Gym - to exercise or to market goods

A recent trend in the gym has been to market stuffs. Gym is a place where people gather, come or are easy to pick and find. So a marketeer or a sales person has a good chance over here.

It happened so, recently someone tried to sell a motivational course to me in the gym which is part of a foreign company. This person happens to be from sales background and wanted more and more people to enroll into this course and hence had organized an introduction session at his home. Looks like he has taken a contract from this organization.

He wanted me to join and told me the leader would identify an area in my life to create opportunity. I told him I wasn't interested as the course was too abstract and not to my liking.

I gave away my mobile number and this person started calling and sending messages on whatsapp. After certain point of time, I put my phone on aeroplane mode and stopped replying to his whatsapp messages altogether. (Blocking him is still pending action).

When I went and told this to my gym instructor, he told me the motivational course was costing about 16k and there was a full family of 4 people who took this course and felt cheated.

In a way I got out of this mess, just wondering, how to react when I see the person in the gym in coming days. But what can I do?

My head just can't tolerate this amount of shit, just because a person has worked for Microsoft or Amazon doesn't mean I listen to him speak :) If I need motivation I shall read a good self help book instead of attending a 16k course!

Also he told me, after this course, he opened his own venture without a single rupee of investment. I thought what the heck, if it works out for him doesn't mean it should for me. What a silly and strange logic from an educated person.

Even before joining, I checked out this person's linked in profile and realized it was his job to sell this course to people. I hope and pray more people do not end up paying 16k to such courses, instead find motivation in exercise or travel or reading or music or something else on which this 16k can be invested and not regretted.

I literally told my instructor 16k is my 2 years gym membership.

Cheers,

Crowded house - Dont dream its over

I came to know about this song in the year 2002. That was when I first heard Six pence none the richer singing Dont dream its over. I admired the tune composition etc etc, until I came to know that, its by a band called Crowded House. That was probably in the year 2010 or so.

Until then I wasn't aware of the band Crowded House. My bad. But ever since I listened to the original composition of the song by Crowded House I never went back to Six Pence None The Richer, until today or in fact until 5 minutes back :)

Somehow, the live version performed by Crowded House popped anup in my playlist whilst at office. I somehow ended up listening to the song, but, more than that, the trivia surrounding the song was awesome.

That song was the last song played on their farewell tour after which the band disbanded. The emotions on the faces of the band members are visibily noticeable.

There are people who enact and make the audience teary eyed and here are the band Crowded House who are making the audience teary eyed, live, as they perform and sing..

This song is from 1996 Farewell Tour. I sincerely wished some people remained together, just for the sake of music, just for the sake of mankind.  but nature has other plans and life moves on. Here goes the song by Crowded House. Brilliantly sung and performed live.

And regarding the song by Six pence none the richer, well, its kind of feels pretty ordinary when you have the original next to it :)

Just brought back loads of memories, what I was upto in 1986 when the song, came out, 1996 when the farewell tour happened, 2002 when the cover version came out, 2010 when I discovered about Crowded House and 2018 as I blog this :) Happy to be alive :) what more can I say

Cheers

Some writing in the new year

After a gap of 15 days odd I am writing. I got time, the mood and the patience today to write. I was super busy with office work with no time to spare. Today we had a sprint closure and I had to do a demo to the client and now thats over, I get some relief for a couple of days, knowing there aren't much things pending to go.

But its been a roller coaster last 5+ months with heavy duty hard work coupled with mistakes and learnings, all in all a fulfilling one, I am unable to play on my PS4 nor read books nor travel much. Its just about work and more work for now.

Meanwhile, I shall write about few things which I have in my mind,

But for now,
Cheers,

PS - Today's demo went well, though I ran from an old source code and flunked it mid way, the response was appreciative and pretty positive :) 

First post for the new year

How sweet of me to key in something on the first day of the year itself. Side by side, I am writing some source code trying to fix an issue in the application.

