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You need some kind of weird mental strength to go through Costco shopping experience. Every time I go to their store I walk out with high blood pressure, incredibly angry and ready to drive like a maniac. Then it takes me several hours to cool down. This in-spite of Costco staff usually being fantastic and helpful. It’s the fucking crowds and the chaos that get me. And that claustrophobia.

The other day I and fam were talking about our best vacations we have taken in the last decade and unanimously agreed on the list.

5 – Egypt: heckling aside, absolutely stunning history and ruins. The pyramids are amazing but Luxor and Aswan are something else!

4 – Greece: stunning islands, amazing people and awesome food. I have written so much about the niceness of people on my blog in past, remains one of our favorites. *(A taxi driver in Athens refused to leave us alone on street when he discovered I had messed up my booking, and helped us get a hotel for the night. Another taxi driver took the expensive DSLR I left in his car to the hotel in Mykonos, who then shipped it overnight to me in Santorini! The owner of Santorini hotel gave us a 1 day full guided tour in his car of the island because I refused to take the free car rental his property provided.)*

3 – Banff/Jasper: the landscapes are truly out of this world, and the hikes are just amazing. And Canadians were so nice in 2017. They probably are, but dont know how right wing has affected them now.

2 – Universal Studios Florida – this is a outlier but this was such a personal trip for us and the kid had such a blast it will be hard to replicate. Peak Harry Potter helped!

1 – Costa Rica – Incredible scenery, incredible people, incredible food. There is absolutely nothing about this country thats not incredible. This is the country I honestly dream of retiring.

Kinda interesting how the refund for the Taylor swift cancelled concert played out. I bought the tix in resale from a very nice person in Europe. We chatted over video and he was the nicest guy ever. I sent him payment via PayPal for above asking price he wanted which was fine, and then he resold the tix he had in his account to me for 1 euro. When the concert cancelled they mentioned they would give a refund on tix and I was like well shit, I bought it only for 1 euro and I can’t get a refund now. I was never going to ask the guy who sold me the tix for a refund coz it was not his fault but I was like damn I lost the money. Turns out they did refund the money to my credit card, even though technically I bought it for only 1 euro from the official ticketing platform. What’s more amazing is once I had the refund I was surprised to learn the guy who sold the tix didn’t upsell the tickets that much at all. Ultimately I was out just a little and not the complete amount I thought. Oh well a silver lining to the end I guess!

Venmo’s bizarre choice of making someone else’s payment public on my feed makes me want to use the app less and less and is such a violation of privacy. Like my feed is full of others people payment. I now know that a friend of mine paid some other friend for Costco, who got a cleaner last week and a colleague of mine just got her nails done. Like WTF! By default all of this should be private not fucking public!

Started “Industry” on HBO a couple of days back. Does the show pick up or the general mental model of the show is Euphoria set in financial industry with everyone sucks characters like Succession?

I really think Coldplay has evolved its music to creating music only for stadiums. I don’t mind it – I have been their fan for a long time and have seen them 5 times in concerts and they rock. Their new single [We Pray](https://youtu.be/knIbwsNGJyc?si=dK2b80C3QLViIzxW) is yet another banger that feels like Coldplay purely manifested for a stadium experience. I don’t care though it’s terrific and yes this will light up the stadiums.

Is the DNC not over yet? How long is this party going to last?

So Taylor Swift finally made a statement about Vienna, after being called out politely by Chris Martin from Coldplay. My kid texted me furiously last night while I was at the gym about it – “DID YOU SEE, SHE MADE A STATEMENT!”. I [read through it on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/taylorswift/p/C-8sKGYymIC/?img_index=1) and asked her *How did it make you feel?* The kid responded she felt better after reading the post, and she is back to being a “swiftie” again. That she is glad she made a statement. I responded that if she felt good about it, so did I. *But how did you really feel?* she asked, and I said I am satisfied with the statement as she is.

I lied. PR statements etc are not new to us or me in our line of work. I dont know who wrote it for her, or if she did it herself, this was the worst way to make a statement about Vienna, and reeked of self absorbed narcissism. There’s a lot I can write about how to write it better, but suffice to say I am over this sack of shit. I wont be surprised at all if she endorses Trump either at this point because narcissists cannot look beyond themselves. I am however going to play along with my kid for a while and let her fandom wither by itself. She is just 13 after all, and I do not want her to be cynical like rest of us adults are in life. I will still try for a concert ticket for my kid but after that I really hope this ridiculous fandom behind a such a entitled prick doesnt last.

And as if I wasn’t a fan of Coldplay all these years, Chris Martin, you really are the man! Can’t wait to hit yet another of their concerts when they tour USA next.

Last night the kid was acting quite rudely and erratic. After a brief tense hour with her behavior going all over the place, she finally broke down in tears about Taylor Swift. It’s been almost two weeks since the Vienna concerts were cancelled and she was unable to go to something she was looking forward to for months. One of her besties got to watch her literally a week before she was going to and it’s been hard for her to calibrate herself. It’s been hard to see how she is coping up and reconciling, but as my therapist put it last week, kids do sometimes need to learn how to handle disappointments. Hopefully she learns in time that no celebrity is ever worth that adulation or love. I will try to compensate for the concert this year, but given the astronomical prices of tickets in USA, probably a very very long shot at this point.

I don’t know how I got here but I am now truly bored of the Obamas. Can we skip tonight and just go to tomorrow and Thu?