Ramblings@DP’s inn

I have been asked about the merits of buying an iPhone. Lets look at what’s bad with the iPhone:

1. Unlike blackberry, it has no physical keyboard. A friend thinks he might get RSI if he used the touchpad.
2. No bluetooth. Yes, you could use wireless(EDGE/3G/WiFi) to send stuff, or even plug the phone into a computer. But you don’t have the convenience of transferring photos from the phone to a computer in an Internet-less, cable-less environment, like a desert, right? (Actually I did see cellphone coverage while driving through Mojave desert last weekend. I was also taking pictures and uploading them to my facebook on the fly.) UPDATE: It has Bluetooth.
3. No office productivity tools such as word, excel, powerpoint yet. You can use google docs though.
4. No stylus(not that you need it..but), so someone who wants to write a grocery list can’t write it. Of course you could use Jott and just speak the list into the phone, which would then be transcribed into text(very accurately), or you could use any other of the tons of apps to record the list, but you won’t get the personal touch of seeing your handwriting on the grocery list.

Now whats good:

1. A software development platform that has allowed developers to quickly create applications and get paid for it. (Yes, I remember the frustrations of trying to build an application for an “advanced” Nokia phone, the N80. The API was almost laughable.) Applications are also really easy to install and use and pay(if its not one of the free apps). A lot of the apps are available for 99 cents. Thats not a typo!

The apps are amazing. If you doubt me, go try some. And then talk..

2. A UI and user experience that has none to match. Remember Motorola Razr? That super sleek phone that everyone bought because it was so pretty, for 400$! It was beautiful, with a UI that made people feel like shooting themselves or killing someone in frustration. My adviser reportedly threw it against his wall, or that was his wish..

The iPhone’s UI is amazing. With a good screen and pleasant design, reading on this screen is a pleasure. Tapping on an item is much more intuitive to me than taking a needle like stylus and poking the screen.

3. Location based services: the stuff of legend in the US research community is finally there in a product. I remember researchers beating their heads about why cellphones here didn’t have location based apps when it was so possible with existing technology. Well, Apple has pushed the carriers to allow that, and make money too. Marking a milestone for everyone, for consumers who can use a variety of new services, for the carriers who can make money from it, and from apple who has a growing market to innovate for and reap the profits.

4. I think its redundant to mention the sleekness of the iPhone, or its quick response UI, or its GPS capabilities, or the iPod that’s sitting inside. In my opinion, finally a cellphone is beginning to realise its capabilities in making life better, beyond email, SMS and phone calls.

So if you think about it, the iPhone is more of a ‘quality of life enricher’ phone, than a ‘raise the company’s bottomline’ phone. And I hope it stays and grows that way.

So to the critics of iPhone, let me say this. Consistency is a very fundamental human trait, as Robert Cialdini has famously discussed in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. What this means is, if you get convinced by a convict to help him, you are going to defend him in discussions afterwards. Why? Because human nature is by default to be consistent with their past. So if you bought a certain phone(Razr), you’d most likely praise it when someone says something that challenges the phone’s capability. Because otherwise, it’d seem like you made a wrong decision and probably reflect poorly on you.

The point I’m making is that, some people who have a different phone react negatively(remember Hillary’s attack on Obama!) on hearing appreciation of the iPhone. Cialdini’s ‘consistency’ in action. Perhaps they start feeling that the implication is that their phone is bad, and they made a poor decision in buying it. I think thats a mistake. If you have a blackberry and are happy with it, stay with it. But attributing the iPhone’s popularity just to “good looks” and “crazy marketing campaigns” and “16 year olds’ fad” shows a lack of understanding of the subject.

Which reminds me of a movie I saw recently that had a hot blonde who is an ambitious journalist. So someone happens to say to her: ‘hey, you are so lucky to be so beautiful’. And she says: ‘I don’t really know. When people look at me, they’re like: blonde, she must be stupid. And when I do something well, they say: oh, its not her work but her looks which are carrying her forth. So I never ever get credit or recognition for the work I do just because I am pretty’. I have seen some people talk about the iPhone similarly.

I have personally used the iPhone, the Nokia N80, Motorola Razr, the humble nokia 1100, and a huge motorola bricklike phone. I have borrowed friends’ blackberrys and palms and used them. For me personally, the iPhone is the best phone so far. And having entered the market, and brought out such a good product in a short time is a testimony to Apple and Steve Jobs. If I met Steve Jobs personally, I am unsure if I’d like him, because of his well known personality, but he drives his company to innovation, and thats what matters.

