Musings of a runner

Two half-marathons

2011-04-26T23:53:00.000-07:00

I have been "long time no see" as regards this blog and blogging in general.
Life has changed...Quite a bit. I have been humbled, yet in a good way.

My previous post, was on intensity. I mentioned that I had an intense hike while going down Tiger Mountain. I said that I would like to see this intensity in my life, albeit a sustainable one. Fast forward two years to now... I am living many moments with intensity these days... My research is exciting, challenging and engulfing me at the same time. I meditate every day to help me keep calm and centered, while I run over the weekend to keep fit.
Yes, running has been relegated to a "once a week" thing. However I started training for half-marathons last year end and have run two of them since.
Seattle half marathon - 2010 and Mercer Island half marathon - 2011.
Both were good experiences, finished in around 2hrs 10 minutes.

I plan to run and hike more regularly in the future. Summer's coming up and nature's calling in Seattle.

On Intensity

2009-06-13T00:32:00.000-07:00

Just finished my spring quarter. Pretty intense 5 days I had finishing up projects. I went hiking to Tiger Mountain I, two weeks back. It's one of my favorite spots. Tiger III is the more popular one during the weekends. But Tiger I is usually deserted. Atop Tiger I is a small bench and there is also a hut made of aluminum sheets nearby called hiker's hut for shade. This trip saw me enjoy the sunny weather. I reached the top at 5:15 pm and sat on the bench, enjoying the view of Mount Rainier and the valley nearby. I then settled down for a pleasant 30 minute meditation, with little birds chirping around and the wind brushing against my face.
Coming down from the Tiger mountain was pretty intense. Why? I had a deadline to meet!!
I had to catch a bus at 7 pm(the next bus was at 9 pm) and I left the top at 6:15 pm. I under-estimated the time it would take me to get down. Jogging down the trail is not easy with lots of small stones, wood, and slippery edges around. You have to be totally focused on the trail. A second's error could mean a slip which may or may not be fatal. It was pretty intense for me for this reason coupled with the fact that I had to meet the 7 pm deadline. 6:50 pm I had almost reached the base of the hill and the highway in sight. Now I had to just make a sprint to the finish. Wow, this reminds me of my undergrad running sessions of around 5kms.. It was pretty intense. We were three guys and we started off slow, atleast I did, but I would catch up with others and then towards the end, in the last 1km stretch we would be pushing our limits in order to beat the other guy.
This 7pm deadline of catching the bus reminding me of that intensity... It's like, when you are done with it, you tell yourself, you are not going to do it again.. Not at that level of intensity anyway, but you do it anyway. Intensity. It's good to befriend it.
Coming back, I reached the bus stop at 7:01 pm. But guess what? The bus was late by 10 minutes!! But this intensity that I felt while jogging or sometimes running downhill (going with the grade) made me wonder if I could apply the same intensity to my work more often.
I had the opportunity this week.. One of the most intense weeks I have had. But it's a different kind of intensity, involving lack of sleep and stress. I prefer a quiet kind of intensity, an inner intensity, that doesn't necessarily express itself as stress in the body, and an intensity that's long-term, and an intensity that's sustainable.

Long run at greenlake

2009-04-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

It is a sunny day today and what a perfect day to go out and enjoy the greenlake experience. Running around the edge of the lake, with people of all ages, with dogs of all sizes and breeds, with all kinds of colors (differernt shades of green and orange on trees, pink and yellow spring flowers bloom, etc), is quite an experience. I finished off my run, by finding a chair near the lake to sit on and meditate for a while and enjoy the silence within. If I could use just one word to describe the total experience, it would be awesome.

Shifting to Green lake

2009-03-20T23:07:00.000-07:00

Green lake is one of the really beautiful urban spots in seattle. The name is suggestive of the geography of the location. It's green all around and in the middle of it all is a large sized lake.
And the new place I am shifting to is right next to the lake, just a block away!

And, this place is a runner's haven and heaven!!

Rocking fun are there.

View Larger Map

Hiking near Granite Falls

2009-02-21T19:50:00.000-08:00

Hiking through trails,
Walking through forests,
What do you seek?

I seek to experience the nurturing hand of nature,
The hand that shows up as soothing sounds
of gurgling water in a nearby brook,
The hand that shows up as a bird singing it's song,
The hand that shows up as the beauty of mountains, valleys, and lakes, beckoning you forward.

I seek to become aware of the jarring noise of my thoughts
in the deafening silence of nature,
I seek to internalize the peace that I find in the forest trails,
I seek to put things in perspective by realizing
the ignorance of man in living life monotonously,
while nature beckons, as always.

Did a solid 4 hr hike in trails near a place called Granite Falls, around 40 miles from Seattle. I noticed a lot of logging going around this area and also heard a few gunshots. I came across a fence with a few horses idling around inside. I stood at the fence and the horses came around and said hello! As I reached my hand out towards them, they first thoroughly whiffed their noses around my hand before letting me touch them.
Also saw a coyote and a black bunny along the way. I wasn't hiking to any particular destination, just randomly exploring the trails nearby. I guess I walked the half-marathon distance of 21 kms today.. Pretty tiring!

Seward park experience

2009-02-14T20:37:00.000-08:00

"Imagine yourself sitting below a tree on pristine green grass with dew drops glistening in the late afternoon sun. Imagine that you are less than a feet away from a lake that is moving rhythmically creating a beautiful sound as the gentle waves splash the shore, with ducks wading along doing some gymanastic upside down flips. Now as you look across, you see the shoreline, dotted with a few tall trees, winding along a curve and your gaze meets the sun that's sending you it's warm rays, providing comfort in the cold weather around. As you close your eyes, you take in all the beauty and sounds and let yourself become more peaceful and content for the moment..."
Now, if you are into meditations, you would say, "this is starting to sound like a nice guided meditation".

Getting back to where I left off..
Now as you become content in the moment, you start hearing some random noises and you recognize them as: A few kids running around with their uncle yelling at them to put on their jackets, two or three 30 something women walking along with their dogs, discussing their ex-boyfriends, and a couple not too far away, who just can't get enough of each other.

Now, this would go down as a Seward Park experience.
I did hike around in the old-growth forest trails in Seward park for around an hour and a half before the above experience happened. One of the trails lead me to an interesting amphi-theatre that reminded me of the open air theatre (OAT) in my undergrad college, back in India.
The Seward park has a very interesting geography as you can see in the map below. It juts out into the lake, almost making it an island. On a clear day, the Mount Rainier is also visible from the East side of the park.

Discovery park again

2009-02-08T13:19:00.000-08:00

Felt an impulse to go to the discovery park. It was cloudy when I started, but when I hit the discovery park, it was sunny! The last time I had been to discovery park, it was cloudy to begin with and midway through the hike it started raining!

I decided to explore the South beach and South bluff(or cliff) of the discovery park and this side has some gorgeous views of Mount olympics. At one point (you are standing at the edge of the cliff) you can see the cliff dropping down a few 100 feet into the beach, then there's the puget sound lake, then a few islands, and then the mt. olympics..One of the mountains in the Olympic ranges reminds me of the mountain in the Lord of the rings. Also looking at these mountains in their glory brings out a tune in my mind... 'Will you follow me?' by Rob Dougan (youtube it to listen). Didn't have a camera (gifted it to my family) to capture the scenery. Altogether, a rejuvenating 2 hr hike.

Federer-Nadal showdown - Australian Open finals

2009-01-30T21:41:00.000-08:00

Catch it this sunday night (Feb 1st 09). Since I am in Seattle, I will have to get up at 1 am Sunday to watch the finals. I am rooting for federer as always, should be an intense match with brilliant shot making from both sides.

2009 Seattle Marathon

2009-01-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

Just registered for it..yes!!

Here's the website: Seattle Marathon

The marathon's going to be on Sunday, November 29th 2009.
So it's atleast another 10 months for the marathon. That gives me a good time for training for the marathon. I am shooting for below 4 hrs. Let's see how it goes.
Will update on my progress every month. FYI, I have stopped running completely and that is one of the reasons I registered for the marathon.. so that I get back to running shape. Have been evading the marathon for the last couple of years..Finally, I will be doing the marathon this year.

Going home

2008-12-14T18:06:00.000-08:00

Going home tomorrow morning. Back to India after 2 years. Pretty excited, yes I am. I notice that I haven't blogged for a long while. Hmm, I was occupied with my course work and also spiritual reading, which contrary to what some might think, is pretty exciting and thought provoking. Why do many people like fantasies, science fiction (LOTR, Harry Potter, et al) etc? They would like to believe that there is more to the world than the routine stuff.. Spirituality is also a fantasy, except that it is not out there, but right here, related to our daily lives. Anyway, might blog again next month after getting back.

Running and Spirituality

2008-09-09T18:31:00.000-07:00

These two words are probably ones that I cherish the most these days (there are many other words too, as you will see later on). Now, how the heck is running related with spirituality you ask?
I had a friend come up to me during my undergrad and tell me, "You seem to be very spiritual. By the way, can you tell me what exactly is spirituality?". It was a funny moment, I told him that I was not sure.

If you have noticed, I started out into the blogosphere with this blog, Musings of a runner. I then added, Musings of a grad student, when I became a graduate student to capture some intriguing ways of life I encountered/was encountering.
And then came along, Musings of a seeker, my official spiritual blog.

My point is that I have only recently realized or better understood the link between running and spirituality, or for that matter what spirituality actually is.

Here's my definition of spirituality:
Activities, processes, attitudes that uplift your spirit. As simple as that.
People also refer to spirituality as a process of growth - growth of the self. Now, what this self/soul is, etc is a topic by itself and out of scope of this blog.

By the above definition here are some things that I find uplift my spirit:

a) Running (there you go)
b) Nothing like good old laughter
c) Meditation
d) Lack of worries and care. Notice that, it is a conscious choice whether you choose to worry or not although people make it a subconscious process without realizing its effects on body and mind. Also, worry doesn't help decision making. I find I make my best decisions when I am clear, confident and relaxed.
e) At the end of a weary day, relaxation techniques (shavasana et al) to revive myself or equivalently running or:
f) Music
g) Hiking: Most of my recent blogs have been on hiking. There is something about hiking in nature that is soothing and calming, but at the same time refreshing. This again, by our definition, is a spiritual activity. I have indeed come to realize that hiking rejuvenates me, and gives me time to think on things clearly.

(What are some activities that uplift you?)

Now, you can become cheeky and say that, psychedelic drugs also tend to uplift the spirit and cause euphoric experiences. I don't deny that, they would definitely be spiritual experiences, but considering the side-effects on health and the risk of addiction, I would rather avoid them.
I mean if there is a healthy way to 'get high' wouldn't you opt for it?

Running and spirituality
Running is something that seemed a natural thing to do when I was a kid. You have nothing to do? Run around the house, wreak havoc, get scoldings. Get kicked out of the house - Then you run around in the streets playing cricket or whatever. Get called in for dinner. Go to sleep. Running for me was synonymous with being free: An elder person could you stop you to give advice, but you could just dash away if you are bored!
I used to participate in 100 metres dash every year and that was also fun.
I seriously started pursuing long distance running when I entered college. Initially it was a drag, I had to push my body to keep doing the rounds. I would get injured. Get back to running, become faster. Get injured. And so on. But, once running become a regular thing to do, I found my running to be 'effortless' at times.
Whenever my running was effortless or rhythmic, I would feel pretty good, it was akin to a 'high'. Long slow runs would also produces patches of this 'high'.
This is not some 'psychological high', it is actually a 'physiological high' - Read
this blog to know more.
So by our definition of spirituality, and because of this 'getting high' due to anandamide, running is definitely a spiritual exercise!

Religion and spirituality
People might tend to confuse religion with spirituality. Here's my take on it:
Religion is a set of beliefs and activities that you have/do because you identify yourself with a particular religion.
On the other hand, spirituality is a set of activities that you do because you like to do them!
Ofcourse, spirituality and religion can intersect. People can be both spiritual and religious. These days, it has become fashionable to say that one is spiritual but not religious. Whatever works.

On being spiritual
Spiritual experiences needn't be esoteric, mystical and 'out there'. Spiritual experiences can happen right here, right now if we recognize and choose them to happen. You can always choose to take a break from a busy schedule and go hiking or walking, for example and feel refreshed or recharged. You can notice times when you are really tense and take a break by relaxing your body and/or breath. It is a matter of simple observation that, the breath, the body and mind are linked. Whenever you are tense, agitated or angry, notice your breath - It would happen in short, arrhythmic quick bursts. Also notice your breath when you are relaxed, calm and peaceful. The breath would be deep, slow and rhythmic.
This link between, rhythms of breath and states of mind is the basis for certain breathing practices (Tai chi, Pranayama, Chi Kung, etc). The idea is that when you can't control your agitated mind, you can control the agitated breath and make it more rhythmic and this has an effect of calming down the mind. Hence, breathing practices are one way to stay centered and be equanimous.

Ofcourse, the range of spiritual experiences that can happen are really broad - It can be a plain simple 'spacing out' while having a shower to 'out of body' experiences that change your perspective on life and death.
The focus is not on having these spiritual experiences, but on doing things you like. Experiences will follow suit in time and space.

I would like to end this article with two quotes I believe in: "We are not human beings having spiritual experiences, we are spiritual beings having a human experience".
"Spirituality is all about getting high, the natural way".

Would be interested in your views/experiences related to this topic - Feel free to pass on a comment or email me at barkbadmar@yahoo.com

Little Si

2008-09-08T17:02:00.001-07:00

Second trip to Little Si. Little Si, is a 'small' part of Mount Si and gives good views of surrounding mountains - Mailbox Peak, Mclellan Butte, Rattlesnake ridge and maybe even Tiger mountain. Little Si on a sunny day also sees quite a few rock climbers with all the gear climbing up one of the many vertical faces near the Little Si trail.
I went off the main trail and tried one supposedly secret route to the top of Little Si.. It was quite dangerous because of the steep incline and slippery mud/stones. I didn't go all the way up..Might have gone halfway up. While coming down this route, I had my heart in my mouth.. A huge sigh of relief when I touched base. This route is between two steep climbing faces and is kind of hidden by small bushes.

On my last trip here, the wind was howling at the top. Today, with the sun shining bright, everything was peaceful at the top.

Getting there by bus
i) 271 from University district to Issaquah. 209 from Issaquah to Northbend. Get off at the Bendigo blvd and 2nd street. Find the snoqualmie valley trail by taking a left on main avenue and going forward a few streets. Follow the trail east till you get to Mt. Si road. Take a left, cross the red bridge and keep walking till you find the trailhead onto the left.
ii) 554 from Downtown to Issaquah. 209 from Issaquah to Northbend and same as above.

I find it atleast 10 minutes faster and more scenic to go downtown and catch 554 to Issaquah than catching the direct bus(271) from university district!

Discovery park

2008-08-30T16:59:00.000-07:00

Discovery park is the largest among the 400 parks in Seattle. Usually, when I think of a park, I think of lush green lawns with flowers, some natural artifacts, rocks, etc.
But this park, I discovered (ahem) is more like a forest, that is close to downtown Seattle. It has lots of old-growth trees, ferns, and beautiful beaches with rocky slopes that also remind me of marine drive, mumbai.
Getting there:
As I usually do, I took the bus route. 71 from my place to downtown. And from there a 33 takes you right to discovery park - A total of 45 minutes of travel.

I hiked from the entrace to the north beach of the park. It was sunny/cloudy to begin with, but as I got into the hike, it started drizzling and then it was proper rain getting me thoroughly drenched - I had no protection whatsoever, but I didn't mind that my t-shirt was totally soaked when I finished my hike or that I was getting some curious smiles from passerby's.

Here's a video:

Some pics:

Some webpages with visual treats

2008-08-29T19:16:00.001-07:00

The following webpages have amazing photographs taken on trails while hiking or travel. Makes me want to improve my photography skills.. big time.

John and Kristie
Misha Longvinov
Jayson McIvor

Let me know if you know of other pages with good mountain/nature pics...

Second trip to Mt. Si

2008-07-12T22:49:00.000-07:00

Boy, what an adventure I had a week back. I usually take the metro bus on my hikes, and that gives me a lot of room for adventure (doing funny things so as to not miss the last bus for example).But bus adventures aside, hiking is always an adventure. This time I made it to the top (not the haystack) in 1hr 50 mins, which is pretty amazing, for me atleast. I paced myself steadily over the climb - a total of 4 miles. The first 3 miles were decent, the last 1 mile was a killer. 4miles and 4000ft, that's some climb.
After getting to the 4 mile mark from where you get a good view of mountains nearby, I decided to go to the top of haystack, a very steep monolith, from where a slip could mean death. The climb to the top was itself very steep and my heavy bag of supplies didn't help me. I decided to ditch the climb, when I was half-way through to the hay-stack...this gives me another opportunity to come back to Mount Si.
Over all it was 15 miles of hiking + climbing in around 6 hrs.. phew. And the last 20 minutes, I was running at a steady 8:00 minute/mile pace so as not to miss the MT 209 bus at 8:43pm from North Bend.. talk about adventures..this was one till the very end. This hike really gave me a feel for endurance hiking. I took a lot of supplies including cookies, fruit juice, and 1.5lts of water.
I will post one or two pics maybe. My next hike would probably be next weekend to Rattle snake lake, again a long hike of around 15 miles (round trip).
A video I took near the top:

Over the top of Tiger mountain - Hiking Tiger 1 + Poo-poo point

2008-06-18T17:39:00.000-07:00

So the hiking season has begun for me. And that's because the spring quarter came to an end last week. This summer is probably going to be rocking. I am going to have a relaxed work load during sumemer - some teaching duties, some exciting research work and ofcourse outdoor stuff including running and hiking.

Intro
So yesterday's hike was my first in 2 months. It's a tough strenuous (due to the length) and close to a 9 mile hike. It took me 5hrs to do it all.
The hike basically follows this documented hike with modifications towards the end of the hike. The previous link also gives a map of the route with description and that was pretty useful since there was one place where I had to search for a trail that didn't seem to exist.

Hike description
I basically hiked to the top of Tiger mountain 1, which is 2900 ft above sea level. From there, I moved on to poo-poo point.
Below is a video taken at Hiker's hut at 2800 ft asl.

Below is a video taken at poo-poo point which is a popular spot for para-gliding.

Since this was my first hike this summer, this hike was exhausting but hikes being hikes, exhaustion is a given. I wouldn't mind getting thoroughly exhausted after a hike if the hike had some great view points along the way. Even if there aren't many viewpoints, just being out there in the green rejuvenates you.
I am intoxicated by the greenery that I encounter during my hikes and below are some pictures along my hike that might explain this phenomenon :)

Summer's coming up

2008-06-10T22:04:00.001-07:00

Or I hope so. This year, according to many Seattleites is not a typical Seattle year.
It's been too cold and rainy for too long this past year. I hear June end is where summer starts kicking up and that's when my physical activities should start kicking up too!
I have no plans as of yet for summer. It's going to be a natural transition into lot's of hiking, running, rock-climbing, and maybe some biking.
But off the top of my mind, I wish to hike the following mountains:
1) Mount Si a.k.a the beautiful sigh.
2) Rattlesnake Ridge
3) Mount Pilchuck (Bike + Hike).
4) A kutty mountain in Enumclaw that gives an awesome view of Mount Rainier.
5) One or two back-packing trips into the wild-wild west - oops!, east.

Ofcourse there is also going to be the ramped up running (summer special). And the rock-climbing (outdoor and maybe some indoor too). Rock-climbing is amazing. It's a skill ofcourse, it's a skill you enjoy learning. It sharpens your mind too, I might say, since you need to focus on precisely which thin edge of the rock-cut to rest our hands and feet on.

Also, I am going to bring in more picture/videos into this blog. Since summer in Seattle is particularly beautiful and extremely enjoyable once you are outdoors.

