When in Doubt, Total Football

I got my bachelors degrees in Electronics and Communications Engineering many moon ago. Since then, I've been employed at multiple organizations on three continents in disparate and diverse roles that included Engineering, Presales, People Management, Product, Technical Project management and everything else in between. And I was indirectly involved in IT nearly at all of those places in some fashion or the other, just so I could have a workspace or environment where I could do my best work and help others do the same.

I've setup and administered Linux, AIX, HP, Solaris on just about every architecture that IBM supports, including the first implementation of embedded Linux on a watch and SuSE Linux on the IBM Mainframe z800. I got to see Linux booting up in the blink of an eye on physical hardware.

In the summer of 2003, I rode my motorbike from South India snaking my way along the west coast to Nagpur and visiting some historical sites and landmarks along the way.

I moved to Singapore briefly before making the leap to New Zealand.

I was the Technical Project Manager on one of the largest interconnect projects between two of the largest telecom vendors in New Zealand. I was instrumental in managing the software upgrades of network transport devices across the country. These projects were in fields that were entirely new to me and yet, I was able to quickly learn what was required, to collaborate and execute these projects successfully.

I left New Zealand and traveled around the world hopping across 20 countries in under a year all by myself. I climbed Mt.Fuji wearing nearly nothing and was up there at the peak to witness the beautiful sunrise at 4am. I got to visit the Ghibli Museum and the kite museum in Tokyo and got to eat some of the most amazing sashimi.

I hitchhiked from Germany, through France, Spain and into Portugal and then hitchhiked back up the same route and into Scandinavia. I watched some crazy stuff at museums in Stockholm and Helsinki and got to experience a snowy winter in Hamburg. Along the way, I got to dabble in a lot of different languages, trying to figure out how they might have come about.

I got to visit Macchu Picchu in Peru, La Paz and the salt flats in Uyuni, Bolivia. Even got to make a detour into Cuba, as one does. Ate some amazing food/tacos at a little market in Cancun - still remember the complex flavors I got to taste from those tacos, nothing like I've ever tasted.

After spending some time in Little Haiti in Miami, a GreyHound dropped me in New York City, where I happened to fall in love and with the city as well.

I was accepted into two different MFA programs in New York, one for Art Practice and another for Creative Writing with no prior formal education in art or humanities. In New York City, a city I've always dreamed of living in. Because of funding issues, I had to drop out in the final semester of Creative Writing, and just around the time I was getting comfortable with Cloud Computing.

I was excited for the opportunities and the possibilities afforded by Cloud Computing and that's how I got into AWS, Azure and DevOps and have been in that space ever since.

I have worked at small dynamic startups, well established small to medium sized businesses and large humongous enterprises. At every organization, I was able to adapt, change, learn and thrive. And when I stopped learning or growing or in some cases got burned out, I had little choice but to leave.

It's been an eventful and interesting time on the professional front. I've done so many amazing things, learned new ways of doing things, and successfully solved a wide gamut of problems and challenges. And yes, I had failures along the way and only remember crying once, after an Art Practice class.

On the personal front, I've had to build and rebuild my life from scratch in three different countries and continents. I've traveled thousands of miles around the world and now live 10,000 miles from where I was born. Along the way, I've learned so much about others and lot more about myself.

And I did all of these things with my mind constantly filled with doubt and sometimes despair.