A day to cherish and remember!
It is my birthday today. When I was a kid and during teen years, birthday used to be lot of excitement and used to be eager to open those gifts that were showered on me. That was the time that, when, others celebrated their birthdays, I used to wish my birthday arrive sooner without wait. How much things change in matter of few years. Now, my birthday feels like just another day. I am more excited about other’s birthdays, I run around with friend(s) to get the cake, buy gift and celebrate their birthday and if it is my mom’s or sister’s or wife’s birthday, it’s a literal festival day for me.
But….
Two incidents that happened today made this day exciting and made me cherish this day. While one was planned, the other was not. Since early morning, my wife showered me with gifts. I was supposed to open one gift every hour at a time written on the gift. At 11:15am, I unwrapped the cover from this beautiful book and at that moment, my mind raced back and gave me a barrage of memories related to blogging, my passion. When I started writing articles more than half a decade ago, I used to write them down (and I still do for some articles) on a paper or in a book and this blue book here is one of the first ones that I used and is the only book that I still have and am going to keep the book forever. The book that I got today from wife is similar book (with a different hardback) and one look at the book brought back all those memories, how I used to sit in a chair on a Saturday night scribbling drafts, all those events, meet ups, tweetups, long discussions with fellow geeks in office and at home. Like one said, the best gift is often the simplest one.
The second incident was rather unplanned. There was a peculiar issue that came to my notice (issue with Android play store on some devices) and while I was trying to fix the problem for a friend, I kind of got my phone effected too (will explain about this later in a post). Though the issue started on a phone that is not from Xiaomi, I dropped an email to Hugo Barra, Manu Kumar and Tom Shen at Xiaomi as the issue is generic, unique and interesting. True their word that “Xiaomi always treats its customers as friends”, I was immediately referred to Jai Mani (Product Manager at Xiaomi, ex-Google employee) and not even an hour later, I was on a phone call with Jai, who was active member of Android dev team during his time at Google. This sort of response from Xiaomi truly made me cherish my day and made this day memorable. How many companies top level management show that eagerness and zeal to help its customers, how many will respond within minutes to try to find a solution. Compare this to my trip to Samsung service center, back in 2013 when I was shooed away by service center executive though the problem was with the device (which was later fixed by simple s/w modification).
Today is without a doubt the best birthday I ever had and this day made me feel proud and happy to be a blogger and gadget freak. Let me now, share with us if you had similar incidents where something or someone made you feel happy about your passion and your work.
