The wife told everyone – “Midlife Crisis” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They were sitting in the balcony on a cool Bangalore morning – all 3 of them. The kid, Mom and Dad.

They had just lost their lovely puppy Sufi – to a canine virus – the previous night. She had entered their life just a week back.

The dad who hadn’t cried that night before was sobbing. The kid had got over it – weeping uncontrollably on that fateful night along with his mother – perhaps the first time he ever cried for a living being.

The kid made jokes to cheer his dad.

It has been 3 months. The dad still misses Sufi a lot. He gets sad when he remembers Sufi and along with him makes the kid sad. They both sit and mourn and curse God.

Life.

Don’t read this book – “Speaker for the Dead” by Orson Scott Card,  if you haven’t read – Ender’s Game – which I highly recommend. This is my brief review from my 2014 Books Roundup.

“Brilliant Book. If you dig Science Fictions you should definitely read this. After Dune by Frank Hebert – this book captured my imagination and kept me in Enders World for the period I was reading this book.  A movie based on this book also came out in November but I missed it. “


After reading Red Rising I was looking for another Science Fiction and I picked up the 2nd part of Enders Game – and little did I expect what is in store for me.

It is unlike any science fiction I have ever read. There is the usual fancy aliens, starship travel and relativity ageing ( our Ender turns 3000 years old in this book ) – but I was hit with a very human angle.

How is to love animals as if they are human?

Now how it is to love aliens as human? This book addresses this in a beautiful way through Ender.  Living beings are classified into Framling, Raman and Varelse.  Varelse are the lowest.. and the aliens are like animals. Framling are humans. Raman is somewhere in-between .

Ender is now the Speaker for the dead. He can be called from any part of the galaxy to speak about a dead person – laying out the facts and telling the truth – bringing peace to the family.

There are 3 key parts in the book  – which are masterpieces in themselves.

In one scene Ender descends on to a widow’s family – which is totally fractured because of the now dead Marco – the abusive family head on whom Ender is to speak of – and ill-mannered kids who hate Ender – and how Ender turns them around one kid at a time.

Another scene Ender, who is the Speaker for the dead – Speaks of the Widow’s husband – laying out all the facts, and brings honour to the dead man and saves the Widow in the process from her misery by exposing the fact that she is an adulteress, yet making her look like a Goddess.

Final scene – towards the end – when Ender creates a treaty with the aliens – simply brilliant.

I hope they do not make a movie out of this and spoil this. But this book is too good to be left untouched by Hollywood.

Now there is the 3rd part – Xenocide – I briefly read on Goodreads about this. The reviews are really funny and discouraging – it seems one needs an iron will to read it – as author rambles a lot apparently.

And found a xkcd cartoon too on Xenocide.

Hmm.. for the time being leaving Xenocide on the table. I will build my mental courage and attack this one.

One has to be totally Irrational to own a Royal Enfield bike. If you are those Rational types – who just require a vehicle to go to from A to B with the minimal fuss – I strongly recommend buying a Japanese Bike.

Also close this tab you are reading in your browser, quit the browser, close your laptop, switch off the fan and light, get out of the house, go find a lake or park, sit on the park bench and think Rational Thoughts. 

—

Now – my dear Irrational Friends, Royal Enfield Friends ( if you are a RE fan you will not be reading my blog – but riding your bike now – but if you are reading this then your bike is in the workshop – for which I am sorry ) and future Royal Enfield riders.. Hello and a warm welcome to the Irrational world we all live.

You – Rational Thought guy – out of my blog. Why are you still reading my post?

Anyway – back to my advise column. The title – if you have landed here because of a Google Search – it is because I know a thing or two about Search Engine Optimisation ( SEO ). You cannot take a print out of this post, stick it in your garage / parking lot and expect to follow instructions. Sorry for having mislead you to this post. This post is me ranting while my bike is in the workshop.

Now if you are already having a RE bike, or planning to purchase a RE bike – first – buy a 2nd hand Honda bike. Trust me. You will need this. This is a very wise Rational thing to do.

