39:00

That's how many minutes I took to complete the 5.6 km run for the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge Event. It's about two and a half minutes more than my last year's time. Naturally I was disappointed as I hoped I could improve on my last year's performance. But I guess I kind of expected this result - I hardly trained for the run this time, and I think I had a bad lunch before the run - I should have just stuck to some soup or something instead of having that prata and following it with an icecream cake. I started feeling pain in my stomach after running just 2 km. After that I could never really take off - I was walking a few times in between. I do believe though that if I had run all the way, there was a good chance I could have bettered my 2007 result by a minute at least. Oh well - next year I guess.

What's wrong with people?

I was going to continue my series of blogs on our Ho Chi Minh City trip, but for the past few days, something's been bothering me so much that I have to break the flow and pen it down. The past 1 week at work has been torturous to say the least. I have experienced emotions of frustration, sadness, disgust and ghastliness in my dealings with people around me.

At work, I am surrounded with people who have no motivation to work, who work only because it is a means of income and nothing more than that - they don't derive any happiness or sense of satisfaction in what they do everyday. There is absolutely no drive or passion. All they care about is money and how they can get away with avoiding work as much as possible. And this is true not only with people at my level but also among my superiors. If managers are going to set such example, then how the heck do they expect people under them to respect them or work with any motivation or integrity? So many of the superiors that I have worked with know only how to delegate with no sense of guidance or responsibility - all they care is that for every task there is a "face" assigned - doesn't matter whether that person assigned is even qualified to do it or knows how to do it. It's pathetic to say the least. And people who suffer under these superiors have a universal lack of courage to speak out - no one seems to say anything to their managers - everyone likes to whine and complain how they are being treated unfairly, but no one will talk it out with the managers. In all meetings, formal or informal, that I have been part of which involves managers, I never see people open their mouth to say what's actually the right thing to say. They just sit mum. And then later they will complain. I mean how in the world do they think their grievances will be addressed if they don't even open their mouth?

Over the three and a half years here, I have felt that people's priorities here are just messed up. It's either about all materialistic things or it's about working until you die. What about people, relationships, friendship? Do they not matter at all? Do only the latest gadgets and a big bonus matter? What about passion, motivation and drive? What about something personal, other than work? Something that you do just for yourself? What about believing in what you feel is right and talking about it? What's wrong with people?

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Trip - Day 2 (5th April 08)

Our original plan for the day was to go to this beach near Saigon called Vung Tao. This required us to wake up early and get going. But we got lazy and decided to wake up only around 8:30am. By the time we got ready and left the hotel, it was about 9:15am. We inquired at the hotel about Vung Tao and got to know that it was actually quite far from Saigon - about 1.5 hours of ferry ride from Saigon river. We decided to discuss about this over breakfast at the same restaurant where we had dinner last night. On our way to the Bi & Bee Saigon restaurant, we saw a tours & travel agency that was offering day trips to Mekong data. We stopped by at the place to inquire more about that trip and then proceeded for breakfast with a brochure for that trip.

The breakfast menu was as impressive, if not more, as the dinner fare last night. There was traditional Vietnamese, English, even Mexican! We decided to order mixed vegetable scrambled eggs, an English breakfast and bread with peanut butter. This was accompanied by tea and coffee. Needless to say, the food was sumptuous. The peanut butter was yummy and the scrambled eggs were very uniquely done with vegetables like green peppers, mushrooms, onions and tomatoes. Nirva's English breakfast looked impressive as well. The tea was especially tasty and we were quite intrigued by the container in which the coffee was served - it had a mini filter at the top from where coffee would drip down. What a perfect start to the day-:). And all this cost us only 6 USD!

Over breakfast, one of the owners of the restaurant confirmed our suspicion that going to Vung Tao might not be a great idea - not only was it very far, but the heat would make it oppressive. Besides the owner was of the opinion that the Mekong delta tour would be more value for money and would offer pretty much the same scenery to view. So we bid adieu to the empty breakfast plates and the owner, and went straight to the travel agency we had gone to half an hour ago. We confirmed our 1 day trip of Mekong delta for the next day. It cost us 18 USD together and we were asked to come to the agency doorsteps at 7:45am in the morning since the tour began at 8am.

