the trip which wasn't

the arrival of few foreign kumaars marked a new found enthusiasm to plan a kumaar trip after a long time and also go..but as usual it was shortlived..the destinations where chosen to be coorg munnar goa and for obvious reasons goa was finalised..our TAS kumaar who was enjoying the hospitality of the one and only TAJ in mumbai was even ready to come directly and also recollected the legendary dialogue of saif of DCH fame(har saal kam se kam ek baar to goa (j)aana chahiye :P)..the plan was dragged upto the point where we needed to book in tatkal and finally dropped..

then there was this sudhoom's legendary ishtyle roadtrip (legend has it that the previous such plan happened around 3 yrs back and that was the last we saw HK in a kumaar setup :( )along the mysore road plan..leave blore around 7:30 am or so go along mysore road till you want to.. go to manchinabele..hog in lokaruchi probably even visit maddur coffee day and come back by 4:00 pm or so..with the list of kumaars game for it touching an ashtonishing two digits after a long time and some unusual names in the list made the plan even more fishy :P as expected there was to be someone who bore the brunt of calling all the people early in the morning (i.e. 7:00 am) and find that none of them are picking up calls..for a change this time it was our rattle the buildup kumaar instead of sudhoom who has lost all hopes on this bunch even though there was a time when he used to call each of us atleast 5-6 times doing the follow-up :P

our first to get married kumaar also is worth a special mention for organising basketball for a record period of 3-4 months continuously :P

the road trip plan metamorphosised itself to a kannada movie plan after a long time but even this never really took off..then came the sending off D to IIM plan.. sadly including the man himself only three people turned up :(

with more kumaars leaving the country and city this year..the prospects are turning out to be even more bleak and sadly we can do nothing about it :(

run kumaar run..

it's too late to post this but i think it doesn't matter..even four years before if anyone asked me whether i could run the answer would be a definite "NO".i've never been (and never will be) a natural athlete and have struggled to pickup most of the gully cricket i've learned even though i know the technical aspects better than most of the commentators in setmax..even now many don't believe that i ran 10 kms and that too in around 52 mins..taking into consideration that in first twenty one years of my life i've never run beyond 500 metres at a stretch :P

around three years back thanks to the IT industry i started running on treadmill for a different reason..struggling to run one km in around 7.5 mins..it worked for me and an year passed away and i had worked up enough to run 4 kms a day with a break in between in around 25 mins..my second eurotrip helped me to quit the treadmill and run on track and also increase my speed though the distance never increased and also to run without break..in the verge of quitting the IT industry my schedule became vulnerable and sporadic and finally hit a dead end..but only thing i was confident about was that i can touch 5 kms any day if i stretch myself..

circa 2008

along with dheeraj made some futile attempts to run in the campus but it never really took off..i can attribute the failure to laziness and lack of purpose and motivation..

circa 2009 april 2nd week..

TOI started advertising about sunfeast 10k run and three of us (me,sampath and dheeraj) registered for it..we got the training chart which was around 6 weeks perfectly fitting to the schedule and decided to train accordingly..the goal was to complete the race

the place

even though we could've run inside the campus the problem was to measure the distance..so sankey tank was initially chosen to be the place and sampath had claims that one stretch there is around 1.7 kms..but then 1.7 is not a nice number,we wanted something better so that we can measure the distances properly.. then we had two of the grounds in the campus gymkhana..but again we didn't know the distance this following message from dheeraj solved the problem and also increased my motivation..if the question is "how" pls read it and you will know :P its as follows

"Inner track of the further away ground is exactly 400m (athletics just happened there)..nearer ground is 520m by bike(someone who claimed to have accurately measured) and 514m by my measurements with shoes of exactly one foot outer length i.e. i took ..... steps" [fill in the blanks LOL :P]

sad that he trained only upto 5-6 kms and didn't run the actual race due to personal reasons.. we chose the 400m ground so that we have easy measurements i.e. multiples of 0.4km and we are done if we run 25 rounds :P

the schedule

we made few adjustments in the training chart.. finally it was like this
run 3 days week tue,thu,sat increase the distance along a week and saturday run the longest distance of the week and then come down on the next tuesday and again increase.. for e.g.
week 'i' :6 rounds, 8 rounds,11 rounds
week 'i+1':7 rounds,10 rounds,13 rounds
and so on..
we started with 1.6 kms (i.e. 4 rounds) and went on till 8 kms(20 rounds).. and never actually ran 10 kms except on the race day..

