Kar Chronicles - Jul 10

Woke up very early today, around 5:40 A.M. There was slight change in plan. First I went to driving and then came back home. Set out for jogging.

Weather was bit moist and dew was still settling in. Perfect calmness and pleasant atmosphere. Nothing more I can think of.

Things on my mind-
About reality of realty blogging, fashion show.

Kar Chronicles - Jul 10

Woke up way too early today by 5:40. Hit the snooze and slept for other 10 minutes. Woke up the second time, refreshed myself and reached the park in other 20 minutes. Weather was quite cold outside. Did some warm up, let my body get some heat. I set out to jog and damn it was very tiring. By second round, I was literally waiting for the elusive 10th.

When I reached my 9th round, I saw the same girl from yesterday in the park. Happily smiling, she said "Hi" and took a nice seat of the bench. Her father had already started his round of jog.

Things on my mind-
Most part I was thinking about most important topic of my married life "Realty, House and the Rest..". Two other things I tried to turn my mind to were Car driving and the discussion around the house.

Overall a good and exhausting jog, the way I wanted it.

Kar Chronicles - Jul 8

Woke up around 6:45 today thanks to Nanna's Galaxy Tab lying outside on the dining table. My alarm on phone was quietly "Stopped" not "Snoozed" by my sweetheart. By the time we hit the bed yesterday it was around 2:00 A.M. Understandably she didn't want my precious sleep taken away. 

I peeped outside my bedroom window, could see some sun light pouring in. Yesterday I had to forcibly skip my morning jogs and I also had eaten a lot in the last two days. So I got up, got ready and was out on the road by 7:10.

I reached the ground and began taking doing my warm up exercises. I saw two cute girls holding shuttle rackets which were almost their height facing each other with about 5 feet apart and trying very hard to make contact with the shuttlecock. It was quite windy. I started with my leg press exercise i.e. standing upright, bending your right knee backward while keeping the left leg straight and holding in that position by the right hand for about 15 seconds.I did the same with left leg this time. When I was about to do the second rep I heard one of them say "Uncle, you already finished that leg". I told her I was repeating.

As I was proceeding to do the fourth rep, with way of reminding, the same cute girl frantically shook her  hand in the air. Once she got my attention, she did some mock leg stretch to tell me I needed to do that. It was such a cute site. I wanted to lift her and give her a nice kiss. I gave her a smile, told her that I had few more reps to do before I came to that exercise.

I then proceeded to do my leg stretch.

Pat came a question "Uncle, do you come everyday"
"Yes"
"Oh..but it is so difficult no?"
"Ya..little difficult. And you?"
"Only Papa gets up sometime and takes me, otherwise I can't come daily" she replied with a cute smile. It was time proceed with my jog. So I told both of them one really strong advice "Don't play shuttle in this atmosphere. Its too windy. You can jog if you want" and off I went.

Came back home, finished my quota of crunches. Feels good. Really good.

P.S. - Had to forcibly skip my jog yesterday and couldn't do it either in the morning or evening. The morning is thanks to Lester, my onsite manager. He just ate our brain non-stop for at least 2 hours on the phone. Even a routine home exercises at home was not possible. 

Kar Chronicles - Jul 6

Woke up late today and was little sad that I may have to cancel today. Weather proved to be wrong and surprised me with nice breezy air around 8:00 A.M as I peaked through my bedroom curtain. I rushed myself through the chores, came out, put on my tracks and went to jog. This in no way means I am gonna take back my words of Hyderabad weather though.

I had some crazy surprise in mind. Today we had to go to our Avva's place. My atha, who stays near by to our house had called us up and we decided to go to Avva's place together in the morning. After cutting the call, Sammu had asked me if she had called us for the breakfast.She hadn't and I could see a little disappointment in her. My atha is one of the sweetest persons ever and I wouldn't have minded calling her up and inviting ourselves for breakfast. Usually she would have called us up, but she might have forgotten this time.