This meant that we had the whole day "free and easy". We decided to hit the Ba Thanh market first, since we had seen the night version of the same the previous evening. We intended to buy most of the souvenirs and gifts on the day itself since we might not have the luxury to come back to the market again in the next 2 days. One thing I must mention is the oppressively hot weather - the sun was beating down upon us from 9 am onwards and it was really unbearable. On the way to the market, we passed a shop selling musical instruments. I have been interested in buying a guitar for purely recreational purposes (since I have had no prior training in how to play it) and I did not want to spend a bomb trying to fulfill my desire. This shop offered beginner's acoustic guitars at just 250,000 Dong - that's just 16 USD!!! Even though I still had a doubt if I was wasting money, Nirva was adamant that I buy the guitar because there could not have been a cheaper deal. I knew what she said was true, but since we didn't want to carry the guitar into the crowded market, we decided to buy it on the way back.

We finally reached the Ben Thanh market at about 11am. It was inside a building with lanes and lanes of shops offering a variety of goods and items with very little space to walk around. We had been told that we should bargain big at the shops there - go down to at least 50% of the price that the shopkeepers quote. So armed with knowledge and with a list of things we wanted to buy, we started our mission. First stop was at a t-shirt shop where I bought a couple of vietnam t-shirts for 3 USD. From there we moved on into the maze to a shop that was selling wooden items, suitable for gifts and souvenirs. We decided to buy in bulk at the shop to get a good bargain. So we bought key chains, coasters, a beautiful tray (for Nirva's mom), and some figurines depicting vietnamese people. All in all, we got a good bargain after a few minutes of haggling. After this we proceeded to a shop that was selling these plates made with bamboo with beautiful hand-made paintings on it. We really wanted to buy one plate for ourselves to decorate our own house (when we have one of ours). And I knew that my bhabhi would like such a plate as a gift since she is a very avid art appreciator. So we bought 2 plates which costed us about 40 USD. It did seem expensive at that time but the next day we found out we had paid less than half of what such things were selling outside. By this time, the heat and lack of space inside the market was really exhausting us and we decided to catch a break by having coconu water. A few relaxed minutes later we decided to continue our shopping escapade. We bought some more coasters as gifts for Nirva's two sisters and a miniature boat carved beautifully in wood especially for Urvi. The final purchase we made before calling it an "exhausted" afternoon were a couple of t-shirts from the first shop we went to, for Nirva's dad. The time was 12:30 pm and the heat outside seemed to have intensified exponentially.

We decided that we surely needed a break and possibly couldn't continue our exploration of the city with so many bags in hand. We had to put all the bags in our hotel room, take a breather and then set out again. On the way back, we went to the guitar shop again, but the young man who had attended to us previously had apparently gone to school and we were not comfortable getting the guitar from someone else. So we decided to buy the guitar on one of the remaining days when the person was there in the shop. We rushed back to our hotel and felt positively thankful to be back inside our room. While resting, we arrived at our next course of action - to visit the Emperor Jade Pagoda before heading back to our favorite place to have lunch. We took a taxi from outside the hotel and gave the taxi driver the written address of the Pagoda location, since he did not understand English. We arrived outside the Pagoda about 10 minutes later - the fare cost us about 48000 Dong. The main pagoda building was pretty small in size but there were some gignatic statues inside. We saw a few people lighting incense sticks and worshipping inside. Overall, we did not really find it as good as it was made out to be. A couple of photos later, we had hired another taxi to take us back to the hotel so that we could go for our lunch.

This time we didn't really enjoy the food that much - not because it wasn't good, but we were just way too tired with the heat not making things any easier. There were two interesting dishes that we tried - Vietnamese vegetarian pancake and fried icecream with banana. We finished yet another inexpensive lunch and decided to press on to other tourist attractions in Saigon. First on our list was the Independence or Reunification Palace. With a map of the city centre we tried to get our bearings right and go in the correct direction. Along the way we were constantly disturbed by over-eager rickshaw drivers who pestered us to take a ride in their rickshaw to our target location. We tried to refuse politely but after a while it did start to get on our nerves since they would just not leave us alone. Finally we got rid of them and reached the road that had the palace according to the map. We walked along trying to look for the place when a coconut vendor offered to help us point in the correct direction. He walked along with us a for a few minutes and then suddenly gave us a coconut saying that "it's from him". We protested that we didn't want it but he kept on insisting. We thought that it was a such a noble gesture, so we must reward him, but when we gave him 5000 Dong as token, he started asking for more, quoting a price of his own. We were shocked - because we didn't even want the coconut. We paid him another 10000 Dong and learned the lesson of not falling into such traps from now on. We went inside a building ground and were soon asked to leave by one of the folks there since it was not the Independence Palace we were looking for. Finally, after few more minutes of walking and searching, we reached the main gate of the Palace - it was about 3:40pm and the Palace was open only until 4pm. So we decided that it was not worth spending 30000 Dong to go inside the palace when only 20 minutes of visiting time was left. We decided to return to the palace on the last day of our stay.

