WHEN BLOGGING IS SHOT DEAD….

Why do famous bloggers stop blogging?

1. Is it because they forget their username/password and get locked out of their blog?

2. Is it because they start new websites and write for the development of that site?

3. Do they lose their speech because some greedy female fan bit off their tongue (a species of Ardentophilus linguophagicus)? Aside– do ‘they’ have a tongue or several tongues?

4. Do they get elected President?

5. Do they rub shoulders in fashion events with scantily clad nymphs who look like Asian Paints representatives? 

6. Do they lose their sense of humor and start writing columns for other websites?

In case you guessed it, here is a holiday for two to Alaska from me– here is a priceless depiction of the erstwhile blogger Rambodoc (now occasionally seen, like a horse in pajamas, in social media like Twitter or Facebook) on the ramp. The pictures of sundry Asian Paints representatives rubbing their ample assets on his strong arms have been deleted by the Indian Government. 

Oh, and about the Alaska trip? Just buy the tickets. I will buy you a bear beer.

COMPENSATING A BAD MEAL

Over at his blog, the Six Pack Doc talks about balancing caloric intake after you have had a bad nutritional day, pigging out on food and causing nutritional havoc.
If you want to share the gory details of his nutritional excesses, please go there, and spare me!

UNWISE VICE-CRACKS

So this patient of mine (and it was a tough day, lemme tell ya) is asking me in my Outpatient Department room, “So, Doctor, when you say drink a lot of water, why do you say that?”
Me: “Because it is getting hot, and you would lose a lot of fluids from your body.”
Patient: “And how much should I drink?”
Me (increasingly restless with the thought of more such specimen waiting outside): “Around 5 liters…”
Patient: “Should I drink all of 5 liters in the morning?”
Me: “Yes, definitely, if you can. But remember, if you do so, you should NOT drink any more water for the rest of the day.”
Patient (in auto-TV reporter mode): “And how should I drink this?”
Me: “By chewing every mouthful of water properly. Every time.”
There is a class of patient (usually the relative of one) who is born to be a TV reporter. One patient’s husband asked me questions like, “How do you know this doctor (the referring physician)?”, “Where did you study?”, “Are you a South Indian?” and even about my physical lackings (you know how people in India think you have TB if you are looking thinner and ask, “You have become so thin. You used to be more healthy in the past. Why is that?”). To this last question, my patience (not my patients, though) ran out and I said crisply, “Because camel’s milk, which I love to drink, is not available in the stores any more. Can you get me some?”
Then there are patients’ relatives whose stories would need blog posts in their own merit, so honorably funny they were.
Have you encountered the reporter types in the past?

HOW TO STAY FIT IN RECESSION

Over at my new blog, I posted on the above topic, something I put in for DR of Health Habits.
I was among an elite group of health and fitness bloggers (from whom I learn on a daily basis) contributing to Fitness Guru DR at his blog Health Habits.
This is my contribution, and check out those of others by clicking this link:

The intro:
“Indians are always geared to recession, though you may not understand that from the media reports of a resurgent and shining India. Indians are generally conscious of not wasting money, especially while giving it off to people (ask me, I have to take my fees out from my patients through their body orifices!). But, in these difficult times, being careful with your money is a policy that resonates easily with everyone here. We are all finally in one recession-hit global village today!
I have some suggestions:”
Go there if you want to read it.

WHY GOVERNMENT BUSES RUN EMPTY (AND SIMILAR SUCK-CESS STORIES)

Many of my old readers surely know how big a fan I am of Big Government. After all, the tax money collected in the interest of the destitute and the poor needs to be spent on things that are crucial for the poor man on the street. All are agree?, a question Government resolutions are frequently preceded by. Among the various ways our taxes are spent include:
1. Giving employment to unemployable youths.
2. Subsidies to grains, kerosene and sugar so that they can be sold by ration shop owners at a higher price in the open market (after all, the market knows no morals, as everyone knows).
3. Build statues of the great leaders of our country who have saved several billions of dollars of the nation’s monies by transferring them to Swiss banks, thereby ensuring steady and safe growth.
4. Build and run hotels so that the poor relatives and workers of political figures can stay when desire strikes them.
5. Run airplanes that can be used by the poor when regular private airlines are packed to capacity.
6. Pay the bills for helicopter rides and private charter planes that carry our beloved leaders to their farmhouses or mistresses.
And so on. Why rehash this old crap, you ask?
Well, I recently heard of a way whereby another great public service our Government provides us, the Public Transport system, helps us.

