The one recounting the period when I joined Babelweb

nov

Kids [...] The great moments of your life won’t necessarily be the things you do, they’ll also be the things that happen to you. Now, I’m not saying you can’t take action to affect the outcome of your life, you have to take action, and you will. But never forget that on any day, you can step out the front door and your whole life can change forever. You see, the universe has a plan kids, and that plan is always in motion.

(rewind) April 2008.

At that time, I was completing my second semester of 1st year in master STIC at Université de La Réunion. It was just before the exams. (After the exams would come 2 months of TER.) At that time, I was planning to come back to Mauritius after finishing that year, work and make some money, go back (or elsewhere) complete the master later (I know, bad idea, but the “socio-economical” climate was complicated…).

So we’re taking a break with the guys, sitting outside our computer room. Mamy-Haja (back then I knew him through being a TICE tutor, he actually is the director of the TICE service) comes up to me, and asks if I’m interested in a job right away, to do flash stuff in relation to e-learning Oò (minutes later, Sawa tells me Mamy-Haja had come up to him first, but he directed him back at me ^^ Hail to Sawa! ). I’m like, “Errr ben ouais!!!”.

FYI, finding a job can be rather arduous in Reunion Island, now one falling into your lap, totoche!!!

Christian (the coordinator of the Babelweb project) had come to Mamy-Haja, seeking a web hosting, as well as a part-time web-developer. I had a brief interview with Christian, rather in a relaxed manner, because I remember telling to Katty (my fiancée) I was wearing torn jeans that day lol

Since the job was part time, I would be able to pursue my master in parallel. And the 2nd semester of master2 was 6months of internship, which fitted in nicely. The project would last till end December 2009.

Before all this, I was rather laid back for my exams, I had a good average the 1st semester and didn’t have to kas paké the 2nd semester to have an average for the year (those who went through the french system know what it’s like lol). But acceptance in master2 was on the basis of a written application. It added some pressure ! Long story short, I made it through the selection.

The “immediately” part of starting to work for the project was put on a hold though, the University was in crisis, change of presidency, no budgets could be voted. But I needed money to pay bills for the coming academic year, and simply to be able to stay around. So, after my TER (on the management of the consistency of ubiquitous components in dynamic networks… yeah, a mouthful, but I like saying it ^^ ça en jette! lol ) Mamy-Haja got me a small job, through his friend and also one of my
lecturers, Fanilo, who needed a web-developer on a short project with SUFP.

Late at night working on the TER at IREMIA, and my macbook

Mamy-Haja also got a “summer job” for Sawa, setting up a uPortal portlet for the university, which I helped him with at the deployment phase ^^ (crazy times, worked till 4am at the worst, the day before the deadline/presentation to the president of the university… and had classes at the same time, oh even worse, had a presentation of our own Oò we were already in September 2008, in master2 ).

Another late night working with Sawa (left) and Med (who had joined along to revise), we were given the keys to an office in the physics department.

I officially joined the Babelweb project in August 2008. It made me learn a lot, meet interesting people, travel (I had the opportunity to go to Athens, Rome, Helsinki and Vichy!) for work meetings/sessions, have a different outlook on what and how we develop or put in place stuff in regards to the end users (Mamy-Haja’s obsession, along with “pérénité” lol)…

From Athens – Babelweb – Nov 2008

From Roma – Babelweb – Jan 2009

(fastfwd) End October 2009.

Life’s unpredictable. I have return to Mauritius, just before my residency card expires, as its renewal was refused by the prefecture -_-” One of the many problems I got there with administration (maybe I’ll blog about that later). I’m still working for Babelweb, from home ^^

In November, I went to a couple interviews (here in Mauritius) and got a job, where they accept that I start in January, really looking forward to it I’ll be doing sysadmin (on mostly mac servers!), task automatization (scripting), and R&D in web