Start of a new year

This is the winter of 2013 in Mumbai, where the definition of winter is that the temperature goes to 18 odd degrees Celcius :)

Welcome to my blog, where I will be writing exciting new observations this year from my perspective and I will start about it with myself. I m based out of Bombay, love to travel, continuously keep meeting new people, due to the nature of my job.

This year of 2013 is interesting, since I have christened it as the year of the health. I am making conscious effort to improve the quality of my physical human body, which over the years has completely degraded and detoriated in to the absymals depths one cannot even imagine.

So what have I done?? I started the year by getting a new iPhone 5 smartphone, and loaded a few applications of software that tracks my health activity and I have started walking, yes you heard it right walking. After tremendous research both online, offline etc, I have come to the conclusion that 45 minutes or 3 miles approx 5 KM of walking daily or even 4 times a week, will help reduce weight by almost 15 Kgs and is better than running / weight lifting etc, which can hurt your body in ways you cannot even imagine.

Due to my travel, I have started carrying a pair of sneakers which I just put on and go for a walk in the neighborhood and my little handy app on the smartphone keeps a track of what all I have done. I make a conscious choice in the kinds of foods I put into my body, so have become a bit more finicky on food.

So lets us see, if I can make progress, it is the first month, the goal is to continue this till the end of the year, I shall keep reporting and keep letting you know on what happens.

Thanks,
Shiva

Bombay Monsoons

Well here I am sitting on the computer on a lazy sunday afternoon. Had gone for a movie (Ice Age 3) with the kids, it was a pretty good movie, kids loved it. It is gently raining outside and after a long time I am really enjoying the day without any committments, no emails, no phone calls, no parties etc. Life should be like this.

So what all have I been up to, for starters, went and saw the complete Entourage Seasons (not sure how many of you have seen it), it comes on HBO and is really good. Have re-started listening to ColdPlay, i.e. getting new music and am reading Dale Carnegie / Warren Buffett / Nandan Nilekani.

Over the past 3 months, I have again involved myself into the Mapmyindia GPS navigators sales and have been actively pushing the sales of our new products along with my colleagues, I can actually see the market coming around and it is nice to see the hardwork paying off. Things I had done 2 years ago is now paying off and we are actually in market making mode.

Outside of sales, I am going to start core engineering i.e. learn how to work and repair cars, have also started programming (coding) for the kicks of it. Over-all in a sweet spot of life.

This past weekend, I went to Pune and loved the city, it is small and kinda sweet, unlike the big bad metropolitan Bombay/Mumbai where I live. Family is doing well. Kids have started soccer, dancing, chess etc.

More till later,
Namaste,
Shiva

2 years hence

It has been 2 years since I moved back to India and it has been a journey, have shifted houses, cities, office locations but it has been well worth it. As someone says life is a journey.

MapmyIndia, where I spend most of my waking hours is growing by leaps and bounds and in general the atmosphere around mapping/gps/navigation etc is doing extremely well. Marketplace is coming around.

Kids have grown up, the little boy has started speaking Bambiya Hindi - local flavour of bombay-hindi, little girl goes a quaint playschool in Mumbai and adjusting well.

This past new years we went to Matheran (a little hill station near bombay around 2 hour drive), where you have to drive upto a point and then leave your car ( you need to go horse back or walk), no cars allowed into the town (one of a kind in India). Kids had a ball of a time, and it is so dirt cheap (the entire trip cost only Rs5,000/- around 100USD) for a family of 4 four with a baby sitter (eating/loding etc all), nothing can be cheaper than that.

This past weekend we went to Sariska, a tiger forest reserve near Alwar (Rajasthan - 3 hour drive from Delhi). It was a great reserver but all the tigers have been killed, some months ago, government introduced 2 tigers hoping to rejuvenate the population. This was my first experience to a national park in India, and I must say it is really cool, should do more of these.

On a personal basis I have put on lots of weight and have become really lazy, as there are servants and helpers for all sorts of things and one does not have to even lift a finger (bed tea is served on a daily basis and i have not ironed my clothes in 2 years). Yes India is irritating at times, specially traffic (it SUCKS!!), if someone has to live in India, his/her commute time should be not more than 20 minutes. All in all, it is fun and I look forward to travelling more around India, now that my kids are a little bigger.

Namaste till next time,
Shiva

Return to Mumbai (Bombay)

So I have finally moved to Mumbai. It used to be called Bombay when I lived here over 13 years ago. Well, where do I start from. Traffic sucks and takes a lot of time from your daily worklife, meaning you start your day early and come home late.

Now Mumbai is a mini-India, whereas you find people from all walks of life, all regions, languages, cultures, class in the city. So it is like re-entering India, repeating the same experience like when I came back to India early this year.
We have gotten a place in an area called Bandra, it rocks and the locality is the most happening in Mumbai, lots of great eating joints, very lively and Bandra-Khar is the center of the metropolitan area. All in all not much has changed in the 13 years, property prices are still very high, schools are tough to get admission into, all the corporate houses still exist though some have moved their headquarters, Borivalli is not considered a far off suburb, trains are more packed then ever, but overall feel of the city is the same, only traffic has become much worse.

People are very professional (compared to rest of India), and most of the work is point to point. Now on the personal front outside of my observations about one of the largest Metropolitans in the world.

The son refuses to believe he is in Mumbai, and wants to return "home" to Bangalore. The little girl refuses to crawl, more so in Mumbai because there are no people who can take her 'Godhi'. Wifey has started using the local trains (something even I am scared off), and swears by it when commuting to work. Still opening boxes, kind feels weird goign from a luxury apartment to a small place in Mumbai (still large by local standards). Hey did I mention, we have started selling our MapmyIndia Navigator Feel free to pick up one.

More till next month. Btw I am linking to this search engine such that hopefully this message of my blog goes to more and more folks. Blog Search Engine

Cheers,
Shiva