An evening in Athens

The previous post in this series is here..

After that Viator tour of the Acropolis followed by a late lunch and a nap, the family informed me that we were going to a very nice place for dinner.. it was a 30 minute walk from our Airbnb towards the old city square. They were all nicely dressed too. I had not recevied the memo! My options in that place were going to be limited. So I coaxed San to go with me to Babaji, the Desi place that had been closed earlier at lunch time.. by saying "you will get good Chai there!". Once in the place, I decided to order a Tandoori roti, dal, rice and yogurt.. and gobbled it up as fast as I could.. the rest of the family was not pleased..but a man with allergies has to take care of himself in such situations! Definitely recommend this place.. Everything I ate was just mouth watering!

We walked to the place (Taverna Klimataria), only to find that it was fully booked for a party. There was live music going on inside as well.

The kids were really disappointed. We decided to quickly find an alternate place to eat. Vegetarian food was not easy to find. However as we walked past the old square there were a few middle eastern guys waving us into a restaurant saying "you vegetarian? we have vegetarian!". Guess we were not the first desis with that hangry look walking past the place!

The food options were limited but we made the most of it! Once something is in the tummy, the family spirits were higher. The food was actually good and we walked around, had some Gelato (Buffalo milk ice cream!) with other snacks, visited an old small Church in the middle of the square and finally walked back to the Airbnb.

A very short video clip! The market and restaurants and walkways are lit beautifully and the old buildings give this a very nice vibe!

Then there was the bitter realization for the kids.. (had saved the screen to remind myself of their protest and yelling)

Promises were made that this would be the last time ever that an alarm was being set for such ungodly hours (their words, not ours). At the time of writing this blog, that promise is already known to be broken on our most recent trip as we had to catch yet another first flight out.. 

We were on the first flight out to Santorini the next morning.. it was goodbye to Athens!

Routines'R'us

On my recent Asia trip, I had to participate in a business dinner at a Japanese restaurant. In case you don't know my food habits, here is a short summary of what I don't or can't eat:

1. I am Vegetarian (so no meat)

2. Allergic to Peanuts and Sesame seeds (so that rules out certain places like Thai restaurants, select Chinese restaurants that use Sesame oil, etc.)

3. Allergic to shellfish (not that I eat fish, but if they cook using the same utensils or some of that gets transferred, I still get a reaction

4. Allergic to eggplants (that rules out a few dishes in middle eastern , Italian restaurants)

5. Allergic to select fruits/vegetables (simple check is, if it has fine hair on the skin, I can get rashes just by touching them, if I eat them there will be othe side effects)

Usually when I eat things on the allergy list the symptoms are skin eruption, wheezing followed by a throbbing pain in the base of my head behind my left ear followed by extreme light and sound sensitivity which is immediately followed by violent throwing up till my stomach is empty. Then I sleep out of sheer exhaustion and after two or three hours wake up like the world is a rosy place and feel on top of the world. 

This happens periodically. With a lot of food restrictions, I have managed to make these "food poisoning" episodes (as my parents and wife call it) less frequent. The problem though is that when they hit me these days, the magnitude of the episodes is increasing on a Logarithmic scale. It is like I exchanged frequent mild tremors for a Banda Aceh type quake! 

Now given all this, I do NOT carry Epi pens with me because my allergies are not the deadly kind. On the Immunologist scale, most of them are a level 4 or 3 reaction. Severe enough to end up immobilized for the short term. Then again, I have not tempted fate by deliberately exposing myself to high levels of these "toxins".

Recently I am hearing that the reasons for this are :

- that kids who are not exposed to lot of different foods as babies are more prone to getting food allergies (eating street food as kids can help was one idea that was talked about)

- some of these are genetically transmitted triggers (my had had excema as a child)

- some of these are environmentally acquired (dust allergies etc.)

