My chance meeting with an impressionable personality

On my return flight from Nagpur on the 4th November 2009, i was sitting in the 1st row of Kingfisher flight, all decked with my music & book ready for a short flight back to Mumbai. Sitting next to me is a couple, a middle aged fattish guy n his wife on the window seat.

As usual, the overhead luggage compartment is completely full and has no space for the bags of the two gentlemen who have just walked in to occupy their seats on the 1st low across from me. This guy is dressed in jeans, brown shoes and a open necked white shirt, some scraggy white hair on his head, slightly unkempt and glasses, horn rimmed glasses. The other chappie was wearing a coat, white shirt n tie.

In his tow are two crew members of KF airlines kow-towing to him and all bent over kissing a lot of ass. immediately suspicions were up that he was a celeb or a VIP. These guys had two bags which found no space on the overhead luggage compartment. So the air hostess proceeds, without asking around, to remove the bag already there and replace it with this guys bag, lets call him Mr. G.

The guy sitting next to me suddenly erupts. He goes " What the hell ? why are you removing my bag ? How can you remove my bag without even asking me ? Who is he - some kind of VIP " Mr. G speaks up immediately - " No sir, I am no VIP, even if I was this still should not happen at all" then he turns to the air hostess and asks her " please remove my bag and let the gentleman's bag remains there, you may look for another convenient place. Sorry sir for this, she was only trying to help." The fattish guy goes " She should not have done that, the least she could have done was ask me". He is now a bit cooled down due to the fantastic handling of the situation by Mr. G. The air hostess in the meantime quips up to mr G, " Sir I will ask the captain to keep your bag in the cockpit". I am now looking at him with renewed interest. fantastic conflict handling.

I do not know him from any other persons and soon the flight lands at Mumbai. We are queued up for disembarking. The fattish guy, my neighbour, speaks up again. he goes," I am sure you are a VIP, sir, tell me who you are ?" Mr. G says," No no I am no VIP, I apologize for the inconvenience caused to you" The guy is persistent, " I am 100% sure you are a VIP" he turns to the airhostess, " please tell me who he is "

She turn around, and says," He is Captain Gopinath" (erstwhile of Deccan Airways)





This guys is now sheepish and says," sorry I was rude" and Captain G says that his reaction was natural and not to worry.

I, now an avid reader of Forbes India magazine, had finished reading an article the week before about the new venture of Captain G, starting a cargo airline with nationwide network and central operation of warehousing, stocking etc at Nagpur. In fact the same morning (when we had arrived from Mumbai) we had see the craft and explained in detail the operation to my German colleague.

I gather some courage and tell him : "Congratulations on your new venture. It is something that was needed in the country for a long time and it is sure to be a big success. " He turn around and says " thanks, this is my new venture and we are making nagpur as the distribution hub as it is the centre of India and very convenient logistically" I am sure a nicely negotiated deal with the Nagpur airport will also have some role to play in this.

He then starts to talk about what they are doing and what they plan to do. This is all while we are waiting for the rolling stairs to come and transport us to the sweet firm ground.

Not being able to resist, after listening to his spiel about his products and to do justice to my German colleague, Dr. Sven Wieczorek, I smile proudly and tell him " My colleague & I sell super speciality gear pumps and were on abusines strip to meet a customer. If you were need some talk to us."

With this we are gone in a swish. Me remebering him to be a seemingly humble guy not out to blow his horn and probably him remebering me as the guy who sells super speciality gear pumps.

street food in surat

Surat snacks

Went for a snack-walk near the railway station / bus stand in Surat to sample the local taste.

First stop was the pani puri (gol gappas). Atta (wheat flour) balls with a mixture of potato, black grams (kala chana) some spices and finally the spicy water. The water was not colored as in Delhi but tasted good. Bloody cheap too - for 7 bucks i got 14 of them balls and not heavy at all. I think the mumbai / pune is awesome and better just for the fact that they have the warm chick pea (safed chana) stuffing. Total time a good part of 5 mins.

Second stop, was a omlete pao. A one egg omlete seriously shook-up and put on a hot stove. The guy had his own mixture of spices that went into it. Along with this was pao shaped like two joint fingers, quickly toasted on the hot plate. total time 1 min 15 secs.

Not finding anything else I wandered into a small tea shop. order ' ek cutting' (one shrpish tea) (u can do that in Surat as well, it seems) took a mathi along with it, which was nice and thin and folded 4 times over. Then I had a rusk shaped biscuit which was also good. Total time - 10 mins 9the tea was hot. Cost - 12 bucks. some pics of the tea shop :

training half marathon

the past week has been nearly no running except one easy run of 45 mins on Thursday.

Saturday was supposed to be a timed run of 10 kn in 1 hr 10 min 57 secs. I of course did not run as I was tired after a lter biz dinner on fri night. SUnday was supposed to be an easy run of 1 hr 45 mins.

I combined both ! So today morn I ran the 10 k at a fast pace and the balance 7 k at a slow pace making up a total of 17 k in 1 hr 47 mins.

But the catch here is the 10 k which I finished in 58.30 mins ! my fastest ever ! that a speed of over 10kmph ! woohoo!

it is 2nd october. the celebrated day for peace and war of peace by the peaceful Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

It was on this day 6 years back that my parents collaborated with Sue's parents and against our wishes , without our express knowledge or approval & hatched a plan to get us to meet.

