Bhrigu's question

Friday doggerel: For he is a very sad man

2009-09-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

Sing to the tune of "For he is an Englishman" - Gilbert and Sullivan, HMS Pinafore. The doggerel is based on the current Shashi Tharoor-Twitter brouhaha. For the humour impaired, this is supposed to be sarcastic and is based on this classic quote.

For he is a very sad man
For he is a very sad man

The Congressman has said it
and it calls for many a repeat
when solitude and wine meet
that tweeting is no great feat
For he is a very sad man

And he could be from any nation
rich, poor or the middle station
he could be your distant relation
even indulges in self fornication
For he is a very sad man

Thinks he has no cause for worry
so he writes in a bloody hurry
the high command makes merry
now the news is not so dreary
For he is a very sad man

He always hits the whiskey bar
while he stays at the five star
often behaves like a great czar
doesn’t even drive his own car
For he is a very sad man

Hope the Congress lynch mob
lets him keep his big job
else Vinod Mehta will rob
he’ll write and we’ll all sob
For he is a very sad man

Origin of Nike's "Just Do It"

2009-09-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

Morbid quiz fact of the day: Nike's slogan "Just do it" comes from murderer Gary Gilmore's statement "Let's do it" to the firing squad that executed him. Wow. Here's the creator Dan Wieden talking about it.

Quiz question. Fill in the blanks (Yeats poem, famous film)

2009-02-02T22:18:00.000-08:00

Fill in the 5 blanks. Film related hint below the poem

Sailing to Byzantium
- William Butler Yeats

THAT is __ _____ ____ _____ ____. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

==
Hint: The blanks gave the title to a famous novel published in 2005। This was made into a film that won 4 academy awards in 2007, including Best Picture.

Interview with Danny Boyle

2008-12-12T21:08:00.000-08:00

Interesting interview with Danny Boyle, the director of Slumdog Millionaire:

AVC: Were there places it was difficult to get permission to film?
DB: There's lots of things that can be solved with cash. [Snickers.] And there's occasional things that can't be solved with cash, which become a bureaucratic nightmare for some reason, and there's no distinction between the two. There's no way of reading a situation and saying, "Yes, that'll be a bureaucratic nightmare, but that one we'll be able to buy off." It just depends on the day, apparently. The most extraordinary thing, you'd be given permission for, and then the weirdest, simplest things, you just wouldn't be able to obtain permissions. And it would go on and on and on forever and ever, and there was no way to know. You have to kind of approach it with an open, quite optimistic mind, no matter what's thrown at you, because it will only ever result in damaging the film if you let any kind of despondency get to you. You have to remain optimistic, and that's clearly how people live their lives there. Against all the odds, they retain kind of a spirit which allows them to get through against insufferable odds. The poverty, the traffic, the lack of infrastructure, the flooding during the monsoons—there's just so many things that are coming at you at the whole time that your spirit has to remain, and that's certainly true. It enters the minutia of filming

My ideal job - Women's beach volleyball referee

2008-08-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

My wife and I have been having this ongoing argument about the Olympics. She considers beach volleyball sexist since the men get to wear shorts and tank tops, while the women wear almost nothing. [My counter argument is that women get to see a lot of eye candy in the men's diving competiton, where the women wear one piece suits and the mean wear not much except sweat.]

Anyway, I checked the rules of Beach Volleyball. It appears that there is a rule concerning the *maximum* amount of clothing that women participants can wear.The rule states that "women's uniform bottoms have to be two and a half inches wide on the sides."

I also checked the website of the FIVB for rules concerning the names of the players and found this:

"Sanctions will apply in case the team name of a men player does not appear on his shorts, while it is only recommended, due to the limited space, to feature the same information on the women's bottom during the 2008 season. Therefore, the FIVB will not fine any women athletes for not placing their names on the bottom of their uniforms in 2008,"

My first question is this one: How the heck do they enforce these rules? I can picture a guy going around with a measuring tape and saying; "Now then, young lady" and measuring the clothing around all vital areas below her navel.

My second question is this: "Are they hiring?"

