Blissful Life

When you apply skepticism and care in equal amounts, you get bliss.

Month: June 2015

  • [jog-journal] Streaks

    Streaks are very important. For today, I’d not have gotten up had it not been for the streak. Yes, the 2 day streak is the most difficult.

    And not just that. I didn’t even think while running today. I was testing the efficiency of my method to achieve runner’s high. And it is pretty much efficient, for me at least. I ran faster and longer, today. But being unable to think is a side effect of running faster.

    And while talking about streaks, I’m on a three day streak in learning French using Duolingo, today. I started my streak again because of my friend, who’s on a streak too and catching up with me.

    Looking at duolingo, social pressure and streak pressure must be the two things that makes one learn continuously.

    On the way back I saw them playing Tennis at the courts opposite cosmopolitan club. That’s when I remembered my failed attempts to learn Tennis and play like Federer.

    Talking about Federer, I had once read that forehand was his great weakness once upon a time. But gradually, he turned it into his greatest strength. What is my greatest weakness?

  • [jog-journal] Is Runner’s High Just an Energy?

    Ever since finishing VJ James’ Nireeswaran yesterday, I can’t get rid of the idea that every thing in the universe is just energy. Our body is made up of molecules of various kind. But inside, they’re just subatomic particles in different configurations. And protons and electrons and neutrons apparently have this wave-particle state. Everything is energy. So, the only question we have to ponder upon is “What is energy?”

    The huge pipe laying work in Kukralli is still underway. But good people have kept the jogging trail untouched, as of now.

    By the end of today’s run, I realized that sprint interval training has indeed made one change in me. I can’t run slow anymore. I can’t jog. I have to run. If I try to slow down to someone’s speed, I feel restrained, and soon, tired. Probably the stride length is longer now. Even chi-running has become impossible. I feel impatient at slow speeds.
     
    And if you are unable to attain runner’s high soon enough or at all, there’s a simple trick to achieve pseudo-runner’s high – just look at the trees, or the sky, or anything that doesn’t move with you.

    A day’s run has been perfect if you feel a sense of peace and happiness flowing out from the middle of your chest.

    On the way back I saw this Ola cab. Makes me wonder, how much would it cost to start driving one, and can it be a good part-time job? Imagine all those part time auto driving fuelled self-funded IIT education stories. The auto-rickshaws would be replaced by Ola and Uber cabs in the very near future.

  • Standing up to be Happy

    Woke up to a dream today, like the last few days. Ran to surgery ward where we discussed deep vein thrombosis – Virchow’s triad and more. Try this question:

    A very young girl (13 or 15 year old), comes to emergency room with acute abdomenal pain in the right iliac fossa. What do you do/ask/investigate?

    After rounds, where we saw dramatic improvement in a thromboangiitis obliterans case after lumbar sympathetectomy – his left leg which was colder than the normal right limb has suddenly became warmer, Anie, who just landed in India last day, gave us chocolates and the best cake on Earth which her mother made.

    Later had fruit salad with ice cream with Trees (who’s leaving for home today), Sweety, and Maggie, followed by butter fruit juice and heard about the amazing fight over closed toilet doors in LH. Speaking of going home, Hari is also going home after having handed over Terrorist to a mess worker two days back.

    My order for rechargable batteries and there charger was delivered by Amazon/BlueDart in the evening. So, while that’s charging, I set up my standing desk again.

    My standing desk. The zig-zag aluminium laptop stand was originally meant for using on the bed, but it is very versatile. The wireless keyboard and mouse you see on the table is not used while standing, but rather when it becomes sitting/sleeping desk.

    Just as I finished setting it up, I discovered this #100HappyDays challenge and decided I’d enroll. The standing desk and the fruit salad would be happy day #1.

    BTW, for that young girl, if you take her to operating theatre, you might not find acute appendix like you wished for. You ask for last menstrual period and rule out Mittelschmerz – which occurs at the middle of the cycle and presents with pain. It’d be a good idea to rule out pregnancy too.

  • Turns out there’s a reason why people love Surgery

    Reading someone else’s blog is a great motivator to write one’s own blog. I just went through some of the very first posts in Lamya’s blog. And the idea of documenting one’s day/week in excruciating details still fills me with enthusiasm.

