60 day challenge 2020

2020 is something.. 

In spite of the virus raging in China and slowly making its way here, the January-March 60 day challenge was on. I started on Jan 1st and finished the challenge 7 days ahead. 

There was no travel and that actually made it easy. I still did doubles early on because there was a flight ticket in my inbox that keep moving to a later date and eventually got cancelled. 

Since the stay at home order, have been continuing the Yoga at home with recorded dialogues from my teachers. Have done another 60 day challenge staying at home after the original one.

There is obviously no party to celebrate, no stories to share. We are all part of the most interesting story of our lifetime with COVID-19.  Surviving this is the only priority. 

Yoga has definitely continued to keep me sane during these times. 

Michelle was nice enough to fly me a T-Shirt at BYSJ! She has also been teaching on Zoom and still predicts with millisecond accuracy on when I am about to give up, unlock my knee and gives corrections online once a week. All my teachers also give me corrections based on photos and videos I post on the group forums. 

Sincerely hope to do yoga in a hot room soon enough! cannot wait.. it was hard to be outside BYSJ and not do Yoga!

Here is the picture with the shirt and my shaved head to go with it!

Was going to ask my kids to draw the last airbender tattoo pattern on my head with a sharpie to take this picture and decided against it.. who knows if I will get an allergic reaction to the sharpie. . maybe with Mehendi... if my wife or MIL are up to it.. it is not like I am going out to meet anyone for another 20 days at least.. 

Now for the charts..

for the first time I did a class every day in the 60 days and 2 on some days in 2020.. 

My weight was okay during the challenge but since then I have added a couple of pounds.. 

Hope there is another challenge later this year when the Yoga studio reopens and I get to practice with all you fellow yogis! 

Thank you BYSJ and all the teachers for doing what you do, even in these tough times to keep us fit and sane! 

Mottai - Do it yourself.. well almost

First it was a Samosa- Do it yourself.. 

now it is a mottai.. I simply could not handle the wet hair post yoga. Started getting migraines last three days. Decided enough was enough. Hair Focus, the salon I have been going to for 18 years is not opening anytime soon.. so this is it. 

Jr. the budding nurse, who will have to eventually learn to shave using something like this eventually got some practice ahead of time..

The little one is not looking at me.. San and MIL think I went over the top..  Jr. is happy with her handiwork. 

Me, just relieved!

Samosas - do it yourself

Last weekend I had gone for a grocery run and saw the empty samosa area in the Indian store. They used to have piping hot samosas there all the time. 

San or me would always get two samosas from any desi store run.. it was something we both do and it invariably makes the other person happy.. we share it with chai. 

When I told my kids how I missed samosas and it has been a long time since we had any, they piled up on me by saying they miss a lot of things like Chipotle too.. so I should shut up and make my own samosas just like how they are making their own mexican food at home!

Samosas are labor intensive and not easy to make on a small scale. Still having been encouraged (challenged if you take it in another way) by some fellow yogis.. decided to make it the weekend project. 

there is a lot of ground work required. I got 15 samosas after almost 90 minutes of effort.. guessing you can make 30 of these in 2 hours with same oil. 

Ended up with 1/2 the masala leftover which we plan to use to make parathas tomorrow. 

Recipe used (scaled everything down to 15 samosas)

1. 3 aaloos (potato) boiled, peeled, mushed

2. 1/2 cup peas

3. one clove garlic (dont need it actually), 1/2 onion (again you can skip this), 1 red chilli, 1 spoon of corriander seeds (dhaniya) - two spoons water and make into a paste. 

4. small bunch of cilantro

fry a spoon of jeera (cumin) in two spoons oil and add the paste, then add the cilantro, peas, potato and make the curry.

Separately  made the dough with 2 cups all purpose flour and 2 spoons of clarified butter (ghee).. think oil will be okay as well if you are vegan. Let the dough sit for 30 minutes under wrap. 

Make the samosas by using water to seal the dough after flattening and filling it with a spoon and a half of the potato masala. 

Trick is in the frying. Keep it at medium high to begin with.. after 30 seconds, drop heat to medium low and wait for a good 3-4 minutes before taking the samosas out.. Then set it medium high again, wait for 5 minutes before adding next batch in. The temperature toggling is what takes time.. so it makes sense to do 50 samosas at one time in a large kadai like in the street vendors.. Bihari (our tea shop from college days in Varanasi) used to make 25 at a time in his large kadai.. they would all come with a consistant golden brown color and a smooth texture.. 

One thing I realized.. the second batch came out with smooth surface like in store samosas simply because the moisture had gone a little bit as they waited. That is one trick I will use next time. That was not mentioned in any video... 

there are many recipes that use flour tortillas or pastry sheets to make samosas ... but if you are going to do something..... go for it with all your heart. No short cuts. 

The samosas came out very well. The feedback from family "masala is really good. The skin of the samosa is really thick in some places, but taste is really good."

They all liked the second batch better than the first batch. 

Had fun doing this.. have allergies thanks to the gardening effort earlier in the day.. so you can hear me sniffling all the time..

Now I am late for yoga class. Fortunately yoga class is only 20 steps away now instead of a 15 minute drive.. and we are on a flexi schedule. 

Here is a video of how this was made.. 

If I can do this, so can you.. so try it from scratch. It is intimidating when you watch all those videos. For a first attempt this came out well ! 

Luke warm Solo Yoga where a group class seems so far far away

Not sure how many Star Wars references I have managed to cram into that blog post title...

