Top 10 activities people do at onsite

I have been onsite for short duration on couple of occasions to US and currently in Sweden. When I was travelling for the first time a colleague asked me what would be the first thing you would do after reaching there, I immidiately replied change location on Orkut. :-) But, Dhruv who was also supposed to accompany me and had more wild plans as in absconding to avoid deportation, running around on beaches etc. none of which materialised though.
In past few years, I have seen many people who have traveled for work and things they do. All things are basically dictated by the Golden rule, 1$ is equivalent to 40odd INR. With this thing mind as solid as anything, many people do stupid things like skipping meals, gorging on free food available in office, spending time in lousy rooms rather than exploring places and culture around or even not making the effort to lead a normal life with basic necessities covered. So what is it that people actually do, let's take a sneak-peek,

10. Work. Well that is the reason people are onsite, so got to be on the list.
9. Eat out. Food in restaurant is generally expensive plus tip is mandatory, converting the sum into INR would fetch ten extra dinners back home, so such luxuries are rare.
8. Travel around. For most, it's the fear that if you went back without visiting few places, bragging would get difficult or you might just be pulled up, so with cheapest possible deals, such journeys take place.
7. Cook and clean. With less probability of eating out and Mom not around, cooking and cleaning is something that one has to be burdened with. Effect of which is, if you are cooking once, make sure you cover at least 2-3 meals.
6. Watch English movies and serials, once the popular stock is exhausted take up classy Bollywood ones, when that's done with go for Marathi, Mallu, Tamil, Korean, Irani and Japanese ones. Piracy Iindabad, long live torrent. Aha, finally something that's free or almost free.
5. Keep pushing updates on FB by way of changing status messages, comments and Likes, watching videos on FB and YouTube. With so much time to pass and very few things to do for free of cost, this is probably one of the best ROI activity.
4. If phone is available for free, call up each and every fellow back home including those whom you have not talked in years. If phone isn't free, still call but keep the talk short.
3. Start practicing the foreign accent in your speech.
2. Check the currency conversion rate and calculate how much money would be saved. Something that brings a instant smile :-)
1. Click photos of all possible places, from all angles, in different camera-modes, in all clothes, of-course with and without sunglasses, finally just to make sure photo is perfect, click a back-up too. Gather all the photos and upload them to internet. I just wonder the amount of hard-disk space, internet bandwidth and server-space would have been eaten up by in all this.

The Skellefteå days

I have been Skellefteå for over two weeks now and in the short duration I have already witnessed the good and bad of its weather. Good being 20C, sunny, cool breeze coming from Skellefteå river and bad being overcast, rainy and damp. It is a small city with city-center, picturesque landscapes and woods all in close vicinity. When you come from India, a place buzzing with gazillions of people, lot of garbage dumped everywhere and to click a photo with beautiful surrounding most of the times one would need to travel few miles at least but the western world with its cleanliness, neatness and planned roads overwhelms you, at times so much so that you open the door and it makes you wanna click photos.
We have been put up in a place called Stiftsgården in a shared accommodation, can't be called a lavish arrangement but we have adjusted well. The place has some history associated with it, one of its buildings is the oldest construction in city and it is in middle of complex belonging to city's biggest church and graveyard. It is not far from my work-place and city center, makes it easy to cycle to both places every day. The conditions have been suiting well to me with cycling adding the zing to daily routine. We are in all a group of eleven people here and all of same age-group so helped in connecting well. In the two weeks, we have been to a beach, a lake and hiked to a rocky mountain top apart from daily explorations on the bike.
This is end of summer here in North Sweden, so people are in general celebration mood, they have had their vacations, been to beaches and charged themselves enough under the Sun. Pretty soon they have to prepare themselves for the ugly side of weather, the harsh winter. All summer there have been various events held in and around city making it a worthwhile tourist destination this time around the year. For past four days there was a food festival on. It is mainly showcasing the food from this part of world specialty being Reindeer meat and Solomon fish. A special note should be made for couple of Thai food vendors; sadly they were too selling non-veg food. Though I am a big foodie, being vegetarian my options had been really limited, out of fifty odd shops I could try only couple of things. Still the whole experience has been quite good also as it helped me check out Swedish girls. In the nights there was a band performing which used to get the whole neighborhood alive. Young hearts of all ages thronged the place in dead nights and danced under the tents and at times sing with the band.
Five more weeks to go and many things around Skellefteå, I hope to have more enriching experiences.
Few tips if you are travelling to Skellefteå:
* If travelling in Aug-Oct, carry an umbrella and a rain-coat.
* It would be handy to carry a cap to cover your ears and hand-gloves.
* For vegetarians, Max burgers offers veggie-burger, also you could get Falafels and veg burgers at other local vendors and of course there is subway with couple of pure veg products.
* Bikes are probably the best ways to move around in Skellefteå, you should be able to rent it for around 50SEK/day.

