GM Diet!

I am not so much of a supporter of diets. I believe more in working out rather than in cutting one's intake. The missus is a proponent of dieting. And I usually fight with her over this.

But I heard about the GM diet a couple of days back. Anyone I spoke to about this had a good thing or two to say about it. So in a sudden pang, we decided to jump into it yesterday.

The version we're following is here.

My updates:

Day 1:
86 kg before the beginning of the diet.
All fruits day.
Was kinda tired of all the fruiting and pissing around all day! And had to suppress a lot of temptations :(

Day 2:
84.7 kg! 1.3 kg down in a single day!
Today's an all vegetables day.
It's evening, and slowly getting used to the diet.
It feels great though :)
More tomorrow..

Day 3:
85.2 kg :( Gone up a few hundred grams! Not worried though.. The first 4 days are only supposed to be preparation for the last three days of dieting, which is when the actual weight loss is supposed to happen. Lets see.

Day 4:
84.1 kg :) Ah! Back on track!

Day 5:
83.6 kg - Not a stellar fall from yesterday. Nonetheless its a fall at least!

Day 6:

83.1 kg - Things look great!! 3 kg in 5 days!!

But alas :( This was the last day of my diet :( Given that this is my Thalai Deepavali, couldn't really argue with the in-laws on the validity of my diet. So broke the diet today!

And didn't measure my weight for 3 more days. Kept feeding heavily on sweets and stuff. Finally reached 86 after all the munching on the occasion of Diwali. So am back at square one, but the diet prevented me from reaching 89! In that sense, was successful!!! And the inches I lost haven't come back (as yet). And now am quite conscious of the amount of food I take, and am able to say no anything, however tempting it might be!! So on the whole, I give this diet a thumbs up.

(Note: Some people complain against this diet, saying it might lead to side effects like loss of hair. I have always been losing hair rather fast, so I didn't notice anything odd)

If you're happy and you know it...

Small is big nowadays. From Twenty20 to Twitter, the message is loud and clear. One more example in this list is FML.

FML is not a very popular site - as yet. But I think it will grow bigger. The concept is simple: it eats on our tendency to gossip, to pass judgments on others, and to crib about life in general. And it is only a couple of hundred characters in length. One more instance of micro blogging a la twitter.

Drawing from this idea, this post is an attempt at another form of emo-blogging (sorry, my coinage!). This is a request to all readers to mention what made you HAPPY today. Please don't use more than a line or two. It could be a smalllllll thing, but then small is big!

So go on!! Keep the page growing for ever...

A trip to the land of the blues - IV

Trip to Mauritius: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

He he he.. I haven't given up on this series :) Not yet at least! Cos my best moments of the trip are yet to be featured! Anyway, am getting bored of narrating stuff. So planning to put only pics in the 2-3 remaining posts. Here goes...

The next day began at Ile Aux Cerfs (pronounced ee-loo-surfs) beach island - Awesome place for adventure sports.

Amazing ride this!! Zooming around and falling into the ocean!!

Me - almost reached the rubber thingee.

Wifey - swimming for dear life a few metres away.

We didn't realize the ocean was only 5 feet deep beneath us!

Tandem Paragliding - this wasn't scary at all! God knows how!

They dip you once during the trip :)

A cruise ship on the way back from Ile Aux Cerfs

Outside our hotel room - just after the rains

Ditto

Freshhhhhhh!!

The stillness after the rains

(reminded me of that blue-colored Alaipayuthey shot)

Carrying a tripod around helped!

This was the REAL colour in REAL life then (8 PM)!!

Never knew nature could be so strikingly colorful

Now on to some photography lessons of sorts. The following three shots appear pitch-dark because they were taken at around 10 PM with the auto mode set in the camera.

What follows are pics of the same frames taken with the controls set manually. Basically just had an extended exposure - about 15 seconds for the first and second; 30 seconds for the last. No flash was used for these shots. Flash kills beauty in the dark!

This last pic won me a photography contest :)

(The 30-second exposure pic)

That was Dec-31 2008. Celebs at midnight!

Just when we had almost retired for the night, the revelry began all of a sudden. Fireworks lit up the sky and the ocean. And a Sega dance troupe began performing. (Sega is the Mauritian Belly Dance). Here's a video:

Mauritius Pictures

IIMB - Independence Day Video

Sometime a couple of months ago, Rakesh came up with the concept of creating a patriotic video for IIMB. Mile Sur Mera Tumhara was the last rage, and he felt it was maybe time to try out a new one. So we set out working on ARR's Jana Gana Mana.

The videos were shot in a single day - surprisingly almost everything went off well that day. We had fixed time slots for the shooting for everyone - from the director of the insti, to the housekeeping staff. We simply couldn't afford to get delayed anywhere given the packed schedule. And we also had to tug along the heavy camera, monitor, tripod, blowers et al and run all around the campus. Was a verrrrry hectic day! Luckily had a good cameraman - Mr Rafiq who understood exactly what I wanted. And even more luckily have a very devoted wife who wanted to be the 'squirrel' and ended up being a lot more!

Anyway, here is the final product of my first 'professional' attempt :)