meanwhile our basketball season was at its peak :D and saturdays meant that i've to run the longest distance for that week and then play..after i hit the 6km mark i started skipping the basketball sessions but used to sit there and watch the baayz playing it and giving them "moral support" especially during the "protests against americanisation of indian youths" by katri

timing

we set a "realistic goal" of starting our training by 6:15-6:30 am in the morning three days a week and also religiously measure our timings..our goal was to run a round in around 2 mins so that roughly we take 5 mins per km..finally it worked quite well even though during the training it varied very much..

misc

we made it a point to alternate directions(clockwise-anticlockwise around the ground) so that we thought we wouldn't strain the same muscles everytime(no scientific evidence though :P)
stretching before and after the race (definitely worked in our favour)
breathing only through nose not from the mouth (this also worked in our favour)
we also tried to sprint few rounds jog few rounds.. (this didn't work :P)
we never drank water in between (depends but for us it was an irritating break which would unsettle the rythm and hence never did that :P)

the actual race

only thing which bothered us was that we hadn't touched the 10k mark in our training..also given the fact that i'd told almost everyone about the run the last thing i wanted was to twist or sprain something and limp out of the race midway.. luckily nothing of that sort happened :D we actually ran conservatively and even after we touched 10k we had a feeling that we could've continued running :P

the (temporary) end

i "treated" myself with a new pair of running shoes using the discount coupon from nike run club,a couple of icecreams from fresh and naturals,dosas from CTR in no particular order and am yet to get the t-shirt and timing certificate..with further plans to may be run a half-marathon or atleast improve my timing in 10k :D

PS:i know people who can run 10 kms with no training whatsoever and run better..but then there are only few natural athletes.. for rest of us there is a training schedule :D

incognito

the glass is always half empty..

after a long long time the hard core pessimist in me has been rudely woken up by the happenings in this gloomy world to put up this post..this is about all the worst things that have happened to the ppl in general and me in particular in recent times..

1.can't play basketball inside the campus :(
this is the worst thing to happen for the baayz.. we are playing somewhere else but the cool serene (deserted for that matter) atmosphere of my college is being greatly missed considering it to be one of the most sparsely populated piece of land in bengaLuru..but there is no hope.. we can't get permission to allow "outsiders" to play :P

2.request to join so many social networking sites..
man this is the pain in the ... already there is orkut facebook linkedin and off course gtalk google groups and still u get so many request to join networking sites that you'd finally end up forgetting all the usernames and passwords.. i don't see a point in joining so many things

3.facebook quizzes
this is the limit.. it started of with somewhat remotely sensible things like "how much indian are you" sort of quizzes and right now it has gone to the stage where each person creates a quiz in his name "how well do you know ?" whats the big deal if i know someone 100% or even if someone knows me 100% it doesn't mean anything.. here a sample question

when did i first went out with a girl on a date?
now you know it and the girl also might have forgotten it.. U Moron why should i remember this for god's sake what incentive do i get out of this question? do i get to go on a date with the girl? :x

soon you'll find questions like "what's the name of my gf/bf's pet" :P

4.IPL commentary team
kill them all.. apart from harsha bhogle in patches.. i hate them all and not without a reason.. why the hell do u want to call a six as a DLF maximum and a wicket as a citi moment of success.. well i cant blame them fully but i got totally pissed off when someone first said a six and gave a correction that its a DLF maximum with apologies :x

rameez raja calls all and sundry young even balachandra akhil who is 31 yrs taking into consideration that there were ppl 12 yrs younger playing the same game.. might be the explanation is wrt his age all are young.. you hit bullseye in that rameez..

mandira bedi asks katrina kaif
you have seen IPL being played in india and now in SA what difference do you find in the conditions? well well.. you thought katrina kaif is a rahul dravid or a jacques kallis? i'd have asked a more sensible "in which country do you get mobbed more? india or SA?"

chang (the loser of the indian idol for the uninitiated) asks ross taylor
"so ross today u are not in the playing eleven what do you think abt it?" i want to ask that loser "so chang you have lost the indian idol.. how does it feel? LOSER" :x you should have asked the same to pigeon.. he'd have launched you out of the park with his bare hands to increase the count of the "DLF maximums" and we'd have been saved of your on/off field antics there after..

