20 September 2016

First time experience!!

Got a chance to fly my first plane – not a real plane but – in a flight simulator. Jay – the great instructor – made us go over New York – by the Statue of Liberty and even Natasha’s dorm. The simulation pictures are unbelievably realistic but I had no time to check out Tasha’s dorm – I was so worried about the plane going down 🙂

Staying up in the air was no problem. Landing was a whole different issue. Jay picked Teterboro runway. Let me put it this way – if you ignore all the warning sirens inside the cockpit that I had triggered with my landing skills, I was still glad that I was in a simulator. I did manage to get it to land on the runway with some help from the instructor.
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19 September 2016

“We are defined by our choices” – Marc Mero

Great talk by the pro wrestler Marc Mero. Many of us who have had kids leave us to go to college can relate to how in the prior couple of years, they seemed to grow away from us as they came of being and their friends became a big part of their lives. The comforting part at the end of the day – while that is not what Marc is reflecting on here – seems to be that they do come back… some later than others.

(Thank you Ajanta Dasgupta for leading me to this video)

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18 September 2016

Rain drops…

Struggled to capture the splash after a rain drop fell on the white banister in the patio. After quite some time, this is the best I could get. You can see on the right side what a rain drop looks like a nanosecond after hitting the surface. The one on the right obviously had hit just before the one on the left…

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17 September 2016

That was a hard one

7 miles in 86 deg under bright sunlight and carrying no water. I must have looked miserable. While on a break at mid point before turning around, I was bent over trying to catch my breath back and a passing cyclist stopped and asked if I was doing ok…

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17 September 2016

Friday. Dress Down Day?

Yesterday, like most other days, I got up and set out in my running clothes. The whole idea was to put in a run, take a shower and get to office for all the meetings and such.
Except, I made the mistake of opening up office emails before going for the run. Looking back though, I am glad I did. For there were too many things that had happened overnight that needed my attention and decisions quickly. Weighed in “run and then work” or “work and then run”. Eventually went with the former. The challenge was that I was still in my running clothes – you know those bright ones I wear with matching shoes and all.
Ah, well, I figured if I can reach office very early and get cracking, I should be able to finish in a couple of hours and then go out for a run before anyone showed up at office. And none would be any the wiser.
Like all of those best laid plans of mice and men, five hours later I was still ploughing thru work. The calls had started – and worse, the scheduled video conference calls (thankfully, all were internal) started too. And there I was – in the most ridiculous Friday dress down day clothes you can ever show up in office with 🙂 In fact, I had to explain to all the folks at office when they came in lest they thought I was off my rocker. Well, any more than they already think 🙂
The good news is that eventually around lunch time I had an hour gap – long enough to put in a quick 5K and then shower in the LA Fitness and resume work. The bad news is that I had to run in those hard concrete sidewalks (ouch) under the noon sun.
At least I was far more presentable during the video calls of the afternoon. And since this is me we are talking about, even that was only relatively speaking 🙂

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