My changing tastes

I am told I had extremely poor taste in clothes. I preferred dull monochromatic shirts. Usually they were beige, gray, dark blue, black and sometimes white. I rarely wore nice polo shirts preferring collar-less T's. My friend Krishna on the other hand would wear bright colors such as Red, Crimson, and Light Blue and for some reason it would make me cringe. I probably felt it drew attention to me.

In fact my taste could have be described as follows; drabber the better

Something changed over the past half a decade. A lot of this was merely mental adjustment on my part that I am wrong most of the time. Along with this understanding came the realization that a lot of the things that were earlier important seemed no longer relevant.

Then I discovered colors. I am not saying this in the same sense that Columbus discovered America. This is one of those cliches on self discovery.

Now I like bright colors in shirts. These dresses were probably always nice; who know why my mind has begun accepting it recently. In fact on a trip to India 2 years ago someone called me a Metro sexual. I chose to take at it as a nicest compliment!!

Earlier I liked no variety in food. During the first 9 months in the US, my lunch consisted of 2 boiled eggs, 3 cheese sandwiches plus salt and pepper. My dinner consisted of 2-3 microwaved potatoes cooked with some spices along with 6-8 slices of toasted white bread and plain yogurt. I never got bored of this menu.

Now I try new food and actually enjoy eating out. That does not mean that if my wife made deep-fried potato curry every day to go with toasted Italian bread I would complain. My waist line may, I definitely would not.

My wife feels very proud about this fact; it took her 15 years to mold me to her taste!! I fortunately cannot make such a claim. She is unchanged from the time I met her.

I Ran A Relay Marathon

Over the past weekend I took part in a marathon in Delaware. A few of us were part of relay. In case you are wondering what a relay marathon is - quite simple. Most of us cannot run 26+ miles so 4 persons run as a relay team for a total of total of 26.2 miles. The lead runner tackles the first 10 miles with the next three running 5.4 miles each for a total of 26.2 m. For this race, there were almost 100 relay teams. Quite a few of us were so unfit we ran when we could and when we were winded we walked.

Our group was named - Chariots of Fire. We were 28 runners in 7 relay teams. Amongst our 4 member team the first runner, Mark, ran his 10 miles at an impressive 8 minute per mile for a total of 1H:20M. The 2nd member Mary, ran her 5.4 mile leg at about 14/15 minute per mile for a total of 1H:15M. The third member, Charlie, took 1H:5M for his 5.4 mile leg. I was told I took 1H:6M for the last leg. Charlie, 3rd leg of my team, was the first person to come back (amongst our seven teams) so you could say I had an advantage. Due to the fact that I was unfit and had to walk for a little while and the 4th runner of another team overtook me and won the race for his team. We came overall 2nd. BTW, the friendly race was only amongst the 7 teams. We could not have competed with the other teams. The fastest relay teams would have averaged 2H:45M and my team finished it in 4H:48M!!

To put it in perspective (how slow we were), I ran at about a 13 minute per mile pace over a 5.4 mile course and the overall marathon winner yesterday ran a 6 minute/mile over 26+ miles and he was a slow marathoner since world class ones run closer to 5 minute a mile pace!!

Wow!!