Who gets to heaven first?

Growing up in India, I remember this song we used to sing. It went something like this: if you get to heaven before me, keep the door open for me. If I get to heaven before you, "I'll close that door, and to hell with you!"

And that's what any discussion of what needs to be done on global warming invariably reminds me of. The West, having for decades plundered the earth, now, having achieved their prosperity, wants the East to "learn from our mistakes" and make choices that may be the best long-term approach, but cost a lot of money, far more than these economies can afford, given the other, more pressing issues they have to deal with.

The data on how much garbage the West generates, especially the US and Canada, compared to less developed economies is astounding. It's an order of magnitude difference. Yet ask any American (or Canadian) to take the train to work instead of driving in, alone, every day, 10 times a week, and see the uproar you'll get. Driving is an American right, so we say. Raise the price of gas and you might even get us to put down the remote control long enough to email our senators!

Yes, we've now recycle a lot of what we consume, but the (main) problem is the amount we consume. Consumption in countries like India is far lower and reusing things (as opposed to recycling) is a way of life for most.

This was in response to this article http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2009/10/india-stands-lose-most-copenhagen

You don't have to buy a Prius!

Green/sustainable living are hot topics these days and there's no shortage of resources advising you on the best products to save energy. Almost all of them involve buying something which to me is both typical of our American society - give me a pill to make the pain go away - and ironic because it encourages more consumption.

What seems like a much better way, to me at any rate, is apparently too simplistic or not sexy enough to warrant attention: take public transport to save money, reduce gas consumption, reduce air pollution, increase fitness, reduce health care costs and look better? No way! What I need to do to is to buy something - I have to go out and conquer; I cannot sit at home and reuse what I already have.

Hence the Prius popularity - let me show everyone how concerned I am about the environment by spending a boatload of money, instead of taking some much better, more effective, but less sexy steps. Even Chelsea, the city I live in, has jumped on the Prius brandwagon, for Parking Enforcement in spite of a low tax base and very small size: According to Wikipedia, Chelsea is 2.5 square miles - it would be a lot easier for all concerned if parking was enforced on foot, but no, that's not good enough. We have to buy a Prius and then keep it idling while we go checking cars for resident parking stickers.

Thankfully, I've seen at least Cambridge seems to have some parking enforcement done on foot. The entire Boston area is so small and dense that this could be done in many other areas. And maybe some day we'll see some meaningful steps taken in this direction, apart from playing to the gallery.

Went to my first meditation class today and I'm sold!

I started going to yoga about 2 years ago and really liked it and have continued to go, though not as often as I'd like, partly because I started mountain biking this year, which ironically makes yoga more beneficial for me!

Anyway, I hope to continue to go regularly. I prefer what I call a more contemplative style and Jesse at Karma Yoga Studio offers a style that he designed called Physio Yoga which draws heavily from the science of physical therapy and is very focused on prevention of injury, which is something I try to do with any sport or activity.

I've always wanted to practice meditation and have done a little bit - very little - and also tried to do it at home which is very challenging for me. Cambridge Insight Meditation Center has a beginner's class every Tuesday and that's where I went this evening.

It was crowded - about maybe 100 people! And I was surprised to see that there were a lot of men there, maybe as much as 50%, and a lot of them were fairly young ie about my age j/k. I plan to go there every Tuesday and maybe I'll see you there one of these days.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Polk iSonic Review (1st Gen)

I'm starting a review section, only I can't figure out how to make a section (as opposed to them showing up as regular posts) so if you have any suggestions please let me know!

I bought this about 2 years ago when Tweeter was closing down several stores in the Boston area and was selling stuff at a substantial discount. What I like about it - the pros - and the reasons I bought it are:

• HD Radio - I love this feature. I like to listen to a lot of music on the radio (yes I also listen to NPR and PRI) but I really don't like listening to ads. In the car that isn't a problem because I can easily change the station; at home it is a pain. HD Radio is great because there are no ads, better quality sound and you get additional channels. 89.7 for example has 3: 89.7-1 is the regular channel that you get when you listen sans HD Radio, 89.7-2 generally has classical music and -3 has shows playing at different times than the regular channel. The best part is that it's free, unlike satellite radio where you pay 10-12.00 every month.
• Sound quality, in general is supposed to be good, but the sound quality that you get from HD is noticeably different and I had to put that in a separate bullet
  
• It's not a Bose! Bose had captured the market for high-end, 'satellite' radios, but they were expensive and hadn't changed much in years. Polk out did them by adding dvd capability at a price similar to the Bose which did (does?) not have dvd or HD Radio.
• It got excellent reviews from high-end audio magazines for sound and video quality
• I like being able to play my iPhone/iPod through it
• You can set 3 'banks' of preset radio stations, with 10 to a bank, or 30 total
  

Cons:

• The UI (user interface) is poorly designed. I can't give you any examples because i don't have it in front of me and I rarely use it. Apple, imo, has the gold standard for UI especially with the iPhone, and this is nowhere close to it, which is why I don't use it.
• I do have to use the remote, unfortunately. Unfortunate, because the remote is poorly designed. They felt compelled to copy the Bose remote, which I think (can't remember) is well designed. One example is that the preset button is next to the power button, so frequently I'll turn the device off when I meant to change stations. The volume buttons are also not logically located and the remote as a whole is not the least bit intuititive.
• One, very frustrating, example is setting presets. When I first got it I set several presets up the way I wanted to. Subsequently I wanted to add a new preset, and I couldn't figure out how to do it! It's very annoying that a basic function like that should be so hard to figure out.
• While the display is quite large, the size of the text is very small, so that you have to come within 4 or 5 feet to read it, which is annoying, because you have to go very close to it if you want to read which song is playing.

