“The Hindu”

I will come out and state that I am a news junkie. Reading news seems to take most of my free time – if there is a way to make a living out of it, somebody please let me know .

Anyway, this is to talk about one newspaper in particular – The Hindu. I grew up reading this paper. I remember rushing to get the paper everyday when I was still in Chennai. If someone else got to the paper before I did, I would beg them to give me the sports section. That was the only thing that interested me. as a kid As I grew older, I added the international section to the list of things I read. By the time I was finishing up my undergrad, I would read it from top to bottom.

When I came to the US, having the newspaper was one of the things I started missing quite a bit. I am not talking about the physical newspaper but the content of “The Hindu”. I would try to satisfy my cravings with a visit to the website – hindu.com. only to find that it was absolutely the crappiest website of all. Slowly I just gave up.

Every time I felt nostalgic or wanted to get some specific news about India, I would still start with the website. Anyway, recently I visited their website and was shocked to see that they are trying to improve their website. After 10 long years, it looks like the folks who run the paper seem to have realized that having a good website is a necessity. Seriously, it took them 10+ years to realize the impact of the web – wow.

Anyway, go ahead and take a look if you were a fan of the Hindu. The URL is beta.thehindu.com. I should warn you that I have gotten a number of Apache errors when you try to access their website – obviously it is still very much a ‘Beta’ site . But I have it back on my firefox toolbar.

Howdy

It has been such a long time since I posted that I nearly forgot I had a blog. Well, buying a house and having a baby in a matter of months just sucked up all my time – who knew having a baby was so much of a time black hole. The other big reason is that I have completely stopped running (because of a bad foot), which means that all the time I think of idle things has gone by the wayside. Anyway, now that I have given my lame excuses for not blogging, I will try and start things again.

My girl is growing

I know this sounds like an odd topic but I think every parent tries to solve this conundrum – you want your baby to grow so your life becomes more normal but at the same time you feel sad every time he/she grows up and becomes more independent.

The roles in our house are pretty typical I guess. My wife likes to baby my daughter and I like to make her more independent. This at least is what my justification for doing what I do which is probably nothing . Anyway, my daughter loves the pacifier. It is not even funny how much we need it. I think we forgot it one time and paid a heavy price – everybody ended up shouting at everybody else while my daughter was pretty much bringing the roof down. Anyway, the last few days my daughter has been doing better without it but we still use it when she starts crying too much and all of us are either busy or not in a mood to lift her to play (actually the last could be just me). So last Wednesday, this happened and we left the pacifier in her mouth. She spits it out pretty often and then cries till one of us rushes to place it back in her mouth.

Well, this morning, she spit it out and then while we were observing her, she started doing her best to get the thing back in her mouth by turning her head and trying to suck it in. I am not sure she could see it properly but she could definitely feel it. She kept at it pretty vigorously and after a couple of minutes managed to get it into her mouth. It was a pretty solid effort. While she was doing that, I went through a range of emotions. I badly wanted to rush in and get it into her mouth to stop her from putting so much effort. Another part of me wanted to just see how long she tries before finally giving up and crying. Another part of me wanted her to succeed pretty badly. The previous time she tried this, the first emotion won out. But eventually all of us were staring at her and when she finally managed to get it into her mouth, we were all elated. My baby managed to do her first action without needing anyone’s help – okay the first action other than suckling, crying and pooping. I felt so proud that she managed to do it while at the same time feeling sad that she had taken her first step towards independence.

Oh well, maybe I will get more sleep sometime in the next 18 years .

Favre back in Green Bay

In preparation for watching Favre back in Green Bay, I was trying to complete some work while leaving the TV on mute. Of course, the game that was on was Cleveland at Chicago and I could not resist watching my Bears. To be honest, I have not seen a team play worse than Cleveland did. Oh boy. Is Brady Quinn really that bad that he can’t replace Derek Anderson? Seriously? Does Eric Mangini actually get payed for that superb performance? I also thought the Bears played pretty badly – I am pretty sure there is no way they are making the playoffs.

