My love hate relationship with swimming

Time is the biggest constrain that anyone can face while trying to maintain fitness levels.

If we take up any activity we end up spending 15mins to 60mins.

We all know that swimming is the best form of exercise as it causes least amount of damage to your body. Unlike weight training which can cause damage to your ligaments and joints swimming is harmless to your body parts.

First Steps

As a kid I had this great fear of drowning. This was accentuated while going for a swim due to the crowd that would interfere with this deadly ritual. There are multiple motivating factors for you to stop where you are.

• Heavily chlorinated water
• Dirty looking fellow swimmers
• Over enthusiastic middle aged men trying to swim and freaking you out by their antics
• Kids peeing in the corner during timeout 

Finally the day arrived when this struggle of mine came to an end. Someone has rightly said that successful people convert obstacles into an opportunity. I was at the other end of this thought. 

That day I was late to the pool and I did not manage to find a float for myself. My coach found the opportunity to force me to swim without a float. 

Out of my comfort zone the best I could do was to scream for help and the lifeguard pulled me out of water. We wrapped up things and I got a slap on my cheek on reaching home.

Overcoming Fear

Fast forward 10 years, in my teens now and full of energy. I take up swimming accidentally and managed to stay afloat for a few months. I was no longer avoiding that daily swim, I believe my will to please my Dad gave me the strength to overcome my fear / laziness. 

I never continued swimming as it was taking a toll on my skin and hair. My next stint was in Thane ARC club. The swimming pool was well maintained and the water quality was at par with Olympic standards. I decided to learn the technique behind some of the most complex strokes. I had a great experience with youtube as a resource to learn music and it did not fail me this time either.

I watched some starter videos and then moved more complex ones. The likes of Phelps and Thorpe were recorded in slow motion and watching their action was a learning in itself. These videos motivated me and I started picking up Freestyle and Breast Stroke. When I last swam I was doing the dolphin kick pretty well and was about to master the butterfly stroke.

As of today (2017) I still wish that I could resume training and brag about it here!

Life and its meaning

People have this habit of complicating things.. There is this breed who is always worried about its prime motive.

Why am I here on this planet?
Even god doesn't know why you are here! My question is why do you want to know?

LIVE LIFE AS IT COMES.

For me life is this very moment.. What else is it? The past has happened, it cannot be changed and future is out of your control.

Today might be the last day of your life.

Do you want to spend it worrying about the purpose of your existence?

All that you can do is have faith in God and keep doing good work.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Ahhhh! finally I am writing a blog..... its been almost more than 2 years since my last post.

Frankly speaking I tried very hard to be a good student but I cannot be.. that's one thing that I have figured out in the first few months of 2012.

For the first time in my life I asked the question 'why?' to my actions.. and finally I managed to figure out that I need not do things that I don't like to do. If I do those things just to be in the good books of few people I will end up being dragged into something that I do not like forever.

Hence, I took a call.. it's my way or highway!!

Loo Woes

It was just another day at work and i felt like freshening up. I decided to visit my sanctuary the most peaceful and pristine place at my workplace and yes you got it right that place is the Loo.

Just imagine you go to do pee pee and you are just standing there people come and go but you are standing there feeling humiliated and at the same time frustrated. You become so nervous that it just doesn't come out the harder you try the tougher it is.

Then it turns out to be a very complex situation as you cannot leave without relieving yourself and at the same time you cannot spend anymore time at the loo as people come and go and start wondering whats wrong with this guy!!!!

Find what you love to do!!

The phrase is overused and we all are tired of thinking about it but it never fails to make us think. Steve Jobs had rightly said in his famous speech that you got to find what you love to do. There are very few people who are lucky enough to find what they love.

I am one of those who are striving to find that one thing. Today I experienced immense joy and inner peace while playing to a Dream Theater track. I dont know if this is the only thing that works for me but till date this had been the most amazing experience.

Metallica !!!

The wait was long but we got what we expected. Metallica performed in India on 30th Oct at Palace Grounds. We embarked on the journey to bangalore on 28th and reached on 29th morning. After freshening up we headed towards MG road to hunt for metal Ts. I was amazed to see a huge collection of  Purple Haze and spent our evening in warming up for the big day. I felt like i was amogst my people. Everyone was headbanging or singing to rock ballads and some epic metal tracks. There is a dearth of places where good (rock) music is played in Mumbai and I felt it even more looking at the choice of songs played by the DJ. After a long session of screaming and headbanging we went back home without having our dinner as you can hardly find any eateries open so late in the night. Next day morning we were all ready each one of us sporting T shirts with prints of our personal favorite bands.
Then started the journey from the main gates to the concert stage. I was amazed to see kindred souls sporting metallica merchandise and the crowd was from various age groups, we could find teenagers, twenty somethings and we could also find people who were well into their 40s.