They knew.

They knew the moment we meet our love, lust will errupt and we will be entwined for the rest of our lives. These 6 years have been an awakening of sorts of our natures. A journey of discovery not only of each other but also of ourselves. We continue to learn about ourselves, our strengths, weaknesses.

I cannot thank them both enough for the grand favor & the greatest gift they have given us.

half marathon training

Nehru Park @ 5.30 AM once again. Target : to run continuously for 90 mins. Personal motive - at least 12 k in those 90 mins.

Target Achieved !! and the feeling at the end of the run, being exhausted, sweat pouring down- exhilarating.

Pep talk from some other runners, who did 18 k in the same time - not required. just the fact that they did 18k in my 12 k time was WoW enough.

Training day

Started on an interesting note. As i entered the Nehru park parking at the bewitching hour (it was still dark) at 5.20 AM I noticed a body in what seemed like a pool of blood. I was not sure what to do - as like most citizens of India I do not want to be unneccesarily involved with our police or their grind of justice. I informed a couple of other guys who were better citizens than I who went to check on that person and called the Police. It turned out that it was a drunk lady who was just dozing off the alcoholic stupor. Eventually in abt 20 mins the PCR jeep along with an ambulance was there and they questioned her and took her away, hopefully to get her sober and off with a warning.

Now the training - I had to run 6 k in 43 mins which accroding to my treadmill timing is pretty good (i usually did 6k in about 50-52 mins). I finished the 6 k in - wait for it - 39 mins !!

Then did some stretches and ran another 3 k to finish off the training. Cool or what !

100 mtr run - marathon training

Hard training today 6 x 100 mtrs run. sounds simple ?

6 runs of 100 mtrs each. at the fastest speed you can muster. an all out run. I touched speeds of 20 km / hr. my best time was 21.1 secs and worst was 22.3 secs.

1. Usain Bolt world record is 9.58 sec
2. The half marathon winners are running at this speed 20 km / hr & higher for the full duration of 21.07 kms

Training for the Airtel Delhi half marathon is on the full swing. So far i had been self-training and following my own schedule devised with the Runner's World website. Today I started with Back2Fitness training. And it was good. Started with some interesting warm ups. We did 70% effeciency runs for 2 x 200 m / 2 x 300 m / 2 x 400 m. Then a 1 mile lap, finally some stretches and we were done ! Interesting part is that we start at 5.30 AM that means waking up @ 4.30 AM ! now thats good hard work. will get pics during next session.

Well I had the 10 Km i-race on Sunday in Gurgaon with a time of 1:11:00 and came in last for the 10 k category. Though there were 7 more runners for the 10 K category who only did 5 K, so I assume I did better than them. Here's the global rank :

Rank

%-ile

Name

Age

M/F

City

Km

Finish Time

i-Race %

i-Race 10K Time

322

18.5

Rishi Madan

33.24

M

New Delhi

10.034

01:13:29

37.26

01:12:22

Explanation:

%-ile (Percentile): This indicates what percentage of i-Race runners you finished ahead of.

i-Race %: This index shows how close to your theoretical best (Human Frontier) you ran.

i-Race 10K Time: This is a theoretical calculation, based on your i-Race performance, on what 10K (Road, not Track) time you would have clocked if you were of age, gender, height and weight of the ideal person for setting 10K world record, instead of your own parameters. In other words, if your God-given limitations were set to the world’s best, this is what you would have run in 10K

So on this basis, the best I could have run was 1:12:22 and I ran was 1:13:29 which proves that I was running the best I could given my current health specification. No Bad !

Now some pics :

For this one you have to enlarge it and see my behind the orange guy in the left corner



Enlarged view :


Heres the individual one of me :

early morning bird watching

For the last couple of days whenever i take my dog for a walk i see this pair of black and white bird who swoops down and right near my ear makes a chirp sound as a warning. I found this bird to be quite fascinating and the behaviour typical of a bird protecting its young ones. So I decided to check them up in my Salim Ali Book of Indian Birds... It turns out that the bird is a Magpie Robin ! Here are a few pics...




oops that Sue.... these are the birds......




While I was at it i got some more captures.... an eagle in flight and a early morning Rocker bird (due to the punk hairstyle) heh heh

The preganant couple Ravi & Parul after a late night movie of Harry Potter. Sitting down for a mid night burger and salad at the Oz bar !

Went for a morning walk on the two morning I spent there.

Proof of my morning walk at nalagarh, Himachal Pradesh. A Special Economic zone for industries. Major installation - TVS Motors.



On the second day I had a cup of tea made on a woodfired clay oven. and saw an interesting bird too !

Bar-B-q @ Oli's by Oli

Lot of fun and very yummy !

A corvette possibly belonging to a pilot at the airfield parking ! looked mean.




another sports coupe


some planes in the hangar nearby

Hamburger Fiscmarkt - traveling market in germany, currently seen near Frankurt

garden decorations - gnomes, dogs windmills etc




cheese


plants bus - from Eur 10 for a plant, went down to Eur 4 in a flash !

also cheese




market scen and the central beer outelt

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the fruit vendor - the real artist and the highest grosser