The Perfect Weight Loss Diet Plan For Women

Pre-Breakfast:

1 glass of warm water with 1 teaspoon of lemon juice
(The sourness of lemon might give your jaw a temporary paralysis, but the warm water will make it more palatable.)

Meal 1: Tea- half cup fat free milk + half cup tap water + Ginger + very little tea spice
(No sugar. A tspf of tea is the right amount of caffeine for the morning. Tea also helps fight increased levels of cortisol which is produced when you are training hard. The milk will provide some calories early in the morning. I used to drink coffee, but I got to know that tea is always a better option as coffee exacerbates PMSing and dehydration.)

Meal 2: Breakfast

1/2 cup oatmeal (the classic one) + 1 cup milk
OR
1 cup sprouts+ 3 egg whites + 1 toast
OR
Apple/strawberry (sim. fruits) + 1 cup yogurt

This would be the hardest part of your day. The oatmeal without sugar tastes worse than boiled paper. [Don't ask me where have I tasted boiled paper now.] If you hate oatmeal, try one of those tasteless cereals. Add some berries or an apple to the cereal if it triggers your gag reflex. But get used to this tastelessness in breakfast. Anything delicious comes with loads of sugars and sodium. And we want to spread our sodium/sugar quota throughout the day in a balanced way. The sprouts are good, but try not to put too much salt in it. But, if you are going to workout after your breakfast, it’s OK to replace the apple with a banana since you are going to use all that sugar that comes with the fruit.

Meal 3: Post breakfast snack

A fruit – preferably orange, apple, pear etc.
OR
1 cup of Low Fat Yogurt

Meal 4: Lunch

Salad + lean meat + blue cheese dressing (only 1 teaspoonful) + 2 Toasts (no butter. Or any 2 slices of bread of your choice. Make it wheat.)
OR
Salad + Lentil soup (This is a great vegetarian source of protien. You can also use 1 tbspf of oil  )

Salad-> lettuces, tomatoes, carrots (I use 1 carrot and carve ribbons out of it. It’s easier to eat that way), spinach (great source of iron)

Lean Meat -> Tuna (or any fish for that matter), Chicken (I don’t eat beef, but if you are a beef person, you can check out options for lean beef. )

Meal 4: Post Lunch snack

Protein berry shake
1/4 cup de-seeded red berries
1/4 cup  strawberries halves
2 tbspf of Low Fat Vanilla Yogurt
1/2 cup of Fat Free Milk
1 teaspoonful of whey protein (you will have to choose this one according to your needs)
3 ice cubes

Blend all of the above.

Replace your evening coffee with this shake. You can also replace the yogurt with a scoop of low fat vanilla/chocolate ice cream.

Meal 5: Dinner

Lentil soup/tomato soup (not the condensed one)/ Vegetable soup- 1 small serve
Grilled Chicken breast/grilled fish fillet (salmon/tuna)

Try to eat your dinner before 7 PM.

Meal 6: Post Dinner snack/Midnight snack
1 scoop of Low Fat ice cream for something sweet
(relieves that craving)

OR

1/2 cup oatmeal + 1 cup tap water + a pinch of salt + a pinch of pepper
(For something NOT sweet. Oatmeal will also work as a late night fibre supplement. Always good for digestion.)

Well that’s that.

Some extra tips:

1. Eat at an interval of every 1 & 1/2 hours.

2. Drink at least a Gallon of water. If you workout, keep drinking water while working out and don’t count that water in your daily water quota.

3. It’s ok to binge on weekends if you are able to keep up with this diet along with a semi-strenuous workout routine (such as, 40 mins of HIIT every morning coupled with a split weight training routine.)

4. The day you feel low on energy and you don’t want to do any heavy workout, resort to Power Yoga. It’s easy to do it when you are trying to get used to this kind of routine.

5. Try not to use too much canned food in your diet. It’s full of preservatives. Bad for health and weight reduction.

Warning: This diet is heart wrenching. You will hate your life and your self for torturing your taste buds with this diet. It’s tasteless for most part and requires tremendous self control and challenge. But it bloody works.

Happy dieting!

And God said,”Let there be light!”…

…and Obama Haters went and flipped the light switch off!

“What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country.”
- Excerpt from Obama Haters Silent Enablers by Frank Rich

I can’t understand this! For once, God said, “Peoples of America, here, out of all the ‘goodness’ that I can shower upon my children, I have given you a man who is honest. May you now learn to live in peace.”

