Something Fishy !!

Fishing .... People really seem to take fishing pretty seriously here. I wandered into a sports shop the other day and was greeted with some hardcore equipments starting from some heavy duty boats to depth finders, sonars ,GPS , radio , tackle boxes , lures , rods , add in a automatic rifle and you have enough equipment to invade a small country , all this gadgetry to land a fish seems a little excessive , its like using the NASA server to update your status message on facebook. looks like the fishes are evolving into a smarter and more devious form too, hence the heavy artillery.

I suppose i could blame it on Mark Twain for putting the idea of fishing in my head, by painting those idealic pictures of Tom Sawyer and huckleberry Finn playing hokey from school and going fishing.

when I was kid I used to watch street urchins, string a fishing net across a storm water drain ( I call it a fishing net cos of its present functional usage , before the net turned into its present avatar of a fishing net it used to serve its primary purpose at keeping Mosquitoes at bay at nights, I wonder who the poor victim of this heinous Mosquito net related crime was , and pray he did not come down with malaria, i have also gotta add here that the storm water drains i mentioned weren't the squeaky clean types one gets to see in America where Travolta attended  drag races or Schwarzenegger chased down killer robots, this was a drain which was a mini Eco system in itself , filled with insects which ranked very high up on the disease charts ,algae had other forms of algae growing on it, the water was a pleasant shade of black and on a lucky day one got to see a bloated carcass of a dog floating by).

yes, back to the street urchins, I used to watch enviously as these Guys strung a net across the drain and came up with a handful of fishes , which they would safely deposit in a glass jar. This simple act blew my mind, I was hooked (pun unintended) I could not take my eyes away from them,the look of absolute joy and satisfaction on their faces was contagious , this was where my fascination for fishing began, I never did venture out into the drain to have a go at this wonderful sport with such a primal nature, but I knew for sure I would want to try it when I was older ,wiser and didn't have to take My mothers permission to venture out into the drains. I did buy the fishes off the urchins once though but ill save that story for another day.

Years went by and I got older and wised up enough to realize that venturing into the drains wasn't a very good idea ,but the enigma of fishing only grew stronger ,I was intrigued by the different types of fishing, not the trawling, dynamiting or mega sized fishing nets it had to be more one on one, more a man versus wild thing.

Picture borrowed (read stolen!)

 The Chinese fishing nets in the backwaters of Kerala, This i feel is the best example of Overkill..... its like constructing a intricate and complex device involving robotic arms ,motion sensors and titanium plates to kill a cockroach.... the catch was so miniscule compared to the engineering and thought that was required to build these nets. Hey don't judge me, but if i was building something that big or so cool looking i would want to catch me a whale. if they were really going to be catching that pitiful amount of fishes they might as well pull of their lungis and jump into the water i say!!

I was visiting Pondicherry  and did chance upon a lake with paddle boats for hire. so i did what any excited city slicker on a holiday would do....... I dutifully hopped on to one and paddled away. Suddenly i see a man in the distance standing in the middle of the lake..... no you read it right i will repeat with dramatic effects this time... i saw a man... standing... in the the Middle of the lake..... as i had never met Jesus Christ before i decided to paddled towards him and hoped to befriend and add him on my facebook. hey, doesn't hurt to have the son of god as your friend when its judgment day right?

so as i got nearer, i noticed that it wasn't a Jewish carpenter out for a walk on a lake but a Indian fisherman propped up on a vertical wooden log in the middle of the lake fishing using a rod (wooden stick). It was the coolest thing i had seen since i heard of ice fishing. i loved the concept. it seemed the purest form of fishing. a simple wooden stick, nylon rope, a steel hook, a wooden pole, and most important factor.... patience.
it seemed to me such a zen moment.
I approached the man slowly , he looked at me and gave me an annoyed look for scaring away the fishes. but i had to ask him a really important question so i braved past the scowl and paddled closer. i stopped paddling and allowed the boat to slowly drift towards him and finally bumped the pole. he looked down at me, the sun was behind him so it looked like he had a halo of brilliant light behind him, i looked up, squinted  and asked him in an almost reverent voice .... " Beedi irka ?" ( do you have a beedi? ).........
True story

I later did get to find out that these people plant the wooden poles in the lake during the summer seasons when water levels are much lower and they swim to these poles everyday, the catch is generally about half a dozen medium sized fishes for a afternoon of fishing.. Nevertheless This form of Old school fishing appealed to me.
  ( Picture only representative... this man did not give me a beedi )





