Day 1, I randomly start a Convo w a dude who basically helped me successfully cross the US border while also maximizing my sleep
Day 2: I find a (relatively) good team that ended up choosing me over another hardware dude from UofT
we ended up winning, despite this hackathon being the worst performing hackathon for all of us. Not even exaggerating
Arduino never worked
got a short circuit 10 minutes before the demo time
Day 3, spent one whole day setting up Deepgram. It should have taken me 30 mins max.
Here’s the thing, it was for that exact reason we won. I spent over 2 hours debugging our code with one of the employees who looks like J. Hudson. He saw and learned about the struggles I faced and showed them that I rlly wanted to make them work
Day 4, I needed a place to sleep after the other people who promised me that they would let me stay for my whole trip bailed on me and kicked me out of their place with no preparation or plan.
was so caught off guard. I felt my body shift into survival mode when they were sharing the news. I did not plan for that to happen whatsoever. If I knew that I didn’t have a place to stay, I would have asked around if anyone else is willing to give me a place to stay.
I ended up dragging my ass to a random hostel at the North peak of SF. So much time wasted there so I guess the only thing I missed out by not sleeping over in their house was a few hours of work. What did I gain? A crazy story I can share to my grandkids on my journey of touching USA land and winning CalHacks
The bigger win I got by not living with these ppl was in day 5 and 6
Day 5, I was welcomed by Tawsif and a few of his friends. We clicked and bonded INSTANTLY. These fr the kind of friends I’m tryna have in uni.
This is where the magic and the power of the Muslim community comes extremely clutch. Tawsif knows someone who lives in UC Berkeley (which is where we ended our trip coz they had to go to the airport). Literally 30 mins before they were going to go to SFO, he messages him and to my surprise, he gave me a place to sleep over. We meet at around 9pm n went and did some work together
Day 6, I wake up. Take a shower, have 4 halal chicken tenders and head to uni to talk to cool people.
at night Ali drops me off at the airport. We pass through the house that had my Tupperware in. Bro was in bed before 11pm though so unfortunately the I will be also leaving my Tupperware in USA (Already have one in Germany)
Day 7, I sleep over in the airport. Would not recommend. Woke up like 3 times in the span of 4 hrs. Nonetheless it was a unique experience that I learned from.