New York, New York

I was in NY this past few days meeting with friends. So I took some photographs. I know. Isn't that amazing? I actually took photographs!!

Although I have been to NY many times before, this was the first time I visited the Empire State building. The light was falling fast but I managed to take some decent pictures using the D70 (no tripod).


View of Central Park.


A different view. This was a handheld shot. I love my D70!


Note how much the light has fallen. The above three pictures were taken during a 15 minute period. I was constantly tweaking exposure in full manual.


Then they had this room with colorful lights. I felt compelled to take at least one shot. Well, I had to do something!


I attempted some rear sync shots so that the background won't be darkened by the flash. This one came out pretty decent. Although, without a tripod, camera shake is evident.


Back on earth, we had to do the ubiquitous Christmas tree-like shot.


At night, we flocked back to our friend Palani's house in Lawrenceville, NJ, a sprinkler city.

Later...

Festival of Lights

Today in India, Diwali (aka Deepavali), the festival of lights, will be celebrated all over the country. Because of major construction work in my parents' kitchen here in Quincy, we are planning to observe the festival on Sunday. They will probably invite some friends over for a big lunch.


Setting up lights (through oil lamps) seems to be done more elaborately in northern India.


Everyone does firecrackers, of course.


People play with firecrackers on their own. There isn't that much of a fire hazard since most houses in cities are built in concrete and brick (unlike here in the US where a lot of wood is involved). Any mishaps I remember from my childhood had to do with light burns on my hands from handling firecrackers.


The Rangolis become more elaborate on such "auspicious" days.

I've been calling up friends and family in India this morning and wishing everyone a good time!

ZMA = Deep Sleep

Ok. No one is paying me to write this stuff. So here goes...



I have been using ZMA for about a year now. The serving size is 2 to 3 caps a day. But I've been taking more like 2 to 3 caps a week. I was slacking off and, sure enough, I didn't see any noticeable effect in my sleep or recovery from training. I thought that since I was already sleeping in a pitch black room with the air purifier on (to provide white noise), the quality of my sleep cannot get any better. And I was recovering fine from training. Boy, was I wrong? Well, at least when it came to the sleep component, I was wrong.

In the last two weeks, I've been taking 2 to 3 caps of ZMA before bedtime. And I have gone into deeper sleep than I had thought possible. This happens on all nights except Monday nights (which is when my 130 lb neighbor has pretty vocal sex with her 350 lb boyfriend). So...I go to sleep and wake up the next morning completely awake. No grogginess. Nothing. Nada. Its like my Nikon D70. You turn it on and its ready to shoot instantly. To re-iterate: One moment I am asleep. Next moment I am fully awake. Like I had just been pursued by a bear that grudgingly decided I was too fleet-footed and hobbled back to where it crawled out of.

Apparently most people (which, I know, is a rather broad term) are deficient in Zinc and more so in Magnesium. While Zinc levels can be brought back up relatively quickly, things don't happen as quickly with Magnesium.

Charles Poliquin explains this a little better in this article:

http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=459745

He explains it again in this one:

http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1257805 (then scroll down to the section "Age, Training, and Dwindling Hormones")

Dave Barr mentions ZMA in his outstanding article on developing a solid sleep routine:

http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1221529

You get the idea.

At 9 bucks, ZMA is a steal:

http://www.t-nation.com/onlineStore.jsp

Try it out.

Larder my rum

For the past year, I have been cooking my (whole) eggs in bacon grease (left behind from frying bacon). I am never going back to olive oil now that I have gotten very used to the distinct flavor of frying eggs in pork fat! Although I have received some nods of dissent from friends, I have continued to do so. Joy!

Anyway, here is a great article from Food & Wine that I recently came across:

http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/lard-the-new-health-food

My 100th post...

...and I honestly don't have a clue as to what to write about It's a total blank in there, man.

So, to settle the matter once and for all, I will just throw in some random photos starting with a closeup of my legs Mmkay?


Vell, I am sorry but I cannot reveal "more" of ze man.

And here is something for the poetically inclined: a picture of a sunrise that I shot along the waterfront a few mornings ago as I was walking toward the garage. It was real early and still considerably dark.


And for those not so poetically inclined: a real early breakfast I prepared and consumed with gusto at around 3 AM this past Sunday morning after wrapping up a Halloween party at my friend David's place. The train's had stopped running and I ended up walking all the way to my apartment in the North End from his place in Inman square. So, yeah, my knees felt like jelly and I was ravenous by the time I got home. I didn't wake up until around 12 or so Sunday morning!

A few slices of bacon, some cottage cheese and a couple of slices of dark wheat (slathered with apricot and raspberry jam) washed down with a bit of hot chocolate.

How about a photograph of my Uncle and cousins? I took the shot when I visited them in Hyderabad back in 2004.

Hopefully I will get to see them again in 2008!!

How the west was won...or was it?

Wild fires in the west are not uncommon. But this is a real disaster!


"A woman watched her neighbor's home burn on the Rincon Indian Reservation."
Picture Courtesy: Reuters.


"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger observed a fire burning out of control in Lake Arrowhead, California."
Picture Courtesy: Associated Press.


"The famous California sun is now obscured behind smoke and ash."
Picture Courtesy: BBC.


Like waiting for bread in the former Soviet Union.
Picture Courtesy: Sacramento Bee.


"President Bush consoles Kimber Fowler at the Rancho Bernardo Community Center resource center on Thursday as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, left, looks on. Fowler's home burned down in the recent fires in San Diego."
Picture Courtesy: Associated Press.


And later on at a press conference in Escondido... "President Bush speaking about the fires Thursday while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger looked on. The men had previously not made a habit of supporting each other."
Picture Courtesy: Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse-Getty Images.



And only last week, I was telling a date that it should be a sea change to live in California

Social Capital

Last night I had to literally close a door in my office as two of my coworkers were being so chatty that a customer I was with on the phone wanted to know if we were starting to have some sort of party. I think for some being chatty makes them productive at the workplace. Now that is not a problem for me at all as long as it does not get disruptive. There was a point in time when I felt that I was starting to chat a lot in the office too but decided a while ago not to socialize so much in the workplace. It wasn't that the chatting was cutting into my productivity. It wasn't. Being single, I could stay around longer and get things done. The decision really had more to do with maintaining a semblance of discipline or polite restraint in my "official capacity".

Speaking of being single, yesterday's incident did make me finally realize something this morning: that I am probably still single because I am not given to talking a lot. I am generally the quiet type but when the fit is on me, I can talk like heck (such fits, however, are rare). So...I don't know if it is good or bad that 9 out of 10 women want to talk like there is no tomorrow. Take my neighbor (who, incidentally, smokes like a chimney; I feel so bad for her dog) and her boyfriend. She is hot; he is not. She probably weighs around 130 while he is closer to 350. Then how in the...? The answer is simple. I have woken up some mornings, looked out my kitchen window and...they were still there in her kitchen a-talkin' from the previous evening!! Now that guy is clearly keeping his woman happy...but at the expense of what? A night's worth of sleep?! Or more? I think that I like my life the way it is.


Is she worth it?

I lowered my standards a bit earlier this year by talking about whatever that came to mind (when I didn't really feel like doing so) while out on dates because I was trying too see if I could appear more interesting. But I only came out feeling silly, a feeling I did not like one little bit. So now my standards are back up to where they were and I couldn't be happier.