Our next destination was the War Remnants Museum that showcased the brutal history of the Vietnam War. It turned out to be a 5 minute walk from the Palace and we immediately bought entry tickets to the museum. The visit to the museum was sobering and grim to say the least. It was divided into 8 sections with different sections potraying different aspects of the war. There were life-size replicas of the US tanks and aircrafts used in the war, as well as missiles and bombs. Most of the sections depcited the entire conflict using photographs and posters. It was an eye-opener to read through the depictions and understand what the people of Vietnam went through during the war. There was a section that contained the replicas of the prison cells and execution room (with the guillotine) that were in place during the war. I noticed an overwhelming number of American people at the museum - perhaps trying to get a sense of this war, which is especially relevant in today's context. We left the museum an hour later with a sense of sadness and sombre. War is never good...never

By the time we left the museum, it was about five in the evening. We followed the map to go to this place that featured the famous Water Puppet show of Saigon. After a little bit of confusion, we finally found the building and went inside to buy the tickets. There were 2 shows everyday - one at 6:30pm and the other at 8pm. Our original plan was to watch the show that evening itself, but we were feeling very tired by this time and we knew that we would not enjoy the show with a tired body and mind. So we decided to buy the 8pm tickets for the following day's show. Having done that, we decided to get back to our hotel and go for a swim in the lovely swimming pool there for relaxation. And it was on the way back we discovered that actually all this while we were not too far away from our hotel.This meant that we had taken a long circle to come all the way from the hotel to the Palace and Museum area, when in fact we could have taken a much shorter route by cutting across the Tao Dan Park - the very park that we were standing outside of after just 2 minutes walk from the Water Puppet show building. There was nothing much we could do but shrug and laugh. The park was really pretty and we spent a good half an hour inside the park. We even rested on one of the park benches for a while before continuing our journey towards the hotel. The park shortcut took just about 10 minutes to get back to the hotel and we made a mental note to take that route when we go for the Water Puppet show the following day.

Back at the hotel, we wasted no time to hit the pool since it was already 6pm. On the way to the pool, I inquired about the full-body massage that the hotel health centre was offering for 17 USD. I thought it was a good deal and booked a 6:30pm timeslot - just nice after a relaxing half hour fun at the pool. It was an outdoor pool at the 2nd level and it looked gorgeous. There were only 2 other people beside us in the swimming pool. Nirva and I both did quite a few laps along the width of the not so deep end of the pool (about 1.6 m). It felt truly divine to be inside the water after such an excruciatingly tiring day. After about 30 minutes, I left for the massage while Nirva relaxed on the chairs by the side of the pool. The massage lasted an hour and it was really good. The masseuse was really professional and knew her craft. An hour later I got back to our hotel room with Nirva already ready to go for dinner.

We left our room 15 minutes after I came back and proceeded to go to our favorite restaurant once again. I think we both liked the food there so much that we didn't really want to try anything else. Besides that was one of the very few places that had a good vegetarian menu to boast about. Since we were feeling relaxed and rejuvenated, and were hungry after the swim, we had a good spread at dinner. Once again, the staff at the restaurant were very nice and it was a pleasure to spend our evening there. Having finished that, we decided to head to a supermarket that Nirva had gone to earlier - Zen Plaza. We had to exchange some currency and I wanted to go to the local supermarket to buy some savories back for my office colleagues. Also, I wanted to see what was the cost of very basic food items in Saigon - just to get a feel of how much did the basic necessities cost in the country. Zen Plaza was another 15 minute walk from the restaurant. We reached there at about 9:40pm, just 20 minutes before the place closed down. We quickly exchanged some Singapore dollars to Vietnamese Dong and went inside the supermarket at the basement. I bought some mixed fruit chips and sesame biscuits for my colleagues. Nirva and I also bought an ice cream which we had sitting on the steps of Zen Plaza. We took a nice slow walk back to the hotel and soon retired to our beds since the following day we needed to wake up very early to make it for the Mekong trip. All in all, it was a satisfactory day - yes we were tired of walking around in the heat, but the swimming pool at the hotel really helped. And as always, we capped it off with a nice dinner.