(source: http://www.travelindiasmart.com)

Here is an example:
A State Express bus, traveling around 50 kms from point A to point B, is often found to be, in official records, to be running nearly empty. The puzzling contradiction is how those empty buses are never seen in reality. The mystery has been resolved by a group of inspectors who have found that the conductors of the buses are charging a ‘subsidized’ rate, especially from ‘old (monthly-pass) customers’ and allowing them travel without the need to issue tickets. The money is generally split between the hard working driver and the conductor.
Protesting passengers are discouraged– if necessary by eviction from the moving bus. Needless to say, our paying public has found a way to manage this, and a compromise struck with the employees, many of whom have bungalows and cars and marry off their daughters in non-Governmental style. Role models for our wayward youth, surely!
A similarly enterprising group comprises of workers in various Government Hospitals, especially the large teaching institutes.

(source:www.oxfam.org)

A typical example is of a technician in the Radiology Department who performs dozens of x-rays every day, using dyes that are used in the x-ray procedure.
For example, a study called the IVU needs two ampoules of a contrast material (as the dye is correctly called). Now, each ampoule usually contains 50ml. Our enterprising technician uses 40 ml in every case. Every fourth case or so, instead of opening a new ampoule of contrast, he uses the 40 ml of saved material, uses it for the last case, and pockets a brand new ampoule (which has been bought by the last patient).
This ampoule, along with many others that accumulate from his enterprising cost-cutting, is sold to the same neighboring pharmacy from where these patients are asked to get contrast from. Sweet, is it not, how our hard working State employees manage to make some extra money in these hard times?
Extrapolate this to drugs, including third gen antibiotics, anesthesia drugs, suture materials, disposables, implants, catheters, and a hundred other things, and what do you have?
A full-fledged cottage industry of larceny and fraud, complete with 100% tax exemption and 100% job security.
Let us, on this note, dedicate ourselves to Eternal and Enterprising Government!

THE LINES OF HADES

After the minor display of irritation shown by some local youths in Lahore (that the world perversely perceived as a terror attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team), the ripples are rolling like the surface of a hijab blown by the wind. Cause: comments by the Brits.
Now, we all know how crazy they are.

(pic: the Jugum penis-UK, 1880-1920, device to prevent incontinence and masturbation)

Look at some of their historic medical devices– a large number being designed unsuccessfully to prevent men from becoming master baiters. They had too much time (and some other things) on their hands. Now, is it not obvious that Chris Broad is as crazy as the rest of them? At least that is the opinion of the 100-odd people in Pakistan who can tell the difference between a bazooka and a mashooka (most people in that peaceful country think they are both names for bombs). Former Pak cricket captain Mr. Javed Miandad, that high priest of reason, has called for Mr. Broad to be banned. A broadband connection is not difficult to make in Pakistan, these days, apparently.

Mr. Younis Khan, current Pak captain, is of the same opinion. Any reasonable man would realise that the world, recession-hit and with free time in hand, is plotting to give a bad name to Pakistan, whose reputation is right up there with Michael Jackson. Mr. Khan has said that “On top of that, if the kids here stop playing cricket when we become pariahs, they will become terrorists”. Which, Government sources say, would be a big deterioration from merely marrying into their families.
All sane men who carry assault rifles to the toilet understand this reality. The problem, as the Government sees it, is how to make the world understand that it (the world) is like a drug addict that needs to wake up.
Elsewhere in the world, Sanjay Gupta refused the offer of US Surgeon General because he wanted more time for watching pornography and self abuse (the technical term he used was ‘marriage’). He was puzzled to note some missed calls from Bill Clinton.
In an interesting coincidence, the New England Journal of Medicine published a paper showing cultural differences in sexual education and the ‘first time’ the young learn to have sex. The ‘Conclusion’ section is reproduced below:

American youth first learn to do sex when they lick ice cream cones or try charging iPods with their asses. A small minority learn sex around the same time they can pronounce the word ‘innocent’.
Indian boys first learn slapping and kicking, while the girls learn to deliver and breast-feed babies and get addicted to K serials, by which time they begin to understand how things might work.
Rich Indian-American boys learn the ‘withdrawal method’ first.

