Category: jog-journal

Four months, quintals of biriyani, and almost fainting inside the metro day before yesterday because I darted to catch it and came to a standstill immediately. It took me these to realize that I should take care of my health even if Bangalore isn’t as enticing as Mysore to go for morning jogs.

There is Jayaprakash Narayan Park near where we stay. It does have some water body inside it, but not a lake. There are brick lanes throughout the park and a sand lane that runs through the perimeter. So, today morning when I woke up at 5:40 after ten minutes of my alarm ringing, I decided that I shall resume jogging. Since I’m not a big fan of the calendar days I didn’t have to wait till new year for making a resolution.

There was a pup about 2 months old tied to the gate of my neighbour’s house. It jumped up and caught my calf with its tiny paws two days back when I saw it. But today it was sitting still, yet vigilant. The Rajapalayam which roamed third main road was sitting in front of its owner’s gate. The German Shepherd (also known as Alsatian, a fact I came to know now when I searched “difference between German Shepherd and Alsatian”) inside was not near the gate and so didn’t bark at me like it usually does. The obese dog at the corner was walking today, for a change. It usually is always sleeping. Maybe it too had a realization today morning.

By the time I came back even the two Indian Pariahs right next door were up. And the Pomeranian was walking behind the newspaper boy for getting its well deserved pat. The pup had broken its meditation, raised its paws and reached out as far as the leash would allow it to.

Did you notice one thing? There were no cats around. I’ve never seen a cat do morning walk. Neither one that actually eats cockroaches. Cats are everything that humans should not be – lazy, selfish, and enigmatic about what their thoughts are. And dogs? Dogs set the ultimate standard that humans should strive to reach – persistent, caring, and down to earth about their feelings. You now know why I love dogs more than cats.

The primary care fellowship and infectious diseases case based learning series are both set to start in January. I remembered it because just yesterday in JeevaRaksha JALS workshop at NATCON 2018, we met some wonderful young doctors with idealism not lost and that spark remaining in their eyes. Hopefully the day after we will meet again and discuss the heroism of incremental care, the wonderful life without “specializing” and the rat race, and a different style of learning and practising the art and science of medicine.

I went jogging in the evening today. My main goal today was to run slow with a smile on the face. To look at others and show my smile.

I remember reading a long article earlier today about what goes inside the mind of a runner.

I know what goes through. “Is my heart beating too fast? Am I going to fall unconscious and die? Should I stop now or run a bit more?”

Funny thing is, every day,
Just as I begin running from one corner of Kukralli,
I see people going in the other direction,
People whom I’d have never seen in my life before.

I run halfway round and reach the other side,
And then I see many of the same people.
Whom I’d never seen in my life before,
Except 10 minutes ago.

And this time, they’d not be the way they were last time.
Some would be sprinting full of sweat.
Some would be slowing down, panting.

And then I look at myself.
I’d have changed too.

But one thing remains.
We’d all be still on the track.

It so happened that I remembered one of the lessons from Chi-running I was practicing from school. I’d to look on the ground directly in front of me while running. It works and I ran longer than I usually would today.

But when I tried smiling at the end of it, my cheek muscles were burning!

My professor had last day told the story of his friend who finished MBBS, Post Graduation, and some specialty, got married, had a kid, and at the age of 30 something, when everything was “settled” got a myocardial infarction. Don’t put health behind anything else, he said. And don’t go running from the next day, he said too.

But, selective hearing at its best, when I woke up at 5.45 today, I had to do something useful. First I read one page of my textbook and just as I was about to go back to sleep, I got the idea to be running again. That’s exactly 3 months past the last time.

Why do people have so much difficulty in doing what they are supposed to do? I had for a long time believed that people forget what they’re supposed to do and get involved in random distracting things. But if that was indeed the case, to-do lists must have worked like magic. But to-do lists don’t work. They just grow and grow and grow.

If it’s not about remembering, maybe it’s a problem with the way we recall what we’re supposed to do. A to-do list is a bare short description of what we’re supposed to do. It doesn’t give us the entire context of what was going through in our mind when we jotted it down. It takes away the motivation.

Maybe that’s why multi-tasking doesn’t work too. We need to enter certain “modes” to do things. When we’re supposed to be learning, we need to be motivated and comfortable to read. That is a different mind set when compared to when we’re supposed to be writing something creative. It is probably difficult for the mind to switch from one mindset to another.

That’s probably why meetings, community calls, hackathons, etc leads to far more productive output than people left on their own produce. When you invest half an hour or a day to get your mind into a particular situation, it is filled with the motivation, the back-story, and the context of what it is supposed to do. And then, doing what we are supposed to do becomes easier.

I have been learning d3.js since yesterday. It is a cool thing. 

The road to kukralli has changed a lot. There are now beautiful pavements on either side. And kukralli itself has been decorated with flower pots on the sides at entrances.

The pelicans are now floating on the lake. Maybe the pollution has come down a bit. And there was this kid running with loose shoes, not exactly lifting his legs while running, but dragging them. His shoes are probably gonna get worn out much sooner than he wants them to.

