Irrepressible Desire

I had a desire. I kept pushing it to the wall but it would always come back after a brief hiatus. For various reasons I gave a blind eye to it, but it would never subside. Somebody said, that you cannot kill a desire, you only have to fulfill it.

My Hero calls it a day

Rahul Dravid, my long-time hero and idol as a cricketer and a person, has retired from test cricket. The fact that I am blogging about it almost two days late, calls for some deep introspection.
Numerous articles have been written about the diligent, the hardworking, the gentleman, the true ambassador of the game, the quintessential wall. He knew what he was born for and he carried that duty to perfection. I remember reading this article about him, which compared the two geniuses: Sachin and Rahul. While Sachin was a gifted genius, Rahul was a self-made one. You could not become a Sachin, but you could aspire to become a Rahul, but it's extremely difficult for the same reason.
I was lucky to have seen him on couple of occasions. The class in his batting and his demeanor, can never be forgotten. In those early years, his batting caught my attention and I soon became his admirer and fan. I think it was not just his batting, but the way he performed on/off the field that drew me towards him. I have not been following cricket too-closely for quite some time, but if ever there was a desire to watch a match it was primarily to see him bat.

The fact that "The Hindu" carried a front-page section for his retirement speaks of his greatness. The title is 'Standing tall, ‘The Wall' bows out'.
Here's his retirement press conference : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qteHves1MYQ
Anybody who had contributed so much to cricket would have loved to have a farewell on the field, but he chose it inappropriate to do that considering that this decision was after the completion of a series and hanging in there for one last test for just this reason would be selfish. That's the person he is. I wish I will continue to hear of him from the press. I hope he would write an auto-biography one day so that I could peek into his life, but I am sure he will not do that. He's too modest to do something like that. Some people want to be nice, and some people are just nice.

Amul...too has reserved a billboard for this moment:-
http://www.amul.com/files/hits/amul-hits-1402.jpg
http://www.amul.com/files/hits/amul-hits-1394.jpg

An example of "Vision"

Around 5 yrs back I posted on my blog about the MMTS service that was started in hyderabad around the year 2003. Here's the link for the post:-

http://dhiraj.blogspot.com/2006/01/hi-tech-city-station.html

The service then was not a big hit and was criticized for the low occupancy. Fast forward it to now...8 yrs later...today during the peak hours it's full to the brim, offers a cheap, fast, green alternative to other modes of transport. Considering the growing demand, additional trains and coaches were introduced couple of days back. My wife and I are both using this service to commute to work and cant stop praising/thanking it everyday. This is a true example of a vision. The vision of Mr. Chandrababu Naidu (and his team). Kudos to them. We need leaders like him.

Excellent Post on Time Management

http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/do-it-now.htm

Java Anti Patterns

Came across this nice articles which enumerates some quite basic and common mistakes done by Java programmes. Definitely worth a read.

http://www.odi.ch/prog/design/newbies.php

Another Brick in the wall

It's very easy to give up...

Extremely difficult to stand up and fight.

If you think giving up/detachment is a virtue... then you are wrong... the separation is thin. Detachment is the state in which you didn't have a yearning for it, but you give up something, to which you were attached some point of time. You gave up not because you wanted to be detached...rather you accepted the defeat and were forced to forfeit and be detached.

Dont give up... be detached !!! pun....it's a big pun

Cycling in hyderabad

After a long time did a long ride along with Anitha. She on her Merida and I on my Specialized. Got up early and started at 6.15 am from our house in srinagar colony and went all the way to Gandipet lake (a.k.a Osman Sagar Lake). It's around 28km one way. It was a little cold on the way and roads were empty and the road through Artillery center was very good. It was a pleasant ride to Gandipet. It got hotter on the way back though and the traffic at Mehdipatnam was a spoiler. Were back at our home by 9.45 am. Here's the Google pedometer map of the route : http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4329901 . Good to be back on the bike after quite some time. Both of us enjoyed it.

Cricket Grounds in Hyderabad

It's quite difficult to find a proper cricket ground in hyderabad. Some of them that I am aware of :-

• HCA Gymkhana ground, SD Road, Paradise. This is a beautiful ground and many Ranji matches are played here. Turf and grass all along the ground. Contact Dutta (9885830200)
• Sanatnagar Welfare Center Cricket Ground, Sanatnagar. Mat, no grass on the ground. Contact Dhanraj Babu (9394556356). More details over here:- http://www.sudeep.me/2008/01/cricket-grounds-in-hyderabad.html
• Sarojini Cricket & Fitness Academy, Bagh Lingampally. Very small ground, but there's good amount of grass. Played on mat. More details here
• MCH ground, opposite Shenoy Nursing home, Marredpally. Small ground. No grass, played on mat.

Participating in AIDS Lifecycle 8

It's been a long time since I posted anything. I am doing the AIDS Lifecycle ride
this year too. Look over here:-
http://www.tofighthiv.org/goto/dhiraj

And this is the video I created in preparation for the ride:-



Prepared it using Microsoft Photo Story 3. Used the pictures that we took on the previous years ride and some others from www.jeffbrockstudio.com.

