Evening Walk-Coffee-Entrepreneurship-Jhamel

Its been six  months since my last post and i am sorry to have kept u waiting for so long. Lots has happened in the last 6 months, watched a few movies (Haider being the latest and the best so far), partied with old friends (with 'Queen of GoodTimes' Bina Shrestha having moved to Stockholm we have to  wait for her to b bck in town to rock the party) , made new friends on Twitter and started a not for profit with them (Nepal Policy Center : a public policy think tank), shifted office after not being able to sustain the operating cost of the old place, started on  this year's session of MGTS 402 (Entrepreneurship Development course i teach at Kathmandu University School of Engineering) and more importantly have sustained the habit of staying off my Poison Food 'Soda Pringles aur  Pastry' (except for that one piece of Swiss Roll i stole from the freeze when i was home alone this Dashian/Durga Puja) . Can't say the same for my exercise/ work out sessions though. Have been on and off the treadmill and the walks . 

As the end of the year 2014 draws close I am back on the treadmill and evening walks. This evening on my usual walking route around Jhamel i stopped to pick up  coffee at a random Coffee Shop .  While i was waiting for my latte an idea stuck me . I loved to drink coffee while walking around Jhamel and the number of coffee shops in this route had gone up. So i thought how about visiting new coffee shops on my evening walks  and doing  a brief review of the place in this blog. While at it how about doing an interview with the proprietor if i can meet him/her with some questions about their Entrepreneurial spirit and business idea. Basically giving me some real life material for my class as well as content for the blog doing something i love (drinking coffee)  while at  something i need to do ( exercise my legs ).   Sounds like a good deal , lets see what do i do about it.

I picked this evenings coffee at Craftmandu Coffee shop , recently opened and located right at the Jhamsikhel junction. When i entered  i was the only customer and had to wait about 10 mins for my latte .  While i was waiting i looked around and found  lots of handicraft items for sale. As well as some clothes (don't know if was all pashmina ). An expat came in and picked up few craft items but no coffee.   They used Mustang Coffee beans (250gms pack was on sale for Rs.440) . The ambiance and seating   was good but sadly no music playing although i saw a music system. I took my cup of coffee (i swear nothing else) and got back to my walk. There was no branding or logo of the shop on the cup.  The Coffee tasted good but as they did not give me a sleeve for the cup the heat made holding it a bit uncomfortable. The hot contents of the cup were welcome as it was a chilly evening .

 I finished the coffee as i passed the Jawlakhel Football ground. As i made my way past the DFID office i spotted a few coffee shops in that area as well so lots of options. On reaching Dhobighat i found a UMN vehicle parked infront of KISC and that got me thinking who could it be . As i moved ahead i was about to cross the Futsal ground when i said to myself how about checking if there is anyone from UMN playing there (i recalled a few photos on facebook posted by my ex-colleagues at UMN  playing futsal ). I was glad to find some old faces( but young men n women) from UMN playing a game. They had just finished the finals of the intra team futsal match and sadly my old team (Operations Team) had lost the match to the Programs Team. After saying hello to them i was back to my walk heading straight home.

On my next walk i will try and get that interview i talked about.

O b4 i end let me  give you the lyrics of the song  whose words n soft music stayed with me even after  my walk this evening .
"Hannah Hunt" by VAMPIRE WEEKEND

A gardener told me some plants move
But I could not believe it
Till me and Hannah Hunt
Saw crawling vines and weeping willows
As we made our way from Providence to Phoenix

A man of faith said
Hidden eyes could see what I was thinking
I just smiled and told him
That was only true of Hannah
And we glided on through Waverley and Lincoln

Our days were long our nights no longer
Count the seconds, watching hours
Though we live on the US dollar
You and me, we got our own sense of time

In Santa Barbara, Hannah cried
And missed those freezing beaches
And I walked into town
To buy some kindling for the fire,
Hannah tore the New York Times up into pieces

If I can't trust you then damn it, Hannah
There's no future, there's no answer
Though we live on the US dollar
You and me, we got our own sense of time
   ------

More Soon,
Brahma

Cause I'm T.N.T., I'm dynamite and I'll win the fight

Day 20

Sorry for stopping to post after Day 2 ! was caught up with work, fun and LAZINESS !

So 2 get to the point, I have so far managed to keep myself off mypoision food Soda Pringles & Pastry ! except for that one piece of cake i ate to celebrate my Niece turning 2 months old !
But the Walking has become irregular after the first two weeks. I  went for a walk last evening but could not this evening. I will pick it up again tomorrow onwards I promise !

