Making choices

In 2016 my final pass% for the choices in the election was 30%.

This year was better. Have been tracking my voting choices. While this post might end up attracting a bunch of more telemarketers before the next election, want you all to see how tricky it can be for many voting choices, given the Marketing machinery that goes behind every one of these measures and propositions.

To say elections are messy in the US is an understatement! 

My 2020 Election Report card : 

Pass/ Fail: 12 pass, 10 fail, 1 Meh. That is >50%. Better than 2016! 

====

✅ means got it right..❌ means the choice has lost or is almost gone.

My vote:
President?VP - Biden/Harris - ✅

Voted for Sanders in the Primary. Had nothing against Biden and thought the choice of Kamala was interesting. I love Kamala as she has more balls than most of the old goats in the senate. It was sickening to see so many of my racist Indian friends (yes, you can have friends who have views different than yours) who suddenly attached themselves to her after she became the VP choice, but will take it.  

Unlike my meh vote for Hillary, voted for this Biden/Harris ticket whole heartedly.

My original thought during the primary was that the US ship had moved too far to the right and was about to topple.. to bring it back to center, you might need to try and pull it too far to the left or it might still end up wobbling for a long time.. Biden is a moderate. He is almost a Republican in a lot of ways, compared to Bernie. Hope a moderate choice is good enough to get the US back on track! for COVID/healthcare, social justice and the economy/Foreign policy (that was my order or priorities).

I personally want us to have a decent working relationship with China and Taiwan till we can get our own Hardware (read semiconductor, chip making in general) business up and running in the US. This was at a personal level where you are thinking just about you and your family. You can ask me "isn't every choice on your ballot, your choice, where you doing the absolute selfish thing?" and I will answer immediately "No. Politics is about "people" as a collective. This is where an individual decides a collective choice. You have to see if your selfishness is goign to backfire on you badly when making choices."

When it comes to China, saying you have to stop eating out when your stove at home isn't working is not a good strategy. Subsidising farmers and not fabs is ridiculous. If Fabs were subsidized, maybe the trade war was not called for and there would be no retalliation on Pig/soy/bourbon etc.  from China and the folks who were hit in the US getting subsidies to compensate for this retaliation. This was an elaborate chess game which in my opinion was botched and turned into a game of "whack-a-mole" by someone who knows more about chess than all the grandmasters put together. 

Not absolving China of unfair practices or asking for trouble. They made a lot of bad choices in the last three years. If China had elections, Xi would have probably lost in a landslide after COVID. But they don't, so this is China's chance to do better and get back on the right side of things. Hope the Chinese "community" is able to "capitalize" on this! 

Half this country agrees Nazi's are bad, but almost all of them seem to be anti China now?! Not good for the world. Hope this situation changes. Things will never be the same again but they can get better.

Now for the rest of the choices.

Ro - House Rep District 17 ✅ 72.9% to Ritesh 27% (Ro was a reluctant vote. Given he is young, expected his votes to align with Bernie.. but was not to be. This was my lesser of two evils vote. All those ads with Ritesh being blessed by the priests was a turn off. I am not going to vote for him because the local priests endorsed the guy. Who do you think I am? an Indian version of an Evangelical Floridian? was the thought in my head)
Ann - State senate District 15 ❌ 46% to 53.9% for Cortese
Evan low -State assembly District 28 ✅ 73.1%

Skipped it (Judge vote with only one candidate in ballot...only Kim Jong Un runs an election with one name only one name on a Ballot? No.. we do it too! ) 

Govind only - Local Community College Board-  ❌ (got only 14% of the vote)

William and sudha - Local school board ❌-  the ladies who want to shut the local schools  for where we live are leading with 38 and 27% . Sudha trails by 3000 votes and Bill is a distant 4th with only 11%. (this was the big disappointment for me on local level)

Steven and kitty -Cupertino City Council ~ Meh Top 2 win.. Only Kitty made it and is in 2nd place with a 900 vote lead. Steven in 4th place and trails by 1100 votes. The surprise is the Conspiracy theorist Charlene Lee who is in 5th place and still got 2600 votes!!  Cannot call this a win. Not sure if Kitty can do what she told me before the election without the support she needs of the 5 total members.

Bosworth, Gatto and Angela- Local Sanitary district - ✅ (all the three candidates picked are leading with 33, 24 and 24% of the vote. unlikely to change)

Propositions for CA : Only 83% of votes reported so far :

14- yes ✅ fund stem cell research 50.9% (not yet called)
15-yes ❌  Change how business property taxes are assessed. Got only 48% (not yet called)

 Not sure how this helps. It would be a good thing if Apple which practically runs Cupertino could just come up with 11M $ to stop the four local schools from closing. How can schools in Cupertino close for lack of funds? More people enrolling their kids in private schools (less PE? Grade inflation, which is a term I heard for the first time two weeks ago?) This topic needs a blog post in itself! 