Quiz Question: Name the English equivalent

2008-07-01T09:35:00.001-07:00

Fill in the Blanks: (cut and pasted from Wikipedia)

Fulano, Zutano y Mengano — in Spanish
Hinz und Kunz — in German
Jan en Alleman — in Dutch
Tizio, Caio, Sempronio, Mevio, Filano e Calpurnio — in Italian
Fulano, Beltrano e Sicrano — in Portuguese
Ivanov, Petrov, Sidorov — in Russian
Are, Oore, Shamsi Kooreh — in Persian

_______, _____________ & _____________ in English.

Hint: Think of the 3 tortoises from the Galapagos brought by Charles Darwin in HMS Beagle

Nissim Ezekiel: Irani Restaurant Instructions

2007-10-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday folks! Here's a nice Nissim Ezekiel poem for your enjoyment:

IRANI RESTAURANT INSTRUCTIONS*

Please
Do not spit
Do not sit more
Pay promptly, time is valuable
Do not write letter
without order refreshment
Do not comb,
hair is spoiling floor
Do not make mischiefs in cabin
our waiter is reporting
Come again
All are welcome whatever cast
If not satisfied tell us
otherwise tell others
GOD IS GREAT

------ Nissim Ezekiel, 1972

For more poems by the great Indian poet Nissim Ezekiel, please refer to his works in the Digital South Asia Library.

'Awaara' of Raj Kapoor & its Turkey connection

2007-06-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

Raj Kapoor's Awaara in Turkish

The IMDB entry has this interesting information:
Comment 1: "The movie and the song were quite famous in Turkey during 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s and it inspired a whole genre of films produced in Turkey"

Comment 2: "yes, it is. it is remade starring Sadri Alisik and Ajda Pekkan in Turkiye. The remake was named "avare" and released in 1964."

[Btw, IMDB lists a 1970 Turkish remake of the same name too.]

Sure enough, here's the Turkish version and the Turkish version of the song.
And yes, hear Raj Kapoor "speak" in Turkiye in the final scene of the dubbed version of Awaara. Beautiful. And other scenes from links.

I found other Turkish sites/youtube videos where there are references to it:
like this tv dance competition, this remixed version (Hindi and Turkiye), and this looks like a wedding celebration dance set to the song.

HBR: Daniel Vasella's inspiring story

2007-06-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

From the Harvard Business Review article (Feb 2007) by Bill George and others. Bill George is a Prof at Harvard, and was the CEO of Medtronics. He has written bestsellers on leadership, including his latest "True North". You can listen to Bill George being interviewed my Michael Krasny on KQED Forum here.

excerpt from his HBR article
==

[..]Novartis chairman and CEO Daniel Vasella,whose life story was one of the most difficult of all the people we interviewed. He emerged from extreme challenges in his youth to reach the pinnacle of the global pharmaceutical industry, a trajectory that illustrates the trials many leaders have to go through on their journeys to authentic leadership.

Vasella was born in 1953 to a modest family in Fribourg, Switzerland. His early years were filled with medicalproblems that stoked his passion to become a physician. His first recollections were of a hospital where he was admitted at age four when he suffered from food poisoning. Falling ill with asthma at age five, he was sent alone to the mountains of eastern Switzerland for two summers.He found the four-month separations from his parents especially difficult because his caretaker had an alcohol problem and was unresponsive to his needs.

At age eight, Vasella had tuberculosis, followed by meningitis, and was sent to a sanatorium for a year. Lonely and homesick, he suffered a great deal that year, as his parents rarely visited him. He still remembers the pain and fear when the nurses held him down during the lumbar punctures so that he would not move. One day, a new physician arrived and took time to explain each step of the procedure. Vasella asked the doctor if he could hold a nurse’s hand rather than being held down. “The amazing thing is that this time the procedure didn’t hurt,” Vasella recalls“Afterward, the doctor asked me, ‘How was that?’ I reached up and gave him a big hug.
These human gestures of forgiveness, caring, and compassion made a deep impression on me and on the kind of person I wanted to become.”

Throughout his early years, Vasella’s life continued to be unsettled.When he was ten, his 18-year-old sister passed away after suffering from cancer for two years. Three years later, his father died in surgery. To support the family, his mother went to work in a distant town and came home only once every three weeks. Left to himself, he and his friends held beer parties and got into frequent fights. This lasted for three years until he met his first girlfriend, whose affection changed his life.