And I hope I get to check in something today. The entire German and Indian team are vacationing. Me checking in on 1 day of 2018 all alone shall be epic. By the way last week of december had only my check ins in the source code repository, but doing one on 1st seems even more epic.

Meanwhile I compile the source code, thought of putting up a post.

This year I plan to do something different. I feel I am nosing around others people's business way too much. I keep asking people questions, I try to be curious about what is happening and in a way I think, I am just putting too much of info into my brains, which isn't really required.

My main motive should be, what others do is none of my business and I would rather try to implement it 100% :)-

Also last year I probably got less angry once I changed organizations. Silkboard never played any part and hence I had no burden to cross over 44 road humps. So I got angry only once in the last 7 months or so. I get frustrated and offended easily, but that's not much of a major hurdle.

Cheers.

Billy Idol - Rebel yell

Nice screaming song to welcome the new year - Billy Idol - Rebel Yell.

Cannot believe this song is from 1983, decades ahead of its time. 

Phenomenal stuffs from Billy Idol..

Cheers,

10 year anniversary

As the year comes to a close, I did forget to mention one point all through the year.

Yes, its been 10 years since I started blogging. I wish I had started early, at least I could have got in more posts plus and I would have been much better at writing and communicating.

But it is what it is. So happy 10th year to my blog. It is so much fun to write whatever I want, considering only max 5-6 people know this blog url. Rest all are random hits from google!

In the last 10 years life has changed, and believe me, I haven't written about most of it. I just have written about stuffs which I felt like writing. There were days when I was extremely happy and days when I was extremely upset. None of which figure on this blog. But yeah, I wish to continue writing. Some day, I shall have a small diary which shall have stories inspired by my experiences or travel with fictitious characters and real ones, inspired by none other than Ruskin Bond,. Until then,. this blog shall have short posts of mine!

Cheers,

Bhujia hill

During our Gujarat trip, we got to visit Bhuj and at a distance from Bhuj was a small hill called Bhujia hill. Our time of visit was perfect. Though we missed out the evening sunset, we were very much in for a surprise.

It was a quiet place with absolutely no visitors in the evening. There were 3-4 temples and one temple at the top of the hill. So we had a little bit of climb, I wish I had come to this place alone.

Its the solitude which beckoned the most. Being all one in the quiet place like Bhujia hill can work wonders. The town was below and over here on the hill it was a temple and wind wind all the way.

I am so happy for our culture where in people have buiilt up temples on hill tops. It feels so relaxing just to climb the hill and take a moment of to admire the nature which god has created and to find a temple and place to pray atop a hill can be just priceless.

Cheers, below are some pictures.

Year ending 2017

One more year comes to a close, this year I decided not to complete my 100 posts instead let it as it is. Also one thing I did this year end, which I haven't done till date.

Yes, I did something today. I donated blood today at KIMS. Today while in the gym, our instructor asked me, if I was ready to donate blood.

Initially I was hesitant, since I generally donate on a ad-hoc basis and on demand. After few minutes, he told his relative was in need of platelets. Then I started considering it more seriously.

I told him I was ready to donate and asked for the contact number. He told he would drive along with me and other guy who was willing to donate. So I did donate today and it felt good.

Being of some use to someone and a very nice way to say good bye to 2017.

Cheers,

I think it was a very small token of gratitude for someone who has been very instrumental in me completing my 4 Himalayan treks and to the person who I am today compared to who I was in 2013.

When temperature dipped to 13 degree centigrade during our bus journey - TTTT 57

Yes you read it right, the temperature dipped to 13 degree centigrade and we were not travelling in a Volvo AC bus. We were travelling in a normal state transport bus.

It happened so, we took a quick decision to travel from Mandvi Gujarat to Dwaraka Gujarat, by an overnight bus. So caught a bus to Jamnagar from Mandvi. And from there, we planed to travel by another bus.