I finally did get to try my hand at fishing few years later while I was sailing.
The vessel was anchored outside Malta waiting for clearance to enter Valleta harbor, was a pleasant Sunday afternoon when the big honchos decided to wind up for the day leaving us lesser important folks to hit the beer cans with a vengeance,after a couple of cans the worm of fishing was planted in out heads , thus began Operation Fishing , nylon threads were procured , hooks fabricated in a jiffy ( the workshop had never seen so many people actually working before) we all cast our lines and waited, not very patiently though. the beers flowed and time seemed to crawl, it didn't help that we kept pulling the line out of water to check if we had caught a fish every few minutes. we finally gave up in a couple of hours.
 But a few months later we tried again and this time with some very good tips given by our in house fishing experts, the Gujarati crew members who 9 out of 10 times were from Daman or Diu and were fishermen by birth and genetically engineered to catch fishes with annoying ease and nonchalance.
We were luckier this time and some people even caught some squids, though i must admit i have never landed a fish by myself, i would hold a line for 2 hours and nothing would happen....  I would hand the line to another person and within a few minutes he would have a fish at the end of the line. My chief officers 6 year old daughter landed more fishes than i did, my vegetarian Fifth Engineer was more successful than me (though he shrieked more than the lil girl if the fish touched him)
But i enjoyed it, the feel of staring out into the water lost in thought waiting for the bob to disappear, a chilled beer in hand and Creedence clearwater revival playing in the background.a Solitary Pursuit.

More ships were sailed on and  many more fishing sessions happened and i continued, my score undisturbed at a big zero, nevertheless always diligently trying. fished in the south china sea,bay of Bengal, Arabian sea, Indian ocean , Mediterranean sea ,North sea, black sea and even in the middle of the amazon too but still no luck. come to think of it i really don't know how i would react if one day the bob did disappear and i had a fish at the end of my line. Would i actually be able to reel it in?

I must admit though i only enjoy the hunt and not the kill. the thrill of fishing ends as soon as the fish is out of the water. and lies there glassy eyed tail twitching and staring into your soul. so i am all for catch and release. That is if i ever manage to catch one ... Ever!

Beer blues !!!!

..... I came ....... I stared ........ I left...... After staring long and hard at the screen for 15 minutes, I realized I had absolutely nothing to write about......
Guess that's what happens when you have not set foot on land for almost 2 months. Sigh !!!

In case you haven't guessed yet, i am back on high seas and am having a classic case of the blues (pun?aw shucks who cares if it was intended or not)
the yonder Indonesian islands tease me seductively with their blue hued mist covered mountains , the waves playfully tumbling on rocks like a bunch of puppies. And the trees gently swaying like in a trance. While I am stuck on a ship anchored miles away..... I am not sure if all this melancholic demeanor has something to do with the fact that I have been sober for way too long.

The last can of beer was last seen on the horizon 3 weeks back , and its been a dry and thirsty existence. I have fond memories of it as I lovingly pulled the tab back, heard the crisp click and watched the froth rush out like a well behaved wave on a beach, the pleasant numbing of my lips as they touched the edge of the ice cold can, the gurgling in my throat as the sunlight colored liquid rushed down , triggering a chain reaction in my body.
The epiglottis hurriedly shuts down the airway like a spanish official just before the running with bulls in Pamplona .The tongue yells out "yo Liver, incoming" the Liver who until now was introvertishly sulking in a corner contemplating the meaning of life and other heavy stuff is suddenly galvanized into action he enthusiastically rolls up his sleeves and with a song on his lips gets down to work. The stomach turns into one big water park party, everybody from pancreas to gall bladder is jumping in with hoops of joy, even the shy little appendicities jumps into a swim suit and heads out to party.
the heart churns out a mean beat on His turn table and the lungs are getting jiggly with it ala will smith style , the kidneys are slapping each other on the back and heading to the bar. The only organ which seems to be working now is the bladder who does not mind working overtime for a good cause. Even the reclusive esophagus decides to make an appearance, and looking at all this the brain has a contended smile on his face and looks on with a satisfied expression and decides to throw on a bright blue Hawaiian shirt and join the party.