At 20, Vasella entered medical school, later graduating with honors. During medical school, he sought out psychotherapy so he could come to terms with his early experiences and not feel like a victim. Through analysis, he reframed his life story and realized that he wanted to help a wider range of people than he could as an individual practitioner. Upon completion of his residency, he applied to become chief physician at the University of Zurich; however, the search committee considered him too young for the position. Disappointed but not surprised, Vasella decided to use his abilities to increase his impact on medicine. At that time,he had a growing fascination with finance and business.He talked with the head of the pharmaceutical division of Sandoz, who offered him the opportunity to join the company’s U.S. affiliate. In his five years in the United States, Vasella flourished in the stimulating environment, first as a sales representative and later as a product manager,and advanced rapidly through the Sandoz marketing organization.

When Sandoz merged with Ciba-Geigy in 1996, Vasella was named CEO of the combined companies,now called Novartis, despite his young age and limited experience. Once in the CEO’s role, Vasella blossomed as a leader. He envisioned the opportunity to build a great global health care company that could help people through lifesaving new drugs, such as Gleevec, which has proved to be highly effective for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia. Drawing on the physician role models of his youth, he built an entirely new Novartis culture centered on compassion, competence, and competition. These moves established Novartis as a giant in the industry and Vasella as a compassionate leader.

Vasella’s experience is just one of dozens provided by authentic leaders who traced their inspiration directly from their life stories. Asked what empowered them to lead, these leaders consistently replied that they found their strength through transformative experiences. Those experiences enabled them to understand the deeper purpose of their leadership.

===end excerpt==

Origami and a space telescope

2007-06-05T14:30:00.002-07:00

You may wonder what the two have to do with each other.
Short answer: Dr. Robert Lang.

I read an article recently in Smithsonian Magazine about Robert Lang, a laser physicst who has worked in NASA's Jet Propulsion lab, and has authored 40 patents and 80 publications He has been an origami buff since childhood. He has mastered the art of making mind-numbingly complex folds based on complex computation of geometric shapes using math.

Now, how does this connect to the space telescope?

Lang has also consulted with engineers at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on a new generation space-based telescope dubbed Eyeglass. The goal is to put huge telescopes—up to 328 feet in diameter—into orbit for purposes that include the viewing of planets outside our solar system. Getting such a behemoth into space poses a problem because the hold of the space shuttle measures a slim 15 feet in diameter. Lang devised a folding pattern for a 16-foot-diameter prototype that can be folded for transport, then unfurled like a flower coming into bloom once in space.

Also, see a related New Yorker article.

Book Review -Nora Ephron

2007-04-05T16:24:00.000-07:00

I wrote this for Amit's Rave Out.

Navigating the Big Apple

Title: I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

By: Nora Ephron

Buy from Amazon.com

Nora Ephron, the famous writer of films like, ”When Harry met Sally” and the writer-director of films such as ”You’ve got mail” and ”Sleepless in Seattle” writes about turning sixty. It is often said that there exists a very symbiotic relationship between the music of Gershwin and the New York of Woody Allen. Ephron, on the other hand, navigates around the Big Apple with the ease of Tony Bennett and Billy Joel, what with her joyous takes on what women carry in their purses, dealing with hair dye, bad skin, and nails, to ruminative outpourings on the difficulties of buying an apartment in an area that will eventually become fashionable.

One wishes that there were more than fleeting anecdotes on her troubled relationship with her second ex-husband, the Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, whose name is never mentioned in the book. She claims that he was in love with the British ambassador’s wife and that the ambassador and Ms Ephron met to weep in each other’s arms, during which time the former dryly remarked; “What is happening to this country?”

While there are no notable quotes or terribly witty statements to take home, this is certainly a cheery book to read on a short flight.

Quiz Question: Identify the town

2006-12-05T19:45:00.000-08:00

It is a town situated in the north-western region of Koderma District in Jharkhand, India. It is one of the only two towns in the Koderma district, the other being Koderma. It is situated in the Damodar River valley. The pin code of this place is 825409.

Which town?

Hint: The website of Koderma district lists the district (and town) as having a very high literacy rate. Clearly, the folks from this place are men and women of letters.

Quiz Question: Identify the author

2006-11-30T14:51:00.000-08:00

Quote from an article that will be linked after I receive some responses:

"The ______ attained a certain degree of popularity, which, though pleasant in itself, brought in its wake involvements that turned out to be ludicrous and even tragic." It was made into a film which mutilated the original storyline much to the author's chagrin. A planned Broadway edition was as reckless in its treatment. The author had to withhold his permission to present it on stage, even as the adaptation was done by an old friend of his, a former literary editor of the New York Times. As an example of the outrage, The author mentions, "For instance, his version managed to abolish the heroine. I objected to his omission and to two irrelevant characters of his own; above all I objected to the hero's turning around and urinating on the stage."

