10 Years of 'vyaskartik2001'

The year was 2001 and I had given my 10^th standard board exams. There is a 4 month vacation after that if I remember correctly. Well I would have played hell lotta cricket for sure, but there is something else as well which happened in the year 2001….ten years ago.

Internet was kinda novelty thing and not everyone was online, atleast not even half of what it is today! Damn I didn’t even had a rig that time.  I wanted to learn a few things and I used to go to the nearby cyber café. I still remember my first date with internet.

Yahoo was the buzz at that time, Google was not that big I believe.  I went to the café and asked the guy there to help me create an email account on yahoo and rediff. First I went for rediff…had to create a username, tried kartikvyas..booked…vyaskartik…booked.  Then I went crazy and made the id myheartwillgoonkartik@rediffmail.com ……lol another one was borntowin@hotmail.com  . I don’t use these two anymore. For Yahoo, I used vyaskartik2001@yahoo.com ,that somehow stuck and I still use vyaskartik2001 to create email accounts J

A lot has happened in these 10 years.  To the internet, to me and to me with respect to the internet…hehe. Those were the days of yahoo chat rooms, I remember having made 122 friends in the yahoo messenger.  asl pls is how it used to start…hehe.Now I don't even used Yahoo, Google is my life now! I hope to work there some day! 

The results of 10^th grade came, I scored a very good 81%, damn I had slogged a lot too! After that I did two years of junior college in science stream. Still continuing with the Yahoo messenger and hell I also gave the IIT-JEE!

Remember the SP classes which I had joined, I was in the vocational batch. It implies all super scholy people who had taken vocational subjects…I was a rare breed there with Biology. I always believe studyin or working with people who are better than you is good for you!

Did my Computer Engineering after that. That was the time when my interest for Computers grew a lot. Used to read a lotta magazines in the library like Digit, Electronics for You and Linux. I used to be one of the few whi used to be there in the library most of the time. Yes even now, even in Infy..I spent lotta time in the library. I somehow feel very comfortable and happy in between hundreds and thousands of books.

I did my Engineering and got an oncampus job at Infosys.  The period at Infosys has made me what I am today.  2 blogs, 1 review site and 1 online startup. Also authored around 11 research papers there from subjects including VPN, SOA, Cloud Computing, Ruby on Rails, Comparison between active directory and Fedora. Wrote book of knowledge on MySQL and IBM WebsphereMQ. The time spent at Infy was just….simply fantastic. Access to lots of resources was the main factor. We all have access to the internet, the thing is identifying your passion and going for it!

I remember I was not doing very well in Infy training, not even feelin that good. Toppers from all over the country competing against each other and surviving through that was certainly not a walk in the park.

One thing noteworthy and certainly by which every Infoscion can relate themselves is the awesome facilities they provide in campus. Having a 1040 seated multiplex screen which is circular from outside just gives you an idea of the magnanimity and  the standards which this company has set in India.

I have taken lots and lots of pictures of Infy campus and when I upload them on Fb, I get reactions that there are not such campuses even in the US. Hand cleaned roads, 5 star guest house accommodations, every sport facility you can ever think of, world class and huge gym, international standard cricket ground are just some of the factors which give you the jaw dropping feeling. And this is prevalent in all the campuses across India.

I indeed consider myself fortunate to have got a chance to have experience all that. I have done part with it to further gain expertise in my field of interest. From going to an internet café first time to going for graduate studies, 'vyaskartik2001' has come a long way indeed!