And still there are people in this Country who fail to see God’s (if you believe in it) point! I mean…c’mmon! How long are you going to stay deluded and be coaxed by people like Bush and just keep fighting with everyone? One man at least seems to want peace, and is trying his very best to be NOT corrupt; you completely overlook all of that and instead, embrace social and racial prejudices against him?

Get a clue Obama Haters!

The Google *Metaverse

*Term metaverse taken from sci-fi novel Snow Crash

There is nothing more pleasant than to wake up after 6 hours of really disturbed sleep and find your address bar suddenly gone from your firefox browser. You think, maybe you did something wrong. You think,”You stupid lay user you! You probably hit one of those hidden buttons designed for some invisible way of removing the address bar. Well, enjoy your own work! Go ahead and try accessing your wordpress / Facebook /Orkut & other sites through Google! You are so stupid you probably deserve it!”

Well…now that you have f***ed it up this bad, you feel that you should at least *try* to find a solution. So, you go to the Google search bar (which is the only thing working in your navigation bar), and type in:

“My firefox address bar is not working! Help!”

…and get ready to trudge through all the 1000 forums where someone might have posted an answer. You actually found a forum called BUG#240242 in Mozilla Firefox. This is how the thread goes:

Summary: At random, the location bar ceases to load pages

Steps to reproduce:
1. Enter a URL in the location bar
2. Hit the Enter key or click the green arrow

Expected Result:
URL opens in tab

Actual Result:
Nothing. No new page will load from the URL bar in any tab.

In reply to it, someone had written:

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately we can’t fix it, because your description didn’t include enough information. You may find it helpful to read “How to report bugs effectively” http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html. We’d be grateful if you would then provide a more complete description of the problem.

The next reply is the first user, typing pages of information according to the forum’s instructions and there are several such versions of the same problem typed again and again. Apparently, everybody has, in some or the other, ended up confused and with their address bars missing. And no replies with any solutions in it.

You get the message. You are pathetic. Just like every other goddamn lay user on this earth.

So you find that it’s a firefox bug and no one really knows how to fix it. You allow yourself to panic. A lot. Because you have a press release to finish and you will need an address bar for your research. And Because if the big shots of the open source community don’t know how to fix it, then there is nothing in the hell that you can do except dilate your pupils and make a face like you have just eaten a rotten egg…
you see, a browser without an address bar is very painful and annoying.

Humph! You don’t want to get back to the horror of using Internet Explorer again- those hundreds of pop ups, that snail mail speed and those mps crashes. So, you finally will have to turn to a new browser. Painful still, but doable. You have heard about google chrome. Maybe you should try it.

You go to Google and search for Google chrome and get to the place where it says “Download google chrome” and click on the button. It will take you to the terms and conditions page. For a second you wonder if it says,

“Listen! We are Google, and your relationship with us is very special, as in, we value our slaves. Please get your branding done as soon as possible ‘coz in the near future, when the revolution hits the world, and if you aren’t a Google-ite, then we won’t be able to save you….at any cost!”

But only for a second.

Of course you don’t read the T & S page since you know it’s absurd. No one. Absolutely no one *actually* reads the T&S pages except for those paranoid morons who have nothing else to do other than to sit and read 20 pages worth of legal jargon and call themselves Hackers. Also, no corporation (even if they are as genius as Google) can own the world and its people or make you a slave through a browser T&S contract.

You passingly remember that, in a Resource collection lecture, your sneaky looking Journalism professor was able spell out the names, social security numbers, addresses, habits, paranoias, names of toilet bowl cleaners and cars owned by you and all your neighbours by “Googling it”.

You agree to the terms and services page as casually as you have done to other T&S pages (most of which said that they are entitled to read each and every word that you write to your wife, children, that other woman next door, and your secret brotherhood emails to your highschool friends; that they have copyrighted your soul and your first borns.)

You check the “please help google by sending all the crash reports for better services” box. You wonder if it has a double meaning. But you check it anyways. You are a conscentious citizen.

The download begins. Blue bars flicker. It will only take 1 min 24 secs. A minute and 24 seconds later you have the latest version of Google Chrome.  You open it. A simple page loads up.

It says,” As you visit sites, thumbnails of your most visited sites will be shown as soon as Chrome loads up.”
You wonder if it will show that free porn site that you visit like a thousand times in a day.

Chrome is definitely faster than firefox, looks more lightweight and viola- it has an address bar! A sudden calm is settling somewhere in your mind. You are sensing happiness and satisfaction. It’s like someone has given you your regular dose of morphine. And now you can browse- teary & red eyed – for another 24 hours and maybe more, continuously. You wonder why such silly things bother you so much. You must be crazy. You smile, kick back and continue your daily grazing around.

