2024 has been the best year for me so far! I was able to accomplish so much this year that I’m proud of, by the grace of Almighty.

Here is a quick summary of what the events that took place in this year!

• Saint Martin Tour: It was my first time visiting a beach and an island, and it was fantastic!

• Umrah: Alhamdulillah, I was able to complete my Umrah by the mercy of the Almighty.

• CodeSamurai’24: For the first time, I participated in a national hackathon and was part of the winning team, placing 9th.

• Promotion: I got promoted to the Staff Engineer role at my current workplace.

Saint Martin Tour

January’24 — A big thanks to my amazing university friends for organizing such a smooth and memorable tour. Initially, it was challenging to gather enough participants, but in the end, we had a group of 20 people, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

We spent five days on the island, with each day bringing its own unique activities. From cycling and playing football to multiple barbecue parties, every moment was filled with fun and excitement. I missed out on a few activities because, once again, I couldn’t take a full vacation and had to spend some time working.

Despite that, the tour was absolutely fantastic and particularly special as it was my first trip with both my siblings and university friends.

Here is more on Saint Martin Island.

Umrah

March’24 — Following my "one international tour a year" schedule, I started exploring nearby Middle Eastern countries for my next trip. Initially, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia came to mind, but then I thought, why not do the Umrah? So, I booked the trip with a group of amazing elderly religious people. The Umrah was scheduled right in the middle of Ramadan, making it the best time for this spiritual journey.

Our flight had a transit at Kuwait Airport from Dhaka Airport, where we entered into the state of Ihram. It was an indescribable feeling! After a 3-hour layover at Kuwait Airport, we continued our journey to Jeddah. By around 2 PM local time, we landed at Jeddah Airport and completed the immigration process. From there, we began our journey to the holy city of Mecca by bus. Since we were fasting, and due to the time zone difference, it ended up being the longest fast any of us had experienced.

Once we reached our hotel in Mecca, we took a short rest and then broke our fast with Iftar. After the Isha prayer, we went to the Kaaba to perform Tawaf and Sa'ay. For the first time in my life, I shaved my head and exited the state of Ihram.

It was an awe-inspiring experience, seeing Muslims from all over the world and visiting all the sacred places. We spent the first week in Mecca, visiting every sacred site and mosque. The following week, we traveled to Medina and similarly visited all the sacred places and mosques there.

An interesting part of my trip was that I had to spend some time in Medina coding for the CodeSamurai’24 Hackathon. It felt surreal to be coding while in such a holy city, but that's how my life goes. The picture below was taken right in front of Al-Masjid an-Nabawi (the Prophet's Mosque).

CodeSamurai’24

December’23 - May’24 — It was the first hackathon I had ever participated in. I’m not much into competitions, but circumstances led me to join this one with my mates, Zahin Afsar and Suaeb Ahmed. We had zero expectations for the competition since all of us had full-time jobs and couldn’t take time off for a vacation.

After a disastrous performance in the mock preliminary round, we failed because our program couldn’t even execute properly. However, in the actual preliminary round, we managed to place 5th out of 400+ registered teams. From there, 91 teams were selected for the second phase (essentially the main phase) in March 2024.

Unfortunately, the second phase coincided with my Umrah schedule, which left me unable to contribute much during that stage. Nevertheless, we got selected for the final onsite phase, where we were tasked with enhancing what we had built in phase 2 and creating a mobile app.

We were lagging behind in phase 2, but somehow (well, not “somehow”—we worked incredibly hard during the final 24 hours!) we managed to make it to the winners' list with a rank of 9. The top 10 teams were honored as winners, and making it onto that list was an incredible feeling.

Promotion

June’24 — I’ve been leading the engineering team for a while now, but my CEO encouraged me to further enhance my leadership skills and suggested transitioning to a Staff Engineer role. Initially, I was skeptical and felt unprepared for such a significant position, thinking I was too young for the role. Nevertheless, I decided to embrace the opportunity, knowing that my experience outweighed any doubts tied to my age.

Since then, I’ve been actively working on refining my leadership abilities and started following the principles outlined in the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. This journey has been both challenging and rewarding, pushing me to grow as a leader.

Concluding

In conclusion, the moments I’ve highlighted above were just a few standout occasions that I felt deserved their own mention, but so much more happened beyond these events. I made several transformative changes to my future plans—changes I could never have imagined before.

Amid all these personal milestones, my motherland, Bangladesh, witnessed a historic mass student uprising, which ultimately led to the toppling of the government. It was a year of profound personal and societal change, shaping both my perspective and the world around me.