16-yes ❌ End ban on affirmative action. Got only 43.5% (called)
17-yes ✅ Restore parolee vote – 58.7% (called)
18-yes ❌ Allow some 17 year olds to vote 

If they turn 18 by election, they should vote in March primaries so their candidate would be on Nov ballot). Got only 44.4% (called). This is a big big disappointment where the older generation screws the younger generation. Sorry kids. I tried?!

19-no ❌ change property tax transfer rules – 51.2% (not called yet)
20-no ✅ Increase criminal penalties and limit parole – 37.8% (called)
21-yes ❌ Allow rent control expansion – got only 40% (called)
22-no ❌ Classify gig workers as contractors - got 58.5% (called)

Read a yes vote on this as an Uber win and contractor loss as they get screwed out of benefits and voted no.Wanted to make sure Uber drivers who are risking a lot during COVID times to have healthcare.  This was the most controversially worded measure that had an intent to confuse.. Maybe Yes was the right vote?  Eventually when COVID leaves and I am on planes again and get to talk to Uber drivers enroute to SFO.. will find out the ground reality.

23-no ✅ Add regulation for kidney dialysis clinics – got only 35.9% (called)

Had to ask a doctor relative for advice on this! 

24-no ❌ Amend state data privacy law – got 55.9% (called). 

This was yet another one which was worded badly. My take is folks have voted against their own interest thanks to word play on the ballot. Have one adorable friend who is a technical writer who will hopefully take to task these folks who end up writing ballot measures with an intent to deceive and confuse the voter! 

Technical writing was weaponized in this ballot! At this rate they could write a ballot measure for mandatory castration of all male babies once they reach the age of 10 and have it pass..that was my thought after reading this!

25-no✅ End use of cash bail – got only 44.1% (called)

Measures for Local region:  Voted for keeping an existing tax or add a tax, and all three passed! 

M-yes -   ✅ pass school district parcel tax .. 73% 
S-yes -   ✅ pass parcel tax for santa clara valley water district - 75%
RR-yes - ✅ Peninsula corridor 0.125% sales tax increase - 69.6%

Don't have a problem paying Taxes as long as there is accountabilty for that tax dollars and it actually ends up doing what it is supposed to do. Seeing all the signs for "please stop our school from closing" on every street corner is making me want to push for more reform on commercial properties to pay proportional taxes which would actually benefit the local community!

Overall, happy with this pass %. Makes me feel less disconnected with the rest of the community this time compared to the last time. 

Waiting for Biden/Harris and an all star team to bring some much needed sanity. In the meantime

- Social distance

- If you can't wear a mask

- wash your hands often

- Get tested if you are sick

- Exercise regularly

- Talk to people who don't agree with you

Put yourself in other peoples shoes or make a conscious attempt to engage

Bring facts and truth back! 

Let's all work on avoiding the concept of "alternate facts" as they are just "lies". 

More on the mystery of how women choose men?

If you have been reading this blog long enough... posted "this" way back in 2007. Little has changed except said Ferrari is now married and we dont see too many photos of his wife in white salwars.. that is a sidebar discussion.

Back to the main theme.. do women choose men because they resemble some early version of their dad.. A version they have of their dad when they were toddlers and consider that the "best possible version of a guy"?

The research is still ongoing. This morning, I went to pick up FIL who arrived from India at SFO. It was hilarious to see him walk out in the same shirt I was wearing. So had to take this picture after coming home!

Yes, my shirt is faded thanks to all the chemicals in the Cupertino water and his shirt still retained a lot of the original color.. but we look like two people who could have played Benjamin Button!

His memory is not that good now. We both got the shirts gifted by my co-brothers dad in Australia a good 8 years ago. It is absolutely cozy and is one of my favorite airplane and rainy day shirts. Apparently FIL likes it for the same reason!

This is scary ladies!

Those three days - Where is all this headed?

For previous posts by Sundar hawking a serious topic with some humor, see:

1. The Unified Theetu theory: Definition, rules and boundary conditions
2. A brief history of "theetu"

This last post on the topic is about why people follow these customs, perception of people who follow/don't follow them, in the eyes of others.

When little Sundaram was all but a boy of 3-4, he would rather be naked and sit next to his mom in a corner of the room for three days a month and still enjoy the "freedom" of running around the rest of the house than be confined to only one side of the room at any given point. After a little scolding from older folks, he just figured out that if he had two chaddis, one of which resided with his mom and another which was outside the "theetu" boundary and he changed as fast as S.Ve. Sekar changed shirts in the stage play, his total exposure time would be drastically reduced and he still got the best of both worlds. As an added bonus, this made him understand the concept of electovalent vs. covalent bonding in ninth grade very quickly.

The scheme came to a quick end when great grandma declared that as per the spec. documents, section 7.2.1.1.1 which would be

7 kids
2 greater than 3 years old
1 clothes
1 boundary
1 cross contamination

any kid touching mom during theetu, is theetu by induction, naked or otherwise unless he has a shower! You can change underwear fast enough, but squeezing in a quick shower, now that was not possible. Not happy with the rules which didn't have any written proof or basis, the little boy picked what was his first of many fights on unwritten rules that did not make anyone happy.

