Technology challenges..

It has been an interesting two days. 

The last few days, there has been a problem at work where a duct spews out bursts of cold air directly above my head. My office has been trying to figure out the root cause and come up with fixes for it by blocking the vent with cardboard, building paper dampers to direct it away from my head etc.. In the meantime, I got a nice cold, thanks to that and the highly changing bay area weather. 

As most of you know, my solution to all ailments is to try doing Yoga in the hot room first before going to the doctor or resorting to any pills. So after scheduling a bunch of late night calls post 11PM, I decided to go do Yoga at 8:30 in the night. It was mildly drizzing when I went into the class and things were, lets say "pleasant".

When the class ended and we came out, there was cold winds and water coming down in intervals in sheets! I am guessing these were more than the 20 mph gusts. This was way stronger. At several points on the way home thought the Leaf was going to fly off the road. There was also a lot of palm leaves falling off the trees and flying around. 

In all of this I did not realize that there was no power in the neighborhood. I drive to the garage and the thing is not opening. I called my wife and she goes "there is no power in the house and the entire area". 

So there I am in my yoga shorts, all sweaty, with cold rain and winds trying to manually open the garage door and park my car inside.. and a gust of wind litterally sends a wave of water into the garage! 

Finally I parked the car and closed the garage door. By now any residual body heat from the yoga class is gone and I am shivering. Then I tell my dear wife "I will go take a quick shower and eat what you have made. good thing we have the flashlights". 

A few minutes later, I realize that the flashlights are the least of the problems. Turns out that the water heater we have installed as part of the new construction which is tankless, energy efficient, reduces our gas bills etc. etc. doesn't work when there is no electricity! It didn't matter anyway. It was not going to be worse than the rain. So that was the shortest coldest shower I have taken after a hot yoga class. 

Then came the dinner part. Wife says "I made stuff for you, but it is all cold. Maybe you can reheat it on the stove because you cannot microwave?"

By now I am conditioned to try everything manual have a low expectation for any gadget. So I know the pilot lamp won't work (it didn't) and use a matchstick to try and light this stove. Turns out that only the back burner turns on without a pilot. These guys have some interlock on the other stoves! 

Finally managed to reheat some stuff and eat with the flashlight and look at my phone... it has <20% charge! 

Went to the battery pack that was given as a company souvenier which is always in my travel bag and that had no charge! 

We both drive a Nissan Leaf. That means if you don't have power all night, we have to fight for the car with the most charge left.. It is a new interesting dynamic in our house.

It was a hard lesson on how dependent we are and how much we take for granted! I managed to muddle through the day and keep my thoughts going. Deifnitely feel better now, thanks to another yoga class, no manual door openings, a nice hot shower, hot tea.. and more importantly a house that is back to 68F instead of 56F!

This afternoon I was thinking about the folks in war zones. People in first world countries have no clue what those folks are going through. We are making it all worse for them by our every day thoughts and actions and what we support knowingly or unknowingly. We also take a lot for granted. The biggest rights we seem to cherish are our rights to stupidity and our right to be irresponsible when it comes to the rest of the world and the planet. At least that is my feeling right now.

A bad vent, a storm for a few hours and an all night power cut are able to make a dent in my life. That is just sad.

Time to spend more time with nature and improve my immunity to cold weather. Also time to do something about all this guilt for everything that is happening in the world! 

Four Trophies and a T-Shirt

After we finish the 60 day challenge at Bikram Yoga San Jose, there is a "Challenge Party" a couple of weeks later. Everyone who finishes collects a trophy and says a few sentences about what made them take up the Challenge, what they learned over those 60 days and their Yoga experience in general, especially if they are first time challengers.

This year was my 5th time finishing this challenge. Did share my thoughts on the challenge at the party.

The question that lot of you have asked me can be summarized as "you go almost every day when you are here? so what is the point of this 60 day challenge?" and the short answer is?

The challenge makes me realize what I take for granted. Normally if it it raining outside or if I have a fever, sore throat, too many meetings that go in late and are stressful, I have the option to say "will skip today and go tomorrow", but not during the challenge. Once that day is past and the last chance to go to class at 8:30PM is missed, that day is not coming back. 

It teaches you that when it is time to make a choice between having a dinner and crashing vs. going to yoga late at night or doing back to back classes over weekend to make up for travel, the tougher decision is the one you have to make when challenged. That spills into real life, when it is time to roll up your sleeves and do the right thing by your work or with your kids or family. 

This year, the trophies changed to a T-shirt. The family likes this move as they would rather see me in newer T-shirts!

 While colleting that shirt, had an idea to take a shot of me doing balancing stick pose (Tuladandasana) with the awards on my back wearing the new shirt. 

However, this is take 6/8 and it required the support of wife and both kids to execute. In class you hold it for 10 seconds. I had to do this pose for more than a minute and a half back to back .. guess the knee locking went to the dogs by take 6 and the leg is not as high as I thought it was and the head is not as low as is should be! Need to put a mirror on the sidewall of the new home studio to help me make adjustments.. 

There is no substitute for a mirror!

As a wise man once told me (translation : as Brad Colwell told me two months ago), "pain is temporary, but a photograph is forever!" . Should have done a few more takes.. but the folks got tired of having to place those trophies on my back within that 10 second window and take them back just when I could hold it no longer. 

