Perfect day to start a week.....

Well let me give you an insight why.... The temperature outside: 18 degrees celcius, cloudy and not much traffic. Now thats what I love about this city, Believe me you will fall in love with the morning weather, it is just perfect. And what better way to start a week.

After a long time, today I came with my car windows down, mostly I don't do that as people have this weird habit of honking whenever they get a chance to, it seems most of the people are obsessed with honking here. But I guess today the awesome weather was more important than the irritating noises outside.

The Bangalore Morning reminded me of my Vienna days today, it used to be similar weather in summers.
Yes definitely I am in Love with this City.

Song Today in Car: You are beautiful by James Blunt

Meeting Paul Tergat & Bangalore Sunfeast 10K run

With the RFL gang

Paul Tergat

hey hey, I got to meet Paul Tergat !!!!! For those of you who doesnt know about Paul Tergat, here is what wikipedia has to say:

Paul Kibii Tergat (born June 17, 1969) is a Kenyan professional athlete. He held the world record in the marathon from 2003 to 2007, with a time of 2:04:55, and is regarded as one of the most accomplished long-distance runners of all time.

Thanks to RFL and Nike, Paul was in town to run the sunfeast 10K , and a few RFLers got the chance of meeting him, I also got a personally autographed T-Shirt from him, which I am flaunting everywhere now! it was nice meeting the guru of running in person and getting some tips on how to increase the timing and the dos and donts of running!

Next day was the Sunfeast 10K run, Bangalore has been suffering from this 10K "marathon" syndrome since a long time, and so here I was running the Sunfeast 10K "marathon" :-) . It was fun meeting with so many RFLers, on an event which is not organised by RFL! the race started on time, i.e at 9:00 am

I did a mistake I started really fast, probably thinking that its just 10K, and then soon after start I realized that it was way too hot! My entire body was burning, lesson learnt: running at 6:00 am is totally different than running at 9:00 am. To make the matters worse, the same pain in my knee which came in the Bangalore Ultra, started again. But still I was able to finish it in 1:01 hrs. Not satisfied with the timing though, I was aiming at a sub 50 Min finish, but then seeing the heat and the tough conditions even a 55 min would have been fine.

So the lessons learnt and next steps:

- Running at 9:00 am is totally different, so would be training for running in the heat as well now
- I need to be more regular with running, so have started running 3-4 K on weekdays as well
- as Paul advised, increase the weekly Mileage in order to increase the timing, so I am exactly doing that

as Farah (a fellow runner) wrote in her mail to the group:

a little taste of the bitter never hurt, as long as you don't make drinking it a habit:) to everyone who met or exceeded their targets...raise the bar higher. to those of you who like me carry the learning of a distance run, but not conquered, we will be given as many chances as we take...and each time a little wiser, stronger and hungrier...


Song Today: Californication

Insaaf ke Rakshak.......

While coming to Office......

7:30 am Sony World Red Light in Koramangla, there is a huge traffic jam, and I am caught in the middle of it. I had an important meeting at 8:15, had something to prepare for it before that, but seems like now I am not gonna make it. But what the hell just happened here, I mean this is the regular time I hit this point and generally at this hour spoilt kids going to school in their dad's big cars are seen on this Red Light, and thats it, the wait time not more than 2 min.

A closer observation told me that the Red Light has gone Bonkers and as usual the Police is nowhere seen in the picture. And now i get the exact picture of what must be happening 300 mts ahead at the red light, all the vehicles must be fighting with each other, that who will be the first to go. Well if you want to teach anybody about what Deadlock is in Operating Systems this is the best example!

BTW Deadlock as wiki describes:

In computer science, deadlock refers to a specific condition when two or more processes are each waiting for another to release a resource, or more than two processes are waiting for resources in a circular chain.

But suddenly the traffic starts moving, and this is miracle , how did this happen ??? Well I thought that the Police walahs might have come to the scene, and by the way the Police station is just a stone throw away from this place! But I was wrong it wasn't the police walas... Some people waiting at the bus stop saw the chaos and opted to take control of the situation, I must admit that they managed the traffic pretty well, much better than the traffic police cops, I guess Bangalore Traffic Police should hire some consultants now. Hats off to these fellows, I made it to the meeting on time, and did get some time to prepare for it as well. Now this is one thing that I love about this city, people are considerate, they stand up and take control of a chaotic situation.

Probably some day something similar would happen to our political system as well, when some people standing at the bus stop would come forward and take control of the county's leadership, but who will bell the cat ???

Song Today: Abhi Abhi mere dil main
Film: Socha na tha...

Radio City... whatte Fun

Radio City 91.1 FM has become an important number in my mornings, and like me to a lot of people in Bangalore and across the metros. While driving to office this is your daily dose on the happenings around the city, the traffic updates, and a lot of other crap, which is nice to hear. Radio has always been an important part of my morning routines since childhood, I still remember waking up in the morning, getting ready for school, but all this while "vividh Bharati" playing in the back ground, with my favorite show of that time Chitralok! Well that was one show which used to air new latest songs, as at that time the only way to hear new Filmi songs was to buy an audio cassette, but then chitralok was a sponsored program which used to air advertisements and audio trailers of movies.

Nowadays since I don't get Chitralok here in Bangalore on Vividh Bharati, I stick to Radio City, with my favorite RJ Vasanthi on her breakfast show. Lately there has been too many radio FM channels, I used to be quite fond of Fever 104 FM as they concentrated on music more and less on advertisements, but the most painful thing with these radio channels (except Radio City) is that their RJs are PATHETIC, they keep cracking pathetic PJs to which you feel like banging the car to the very next pole. But still if you can bear the pain of some advertisements, the quality of "Bakar" on radio City stands apart. I have been following Vasanthi's breakfast show (in the mornings) and Aviva's Joy Ride (in the evenings) and I find them quite entertaining and informative!

But I still miss my good old vividh Bharati...citralok, hawa mehel, that typical trumpet tune of Jaymala, that brings back my childhood memories, getting ready for the school bus, those chilly winter mornings when you and your vividh Bharati are the only things humming when there is still dark outside. At that time I used to miss new songs on the radio a lot, but now all these FM channels are not able to satisfy my hunger for old songs! except on Fridays when Vasanthi plays Friday Flashback, this is one show I love, and the trivias.....but alas I cant hear that entire program, my office comes after 20-30 minutes drive!

Song Today: Raat Akeli hai...
Film: Jewel Thief