Biking

 And before we know it, the first month of the new year is over. 2021 is no longer new. We are 8% into the year already. January has been a busy month catching up on work and adjusting to new changes. COVID-19 situation continues to be as-is and even worsening in some countries.

A new thing I seem to have discovered in the last few months is - bicycling. I think with the lock-downs, the social distancing and the overall lack of entertainment options indoors, people seem to have  generally ended-up outdoors. And if you are not the jogging kind I guess cycling is a nice form of low intensity work out. It can take you long distances, you can get some wind in your hair and also get a bit of cardio.

Singapore has been encouraging people to pedal (and generally remain active). The Park Connector Network (PCN) is an amazing network of bicycle paths that are trying to connect all the parks in the entire island so that you can literally navigate the entire island by your bicycle (or on your feet). Naturally, biking seems to have become a very common activity for a lot of people island-wide. This is evident by 2 things - the no. of people on bikes in the PCN and the general lack of new bicycles available for purchase in most bike shops.

FOMO hit me hard, and I have been trying to bike some miles last few weeks. I am not sure how long this new found hobby is going to last, but if you are sitting on the fence and thinking about a new activity to start, I guess biking should be a good one to try out in 2021 and beyond.

Thank you people

As 2020 comes to an end, I can say that this has been the most unique year of my life so far. Things have been difficult mentally and physically.

The silver lining of this year has been, I met (virtually) a lot of amazing people.

Complete strangers, long lost friends, neighbors, doctors and good samaritans went out of their way to help me when I felt helpless. Never have I ever realized before that we all are a part of an co-dependent ecosystem and humans are helping by nature. While social media is making us divisive and angry over trivial pursuits, deep down most people are fundamentally nice.

I just wish to end this year by sincerely thanking everyone who made a difference to me this year.

Thank you!

The Magical Chair

So I served a 14-day quarantine order in a hotel in Singapore for doing a crazy airline trip to India and back in the pandemic. While, I do not have much to say other than the fact that I am pleasantly surprised by the chain of events I had to go through. I am "glass half-full" kind of guy. I felt that the 14 days in a hotel room were my most productive days ever. I went in with a mission to not waste my time in there, and I feel like I accomplished it.

I was not allowed to step out the hotel room, and there was nothing else I could really do. I just want to highlight that in my quarantine I found this magical chair that was kept outside my door that auto-magically had breakfast, lunch and dinner 3 times a day at exactly 08:00 AM, 12:00 PM and 6:00 PM without me doing anything about it. All I had to do was open the door, and the food would magically appear on the seat. I wanted to bring it home, but unfortunately, the hotel did not allow. So I wish to salute the chair on my blog for eternity.

The chair was mostly very health conscious, so I got healthy food (tasty was a hit or miss - but I generally have no expectations from the food I eat). I have put a photo of one of the tasty foods I received from the chair once.

Chicken Rice

Another interesting aspect of the chair was, every lunch it would give me a small pastry that I would then ruminate over around 4 PM with a coffee to complement it.

The quest for a red shirt

Christmas is coming. While nothing has really changed with the COVID and WFH situation, my organization has decided to celebrate Christmas virtually. One of the "asks" is to wear something red to suit the occasion. Christmas's and Santa's association with the red color is the work of art of the Coca-cola marketing department. Brilliant indeed. However, we talk about it some other time.

After browsing through my big wardrobe (or even before browsing through it), I realized that I only carry shades of black (Black, Blacker and Blackest) for informal t-shirts and shades of blue for my formals. Thinking hard now, it has dawned on me that if you are a man living in Singapore, you need to have at least 1 red t-shirt in your closet. Hold your horses to read why.

The 3 biggest occasions that are celebrated en-masse in Singapore are - Christmas, Lunar New Year and the Singapore National Day. Tradition demands that you wear red on all these occasions (Coca-cola is not responsible for the association of red with the Lunar New Year by the way - they just got lucky there!).

So after years of refraining from buying bright colors, I have succumbed to the idea that I need a red. So you shall see me in red hopefully at least 3 times in the year going forward.

