Reflections & Insights

Yesterday, I ordered some tissue culture and planting supplies. Indoors plants market is huge. There is a lot to learn. There are new terms, new communities to join. But it is pretty exciting. The main reasons I decided to explore this space is because: It is slower paced. Cannot pull all-nighter to make plants grow faster. My kids should enjoy it. And I can get them involved. There are interesting methods to master like creating perfect environment for optimal growth, growing exotic plants, etc. It can be scaled to more commercial operations, renting a greenhouse or something similar. Plants are good for the planet. If it fails, I will have plants for our home.

Follow up to my last post, the people I admire the most are usually startup founders or business people. And then creators of open source softwares. This weekend, I also met my engineer turned entrepreneur friend and saw Jobs movie. It seems I know what I should do. I want a business that gives a lot of freedom, especially freedom to be with my kids. If I can involve kids in the business, it would be even better. Would love low stress business but it is not a requirement. ...

“What should you do with your life”, this the question I almost ask myself daily. I am still not sure what should be my long-term goals. I have gone back and forth between pursuing my hobbies as a career, focusing on corporate career, and starting businesses. Recently, I learned a simple question that can provide you insights into your deeper aspirations. The question is: Who are your heroes? Ask yourself who are your heroes, who do you feel inspired by, who do you read about, and who were your heroes when you were a child. ...

I am not sure if women experience midlife crisis but I know several men who have experienced or are still in middle of midlife crisis. I have a theory that every 20 years, men need a big change. Usually, there is a big change in 20s, people are moving out of their parents’ homes, going to college or starting their careers. And when people turn 60, they are getting ready to retire. Downsize their homes. ...

We just recently bought a beautiful single family home. Before this, we lived in a townhouse. And before townhouse, I have lived in apartments. Buying a townhouse was a big step but buying single family home is a whole new beast. First, buying a house is probably a sound financial decision. There are plenty of articles and research that shows people who own homes are financially better off. But very few people talk about negatives of homeownership. And I think because lack of that information, a lot of people make incorrect decisions and end up regretting their home purchase. I did. I had huge buyer’s remorse the day we moved into our new home. I am still getting over it. ...

There is a saying that we overestimate how much we can do in days but underestimate how much we can achieve in years. Nothing makes a father as proud and happy as his children. My biggest guiding principle for my long term goals is to provide Ayden and Zayn an environment where they can grow to be happy and successful. Also it is important to realize that I cannot make anyone happy or successful. Only thing I can do is create an environment for them to grow in. ...

Just the other day, I happened to skim a blog post, “My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span.” It struck a chord, and I realized that I’m in the same boat. It’s been ages since I’ve properly read a book. Even when I have audiobooks on, I’m doing something else and hardly ever genuinely enjoy them. I’ve got this habit too, of kicking off loads of projects and then ditching them once it’s time to roll up my sleeves and do the detailed work. Setting up a new project is a rush, but finishing something? That’s a snooze fest. ...

Calculating rough ROI on rentals is easy: For example, let’s say one buys $500,000 single family home and rent it out for $3000 per month. Since it is investment property, they will need to make at least 20% down payment. On $400,000 loan, their monthly payment would be about $2750 at 3.25% interest rate, with $10,000 in property taxes per year and $2000 yearly insurance. ($36,000 - $33,000) / $100,000 = 0.03 or 3% return. ...

I was debating between PS5 and Quest 2 (Affiliate link), and yes it is like comparing apples and oranges, but in the end Quest 2 won. I will likely buy PS5 at some point though. But before I buy PS5, I need a new TV with 4K and HDR. It seems pointless to play PS5 on 1080p TV from early 2010s. Quest 2 is not my first experience with Virtual Reality. I tried PSVR about 2-3 years ago but the mess of wires really turned me off with the idea of VR. When I found out that Quest 2 is completely wireless, I got interested in it again. I was not very excited about needing Facebook account to use it though. ...

I moved all my blogs back to Hugo. I have gone back and forth between Wordpress and Hugo several times. WordPress makes it really easy to write and publish content. On this domain, I was using WordPress as a bookmarking service. With PressThis plugin, I was able to use a bookmarklet and publish a new post from any page on the web. But that plugin has not been updated in a while and it seems with every new WordPress release something would break. A few times, I was able to hack it to keep going. But lately, I cannot keep up with it. I will have to figure out a better way to bookmark but for now, I didn’t want to deal with WordPress. And easy bookmarking was the only reason why I was using WordPress. ...