Conclusion: at the time this was the only option that had everything, but I think they rushed it to market to be in time for the Holiday Shopping season and as a result it wasn't well thought out. I know they have since introduced a new version which has an iPhone/iPod dock and is about 3-400.00, which I think is a great deal, because I think it still doesn't have any serious competition if you want HD Radio and DVD in addition to the usual radio, CD player etc.

How come I haven't heard of Flock?!

lovin it!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Saw Inglorious Basterds last night - don't bother

weak plot, weaker acting, and too long. The only minor saving grace was Shoshanna

Making better choices when eating out

I stopped reading Men's Health a long time ago, but I came across this article which is a great source of information and a reference on the nutritional (!!) content of the menus of about 60 restaurants http://ncane.com/a93. Worth a read imo.

Just signed up for my third Twitter account!

http://twitter.com/BernardDeCunha. wish i could just copy all my stuff from my old account instead of doing it manually

Only 23% of high school grads have the skills to succeed in college

and the bar is set low: have a 75% chance of scoring a C or higher in entry level courses. http://bit.ly/1v92kl

This is another important and complex issue - well it shouldn't be that complicated but it is. Maybe I'll talk about why it is complicated and some potential solutions in a future post.

Just signed up with Twitter Feed

http://www.twitterfeed.com/ a tool to automatically send tweets based on your blog postings so that eliminates one step.

Got the idea from http://www.arcticllama.com/blog/

I already have my Twitter feeds going to my Facebook page, so now all I need is something to post to Linked In. Any ideas?

The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare

John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods on 8 common sense and practical things we can do to reform health care without spending trillions of dollars http://ncane.com/clyq

My first charity bike ride

I heard of and managed to get a 'rider scholarship'. Very excited to be doing my first charity bike ride. The ride is from Boston to Provincetown and riders have a choice of doing either Boston to Sagamore Bridge, Sagamore Bridge to P'town, which are each about 63 miles or the whole thing which is 125 miles.

I'm going to do the first leg, and then at Sagamore Bridge decide whether I want to go further or not - at or after that point if you decide you've had enough all you have to do is get to the next rest area - they're 15 miles apart - and they'll drop you at Ptown.

Earlier this year I did a 44 mile ride which is the most I've gone in a single day. The most before that was 30ish but I haven't been riding much since. Hopefully I'll be able to rack up a lot of miles before the ride.

Go to http://www.harbortothebay.org/ for more info and let me know if you'd like to support me for the ride ie contribute to the cause which is AIDS, and for the me the really cool thing is that 100% of all contributions go directly to the cause, in part because they are fully staffed by volunteers. Happy riding!

Boston to get bike sharing program

Just saw this - implementing this would be just a great step for so many reasons:

- reduce pollution

- reduce noise

- reduce gas consumption

- ease pressure on other modes eg bus and train

- reduce traffic congestion

- improve physical fitness

- improve heath

- reduce health care costs (something we desperately need with the 'success' of our universal health program :-)

- save money

We have a long way to go before we catch up to other cities. NYC added 200 miles of bike lanes last year. Boston? 5 miles. Bicycling mag named Boston the worst city to bike in THREE times!

Food meant for kids

I rarely buy any food or drink outside: I much prefer buying it at Market Basket (my favorite grocery store!) and then taking whatever I need with me. Obviously I can't do this all the time but I do it when I can, for 2 reasons: I save money and I get to eat what I want to eat which is generally a healthy choice. 

This doesn't mean I don't eat 'junk' food, but it does mean I look carefully at the nutrition label of every thing I buy and choose what I believe is the best value for something that is low in saturated fat, sodium and sugar and no trans fats. I don't want to get side tracked from my topic for today so I'll save my transfats diatribe for another post :-)

So we were out and Gerard wanted something to drink and since I was getting coffee for myself I allowed him to choose what he wanted. He wanted a strawberry drink which turned out to be a Garelick Milk Chug. I looked at the label and could not believe that it had 48 grams of sugar per serving. The second ingredient was that scourge of our times, (well not as scourgy as trans fats but still) high fructose corn sugar.

How does anyone design a drink meant for anybody that has that much sugar in it? And that too for kids? It's mind boggling. And Garelick is probably patting itself on the back for creating a healthy drink. Nutrition in general can lead me down so many different paths that I'm going to stop here, happy with the fact that I've restarted my blog.

