Just when you think you’ve mapped out all the surprises Paros has to offer, the island winks and tosses a few more gems your way. Really, how different can another beach or town be? Spoiler: quite a bit. The day kicked off at 6:12 AM, thanks to some chirping birds and our white noise machine dueling it out. Vanya wasn’t feeling her best, so Nidhi and I ventured to the breakfast buffet alone, where scrambled eggs, olives, cherry tomatoes, and an array of local delicacies awaited....

Our second day in Paros arrived, loaded with promise, a mix of jitters, high hopes, and the kind of excitement that makes you check your pulse. Today was the day for our maiden voyage into the mesmerizing Mediterranean with Captain Ben’s Sailing Tour. Ahoy! Figure 1: Breakfast for Kings, Hotel Arganauta After a glorious night’s sleep (yes, 5:22 AM is the new 8 AM in my book), we faced a breakfast spread that could rival a royal banquet....

Vacations, much like dessert, always seem to end just when you’re getting to the good part. It’s our third night, and we’re gearing up to say goodbye to the sizzling island beauty, Santorini. Parting is a bittersweet symphony of sorrow and joy—like finding out your favorite seasonal latte is back, but only for a limited time. The memories? Oh, they’re cherished like that one perfect photo where nobody is blinking and everyone is smiling....

Ah, the magical third day of a vacation, the time in a relationship with a travel destination when you start to either deeply fall in love or eye your return ticket. Thankfully, we’re still smitten with Santorini! My sore thigh muscles sang songs of the many mountains (or at least, steep inclines) we conquered on our way to Oia. Who knew a hike could provide such an excellent workout? Finally, we managed a good night’s sleep, waking up at the ungodly hour of 4:40 AM, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed....

Vacations are not just for sun-soaked beaches or thrilling adventures; they’re also unexpected havens for introspection. There’s something oddly romantic and comedic about the clarity that comes when you’re far from the grind of daily life. It’s during these moments, amidst the relaxed ambiance and the freedom from routine, that we confront truths we’ve sidestepped in the hustle of everyday existence. The Unlikely Classroom of Leisure Imagine you’re lounging on a hammock, a gentle breeze swaying you into a state of bliss....

A Magical Morning in Our Cave Hotel Waking up in Santorini is like waking up inside a postcard, but with better WiFi. Our hotel room? A cozy cave on a cliff, because who needs regular walls when you can have rocks? Natural light poured in from the door facing the west, teasing us with views of the Caldera that are too stunning to be real. At 6 AM, instead of hitting snooze, we were on WhatsApp, showing off our cliffside abode to family and friends back home....

A vacation for me? It’s like a coffee shot of espresso on a Monday morning - absolutely essential! Flights of Fancy and Not-so-Fancy Figure 1: Economy Sandwich After what felt like a mini-lifetime (~14 hours to be exact), we landed at Istanbul airport, and without skipping a beat, jumped onto our next flight to Athens. The flight meal was typical - an adventure in culinary minimalism. I chose the AVML (Asian Vegetarian Meal), which was basically an Indian feast at 30,000 feet....

This series of posts explores the intriguing challenges I’ve encountered throughout my career. Today, I’m excited to share a pivotal chapter: spearheading compliance for Splunk Cloud’s multi-tenant services, covering SOC2, HIPAA, ISO, and PCI standards. Back in 2019, we had developed around 20 multi-tenant Splunk Cloud services to enhance the existing, monolithic Splunk solution. Despite their innovative capabilities, these services operated from a single region and lacked essential compliance certifications. This absence was a significant barrier, precluding these services from being integrated into customer cloud solutions and halting numerous product launches that relied on these new services....

This series of posts explores the intriguing challenges I’ve faced in my career. Today, I’ll discuss a significant hurdle: transforming Splunk’s single-tenant architecture to support multi-tenancy, a feature our competitors leveraged to share resources cost-effectively. The initial problem was clear: running Splunk docker containers in the cloud was prohibitively expensive for smaller customer workloads. Given that Splunk clusters are inherently large, creating a small cluster was still financially burdensome for our customers....

In the ever-evolving landscape of web development, the journey from concept to live site is fraught with challenges. As the curator of what I envisioned as a “simple” blog, I’ve navigated through this terrain using a toolkit composed of several key technologies: Domain Name Registrar: Namecheap Code Repository Vendor: GitHub Web Hosting Vendor: Cloudflare However, even with this arsenal at my disposal, I recently encountered a snag that left my users facing a less-than-stellar web experience....