Life Lesson from growing Avacado Plant

 

When summer sowing season started, my son was obsessed with planting any seed he would find in the kitchen. We sow corn, peaches, apples, strawberries, chickpeas, different types of beans etc. In April, he saw me removing an avocado seed, and he immediately asked Google how to plant avocado. After we watched the video, we followed the procedure and kept the seed in the water. For the next 2 weeks nothing happened, so I decided to use another seed. 

We were changing water weekly.  After almost 3 weeks, we saw a split in the seed. He was so excited to see something happening finally. The split started breaking the seed into two pieces and on a fine day we saw some roots in the bottom and a small stem growing inside. I started changing water and adding some sugar to feed the plant. In almost 2 months, we saw a plant coming out of the avocado seed. It was not growing faster. I could see 3-4 leaves and  the length of the stem increasing slowly by October 2020. It was almost 5 months old and around 10 cm in height. I googled to see what's a good time to plant since winter was approaching, I was worried about what could happen now. I read that if a plant remains in water for a long time then the stem remains weak. The plant may not be able to hold itself when transferred to soil.

In October 2020, I decided to plant it in a pot. It's been 2 months now, and it's growing so fast that it tripled in height. There are three levels of leaves. What an amazing journey from seed to plant! First seed which did not germinate, I felt that nature knows what was best for the seed. This growing plant in winter in my house gives me hope that nature is powerful and nurture is essential. As Einstein said correctly, "Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."  I stopped worrying about anything. My job is to grow and keep trying. Tao takes care of everything else. All is one!

Covid-19 Diary From a Mother

When I heard about China's shutdown at the start of this year, I didn't think that the world would land with the same fate. No one could have imagined that the world would be shut down to the extent never before. Finally, when a month of lockdown was announced in Canada, we all followed the instruction thinking that it's going to end soon. With our hearts pondering and nerves beating, we started stocking stuff like never before in a crisis.  It's a fact that no one has ever experienced this in their lifetime or heard of it before COVID-19 world.  I am on a career break and I find this to be a blessing in disguise. I realized that in the past five and half years, except weekends, I have never spent these long days together with my son. He started daycare when he was five months old. Since then, he moved from daycare to school. Finally, I became my five-year-old son's full-time caregiver, homeschooler, play date friend etc.   Apart from this, job search stress, housework, MOOC courses etc. were regular workload.  As a parent, I penned down some glimpses of my emotions going up and down during COVID-19. I can't imagine how many working moms with work from home will be stressed. I have been talking to all my mom friends and telling myself and them to hang in there.  

Day 1 : March break and there's no school for my son who is in Senior Kindergarten.  I need to submit my Udacity Nanodegree Capstone project. I am working on it. And my efficiency has dropped significantly.   

Day 5 : Nothing is working. I am not getting time to work on a project. Apply for a job. Taking care of the kid is taking most of the time. Planning creative activities, doing online app work etc. Created routine but no compliance. He expects me to play with him all the time. We were getting groceries and cleaning everything with wipes. We were taking a bath when we went out. So many things have changed. 

 

Day 10 : Finally I submitted the project. Now I set a routine and the afternoon 3-hour TV time gave me some free time.  

Day 15 : Online school starts after March break. Somehow, his relationship with school work was not great before COVID-19. This was like an online school with work to be completed with parent supervision. I am sitting with him and trying to finish daily school work. I am enjoying it and decided to spend full time with him.    

Day 30 : Finally, we are going out for a long drive and summer has arrived. Today when we went for a walk, we met my son’s best friend from the neighborhood, and he was so happy. They played in front of the house. What can isolation do to a kid or a person? It’s really challenging not to socialize.    

Day 45 : Now officially summer has arrived and lockdown has been lifted. Kids started going to the park. We went camping. What a great time! Finally, I felt that I became a free bird. Looking forward to the camping season.    

Day 160 :  Finally, summer is over and online school has started. He is in 1st grade now. I participated in the Great Canada Bike Challenge and completed 200 km biking in a month. 

Day 200 : We celebrated my son’s 6th birthday. We learned that we do not need big parties. I got a few small gifts, and we did gift hunting. I invited his best friend for a play date and the day was spent happily.  

Day 250 : Second COVID-19 wave started, we have been living the same way since pandemic started. Now winter has started so we are stuck indoors. I started a job search and a mentorship program.  

Day 285 :  COVID-19  has definitely shown us what is essential and what is not essential. No shopping, movie theaters and going out and many other things were necessary. We learned a great lesson that we can live without so many things. All ups and downs showed me how to be at peace no matter what. How much emotional stress is self-generated and unnecessary? We focus on what can’t  control and follow suffering. Prioritizing everything, whatever is in our control and working to achieve that much, this realization helped me to sail through this year. We can break or make out of the crisis, and I am so proud that through all the breaking, I survived the storm.

These are unprecedented times. We know that we cannot predict what will happen. Although, it is always true that we are not able to predict the future. Still, life was a normal and predictable routine.  I did some research (I love research.) about past crises like the current situation from a different perspective. Research means searching for something new systematically.  There are many articles talking about the financial implications of the Great Depression and World War II.   As we stay indoors and worry about money and financial crisis in the future.   We have achieved so many technological advances during the crisis that it shaped the world after 1950.  Do we need to ask questions?  There are no wrong questions.  What’s going to happen in the future?  How many job losses, financial crisis, housing market crash, stock market crash? Etc. We need to train ourselves to ignore the information and answers.  If the information is overwhelming to you. Shut it down. Our natural response is more powerful to answer and take care of ourselves whether we are parents, job seekers, struggling in a job or in any type of situation. We are all right.  Whether we make mistakes, or we do the right thing. Hit the pause button. Flow with the flow. It’s ok to make mistakes and fail.  We have witnessed a once in a lifetime crisis. I hope the new year brings a better new normal. 

Unchanted words :Bias : Human / AI

Musing  : Bias : Human / AI

It’s been a few days that my son was telling me, this is a fall-spring. His conclusion was based on colour change that he is looking around him. I was insisting him that we see different shades of green around us in the spring and start of the summer.  We also see cherry blossom type trees where you will see buds, flowers and finally green leaves.  It’s not like fall colour where we see red, orange, green and brown colour change in tree leaves around us.

It made me think that how his algorithm based on past fall experience has generalized fall concept.  We call this as a bias (cognitive).  Today, we were walking through the street and he showed me a maple tree with brown, orange and green leaves.  You see mamma that’s what I was telling you.  It is also a fall now. It’s a summer-fall.  I was enlightened about bias. 😊  I have missed seeing a maple tree colour change in the summer. There are lush green trees everywhere. I failed to see trees with different colours.

I started thinking about my thinking. Do I make all conclusions like this?  

I have been reading more about Bias and Variance in the data science.  AI bias will explode. But only the unbiased AI will survive.  How much impact human bias has in our life? What will happen when human and AI both are biased? 

P.S. : “We are just processing information within a cartography of our mind that gives rise mechanistically to our behaviour. So the decisions that we think we are consciously deciding on and making, actually it’s all just an illusion that can be reduced to what our brain is telling us to do.” — Hannah Crichlow, prominent Princeton neuroscientist and author of The Science of Fate

 

To increase share holders profit?

This is another draft which was sitting unpublished.

Today I found this article.  This is what I have wanted to write since long time. 
“Maximizing shareholder wealth is the most superior objective of the company, is not it?”. 

Major company objectives, vision and goals looks very customer focus and social responsibility, however, in reality, it is always to increase the shareholder’s profit, is not it?