My quarter ends by the end of this week. So my vacation starts next week. Totaal enthu max put its vonly.

Running progress

2008-05-16T19:38:00.000-07:00

I am running every weekend, that's currently my time committment to running. Sadly, this is 1/3rd of the time I used to put into running during my undergraduate days. But, that doesn't matter. What matters is that I am running regularly, though it's been a slow progress.
I had stopped running in March 2007. I began running again in December 2007 and to my astonishment and dismay, I wasn't able to run more than 1.6kms to begin with. That was my fitness level - 10 minutes of running after 9 months of no running. I wouldn't say I have progressed a lot since then, but right now I am able to run 5kms at close to 8min/mile or 5min/km pace. I just want to keep running atleast once a week.
The growth in running mileage is usually exponential. So I should be able to run 8 kms in another 2-3 months and 15 kms in another 4-5 months.
The easiest part about running is you just have to get your 'regular' runs in.
The hardest part is 'getting' your regular runs in. This basically requires a lot of committment at the start of your 'running career', but as you progress and keep getting better at your runs - better in terms of pace, stride, rhythm, etc, you look forward to your next run, you look forward to the progress you are going to make. And in case you also run on trails, you look forward to connecting with nature.

Today the run was totally rhythmic from start to finish. Well, at the start I had some cramps, but they wore off as the run progressed. Rhythmic running is an amazing thing - it reminds you why you love running.

Different modes, different experiences

2008-04-26T22:20:00.001-07:00

What modes of transport do we have for travel ? - Trains, buses, cars, bicycles, motorbikes, ships,
aeroplanes, roller blades, and last but not the least 'human power - a.k.a walking or running'.

Travel has different purposes, but I am restricting this post to short distance travel (within 50 miles) for leisure or for sight seeing.

Let's consider two modes: cars vs walking. Let's say the destination is 10 miles away and you just want to travel to that point and come back. On a car, that would seem a trivial distance. No matter how beautiful the surrounding scenery is, you would be back in no time and it wouldn't seem like you spent a lot of time - unless you stop at some point in between.

Let's consider the same distance covered by walk: That's what I did today. I went to a Place called Ernie's grove by walking to that point from North Bend, WA - a round trip of 10 miles. It took me 3 hrs. And the experience was totally unlike what you would have if you were "shut-inside" a car. Here are some experiences on the walk:

- North Bend, located around 30 miles from Seattle is home to many cascade mountains - Mount Si, Little Si, RattleSnake ridge, Mailbox Peak, Mclellan Butte, Cedar's Butte, Round table mountain, etc. So when I alighted form MT 209, I could identify from that point 5 mountains in the vicinity, towering tall and presenting a majestic sight all around. Hence, you can imagine what a wonderful walk I had going to Ernie's grove 5 miles away:

- Ever seen never ending green fields full of golden yellow flowers gently caressing the foot hills of mountains?
Now Mount Si, which formed the backdrop for most of my walk is a massive mountain with an incredible slope. It's 4000 ft tall and it seems like a huge piece of rock rather than a mountain that starts somewhere and peaks elsewhere. I was essentially going around Mount Si, by walking on that road.

- Add to that rivulets which present themselves when I cross a bridge or two.

- Add to that "Llamas", animals with elongated necks:

- Add to that a glorious sunny day (kind of rare in Seattle)

- And also dogs that attempt to chase you while being within the fence.

- And the fact that it was a 3 hr long walk - I have never walked 3 hrs on a flat road before. Agreed, I have hiked for that much time or even more, but just walking and for 3 hrs? This is amazing. I mean, I can right now run for not more than 20 minutes. But walking for 3hrs? Seriously says about the yawning gap between running and walking fitness.

- Add to that the different heat and wind conditions during the walk, the tiredness towards the end, the cows staring at you all the way until you are out of sight, and the exhilration at reaching the bus stop just on time.

I am sure you wouldn't get the above experiences by taking your car out and going on a 2o minute drive from North Bend to Ernie's grove and back. Similarly, other modes yield different experiences:

Bicycling: Bicycling on a road bike on a flat stretch of road is awesome, more so when the surrounding scenery is breathtaking. Biking is also another way to combine activities and be efficient: For instance if I had my bike today, I could have biked to the end of the road and hiked a mountain nearby. But then, I wouldn't have noticed the details that I noticed during my walk. Nevertheless, biking is a more richer experience than driving a car on the same stretch of road.

Trains: Trains are again amazing. They present a different travel experience. You don't have to worry about the road, about cramped legs or fuel. You just get in, take a nap or watch the passing scenery as the train whizzes by.

Personally, I prefer a combination of biking and walking for travel to nearby places (within 50 miles). Beyond that, ofcourse I would need to use a car or I could use a train if available. Cars are also useful, when you want to conserve time because you would want to hike at the destination.
But if you have the time and want to have a wholesome experience, do a bus + bike + walk multimodal trip.
My point here is that, biking and walking provide a much richer and enjoyable travel experience than just going the same distance by car. Ofcourse, you need to put in a lot more effort physically, but the experience is worth the effort, right?

Where are you going sir?

2008-04-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

A few possible answers:
"I am going places".
"I am going to hell".
"I am going to heaven (because my punya (good deeds) is greater than my paapa (sins))".
"I am going for a run (that's me)".
"I am headed nowhere in life(grad student)"
"I am going to buy groceries (dutiful husband)"
"Going going gone".
"I am going to downtown and to the back of the bus (Multitasking)".

Now the last answer is not typical, is it? Here's the story behind it:
I was comfotably seated in MT 73 that goes to downtown Seattle one (of the many) cloudy afternoon last week. The bus has just stopped at a bus stop in the university district and the door opens.
One long-haired guy with baggage gets in and announces proudly to the driver in a sing song manner(read: Nana naNa Nana): "I am going to downtown". The driver asks him for his pass and he moves into the bus, close to where I am seated. He puts the bag onto the seat next to me, gets his dollar and 25 cents out, looks at me and says, "I am going to downtown". I am like, yes sir, you are, have a good journey - I don't say that ob, I acknowledge. He goes to the driver,
pays the fare, gets his ticket, comes back to me and says, "I am going to the back of the bus" - again in a "Nana Nana" tune. Longhaired guy looks to be in good spirits. I acknowledge again and he is gone.
I was pretty amused by this, I mean you don't get live entertainment everyday. As I reach my destination and was about to alight, I let the driver know - longhaired guy Nana Nana style: "I am getting off here". As I get off and look back, I see the driver is highly amused.

So when someone asks you where you are going, reply in a "Nana Nana style" and pass it on :)

Hiking at Wallace falls state park, Gold bar

2008-03-27T00:05:00.000-07:00

So I was looking towards North to North-East of Seattle after my little trip to windy Little Si.
I narrowed down on Wallace Falls state park - Infact, almost all places I am hiking at this spring break is from this webpage. Mr. Pinyon has done a great job of putting together places that you could go to for hiking or backpacking with the added condition that they be accessible by the bus-system in seattle.

{\Diversion into bus-systems in Seattle}
So far, I have used the following bus-systems to go around Seattle on different hikes/road trips:
1) The good old King County Metro - Serves the heart of Seattle and also touches the outskirts of Seattle such as North Bend, Carnation, Kent, Bothell, etc.
2) The Sound Transit (named after the Puget Sound River system that form the backwaters of the Pacific): Good point to point service. For example: University district to Everett takes just 32 minutes - a distance of around 25 miles.
I have used the Sound Transit on a biking trip to Lake Kapowsin, where I travelled to Tacoma by bus and biked from there to Lake Kapowsin.
3) The Community Transit: Serves most of the northern outskirts of Seattle with a Hub at Lynwood. Can be used to get to places such as Granite falls and Gold bar.
I took CT 271 to get from Everett to Goldbar (wallace falls state park located here)
Other Transit services I have noticed:

4) Skagit Transit: Used to get around Skagit County with places including Bellingham and Mt. Vernon.
Skagit Connector: This bus (90x) connects two counties: Snohomish County (Everett) and Skagit county.
I could use this bus to access places such as Mt. Vernon or Caymon islands (through a transfer bus), both wonderful places to visit and ot hike. But the only problem is this bus is available during weekdays. This bus also has limited service from Everett Station- early mornings and late afternoons.
5) Island Transit: Can be used to get to beautiful islands North and North-West of Mt. Vernon such as Caymon Islands.

{\End Diversion}

Start: I started out at 12:30 pm from Seattle. Caught the ST 510 to get to Everett. From there I caught CT 271 to get to Goldbar, this bus takes 1.5 hrs and gives you great views of the infinite mountains that crisscross across this region. Only problem was that it was raining and I had to contend with rain drops on the window of my bus!

Once at Gold Bar, I had to walk for 30 minutes to get to Wallace falls State Park.
Below is a video that describes the walk:

Inside the state park, the first awesome view was of the roaring Wallace river that begin as Wallace falls from the heights of this park. A few rapids on the way made for a delicious and delectable scenery :d

Moving ahead, I went to hike the falls. It took me close to an hour to hike all the way upto the upper falls. I liked the middle falls best, below's a video of the middle falls:

Coming back, I got some great views of the mountains near Goldbar as the sky cleared up. Unfortuantely I screwed up my digicam settings or the camera itself got screwed, so the pics didn't come out well. Suffice to say, this was a great trip despite the persistent rain I had to endure during the trip.

An ode to Mount Si

2008-03-25T23:26:00.000-07:00

Mount Si (pronounced sigh) is an extremely beautiful mountain located at North Bend, around 15 miles from Seattle.
This short poem was inspired by its beauty:

Oh Mount Si
Your beauty makes me cry
The breath taking views you offer
Will not make me defer
My pending trip until next summer
Coming soon, yes I am, to take back wonderful memories over and over

Last weekend, I made a trip to the Little Si, the younger sister of Mount Si. The views from Little Si are breathtaking too. The howling wind at the top made it a little difficult, but what the heck it was amazing all the same. Posted a short video below (not great quality):

Life update

2008-03-20T23:03:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I have updated this blog....on anything :-) So, thought I had post an update on running and life in general:

1) I have been running regularly (2-3 runs/week) over the past three months. But the runs aren't anything to brag about distance wise or time wise. All I can say is, I am on a comeback trail and its different!
2) I have been sleeping earlier and more regularly over the past two months than I have during the past two years.
3) Right now, my spring break has begun with 10 days break. I am going to catch up with hiking, climbing and ofcourse running. In fact, this saturday, weather willing, god willing, and my willing, I should go climbing up Tiger mountain (3rd time around).
Last quarter was pretty useful as I took some pretty nifty courses that added to my database and web skills.
4) Life in general is more smoother than it has been in the past few months. I know you can't make out much from the previous statement, but suffice to say that I had some real tough times out here in my personal and professional life, and I am glad I managed it well.
5) I am moving out from a 5 bed room house to a 1 bed room apt. Huge shift in both costs :( and environment :)

Ok, that's it folks. Will post something on hiking or running the next time. Meanwhile take a look at this video, if you haven't already.

Racism experience

2008-01-27T21:16:00.000-08:00

So I was waiting at the bus stop at the campus for bus MT 65 that would get me to campus parkway from where I would catch another bus. I arrive at the bus-stop at 7:05pm and the bus comes at 7:09 pm as scheduled, but hold it right there.. The bus doesn't stop, it slows down, the bus driver knows I am waiting to get in to the bus, but he doesn't stop.
This is not the first time that a bus has skipped the bus stop and on both ocassions I was the only guy at the bus stop. And on both ocassions it was the same driver.

How do I know? On the first ocassion, the bus driver slows down but doesn't stop. I run after the bus and wave to him to stop. He stops after going some distance and asks me as I get in, "If I knew English" and that I am supposed to "wave my hand" to stop the bus. Wow, that's a new rule right. I mean, I am standing at the bus-stop looking towards the bus, you damn well should stop.

The second time, that is the incident that just happened, the bus slows down and speeds away. I am totally incensed, and since I know that the next bus-stop, the "HUB" is not far away, I sprint after the bus and catch the bus as it stops. And why does it stop at the bus-stop?? Because someone is getting down there. I get in and surprise surprise, it's the same guy. I give him a long stare and decide to complain against him to the King county Metro guys.
As I get down at the last bus-stop, I ask the bus-driver for his name and he ofcourse doesn't give it to me. But guess what, according to him, I could note down the bus number and go ahead and complain. You can clearly see his intentions here, "I don't give a damn about you, I am going to be the way I am". And I do just that. I report him to the King county Metro guys.
I am going to be here for a while atleast until I complete my phd. I am being peaceful here, going about my work everyday and contributing to the research and to my department. I don't see why I should tolerate such incidents and I won't.

US medical system - A perspective

2008-01-07T15:07:00.000-08:00

I had a bike fall on November 8th 2007. I was taking a turn and the roads were really slippery and I somehow lost balance and crashed. The right half of my body took most of the impact, since that's how I landed onto the ground.. I had deep cuts on the right side of forehead, a few bruises on the right cheek and minor abrasions on my right shoulder. I lost consciousness for a few moments, but then was admitted to the University of Washington Medical center, thanks to "American Medical Response", a private ambulance service that has billed me $612.25 for picking me up, ascertaining my whereabouts, checking my condition and dropping me off at the medical center, a kilometer away. Anyway, my "insurance" is supposed to offset such monstrous costs.

The medical center conducted various scans - CT head scan, CT angiography for the neck, CT head scan 2 and Xray for cervical spine to check in detail if vital organs of my body that took the impact during the fall were unaffected. I am told that I am allright - Great. Now, they stitch my cuts up which is wonderful and I am sent off, less than 12 hrs in the hospital. When I reached home, I looked into the mirror and realised that despite the stitches and ointment application, a dressing would have helped, since blood was oozing out here and there and an overall patch up would have made me get on with life. I went back to the medical center and the nurse there was reluctant to give me a dressing. I am baffled, I tell him that the least he can do is patch up the wounds. Finally he gives me a few bandaids and says that he is not supposed to give this, but that he is doing me a favour.
I just wanted to get over this injury and get on with life, so I didn't give much thought to that.

Two months later, I get a bill. Get this: the Xrays and CT scans, etc cost 662$, which is supposed to be "fine" if you have insurance, but I am charged $4283 for "hospital usage"??? What the heck. Even if I were to have insurance(covering 90% of the cost) , how the hell can you charge $4283 for hospital usage, I was in the hospital for hardly 12 hours. Does it make any sense?
Can any one tell me how in the world this cost could probably be accounted for? Assume for the present that there is no such concept as insurance and people pay from their own pocket the costs incurred for medicare. Also assume that the hospital charges came out to $428.3(10% of the original cost), people will find this cost to be simply too much. They can't resort to, "Do you have insurance? It should take care of most of the cost". And if the hospital charges did come out to $4283 as in my case for a trivial treatment of minor injuries (we are not talking of bypass surgeries here), they will instead simply rebel. Insurance just makes the costs look better. As another example, I was asked to come back a week or two later to get the stitches removed. I went to the medical center at 9 pm, since the waiting room seemed crowded I asked the receptionist if I could come at say 11 pm. She told me that there would be an extra charge for emergency room check in beyond night hours. I asked her how much that would be, she just said, 'oh don't worry about it, it would come in your bill and the insurance would cover it'. Well, it was included in the bill and I was charged $120 for that. So if I were to say that insurance would cover 90% of that cost and I need to pay only $12, it makes the overall picture rosy and beautiful, but it fails to explain how they came to charge $120 in the first place.

I recently heard in a lecture that institutions in US including universities and medical centers have to pay negotiation teams hefty fees to prevent people from sueing them million dollar suits for whatever reason (improper medical care, etc). So that, these fees are passed on to people using these institutions, students paying hefty tuitions in the case of universities and patients paying astronomical bills in the case of hospitals. I am not sure on the credibility of this reasoning but I can't come up with a better reason(or let's say other reasons) for the medical center charging me $4283 for hospital usage.
I just came across this article that reflects a trend for American patients seeking medicare abroad for the same reason I posted this blog. Hmm.

Long time

2007-12-31T22:01:00.000-08:00

It looks like my blogging frequency has come down quite a bit. I don't want to go into the specifics of it, but the good news is I am picking up from where I left off...I am talking about "running" (he he). Its been atleast three months since I have run regularly (or even sporadically) and this is primarily a running blog, so this year ending post is to say that I am optimisitc about my running and I am hoping that I will get back into solid running shape next year.
I am not a big fan of resolutions, but I do want to see myself running a marathon or two next year. Here's wishing everyone a happy new year and happy running or whatever makes you happy.

Hiking Mount Si

2007-11-30T02:34:00.000-08:00

Atop Mount Si
More to come... :)

Dominant Federer

2007-11-18T03:41:00.000-08:00

The video below is from one of the matches at the Shanghai Masters cup which Federer won with sublime dominance. Enjoy......

Hiking Tiger mountain

2007-10-03T20:29:00.000-07:00

Intro
Last Saturday, on a chilly and cloudy afternoon, my roomie and me set forth to scale this beauty of a peak, a glorious 2500 ft asl. For most part this peak was steep, but it wasn't like I was crossing streams or going through dense undergrowth; the path was well laid and well marked, leaving no room for confusion or getting lost in the dense and picturesque old-growth fern-fested forest.

Duration
It took us 1.5 hrs to get to the top of the Tiger mountain III(yep, there's II and I hiding just across from the peak). Coming back, we were on auto-cruise/run mode and it took us a shade less than 45 minutes.

Getting there
We exclusively used bus and strong legs as the mode of transportation. 271 takes one from the university district to Issaquah (1hr ride). 209 from the transfer point, takes around 20 minutes to Highway point, the first stop on the freeway. From there, its around 20 minutes walk to the Tradition lake trail head.

Overall, it was a quick but refreshing trip. We got good views of the Tiger II, Squak ,Cougar mountain, and ofcourse the gorgeous Mount Si from the Tiger mountain III view point.

PS: Maps and pics to be posted soon.

It feels good

2007-09-21T11:26:00.001-07:00

It feels good to be alive, to be able to wake up every morning and not worry about what's coming. It feels good to be able to say this, it feels good to have overcome misery in life and comeback strong. Miseries and struggles can't be avoided on the one hand, and make us appreciate the good things in life on the other hand. Its only when you are really miserable can you know what it means to feel good in life. It feels good right now, believe me.

The Irony of it at US open

2007-09-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

The man who had won all his matches so far in the US open without losing a single set, lost to Federer in straight sets at the semi final!! But, as Federer mentioned in the post-match interview, it was a major battle for every point in the match. The third set saw 6 breaks between the two players; each player was breaking the other and losing the game on the serve. Federer was down 3-5 in the third set, but made an amazing comeback to win the match 7-5. 6-1, 7-5. Davydenko is an amazing base line player, but on this occasion he was playing against proabably the best tennis player in the history of tennis. Also, the record of 9-0 match wins that Federer has against Davydenko might have been a psychological adavantage to the former in the match.
Federer faces a tough opponent on Sunday, against whom he has a record of 4-1, which is pretty impressive. But, the only loss occured at Rogers cup 2007, Montreal, a few weeks back. So Federer would need to be at his best(which often happens at grandslam finals) to win the final tomorrow hopefully in 3 or 4 sets, Djokovic's antics notwithstanding.

Tennis: US open

2007-09-05T17:54:00.000-07:00

This US open has had a lot of upsets on the men's side. Hewitt, Nalbandian and Nadal have been ousted. The latter two upsets have been by David Ferrer, who is really persistent in his game and brings out amazing returns complemented by his amazing agility on court. Other upsets, include a real tight 5 setter loss for Blake against Hass, and though not an upset, a straight 3 set loss for Hass against Davydenko (who might be the only player to have not lost a set so far).In the other quarter final matches, my bets are on Federer, Ferrer and Djokovic going through for obvious reasons. The semis seem to be well poised, my take is that Federer goes through to the finals and a surprising upset by Ferrer should get him through to the final as well. And ofcourse, the final would see Federer winning a 4 or 5 setter. Now, back to reality.

