2013 : A Look Back..

Last year’s new year (2012) went completely undocumented, but we did have a lot of fun at that time. I was experiencing my first new year in the streets, streets loaded with traffic at the midnight, people cheering here and there, fireworks at few corners of the streets were ablaze, bars and pubs were filled with new year party nights, while Prince had just arrived in time to Chennai. Me, Chetna and Ishwarya had went to Univercell to buy a new phone for them. Chetna got her HTC Desire X and Ishwarya got the HTC Desire C, after which me and Prince started off to our hostel to get this things set up. Dharani had been wearing the Mala for his Sabarimala pilgrimage and therefore, he hung around with us instead of getting boozed with Sunel and Vishnu. We three were walking along the beach at around midnight, and exactly at 12AM Jan 1 2013, I was pushing through the hell load of vehicles parked along the parking area. We wished ourselves happy new year and we were roaming around for nearly an hour, then we sat down by the waves and were planning what to do for 2013. Me and Prince were so sure and also had a deep instinct feeling that 2013 isn’t going to be good for us. Not just because 13 is an unlucky number, it was because of something else. 2012 was a rockstar year, I loved every moment of it. Almost the whole year was a joy for me, I had loads of fun in college, got my Xype, finished my first Android Project, finished my College, got placed in two companies, started to work, learned a lot (I mean a lot!!) and best of all, got the most amazing and lovable friends in my life.

I certainly don’t believe in superstitions, I actually hate it and also hate the people who support them without an acceptable logic. I see it in way that, superstitions bring down the confidence that they can have on themselves and also nurture negative thoughts. It stops certain people to do what they want, even before they try doing it. Being that sort of guy, I’ve always told myself that 2013 is going to be good year for me, and even if bad things that happen, they are going to have a good reason to follow in the future. Starting with February, which as Sambarians, consider as a new year’s beginning, things started to shake up. Chetna joined Accenture and had to leave office, following which I decided to pursue my dream career. In a turn of events, I became greatly ambitious, thinking that I have nothing to lose, I decided to quit my job and start learning Game Development. I joined ICAT with great excitement with the notion that every student there will be as passionate towards gaming and that I can form a team to make the greatest Indie game ever. It turned out to be a Mega Game Zone, where my classmates, just come in, play Call of Duty : Modern Warfare from afternoon till evening most of the days and go back home. I had spent 2 lakhs as the tution fee for ICAT, that’s almost everything I had earned an year earlier. Also hoping that my decision of dropping out from work wouldn’t change much in my home, it eventually crumbled down the financial condition in my family, tripling the burden my parents had to give me for my education and stay here. After moving out from my old hostel, it became even worse. Right from childhood, I know the value for money, I don’t really ask for something to my parents, if I don’t really want it. After got into work, I completely decided to get everything I desire with my own earned money. That decision is still one one of the strongest decisions I had taken in my life, which is what makes me stare at techie gadgets in malls and check my empty pockets now. Although I saved half of the money I earned, I enjoyed buying at least one thing that I love every month such as games, tshirts, the skullcandy headset and my wrist watch. Just like that, all of them just disappeared after I quit my job, the t-shirts faded and got worn out here and there, games became outdated, I lost my skullcandy headset in a train, my Fastrack watch’s glass got scratch, the date stopped working, the strap became highly worn out, and the money I had saved in the year all got spent on paying half the fees at ICAT. The immediate question which everyone is going to ask and what I’ll ask to myself to is : Well, was it worth it? The answer is Yep, it definitely is. I have no regrets in what I’ve done, and just because the time isn’t right for me, doesn’t mean that what I did was wrong. I still don’t believe and I can’t accept that living like a guy born-grown-played-worked-died is great. I still believe every single line of code I write, every adventure I take, every single thing I do must change the world in some way, Well, maybe not the world, at least single person. If what I do doesn’t create a smile on someone’s face, it’s not worth it. I don’t get the point always cherishing someone’s else work, working for someone else’s life which always ends up looking for money all the time. And of course, that’s a very safe way of living life, no risks at all, they lots of income, all desires full-filled and people call them successful. Well, that’s great, I do great appreciate that concept but I just can’t do it. I’m willing to accept the name that I’m a loser, but I’ll be happy that I tried and failed. So now I know I’m crazy, I know the things that I did is not working out the way I want it. Being a tech geek, I love to buy new gadgets and I need money. I also need money to keep my family out of financial burden that occurred because of me, and the only fastest way I could do it is, join the bandwagon with the so-called ‘successful people’ of this age. I cannot fully blame ICAT for the things that I has happened to me, it was also a fault on me, as I wasn’t paying much attention to studying a lot of things by myself. My passion should have pushed me harder exploring the branches of Game Development and I should have a learnt a lot of things by myself.

