song of the road

Yiippppeeee.. made it to gym today.. first day of a long journey.. awfully tired but feeling good…

Love you all

100+ things that make me happy

With Round, I join in here with my list of 100+ things that make me happy. This is an effort make myself calmer, happier, more centered and satisfied in general. Hope that this will add significantly to my weightloss journey. Please see the original happiness post from Round.

Here is my first 10 things - not in the order of preference.

1. Long drive

I love long drives. More when someone else is driving. From the time I can remember I have loved a window seat with wind flying away my hair. Love the long roads and changing scenery. Luckily India is a fascinating country where I do not get bored ever on a drive. In fact I love my drive to and from work as well. It is my time to relax and let my mind wander. A drive across India is heaven. A drive across Mumbai is very good too.

2. Walk on the Marine Drive

This is a special place. This is end of Mumbai. All you can see is Arabian Sea. And some of world’s richest real estate is behind you. There is a concrete pathway on which people sit, stand or stroll on. This is built on reclaimed land. So no gentle beach this. The sea side of the walkway is a straight drop ending in piles of huge boulders. Doesn’t sound very interesting, does it? But the atmosphere is electric. Every single time I have been there, I have forgotten every problem I had. Can’t really explain what it is. Perhaps the lovely wind blowing in from the sea or the decked up families and lovers and old comfortable couples or the apartment complex on the other side of the road (where I do not dream of living in my next ten reincarnations) - I don’t really know what it is. Just sit on the pier and look out and once the Sun sets there is nothing to see also but it just lifts me up no end.

3. Watching a few episodes of Friends

I enjoy watching season DVDs of tv series. Of all that I have watched so far, FRIENDS remain the favorite. There is something so lovely in these six friends and their lovely conversations and antics. I specially love how they get up each time they fall. They are not someone you would call particularly successful but they have the best attitude. So yeah, when I am blue and hopeless, I sometimes make myself get up and plug in a season DVD. Perhaps one day I will grow tired, but till then big fun.

4. Cooking a near-perfect family meal

Do recognize the word near-perfect there. Know that I should not get bothered so much. But it’s such a big deal for me to have everything just perfect. As much as possible I would not let sis-in-law to help. Mom can help but she needs to do exactly what I tell her to. So I would plan a whole menu on these days and cook everything with lots of love and care. I love to see the joy in everyone’s face. Specially brother’s whose praise is difficult to get. Of course I love to eat that meal too. The meal is not always healthy. It is always healthier because picking up healthier options have become second nature, at least when I am cooking not under stress.

5. Cooking and eating a comfort snack

A guilty pleasure now. Well, I have lost the taste for process snacks (the ones easily available) for most part. Not that I never indulge in a packet of chips. But for the most part when I want to eat something because I am down or just feel like indulging a bit - most often I want to make something to eat. About half the time I cook variations of Maggi noodles. Maggi is an immensely popular instant noodle brand in India. It’s holding on to the most popular spot for 25 years now. Most Indians have their own variations and twists. Generally it would be a vegetable laden soupy concoction for me but quite often it is guiltier and spicier. Apart from this too, the main theme is savoury soupy stuff with oats or lentils or again some savoury stuff made of left overs. Generally a bit of nonsense really but I love them. What I need to do is not read a book while eating those so I get a better handle on the quality.

6. Reading

There will be a few more more specific reading items in the list. However I love to read (okay, to an extent) any content. I hoard mails in a to-read folder as I hurt deleting mails without reading. I know I am not interested in company balance sheets (yet) but I will save that mail for years. We often use paper sacks made of recycled newspapers and magazines. It’s a passion to carefully tear up the sack to open and smoothe the paper to read it. Perversely enough I barely read current newspapers. I do sometimes but not really much. I love reading emails of every kind. So yes, reading makes me happy - on the net, on the phone or on plain old fashioned paper.

7. Washing my hair

I love washing and conditioning my hair. Must be the one grooming thing that I do frequently enough. I love the fragrance of some shampoos. Love more the soft, clean and shining hair. I love blow dried hair too. Get that done with a hair-cut. But otherwise, no. Also love getting my hair washed in the salon. They sometimes massage my head a bit too. Lovely!

8. Taking a long shower

Love taking a long shower. Specially using a fragrant body wash or bath soap. Specially in the summer which has started in all earnest before time this year. Specially after working out. It gives such a squeaky clean feel and I feel lighter. It makes me fresh in the morning and sleepy at the end of a day or a lazy Sunday afternoon.

9. Full body massage

Again heaven. Almost always. I often have body pains and aches from everyday stress and of course the body and the feet hurt carrying the immense load. High heels help getting some pains too. It’s heavenly to get a massage done where pains flow away and muscles loosen. I love to get pampered. I love that time of doing nothing and letting go.

