31 may 2008

5k treadmill running. 20 push ups :-) pehle lagte nahi the.......3 second Frog stand planche position (see previous post) . 2 sets of forward lunges. 10 and 12 reps. ok day so far. its just 7:13 pm

planches

a friend told me about these. bodyweight training which does wonders for your abs and core strength. All the stuff is taken off from dragondoor.com and the link to the article is

http://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode3/229/

Frog Stand
Begin this position by assuming a full squat and placing your hands on the ground directly in front of your feet. By directly, I mean right next to your toes. Arrange yourself so that your knees are resting against your bent elbows. Now gradually lean forward taking your weight both unto your hands and also unto your knees by leaning them on your elbows. Using your knees on your elbows will allow your legs to help your shoulders bear the load of your bodyweight. As you continue leaning forward you will eventually be able to remove your feet completely from the floor and hold yourself up with only your hands on the floor and your knees on your elbows for support.

Balance is also a key to this exercise. As you first begin to learn how to lean forward in this position, you will often probably overextend and fall forward. Don’t worry have fun with it and enjoy some new training. Some pillows placed in front of you will help to cushion any crash landings.

Notice that this is the only static position in our progressions with bent elbows. Continue holding sets of this position until you have reached your one minute total time.











aaj try karoonga gym mein. kafi cool rahega

Tequila and Scotch

No Gym today. Didnt feel like. Had Raajma and Chaawal late in evening. Met old friends from college. Had a couple of drinks today. Mom and dad are worried these days when I come home late. I told them that its ok. I am not doping or anything but then they are worried. Dont feel good when Dad cant sleep when he feels I may be going through some tough times. But how do I tell him that I am ok. He just doesnt take it. Cmom dad I am 28 and very ok. So sleep well. I am a lil drunk. But good wala drunk. Not the talli types. Anyways......

Cold Steel

Have recently finished this book. Its abt the takeover batter over arcelor by mittal. Must say I am impressed, by LNM and his son. Well yeah the book is about the winning side so may be a lil exaggerated but then winners write history. Guy dolle is not gonna write a book on why he couldnt save arcelor going mittal way. But the book is amazing. Like a thriller. Must read hai.....

29 may 2008

12 k treadmill running. hot chick on one treadmill. post run 4 slices bread with jam and butter. some wafers, kurkure, old monk with diet coke with friends (khirbat, sidhu, lolly), chocolate ice cream. random net surfing.

man i do have so much free time. i cant believe i am writing all this shit.

may 28, 2008

6k on treadmill. 1 degree incline. Fat uncle and hot chick on the other two treadmills. 0 sum game.

I quit

Aaj khus to bahut hoon main. Aaj na mere paas gaari hai na bangla hai aur na hi maa ka aashirwaad. bank balance bhi kam hai.

But finally i have resigned from job and have decided to get going on my own. I am hopeful that it turns out well for me. This decision. huuuuh. Thora nervous to hoon but its ok. I guess abhi I can take chances. Its easier now than later. Baad mein biwi bacche boodhe maa baap :-) and all.

Will keep posting on this.

Statement of the century

A friend of mine asked mom if there is a way to control his dominating wife (who i think is smarter, brighter and much more mature so its perfectly fine is she dominates him :-) ) of course it was all in good humor to which my mom said
"India got independence in 1947 and women have got it just 5-6 years back and its perfectly fine if they dominate"

Frankly I had not expected such statement from mom. But she was right I feel. At least till a couple of years back women had little place in decision making in the household. That seems to be changing now. I see so many smart women these days. In fact I feel that most of them are smarter than I am . Really. To this some of my friends will comment or may say that "yeh to kafi obvious tha. adhiktar log tujhse smart hi hain". I agree.
Random dialogue time from the movie Dil Chahta Hai: "Ret (sand) ko jitni jor se pakro utni hi haath se nikalti hai"

The road never leaves you

Thats why running is my first love. You can do it alone with the road as company and it never leaves you. If it does, or if it ends you can always come back to where you started from.

doob ja mere pyaar mein ein ein ein

this new song from Jhonny gaddar. kafi mast latke jhatke wala dance hota hai is par...