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Trip - Day 1 (4th April 08)

Nirva and I decided go on a 3 day trip to Ho Chi Minh city, aka Saigon in Vietnam. The whole thing came about because Nirva had a business trip planned to Saigon and we thought that it would be best to extend the stay and make it into a holiday as well. So Nirva flew on business to HCM city on 1st April and I joined her on the evening of the 4th. My plane landed at the Tan Son Nhut airport at about 5pm and by the time I cleared immigration and collected my baggage, it was around 5:30pm. I got a prepaid taxi from the airport to drop me at our hotel (New World Hotel) which costed me 12 USD.

During this taxi ride, I got my first taste of Saigon. I was absolutely amazed at the traffic - it was chaotic and crowded. And the number of 2 wheelers just blew away my mind. All I could see on the road were people on scooters or motorcycles at every inch (even on the pavement). And I was surprised by the number of women riders - I was positive that I saw more women riding the 2 wheelers than men. And the traffic was a crawl at certain places - on one of the long stretch of roads towards the hotel, my taxi would barely move for 15 second before coming to a halt for 4 minutes. This pattern repeated for at least 10-15 times on that road and I was wondering if I would reach my hotel by that night. Finally, at about 7pm I arrived at the New World Hotel, with Nirva waiting for me at the entrance with a worried look.

The hotel looked good and so did the room. We chatted for a while before we decided to head out for dinner. Nirva had found this nice restaurant about 5 minutes from the hotel that served amazing vegetarian dishes at crazily cheap prices. After a quick freshening up, we walked to the restaurant while trying to cross roads amongst heavy and chaotic traffic. The vehicles would just come at us from any direction. I was kind of transported back into India where I was used to such traffic patterns. But despite the chaotic and undirectional traffic, the people seemed nice - no one seemed to unnecessarily raise tempers at the pedestrians or fellow riders for cutting lanes and crossing roads. So after an adventurous 5 minute walk, we were at the restaurant - Bi & Bee Saigon.

And boy did it live up to Nirva's word. The food was really excellent - and it was really cheap. We ordered vegetable tempura for starters, crispy fried noodle with vegetables and a mixed vegetable braised claypot for main course. And we ordered a couple of cocunuts to have the coconut water. The portions were huge! And it was such a gastronomic affair - the braised claypot dish was especially tasty with its own spices. The chilli sauce that they had was yummy as well - we immediately decided that we will buy a bottle of that chilli sauce from the local supermarket to take back home. And all of this came to only 8 USD. I couldn't believe that we hogged such tasty food for just 8 USD. Needless to say we left as very satisfied customers and decided to come back for more meals while we were in HCM city.

After dinner, we decided to go to the famous night market - about 15 minutes walk on the other side of the hotel. The market had an interesting array of roadside shops selling all kinds of paraphernalia imaginable - there were pirated Prada, Gucci and other branded bags, clothes, soft toys, wooden show pieces, purses, decorative items, shoes and what not. We went to several differnet shops and Nirva bought a nice handbag for 10 USD. We made a mental note to buy in the following days many of the things we saw as gifts for our friends and relatives. We wanted to check out the day market as well before making our purchases because it was supposed to offer a better array of choices. Having spent about an hour at the market, we walked back to the hotel. I was tired of the flight and walking, so we decided to call it a night and start the real tour of Saigon from the next day onwards.

A weekend of calls and conversations

This has been a rather mixed bag of a weekend for me. First, Nirva left for India for her sister's wedding on Saturday evening which made me sad because I won't be seeing her until the 24th. And one of my other housemates Neha left as well (coincidentally for her brother's wedding), leaving just 2 people in the house - effectively just me because my other housemate is rarely around. And I am still not used to living alone in this house, although last night I did sleep with my room lights off (you will be proud to know my dear). And today (Sunday) I had to spend hours trying to understand the requirements of the new project for which I have been made the defacto Project Manager. For some reason, I am finding it very difficult to understand the domain as well as accept this whole business of PM work. I so wish I didn't have to do this, but it seems that everyone around me except for me thinks this is a good career move for me. I have to submit pricing, proposal and project plan by Wednesday and I have not had a start at any of the 3 areas yet - the whole day was spent in reading the old documents and trying to understand what is the project about since the users expect me to know all the details beforehand. I don't know how I will fare in this but I don't have a good feeling about this.