It happened so, we were supposed to reach around  6am to Jamnagar bus somewhere around 3 am in the morning, it turned out to be freezing cold. O boy, we were just covered up, but it was so cold that, we couldn't add more clothing to ourselves as our backpacks were all stashed away in the upper compartment and we were too lazy to unpack and wear them.

So we managed the journey, we ended up in Jamnagar early in the morning. But upon reaching my friend who had just measured the overnight temperature told me, it had stooped down to a whooping 13 degree centigrade. Can you believe it ?

It was a fun ride, and believe me, things like these just end up being so memorable!

Temperatures had gone down to -7 degrees whilst in the Himalayas, but this ain't mountains, this was plain old city to city ride!

Cheers,

An ode to the warm up man - Gym stories

Let me classify my gym posts as gym stories, just like my travel stories.

I have been going to the gym pretty regularly. So I get to see a whole bunch of people daily. Since the last 7 odd days I have a stiff muscle, starting from my lower back all the way to the left leg. I feel I'm unable to stretch it freely nor able to bend myself and touch the ground as much as I want to.

So today, I got a bit of stretching exercises at the gym and guess whom it reminded me of? The warm up man. The warm up man, was one special person coming to the gym. He's  no more seen in the last 5 odd months. I shall tell you about that later.

He was one person who used to do warm up and stretch for round about 25 minutes. I used to complete my treadmill run and this person would still be stretching and stretching. I think I have not seen anybody do that much amount of warm up exercises and stretching. He looked like a trained athlete and seasoned professional, and could not be compared to anybody else in the gym.

Last I heard he underwent a surgery of some kind and was advised not to exercise. He was one person who was regular since the day I joined the gym way back in December 2013.

Such is life, so there goes an ode to the warm up man. Warm up and stretching is an essential part before we exercise. I under do it and I bare the outcome in the form of stiff muscles, sore legs, sore back. Some day I shall remember to stretch and warm up adequately before work out.

Until then cheers,

Music for 2017 - Fleetwood Mac .

Well, this year I listened to loads of songs, either on the way to office or at work or at home. I even upgraded my speaker to one with woofer. So now I have a better sound system.

But this year can be characterized by my inclination to one such band which I feel is the most underrated. I have spent almost 3/4 of the year listening to their songs only and I am still not bored and probably will never be. The irony is most of their best work came out when I was a kid and when there was no satellite television in India.

The band I am talking about is Fleetwood Mac, some of their songs were way ahead of time. The tune the composure. They wrote more about romance and love, thats their genre. But if you ever get to see them performing live, believe me, its a bliss.

The band has got loads of history, its just that they are underrated. Listen to two of their masterpieces below. One being my all time favorite - Gypsy (1982) and the other one, - Everywhere. (1987). Now you can understand my love for the 1980's. The decade when some super music just came out and rest is history!

below is the live performance.. can it get any better?

And Christine McVie at 74 years of age...can produce a masterpiece like the one below..

BSNL and dismal internet performance

This year, I badly needed internet to perform, because, I was loaded with work, I needed to work from home and I needed internet which was reliable. BSNL this year was a let down. There was an instance where there was no internet for 1.5 weeks flat. This annoyed me to the core.

I was waiting for a chance to switch to airtel or ACT. Now during Christmas again, internet was unavailable and I thought time was right to raise a request for Airtel broadband. As of today, I'm waiting for Airtel to be installed at my home, payment is through only installation is pending.

So there goes out BSNL, no more crying for a slow internet. Hopefully Airtel shall be much more efficient, here's new internet for the new year. Something to look for! And guess what its optic fiber this time. 40MBPS line.

Cheers,

When we had a sudden encounter with a something special! - TTTT 56

Over the last couple of years, while trekking, I have encountered many creatures, be it reptiles, be it elephant or be it deer or wild boar, but this time something strange encounter happened. It could have been worse but nothing of that sort happened.