Box that changed the world

Its only because of containers and boxes that world trade is today where it is today. Without containers you cant ship goods effectively. I have been in the business of selling boxes for about 2 years now and its been sheer fun. Really. No CEO or CXO of a company would know about boxes (corrugated or otherwise), essentially packaging stuff. They think its trivial. But they do when the production line stops. Why is that? Cause nothing moves in our world without packaging. Boxes are perhaps one of the few products which arnt shipped in boxes themselves. Everything else moves in cartons. I am in the same business.

and its my hypothesis that the perception of CEOs and CXOs is gonna change. Very soon. material handling industry is one area I am bullish about. Cheap manual labor will soon give way to pallet trucks and material handling tools. I am even looking for some companies to invest money. Its a broad call but I think its gonna work. Not big risk but I certainly see big returns.

About risk. It just occurred to me that Risk isnt only about risk but also about perception of risk. Ummm yeh thora deep ho gaya but mujhe aisa lagta hai. I don see any risk here but may be other people and even though I think that risk and return is a fundamental law but the perception of other people is what changes the law here in this case.

whos stopping us

Tragedy of the commons. Its one of the many archetypes you can observe in the everyday world around us. If I look around I find this behavior quite rampant. Me first. this is the difference between a developing and a developed nation. Look at any queue, ticket counter we are in a hurry. Most traffic jams happen for the same reason. And so do the accidents I guess.

It results in a situation which is sub-optimal. If traffic could be cleared in X amount of time in a developed nation now it takes more than X here in a developing nation. I think now I know the difference between a developed and a developing nation. It is the tragedy of the commons. Better roads, infra, clean streets are the end result and not the starting point of a path towards becoming a developed nation.

a lil low

Was feeling a lil low today. First I am sick and tired of going to the Malls here in Gurgaon. Same old stuff, noise and chaos, consumerism (not that i am not one of those). Gets on to my nerves sometimes. Its only for the excellent company get that I frequent them. I have been a lil busy with work after college and havnt taken a break since. Job starts in another 15 days and then it will be even more busy. Really felt like going on a trek somewhere but just couldnt find enough time.

have been watching movies every weekend for quite some time and it seems now even they are becoming routine. movies have been the only source of Audio Visual entertainment given that its been some years that I watched any TV. Not even cricket. I quit that when I was in school. Seems like waste of time to me. and its not too much entertainment either.

Have been thinking of going for a long run today. Will see how much I can do today. Look its gonna be a depressing post today so leave now...Have been suffering from a posterior compartment injury for abt three years now which means I can not run long regularly. If I start doing more than 50K a week it surfaces again and I cant run for the next full month or so.

Vaise If I look at it this way, dont know why but running has been like meditation for me for abt 5 years now. After a long run, everything seems good and fine. I even lied to my GF when I had to go running and she wanted to catch a movie. Will go for a surgical treatment once I get on with the job and some money to get the treatment. They dont have good doctors here in India who deal with these injuries. So may be a trip to australia or south africa is on the cards :-).

Have been going through some finance books of late. Cost accounting specially. Got a c+ in college in CA but now find it interesting now that we need to come up with some ABC like accounting system for our business.

Mom has made some tea.....thats it for now

LIFEINLINFES.COM Concocation day Explosive loose motions and I dont need no education any more hurray!!!!

lifeinlines.com check out this thing. a friend from college has started this new web based service where you can pen down your thoughts....emotions using a host of tools like sms, voice in, through the chat clients or through email. essentially your online diary. much more easy to maintain and easily accessible. they are adding on more features but have a look till then.

we had our convocation today , its a good feeling needless to say. mom and dad were there too. no one knows which way life takes a turn. I remember when I was sent to UK for a project for about 2 years. Donkey work....boring clients and an even boring city (bradford). One week into the project I heard boss talking to someone about sending one chap home. And I was at the corner office the next day demanding to be sent back home. Had I not come back from UK so many things wouldnt have happened. Family business, IIMCAL, BeatStreet Holdings. A couple of other life changing events as well but those are history and I really dont wanna talk or think about them.