My RE bike is a 2013 Thunderbird, 500 CC bought 2nd hand in 2014.

One fine day – the beast refused to start. Tried the Kick a few times. Still it will not start. Shake it left, shake it right. It will not start. Tap the tank. Touch the spark plug. Wiggle it a bit. Touch the wires. Kick. It will not start.

So I had to take the reliable Honda Unicorn bike – which by the way has crossed 10 years of life – and go around hunting for a Mechanic. This is Use #1.

Next the mechanic will say bring the beast to my shop. You cannot push this thing. It weighs a ton or so – ( around 200 kg don’t worry.. we bloggers / writers exaggerate a lot ). Then he will send his boy who will ride the reliable Honda bike to your right, while you sit on the dead beast, and the boy with his left leg will push the silencer.

And your ruffian bike will just quietly glide on the roads – without a single ounce of shame. This is Use #2 for the Honda.

This bike ( all REs made after 2010 or so I think ) has an EFI – Electronic Fuel Injector. The mechanic says it is gone. Has to be replaced. Had it been a Carburettor such a problem would have never come.

Next the mechanic will try to confuse you saying Carburettors are good and EFI is stupid technology. He will change it to Carburettor and then the bike can run without any trouble. I get back home to do my own research – since I cannot call anyone in my network of pot belly friends who all either drive cars or use an Uber / Ola.

I come to realise that EFI is actually pretty good technology – the same technology used in cars and fancy bikes – it regulates the ratio of air and fuel, based on the gear,throttle,temperature,whether Maama is nearby or not – and injects a good optimum mixture into the engine – giving a good spiffy response and at any altitude or time of the day. That is why we see so many REs on Himalayas – these things are tested over there. As a geek love this.

Carburettors on the other hand – is old technology. Just filters air and pumps it into the engine with no wizardary like EFI. The bike after conversion loses 1BHP and gives a little better mileage as he claimed. However, the bike has to be cooled intermittently on long rides – as these are air cooled bikes and the efficiency goes down as it cannot suck enough air when engine is super hot. Advantage is all mechanics know how to fix this ( actually nothing goes wrong in this ). EFI when it goes wrong has to be replaced – gulp – and it costs as much as a 2nd hand 10 year old Honda bike.

So I grudgingly decide to replace the EFI – and promise not to let this happen again. All I have to do is to keep the bike’s fuel level above 4 Litres always. If it goes down it hurts the EFI – and I have done it quite a number of times. No one told me this. Should have networked more damn.

I had to go now and buy the Fuel Pump. In Bangalore I had to go to JC road, right next to SBI there is a small road that takes you to Fixwell Genuine Royal Enfield Spare parts shop. The owner had parked his Harley Davidson outside the shop – what a beauty. I inwardly think – oh – so this is how you get to buy a Harley – by selling RE parts to poor souls like me. Btw – Use #4 for the Honda bike.

So – here is where I am. The Fuel pump is being fit right now – hope it starts.

Owning a RE bike is a lot of responsibility. My irrational brain made me buy this bike. However I have to be rational and take good care of this. Like having a 2nd bike – a reliable one to assist in emergencies like this, having half a tank of petrol in the bike all the time, servicing it regularly ( which I did btw ) and ride this beast on a daily basis and not let it sit in the garage for long periods of time – then it becomes a costly sofa as the wife keeps telling whenever she sees it lying there refusing to start.

Now – waiting for the call from mechanic to go pick the beast ( will take a bus this time ).

Update : 

The mechanic called me and said bike is starting fine. Went and picked it.  Yesterday couldn’t ride it. Today morning it gave a scare when I was taking the wife to work – it refused to start. Switched off and on – and it started. Phoo. Close one.

Finishing off this post with a quote from The World’s fastest Indian movie :

Here is the post everyone was waiting for – list of books I crunched in 2015 – and here is the list for 2010, 11, 12, 13, 2014.

2015 began well with The Martian. Saw the movie on October 2nd, 2015 too – well made and did not disappoint. I will recommend the book any day – brilliantly written and well researched.