Mr. Sanjay Gupta will soon be doing a live program on this important subject, according to a spokesman identified only as a Mr. Larry K.

WHY NANDAN CANNOT FIND INDIA ON A MAP

I have not had any urge to write all these days, and I can’t say I am in the best of mindsets to do a good job. However, here is a small essay written, with my active help, by my son. I hope you tolerate me for this. You cannot find a drier piece than this, I am sure.

I live in the city of Kolkata, surrounded by dusty buildings, most of them made of bricks, and some of them of a mix of thatch, wood, mud and plastic. The latter type of building makes for the shanties that freely thrive in my neighborhood.
In one such shanty lives Nandan. I have been seeing him for the last two years. Nandan does not study in my school. He works in a garage next door, by the side of the street.
At those times when the ball flies out of the building walls and lands in the garage (whenever we play cricket in our compound), Nandan is found ready with it, handing it over to us reluctantly. I have sometimes heard him being rebuked by his master for wasting time looking for the ball beneath some damaged car or the other.
Nandan looks like a grease monkey. Really. He works on his back, lying on the rough muddy ground and hands over tools to the car mechanic who is his teacher and mentor. As the day goes by, the muddied lubricants from the spare parts of the cars find their way from his hands to his face and neck. The only thing the black paint cannot hide is his brilliant smile. But that is something I have seldom seen.
Nandan does not play with us, as he is busy at work. When we are at school, he is at the workshop, and when we are playing, he is right there. We got talking sometimes, but not much.
While me and my friends are getting plumper watching TV and playing on the computer, he is thin as a rail. He cannot even find his country on a map, I found! He told me one day that he wanted to learn English and maths, and asked about how my school looked. I don’t know whether he believed me when I told him how grand and old my school was.
At home, Nandan gets to eat with his brothers (while I have none), but his mother is too busy with household work to talk to him or put him to sleep. Or else she is too busy fighting with other ladies in the shanties over whose turn it was at the toilet or the water pump. I have seen this many times from my verandah, high up in my building.
I am sure he must be getting bitten all over at night by bugs, while I sleep in comfort a few storeys above him. I sometimes wonder whether I deserve being better off than him, but then, this is not the age when I need to handle tough questions!

EFFING!

My long-suffering readers know that I am not famous for using intemperate language in this and other blogs.
The taken-aback, perineally loyal Rambophile may wonder, “Pagla gaya kya?”, which is a Hebrew expression meaning, “I love him, V Day to D Day!”. Speaking of which, incidentally, I posted on Facebook that I was wondering if, at my tender age, I should be celebrating this:

Tender, incidentally, is not a politically correct word, in this age and context.

Do check out my short piece called ‘Microvalentine’s Day’ (old post).

Before I wade into another mile of this nonsensical ramble, I should set the record straight:
I don’t mean Effing in your kind of effing sense.
This is a radical, new verb. My invention. It intends to describe an activity that “uses E-sources for Food and Fitness.”
Brilliant, wouldn’t you say?
So, let us carry on about Effing.
This post, following on from the earth-shaking previous one titled ‘The Fat Loss Plateau and Beyond’, is focused more on the same, by popular demand.
I promise you I will talk sense, and will not bore you with statistics and evidence. I will, instead, use my anecdotal example.
I started working out in the gym an year ago. I found I was getting stronger, but I knew I had a long way to go before I could be considered fit. I also found that I had lost only so much fat in spite of a lot of effort. This is the very common conundrum that is called the fat loss plateau.
I used certain tricks that are threatening to make me the next Adonis with a six-pack neck (anywhere else, it is all so passé, so upwardly upper class!).
I got a free account in FitDay. This made me focus on exactly what I was eating on a daily basis. The results astounded me. Take a look.
This is a typical day’s intake when I was working hard and yet seeing no fat loss worth the name:

You can see that a huge truck-load of calories was coming from carbohydrates in the flour and other grain sources, apart from sugars. Luchis are fried breads, aloo dum is fried potatoes in gravy, and samosa is a savory- fried flour pastry stuffed with spicy potatoes and a few minor vegetables.
I decided to cut that out. On the day when I fast and then break it, eating gustily in the four-hour window (read previous post on the subject linked to above), see what happens:

I still ate rice and pancakes (the Indian equivalent) but I logged less than a hundred grams of carbs (and far too low of the proteins I need), and only half the calories I could have eaten. But that was because my mother cooked for a family get together, and who can miss out on mothers’ cooking, right? Incidentally, you can see how badly balanced a South Indian vegetarian diet is (the last four items were ‘aloo curry’, ‘sevai’, ‘kirai’ and ‘appam‘) from the chart. The names ‘ON’, and ‘ON’ powder refer to the whey protein supplement made by Optimum Nutrition. Casein is ‘channa‘- milk protein.

So, I cut out grains from my diet. I checked again, another day:

I was still eating some rice, and worse, I was getting a lot of calories from the occasional ‘treat yourself’ sweets and the modest alcohol I drank on a given day (a get-together of family or friends). This was revealing: in spite of a conscious effort, I was still letting things slip, thereby blunting the results. I became more vigilant. Look at the typical IF day chart now:

Violá! I was hitting the sweet spot: I was actually consuming more proteins and fats, and getting closer to the 50 grams daily dose of carbs I was looking for. I think a carb intake of up to 100 grams daily should be good enough for fat loss, especially if you eat clean and keep within your total caloric requirements. Think Primal Living.

So Intermittent Fasting works well to reduce total calorie intake, but you have to be very careful and diligent if you want to reduce your carb intake. Too often, even geniuses can eff up with their resolve, allowing the calories to slip in.
If there is one thing for the reader to take home now, it is the fact that so much of your intake is what you would forget when asked: “I don’t eat at all, but I still gain weight!” The blame is shifted to last year’s hysterectomy, gall bladder surgery, thyroid problems, baby, genetics, and even the weather!

Eating clean will bring in results, especially if you are active physically, and not merely doing what my son said (when asked about his exercise of the day), “I worked out my fingers really hard, playing FIFA World Cup on my Playstation!”

Keeping an online journal lets you be objective in analysing your results:

So, I know how much tighter I should control my food, or when to be a little easier on myself, without losing track of the larger goals.
I also keep a mini-diary in the site, like this:

So you think you burn a thousand calories in the treadmill, so you can hog that dinner tonight? Look at this:

I believe I burn more than 3500 calories a day, but that does not make an effing difference to the computer! So, sadly, we have to believe the records. Moral of the story:
Keep your food journal diligently, and learn from your mistakes. It takes 5-10 minutes a day. It gives you more rewards than Twitter/Facebook/blogging, and other things for which we try to carve out some time.
Happy eating, this Valentine’s Day! Incidentally, if you think of gifting me a bottle of Ballantine’s for next year’s V Day, think of a fifty year old single malt instead. It’s twice my age!

A HOME TRUTH

The wife needed to go to the tailor and was one driver short. This was one of those occasions an alpha male finds himself poorly fitted to oblige. However, when one is the guarantor of the other’s debts, one has but little choice. Not for this occasion the male choice of resting from the rigors of city life in one of the clubrooms or the (environmentally friendly) dimly lit lounge bars where one can be with the kind of company where discretion is the sole chaperone. The ones quite favored by business owners when cooking the books with their auditors in a public-private venture.
Anyway, I drove her to the depths of Wellington, Central Kolkata, to which hellhole this Muslim tailor had shifted. Incidentally, all half-decent tailors in Kolkata are Muslims, and I dare say the same applies to specialists in gold filigree, embroidery, etc. in other metros. Wonderful word that: ‘etcetera’: comes in very handy when you want to escape the imminent public visualisation of the bottom of your knowledge.
After reaching somewhere near the destination, I showed immeasurable common sense in parking my car, and engaging a hand-pulled rickshaw to the ultimate spot and back. Now those of you who live in places with flat roads may get shocked. “Why couldn’t you walk or take a cab? How could you ride on a hand-pulled rickshaw, a living symbol of the depths of mankind’s cruelty and oppression?”
To which I nod my head, South Indian-like (a Zenthil), and say, “Quite, quiet!”
A polite way of putting duct tape on protesteth os oris.
When you have delicate female folk who can’t walk except on named streets like Bond Street, Fifth Avenue or Champs D’Lysée, you have a big problem in life. You need to deal with violent retching, the covering of face with nearest available clothing (one important reason for women to use a dupatta or stole), and the “Omigod, it is so dirty!” (repeated till you begin to retch), as if you were personally responsible for the recent decline in civic standards.
So you cop it, and do good to the rickshaw-pulling industry. You refuse to get up, but concede to public demand, and take pictures.