I don’t like competition. I have never been a big time competitor, and I have never enjoyed competing against others.

Inspiration is different. I was doing my usual hike on the Mission peak this morning and realized that I forgot to take my heart rate monitor or water. And I was thinking if I was overtaking enough people this morning. As I’ve said before, overtaking someone on an incline is a lot more fun than kissing a hot girl at a decline ;). But then I started stopping around and taking pictures with my new cool camera :).

Well, I digress. The point is, when I’m inspired by something, which has happened a couple of times in my life, I have needed no competition or motivation. The inspiration itself is enough. Running well is an inspiration. Its enjoyable on the whole, though at times its painful. Thats what I should be focusing on, rather than worrying too much about how many old women I overtook.

Lemme flashback a bit. And forgive me for my overly academic obsessions. I used to be in a middle school where we usually had teachers come in for maybe 3 or 4 of the 7 periods everyday. They were not the best teachers in the country, but I realize now how utterly sincere they were and how hard they tried. Finishing the syllabus was never a priority. Making something understand was. But I was restless, seeking more. And so when I took the sainik school entrance, I cried on the bus on the way back. Crying is very unusual with me, because I usually just grit my teeth and decide to teach the difficulty a lesson. But this time I had worked really hard. Waking up at 4 am instead of 8 and studying before and after school. I had invested my life into it for a month, and I just couldn’t believe how badly I had done. I was passionate. I was obsessed. And I couldn’t accept I had failed.

Well it turned out differently. I was placed third, so I got in :). Nice surprise. I cannot forget the feeling of accomplishment after I heard the news. I had tried really hard, thats why I loved it. I wouldn’t have enjoyed the success so much if I hadn’t been so inspired.

I took the JEE later in life. Actually getting into IIT wasn’t really so exciting, because I wanted to study astrophysics. Engineering held no charm for me. The exam did. The idea of clearing a really hard exam was just so inspiring. I had a lot of issues living in Delhi and getting sick almost every month from the unhygenic conditions, compared to the clean fresh environment I was used to. But in the last 4 months, I cranked up my gear and worked between 11-14 hours every single day. Essentially, I was studying throughout the day, like crazy. In the summer 45 celcius heat. I never regretted it. I never had second thoughts. I was inspired.

I had also concluded that 14 hours of work a day was my limit. I could somehow never push it to 15. And then I went to MIT, where I sometimes had 36 hours of nonstop work. Sitting on the same position on my bed programming and reprogramming over and over until it finally worked. I realized that the limits of humans are truly set only by their imagination. We’re far more capable than we ever think.

Coming back to the topic, I don’t think I needed motivation for any of these. Motivation is like saying: do this, so you can get that. Or, your life is wasted, if you don’t do this or that. I guess one needs motivation when one is trying to do something s/he isn’t really passionate about. Since it feels like a chore, you try to “motivate” yourself from time to time so that your productivity is acceptable and you feel ok. You’ll never feel the exhilaration of doing something awesome and exciting that way though. One has to follow the passionate path for that.

As I was hiking up Mission peak this morning, an important realization came to me. After my marin headlands half marathon I had rested for a while before resuming running. My first run after that was on the Stanford dish. And it was a breeze. But after about a week the Stanford dish runs became as difficult as they used to be before the marin run. What happened?

My belief is that my body adjusted to the marin headlands run, which was tough for me. So the next time I went running, my body had kind of preparted itself for a “marin” run, so the stanford run was fairly easy. But when it only got the stanford level of exercise for a few days, my body realized that the “marin” run preparation was no longer needed and went back to its old ways.

The lesson is that one’s running cannot be the same every week. It has to vary(increase, unless you are post-run recovering). When you push yourself hard, your body’s ability elevates. You have to pick it up from there and take it higher. So every week one’s mileage must slowly increase, and so must the difficulty of the one “hard” run you do every week. Here’s what my current schedule looks like(just a typical example):

Sunday: long run
Monday: recovery
Tuesday: alternates
Wednesday: recovery
Thursday: tempo
Friday: recovery
Saturday: Rest and party!!