My mother used to tell me horror stories of how she was treated badly when she was just a teenager. Most of these stories involved older widowed womenfolk in the house taking it out on the younger girls in the name of "thooram vilagaradhu", "aacharam" etc. etc. and the middle aged women not backing the young ones and siding with the oldies for fear or retaliation. I am sure the men played a part in this by looking the other way. Decided that when it was time for my sister to go sit in a corner, I would fight for her.

A decade went by and in what would have made Abhimanyu proud, I fought the entire family tooth and nail so that my sister would not go sit in a corner when it was her turn. Initially my sister was proud of me, but after seeing the way everyone ganged up on me, she thought it was better to end the fight by going to the corner. After that, whose fight do you fight?

Told myself that someday when I got married, will make sure that my wife will never go and sit in any corner. When San and I got married, she came here within days after our marriage and the first time we had to decide on the rules, told her that my preference was that she do not go overboard with theetu. She had the right to choose whatever restrictions she wanted to follow as long as it did not affect us both. In other words, I wasn't going to take any extra showers because I gave her a hug after coming back from work. She was very happy. San would not touch the prayer shelf in the kitchen, would not touch items in the kitchen that were associated with any prayer, would not go to temples during those days and that was it. If she was tired, I would take over the cooking or we would just go to Bhavikas, not that we needed a reason to go to Bhavikas. I was also happy with that arrangement.

There was no one from either side of the family visiting us till just before Jr. was born. In those 4 years, there was only a self imposed "theetu-lite" in the house. Then Jr. came and we did not have to worry about any rules for almost another 6 months.

We did declare to the parents and in-laws that our house will have only these conditions. One funny conversation that happened with an elder relative when they came to our house:

ER: this carpet, is it cloth?
Me: it is synthetic, but has natural fiber mix in it.
ER: Hmmmm. . how do you clean it.. can it get wet
Me: they have this amazing concept called steam cleaning. They wet the whole carpet with steam and vacuum it, makes it come out like brand new. The carpet stays wet for a day but after it dries you can really see the difference.
ER: Appo "theetu" aache!
Me :!!!!!!!

Small problems like this did arise every now and then and one tries to use his limited knowledge of science and technology to come up with clever workarounds, like they came up with the vinyl covered pillows!

These days, the number of restrictions has taken a slight increase. As we grow older and have kids running around the house, we tend to gravitate more towards religion, belief and faith. Part of this is because we believe that if we raised our kids the way were raised, they will turn out okay. This of course is because we have usually turned out okay in our own eyes. There is always a hope that we would transfer at least what we perceived as the good part of how we were raised on to our kids.

Take me for example. A couple of weeks ago, the girls were so impressed when they saw me recite pages and pages of scriptures from memory. They wanted to know how to do that and said "it is too hard and impossible for me to do this daddy". They also wanted to impress daddy by doing what he does. So we started working on some slokams, by breaking them into small pieces and then putting them together into one long piece. They can both recite many slokams fluently with the original sanskrit pronunciations.

There were two reasons for my doing that. The first one being my own perception that my good memory having something to do with all those hours spent on my grandpa's lap every morning and evening as he recited scriptures. Maybe the ability to hear and remember and recite was what gave me ability to be a "star Maggu" in school and college and eventually helps me everyday in my job. Then again, my memory could simply have been inherited from my father who is a walking phone book. In either case, the logic was that the kids could have inherited a good memory from me by chance or they will improve their memory by reciting slokams.

The second reason was to teach them how to learn that complex things can be broken down into simple pieces and that practice makes perfect. The whole thing was an opportunity for me to teach them how to learn all those things and of course realize that they can do things they thought were impossible, if they listened to their daddy.

That last sentence is the bane of our existence. We so believe that what we pass to our kids will make them like us and that is the best we can do. We teach them to choose wisely and train them to choose like us.

I write this post with hope that eventually when the girls get older, they will make a choice that makes sense for that time and place and environment. There is a very good likelyhood that they will follow some lighter form of "theetu-lite". So far they do not know or even realize that something like this is being observed and that is the basis for the guess.

It is very difficult for every generation to accept drastic changes that the next generation makes. Gradual changes seem to have open or even reluctant acceptance. Hopefully the girls will not be judged for the choices they make. To a large part that depends on how the older people in the family (we are growing older and that means it includes us and our generation) will accept their choices for what they are.

Cleanliness and godliness are both relative terms and there is always a balance between the two that every generation arrives at. Wish the girls will choose things that they are comfortable with, for their own reasons.

One thing is for sure. Just like my decision to defend my sister and wife at some point with their choice, my support will be there for Jr. and the little one, when they make choices and want someone to help them defend their choice. Hopefully that situation will not arise.

Here is to hope!

.