Tour oF Nilgiris

I am happy to see that organized long-distance cycling events are starting to take place in India. Stumbled upon the link to "Tour of Nilgiris", 7 day 919 km cycling event from Bangalore to Mysore. The culture of cycling is spreading to India...one good effects of globalization ;-)

Comfortably numb

The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

- The Wall, Pink Floyd

It's all about Biking (Bicycling)

4000 miles on my bike and still going. Little did I think that I would do so much of cycling when I bought my road bike in May 2007. Thanks to biker-friendly California and the sport of Bicycling itself, it has become my passion. Sometimes I even foolishly think of becoming a Pro.

It was in the month of May 2007 that I first rode on my bicycle, a mere 12 miles. But it wasn't until Oct 2007 that I seriously started cycling. I have been commuting to office on my bicycle since then, 17 miles a day. At around the same time Sudhir and I decided to participate in the annual AIDS LifeCycle'08 event, in which we had to cover 545 miles from SF to LA in 7 days. It was in that event that I did my first century on the bike. That ride increased my interest in cycling even more and nowadays I spend some of my weekends going on long rides on my bicycle. For the first time I watched Tour De France 08 and also started keenly following the Pro races. Had I been into this a little earlier, I would have followed the AMGEN Tour of California where most of the Pro teams around the world complete. Hopefully my wish of watching a Pro race with my naked eyes will be fulfilled in Feb '09. That's when the Tour of California will begin.

Road Cycling is a wonderful sport. You can enjoy it in solo, no company required. You can go to far away places and enjoy the natural beauty along the way, as if riding in a car with an open-top. It's a nice way to keep you in shape. Unlike Running, there isn't so much of impact on your legs and knees. And if you commute daily on bike then you are being very Green and also saving a lot of money on Gas. For e.g 4000 miles would mean (4000/30)*4 ~ 500$ of savings in a year.

Thanks to America for bringing me into contact with Biking. Hopefully I will be able to continue Biking throughout my life, irrespective of where I will be.

Book Excerpt : Its not about the bike

This is an extract from the book "It's not about the bike, My journey back to life" on Lance Armstrong the seven time Tour-de-France champion:-

THE QUESTION THAT LINGERS IS, HOW MUCH WAS I A factor in my own survival, and how much was science, and how much miracle?
I don't have the answer to that question. Other people look to me for the answer, I know. But if I could answer it, we would have the cure for cancer, and what's more, we would fathom the true meaning of our existences. I can deliver motivation, inspiration, hope, courage, and counsel, but I can't answer the unknowable. Personally, I don't need to try. I'm content with simply being alive to enjoy the mystery.
Good joke:
A man is caught in a flood, and as the water rises he climbs to the roof of his house and waits to be rescued. A guy in a motorboat comes by and he says, "Hop in, I'll save you."
"No, thanks," the man on the rooftop says. "My Lord will save me."
But the floodwaters keep rising. A few minutes later, a rescue plane flies overhead and the pilot drops a line.
"No, thanks," the man on the rooftop says. "My Lord will save me." But the floodwaters rise ever higher, and finally, they overflow the roof and the man drowns.
When he gets to heaven, he confronts God.
"My Lord, whey didn't you save me?" he implores.
"You idiot," God says. "I sent you a boat, I sent you a plane".
I think in a way we are all just like the guy on the rooftop. Things take place, there is a confluence of events and circumstances, and we can't always know their purpose, or even if there is one,. But we can take responsibility for ourselves and be brave.

Red-use, Re-use, Recycle

Yesterday (April 22nd) was Earth Day. If I were not in US probably I wouldn't have known about it. Lot of people here are concerned about their carbon footprint. It's a different matter that US does most of the climate damage.
There's a lot of talk about Recycling. That's nice but the other problem is that the US economy is primarily driven by consumption. For a variety of reasons (cost, convenience), there is excessive consumption. This is really bad for the environment. It's economically cheaper to buy a new good instead of getting it repaired because of the labor cost. Just dump it and buy a new one. And yeah we can recycle it. There is extra cost for recycling it. It would have helped the environment a lot if the good was reused and extra goods were not manufactured at all.
One fact I realized is that there is a lot of food that gets flown via flights to different parts of the world. This contributes to significant amount of global warming because of the fuel required for transport. Often the cost to environment is not considered in the economics.
Individual can do considerable help in reducing global warming. Some of the things are:-
- Switching off lights when not in use
- Carpooling/Biking/Taking buses etc whenever possible
- Avoiding using throwaway plastic cutlery and styrofoam plates
- Reusing stuff as much as possible

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle as much as possible.