Our breakfast usually consists of me eating oats/musili with milk and sugar and Sammu having her regular dose of masala oats. Amma has her bread and egg combo. So when she had sweetly inquired about the breakfast invitation, I could sense the longing to have something other than the routine offering. So I mentally decided I am gonna bring the food from outside. So I took my keys, my cell and some money along with me to the park. 


This was the thought that kept running on my mind as I jogged. The other things in my mind were my thoughts to blog about my birthday, Avva and the movie Brave. As I kept jogging sentences were running in my mind about what to write. It works better than the music I feel. Actually I jogged with music only twice so far. What happens with music is your mind keeps thinking of the count of the songs that are playing, trying to assess if the song is in the middle, keep wondering when its gonna end and when the next one is gonna start, think about if its worth stretching my jog for 5 songs or just stick to 3 songs. The list goes on and on.


With thoughts on writing, its just endless like the this post has just flowed. Thoughts keep flowing and words keep flying. I always remember the line I read from Swat's diary - writing is a theraupatic medium, nothing brings more joy than having your feelings and thoughts written out. The three posts I might do it some other time but they will always be there in my mind to take me through the jogging.


Back to the surprise. As soon as I finished my jogging, I rushed back home, got on the bike and set off to the tiffin center. I decided to skip the crunches today. For that I would have come up again and my darling would spoil my plan. I can always make it up some other time. I called her up from the hotel and gave her a nice surprise by asking her what she wants for breakfast.


Took two plates poori, came home had breakfast. That's how the jogging ended. On a surprised, happy and peaceful note. 

Kar Chronicles - Jul 5

Got up little early today and was all set by 6:30 A.M. Had small errands to do and by the time I was in other 10 minutes.The first thing I noticed was the bright sunlight that was falling on the edges of the building. It wasn't a good sign. For the first time in my life, weather was playing an important role. Never cared about it before. Ever since I started jogging I really hope to look forward to nice cold weather, the kind that's usually prevalent between 6 to 7. I just don't like doing jogging with sun directly falling on your head. Hyderabad weather has got to be one of the worst ever weather. Monsoon is feeling like Summer. Wonder how the upcoming winter would feel like.

I for one am darn sure I would be comfortable wearing shorts all the time. Anyways, had a good jog. Left knee was slightly paining. This was due to yesterday's extra dose of exercises.Since jog was ruled out yesterday, I had stuck to exercises. With over zealousness I had done 3 sets of uthak-bathak (a.k.a squats) with 15 reps. Same with the case of stretches. Wasn't feeling good all day till night. By morning it had subsided considerably with little traces left.

It is only after I came back from my jogging and about to do my exercises I realized what had caused this.
Two things are in my mind now.

1. Irresistible urge to check my weight. The highest weight I ever had in my life was around 86.5. Over the last six months I was hovering around 78-80 Kg. My actual goal is 74. I have this strong feeling that I have touched that mark but I am little afraid to check fearing it might show more than what I am expecting. Even if I have touched 77 I would be happy.

I wanted to check the weight this Friday. Now that I will be on leave I am going to do it coming week. I would be putting little extra efforts and maintain a real strict diet. It almost feels like the extra amount of control that sugar patients put up just a week before their diabetes check. I feel like a school kid eagerly awaiting my first unit test exam result.

2. Am little concerned with the kind of surface I am running on and the after affects it would have in my life. Ever since I heard Guatham Bava tell me during the last car ride we had during his birthday, that one of his friends who had constantly ran on concrete for years together, suffered arthirits I have become more concerned. Want to phone Anu and ask her to find out with her Physio if it is okay to run on ground surface, which is what I have been doing so far.

Hmm..no wonder my mom tells me "Practise writing less matter." This was supposed to be small notes on everyday jog. This turned out to be something else entirely. 

Fight the Fat - Day 1

Have you heard of the saying "If you can't beat them, Join them" ? Have you? hmmm...Just asking..Nothing related though.

