In
July 2013 when Joerg Simon and Fabian Affolter introduced Fedora
localization and the OSSTMM to Central Tibetan Administration i saw
Joerg using fedora with kde, he called it his own custom fedora and
had a lot of tweaking in it :D. I tried fedora but then again I went
back using ubuntu since all my colleagues were using it and thought
troubleshooting would be much easier. Joergs interest in tibetan
thangka gave us a good time hunting for the best of thangka painting
in mcleod ganj. Finally we got “Manjushri” - the Boddhisatva of
Wisdom. We became good friends
and i
met him again during Nullcon 2015, during which he introduced me to
Praveen Kumar and he told me about fudcon.in 2015. Joerg guided me
throughout the fudcon procedure, although i was intimidated at
submitting a paper at fudcon. I also met Harish Pillay again, he is a
cheerful and warm hearted person who also knows and wants to help
about the tibetan community.
And
so my journey began for Fudcon Pune 2015, I thought fudcon will be
like any other conference where I will present my talk, meet new
people. Little did I know that the F in fedora also stands for Family
:D
Day
1 Midnight
Door
bell rings ... Ding Dong
I
woke up to see who is at the door, it was Aditya patawari, apparently
he seemed confused that i am his room mate. I guess he was expecting
someone else. He went off with the bell boy looking
confused
...
The
bell rang again and i see him, this time he was sure i am his room
mate. We exchanged a quick greetings of “hi hello” followed by
our name and went to sleep.
Day
1.
The
first person i meet in the morning was Harish, whom i met in nullcon
goa and it felt great to see him again. Kushal started distributing
the Fedora merchandize and then we headed to the venue MIT.
Since
this was my first time in the fedora community, i didnt know anybody
and was excited in meeting new people.
I
met danishka, sirko, yogi, brendon who gave me a pair of fedora
sticker for my blank thinkpad.
It
was really intimidating at first, although excited, i was the only
one from my community and i thought no body knew about Tibetans.
I
met swapnil who was in hill hacks few weeks back in mcleod ganj and
quickly our converstaion grew making me feel less intimidated of
fudcon. I had a good talk with Harish how we have been in our life
since the last time we met. For some reasons i was feeling dizzy
after having lunch and it seemed like i was having a migraine
problem.
I
had to go back to the hotel and get some rest. Later that night
Aditya patawari invited me for the mini fudpub but i couldn't as i
was not feeling
well.
Day
2.
My
session being at the end of the day, I thought of attending various
other talks. Kernel and userspace tracing with LTTng by Suchakra was
a very interesting session, and i couldn't resist asking him for
linux performance observability tool chart and i have it posted on
the wall in my office :D
Pravin's
talk on nuts and bolts of fedora internationalization and
globalization was the talk i was looking for. I wanted to have the
whole fedora os in tibetan language and his talk gave me a number of
new ideas to implement. After the lunch i just sat in the Auditorium
brushing my presentaion and enjoying the talks going on.
Finally
my turn came and i began by asking how many in the audience know
about tibetans in india. There were quite few who knew about the
community and actually been to the places. I was very happy when
Kiran said he has been to dharamsala and visited hillhacks and he
knew about my community.
After
my talk, i got a very good response from the audience who are willing
to help in localizing tibetan language in fedora. I was overwhelmed
by the feedback i received from the audience .
From
Fudcon venue to bluO in Phoenix MarketCity where the actual Fudpub
was happening i shared 2 hours bus ride with kushal das.
To
be honest, he looked intimidating and serious to me first. But those
2 hours of conversation with him chagned everything. Kushal was a
tibetan food lover, spicy thukpa to be specific. He told me, he
wanted to visit my hometown and i was happy to have him as my guest
at home. Kushals interest in collecting buddha statue even got me
closer to him as friend.
At
Fudpub i met Truong, my first impression was OMG!!! There is a
chinese person in the audience. Even i know that FOSS and Fedora is
neutral ground to bring us all together - i was a bit hesitent to
talk to him and my first question before even introducing was “are
you chinese ...”? To my surprise he said, NO i am
Vietnamise!
We both laughed when he said that, and we had a great time together.
Izhar joined us and all of us had great fun at the fud pub. The food
was good and the people were cheerful. I had a great time bowling with Jens Peterson; we both had good number of strikes but he won :D
Photo Courtesy: Kushal Das
Day
3.
I
couldn't attend key signing party, for some reason the morning
weather seemed to trigger my dizzyness and headache. I quickly
exchange my keys with friends i have met during the fudcon.
Closing
note from Rupali was very good and it shows how every one in the
community worked hard to make it a sucess and i was happy to be a
part of a community. To me it felt like a large family always ready
to accept new members and i felt great being a part of it.
A
Group of us went went for a shopping and on our way to the shopping
place i had a good chat with danishka and yogi. We went to the
Tibetan market in pune called the fashion street where i pretended to
be someone from Indonesia. We met an old lady who after finding out
i was an imposter asked me why I came all the way from north India
to Pune.
She
was very happy when I told her about my purpose of visit and how
everyone in the group is a supporter for Tibetan people and its
cause.
At
dinner, Kushals rant on the Tom yum soup was funniest moment of the
night. I headed to Kirans room where they were editing the noise in
the videos of the talk.
Kushal
joined us and started cracking jokes from this mysterious guy name
ramkey. We had such a good time at Kirans room that night , followed
by me finding out Ratnadweep and Sayan chowdhary are anime lovers.
This day couldn't have been better. We exchanged our contacts and had
our own rants on the spoilers during the anime episodes.
Day
4.
I
had lunch at kushals place and finding his wife was also interested
in Tibetan food and its culture, I kept thingking they should have a
Tibetan name :D
I
missed my chance of visiting Redhat office in pune since i slept in
the morning, but all in all it was a conference to remember and I
look forward to attend next year :D
As
I was leaving the hotel, I asked Kushal it would be nice to have f in
the fedora for family. He responded saying F does stands for family
and fedora infact was founded by a group of friends.
As
I promised in my session, I am proudly using Fedora for my personal
use as well as at work. I even get my dad to use Fedora. :D