If you are unfamiliar with running lingo, alternate is running one minute sprints followed by 2-3 minutes of rest. Tempo is a fast run but not so fast that you have to stop. You try to run at a fast constant speed, for say 45 mins. Recovery are easy relaxed runs, maybe 30-40 mins. My Sunday long runs are usually about 10 miles, with a decent part of it on a steep hill. I also run my alternates and tempos on hills, but thats because I am preparing for a mountain marathon. There are many benefits of hill running, but you can follow the schedule above without running on hills.

As far as schedule is concerned, for me easing into a schedule works much better than jumping into one. If I decide that I’m going to follow a particular schedule(which I never do), and I don’t I feel guilty and discouraged and eventually do nothing. Instead of doing that, I just create a schedule and keep doing my running as usual. Over time I can see that I do some of the things in the schedule, though not in that order or that extent. So when I’m feeling energetic, I go ahead and push myself a bit to reach the schedule target. Eventually the number of things on the schedule that I’m doing increase and at one point I exceed the planned schedule.

I added 4 minutes to my Mission peak best round trip time of 1.30. Because I forgot to carry a powerbar and enough water. It was sweltering and I ran out of water towards the end. Lesson: if you plan to run for an hour, definitely carry a power bar. You need fuel.

Also friends, carb is not your enemy. People planning to lose weight often just forgo carb and try to work out like crazy. Well thats fine except that right after a workout your body needs carbs to quickly rebuild your muscles and bring you back from tiredness and hurt. A powerbar in the middle of a workout or right after(even 2 if your run is long) is just perfect. Just don’t eat the carb before you have done at least 30 mins of running. Make carb your ‘best fraaand”. Just don’t give your heart to it.

Speaking of giving one’s heart away, I fall in love with the sights everytime I am on mission peak. Its the kind where you keep falling more in love every single time you meet the person. Just an utterly blissful experience it is to look around and admire the curves and contours of the hills all around, with two sky blue lakes in the middle and Mount Diablo far away in the hazy distance.

I feel I tend to get shallow if I don’t run regularly. As I near the peak and the really steep incline starts, my mind becomes free and creative and I start getting high. All the worries and thoughts of life start floating clearly, as in a soup. From a cream soup, it becomes a minestrone and I get all my answers. Being close to nature restores me to my natural self and clears out the fake from the genuine in my life. Its something that has to be experienced to be understood.

With commencement coming up this Friday, I’ll probably do a run along the Charles that I once loved so much. It will be a nice pleasing ego boosting glory run in celebration..

hmmm, I ^^really^^ don’t know what I was thinking.. In a moment of madness, I signed up for the Pikes Ascent. Frankly, I don’t recall doing anything as daunting since I took the JEE way back in ‘99.

But then something I find exciting yet superhard really gets me excited. I hope I am not going to DNF this race. So whats so hard about Pikes?

Well its a somewhat different half marathon. The elevation gain over 13 miles is almost 8000 feet. Very steep! Mission peak gains 2000 feet over 3 miles. So Pikes is like taking 4 trips up Mission peak consecutively. With a slight difference, however. Pikes peak is at an elevation of 14000 feet. So by the time you reach at the top, you’re breathing in an air that has about 43% less oxygen.

Pikes is actually an experiment for me. It an excuse to get into better shape by training much harder. If I train as hard enough as I should, I know I’m going to be able to do it. The key point is consistency then. And training in simulated conditions.

My aim is to scale the peak in about 4:30. I am going to try to maintain a constant pace throughout the race. Of course the last 2 miles are going to be crazy, and I can’t do much about it except maybe do a few high altitude hikes/runs before the event.

The SF half marathon, which is about 2 weeks before Pikes, should be an easy run then, since I am going to train superhard before that ;). I’ll run the SF at an easy pace, mostly for the views and the spirit than for any PR. And I’m expecting a bunch of friends to join me so we’ll all run together probably..

The Garden of the Gods 10 Mile Run and Summer Roundup Trail Run shuld both provide some high altitude training. They are held, like the Pikes, in Manitou Springs, Colorado. I need to start booking my plane tickets I guess :D.

So my 2008 races are going to be:
Golden Gate Headlands Half Marathon - Apr 5 - DONE
Garden of the Gods 10 Mile Run - June 8
Summer Roundup Trail Run 12K - July 6
SF Half Marathon - Aug 3
Pikes Ascent - Aug 16

Tentative:
Boston Half Marathon - Oct 12
Honolulu Marathon - Dec 10

Meanwhile, Matt Carpenter, the record holder for the Pikes Ascent as well as marathon, is a really inspiring guy. He’s also written a couple of really good articles on running.