The irony of hindsight

 So 17/Nov/2020 we quietly celebrated the first anniversary of the discovery of COVID-19 on WhatsApp. I think that date is disputed and based on this article by SCMP. WHO declared its existence to the world only on 31/Dec/2019. As I look back, I find it ironic that I took a day off on 31st December of 2019 to celebrate the end of a decade and the start of a new one! We had no clue of how bad this pandemic is going to be all the way till Feb 2020!

As we prepare to look forward to the last month of 2020, I do not see hope in things improving any faster. Outbreaks continue, lock-downs are common place and travel, tourism and a host of other related activities are a distant memory. While we all await the vaccine with bated breath, my pessimistic mind says, it ain't gonna happen so soon. And then distributing the vaccines across the globe is going to be another "unprecedented" logistics nightmare!

I remember reading articles and thinking about "Vision 2020" and "How will the world be in 2020" a few decades ago. No where did we talk about locking ourselves in our homes, wearing masks, avoiding people and working our a$$ off from home. But here we are in 2020 now, and that is the new normal.

Continue reading books

Books haven't been my go to source for entertainment ever. Almost 3 years ago, I tried to build a "book reading" habit into my daily routine before I sleep, and I have managed to keep it that way now for a while. Yesterday I managed to finish my 12th book of this year and I am happy to say that I managed to stretch my resolution of reading a book a month to the third year. I hope to keep this resolution (forever?).

Of course, sometimes I read really small books and sometimes I get stuck in super big ones. Overall, I just manage. I have realized that I am not a fan of fictional books, but they are the fastest to read. In non-fiction, I am not particularly fond of "self-help" books. I think I mainly love reading business books, and recently have taken special liking for history. Managed to read 2 books about India's history this year and the 3rd book is on its way in the postal mail as I write this blog post.

I don't manage to retain everything I read in a book, but well, bits and pieces and some novel ideas do stick in the back of my brain for most books. If you are consuming all your information these days from news sites and social media, I implore you to read books of topics you like. And if you are a voracious reader, I admire you!

The US elections that just went by, seem to me like one of the most divisive elections I have ever seen (in my lifetime). It could be because of social media, or just that anything that happens in the USA gets a lot more media coverage than anything happening anywhere else. Anyway, reading all the caustic news occasionally, has strengthened my resolve to read more books I like and not get unnecessarily bothered by political  happenings on the other side of the planet.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle

After we are done (whenever that is) with COVID-19 and the US Elections, we still have to come back to the looming problem of Climate Change. It may be on the back burner now, but it is just a matter of time before it raises its ugly head again. While I am no scientist, I do believe that we all can contribute to reducing our (human race's) impact on the fragile ecology (or whatever is left of it now).

 

I think the age-old saying of Reduce - Reuse - Recycle needs to be somehow changed to emphasize on the fact that we need to reduce a lot more than we have to reuse and we have to reduce and reuse a hell-lot-more than we have to recycle. Only then, we have any hope of saving the planet. My not-so-clever brain came up with this inverted pyramid to depict that:

 

 

Rather than simply engaging in green washing, think about your environmental impact in everything you do. For e.g. by now, I hope you have read that plastic bags are environmentally more friendly (if you reuse them) than cotton bags (reuse 45 times than reuse 7100 times to have the same life-cycle effect). Anyway, let's revisit the terms Reduce - Reuse - Recycle again:

 Reduce

Buy less. Use less paper, plastic, food. Use less electricity. Use less water. Walk where you can drive your car. Take public transport wherever you can. Don't waste stuff. Every action you do, think of your environmental impact. Remember, the world has to last even after you are gone. So reduce the irreversible change that you are inadvertently causing.

Reuse

Reuse plastics, reuse paper, reuse clothes, reuse utensils. Reuse whatever you can. Be stingy for the environment. It is not about how much you can afford anymore (most of us are rich enough to afford quite a bit of luxury and be wasteful). It is all about the environment now.

Recycle

If you can't reuse, then remember that most countries now have recycling programs. If you try you can find out how you can recycle your stuff. Make sure you segregate at source so that items put for recycling are really recycled.

Constantly Distracted

I feel constantly overwhelmed by too much work-email always in my inbox and too many instant messages. It's like this leak that constantly fills up a bucket in your house. However hard you try to empty the bucket, it fills in again.