Can't help laughing

2007-08-18T02:50:00.000-07:00

Can you?

Pleasing music

2007-08-11T02:21:00.000-07:00

.
Gananayakam

I have always found Mandolin Srinivas's rendition of Muthuswamy dikshitar's compositions (Mahaganapathim, Kamalambal Bhajare, etc) particularly delightful. U srinivas is ofcourse an accomplished player of the modified mandolin, but a lot is left to be said about the creative genius, the composer.

Hiking up Squak mountain, Issaquah alps

2007-08-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

I was looking for some elevation and narrowed down on Cougar, Squak and Tiger mountains, the three mountains which are very close to the city of Issaquah on the outskirts of seattle.
I finally picked Squak mountain, since it is supposed to(although I didn't find the viewpoint!!) give a good view of Mount Rainier from the top and has an elevation of 2000ft plus it's also easily accessible by bike. So here's how I went about the trip:
1) Take a bus (M 271) from university district to Issaquah (This takes around an hour).
2) Bike 5 kms to the Squak Mountain Trail head on the mountain driveway, 700ft above sea level(This took me around 30 mins)

3) Start hike at the Mountain driveway trail head. Hike 3 miles to the top of Squak mountain (2050ft)

The hike took around 1.5 hrs. But since I had some more time to kill, I went around other exploring other nearby trails.
I started at 1:30 pm and was back by 8:30 pm (thanks to missing a bus and waiting for another 45 mins).
The trip was really enjoyable in that I was right in the middle of an evergreen/deciduous forest with ferns and firs. There wasn't any view from the summit, since it is surrounded by tall trees. After coming back, I checked a map, and the view point is further down and not marked, that explains why people don't get to the view point.

Pics/Slide show

Sample video (How this works)

P.S.
This hike has definitely been an eye opener into hiking in the middle of the forest. At first, I was a little scared of venturing into the trail, but then mustering some courage I went back. Meeting a few people along the way helped, and after a while I was comfortable being alone in the middle of a dense forest!

For my future trips, I have many options. Tiger mountain is next door to Squak mountain, and from what I have read, it has three peaks!! Then there is Mount Si, North-east of Tiger mountain. Mount Si,which gives good views of Mount rainier and other nearby mountains, is supposed to be the most climbed mountain in Washington and some claim in US too. Looking to the North, there is Mt. Pilchuck. This month is going to be fun if I can get a few more hikes.

To get to know the sheer number of mountains in Washington, look at this page. Seattle in summer with cool temperatures (June, July) is indeed a heaven for hiking.

Links
1) Squak mountain good info
2) Squak trail description
3) Squak on Seattlepi
4) Photos

Tiger mountain resource

2007-08-05T14:34:00.000-07:00

I have pooled up some links from the web on hikes to Tiger mountain from different trailheads including the poo-poo-point trail. I will update this page when I find a new link.

Poo poo point hike:
http://www.niffgurd.com/mark/hikes/2004/june/12th/content.html
http://washingtonhikes.com/2004/poopoopoint/index2.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/getaways/122399/hike23.html
http://www.kuresman.com/2004/Trip_Reports/PooPoo_321_Loop/Report_PooPoo_321_Loop.html

http://www.washingtonhikes.com/2004/poopoopoint/

West tiger hike:
http://www.eskimo.com/~pinyon/bushike/Hike32-1.html
http://www.eskimo.com/~pinyon/bushike/Hike33-1.htm
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/getaways/021397/hike13.html

East tiger hike:
http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Gorge/4424/Winter00/LunarEclipseEastTiger.htm

South tiger hike:
http://www.wnps.org/cps/walks/nov_walk3.html

2 hr ride

2007-08-03T23:09:00.000-07:00

I usually get the emails from the UW cricket group as a digest. So, when I got an email about cricket practice at 6:30 pm today, I got ready to go. When I reached the place, I saw that no one was there. After waiting for 10 minutes, I realised the reason for their absence: the digest email was from the previous day!! So much for cricket.

Now I didn't want to go back home, so I decided to do a 2 hr ride to nowhere. 1hr up and 1hr down. The route was simple, go up along 15th avenue for an hour and come back the same way. I took a liter of water (I only consumed half-litre) and a few bananas. The road progressively became worse and to add to that there were these hills.. I would rather call them monsters.
Coming back I stopped at an Indian store and got a few things. Just when everything seemed fine, a climb with a steep grade (200ft climb in 300 metres) almost knocked me out (I started cramping on my heels). Anyway, this hill training is good for me since, if I plan on going anywhere near mount rainier, I better ride on some tough hills.

Stats:
Going - 15kms - 1hr
Coming - 15kms - 1hr 2 mins.
Total time on bike - 1hr 45 mins
Average speed - 15kmph
Net average speed - 17kmph

Biking to Marymoor Park, Redmond

2007-08-01T17:50:00.000-07:00

So I was getting all worked up that I haven't ridden in a while. Hence I took off at 5 pm yesterday on a 72 km (45 miles) roundtrip to Marymoor Park located at Redmond, and close to I believe Microsoft. This trip had the combined charm of Burke-Gilman trail(lots of trees and greenery) and the Sammamish river valley trail (lots of open spaces and fields).

Food and fluids
I carried along with me two litres of water, two biscuit packets, a few bananas and one snickers pack. As I found out, the water was just sufficient and the food was more than sufficient. I consumed water every 15 minutes and that kept me well hydrated.

A few canadian geese grazing near the sammamish lake

The Sammamish trail has quite a few trail facilities which include restrooms and drinking water

The trail sticks close to the river and makes the ride delectable

Para sailing from the ground??

The guy finally managed a small lift but not quite

On the way back the roosters were going great guns

Stats:

Going:
1) 0 - 20 kms - 0:00:00 - 0:50:00
2) 20 - 36 kms - 0:55:00 - 1:50:00

Coming back:
1) 0 - 16 kms - 2:20:00 - 3:05:00
2) 16 - 36 kms - 3:10:00 - 4:10:00

Total trip time: 4:15:00
Time on bike: 3:30:00
Average speed: 17kmph
Net Average speed: 20 kmph
Max speed: 35 kmph

Christian yoga???

2007-07-28T09:56:00.000-07:00

Seriously, what is that? This is one of the websites that advocates christian yoga. According to one blog, "Practitioners say that Christian yoga fills a need for believers who want the health benefits of yoga but are put off by the practice's ancient Hindu roots." This really says something about the parochialness and the lack of tolerance of christianity towards other religions. It also reflects a sense of insecurity among the practitioners of christianity. And yoga as known to the world is actually Hatha yoga, which along with Karma yoga (Yoga of action), Bhakti yoga (Yoga of devotion), Jnana yoga (Yoga of Knowledge)and Raja yoga(the king of yogas) form a part of the yoga sutras of Patanjali.
The sad part is many Indians today aren't even aware of the different forms of yoga, let alone knowing more about them from literature. Karma yoga, for example,has more to do with identifying who you really are through action or work than worrying about accumulating good karma or bad karma.

Biking beyond the gilman trail

2007-07-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

Thought of doing the burke gilman trail + sammamish river trail, a round trip distance of 72 kms (45 miles). But since today's a week day, I had to be back before my advisor starts looking for me. Hence I just went 8 kms into the 16km-Sammamish river trail, a beautiful trail actually. Unlike the Gilman trail, which is surrounded by a canopy of trees, the Sammamish trail follows the kutty Sammamish river all the way to Marymoor Park, Redmond and affords great views of open fields all around. Reminded me of the dainty town of Orting on my previous biking trip to Kapowsin. So I managed the whole trip(56 kms or 35 miles) in 3 hrs and 15 minutes including breaks. Probably this weekend, I might do the full distance and get some pics too.

The chain that asks me to speak...

2007-07-25T04:04:00.000-07:00

... About myself. It's also called the 'tag'. I was tagged by Priyank a week back but research work, books and erratic sleep times have put me on hold. So here goes..
Despite being lazy, I like to do un-diluted research whenever I can and in doing that I border on being a masochist. I like to borrow books from the library and read the prefaces and forewords, before returning them back. I am an idealist with changing ideals, but I do stick to a few core ones for long periods of time. I am, as many human beings would be, constantly looking for a sense of purpose in my life, and the questions which come about through such deliberations take me through myriad books in philosophy, long excursions on bikes and of late, through meditation, into the varied realms of silence. I believe in the limitlessness of the human potential and would be more than happy to see a minute nano-glimpse of this infiniteness in the smallness of my human experience.
An extrovert during my childhood days, an introvert during my adolesence to being an ambivert right now, I have traversed three-fourths of the circle.
Now for some real facts:
The time when I hit the sack during the past 9 months have spanned all of the 24 hrs.
I have run a half-marathon.
My weight has been a constant 65 kgs over the past 5 years.
The first big thing I bought when I came to Seattle was my beautiful road-bike. The cell-phone came 6 months later. The lap-top is yet to make an entry!
The chain ends here.

Sammamish river park

2007-07-18T20:48:00.000-07:00

Intro
This week was cloudy and I was starting to get worried. Why? Because once it starts raining in Seattle, it becomes an everyday affair. Summer is still going to be around, maybe till August end, but that's just a month away from now. Hence I decided to do kutty training rides of around 30 - 40 kms a little regularly. Hopefully, these training rides would get me geared up for bigger biking trips of 100 - 120 kms which should be in August.

The place
Sammamish river park is located 12 miles or around 20 kms from university district, Seattle. The going was damn easy since it was mostly downslope till Kenmore, after which it was a flat road till Bothell, where the park is located.

I noticed a lot of kutty wildlife at the Sammamish river park, just around the point where the Burke-Gilman trail converts into the Sammamish river trail (which goes upto Redmond).

Roosters and rabits abound.

I didn't have much time to do any sightseeing. Just hung around at some places, took a few pictures and returned through the Burke-Gilman trail.

Now if I had taken the SR 522 back to Seattle, it would have screwed my body, since all the downslope while coming converts into massive upslopes while returning back.
Luckily, the Burke-Gilman trail comes to the rescue.

SR 522

The ride back
The burke-giman trail is an awesome trail, since it passes by the washington lake and has some big trees and variegated vegetation along the trail.

But there are also down-sides to the trail. There are many bumps on the trail as in the picture below.

These bumps can harm a road bike going at a good clip. So I had to slow down unwillingly at many places. But unlike last time, these bumps have been marked with pieces of chalk at most places and this would definitely keep the riders alert. I applaud the effort of whoever it is that took upon this job.
My fitness on the ride back was good. I wasn't getting tired, though my legs were. Does that make sense? I have been having problems with my left and right knee which has prevented my running, but hopefully crosstraining through biking should help the knees heal well.

Stats
The going was pretty quick, thanks to the downslope. It took me around 40 minutes for the 20 kms.
Coming back: The burke-gilman trail - 55 mins for 19 kms.

Future trips
This ride was upto Sammamish river park, which is the start of another trail - Sammamish river trail which goes upto Marymoor park, Redmond, a distance of 10 miles. This river trail is supposedly very scenic, so Burke gilman + Sammamish river trail might be my next trip, a round trip of 70 kms.

Another trip that I have already planned for, but am yet to execute is the trip to Granite falls (round trip distance of 90 kms), North of Seattle (North-east of everett).

Flats

2007-07-17T17:35:00.000-07:00

Have had 4 of em in the front tyre(recent purchase) in the past two months and one on the back tyre in the past 9 months!!! Apparently, the front tyre(ultra-sport brand) is suitable for "smooth-road" biking but not for the roads of seattle, what with glass pieces strewn randomly on many minor arterial roads. 3 of those 4 flats have been due to a glass piece. Hence I got a tyre that has a much rougher surface and kevlar inner-lining. No flats so far (it's only been a week). In the long run, I am going to get a mountain bike for city commuting and use the road bike exclusively for long-distance trips. Makes a lot of money and time sense.

The good side of a trail race

2007-07-14T18:18:00.000-07:00

I got a virtual glimpse of the good side or what I imagine is the good side of the Hardrock 100 mile race which was flagged off in Silverton, Colorado on July 13th. It's a gruelling, extreme 100 mile endurance race with lots of dehydration, altitude sickness, hypothermia and injuries (the bad side) on one hand but also with exotic and scintillating visuals on the other hand. The good side of this 100 mile race can be seen here. This year's winner was Scott Jurek, who also set a course record by finishing the race in just over 26 hours! I can't fathom what it means to finish a 100 mile run, let alone compete in one. How is it that the same guy(Scott Jurek) particiaptes in similar races of 100 miles (Western states and Hard rock) but takes around 15 hrs to complete the first race but 26 hrs to complete the second, all the while setting course records in both? Maybe that's why they call it the hard rock race(I guess it has to do with the amount of climbing involved in Hardrock(33000ft) as compared to Western states(18000ft)).
Coming back to the good side and visual effects, its interesting to see that the scene in LOTR with all that running for days together could actually have been a part of an ultra-marathon such as the Hardrock 100 mile run.
As of now, Hiking - yes, running - no (its not like I have a choice!).

The runner

2007-07-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

Amazing beginning. Watch it here by Stuart Jones.

Ultra Marathon Man

2007-07-10T15:34:00.000-07:00

I bought this book yesterday evening on my way to dinner at a Thai restaurant. I had been meaning to read this book by Dean Karnazes for quite sometime. This book is ofcourse an autobiography that centers primarily around the running or ultra-running adventures of a Greek descendant-American born athlete.
The book, if you ask me could be organized much better, but given that it's an out and out running-centric and egotistical yet inspirational book, I didn't mind it at all.
Great people should write inspirational books that brings the far-removed 'greatness' right back into the common-man's experience. The central theme of this book is that
'Suffering is spiritual'. The book has a great start, but sort of gets into discrete event-based sections as you go along, losing a bit of the coherence, but nevertheless being inspirational. I finished the book in two readings - the first 'three quarters', just as I fell asleep yesterday night and the rest today morning after I woke up.

The one experience that Dean narrates, where he is a bit drunk at a bar on his 30th birthday and decides that his life needs to change, was really a profound read. That night, he ran till dawn break the next day, for the first time in 15 years and this experience got him into what this whole book is all about - Testing the capability of body and mind through physical and mental exertion - a.k.a running ultramarathons.
I have a similar theory on what life is all about :- Psycho-physical-spiritual experiences. The word spirituality has been taken for granted, my definition is quite simple - Any experience that uplifts your being or spirit is spiritual; be it meditation or Tai-chi or running 48 hrs non-stop as Dean Karnazes does. Since the medium for spiritual experience could be a physical activity such as running, hiking or mountaineering or simple house-hold chores such as cleaning or mowing - the experience is physico-spiritual. Bring in the mind either through research or mental exertion or intellectual stimulation, it becomes psycho-spiritual. Club it all together and it becomes psycho-physico-spiritual, the experience called life.

Federer gets the Wimbledon 2007

2007-07-09T00:07:00.000-07:00

7-6,4-6,7-6,2-6,6-2 against Rafael Nadal, and ties with the great Bjorn Borg for five consecutive Wimbledon titles. Great going Federer! Here's to your rivalry and camaraderie with Rafael Nadal.

A synopsis of the match

The last set of the match

Federer's interview post match

A report of the match.

What's near seattle?

2007-07-05T20:00:00.000-07:00

Man, I have been in the dark so far. I was expecting enthusiasm from my friends here for road trips or biking trips. Sadly, not many have a bike here, and their idea of fun is a little different. Even I have been ignorant of many beautiful places in and around seattle.
Seattle, so far for me, has been small spots north of seattle. I haven't looked to the east and I just went on a biking road trip to the south. East and North-east is the place to be. The cascade ranges, part of the coast ranges that run from North to South along the coast have innumerable trails(many passing through mountains) to hike, run, bike, ski on.

When I say innumerable, it's mainly from what I have read on other blogs and what I have seen on google earth.
I am sure many other cities in US have a rich trove of places to go around and have fun, its just waiting to be discovered.

Let me just rattle out a few hills/mountains from memory:
From West to east starting at Issaquah (south-east seattle): Cougar mountain, Squak mountain,
,
Tiger mountain, Rattlesnake ridge/mountain, Washington Mountain, Mount Si, Granite mountain, Humpback mountain, Snoqualmie mountain and falls. The good thing about these mountains are that they are of different heights and can accomodate all kinds of nature junkies: the family hikers, the serious hikers and climbers, the runners, etc. For example Squak mountain is just over 800 ft, while Snoqualmine mountain goes upto 5000 ft.

Iceberg lake, Glacier national park, Montana
Heading north-west from Mount Si: Index mountain, Mount Pilchuck, Baker mountain and Mount Shuksan (which goes across the Canada-US border).
Mount Rainier(14000ft asl) down south is the largest stand-alone mountain of the cascade range.
Mountains which are above 14,000 ft are called fourteeners. The state of colorado has 52 fourteeners, which are mostly contiguous.
Behind mount rainier and bordering state Oregon, there are mount adams, mount hood, mount St. Helens and a few others.

Mount St. Helens
This region has active volcanoes including rainier. A huge fault infact passes through the heart of seattle.
And finally to the west of seattle and along the Pacific ocean, Olympic mountain.

Olympic mountains
The olympic mountain range is infact responsible for the unusually rainy weather that Seattle experiences most of the year(except summer). Basically, moisture laden clouds from the Pacific hit the olympic mountains, which receive a quite a bit of rain. But a significant portion of the clouds deflect around the olympic mountains and converge in the Puget sound region. This convergence area is called the Puget sound convergence Zone (PSCZ) which makes Seattle cloudy year round. It doesn't rain much in seattle, around 1000mm, less than in Newyork infact, but it rains for twice that many days as in Newyork.

Miscellaneous links:
1) Mount Si
2) Granite mountain

Biking to Kapowsin, WA

2007-07-04T17:05:00.000-07:00

My friend who is also an avid amateur biker like me made a trip to seattle for a couple of days with some others. We decided to rent a bike for him and go some place. We thought about Snoqualmie falls, located east of seattle, further ahead of Issaquah. But apparently, his group was headed there. Hence, we thought of biking to the base of Mount Rainier, whatever that meant.

Kapowsin, which is a rural hamlet, located around 95 kms from Seattle downtown seemed to be the closest point from Tacoma to Mount Rainier national park and hence we decided to head there.

Since we had little time to plan, we didn't go into other alternative options that might have made better sense. The idea was to do some good biking on some of the steep roads in the country, get to the destination, possibly get a good view of Mount Rainier and be back before the end of the day. Since a 180 kms round trip seemed impractical, we decided to make it a 90km roundtrip by taking the bus till half-way, i.e. Tacoma.

We started out at 5 am and reached Tacoma dome by 6:30 am.

Since there were very few food stores open, we had to go around till we found a place to buy lunch. We started biking at 8 am and immediately noticed the elevation gain.

After the initial elevation gain, the roads were more or less flat all the way.

We took regular breaks every 20 minutes.

The mistake we did on this trip was not to carry a full blown map. We just had directions from Tacoma to Kapowsin.

What we didn't anticipate was that our curiosity in exploring new places or roads might get us lost or frustrated.
We had to abandon our initial route since the road we had chosen was unpaved. Luckily for us, mount rainier was the guiding sage. I mean, we were headed over there and when it towers 14,000ft asl, its hard to go in the wrong direction.

When we left a town called Pullyap where it seemed like everything (schools, sports fields, shops, houses) was put in just the right place (model town), we were in for a shock. We had to do non-stop climbing for 10 minutes so as to gain an elevation of 400 ft. That left us beat.

