micro

Have a heated debate with dad about increasing anti Muslim and fascist rhetoric in our extended family WhatsApp groups. Goes on to agree with everything I say and how it’s disappointing others are behaving like this. Gives examples of how *he* is not like them at all. 30 minutes later proceeds to forward a anti-Muslim lie filled video on WhatsApp to the same group. Why do I even bother? 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Is it just me or micro app has become significantly faster on iOS? Nice!

In other news my scared of every thing that moves dog decided to chase a garden snake and tried to bite it. I had to yell and shout to get him out of his trance. I am like dude you are scared of a leaf that falls and you want to chase a snake?

I see your stick figures on SUV and know you are a family of two adults, three kids and 2 dogs. You have a Coexist sticker along with Ukraine flag so I can make a fair assumption your political leanings are probably left. Oh your kids do swim and athletics too? I am fairly certain where you might live as well – I mean that High School sticker and parents of honors student sticker is a kind of a give away. Putting your life out there on bumper stickers is such an uniquely American thing. I dont know why they do it but the idea of putting my personal information out there on cars has never appealed to me.

Finished season 1 of Rocket Boys (on Sony Liv) last night and can’t recommend it enough. Terrific casting, performances and pace through the 8 episode run. I am sure creative liberties were taken, but in spite, its a fascinating piece of Indian history on birth of India’s space & nuclear program. Vikram Sarabhai and Homi Bhabha (along with Abdul Kalam) had such a huge impact to India’s science programs.

Also, speaking of *Sarabhai* himself, feels like every fucking thing of note that Ahmedabad is known for came from him – ATIRA, CEPT, Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), the IIM-A and the wonder kid called ISRO! Crazy to think *one* man behind all of that.

Summer Europe trip finally booked (just Air) but couldn’t pass up a good deal and we really had to do *something* for the summer. Planning shall commence now!

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.