    The reader deserves to know. They can’t be left hanging off the cliff. Every story needs to be completed, or continued. If you do not plan on finishing a story, do not begin writing one (at least, do not invite readers).

    Surgery is what I wasn’t sure of. And it is the only thing I am sure of, now. More than my love of learning, it is Balu sir’s love for teaching that keeps me hooked. Nothing is complicated. Surgery is like plumbing. Conceptually very simple, but when you get down on your knees and reach out to the corner to fix a leak on the pipe, it is a tug-war between your perseverance and the graveness of the leak. If you become lazy and do a quick hack, you’ll pay for it in terms of complications soon.

    Sometimes in the operation theatre I come up with ideas of building robotic hands that can go inside the peritoneum and hold that structure just the way the surgeon wants. If you watch the struggle to get the gall bladder into a plastic bag in laproscopic cholecystectomy, you’ll definitely come up with such ideas. It is all about reaching into that space, why should it be so difficult? If only you could put your hands inside the body like Neo does in Matrix 2.

    Fact is, that is what surgeons do. When a giant cyst is trapped inside your body, pressing on your nerves and causing you unbearable pain, all you want is someone to reach inside and take it out – something that no amount of medicine can do. That desperation is the license for surgeons to be daring. It is what lets them cut tissue knowing for sure that it is irreplacable. Surgeons live the Nike slogan – they just do it.

    The results are usually immediate and dramatic. Here is a patient who’s crying and dying, and minutes later he’s smiling and dreaming again.

    I am that patient. Hopeless and desperate before going in, and within days of surgery posting I’ve regained my confidence in what I can do.

  • Beautifying GNOME with Paper theme (Material design)

    Last night while I was searching for alternative window managers I discovered this wonderful GNOME Shell theme called “Paper”. After installing it, I’m enjoying looking at my computer screen.

    Here’re some screenshots.

    Applications Overview. Look at the menu menu on the top right.

    Nautilus with folder icons

    Tweak tool showing the wonderful checkboxes and the settings I had to change to achieve the theme

    Turning Global Dark theme on was a welcome addition to the Paper theme. Read about setting up GNOME with paper theme on my website.

    Another useful app I installed is Synapse launcher. Ctrl+Space and it gives me access to everything I need.

    With these, somehow, I feel like my computer has gained a few milliseconds in speed.

  • [jog-journal] The mind game

    If you sleep late, you wake up late.
    If you sleep early, you still wake up late.
    That’s why they have invented alarms.

    About one week since I last woke up early enough to go jogging. The body clock is so unreliable. Woke up to my phone’s clock. Two snoozes only.

    Today, my plan was to run the whole round. So I started slow. And quite unexpectedly I had to give up half way round. Therefore, the sprint-interval training I’ve been trying hasn’t worked. Well, it wouldn’t have worked, either. The intervals between sprints were too long. And the intervals between sprint-intervals were too long too 😛

    The idea of long distance running is not to let the heart rate or respiratory rate go above a threshold. Once you’re past that you’re in the sprint mode and you can’t go far. But what I had was pure fatigue. The chest couldn’t hold it. In fact, when I thought of finishing with a sprint in the home stretch, I had acute intercoastal myalgia, one of the differentials of heart attack had it come on the left side. But this one was, as always, on the right.

    On the way to the lake there was an Indian Pariaah which showed cubitus varus. On the way back there was a lost pug looking for its owner.

    Two people asked me the route to Maharaja’s. There was police blocking the entry to DC’s office. Something is happening in Maharaja’s.

    And I met two professors, one colleague today. It’s fun how jogging parks are central to Mysore. Maybe if there was a park in Mattanur, more people would have been jogging.

    I had less thoughts today. That’s good. The ultimate aim of running is to have no thoughts.

    I do not like people who run with earphones, because those keep falling out of my ears. But then I saw this man at the University gate, he had a cooling glass and a huge headphone around his head and it was probably giving him a 3D surround. I hope running with music is a great way to keep running, although I have never experienced it. Have you? Feel free to comment.