I heard in a movie. "Life is pretty simple. You make choices and you dont look back". This thing can be life changing. Easy to say but I guess each of us takes his own time to learn this. Some may never.

And another thing happened today. Loose motions!! I counted and it was 17 times!!! By the end of it I was all drained out and had to drink several pouches of ORS (oral rehydrate) to just stand. I had to as I was in the convocation ceremony.

Now I understand why everyone is talking abt importance of water and its shortage :-). Delhi will have a water famine in 2020 someone calculated. I dont know how but if that happens .....phew....atal bihari vajpayee once said that the next war will be fought over water. not surprising.

Tomorrow I leave for gurgaon again. I have never liked calcutta. To the extent that I now have preconceived notions about its residents also but thats ok I can live with those and hope that I dont get to come here again. May be after 25 years in the alumni reunion. I am already looking forward to that but 2033!!! too long and I am sure we are gonna see too many new things by then. Anyways our generation has seen the Internet, the oil wars, and we will see the water wars , india shining and rising and what not. Its been a mix so far. Someone was saying that the last 2 years have rather gone through quickly and I was thinking about the past 28. Rather fast. So life is short. And there are so many things to do or have.

It was only yesterday that I was thinking of writing one last article here on my blog. Aaj man kar raha tha so just ........

Risks and in general

I have a job now from campus placements. And this event rendered me quite useless and lazy and good for nothing for the next few days as I could see no more utility in studying and attending classes. It was during this time that I have thought of something about risk. Some of my friends said that they ve already read this theory by some famous thinker :-) he he I was born a little late. Else may be mera naam bhi newton ya plato ya something hota.

Theory 1:

empirical evidence is there that backbenchers and people who come average in class generally do well in life. Better than toppers.
Well I think when a backbencher is not studying for the exam, or is caught sleeping he is taking a risk. Right. And going by the fundamental law that risk and return have a correlation, this risk taking appetite if what makes these backbenchers continue on their journey to break from the herd and do something worthwhile. High Risk High Return.

Theory 2:

Treat yourself and many others like stocks. Go for a bottom up stock picking approach. If you do your calculations well and research well you may end up picking one of the high return yielding human stock. Thats how focussed mutual funds beat market portfolio based mutual funds.

the point is simple, if as a professional you dont take enough risks, there is as much return you can expect as someone would expect on zero coupon long term government bonds. Its implications are profound:

If you are earning the risk free rate of increments in salary and you plan to buy a house which is appreciating in value and you plan to buy it after some time, by the time you reach that time event, the house would cost you more and stretch your cash flows which can force you to go for extra leverage. More risk.

See. No Risk. No Returns.

Plank Exercises to Increase Core Muscle Strength

Ripped Abs in Three Moves

Air travel

remember? long time back when air travel was a luxury and air hostesses were all supposed to be former some kind of beauty queens. he he. I travel Indigo all the time and now I am at a stage where whenever i fly, i know some one on the plane. Someone from the crew. They have the best planes and the sweetest air hostesses i tell you. really nice. i remember so many of them. but as a personal policy i dont take names.

the first time i boarded a plane , i was in 9th std i guess and it was an indian airlines flight and i remember i was sitting in the tarmac bus waiting to be taken to the plane. Mind you, that was the first time ok. I thought we were getting late as per the ticket timings and i went to the bus driver and said "uncle hamara plane miss ho jayega. jaldi chalao". uncle just smiled. when i went again and said the same thing, uncle said "beta sabhi log usi plane mein jayenge". but the air hostess was nice.
after capt gopinath crashed the travel fares for airlines, it was easy to fly. from 12000 bucks for a delhi bangalore ticket they came down to 2500. in real terms it got even cheaper.