Once a Runner

Then one day I took a decision – lets run a marathon. So to inspire myself picked up this classic. This is a fun read and has some hilarious moments in the hero’s college days. Has lot of philosophy on running.

Seven Years in Tibet

I had seen this movie before – Brad Pitt is the hero. In this case I recommend the movie. The book is  an autobiography of a German Mountaineer who is imprisoned in British India and how he escapes and reaches Tibet. This could very well be the first book to ever be written about Tibet – as Tibet is very secretive and does not allow outsiders in. The first half was very interesting – our Hero ( Heinrich Harrier )  escapes and gets captured multiple times. Finally he makes it to Tibet surviving the harsh weather and bandits.

A Wizard of Earth Sea

Harry Potter is a poor copy of Wizard of Earth Sea ( written in 1968 ). Harry Potter is this boring kind of guy – who will ace in everything and will not do anything wrong. In the Wizard of Earth Sea however, our hero kid is quite complicated. He is prone to vanity – like any of us – and once he loses his mind and invokes a very dangerous spell which kills his teacher ( dumbledore like character ), and brings out the dark creatures ( much like Voldemort ) from the depths. Rest of the book he tries to fix this. Highly recommend the book – especially to Harry Potter fans – you should know what a poor copy Harry Potter is.

2001, A Space Odyssey

I had seen the movie long back and did not understand it. Read the book and understood to the most part but for the ending. Wont spoil it for you. The book was ahead of its times. After reading the book saw the movie again. The book was written mainly for the movie. Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke collaborated a lot – and it shows in the movie.

I ran the Kaveri Trail Half Marathon listening to this book.

The Devotion of Suspect X

There was this hit movie – Dhrishyam – a Malayalam Movie, which was remade in Tamil as Papanasam and then in Hindi – as Dhrishyam again. Was quite curious and read somewhere that the story is based on a Japanese murder thriller.

And what a story this turned out to be. A High School Mathematics teacher will do an elaborate setup to cover a murder. And a Physics professor – his school friend – will try to break it. A well structured cat and mouse game. Even if you have watched the movie – you should read this book. The movie(s) don’t do justice to this story.

Natural Born Heroes – Christopher Mc Dougall

I am a big fan of Born to Run – it made me a runner. This was the second part and a huge disappointment. In this book the author tries to uncover another energy within humans – elastic energy – which the parkour athletes use – and how it had helped the Davids win against the Goliaths. The book never took off – drudged on and on till I dropped it midway. Wasted money.

Darbar – Tavleen Singh

I don’t know how much of stuff written in this book is fact or fiction – but scary nevertheless. Lot of stories are covered – Sikh Riots, the self made mess in Kashmir – which our poor soldiers are still losing their lives – and the Gandhi family – who still are very much in power and will be for the next 2 centuries. You are a person who like politics or not, you are on BJP/AAP/Congress/Amma/Appa or whatever allegiance you are on – read this.

Scrum

This is the book from the horse’s mouth – the creator of Scrum. If you are a manager, developer, BA, Project Manager, Client, practice agile or not – read this book.

Bhagwat Gita as is 

I had a goal to read all the religious books in my lifetime. Towards this I got this book from Iskon – thinking this is it – the unadulterated version as the title claimed. Would have read 100 pages or so – but some of the interpretations in it had my blood boiling. So left it “as is”.

SingleTasking

The title says it all.  This is a small book – a blog post would have sufficed. It has study after study proving why Single Tasking is the way to go. It did help me in restrategising how I work – as at one point I was doing it all – and poorly.

Being Mortal

A must read for all of us. I witnessed my Father in law’s condition deteriorate – after undergoing 6 rounds of Chemo ( 3 before and 3 after a major surgery ) – and still we could not save him. This book will help plan our life at its end, as well as our loved ones.

1984 by George Oliver.

This book is eerily close to the truth. So many of the terms we loosely use like “Big Brother”  – came from this book. The book describes a dystopian world – and the attempt by our hero to break it. After reading this book – and now when I see the newspaper –  can already see some of the things in the book being enacted. Sigh.

