New Year, New Resolution

 And it is here; another new year. People try to stick with different resolutions at the beginning of the year. And it is very very common to drop the resolution after a few weeks.

But what is the reason for this? Is it that people choose resolutions they don't like to do? Or is it because they get bored doing the same thing again and again? I feel it is a little bit of both. Then I thought of this resolution which could handle both the problems.

The resolution is simple:

Every month do something for the first time in your life.*

* Conditions apply
- You cannot choose similar things more than twice in the year. Eg. You can't keep cooking different dishes each month or only visit places. The chosen items should be different.
- It is a new year resolution. It shouldn't be something that causes harm to your body. Do not take up smoking if you run out of ideas!

That should push me into trying different and new things. There are innumerable things out there to try; so running out of ideas should not be an option. Oh, that gives me the idea for January: running my first marathon! :)

The resolution sounds interesting to me, and if it goes well I would want to try it longer than a year. You could travel to a new city, try a new game or an adventure sport, cook something for the first time, join some workshop/classes, start a new hobby; and many more (suggestions welcome in the comments section). It definitely cannot be as simple as going to the neighbor's house for the first time or watching a new movie (making a movie could count ;-) ), or going to a restaurant!

 So who is joining me? Watch this space for the progress on the resolution.

(Cartoon source: xkcd)

Other posts you may be interested in:

Sendai Earthquake
White List
White List - II

Random is Good!

“One of the most beneficial and valuable gifts we can give to ourselves in this life: is allowing ourselves to be surprised! It is okay if life surprises you. Its a good thing!”
- C. JoyBell C.

Life brings surprises because of its random nature. Randomness is one of the best attributes of life, so live it that way! If you knew what is going to happen next, you could perhaps control the situation better; but it would definitely be monotonous and dull. I am not asking you to take it to the extreme, as The Dice Man, but sensibly.

Random Act I:  Read a random article on Wikipedia
You may have noticed a link on the left pane of Wikipedia which leads to a 'random article'. It would lead you to one of the 4.1 million English articles. I visit few random pages every day; and even have this link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random) bookmarked on my browser. You come across different and interesting articles from the huge collection of the free encyclopedia.

Random Wiki Page

Display a random: Article Talk User Talk Wikipedia Talk File Talk MediaWiki Talk Template Talk Help Talk Category Talk Portal Talk Book Talk

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous. 
- Eric Hoffer

Ofcourse, if you keep doing the same random act, it gets monotonous even if the outcome is not known to you. So you need to keep shuffling it up. Try different things each time. I have listed few more things you could try. 

Random Act II: Random trip

Pay a visit to a random place. For it to be random, the only condition is that you do not pick it. You may have to use public transport for this one, so that "you are taken" somewhere. So go to a bus/railway station and get into a bus or train without knowing the destination and get off say the 10th stop. Every city/town has a history, has a story to tell, has places to visit. This is something I have wanted to do for a few months now and I plan to do when I get a long weekend. The first two days could be spent boarding different buses and getting to unknown places and then the last day travelling back. You will find it on my white list soon. :-)

Random Act III: Listen to random songs: 

 Stop listening to the same old playlist. Explore! Tune into any of your favourite radio stations, that you have never visited before, or listen to any new artist. Try listening to songs in a different language! You may still have not found your favorite genre!

Random Act IV: Watch movies in different languages: 

 Watch dubbed movies, or movies with subtitles. There are wonderful movies made in every language, so don't be biased by few movies you may have heard about. People who arent from the southern states of India think that the South Indian movies are all about a fat hero in lungi singing with a pretty damsel and fighting a hundred fatter and uglier guys alone. But they forget the actors and filmmakers from the south who have made beautiful and sensible movies which have been critically acclaimed. Many people rate the Academy award winning movie, The Departed as one of the best crime thrillers they have watched. I too liked the movie; but I found the original film Cantonese film, Infernal Affairs far better. The prequel to the movie, Infernal Affairs II is also equally good. To make it random pick the language first, then search for good movies made in that language. Sites like films101 could help you.

Random Act V: Sites bringing you random pages:

 Of course you have sites like StumbleUpon, which introduces you to different web pages. Most of these sites allow you to mark your preferences, and then show you pages related to the ones you have "liked", given "thumbs up", "digged" etc. This is a good feature, but at the same time you may lose many interesting things out there. So it is good to keep checking pages outside the "Recommended for you" section. Reddit even has a link for showing you a list of articles on a random topic (http://www.reddit.com/r/random/).

Other Random Acts: 

The above mentioned are just a few things I could think of. There are innumerable things for you to pick from. Eg. Pick a random letter and then choose an author or a book starting with that letter for reading. Or pick an adventure sport starting with the letter for your next trip. Options are limitless; you just need to play the game. 