but not all of them are nice. i was coming back from london to delhi and the air hostess (she must have been somewhere around 35 or may be 40 without makeup) was thrashing the passengers with verbal assaults when ever they asked for something. Though I got my packet of potato wafers but when my sidey asked for an extra packet he was told to "pehle jo hai voh khatam kar lo fir aur le lena". ha ha. i couldnt stop laughing and the sidey was all sharam se pani pani.

then there was this young girl in indigo who came to have a chat. You know its good to know that these days people have so many options. many people do their degrees by correspondence and instead work along. good thing to do. what do you do in a degree college anyway (yeah they have most fun i agree). She was all burdened with work as she would believe. "You know these airlines, they pay you good but they make you work like dogs". I asked howcome. "We have to work for 7- hours a day. can you believe that". And all i could say was yeah yeah poor air hostesses. So much work (8 hours) for such a pay packet. I wish i could be an air host on a part time basis.

on my latest trip from calcutta to delhi i had a different experience altogether.
so what i had around was ....

two air hostesses. very nice. one from goa and another one from delhi. now how do i know this. there was one old (young at heart ) uncle who was as curious as a 5 year old kid. uncle was telling these three marketing guys about everything from india - australia match to finer aspects of marketing.

and these two shady kind of characters who were sitting besides me. the conversation went something like this:

uncle: hi. how are you. you know indigo is the best airlines.
airhostess1: big smile
airhostess2: big smile
marketing pro1: uncle is very happy haan
marketing pro2: he he
uncle: where are you from?
airhostess1: goa - mumbai
airhostess2: delhi
marketing pro1 reclines his seat to maximum
uncle: yeh kya kar rahe hain. humne bhi paise diye hain.
marketing pro2: to itna bhin bhinane ki jaroorat kya hai. hum kya koi happy hours mein baithe hain. ek ke saath ek free.
airhostess1 brings some water for uncle.
uncle: so nice of you young lady
my neighbor: saala tharky boodha


Quite a trip actually. Though its been some time since i boarded a public bus but i am sure i am not missing on any of the action

tourists in danger

noticed something. now almost everyday there is a news abt some tourist being molested in some corner of india. i wonder why suddenly. or is it that media has become active in public interest. suckers they are. now when that they have an issue they will even pay people to molest women.

i know of one such incident where they paid some college student to rag juniors. what to do? but yeah a lot of things can be explained by thinking abt incentives.

database management, weight loss and fitness and cleaning your room

whats common between these three. he he he. kafi mushkil sawal hai yeh. aap phone a friend use kar sakte hain.

i was thinking about databases. you maintain one. clean one. there is an administrator who looks after the database. you fine tune it. what for? so that you can reap the benefits of maintaining a database in shape. taking out a report becomes easy when its in shape.

same goes for a clean room. specially in a hostel. i have a friend whose keeps his room in such a complex format that it requires some sort of effort every time he tries to find his glasses or a book or something. to the extent that he doesnt dare even touch his room (database) lest he screws it up and things get lost. so a passport will stay on the floor. its not lying there. its kept there.

if he could somehow spend a little time everyday, things would be a bit simple. but then without any situations or emergencies what is there in life. haan.

lets talk about health. its a long term thing. i am happy that i see many new faces at IIM Calcutta's gym. good. but is it too late. may be may be not. but a good start nonetheless. see here also you keep investing in your fitness. with your time, money ( on a good gym. where those table flat tummy girls turn up. they are quite an inspiration i tell you. try running on a treadmill next to a beautiful and slim model types girl and you will see your own stamina and endurance go up in a day) more time you invest maintaining it, less money and time you will spend in future repairing it.

by the way

anand raj anand has recently become my favorite singer. some of the gems which have come out from his music studio:

1. ishq samundar dil ke andar ( kaante)
2. pyaar aaya pyaar aaya saj dhaj ke mera yaar aaya (plan)
3. tera sarapa aisa hai jaanam (welcome)

all these songs are amazing. daaru peekar jitna mast dance in par hota hai aur kisi par nahi hota.
try it next time.