Its been a while I posted.. Last six months I had hectic travel due to my work..most of the time to Bangalore. Will share those experiences and also at present I am preparing for Mumbai Marathon next week..will post the pictures and experience of the marathon..Running for Mumbai marathon was one of my important item in the Bucket list of To-Dos in life…I am really super excited for the marathon..I will be running the half marathon this time..Need your wishes:)

1. Unconscious Incompetence:  I know not that I know not.
2. Conscious Incompetence: I know that I know not.
3. Conscious Competence: I know that I know.
4. Unconscious Competence: I know not that I know

If there had been one great social bookmarking tool I enjoyed using in the last five years it was delicious. The ease of use, knowing the popular bookmarks, easy plugins with Mozilla. Folksonomy or social tagging was a step ahead from the conventional browser based bookmarking. This helped us a lot to access our bookmarks anywhere wherever we need.

Few years back Yahoo acquired this and said it is going to improve this service further.

Now I get a ail from Yahoo today saying they sold of. This company so infamous for acquiring killing some big products, why could they not turnaround this product.  But since Yahoo had plans to pull the plug from delicious, I have already migrated to Google bookmarks which is the only closest thing which is as good as delicious but the missing features are social aspects. I do not know which are the famous links, networking etc. I will live with that anyway until AVOS does something for delicious.

I had a need to update my movie and songs list today and was looking for a tool that would ensure the song lists updated in my external drive and my laptop hard disk. Found this simple Microsoft tool SyncToy. You can choose two independent folders ( left and right folder ) to keep your data in sync between folders.The best options that comes with this tool

1. Two way syncing also Echoing a particular folder / Subfolder.
2. Very simple and intuitive UI.
3. Also you can create many pairs of folders and you can run the pairs whenever you need to / schedule the synch.

This blog was started in 2006 and this would be my first post from mobile apps. Yes I now blog either from my iPod touch or the HTC Mozart windows phone 7. This is too cool for micro blogging I must say. Amazing growth of technology. Though this is existing for a long time I could afford this only now. More posts to come from my app soon

As I reflect about the last one year had - 2010, the amount of changes that had happened were not just a few. So wanted to list some of the great things that had happened in this year for which I must thank many people who helped pass through this journey.

The year 2010, started with the final term of my post graduate program in XLRI but a great term in terms of learning important things for my life. Got some of the great friends in this place and getting a gold medal made the last term very eventful though there was a heartbreak in my previous term. My mother had her day in my convocation, it was one of her long waited sight which I keep hearing from my school days - Finally she was happy that at least once I could get her the sight of getting a medal.  Left XL with a good number of friends who had helped me pass out this place successfully and also a few I was not interested to meet ever in my life. But saying that I do not have any grudges against any of them all forgotten now, all helped me in my learning.

Joined Microsoft in March, started the journey of work for second time. Great team at my work made the remaining part of the year very memorable. I finally shifted my home from Coimbatore this year. Yes, after 44 years of living in Coimbatore, my mother had to shift with me to Hyderabad. This was one big change she herself never expected.

After about 4 months of working in Hyderabad in couple of roles, got an opportunity to work in Redmond for 3 months. End of July, I flew to Seattle. Made new friends in this place and first time ever in my life I started running. All thanks to my coach and my super boss, Matt who coached me in swimming and inspired me with his Iron Man participation. I started swimming regularly and knocked of a minute from my timing log for a 100 yard swimming. Cycling a 100 mile, completing two 5Ks and swimming a 2.5K were some things I would consider as sincere efforts in my training when I was in Seattle. Also learnt a bit of cooking during this time and tried some different cuisines like Lebanese, Ethiopian, Mexican, Thai… Left Seattle gaining a good fitness and determination to run more when I get back to India.

After coming back to India, traveled further for some recruitment trips. This year I had visited all metros in India. Took a vacation with my Mom and visited Taj. The beautiful sight of Taj Mahal is still in my eyes, early morning run at Agra around Taj and entered the place at 6.00 AM. I would rate the sight of Taj early morning as one of the best time to see it. Went around Agra, Mathura and Shikri with Mom. And by the way during this I have also added another few sites to my journey to complete visiting the 28 UNESCO heritage sites in India. I have so far visited 12 of the 28 sites, and in 2011 I hope to add a few more to this.

Learnt some new things in this year - finally I can drive a car now and got my driving licence. I can read Telugu slowly like a first standard kid, I am at this stage only now. I completed my first half marathon in Bangalore with my best friend. Though both of us struggled, since we were running a half marathon in midnight after a long day walking around the city.  The year closed in Mumbai, with my XL friends.

I hope this new year, 2011 would also be a very eventful journey. Lots to learn new and I continue to change for the good..Happy and Prosperous New Year 2011 for all.

During my three month stay in Seattle, I really had improved in swimming. All thanks to Matt, my HR Director who trained me to improve my breathing in water. I almost had a 3 month continuous practice of swimming in one of the best indoor pools I have seen so far. It was called the Pro sports club which had 3 indoor heated 25 yards pools. I was tracking my time taken for doing a 100 yard lap, which I started with a 2.45 minutes when I reached Seattle in August. Before leaving to India I could take a minute off from the timing. I could do the 100 yards in 1.45 minutes. That was the improvement I could see in the 3 months of training and retraining. But what I also improved was my stamina, I could do a 3KM of swimming. Which I could never ever done before my regular training.

The best thing which I enjoyed during my swimming trainings was the amount of time I get everyday to reflect upon my various activities at work and other than work. I felt it was a time for myself to prepare, plan and pursue on my personal development plan. Later I started to increase my mileage by lot of biking and running at Seattle. These two are something which I am doing very dedicatedly even after coming India.

In the past till I was in my engineering I had very little or no time for reflection. But later I found the best things happened in life were because of the time I spent consciously on reflecting upon my actions and thoughts periodically. This could be a weekly or monthly. But the time spent on self-reflection or you can call it as introspection is an investment for your personal improvement. It has brought in lot of change in me and it would be the same for anyone who can put in the time periodically in reflection. This is one of the reason I do not want to miss out my Triathlon practice everyday – either running, swimming or biking.

Anyway I would be running the Bangalore Midnight Marathon on 11th Dec @ 0000hrs. This would be my first half marathon, you can cheer me up by sending your wishes as comments or email. Which would motivate me to practice regularly in the last few weeks and complete the half marathon next month.

More updates about my Half marathon and especially my long biking expeditions recently coming soon Now I need to catch up some work.