10. The view from my bedroom window

This is a bonus that would go away when we leave this apartment. It’s a rented one and quite far from my office. However what a glorious view. The city sprawls on for a while and then there is a small mountain rising up. When the light is mellow in a morning or late afternoon (a glorious golden light or a sepia light comes up at times) or a cloudy day or even on a sunny noon, the view is lovely. I keep looking out and when I do I always feel better. The lights dazzle like jewels carelessly thrown. Rain falls vertically straight or columns of it move with the wind. The mountain gets lost in clouds and sometimes in mist. In a very busy, very crowded city, we have hit jackpot. Do not plan to leave before the rains. However may do later to reduce the commute time.

Looking forward to jotting down the next 10. Do let me know your thoughts. Also if you decide to make a list, do let Round know so we can have links to all of them at one place.

Sunday (21st March)

That’s what I want to be in the coming week. Last week was very slow on the weight loss front. I went to the gym near my office. It is quite good. I was supposed to join last Wednesday. Consistently on all three days starting from Wednesday, I could not make it to the gym again. To sum up the progress - I found the gym and I made to work by 8 am every single day. Going early happened. Now I need to make leaving early happen. It will - I know. I will set up reminder from 6 pm which will flash every 15 mins to remind me about working out. I should then be able to leave by 7:30 pm.

On the not so good news front - my teeth is acting up again. This is a signal that my blood sugar is up again.

Later - Tuesday evening (23rd March)

Well, that was all that I wrote on Sunday. After which brother and I had a marathon chatting session. Talked and talked. It was good fun. Got too late and fell asleep about 1 am.

Had gone to the gym and paid the admission fee for 3 months. That’s the part I am always successful. Have an initial counselling planned for Thursday. The plan was to do cardio today and yesterday. But came home early today. I am planned to come to UK in May. Need to file a ton of paperwork. Had misplaced some tax returns. Went through a mountain of old papers looking for these. Very happy to say that I have found them. Now all is well. Need to get photographed tomorrow, per specifications.

Plan to stay as positive and as happy as possible. I need to grow more calm and cool. That’s what I want to be to lose weight and be better in my job.

Lots of love to all of you.

Have been adding some good stuff to read to my google reader. I loved this short story that cropped up.

http://www.littlemag.com/family/kamala.html

Before coming to what’s on my mind today, let me sum up today. Foodwise it was about okay. Had protein shake as breakfast, chapatis and a couple of veg curries as lunch, pineapple and a couple of grilled sandwiches were dinner. had a diet coke somewhere in between. Workwise it was crazy again. Also I kept feeling blah. Lots of tension there. Nothing end-of-life but just gathering up. But then I am better than how I was last year. So chin up and hang on.

What I am trying to figure out is how to focus on weight loss. My main focus is work these days. I am doing reasonably well there. At least I am consistently and with discipline plugging on day after day. Hopefully intelligently too. But when it comes to an effort on weight loss, I keep losing steam every 3 days. On one hand, I think I am not too good in having two major focus areas at once. When I had to study hard to do well in a fiercely competitive entrance test to get in engineering college, I did nothing on the alternative study path I was trying to keep open. When I was in love a couple of times, I did neglect my work both times to a good extent. Now that I am working, looks like I can almost not diet and work out. But that is not how it should be. Everyone is taking care of family, their own self, work and then lose weight.

I am planning to use almost all free minutes this week to figure out how to do this. How do I bring the focus back? Do I do some kind of a remembering exercise every morning to set the tone? May be reading or reminding me of something on the way to work. Podcasts perhaps! Let me think. I need to stay on the path for a while for anything to happen. When I lost weight last time, the rapport I shared with my trainer was an anchor that kept me rooted. Need something else this time.

The ideas that occur to me top of the head

1. Listen to one fitness/weight loss podcast every morning

2. Read one fitness or weight loss article in the morning

3. Try to work out an eating and working out plan for a week or for a day?

4. Set up a screensaver at work laptop which can act as a reminder to my goal of weight loss

5. Break the bigger goal in to smaller sizable goals and plan accordingly

Anything else occurs to you? What has worked for you. Any help most welcome.

Planning to add one positive thing that happened on a day or in very recent past here. Anything that made me happier. This is a small part of a project to become generally more happy. Will be making the list of 100 things that make me happy with round.

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Positive note

Remember Mr. V. He is a peer who is a big competitor in the work place. He is joining my team now. I kept on having visions that my team members will be happier and more relieved to see him joining us. That did not seem to be the case when I announced this today. They were a bit curious and nothing more. It does sound a bit weird but I genuinely like everyone in my team (except one or two whom I like a little less) and am a bit jealous about their affection.