At the tailor shop, Her Majesty got a calendar as a token gift. Women, some men believe, are inherently brimming with the frothy cappuccino of human goodwill and bhadrata (‘gentility’ is a close translation, perhaps). When we got off back at the car, she (spontaneously) offered the calendar to the rickshaw-puller.
“Didi, I live on the pavement. Where will I hang this calendar?”, he asked with a smile.
The lady went red in the ears, and was muttering remorsefully to herself. Or to me, but I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about how I (ever the consumer in the open market) reduced the rickshaw puller’s initial demand of the fare by ten rupees, to which the clever rascal immediately consented.
I went there the next day, and yes, he was there all right. I gave him his ten rupees back. He smiled again.
Sometimes, being kind, being a sucker and being charitable are entirely different things. What do you say?

MARY KISS MASS

Though I am a hard-headed atheist since the time the infant Rambodoc slipped mischievously from his Ma’s lap and hurt his little head, I have a soft spot for a little head. This soft spot includes celebrating religious holidays like Kiss Mass Day.

Today being accepted by broad consensus as such Day, I went out of my way to ‘enjaay‘ the holiday. To this end, I went into a multiplex armed with a fistful of tickets to a movie about cloning. The movie was called Ghajini. This was about a The Incredulous Hulk clone made into a movie that was cloned from a Tamil clone of an English/American movie.

Except that this desi Hulk does not seem to eat anything to justify his muscles. He just keeps getting whacked in the head, and this seems to stimulate as much Growth Hormone release as claimed by the various supplement companies who live in my Junk folder with the sole purpose of inducing me to buy their wares, to give an additional three inches to my manhood. To which temptation I have never succumbed even when the pickings were short in the lean seasons. If you can understand my tortured metaphors.

To get back to the movie, Aamir Khan’s muscles grow from his brains to his ears, after making a business class round-trip to his legs. When tears cloud his eyes, you can see 58 muscles twitching in tetanic fury. When he gets walloped from the back, you can see the haarmoans pumping up his delts and traps, and he swats mutant Ganjas like a gesticulating Amar Singh in Parliament while denying allegations of bribery. All in all, very impressive. I mean Amar Singh’s escaping those allegations, and more so his great contributions to the poor of the world. Like Bill Clinton.

One thing about this movie is that it seemed to attract all the gays in the city. The guy next to me (he was alone, and this is always a negative feature in a guy, according to my wife) was singing along with Aamir in the song sequences. There were some other (equally single) guys who stood up and clapped when Aamir came out of a BMW, as if they had been paid for that errand. So the general impression from the straight perspective was that “That guy is a gay. Imagine clapping for a guy! I can accept getting the clap from a girl, but this! Fagging gays!”

The morning show started around 10 in the morning, as promised (you know, there is a 10 PM show in the evening, too, but the movie guys took us in the morning, as they said they would). By the time the last punch had landed, Aamir Khan had put on around 300 lbs of lean muscle, and the sun outside had set. We had to make the most of the Great Holiday and left even as the last song was threatening to spill over on to dinner time, with the producers of the movie exhorting us not to leave, and to get every penny of the ticket price back with bonus decibel points. “Thanks so much, but we will be back for the sequel, whenever you find a suitable clone, that is”, we said, and took a much needed toilet break.

I then went down and bought groceries. I will soon drive a couple of hours till the next block where I will, with family pulling the leash, give a gift at a party, and rush back quickly in another two hours so that I can shut my eyes on another great, memorable day.

How was your Kiss Mass Day?