First of all I would like to nominate 'yesterday' i.e. 29:07:09 05:25:04 +/- few seconds here and there as a the lead contender for the second prize in the category "Groundbreaking life decisions" (here is the first-Link). That was the exact moment I strongly decided to follow the GE/GM - Weight Loss Diet Plan after hearing few miraculous things from Linda about it's outcome. The name confusion is because it's not abundantly clear who actually started this. It's popular by the name of GE but most of them list it as GM. Whatever it is, there is one common thing - John Hopkins University findings.

After the snacks coming straight back to the office, I heavily researched on this and no surprise. Google had 131,000 results. Its a one week course aimed at reducing 5-6 Kgs per week. Ok, I think you don't get it. It's 5-6 Kgs per week. Almost too good to be just another "eat less, run 30 minutes daily, bam, 5 gone" kind of treatment. Filtering through the filth, it was not until I checked some real life experiences by the people who have followed this and have shown some tremendous results (some lost almost as much as 8Kgs!), did I put my heart on it. I have started reading through all the comments, collecting some of the common doubts and have taken a print out too. Well here is the gist of things one must do if he/she is planning to shed some excess weight over a span of one week (or) in simple words - Arre saale itna to kar ...dek wo tummy teri...

Day One
All fruits except bananas. Your first day will consists of all fruits you want. It is suggested you consume lots of watermelon and cantaloupe.

Day Two
All vegetables. You are encouraged to eat until you are stuffed with all the new and cooked vegetables of your choice. There is no limit on the account or type. Avoid oil and coconut while cooking vegetables. Have large boiled potato for breakfast.

Day Three
Any mixture of fruits and vegetables of your choice. Any amount, any quantity. No bananas yet and no potatoes today.

Day Four
Bananas and milk. Today you will eat as many as eight bananas and drink three glasses of milk. You can also have one bowl of vegetables soup.

Day Five
Today is a feast day. You will eat 1 (one) cup of rice. You also have to eat 6 (six) whole tomatoes and drink 12 (twelve) glasses of water today to cleanse your system of the excess uric acid you will be producing.

Day Six
Today is another all vegetables day. You must eat 1 cup of rice today and eat all the vegetables you want cooked and uncooked to your heart's content.

Day Seven
Today your food intake will consist of 1 cup rice, fruit juice and all the vegetables you care to consume. Tomorrow morning you will be five to eight kilograms lighter than 1 week ago.

If you desire further weight loss, repeat the program again. Repeat the program as often as you like, however, it is suggested that you rest for three days before every repetition. You can find much more over here - Link.

Friends, well-wishers, and those-would-be jealous folks this is my day 1. Seeing the routine I definitely knew I can do till day 4 comfortably. I was not wrong and here I am blogging away my successful first day's report*.

Fruits Day -

• 9:30 A.M. - 1 Apple, 2 Oranges
• 12:00 P.M. - Cut fruits - mixture of watermelon, musk melon, papaya, grapes and pineapple. Everything was perfect except for the musk melon - some were sour
• 12:20 P.M. - 1 Ltr Water
• 1:30 P.M - 5:00 P.M - 1 Ltr Water
• 5:00 P.M. - Cut fruits - only water melon this time
• 6:00 P.M - 9:30 P.M. - 1 Ltr Water
• 9:30 P.M. - Cut fruits - mix of water melon and musk melon
• 10:40 P.M - 12:00 A.M. - 1 Ltr Water

Investment so far -

• 2 Oranges - Rs.30
• 1 Apple - Rs.15
• Cut Fruits - 45
• Water - Free
• Total - 30+15+45 = Rs. 90/-

That ended the day 1's investment.

Experience so far -

Felt little hungry just before snacks and thanks to few calls to mom and dad it subsided. From then on I didn't haev any hunger pans. Water helps a lot for that if you didn't figure out by now. Mind is the key here, it's very important to be pre-occupied and not think about foody-foody thoughts. This you can by you know working, attending meetings, coding and if you ain't got no work - blogging!

