Blue Bottle has just started making Nespresso capsules! When I saw that update from Omar, I was pleasantly surprised.
Of course, I had to try it :-)
Blue Bottle’s website was sold out but Nespresso had it in stock so I ordered one sleeve and tried it this morning.
It is very good but I still prefer Nespreso’s Melozzio and Vivida as my go-to capsules.
It’s been a few months since I wrote about missing Twitter.
Since then, I became a semi-regular user on Mastodon but after Threads launched, I went all in there. It was good to see “big accounts” show up there but what I have missed are two big things I relied on Twitter for – real-time stuff where we watch sports and awards shows and react together as a community, and DMs coupled with easy access to customer support.
Having said that, it is still a good place to get news and I have made some new online buddies there.
After being one of the early users of Bluesky and not liking it much, I have started enjoying that service too. The biggest draw is that a lot of my old Twitter friends are actively posting there. It’s been good to interact with them again. Plus, it has a good emphasis on real time stuff and I have seen some popular sports reporters also start posting there.
So for now, my Twitter experience is a messy combination of Threads and Bluesky.
On January 17th, Indian Standard Time (the evening of January 16th Pacific Time), I received the dreaded phone call from my brother. Just like 3.5 years ago, it began with "I have sad news." That time it was to tell me that mom had passed away, and this time it was to inform me that dad had passed away. Mom had a heart attack and passed away before reaching the hospital, while dad passed away peacefully in his sleep.
It's been a few days, and I have been flooded with emotions. This has been one reason why I haven't been able to write this, but at the same time, I felt that writing something like this would help clear my thoughts.
Sadness
The immediate emotion is sadness. I am deeply saddened that he is gone. I mourn the fact that he won't be here to witness more of his life and ours – more birthdays, career milestones, educational achievements, Diwalis, family gatherings. He won't be there with us to share all those milestones and events.
Emptiness
Despite being far away physically, I feel a profound emptiness. His well-being and happiness were always on my mind. I used to call him every Saturday morning. Until a few months ago, our conversations would be about everyday things like cricket, sports, politics, election results, etc. Recently, the frequency had decreased due to his declining health. However, Saturday mornings remained my time to silently convey my thoughts to him and cherish his memory. I feel empty now.
Relief
In recent visits – December 2023 and April this year – I could sense his frustration and helplessness due to his inability to care for himself. His attempts to communicate were often cut short, as if the signals from his brain arrived too late for his words to form. He struggled even to use a spoon consistently; helpers had to mash his food so he could swallow it because chewing became difficult. Despite all this, I feel a sense of relief for him. I'm grateful he no longer has to endure such struggles after living a life of independence and good health. He's found peace in heaven.
Reunited with Mom
Ever since Mom passed away, Dad lost his will to live. His only wish was to be reunited with her. Finally, his wish has been granted. I believe he's happier now in heaven with her than he was on earth, suffering without her.
Thankfulness
Although taking care of one's parents isn't "babysitting," and my brother and sister-in-law's dedication to Dad after Mom's passing shouldn't be called "parentsitting," I am immensely thankful for their unwavering support. Despite the challenges and unpredictable nature of caregiver services, they ensured Dad lived as comfortably as possible, maintaining routines familiar to him. They sacrificed their freedom to prevent emergencies and provided steadfast support. I'm thankful that they were there for him over the past 3.5 years as his condition worsened. I cannot imagine how big a vacuum they would be feeling!
Pearls of Wisdom
Dad often shared pearls of wisdom on a wide range of topics – friendship, business, relationships, finances, health, nutrition, discipline, and more. I missed hearing those pearls over the past few months as he slowed down and stopped interacting much. I will surely continue those nuggets of wisdom in my life and hope to pass them on to the kids as a shared legacy.
I will miss you, Pappaji. I hope you are enjoying your time with Mummy. Please continue to bless us from above, and we will keep you informed about our lives.
Rest in peace. 🙏
Cover image credit: Bob Brewer https://unsplash.com/photos/a-group-of-people-standing-on-top-of-a-sandy-beach-caSt0XQCiG4
This month I turned fifty. I don’t really like (my own) birthdays and don’t make a fuss of it.
But this is a milestone and I thought it would be good to repeat what I did for my fortieth. I had set up a charity: water fundraiser to help provide clean water to the people who don’t have access to it.
This year (decade) I have set up a similar fundraiser and I would love to see you donate to it. I would appreciate whatever you can help with.
Thanks in advance ❤️
https://www.charitywater.org/romit/half-a-century
It took me completely by surprise to read about Mint closing down and them moving their customers to Credit Karma, another similar financial planning service in the Intuit portfolio.