I am sure many of you experience the same. To add to it, if I go away from my laptop, the constant instant messaging and new email from work on the phone adds to the stress! There really is no work-life balance. The entire life is "worklife". I wonder how other people manage this distraction? I have stayed away from social media for a long while now. This definitely has helped to reduce my other distractions.

I miss the good old days (more than a decade ago). Where you left your work in office when you left for the day. Work from home was limited to the days when you had to bring your work laptop home to do some work. And I needed approvals to get a laptop! Life was easy. There were no "Smartphones". All that could pester you were SMS and most of the times they were never work related.

I have a feeling this is just going to get worst before it gets any better. While I have been actively trying not to check emails on weekends and after office hours, it does not seem to help much. The more I think about this problem I realize that along with time, "attention" is my most important asset. I have to work towards constantly guarding it.

While 2021 is still far away to make resolutions, I hope I can really practice mindfulness and go on an attention diet.

Time

Sorry for disappearing for almost a month. Life changed suddenly (like it always does) and I am in the midst of that change. I will probably write about what I have "been through" in a subsequent blog post once I am through this.

If there is one thing that I feel we all have equal access to (regardless of race, wealth, color) is - time. Every human being on the planet gets 24 hours a day. Irrespective of how rich you are, you can't trade time and everyone is equally wealthy in terms of the number of minutes you have in a day.

We are obsessed with money, but if you are a middle-aged salaried man like me - you need to guard the finite resource - time - by trading away money to do things that take too much of your time. To value your time, you need to have an index cost to each hour of your time so that you can do a cost-benefit analysis of your "time" much more easily.

I know it sounds simple but this "cost-benefit" analysis can get really complex. There are some things we do with our time that are genuinely required. For e.g. spending time with family is priceless. Working out, eating, sleeping, daily ablutions are a required (mandatory) use of time. So then, this analysis is something we need to seriously do about the discretionary time (browsing, socializing, entertaining) that we spend. Or the chores (cooking, cleaning, paying bills) that seem to occupy all of your weekends. I know I have written about time-boxing before, so I am sort of repeating myself.

Anyway, this brings me to my last argument on this topic. As much as possible try to do the following two things with your chores:

• Automate
• Outsource

 If repetitive things can be automated (auto-investment, auto-bill-payment for e.g.) then do it! Save time on non-value added activities. If you can outsource boring, non-value added chores (filing taxes, washing, cleaning (to maids/ robots/ consultants)) then do it. Only DIY if you enjoy (entertainment) or have a health benefit (cleaning 1 hour is your workout of the week!) or it is really worth it (for you).

I wear Speedos

As a few of you know, I enjoy swimming. I have been practicing it for more than a decade now. While I don't swim any better than before, over the years, I have spent a lot on swimming accessories and this blog post is my experience speaking.

First of all, my typical swimming gear is - Cap, Ear Plugs, Goggles, Swimming Shirt and Jammers. I have tried a few brands for each one of them and more or less settled on specific choices for each one. Today, I shall talk only about the Swimming Jammers. They look something like the picture below:

Over the years, I have tried a lot of brands like - Arena, TYR etc. Somehow none of them have lasted me more than a year with an average of 1-2 times a week swimming frequency. Maybe it was just my bad luck. The 2 times that I bought a Speedo Jammer, it sort of outlasted my expectations. My last one gave way after at least 220 km of swimming over a period of 4+ years. Mind you, I started tracking on my Garmin, at least a year after I bought the jammers.

I am amazed that they lasted so long. Chlorinated water is corrosive, and I don't expect anything to last that long. Hence this post commemorating them! I also notice that over the years, there has been significant progress in the material used and they seem to repel water better and last longer.

Anyway, since this has been a boring post, here are 2 videos for you to enjoy. First - a song named "Despacito" which was a viral sensation and has had more than 6.9B views (as of this writing).

And its parody by Mikey Bustos titled "I wear Speedos" which I think is a very nice and funny parody though slightly on the PG13+ side. Every time I say "Speedo" now, I can't help but thinking about this song.

P.S. - He ain't wearing jammers in the parody video. Jammers are longer and look more like cycling shorts than swimming attire.