Then the wait for main act started. We missed the indian band that was opening but managed to catch Biffy Clyro the scottish rock band. They sounded promising but as the time passed and as the crowd became impatient to watch Metallica they seemed to be out of sync with the crowd. Who would wants to hear a rock band prior to the performance of the Gods of Metal? Eventually the crowd started to boo them.

They went and in came Professor James. While the team was arranging equipment and getting ready for sound check James Hetfield decided to test the patience of bangalore crowd. He started preaching the crowd about being responsible for their safety and the safety of their neighbors. That sounded so weird as it came out from the vocalist of Metallica a band that has tracks like Seek n Destroy to their credit. Repeated instructions and warnings about walking out sent the paranoid section of the crowd into a frenzy. They were incorrigible even after telling that the guy is killing time while the sound check is done.
After a long one and half hour wait finally Ecstasy of Gold started and in came the Four Horsemen!!

What i loved about the concert was the sound... it was so loud! the drum beats were piercing through my chest. The very first song they payed was creeping death i still remember that moment. They came up with all that people wanted to hear. They were playing "One" when i could see white birds flying over head in the dark night sky and I was amazed at the way things happened and they seem to be designed by someone.

They played one of my favorite tracks on "Justice for all" "Blackened". This is one album which they avoid to perform live because of the complex nature of rhythms. This time they pulled it off i was looking forward for that section of song where the bassist and vocalist sing alternately even that came off very well.

By the end of the show i could hardly talk, walk, turn around to check out that hot chick or bend. We all were just like zombies life sucked out of us screaming and head banging like there would be no tomorrow!

Enough of social networking!

Travelling in public transport is turning out to be a very risky affair, gangs of opportunists waiting to slip your mobile phone out of your pocket. Having experienced it twice, I take special care of my phone and wallet. I prefer putting it in my bag rather than playing with them while i am onboard. This way I manage to save my ass. As we know America was discovered by accident and so are many other things. In my case I discovered peace, letting go of my mobile saved me the pains of checking Facebook, BBM, Gtalk and Yahoo Messenger updates every 1 or 2 mins. When I reached home I forgot to remove it from my bag and suddenly I felt life is so much better without the constant chatting and commenting. I felt like the machines own me rather than the other way round. If someone pings, you have to reply as soon as possible, if that someone turns out to be a girl she surely would make a fuzz out of it. Calls have to be answered it can be somehting important! This has really changed the way we spend our time and our mind. Our mind is never still, its always turbulent crowded with so many things that you struggle to keep up with happenings around you. Just imagine what you would have done without FB and make a point to do it. Without FB you would probably be hanging out with friends or reading something or watching the idiot box or pursuing one of your hobbies. Calculate the amount of time spent in social networking it will easily exceed an hour a day. This is the direct loss of time, what about the indirect loss? That would be the time for which your mind is floating around as a result of constant pings. This implies that in a month you end up spending 2 days in doing something that can be avoided.

Well getting to the point the initial idea of this blog was to talk about google plus. So will do that now :p Google plus was launched at a point when people were raring to have a peek at what G+ looks like. Netizens were excited and hunting for invitations. The number of members on G+ went up exponentially but somehow right from the start it failed to be a Facebook killer. Everything seemed to be good but something was missing!

G+ added features which were getable for the techies at FB as I type G+ has opened it self to all and the only advantage they have is that of Google Docs and Gmail. Somehow they have not been able to capitalize on that. Why cant they integrate everything and present it in a completely different format. As Steve Jobs says putting a dent in the universe, that is what is required. Playing around with old formats wont work. Google Wave looked promising but the Godfather of GWave was removed and so was the Wave project. Why cant Google take up the Wave format and do something with it?

I would like to end this one with a question and that is..

WHY SHOULD THE PEOPLE SUFFER FOR THEIR INCOMPETENCE? WE DESERVE A BETTER SOCIAL NETWORKING CONCEPT!