How long had I been waiting for this to commence - every month, every week, every day passed so painfully slowly - it seemed like eternity. I sometimes felt like a little kid imagining weird things - imagining being in some limbo land where the clock just wouldn’t tick any further.

And finally it happened on the 26th of November, 2012. The Google Code-in ‘rocket’ had launched from the lands of the ‘Google empire’ to many thousand homes where young developers were ready to explore the world of Open Source in the next 50 days of their life. I am one of those students. I’m not exaggerating - seriously. I’m just giving voice to the feelings of hundreds of teenagers who participated in Google Code-in 2012.

After contributing to KDE in GCI ‘11, I was determined that this year I would be doing the same. Thankfully I got this opportunity and I grabbed it with both hands!

I was able to do 71 tasks for KDE and acquired a lot of knowledge while doing each one of them. And by knowledge I don’t mean merely programming skills but I got to learn things which, in my consideration, are much more important than this. I learnt to keep my cool in the most trying circumstances. I learnt to give a 100% in all my endeavours. I learnt never to lose hope. I learnt that friendship and humanity transcends all boundaries. I learnt that this is just the beginning ………… there’s so much more to learn!

It was during GCI when I got my KDE developer account, on the 6th of January. And I am just so excited about this. I am now a part of this community.

So much remains unsaid ….. but every thought can’t be put down via pen and paper - okay fine, it should be keyboard and blogpost ;). But I feel I have been able to convey how profoundly I feel connected to the K Desktop Environment.

I have not yet thanked my mentors and I wanted to do it in a special way. So, here it goes …

The ‘perfectionist’ - Dennis Nienhueser

The ‘guiding light’ - Torsten Rahn

The ‘helping hand’ - Rene Kuttner

The web ‘spider’ - Ingo Malchow

The KDE Edu ‘pair’ - Marco Calignano, Aleix Pol

The ‘super woman’ - Lydia Pintscher

The Affectionate mentor - Anne Marie-Mahfouf

The ‘anagram’ genius - Laszlo Papp

The ‘flask’ of knowledge - Jan Kundrat

The ‘visual’ mentor - Thorsten Zacchman

The ‘code-checker’ - Kevin Krammer

I would also like to thank Carl Symons for being my mentor in a task although we didn’t get an opportunity to interact but I look forward to do so in the future.

Apart from my mentors, I would also like to thank:

  1. Ben Cooksley, for approving my developer account application

  2. Jonathan Riddell, for adding my blog to Planet KDE

  3. Teo Mrnjavac, for always being there with me and helping me out with my petty problems

  4. Google Inc. for giving us a global platform to enhance our skills

Last, but by no means the least, a BIG thank you to my family for being like the life-giving oxygen - inconspicuous yet omni present.

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