DS

It’s been three weeks now that the god awful Illness is in the family. It started out with the kid who seemingly recovered in a few days - which is why we made the trip to Detroit, only to fall sick again there. We got strep/ Covid tests done before we left. After we came back we again took the kid to doc who said she had “walking pneumonia” and gave her 5 day antibiotics course. Doc also said she is not contagious at all and antibiotics will take care of it. At end of her course we attended the bat mitzvah. She had recovered and we were not sick so no problem right?

Well no. Turns out my sis kids are sick. One day after event we fell sick with same symptoms as kid did. And she likely made have her friend sick too. So present state both me and wife are just sickly sick, my cousins kids are sick and who knows who all. What a cluster fuck of events in the last three weeks this. I feel miserable physically and mentally right now knowing that we probably spread something around but I also am angry at the docs. Like fucking two times they got it so wrong.

So much ridicule and noise about Amazon and Just Walk Out technology using 1000+ contractors in India to label what shoppers were shopping through video. Well folks, thats how AI/ML works. Its called ground truth and part of training your ML model is to actually have humans validate what your ML model is doing & train it appropriately. AI/ML is not some magic wand out there that just “knows” what to do - it has to be taught, and sometimes it has to be taught for years and years, and the teaching may just never end. In fact, humans should hope that the training AI never ends; the day AI reaches a state where it doesnt need a human to validate ground truth, we are in trouble.

A friend’s parents who have been in middle east for the last 45+ years are now planning on migrating to India or here for retirement. They want to stay in the middle east because, well, 45+ years of building your life there. But they can’t anymore because without a work permit (visa) they don’t have anything to stay for, and its expensive. This is why I hate all those middle east countries with a heart - you can give those countries your entire fucking life, but you will always remain a second or third class citizen in their eyes. Forget citizenship, they won’t even offer permanent residency to folks who’ve lived there forever, contributed to their economy, and in this case created jobs and run a big factory there. While the immigration system here sucks bad as well, at least there is a pathway and a hope that you will become a part of this country permanently one day.

Canada’s rightward turn happened faster than people anticipated didnt it? Immigration has pretty much become bane of Canadian society it feels like. Of course I could be all wrong here and its election year so I might be reading only bad stuff. That said looking at my cousin’s own take wouldn’t be surprised. (She loves Canada, but also regrets making the move coz no jobs at all)

Biden continues to be enraged about all the things Israel does and put out statements after statements but won’t do the things that you know, as Israel’s biggest backer, can and should. I am not going to blame progressives or arabs who are upset with Biden over this one. The alternative is even worse is not a good enough reason for Biden to not do something. How long before Israel effectively starts a large scale middle east war and Biden continues to be “enraged”?

Finished reading: Death’s End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #3) by Liu Cixin 📚 ★★★★ I think this was the longest book amongst the 3 Body Problem trilogy. While I loved it I also felt it gets fairly laborious towards the end. The first 85% of the book is absolutely amazing, and in totality forms an exceptionally good trilogy with scale & vision. That said, the last part of the third book is kind of painful to get through and finish, and I wish Liu Cixin scaled it down & ended the book at an earlier point. I am now going to watch the show but wow I am not sure how many of the ideas are going to translate on screen.

I have seen enough. Jon Stewart should have stayed retired. He is just ruining his own legacy at this point.

I finally got annoyed with our landscape guy and asked for a refund for spring seeding work he did this march. I went out of our way to take some risks with our sprinkler system just so he could seed at the beginning of march. We are now more than 5 weeks in and it has been a total failure.

My favorite spring flowers

One of kids closest friends from childhood who is Jewish invited us to her bat mitzvah. This was a unique experience this morning in a Jewish temple seeing their traditions and customs honoring the girl coming of age. Post the ceremony we had a small meal with the families and in the evening will join them for the reception. Like Indian upanayana ceremonies this was also a multi-day affair for them, and I am glad we could join them today.

This past winter in particular has been one of those life affirming moments with doggo. It’s no surprise I detest cold and yet this entire winter come snow or bitter cold I have been out with him for a walk almost daily for a min of 30-40 mins. It probably has increased my cold tolerance (and no I still hate it with heart), but I feel a sense of accomplishment about this small thing and I have only him to thank for it.

Was not in a mood to go out for walk but I HAD to because doggo needed his walk and then we ended up walking a good one hour and now I feel refreshed! Our doggo literally makes us healthier and energized without trying!

Sometimes I wish my kid had more desi/Indian friends. A majority of her friends in school/swim are white, and while they are all amazing girls from awesome families, we often feel like we don’t know how to extend the kids friendships to adults - they are all great folks but we’ve never really gone from being acquaintances and parents of BFFs to being actual friends ourselves. With Indians, its almost guaranteed that if two-three kids are BFFs, sooner or later the parents will also meet up with invites for snacks/lunch/dinner and eventually become friends. I am reasonably sure that happens within white families also, but I don’t think it happens as much in mixed races - Or at least I do not have any proof outside my own circle of friends to say so that it isn’t. Nobody in my close circle or even outside of it has friends of other colors (specifically white, black); acquaintances yes, but not friends. Having Asian friends is more common though and I guess its attributable to being immigrants too. Anyway random musings on a Friday evening before doggo walk.

Returning the Pacifica today and I realized that pet hair is so deeply ingrained all over that I need to get a pro clean done before I return the car lest Avis charge me 200$ deep cleaning fee. Perks of having a heavy shedder folks!

So republicans against sending billions of dollars in Ukraine aid will have zero problem redirecting a couple of billion to rebuild the Baltimore bridge amirite?