Macro

An excellent Mother’s Day meal at Tamasha this afternoon in dc. The biryani was the only downer. However the restaurant is a hike and not in a great area so makes going there mostly not worth it when we have so many other equally good options nearby or in opposite direction to dc. That said every time I am in dc I love the city so much – except for the rodent occupying Pennsylvania Avenue!

Beginning of last year my endocrinologist recommended me to think about taking Mounjaro (a cousin of Ozempic, and the diabetic version of Zepbound with zero difference) for T2 diabetes care. I shrugged it off telling her that I’d try on my own to get my A1c numbers and weight down with existing care I already was on. I was confident in my ability to do so, and I was also slightly suspicious of this new drug. Not to mention I also had a slight stigma of “injection” from my younger days watching my grandma take insulin every day. A a year later in Jan, I was back in her office, having lost no weight (and in fact put on), and more elevated numbers. This time I asked whether I should be on this drug and told her of all my concerns and stigma around it. She heartily recommended that I should and my concerns were unfounded. Thanks to job change and insurance changes, by the time I actually got the first “starter” dose of Mounjaro, a 2.5ml once a week injectable kwik-pen it was towards end of March. I decided to delay starting the medication because of our Peru trip (the best decision I took honestly!) and early April took my first shot of supposedly wonder medicine that everyone’s raving about.

The first night was absolutely horrid. The nausea, acid reflux, tummy rumble – you name it – I experienced it and it felt absolutely horrible. I couldn’t sleep Sunday night (I decided to use Sunday-to-Sunday as my schedule). I woke up next morning feeling nauseous, unable to find any will to have any food. I forced myself to have my regular morning chai, which probably made everything even worse. I don’t think I ate anything substantial for next 2 days. It was only by Thursday that my tummy started feeling some sense of normalcy – I felt worse enough that I debated telling my doc that I was not gonna continue with this. I hadn’t stopped taking my other meds for diabetes care, so it felt like I was triple dosing on meds. I needed some help quickly, and my emails to doctor or her practice went unanswered (Nothing to worry, it was not intentional on her part, our communication got completely mixed up, and I was later admonished for not calling her direct, which in hindsight I should have done as I do have her direct contact!). Anyway, with lack of sleep, food and overall tummy upset, I decided to take help from our new friends on the block: Google Gemini AI!

Enter Gemini. I uploaded most of my labs from past, and my existing health records along with my daily medications/dosage to Gemini so she had a background (I am aware Gemini is probably sexless but since my doc is a she, I am going to call Gemini a she, don’t be offended!). I then gave her details on my dosage, my symptoms and what I was feeling. I was pleasantly surprised how good Gemini was. She gave me good description on how Mounjaro works, how to avoid tummy log jam, could explain why I was feeling the way I was based on my symptoms and suggested good relief mechanisms. One night I woke up with shivers and hunger pangs and had classic symptoms of low sugar so I had to run to stuff myself with food at 2am. Gemini recommended I start testing my glucose continuously immediately and led me to Lingo, a continuous glucose monitor attached to your arm which can give you details on your sugar levels throughout the day. The data nerd that I am, I immediately got it coz I track so many things, why not this?

Over next couple of days I uploaded my daily readings to Gemini asking for recommendations. To her credit every message proceeded by I am not a doctor warnings, but she immediately identified that I was probably over medicated on my triple medications and asked me to cut out one specific medication after talking to doctor. I tried to reach doctor again with no success. I asked Gemini what if I took a risk and cut out the medication I should skip and it warned me that while it was not a good idea, the fact that I was on the lowest medication dosage meant that it may not be horrible. I was in week two by this time and I was scheduled to meet my doctor the following week. I decided to take a risk and not take the medication it recommended (again, not recommended, do not listen to AI blindly!) only once a day (instead of twice I took). I stopped taking the medication at night to avoid the shivers and hunger pangs, and within the next couple of days coupled with glucose readings my night time sleep improved dramatically. Gemini asked me to keep a tab of all of these symptoms and note it down for my appointment next week (for which it also created a reminder in Google Calendar with talking points! FML!). While the second week was marginally better than first, I decided to just stick through it until I met with doctor.

Of course the lack of eating also meant I had dropped a few pounds so that kinda… felt nice? Third week was marginally better than first two but since I was already going to meet the doc I knew what I had to talk about. I also had fresh labs from previous week while I was on the medication for 10 days so if there were any differences it could show up. Well, it did. I told my doc that based on my Gemini conversation I had stopped taking one medication at night to which she had a face of horror. Then she realized it was the lowest dose and asked what else did Gemini tell me – to which I of course had her notes handy. She was amused, and also kinda pissed off that Gemini identified most things correctly, including which medication to stop. She admitted Gemini was actually right and asked me to come off that medication completely. Not just that she also admitted that she was surprised by how much I had reacted to Mounjaro, and that 2.5ml dose is really a starter dose for people to get adjusted. She decided to keep my medication there and asked me to call her before trusting AI (I know, I know!), and also forewarned me I might have to drop off other meds too!