I am also told by friends who read the "news" that :

- reintroduction of these allergens in small quantities helps overcome this as long as it is done at a young age

- one can naturally outgrow allergies to certain foods and develop allergies to new ones, if one is prone to such allergies and that one has to periodically "test" for such changes (a colleague of mine has developed an allergy to almonds close to the age of 50! )

- allergy to peanuts could be allergy only to dry roasted american peanuts vs. boiled Indian peanuts (this I can actually vouch for.. I can eat a few Indian peanuts without getting a severe reaction but the large US peanut gives me rashes within a few hours)

- There are "eastern treatments" that can work for this ranging from :

   - oil pulling (gargling sesame oil in your mouth for 10 minutes and spitting it out for 30 days)

   - going to some place in Andhra where they take a small live fish and push it down your throat 

   - going to kerala where they put a flour dough boundary on your stomach and fill the surface of the stomach with some herbal liquid which absorbs the poison from your insides 

etc. etc. It may not be fair for me to clump all of them under same bucket as some come with more evidence, recommendations, different thumbs up/down ratio on Youtube comments, and other metrics which are equally helpful in evaluating cures. In spite of having a lot of respect of eastern medicine (our elders were wise) but being a product of western HEROS thinking (Hypothesis, Experiment, Result, Original Schedule, Status .. for those who are wondering), have not tried any of the pulling, fish shoving or toxin absorbing stomach swimming pool treatments. 

Instead I have always :

- Watched what I eat

- Mostly eat only home cooked food (take my lunch with me to work every day)

- eat the same thing on trips (after doing trial and error in different restaurants, different dishes, and taking my own food with me for the most part of the trip)

I am also not fun at business dinners because of my abstinence from alcohol, sodas and coffee. So it is either sipping water without ice, orange / apple juice or apple cider or tea!

On this recent dinner, the chef was challenged to know of my Vegetarian status and allergy status. So he got "creative".  I get the "poor guy" looks from people which baffles me. Even if I am allergic to a subset of food, there is still plenty I can eat! 

The restaurant came up with mountain yam cooked and extruded to look like pasta, a funnel of asparagus, cucumbers, and other greens in a yogurt sauce, something called dragons beard leaf, some other stuff that folks had difficulty translating into English.. 

Ate or tasted stuff that was translateable and found it to be tasty after mentally preparing myself for the worst. Then they gave a sauce which had some green wasabi stuff, white stuff and a powder that had to be mixed in the sauce.. (could clearly smell sesame seeds on that powder and avoided it) for the yam to be dipped in and it had a sambar flavor! 

There were some dishes that were simply shutting down my nose with the smell and those I passed on to my fellow diners. The tea was great as was the conversation and I loved the fact that everyone in the table at least respected my "sensitivities" in a literal sense. Everyone else in that table had a penchant for fine wine, high proof alcohol, exotic dishes of every kind from everywhere in the world. In short, I was feeling like Buddha dining with the Anthony Bourdain family! 

After that dinner, I did not go through the usual throw up routine. There was mild rashes and a stomach upset for 48 hours, but the rashes are gone now and the stomach is well set after a day of dieting only on bananas, oranges, grapes, almonds and coconut water. 

This weekend, I plan to start eating one sesame seed and one peanut on saturday, increase it to two each two days later, four four days later and see how far it goes. I have to see what the breaking point is. Worse case I will drink salt water and throw up.  Was inspired by one person at the table who drank like a fish who could not handle alcohol at all as a young man but he told me he conditioned himself to it over time as his job involved a lot of wining and dining! 

Will post the results HEROS table style and let you know if shocking the system on a non linear scale helps condition it better. Somehow my initial "gut feel" is that a linear increase my condition it less. While my experiement is still not as agressive when it comes to the max, it is still a lot less than eating a full ellu urundai! 

Routines may be good for me, but I think those periodic throw up sessions after "food poisoning" were actually doing me some good in a self regulating way. 

Yoga has definitely helped with getting back to normal post such attacks, but even doing yoga 200 times a year for more than six years has not eliminated the food related triggers. There are other triggers like dust, old library books, certain incense sticks, perfumes etc. that I have improved with respect to tolerance levels.

(these topics have all been broached before in various forms.. here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here..   but going for the experiment this time).

Will come back with data!

Wear pants, speak English, Eat cow and last but not least, get a gun!

No.. no Jon Stewart style monologues today. Just a few "bullet points"  to put down given my current frame of mind. When you are tired, grieving and a bunch of random things come together in your brain early in the morning, there is a collision of thoughts, of worlds, where you think "did I accidentally ingest some drugs?"