I don't blame Intuit for consolidating their brands, but I would have thought bringing Credit Karma features and users to Mint may have been a better option, but perhaps it is about organizations, talent, technology stack, and much more than what we see as outsiders and in my case, as a customer.
I have had data in Mint since 2013 and have been using it as a place where I see transactions from all my financial institutions and a place where I see general trends of my income and expense. I do not use it for budgeting or to monitor my investments in any way. For my use though, what is important is that all my institutions are supported, and I can search for transactions easily.
Once the news broke, I had to quickly start looking for alternatives and I was debating really looking at Credit Karma when through Threads, I found out about Monarch Money. The service seemed quite nicely designed and had a web presence as well as mobile, so I decided to jump into their trial. As I dove into the service, I found out that it was founded by one of Mint's original product persons, so I got some confidence that the service will be shepherded well.
It was very easy to set up Monarch Money (MM) by adding accounts. Unlike Mint, MM uses third party data connectors like Plaid, MX and Fincity so it was an interesting experience going through the setups - some institutions bounced the authentication to their own mini windows, and some used Plaid's user interface. Regardless, in no time I had most of my recent data in MM and could start seeing some trends and cash flow analysis.
I also noticed they had a Help & Support interface within the app and on the web which created a support ticket on the back end. The response there was meh, but in my attempt to find some answers to questions not on the FAQ, I stumbled upon their subreddit r/MonarchMoney. This was a great subreddit where they acknowledged and welcomed Mint refugees and had a few employees responding to many threads which was a refreshing surprise.
I had exported transactions from Mint and MM had a Mint import feature which I used heavily to bring in the historical data from Mint so that I could start using MM as a true Mint replacement - seeing my income and expenses, over time, and also being able to search for random transactions from the past.
This is where I started seeing a bunch of nuances in these financial aggregation services
What I like about MM compared to Mint at first glance:
What I am waiting for:
I am a fan so far and even though it is a bit expensive @ $95/year, I would subscribe to it. They have offered a 50% discount for the first year and extended my already-extended trial by another 30 days, so I know they are customer-centric at the core.
I had forgotten about Quicken since I moved to Mint in 2013 and I was surprised to see their online service Simplifi as a competitor to Mint and Monarch Money. The look and feel drew me in, so I decided to do my own bake-off between MM and Quicken Simplifi (QS).
Setup was similar to MM, but for some reason, the accounts got added more quickly than MM. I am sure it is a perception issue because by the time I started using QS, I had gone through a lot of bumps on the MM journey.
Maybe it's the typeface they use and/or the fact that they have pretty tiles and reports on the main dashboard, but at first glance, QS seemed more attractive than MM. I did the same steps as I did with MM - set up the accounts, and then import the Mint exported data one account at a time. QS, like MM, had a Mint importer that interpreted the Mint csv nicely.
Support at QS has also been impacted by the influx of Mint refugees and they also have a good subreddit at r/Simplifimoney and even though I have seen some employees respond, it doesn't seem like their primary form of support for end customers and instead it is more of a user community. Their actual website user community is very active and because it seems like an older product, there are a lot more articles and knowledge bases to tap into. Their support has a great generative AI-based bot which switches to human messaging-based support medium and that support is very prompt.
What I like about QS compared to Mint is very much like what I like about MM compared to Mint. QS does not do batch fetching so there is an occassional spinning I have seen when it refreshes all the accounts but that's ok. Also, the additional user can only be added from the web and I guess that's a temporary issue. Also, the support mentioned above is a big plus over MM.
One thing that I kinda like with QS is that movement of money from one account to another - credit card payments, loan payments, etc. is like the desktop Quicken experience: it changes the category of both sides of the transaction to the be other account name. So for example if I paid $100 to my Amex from my BofA checking account I would see the check account $100 categorized as "Amex" and the debit in my Amex show as $100 with category of "BofA checking". That's nice because there is no additional information I need on each of those transactions than the fact that it went from one of my accounts to the other. Both those transactions are skipped from spending reports, naturally.
To my surprise, transactions from accounts like PayPal which are transacted ultimately through a credit card also show up nicely where the PayPal transaction is duplicated so one of them can be categorized properly as shopping or whatever and the other represents the transfer of funds from credit card to PayPal to fund the original purchase.
What I am waiting for:
I am also a fan of QS and it is less expensive than MM, so if they make the performance improvements, it will be a very tough call for me to choose between the two services.