By the way thanx for the support from across the globe the first time i wavered (that was on the 3rd or the 4th day i think)

Come to think of it i did eat Nann just 2 nights ago at dinner while celebrating completion of a project and start of a new business partnership. My Bad ! too many times i hve slipped it seems.

But then this one time i held on thnx to u all.

Now to answer your question Niti : i stopped getting on top of the scales the day it hit 100Kgs (i used to joke i wanted to hit a century ) and am too ashamed to weigh myself again until i think i hve come below that mark.  It will b hopefully not a very long wait for the day i am bck on the machine. Cause I'm T.N.T., I'm dynamite  and I'll win the fight

Thank you Niti for asking me to continue writing  my blog and sorry for hve renegaded on my promise to do it last weekend.

 So this week onwards i will make use of that Treadmill standing useless in the guest room .

 More tomorrow!

Talk 'bout the Highway to Hell !

DAY 2

B4 the Walk

Well somethings never change and definitely not on Day 2 ! I slept around 4am and got up at 11am, so no change in sleeping habits yet. After a lunch of Rice & Chicken (no 2nd helpings) i went to work with Ashish picking me up on his motor bike. We spent the day goofing off and drank a cup each of freshly brewed black coffee ! He kept tempting me to join him for some Cream Rolls & Chicken Patties (smthngs for which i hve even bunked work in the past) but i held on to my resolve of avoiding my poison foods.  We decided to call it quits at 6pm and i started on my walk.

The Walk 

The route for this evening was the same as yesterday but in the opposite direction and with 3 pit stops. My sister wanted me to pick up Nasivion  for my infant niece and some vermicelli . So i started from the CoIn building and passed the newly opened Bawarchi outlet (they make the best kati rolls in town) 5 mins down the road (I did not go in, I swear) and stopped at the medical store in front of Saleways departmental store to pick up the Nasivion. I went inside Saleways for the vermicelli but could not find them so made a quick exit avoiding the rows stacked with  Pringles and Coke. I continued walking  but this time with some music playing on my phone. I walked upto the Bhat Bhateni superstore in Patan and went in looking for the Sevayians . I found them stacked in a corner (was confused between them and the spaghetti packets) and picked up 2 packts of Nillons vermicelli.

I had not taken any water with me and went looking for a bottle of water when i came across tetra packs of Cranberry juice. 

This reminded me of the night in Syracuse when Sherry had decided we both should go on a Cranberry juice cleanse . After tasting my first glass of the said juice i had opted out and choose to eat the awesome biryani she had cooked for Humayun n the kids . So this evening i bought myself a 300ml pack of Cranberry juice to give it another try. 

I made my way down the hill from Himalaya hotel to Kan Devta Sthan and found myself facing the climb up the San Fransisco Loops (i named it thus as it reminds me of the Lombard Street in SF with hairpin bends ) towards Summit Hotel. This was my major test of this 2 day old adventure. In the past i have found this to b the toughest part of my walk home and i was not sure if i could make it. But then 2Cello started to blast their Highway to Hell  cover through my headphones.

 

With my adrenaline pumping at full speed i made the climb up to the Summit Hotel by the time the song ended . But the side affect was i was out of breath and my heart beat was touching the roof . I needed something a bit slow to calm myself but not so slow as to make me rest . Luckly the  song Talk by Kodaline started playing . I got to thank my friend Bina's son Chand who shared this song with her and she in turn with the rest of us via facebook.

I also decided to drink that pack of Cranberry juice and slowly made my way home. It took me about 10 minutes less to walk  the same distance as yesterday if i take away the time i spent at the 3 pit stops. Plus i climbed the SF Loops instead of going down it like yesterday. So overall a good day.

Day 2: Soda 0 , Pringles 0, Pastry 0

P.S. here is something that my school friend Firdaus Haque posted on facebook today which got me asking is this true ?

Brahma

It's a Start !

Soda Pringles aur Pastry symbolize the three food groups that are my comfort poison food ! No matter my mood (Happy,Sad, Depressed or Ecstatic ) or the time (morning,day,evening,midnight..) i like to eat junk food and wash it down with soda . This blog is about my daily attempts at keeping off them and any form of physical exercise i do to burn the  never ending supply of fat i have accumulate over the years . 

Why a Blog?