Luckily, it was all downhill or flat from there on till Graham, a town before Kapowsin.

A vintage train by the road
From Graham to Kapowsin, we got some of the best views of Mt. Rainier on the route. Its difficult to describe how it feels to see such a huge mountain upclose (from 25 miles away!) and without cloud cover.. simply elevating.

We were really tired when we reached Kapowsin after 5hrs of biking and we took a break for around 2 hrs. I caught up on some food, fluids and sleep.

Lake Kapowsin

Boating are there

Beyond: Electron reservoir and village
We couldn't do much sightseeing around Kapowsin because we were too tired from biking and lack of sleep.
Instead, we decided to take another possible route back to Tacoma and that turned out to be good decision.

Map showing the onward and return routes

Peaceful country roads
We took the Orting-Kapowsin road all the way to Ortin, a hamlet south-east of Pullyap. The scenery on the way to Ortin was pretty beautiful.

The landscape was an eye-candy even after we passed Ortin with yellow-green grass in the foreground and the dark green pines in the background.

We did some fast biking on this stretch till we reached Tacoma, but we did get lost on the way and were asking too many people for directions. The return journey was faster (4.5 hrs) despite being a longer route.
Overall it was a "decent" experience. Kapowsin is a cool place by the lake but it doesn't have any known trails that take you to Mount Rainier base camp. The most well-known trails (hiking, biking, etc) that approach Mount Rainier national park are ones from the north( carbon river road trail and mowich lake trail) and one from the south (paradise road trail).
However by car, there is the SR 410 that goes upto 8000 ft high.

Quick directions: From Tacoma, take the Portland avenue all the way till it joins Meridian Avenue and 112st. Head down as you pass by Graham till you come across the Kapowsin Hyw rd which takes you to Kapowsin. (We ofcourse didn't follow this route for many reasons).

Route on google map

We had some good and bad experiences on the trip which made us think on what's important for a biking trip -
A "biking road trip" has many components, a few important ones are:
a) The place you are headed. You can have high expectations of the place provided you get to know of the place from some one... Not otherwise. Researching the place and its surroundings will help a lot, especially if the place is not a popular destination.
b) If the idea of the trip is to not just bike but also explore the destination or the route taken, the biker needs to make sure that he is fit enough for the ride. Training frequently helps.
c) Maps. Very important especially if you are going to explore places or roads. Maps also ensure that you don't get 'lost'!!
d) Food and water: We didn't have any problem here since we had enough food and water was available at '7-11' stops on the way. But some rural roads might not have stores and hence in those cases its good to take more water for the trip.
e) Guiding device: GPS, compass, etc. This will work when maps don't or when you don't have maps of some particular region you want to explore. Some examples are forest cover with dense bushes, hills with no clear trails, places with little information on the web.
f) Riding safety: When riding on shoulders on main roads such as arterial highways, take note of the traffic on the road. If the traffic seems congested or is too fast it is better to slow down and move to the sidewalk or focus more on riding parallel to the shoulder line.

Recent shootings

2007-06-27T15:46:00.001-07:00

A week back, 5 guys tried entering a night club near the university but were denied entry by the night club personnel. They left but came back 5 minutes later and one of them shot the night club personnel using his hand gun. Since I came to Seattle last september, I have read in the news atleast 3 such shootings that happened near a night club and mostly in the same block or area!!! On another ocassion a few months back, a stalker entered a university building and shot dead his ex girlfriend and then himself.
And then the virginia tech incident happened. Imagine having gun-culture in India or China, countries with a population of billion plus. There would be massacres at the slightest of provocations.
Gun laws maybe a political issue in the US, but the frequency of shootings either in schools or at night clubs should be an urgent indicator to both the politicians and the general public that holding of guns legally should be banned. A new gun rolls of the american assembly line every 10 seconds according to one video on the web. According to Wikipedia, 59 million adults in US personally hold a gun. And, roughly half of the US adult population live in households with guns. Why do so many people own guns in US? Maybe its got to do with the history of gunculture in US either for hunting game or for self-defense.
Whatever it maybe, the current reality calls for a different course of action...stricter gun laws or better, banning guns in civilian hands. It's obvious that the use of guns to defend oneself comes at a heavy price... its easy access to kids and criminals alike.

What?

2007-06-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

"I am that. You are that. All this is that". So, what exactly is this 'that'?

A case for healthy living

2007-06-19T23:34:00.001-07:00

My uncle (mom's elder brother) is a really amazing man. 65 years old, he is fit as ever. What's amazing about him is not just that he walks 2 hrs a day and wakes up at 3 am to do that. What's more amazing is that he is a man of strong will power and has influenced our family's and relatives' lives immensely.
Mama had a heart attack right around the time I was born, 23 years back. He was a chain smoker before that. A simple change in life-style and a strong will brought him back to life and healthy living. The number of days he has missed walking in the past 23 years have been few, which shows his dedication to walking regularly and towards a healthy lifestyle.

I believe there's a lesson to be learnt here. It's not enough to live long. You must also enjoy living in old age.
The argument given by smokers is that we are anyway going to die someday, how does it matter if we die a few years earlier.
The point is not just to live a few years longer, but to live all of these years with a healthy body and mind. A habitual smoker 20 years down the line would have done a lot of damage to his lungs. Agreed, he might have cut down his life time by just 5-10 years, but his/her last few years or decades might just get really miserable due to health problems. Making a life-style change then might have little improvement on the sense of well-being and health.

So at this point, the focus is on living longer and healthier. Let's just look at a few factors that affect positively or negatively the life-span of a human being:

1) Exercise: Some kind of physical activity is a must in today's world because it's easy to get caught up with work and lead a sedentary lifestyle. The human body is an amazing creation. Tweak it the right way and it will become stronger and more robust.
Today, there are infinite choices on the kind of physical activity to pursue:
Gyms; individualistic sports such as running, walking, biking, etc; group sports such as volleyball, soccer, etc; spiritual-physical disciplines such as yoga, tai-chi and other martial arts, etc.

2) Sleep: It's a simple observation that you are less active and alive when you have less sleep. There are general guidelines on how many hours to sleep and the right time for sleep, but I think one should sleep as much as the body requires, which could vary depending on the type of activity being done during the day. And my personal observation has been that the earlier in the night I sleep, the more refreshed I am during the day. Plus, nothing beats waking up in the early morning and taking in a whiff of fresh air.

3) Drugs: Substances that change the chemical make up of the brain temporarily or on a long-term basis are definitely not conducive to a healthy life-style.

4) Alcohol: There's a debate from what I have heard and read on the right amount of alcohol for consumption with some studies showing alcohol in moderation can be healthier, etc. I have nothing further to say here other than that one needs to be watchful and observant of the effects.

5) Stress: Its been said that stress is one among the many pressing health issues that we face today. I term stress as a lack of mental well-being. Stress, though being a mental affliction, can strongly affect the body. Hence it's all the more important to have a healthy level of stress. A steady, stable and equanimous mind, that is not affected much by life's ups and downs is one way towards reducing stress and improving mental well-being.
It's important to know today, how to relax when needed and that too in a healthy way (people give stress-release as a reason for smoking). Meditation and better breathing techniques that form a part of Pranayama would greatly help stress release. I personally used to do the shavasana (corpse-posture) when I used to get really stressed out during my first year in my under-grad.
The basic idea in shavasana is to relax every tiny muscle in the body through auto-suggestion and controlled breathing. It worked well for me.
Also, taking deep breaths from time to time is an effective way to relax and recharge the system.

6) Food: Last but not the least, the kind of food you consume can affect your mood and your sense of well-being, not to mention your productivity at work.
In America, people associate eating healthy food with being 'hippie'. That I think is ridiculous. Healthy food doesn't have to be bland or tasteless. If you find it bland, then you haven't yet learnt the art of cooking tasty food (Hint: Try inclduing spices into the food).

Now, the question arises, if one has the six factors above and other relevant factors (social life - family and friends, etc) under control, how long can one live - i.e. the ideal scenario. Is there a limit at all (of course, pollution imposes a limit)? The longest I have heard a person live is 160 years. Observing the life-style habits of these people should give an indication of what factors have influenced their longer life-span. Infact the following video does just that:

Another video can be found here
Surely, its worth following and living a healthy life-style to be able to live another 100 years!!!
Here's wishing all the readers of this blog a healthy life made through better life-style choices.

Racism or what??

2007-06-15T01:31:00.000-07:00

I have just purchased a few groceries from safeway and I am heading back home on my bike, riding close to the sidewalk, when a car slows down by my side, a guy juts out of the window and lunges against my body. A quick second and the car is gone, leaving me fuming and helpless as I struggle to gain balance. Do I call this an act of racism? Do I call it a prank by college kids? Or is it a combination of both?
This is not the first time an incident of this kind has happened to me. This car slowing down business, cracking some cheap jokes and speeding away has had me frustrated a couple of times in the past. But this time it was physical. Is it something these guys have against someone riding a bike? Or is it something they have against non-whites riding a bike, i.e. a racially motivated prank? I am not sure.
But what I am sure is that if this happens again, I am definitely going to take some action.

Federer vs Nadal

2007-06-10T01:01:00.000-07:00

Who's it gonna be at the French open final? I am a royal fan of Federer for his amazing shots (remember the one where he got the racket behind and between his legs) and movement across the court and ofcourse for his big serves. A nice compilation of some of the best shots of Federer ever, I found on youtube:

Nadal is more of a powerhorse and a clay god. And Nadal has defeated federer on several occasions in the past. But Federer is a class apart and I am sure he will get Nadal soon, if not tomorrow.

On another note, I was wondering if there is no one to rival Henin Hardenne. She's just a one woman force at the grand slams.

More climbing

2007-06-08T20:20:00.000-07:00

Today's session was good. Looks like I am becoming a regular here. Don't know how long that will last. I was able to do stuff which I couldn't the last time. People were a little amazed and puzzled that I wasn't using shoes. I just want to see how far I can go on bouldering(rock climbing without ropes or support on boulders or small monoliths as against free-soloing - which refers to rock climbing without ropes on any structure - big or small) without shoes. But it definitely is fun because bouldering as such is a challenging sport and not having 'climbing shoes' (which are especially useful because they are sticky, prevent scratches from sharp edges and give a better grip for small sharp cracks and footholds) is a disadvantage but also a challenge.

Confidence - This plays a big role in climbing atleast. I found that I am able to climb better in front of a group of people than when I am doing it alone. This maybe because when people watch what I am doing, it gets me focussed as I don't want to goof up!
I think the ideal climber is one who can climb the monoliths easily and fluidly as if they were just walking up the monolith. Infact I am starting to see some similarities between our primal ancestors and the pros at the place :).
To illustrate my point in the previous statement, I have included a wonderfully badass video of Dan Osman free soloing Lover's leap, California. (Ignore the music if it sounds like trash metal).

In the end it all comes together: Hatha yoga or yoga (including pranayama), swimming, taichi, kungfu, gymnastics, rockclimbing, running and biking. Though the goals seem to be different (apparently), at the highest level, all the sports aim at one thing: High flexibility and high strength.
Rockclimbing from my experience, not only develops high flexibility and strength, but it also requires high flexibility and high strength if you want to 'decently manage' some climbing routes!!! To elaborate on this, let me give a hypothetical example.
Lets' say that there are 5 levels in climbing skills with the successive levels being better than the previous level. Then the flexibility and strength of level 2 will not be enough to tackle level 3. In that sense higher flexibility and strength is a requirement for level 3. So you are in effect forced to do some weight training or some thing like that in order to do better climbing unlike in running, where one does weight training(to look good) because running (long distance) reduces muscle mass for efficiency!!

I am not done with running yet, though I haven't run in a long time (months). Running real fast or speed training is an altogether different experience as compared to regular running. Even long slow runs come under a different genre of experiences in life. So the memories of these experiences should bring me back to running, though I am not sure when.

Rock climbing near husky stadium

2007-06-07T18:22:00.000-07:00

The place is right next to the Husky stadium.
I was actually looking out for a friend who said that he had come by 7 pm to IMA(Intra mural association) building to play racket ball. When he didn't turn up, I did the next best thing, which turned out to be THE best thing!

The place

That is plain vertical!

The plain vertical I was talking about

I went up without much of a hassle. But I was stuck at that place for a minute, as I made some unsuccessful attempts to get down before summoning the courage to do it. Like some one said at that place, its like going to the next level (not really).

Nice moves by an experienced guy.

Gymnastics and rock climbing!

An overall view of the place. Though the place looks small, you can spend a lot of time (months) mastering moves on a single monolith. The experienced climber in the photos above told me that he comes to this place many times a week and never gets tired or bored of doing it. I have tried out successfully (atleast partly) every piece here except the tallest one. It is too technical i.e. not having many footholds and many of them too tiny for my bare foot. If I need to make progress on that big one, I definitely need shoes, but I am yet to replace my worn out running shoes. So it will have to wait. :(

Three things

2007-06-01T21:35:00.000-07:00

1) I got my cycle oiled and air filled up in tires and its as good as new (been neglecting it). No creaking sounds from the chain, smooth noiseless transition between gears and last but not the least an awesome riding experience.
2) Tried my hand at free soloing today - Third time so far. Free soloing is rock climbing without the use of ropes. And truth be told, it was fking awesome. Pics wil be posted in due time.
3) I just heard from someone I met at the rock-climbing place that there are some good places at eleven worth and near sammamish river for bouldering. That would probably be a destination that I shall touch upon soon. I mean think about it. Combining biking and bouldering!!! That should be awesomely fantabulous.

Biking to the Wayne golf course, Kenmore

2007-05-28T08:24:00.000-07:00

I left at 5 am to this supposedly nice Sammamish river park and golf course located at the foot of a tiny hillock, about 100 m high. This was on the 20th of this month. The idea was to bike upto this place and climb the hill. All was fine till I reached Kenmore(about 16kms from university district) where I was supposed to take a right onto the hill climbing trail. But I kept going on towards Bothell(another 2kms), where I came across a fruit and vegetable shop.

After buying a pound of plouts (plums + apricots hybrid), the shop keeper mentioned that I had already passed Kenmore. So back I went 1 mile toward Kenmore (no sign board damn). I took one of the bridges that goes across a creek towards my destination.

But having crossed the bridge, I was unable to find the trail that would take me to the top of the hill.

The picture above shows what went wrong

Finally, I had to settle down to viewing the golf course, which was very vast and green.

The trail to nowhere

Coming back, I came through the usual route - Burke Gilman trail, which took me about an hour for 19 kms.

My next biking trip is obviously to get to the top of that elusive hill.

Running to work

2007-05-17T00:54:00.000-07:00

I had a strange and esoteric idea last year. I wondered what it would be like to run instead of 'walk' our daily lives. You got to go to the grocery store a mile away. What's normally done is to walk the distance or bike it up. How about running it up? After all running is an extension of walking. I mean, I could crawl on my fours and go to the grocery store, but I chose instead to walk. In the same vein, I could also think of running to the grocery store. Ofcourse, there are some practical issues but they are of lesser importance right now.
The other day, I got a flat tire and since I rely heavily on my bike (the only walking I do is walk from the nearest parking location to my destination), I found it tough to walk!

Normally I leave my home 10 mins before my first class in the morning. The other day, I forgot that I coudn't use the bike. So what did I do to get to the class on time? Yep, run. Call it karma or samskara, I did the same the next day and the day after when I got the tube replaced. Those were two good days. Now, I am back to the old routine.

AR Rahman Interview

2007-05-16T02:41:00.000-07:00

I have been looking out for interviews with AR Rahman - I found one of them with Sun TV in Tamil which was good, another one with Headlines today, which was Mediocre. But the interview that stood out was the one with CNN-IBN interviewed by Anuradha Sen Gupta. The interview wasn't a monotonous scheduled one but had quite a few improvisations of questions during the interview. My only rant is the indifference and ignorance shown by her to a few regional songs that have been well acclaimed and have won awards like Yenna solla pogirai in Kandukondain Kandukondain. Titled 'Being Rahman', it tried to bring out the character of Rahman and did a good job at that. I had recommend this video even to a casual observer, as it has some insightful replies by Rahman. You can watch it here.

Golden gardens park and beach

2007-04-25T15:47:00.000-07:00

Located North West of the university district, this place sloping down from a mini-cliff, provides for a classic weekend getaway. Not a huge place, but many scenic locations for viewing pleasure are there. I was wishing for a sort of clear sky, but as it turned out (no surprise), it was cloudy and as I reached the place, it even began to drizzle. Add to that the early morning cold and I was pulling my jacket closer home. In India, especially in Hyderabad or Chennai, if it were to get cloudy and drizzle lightly, I would more than welcome it, I would infact go a little berserk. But that’s because when it rains in hyd, the temperature drops to a pleasant 20 – 22 degrees, not a chilly and bordering unpleasant 8-10 degrees as in Seattle.
Another disadvantage to having a misty-ish cloudy weather is that, for instance, I can see the beautiful Olympia mountains in the distance from the park, out west, but try as hard as I might, I can’t capture it half-decently despite all possible tweaks to my camera settings.
The highlights of the bike ride were meeting up with real monsters and a few good frames captured…

As I was headed out of the university, I came across a squirrel playing hide and seek on the trees.

Meet Monster 1..

Location and address..

The mini cliff descent on the way to the beach

The rail road mainly serving freight traffic from the ports of Seattle and Tacoma going up north. Amtrak commuter rail runs on these tracks too.

The olympic mountains out east..

Mystique cloudy formation..

A waterhole

The mandatory bike pic

LOST..

Aila..

Liked this pic a lot

Alai..

From the rocks

Colour

Train pics
The railway tracks pass right through the middle of the park and I was able to take a few pics of the cars (I missed the engine).

Double stack containers..

Return of the monster..
On the ride back home..

Golden gardens park and beach

"Free running" movie clip

2007-04-22T22:43:00.000-07:00

This video is from the French movie District 13 (Banlieue 13) and stars David Belle, founder of Parkour (the sport of efficient movement).
Enjoy!

Fix

2007-04-13T23:40:00.000-07:00

I need to fix stuff bigtime.... I need to fix my life(er..this is for a separate post). My shoes are worn out and that has stopped my running for the past 1.5 months. My bike needs a fix too.. The back tire is bent and out of shape, atleast it appears to be bent when I move the bike slowly along the road.. Need to check up if there are any loose ends/screws. Long distance biking is imposs here without a spare tube, tyre and if possible a patch-up kit(or the black rectanglular tube piece and glue that our expert tyrewalas use back in India). If I can fix either one of the shoes or the bike, this weekend is bound to be fun what with some exotic destinations(read beaches) north of seattle waiting to be explored. Let's see..

Update: I fixed the bike(the bracket for the lock, air, oil, etc) but I couldn't manage a long ride partly due to a desi-meet on saturday night which went on a little late. But I am still happy climbing up the hill on the 45th street. It begins at 45th st and 25th avenue and climbs up onto 45th st and 15th avenue. I would reckon the grade for the first half of the climb is atleast a treacherous 7 degrees(145 ft or 44 metres climb over a distance of 340 metres) and as a result my legs keep getting screwed up not in the way running screws up legs..this is more like a constant heaviness/mild pain in legs as against sharp pains in the shin or knees or ankle as experienced in running. The challenge is not to get to the top fastest, but to stay on the bike all the while when doing that. I bet it would be easier to jog up the hill than bike. I should also mention that my fitness has a lot of scope for improvement and a few more such treacherous climbs should make the climb seem a little less treacherous and more like painful but manageable.
There are a lot of such hills in seattle, but I find this a little too intimidating for my taste.
Below are the top and side view of this hill/steep grade.