Whilst trekking in the western ghats this year, probably in November, we had just started the trek late and mid way through we just had reached the grassland located between two hills. Yes we were in the open between two hills and we had just emerged out of the forests.

While we were admiring nature resting, taking pictures all of a sudden we could spot a swarm of bees headed towards our direction. It was so instantaneous, some members of our group ducked to cover themselves. I thought it was too late to cover myself and just stood my ground watching the bees.

Luckily the bees had some other intention and just flew over. This was my first ever encounter in the open to such large quantities of flying bees. There was no place to hide, no water source, we were all in the open about to be bitten if something had gone wrong, but luckily, we managed to stay clear.

Cheers,

Tattery reading and tattery writing

This year I haven't read much, nor have I written much. They year has just gone and I have only memories of myself overworking. Yes, this year I finally switched jobs to something closer.

I travelled moderate, did not trek the Himalays this year plus I overworked. Yes, the second half of the year was more about heavy duty work, not that I was forced to work rather I enjoyed over working. With such close interaction to German colleagues, even over working was a breeze.

I purchased a PS4 but could not complete GTA 5 in 2.5 months time owing to less time. Same goes with my writing and reading skills both of which are left in a disarray, the main reason being, I'm trying to catch too many birds in one shot.

One thing which remained my constant source of motivation is my desire to exercise, which never came down. I was continuous to the gym and had loads of good time exercising.

Hope I can read something more during the next year, work and contribute even better, travel too.

Cheers,

When Kankaria Zoo, Ahmedabad, left me terribly disappointed - TTTT 55

My visit to Ahmedabad was for a day. During that day too I was very upset after my visit to Kankaria zoo. This zoo appears to be a tourist attraction. But sad part is I was not amused.

There was a zoo which housed caged wild animals. The reason which me sad is because of the poor condition the wild animals were housed in. The lion, tiger, leopard all were housed in a small enclosure which didn't look good either. The gates on the other side opened to a bigger enclave but only one animal could occupy it at a time.

If one could look into the eyes of those wild animals, it sadly reflects the same sadness which you would see when you cage a human being.

The worst part is the zoo is next to roaring traffic. Deer which I have always seen in Bandipur jungles amid silence, in Kudremukha amidst no human habitation, here had to stay listening to blaring and honking vehicles. There was no peace whatsoever to the animals of the zoo.

Sometimes, its just cruel to put animals in cage but putting them in a cage next to traffic main road is nothing short of disaster. I myself could not enjoy my stay at Kankaria zoo, I bet the animals and birds would be having a torrid time over there.

Such is life. Yeah I was a bit teary eyed too.

A bus ride which was about to be missed! - TTTT 54

I had been on a trip to Gujarat this December, first week to be precise. And during this period, in order to save money, we traveled by State Transport buses. But after traveling by State transport buses, my back and butt had taken all the brunt and I was in no mood to travel in those buses.

It was Friday morning and I had finished my visit to the Sri Krishna temple in Dwaraka and I thought of heading back to Ahmedabad same day by doing a day journey.

Mind you I was all by myself. I had a return bus ticket to Bangalore. But Dwaraka to Ahmedabad was still good 439 kilometers in distance. When I enquired there was a bus to Rajkot every hour by Shiv Shakti travels. So I hurriedly packed up and vacated my room and booked a ticket and caught this bus to Rajkot, which was a normal bus just a bit better than the ST bus.

It was almost 1 pm when I got dropped in Rajkot. Rajkot to Ahmedabad was a good 200 kilometers in distance and I was way away from the bus stand. I had infact lost my way trying to find the bus stand. This time, I was bent on not travelling by ST bus as it would be too slow.

Finally I managed to reach Rajkot bus stand carrying all the big back pack huffing and puffing only to find the volvo bus just in a nick of time.

So this was a journey which was about to be missed. Though the volvo bus was costing me double the price, it was well worth the journey back to Ahmedabad.

I made it to Ahmedabad by 8 30 PM and it was almost 12 hour journey, could have been a little lesser, had the bus not halted at Jamnagar for 30 minutes time.

