2014: Year in review

2014 was a big year in terms of changes in personal life, with two big events that might both end up being investments in potential bubbles.

In April this year, we completed the purchase of an apartment in Jayanagar, Bangalore. We had expressed our interest to buy it back in 2012, when the construction of the building started, but it took until 2014 for the building to get completed.

The first few months of the years thus went primarily into overseeing the final stages of construction of the house, getting the interiors done, and getting a bank loan to fund the purchase (which turned out to be harder than I expected). Finally, after what seemed like an eternity we moved into the apartment towards the end of May.

And barely two months later the wife moved out. In August she left for Barcelona to do an MBA at IESE Business School. She has completed one term and so far seems to be enjoying it. I’m back to a bachelorly life here in Jayanagar and so far I’ve been coping reasonably well.

I stopped making coffee at home in order to cut down my caffeine consumption. Now I walk 10 minutes to Maiya’s in Jayanagar 4th Block to get my caffeine fix. It costs eighteen rupees plus about five minutes spent standing in queue, but it’s really awesome and well worth it!

On the professional front, things have been quieter than I had imagined. My consulting continues, and I ventured into a new sector this year. I still need to up my business development, though, and that is going to be the focus in the new year. There have also been a couple of interesting opportunities for a change in line that have come up towards the end of the year but it now looks like I’ll continue what I’ve been doing.

There has been one exciting development on the professional front though – I started teaching at IIMB earlier this month. I’m an “adjunct faculty” and will be there for the length of one term. The classes started a bit slowly (in terms of student participation) but now I think I quite like the lot. And so far I’ve been enjoying teaching. I hope I can continue doing this going forward.

Another feature of my life this year is my constant in-and-out in my use of social media, primarily facebook and twitter. I was off twitter for all of January, August, September and October, and part of December. I was off Facebook for most of this time (all except January). The break helped and my blogging has picked up significantly. So much so that the hosting provider had to twice increase my bandwidth quota!

My plan for next year on the professional front is to ramp up on business development and hopefully expand my business. I want to write a book. I’d set a rather aggressive target for that but now it looks unlikely and I need to possibly extend it. And then I plan to see a little more of Europe (based in Barcelona – helps that Vueling has its hub there), and hopefully do a bike trip. Of course one can’t plan for everything!

Wishing all of you a happy new year 2015 and a great year ahead!

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