Being Me !

Profile

Age: 24

Height: 5′ 10″

Weight: 95Kg

Body Mass Index: 30Kg/m2

Wondering whose profile is it? Well, its mine. Today, I bumped upon the ‘much rejected’ BMI Calculator page in Men’s Health India. After some seconds, I figured out I’d give it a go. After a couple of clicks, I found out that I was overweight, or obese to be more precise. May be that’s why I’m so uncomfortable traveling in a bus, I thought the seats were pretty small.

I’m really struggling with the greatest menace of all time, “weight”. I do know that burning the calories is the only option for me this time, but how. I don’t live a normal man’s life. I work in night shifts, which honestly till now I’ve not been able to adapt. I don’t have a proper sleeping time, a proper routine as my shift timings fluctuate very rapidly. More than finding a time for exercising, it’s the initial laziness that’s killing me. It takes 20 days for an errand to become a habit or routine, and I’m bad at it, and I mean really bad.

They say, 12.1% people in India are either obese or overweight. It really is good to be a member of a club, which I was not for a very long time until now, but joining the “Indian Obese/Overweight Club” was a little too much for me, considering the pile load of troubles that I caused due to my negligence.

The good thing I did in these days is that I quit smoking. Yup, I did it! It’s been more than a month. I don’t think I’ll smoke that nic-stick again. That too was a reason for me being overweight. I’m 25 now and it’s time to be serious in life, I don’t know why am I scribbling this in my blog. Honestly, I don’t have any thing else to write … ha !

To add to my delight, I found out that I’m suffering from a condition called Alopecia Areata. I’m losing hair in circles. What a damn world. My immune system is identifying my hair follicles are foreign and it’s attacking them, shedding them to baldness. It can be worse, I could lose all of my hair on my body if it becomes worse. And there’s more, there is possibly no cure for it. Isn’t it a delight? God !!! WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE?

Parents separated, not even a bachelor degree in hand, overweight, losing hair, single n lonely, away from home, no identity to prove my nationality; no driver’s license, PAN card, passport … This is me … and being me is a bit difficult … at least that’s what I want to believe ! God Help Me !

Quit Smoking !!!

As usual, life’s so dull these days. May be its the weather in CBE, life seems so slow and creepy for me. Its been quite some time that I had a feeling that I’m missing something vital in my life. I feel like a loser, may be I am one. Love, money, health; I’ve lost it all, or don’t have much of it rather! So I thought it’s high-time for damage control! And may be I should start with something that is in my hand, something that is under my control. The first thing that came to my mind was “Smoking”.

I’ve been trying to quit smoking for sometime now, but all my attempts went in vain. The max I could control was for a week and a half. For me it was not a lot about controlling, cos i knew deep inside that I could quit, it was easy cos I believed it was easy. I googled for a bit and bumped on a piece of article published in indiatimes.com. I think its really cool and really useful for people who are trying to quit. Here is the extract.

Here are 12 techniques that will help you quit the habit.
Remember – you can do it!

1. Deep Breathing Perhaps The Single Most Powerful And Important Technique: Every time you want a cigarette, do the following. Do it three times.

Inhale the deepest lung-full of air you can, and then, very slowly, exhale. Purse your lips so that the air must come out slowly. As you exhale, close your eyes, and let your chin gradually sink over onto your chest. Visualize all the tension leaving your body, slowly draining out of your fingers and toes, just flowing on out.

This is a variation of a yoga technique and is very relaxing. If you practice this, you’ll be able to use it for any future stressful situation you find yourself in. And it will be your greatest weapon during the strong cravings sure to assault you over the first few days.

2. Taking In Fluids:
The first few days, drink LOTS of water and fluids to help flush out the nicotine and other poisons from your body.

Remember that the urge to smoke only lasts a few minutes, and will then pass. The urges gradually become farther and farther apart as the days go by.

3. Stay Away From Alcohol, Sugar And Coffee
Do your very best to stay away from alcohol, sugar and coffee the first week or longer, as these tend to stimulate the desire for a cigarette. Avoid fatty foods, as your metabolism will slow down a bit without the nicotine, and you may gain weight even if you eat the same amount as before quitting. So discipline about diet is extra important now. No one ever said acquiring new habits would be easy!

Nibble on low calorie foods like celery, apples and carrots. Chew gum or suck on cinnamon sticks.

Stretch out your meals; eat slowly and wait a bit between bites.

After dinner, instead of a cigarette, treat yourself to a cup of mint tea or a peppermint candy.

4. Taking an Oral Substitute
In one study, about 25% of quitters found that an oral substitute was invaluable. Another 25% didn’t like the idea at all – they wanted a clean break with cigarettes. The rest weren’t certain.

One can use cinnamon sticks, chewing gum or artificial cigarettes as a substitute. You will mostly find that after the first week of being a non smoker, you wouldn’t even need these.