Matters became rather acrimonious over this script and the author had to leave New York at a very short notice to avoid being summoned for a subpoena; he found asylum in his country's consulate before boarding a flight out of the United States. However the script was later revised and “The _______” opened in Broadway in March 1968. It closed in less than a week.

If you fill in the blank with the name of the book, you can easily identify the author. Another hint, he was rumoured to be in contention for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, but did not win. He explained what the deliberation of the Nobel Prize committee must've been like:

"...His writing is too simple, and too readable, requiring no effort on the part of the reader. ...He has created a new map called X in which his characters live and die. Story after story is set in the same place, which is not progressive, a rather stagnant background..... We hope some day {the author} will develop into a full-fledged writer deserving our serious consideration."

Ans. R. K. Narayan and Guide. Ravikiran got it right. The article can be found here.

Kabir translated by Rabindranath Tagore

2006-10-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

Project Gutenberg has Songs of Kabir translated by Nobel laurete Rabindranath Tagore.

No 68
=====
Bai koi satguru sant kahawai

He is the real Sadhu, who can reveal the form of the Formless to the vision of these eyes:
Who teaches the simple way of attaining Him, that is other than rites or ceremonies:
Who does not make you close the doors, and hold the breath, and renounce the world:
Who makes you perceive the Supreme Spirit wherever the mind attaches itself:
Who teaches you to be still in the midst of all your activities.
Ever immersed in bliss, having no fear in his mind, he keeps the spirit of union in the midst of all enjoyments.
The infinite dwelling of the Infinite Being is everywhere: in earth, water, sky, and air:
Firm as the thunderbolt, the seat of the seeker is established above the void.
He who is within is without: I see Him and none else.
==

Azam Ali and other things Persian

2006-10-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

Azam Ali is an interesting person. She was born in Tehran, did her schooling in India and then migrated to the US, where she began a career in World Music. She is part of two groups, Vas and Niyaz. Check out three interesting music videos here, here and here.

She has got a song with Laxmi Shankar. Also, she was the vocalist whose song we heard in the recent ABC miniseries '9/11 - Path to War'.

I like her sound.

But Googoosh, Iran's legendary singer will always remain my perennial favorite. She had a gap of 21 years in her singing after the 1979 revolution resulted in a ban. While she could've easily emigrated and formed a new career among expats, whilst exploiting the large overseas market for her music (her songs are famous in Iran's neighborhood as well), she did not leave her country. It was only in the 2000s that she went overseas to give concerts. Her voice hasn't lost its edge. She has now settled in Southern California.

What a tragic loss for many years though. For some examples of her singing prowess & soothing voice, do visit this and this.

Reading recommendations while you listen to the above music:
1. Let me tell you where I've been, New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora by Persis M. Karim . Simply the most amazing collection of poems/short stories, I've read in 10 years or more.

2. Strange Times, My Dear. The Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature by Nahid Mozaffari (Editor), Ahmad Karimi Hakkak (Editor). Ironical that it was almost banned in the US!

3. Lipstick Jihad, A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America And American in Iran (Paperback)by Azadeh Moaveni. Btw, Moaveni has written a book with Shirin Abadi recently.

4. Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas

5. All books by Marjane Satrapi.

Protecting women

2006-09-25T15:45:00.000-07:00

Apropos to the post by Amit:

An Assurance To Womankind

Rest assured and have no fear.
So long as you do not lift your head,
you will find men all around you,
guarding.

If a Ravana was to abduct you
or a Dushyasana was to pull your robe,
there are many a Rama and Krishna around
who will shroud you with cloth infinitely long,
and pass you through the test of fire,
and make it all nice and flawless and sound.

Kannada Poem by D. Vijaya, Translation C.P. Ravikumar

Pundita Ramabai - Article in the New York Times

2006-09-25T14:51:00.000-07:00

Mar 7, 1886 New York Times

Women’s education in

India

What has been done by the Brahmin lady now in this country.