I also had to put up with snarky comments after every take like "your posture sucks. Your leg is not up yet. why can't you just hold on a little longer".. I wanted to launch into a long lecture on "come and do this 6 times back to back and then talk .. etc. etc." but held back. I needed their co-operation and they were giving me their valuable time for this crazy idea of mine. So took a few deep breaths, smiled and said "please, one more try"!

See, the yoga helps!

Now for the usual graphs and charts. There was travel and bugs during this challenge as previous ones, but rain or shine (more rain than shine this year) and sickness or health, showed up and did the best I could. You can see that the last three years has seen me finishing the challenge with lots of doubles, thanks to travel. Sometimes I just wish to be able to do this yoga once a day and take that for granted, but you all know my lesson learned already.

This is the weight chart. Have to analyze this throughout the years to see trends. Within the 60 days, seem to go from a 150 to a 140lb range in last few years possibly because of Christmas vacation weight gain?! 

Here is the data since the excel data collection was more or less regular.. 

It has been stable more or less over the last five years and that is a good thing. 

Have made new friends over the years and during the course of this challenge and learned a lot more than "don't take things for granted". 

Definitely recommend folks to try this 60 day Challenge, even if you are new to Yoga. It is a morphing experience. You definitely start as a larva and come out a butterfly in those 60 days or something close to that, and you learn to assimilate a few things on the way and leave a few things behind as well that don't serve you!

On a side note, my wife never tried dancing but was my biggest critic when she watched me dance. Now we have three people who are armchair critics of my yoga poses. 

Sadly, they are getting very good at the critiquing thing and their points are all valid! 

So there is more to work on....

Birthday with a bang!

Last year I happened to be in India for my birthday and spent the day with my college buddies. It was amazing. These guys made sure I had a great time.. even gave me birthday bum(p)s! 

To top things off, I had a nice glass of Mishrambu that was topped off, and it was the rangeen (colorful) type! Translation : it had bhang.. just enough to make me sing "happy birthday to me" by myself over and over again!  (Let it be known that, by buddy in the picture had the plain version)

 

After that, spent two days with my parents in severe weather conditions and miraculously made it out of Chennai before the heavens opened and shut down the airport! That was last year.. 

This year, the birthday was also celebrated with a literal "bang". On the whole, the day was full of ups and downs. It was one of those work days worth forgeting. Then things took a turn for the better and the evening turned out to be nicer than the morning. One mintue we were at Bhavikas having dinner, all smiles and we came home happy. Wrote a nice post about it, and while I was hitting the Publish button, there was another bang! This time it was an injury, which thankfully ended up being something recoverable. Went from happy to mad to happy to sad every 4 hours. 

We did manage to do a mini trip to LA to meet my sisters family. It was shorter trip compared to original expectations as my long weekend was reduced as I flew out sunday morning.  Spent a day at Universal studios and visited the Malibu temple on the way back home.

Was happy to see my sister and family after almost a year and a half and spend a day and a half with them!

The trip was worth it just for that one Photograph!

It was raining very heavily and we took 8 hours to make it back instead of the usual five. We were all glad to make it back in one piece after that drive. 

Was in two minds that night on going to Asia the next morning, but the family decided that I should be done with work travel for the year and they will manage with help from friends.

That morning my rudhraksha necklace broke and the beads came flying everywhere in the room. With construction going on, my odds of finding all the beadsl were slim. Also thought it was a bad omen of sorts. Given I like to challenge bad omens (pissing off my family and going against bad omens is a habit from childhood), decided that what has to happen will happen. So travel was on.

After searching for the beads everywhere, found 108 of the 109 beads. A rudhraksh is tied to your soul once you wear it for a long time and custom is that it gets burnt with you, when you are cremated.  Also wearing 108 beads instead of the 109 can make one dizzy, or so say spiritual gurus. I had no time to find the lost bead and rushed to the airport with a heavy heart.

There is something special about this necklace. It is made of seeds from the rudhraksh tree and is completely organic material in a silk thread, but it flags in the body scanner at the airport as metal, every time! The TSA agents always look surprised when I pull it out and they ask "is it on a metal thread and I go, NO! Silk thread". Somehow it must be absorbing millimeter waves or is magnetic. Either way, the fact that it absorbs radiation says there is more to it than I know. Maybe someone else who has the time can study the radiation absorbing properties of these beads!

The first thing I did after coming home from Asia, was launch a search for the missing bead, and found it! Tomorrow will be spent in remaking the necklace. 

There were many life lessons learned in the last week.

One : Should enjoy time with family, every chance I can get. All it takes is one mistep and things can go from happy to sad. 

Two: I might think of work as another home and colleagues as an extended family, but it may not be reciprocated. At the end of the day, work remains a means to an end and I should keep that perspective.

Three:  Should trust my gut feel on people and events. Even if my track record is not that great, at least I can own the fall out a 100%

Four: Should always remember Karma! It gets me, all the time!

Could write a chapter or mini book on all four of the above, but there are consequences which I am not going to be comfortable with. So will use the third and fourth lesson and leave it with this blog post!

Two birthdays.. very different experiences. A blog post that describes mood swings should end on a happy note. So here is a photo of the little one I took the day before my birthday which is as cheerful as the world gets for me!

That smile can keep me going to the moon and back.

This year(correction.. two years) I have travelled more than enough miles to go to the moon over hundreds of hours of flying and walking around airports and being driven to airports, hotels etc.    That smile can bring me back from any distance, in an instant!