Fads & Fridays

‘Fad’ as defined by Dictionary:

Fad –noun

a temporary fashion, notion, manner of conduct, etc., esp. one followed enthusiastically by a group.

All of us, at one time or other, have blindly followed the latest trends. Infact so much that neon cycling shorts, oversized tshirts, all teenybopper songs owe their success to these this mass mania. In the past few years ‘being social’ has been the latest ‘it’. And lately, check-ins.

I have always wanted to get onboard this craze. But I thought that surely there’s no one interested in knowing that I checked into my local grocery store (or that I go to 3 of them,.. ummm… thts another blog post). Anyways!! I finally went to this restaurant which ranked passably on my cool-enough-to-let-the-world know barometer and I feverishly downloaded the Foursquare app on my dinosaur (psst.. iPhone 2G). But thanks to ever-efficient AT&T, the app took ages to download and when it did, the app started crashing everytime I tried signing up. Thwarted at the first attempt, next time I was ready. I had my ever handy Yelp app, which also allowed check-ins (you see everyone except me has jumped on this ). And I was already logged in so that I don’t give AT&T one more chance to screw me over. On one rare Friday night where me & L decided to act our age & went for an early meal outside (check-in#1), a secondhand bookstore that I absolutely love (check-in#2). The stack of awesome books that we carried under our arms tempted us to go home & kickback our feet threatening our check-in plan. So we stuck to our plan & went to our fav dive bar (check-in#3). So what did the next day bring? No, not a hangover, we didn’t go THAT crazy! But an evaluation as to what our check-in experience taught us.

a. We had an amazing time!! And that too after such a long time

b. Scored some awesome books..

c. This check-in isn’t all that great for the reasons that its promoted. But it does have an appeal if you are into the I’ll-have-fun-so-that-I-can-show-that-I-had-fun category.

But our fun wasn’t because of the check-ins. I (yes, the hubby didn’t know about my check-in mania till he checked his twitter feed the next day), had fun during that time & it wasn’t dictated by the check-ins or even any technology media. It was good old fashioned going out with friends on a Friday kinda fun. So even though I didn’t fall in love with the whole fad & won’t be following the world (src: Foursquare 2010 report card: 3400% growth), but if you love it, sure, go ahead. There’s a reason the terms ‘fads’ was added to the dictionary

Cheers \m/

New year – new resolutions??

With more than half a month into the new year, I started thinking about new year resolutions, or my lack of them in particular. Every new year, I come across tons of news, blog posts about everyone’s new year resolutions. But I never had one. Not ‘coz I have a case of Calvinitis, as below

I’ve had goals & made sure that I achieved those, so it also wasn’t a fear of not following through. But just that most of the blog posts referred to the lack of those resolutions being followed through till the end of the year or till the time the goal was achieved. So this year, I’m going to make one.

My goal sometime back was to break into the 3 digit weight group. You see I’ve always been underweight for a 5′ 7″ person. I achieved my goal, but I think I fell back into the 2 digit group, but I’m not sure since I never checked my weight again (psst.. in the past 5 months), just for the fear of having lost my advantage. So this year I’m going to move away from the number based system, & move towards the broader goal of being healthy. So how do I define ‘healthy’? Hmmm…

Healthy:

• A BMI of 18.5 atleast
• Cut down red meat intake to minimum
• Some sort of exercise routine

This’ll make sure I don’t get my butt kicked when we go for hikes. And also make myself useful when we’ve to move heavy furniture. I’m completely useless when it comes to lifting even moderately heavy Ikea furniture. But all that comes to end this year And what is a healthy resolution without a buddy. So my buddy this year is going to be L. But his resolution is a bit different than mine. He’s also aiming to be healthy, with a BMI is the 18-20 range. But he’s going to hit that range by losing weight. So the means of achieving our goal will essentially remain the same. Eat healthy & exercise. Just the food groups that’ll be a part of our meal will be a little bit different. And to make sure that we are on the right path, we are going to blog about it.

So here’s to a fruitful 2011….

Cheers \m/

The Art of Resilience

What is resilience?

The Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary says:

Pronunciation: \ri-ˈzil-yən(t)s\

Function: noun

Date: 1824

1 : the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress

2 : an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change

The one that I am referring to here, is the latter. viz. the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.

I have a doubt regarding this thought. How can we say that a person is resilient in terms of measurement? Because as the definition implies, resilience is solely dependent on 2 characteristics: the amount of misfortune/change and the recovery from/adjustment to it. So if I say person A is resilient, am quantify is resilience given my experience of bouncing back from a misfortune. So that would in turn mean that either I have had the fortune of being less unfortunate or A has a slightly better outlook than mine in terms of being his/her normal self. See where this is going??

The highly relative nature of the ‘resilience’ factor can easily change a person’s outlook towards life. Coz isn’t the other person’s ability to withstand all with a smile the biggest source of inspiration for people around him? Isn’t this the quality that every person out there looking for to inculcate in himself? The ability to take that one extra step towards the horizon irrespective of the huge roadblocks or minor winds or scorching weather. Does that also mean that we should look at hardships from a different point of view? Look at how stronger we would come out at the other end of this? Should that be the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel? The pot of gold at the end of rainbow? Coz, lets face it, we aren’t taking that huge promotion or the certificate of appreciation anywhere. Its this feeling of having inspired other people to endure difficulties and emerging as a better person that matter.

Hmmm… Worth giving a thought…..

Cheers \m/

One Huge Step

“If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. — Bruce Lee

This was the quote posted on the wall behind my mentor’s desk. It had a picture of Bruce Lee from the epic ‘Enter the Dragon’ movie.  And no, the picture wasn’t what caught my attention

The whole day I kept re-reading the same thing. Wrote it down and sent it to a few friends. The profoundness of this somewhat obvious philosophy caught me unawares and I realized how true it is. We, or atleast some of us, fail to realize how much damage we do to ourselves by setting up ourselves for failure by fearing to venture into the unknown. The perceived difficulty of any task is not the requirements or expectations that have to be fulfilled, but the fact that we create a huge hoopla about the factors that are unknown to us–the black void that engulfs and taunts us. Now it is upto us, we can take offense to the taunts and move ahead or stagnate at the same point to avoid the risk of the unknown.

This week I chose to move ahead. And it has been liberating. And rewarding, to say the least. What seemed like an insurmountable mountain seems like a tiny speed-bump from this side.  So here’s a huge shoutout to one-step-for-mankind-but-huge-leap-for-’me’kind…

Cheers  \m/