Now to the game in question – there was no question Favre played beautifully. In my opinion, the booing was well deserved. I thought I would end up supporting Favre and the Vikings but I guess I have been in Wisconsin for too long. I felt really sad for the Packers – they had one of the worst half I have seen. While I will never agree that it was a good decision to trade Favre, I think even he would have had a real tough time with that offensive line. The play calling also was a bit lacking and that pretty much made it a pretty sad day of football watching. Both the Packers and the Bears suck – at least the Packers might be a wild card. I don’t have much hope for my Bears.

I was seriously contemplating dressing up in a Favre Vikings jersey with a score of 100 – 0 in favor of the Vikings for Halloween. Is that not the nightmare situation for any Packer fan ?

 

My kingdom for a bed

Jeez, who knew having a baby will teach you how important sleep is to a person. The first two weeks were just bizarre – I was feeling sleepy all the time. Then I did the smart think that most Indians do and pawned off my daughter to my mother-in-law. But still the importance of continuous sleep hit me right in the face. I would get 3 or 4 chunks of 2 to 3 hours and still not end up with enough sleep. I wonder why this is. I have been trying to read up on the internet to see why continuous sleep is important and I have not seen too much information.

Anyway, that essentially put a kibosh on my running. The only running I have been doing the last few weeks has been running to the crib whenever my baby decides she misses us. And boy, do they make their displeasure really clear (I should say loud and clear). I still cant figure out how something that small can bring down the house. When she is crying, she has all 4 of us around her playing the clown to get her to calm down. Jeez.

Hopefully I will get back to running. I have been doing 2 mile runs in the evening the last week and I will probably stick to the evening schedule for sometime.

Double whammy

How many times do you walk through the food aisle when you are on a diet? It is one of the toughest things to do if you are a foodie. You can only have so much self control. If you do go there, in your brain you know that certain foods need to be avoided as much as possible. You see product A which is bad  for the diet and avoid it even though you love it. Same goes for product B. Then you see product C which is a combination of  product A and product B. That just kills the whole deal. Damn, that should be good. You ask yourself – “Can you even have product A and B together? Why didn’t I think of it before? If I eat that, at least mentally I have an excellent excuse for breaking my diet. ” At this point, the cravings just override all will power.

If you have ever been on a diet, you know what I am talking about. Seriously, how many such foods can you think about. It will differ based on your liking but here is my list – it is a pretty short list but it get to me every time.

1. Snickers ice cream – Snickers I can avoid. Ice cream also. But the two together most of the time is just too hard
2. Bholi with Ghee – ahhh, I miss India
3. Peanut butter and Nutella sandwich – cause for this post. Boy was it good.

I was like Joey in Friends who goes “Jam good, <something> good, Meat – goood”. I had the same epiphany when I looked at the peanut butter and Nutella sandwich. I hope I don’t see it regularly in my office snack shop or my kid is going to see an oversize daddy .

Shopping for a child

I am sure every first time parent goes through this but shopping for a child is the more nerve wrecking than just about anything I have done before. If you have been a parent before, you know what I am talking about – if not, you soon will.

Let me take the simple example of buying a car seat. You can get a car seat for anything from 50 dollars to 130 dollars and a travel system for anywhere between 140 – 300 dollars. With everything else, you will probably see how much use it is going to be put to and then decide. If you are going to use it for at most one year, the 50 dollar one might just be good enough. This cannot apply to something you are buying for a kid. Is the 50 dollar one safe? If no, why are they selling it. If yes, why is there another for 130 bucks and why would anyone buy it unless you work in Wall Street.Is the 50 dollar one real uncomfortable? How will the kid know something is uncomfortable? The only experience is inside the mom and I am sure that was more comfortable than any thing else it is going to experience. How does someone who designs things for a kid know something is uncomfortable for the kid? Did they poll 3 month old kids to find out if one car seat is more comfortable than the other? Obviously, trial and error will not work – even if it did, who wants to test things on their own kid ?

Anyway, after doing a lot of painful research on everything starting from a crib down to diapers and onesies (yes diaper research is one of the most painful things and you can apparently be absolutely wrong once the kid comes out ), we are nearly done with all the shopping.

