Once in a while (not once upon a time), very, very rarely, I get fired up about things. I choose to express such feelings even less frequently and hardly ever read the news, unless its for work. Bill Gates however is worth reading about simply for the amusement factor. Bing is the next thing in search (sure, honey!), India needs to produce more Computer Science PhDs (sure, honey!) and so on and so forth. Growing up in Bangalore was very different than what it has turned into now. Of course, for a triathlete, its hell. Waking up at 3am is overrated and really affects your happiness in the long term, just for a bike ride.. added to this, the point of exercise is to get outside.. somehow, communicating this to crazy coaches who draw analogies to tough people that train indoors in the winter was never easy... "yes coach, they train indoors 4 months of the year... im training indoors year-round... thats why I hate the treadmill.... etc. etc."

Parts of my city in specific and country in general have gotten a lot richer, thanks to outsourcing, off-shoring, or whatever you want to call it... perhaps the affluence of a nation is easily seen with the amount of amateur athletes in nice nike gear... why doesnt anyone get it? Now that we are somewhat better off, we have time to run, to think about health, to want to spend time with our families and raise our children well, nothing wrong with any of this.. Of course, being the "third-world" (the term itself being an abomination) outsourcing has also crowded our cities beyond their current capacities and my city is not where I grew up. Everyday trees get cut down to widen roads.. I say (everywhere in the world, not just India) people are too lazy to get off their high horses or cars to walk anywhere.. and if the road is too narrow, maybe a car shouldnt be allowed there in the first place.. since when did cars become more important than pedetrians (oh wait, I missed the 2000 y.o memo.. sorry!).

Anyway, growing up all over the world, my ideas of happiness and progress have a relative comparison scale. For example, outsourcing is very similar to what happened in America even, when the great Steinbeck wrote his awesome books. We are like the Okies, we work for less therefore we attract investment. There is nothing wrong with wanting to live well.. and its not just Bangalore or Beijing that wants this.. everyone, all over the world, does.

From a somewhat young Indian's point of view, outsourcing has killled and encouraged creativity equally. Its only the skeptics that buy one version or the other. I believe the news is good, outsourcing or no outsourcing. Working closely with the innovators in my own country and mostly with Tier 2 and 3 companies, individuals and students, I see that a lot of savvy people and moving along with gaining global competence, with ideas, with marketability and just sheer participation. Yeah, that neighbors son has made his milion and has time to sip coffee and write books and be a rabble rouser about environmental policy, what is so bad about that?

Point being, inertia is a good thing. Sure, I get very riled about the "state-of-affairs" at home but, whats to not like about being able to stand up and do things that my parents couldnt have even dreamt of doing?

What has this ramble got to do with triathlon, you ask? Well, here is a little story.. i started off on what I thought was a 3 hour ride, which turned into a 4:50 ride or more.. When Im riding, I have no concept of time, space or effort. This is why my biking sucks. Sport, like my studies, seems to require an element of concentration to get in the efforts, once in a while. I did not realize this until now... but now that I have realized it, Ive also realized that just training big hours and being self-rigteous about it is not enough.. Laziness manifests itself in so many ways, specially when you think you have time. If you flip the coin and tell yourself you have no time and have to get this done and done right, then the whole equation is different. So, Im currently on a mission, to learn a lot from a smart person with the soul of a mid-western farmer and the vocabulary of Walt Whitman.. Hey, I dont really mind that he is from Buffalo.. he has so much to teach me! Specially about riding a bike.. So, hopefully, Bangalore will also have a lot to offer.. in terms of bounty of the intellectual and the nike-wearing kind.