DevD- not for the prudes

A wealthy young lad (Devdas) in love with his childhood girl friend (Paro). A huge amorphous mass, society, standing right between them. A matter of personal choices and ego masqueraded under the rubble of social stratification; and a brooding and sardonic nature that drags Devdas to his deprivation. The result- a painful and tragic death. Of love. Of Devdas…

… and a legend is born.

In his movie DevD, director Anurag Kashyap has set out to discover the psyche of this legendary “Devdas”, twisted to fit into modern world. Placed in backyards of Delhi- DevD’s music, sensibility, and characters converge into a shambolic collage where the original concept of the novel and suffocation of the modern Indian youth scream together in their own distinct flavors.

Dev (Abhay Deol) is from an affluent family of Punjab studying in London. He has a steaming long distance affair with his childhood girlfriend Paro. But when Dev arrives in India, he finds his love for Paro trapped in social conventions, hypocrisy and distrust arising from their own (Dev’s and Paro’s) unbridled sexual explicitness. Jealousy and hatred prevails, Dev refuses to marry Paro. Paro gets married to another man, and Dev (being the rich and spoilt boy of 27 years) starts drowning himself into single malt Glenlivet.

Paro starts a new life with her new man and Dev, neck deep into drugs and alcohol, meets Chanda- a victim of high school tragedy and an escort. Abandoned by the whole world, 19 yr old Chanda is  highly educated, intellectual and believes in a guilt free life. Dev and Chanda connect well, become good friends and fall in love with each other. The problem- Dev believes that he is still in love with Paro.

If it were a painting, I’d classify DevD under Cubist- every character seen from every angle and thrown flat on the screen. The movie’s strengths are its editing, nonchalant (and commendable) performance by the actors and an off-beat music teamed with chaotic cinematography. Its weakness is that it suffers from time dilation induced by boredom- the last 45 minutes painfully hang at the event horizon of a black hole ( there were moments when I could get up, wash my dishes, come back, and not feel that I have missed a whole lot.)

So, if you aren’t planning to watch this movie in a cinema hall, and if you belong to the generation that bleeds love from outside and an obsession with self inflicted problems from inside, a.k.a “the Y generation”,  then you will love this movie.

For everybody else, it’d be just some garbled noise.

Sabyasachi Spring/Summer collection 2008- Mercedes Benz Fashion week at NY

At Mercedes Benz 2008 Fashion week , Sabyasachi Mukharjee carved his Spring/Summer 2008 collection out of anarchy picked from history books. At 28, this fashion designer, from India, Kolkata, has made waves with his unusual repertoire and this was the second time he was invited to participate in this show.

He maneuvered rich Indian fabrics in furious reds into bikini tops and slacks with voluminous flares; the layering in warm earth tones and greens doing a perfect job of toning down the ferocity. Sheer overcoats whisked the ramp and cream colored tops with symbols of various countries printed on them were paired with large green pants and similar. A lavish red trench coat, a cinched waist pleated red dress, a flat paneled cream and olive green ensemble looked classy and comfortable at the same time.

In his burnt-orange vest and hooded, over-sized formal wear there lied an irony; the irony thrown in consciously as a mix of shyness of a tradition with the impudence of breaking one. Subtle, simple, and not too cluttered, the designs oscillated between feminine and feminist. The remarkable combination of cream, red, military green, and henna dyes was young and serene, just like the beginning of a revolution.

His designs, they say, have an air of extremity and pander to sentiment. But whoever started a revolution without a sentiment overly expressed, a passion unfurled and a heart bound by ordinary rules? His impeccable cuts and perfect silhouettes, an ability to suffuse rude cosmopolitan streets with elegance have always been able to squeeze a wow out of his audience. Sabyasachi is known best for his flare of breaking traditions and merging cultures; and this collection is no different.

A physicist & a writer

I was thinking why I haven’t published anything on my blog when I have been writing in my private diary everyday. I believe it was fear of criticism.

A couple of weeks of writing just for myself and not for anyone else has brought my confidence back to life. Mainly because I realized that, in the beginning, I don’t have to know everything to be able to write, and that I have to start writing from what little I “do” know and keep learning while I am at it. This way I won’t lose my mind at least.

Also, it’s just a blog anyways.

Now about the books that I am reading.