Explore, Explore, Explore, Learn!
- Unknown.

Links: 
The Dice Man
Biscuit Tin
Random Good Stuff
Wikipedia: Random
StumbleUpon, Digg, Technorati, Reddit, Delicious

Other posts you may be interested in:

Sendai Earthquake
Dzongri Trek - Days 4, 5 - The Ascent
Duke's nose trek and valley crossing
Rappelling at Naneghat

White List II

Life is getting a little monotonous! And sometimes I need directions and deadlines to keep me going. So its time I created my next white list. Like the previous one, this too should push me into doing something...



So here is is; the list of my targets for the next 50 days:

1. Run for a marathon! I have always wanted to do this, but never did!The 'Running and Living Pune' group is organizing a marathon on the 3rd of July, Sunday. I have decided to run for the quarter marathon which would cover 10.5 kms. I know I can keep walking for a long time, but I am not sure how far I can run. Lets see how it goes.

2. Workshop! Learning never stops! I had been quite busy with the theatre acting classes and then with practices for the play 'Tale Danda' during the last couple of months. Now its time to learn something new, different and interesting during the weekends. Let me see what I can find on the net or in the papers!

3. Leh-Ladakh! A plan that was made a year back and got washed away in the cloudburst! We are planning to go for in a month.
Fingers crossed.



4. I haven't trekked for a long long time now! Many people often ask me about my treks as I used to frequently go on treks the last year. I just realized that my last trek was over 6 months back during last Christmas, when I had gone on a 4 day trek to the Alang-Madan forts. I did go to Mt. Takao during my Tokyo trip, but I would  not call it a trek. It was more of a hike. I therefore have to end this dormant period. Fourth in the list: a trek!

5. Donate blood! Another item that has always been on my will-do-tomorrow-list. High time I put it on the White List.

So those are the 5 things I need do! Today is the 2nd of July. So the deadline to finish off the tasks would be August 21st (50 days later; like White List I).

I will keep you updated as I finish each item on the list.


PS:

July 3rd: Woke up at 4:15am after a 3.5 hour nap and reached Pune University at 6am. The marathon started on time. There were around 25 people running. The pleasant climate, more than 20 people running along and half a bottle of gatorade helped me complete the marathon in around 70 minutes.

Certificate of 'completion'(Click to enlarge).

It was my first time, but I can tell you there are many more to follow!

#1 on the list, completed!

July 9th: Today, I went for a workshop on... making cookies and cakes! :-)
I had found Rajul's Cookery Classes on the net; and I thought this would be an interesting workshop. So I registered immediately. The workshop was conducted by Rajul Sanghvi at her residence, near Shivaji Nagar. She conducts a cookery workshop every Saturday from 1 to 4PM. Today she taught us to make chocolate muffins, shrewsbury biscuits, coconut cookies, banana cookies, pinwheel cookies, chocolate chip cookies, egg-less sponge cake with pineapple icing and chocolate sponge cake with cherry icing. Yeah, lot of good stuff; not all of it is in my head right now; but its there in the handout given to us there along with some 'tips from the expert'.
At the end of the workshop, we had the cakes and cookies that were made. The sponge cake was nice, soft and quite juicy, and I loved the shrewsbury cookies and the banana cookies! They were awesome! I hope when I try my hand, they turn out to be atleast half as good!


#2 completed! Three to go...

July 17th: At Sadhu Vaswani Mission in Pune, a blood donation camp was organized on the 17th of July. Being a Sunday, it was convenient for me to go there. After a quick blood test, I found myself on a cot with a needle sucking blood out of my vein. I was given a stress ball, squeezing which helps hasten the process.

July last week: Bharath, Vipin, Murali, Arjun and I set out to Leh for a trip of a lifetime! One of the most beautiful places I have seen. A must visit for all travel enthusiasts!

Aug 6:  During the trip to Leh, we had gone rafting on river Zanskar. If that doesn't count as a trek, I had gone on a trek to the Panvel waterfall along with a trekking club here, Offbeat Sahyadri, followed by rappelling down the waterfall.

And this completes my second White List! Many more to follow!

The Sendai Earthquake, and later - as I felt it...

 Taka san and I were getting set for our daily call with the Pune team at 14.55 JST. Chris was just outside talking to Ron. That was when I had the same strange feeling as 2 days back on March 9th. Then I had initially thought that I was feeling dizzy until Chris told me what it was; but this time I knew that it was an earthquake!