Angrez movie clip

2007-04-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

I just got to watch the movie Angrez. This is a proper hyderabadi movie that highlights the hyderabadi hindi-urdu language with all the mannerisms, expressions and lingo. For starters, I recommend watching this clip

I have the script written below for the clip:

Jehangir: Salam Malikum Ismail Bhai.
Ismail Bhai : Malikum salam Jehangir.
Others: Aa bait re. Sab khairiyat.
Jehangir: Aur sab khairiyat Ismail Bhai? kya ustad apke ghar pe aye to aisa bol diye?
Other guy: Kya hua ustad?
Ismail Bhai: Arre tum logan serious kaiko lete yarro?Ismail bhai ke patte hain. Pachis saal se Charminar me baita hua hoon, Kuch izzat hain yaaron!Tum logan kya to bhi samje re mereko?
Jehangir: Acha, woh sab jando ustaad. Parson, Dabeerpure me kya ladai hua maloom? Chindiya ladai hui. Kya hua bole to mai, izzar, Jabbar, jalil, patel, mallesh, Chinna, Feroz, Khaidar, Iqbal pure gaye the dekho ladai me. Khali ladon se diye. ghab-ghib, ghab-ghib, ghab-ghib....Mai kya kara bole to labbar ki chappal dal le ke, kata wisil dalke, diwar khudke woh diya, woh diya, woh diya puron ku. Phir Akbaar ko kicha deroon. Kya re Akbaar, tu bhi do bhairiyan rakh de re, do do gardhan pe kichde re bole to..Akbaar mereko bolraa 'merehich bazoo circle tehra hua tha. Mai kaisa maroon'.
Ek char chai, adha dabbe bada goldflake bhejo ji Ismail bhai ke table pe.

Enter Salim Pheku on an stylish scooter.

Salim pheku: Salam maalikum Ismail Bhai.
Ismail Bhai: Maalikum salaam.
Jehangir: Aa gaya Salim Pheku.
Salim pheku: Ismail bhaaai. Aur kya haal he? Haan..Sab maje me hain?
Aur kya ustaad?
Ismail Bhai: Kya re Salim, kya khusboo aari re?
Salim Pheku: Poison dal diya.
Jehangir: Kya re? Posion dal diya.
Other guy: Arre, kya phek ra re une
Jehangir: Kya phek ra re bhai
Salim Pheku: Arre, tum logan cheap category ke, local basti ke ciggarete logan hai. Poison boleto scent ko bolte. Bahar milta.
Jehangir: Ha. Abids ke footpath pe milta woh.
Salim Pheku: Woh duplicate tumhare baba lagate.
Jehangir: Baba pe nako jao.
Salim pheku: Arre chal ja re ...
Ismail Bhai: Arre tum logaan ladlo nako yaro
SP: Arre, mai kya bolraon bhai...
IB: Aah..
SP: Poison boleto scent ko bolte. Mere bedroom me saatsow kisam ke scent ke shishian he. Mai jab bhi dawat me jatoan na..ek puri scent ki shishi dal leke jataon..kapadon me, idar..udar, cheddi me, jooton me..sab dalleke jataon..Kal raat ko kya hua maloom?
IB: Kya hua?
SP: Krishna Oberoi me daawat thi. Daawat me jaate..purae manegaraan..vanegaraan hello hai bole. Mai bola, party kahan chali bole to blanket hall me chali bole.
Other guy 2: Kaunse hall me?
SP: Blanket hall yaaro. Blanket hall me aise ghuste hi purae logan nachre. Mai bola, ab mai nachne gaya tho pure pottiyan mujhe lapat jate..
IB: Aah..
SP: Tho, mai aise bazzoo se nikalraon...
IB: Aah..
SP: Tho do logan tehre hue the. Jaake aate waloon ko kya suna rahe the maloom?
IB: Aah..
SP: Arre, ine English filimon ka hero dikhra nahi?
IB: Abaa..
SP: Ab, mai halloo jake table pe bait gaya.
IB: Aah..
SP: Baithehi waiter aya..
IB: Aah..
SP: Aake bola. Sir, anything tanda garam? Ab sharaab tho mai peeta nahi. Mai bola ek aaall mixed fruit juice la bola.
IB: Aan?
SP: Aisa baithe saamne se Mallika dheki..
IB: Aah..Mallika? Kaun?
SP: Arre murder yaaro. Bhaagleke aate, Mallika boli: "Hi Salim. Where are you? How do you do? Now you do" bolke pakad li!Mallika, pure logan dekhren.. ye Kya kar rahi ho tum?Boleto, une kya boli maalum, "Aise kaama kare to apan popular hote boli". Phir lapatne aate hi, mail bola, dheko control me raho.
IB: Aah..
SP: Mereko phir lapti ustaad.
IB: Aah..
SP: Lapatke, idar pappi, udar pappi..Tum samajh rahe naa..
IB: Aah..
SP: Udar pappi, idar pappi deke..meri phulna shuru hogayi.
J: Kya phulna shuru hogayi baap Salim?
SP: Arre saans phulna shuru ho gayi yaaro..Uske baad me mereko kya bolri maloom?
IB: Aah..
SP: Ab tum mere saat Mumbai chalna katte..
IB: Kaiku?
SP: Mai bola Mumbai jaake mai kya karoonga? To kya boli maalum? Mai tumhareko hero banati hoon. Maine bola bombai me ek se ek hero he.
IB: Aah..
SP: Mai aake kya karoonga boleto kya boli maalum?
IB: Aah..
SP: Ek bhi hero kaam ka nahi he bombai me. Biral bait gaye
IB: Aah..
SP: Thoda ek do glass beer veer kyaki pee lee une. Phir mereko boli, "Salim, Mereko bore marra party me. Long drive pe jaana he.
IB: Kidar jana he?
SP: Ab, hyderabad me long drive pe kahan le jaoon? Kya kara maloom, gadi me aisa bitake Begumpet se panjagutta. Panjaagutta se necklace road mara. Phir aisa tank bund pe lete hee, kya boli malum? Salim, mereko icecream hona. Bolte hi, seeda lakhe aise Mozamjahi market ke pas rokha
IB: Wahan kahan he?
SP: Arre, Mashoor icecream nahi he yaaro. Paanch paanch cup icecream khaaye.
IB: Paanch paanch cuppu?
SP: Itte itte tho cuppa the yaaro. Khaliye baad bola, ab to tum zara thande hogaye honge bolke..seeda usko legaya krishna oberoi thak. Mai bola tum jao ghar ko. Mai bhi jataon ghar ko goodnight boleto kya bolri malum. Salim, tum ab kahin jana vana nahin. Aisa kaisa hota? Tum mere saat room ko chalo, kuch batana hai boli. Ab mai kya kara, uno bolri bolke mai seedha room tak chale gaya. Ab room ko chale gaya baad, raat bhar kya hua nakko poocho.
J: Neend me se khuli baap aanka Salim Teri.
Other guy: Subah
Everyone: Ha ha ha............

Long live hyderabadi Hindi and Telugu.

Northie-southie divide and language issues in India - Part II

2007-04-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

This post continues from the previous post....

Conservative
Another thing I keep hearing from North-Indians, is that south -indians are very conservative. Well, I don't see why being conservative should effect communication between two people. Being conservative is just a preference that might be culturally motivated. I am sure there are a lot of north-Indians who are pretty conservative in their own way. Would that entail them to be rejected by their more liberal counter-parts? And what do you mean by conservative? Do you mean religious views, attitude on marriage, pre-marital sex, etc. Again, all these are personal preferences and mostly based on the culture and history of the region and shouldn't be a hinderance to communication between people or atleast shouldn't be a reason for a lack of good-will. Learning to respect differences in culture and attitudes would do a world of good. I am proud of the rich carnatic classical heritage in South India. I haven't seen many North Indians who appreciate Hindustani classical music in a similar manner. Does it bother you that people take pride in their heritage and you don't? All along, "being hip" in India, has meant following the west. Yoga became popular in America and a rekindling of yoga in India followed suit. Carantic and hindustani music has a great following in USA, so by calling yourself hip, shouldn't you also be following classical music?

Non-Natives and accents
I see a parallel between Americans and North-Indians. Both these communities complain about non-natives not speaking English or Hindi with particular emphasis on their accent gone wrong.
Well, to that my answer is..you guys are lucky bastards who have somehow managed to convince the world/India that English/Hindi is the de-facto common ground for communication.
I challenge you Americans/North Indians to learn a language that's not English/Hindi and see how you cope up with the new language such as yokuts (native-american). Are you able to speak yokuts like the natives(er..the ex-natives), and in the same accent? I bet you would come up a big zero on the accent and the pronunciation. Huh, so much for your crib on non-natives and accents.

Movies
Actors in south-Indian movies don't look as good as actresses. What do you mean by that? It looks like the crib is not about actors not looking good so much as them not being fair. South Indians are in general a little darker than north-Indians. The movies to be realistic should reflect the same. We don't have the whites-blacks divide in India, but there is the inherent prejudice for people who are 'fair'. South Indian movies, particularly Telugu and Tamil have outsourced their actresses from North India and Mallu land due to the 'fairness' factor. And, RajniKanth is a celebrated hero because of his acting skills and command on the screen, nothing more, nothing less. People who crib about RajniKanth suck up to popular media prejudice but I bet they haven't watched one movie in which RajniKanth has starred. Ofcourse, how could they? They don't understand Tamil. The good news is we are in the sub-title era. We should take cue from the popular sub-titled Korean, Chinese movies and do the same for our regional movies.

Have you noticed one thing so far. Most of the cribs I have addressed so far are by the North Indians on South Indians and their doings. I haven't seen many cribs the other way round in my interaction with gults and tam junta.

Reconciliation
Now, the question is how do we reconcile the language issue. One way is through more cross-lingual exchange, better portrayal of the communities in movies. Movies and media influence on the general public is undeniable. This issue is kind of a vicious cycle. Unless one side steps down for a while, the divide is bound to deepen. But the bigger question is how deeper is the issue? Does it matter at all, now that most people in India are familiar with English and its variants such as Hinglish, Tanglish, etc. The issue may just surface once in a while, so is it enough that we just discuss the issue and leave it at that. The point is as long as people are not open-minded, this issue will be a pain in the ass every now and then and hence needs to be considered with some level of seriousness.

References
1) Reconciling Linguistic Diversity: The History and the Future of Language Policy in India

Northie-southie divide and language issues in India - Part I

2007-03-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

I am a tamilian but I hail from Hyderabad. I grew up speaking hyderabadi hindi and telugu. For instance, a conversation could run this way:

A: "Gemi ra bhai. zara down ga unnavu" (What's up brother. You look a little down)
B: " Yem ledu ra. oka project nanu PARESHAN chestundi ra bhai." (Nothing man. A project is paining me)
A: " pada ra bhai. Chai tagudam. Gada matladachu" (Let's go dude. To have tea. We can chat over there.)
B: "Sere pada. Arre, ninna nenu oka poti ko deka re. kya poti thi re baap...." (Ok, let's go. Arre, I saw this female yesterday man. She was one of a kind....)

Note: Bhai is not pronounced bhaai (as in Hindi) but more as 'bhi'.

In the next few paragraphs I try to look at some of the issues and prejudices, I am aware of, that exist on both sides of vindhyas.

Gulti
During the summer hols, I would look forward to visiting chennai, since most of my cousins stay there. Now, Hyderabad is a multi-ethnic society. I have grown-up with muslim neighbours and have had a lot of fun doing that. So to get paranoid at the mention of a muslim was simply unthinkable. I am also very tolerant to people who speak languages not my own. So when I would get teased in Chennai by my cousins in a good-natured way for being a gult(telugu-speaking person) more specifically as gulti, I didn't understand the origins for such a prejudice against telugu speaking people. Gulti is derived by reversing telugu. Te-lu-gu -> gu-lu-te -> gulti/golti. Gulti in tamland is some sort of an inside joke.

Food
I never knew of the existence of a northie-southie(more specifically North India vs Chennai(apparently the representative of South India!)) divide till I landed in IIT. North Indians seem to have a general hatred for many things South Indian including food, culture, etc and south Indians seem to be indifferent to North Indians. This is reflected in how a typical South Indian is shown in Hindi movies, that is when that rare event happens. Similarly, I have heard many Northie guys tell me straight that they hate curd rice or sambar or whatever. Basically, they meant to say that south Indian food sucks. But the irony here is, South Indians don't seem to have the same hatred for Chappatis, Rotis, etc. Infact many south indians I know enjoy north-Indian food.
My take on this is, yes south Indian food in many restaurants aren't prepared as well as they should be, but to generalize this to say that south Indian food as such sucks is a) Stupid b) Shows the inherent prejudice that north Indians have against south Indians.

Pride,History and prejudice
Now there's the other side to this issue too. South Indians in general seem to lay way more stress than the general populace in India on their English. Its a matter of great pride if your English is better than the other as in the US. And Tamilians do exhibit this pride whenever they can, though nowadays, this seems to be the case throughout India.
So I understand that this so called show-off of English doesn't go well with North Indians

Back in the sixties, the government of India was trying to come up with an official language that was Indian so as to phase out English. Since Hindi was popular in the North and due to its similarity to Sanskrit, which again is the origin for many Dravidian languages, the government assumed that South India would be ok with Hindi as an official language.
The reference quoted below, makes a nice distinction between official language and national language. While, Hindi was being drafted as an official language, a simultaneous movement to popularise Hindi as the national language sprung up. The states of South India, particularly Tamil Nadu took exception to Hindi being touted as the national language and that's where the whole language issue began(Note: Nowhere in the Indian Constitution is it said that Hindi is the national language of India and it isn't).
The Indian government tried to incorporate Hindi into the school Cirriculum. The TamiNadu government revolted against this and took to enforcing English in the school cirriculum and sidelining or ignoring Hindi. At the same time, North Indians revolted against this anti-Hindi campaign and hence reinforced Hindi and side-lined English. It's interesting to note that Bengalis shared the same intensity of pro-Bengali/anti-Hindi feeling as Tamilians did for Tamil apparently for the same reasons of cultural and historical significance.

Another common crib from the North-Indians is that when they visit Chennai for example, people refuse to speak to them in a language other than Tamil. Well, let's analyse this crib for a moment.
If for instance, a country consisted of regions where people spoke different languages comprising Tamil (60%), Hindi (30%), kannada(10%), I would definitely not claim that Tamil be the de-facto language in this country. In fact, I would expect that if a person who knew Tamil were to visit a region where Hindi is spoken, she should atleast make an effort to converse in Hindi or maybe a common language such as English.
I state this example because, when having a discussion with a few friends in the Indian community here, my North-Indian roomie stated that he wouldn't learn Tamil if he landed in Chennai, since Hindi was more prevalent in India and hence that should suffice for him to live in Chennai!!

Most of my friends in IIT were north-Indians and I spent a good amount of time fine-tuning my hindi so that I now know both hyderabadi hindi and hindi as spoken in the north. So the attitude of my roomie came as a surprise to me. Such narrow-mindedness doesn't help the already existing northie-southie divide. For one, it makes you more defensive when you speak to a North Indian and vice-versa. In hyderabad, most people including people from the North, know telugu and hindi, because those are the regional languages in Hyderabad.

Contd. in the next post...

Cycling to Lyons' creek, Lake Washington - part II

2007-03-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

I am outsourcing the photos that come under this post to Flickr since I find it cumbersome to post pics here. Here are two maps in google earth of the route I took.

This one show an overview of the route I took. The part of the route with a line passing through shows my return trip through Burke-Gilman trail, a distance of 15kms.
The place markers' that are not connected show the first part of the trip along Lake city way, a distance of 10 kms.

The above pic is a closeup of the previous pic.

Cycling to Lyons' creek, Lake Washington - part I

2007-03-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

Been a bit busy lately. Who isn't eh. Thought I had take a break and go out cycling and explore the place. I couldn't have chosen a better time to do the trip, what with spring showing its true colours. Ok, without further ado, let me get straight to the trip....

6 am
--------
On the move

Basically took 30 minutes to reach this place, through lake city way, 10kms away from the university district. On the way, there were 2-3 downhill stretches that simply rocked.

Spent considerable time at this place, mostly clicking away. The return was through Burke-gilman trail which I shall cover in the next post.

The research and ultra running communities

2007-03-09T03:25:00.000-08:00

First a few definitions:

Ultra running: The sport(that's right) of running taken to the extreme in terms of distance. More definitively, any distance beyond 42kms 195 metres or 'the marathon distance' would qualify as an ultra marathon. And training for such distances, usually on mud trails and close to nature would qualify as ultra running.

Research: 'The real head banging'. To expand the theme, being occupied by a group of related ideas on a very specific topic that may seemingly have no connection with the 'real-world'. I was chatting with a friend the other day who is working in neurobiocomputing and he told me that he had had an orgasm the previous day when preparing for the mid-terms. Here's a sample of the conversation.
Me: "Wow!!! It was all 'ah...ah' level eh"
Him: "Yesh, nothing like understanding how you understand....how your brain and senses work".

Now, for a few comparisons or rather parallels which I draw from experience and reading.

1) Both the communities occupy an area less than 5%(2 standard deviations) in a normal distribution(or any relevant distribution) of the sizes of different communities.

2) There are huge highs and lows experienced in the regular workings of both the communities. The highs come from either endoprephines, anandamides or pure insights as the case may be or just the condition of being focused or what can also be termed auto-cruise control.
The lows could be pains categorised as physical, mental or a mixture of both. Research tends more towards the mental/psychological and sociological frustrations while ultrarunning involves a healthy mix of both the mental/psychological and physical pains/frustrations!!

3) There is always the "Why am I doing this? I must really be insane..really really insane" genre of questions that pop into the runners'/researchers' mind now and then.
Instances:
a) Running on trails for 5-6 hrs with no one in sight and the body has already given up all hopes of rest, working in submission to the mind's fancies (I haven't run for more than 2 hrs straight so I can only sort of imagine what it feels to run for 3 hrs, leave alone 5-6hrs straight). Here the mind is fixated on one thing which the body has to put up with.
b) Sitting in the lab in front of the computer for the whole day doing assignments and stuff and you realise you got a weekly meeting with the professor the next day. The day shift ends, the night shift begins. Here, mostly the mind has to put up with itself.

4) People seem to find that ultra running/research occupies most of their time and they can only talk about their next training run or how they have been put off by an injury and can't wait to start running again. An anology in the research community would be, people who can only talk about their current research or what they plan to do next and how the crappy assignments are interfereing with their research work.

5) Ultra-running and research complement each other well, since you can run on auto-cruise control(analogous to recharging your batteries) while running (i.e. switch off the mind and just observe the surroundings) while on the other hand while doing research, the body is given a damn and the mind is actively involved in a play of ideas, analysis and dreams.

6) Quite a few ultrarunners also seem to do well in their 'professional life', whatever that maybe.
Motivation needs to be high, to be able to undergo some of the treacherous pains experienced now and then in ultra running and research. For example, whenever I run a 5km race, I always tell myself that I will never do it again since the body heat, pain in the legs, stomach during the race sometimes are intolerable. But the desire to be able to run faster and the feeling of fast movement will always brings me back to running such races. A similar analogy can hold for ultra running. As far as research is concerened, writing a document brings me the most pain, because of the seemingly infinite corrections that need to be made to make the document coherent, structured and understandable to the targetted audience.

There is also an article by a researcher who runs ultras on 'Why men run ultras', which gives an alternate explanation on why more men than women run ultras. The article is not sexist as some feminists might immediately want to conclude, but merely put forths a psychological hypothesis for why men run ultras which is also consistent with why not many women may not want to run ultras. However, having said that, digest the article in with a pinch or two of salt especially the statistical analysis part, since the sample size or even the population of ultra runners as compared to men who don't run or those who run lesser distances is known to be negligible.

Barefooted

2007-03-06T21:21:00.000-08:00

Felt good. 10 minutes. A lesiure pace around the campus. Got a couple of comments from bystanders, which is usual. Don't know how my legs would respond, since I was mostly running on the pavement. My guess is it would be atleast two days before I can run again.