5.A channel called setmax
please someone ban this channel.. 4 balls an over.. worst commentary.. compounded with a bunch of losers and to make our blood boil they telecast totally irrelevant stuff.. who the hell wants to see mandira bedi skating on a sandboard or chang sky diving? or for that matter rameez and mandira standing under an umbrella singing god knows what.. please do such things offline.. and when there is no cricket they relay the same movies again and again and again... :(

6. reality shows.
someone like me who hate the very concept. the concept of reality shows have hit the rock bottom.. KKR aka the losers took the initiative by doing one called knights and angels to select girls to cheer them in IPL with sometimes murali karthik and even saurav judging the show (do i need to mention SRK here?) rakhi sawant now takes it to the next level by a show called rakhi ka swayamwar where in the end (literally "THE END") someone who sets a record of redefining what it means to be a loser will have to marry none other than the great rakhi sawant.. now please stand up and observe two mins of heartfelt silence for the guy :( i want to call the guy who just misses this in the finals as a winner.. ROFL..

as always the glass is half empty :(

the potato in the mouth situation

all would have heard the foot in the mouth.. the haddi in the kabab.. the potato in the mouth also isn't something unique..for me it was potato for others it would be something else.. the day wasn't particularly good.. slept early in the morning woke up by afternoon missed a class, more importantly breakfast and lunch :( add a strike from mess workers and a plan gets hatched to eat out.. as per the plan we went to CTR aka shree sagar to have mouth watering beNNe masala dosa..

i'd already made up my mind to have 2-3 of them.. but destiny had other plans :( i was just about half done with my first one and a potato got stuck in my throat.. damn i must have tried to swallow it..i mustered courage.. drank water.. lots of it so as to wash it down my food pipe.. no it was not be the case.. i tried to finish of the remaining dosa and couldn't.. i left it as it is and came out.. walked back to the hostel.. i couldn't talk continuously.. i couldnt' breathe with the usual ease and the potato moved up and down causing much distress.. my accomplice made tried all sort of things to make life easy but it wasn't meant to be..

after about an hour and a half of struggle i decided that only a doctor can save me from this anguish.. so found a clinic where i was made to wait for another 20 mins and finally arrived to saviour to be.. he brought out a wide array of equipments tried so many things and finally declared that i'd have actually swallowed the potato and hence there is no potato in the throat but i'm feeling so as i'd have forced my epiglottis(hope this is the right one) to change its position and touch my food pipe or tongue or whatever and so i'm experiencing "foreign body sensation".. he also unveiled a wonderful prospect of bearing it for another 3-4 days as it takes that much time.. also warned that the day's precious sleep was going for a toss :((((( it was too much to bear for 2 hrs and this guy confirmed that i've to bear it for another 3-4 days..i'd no choice but to accept defeat and came out preparing myself for the inevitable.. again decided to walk back..

midway through i had a vomitting sensation and decided to give it a go.. to my surprise and great relief the potato finally came out.. yeah ofcourse it was always there no question about it.. :) what a relief.. i thanked all my stars for being kind to me and rushed back for another 'session' starting with a sugarcane juice to warmup :D

when i lost my bicycle

whenever i'd heard about people losing their bicycles in the campus i used to wonder what the security guards are there for. now i got to know it. i hate myself when i lose things, especially i hate myself more when i lose some things which aren't mine as i don't like putting up a sorry face later and give some lame excuses and that bicycle definitely wasn't mine :( .

as i'd missed my breakfast today i didn't even bother to come out of the block till it was time for lunch. and then i saw my bicyle had vanished into thin air.i tried to recollect whether i'd left it in the dept last night and had forgotten.. no it wasn't the case.might be i had left it near the mess last night after dinner.. anyway i'd to go to mess to have lunch so i decided to see there before actually complaining and making a fool out of myself.so went to the mess and there came the realisation that after dinner i came straight to room the last night with the bicycle that is and so there was no chance that my bicycle to "go" to the dept or mess. anyway as i'd come that far i had lunch in a hurry and went to the security guard near my block.