 Within seconds, it started getting worse. The chairs started moving, then the doors, then the whole office was shaking! All of us were on the floor for some time. An automated message kept saying that it was just 3 on the scale and that the building was safe. We didn't trust the old building a lot; so we climbed down 22 floors by stairs and got out of the building.

 

The first earthquake - from the 22nd floor of the office.

There were obviously a lot of people on the roads then. 

Some interesting conversations when we just got out:

Taka san: Lets check out how the Starbucks is looking now!

.

Ron: I am worried about my wife and daughter.

Chris: I hope my TV is fine!

.

Me: That was interesting!

.

Chris: Dude! I am really worried about my TV! 

We didn't want to keep standing under the 28 storey building. So we moved to the adjacent Hibya park. The park was filled with people. Within 5 minutes of getting to the park, we felt another earthquake. This was a pretty big one as we felt it even on the ground! You can see/hear the manhole rattling in the video below.

The second earthquake, after we reached Hibya Park

You can also see the office building moving a little in the video below.

The office building, seen from Hibya park

Some of the people were trying to contact their beloved ones. The others were gathered around cell phones with television checking the news; there was news about a fire near the Rainbow bridge, another about a Tsunami! There were tense faces all around.

People gathered at Hibya park

Soon it was getting cold out there. Not many of us thought of the temperature outside when running down. We then went up to the building to pack our stuff. We got whatever we needed and climbed down the stairs again. As nobody really wanted to work at the 22nd floor of an old building, we went back home.

On the way back, I thought of getting into the convenient store to get something to eat, but there was a really long queue.So I decided to get something from the convenient store opposite my apartment. But when I reached there, this is what I found.

Convenient stores in Tokyo

There was also a lot of traffic on the roads; the main reason being the subways not functioning because of the earthquakes. I had not seen traffic jams here prior to the earthquake. When I reached my apartment, which is on the 9th floor, I could feel the aftershocks; the lamp-stand and the chair were moving quite a bit. So I packed some important things into my backpack and got out of there. There was no network on my cell phone, so I couldn't contact anyone immediately and there were long queues outside the coin phones. I walked around in the streets of Tokyo for sometime, and then got into a phone booth and contacted Taka san and Chris. They advised me to go back to the apartment after some time.

Stagnant traffic in Tokyo

And so I did. The apartment would shake once in every 20 minutes or so. I was getting used to it and stopped worrying about the small aftershocks. I kept my backpack, jacket and shoes by the door just incase I had to rush out. This time the backpack was packed more carefully; with my laptop and its charger, charger for the cell phone, camera, cash, some food, 10 and 100 yen coins for the phone booth and my passport.  And then, trusting the Japanese civil engineers, I went to bed.

Ready...steady...go!

Earthquakes, tsunamis, over 500 aftershocks, nuclear radiation leaks, volcanic eruption, cold wind blowing from the north, stocks dropping low! I really hope this country recovers and gets back to normal as soon as possible! I had great respect for Japan and its people before coming here and it has only increased seeing the way they have reacted to and handled the situation so far. I think I would have been much more worried if I was in the same situation in any other country!

Hoping for the best!

PS: Back in India now. There was another thing I wanted to share on this post earlier, but I didn't want to freak some people out! So I am sharing it now after safely returning back home. On 11th March, when the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, my roommate Ananth had searched for me on Google Person Finder. And the update he received there wasn't very comforting!

I have received information that this person is dead!!

So, do not just rely on these websites set up for finding your friends/relatives. They could be used to ease your search, but you cannot totally trust the information put up here as there could always be some people trying to play pranks without understanding the seriousness of the situation or some honest guys but without the right information.

Dzongri Trek - Days 4, 5 - The Ascent

Previously on The Dzongri Trek:

• Days 1, 2, 3 - Getting there!

We reached Jalpaiguri at 2 AM. Our cab driver, Shishir reached in some time and at 2:32 on the watch, we were off to Yuksom. We travelled along the NH 31a; we passed the new Jhola bridge, Teesta and Kalingpu on the way.  Most of the guys were sleeping as we entered into Sikkim at 4:10AM. We also came had to take a detour because a part of the road ahead of us just got washed away in a landslide.

A part of the road 'wiped off' in a landslide

The weather was cool and nice. The view as we drove around and over the hills were amazing; calm streams, tall trees, snow capped mountains far away, and waterfalls were all around. We stopped at Legship to have some tea. Legship is known for a beautiful Shiva Temple (Kirateshwar Mahadev Mandir) at the banks of river Rangit. We didn't visit the temple though; just saw it as we passed by.

Renzil and Masoon had reached Yuksom the previous day. They left Kolkata couple of days back and reached Yuksom after visiting Gangtok. We reached the Blessing Hotel at Yuksom, where they were staying, at around 8AM. All of us freshened up there in some time and were ready to go!

