u/aisnake_27

Hello,

After years of saving points, I booked 4x flights DEL-SFO in business class on Air India. Unfortunately the flight got delayed by 7 hours and the new flight timings will not work for me.

Aeroplan has offered me a rebooking through DEL-YUL/YYZ-SFO but the issue is that YYZ/YUL-SFO is a reclining seat. I've asked if it's possible to do one of the routings on a star alliance partner but they have just turned me down on this.

Does anyone know how to make this happen?

I've noticed a general trend, at least in California, that most Desis really are not that financially ambitious or career ambitious compared to other groups. I should say as a disclaimer that there are more metrics to life than money/career but I feel like Indian and Chinese culture is similar in many aspects and still it feels like we are not performing at that level.

Take the bay area for example, where there are many Indians. In wealthy cities, like Palo Alto where homes are $4m++, you can find many Chinese/White people. But there are wayyy less Indian people compared to the cheaper cities like Sunnyvale/Fremont.

The worst part is I find that most desis here live in some boring middle, where they neither have ambition to make money to truly move up in life nor do they have any passion for what they are doing. Like working 60 hours a week, don't try to switch jobs, and instead commute to your 1950s built house 45 minutes away from work.

And this is so obvious at the top tier. Sure, at big tech companies like Google etc there are many Indians. But at the cutting edge, like frontier research labs (OpenAI/Anthropic), there are at least like 5x more Chinese people compared to Indians.

Even for entrepreneurship. I grew up in Irvine, CA and so many Chinese people I knew had p@rents that retired (made enough money through business / selling startups. Like several friends p@rents live in $3mm houses but do not speak any english/work a job at all). Yes, there are indian entrepreneurs, but it feels like proportionally wayyyy less.

Even on the extreme low end I know so many desis who have decided to move out to far out suburbs to buy a builder grade new construction house (like Tracy, Mountain House, Livermore in NorCal and Corona/Riverside/Eastvale in SoCal). In Frisco Texas there are similar situations. Like I know desis who will literally not even interview for a new job to make more money but rather move to a cheaper area and stay at the same underpaid job.

I just find it interesting. The desi mentality of working hard and getting a tech job might make you enough money to buy an old house in a "good school district." But it will not give you enough money to buy a house in said area and tear it down and build a new one and then enough money to send your kids to private school.

Has anyone else noticed this dynamic?

Trying to help my parents see how to upgrade from a smaller house. They love Irvine as our ethnic community is here and all favorite friends / community is here.

They make $300k and current home is worth $1.4m (paid off). Unfortunately for a variety of reasons it does not fit their needs anymore and there is no possibility of expanding it.

Looking for a 4 bedroom house that isn't outdated and is not next to a main road or train tracks and one downstairs bedroom, along with at least some backyard (my dad loves gardening, it's his only hobby). That's literally it.

Unfortunately it seems that the cheapest house fitting even most of this is like $2.15m. All cheaper houses need at least $150k of work or have some major downside (next to main road, extremely bad layout etc).

My parents don't want to sell the existing house and would rather rent it out but even assuming they sell the existing house and get $1.3mm after selling fees to put down, the payment + prop tax/mello roos, etc would STILL be ~$8k per month (on 30 year mortgage). This doesn't seem super feasible for people in 50s tbh.

How are people here able to upgrade in 2026? The new/expensive neighborhoods feel filled with relatively young people (early 30s, etc), and I understand that first time buyers need high income to purchase, but I thought at least having a ton of equity/paid off home would help.

Or, is simply having equity not enough and one needs equity + high income?

There's a lot of talk about people moving to lower cost of living areas to buy a house, etc but I am curious about people who went to a more expensive / similarly expensive city. In SoCal, I guess this means one of the beach cities or westside LA, which are all much more expensive.

In NorCal, i think the only equivalent to Irvine is Palo Alto / Cupertino, both of which are easily 2-3x more expensive lol.

Of course, if you were someone who was considering upgrading from Irvine, curious about if you did it and how it went. Something that can't be replicated everywhere sadly is diversity; my mom loves the beach and ocean air but would hate not having indian people/restaurants/hindu temples nearby, so Irvine is the best choice for us.

On another note, it is crazy that Irvine is somehow the cheapest tier 1 area in california with good food schools, modern etc 🤣