Pundita Ramabai, the distinguished Brahmin lady, who with her little daughter, 5 years of age, arrived here yesterday in the British Princess to witness the graduation in medicine (at the women’s medical college, Philadelphia) of her relative, Mrs. Anadeebai Joshee, is a remarkable character. She is the daughter of the famous pundit of Poona, Bombay Presidency, India, who sacrificed his wordly prospects and eventually his life to the cause of emancipating the women of India. He gave his daughter the same education that he gave his only son, and both the sister and brother became famed for their learning and traveled together throughout India. The brother dying suddenly, the sister married (as few Hindu ladies are permitted to marry), the man of her choice, a graduate of Calcutta University, a Sanskrit scholar and a pleader at law. About a year and a half of this marriage, which was a happy one, the husband died of Asiatic cholera.

Stricken to the earth by this bereavement, parents and brother also dead, darkness for a time encompassed the widow. Then, she rallied, to devote her life to improve the degraded condition of her countrywomen. For this purpose, she returned to her native city, Poona, and formed a society of ladies known as the Arya Mehila Sabba (sic), whose object was the establishment of native schools for girls. She then went from city to city throughout Bombay Presidency, establishing branch societies, and arousing the people through her eloquent appeals.

She is chiefly known in the United States through a remarkable scene in which, she was a prominent actor, in Poona, in September, 1882. At this time the English Education Commission visited this conservative and wealthy city to inspect the educational institutions, whereupon the leading Brahmin ladies, members of this newly formed society and others, to the number of about 300, notwithstanding a heavy rainstorm, assembled with their children in the Town Hall to welcome the education commission to show them that although the municipality had not encouraged girls schools, a real movement was being made by the best families of the Maharatta country. This was quite an unparalleled occasion among Brahmin women who are kept in such strict seclusion.

Pundita Ramabai Sancrita was the orator of the occasion. She read a leter in English to the commission, and made an eloquent speech in Merathi (sic). She dwelt upon the difficulties which, as women of good family, they had to encounter from the absence of trained female teachers and the absence of school books fit to be placed in girls’ hands. “We want” she said “education for our girls as much as for our boys, but the English government has supplied trustworthy teachers and suitable books for the boys and none for the girls.” The President of the Commission, Dr. W.W. Hunter, in replying to the address, expressed his pleasure at meeting such an assemblage, which was altogether a new experience for him in India. “If the women of India” he said “have really made up their minds that their girls ought to be educated all minor difficulties will quickly disappear.”

As an immediate consequence members of the Poona municipality intimated to the commission the next day their willingness to take up the cause of the girls schools and to provide the necessary funds. Now, four years later, not only are there elementary schools, but a native high school for girls is in successful operation in Poona. IN 1883 Pundita Ramabai went to England to acquaint herself more fully with their methods of teaching, and in educational work in general. Her scholarship was tested by Prof. Max Mueller and others, both in Cambridge and Oxford, and pronounced sound, and on the recommendations of these distinguished friends she was appointed Professor of Sanscrit in a women’s college in Cheltenham. This position she has held for two years, in the meantime, improving the rich opportunities on every hand for special courses of study.

Her purpose in England accomplished, she is now about to return to India to resume her educational work. But the great event so fraught with significance to India, about to occur in Philadelphia, led her to decide to visit the United States, “that holy land called America” as she styles it in a recent letter, to witness the graduation as a doctor of medicine of Mrs Joshee, a Hindu Brahmin lady.

Quiz Question: Identify the actor

2006-09-02T10:10:00.000-07:00

This is a quote from an article in the New York Times.

"Where Dawn comes up like thunder - Also Talkies in Urdu and Hindustani, Myths, Blurb-writers and a Child star" - New York Times, May 31, 1936.

The annual issue of India's chief film magazine, however, floats a full-page advertisement in tri-color announcing in the international monotone of the blurb writer, "Bravo India, thy sons and daughters deserve unlimited admiration. Heaven be praised! Shirley Temple, Hollywood's child star is now excelled by Baby Rani, 5 years old, India's youngest child star who has done wonders in Bai Jaddan-bai's "Talash-e-Hag" or "The Search for Truth", a Sangeet production, remarkably wonderful, now being lavishly produced.

Question. How do we know Baby Rani better?