I have made the decision to let the bake-off run for a year and decide which one to stop after seeing the progres or lack of during the year.
fwiw, I also tried Copilot Money for a brief second, but didn't even go beyond the trial because they did not have a Mint importer and they did not have a web presence. Also, their apps were only iOS and MacOS so it would have been a stretch. The interface and design was nice though.
Sound off in the comments if you are in a similar boat as me and what your experiences have been.
I have started writing a series of blog posts around platform product management, and more specifically, data platform product management.
Last night and today, half of Twitter employees were fired by the new owner of the company, Elon Musk. Almost 3,800 people without a job because of no fault of theirs. They were doing good, meaningful work. While there surely was some fat at the company, as is the case at any company this size, I don't think Musk went about it with any real thought process business-wise. If he did, it would have taken a few more months to analyze the value of the various products and teams before he could make a decision.
Anyway, this post is not about the layoffs. I started losing interest in Twitter as a community when Elon finally took it over. It is because he believes that everyone should be heard and that is what he describes as free speech. To him, letting anti-vaxxers say what they want to say is equally important as doctors and medical professionals saying why vaccines are important. Where will he draw the line? Is a Holocaust denier's voice important to be heard? What about a racist? White supremacist?
Bottom line, I can see Twitter becoming more noise and much lesser signal. So I started thinking where else can I go to get a similar experience, and realized there is really nothing that satisfies what I love about Twitter (besides making genuine friends, even if they are online-only although some are also friends IRL).
So what is it that I like about Twitter that makes me somewhat of an addict? It's not doomscrolling. It's not idle surfing which is what I used to do with Facebook when I was active Facebook user. It is a combination of:
This combination of benefits is a killer. I am not sure if there is anything that can come close to this experience. There are some promising platforms like Mastodon but I will wait and see if they gain enough of a critical mass. I did the switch a few years ago from WhatsApp to Signal when there was this move regarding privacy policies at Meta but realized quickly that most people I'd like to chat with were not on Signal and stuck around on WhatsApp.
There are other services which provide some parts of this overall experience but fail because they don't provide the others - Slack, Discord, etc. have good community features but I think they are meant to be more like BBS's than a Town Square. Which means the community will be limited by design.
It's kind of ironic but Google+ would have been a great alternative to Twitter - it had a community of all GMail users, it had a feed although it was more algorithmic vs chronological as I remember but I may be wrong, it had Reader built into it for discovery aspects and I am sure if it gained enough momentum, companies would come to it and start providing customer support too.
With all that said, I am not leaving Twitter as yet, but if things devolve and Musk keeps giving the nutjobs an equal presence on the platform, I would be willing to disappear from there and rely on multiple tools to satisfy my needs.
So, what's a good RSS reader these days? What's a good public-y Discord server? Any Mastodon fans? What's a good starting point? :-)
I still remember the moment when I heard the sad news. We had finished dinner on Monday Jan 25, and I completed some pending work that was due the next day and I had came back outside to the living room. My wife got a call from my cousin and simultaneously I got a call from my brother. It was the shocking news that my mom had passed away. He was at the hospital so my brother could not give too many details but my heart sank knowing that she was no more. I could not believe it.
Immediately a flurry of thoughts started flashing in my head - what was the last thing I said to her? What was her last thought between us? When did we last meet and what was the highlight of that day? What will dad do now, knowing that he was completely dependent on her - not just for companionship since they have been married for 58 years, but also for providing him his medicines, reminding about various things he needs to do, cooking, preparing breakfast and snacks, and so much more.
More thoughts. What happens to the move that they were planning in a couple of weeks? How must my brother and his family be handling this news?
The thing is, this was absolutely unexpected. If a person is ill and deteriorating, you mentally prepare yourself. You run through various possibilities in your head, including unfortunately how you would handle the person eventually passing away.
Not for my mom. Not for the one who was super active both phyiscally and mentally. Not for the one who was willing to take on a residence move at their age (and perhaps the move was one of the things that may have contributed to her stress and anxiety, who knows?). The one who was planning to send some Indian snacks to us via courier *while* planning for and preparing for the move. Planning the move? She didn't have to pack or move but she had to get the bathroom done in the new flat, painting, new sofas, new dining chairs, clean up old and unwanted paper work, and so much more. All this with a servant who is not full-time and was not guaranteed to come regularly because she was sick off and on. She had mentioned that she was feeling overwhelmed about it.
