Reflection

 Hey guys! Happy New Year 2022. Perfect time to write a new post, so here's one. You're welcome.

2021 was a very unique year in my life. There were some life-altering events and in hindsight it was pretty crazy. Let me just go through the events from Jan to Dec to make sense of what happened, for myself as well as for you. 

The year 2021 started in Kolkata for me and I still remember I slept at 9:30pm on 31 Dec 2020, lol. I had a cool time in Kolkata playing football and badminton with friends. College classes were going on in online mode (including lab classes which I remember I attended as I was driving from Kolkata to Jamshedpur). I think our Grand Viva for the 4th year was in January as well. I distinctly remember that I could not answer any of the questions asked by any of the panel members. I was given the advice to start from the basics of 1st year if I ever wanted a career in Electrical Engineering and yup, I agree. I have the same amount of electrical engineering knowledge as.. my sister who is currently taking her class 12 board exams. 

This was also the time when a relatively small tragedy struck( I say small in hindsight. It was pretty huge at that time). On 2nd February, I had gone for lunch with my friends in a place which was pretty far away from my place. After food and catchup, we decided to see NIT Jamshedpur because there were some new constructions going on worth 12/13 crore as proudly exclaimed by a student there. While travelling, there was a patch of sand along the road and my decade old scooty decided to try some fun on me. I tried to apply my brakes and it went full dramatic-actress-falling-on-floor-in-serials on me. I tried to control the situation but in the process I broke a bone in my right elbow. Thankfully, the person sitting behind me wasn't hurt (sorry Pramanik da).

On any other day, a broken bone wouldn't have made such a difference to my daily activities but as luck would have it, this broken bone was just before the GATE exam. My GATE exam was on 8th Feb and there was no way I was going to take this exam anymore. Two years of kuttar khatuni down the drain for this man right here. So as you can imagine, my mom was extremely elated when this happened and patted me on my back. 

March was relatively event free except for some exams. At that time, there was a one company policy in our department and since I was already placed in Capg, I was only applied to sit in dream companies. I had taken the online round of a certain company without telling my parents because telling them would only mean disappointment when it would turn out that I couldn't even go past the online round.

Then came April, and boy did this month change everything. On the 5th of April, I got the mail from HR that my interview had been scheduled for the 8th (exactly 2 months after GATE). I won't reiterate my interview experience here as I have already made another post regarding it, go read it if you want. I still remember the day I got the confirmation. It was not official or anything but our Training and Placement Officer had called three of us personally to give us the news and told us to keep it under wraps until HR sent official confirmation. The height of my jump after that was, in my opinion, higher than Ronaldo's jumping header. Official confirmation came after 10 days and that's when my family and friends knew about it XD. People started calling me after that to congratulate me and my parents started calling relatives to let them know. I slept at 1am that night after the last call. However, I couldn't really celebrate with friends at that time because the second wave was at full force. 

I think that was the start of my YouTuber arc Link. I literally didn't want to do anything after that and was just up in my roof all the time recording random stuff, including a video where all I did was film rain, on my mobile and then uploading it on YouTube. You can still check out some of the videos there if I have not already deleted them. Some of them were real cringe. This entire thing lasted for more than 2 months until May when my final semester exams started.

May was a pretty uncomfortable month. We had some assignments which were called exams and we needed to submit them within 12/24 hours. I don't remember correctly. Now, pretty much all of my classmates started writing late and finished their answer scripts late in the night but I had different priorities. My wish was to complete all my answers by 5pm so that I could go to the roof for my daily walks. I wouldn't miss them for stupid reasons like exams. So this was a self made handicap. I couldn't leverage the toppers and had to actually study the notes to make answers. Sometimes, I didn't even cross check my answers with anyone and submitted them, as is. Only once was this rule broken, when I had to stay on till 7pm to solve a doubt because the electricity in the home of the only topper who could solve this problem, was out. I think some exams were postponed as well due to a cyclone and were taken in June. Almost everyone got 10 SGPA in our batch in the final semester so... yay!

June was the month of Euros and Copa America. Messi finally won and it was well deserved. He truly is the GOAT. The intense will for England to lose was a mutual feeling among almost everyone in my social group and that was justified! Thankfully Italy won. Mancini with 32 unbeaten games was a fantastic feat. Felt sad for Eriksen though, I had never seen anything like this in a football match. 

Apart from football though, June was pretty bleak. Some classmates started their jobs and we couldn't even have a proper farewell before college life ended. I had two entire months before I was joining my job and was positively bored because I couldn't even get out of my house. YouTube videos kept coming in Jone as well.

July was a pretty hectic month. There were some misunderstandings in July which led me to believe that my Job would start from the 5th but when a batchmate turned colleague mailed the recruiter asking for a joining date, they said that it was 26th July for us. At this time, each passing day was becoming unbearable and I was getting bored out of my mind. Finally, my starting kit came one week before my joining date and I made a Youtube video about the unboxing. That is my last video I believe. After that, I became quite busy so there aren't any updates in August except that the effects of the second wave was slightly coming down and slowly I came out of my house just to roam around in the society.

Finally in September, the situation was under control enough for us to step out of our houses. I gave a small treat to some of my friends in September and we went on some trips to a dam on the outskirts of Jamshedpur. I did not ride my scooty this time. Something else happened in September as well with one of my friends, or rather, I came to know something about one of my friends in September by mistake ( I wasn't supposed to see it). I am not at liberty to say what it was but I will write about it as soon as I get permission. 

Messi was forced to leave Barca in by Laporta and labelling this as shocking would be quite an understatement in the football world. Fricking number 30 in Paris. What a joke!

October was Durga Pujo month! I took my first one week chutti in this month and this was honestly jarring. It was a fun durga puja though. I had some internal information about some of the people in the society and watching them interacting with each other was honestly giggle-inducing. We ate out a lot in this month and I'm thankful for that. My mom's birthday was in this month and we got a bit materialistic this festive season with me gifting an iPad to mom and a OnePlus to my father and them gifting an iPhone 13 to me for my birthday in November. This... felt terrible to type, seems like I'm bragging or something. I'll probably delete this line after completing this post. 

November was free of events, relatively. Went to eat to a few new places and gave some treats as well. 

Finally came December with it's Christmas spirit and a feeling of hopefulness... which turned out to be a lie. There are some health concerns in the family which I don't feel like writing. Not because it's anything secret, but because I don't really want to think about it that much. I hope you understand. 

Coming to a lighter topic, I came to know something else about another friend in December as well. I don't know if I have the permission to write about this as well but I will make another addition to the series "My Friends live amazing lives" pretty soon. 

So yeah, that was my 2021. It was a pretty life altering year for sure. I tried working on some flaws in my character in this year but I don't know how successful I was in doing that. I will try to work more on it this year. I'm really trying to work on reducing the negativity and people who know me know that I can become quite negative when I want to.

I would also like to work quite a bit on my technical skills this year and learn about the new things that are being introduced everyday in this world. Really want to contribute to open source in this year as well but honestly I have no idea where to start. That is definitely top priority right now.

I could always say that I want to lose weight as well but that would be laughable. I think weight loss will only happen for me when I'll have some thing in life which will want to make me lose weight willingly and since there is nothing or no one right now, I'm pretty stable on the weight side. 

And finally, I would really like to work on my communication skills. I usually feel myself getting constricted when I meet people I'm not familiar with and that's when the awkward jokes come out. It would really be nice to not fumble in front of strangers like a school kid in front of their crush.

That should be enough for this post. Thank you guys so much for reading and as always, I will see you in the next post. Buh-bye!