Mom and Pop stores

2006-08-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

A different perspective from Matt Yglesias:

Mom and pop may be admirable, hard-working, decent people, but their store probably sucks.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

2006-07-25T16:18:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Yardley writes in the Washington Post:

[..]Rum is essentially an accident. On 17th-century sugar plantations in the Caribbean, "sugar wastes were considerable," chief among them molasses. Eventually, someone figured out that molasses combined with other ingredients could produce a potent if rather vile alcoholic drink that came to be called rum, perhaps as "a truncated version of rumbullion or rumbustion ," both of which "were British slang for 'tumult' or 'uproar,' " which, as Curtis puts it, conjures up images of "fractious islanders cracking one another over the head in rumbustious entanglements at island tippling houses."[..]

Read the entire article.

Badwater began this morning

2006-07-24T13:59:00.000-07:00

The webcast can be accessed here. Everyone of them is a hero. But Indian eyes will be on Nattu Natraj.

A champion's heart

2006-07-20T22:45:00.000-07:00

Never mess around with an American, Aussie or German with his back to the wall. Here is today's champion. What an amazing ride today! No superlatives can be adequate . More here & here.

Upholding freedom

2006-07-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

This is the image of the so-called directive from the Indian government ordering a ban on some websites (from Sepia Mutiny).

The process by which the blocking and unblocking of sites have occurred in the past two days bears scrutiny. The order on the left seems to have been signed by a Asst. Dir General of the LR cell of the Department of Telecom. That, a lowly bureaucrat had the gall to send a directive to major ISPs is amazing. What was his locus standi in this matter? Why did he not give an explanation in his letter? What is the position of Indian law on these matters?

More importantly, why did the ISPs act so hastily on receiving this order? Didn't they even consider, for a minute, the consequences of their actions in inhibiting freedom of speech, in actively participating as state-sponsored machinery in curtailing the freedom of expression? Did they even consider taking a legal opinion on this important issue? Did they even suggest to the powers that be that there needs to be a public debate before such blanket bans are enforced.

The role of ISPs in transgressing some of the basic elements of the Indian constitution is worrying, if not downright frightening. Do the very same ISPs and telecom service providers provide website-traffic data, telephone-call data, and details of other private transactions to nameless government bureaucrats on merely being asked to do so?

Be afraid. Very afraid.

Track Etiquette - a story

2006-07-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

I had a great track workout today. I had not done one since 2004. I did a set of:
1 mile warm-up at 10.10,
800 at 3.46,
1 mile at 7.48,
800 m at 3.56,
followed by a 1 mile cool down run.

The story however, does not relate to my run which, by the way, was terrific. I was running with my buddy, when I noticed two ladies walking ahead of us. I yelled "track", but they did not budge.I asked politely, "Ma'am, could you please move to that track" {pointing to the track closest to the fence}. No response. As I passed them, I pointed to the track and made a "move there, please" gesture.

We carried on. Soon we encountered them again, and the same story was repeated. When the 800 m run was completed, they passed us. I walked up to the ladies and informed them politely where they ought to do their walking. One lady gently said, " We typically walk on different numbers after every round." The other one looked at me sternly and said: "We'll walk where we WANT to!".

Taken aback, I told her, "No ma'am. There are rules for running/walking on the track. You must not walk on the middle tracks when runners are out there." She ignored me and continued walking.

Now, these two ladies were immigrants (probably from mainland China) and perhaps, my Indian accented English confused them! However, I was aghast that one of the ladies was rude inspite of my polite request. The other lady was quite accommodative.

It is quite disappointing to see many people use the tracks as paths for walking. While we do track workouts, we are targeting a particular pace. Sometimes, runners are zoned out and are not aware of a walker until the last moment. Therefore, it is not only distracting, but quite hazardous to walk on the tracks. Some runners do their warm up runs anti-clockwise in lane 2 or 3! I do realise that not everyone is aware of track etiquette. But, when someone tries to inform you of it, you ought to listen.

See these links 1, 2, 3, that contain info on track etiquette.

Quiz Question: Name the footballer

2006-07-04T18:05:00.000-07:00

He lives in Huntington beach California with his Chinese-American wife Debbie Chin and their two children. He comes from a family of bakers from a town called Goppingen, and is, in fact, a trained baker himself. His tendency to dive in the penalty box earned him the nickname ''Submarine Commander'. He took that in his stride when he played for Tottenham Hotspur, by celebrating his goals with a diving action. Under the pseudonym Jay Goppingen, he made a comeback as a player in 2003 for Orange County Blue Star in the American Premier Development League . The 39-year-old was able to score five goals in eight appearances, helping his team to reach the playoffs.

Who?