I was definitely speechless. Numb, to a certain extent. Then I started getting calls from cousins and uncles/aunts. That's when it hit me hard - she was definitely gone. Oh my god, I had to start looking for tickets and figure out the formalities I need to take care of to be able to travel to India in this COVID time. I found tickets for the next morning's flight but I realized it may be complicated if I don't have a negative COVID test. I could of course take a chance and land there and figure out, but the more I read about the paper work, the more I was convinced that it would be better to get the test and then leave. So I started looking for appointments for the drive-through test that I had done in November. I got one at 7am, locked it up. Meanwhile, my cousin came over and he started calling some hospitals in the area to see if they can give me a rapid test - they all said I would need to wait and that someone with a heart attack will get priority over someone like me who is looking for a favor. I made the call to just stick with the test, knowing that we get the results in ~24 hours. I also informed my brother that they don't need to wait for me for the final rites since the earliest I could be in India would have been Wednesday night and that would be a good 36 hours after her passing and keeping the body for that long in the house would be inadvisable. Having settled on the plan, I got my airline tickets changed too.
Then in the moments of silence after this flurry of activity, various things started coming to the head…
She was the life of any get together - my mom LOVED to hang out with people. She would try to get people together whether it was for festive occasions like Diwali or Raksha Bandhan, or something related to her social work like Inner Wheel, or kitty parties from her past. It was not for gossip, she really really loved keeping connected with everyone. And connected she was! In the past couple of days, I heard from a large group of friends and extended family and the common thread has been that they all remember her being genuinely interested in what they were up to and taking great care of them whenever they met.
Extra - my mom was always extra in her party-planning. For as long as I remember, there was nothing "ordinary" or "simple" about any meet up or party. I remember birthday parties with fancy homemade cakes. I recall our daughter's birthday party at a restaurant's party hall when we were visiting India. I remember our son's birthday party she arranged at home but with fancy decorations and of course a professional photographer. Oh, photographer! She loved, loved, loved to have a professional capture pictures and videos even for the smallest of functions. Perhaps she wanted to ensure everyone in the family was captured in the pictures (so one family member who takes pictures is not left out), perhaps she wanted the togetherness to linger on in her heart as she would flip through those pictures the photographer would send. Perhaps she just wanted frame-worthy pictures of her family and get as many of those as she could.
Feed everyone some more - the above two items were combined with another consistent trait of my mom, which was to feed to the maximum everyone she loved. There was never a single lunch or dinner table discussion where she and I argued about that one thing I did not take or for taking one more helping of the stuff I liked. Not one, it was 100% true all the time. I had invited some US friends for my wedding and I remember them saying fondly that just as they were about to get up, my mom would come with a "wheel barrow of potatoes" to dump into their plates. I remember my two college friends who used to come up as part of a study group who till this day recall the food mom used to feed them and make them feel like a "wedding party" with the "come on, you can have one more of x" at lunch every single time. She would always have multi-course meal, most of it made at home, most of it made from scratch and almost always at least 3 different courses and many times 5 or 6!
Learn, learn, learn, and try until you succeed - mom was always willing to learn something new and as long as it had some benefit to her she would not mind if something came across as greek and latin at first. I recall distinctly teaching both mom and dad how to use the computer and mouse, some simple stuff. She remembered and practiced quite a lot till she became fairly knowledgeable about most of the stuff around Excel, Word, and of course internet. She started making greeting cards in Word, creating simple spreadsheets and once the e-commerce boom started in India she was buying AND selling stuff online fairly regularly. She became known as the Google aunty among her peers and was regularly giving tips to my aunties about how to book tickets online and how to look up stuff online to get more information. Naturally she took very well to the iPad and it was her single-most used "computer" where she learned how to use Apple's Notes to store important notes, how to use SkyDrive/OneDrive and Google Photos to back up all pictures and videos, print stuff from there to the printer, and play all kinds of free-to-play games. She was also able to get their home network upgraded to have a wifi extender so there is a good coverage in all parts of the house. I remember recently on a group FaceTime call her grandkids started putting animojis on their faces and she could not sit tight until she figured out how they were doing it. I remember getting calls in the middle of her night asking for some clarification on some tech issue she got stuck with. Or even better, she would send a screenshot in WhatsApp asking if it was ok to click on something that sounded obviously too good to be true. She knew the internet well enough to at least sniff out the bad scammers!
Travel some more, see something new - mom had a passion to see new places, try new stuff. She would never hesitate to go for some adventure (as long as her health permitted). It's not the lure of traveling outside India, or the lure of going to some exotic places, she simply wanted to see some new places. As a result she also visited a variety of places in India like Bhuj, Varanasi, inner Maharashtra, inner Gujarat, etc. The last two times she visited us in the US, she expressed wanting to go to Mexico. I am still extremely bummed that we never planned and made the trip.