Now some nice Dean Karnazes quotes.

So yesterday, I ran the Golden Gate half marathon in 2 hours 50 minutes. This run took about 46 minutes more than the Boston half marathon. Compared to the Boston run, yesterday’s run was brutal. You gain an elevation of about 1500 feet in the first 2 miles, the trail keeps going up non-stop. The total elevation gain over the entire run is 2200 feet.

Having done this run, I feel confident and humble. Humble because you see specks of humans crawling away on the hills. And it hits you that humans like us have been doing this for millions of years. We test ourselves against nature, and then we perish in less than a hundred years each. New offsprings do that over and over again for eternity. Yet the hills and the earth remain. The hills erode away too, but its much slower compared to our own erosion.

Another thought that occurred to me (and I’m sure this is no novel thought as such) was that each of us alive is at the end of a long line of survival starting right from the first man or men(if you believe in evolution). When you die without an offspring, you cut one of those lines of succession that had survived these millions of years. Hardly does this occur to me when someone passes away who had no children. But it is true. But then does it really matter that this happens? I mean, there is mating within the human population between pretty random points(though traditionally the randomness has sometimes been confined to sub-populations such as Americans, Brahmins, Hindus, Catholics, Norwegians etc..). So is there really a true identity one might have of oneself? How long can one go back in time and trace one’s identity?

Now for very long, I’d argue. You go back a few thousand years and all these notions of nationality and religion and community that we have today would be nonsense then. Go back a few million years and even the distinctions of race vanish. So does the line of survival idea make much sense? Yes and no. Yes, its true that you who are reading this blog post over the Internet are a member of the survived community. You are at an end of a one-way succession over time and you have maybe already produced or will produce the next generation. But if I go back many million years, I can’t really tell the distinction between my ancestor and yours, even whether they were different at all. A lot of our present day notions just vanish.

Think of civilizations like the Incas, highly developed civilizations of which there is not a trace today. When we feel like we are the ever powerful humans, the most developed species, do we ever stop and think if we’ll disappear like the Incas, and our technology that is all so cool and advanced(or so we think!) will just go away? This is not such an impossible scenario. I am sure an Inca guy developing a smart invention or technique had never imagined his civilization just doing a disappearing act.

Well, coming back to the run, it was much fun. I met two girls, Katie and Rebecca on the way and we ran together most of the route till they sped away to the finish while I followed close behind. Katie is from Berkeley, so my Stanford shorts were unhappy and sulking later over my letting a Cal girl beat me at marathon timing ;).

But then I have an excuse. I was running with a foot I had sprained last weekend, and I had to stop and rest several times, or hop with my weight on the right foot whenever the left foot started hurting. It was kinda challenging, but I enjoyed it. And I really enjoyed the beautiful views all over the race route. What a sight!

I am wondering if there is a marathon(other than crazies like in the desert or on the south pole) which has a more challenging course than the golden gate marathon. I’d really like to know..

Coming back to my original point, doing this run has definitely been a confidence booster. I only had a month to train, with work schedule forever screaming for attention, and a sprained foot. But it wasn’t as hard as I felt the night before the run. I did not feel like I was going to die. And now I feel I could run a full marathon sometime later this year. Maybe the NY in Nov! After all, Louis Armstrong, the biker I reallyyyy admire, also runs it!

Yesterday I made paneer masala and it turned out to be really yummy. So here’s the recipe:

1. Cut paneer into cubes and deep fry in butter until it becomes spongy. Remove the paneer from the pan.
2. Chop 1 large onion, few green chillies, ginger and garlic. Chop 2 small tomatoes or use marinara sauce. Fry them in the butter left over from frying the paneer.
3. Add haldi, salt, meat masala and some sabji masala and fry until the onion turns golden brown.
4. Add half a cup of water.
5. Add the paneer cubes and cook on low/medium low for 15-20 mins. Towards the last 5 mins, squeeze half a lemon and add mint leaves.
6. Remove and serve.

Yesterday I ran on the Stanford campus. I had actually intended to run on the dish area, but I made the BIG mistake of taking central expressway. I arrived well after the dish area had closed, so I just decided to run on the campus. It has anyways been quite a while since I used to run there.

I had a discussion with my good friend Helen(self-proclaimed ex-athlete) about my getting tired during runs. She suggested it might be a dehydration problem. But I drink a lot of water all day and make N trips to the loo at work. So dehydration it can’t be. Perhaps, she suggested, it is an endurance problem. After all, running on hills is brutal compared to plains.

