Welcome to my New Home

This one has been pending for a long time now.. but finally made the switch..

I have moved my blog to my own domain (http://ram.viswanathan.in). I took a couple of detours to get here nevertheless happy to here. I tried switching my registrar in vain and wasted several months in that process. I tried switching from rediff.com to net4.in but couldn't. After numerous calls and emails with both registrars, was told that .in domains cannot be transferred within the first 2 years of registration. I don't know if it is true or not, but for now I will have to put up rediff.com domain management online services. Their domain management system is by far the worst in terms of usability and and comes with little or no help. What is your experience with rediff.com domain management services?

In anycase.. welcome to my new home..

A Commitment - Good Entertainment

A Commitment by Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy solid Entertainment. Last Saturday (Nov 17, 07) Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy performed in Chennai as part of their all India tour. They enthralled the crowd with their music and had them asking for more.


The program was supposed to start at 6:30 PM and wanted us to be seated by 6:15 PM. However, people were trickling in when we went around 6:25. The program started only around 7:00 PM and even then half the stadium was still empty.


We went to this program expecting 'fusion' music as to be expected from a Shakthi Foundation program. But this concert was anything but close to that. Shankar and team played foot tapping hits from their hits from Dil Chahtha Hai to Don. (Picture - Shankar ably supported by Akruthi & Raman. I have never heard of Akruthi & Raman before but they surprised the audience with their renderings.)


Shankar Mahadevan was awesome. His versatility in various forms of singing is simply mind boggling. Even though I would liked him to have seen sing some Tamil songs, all his Hindi numbers were great.


Shankar Mahadevan working the friendly crowd. The over zealous security guys weren't too happy with that. They were going around disciplining the crowd when Shankar encouraged everyone to be foot loose much to the chagrin of the security guys.


Spotted Kalanidhi Maran at the concert. Is SunTV broadcasting this program? Most likely not as Shankar sang mostly Hindi songs...

Who is a Hindu?

The first state funded Hindu School in Britain has come up with a definition..

The policy defines 'practising Hindus' as those who perform daily prayer and deity worship either at a temple or at home, and accept and follow Vedic scriptures, in particular the Bhagavad Gita. They must also be involved in at least weekly temple-related voluntary work, attend temple programmes at least fortnightly and abstain from meat (including fish and eggs), alcohol, smoking and drugs.

According to this definition, majority of Hindus of in India would be disqualified as they eat meat!!!!

Dog Bite Scare

Did the dog bite me or not? I don't know and will never know, but was worried enough to go to a Apollo Clinic for consultations and injections.

It happened yesterday (Saturday, Nov 18, 07) on the Thiru. Vi. Ka. bridge on my return run. I was heading back from Elliots Beach and was going towards Mandavelli on the left side pavement. Couple of stray dogs were sitting / standing harmlessly(so I thought) on the side walk where I was pounding my way back home. As I was running past the dogs, one of the dogs (a white one) probably felt threatened and did something. I thought it tried to chase me away and felt some strike on my left heal.. or so I thought. Since, it was only on the shoe heal, I never stopped and didn't even worry about it till today.

Today, while having my lunch today, I sat folding my legs in the chair and noticed marks near my right ankle and that's when the monkey called 'doubt' and 'what if' climbed by back. Where did the dog strike me yesterday ? was it right or left? was the shoe heal or near ankle? I wasn't sure and ended up at Apollo Clinic. Not wanting to take any chances, Doctor suggested 4 injections that will I have to take over a 7 day period (0 - 4- 7). I took a Tetanus Taxoid (TT) and Verorab today and will be taking Verorab again on Thursday and Sunday.

Even now, I not sure if the dog really bite me, but the doubt monkey is a strange thing. Sita and I and wanted to end the 'what if' nagging question and get rid of the monkey and that's what we just did. It's going cost us about INR 1500 and some painful injections. But hey its worth every penny for getting the monkey off our back.

This is not going to stop me from running on Chennai roads, but the dogs will definitely get lot of respect from me.

India, China: Pl. Don't Follow USA on this One

India, China: Pl. Don't Follow USA on this One

I am talking about hunger for oil.. Americans consume quarter of all oil produced (total production - 85 million barrels per day) and If each Indian and Chinese were to consume as much oil as an average American does then the world oil production capacity (and availability) would have to jump by 250% to 200 million barrels a day.