On eyes being the door to another reality

2007-02-28T18:23:00.000-08:00

He was headed towards the quadrangle in the hostel to play a game or two of cricket, dressed up in his usual gear of tshirt, shorts and now ofcourse, his 2 year old reebok shoes. He could see some junta assembled on the ground and as he took a closer look at them from the second floor he was on, all the while walking towards the stairs, he was given a thorough shoulder shake. Pg (as he was called much to his dislike) gave a nod to his friend, Safari who had pleasantly surprised him but then his presence had been a harbinger of something unexpected. Suddenly things didn't seem all right, or atleast he wasn't seeing things right...
"Safari, I am not able to look straight, my vision has tunneled down.. literally. I can't see you, but I can see your legs. I can see the door we are approaching right now, but I can't see the bolt on the door nor the room number. The only way I can look straight is by moving my head up. My vision is slanted and it sucks man.", Pg spoke hastily with desperation reflected in his speech.
Safari replied nonchalantly, "So you want to play cricket right now?".
"Ob, aren't we headed over there right now", remarked Pg with a touch of annoyance.
'Yeah, but then your vision is screwed up right', continued Safari.
"So what do I do?" replied Manoj clearly uncomfortable and wanting a way out of this seemingly preplexing problem.
'Why don't you look up and force your eyes to look straight, what's preventing you from forcing your eyes open?', replied Safari.
"Hmm..yeah my eyes seem to be half-closed. Let me try opening them to their full functionality". It was as if he was unaware that the solution to his current problem might be to just open his eyes.
Now, Pg found a stiff resistance to this exercise of opening his eyes. His eyes seemed to have conspired into being partially functional...for some reason.

Pg didn't give up. He pressed harder in an effort to attain clarity of sight. His eyes couldn't take the strain anymore, and he found himself opening his eyes into the waking state. That was a beautiful dream he thought, a dream that had a physical connection with reality.

Right now

2007-02-27T09:18:00.000-08:00

I am nostalgic.

Nice video

2007-02-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

Kenenisa Bekele

External and portable hard disks

2007-02-12T09:50:00.000-08:00

I have been doing some reading on external and portable hard disks, mainly because I am planning to buy one of them in 100gb - 200gb segment.
External hard disks are primarily used for back up of files on your computer, but they also offer great mobility and can usually function well when connected to USB 2.0 ports (disks with memory of say 100 gb and higher or a thickness of 3 inch and more need an external power adaptor to supplement the USB 2.0 connection). USB 2.0 ports(30 MBps or 420 Mbps) are an improvisation on the USB 1.1 ports which can support a maximum speed of 1.4 MBps or 12 Mbps and external hard disks work much better on USB 2.0 ports than on their former version.

I see a range of prices on offer, right from 60$ for a 120 gb hard disk, 100$ for an 80 gb hard disk to 150$ for a 160 gb portable hard disk and others in between. It seems from what I have read in the forums and other web pages, there are a few things to be considered before getting an external hard disk:

1) An external casing for the hard disk is always preferrable especially if you are going to move them around . Some brands like Western digital offer them for a few models, while Seagate offers an external casing for most of the models that have a memory of greater than say 100gb.

2) Speed - If you are going for a memory of 80gb and higher, it's better to go for a higher rpm of say 5400 or 7200. It seems that despite the usb 2.0 inteface having a limited capacity of 30 MBps or 420 Mbps, having a higher rpm would help sustain higher speeds over a long period of time.

3) If you are looking for mass storage, there are 500gb and 1 tb(tera byte) models that offer pretty cool prices. For example: Seagate offers a 500gb for 300$ and 750gb for 400$, while Lacie offers one of the 500gb models for 175$ and a 1 tb model for 1000$ !!! (1 tb models actually look like a scaled down version of the CPU). Fantom G-force offers a 1tb for around 400$, so you see these price variations are sometimes hard to comprehend and a big price doesn't necessarily mean better quality or even service.

4) Other aspects such as portability: Portability necessiates doing away with power cords as far as possible and making the hard disk slimmer and hence more costlier too.
For example: Seagate has two models that offer 160 gb:
a) A 3 inch thick * 8 * 5 hard disk with 7200 rpm at - 103 $ requiring the use of power. This is ofcourse portable but heavier and requires the use of power.
b) A 1 inch thick * 5 * 3 hard disk with 5400 rpm at - 150 $ requiring the use of only a USB 2.0 port. This is a slim, power free but costlier model.

5) Some minor aspects that nevertheless count are the sturdiness of the disk (thick metal cover etc), the level of noise produced during operation, presence or lack of irritatingly bright leds', errors after formatting. Now, formatting to NTFS needs to be done as soon as the hard disk is purchased since FAT 32 doesn't support transfer of files of size greater than 4gb onto the external hard disk. On some models, when this formatting is completed, some error messages keep coming up which could be a pain.

On the whole, selecting a model from among Seagate, Lacie, Western digital, etc comes down to the budget at hand, portability required, frequency of usage and the 'anticipated' size of back up and usage of external hard disk. Ofcourse I haven't mentioned customer service here, some brands such as Seagate have a reputed customer service, a few others are supposedly average in their response. All this information is gleaned from discussion forums and product reviews at websites such as newegg.com, cnet, etc and hence the authenticity is debatable.

P.S. I would appreciate feed back from people who have bought external hard disks, on how they perform, etc.

Where am I headed?

2007-02-10T03:03:00.000-08:00

This post might seem suspiciously similar to a blog with a similar title I posted a while back: Where do you go?. Well it is similar in the concerns expressed, but the context(expect a lot of word and meaning dance on this word) is different.

The following text is structured into 4 sections. Each section is independent of the other and can be read as such with minor interlinkages. Section II is essential to this post and is relevant to my current state of things, the rest of the sections are add-ons and sometimes plain fluff. But, you might find sections III(connecting three seemingly different fields) and IV(inter-linkages and abstraction) more interesting than the other sections if you dig technical stuff.

Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4

I. Introduction

 Jump to II

Where am I headed? I find myself asking this question often, so much so that I have a notion of being "lost in life", and it comes up as a status message on google talk inadvertently while I keep reverting back to 'available' and my friends seem amused. Not sure the previous sentence made sense, but yeah, the sentence is open to interpretation: The meaning you look for, you shall find. Now, another thing I am also 'being' these days is philosophical. Infact you can look to the right of this page and see that a whole new blog has transpired because of this tendency. One might argue that this post should rightfully belong to that 'other' blog. I have my reasons for posting it on this blog, anyway, where am I headed? Right now, nowhere in particular, I mean I need to get back home and catch some sleep, but that can wait.
But seriously, where am I headed? Well again, nowhere in particular. I mean I have just started out on a Phd, where do you think graduate students are headed? I mean for another 4-7 years, depending on my procrastinating abilities, I shall waddle around looking at the ducks at the Drumheller fountain in the campus, as I pass by them to my lab and back everyday. So yes, there is research and temporary coursework to fit in the details of these 4-7 years, but the big question is where's the big picture?

II. Levels and states

Go back to I
Jump to III
Or IV

There are three broad levels and many states that can describe 'where I am headed'.

The broad levels are basically all plausible possibilities that I can see myself getting into, say 5-6 years down the line. The states are essentially what happens within the context of these levels, it can describe what I think of where I am headed at any given point. The levels and the corresponding states are described as follows:

Level 1) Get into the industry after my phd, earn dollars or rupees and life goes on.

State: This is a fuzzy thing right now, I am not particular about earning big money and hence my aspirations in this field are negligible as of now.

Level 2) Continue research after a Phd, which can happen in a few ways: Faculty at a university, Research scientist at an organization or industry.
I am describing a few possible states at this level:

State a) Big picture clear, but the details are fuzzy: Here I refer to the 'area of research' as the big picture. This state is more or less a temporary problem and is usually considered normal. Can be worked out. I mean you will have glitches in your research and you may be less motivated at times than others, but you are sure which area you want to work on right.

State b) Deatils are on, but the big picture is fuzzy (similar to 'lost in life' I mentioned earlier):
Now, this means that you are doing research and course work, things that grad students do, but you are not sure if you want to stay in the area of reasearch you are currently on. Now, this by no means is a temporary problem, indeed to determine if this is a problem at all requires time and thinking. It's like when you say, 'give it time, things will sort out for themselves'. Only that, we are talking 4-7 years in a given area and once you are decided on an area its hard to shift to areas that are a little unrelated.

Hence area of research needs to be more or less the same, with minor variations over time.
My state right now is that my big picture is a little fuzzy in that I am undecided on the level of theoretical or mathematical rigor I would like in my research. I am also undecided on whether to decide anything about this undecisiveness. To understand the previous statements in detail, visit section III.

Level 3) ??. The ?? or question marks are fuzzy areas: Things that I am 'open' to, things I am not clear about, dreams, etc. For instance, I am 'open' to the idea of being an entrepreuner, but I recognize fully well that I lack the skill sets especially on the financial and managerial aspects required for a successful start-up.

State: This is ofcourse a wild dream, but I am just open to it as of now. Entrepreuners are the order of the day and are needed big time back in India, is one idea I believe in. We have a lot(or many??) of IT startups but how many technological start-ups? What are the core needs that India might face in the next 10 years? Well these are really broad questions and may have little to do with one being an entrepreuner per se, but one needs to be aware of the state of things before plunging into it and I am sure I would be more aware of these details as I proceed down the time line. But its nevertheless fuzzy right now.

III. Brief diversion into intepretation of optimization in Math, Industrial Engineering and Transportation:

Go back to II or I Jump ahead to IV

This diversion is essential to understanding the context behind my dilemma and can be read independent of the rest of the post.
Consider the three broad areas of transportation engineering, industrial engineering and Maths. At first these may seem unrelated areas, but a closer look can bring out possible connections.
Transportation engineering has to deal with operation and management of transportation systems. (I am more into the operations part of it, though management and operations are inter-related for example in decision support systems). Transportation systems could be systems involving rail transit, bus transit, air, shipping, etc. Transportation, again is a very broad area, atleast to transportation engineers(you see how narrowed down research can get) and the area I want to work on is optimization applications in transportation. Now here, what we have is a methodology (optimization) being applied to a field (transportation). For instance, I can have a problem where I want to optimize the operation of a transit system i.e optimize the routes and schedule of the transit to minimize costs, waiting time, etc.
Now, industrial engineering is again a pretty broad field with connections to mechanical engineering in inventory control, etc, and operations research. Operations research is the science of optimization: how to twiddle or tweak the parameters of a system so that the system performs better. It basically is a methodological field with applications in many fields including manufacturing, electrical systems , transportation, chemical engineering, basically any problem that entails "better performance".
So you have the nail(optimization) and the head(transportation in my case), you can't really separate them out, but you can state the degree to which you would like to use each of them or look at each of them - basically your focus.

Now, we are already heady with all the nails and heads and the hammering, along comes math to make it even more bumpy. Math is again a very broad field with topics ranging from abstract algebra, number theory, optimization, calculus, harmonic series, etc.
Did you just notice that optimization came in the list. So how is "mathematical optimization" different from what industrial engineers call "operations research".
Again its the area of focus: Mathematicians tend to be more rigorous, they are more into the mathematical "exactness" of the subject. There is a structure, there are axioms, theorems and proofs. You can't just state something loosely about optimization methods without inviting criticism from Math professors (and this has been my personal experience). Everything needs to be laid down in white and black.
Everything's got to have a proof. That's the bottom line.

So we have just seen three broad areas of research and as you proceed from Math (optimization) to Industrial engineering (operations research and its application) to Transportation Engineering (Pure application), things get pretty watered down in terms of 'preciseness' and the 'theoretical rigour', but they also get pretty exciting, since the real world is by no means laid out in black and white and unpredictability arouses excitement. By the way, there is a whole area of research on unpredictability: Stochastic processes. Reasearch in transportation is sometimes very data oriented(e.g. Intelligent transportation systems) and hence a whole lot of time is spent interpreting data sometimes in an unstructured manner and this is where I am currently facing a problem. This is where I am 'lost', I want to decide very soon, the 'degree of theoretical rigor' I want in my research and this could mean shifting directions, shifting research and getting more of the 'nail' than the 'head'. Getting more of the nail, could either mean bringing in more theoretical rigor into research(can get very boring at times) and possibly shifting into researching better optimization algorithms and techniques or could mean taking the middle path also known as operations-transportation or OR-Transpo and actively update myself on current state of the practice in optimization, all the while keeping tabs on potential applications in transportation(congestion in container ports, public transit, intermodal transportation, etc).

So what am I doing about me being lost? Well, I am alert, I am keeping options open and let's see how things go.

So to describe my state in level 2, I have brought in my understanding(or lack thereof) of optimization in math, industrial engineering and transportation - Interesting.

IV. Related and unrelated final comments

Go back to I or II or III

Post-script and Gripe: This whole division of areas of research into engineering, science, philosophy(yes even that), humanities, arts (making a good power-point presentation is an art, as many would agree) at a very broad level don't make sense, since new science, new engineering are merging rapidly with other fields. Quantum physics necessiates the need for an observer, it brings in subjectivity and consequently philosophical paradigms. Many inter-disciplinarly fields of quantum-bio-computing, mathematical finance, and possibly Philosophy of science(really?) call for inter-disciplinary collaborations and we are now seeing a shift from traditional divisions of knowledge into such and such areas to this, that and them areas put together. I see this in some universities: Department of electircal engineering and computer science or department of civil engineering and engineering mechanics, etc.

Post-Post script: Why does optimization fascinate me. We all seek perfection in life, in work, in relationships, etc. However optimization is not just about perfection, which could also mean being effective. We are looking for efficiency in this effectiveness, the thought that there is one possible way or a set of possible ways in which a system can perform at its optimum is something fascinating. But then a question arises on the context of this optimization. What scale are you looking at? How big is your system, etc. You can be efficient in a given system but can cause unfavourable ramifications in a system nearby or a related system. So you see, subjectivity comes into optimization too. But operations researchers are very clever, for that matter engineers too, they restrict themselves to the 'scope' of the problem. This restricting to the scope is something environmentalists don't appreciate apparently(in a related context). But all is not lost, this 'scope' is broadening, as we see the effects of our technology on the environment and we are in a general sense, becoming more aware of the need to broaden this scope - this inter-disciplinary thing is one way in which that can happen.

Post-post-post-script: This post purely describes or questions where I am headed in terms of a career in life. Other possible connotations are out of scope of this blog and are left to the reader's imagination.

Flirting with Death - Dan Osman

2007-02-09T19:07:00.000-08:00

The above pic shows Dan Osman lunging upward towards a hold you can see at the bottom of the pic.. He was in the air for a second when he did that...at 200ft asl. (Check 4:20 of the following video for more detailed action).

If this video isn't bad ass, what is? Maybe this one. You look at crazy, insane, wacko, fearless and larger-than-life men like Dan Osman and what do you say? You say nothing. You are in awe, filled with a real deep respect and you wish you could do a minute fraction of what he's done. We are not talking about rock climbing here, we are talking about free soloing - climbing rock cuts or faces without ropes and no other support whatsoever. To be able to do what Dan Osman's done requires transcendence, plain and simple. Even the slightest fear, which reflects a lack of confidence( and how does confidence come in such an extreme max sport?), would invite panic and panic, when you are hanging in space if not immediately brought down will ultimately bring you down...free fall to the ground and death.

P.S. Dan Osman died at the ripe young age of 35 in 1998, not while free soloing but during controlled free fall (similar to bungee-jumping but in a natural setting), when the rope attached to his body got cut. Dan lived life the way he wanted to and to that end I bow down before the man.
The song in the first video is from Metallica's first album (known as Metallica or The black album) called The Unforgiven II

More videos: Fire in the hole
Blues riff

The jet lag route to heaven

2007-02-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

When I landed here in Seattle, a few months back - I was sleeping at 4pm and getting up at 1am. Weird but that's extreme jetlag for you. IST is 12.5 hrs ahead of Seattle (that's without day light savings ofcourse), so all hell broke loose when I landed in Seattle after a weary, gruelling 26.5 hrs of journey time(Hyderabad - Frankfurt - Portland - Seattle). But in a way it was good, because it was an opportunity to experience the freshness of early mornings. Unfortunately it didn't last long, soon I was back to sleeping at 4 am. My friend commented on how I was sleeping IST in seattle - that's not exactly true but, yeah(btw, in that vein I used to sleep East US time in India).
The point I am getting to is, for people who are on the border line as I sometimes get to - sleeping at 6 am - 8 am and getting up at 2 pm in the afternoon, there's 'another' way to get back to normal sleeping times, by normal I mean sleeping around 9 - 11 pm. Just extend the jet-lag principle, you are halfway into it anyway.
This for example is an excerpt from my sleeping routine some time back:
Day...Sleeping time
1 .....4 am
2......5 am
3......7 am (when you are used to sleeping at 4 am, so far is manageable. The pain starts from the next entry)
4.....8:30 am
5.....10 am
6.....2 pm (This was a little too much for me, but keeping the end result in mind, I endured)
7....4 pm (Note, I have reached the time stamp I was sleeping at when I landed in Seattle, from now on is familiar territory!)
8... 5 pm (End in sight, keep it going)
9... 6:30 pm (Going good, a few more days before I stabilize)
10... 7 pm
11... 7:30 pm
12... 9 pm
13... 9 pm
14... 8 pm
15.. 9:30 pm (More or less stabilized)

So it took me around 13 days to stabilize to 'normal' sleeping time. That's ridiculous you say, not to mention the pain of staying awake for an extra hour or two or more every day so that you can go down the time line. Well, the point is, it works and I have tried it out both during the recent winter break and during the last quarter loaded with assignments and quizzes. Besides, it was only day 4 - day 7 that seemed really tough for me, days 1 - 3 and days 8 - 13 was familiar turf. This method is more suited for people who have 'real' flexibility in working hours and other committments; if it were not to be so, this wouldn't apply to you anyway since you would more or less be having a set routine. Having said that, you need to be more or less desparate to take this route, having given up on all other methods.

So how do I come about sleeping at 4 am anyway. Well, I have always been good at procrastinating things and so if I have a deadline tomorrow, say in documenting some work, I don't start still late into the night at 11pm. So that I sleep at 6 am the next day. Now, keep repeating this 6 am thing and you would soon stabilize at 4am, when I say stabilize, it means the body is ok with sleeping at 4 am but it's not a 'great' feeling getting up at 11 am.

On the other hand, sleeping at 10 pm and getting up at 5 am is actually heaven, especially if you were to go out early in the morning for a jaunt or run. Even if you don't that's fine, I am sure you would have a window or two to open up. The freshness of air, the cool breeze and a more or less heightened state of awareness resulting in better functioning of body and mind are a few things that make it worth your while if you were to sleep early and wake up early.

On Lucidity and the thread that unfolds

2007-01-19T11:23:00.000-08:00

Lucid. What does this word mean? The meaning of this word centers around clarity. Instances of the word in use: Lucidity in thought, lucidity in speech.
I was wondering if this word could be applied to what are known as dreams.
Lucid and dream....hmm, there are two possible ways I can think of combining these words: a) Dreaming lucidly b) Lucid dreaming

Dreaming lucidly
Now the first one, I guess has to deal with seeing dreams clearly, if that makes any sense. Dreams are anyway vague so why bother making them more clear, they might lose their charm, so you say. I can't agree more. But on second thought, I do think there might be an unexplored world of unusual visual sights awaiting us if only the dreams which we dream were to be more clear and colourful(which might be the case with many, though I am not sure). All the dreams that I chance upon are more or less seen in black and white, but sometimes its not even that, its more of a caricaturial interaction of people discussing and doing vague things in even vaguer situations. Though I tend to forget dreams, the one thing I remember about them is wondering in the dream how some incident could occur, as it was something out of the world!, something that doesn't happen in waking life, something that doesn't obey the physical laws that we know of. For where else, would you happen to observe a usb-drive metamorphising into a cell-phone.