Well I ran about halfway on the campus drive loop and got tired again. So I got an idea. After resting for a minute, I started a 240 step sprint. I didn’t really feel any lack of energy in sprinting. I jogged for 240 steps after the sprint and repeated this 5 times. By the end of which I was thoroughly tired with my energy well spent. So my body was just lying to me about being tired?

I suspect that is the case here. Sometimes you just need to put your foot on the gas I think. Alternate sprints and jogs are anyways a good exercising technique that I saw on some marathon training website. I think doing that on a hill might be even more fun..

Meanwhile I have gotten serious about getting myself a heart rate monitor. It looks like a really useful device to optimally train for a long run. But the difficult question is, which one to buy? Choice always makes life tough, doesn’t it?

So yesterday I went running to the Marin headlands itself, the site of the actual half marathon 2 weeks from now. Now I didn’t have a map, and as usual I don’t like to carry anything on a run, including my iphone(which had the map). So I headed off just with my car keys. It was a nice warm sunny day, with a beautiful breeze blowing across the face. The breeze was actually strong enough to make you feel some resistance against the running. And man, the climb was quie steep! Unlike the Stanford hill where the steepness ends after a while, the Marin climb goes on and on. The total ascent over the full run is 2200 feet.

Now being without a map, I naturally lost my way. I couldn’t find the wolf-ridge trail, even though when I came back later and checked the map, I realized I must have been on it. I did take the head trail which takes you to a peak(hill 88) where there are a few abandoned one-room buildings with graffiti all over. I did a couple of sprints on the last leg of the climb.

At one point the main road suddenly stops and you have to take a dirt path. And when you have walked a bit on that path, you get the old road again. Now that part of the road in between has landslided, and it looks kinda scary to see the steep and sharp fall along what was once the road.

So overall I ended up doing the path usually taken by 7-milers, not half-marathoners. But it was a good run and I felt somewhat energyless at the end. Maybe because of the repeated hill climbs. Or perhaps not enough energy nutrition. I lay on the beach as the sun was coming down and the sunset was very pretty. A hispanic couple to my left were acting silly and taking photos while 3 guys sat on a log, and brooded. Then they quietly walked away.

I drove back while the sun was still setting and gave a ride to 2 girls from SF who had lost their way on the hills and had gotten late. They really didn’t have much idea of how long their walk was going to be to SF (that was their plan until they flagged me down). I don’t remember much, except that one of the girls’ name was Dora(n), and the other was…..hmm that was an easy name but I just can’t remember. They are environmentalists in the city.

Tiring and somewhat satisfying run overall. I’m lying in the bath trying to warm my sore legs as I type this. If the headlands wasn’t so far, I’d go there every single day..

I have finally been able to figure out a way to not have to stop to catch breath when you reach the top of a steep incline. This must obviously be an old trick that I’ve rediscovered. So when I run an incline now, I do 2 things:
- I decrease the frequency of footsteps and try to keep my pace length(steps) long. Its like running like a cat, taking slow soft and reasonably long steps, not short quick steps because that tends to tire me out and push my heartbeat very high.
- When I get to the top, I run at a very slow pace, with longer steps, and match my breathing with the running. So I force the breathing to be slower then its naturally trying to be. The recovery is pretty fast this way. I tried this yesterday and didn’t have to stop to catch breath after any of the slopes.

I kinda believe I had this figured out when I used to run in Boston in 2006, but I surprisingly seem to be forgetting all the tricks if I stop running.

I have stopped listening to music on my runs. It interferes with my natural pace of running by speeding me up(if the song is fast) or trying to slow me down(if its a heart rending serenade). It also doesn’t let me think clearly about something. But the key thing is when I play music, I am constantly thinking that the music is helping me by distracting me and I am actually tired. Even though I am not. So, no music on my runs. Also, the GG marathon doesn’t allow headphones.

Yesterday I did a loop of the Stanford dish, then ran 2 miles on the campus. I wasn’t tired, but I felt out of energy somehow at the end of the run. My original plan had been to do 2 loops. Maybe I need to feast on more carbs now as my frequency of rest days keeps going down..

The Golden Gate marathon is round the corner. I won’t say I am scared, but I need some confidence boosting sessions on the hill. So far I have limited myself to one loop of the Stanford hill.