Cheers to Gujarat Darshan.

Favorite drink during beach trek - TTTT 48

This year I completed my 5th beach trek. Yes its been 5 years in a row and people have vowed to black list me for other treks, if I participate in another beach trek!

I have always written about my love for the beaches, but I never have written about my favorite drink during the beach trek.

A beach trek is always under the sun, its humid, we are sweating, we all are losing loads of salt and we need to hydrate. Most of the time I drink water, plus electral, to make up for the lost salts.

But somewhere in the beach trek, we end up joining the main road which leads us to Kumta before we join back the beach, and its over there we get to buy some reinforcement liquids.

After a hard day's walk, I prefer to take Lassi. Yes, in the coastal area, sweetened curd is available in stores in a small packet of Rs 10. Simple and effective solution. Though its got sugar and loads of calories, boy, we would have lost so much that, this one gives the right kick and boost to continue our pending journey, towards the town and then towards Bangalore too.

So, its got to be Lassi. Though this time, I tried out ice cream and also a Jeera based drink. But lassi seems to be a level above the rest!

Cheers.

Best story of Ruskin Bond (as per me)

I have been reading Ruskin Bond for quite some time now, probably two years. Ruskin Bond has written over 500 short stories and I probably have read more than 150. There are plenty of them which I love and adore. But one particular story catches my mind instantly.

Its called - "The Man who was Kipling"  Rudyard Kipling hasn't been a very popular names amongst Indians. Though he wrote masterpieces like Jungle Book, but it isnt that which he is remembered for. But for other works which have rubbed Indians in the wrong way.

This story is a short attempt at justifying Kipling was a great guy, its just that age that made him write stuffs which hasn't gone well with we Indians.

Never mind, what Kipling wrote about, but what Ruskin Bond has written is just a brilliant masterpiece. There are so many stories of his set in the hills which I love and adore, this one, sets standards to another level.

Hats of to you Ruskin bond,

Cheers,

When we started a trek late and ended it late - TTT 52

I have to say this has to be the trek, where we started the most late of all. This trek happened last sometime last month I think, it was somewhere in Sharavathy valley.

It happened so our hired vehicle a Tempo traveller got punctured two times, leaving with no option but to be stranded on the road. So, by the time we reached our trek start point it was around 12 45 in the afternoon and we started the trek at 2 30 PM.

This by far had been the most late. We had previously once started a trek around 11 30 AM and completed it by night 11 PM.

But starting a trek by afternoon 2 30 is nothing but asking for trouble. We walked through the forest in the dark and saw wild boars this time. In the end we made it to the other village via forest and reached our place of halt by night 8 30 PM.

It was a well achieved day, I was very happy, as we had hauled our entire luggage from one place to another and it was total fun.

Cheers,

4 years and counting....

It was exactly 4 years ago, that once incident had made me realize I had to change. I had been on a trip to Gingee Fort in 2013 December and I could not climb the fort easily. I struggled, I sweated it out and I made it

Its been 4 years to that day. One remarkable thing happened after that trip. I took a decision to get fitter. I decided I should be in a position to climb easily.

I had no choice, but to get fitter. I could have waited to join a gym in the new year 2014, instead I chose the last week of December. My organization at that time had working business hours at 11 am to 8 pm and it was located at Electronic City. So I got a fair chance at exercising during the morning hours.

And boy was I glad. Its been 4 years to that day and I still work between 11 am and 8pm but at another organization located nearer to my home. Things are hectic currently but I still exercise in the morning.

I think at some point in time, I just feel gutted that, I did not discover the power of exercising regularly, early in life. These days my job change reveals around the question, can I get enough time to exercise or not. If no, I generally do not attend interview itself :) Also as you get more experienced, the opportunities dry up, owing up to the billing factor and cost per head factor. So in either case, my job switches have become lesser.

So, cheers to exercise.