My last personal update earlier this year was a bit doom and gloom. My FIL had just passed away, and our comfortable rental house was being sold and we had to move, and a lot of things were up in the air.
Things happened fast – in some ways, if the last two years were all fire and movement and excitement, the past few months this year has been like a consolidation, of setting down roots, of achieving long-term goals.
It’s also been a severing of ties with our life in India. We sold our apartment in Bangalore, withdrew our PFs (a long, drawn-out, tiresome process, which took the better part of a year, ugh! I have grown to hate the red tape of our official government systems in India!). And what did we do with all this money? We put down a down payment for a house here! Both K and I (and even the kids) had gotten tired of shuttling around from one rental to the other. And instead of paying rent every month and having no assets to show for it, we decided that buying a house would make more fiscal sense.
I’m still not convinced about our decision and our long-term plans, but there were some good deals to be had, and given the generally uncertain economic situation and my corporate uncertainty specifically, we just took a risk and got ourselves a fixer-upper.
It feels odd that we are buying a home when my current job role involves training AIs and building automations that will wipe out a bunch of jobs (including possibly mine) in the next couple of years. But we wanted to apply for a mortgage at a time when I qualify, and rates are competitive. So, yes, a bit of a risk, but overall, fingers crossed, we think we will be able to manage fairly ok.
So, yes, the last couple of months have been spent in our fixer-upper. And while we love the house, it’s taking ages to get our kitchen and bathroom fixed and the flooring redone. We are all still in the middle of the mess. Only our bedrooms are habitable, and I feel kind of done eating meals in our bedrooms or the garage.
All this frustration kind of built up in me, and on an impulse, I booked a trip to Argentina and Chile this November with a friend of mine. I kind of regret it now – I could have used some of the money instead on the spiraling house expenses, and I feel guilty leaving K at home to fend for the 10 days I will be gone. But at the same time, it’s probably the only bright light on the horizon that I can see, and after the extremely stressful (workwise) last couple of years I have had, I also think I deserve a bit of a break.
Booking tickets, accommodation, transport, etc., has been a massive undertaking. We are doing everything ourselves to keep costs low, but that means digging through a bunch of Spanish websites to book tickets and tours. The navigation experience is just not intuitive at all, and they ask for a bunch of details that seem quite irrelevant. Trusting in Google Translate, I have made the bookings, and fingers crossed, I haven’t goofed up anything. I already suspect I may have said I am married to my friend, when all I meant to do was confirm my marital status (it’s really odd that we have to give these details when booking bus tickets).
Work has continued to be crazy. AI has been such a game-changer, but also a continual source of stress and anxiety. The layoffs are ongoing in our company, and there has been a full on shake-out right from CEO, CFO, trickling down to all the individual contributors. Work is moving off shore and to LLM-first. Every week there seems to be a new priority, a new shift, I wake up to farewell emails from colleagues, and breathe a sigh of relief, that at least today it’s not me.
So, yes, my mental health and peace of mind hasn’t been great. The news of the loss of our dog Coco has added to my doldrums. While leaving India, we had to make the sad decision to leave him behind as it just wasn’t feasible bringing him here. We took care to ensure the transition was smooth, he was already familiar with the new place, and when we left, we got frequent updates. All the news was good – we saw videos of him having fun, and making new friends, and overall he was quite happy.
Sadly, he was also an old dog, and he had health issues even while he was living with us. Labradors especially are prone to hip issues and he’d had a couple of surgeries while living with us. This time around though, the hip issue turned out to be a tumorous lump that needed to be operated, and this time when they operated, they noticed issues with his liver and pancreas. With great sadness, they had to take the decision to put him down in the middle of our night. We didn’t even get to say our goodbyes to him ☹.
With all this happening, my mum really held the fort for us, but now she’s gone back home, and I’m really missing her steadying presence – although in a way, it’s also a relief as I was terrified of her tripping and stumbling on all these loose wires and equipment, and feeling guilty that we couldn’t give her a more comfortable living environment here.
With fall, the boy started year 10 in school, and things are getting serious as they ramp up the pressure for his GCSE exams, which he will take in 2028. I speak of pressure, but I have to say that it is no where close to what he would have been facing back home. He’s just finished his first term exams, and while the papers are challenging, it seems like he was decently equipped to take them on. He’s also becoming more independent and serious about his studies, so less nagging and oversight required from my side.
The girl starts her second year of university, and things are getting serious for her as well. Her first year was mainly a lot of parties, making friends, understanding the lay of the land, and the expectations behind assignments and tests. This year, things get more intense. She’s also trying for some work experience, and for that, she needs to improve her portfolio, showcase her understanding of the subject, and do all her applications on time. She’s working closely with her personal mentor in university, and hopefully, she’s able to land something. The job scene is terrible especially for freshers and again with AI dominating the scene (ugh! I am so repetitive sometimes), it’s very, very hard to get a foot in the door.
K seems to be the only one among us who is doing universally ok. His job is close by, not even a 10-min commute, but he gets to leave the house, talk to a bunch of people in person, and take a break from the craziness of the house repairs. I am exclusively working from home because of this house move, and I just feel so disconnected from the outside world on the days that I do step out to do anything beyond school/groceries/park/library. Another reason why this upcoming trip to South America feels so important for me.
Reading back on this update, it does seem like more doom and gloom, but overall I am optimistic. This is a period of change, and it just feels like a temporary thing that we all need to push through to get to a better place.
We are doing good – we have managed to get a decent house, our mortgage is lower than all the rent we were paying, we are building assets here, and our children have mostly adjusted to the life here. Looking at things with a long-term view, there has been progress, it’s just that we are on the messy and challenging part of the journey needed to fully get there, and I expect things to start looking up more in the next few months 🤞.