Before I go, I have to throw in one little thing about high fructose corn sugar: check this link out http://www.foodsdatabase.com/LinkedLabel.aspx?FoodId=6660. The second AND third ingredients! Alright, good night

Changes

Ok, so clearly I havent been blogging on anything remotely like a regular basis. So, here's a list of topics that I will be writing on in the next few days:

- nutrition as it relates to children (Garelick Milk Chug)
- mountain biking, my latest passion
- got to go right now so I'll continue this list and/or expand on the above later, hopefully tonight!

HD radio and music in general

Vendor Etiquette

I just replied to a post at Mathew Diehl's SEM blog. You can read his blog and my response here

Not happy but lucky

Woke up this morning to find out that someone broke my car window presumably to rob something. I say presumably because nothing was taken. There were two pairs of sunglasses that the perp clearly saw because he kept them on the seat. I also had a GPS in the glove compartment and it seemed like the glove wasnt even opened.

So I was ticked off because I was on my way to a breakfast meeting and got delayed because I took a few pics and had to clean up the glass (amazing the amount of glass from one window) before I could leave. I couldnt get it fixed today which means I have to wait till Mon morning and drive around with the driver's window open.

All of which is inconvenient but I am glad that nothing was stolen.  

My must have iPhone apps

Here in no particular order are my must-have iPhone apps. All of them are free - so far I havent felt the need to pay for an app, but I'm willing to, if there's value.

These are on my home screen:
Fake Caller - just cool to show friends. I haven't actually used it ;-)
Pandora
iTV - I dont watch TV; this is more for Gerard's programs on the weekend
Quitter - tracks how long I've quit smoking and is a good motivator for me to stay stopped
The Weather Channel
Zenbe - nice To Do/Lists app; there could be better ones in the App Store, but I havent looked that hard
Linked In
Facebook
Say Who - phone dialer; havent used it for a while, since I got my new Bluetooth

Other screens:
Mobile News - headlines from AP
Easy WiFi - auto log into AT&T hotspots
Word Wrap - word game, very addictive, you have to create words using 6 letters and have to have at least one 6 letter word to move to the next level. My highest score is 5960. I could beat that but it gets too easy/boring after some time
If found - call xxxx
yelp
Snap Tell
iChess
SOS Torch
Mini Piano
Pac Man Lite
FSS Hockey
Apple Remote
Guitar Chords

Games that Gerard likes:
Armado Lite
Tap Tap
Light Sabre - cool Star Wars thingy you can play sword fights with
Trace
Whoopie - a fart thingy - Gerard's 5 y/o - enough said

More snow?!

I may be wrong but it seems like we havent had much snow the past few winters. Whether that's the case or not, you certainly can't say that about this winter. We had two snow storms in the last couple of weeks of 2008, one more in early Jan and in the middle of our 4th storm today.

Because I don't live in a single family I don't have much shoveling to do - I still have to shovel in front of our building, but that's shared with the other two owners in my building. But there are two other factors that snow storms add complexity to: one is I live in the city and park on the streets, which means that parking spots are limited to begin with and more so when there's a lot of snow on the ground.

The other, more *interesting* aspect is that my car has rear wheel drive and a very skittish rwd at that. so before I get into a parking spot I have to consider whether I'll be able to get out of it! All of which means that I should probably sell my car, which is a dangerous position for me to be in! Buying a car, I mean!

Gerard on YouTube!

Most of you have seen this but check it out if you haven't and it's still good for a laugh if you have http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8zVWIRQf0k

Just started a new gig!

I just started a consulting position with blue green ventures which is headed by Jeff Eckman , friend, father of a handsome boy, entrepreneur and drummer extraordinaire.

I'm helping Jeff with biz dev for ion interactive, a fast growing firm that focuses on post-click marketing to increase client conversions by at least 400%. This is my first experience with a start-up, having worked for huge organizations for pretty much my entire my career, and the experience thus far has been great!

Happy weekend and for those of us in the Boston area, all the best with the latest storm: go easy with the shoveling and be careful walking on those sidewalks - a close friends' wife fractured her arm last week.

I guess I need to blog more often!

So often, on my way back home I'll plan to update my blog and equally often I forget. But today a good friend of mine said that I haven't updated my blog for a while. I was very pleased that at least one person checks this blog and felt the least I could do was make an entry today. Not tomorrow or next week; today. Thanks Fred!

Gerard and I spent Christmas at my cousin Ajoy's place in NJ. His sister Tania and her family were there too. They both have 2 kids each and Gerard loves hanging out with them. We spent a week with them in the summer which was also a great experience for both of us.

I spent Christmas Eve with Robert and Elke and Elke had made some German cookies which were amazing. We had a great evening and it was very nice to meet their parents and daughter. One highlight of my visits to my cousins' is the food which is always great, but more importantly for me are the sweets which are outstanding; more so at Christmas - memories of Christmases in Bombay!

Another highlight was playing in the snow with Gerard. We had a ton of snow over the past couple of weeks and Gerard and I had such a great time. We went sledding last year which was fun too.

I want to take him skiing but I'm apprehensive about the whole process. I'm planning to take him tubing with Mark, Salil and their boys which should be a good way to start.

That's it for now. I hope to be back soon. I wish you all the very best for 2009!