Different Worlds

Vow, a lot of big events have happened in my life in last couple of months than last two years, I got possession of my house in Pune, I switched job, left Coriolis to work with Tieto and now I am visiting Sweden for seven weeks on official assignment. Though I had booked the flat for quite some time now, but getting the possession has changed lot of parameters, full EMI payments are being deducted from my account, a lot of money just vanishes in fixing little things in house and yeah this flat has made me a land-lord as well :-).
Tieto has been a quite a different experience, I spent four and half years at Coriolis, a twelve people strong company, but Tieto has offices possibly in each continent with more than seventeen thousand employees all over the world. The challenges for both the companies are quite different creating very different cultures and processes. Both of these things have caused subtle changes in my life but being in Sweden has had a direct impact on my lifestyle although for a short while only.
I am currently in Skellefteå, a small city even compared to Swedish standards with a population around 32k, and it is a very quiet place. But, like the whole of western world, it is well equipped with most luxuries of life. I have stayed in USA for few months and though back home when we might feel whole of western world is same, within a week I could spot lot of distinctions between the two places. US is more multi-cultured, it is very easy to spot Indians, Chinese, Koreans, Mexicans, Africans and of course Whites and natives. You can find Indian grocery shop and Indian restaurants on each corner and if you are (un)lucky you can catch Himesh Reshammiya performing live in concert. On the other hand, I did not find as many different races or colored people here in Sweden. Also, Indian food is kind of alien here. There are some products available in super-market offering Indian taste but they are all made in Britain and I am quite sure they must be lowered a lot in spices to comfort the western-stomachs so the purist that I am, I don't buy them instead preferring to settle for the native falafel :-)
Other big difference is language, it is not guaranteed here that everybody here would be fluent in English actually it is easy to bump in to people who know hardly any English. All the signboards are in Swedish though the script is Roman but the words are very different; their length and heavy usage of umlauts make them difficult to read and remember. In general I found people very friendly, relaxed and at leisure. In US, I used to see more cars and hardly any people. Definitely cars were shinier in US and you needed to get on freeways more often. Here bike-lanes are very well developed and highways are not as big. I must admit, I found US more political there is some charge, stress about US that is missing here. Of course being Europe and that too countryside, this place is more picturesque. I am not sure if this phenomenon is all over Sweden or it is limited to Skelleftea but lot of people here move around on cycles and even I am given one.
Alright folks this is it for now, I am hoping to check out more of Skellefteå and Sweden and possible other parts of Europe during next six weeks if things fall in place. bfn.

Lose your weight

I don't know how many people are interested in losing weight but I have been longing for it since forever it seems. I recently picked up the book "Don't lose your mind, lose your weight" by Rutuja Diwekar (Kareena's "size zero" is lot to do with her). In this book, she shatters many myths related to weight loss and I found the content quite crisp with adequate information to back it up.

She has very effectively communicated why things like extreme diets, detox diets or any other form of fad things don't work. She advises to eat a balanced meal and couple it with regular exercise.

The crux of her advice comes down to following four principle that one should incorporate it in lifestyle:
1. Eat something in first ten minutes of waking up but strictly avoid tea or coffee as the first thing in the day.
2. Eat every two to three hours in the day in smaller portions.
3. Eating habits should be in proportion to levels of activity.
4. Maintain a gap of at least two hours in your last meal and bed time.

The book has no literary value but it is high on knowledge which is expected from a fitness expert. I must add that the book startled me with some forthright expressions, also time and again she presents some analogies from completely unrelated domains that again surprisingly keep you intrigued. She has written down many of her client interactions which you definitely can relate to people around you and her sharp remarks, leave a chuckle on your face.

There is loads of more information available in the book on different kinds of food, nutrients needed by body. All in all it is a very educative yet fun to read, now I must follow it to see how effective it is :-).