And there was this white labrador dog which was so scared to jump across the roadside drain. The owner had to walk parallel till there was a small bridge across. Stupid dogs.

The usual pack of stray dogs were serenely looking at the morning walkers in front of oval ground – not moving unless the wheel of an oncoming car is directed at the ground under their rib cages. One of them suddenly started jumping with joy as it saw an old man and ran towards him. “Did you think I have biscuit?”, said the old man petting it.

Why do dogs love humans so much? Maybe during our evolution, we humans gave environmental pressure for the selection of loyal dogs only. Maybe cats evolved on their own and maybe that’s why they don’t care about humans.

I think contributors to FOSS also undergo such a selection, unknowingly.

People who end up being contributors to FOSS are the people who ask questions and answer them themselves.

Most FOSS projects are written as dogfeed to solve the author’s specific problem. It is only an after-thought that makes it a public library. Therefore, things would be done in ways that are less than intuitive. Configuration would be a mess, and the only documentation would be the few comments that’re dispersed in the source code.

With projects being so beginner unfriendly, how do newcomers start contributing to FOSS? Or, what kind of newcomers start contributing? Only those who are genuinely curious, who’re willing to learn by themselves, and who are more comfortable finding answers online than asking people questions.

This could explain why sometimes FOSS contributors are the worst people to take help from to get started with contributing to FOSS. They themselves are curious truth seekers who do not like third party answers. They are not acquainted with the process of handholding. And therefore, they appear hostile to the poor newbie who is still learning to ask questions the smart way.

Today morning I made a presentation for two girls in a college in Kerala whom I met at hackindia to get started with FOSS. I have been trying this pedagogy which puts the emphasis on acquiring those skills which help in auto-didactism.

And I ran so hard that I felt my eyes would pop out.

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?

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.

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.

They say an idle mind is devil’s workshop. A jogger’s mind is god’s workshop then.

I’m waking up at 4 am since I had a sweet dream yesterday.

Some goons appear outside a hostel. They beat the two securitiy guys up and ask them to go inside, take the mobile phone from every guy sleeping inside, and hand it over to them. The clever securities went inside and woke all the guys up. The guys started coming out one by one and soon the goons fled seeing the crowd.

When I woke up I had the realization that individually we are all powerless, but if we can wake people up to the reality, we can fend off any enemy.

That was yesterday. Today I had no dream to wake up with. This thread is going on about licensing of a Telegram based bot. If the license is AGPL, does it protect the bot as we want it to be protected? I’ve sent an email to FSF because the answer isn’t clear from their FAQ either. Then I started making a teaching kit called “Internet elevator pitch for administrators” after wondering how I’d make my college Dean understand the importance of URLs. (My college’s official website is mmcrimysore.org.in. If you’re to visit it, you’ll be redirected to the subdomain of the website of the web developer (I’m ashamed to call that guy by this title). And the guy says the official URL will be used once the website is completed. Poor administration should have believed that.)

It was 6 o’clock by then and fairly sunlit. And I was having a bit extra energy and so I went jogging to Kukralli kere. There are bulldozers around the entrance laying down huge pipes and I had to jog anti-clockwise today because the other entrance was blocked with soil. I remember reading somewhere that running anti-clockwise is good for the heart, but I wonder if that’s true for large circles (or even small circles). Also, what happens to the previous tar on the road when it is being retarred?

Halfway through I noticed a woman running with a stooping posture. She didn’t look tired and she was young enough to be not having senile stoop. Do women assume certain positions while jogging to avoid uncomfortable jiggling of their breasts? Can this be avoided by wearing appropriate sports bra? If yes, maybe a bra-salesman can make a fortune at the entrance of Kukralli kere. After all there is already a leafy vegetables/hurbs guy, a glucometer guy, and even water purifier guys there.

I was in the home stretch by then and I saw an Eagle being carried away by wind. Wind flows from water to land in the day, doesn’t it? That’s why there was wind I guess. And then a blue bird about the size of a small crane with 4 long fingers.

I should write all this down on my blog! After switching to my website for all serious stuff I have been wondering what I’d do with this blog. Maybe this is the right place to write all these random thoughts. Maybe I should name it “Jog Journals”. Oh! That’d be fantastic. It’d keep me jogging every day because I’ve to write the journal and it’d keep me writing every day in turn.

Just as I was fancying that idea something happened. I had been jogging regularly in first year. We had a group who’d go jogging and we’d complete the Kukralli round in 20 minutes and be back. But we lost that habit during university examinations. After that the only real reason that made me go jogging was this girl, in my immediate junior batch, who likes running a lot and whom I like a lot because of that. I knew she came to Kukralli every morning but I’d never ran into her despite adjusting my timing frequently. Incidentally right at the end of the round I saw her and she said “hey” and I said “hi”. Ha!

I have absolutely no doubt that there will be enough interesting things/thoughts every day to fill this series with. Yes, a series, that’s the idea. Keep looking for the tag jog-journal.