Anyway, now we are packing things for the hospital. My wife is running around deciding on what music to take, what clothes etc. I am more worried about what I am going to do after the kid is born and I will be staying in the hospital for 2+ days. Will my wife be pissed if I decide to take my comp and Civ 4 ? Probably but considering the fact that she will be asleep or feeding the baby most of the time, she might actually agree to it. This will definitely be an interesting experiment. Civ 4 actually has pleasant music so she will not have to worry too much about corrupting the kid. And since it is turn based, it might just be easy to pull off with all the responsibilities.

Brett Favre’s latest comeback

I am posting after a real long time and as usual the first thing that comes to mind (other than Usain Bolt’s run in the worlds) is Brett Favre and his return to the NFL.

Personally, I think he took a choice that works for him. People should not be so upset with this idea of coming back. If someone gets paid 25 million to do something he/she loves, I don’t have a problem with it. Can you name one person who would not do it – rivals be damned. The Packers screwed him over last time and still there are other teams that think he is going to help them win games. I agree the drama is a little bit too much but isn’t it more media created than something he did. All he did was stay in Mississippi and throw to a couple of high school kids. My only complain is that he did not join the team before training camp started and that sends a crappy message to the rest.

All this does not mean I am going to start supporting the Vikings. I hope Favre does well – he is my all time favorite NFL player but Go Bears!!! I think there is a good chance the Vikings will win the division with the Packers a close second. For some reason I don’t trust the Bears defense – they really took a step back last time around.

Madison half marathon

I ran the half marathon this weekend and it was a blast. Finally I managed to finish it in under 2 hours (1:57:39). I shaved nearly 30 seconds per mile from my previous one in Chicago -. Of course the bad thing was that by the end of this one, I was completely burnt out. It was a lot more tiring than the Chicago one.

Some observations:

• Easily the best course I have run (of the two that I have ). We racers made our way near two lakes and the views were absolutely phenomenal. The views probably helped me along initially.
• They need way more port a potties at the start. I got to somewhere near the start line at 6:15 and ended up waiting for 40 mins at the pot a potty. I had to run to join the race on time and I ended up starting way at the back instead of with my pace team. I had signed up for the 2 hour pace team but luckily I did not need them.
• They also need more Gatorade especially in the last few miles. Near the end it felt like they were spaced too far apart. I was running on fumes towards the end.
• There were a couple of people serving beer unofficially at around the 8th mile. That was totally cool . One runner in fact went for it. I would have probably been completely dehydrated had I attempted to have a glass.
• The best costumes were by a couple of folks dressed up as mustard and ketchup. I am not sure how people run in costumes without feeling really hot but it was a lot of fun to watch.

I wanted to go the brat fest pretty badly but my money was in my car and I spent nearly half hour just searching for my car. By the time I reached it, I was so tired that I decided to just go home. Maybe next year I will have a boca brat. It looks like they broke the record without my help .

If you are thinking of running a race, I strongly suggest the Madison one. It was definitely a fun one and the crowds were fantastic.

Interesting article about running shoes

Recently I read this really interesting article about running shoes and it got me thinking if the argument in the article is valid. The first thing I thought was my own personal experience. My first shoes were an Adidas pair that was bought pretty cheap and they did work fine. I did not have any problems and as far as I know, they did not have any kind of support. The one thing is I was not doing half as many miles as I am doing now but I was way heavier. My next shoe was a Brooks, then I went to Saucony before finally settling on my ASICS. I dont have any scientific knowledge but for now, I think I am sticking to my ASICS. They work well enough for me for the number of miles I am doing.

On a slightly higher level, I am not sure I completely trust the statistics. I am not saying it is wrong but I have seen enough ways to spin numbers (bank stress test anyone) that I would take it with a pinch of salt.

That being said, I have switched to buying the older models so that they are cheaper than the newest models but otherwise I am not planning on switching completely over to shoes without cushoning. The one change I am making is running more miles on my existing shoes – close to 450 as long as I dont feel too much pain in my legs.I agree that this is not as extreme as the article suggests but it is a start.