Funny enough, week 4 was a complete turn around for no reason. This week’s injection hardly mattered and it felt like my body has finally adjusted to the medication well. So what has happened in the last 4 weeks? I have lost 7 pounds! Of course it’s a combination of eating less and walking more also at play here, but it’s undeniable what a force this medicine is. The biggest thing I have noticed over 4 weeks is how much the food noise has disappeared. Like I am known to keep snacking through out the day (health stuff mostly, but calories nonetheless!). That noise has disappeared! I feel full for longer without having the craving to eat. I am not feeling the sugar crash I had on previous medication which made me sleepy in afternoons after lunch or in evening. I am not constantly reaching out for a quick bite in the day. Most of all though, my sleep has tremendously improved in the last 2 weeks. There is a marked difference in my deep sleep stats compared to month ago. I am told that the food noise eventually returns, and the weight loss slows down, but I am not thinking about that.

In fact weight loss is not the reason the doc put me on Mounjaro anyway. It was to control my T2 Diabetes and weight loss was a side effect. After monitoring my glucose levels for 3 weeks I can see a marked difference in how my sugar levels act. Gemini has been wonderful in answering all the questions regarding what I see in graphs – I don’t trust it 100% but directionally she gives good pointers. She makes mistakes and I probably have already pushed her to her limit of long term memory at this point. I start month 2 this month and I no longer have the stigma about “injection”. In fact I am looking forward to it. And yeah, I now have 6 month supply of continuous glucose monitors (yes insurance covers them) so for a health data nerd like me, more numbers mean more fun. Oh, did I mention I also got a new Dexa scale to measure 50 weight metrics including whatever is visceral fat? Coz why the hell not when you are losing pounds, am I right?

The teen is going with her bff from school for their first solo concert by themselves this October to Olivia Rodrigo’s show. The tix cost fucking 419 bucks a piece, like what nonsense pricing is this? She is super thrilled though that it’s without parents. Of course a parent will be dropping and picking up but I can imagine the feeling she’s having right now. October can’t come soon enough for her.

The biggest issue with AI at work today is not that it’s not helpful, but it’s unimaginative. I suspect that it will always be? Our AI tools are optimized to give feedback against our own internal knowledge base first and then external knowledge. This works great when you are doing research for topics internally and want to get understanding of how things work. However I have tried it and failed multiple times to get AI to imagine something brand new within the context of information about our company it has. I have prodded it to come with new ideas, new features and so on and each time either the idea is outlandish with no sense of connect to our limitations or it just keeps regurgitating the same stuff that has already been explored with new names and passing it off as a brand new idea. Like I would like it if AI just said nope I can’t generate ideas for you, but no it won’t do that. I suspect it’s on purpose.

This is a strange company where the engineering constantly asks me what “solution” I want them to build and I am like I want to tell you the what, not the how! You should be telling me what’s the best way to solve this – not the other way around that I dictate a solution and you just build it. In that case I could just use a team of Claude code AI engineers no?

IPL really seems to have really gone down in quality hasn’t it? Even back home in India nobody seems to be watching it or following it with interest. This was bound to happen with a format that is so one sided – like 250 scores are normal and teams even chase 264 with balls to spare. This is just not cricket anymore – just batting practice in a video game.

I have 4 reminders put on my calendar to get tickets for Olivia Rodrigo concert on Monday by my teenager. She’d used all caps multiple times in our family group to make me and her mom understand the importance of it. I had to actually scold her for constantly throwing all caps at us and told her if she sent another Olivia Rodrigo message in all caps no concert was happening!

I recently finished 3 months at the new company and my god this has been the most stressful 3 months ever. In hindsight if I had any inclination it was gonna go down like this I would not have left the mothership. How’s the workplace you ask? Absolutely pathetic. This is the second time I have left Amazon and I already feel like going back there – and it’s the same feeling so many of us ex folks in this company have now. The tech world has become a lowest common denominator world at this point. Just disappointing considering the product itself is so good and well known.

A senior executive from a company hounded me for weeks to get time with me to talk about a role at his company. We met on zoom today and 5 minutes into convo we both realized he got the wrong guy with same first name and last name. I exactly know who he was trying to get to coz he is active on LinkedIn and is as old as me probably but it was a hilarious mix up on his end. We laughed about it and ended our call. I mean the only reason I was getting on call was to tell him gently I am not interested in the role he was offering but I did find his company interesting.