Sorry for ending on a sad note. Books hold a mirror – and it is not pretty what we see in the mirror.

And in terms of quantity I did very poorly – hardly 1 book a month. For 2016 I have put a high goal of 1  book per week. Lagging behind terribly. Have to plan a few book vacations. Hmm.. why not?!

Had Julius Ceasar decided to go on a hunt – Jan 1 might be actually Jan 15. These days, new years really does not make sense in the large scheme of things – a speck going around a little brighter speck in a  random corner of the Universe.

However – it does matter in the personal progress. Am I wiser, stronger, smarter compared to last year? What am I going to accomplish this year, that I did not do last year?

It does serve as a mile stone.

In no particular order – my goals for 2016 – where I return to Bangalore for the 2nd time in my life.

Running

In 2012 December, I ran a half marathon (21.6 KM) in a little over 4 hours.
In 2015 September, I ran a half marathon in a little under 3 hours ( 2 hours, 53 minutes )

In 2016, perhaps I will run the half in under 2 hours? Or should I aim to run a full marathon ( 42.2). I have at my disposal 2 lakes at walkable  runnable distance from my home. Today I did a 5k in 32 minutes.. will see if I can extend it to 10k in 64 minutes and try to increase distance and maintain the pace. Yes.. my age is increasing…. but I am getting younger.

Biking

In 2014, I did a Bangalore to Mumbai Ride – on a Royal Enfield, Thunderbird 500 cc ( http://kvrlogs.blogspot.in/2014/06/bangalore-to-mumbai-on-thunderbird.html ) . The longest I did after that was the Gorai Beach trip, or could be Thungareshwar from our home in Kandivali.

Perhaps this year I will ride to Nilgiris. It is a crime not to let the bike run full throttle.

Reading

2015 has been a good year with books.  Crunched a cart load of them. Yet to compile the list of 2015 – to continue my annual tradition (  http://kvrlogs.blogspot.in/2015/01/2014-books-roundup.html )

In 2014 ( or could be 2013 ) – read about a guy who planned to read 365 books that year. Now at a minimum I will crunch 52 books this year. Life is too short for the number of good books that are there waiting to be read.

Cycling

The Home-office distance is 5.2 Kms one way. The days I don’t run I am planning to take the cycle. Tried it once and it was just right. Did not get too sweaty that I needed a shower. Don’t know how it will be in summer.

Dog

The idea of having a pet dog bites me every year. Last year I got serious and joined a few adoption forums of Bangalore and Mumbai. Anyone coming there looking to adopt  a pure breed get nicely scolded and they leave the forum and go buy one from a pet breeder ( or puppy mills as they call ). I keep seeing the posts in these forums – cannot bring myself to adopt an Indie ( call me a hypocrite if you want  – I see them on the road all the time and cannot imagine them running inside the home ) – and at the same time cannot bring myself to buy from a breeder – as it perpetuates this inhumane practise. So waiting for a puppy to fall into my lap – hope this year I get lucky.

Programming

I started writing a Project Management tool in angular ( I evaluated so many but none fit my simple requirements  – all had too many features). Will complete it and make it available for our team.

I got a Raspberry Pi last year. Played around with but didn’t do much. This year will improve upon Python and along side plan a few projects. I strongly believe low cost computing will be the next big thing. Perhaps I will hook it to our Generator in our Apartment  Complex – Being in Mumbai last 4 years I had forgotten how it used to be without power cuts. But here.. in Bangalore – when Generator is on – I cannot turn on the iron box or geyser – as the Circuit Breaker will trip immediately. This is an immediate problem I want to solve – a simple App that shows when the generator is on.

I enjoy coding. I enjoy working on a Mac. Want to learn Swift and write a Mac application – perhaps a todo list ( while Omnifocus is good I am not too happy with it ) or an Email App ( Mailbox was almost perfect.. and Dropbox idiots acquired and killed it ).

Travel

I am not a wanderlust. I am more than happy to be holed inside the home – with my mac, music and a fast internet connection – for days.