I have been inspired by my school friend  Dhruv Bonnerjee who is blogging about his  attempts to quit smoking  . When he could not post how days 6,7and 8 went by I got agitated enough to post a Facebook update inquiring about it. As it turned out it was only time management issue and he is on track. His stories forced me into thinking aloud what was i doing about my poison, and the answer i got was nothing. B4 i get into what else forced me into taking some action against my obesity let me point out another reason for starting this blog. 

Ever since i can remember i loved to talk, but never to write. I can yabber-jabber on any topic non stop. I think it all started in those Moral Science classes in school at LFS ( Thank you Mrs. Ghosh 4 making it my most interesting class to date), right through my undergrad days at KUSOE (where i could b found debating anything but course material mostly with one of my best friends Bikash ) to my graduate days at KUSOM (what i spoke about here is a blur) and continued into my Managerial Leadership Class at Maxwell (where i had to compete against 10 other equally vocal Humphrey Fellows from around the world) . Another constant throughout this adventure was the feedback i got from my teachers/professors :  "Please Elaborate" on my written papers.  I somehow seem to loose interest while writing my thoughts and views . I have said this many times End Sem exams should hve the option of a viva and one should be able to voice mail assignments. Now my friend Sanjay wants me to start writing a column for the  newspaper he edits in return for covering my Business Incubator venture. Plus there is so much i want to say to a wider audience (outside Facebook) so i thought this blog will be a good learning experience . P.S. Add to that the no longer hidden desire to get a PHD someday .

Why start Now?

Its not a sudden move , i hve been seriously thinking about this for a while and my Mom has been nagging about this  since ages. A few years ago i started going to a gym with my friends Milan,Sudeep and Bineet. All of us paid for a annual membership  to get a big discount but after 2 months Bineet and I dropped out citing the winter cold. One thing that i remember from those 2 months at the gym is that i started watching what i ate for the simple reason that each morning i experienced how hard it was to burn off those calories. But my laziness and the late nights got the better of me and i found excuses to stop gyming. In 2011 i landed in Syracuse for a year and lived on Large sized Pizza's , frozen burgers and Chinese dinner until my friends Humayun & Sherry took me in and started feeding me proper food at dinner. For lunch i started eating fruits and salads thanx to my friends Sania and Kristine with whom i usually went grocery shopping .  Chocolate Milk from Rite Aid down the hill continued to be my poison. Sania & Kristine did try to get me into stop taking the bus after class and walk instead but i was too stubborn for them to fix me.  Two months in New York with my college friends Bikash & Juna got my eating habits on track somewhat. As a  result i was perhabs the only one i know who lost weight instead of gaining it after a year in America.  But that was 2 yrs ago. And its been a downward journey since i got back to mandu .

More recently i was on a weekend getaway at a resort outside Kathmandu with my friends Milan, Ashish, Khagendra and Bineet (the Torpe gang). Late into the friday night we somehow started talking about my obesity and my sleeping habits (sleep after sunrise and work/play at night). Milan is perhaps the oldest member of our group and most certainly the fittest.  He told me how he changed his sleeping pattern , started exercising  and  eating healthy. His pep talk had a certain effect on me though not visible immediately. Last week  the old Maruti Omni van that Dad usually drives after he retired broke down while he was driving Mom to a meeting. Since than Mom refuses to go anywhere in the Van and my car has now been called into service leaving  me wheeless (my motorbike having been retired to Rajbiraj for the once a month trip to my village). I have started to walk to work ever since (Ashish drops me home on his bike each evening). This week my parents went out of town for a fortnight taking my Dezire as their ride in the absence of the office Prado or Pajero that would have been the usual choice until Dad retired a year ago. This means i am most certainly without a ride for the next 15 days.  I just hope i can use this to start a new life style.

What happened Today ?

 Although i have not yet been able to shake off my sleeping habit, this evening I decided to take a walk . I walked from home towards Summit Hotel down the hill to Kan Devta Sthan then up the hill to Himalay hotel all the way upto Pulchowk. From pulchowk i walked through what is now called Jhamel an area with more eateries than i can count and a few new ones are still coming up. This is my heaven , lined with the best pizza place in town (RoadHouse Cafe) to a choice of Italian, Malaysian, Korean, Continental, Indian , Nepalese restaurants,  numerous bakeries  and a couple of sports bar. But i did not stop at any of them to eat or pick up a bottle of Coke or Sprite that i would have usually done. I did pick up a cup of Cafe Latte from a Illy outlet at Chai Chai Cafe. Once home i thought back on what had happened and took this as a starting point. 

Day 1 : 0 Soda, 0 Pringles, 0 Pastry !

Wish me luck !! lets c what happens tomorrow. 

Brahma !