Creativity - my mom was a bundle of creativity. From the innovative birthday cakes I referenced earlier, to cool games she made us all play at family get togethers. The arts and crafts she used to make for various occasions like us visiting India or some event with Inner Wheel club, or birthdays, anniversaries, etc. to the same type of stuff digitally with variety of collage-making and funny video-making apps. There was never a repeat, it was always a unique piece of art. The brain cells were working overtime for sure and the results were fantastic!
There's so much more I could write about my mother but I'll finish this with a few things that I personally will miss about her.
Her sacrifices when I was growing up - I remember distinctly that she was my alarm and more importantly, my snooze button. I used to prefer to study early in the morning vs later in the night, and in some cases I would request her to wake me up at 4.30 or 5 and she would diligently do so and I would keep asking for 5 more minutes and she would keep waking me up after those 5 minutes till I actually got out of bed, and washed my face and started studying. These unconditional sacrifices continued through college and of course the biggest was sending me off to the US.
Her reminders to me and my wife about not being strict with our kids - Having spent a few vacations with us in the US, my mom knew how my wife and I handled our kids. We are not super-strict, but we have some rules and if the kids break those rules they face the consequences (lower screen time, for one). My mom did not like that and felt like we should let them be and we should always teach them a lesson when they are receptive to the "lectures". So regardless of anything else, she would remind us and specifically my wife to let the kids be themselves and to give them a pass.
Be positive and optimistic - perhaps this was a principle she adopted later in her life but I cannot forget how positive and cheerful she was regardless of her situation. Whether it was her physical pain due to back issues or knee issues, or her huge insomnia problem, she was always looking to spin any situation positively and move forward instead of ruing over the past. She would often say aloud that she was frustrated with something and then also speak aloud that she was not going to give up and instead try to find another way to get out of that sticky situation. I did not hear negativity from here, except when it was self-deprecating. It's something I have tried to adapt very consciously in my life.
She and I were the opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to how we think - she claimed (rightly) that I was too logical and rational in my thought process and she was of course extremely emotional. We learned to live with each other's way of thinking because both of us realized there are so many more important things in life to worry about than argue about how one thinks.
I was really looking forward to spending my sabbatical with her and the rest of the family in India last summer but thanks to COVID, we had to shelve those plans. As a result my last memory of her was this past weekend talking about her choice of finally giving up on her 30+ years old couches and getting a new set for their new flat. She also talked about how easy it is to customize stuff in India, related to her getting a new set of dining chairs, where two were swivel-based so they are easy to get off of. And of course, what kind of snacks we would like to get shipped since she was about to send a courier package to us, now that she could send stuff via DHL.
The last in-person memory I have of her is celebrating raksha bandhan with the cousins and family and on the same trip, celebrating her birthday back in 2019. That raksha bandhan celebration was also as usual, extra, and showed off all of her traits I mentioned above. My aunt (her sister) and my cousin has his family were visiting from New Jersey so naturally it was show time for my mom :-) She asked everyone to come dressed up because, yes, she had called a photographer to take official pictures of the evening. She started looking online for local photographers, called up a few people and emailed a few more. Finally she and my wife settled on one of the candidates after some back and forth with her. For the event, it was not one item or two, it was a big spread of food and drink. She made everyone play unique games. For the prizes, she even custom-made the gifts! Every single person had a fantastic time as usual, and I am sure she felt a huge high off everyone enjoying that day.
We should all celebrate her life and how she lived it. She has only left us in this physical world and gone to hang out with her besties (sisters-in-law - brother's wife and husband's brother's wife). Her presence and her essence will be with us forever!
Rest in peace, mummy.
Addendum:
Couple things - one that I forgot and one I knew but discovered to a great detail in the past few weeks.
I forgot about her LOVE of shopping, and more importantly, getting a bargain. She didn’t necessarily buy stuff but she loved the process of shopping. Much to my dislike she would sometimes go all morning or afternoon or even the whole day just browsing, negotiating and ultimately not actually buying anything and still consider it a great day. Amazing stamina and strength to do that.
The other thing, she was amazingly organized. She had documented the smallest of things - petty expenses, codes, passwords, password change dates (no, I couldn’t get her to use 1Password but she was on her way there, her vault had 1 entry already!). More, she had labeled all her stuff everywhere. What was for whom, what was done, what was pending. When we finally got to a couple of her safe deposit lockers, we saw that she had left a bag in the locker in case she forgot to get one when trying to bring stuff back (!!!!) - so cool. There are instances like this one all over her life and whatever she touched.
I miss you, mummy. You amaze all of us every single day.
#2017 #oneeveryday via Instagram ift.tt/2kXDJDI