I am reading David Zindell’s Neverness. Whenever I read a fantasy cum sci-fi I always think about Dan Simmons’s Hyperion series; about how alive it was, that it flowed through mystery, philosophy, imagery and science so beautifully.

Compared to Hyperion, Neverness is slow and over-speculative. The science element in it is wanting and the philosophy is not really that new (although well written). He has this entire section on Neanderthals that I found extremely boring and long. The hero is an epitome of Ayn Rand’s “Peter Keating” (I will have more to say on that later), or in casual terms, a wuss.

Nevertheless, Zindell is a profound writer and a good thinker. His descriptions are imaginative and novel. Only if his plot were a bit tighter and had some pace I would have enjoyed the novel more. But I haven’t finished it yet so I will refrain from making any further opinions.

I am also reading Linear Algebra by Jim Hefferson, a professor at St Michael’s College, Vermont. I found his book free on his site and is one of the best books on Introduction to Linear Algebra that I have ever come across! I don’t know why he hasn’t tried getting it published (or maybe he has and I just don’t know about it.)

Hefferson understands the lazy nature of his flippant audience who would read through a solution of a problem instead of actually solving it on a piece of paper and hence his examples and problems are easy, down to earth and effective in explaining the concept. I love reading the concepts and I love solving the problems!

(I wonder why practice is harder than understanding the concept. Maybe because “understanding” is done by the subconscious part of brain and is satisfactory even when it is vague and “practice” has to be done consciously; and anything done consciously is work and who wants to work? )

Here’s a link to his site just in case you are interested:

http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra/

Three other non fiction, non mathematics books that I am reading right now are-

“Art of Non fiction” by Ayn Rand

“Elements of Style” by Strunk and White

“Francine Prose: Reading like a writer”

Art of Non Fiction is a usual Rand- authoritative, detailed, energizing and encouraging. Elements of Style, as thousands of readers have already attested, is like a bible for grammar and composition; and Reading like a writer is a book that I regret not reading before I picked up my first ever book 15 years ago. More about these books later.

Why is Atlantis a belief/myth and not a scientific theory?

Part1- Structure of the Pyramids

Plato, in his writings, talked about a powerful civilization that existed 10,000 years before his times in a city called Atlantis. It is believed that the city of Atlantis was lost in a deluge and some of the Atlantians escaped in ships to come back to teach their ways and technology to the world- technologies such as The Pyramids in Egypt and Central/South America.

At a glance, the structure of Pyramids point towards something close to what Atlantian belief says- that there probably was a technologically advanced civilization that helped humans build them. But then why do scientists tend to discard Atlantis as a reliable scientific theory and call it a belief or a myth? Why is structure of the Pyramids, its complexity or similarity between that of Egyptian and Central/South American Pyramids, not considered as an evidence of Atlantian intervention? Let’s break two of the popular beliefs into three parts- Assumption, Atlantian conclusion, and Scientific Speculation.

Assumption#1: The Pyramids are huge and perfectly built structures.

Atlantean Conclusion: Since the technology at the time when Pyramids were built was extremely incipient for the complexities involved in Pyramid construction humans could not have made such structures without any external/technologically advanced or superior help.

Scientific Speculation: The basic question is how did we learn to build anything? The answer lies in structures built by humans earlier than pyramids. When archaeologists dig around the area of the Great Pyramids of Giza and those built by the Mayans they see remnants of a rigorous trial and error method to build something like the Pyramids. The scientists claim these structures to be “the lousy attempts to build Pyramids”. The amazing but not so surprising fact is that these “lousy Pyramids” date back to a time hundreds of years before the “prefect Pyramids” were built. A rigorous trial and error method that spanned hundreds of years indicates a gradual progression in the development of the complexity of Pyramid building which in turn states that humans were rather self taught in the art of Pyramid building no matter which continent they belonged to. If the technology was just given to these people by some other civilization, then there should have been no signs of trial and a sudden appearance of perfect Pyramids, built from the knowledge conferred to humans by Atlantians, would have been observed.

Assumption#2: The Pyramids of Egypt and Central America look almost similar to each other. How did they know about each others designs?

Alantian Conclusion: There was someone who communicated same designs to these people and that was achieved through a higher level of communication which indicates a technologically advanced civilization (Atlantians).