However, with the responsibility of bringing up a human being –  the 8 year old son – I have to maintain his curiosity levels and keep him exposed to different experiences – I have to plan more travel. Perhaps will show him the temples of South, or go to the bottommost tip of the country, or show him Snow..

Food

Its been more than 2 years since I turned Vegetarian. But still I consume Egg occasionally and Diary products. Perhaps this year I will kick off the Animal products entirely and go Vegan. Now that I am in Bangalore – I can afford to do this.

Fasting

Have never done fasting – other than the times when I was forced to skip a meal. But it has been disastrous – head splitting headaches, irritated mood levels.. have to conquer this. The Vegan fad has subsided ( it has become mainstream ) – and now the new fad is fasting.. the mentions are increasing in the podcasts I follow. Will as well try it.

Going Carbon Neutral

I heard that a guy in our Apartment Complex has made a van with solar panels – which is parked in our visitors parking lot half the time. Apparently he is doing research on this and has got grants etc. Yet to meet this guy. Planning to put up a panel on our roof and see how much juice I can generate.. and start learning on these technologies – perhaps when I retire off in a small farm somewhere someday I can live off the electrical grid entirely – or who knows – this might as well be my next startup – once I own all the Apartment Complex Rooftops 😉

So thats it – starting a new tradition with this – will revisit this post in 2017 to see how I did.

After I got busy with my marathon preparation – since June –  I stopped going Sudarshan Kriya by myself.

Tl;dr : After preparing for a Full Marathon, I complete the Half Marathon – in just under 3 hours.

This reminds me of a tweet I read “Woman completes marathon without talking about it” – and thought about myself. Here I am chronicling each week of my Marathon training![ Starting here ]

Anyway – here is a brief write up of my running the Kaveri Trial Marathon 2015.

I had booked a cheap room near MG road, one of the fancy startups of 2015 – parallel to Church Street – where all the pubs are there. Woke up at 1:00 AM, freshened up and walked to the bus pick up point near Queen Victoria Statue. This is near the Chinnaswamy stadium – and till I reached I was not sure if the bus will be there – and was wondering what will the plan B be if the bus had already left or didn’t show up.

Thankfully 2 buses were there – and a volunteer cross checked my name and let me in. I got in and immediately dozed off.

Took more than 2 hours to reach the race venue. It was still dark. They had music going on and felt energised.

Some 200 odd Full marathoners were there. Their race was to start at 6:00 AM. The race starting point was a Km away. For the 800+ Half Marathoners , the race was to start at 6:30 AM. The full marathoners started proceeding to the race start point.

I went and stood in the queue for the Portable Potty. There was a long queue and there were 5 units, but only 2 were functioning as water and toilet paper were out in others. Next time – carry a roll.

I had to rush to the race starting point – and boy oh boy – there was such a huge crowd. And the track was so narrow. I thought – there is going to be a stampede.

It was beautiful. Just perfect weather – not too cold and fresh clean air. And the excitement and enthusiasm all around crept into me.

6:30 Start.

The fast runners pulled away quickly and we laggards started slowly – the narrow road was not a problem. I was looking at how people run  and a few were stomping heavily – felt bad for their legs – it will hurt bad at the end.

I ran without a break till the turn around point came – and still kept going – passed all the aid stations and finally stopped at around 12kms. I was listening to 2011 Space odyssey. What a brilliant book.

I was munching parle biscuits and looked at the sky – and it looked so clear. My mind was calm and devoid of any thoughts. Paused the audio book and let the moment sink in.

I resumed running and continued my gentle unhurried pace. Soon I was just 5 or kms from finish line. No pain came thankfully and was enjoying the run.  It is all in the mind.

The sun was up, but clouds quickly covered and there was a gentle breeze.

Finally completed it in a new Personal Record time of 2hours and 53 minutes.

The deed was done.

The Full Marathon looks impossible now. Perhaps will give it another shot next year. Will continue my training. Have to increase the pace. This number I put up – was still slower than the veterans – 60 years and above – first place finish ( 2:45 I think ).