This is the dairy entry of a hot yoga junkie:

Day 5 of stay in place : In what was yet another attempt to sweat and sweat a lot, progress was made. Ditched the crammed bathroom and restricted movements. Went back to guest room and set up the space heater to "max". It was still luke warm to say the least. Saw my friend Sid's post on the BYSJ group where he was in his bathroom but had a lot more sweat than me.. that got me thinking.. was it because he was still wearing a shirt? So I decide to wear a fleece jacket to force the sweat.

I did sweat a lot more .. but in the jacket. Finally at the end of class two drops of sweat landed on my mat... normally I have two buckets of sweat after class.. calm down I tell myself. Every deluge has to start with a few drops.. I look at those precious two drops and cry.. make that four drops..

My teachers are posting their dialogues as youtube videos. Only problem is the unreliable internet connection at prime time where things start buffering in the middle of the class. I have started recording these in the middle of the night to save them as audio files only. This way the class can go on uniterrupted.  Only problem is that there is a loud pinging noise in the middle of holding poses.. Found out that this is the outlook incoming mail notification going through the internal microphone. Matt Newman will have to recite the dialogue to an empty room at midnight for me to record this again.. Last night I actually fell asleep while this was recording.. had set an alarm just in case to wake up after 90 minutes to turn off the recording. Who knew Bikram Yoga dialogues make for good lullabies?!

Had no idea that last Sunday's class would be my last group class. Given everything we know about the virus, we would probably have quarantined ourselves a lot earlier. Good thing is all my friends seem to be doing okay and posting their own solo yoga experiences from crammed bathrooms and other spaces. 

Tomorrow will be two years since I stopped drinking water during class. That Mary Jarvis class that changed the water habbit seems ages ago. Last Sunday's yoga class seems ages ago! 

I am a social animal of the huggy type. It is not easy to isolate myself, but it is being done. Have been working on a yoga mat all week. It is surreal to be cooped up in a room all day. I see my kids for maybe 5-10 minutes a day. They are on a different time zone within the house. My MIL is still in her own room and watching TV and chatting with friends. We all go for walks one at a time twice a day around the block. The kids have shown no signs of exercising. Perpetually in their beds. I am thinking of going for a family bike ride tomorrow, weather permitting. Things are changing rapidly.. I am the designated shopper for the family. On Monday I made a Costco run at lunch break and this was the situation..

that was one person out one person in with a limit to how many folks who could be inside costco.. but we were all pretty close to each other.. would not call it social distancing... most of the stuff we needed were out of stock.. we do have a lot of cuties.. eating them on a regular basis to get more vitamin C.. which works for colds but not sure if it helps with the new virus..

There are lessons learned in self control, trying to set up the right environments and most importantly hydrating myself. At work we would all walk around between meetings, take a water break, restroom break. At home the meetings just keep coming one after the other.. you cannot just see who is at their desk to go grab the team for an impromptu meeting.. everything has to be scheduled and that means no breaks. 

The last two days, I took one hour breaks in the middle of the day to drink water and walk around the block. 

The yoga journey continues. Hope we get over the virus soon and get to be in a hot room.. something tells me that this is not going to happen anytime soon... but the community is there and everyone is working on cheering up the others. 

Yoga is a blessing, as are my fellow yogis!

A baby sloth - Costa Rica Day 7

The previous post on this series is here..

On the last day of the Costa Rica trip, only me, San and Padma decided to stick to the original plan of going to Manuel Antonio park. The rest of the folks stayed back at Coco Mar to enjoy the waves some more.

We went on a guided tour of the park to see the sloth and were treated to see a baby sloth! 

The sloth mom is on top and the baby is facing the right.. Using a 200mm at 400mm with an extender still got me only this clarity. Was happy to see it live! There are lots of pictures in the Photo Galleries which did not make it to the posts.. you can check them out on the Photo Galleries tab for Fauna, Flora, and their landscape folders..

There was also a lot of animals, birds, insect sightings again.

At the end of the guided part, we ended up in a beautiful lagoon which was crowded with swimmers. We were not planning to get into the water. There was no chance for more wet clothes in our bags. We were leaving later the same evening.

We took some photos on the beach and hiked all around the edge of the park for a strenous 45 minute hike to Cathedral point. It was beautiful. On the way back we came past the other side of the land facing the other beach. 

Once back at Coco Mar, we had a quick bite to eat, said our byes to the private beach and drove towards the airport.

On the way we were talking about how it would be great to come to Costa Rica and retire.. and maybe start a resort like this with a private beach.. and we crossed this building..

When asked, the driver explained in his broken English that a family from US had started building a resort and the USD slid in value after the sub-prime crisis and they could not come up with money to finish the project. Costa Rica is so good that it sets you straight before you leave the country! It is full of prompt lessons..

The driver was nice enough to give us two stops at beaches on the way. The Jaco one was beautiful..

They have artists paint everyting.. this was a bus stop that was just amazing.. 

We had Desafio accomodate us with a dinner stop at San Jose in Taste of India, which was in the 2nd floor of a high rise residential/commercial building!

After a sumptuous meal and one last masala Chai for 2019, we were at the airport.

We had 5 hours to spend before the flight. Ended up playing a board game for couple of hours. 

The Juan Santa Maria airport is on high ground and you can see the valley below. We got to see at least 8 fireworks light up the sky from the gate area at midnight. 

A video of the day's events here..

We had a lot of fun on this trip. This is going to be the baseline for trips going foward. No driving on our own. The entire trip planned ahead and rides showing up on time everywhere. Vegetarian food options that work for me. San has set the bar high on this one.

Strongly recommend this place for a visit at this time of the year!

There is one last post on Costa Rica.. that is not part of the series, but something that I kept seeing everywhere.. will post it tomorrow.