The Turkish desi..

San was recommended a Turkish watch by one of her friends and she started watching it.  She had just started and I walked past the family room and said "are you watching something in Turkish?" .. she was surprised that I could recognize it was Turkish by just walking past to the kitchen..

It was a cute chick flick called "Her Yerde Sen". After spending 2 hours watching it, I thought it would come to a happy ending and it kind of went to titles abruptly..

Then she sheepishly tells me it is a "serial" and that was the first episode.. There are 22 such episodes 2 hours long. I get migraines if I watch TV for more than 3-4 hours in a row but this was cute and we hardly watch anything together.. 

So I beg her to watch one episode with me every night.. we were okay for two days.. then the long weekend hit and she just went to episode 18 in two days while I was still at 4! She binge watched the damn thing by fast forwarding 2 hour episodes to under an hour. . . she insisted I do the same.. and I gave her a long lecture on why fast forwarding rom coms to a kiss is as bad as fast forwarding Jackie Chan as he makes all the prep moves before he strikes.. you know the action is going to be amazing, but watching him setup the strike is as important as the 15 seconds of action itself.. the whole buildup of the drama is lost if you fast forward.. 

I am going to watch 1 hour a day and maybe finish this in another 16 days without fast forwarding.. so yes, I am spending the long weekend watching a Turkish serial! 

Then came the part where I surprised my wife with some Turkish vocab.. even the kids were surprised.. everytime I show any proficiency in a language the folks at home automatically assume it has to do with a girl.. 

So here is the back story.. One of my close grad school friends Sedat was from Turkey and we used to live in different floors of the same Apartment complex. It was me, a Bengali guy and my Turkish friend taking turns making Tea (Tea bag tea, Turkish tea, Varanasi Chai) in someones apartment every day and we would watch Star Trek and Simpsons back to back for an hour on week days. A lot of great memories.. 

we would also teach each other phrases on what things were called in Tamil, Bengali and Turkish. Sedat thought it would be a good idea to teach me enough Turkish to pass me off as Turkish in one of his get togethers in his apartment. It was an experiement or prank of sorts. He used to give me cheat sheets to practice and I found some of them to show my wife and kids! (in the process I also found a lot of old photos etc. which was a trip down memory lane). 

there were many such sheets..can't find the rest of them. He taught me conversational Turkish and all I had to do was pronounce every word correctly.. think I did him proud by passing off as a Turkish dude.. He always thought I was a good student. Had no idea of the detailed words but could repeat entire sentences from memory.. 

The good thing is that I can always come up with intersting stories that surprise my kids.. 

Yeah kids.. your dad was cool once! 

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!

Angel card for 2020

BYSJ has these Angel cards at the beginning of the year. Something positive to center your thoughts around when your mind wanders around in the hot room, and turst me, it wanders a lot...

This year's card for me is 

The irony of this is that since coming back to reality in 2020, Joy is the one thing that is really needed. Things are hectic at home as usual.. but work is another thing altogether. Someone told me recently that I am not smiling enough in the office. 

I can always smile, but the card doesn't say smile.. it says Joy! That is something that has to be felt. It will come.. the Joy will come! Till then, it is time to hold that thought and show the Joy at least while doing Yoga or watching the kids interact very differently now that Jr. is in Sr. year of high school. 

There is hope that they will be closer than what they let other's percieve.. and there is Joy in that!