Even if Indians and Chinese doesn't consume as much as Americans do, it is predicted that by 2030 India and China where one third of the humanity lives, would import as much as what US and Japan does today. To meet this demand, world oil production capacity would have to go up to 115 million barrels a day and just imagine what this would to do the price of the crude oil? It is hovering around USD 100 today and your guess is as good as mine as to what it would be in 2030.

What is even more worrisome is the fact that India and China seems to fast going down the path of aping US in its love for cars. Even though road infrastructure is far from perfect, its pot hole filled streets are already overflowing with cars, the appetite for Cars seems to have just started. Tata Motors has promised to bring out a people's car at INR 100,000 (USD 2500) which will only dramatically increase the need for imported oil.

I am happy that the Indian economy is booming and that is enabling more Indians to buy cars. But if this boom is not managed properly, we will have drastic and telling impact on the quality of life of all inhabitants of this earth, not just on Indians.

As two of most populated countries in the world, India and China owe it to the world to properly govern their growth, particularly the hunger for oil. Here are several things they can do:

• Make Car buying unattractive: This can be done via sin tax and in the cultural context
• Public transport system: Invest heavily on public transport system. It is unfortunate that cities like Chennai aren't effectively leveraging the train system. MRTS started in 80s is languishing with no direction and funds for years.
  
• Alternate Sources of Energy: Just like China and India leap frogged in telecommunications, they should jump ahead of oil hunger and find new and efficient sources of energy. India and China were lagging behind in the telephone connectivity, but they jumped on to the mobile bandwagon and now boast of several hundred million connections. They should do the same in transportation as well, but this time by inventing something new and showing the way to the rest of the world.
  

This does not absolve US of its responsibility to itself and rest of the world. I remember filling up gas in California at USD 0.69 a gallon in 80s and in the same spot Gas costs around USD 3.00. Even at that price, Gas is cheaper in US than several other parts of the world. Even now, the 'need' for bigger cars and bigger houses has pushed oil consumption in US to 21 million barrels a day from 17 million barrels in 90s. But this is not sustainable for very long. It is incumbent upon US to show the way out of this oil hunger by reducing its own consumption and finding new alternate sources of energy. There are several things US can do to in this front:

1. Sin Tax: Just like cigarettes, increase the tax on gas and big cars to change citizen behavior.
2. Tax incentives: Encourage use of smaller cars / alternative sources of energy via tax incentives.
3. Improve Mass Transport System: Allocate more funds to mass transport systems and encourage people to use them via subsidies.
4. Alternate source of energy: Put focus (and money) on finding alternate sources of energy in a big way.

The oil as we know is not going to last for ever and it is a responsibility of all of us to reduce energy consumption in any which way it is possible.

Overcoming Obstacles

While the ChennaiRunners were running on the ECR last Sunday, the largest ever NYC marathon was also happening. About Forty thousand runners pounded the streets of NYC and Paul Radcliffe one of them. She won the marathon with a timing of 2:23:09. So what's big about this? It is BIG because she had given birth just 9 months back and had several nagging injuries that almost pulled her out of the race. But, she still ran and won.

There were also some sombre moment. Ryan Shay (28) who has run several marathons before this one died preparing for it. The cause of his death is still unclear, but how do you explain the sudden death of a 28 year old who had clean chit of health and had no known health problems. This news is kind of disturbing, but for somethings in life acceptance is the best answer...

But on the positive side..
NYC Marathon had a record participation of 39, 085 runners and a good number of them (38, 676) actually completed the race. The oldest participants were a 85 year old woman and 86 year man and both completed the marathon with a timing of 5:58:58 and 7:22:17 respectively. And here I am, thinking of 'retiring' from marathons after completing 10.

As I read through the triumphs of various runners, I am reminded of Randy Pausch last lecture where he talks about walls and the reason behind them..

the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.

Coming back to NYC Marathon, NYTimes has a wealth of coverage of here.