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Tired out of mind today. I somehow run out of steam periodically. Must be my health. Because hear people doing 70 hour weeks etc. I stayed at work for 13 hours today and add 2 more hours of travel and I am dead today. Also to add on, had a couple of important meetings today, about which I had been stressing for a while. So all done reasonably well. Have another meeting in a while. But decided to bunk. Will get my updates later. Just waiting for one piece of mail to come and I am out of here.

Eating has not been that well. Didn’t seem too bad either. It has been generally healthy but not very weight loss kind. I have gained 1 pound. But surprisingly enough have no energy to feel particularly downbeat about it. Will need to get in to working out. That seems to work for me. Will need more planning to eat cleaner.

Watched a couple of very different movies this weekend. One is Inglorious Basterds. Obvioulsy loved it. Quentin Tarantino and underdogs winning left a good taste in my mind. The other is a tamil movie. It’s an old one actually. It’s about a 9 year old girl who finds out she is adopted and then insists on searching for her mother. Her adoptive parents knew about her biological mother who was a refugee from Sri Lanka. Then they go to a war-torn Sri Lanka in search of her and eventually after almost not meeting her, the girl meets her. A few times in the search they get caught in the middle of blasts, bombings, evacuations, gunfire battles. The family runs really scared and a bit hopeless at times. The bio mom was a revolutionary who almost decides on not meeting her daughter. Where the two meet eventually is beautifully done too.

The movie is beautifully shot on a haunting backdrop of South India and Srilanka. There is one scene where the Srilankan refugees are shown literally standing in the middle of the sea, with their own country not safe and this one not welcoming them either. Anyways what particularly hit me is the kind of unconditional patience and love got extended by the adoptive parents to the small girl who did seem spolied quite a few times. Between both of them they almost ran ragged. What would I do? Sure that was perhaps an unusual situation. But still… don’t know. Remember an adoption forum mentioning that this movie has set back adoption by quite an amount. Could be too. The movie did seem reasonably okay, not particularly promoting any agenda or anything.

Anyways, my mail now has come now. So bye for now ladies. Hope you are faring better than me.

Already lost count of the days on the plan The plan to eat clean is chugging on. 3 out of 4 days last week were reasonably good. 1 day I ate noodles instead of customary fruits as my evening snack. Couldn’t eat dinner at work as planned. Was hungry later at night. Ate very badly then. Blame the start of TOM for this. Otherwise did quite well - chose cleaner food. Would need to work on the serving sizes specially over weekends. Let’s see when can get started with exercising.

Slept most of today. Working this evening. First thought out goals and to-do for 2010 - what I would do beyond the work of my reportees. Looks like this year I am still lucky. All that I am planning to do fall in this category anyway. As my reportees start progressing on, this will become harder. However listing all I need to do, is incresing my anxiety a bit. Would need major hard work, balancing, time management, cool head and confidence to pull all this off. Then have an one-to-one meeting next week with our new line-of-business head. Was planning out what I would need to say or may be asked. Will get more info from the team on Monday. Hope I have covered all grounds. Hope I will make a good impression. Now I need to start reading on actual work.

Hope you all doing very well in weight loss and in life. My best to each of you.

Eating still somewhat okay.

Breakfast - protein shake

mid-morning - one sweet (this time it would not have been difficult to avoid)

Lunch - 3 chapati + daal (thick lentil soup) + green papaya curry

Evening snacks - miss

Dinner - 3 chapati + cauliflower chilli (Should have eaten the tasteless sandwich, the cauliflower was oily. Will do better tomorrow. Wish could eat home cooked food instead of cafetaria stuff. But not sweating too much as once starting working out at night, won’t be there for dinner.)

2 cups of tea, 2 pieces of chewing gum, 1 liter of water

It was a crazy busy day today. I literally had meetings after meetings. Was feeling sleepy and tired from the morning anyway. Got so stressed by mid-morning, downed a couple of head ache tablets. I can at times feel the adrenalin rush in my head. Overall a productive day. Tons to do tomorrow. Ended the day with a team meeting. Thankfully the team meetings are fun and pretty stress-free for me and others (hopefully). After all announcements and action items, we started chatting about movies. One guy who was listening till then started taking notes. Got a good team going so far. Hope for the best. A girl’s marriage got fixed today. More sweets. I talked to my managers about changing my work timings. Both were cool about it. Let’s see how it goes.

Good that I didn’t eat too badly in the face of the stress. Also to be frank, just did not have time too. Hope trying to eat dinner more than 2 hours before sleeping time would help.

Lots of love and all the best.