Marathon update and lessons learnt!

This is my last week before my 10K(6 miles) race on sunday and I feel excited and scared at the same time. Till today I have run the whole 10KM distance only once during my training. My usual distances are 4miles(a little less than 8KM) and I do that with little discomfort. Last weekend I attempted my first 10KM distance and struggled for the last 1 KM. I finished it huffing and puffing. I might run the whole distance twice this coming week and take rest the last 3 days before the run.
The Marine Corps Marathon is a very prestigeous event and the 10K portion of the marathon has been popular among people who want to run but cannot run the whole marathon(26.2 miles) or half marathon distance(13.1 miles). Often, a 10K is the starting point for a lot of beginning runners(5K is another place where you can begin). People line up along the spectator stands early before the race starts and cheer for runners all day. Its one thing running for yourself, its another to cheer some person who don't even know, to keep going! I will do a full post on my 10K marathon running expereinces and how the crowd was.

I am terribly slow. The other day there was this guy running on my neighboring treadmill in the gym and he seemed to be struggling with it. From the looks of it, it seemed to me that he was running a moderate pace. I was diong a 5mph pace and thought he must be doing something similar too. I glanced, stealthily(yeah, I know it is a bad habit!!), at his treadmill dashboard and almost fell off mine! He was running a 7.5 miles and hour pace and it didnt even seem like that! After that shock, now I stick to looking at my own dashboard instead. Even at that low speed, running feels very energizing in so many ways. One being the adrenalin that is pumped because of the workout. Another reason is that running makes me feel like I am overcoming my weaknesses. I am a slow runner and my reflexes are poor so I cannot play a game like Tennis or Squash with someone who can play well and that makes me feel a little inadequate but being able to run 40-45 minutes without feeling it makes me forget those inadequacies!
Is there any workout/activity that makes you feel energized?

Blog Action Day - Poverty

This post comes after reading Nita's blog on this topic. According to her,
Blog Action Day 2008 (15th October 2008) - an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day.

So here are my two cents' worth on Poverty.

I have never been poor. I have never had friends who were poor. But I have seen poverty around me. In ways that might not impart the experiences of living poor. I have seen that the maid who worked in our house for 20 years was really poor and could not afford to send her kids to school. Her children worked with her and made whatever money they could. I have seen poverty in the umpteen slums around my posh apartment in Kandivali, Mumbai. I could see the slums and the goings on there from my 8th floor apartment window. Half clad children playing near the gutter, women fetching water from municipal taps, unsanitary conditions all around. It used to make me sad, and guilty, but I confess, I did not try to do anything about it. I guess most of us are like me. Its easy to close our eyes and imagine that poverty does not exist.

It's the Economy, Stupid!

This was a phrase used by James Carville, who was advising Bill Clinton during the 1992 presidential campaign. Well, in 2008, "It's the Economy, Stupid"! And I want to say that to both the campaigns, although I want to give credit to Obama for consistently keeping the focus on the economy until this week. As soon as Sarah "Barracuda" talked about her "opponent palling around with terrorists", and the McCain campaign started slinging mud, he rolled up his sleeves and went into the mudpile with them. The day before, there was a documentary from Obama about McCain and his association with Keating in the 1980s. Then there was an ad by McCain(gosh his name is tough to write fast....m, c, c, a, i, n) that said Obama is dangerous and cannot be trusted blah blah blah! Its the Economy, STUPID! There, now its in bold and caps, will you, atleast now, talk about how you want to steer the economy when u are in office?
Will you stop talking about judgment, Israel, old associations for a minute and talk about the economy? People are losing jobs, their 401K's are losing value, their homes are losing value, there are 2 wars that are draining our resources and killing people and you are worried about who has worse friends and who asked for less earmarks?
I saw this in the VP debate too. Biden tried to talk about the economy a few times. Palin's repertiore of answers when confronted with a question was limited to "we are a bunch of mavericks", "hockey mom", "dont talk about the past" and a lot of other empty words like "like", "doggone it", "you betcha" and a few winks and creepy smiles. (Did you all hear, she says "nucular"? That reminds you of someone?). Lady, tell me what your "maverick" runningmate is going to do about the economy? He doesnt even understand his own healthcare plan. Is he taking those $5000? Can I more across statelines and avoid that tax? How? Does $5000 cover all medical expenses for a family of 4?
I think a part of the problem, my friends, is that no one is asking those questions. Yesterday's debate put me to sleep. Did the people in that room appear even remotely interested in what the two were saying? And all the media talked about was how one was hostile to the other and who won. Well, I say no one won! I say the people lost. Why? Because it is the economy, stupid!

My first blog award!

Newsflash!!!!I have been awarded by Asaaan!



A big thanks to her for this. This being my first award, I would like to thank myself for putting myself in the position of having to move so many times! I am sooo proud of myself.