...* - Day hasn't ended yet though, hence the star.. More to come

P.S. - If you read through again you would find I said this day as being 'nominated' - the reason being I just can't figure out how in the world this is going to work. So life changing/ not there is too much to prove.

P.P.S - Krishna Hari Kalluri and I have already wagered over it and I owe a Mexchicken pizza with coke if I don't make the 79 mark by next wednesday. So my ardent readers, cheer me on, you defnititely don't want to see him win...would you?

Fight the Fat - Day 0

Just to borrow the words of the latest Terminator series "It's the beginning of the end" ...

Weight hasn't ever been an issue for me. I for one always belonged to it's-good-to-do-exercise gang but never the oh-my-god-look-i-am-so-fat gang. Throughout my almost 3 years stay, roomies paired me up with Srinu in comparing the tummies and judging the fattest guy and having a laugh about it. It never really bothered me though. I always felt, there were only few extra pounds that I had to shed which, I was confident with few weeks of gym I can just get that extra digits after 8 (usually either 1 or 2). In the course of time I was able to comfortably do that and hover around 78-79. And ya, like I said before these numbers were immaterail to me. I knew I was little overweight and also pretty much sure even with this I was like the normal dude like-lean, tall, good-build and in my case handsome.

Then something happened. The first time I observed this strange feature was when I was going through some snaps taken at Barbaque Nation for Srinu's farewell (his first UK Trip...). Below is the preview!

Taking advice from none other than my buddy, roommate, classmate and sort-of well wisher who occasionally speaks his rightful mind, I wore that in-shirt. And damn just have a one more clean look at the pic above before you continue reading. Yes, I know, I should have seen the signs then but I didn't. Guess what? 4 months later or am not sure at least 8-10 months later I end up looking the same if not more awkward as seen below (that's the recent birthday snap which I will be blogging very shortly...).

!!!Concentrate on the guy on the extreme right..especially the T-u-m-m-y!!!

Added to all this was not so regular daily remarks from the most unexpcted sources - Bunty (my cousin, just couldn't believe, he could say that!), Bhargavi ( his wife), Uniques batch folks (almost all of them), Joy (this guy is sure turning out to be a one crackpot jackass manager kind with his oh-so-diplomatic remarks) - "you are great dude but you need to you know just workout on getting a V shape than a H shape" apart from the regulars - mom, dad, Indarni atha, Laxman Bhai, Swati so on and so forth. Fact is what he said struck me full force when I was narrating it to someone else, the incredulous sarcasm. The guts I tell ya?.. All these started hitting slowly, like the way heavy rain starts pouring down with few drops as a teaser. To complete the analogy the heavy rain that befell was after seeing Srinu (after his second trip!). Blistering Barnacles!

Is he a human/half-breed or what? How in the goddamn world did he lose 5Kg I ain't got no idea. But one thing for sure it just didn't feel right. The whole eat-nothing-but-chicken-at-lunch routine just got smashed to bits. I have become the butt of the jokes now and surprisingly it started to pinch me. When I am about to dress or come out of bath, crossing RevT on my path to my room, if there is one thing they don't miss it's the huge semi-spherical dome with a nice smooth curvature and you know what happens right? ga ga ga ga like small kids with knickers who have just seen someone missing catching a pen...so funny eh?

There are so much more to report but to cut the long boring-mindless-senselsess-stupid story short, Srinu was the last straw. As you all know for any right-minded person who is in his right -frame with this almost-right bunch of guys in a room, it's jsut impossible to stick to a resolution. Its as impossible as Hari getting up at 6 in the morning all by himself for playing crickent on Saturday. I mean, hello, just give it try? Then there are always excuses, not today, not tomorrow, slept late, from monday, from thursday,from my bonda day- what the heck and ya now the mother-of-all-excuses- TOEFL!

Is there anyway to come out of this mess? As astounding as it might sound there is ...Read on...