First, the Church shooting that has left a lot of us disturbed for various reasons. Some because we feel that peace may not be the option, especially if you are the one dying for peace, and others because they have to start the "we have a right to our guns" propaganda machinery all over again after the 24 hour period where they let the victims grieve (it used to be 72 hours.. now it is only 24 hours before the FB feed starts seeing posts on why one's right to even having opinions on guns is subject to conditions!)

I have not owned a gun, but have shot one with ball bearings in it. It was a good toy, as long as I was shooting at  piece of paper with a turkey /bullseye drawn on it some 100 feet away. If you love physics, you will love guns. It is like loving rockets. They are good when used for space travel, but bad when used as missiles.

Also understand why my friends living in downtowns or crime filled areas have a gun in a holster while they walk alone. However, having guns consistantly land in the hands of people with an evil intent or a deranged mind is beating the odds in the US by a wide margin. These are no "random accidents". They are systematic. 

On a tangential note, we still have no pavements or lights in our street. The guy who came to my door for my vote many years ago, spoke to me for 30 mintues. It was shortly after my bike accident. Told him that the whole "village of cupertino" thing being implemented only on our street does NOT make sense. All other streets in our area have lights and pavements. Our street is exempt because some old folks who have lived here forever are insisting on keeping it that way. These guys are clearly living in the past. we now have Teslas that are quiet and fast zipping through the street and our house is a blind turn. The danger is there for sure. He promised to fix it and I voted for him. 

The now elected city councilman, did not do anything. Instead he sent me a form and asked me to pay $700 to submit it, after getting it signed by everyone in the street. Common sense does not prevail. I would have had better odds suing the city. Anyways the whole reason for this tangential rant was that, we can change the rules to adapt to changing times, if as a collective we choose to. In this case some anti street light guy cost me a lot of money in medical bills, and one hell of an experience trying to get my life back on track. The only bright side of the whole thing was I found Bikram Yoga when physiotherapy could do no more. Over the years, I have become a "cup half full" kind of guy. 

Someday, someday, during this lifetime, I will see some sanity with gun ownership and regulation, where guns are mostly safely stored in shooting ranges and no one is able to give automatic weapons as birthday gifts to their deranged kids. 

To my gun owning friends, please understand. I am not for taking your guns away and I say this, not out of respect for your feelings, but for fear of those guns you have!

As for the bozos who are in Congress and the Senate who shamelessly "grill" airbag and automobile companies for a few deaths on a product that malfunctioned (on a normalized % of product use vs. damage these are orders of magnitude lower than guns), show some balls and do the same "grilling" when it comes to guns which have repeatedly caused tragedies. If I see you one more time on some C-Span hearing preaching about safety and consequences, while you voted NO on meaningful gun legislation (background checks), will not be voting for you again. I have a large stock of photographs of sunsets, flowers, birds, kittens and cute puppies as well as a decent version of Photoshop! Can do a lot of "inspirational" messaging that will go against you. Thankfully I have a day job and a family to take care of. Don't turn me into an activist. You are not ready for it.

Then came the "eat dog"  sorry "eat cow" thought.  Received a petition to sign saying, "stop the chinese from eating dogs".

This is a topic close to my heart. No, not the dog eating. Love dogs, although I am allergic to them. Here is the thing. When I was a kid and growing up in India, most of the households had a cow in the backyard. We would go feed them hay or balls of cooked rice. Everytime there was a prayer for our dead ancestors, my brother and me would be tasked with feeding the cow with the honorary food. We would pet the cows, see them smile. We bonded with them. We were taught that the cow was to be treated like your mother. After all, you drank its milk! 

When in elementary school, my mom or grandma would send me to the local milkman  with vessels to get milk  Think his name was Jai Ganesh at the corner of St. Mary's road and Devanathan Street in Mandaveli. He along with his team, would milk the cows in front of us and give us milk. Not sure if they are still around, now that they have door delivery of packet milk. Where was I going with this?

When I came to the US more than two decades ago, it was shocking to see so much meat in peoples plates. It was difficult to digest the scale of animal slaughter that was going on in this country. Kind of got used to it, what with the fact that you never see a live cow or chicken on a day to day basis. 

The hypocracy of asking the Chinese to stop eating dogs really got to me. One mans dog is another mans cow. Have said this before many times. If folks in the US can treat cows (or chickens or pigs) in the most inhumane way, and eat them with total apathy, why cannot another race of people treat dogs the same way? The dogs don't mean anything to them. So when they see a dog, they think "delicious" much the same way a picture of a cow might bring thoughts of "juicy and delicious steaks" to folks in the US. 