That time of year again

It is that time of year again, when I do new resolutions for the coming year, not that all the vows see 31st night's celebration as most of them do not survive long. But, being the ever-optimist I am, I would not hold back. So, before starting with the resolutions, it would be better to take stock of last year's resolutions. I am a modest person, there were only three commitments:
1. Loose 5Kg of weight.
2. Write 2 blogs each month.
3. Read 1 book each month.

And how did I fare at the end of year:
1. Gained 4Kg....very very bad.
2. Wrote 20 write-ups (excluding quotes)...not bad
3. Read around 4 books...umm..very bad.

This year, the list is going to be about getting bugs fixed from last year with one being dropped. I would not set a goal on number of books, it just takes away the fun of reading books. I hope this year the fate won't be similar to earlier ones. So, this year's list is:
1. Loose 9Kg. (tough)
2. Write 2 blogs each month. (achievable...just completing one ;-) )
3. Do a better financial planning (I am going to get possession of my house this year, really looking forward it :-) )

1000 Rs/Kg

This is an account of last six months, wherein along with shedding pounds of fat, I learned few life lessons too. These days everyone who meets me after a long gap is wondering how have I managed to lose weight. Well, it has come after a lot of perspiration, determination, failures and frustrating times. But in the end if I could do it, you can do it better :-).

I have always been a "heavy person," and a soft target. After years of half-hearted attempts, this March I fired on all cylinders for one more attack on fat. Started with the "GM diet"; got more attention than actually reducing any weight. There lies the first lesson "Extreme diets and without any workout don't work."

I am 25 and in last quarter century I have heard / overheard as many weight-loss "tontkas" as in
1. Drinking warm water all day.
2. Taking Triphala Guggule (Aurvadic medicine) with warm water, thrice a day.
3. In morning, take honey with warm water.
4. Instead of honey use lemon juice.
But, not even grams were lost because of these. (Lesson 2: Make peace with yourself. Doesn't mean compromise with what you are but accept if this is not working for you something else will. Find it and do it.)

After all these failed experiments, I researched and got to know that weight loss is a game of calories in versus calories out. Thus, I started one more fling with gym. In the initial days my regularity was again in question. I promised myself if I go to gym for seven days without break, I will get new gym shoes. (Lesson 3: Appreciate, reward yourself and be wicked, gift gym shoes which would further compel to the cause). Later on I went on to workout for 30 days without break. :-)

After first three months passed, I became pretty regular and my diet was in line. But, my weight lost was mere 3Kg, so I got few tests done (Sugar, BP, Cholesterol and Thyroid) everything was just fine but 3 Kgs in 3 months wasn't enough. So I grew frustrated, on one such Sunday morning while working out a girl came upto me and told me, "Hey, you've slimmed down a lot since I first saw you around, you look a lot thinner now." After completing the conversation with her, I could not stop smiling. That was my first compliment and truly uplifting moment.

But, still the fact remained that I got to lose a lot more. So I got a personal trainer. He would be there monitoring me all time, scheduling my workout and giving diet tips.

My daily schedule is: In morning have a bowl of skimmed milk with Muesli before gym. After gym, one bread, one cup tea with very less sugar and couple of Marie biscuits. In lunch, 3 chapathis, one bowl each of sabji and daal but no rice. At 5 PM, some light snacks. For dinner very light mostly South Indian. But, it would be a good idea to mix-match the dinner with Soup, fruits and salads.

These six months have changed me a lot not only in physical appearance but my lifestyle as well whether it being incorporation of workout in daily schedule, eating food before bath and many other things. (Lesson 4: If situation demands, change yourself.)

It takes time to lose weight, one needs to be very patient, very regular and follow strict regim. 1 pound of fat is equivalent to 3500 Calories. So one needs to take at least 1000 calories per day and utilize them to burn in excess to lose weight. In the initial phase, as I wasn't losing any weight people around me hardly noticed any changes in me, some even told me that this is my body-type and I won't be able to lose weight, don't fight the one you can not defeat. But, I still didn't budge, I had decided if this wont work, I would take help from the slimming clinics. Apart from this, there was a brief period that required me to break my workout in two and make me visit gym twice a day. Other than this too, I had to battle out many other issues, but I overcame most of them. (Lesson 5: There are more solutions in this world than problems.)

Finally whats with the name of this post? Well I am Baniya, all I can do is calculations and think about profits. I have lost 12Kg in last six months and the rate applicable was 1000 Rs/Kg :-)