This has probably been the busiest year of my life, with so much happening at once—especially being on the job market again. The question of whether to return to our home country or stay here in the US has dominated our family discussions, beyond the normal routines. Both countries have seen significant changes, but the central issue for us remains education for our children. I won't dwell on this topic since this is meant to be a short note, but I'll say this: education is a challenging endeavor. Investing in people requires enormous resources—smart people, time, money, and hard work. Done right, it yields tremendous benefits for individuals and society alike. Yet nowadays, from K-12 through higher education, we face so many problems.
I still spent a lot of time driving the kids around, and driving myself. My Sienna accumulated far more miles than expected, which is one indicator of just how busy we've been. I believe that spending time with kids is the most important thing for maintaining a good relationship with them, no matter how small the moments. They just need you to be there.
There are two or three things I feel I didn't do well enough for the kids this year. Our older daughter transferred to a new school in 2025. We knew it would be challenging for her, but we didn't spend enough time talking with her about it. Our third one was hospitalized in October, just one month after she started school. In retrospect, we think we could have done better—both in preparing her for school and in advocating for how she was treated at the hospital.
LLMs have been a helpful tool for my wife in organizing and managing family routines. The same is true for me. The kids have now started asking questions to LLMs too—it's quite fun to look at what they ask.
02/05/2026