My current favorite

I love reading. I love fiction. I love a good book. And if that book is humourous, written in a simple language, has a dash of reality, a little bit of philosophy and has a riveting plot, all the better. There are a few authors that come to mind, who have the uncanny ability to mix all the attributes above. A year ago, I would have said Somerset Maugham, Jerome K Jerome, Harper Lee(though her body of work is limited to one) make the cut. But now I am ready to add another author to this list. He is a modern fiction author who has written more than 25 books, spanning 4 story series and is internationally acclaimed for The No1 Ladies' Detective Agency series(source: wikipedia). The first time I heard of Alexander McCall Smith was when one of my friends was reading this book called The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency sometime in 2006. I was curious. The name sounded like it was a childrens' book. I like reading anything that comes by, but I would not be too excited about a kids' book. I asked her how she found it, and she said she loved it. Now this girl was by no measure a poor reader. We used to routinely exchange books and I knew that she had a good(very good) taste in books. So when she said she liked the book, I borrowed it from her and very gingerly started reading. Saying I was surprised would be an understatement. I was pleasantly shocked that this book surpassed my expectations and came out with flying colours! Since then I have read almost every book by McCall Smith in the market and eagerly look forward to his new ones!

Now let me get to the point and talk about what is so special about his writing that has me hooked.
There is a story. Each one of his books has a different story. All the characters are very well profiled and you get the feeling that he has spent quite some time thinking about them. None of the characters, however small, is left without a unique personality trait and all of them have a role in advancing the story to its end. No charater is just there to fill pages or to provide the shock value! The story itself is very simple. In most series, there is a central character(or characters) who either has another person's problem to solve(No1 Ladies' series), a personal problem(sunday philosophy club series) or a larger than life ego to satisfy(Von Igelfeld series). While going about doing this, the characters experience love, pain, apathy and a myriad of human emotions and their relationships with other charaters evolve(or degenerate in some cases). All this drives the story to its intended end, which can be the most unexpected or the most mundane.
More than the end, it's the journey that overwhelmes me. It is the way emotions are woven into each story that get me everytime I pick one of his books. It is the simple language that impresses me. It is the fact that he doesn't have to use cliches, (unnecessary) graphical language, (useless) side storylines that are meant to capture the readers' extreme reactions, to sell his books that makes me so happy to read him. All the incidents in his stories are drawn from real life, with a dash of humour. I would go so far as to say that he is one of the best modern fiction writers and certainly my current favorite. Do you have any favorite authors?

You Are Not Prissy

You're the furthest thing from a princess - and you probably stay far away from any princess types you know. You have an easygoing approach to living. It doesn't take a lot to make you happy. And when life requires it, you're ready to get your hand a little dirty. There's no problem you're too prissy to tackle!

How Prissy Are You?

Another moving story!

So the move went really smoothly and we are settling in slowly.
I have always had mixed feelings about moving from one place to another. For the first 21 years of my life I stayed in the same city, same community, even the same house. I went to the same school and had the same set of friends for 15 of those 21 years. People got transfered and moved all the time, in the part of the city we lived in, but my dad always opted out of the transfers and liked to stay put. I always envied the new girs or boys who joined my class every now and then. They were the lucky ones whose dads got trasnfered adn they moved boriya bistar to a new city. These new students were like honey, attracting all of us oldies who were desperate for a few new friends. We shared our lunch with them, got them random gifts, even shared the much adored 'scent rubber'(eraser) with them. How I longed to be one of those new students is known only by me. But the irony of the situation was not lost out on me. While I whined and longed to move to a new city, these 'new students' hated moving and used to be really sad about going away to a new place. I used to think they dont know how lucky they are...the ignorant fools!
Well, anyways, the 10 years of schooling, 2 years of working my butt off preparing for entrance examinations and 4 years of funfilled undergrad saw me staying at home, at the same home all the time and I longed more to get out! Well, my prayers(uff) were finally answered and I set out to start my first job(this was in 2002) and moved to Trivandrum for a couple of months. Once there, I was as usual excited that finally I was out of home (but missing family ofcourse) and had lots of fun with new friends. Then I moved to Mumbai. I still loved moving. I lived with a few friends intially and realized we didn't quite get along, so I moved to a new apartment and new roomies within a few months. The new roomies were awesome and I was having fun, when I had to move again, this time to Amsterdam. Sadly I bid adieu to all my roomies for a few months, when I was back in the same apartment in Mumbai. Now again my fun with roomies, shopping, food, movies comtinued. After a while the some of my roomies started to move(sigh...by now I was disgusted with the word) and I was dreading my lonely existance. One fine day, I was told I was to move to Triva drum on a new project and I did, boriya bostar bandhkar. I really hated this move. I had accumulated a lot of stuff, friends and memories in Mumbai and didnt want to throw all that away and move to a new place. By now I had started getting a taste of what those 'new students' felt when they moved from one city to another(finally!!). After a few months in Trivandrum came the move of a lifetime, when I left the indian shores for the US to pursue my masters. Now my atleast-once-a-year-move pehnomenon began. I moved in temporarily with a Tiwanese girl for 6 months, then to a makeshift apartment for a few days, then to a new apartment for a year, then I got married! After the wedding, I came back to do an internship so we moved temporarily again to DC. We came back to the university after 3 months, and lived in an awesome house for a year. The lease on that house was up and we werent sure how many more months we would be at the university so we moved into the university apartments. Barely a few days after we moved, I was offered a job and we MOVED to DC. Spent a year in the new apartment and towards the end, S got a job and we had to move again to move closer to his workplace. Thus, owing to these extreme experiences I have had with moving(ativrishti/anavrishti), now I have mixed feelings about moving. I feel good because I am moving on the a better(hopefully) place, and have the chance to do up a place all over again! I feel terrible because I am moving from a place where I have built memories and led some happy and some sad times!
SO here we are now! Anyone counted the number of times I moved in the last 6 years?