Just like music, I’m trying to think game development is just isn’t my thing. If you didn’t know, I love to create music, I have tried to play a lot of instruments from my childhood, I had been using FruityLoops, the professional music production software, even when I in 9th standard in school. Just because I loved to create music, I wasn’t able to do it, to be true, I’m a total failure at it. I lack the music creativity unlike my brother, it took years for me to realize that and finally I had to give up creating music when I was in 3rd year of college. Everyone is going to say, ‘hey, that’s not right, you can do anything if you try, you just have to practise, bla bla bla’, of course I know that, but is it really that worth it? Everyone knows, I don’t work hard, I try to work smart, just because I’m super lazy. Why study and learn something that totally not in me? I could ask my brother to create a background score for my movie, and he would do it willingly and also gives him a chance to expose his musical creativity to reach a broader audience through me. Well, what do you thing I should do?

Depending on your answer above, read on :

You answered me : Yeah, making your brother create the music is a smarter move. It helps him grow and also helps you in whichever project you are working on. You can try playing with music but don’t take it serious.

I’m a Everything-Wannabe, but I have to realize that there are things just couldn’t take it inside without deep effort. Almost all of you know, I’ve been programming since I was in 3rd standard, but on looking back on my experience, I’ve always had the higher edge on programming and designing for web. When I program the web, the code just flows out like poetry from my hands. I could visually see the output of what I’m doing right when I’m coding it without even hitting the F5 in the browser. That’s something that never happened in any other thing I’ve programmed, be it the games, softwares, mobile applications. Maybe that’s because programming the Web is easy? I’m not sure and also a lot of my tech friends don’t seem to agree with it. Maybe I’m built to be a Web Programmer, and that is what I’m made of. Maybe I have to dig deeper and enhance my talent in programming the Web and reacher a greater height. That way, I can accomplish my dreams of creating games through the Web just like Google does. Who knows? I’ll be a Game-Web Developer one day. For now, I mean 2014, I can keep my Game Developer dreams aside, learn Web and App Development even further work in a Software Development company. With the money I earn, I can buy my dream PlayStation 4, and also keep my parents happy as sooner. During my free time, I can learn game development on my own, creating simpler games for my friends to play with and also make games available on the Google Play Store, which might give me some additional income to necessitate my needs. After I’m completely satisfied, I’ll startup my own company at 25 and pursue my direction in developing products that reach people in changing the world again.

You answered me : No way, don’t drop your dream to create music. Keep learning harder and harder even though you don’t have it in you, you will one day succeed. Even if it takes years, don’t let others take part in your dream project.

