Reflections

Don't sprint the marathon is not the 'run-of-the-mill' self-help book targeted for all and sundry, but is aimed at overzealous and ambitious parents who relentlessly push their children towards 'success'. The author, V Raghunathan, painstakingly explains that, for most part, all the small things in life do not matter in the long run and it is the attitude and the innate passion that made people like N.R. Narayanamurthy and GM Rao  stand out from the rest. As the blurb on the back cover says, the title of the book does sound very obvious and intuitive,  but then as one of my colleagues, Patrick Marion, mentioned to me once - Knowing does not mean doing.  To that end, I do believe that this book is worth a read for all parents of school doing children. While I did enjoy the small anecdotes and examples of the numerous 'achievers', I do have my complaints. It clearly appears to me that a lot of the messages intended for the audience get repeated over and ...

When I came across this book in my library , and noticed that the blob contains keywords "running" and "memoir",  I had no choice but to pick it up.  Having been running myself and jotting down memoirs of the same, I could not have resonated more. And the book did not let me down. There were several instances/episodes in the book which I felt could have been typed by myself instead. I will try to list a few of them. Before that, I would like to mention one point -- this review is unlike others in this blog,  I have added a lot of my personal take on the different episodes, unlike others where I have just tried to be more objective. The first is the author's observation towards the end of Chapter 3, where he says that even after 20 odd marathons, his feelings during the 26.2 mile race have been more or less the same - good feeling for the first 19 miles,  then the period of pain and frustration,  and finally (once the race is completed) forget the entire...

I just completed this book   and I should admit that I was pretty disappointed. The book titles Valkyrie, the plot to kill Hitler, but makes just a passing reference to this plot. No details have been provided on the plot and the book clearly fails to meet the expectations in that front. The book is in fact the memoirs of Philipp V.Boeselager and in itself a good read to understand the conditions from a German WW2 soldier. The bravery of the soldiers waging a losing war in inhuman conditions, fighting against a Red army who had no scruples sacrificing their civilians to exhaust opposition's ammunition, the bravery of captured soldiers not spilling the beans and revealing co-conspirators even in the face of severe Gestapo torture -- the book is replete with such touching episodes. On the plot to kill Hitler and the role played by the author and his friends, I tend to fully agree with the assessment  this article . In particular, I agree that one gets a felling that a lot o...

Well, I really wanted to write more than just my marathon experiences, but given that I just finished one, I had to write about it. This time, it was the Auroville Marathon on 13th Feb, 2011. I wanted to run Auroville Marathon last year itself, but given that I had finished my first Marathon in more than a couple of years at Mumbai in January 2010, I was not very confident of doing two marathons in two months. So, I just passed it, but heard from all people who ran that this was an amazing trail and too good to miss. So, I was determined that I run it this time around, now that I already had 5 marathons in my bag. I was a little lax in registering for the race and by the time I eventually got to do it, I found that all hotels in Pondicherry were full and I had no option but to stay with my uncle in Cuddalore, about 24 K from Pondicherry. I took the night bus on 11th Feb and reached Cuddalore on Saturday morning. Since it was pretty early in the morning, I decided to walk the dista...

Last weekend, I did my 5th marathon - Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2011. Of all the marathons in India, SCMM is beyond doubt the most renowned and the biggest of them all. And to add to that, this probably is one of the very few marathons in India where the whole city comes out in vociferous support for the runners.  Needless then to say, this is one marthon in the "to-run" list of most runners in India. The run up to the race itself was muddled with a lot of confusions and uncertainties. First the train ticket did not get confirmed till the last day (in spite of having been booked almost three months in advance). Then there was the nagging cold and cough which I contracted exactly four days before the race and one that threatened to only get worse by the day. The third was the unexpected hospitalization of my aunt, with whom I was planning to stay.  Luckily, I was able to work around these and for my cold, I just took a chance hoping that the cold will not cause too ...

For any professional programmer,  knowledge of Design Patterns is necessary not only designing efficient solutions to problems, but also to add to his vocabulary while interacting with other technical architects as these terminology have found widespread usage in design discussions. Head First Design Patterns  is clearly not the book that a design pattern veteran would pick up, nor will it ever be the go-to book when you want your hands on a reference book on the subject. And the book clearly mentions that it is not written with this intent. Rather, this book is for somebody who wants to get an idea of what these design patterns are -- not just their definitions, but more practical explanations such that people do not forget these definitions once they close the book. And I should  say that this book meets this goal. The book covers 13 design patterns in detail and each and every one of them is explained based on a (though sometimes overly synthetic) problem with acc...

Another year and it is time to reflect back if I have grown one year wise or just one year old. Pretty difficult question, I should say.  I am not going to try and fool myself answering this question one way or other, instead let me try to list down some of things that come to my mind as to how 2010 progressed. The three marathons that I ran this year should definitely qualify as one the highlights of this year, with each race being a challenge in itself. Mumbai 2010 was my first marathon in two years and I need to overcome the mental demons as much as the physical challenges. SFO in July 2010 was an unexpected marathon and so I was not clearly as prepared as I would have liked to. Also, this was marathon was after a long layoff due to the shoulder surgery and given the course, this was a difficult race to run. Finally my first 50K race at Ultra in November.  Needless to say, any distance after 42.2K is challenging and 50K was a real challenge. That I did them, though not ne...