.ahhhhh I miss those days, back when beer was bountiful and was just a stretch of the arm away ......... I am going to go and sulk for a little while now.

Sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 

Is There a Googler In The House??!!

You know you are getting old when you start feeling pains in parts of your body you cant reach anymore.

I am a compulsive googler, i google everything from Sunny Leones earlier works in her movie carrer ( oh come on!! dont get all holier than thou on me, i am sure you did too, i am just honest enough to admit it) to how many stars are in the galaxy (100 Billion incase you were wondering, your welcome ) 

The older I get the wiser I have become, I don't click on the first suggestion Google churns out for my symptoms and start panicking, I am wiser now and open four or five different pages weigh my options and finally select the best diagnosis. Now that I am wiser I don't settle for the most convineant sounding ailment , I now have a few category's to be met, like fancy sounding names filed with medical terminologies with a glamorous background or cool sounding names "Achilles heal" , or even "tennis elbow". Why tennis elbow you ask ? , it's simple, when you tell somebody you have tennis elbow you are implying that you play tennis , which implies that you are athletic. It does not matter that you gave yourself tennis elbow by doing some chronic ear wax digging.

I blame Google for all the ailments that ail me.it has unfortunately gotten too easy for one to become a self proclaimed Google certified doctor. connecting the dots from symptom to disease is but now a few click away( a few painful clicks if you have carpal tunnel syndrome.where did I learn about carpal tunnel syndrome you ask ? i gave myself carpal tunnel syndrome while i was frantically  trying to find out how to give myself a back massage  ).

I have always wondered why doctors felt the need to display their degree certificate on the walls of their clinic. Now I understand , it is their way of saying " I went to medical school for 5 bloody years. I know more about your problem than what you can research on Google or Wikipedia so please keep your mouth shut and allow me to do my job".

Doctors initially had to deal with patients sneaking away from the prescribed treatment and trying home remedies. And then returning sheepishly in a worse off condition than they began with . Today doctors have to deal with google-fueled-smartarsess .not only do these guys steer away from their prescribed treatment and dosage half the time, they arrive at the doctors door after having unsuccessfully tried to cure a whole different non existing disease. Now the doctor has to deal with the problem in hand and the problems caused by the self medication.

Patient- doctor I have been noticing a abnormal growth on my forehead which is growing at an alarming rate could it be malignant poly tumor ?
Doctor - no Einstein,it is a pimple and if you stop touching it every 3 minutes it will stop growing.

Back home in India ,medical help comes in all shapes , sizes, budgets and even religion . From witch doctors to neurotic surgeon we have them all. here in the US medical help is sinfully expensive if you do not have an insurance. i was speaking to a friend of mine visiting on a tourist visa, and he happened to mention that he has been sick for a few days and is considering going to a doctor but didn't have a insurance coverage, i asked him to suck it up and cure it by swigging a bottle of whisky and sleeping for 36 hours, else he would have to sell a kidney to pay for the treatment of a common cold.

 I have spent more time researching the different pains radiating from my legs than actually running.

I now know that i can get Runners knee( Ilio Tibial Band Syndrome or Pattelofemoral Syndrome) ,Shin Splints( Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome) ,Plantar Fasciitis , Achilles Tendinopathy , Plica syndrome, Hip Burstis or Excercise Induced Compartment Syndrome and  almost scared myself into never running again.

Ilio Tibial Syndrome or Plantar Fasciitis sounds like something you would catch from recreational visits to the  shadier parts of the city but i assure you it is not.

I twisted my ankle a month back while running and while my wife was fussing all over me , I told her in my best Indiana jones voice, "don't sweat it luv,all I need is R.I.C.E" ... " Rest,Ice,Compression and Elevation" as she looked at me with admiration in her brown eyes , I didn't have the heart to tell her I learnt it from google while I was limping painfully back home. So google to the rescue I guess .

Makes you look smarter than you really are. 

 Its not long before the legendry sentence " is there a doctor in the house? there has been an emergency!!" will soon be replaced by "is there a googler in the house??!!". Don't be surprised if you see some smug idiot with smart phone step up and say " I know CPR, I just googled it." 

Sure google has that annoying habit of trying to guess what your looking for, keeps trying to tell you what you want before you finish your sentence(all you men,if you just had a sense of deja vu then you must be a married),But honestly speaking i really dont mind,you never know what you might find.its like sticking your hand into box of assorted cookies and not knowing what you might pick. i asked google four most elementry questions Who,How,When,Where and What google had a couple of interesting suggestions to make...