Anyway, apart from the dreary things above, the good and surprising thing that happened this weekend were phone calls - this truly was a weekend of calls. On Saturday evening, first I spoke to Kartik (my cousin) and Krithika (my bhabhi) in Mumbai for an hour and fifteen minutes. After that I called home and spoke with my parents for about 25 minutes. This was followed by a 40 minute conversation with Shankar mama (my uncle). And before the night was over, I spoke with Ramesh in the U.S. (Kartik's younger brother) for a good 25 minutes. To top it all, this morning, my mother called me and I got to speak with two of my cousin sisters Shubha and Janani. So all in all, this has been a weekend of calls and conversations - of catching up with family, something which I had meant to do for a long time. Of late many of my relatives were getting a bit angry with me for not calling them, since I used to be very punctual and diligent at that earlier. I hope I have addressed everyone's qualms adequately this time-:)

Back after a long time, will be gone for long again

So I am back to blogging after a long while. And it looks like I will be gone for long again given the new challenges that are going to manifest soon at my work. A lot has happened since the last time I posted here. I made a trip with Nirva to Ho Chi Minh city (I will make posts devoted solely to that trip later). I accepted a new role at my job and it is already feeling way too challenging. But in this post, I am just going to talk about something I had intended to do about 2-3 weeks back - having finished watching seasons 1 to 3 of House.

Yes, I have finally finished watching the 3 seasons of House. And I must say I was really really hooked. I think House is a very interesting character - different from what the TV shows throw up normally. I do admire him in some ways, although I do find him obnoxious in many other ways as well. Thanks to the series though that I learned so many new medically-related terms - I learned of diseases I had never heard before like Auto-immune disorder, African sleeping sickness, tuberous sclerosis, lupus, Cushing's disease; I learned of medical procedures that were completely unknown to me like entebation; I learned of new viruses and amoebas like Epstein-Barr virus and Naeglaria Fowleri (skin eating amoeba) and I heard of new medicines like IVIG, broad spectrum antibiotics and interferon. I think overall the series balances real medicine with drama quite brilliantly. One of my favorite episodes is the 2-part story of the laughing cop (titled "Euphoria") where Foreman also gets infected with the same disease and somehow the team finds at the neck of time that it was Naeglaria Fowleri. The tension was really cutting-edge throughout the 2 episodes, and you get to see one of the very few times that House does care. I thoroughly enjoyed almost all the episodes of Season 1 and 2, although the quality of the series did go down a bit during Season 3.

A severely compromised Immune System?

That is, my immune system. My friends and family have known this for a while now - the frequency with which I seem to fall ill - all the common illnesses strike me quite commonly, so to speak - be it cold or fever or influenza. In fact, currently I am in the middle of recovering from a debilitating influenza attack. I got hit by the virus some time last Tuesday when I visited a cardiologist in the Gleneagles hospital here (that's another story altogether, but so far nothing seems to be wrong with my heart, so no worries there). Since then, I have been on medical leave for 7 continuous days and I still have not recovered. Days 3 to 5 were especially bad when I was sneezing uncontrollably and feeling weak and dizzy all the time. Today was the first time in a week that I went to work. The phlegm is still there in my system and my nose is still blocked. At the end of the day, I started sneezing once again just as I was leaving work. And in between all this, I have been unable to sleep well in the night for some odd reason (despite the supposedly "knock-out" medicines).

So what's wrong with me? I know it has to be my immune system. I maybe termed obese in the strictest numerical sense, but I do not think that that is the cause of all this - I do not experience the symptoms of obesity and I quite love to (and without any difficulty as well) run and indulge in physical activities. So what happened to my immune system? And when? I do not recall being susceptible to these common illnesses during my 4 years in the US. And before that I do not recall falling sick at all when I did my Junior College in Singapore. It's only after coming back in 2004 that my immune system has tanked. I do agree that unhappiness at work is a contributing factor. But that much? I am not that unhappy at work (at least not yet) that it would impact my immune system so severely (although I attribute my hypertension problem solely to the torturous and agonizing first few months at work). So what happened? Do you have a clue? And more importantly, do you know someone (a doctor or wise old men/women or a body of knowledge) who can suggest ways on how to rebuild my immunity (preferably without ingesting big pharma tablets into my body)? I would be really grateful if someone could point me to such a source. Because I think the time has come for me to really address this issue...I will be 30 in a couple of years and I want to be in good health before I hit that number.

Yes, I am a bit scared, somewhat in despair and quite lost as to what to do.