I was born crying like all other millions and billions of babies ever born. I grew up fighting, biting, falling and studying, like everyone else. Yet, I somehow feel different from the rest of them. Life is a wonderful thing. It gives each and every person ever born, a unique experience. Nuances here and there…

Yet, most of the people sterotype themselves after they reach a certain age/time in life. Life wants them to have different experiences than that of the neighbor. Yet, the human mind tells them to have exactly what their neighbor has. Life wants them to be varied and diverse (in thinking)…but the human mind tells them to constrict themselves into narrow mindsets drawn by religion, culture and elders.

I look around everyday and find stereotypes. Stereotypes want to buy a house, bigger (or same) than that of the neighbor, buy a better car if not the same, have a bank balance that resonates more than the neighbors and so on and so forth. There ends their thinking. There ends love and passion. There ends the variety that life gave them. There ends all the uniqueness and glorification of a beautiful life.

Material objects don’t mean a thing. Yes, they are necessary to give you peace of mind. They are essential to give you the freedom to do things
you want to do. But as Brad Pitt says in fight club – “the things you own end up owning you”….

My spirit wanders freely. I have taken upon huge tasks and they don’t seem a burden. They look more like challenges. Challenges to rise above
normalcy. Challenges that make me a better person and add value to my life’s experiences. And yes, in spite of all this, my spirit wanders freely.

Life is good!

Since I am aiming at running a full marathon, I decided it would be good to start collecting a few interesting facts about marathons in the first place. The following has been mostly gleaned from Wikipedia, and is the first in a series of “Marathon bytes” that I will be writing.

The marathon is a long-distance running event of 42.195 kilometres (26 miles 385 yards) that can be run either as a road race or off-road

The name marathon comes from the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek soldier, who was sent from the town of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon. It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping and burst into the Senate, exclaiming “Νενικήκαμεν” (Nenikékamen, ‘We have won’ or ‘We are victorious’) before collapsing and dying of exhaustion.

The world record time for men over the distance is 2 hours 4 minutes and 26 seconds, set in the Berlin Marathon by Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia on September 30, 2007.

The world record for women was set by Paula Radcliffe of United Kingdom in the London Marathon on April 13, 2003, in 2 hours 15 minutes and 25 seconds.

My New Year resolutions seem to be getting resolved this year! I had always wanted to run a marathon in my life. I just never gathered enough motivation or enough guts to go about it. Well, I finally did make the commitment to run the 26.2 miles this year. I will be blogging regularly about this. Meanwhile, please click here to know more about why I am running and what this is all about!
Note to self : Keep updating the blog

I am a big fan of mexican food. I love everything from the salsa to the tequilla, from the taquitos to the fajitas. I thought I had tasted excellent mexican food from expensive restaurants in NYC and elsewhere. So what was different? Well, for a change, I had the experience of tasting mexican food…..in Mexico. And I thought after my first bite into the taquito, American Mex food is nowhere near the actual deal.

The so called “chips” and “salsa” served in american restaurants is far from reality. The chips are much thicker, made from a totally different flour, are fried and served on the spot. I don’t even need to elaborate the salsa part.

On the whole, an eye opening experience in Mexico.