In this post I will brief what’s going on for me in 2016.

Family Life

Start of 2016 brought us excitement with arrival of our 2nd daughter-Goyumi. She came to this world on 12th Jan and that forced me to stay away from work for couple of weeks. She brought us joy in the start of the year and hope it will remain throughout.

Goyumi

Mindfulness Practice

As you noticed, since start of 2015 I have slowed down and move my energy to learn something really challenging (practicing to live in the present moment). I have gone for my first 10-days silent meditation in Jan 2015 (read about it) . I am planning to go for my 2nd 10-days retreat in late March 2016. There is a possibility of going to 3rd retreat over Christmas and new year break.

Sometime you may be surprised why I am spending  this much of time on this. Only way you can understand this is experiencing “living in the present” by yourself (one cannot understand by listening to someone else experience or read about it). If you want to know scientific power of meditation you can watch this quick 3 min video. Here is another great talk how businesses promote practice of mindfulness to achieve better outcome for both employee and employer.

You are not require to be in a sitting position always to do meditation. You can practice to bring your mind to present moment while walking as well. To practice this, I have built a walking track in my backyard. I am trying  to do it (at least 1 hour per day) by being mindful and concentrate on walking. More and more you practice, you will realize your mindfulness automatically comes and you can’t walk without being mindful.

IMG_4709

Studies & Certification

There is no plans for me to go for another CCIE. But my current CCIE status due to renew by 31 Dec 2016. This mean I have to go for a CCIE-Written Exam within this year. I have got a free voucher (Thanks to CSC – 2015 VIP program) for CCDE-Written.  I have to use that before 18th March. So I will try that first and if no luck will go for CCIE Wireless written exam later in the year.

Conferences & Community Support

I have been inducted to Cisco Support Community – VIP class for 2016. This is the 3rd time in a raw selected for this. There are 29 in total and 5 of them for the “Wireless” technology area. Here are the wireless VIPs in CSC for 2106. Congrats to all of them. In this year too, I will spend time on CSC and give something back to the community.

2016-VIP

This brings certain privileges and free access to Cisco Live is one of my favorite.  So I will be at Cisco Live Melbourne and looking forward to see some of you.

So this is the quick update from my side.