ECR Run # 4 - a Report

When I woke up this morning around 3:00AM, I wasn't sure if we would run as it was drizzling quite incessantly. I wasn't sure how many would turn up and how would many would actually want to run. Regardless, I went to our designated assembling point and found that few had already arrive but were of mixed opinion running in the rain. We decided to drive down the starting point and take stock there and that proved to be good decision. By the time we reached MGM Dizzee world, rain stopped practically giving us green signal to get on with the run.

Here are some pictures from the run.. (Thanks to Ramani & Anupama for taking the pictures)


In spite of the rain, we had 20 runners and 3 volunteers rearing to go. We started the run when it was still dark but the weather was cool and conducive for the run.


Ramani, a ChennaiRunner decided to volunteer this time around and boy he was of great help. Ramani took some video of the run. Pl do look forward to it in youtube soon. Ramani, Anupama & Velu volunteered in two cars and they made a qualitative difference in our run. Thanks Guys..


Yours truly..Overall I had a good run.. but my iPOD froze within the first 30 minutes and that proved a dampener for me. Not sure what's the problem with my iPOD, it freezes randomly. It has so far frozen 4 times and all during running (that's the only time I use it). This iPOD is hardly three years old and I am I am not too happy with this random freeze thing.


George, Ravi, KK, Tiger & Narayanan. This was the first LONG run for George and he did good.. though he wasn't quite satisfied.


Senthil, Mahesh & Suresh



Sumptuous breakfast @ MGM Resort. All you can eat breakfast costed us INR 175 per person and was well worth it. Some of us took a dip in the sea prior to the breakfast and that was very soothing. That combined with the all you can eat spread was all we could have asked for after the long run.


Heading back home.. after our successful run. Overall, I am glad we ran today not cancel the run due to rain. In fact, the downpour prior to our start actually primed the weather for us and ensured the run was enjoyable.

More picture here.

ECR Run # 4

Tomorrow we (ChennaiRunners) are doing our fourth ECR run. This time we are doing the run a little differently. Till now, we started our run near toll booth and ran one way till Mahapallipuram and took a van back. This posed some logistical challenge as arranging transportation from Mahabs always proved little difficult and slightly expensive.

So, this time we are starting the run further south from MGM Dizee World but would end the run back at the same point. We would run for about 15km south till Dolphin and turnaround to head back to MGM. We are expecting around 40 runners to join us tomorrow and if you are interested, there is still time. Pl register here and find all information regarding the run here.

A Definite Must for Marathon Training

A good read from Adidas site on the need for long runs as part of marathon training..

Whether you call it "overdistance", your "distance day", or "LSD" (Long Slow Distance), the long run is the essential building block of any marathon training program.

We at, ChennaiRunners will be doing our 4th ECR run this Sunday and this 30km run would particularly be helpful to the folks who are doing the Singapore Marathon which is less than 30 days away.

(More on the ECR Run tomorrow).

This Should Make Shumit Happy

This research work coming from Europe.. should make Shumit a happy man.

Some Researchers in Europe have actually concluded that beer after a long run / exercise is actually good for your body.

Researchers in Europe have carried out a study and found that a glass of beer is far better at re-hydrating the body after exercise than water as the sugars, salts and bubbles in a pint help people absorb fluids more quickly.

Now, Shumit, do you feel vindicated?

Marathoners.. Leave you iPOD at home

Marathoners.. Leave you iPOD at home

That's the message USA Track & Field, the national governing body for running, is giving. It has banned the use of headphones and portable audio players like iPods at its official races. This new rule was apparently created to ensure safety and to prevent runners from having a competitive edge. It would be interesting to see if they implement this rule coming weekend in the NYC marathon.



This is pretty odd one for me and I certainly hope they don't start implementing it in Singapore Marathon and other places where I generally run my marathons. In fact, I don't think I would be able to to complete marathon without my favorite music, let alone gaining some competitive with my favorite music playing in the ear.

I echo the same sentiments as expressed in the article.. First I think this rule is absurd and two not sure how they would uniformly implement it amongst thousands of runners in any event.

Math Help from India !!!

Photo courtesy: nytimes.com

Interesting article (registration required) about the next wave in offshoring called 'person to person' offshoring. In this model math / science coaching, personal assistance and other kind of help that are person to person nature are being offshored. This business model is still nascent but might as well have lot of opportunities.