Lucid dreaming is a term that refers to the state where a person who is dreaming realises at some point that he is seeing a dream and is then said to have become lucid. Astounding but possible. There are many resources on the web that cater to this particular paradigm of becoming lucid.
The movie waking life deals with this particular concept in depth and also touches upon associated philosophical tenets.
In the movie, the dreamer(D)interacts with many characters in the dream world and has brief discussions on topics ranging from free will to quantum physics, philosophy and dreams. He even wakes up in a dream only to realise that he is still in the dream!! He is taught by a dream character(DC1) on how to identify whether one is in the dream world or the so-called real world. According to DC1, digital watches malfunction in a dream as do light switches. Thanking DC1 on this piece of information, D begins to leave the room where the discussion occurs and just to test this piece of information, flips a light-switch and is baffled when it doesn't turn the light-bulb off!!
In another instance, D wakes up from a horrible dream and takes a look at the digital-watch and he can't decipher the time and then the realisation hits real hard - He can't get out of the dream. Well, that's another story altogether.
This reminds me of a story by Chuang Tzu. 'I remember having a dream where I dreamt that I was a butterfly happily fluttering around. And when I woke up, I didn't understand whether I was a butterfly now dreaming that I was a human or whether I was a human who had just woken up from a butterfly dream.'
I think 'dreaming lucidly' and 'lucid dreaming' are pretty much connected since, when you know that you are in a dream, you might want the dream to be more clear or lucid. Or maybe we(I) don't remember much of what hapenned in a dream once we wake up, and hence can't detail the clarity of the dreams.

Waking life is a great movie touching on many deep and abstract concepts necessiating revisits to the movie to actually comprehend the essential message of the movie(if there is one), which is built on seemingly random events that are woven together in a framework that makes sense - the dream. And I recently chanced upon it for the nth time around and in one of the encounters D has with a dream character(DC2), an interesting event unfolds: D is descending a stairway presumably into a subway and bumps into a woman(DC2). He excuses himself and starts proceeding when DC2 calls back to D and asks if they could go over it again. D bulbs and doesn't understand what she means by that.

The thread that unfolds
DC2 explains how we are all like ants moving around in an ant colony with antennas to recept people and send out standard responses. You see a person in the hallway approaching you, you wait till the gap narrows down to the appropriate distance, give a glance and say 'hello' or 'how are you doing'. Actually speech is not necessary here, even a nod would have sufficed, since what's actually happened is the acknowledgement of the existence of the other person. The 'hello', 'how are you doing' is just a euphemism or a social construction that presents the acknowledgment in a more pleasing manner. Would you like to have a conversation beyond the 'hello, how are you doing' - Probably not. And why is that? Oh, we are all busy people like the ants doing things that busy people do - Again a social construction: The need to be busy all the time or convey the same. Otherwise you would get comments like, "Jobless fellow, go do some work". And I have found this tendency to be busy both during weekdays and weekends particularly prevalent in the US in the few months that I have been here to experience what I am talking about. The American dream ofcourse, be busy all the time. Work hard, climb up the ladder. What if I didn't want to work hard, maybe I just wanted to have some fun.

The distinction between 'work' and 'fun' comes in the first place because work is not considered as something people would love to do per se, not to say of doing it and really liking it all the time. You work over the week, so that you can do things that are fun during the weekends and in general over your life time. What if life was meant to be fun or let's say 'work' that's fun, then the societal contraption that's been put into place would make it difficult to do the same. For instance, its tough to not to do anything at all for a day here. All the work that needs to be done is compressed into 5 days and the weekend is associated with fun and stuff like that and then you complain that the week was very stressful. Ofcourse it will be. I mean, you can work and have fun on all days including the weekend right. This repetitive cycle of getting stressed out and de-stressing over the weekend seems pretty depressing to me.
Also notice that the transition is easy only one way: From work to fun. Not the other way around. What's called the monday blues. I mean what's the point in saying you work hard and stuff if its not balanced and not enjoyable. Not my model of work and life.

More exotic fusion music

2007-01-14T15:23:00.000-08:00

This can be considered a follow-up post to the The fusion route to Indian classical Music.
I found some nice videos on the tube, a couple of days back:
1) Percussion tango: Tabla(Zakir Hussain) meets the Japanese Drum
- Here. Its wonderful to see how the Japanese drummer starts out tentatively, but then gradually gets into perfect rhythm with the Tabla. Reminded me of the drums used for the music played in the carnival in Matrix II.
2) Guitar and Sitar - Here. Reminds me of the music background for the serial "Bomkesh Bakshi" aired on DD1. This piece has an excellent beginning and ending, with pop level music in between, interspersed with classical notes on sitar.
3) Guitar and Tabla - Here. Worth a click.
4) Guitar, Indian ensemble, Zakir Hussain and John Mclaughlin : Then and now. Same music and spirit.
5) Trance and Tabla?? Seriously, check it out here.
6) Beenie man and Tabla!! - Here
7) Another fusion with Tabla - Tabla Guy - Here

These are really an aside and not fusion per se(thought it would be good to put stuff in one place):
8) Tabla dude, Zakirs' tutelage - here
9) Zakir and Shiva Kumar(Santoor) - here
10) An intro by Suresh to mridangam, a south Indian percussion instrument - here
11) An intro by Suresh to ghatam, again, another south Indian percussion instrument - here
12) An intro to South Indian classical(carnatic) vocal by Soumya - here
13) Alam Khan's intro to Sarod - Here

Finally, unrelated to fusion music or classical music (call them psychedelic if you will), one of my favourite rock songs(click here to know why) ever:
14) Blue oyster cult, 'Astronomy' Live - Here
15) Drums to the above music - remix - Here

From Enigma variations, Rob Douglan to Free running

2006-12-30T23:47:00.000-08:00

The evolution.

Nature came about.
Man came about.
Nature inspired man.
Man made inspirational music.
Along came Enigma variations by Edward Elgar
Which was ripped/remixed by Rob Douglan into Clubbed to Death
Which inspired Russian Free runners to set their free running video to this tune
And the American counterparts did the same
Videos that followed on had variations of the same music
While some limited that music to serve as an introductory piece, as a mark of respect.

"Running is bad for your knees" - A myth busted

2006-12-26T17:35:00.000-08:00

This post is dedicated to all you non-runners out there. Yo, you guys rock.

Any time I tell "non-runners" , that I run during my free time(that's how it comes up..What do you do man..Play football [or soccer for Americans], basket-ball, etc?), they all go: 'Oh that's nice, but uh..I think its bad for your knees'. Man, atleast have the decency to put your prejudice as a question: "Don't or do you think its bad for your knees" is much better than "Its bad for the knees. I therefore don't run nor should you."

People who run or jog regularly(with flexibility in runs), have a feel for their runs, care about their form..questions like, "How does my leg feel", constantly come up when you run. Good form is also aesthetically pleasing to look at. People who run also think of running as a sport. Why else would they be doing it? I don't need to lose weight, I need to gain weight if you ask me. But even if you take up running to lose weight( that's the best way to do it), you would soon stop obsessing about losing weight and focus more on enjoying your runs. And running is not as easy as you think. It involves completely surrendering to how your body feels on any particular day. Do you know how hard that is? You want to go out fast today, you can't. Why? Because the body isn't ready. And why is that? Because it hasn't recovered from the fast run yesterday. And how do you know if your body has recovered or not? That's what you call listening to your body.

People who start walking all of a sudden can do it daily without a problem. People who start running all of a sudden and try doing it everyday, end up with a runner's knee. Again why? Because you are not yet sensitive to your body's signs of inability. I understand its tough to know "how your body feels", I have been through it many times, when I have had a lay off. Its always tough to comeback. If you go back to some of my posts, you would understand that. But that doesn't mean you give up. Its a subtle art of deciding what pace you want to run at any given moment during the run and how far to run on each day.
Following a schedule strictly in running is a great recipe for ending up with runner's knee or shin splits

When I started running regulary 3 years back, I frequently sucummbed to shin splits. Why? I committed the classic mistakes of sticking to a schedule. Run every day at the same pace(atleast slow down on a few days). My uncle who walks for 2 hrs every day, would ask me what's the use of running if you can't do it regularly? Here's my answer: Running is a completely different ball-game altogether. I challenge you non-runners. If you think running is easy enough, go out and run. See for yourself if you can run regularly for a month or even two weeks, make progress and not get injured. Running is a sport, the rules are decided by the body. Simple.

Now, the past three months, I haven't run much..Just 2-3 runs per week. But the good thing is, I haven't had a single indication of pain in my legs during these runs so far. If during a run, my legs started feeling heavy and painful, I would just slow down or stop. But almost always slowing down helped. Its always the initial two-three weeks after a long period of non-running which is really painful, since the body is adapting itself to the rigors of running, to the constant pounding the legs has to take, there is also some losing of weight involved so as to get back in 'running shape'. After that initial phase, running becomes really enjoyable, something to look forward to, not something that needs to be done to attain any specific end per se.

Links:
1) Hal Higdon

Fantastico

2006-12-25T04:48:00.000-08:00

It was 3:30 am in the morning. I was feeling really groggy, I had woken up a few hours back and now my body simply refused to listen to my comparatively alert mind. I was contemplating going back to sleep vs doing something productive. And then it hit me. Yep, this body wants some running. Let's satisfy its craving. True, it has been a week since I ran and as I stepped out, and took my first few steps into the run, the body simply took off. I was like, wow someone's really in mood today..bring it on baby. I maintain a running log and I realised that this run would definitely would come up as one of the faster runs in the log in the past few months. Though my bowels weren't empty, I was having a good time, who wouldn't when the body is ready for action. The side-stitches(rawly described as stomach cramps due to food in the stomach coupled with fast running) did crop up later into the run, but I just kept on cruising, striding my legs off. The last 1.5 kms were pretty intense and I was doing 4:12/km or 6:43/mile pace and despite the stitches, managed it well. And the time: 5kms in 23:13 a definite progress over the past three months(earlier times were around 26-27 mins for 5k), considering that I am not running more than 2-3 runs/week. This run reminds me of my days back in campus..We used to do 4kms in 15 - 16 mins flat. I am no way near that fitness now, but this run surely proves an inspiration to keep running and improve my times.

Youtube laughs

2006-12-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

Warming up
1) Real funny baby laugh
2) Contagious hysterical baby laugh

Going good
3) Car without a driver
4) Babies again

Real hysteria
5) I am happy, I am relaxed!

And Finally
6) Laughter club - London
7) Laughter club - Virginia

There are a bunch of videos on the tube and I strongly recommend anyone who needs a break to browse through them. Happy laughing!

Tam hip-hop - Yogi B and Natchathra

2006-12-19T22:33:00.000-08:00

Though its a bit old, mixing ilayaraja's composition in a hip-hop framework deserves mention: Madai Thiranthu(album: vallavan)

This is the Malaysian band's website: Yogi B and Natchatra
I found the lyrics in a couple of blogs. Some of them are lyrics1 (incomplete but better wordings) and lyrics2 (accurate at many places and complete)

Now, if someone could translate the lyrics to english that would be great. My tam's decent(vernacular) but this stuff goes over my head.

For my reference, I am pasting the lyrics(appropriately combined from the above two) here. I have also pitched in my version(with errors) of the english translation of rap 3 (fast forward 4:02 - 4:46)

makkalukku ne eduthu sollu (Bring it out to the public)

Damn Its gonna blow...Thaavum nadhi alai naan...(I am like the wave of a river??)
Maybe u shud know...Koovum siru kuyil naan....(I am like the koel that sings sweet)
Isai kalaignan..yen aasaigal aayiram..ninaithadhu palithadhu...*2 (I am a wanna be music artist who has a thousand dreams and sees them being successful)

Rap 1:

En urai thuvangum mun..nalla ulangalukku nandri
Nandri thaayae..neeyo idi thaangi..thandhai neeyo sumai thangi....
Pasi Kodumai..Nadaipadhaiyil Urakkam...
Aasai kedakkudhu karanam....Iraivanin irakkam...
Ethanai Yaemaatram..Anudhinam Avamaanam...
Edhayum thaangum ullam ...thodarum isai payanam...
Tholaival gaanam paada vendum Natchathiram...
Thodarndhu poaraadum...kalaignanin manam...
Thottakal thullaikkadhu....anugundu thagarkkadhu....
Avamanam yen uyirai azhikkadhu...
Adhigaram yen kanavai thadukkadhu.....
Karuppinar sollisai maindhan kidakkatum....
Sentamizh sollisiai selvendhar pirakattum...
Viyakka vaikkum thiruppangal ini nigazhum...
Bramikka vaikkum padai...ini thodarum...
Pudhiya parimaanam...padai edukkum...
Natchathirangalin jananam adhai mudivedukkum.

[End of Rap 1]

Damn Its gonna blow...Thaavum nadhi alai naan...
Maybe u shud know...Koovum siru kuyil naan....
Isai kalaignan..yen aasaigal aayiram..ninaithadhu palithadhu...*2

Rap 2:

angara thanduvom matmajothil~adaiyum neram
aay thiru mugam sen nirumbulee kondu garbam
andha sarasaram adangee alambel vaaai thalam.
sutham nilavaadhu adiga budiga natpu nelabey kolabey sedhapey badhbey sedhabey sumandhu thenna maram aaka naanga neeka
vidabey vidabey vidabey vidabey un karunai kalaivaaney
isai thaayey kalai arul thaa nee
ullai needhi indha rap paaatathil aaga mothatthil
pasuthoppol theeya puli anaindhavanukku unna
we lie vallavn manadhil aasai kottai katti pozhuludupokku avan ivan paathu vetti peychu
peychukku ennada peychu pasangala ippo ennada aachu vandha nasaikkal kai kodi serthadhu [Sollarom Le]
varumo theriyadhu vallavanin maru pagudhi annaney pugal keetu padam vidum thodangumey idhu voru

[End of Rap 2]

Netru yen araingile...nizhalgalin naadagam....
Indru yen edhirilay...nijangalin....dharisanam...
Varum kaalam..vasantha kaalam..naalum mangalam...
Varum kaalam..vasantha kaalam..naalum mangalam... Isaikena..pirikkandra...rasigargal rajjiyam....Enakkaeee dhaan.

Rap 3 [4:02 - 4:46]:

Yevanukkumay theriyadhu...(No one really knows)
Unakku sonnal puriyaadhu....(Even if I were to tell you, you wouldn't understand)
Now take you back...flashback...when I was just little...
My circle crumbled..next to the colony temple....
Hey Gundu Payya...unga amma appa chellam...(Hey fat guy, you were your mom and dad's pet)
pattanam maari poanoam...yen'na mazhai vandha vellam..(We changed cities since if it rained it was sweet??)
Pudhiya... pazhaya... ulagugal maara.... Aangilamum ..thamizhum...kalaachaarangal modha...(New and old..A change in worlds..And a clash between the English and Tamil cultures)
Kadupuchinaen'ada indha Hip Hop... (I discovered this Hip Hop)
Andru mudhal indru varai...market dont stop...market dont quit...(Since then it has been...market dont stop...market dont quit...)
Sodhanai Vedhanai..yen kannil thulaiika..Appo thumbikkai yen nambikkai...(Pain, Anxiety, reflected in my eyes..Then did my belief become firm)
Wallaloo..How...Chennai..London...Tamizhan...MC...Mudhalvan...Vallavan...
Rap Music kalai vidhiyin sambrudhaayam...Madai thirandhu..nadhi alai pol yen (Resulting in the tradition of the rap music art combined with my poetic interludes like the waves of a river)kavidhaigal thaavum....

[End of rap 3]

Damn Its gonna blow...Thaavum nadhi alai naan...Maybe u shud know...Koovum siru kuyil naan....Isai kalaignan..yen aasaigal aayiram..ninaithadhu palithadhu...*2

Adhikkarathuva orunginaippu...Isai kalaignargalin anivaguppu...
Idharkku kadavul Kaarana kartha...Idhuvae ezhudhapadum..idai vidaadhu thodarum...Indri amaiyaadha...Isai Thenamudhaagum.

Kavidhaiku enna kattupaadu....Madai Thirandhu alai paayum yen soll isai mettu...Iraivan mattum arivaan...naan sindhiya veyarvai..ratham ..thyagam...

The funny original of the rap remix can be found here: Madai Thiranthu

What's your speed?

2006-12-18T17:12:00.000-08:00

According to the special theory of relativity that's no question. Its a fact. Every single object in the universe we know of, you and me included, is always in motion at the speed of light.
What if I were at rest(relative), say I am sitting in front of the computer reading this blog? Then you are not moving through space, but through time at the speed of light(c). Since space-time is considered as one medium in relativity, at any given point in time your combined motion in space and time would be at the speed of light.
And what if you were to be travelling at the speed of light, i.e. to say your speed through space is 1 billion kmph. Then you wouldn't be a time traveller(you wouldn't age at all). This gives a new perspective to time. Its not that time is passing by, it's that we are passing through time(time travellers) and we can control the rate of passing or speed through time, by controlling the speed through space. The sad part is, no one's come up with a way to go back in time. Ok, enough said.

Hail the king - Haile Gebreselassie(Geb)

2006-12-17T18:36:00.000-08:00

The Ethiopian who shook up the middle distance racing scene in the nineties creating many world records to his name is now all set to take up the challenge of breaking the Marathon world record time of 2:04:55 set by Paul Tergat a few years back(2003). His recent performances in Berlin Marathon (2:05:56) and in Fukowaka, Japan (2:06:52 on 3rd Decemeber 2006) go to prove that his current level of fitness will ensure that the marathon world record doesn't stay for too long(months??). The performance in a half-marathon is a great indicator of the expected performance in a marathon and Haile has the half-marathon record of 58:55 (see bottom pic). Now, all I can say is, Go go Haile, you are the King.

Some of his personal bests:

1,500 m	3:33.73	1999-06-06	Stuttgart
Mile	3:52.39	1999-06-27	Gateshead
3,000 m	7:25.09	1998-08-28	Bruxelles
Two miles	8:01.08	1997-05-31	Hengelo
5,000 m	12:39.36	1998-06-13	Helsinki
10,000 m	26:22.75	1998-06-01	Hengelo
10 km (road)	27:02	2002-12-11	Ad-Dawhah
15 km (road)	41:38	2001-11-11	Nijmegen
Ten miles (road)	44:24	2005-09-04	Tilburg
20 km (road)*	55:48	2006-01-15	Phoenix
Half marathon	58:55	2006-01-15	Phoenix
25 km (road)	1:11:37	2006-03-12	Alphen aan den Rijn (not recognised by IAAF)
Marathon	2:05:56	2006-09-24	Berlin

Another point to note is that Haile is the only athlete after Kenyan Felix Limo to finish 4 marathon races in less than 2:07:00.

Marathon - A misnomer

2006-12-16T22:25:00.000-08:00

A: "I ran the marathon yesterday"
Me: Oh really? ( I wonder when this guy started running, leave alone running marathons)
A: Yeah
Me: How much time did you take?
A: Oh, around 30 minutes
Me: Huh? (A new world record) Oh, you mean you ran a 5km race
A: Yeah, they called the race a marathon

Ofcourse, they would call it a marathon if you ran the full distance of 42kms 195 metres. Anything less than that is called a fraction of the marathon or not-a-marathon. For example, a seattle marathon event will hold a marathon(42kms), a half marathon (21kms) and probably a "corporate" run of 5kms or 10kms. Many people run the 5km or 10km event and get an artificial sense of accomplishment. Do you know that training for a marathon can take as much as 4 months if you start from scratch? And how much time did you train for the 5km run? 3 days? Cut out that marathon crap. You either ran a full marathon or you didn't. Simple. Got to respect the distance man.