The Golden Gate is a hard marathon as Scott Dunlap says, from experience. Actually I didn’t quite know that when I signed up. I was looking for a nearby half-marathon that was happening soon, which would get me into running again, and I signed up. I thought it was some trivial local marathon. Apparently not. And I should have known better, after my repeated visits and treks to the Marin headlands where this run will happen. I’ve been on the trails and walking itself was tiring.

Its taking me about 41 mins to do a loop of the stanford hill, which is about 3.7 miles. That makes it almost 3 hours to finish the half-marathon, much worse than the 2.04 I took to finish the Boston half-marathon. The Boston run was not hilly, although the road went up and down a few times. GG is very hilly, but I need to rehearse it and time myself to see how good or bad I am doing.

I’ll miss Lien at this event; he got too busy and forgot to register and now its all sold out. He actually did the Boston run in 1.52 which is pretty good timing He could have actually done better, but he stayed with me when I was having a nibbling backache during the run. Very good running mate and friend.

Last weekend I went on a trip to Lake Tahoe. South Lake Tahoe for the split-hair specific-minded Jhajee.

A week later, I have a very vague idea of what the lake looks like. Like, come on, having gone on a trip to “lake Tahoe” one is supposed to at least visit the lake, right? Not quite. Most people just go there for the snow and ski, and forget the lake. But we actually stumbled across it, and realized that we were driving next to the lake on our way back.

Now the adventure.

We had planned to leave on Friday afternoon - Tyagi Suman and I - so I dutifully left work somewhat early. But Tyagi just happened to realize that his application to a bigshot B-school had to be mailed immediately. Also, it had to be written by hand! So he spent the entire evening( till midnight) finding someone to write and then making him write multiple copies of the document till he did one without an error in it. Naturally, we skipped the trip that day.

But Saturday was different. There was a laziness plus restlessness in the air. And it felt like a day of skiing wasn’t such a bad idea either. So we left Stanford at 3 pm (the plan was at 1, but…) and drove north on 101. The wind was pretty strong that day so it was kinda fun seeing the car try to negotiate itself into the next lane ;). In a little while we got onto I-80 and then I-50.

It didn’t take us too long to get to the chains area. For the uninitiated, one needs to put chains on a car’s tires while driving on a snowy mountainous road unless you have a 4-wheel drive with snow tires. Now I have a 4WD Mitsubishi Eclipse, but the tires didn’t look like the snowy type. So we stopped at the entering point and were able to raise 29$ between the 3 of us(a dollar less) to get our car ‘chained’. Now since ours is a 4WD, the guys just chained the back wheels. You just chain one set of wheels, the wheels that power the car.

We got moving and it was kinda fun driving in the slushy snow at 20 mph. However, the car seemed to skid a little bit occasionally. I was however prepared and we kept going on. At one point we had to pull over because with our slow 20 mph speed (4WD with snow tires can be driven much faster) we had held up a lot of traffic behind us. I had also gotten tired of peering through the snow to figure out which way the road turned ahead since I had been leading.

Now when I tried to get the car back on the road, it skidded real badly. Tyagi and Suman were casting aspersive glances commenting mentally on my driving in their head. The car would just veer right and left. But I finally managed to get back on the road and get going.

However after about a mile or so, we got totally stuck.

The car would just not move forward. After veering right and left a couple of times, we began wondering what the hell was wrong with the car. Even with chains, we were somehow not able to drive the car!!

While we were pondering over this, it was snowing heavily and heavenly. Utterly beautiful flakes that I had been missing so much. Boston had a lot of snow, and I enjoyed both my winters there. So it felt very homish, even though we were stuck on an icy-snowy road somewhere on the way. The last milestone had indicated that we might be about 95 miles away from Tahoe. We had a loooong way to go. At 20 miles an hour, it’d take 5 hours. And we weren’t even moving.

So finally, one of the god-sent snowcleaning angels arrived. He asked us what we were doing. We said we were stuck. Then he asked me to press on the gas. I was amused, but I humored him. This was obviously not going to work, and we had tried it enough. But he had something else on his mind. He told us we had the chains on the wrong set of tires!! My car was a front wheel drive, he told me. And the chains on the back wheels were useless. You might as well take them off, he said.

So with some help from him and my comrades (pushing the car) we got out of the icy side patch of snow and started downhill. We were able to wake up a general store owner who apparently also sold chains and doubled as a chain putter and remover. In about half an hour we were ready to go with the chains on the front wheels. Tyagi and Suman did manage to save us 20$ by taking it off from the back wheels themselves ;).