AIDS/Lifecycle Practice 1

Now that the event AIDS/Lifecycle is just 6 weeks away, and now that the California Summer of 2008 has arrived (Forget the afternoon, but the evenings are amazingly refreshing), I shred my lethargy and went for my first practice ride from Cupertino to Stanford and back a total of 24 miles at a stretch. Did it in 2 hrs, my usual speed. I know it's very less and I feel the pinch every now and then when somebody overtakes with ease :-(. This is a good beginging and if I keep commuting to office on my bicycle that should serve the minimum training. But I need to build my lower-back muscles so that they are strong enough to keep in the riding position everyday for 80 miles for a week. My back started aching towards the last quarter of the ride today. Time to go to gym.
Here's the map from Google Pedometer
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1790162

My First Half-Marathon

I have been jogging all through my life but never for more than 1 hour and never very seriously. The last public event of worth mentioning is Hyderabad 10k run (in 2005) around the Hussain Sagar. I guess I completed it in a little over 1 hour. On that day I realized that I could run for even 2 hrs at that low speed. Running very slowly is the key atleast for beginers.

Thanks to Vamsi & Sudhir, we all (including Bharath) registered for this event that was to happen on April 5th 2008. Sudhir & myself knew that running 13 miles wouldn't be easy without practice, so we started practicing running on school tracks in the evenings. The practice helped us a little, but little did we know how hilly the terrain would be in the Golden Gate Headlands Marathon (Rodeo Beach, California). The idea of going to the Rancho San Antonia Park, turned out to be helpful as we realized how difficult it would be to run on Hills. Then, couple of days before the event Sudhir saw the altitude graph of the terrain, and then we had some vague idea of the difficulty involved. At least these events prepared us mentally for the half-marathon.

It was nice to see the number of participants of all ages. This was my first such public event in USA. In the begining itself we had to climb a hill and the altitude gain in the first 1.5 miles was around 600 ft (600 ft looks very small, but you'll know only when you run it :-). And there were steps in one place. We were happy to see the steps as we could stop running there and walk for some time. Sudhir and I ran together and completed the half-marathon in 2 hrs 19 mins. It's not a bad timing considering the terrain and that this was the first one for us and we hadn't
really practiced much before the event and I felt good. The last stretch on the beach was quite tough and it sapped me completely. But seeing Sudhir continuing, I pushed myself. Running together helps a lot atleast for beginers like us. I had a small knee pain, which I generally get if I use too much of my legs. Other than that there weren't any problems.
Check out the result here:-
http://www.envirosports.com/results/event/2216/results.php?p=2&bib=766

And the photos are available here on Flickr:-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhiraj/tags/halfmarathon/

Jo Beet gayi so baat gayi-Harivansh Rai Bachchan

One poem from my school days which is my favorite and it still echoes in my mind. That's the beauty of it. It was written by Harivansh Rai Bachchan (father of Amitabh Bachchan) at the time of the demise of one of his dear friends. It goes like this:-

जीवन में एक सितारा था
माना वह बेहद प्यारा था
वह डूब गया तो डूब गया
अंबर के आनन को देखो
कितने इसके तारे टूटे
कितने इसके प्यारे छूटे
जो छूट गए फ़िर कहाँ मिले
पर बोलो टूटे तारों पर
कब अंबर शोक मनाता है
जो बीत गई सो बात गई

Read the rest of it over here. (Thanks to Sandeep for writing it in Hindi)

AIDS Lifecycle : Cycling for a cause

This summer (June 1-7, 2008) I will be cycling from San Fransisco to Los Angeles (a total of 545 miles in 7 days) to raise donations for fighting AIDS Worldwide. I will be one of the ~2500 people participating in this tremendous event. It's a tough physical job but I hope to complete it successfully with months of training and support from near and dear.

Visit my personal page for details and donate/leave a note of support.
http://www.aidslifecycle.org/6691

Words of wisdom...

From one of those email forwards:-

Forget about the days
when its been cloudy, but
don't forget your hours in the sun.

Forget about mistakes
that you can't change now, but
don't forget the lessons
that you've learned.


Forget about the times
you've been defeated, but
don't forget the victories you've won.


Forget about the days
when you've been lonely, but
don't forget the friendly smiles you've seen.


Forget about the plans
that didn't seem
To work out right, but...

Don't forget to Always Have A Dream

Keep Smiling

Yahoo Pipes

I had heard about Yahoo Pipes long time back (If my memory doesn't fail me, it should be more than six months). Little did I realize that it would be a very handy tool for me then. I have been searching for a used car for a long time and checking craigslist has sort of become a daily habit for me. It was becoming very painful visiting the site and finding out the cars that interest me. I was thinking of writing some Java Program which would filter out the things for me and send me an email of only the cars that I am looking for. Only a few days back I realized that I could use a Yahoo Pipe for the same. So I wrote a Yahoo Pipe. (Of course there were many similar pipes that people had already written, but they wouldn't meet my specific requirement and also to satisfy my ego, I thought it would be good to write one myself.) It was so easy and fast to write and the Pipe creation Tool was very impressive and I loved it. And we have an option of using the Yahoo alerts to get notifications about any changes in the Pipe Results. This was what I was exactly looking for. Had I written a Java Program it would have taken me more time and it wasn't worth the effort...until my search for cars doesn't end. Check it out http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/. You can copy others pipes and customize them, embed Pipes within Pipes. I guess these are the next-generation SOA apps or what is the term "Mashups". I am really impressed with these concepts. Trivia: As anybody can guess it derives it's name from Unix Pipes.