I've been enjoying Naveen Richard's content

I've been watching standup and sketches by comedians of Indian origin for several years. Most of these are from the same mould. The comedian is someone who makes fun of different ethnicities and their idiosyncrasies. There's a sketch or two involving different accents. Then there's the sketch about the parents of the comedian and how the comedian was raised. These comedians are entertaining but after a while they all touch the same themes of race, terrorism, "white people". Isn't there something more original?

Over the last year I've been really enjoying the sketches of Naveen Richard on YouTube. Naveen and his friends(colleagues?) run the Them Boxer Shorts channel. Naveen now also has stand-up specials on Amazon Prime. By watching his shows I've learnt that Naveen hails from Coimbatore which is in Tamil Nadu where I'm from. This connection might be a factor why I can really connect with some of the themes he touches upon. Most of his sketches feel original, creative, non-repetitive and well-thought-out. The sketches seem to display some sort of creative energy and you can feel that the writers had fun creating them. This is usually how things start out before they go big. I just wanted to write and say keep up the good work Naveen.

What makes up a healthy life?

I think during the course of my life so far I've figured out that the secrets to a healthy life are surprisingly simple, at least on paper. These seem to be:

1. Eat a balanced diet, mostly plants.
2. Get enough sleep, this seems to be around 7-8 hours for me currently.
3. Exercise regularly, at least 35 minutes 3 times a week would make me happy.
4. Meditate on a regular basis, I haven't figured out how often to do this.
5. Be social and interact with other people on a regular basis.

These are most of the pieces that make up the answer. The challenge is to do it consistently, I haven't figured that part out yet. Logging activities helps some, being mindful of everything one does helps others.

Senses come alive

Every time I visit my parents home in Chennai in India, where I grew up, all my senses seem to come doubly alive.

There's a ton of sounds all around, from a plethora of birds to construction work to incessant honking in traffic.

There's a ton of color everywhere, starting from clothes and green trees that are decades old to the variety of colorful paint used for houses and rooms. Pink and bright yellow houses are a regular feature of our street.

A couple of new dimensions are added to my taste-buds. Sour and bitter tastes are fairly common here compared to the western world. These tastes nicely complement the extra spice and sweet also found here.

There are a ton of smells good and bad everywhere, ranging from rotting garbage on the streets to sandalwood or eucalyptus in public spaces.

Finally my mind can be at rest when at home compared to the constant running from one thought to another when away. The act of non-doing is critical to my interpretation of life and I'm grateful to still have moments to practice this.

I do shudder when I think about getting back to the US mid-west in about a week. I think of the muted silence everywhere and dimming down of other senses. However, I look forward to the amazing intellectual challenges at work and spending time with my wife.

YouTube

YouTube is such a phenomenal resource for students. A large number of amazing scientists are now just a click away on YouTube. I'd like to thank every organization that has made an effort to make these resources available for everyone around the world.

Mango ice-cream

Growing up, visiting my mom's parents, my grandparents, was a regular weekend activity. This partly explains why I'm perhaps more closer to my mom's side of the family.

We frequently visited an ice-cream store in the market next to my grandparent's house. Initially, it was a Kwality Walls store but at some point, if I remember correctly, the owner shut down the store down and moved abroad. I remember I ate my first Cornetto at that store. The next store that we then started visiting was an Arun ice-cream store. The Mango/Raspberry duets and the Casatta ice-creams were the regular favorites. I miss Casatta sometimes since it combines cake with ice-cream and nuts, the result can be truly delicious if done right.

The Arun ice-cream storeowner was perhaps not the greatest person I've encountered in life. For some reason, I remember him telling that his son has the same name as me. Arun ice-cream has been acquired by a different company now. It might be interesting to read up on how Arun ice-cream started, it's not the most creative name for an ice-cream store, it's a bit like Ben and Jerry's.

Numb legs

When I was about seven or eight years old, until up to about 13 to 14 years of age, a weekly activity was to visit my grandparents, specifically my Mom's parents. We did occasionally visit my Dad's parents as well but not as often.

My Mom's parents lived in Alwar Thiru Nagar - this is a locality that's about, I'm guessing with Google's help, 10km from where we lived in Anna Nagar. My Dad back then just owned a motorbike, which I remember was a IND Suzuki. I would sit in the front of the motor-bike, right on top of the fuel tank and my Mom would sit behind my Dad(possibly with my baby sister in her lap). This sounds incredibly dangerous when looked at from the lens of the first world but it's fairly common in the developing world. To be clear, I'm not advocating this form of travel at all but in general when one has modest means and needs to accomplish something, humans come up with innovative solutions. Once at a yoga class someone came up to me and said she loved my re-interpretation of the salad dresser carafe, I smiled to myself, to me it just looked like another container to hold some water to drink.

Anyways the whole point of this post is that I remembered how my legs would get numb just sitting stationary with my legs stretched out for the hour long journey from my grand parents' house. The journey would always start out well with me hoping that this time my legs wouldn't get numb, but it was inevitable almost every single time. I must have lost at least a couple of flip-flops which fell off my feet during the journey without me able to feel them!

Best Wishes to buddies.

Two of my really close friends from school are getting married/engaged this month, my best wishes to Jojo and Vikram. Here's to a lot of happy and fantastic years ahead !