To be continued..

I have always considered myself very indifferent to politics. In my 5 years of college, only once did I go to vote, because some friends needed every vote badly for their candidate to win. I mostly ignored the action and was happy with my life.

And that, when I seem to have an opinion on every government policy, and greedily devour political stories. In my opinion, politics is about doing something difficult and uplifting for the people, and that truly fascinates me. A politician has an incredible power and ability to influence the lives of millions. Whether he actually does that or is caught stealing fodder is an entirely different matter.

So consider my incredulity when Bill Clinton, one of the few politicians I have admired for a long while suddenly blows my frame off, totally. yes I’m talking about the US elections going on right now. Bill Clinton being so negative? Bill Clinton making racial comments? Bill Clinton making demeaning remarks about the opponent’s vision and mass appeal. Hearing that from a guy whom most women seem to love(and vote, many have admitted) just for his looks sounds a bit too ironic. Not just ironic, but nasty. Irrespective of the results of this election, Obama is clearly the winner here. He deserves applause and respect for his sincerity and vision.

Now some(not the majority even) of my female friends suggest that I’m just trying to block the election of a female as president(hell I’m still on a student visa, forget voting rights!). If you know me well, I’m one who’d support a woman between two candidates who are otherwise equal. I believe in women having equal rights as men. But arguing that a leader should be chosen for her gender doesn’t hold much logic for me.

So why this rant? Well I’m just disturbed by the negativity used by the Clinton campaign. A friend suggestd that Bill Clinton is a politician and no different from any other. He said that the aim was to win, and Bill was timing his remarks to get maximum effect. And I’m like: No Bill isn’t like that! He’s a statesman, and I don’t know what the hell has gone wrong with him. Why is he being so desperate to win an election at the cost of his reputation and conscience?

Some would argue that Bill doesn’t have a conscience. Look at what he was doing in the white house, they’d say. But I disagree. I think he feels bad when he’s lying in his bad and planning another diatribe on Obama. I think he knows he’s not fair. And I really respect Obama from not following in Bill’s footsteps and throwing mud. Bill Clinton has been an admirable person, but doesn’t in my opinion have the moral authority to make such value judgments and false accusations. And he should probably remember that he’s not running himself.

Looking at the drama that’s unfolding, I can’t help but think that the Clinton camp is being wily in their campaign, while the Obama camp carries on its campaign without using slander as a strategic weapon. I have no doubt that this is hurting Obama’s campaign, perhaps a more Machiavellian personality would increase his probability of being in the white house this fall. But he chooses to stand up and be fair in his fight for the presidency. And that, my friends, is admirable. Thats the stuff great leaders are made of.

Someone suggested I listen to this song, and I’m totally hooked now. Its a somewhat difficult song to translate, but amazing lyrics and well sung with good music. Here’s a try:

Kuch Is Tarah - Atif Aslam

Kuch is tarah teri palkein
Meri palkon se mila de
Aason tere saare
Meri palkon pe saja de

Lets make your eyes meet meet mine,
such that
all your tears
adorn my eyes.

Tu har ghadi har waqt mere
Saath raha hai
Haan hai yeh jism kabhi duur kabhi paas raha hai

Every second, every moment
you’ve been with me,
yea this body
has sometimes been together, sometimes far apart.

Jo bhi gum hai yeh tere
Unhe tu mera bata de

All the sadness you have
give them all to me.

Kuch is tarah teri palkein
Meri palkon se mila de
Aason tere saare
Meri palkon pe saja de

Lets make your eyes meet meet mine,
such that
all your tears
adorn my eyes.

Mujhko to tere chehre pe
Yeh gum nahi jajjta
Zaij nahi lagta
Mujhe gum se tera rishta
Sun meri guzarish ise chehre se haata de -2

I don’t like to see
this sadness on your face,
it’s just not fair
this relation of yours with sadness,
please listen to me,
and wipe it off your face.

Kuch is tarah teri palkein
Meri palkon se mila de
Aason tere saare
Meri palkon pe saja de

Lets make your eyes meet meet mine,
such that
all your tears
adorn my eyes.

Graduated from MIT! Traveled to India. Starting a job soon…

Yey!

46,326$ = median US household income as resported by the census bureau
40,000$ = price of a limited edition louis vuitton handbag

splurge!