I know I will be able to accomplish whatever task I take, with a lot of learning and practice. Although I hate maths and physics since my school days, I can somehow inject it inside me and learn to love it. What I learn now is totally alienating from the things I’ve programming since my childhood, I do love it. Realizing that the bird you drag from the catapult in angry birds is actually following a parabolic equation, and a car dashing each other and glass pieces shattering in Burnout, is actually and object with a particle system attached and a collision system detecting the coordinates of objects and sending messages to the division messages receiver that divides that sprite with material of translucency into smaller pieces drawn across the 3D space with vertices generated in random order following the range obtained from the messages obtained from the collision system. Thankfully, you skipped that sentence as fast as you could and yeah it’ll take me an year or so in order to learn how to do that, if I’m not using an Game Engine. You are not here to know what is a Game Engine, are you? Anyways, that’s how Game Development is, I know it’s this way even before I joined the course, with a lot of learning and breaking my head, I will soon able to crack it up. In 2014, I’ll try to learn my best to learn game development to the fullest and I’ll get a job with fresher’s salary ranging from 10k and at maximum 20k if I get into a bigger company, I’ll leave Tamilnadu, leaving all my friends and make an all new paradigm shift to Maharastra most probably, or Karnatka or Andra Pradesh. After 2 years, I’ll use the experience I earned I’ll try to do MS in USA in game programming, and then get placed in a bigger company, buy my dream PlayStation 4 nearly 5 years from now. Work for a few years, and come back to India, I’ll startup my own company and pursue my direction in developing products that reach people in changing the world again.

Regardless, of whatever I choose, I’m going to be a game developer as I always wanted. You guys know how stubborn I am in the things I want :D. The decision comes down in which path I am going to take, the smarter move or the harder move. I really would like to know your comments. Please comment them below, if you have any opinions in the path I take for my future, most importantly 2014.

Once I was standing near Ishwarya’s hostel in Adyar, and there was a tree nearby me. A caterpillar fell from the tree and it was trying to cross the road and the street was almost busy with a vehicle crossing every second. I tried to get it back into the tree, but it just wouldn’t budge, it turned facing the street again and again in spite of me changing its direction. I guess it really wanted to cross the road, or maybe it was following something. I was waiting for her for around half an hour, and to pass time I was watching the caterpillar move. I was like “Go, Caterpillar Go!”, I was happy for its ambitious plan to cross the street, I was wishing it all success. I assumed the position of the worm, it could have stayed on the branch, growing slowly and becoming a beautiful butterfly someday but no, it wanted to take risks and take up the adventure across the road. As I assumed its position, I started praying for it, that it must somehow cross the road, I took every vehicle that crossed by, as a hurdle that will come to my life too. The caterpillar made some turns here and here instead of crawling in a straight path, and I started to count in seconds, how much it has saved to save its life from getting killed. Almost 7 times, the caterpillar was just within millimeters from the vehicles’ wheels and it was because of the turns it had taken earlier. If it had moved straight, it would have got killed sooner as I had calculated. 4 times, as faster vehicles came near, they took it off it in the wind because of the force. Regardless, it kept crossing the street, it’s determination was astounding me. I was fully excited and filled with hope, that god is great, its a miracle how a caterpillar could manage to cross such a busy street. It reached almost 3/4 of the road, and I ran to opposite side of the road to welcome it to the finish line. It kept crawling slowly, I started hearing background music in my mind, and suddenly, pop! A car squished it to its demise within a second and it kept rolling. I was completely heart-broken, being a caterpillar, it was doing its best to cross the street, it can’t fly with super powers. I couldn’t understand why god did not help the fully determined caterpillar. I guess the all those happy things we hear happens only in stories and fairy tales, in their real world it’s not just practical. But the thing, we can learn from the caterpillar is to keep moving forward no matter how many hurdles we face. Also learning to take the right turns at the right time of life, to save our lives just like the caterpillar escaped from the death moments earlier. Without taking it’s demise as a negative thought, we can compare that to our age. We all know that we are going to die one day, what matters today is that we make the right turn choices in life to take care of ourselves and others with us. With me and also Prince, hoping that 2014 will be an awesome year for us, and also to you, I wish you a Very Happy New Year! Keep Smiling and Let’s laugh at the hurdles we face and shed our tears that are precious that gold to only those which are worth it. And most importantly, let’s be crazy!

Happy New Year 2014, Everybody!