It is bad if you are a cow and are born in the States. It is bad if you are a dog and are born in China. If you are a cow and want refugee status, go to India. If you are a dog and want refugee status, go to US. I know my friends in the animal kingdom cannot speak for themselves, but that is where we have to step in. If you want to be fair, stop eating animals. If you cannot give up your "medium rare steaks", stop preaching to others on what they can and cannot eat.

Over the last twenty plus years, do you know how many times a friend or co-worker has joked "you get sick a lot and are puny.. a steak or two is what you need". They don't even realize how much it might offend someone. For the record, I became immune to this in two years. Even tasted meat for three years on and off during grad school days and found it to be "meh". There was nothing delicious and the meat did not make the food tastier.  Nothing to beat my mothers potato curry roast, my grandma's Vaththa Kozhambu or munna's Malai Kofta. As for the "protein", I definitely did not need that much protein. Have been vegetarian for the last 16 years and I am not missing anything.

We are all the product of our experiences and upbringing. So I am definitely not suggesting the world go vegetarian.

Just remember, one man's dog is another man's cow! 

The vegetarian VP

Over the last year or so, there are friends that make jokes like "How is Mr. Vice doing?" , "What's up with the Veep?" etc. which are all references to my VP title at work. 

The irony of the vice thing is not lost on me. As a person who is vegetarian by choice, a non smoker, non drinker of coffee, anything carbonated and anything alcoholic, there is a severe restriction when I eat outside.

Folks who have worked with me over the last decade know that I always bring my own lunch box and eat my rice with Rasam, Sambar or plain yogurt with a curry or two. A perfectly okay meal that seems to meet my dietary needs and food allergy restrictions. 

The demands on socializing outside of work definitely increase as one moves up the management chain. At some point, it becomes a necessity to go beyond meeting at Starbucks or the local bars to some high end dining locations. 

To the amusement of the others at the dinner table, yours truly always toasts with plain water or a glass of orange juice. The 400$ bottles of wine that are sniffed and then passed around make for amusement from my perspective. Still a value shopper, I can never understand why a bottle of wine should cost 400 bucks and if the folks at the table can really differentiate betwen a 400$ bottle vs. a 40$ bottle on a blind test. Then again, I am probably not qualified to appreciate wine as I lack the experience. 

Recently at a friends place we had a discussion on "If you have a VP title, your job is to do more business and less technical stuff.. even if you are the VP of Technology... so how can you be efficient as a VP if you don't drink or eat meat or go to places where people smoke?"

That question threw me back! It was never part of the job description as a director, senior director or VP! Was it one of things like the "code red" in "A few good men", an unwritten rule of sorts? I started to wonder if my job would be better done if I drank a lot instead of being the designated driver at these dinners! 

Where the meat figures in this is still beyond me. Most of the restaurants I have visited have at least one vegetarian option if in the US. However, I did see disappointment written large on the face of a head Chef at a restaurant outside the US, when our host was translating. He pointed at me to the chef and said "do you have anything vegetarian?" and the response was "we have mussels, clams. does that work?" and I nodded saying "No. those are not vegetarian" and the Chef said "Oh, No!" in their language. They discussed for a few more minutes and finally got a large salad specially made for me. To compensate they gave me a double portion of chocolate dessert! They were extremely happy that I loved chocolate.

It is true that becoming a dedicated Yogi and practicing Hatha Yoga and simultaneously doing meditation on a daily basis makes folks around me think I am going to become a monk any day and walk into a forest. Given that there is a darling wife who cooks for me to remind me of the finer things in life and two daughters who hold the key to my breathing, there are no plans to become a monk at anytime. It is always easy for folks who claim enlightenment to walk away from social obligations, but it is a challenge to have a clarity of mind and still do what matters on a day to day basis.  

The side effect of doing Yoga and meditation is that I now have the resolve to say "No" to things I do not have to do or want to do and still strive on being the best at what is required. The first contradiction to that was the question raised "you cannot be the best you can be if you don't drink!"

Time will tell if success on the job was ever compromised by being a Yogi! So far, I think not. Every person I have interacted with at these dinners seems to appreciate my abiilty to say "no" to expensive food and wine and stick to my salad, bread and chocolate cakes. My colleagues who know of my allergy history have no complaints. 

