Day 175 - Hibernating In The Rains

As you know, last week, or most part of it was spent in travel to and from Bengaluru, the marriage ceremony and spending time with family and lots and lots of relatives.

This week is the second week of my holidays and I am in hibernation mode.  However, even in this mode I realised there was a lot happening. 

First of all, I do have to work through a long list of 'to-do's accumulated over the last couple of months.  These included varied things like getting my SIPs updated, repairing the childrens' bicycle, reparing the phones, immersing a couple of paper mash sculptures, etc.  The good news is that I am almost done with these.

Next up was the World Cup football.  Having missed the first round of matches due to all the travelling last week, I decided that I will watch all the matches live till I am on holiday.  I have been partially successful but have witnessed some interesting encounters as well.  The match between Brazil and Ivory Coast was a very bad advertisement for the sport.

On the health front, Priya and I decided to have another go at the GM diet.  Priya was done on the first day.  I am still holding the fort.  Hence, it is a bit of a torture being on holiday and not being able to eat whatever I fancy.  It is even worse when you get the opportunity to meet up with friends and go out for dinner, which is what is being planned in the next couple of days.  I think it will be painful to watch everybody at the table having a go at schezwan rice, with me limited to nibbling salads.  We will see.  I have however, restarted going to the gym seriously.

The other thing which I wanted to do during these two week holidays and have failed to do so horribly is to pick up my reading habit again.  There is a huge pile of  half-read books on my writing table, which I intended to tackle.  However, I have not been successful at it.  Either these books are very boring or my attention span is decreasing by the day.  Dangerous trend.  By the way, I started reading a new book - 'Blackberry - The Inside Story of Research In Motion'.  So far, so good.  I also plan to see a film - Rajneeti tomorrow.  Hope it lives up to the reviews I have read about the film.

The bright spot of this holiday though was Suryanksh's first day to school and the rains.  He has started going to the Bombay Scottish School (Junior KG).  Have been picking him up everyday from school.  The other bright spot was of course the onset of the rains.  It has been cloudy for most parts of the last couple of days and it has been raining heavily sporadically.  The sights and sounds of Mumbai are completely different when it rains.

So, the only evidence of my hibernation are the afternoon naps that I took on a couple of days.  However, inspite of all this activity, there is a sense of restlessness in me.  It always happens when I am on a long leave.  It is like I am being deprived of my daily dosage of some strong addiction.  I suspect, that addiction is of work. 

Yes, am sick of browsing the mails on the Blackberry and am itching to come back to work.

Take care.

Day 161 - My Experiment With Dieting

Did you know there is a cookie diet?  Well, I did not, till about five minutes ago when I was researching about diets and dieting plans for this post.

The reason I am writing about diets this week, is that, I was on one such diet for the past few days.  The diet plan, however, was a disaster.  I can, however, very conviniently place the blame for the disaster on the wrong timing of the diet!

Over the past few months my better half has been obsessed about her weight (like most women are, across the globe).  This reached to a point where she actually started gymming and swimming quite regularly.  Anyone who knows Priya would be quite surprised that the lady actually took the pain of working out.  However, as we all know, work-outs is not an instant formula for weight reduction.  According to me, my wife's weight has not changed much over the last couple of years.  She is not over-weight at all.  She just thinks she is over-weight.  If you ask me, she is just perfect. 

After a couple of weeks the situation became a bit desparate when Priya realised that she wasn't getting much traction with weight reduction inspite of the work-outs.  Then she turned her attention towards diet plans.  After much deliberation, it was decided that she would like to do the GM diet.  Of course, I had to give her company, as doing a diet alone would be quite painful.

So, off we were on our first diet experiment!  The GM diet, or the vegetarian version of it:

Rule: Day 1 :  Only fruits to be consumed, except bananas.

Result: Success

Rule: Day 2: A boiled potato in the morning.  Only vegetables for the rest of the day.

Result: Bad timing.  This is where we hit the first obstacle.  Everything was as planned till evening.  However, this was our wedding anniversary!  How can we celebrate such an occasion eating raw vegetables?  So I lured Priya into a pizza outlet.  I ended up having a pizza.  Priya still had only salads and did not succumb to the temptations of an 8 incher.  She was really serious about this!

Rule: Day 3: A mixture of fruits and vegetables.  No bananas.  No potatoes.

Result: Inspite of the disaster the previous evening Priya decided that I should continue to give her company.  Everything was fine till evening.  In the evening, another disaster.  Being a Saturday, we embarked on a shopping trip to a well known mall.  There, the golden arches beckoned.  This time even my better half could not resist the temptation!

Rule: Day 4:  Only bananas and milk today.

Result: Inspite of the double disaster, my wife wanted to push on with the diet plan and marched me off early in the morning to buy a huge load of bananas and milk.  We lasted on bananas and milk till afternoon.  After that all hell broke loose. 

End of the diet plan.  And my first experiment with diets. All due to bad timing. 

Not to worry, though.  Priya has pledged that this needs to be redone.  This time, based on the learnings from the first attempt, the seven days of the diet plan will be planned in such a way that there are no important occasions during that period!  See, it is all about timing.

Wish Priya (us) luck the next time around.  Take care.