Pankaj Kumar's Weblog

I was reflecting on some of the major happenings (well, at least for me) of Year 2002. It was quite an year!!

High Points:

• Released my first opensource project at source forge: XPB4J. It was quite an experience -- setting up an account with SourceForge, preparing the website and documentation and getting listed at a no. of online journals. Sad part is that it is almost moribund now.


• Year 2002 was my first year of making a number of presentations in industry seminars and conferences: SDWest2002, SD Forum, Technology Association of Georgia, Atlanta and HP World2002.


• Akriti got admitted into Millikin Basic elemntary school -- one of the best schools around.


• First full year of Unnati turned out to be very different from her older sister, Akriti. A lot more active and rumbunctious.


• Veena started driving and got her own car.


• HP Press recruited me to write a book titled J2EE Security for Servlets, EJBs and Web Services.


• INS gave the ticket to stay in US as long as we want.


• Freshmeat.Net published my account of ergonomic trauma.

Low Points:

• A noumber of close friends had to move out of Bay Area due to worsening tech economy of the valley.


• HP got out of Middleware business. This had many impacts -- one of them being job uncertainty for many months.


• Thanks to the red hot housing market of the valley -- Had no luck in finding a reasonable and affordable house.


• The brokerage account continued to be in dumps -- losing ever more money.

From an interview with Screenwriting coach Robert McKee:

"The great irony of existence is that what makes life worth living does not come from the rosy side. We would all rather be lotus eaters, but life will not allow it. The energy to live comes from the dark side. It comes from everything that makes us suffer. As we struggle against these negative powers, we're forced to live more deeply, more fully."

Last week Veena had a bone fracture in her right foot and since then has been near-immobile. I have been doing most of the house-hold chores and looking after her, Akku and Unni, in addition to the office work. July 4th excursion is cancelled even before getting finalized. India trip is in jeopardy. Butamazingly, I feel that this incident has made us live more richly. I have better appreciation of what it takes to raise two kids and run the house-hold. Not very convenient or comfortable, but comforting nonetheless!

Today the escrow closes for our home!

It would still be few months before we can move in, but hey ... I own the land and the structure now and the old owner will pay me rent.

Here is a picture of the house:

Akriti and her friends put up a great performance on the tunes of Salaam Namaste song. I recorded their part and uploaded to Google Video.