Someday, when I retire from being the busy technologist, will write a book with this title. There are simply too many funny stories to share. Given the blogs separation of work and blog policy, those stories have to wait post retirement.

What does China have to do with Thachchi Mammu!

After almost a year, bought a book! Yes, this is a big deal now for a guy who used to buy books while going on walks near Pondy Bazaar or Luz Corner in Madras or Rittenhouse square in Philadelphia.. 

The book is "The China Study" and it was a recommended read from at least 12 of my friends who saw my rants on corn syrup, the difficulty in projecting the value of what good food is to our kids and my occasional fights with San where we have basic disagreements that typically goes like this..

I come back from Yoga class wearing a small shorts (dubbed Jigina Jetty by the little one and Jr.) and the little one says "Appa, your legs and hands look like horsies appa!"

Me : (on cloud nine) Really! See Sangeetha, while I don't have much body fat and cannot adapt to cold weather these days, the kids can see that I am all toned muscles now!

San : Naalukku naal nee skeletonaa aayindu vare! (day by day you are becoming a skeleton). You should be eating more protein. You come take 3 hour naps in the afternoon on weekends. all you do is Yoga and sleep these days.  etc. etc. etc. 

There were a lot of protein recommendations from friends as well and most of them also recommended that this book be read, ASAP!

Have finished only 64 pages so far and the summary seems to be .. 

1. Protein in excess of 12% in diet is bad

2. Milk based Casein protein is the worst offender

3. Vegetable based protein like Soy and fruits/veggies is okay 

4. Meat is totally off the table 

In order of badness Meat >>> Milk >>Plants

Now the last three weeks has been a study in Labels for typical foods that we eat. This is not easy because most of the lentils etc. we buy from Indian store just have a small sticker on them which show weight and price. With some more internet research have found the following % for stuff we eat most of the time:

Dal (lentils we eat with rice) 23% , Milk (20%), Buttermilk (20%), occasional ensure milshake for breakfast (19%), Sago (0% if label is to be believed), Sona Masoori rice (7%), Atta from which we make Roti (12%), Almonds which I eat raw almost every day (40%), eggo waffles (6%), popcorn (4%), Aunt Jemima Original Syrup (0% if the label is to be believed), Zico Coconut water (0% if the label is to be believed), Dry roasted Edamame which we buy from Costco and use as a time pass snack at work (40%), Potato as a sample vegetable? (9%).. Most of the green vegetables are ~5% if you compare by grams and if you compare ratio of Protein calories to total calories a lot of these numbers change. Maggi Noodles, which is part of the staple diet comes in at 9%!

Now, going by this book, a few things are obvious :

1. I am already getting way too much protein compared to what is required even with the original diet (without the extra lentils)

2. The good news is most of this is from Vegetable sources (given Lentils, Edamame and Almonds go in this category)

3. The bad news is I drink two glasses of Chai a day (50% milk) and eat lots of Rice with Yogurt (Thachchi mammu). That is all 20% milk protein. Don't know if cutting that back is even an option.

4. Corn is not a bad deal w.r.t. protein intake. 

All this only after first few chapters. Will keep reading to see what the authors say..

My feeling tired could simply be a combination of exercise and work or travel pressures and have nothing to do with Protein intake. 

Have not yet read the part about the Study in China.

One interesting thing that keeps coming up in my mind. These studies were all done with milk from American cows that are not exactly vegetarian holy cows that are fed better than the humans that feed them. The American cows are fed ground meat as part of their diet. 

Would a study of milk protein derived from Holy Indian vegetarian cows vs. Non Vegetarian body building American cows show a difference in instances of cancers? 

Just like all proteins are not equal, maybe all milk based proteins are not equal? 

I now have to go research if the Yogis in the Himalayas actually gave up Milk! The Yogis and the Shaolin Monks seem to have figured out all this stuff already?! Maybe all we had to do was listen to our elders instead of having to kill a few thousand rats to figure out the obvious?!

It has been an interesting read and it is not going to be easy to take recommendations that come in this book and put it to practice. Not because we are just fighting a food industry and its marketing dollars, but because we are trained on a diet from the time we are kids and those preconceived notions are hard to change!