How to Boil an EGG??!! seriously??

 Google must be  high on Weed!!
excellent questions for a Pothead.

This is what i mean by intersting new finds i could
have been typing " what is quantum physics" but
now i going to discover what
Harlem Shake is !! win win if you ask me

Where is the Love indeed.
and off course where is Chuck Norris!!
Wouldn't you want to know ?

  

Google is the new age Jeeves.

In case you were wondering what a Harlem Shake is :)

http://www.youtube.com/embed/4hpEnLtqUDg?autoplay=1

War Pigs!!

The Pigs look like they are glutton for punishment dont they?(pun intended) first the wolf huffed and puffed and blew their houses down , and now birds with anger management issues are hell bent on knocking the stuffing out of them, time for a new war plan. they should try reading Sun Tzu's The Art of War ,or Patton's biography for that matter.

Da Vampire saga !!!

These are for my wife , who can't seem to get enough of vampires.she is a huge (bad puns ahead alert !!) sucker for these aliiumphobic pain in the necks. this ones for you Luv!! :) yeenzooyy.....

Running For My Life !!!!!!

I run 3 miles everyday, that is if you call red faced,gasping breathed ,desperate hopping meets frantic plodding as running.

I run on a nature trail which for most parts is away from the road, but is intersected by a few traffic lights, to save me the embarrassment i have learnt to pace myself, my running for most parts is as graceful as a giraffe with asthma running a three legged race.when i approach a cross walk(zebra crossing),my legs are so stiff that i waddle across like a penguin. I now time my self in such a way that 200 yards approach to and 200 yards after the cross walk  i am Usain bolt and a cheetah rolled into one, i leave the motorist waiting for their signal spell bound at how graceful and athletic i am. they see me whizz by head held proudly high, my legs taking long graceful leaps with amazing in air hang time(Michael Jordan would be proud of), nonchalantly slowing down at the signal, arrogantly looking on either side with a eagle like narrow eyes and cross the road with fluid momentum. if i were my own admirer i would swoon.
what they don't realize is that, exactly 2 minutes later this gazelle turns into a sloth and shuffles all the way to the next cross walk where he magically turns into a gazelle again. what they don't know is that arrogant look they see while i scope the road is nothing but blurred vision caused due to low oxygen supply and the sharp narrow eye is so that the sweat which is pouring out of my scalp does not enter my eye and set it on fire.

Why all the showmanship you ask?? I can't help it !!! its a involuntary action, i have no control over my brain!! its like fat men sucking in their stomach when a pretty lass walks by. or short men standing on their toes while talking to a taller person.

I started running while i was in Chennai a few years back at Railway Officers club where my dad is a member, i used to haunt its health club . you would generally find me breathlessly hanging on to a runaway treadmill or sulking underwater in the deep end of the pool. hanging out here was a big ego boost for me, as i was generally surrounded by middle aged women discussing the latest soap operas or men with globe shaped midriff walking languidly on the treadmill, the tennis courts had geriatrics playing a game of if-my-serve-makes-it-over-the-net-I-win. the more athletic sorts were shielded away from less athletic sorts by being enclosed in indoor badminton courts so as to not upset anyone or bruise any egos. so i was generally the toast of the joint with my laborious 5K exploits being considered the most effort anybodies ever put in and being skinny was enough to be called fit. i reveled in my skinniness until......

I landed here with the same brimming confidence and walked into the health club in the apartment complex i live in, only to find to my utter dismay it was filled with Greek gods and Godessess, the place seemed to be crawling with statues from some pillaged Greek temple. It was filled with people who hadno business being there.
 I found people twice my age pumping weights and running distances twice what i could even consider physically or for that matter remotely possible.everybody looked like they had just stepped out of the cover of a magazine.i kept looking around me to see if there were cameras around shooting a hip hop music video or holding the annual Mr. Universe competition. my entire workout regime was just a warm up for most people.
In my 3 mile run, the last mile is the hardest, i turn into a regular monica selles (in the grunting department) and the sweat is streaming down my face as if in a hurry to flow down to Somalia and solve the drought situation there. i am staggering all over the treadmill , my legs are protesting and threatening to give up any minute, my knees are turning into jelly. and my eyes are fixed to the distance meter pleading it desperately to go faster. by the end of it, i am a breathless mass of quivering flesh who feels like the test dummy of an juvenile acupuncture student.
On the other hand the sons and daughters of Apollo,Hercules and Athena in the gym barely seem to break a sweat.they in their fancy sports wear and even fancier sports drinks they saunter through their extensive and rigorous workout like they were taking a lazy walk on a beach even their hair didn't seemed to get disheveled , while i on the other hand looked like i just climbed up Mount Everest and came down on the other side using my face as the break.

