The diet, retry number 008

I am on a diet, I declared triumphantly after completing a day on a diet. Earlier declarations used to be before the start and hence always failed, or so I thought. I walked into a supermarket and the ribs with grease never smelled this good, not that I eat those. I felt the whole world is against me fitting into my favorite Tee again. So I realized it was me against the world. I came out from the super market with just a fruit. Ha, World 0 - Me 1

Did you hear 'Borders', one of the biggest book chains , is going out of business. They are having a sale with everything priced at 10-50%.I walked into the store and saw some of my all time must read books on sale. Books like, 'Chicken soup for the soul' 'Who moved my cheese' 'Nobody moved your cheese' were on sale. Reading the names made me hungry today, not for knowledge. So it's the world against me again!! But still, World 0 - Me 1.

As you know my room-mates were searching for a new room-mate as I am moving out. They found one, who does not have much interests in cooking. Out of the blue he decides to cook, not that he cooks everyday. And guess what, he can work magic with spices in a dish with some help from our all knowing savior, messiah from Him, Google. The aroma from the food was magical, like the one I had never smelt before. So again it's the world against me. I slept with just a fruit juice, not succumbing to pressure from the forces to be.  World 0 - Me 2

Happy that I could complete a day, I went to bed early to avoid further temptations. Fruits have a strange way of working. Even beer would not wake you up at the middle of the night for the nature's call, but fruits do. I woke up in the middle of the night and after finishing my business, I realized that I was hungry. So it's the world against me in the middle of the night.

I walk into the kitchen and see that there is some left over from dinner and that's when I realized that the world kept dropping hints to not diet at all. I now respect the decision of the forces to be and no longer even attempt to diet. I know the world is a wonderful place meant to eat drink and be merry. So eat up people. Dear world, I give up, You win. Let's not keep scores any more

Online since...

I went to Mumbai for the first time in Dec-2006 for the new year's. I was amazed by the city and decided to blog about it. So on January 5, 2007 this blog was born. I used to post at a different address but later on moved to this link.
My first post was ' Local trains faster than Planes, vada paav better than 5 star hotel buffet'
,inspired by a friend's post about Delhi when he was there for his training.

Why the name?
I decided to blog and at that time was deciding on a name. I saw a book (diary sorta) my wife used to maintain. It was named 'Rich-Tales' and got that idea for this blog.

Why the blog?
I wanted to maintain a diary no one at my home snooped into. An actual diary never worked. So went online. I knew they would never find out ;)

On a serious note, wanted to write a travelogue and started this as a trial. No travels happened after this Mumbai trip. Correction: I did not get a chance to travel after this Mumbai trip for about 6 months.  So moved on to maintain this as a journal for my jibber-jabber.

What else?
I got into photography by this same time. Once I thought I was ready for an SLR, after 2 years with my point and shoot, bought one and started publishing my pictures here  since Mar 9, 2009.
This was my first flickr post

Wanted to check out twitter and tried out this. Not very active there. Very Active these days.

Why this post?
Read a couple of blogs talking about their humble beginnings. So wanted to check out how long have I been blogging. It's been 4 and a half years. There it is, my humble beginning and the humble present ;)

Trip Report: Miami, FL. Part-3

Day 2 ended with just sign seeing around Key west. Day 3 was filled with activities.
We thought of going to another one of the beaches. We lost our way and ended up at the southern most tip.

Found a guy selling tender coconuts here. We quenched our thirst with coconut water and headed to a beach
Felt like home with coconut water and a beach
We decided to visit Smathers Beach.

This beach is know for its shallow waters upto a mile. We walked about 1/2 a mile in the water. This beach does not have waves hitting the shore. A lot of activities happen around here. You can either hire a water bike and roam around or you can get a peddling boat or a kayak or a surf board on rent. We decided to hire a kayak
Kayaking is tough as you are fighting against  forces of nature, wind and water. I was scared when ever my kayak was facing sea. I could see just water and got the feeling of being mid-sea and lost. Thanks to wind which turned me back again and I could see the shore. Kayaking was a good experience, though a tiring one.

Saying bye to the beach is a tough task. We said bye like Ross said bye to the room in Barbados. Back to our mundane lives, back to our busy schedules, back to work. It is at times like these we look back to how we forget that we can manage our time well. The division between all these is only in our minds

The fence created when we say, Sorry, no time

And its almost time to plan the next trip, followed by a trip to India