The previous evening, Ren had checked with Sherpa treks, a local group there which organizes treks to Dzongri and Goecha La. They agreed to take us for around 3k per head. We agreed as we didn't have enough time to find another guide and also there were many tourists there looking for trekking agencies and guides. The package included food for the 4 days, accomodation, sleeping bags, a guide cum cook, a porter (Norton, a boy aged around 16) to carry some utensils and help out the guide, a yak -  actually a Dzo (hybrid of yak and cow) to carry some of our luggage, food and the sleeping bags, and a yakman to tend the dzo. 

Our yakman loading the Dzo!

The initial plan was to get to Tshoka before sunset on the first day. But as we were a little late to arrive at Yuksom, we decided to halt at Baakim (14Kms from Yuksom and 2Kms before Tshoka) for the night. We started off at around 10.30 AM, a couple of hours past the initially decided time.

The route to Baakhim was mainly through the Kanchendzonga national park, known for the Rhododendron flowers, which I was told fills the place in the month of March.We did not get to see the flower. We had to cross 4 bridges on the first day, most of which were suspension bridges.

 

One of the 4 bridges we crossed on the first day

As hours passed, we could feel the weight of the bags pulling us down. Each bridge did tempt us to take a dip in the cold water running below; but we did not have enough time! We kept walking. It starts getting dark pretty soon here. The sun set at around 5.30PM; we reached Baakhim few minutes later. When we reached there we were starving, but nobody was thinking about food! ( I am not very sure about one person ;) ) We were all digging into our bags, and wearing all the warm clothes we had. In 5 minutes, each person weighed an extra couple of Kgs. 

We were served hot mugs of tea, which were gulped down in no time. We then got our dormitory for the night. There we had the popular beer in Sikkim - 'HIT'. Dinner was served soon afterwards. I do not remember many instances when I was more hungry! All of us kept appreciating the food! :)

The next day we woke up around 630, freshened up, had our breakfast and set out for Dzongri. Since we had halted at Baakhim instead of Tshoka, we had to cover an extra 2 Kms uphill.  We reached Tshoka in 1.5 hours. We could see few snow capped mountains from Tshoka including Pandim.  Our next stop was Phedang where we were supposed to have our lunch. The climb uphill was quite tiring. There were some preliminary symptoms of altitude sickness were shown on couple of us. Phedang is around midway from Tshoka to Dzongri. There is a small wooden cabin where you can prepare your lunch. We had some maggi and biscuits for lunch. 

Having a mug of steaming hot tea at Phedang

We were told that the climb to dzongri was steeper than the stretch we had covered earlier during the day. That wasn't very encouraging. We started from Phedang in half an hour. The path ahead was all foggy. We couldn't see more than a few metres ahead for sometime. Within an hour we saw snow. Though it was quite cold out there we didn't hesitate to make balls of snow and shoot at others. I had never seen snow before. We kept walking and in around 2 hours after we left Phedang, we reached Dzongri! We were pleasantly surprised that we weren't too exhausted. I doubt if our guide/cook added some secret ingredient-x in our maggi for lunch!

Our guide arranged for our cabin for the night. We kept our luggage in there and then walked around the cabin enjoying the view. There we witnessed something which for me was the most beautiful sight I had seen till date! 

 

 

Altitude of Paradise = 13,200 feet?

But was this going to be the most beautiful sight of the trip? The foreigners we met on the way, who were on their way back to the base, didn't think so; they told us that the sunrise at Dzongri has no match in terms of beauty! We would know that in a few hours! Until then we kept admiring the bed of clouds on front of us. It was freezing cold outside; but we waited there till sunset. After sunset, we could no longer stay outside; the temperature dropped to around minus 7 deg C!

Ready to get Bamboo-zled!

The guide told us that he would get us the local brew - Bamboo! It is made of fermented millet and served in bamboo stem, cut and used as a tumbler. All we need to do is add warm water to it; wait for 5 mins...and...voila! You've got something that tastes like wine! Once you finish the drink you just need to add more water to the fermented millet and wait for 5 more minutes to get your refill!  It does get milder after a few drinks though. If you go to Sikkim, this is another thing you must try!

After that we retired for the night. We had to catch the sunrise at 4 AM the next day. Would it turn out to be as beautiful as many people we met and all the reviews on the net said? We only had to wait for 6 more hours! And you only have to wait for the next blog-post. :-)

PS: 15 shots of bamboo - Not Advisable! ;-)

Links:

• The Dzongri trip from Ren's keyboard.
• Yuksom on Wiki-travel