PS: This is not to say I disrespect a 5km run. I infact think 5kms is one of the toughest middle distance runs to compete in, but then I would call it a 5km race and not a marathon plus I would train for it, not just land up on the race day and run 5kms for the first time in my life and say "Oh I somehow managed to finish it". Yep, that's a wonder indeed, given you didn't train for it.
Some of my best moments in my running career have been running a 5km in 20 minutes. I have run a half-marathon, but finishing the half-marathon didn't give me even a fraction of the euphoria which running that 5km in 20 minutes gave me. Why? Because I ran the half marathon on a half-baked training of 11 days and well, for the 5km, I had been training for quite sometime.

Alu-gobi-mutter

2006-12-16T17:31:00.000-08:00

Alu-gobi-mutter (potato-cauliflower(broccoli) and peas) is one of my favourite curries. I haven't really had it in a long time...probably years. I am right now transitioning from eating crappy food to 'decent' food. A week back my stomach took a lot of beating with all the noodles I was having for my main course and it refused to accept it any further. So I was forced to start cooking rice, curry, etc..something I have feared since I landed here. I mean I haven't tried cooking food ever before, all I had was my mom's recipies for it. But wonders of wonders, alu curry (dry) turned out just ok on the first day of cooking and alu-gobi (dry), yesterday, along with curd rice was just short of being lip-smacking. Now, all I need to complete the circle is either of rasam or sambar. The past 5 years, I have hardly hard any proper south indian meal, relying heavily on chappatis and dal. Why? Because the mess food sucked big time. And even the restaurants outside the campus, only a few of them knew how to make good sambar or rasam or a good meal for that matter.

What I am arriving at here is, the north indian food that's served at the restaurants in india are state-of-the-art in terms of making the dishes(naan, rumali roti, paneer makhani, etc) as they should be, but the same is not the case with the south indian meal. To make a good south indian meal, every single disaggregate component of the meal (rasam, curry(dry), rice, koot,koyambu, etc) should be up to the mark. Even if one of them is done badly(its easy to mess them up), the overall taste goes for a toss. If you want to have a good south indian meal, it invariably has to be a home made one. And if restaurants do prepare them well, there are very few of them(saravana bhavan, etc) and pretty costly(2-2.5 times) relative to most south indian restaurants. This only means that the south indian restaurants have pandered to attract more customers by underpricing the meals and consequently 'averaging out' the quality of the meals or maybe that just is the attitude adopted by these restaurants and no one's looked to change the same. Well, this is ofcourse just my opinion based on my experiences and should be taken in with a pinch of salt and pepper ;)

End of quarter

2006-12-14T16:10:00.000-08:00

Yep. Good times.
Came here, got thulped first few weeks with all the things going on in life - searching for apartment, searching for roomate, searching for a bike, searching for buildings and locations..you get the picture.
And then when all seemed well, came the onslaught of assignments. One of the courses I took had 7 assignments, 4 labs, two quizzes, one end term and one term report - Can you beat that? The other two courses weren't that bad.
Adjustment and adaptation to the system took me one month. I learnt that the best thing to do with courses bombarding you with assignments is to just print on a piece of paper the due dates for the assignments from all the courses and atleast know when what is due..eh.
Once, I did that, things were back where they should have been, the familiar nightout/intense workout before due date fundaes..And now the quarter has come to an end. Got to plan some biking trips to exotic locales around here and if possible get some mountaineering in, though it might be dangerous with possible landslides. But I will definitely accept some variations like rock climbing and bouldering though buildering might be a long shot here (I have climbed my house bottom up back in hyd).

On flat screens and plain water

2006-12-12T23:32:00.000-08:00

Take a piece of white cotton cloth, dip in water, wring it till no water drips off..i.e. it is just about moist. Switch off your laptop or LCD monitor. Start at the top left corner or any convenient point and in a slow circular motion very very very gently caress the screen. Repeat till you have whole of the screen covered. Now we have all the smudges and marks off the screen. Run time for the whole process - (15 - 45) mins.
Pros - Can save you the frustration caused when you log onto your computer and look at the modern art for a brief while, while the computer loads.
Cons - Time consuming and doesn't work for oily smudges.
Conclusion - To be attempted when frustration reaches its peak and/or when there r lots of free time.

Of snow, slippery roads and the cliched runs

2006-12-06T15:42:00.000-08:00

Two weeks back was the first time I saw snow in my life..in reality. I was sleeping longer than usual and as I pulled the blanket closer and looked out the window, I wondered why the rain out the window was so thick and precipitating at a slow rate.
3 hrs later, wide awake, I couldn't stop looking out the window.

Black smoke
In the background
Buildings
all around
And pure white snow
gathering on the ground

My mounting fear abound
Could I run on the slushy ground
When the time came near
Could I withstand the cold weather

For I have missed runs in the past
With disastrous impacts
Not that I wished that happen again
I went out onto the terrain
Painful at first it was
Mangaeable when I avoided the white extras
And fun
When I realised I was indeed doing my regular run

Cliched ending:(Calling some thing cliched and mentioning it anyway, sounds cliched to me now[add loop for the cliched calling the cliched][infinite])

Before I knew
I had a bad flu
I summoned up my might
And took the last right
For the end was near
I had no reason to fear
A run of a kind
To be stowed away
In my mind
To be remembered
When I unwind
From a race of a stressful kind

Abstract/philosophical or 'plain shady' ending:
Consistency they say
Paves the way
For that sought after progressive state
Follow the path
Before its too late

Ah, but its never too late
The choice you make
Only delays the date
For as long as there is intent
Its manifestation is imminent
A time machine would make it easier I know
For I could look into the so called future you know
All said and done
A routine can sometimes be fun
As long as you can maintain one
In the markovian process called 'the run'

I dabble in poetry. That's about it.
Now to mention something about real running eh..

Briefly, I have managed 10 runs in the past 25 days..Not bad I say, but again I can invoke the last but one para of the shady ending to the above poem and say consistency.............

Basically been running 4-5 kms @ 8 min/mile (I must say I am adjusting well to living in america, for I can use kms and miles in the same breath). But as Henry Rono, who's competing in the masters segment, would say in the lets run forums....I am starting to feel less fires in my legs and more lightness...Meaning, my runs are getting better.
But the roads are not good. I repeat, they are not good at all. The gilman trail has some muddy paths, but that's beyond what I run. So I got to long, so that I run comfortable. So long.

Bike Incident II: Lost and found

2006-11-25T23:12:00.000-08:00

My bike is one hellofan adventerous bike...It likes to get involved in accidents and likes to get stolen for short periods of time, I believe..

I come out of my department building and usually I just look to where my bike is(20 yards away) and I always find my bike at where I look..Except that tonight it wasn't where it was supposed to be. Were my eyes deceiving me?

What would be your reaction if you were to find your $500 road bike missing?
Mine was.."Oh another one of those unnerving, shocking incidents that's been happening to me lately."

I don't know why but I just ran down the stevens way and as if it were to be, a police car was waiting around the corner and the patrol sergeant was just about to get into the car. I explained to him the situation and he met me again at the scene of theft. The U-lock which is normally supposed to be hooked to the frame of the bike was placed around the parking slot frame..a grave mistake. And the cord that I use to lock the back and front tires of my bike was cut..into two.
The sergeant asked me a couple of questions and most importantly asked if I knew the serial number of the bike. I told him I could get that info. from the bike shop tomorrow. I was given a case number and asked to fill in the serial number of the bike on to the case record asap.
I was kind of annoyed at how casually I was reacting to this situation. I was like, yeah the bike's stolen, but can you do anything about it now? No.

I wondered if the thief was from the campus. Probably. The bike wasn't parked for more than 5 hrs before it was stolen, so this guy probably had to be someone familiar with when and at what frequency people come in and out of buildings, when the roads are deserted and a general familiarity with the workings of the campus: especially with the patrol car doing its rounds every half hour and given that my bike was parked close to the road.

I unlocked the U-lock from the parking frame and placed it in my bag, just in case I was to find my bike stashed somewhere behind the trees or if it were to magically pop up in front of me...somehow.

Now, the thing hit me. It usually takes 5 minutes to get to my home..by bike. Walking would take 15 minutes. I could manage walking daily, but the bike...that's...that's my precious.

I proceeded now in an arbitrary direction towards the gilman trail..Why? I don't know..Some thought that I might somehow find it there. Just as I entered the trail, I saw two bikes of a similar make parked at a nearby parking slot. One of them didn't have a back tire(apparently stolen), the other was ok. The locking mechanisms used in both the bikes were the same U-lock. Lucky bike I thought.
I gave up hope now, the only way I would get my bike was if the guy were to land up at a pawn shop and the pawn shop owner were to notice that the serial number of the bike was one in the stolen bikes list supplied by the campus police.

There's nothing I can do about that too, so I started walking back towards my department and then one guy comes riding a road bike(that looks like mine) and parks it in the exact same spot where I had locked my bike. I run upto him and ask him what the hell is going on. He had an interesting story about his friend stealing my bike and him returning it back. "I had my bike stolen once and it was pretty bad, and I don't know why my friend did that. So I decided to return it."

I was happy that my bike was back and in good shape and after a few more questions I let him go.
A while later, I come out of the department to see a car parked by the road side and our sergeant staring at my bike and going around it and shaking his head. I go towards my bike, and he exclaims, "How..how did you find the bike?"
I thought of telling him that all this was a game, but I let that pass and briefed him on the new development.

The fusion route to Indian classical music

2006-11-24T01:51:00.000-08:00

Indian classical music can be broadly classified as Hindustani and Carnatic. One is popular in the north and the other in the south. But they complement each other very well, as can be seen from fusion albums of the two genres of classical Indian music.
One such fusion is the "Remembering Shakti" live performance, which has five greats coming together:
John Mcloughlin - Of the famous Al Di Meola, Paco De Lucia and John Mcloughlin guitar trio
Mandolin Srinivas - Unmatched god and my role model for carnatic music on the mandolin
Zakhir Hussain - The tabla God. Period.
V Selvaganesh - A Percussionist who plays the mridangam, ghatam and Kanjira equally well.. I have seen him perform at the IIT bombay Mood Indigo cul fest and he was awesome.
Shankar Mahadevan (vocal) - Shankar Mahadevan needs no real introduction, as he has sung popular numbers in movies like Dil Chahta Hai, etc and is also popular down south.

There are many songs on the youtube from this performance, but I recommend the following song for a first intro to classical Indian carnatic music:
Giriraja Sutha
Giriraja sutha is a popular carnatic song and is set in the Bangala Raaga and the song is composed by the composition genius Thyagaraja.
Another recommended port of entry is the song Thaye Yashoda set in Thodi Raaga from the movie Morning Raga. Find the video Here.

Here's an instrumental piece where Srinivas and John complement each other very well.
Another instrumental , where the players interact and tease the music, albeit in a pleasing manner.
Remembering Shakti on youtube search.
For those interested in further exploration of Carnatic on Mandolin or for that matter any thing Indian classical, here are some sources for classical Indian music:
Kannada Audio
Music India Online

A final note: The cousin of carnatic on mandolin is carnatic on guitar. And a good exponent for the same, is Prasanna. Here are a few of his videos: Thodi, 2

P.S. If you have come thus far, you might as well watch this one. It resembles dance from Dream

Bike incident - I

2006-11-15T14:47:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1

"Aah..ah", I groaned taking in the heaviness of my forehead, looking ahead from where I was. I saw an elderly woman sitting beside me on the side-walk and staring at me in a concerned manner. I dismissed her and looked ahead to see the university bridge, I looked around to see the East lake avenue. The university bridge sounded familiar since its close to the university, but the Eastlake avenue..seemed vaguely familiar. All this was very surreal and..
"Are you alright?" asked the woman interrupting my efforts to know what was going around here. I looked at her, looked behind to see a van approaching me and looked at her again. "Am I in a dream?", I asked her.
No..no, you just fell off your bike..
"I am actually a bit disoriented here.."
Yeah I can see that.

**********
Can I have your name sir?
"Eh..is this an ambulance?", I ask with my eyes half open.
Yes sir, you just had a bad fall. Your name please.
"I will tell you everything. I want to, because I don't seem to recollect much of anything...Please ask me as many questions as possible.."
Do you know what month this is?
"huh..Novemeber..its 9th or 10th I guess"
Do you know what happened before you fell off the bike?
"Uh..I..wait..yeah..I was riding on the East Lake ave..wait I was riding from my home..yeah.so I was riding on the East lake avenue and I don't remember what happened after that"
Do you know where you were headed?
"I must have been heading towards the university"
"Is the injury severe?"
Well, the hospital guys would take a good look at you..but yes you have had some abrasions and deep cuts from what I can see.
Do you know where you live?
"I..I live at..."

**********************

20 minutes hence

Could you tell me where you are from?
I looked up and vaguely saw a man in white clothes, and from the movement of the walls around me, I guessed I was being wheeled to a ward.
"I am from India. Where are you from?...."

*************************
I am Dr. Solzberg and this is Melissa beside you..
"Hi Melissa"
We are taking you to the ER ok, we will get you covered up as you seem to be shivering and Laura would take care of you from there on.

Hi..Mr..uh..C?
"Yeah, that's me"
I am Laura, me and Melissa here would make you feel comfortable and see what needs to be done. Sound good?
"Yeah..do you have another sheet"
You mean a blanket?
"Yeah"

Ok, now we need to wrap this collar around your neck. Hold still while we do that.
No..no don't move your neck..don't help us, we need to ensure your neck is as stable as possible.

************************

Hi.
"Hi..you are..", I exclaimed as I saw a guy coming into the room.
I am Dr. Solzberg, I wheeled you in.
"Oh..ok..yeah"
"Where are you from?"
North dakota..I am actually a norwegian. I told you that remember?
"When you wheeled me in?"
Yeah
"Oh..I dont seem to recollect that.."
"So you are from the land of midnight sun eh"
he he..yeah.
Ok, let me just look at your cheeks here..Hmm..looks like a laceration and a deep gash around your eyebrow, that might need some sutures. Your shoulders seem to be swollen, minor bruises on your hands. Looks like your legs and hands are doing fine, it could have been worse.
"oh.."
Yeah, a lot of people involved in bike incidents come in here in a real bad shape.
"Oh.."
Yeah..you know..broken bones..
"Hmm.."

Hi..I am Dr. Allen.
"Hi..", I looked around to see another white clothed person come into the ward.
So what speed were you driving your bike at?
"Uh..Must have been around 15 miles an hour?", I replied as I wondered if this was
a general enquiry.
So how much is that in Kilometers?
"24 kms/hour"
Must be around 27 kmph..
"No its 24kmph"
Good..your are not doing bad. Ok, I got to go now, you are in good hands with Dr. Solzberg.
"Ha..ok".

We don't know if you have had any head or neck injury, but its standard protocol to take CT scans and xrays ok?
"Allright"
Allright, lets get you started here. I will call in an assitant to wheel you into
the radiology department. Till then, if you need any help, press this button on the remote and watch TV if you like.
"Thanks man"
Sure, no problem.

*************************
1 hr past

Hi..
"Hi..Laura"
Good, you do remember my name.
"Yeah, I seem to have had a short term memory loss and now I am clear about what happened during the incident and can recollect stuff better"
Good, ok we are just gonna change you into this gown ok..
"Fine.."
So, what hapenned?
"I was riding my bike towards the university.."
And you fell off the bike?
"Yeah..it was raining, the roads were pretty slippery and I was late for a meeting"
Hmm..
"Do you know where my bike is?"
I actually don't, the paramedics or the police might.
"The police?"
Did you see any police vans at the accident site?
"I..I actually was blacked out for sometime till the paramedic van came to the site. But I don't recall seeing any police car"
Hmm..ok, you should check up with the Seattle police, they usually clear the site, before letting the paramedics in.
"But mine wasn't actually an accident.."
Oh..well I should still say you contact the paramedics that got you in and the police.
"ok.."

"So, Laura, you are from here?"
Well, my parents are biregional.
"Oh.."
Yeah, from korea and America.
"yeah you look..you look..hmm.."
Ok, I am gonna go out now, but you can press that button anytime you need help before you get wheeled in for a CT scan.
"ok..."

*****************
90 minutes later

Dr. Solzberg walks in with a grim face.
"So what's the scan say", I ask.
Well, I want you to stay calm. Do you have any kind of pain at the back of your neck?
"No..I mean this collar is a little painful for me to move my neck around..but nothing that's painful"
Ok, let me just move my hands around your neck and tell me if you feel any pain anywhere.
"Well..there..yeah there..Its just a tenderness at that point..but no pain"
"But what do the reports say??"
The radiologists' reports indicate that you might be having arteriosclerosis somewhere in the region of your neck.
"What?? You mean hardening of..."
Arteries...which is unusual for a young man like you.

To be continued

Another slump

2006-11-11T19:14:00.000-08:00

Man I try, but sometimes things in your life..grad life in my case, takes toll on running. Its been three weeks since I ran...I seem to be repeating the same mistakes I did earlier this year. As georgiamarathoner puts it, "its hard to learn–how to drop everything that's going on in life and go for a quick run and then get back to life again".
Anyway, I went for a run today, 17 minutes on my feet and it was good. Hope to continue in the same vein in the future. Its all hope, that's all I can say. No guarantees. There might be another post 2 months hence describing another major slump or may be not. Let's see.

Forrest gump..er..Dean

2006-11-10T19:53:00.000-08:00

Most of you would have watched the movie, Forrest Gump, where Forrest runs across states just because he felt like. That was a movie. What we now have is reality TV baby. Yep, Dean Karnazes and his much publicised 50-50-50 not withstanding, he's decided to run home after finishing his last marathon of the 50-50-50 a couple of days back. Home from where? Newyork. To where? SanFransisco. And how much is that. Ah...atleast 2500 miles(shortest path on google earth).
It looks like 50-50-50(1300 miles) was a planned warmup not revealed by Dean towards his Run back home(2500 miles+).
Way to go Dean. Awesome.
Here are some links for more info:
1) Dean's own blog (sounds like God's own Turf eh)
2) Run back home and Run back home blog with maps et al of his run.
3) 50-50-50
4) 350 mile run
5) Sam Thompson's 51-50-50
6) Thanks to trailrunner, for his post on the same.
7) To finish off, you can get to watch a lot of videos on Dean at this place.

Also if you were to google blog search for "Dean Karnazes", you would end up innumerable blog posts like mine applauding his la super-human effort.

Phd comics rocks

2006-11-09T02:44:00.000-08:00

These are lifted from the recent three strips on the phd comics website. For all those who don't know why I am bragging about this website, it's because the website is the best 'virtual/online empathiser' in current literature!

Grad life rocks

2006-10-29T20:37:00.000-08:00

It really does. I got to blog for 23+-(+-10) seconds.

(Sun)day

2006-10-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

There was sun out today. A rare event in seattle. And the sun was out on a sunday, what's the probability of that happenening. Assuming independence, Prob(sun coming out)*Prob(a day being sunday). But there is some correlation as I have noticed, so the previous assumption doesn't hold true, its like Seattle telling its people, I may be cloudy on weekdays, but I will clear the turf when you wanna play.
Anyway, I ran in the morning and saw people run the dawg's dash 5k/10k. Post running, I went around green lake (a beautiful place and a hotspot for runners) to check out a store. I met a Pakistani woman, exchanged a few words. I bumped into someone who was looking for a canoeing partner, so I was game and we did that for an hour in Lake washington. And to finish off, I did some rock-climbing at the monolithic structures adjacent to the husky stadium. How much better can it get?(reminds me of metallica's tune for the line 'How sweet are you? How sweet does it get?' in sweet amber, st. anger)