Scientific Speculation: Look at the structure of Pyramids. They are all tetrahedrons. This is because it was the only structure that could have been built using only stones without any binding agent to make the walls stand. That is why all these structures taper at the top. People in those times had not figured out a binding agent except for mud which couldn’t have been strong enough to hold a structure like a straight wall. Also, scientists don’t seem to find any common denominator in the languages spoken by the peoples of these two continents which would have proved the existence of a common instructional-language that Atlantians would have used to teach humans about building Pyramids. A detailed discussion of language diversity requires a new blog entry.

The skepticism that scientists show towards Atlantis arises due the nature of science and its ways. Archeology, just like any other science, has very stringent ways to authenticate an observed pattern as a theory. In science, a phenomenon, although is the beginning of a theory, cannot be the basis of the generalization required to form a reliable theory. This is the biggest reason why structure of Pyramids cannot be used as an evidence of Atlantian existence since its pattern directs us more towards thousands of years of evoultion in contruction technology and not a sudden upsurge of any kind of new or astrounding technology. More on this…next time!

What is wrong with Femina Miss India?

I know there is no definition of Fugliness. I know that there is no definition of beauty. But I also know one thing- if you are in the business of beauty, the definitions come from the predecessors. After Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen, Diya Mirza, Lara Dutta and Priyanka Chopra, if you think that femina Miss India has acquired progressively unattainable beauty standards every year then you are terribly wrong.

Don’t believe me? Go visit Femina Miss India’s website and after you are thoroughly repelled by an atrociously done website do (at your own risk) take some time to look at the contestants as well. More than half of them seem to be anemic and rest are just not 1/3 as photogenic as an ordinary model should be, forget about competing in international pageants. Well at least they all are tall and marasmic which probably would gain some sympathy for belonging to a developing nation which is still ruled by starvation.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that the girls are ugly or anything. I just think that they need some more makeup (to hide their bad skins or malnourished under eye dark circles) or some good hairstylists (to hide their bad haircuts) or …forget all of that… how about some good photographer that would totally eliminate the need for the former two?

I don’t think India’s potential in beauty has dwindled as when I see the Indian film industry and the regular fashion scene in India, I see devastatingly pretty faces, some being better than any international models. Still Femina insists on bringing insignificant faces to its platform. Is there a good reason for it or is it because Femina has lost its repute and is unable to charm those women who actually have the potential to achieve something on the international pageants?

Phoebus was gone, all gone, his journey over

Recently I stumbled across this poem in the library. It’s written by an anonymous female writer.

“I shuddered at his touch. I felt the fear of it.

I trembled as if I knew the true terror of it.

I opened my arms wide and pressed him against my body.

Then I froze: I was ice, all ice. My blood drained into it.

He had fled. Here was my embrace—and there was nothing in it.

Fully awake now, I cried out loudly:

“Where are you fleeing to? Why are you rushing away?

Wait, wait for me. If you want, I can enter there.

Because the truth is, I want to live with you forever.”

I read these lines and thought that this is one of the most beautiful expressions that I have ever come across. If you want, read the whole poem and then you’d probably understand why.

White Dwarfs, Supernovas, Neutron stars and Black holes…

Just finished reading Isaac Asimov’s “Collapsing Universe- the story of black holes” . I believe that if there’s anything that can bring one closer to Astronomy, then it is Asimov’s writing. From his Foundation series to his three volumes of Understanding Physics- Asimov is the king of exposition through effective storytelling.

Collapsing universe is a layman introduction to Astronomy buzzwords such as White Dwarfs, Neutron Stars and Black holes. The book starts with explaining the four forces (Nuclear, Electromagnetic, Weak and Gravitation), atoms, density and gravitation. With these basics covered he starts building a structured story where he moves on to explaining the birth cycle of stars, white dwarfs, Neutron stars and finally black holes. The most interesting chapter was “The Exploding Matter” in which he gives an easy to understand review of Big Bang and the oscillating universe model. There are no equations and the book is strewn with comparisons of density, mass etc. which does two things:

a). It gives the reader a good understanding of the astronomical nature of the forces and structures involved in the subject.

b). Explains how physicists and scientists use these simple properties (density, momentum, mass, luminosity etc.) to answer questions regarding the mass of celestial bodies like stars, galaxies and universe itself.

The books ends with a bunch of speculations- some popular scientific conclusions and others Asimov’s own such as tapping black holes for enormous amounts of energies. A brief discussion of “Tunguska explosion” and it’s relation to black holes particularly interested me since I am a big X-files fan(lol).

Reading this book is like reading one of Asimov’s novels. It is full of science, ideas and of course, drama which keeps the reader intrigued till the end of the book. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Astronomy …or in Asimov’s writing in general.