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WTF some trees are already… shedding? Also where the fuck is summer. I am done with spring go away.

Its now been almost 3 weeks since our RTO started. Its frankly not been that bad at all, and feels like the pre-pandemic days. I go in several days and stay a few hours and come back. I was able to connect with couple of team members, and honestly some conversations are just so easily done in person without the burden of scheduling and finding time. I and a colleague got done with a bunch of things white-boarding it during a coffee break that otherwise would have taken us several days to find time on each other’s calendar and go through it. I connected with another person whom I’ve only met in meetings, our casual conversation *after* meeting gave us a path to something we want to do in future; without this interaction I would have been spending days and days together trying to hunt the information. These kind of conversations are productive, quick and move things ahead and precisely what RTO is good for. As long as I can RTO for these kind of things and keep my focussed work at home, I am game for this. Which is basically saying as long as I can RTO for 3 hours on a given day its productive lol!

I can make out where someone is calling dad from by how loud his voice gets when talking on phone. If its his friends here in USA, his voice is normal, while family in Bangalore a bit louder by 10 decibels. But if its his cousins from towns or his village his voice is almost 20 decibels louder. I suppose its some mental distance to voice gymnastics he plays in his head and assumes longer the distance the louder he needs to speak on the phone!

Up till last year the intersection at which my gym is located used to house a run down functioning motel that was torn down and made way for a very swanky and large WaWa. The gym is at the dead end of the intersection and perhaps a block away or less at best. Replacing the run down motel with swanky WaWa should’ve been a win for all you’d think? Totally. For the first few months at least.

As part of building out the swanky large WaWa at intersection, they *beautified* pedestrian paths on corner lot they had. The pathways are huge and WaWa put in benches and seats with streetlights and also constructed a bus stand. You’d think it almost looks *communal*. Except, after the first few months the homeless started appearing on the benches. First a trickle, and now its basically a tent-fest (remember I told you that pavement is big!), with all benches and seats basically taken up by drugged up homeless by evening time. The day isn’t much better but its a lot emptier, but the night is full, and frankly looks a lot unsafe even though the druggies probably are in no state to do anything meaningful to people, but still I’d not venture out there on foot.

The situation now is so bad that my gym refuses to let our female coaches coach the last sessions at night (usually 8 or 9 at night) out of their safety concern, and in fact tells us warns other women from signing up for late classes at night. Though we are block or less away, the concern around this has become very real. The police are nowhere in sight, and there seems to be absolutely no effort to do anything about this. A few blocks down is another gas station which also has druggies all sprawled out by side of the station in various states of druginness. Up the street is a park which is great in day time, but at night has evolved into a literal fight club (no, really!). Where is the fucking police you might ask? No where is where. Its truly appalling.

Not handling homeliness and drug addicts is one annoyance and major nit against liberals I have. I understand that situation demands empathy and care, but surely we can do better than this? At what point do liberal governments think its going to be enough before it becomes a menace? All this is happening in heart of Fairfax, *very much* suburbia of DC area, not inner cities. I live 4 miles from there. If this problem continues to be ignored by democrats they are going to lose all local elections and perhaps even the state because this is not funny. The drugs and homeless problem is real and until democrats roll up and their sleeve and actually *do* something to increase perceived sense of safety, they are going to lose votes eventually & fail.

siddaramaiah was the absolute worst thing to happen to Karnataka before BJP came to power and one upped him. Now kannadigas are like let’s give a horse shit another chance coz bull shit was so bad.

Was chatting with my cousin who moved to Canada more than a year ago for higher education. We’ve been trying to meet for a while now, and she almost made it here and then had to cancel due to other commitments. She was talking about how life in the west is hard, and everyone’s always busy and she misses the life she had in India and a certain carefreeness to it, not to mention all the cousins and brothers/sisters that she misses (who i miss too, but now I am so far disconnected with them we dont matter to each other). In my mind and heart i am like cousin, just go back. Just go back. Its not worth it. She knows it too, but I didnt say it loud. I wish she goes back to India before its too late.

I am always amused by news like *”India-China hold high level talks over border issue. “*. Like what exactly happens in these “talks”? These countries have have been high level talking for the last 5 decades or so but I am yet to see anything that progressed beyond *high level talks*

You don’t realize it but mulching along with mowing a sloped backyard is a serious workout. On one hand I enjoyed it because good exercise, but on other hand I wish I was younger not to feel so sore lol.

I guess my next tv is the LG then – [Samsung admits defeat and reportedly inks deal for LG’s OLED TV panels – The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/16/23725160/samsung-lg-oled-tv-panels-deal-supply-report)

One of striking features of sports in America is the role of coach and the importance it gives to them along with players (sometimes even more than them) unlike other countries where players are the key and coaches though well known & respected are not above the player who plays the game. However at a lower level (kids sports), the role of coach is at best, functionary, and not really a coach. Be it swimming where the coaches 99% of the time just make you do drills over drills with no emphasis on stroke, breathing etc (heck coaches don’t even get into water!), or soccer whose primary duty on field is to avoid kids hurting each other rather than teaching kids about strategy, passings, assists etc or even volleyball where coaches take no serious effort to do 1:1 coaching. The “coach” is just an official and it would be nice if they just called them officials instead of “coach” cos coaching is the last thing they do.

And yet when it comes to group placements in any sport, the coaches yield an inordinate amount of power over your kid inspite of doing very little themselves. Its no wonder then that as long as you as a parent are willing to kiss their asses and be pally-pally with them, your kid is well taken care of. Its no wonder then we have a generation of helicopter parents who know more than the coach and will go out of way to push their kids, and i feel them now. At some level i feel like I have let down my own kid because I’ve always believed in staying out of it and let her shine through. But its now clear to me that it is actually working against her, and I need to butt in as parent even if I am not interested in doing this so that she gets a chance. Its wrong IMO to do this, but here we are. Because all we have are lousy officials carrying the “coach” moniker and thinking more of themselves than they really are.