If that wasn't bad enough the Gym overlooks the pool which is crawling with people who didn't look like they had ever lifted a dumbell in their life, but had a body which could be used to chisel diamonds with. they had cuts in parts of bodies where i have bumps and their Abs were stretched across their stomach as taught as a trampoline.this was too much for my fragile ego, crushed and mutilated i sneaked out when nobody was looking and decided to taking my running outdoors henceforth.

I am all for health clubs banning fit people from entering them.Now i understand why most Greek and Roman statues have been vandalized. . it was done by people with bodies like mine.

I took to running outdoors, i tell people that i did it because that is where the joy of running is and there are many beautiful nature trails here i can run on. but the truth is that i was driven outdoors in the heat and potential public embarrassment by the Da vinci's specimens of the perfect race infesting my Gym.

The View from on top of the hill was worth the effort!

Running outdoors was great, the trails were well marked and very scenic, some of the trails lead you through a forested area,and one beautiful trail takes you right up to the top of a hill giving a panoramic view of the entire countryside,there were few fellow runners, but ( if you have read my blogs before, you will have come to realize there is always going to be a "but" :) )  along came summer. The damn sun refuses to set till 8 at night,the heat wasn't a problem, for some one coming from between the tropic of cancer and equator a little heat never hurt, its the damn snakes.

I wonder if the Snakes
know about these rules?!

Summer seems to bring out the snakes from their cosy abodes, and lucky me to live in the area infested and famous for its RATTLE SNAKES!!!.
It takes a lot of will power to maintain an exercise regime, and believe me it does not help when you hear so many horror stories of snake siteings and bitings. fitness be damned, self preservation comes first.


My once de-stressing run slowly started turning stressful, while running these trails i am no longer focusing on my breathing , listening to music and reveling in the adrenalin rush. i am now searching furtively with darting eyes for snakes, i am constantly scanning the long grass on either side of the trail for reptiles. every time i hear a rustling noise , my heart leaps out of its place between my ribs and lodges itself in my throat  i have to swallow hard to send it back down. every time i see the grass move, i jump three feet in the air, the hair on the back of my head are at constant attention. i keep forgetting to breathe leaving my gasping for air every 20 yards.i would arrive home at the end of the run looking and feeling like messenger boy who just ran through a war zone and is in need of medical and psychiatric help.

enough sssssaid !!

 It was almost always rabbits,squirrels, wild turkeys or other smaller birds who would trigger the panic attack in me on these trails and the one time i did see a snake on the trail turned out to be a California King snake which Google informed me later was non venomous and make for great pets. i didn't know all that when i stumbled upon him, but didn't stay long enough to acquaint myself to him either, saw the snake , had a mini heart attack , turned and ran for my life in the opposite direction, venomous or non venomous i ain't trusting a snake. i did stay long enough to take a picture though. :) you have got to admit it makes for excellent Facebook posting material.




So driven outdoors by people, and driven back indoors by reptiles..... i suppose none of these Greek gods bite, so i am back safely on a treadmill running like a racehorse, no no not as fast as a racehorse, i run like a racehorse wearing blinders,looking straight ahead, so as not to be distracted by somebody bench pressing a 150 pounds or doing 200 squats or 250 crunches. volume on full high i run in my own world, a world where i am the center of the universe and there are statues of me in Greek temples.

Pretty much how i feel at the end of my run - ;) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES32UFlPOUA

Life iz A Beach !!!

The missus decided that it was about time i visited San Francisco, after the obligatory visit to the golden gate bridge she Whisked me off to this cosy Little nook of a beach called china beach. She told me it was a hidden beach and that not many people knew about it. Once we got there, judging from the number of cars in the parking lot, I realized it was one of the worst kept secrets, like Osama being in Pakistan ( too political an analogy you think).

Decided to leave a message for the aliens to read. :)