Sunday, February 17, 2019

Ciao Amigos

Hello there everyone! Hope 2019 has been good for you so far. I have been through the Gregorian new year celebrations followed by the Lunar new year celebrations. Besides celebrating and eating a lot more than I should have, I don't think I have done anything great on the personal front. Hope your resolutions are going great, and you haven't given up on any of them (yet).

I tried getting rid of my caffeine addiction beginning of this month. After a series of bad headache days (severe caffeine withdrawal symptoms), now I am at the 2 week mark and surviving without my daily coffee in the morning. I still get crazy occasional cravings for a cup of coffee (especially when I walk in front of a coffee shop and can smell the roasted coffee beans) but so far so good. I hope to reduce my coffee intake to a "reasonable" level in the near future. I never realized how much addictive coffee is! I have been to several early morning client meetings and gone around the place desperately looking for a coffee before the meeting. On such occasions even a bad coffee is better than no coffee!

Anyway, if your resolutions include fitness, I felt this comic from Oatmeal is quite apt for the feeling of helplessness I am currently going through:

Oatmeal - Exercise Response

While I managed to lose a bit of weight in my early 30s now it is getting increasingly difficult to hold onto it. Neither reasonable amount of diet nor exercise seems to have the desired effect. Either metabolism is slowing down or I ain't disciplined enough (or both :) !!)

Lastly I feel bad that Opportunity (the mars rover) is no longer operational. It was launched in 2003 right when I started working and all it's working life has overlapped mine. I still have to work for a lot more decades but Opportunity called it quits! Well jokes apart, I am amazed that a robot built for a 90 day mission managed to work for 15+ years.