when i enquired he told plainly that there was a bicycle which wasn't locked and so he had promplty "deposited" it to the security office. oh yeah as soon as i parked the bicycle last night i got a call form home and as the network was pathetic i decided to take a walk.. so in a hurry i left the place without locking and came back and didn't bother to see later..i ran to the security office where i was asked for the color,identification marks on the cycle,my ID etc and finally i signed in the register saying that i received my bicycle back and got to hear a few "words of wisdom" as to not forget to lock bicycles next time and there have been cases when even locked bicycles have been taken and so to be careful..man you thoroughly deserved tihs i thought and finally came back relieved..

i thanked the security guard for making me realise afterall that they are indeed taking care of few things,it was my mistake to blame them before without knowing things.. came up to the lab to post this.. :)

cheers,

kumaars play basketball

for the uninitiated here is a concise and incomplete(as the writer himself claims no definition can be complete :D) definition of kumaars
it was meant to be cricket but then i've a post already to explain that..

yes you heard it right.. it means even i played.. inspite of katri branding me as a "PSEUD" i enjoy meeting kumaars as such and don't mind even if it takes my "legendary" basketball skills to be put to exhibition as long as i meet kumaars regularly.. :D.. don't worry about the means just think of the end result.. before getting more philosophical.. damn i'm yet to get a pic to put up.. :(

sure there is a fall in enthu considering the days when our organizing kumaar aka sudhaama (maga, where art thou?) used to come up with plans like "maga lets keep going on tumkur/mysore/god knows what road till some point where we find some eat-out and can have dinner and come back.. " and people used to turn up..even now i'm game for such plans..

maga i don't criticise ur intentions though HK would not second my thoughts.. :P

but even then 6-7 kumaars turning up atleast for 3-4 weekends on trot is something like a revival or so :/

i hope we will continue to meet hardly matters whether we play basketball cricket or even gilli daanD.. as long as kumaars keep meeting i'm not the one to crib :D

adieu

Irritating forwards inc

i just get terribly irritated with forwards which have this send it to N number of people and you'll find the love of your life... blah blah blah...the one which irritates me most for some reason is this

Think of words ending in "-gry". "Angry" and "hungry" are two of them.
There are only three words in the English language. What is the third
word? The word is something that everyone uses every day. If you have
read carefully, I have already told you what third word is.
If u already gave up - send this to your friends the answer will pop up
on the screen automatically.

its around for at least 5-6 yrs and i keep getting once in few months :x

please read this before forwarding this to someone

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/-gry

sidekick: while i was about to end this someone forwarded a profile which had this "interesting" about me



i've 'compassion' about astrophysics

OOPS :P :D

knights dragons et al

ever since i read this in my 3rd standard or so in the "gulmohar reader" (anyone remember :P) i was fascinated by knights dragons et al..

A Knight and a Lady

A Knight and Lady went
Riding one day
Far into the forest
Away, away

Dear Knight said the Lady,
Oh please have a care,
this forest is evil
Beware, beware.

A fiery green dragon they
Spied in the grass
The Lady wept sorely
Alas, Alas.


The Knight slew the dragon
The Lady was gay
They rode off together
Away, Away.


i always wondered how something can spew fire out of will and was amazed..
it all went downhill once i saw an article on komodo dragons which rubbished everything about dragons and myths surrounding them..
further i got really entangled in the mysterious net of knights once i read timeline the classic from Michael Crichton..
i was awestruck by all these chivalry bravery battles trebuchets to say the least.. who cares whether they killed dragons or not...
then arrived age of empires.. nitk lan hosted thousands of games,transferred millions of "1" "2" taunts..etched the words like "trample damage" "heresy" "garland wars" and many more into our otherwise short living memories..and also offcourse was a mute spectator of monasteries built.. relics captured..castles destroyed.. william wallace of braveheart was better known to us as the starting campaign in AOE..

realm of knights expanded so much but dragons seems to fade away until...

all of a sudden i saw this "Dragons:Fantasy made real" documentary in discovery channel and was so happy as they explained how they "created" fire etc..not only that there were explanations about how they fly..even how they mate..traced the genealogy also... for few hrs it made me happy that someone has found some evidence after all..

the sad part was i tuned in 5 mins late and missed this dialogue

"the natural history of the most extraordinary creature that never existed" :(

reality hit me hard after some googling and then i came back to senses..
knights might have existed but no question about dragons :D

don't believe everything even though its showed in discovery channel (they are not to be blamed though.. they claimed it to be a docudrama/mockumentary in the first place.. i was the one who just got carried away...) :(

Incognito