Look back at 2025 was for me
I have been seeing so many "Echo of 2025" and "Year in Review" posts from my favorite apps like Mastodon, AntennaPod as well as LinkedIn lately. They inspired me to sit down and reflect on my own journey. Initially, I considered a month-by-month breakdown of significant milestones, but I realized that might read more like a calendar than a reflection. Instead, I’ve categorized my year into personal milestones, favorite purchases, memorable vacations, personal projects, and work highlights.
Personal Milestones
I turned 44 this year. According to some research, this is the age when people begin to age more rapidly. I’m not sure I feel the change just yet, but I’ll keep you posted on how things evolve! This was also a unique year for me professionally and financially, as it was the first year I did not draw a traditional salary, focusing instead on building our vision.
Lovely Purchases
1. I finally bought a long-cherished dream car—the Tata Nano. It was a technical masterpiece of its time and is now reaching a "vintage" charm. I was lucky to find one through a friend of a friend at a fair price, avoiding the inflated markups of online marketplaces like Spinny or Cars24.
2. I picked up several USB-to-HDD, IDE/SATA, and M.2 connectors. If you maintain any legacy hard-drive-based systems, these are essential. Using M.2 SSDs as backup devices—and even as backups for my backups—has been a game-changer, and these connectors make the process seamless.
Amazing Vacations
This year was punctuated by three beautiful trips that allowed me to recharge:
Taki, West Bengal: It was interesting to see the river boundary between India and Bangladesh. Its was also eye opening to see how our boundary with Bangladesh is too difficult to contain. We did the mandatory boat ride along the river boundary as well.
Srirangapatna, Mysore: A visit to Payana Car Museum was amazing. Its one of most interesting museums with tons of vintage cars. Railways Museum, Sand Museum and Sea Shell Art Museum are must see once for everyone. My kids especially enjoyed them the most.
BR Hills: We stayed at Gorukana Resort for a night. It was a calm and serene place. It was a much needed break for me. The early morning bird walk where we managed to spot a number of very interesting birds.
Personal Projects
Educational Games for My Kids: I made great use of Gemini CLI and Qwen Code to build a suite of educational games for my children. I developed them as static HTML5 apps and hosted them at apps.100rabh.com.
The Home Backup Server: I set up Syncthing on my old Raspberry Pi 2B (yes, it’s ancient, but it still works!). It now automatically backs up photos from my family’s phones, which I then periodically transfer to an external hard drive. While there are many cloud services available, I’m still enjoying the control of a self-hosted setup.
Actions@Work
Sudama Health: The First Clinic: February was a major milestone when the fruits of our labor became a reality. After months of Abhijit and I coordinating with plumbers, masons, painters, and carpenters, our first Sudama Health clinic opened its doors. We designed it with a modern aesthetic, and it was incredibly rewarding to see that patients felt comfortable walking in. The turnout exceeded our expectations, and our medical team did an amazing job bringing this "weird dream" to life.
Perfecting Telemedicine: Establishing our telemedicine workflow was an uphill task. We built it iteratively, consulting with our medical team and testing different equipment until we found the perfect setup. It took a few months to standardize the process, but we finally moved to a fully remote consultation model that is scalable and uses technology to support the doctors rather than limit them.
Expansion: Once we were confident in our remote consultation model, we built our second clinic. Thanks to our earlier experience, we moved much faster, completing the work in just a few weeks. We maintained our high standards for a clean, modern look—so much so that some locals jokingly asked, "Who are these idiots building such nice clinics in our area?"
Bangalore Tech Summit: This was a fantastic experience. We met incredible people and had many promising discussions that I hope to follow up on soon. A special thanks to Dilip from the Bangalore Bioinnovation Center for providing us with a space at their stall.
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