5. Get Exercising
Go to a gym, sit in the steam, exercise. Change your normal routine – take time to walk or even jog around the block or in the local park.

6.Pamper Yourself
Go ahead and join a yoga class or maybe reiki – they’re great! Get a one hour massage, take a long bath – pamper yourself. Get yourself involved in a hobby.

7. Ask For Support
Ask for support from co-workers, friends and family members. Ask for their tolerance. Let them know you’re quitting, and that you might be edgy or grumpy for a few days. If you don’t ask for support, you certainly won’t get any. If you do, you’ll be surprised how much it can help. Take a chance – try it and see!

Ask friends and family members not to smoke in your presence. Don’t be afraid to ask. This is more important than you may realize.

8. Destroy All Your Cigarettes
On your quit day, hide all ashtrays and destroy all your cigarettes, preferably with water, so no part of them is smokeable.

9. Write It Down
Write down ten good things about being a nonsmoker – and then write out ten bad things about smoking. Do it. It really helps.

10. Don’t Pretend
Don’t pretend smoking wasn’t enjoyable – it was. This is like losing a good friend – and it’s okay to grieve the loss. Feel that grief, don’t worry, it’s okay. Feel, and you heal. Stay with it – you can do it!

11. Affirm Yourself
Several times a day, quietly repeat to yourself the affirmation, “I am a nonsmoker.” Many quitters see themselves as smokers who are just not smoking for the moment. They have a self-image as smokers who still want a cigarette.

Silently repeating the affirmation “I am a nonsmoker” will help you change your view of yourself, and, even if it may seem silly to you, this is actually useful. Use it!

12. Holding Out
Here is perhaps the most valuable information among these points. In Phase 2, the period which begins a few weeks after quitting, the urges to smoke will subside considerably.

However, it’s vital to understand that from time to time, you will still be suddenly overwhelmed with a desire for “just one cigarette.” This will happen unexpectedly, during moments of stress, whether negative stress or positive (at a party, or on vacation). If you are unprepared to resist, succumbing to that “one cigarette” will lead you directly back to smoking.

Remember the following secret: in these surprise attacks during Phase 2 – and they will definitely come – do your deep breathing, and hold on for five minutes, and the urge will pass.

In conclusion
Remember that if you quit you will live longer and feel better. Quitting will lower your chances of having a heart attack, stroke, or cancer. The people you live with, especially children, will be healthier. If you are pregnant, you will improve your chances of having a healthy baby. And you will have extra money to spend on things other than cigarettes.

So get the information and support you need to make the stopping process a little easier. Seek the help of family and friends, and most important decide you want to do it and visualize yourself as a non-smoker.

Courtesy:indiatimes.com

Jobless and Single …

Ever since I heard about the word recession in news, I was a little concerned and a bit sad about the people who were fired before they knew what was going on. I was just wondering if there was any possibility that I was going to be one among them. I didn’t even stop wondering and boom, it came and took all of us by storm and left us all with nothing but agony, agony that what we were doing for the past one year all went in vain. All the management said was, “as part of cost-cutting measure the client is winding our project down and shifting from India to Philippines”.
I just was thinking how can they ever do that? Didn’t they sign any kind of contract with our company? The answer was no and the whole crowd was told to leave. God! It was a moment to always remember by. I did have thoughts about the stability of our company, but the name of the client did put a relief to my heart. I must say the client was Spinvox, and the project we were working on was Spinvox V2T. Yes, Spinvox Voice to Text.
If you hit the ‘how it works’ section of the Spinvox website, you’ll see something like this:

“Spinvox has a job to understand everyone.
But it’s the one job it’s very good at. How does it do it? It captures spoken words and feeds them into a Voice Message Conversion System, known as ‘D2′ (the Brain), and spits them out as text content.
So D2’s pretty smart. It’s bound to be, as D2’s a combination of artificial intelligence, voice recognition and natural linguistics. But it also knows what it doesn’t know and is able to call on human experts for assistance. It learns all the time about how we speak, and what we say, from the mundane to the ridiculous and so is able to convert what you mean to say.
Over the past four years D2 has been chomping through our words, learning thousands of new words every week and converting millions of messages from millions of different voices and accents, in English, French, Spanish and German. But now it’s onto the main course and wants to feast on your words to become bigger and stronger .”

That’s a bunch of rubbish they’ve published. As far as I know there is nothing as such as ‘D2′ (The Brain). The Voice-to-Text conversion is done by people sitting in Spinvox-outsourced companies all around the world and they do it on a software called Tenzing. The people who convert the audio are referred to as agents and they sit 8 hours in front of the computer working with not a minute to spare. Well, that’s how it works!!! Though I got placed in another company, I got really sulked into the issue totally as one of my colleagues committed suicide recently. I didn’t know the actual cause, but I do think it was related to the job. As for me I’ve to join on 1st of July. Again an outsourced job, same risk, same process, but I got a decent hike in my pay. The markets are slowly picking up it seems and I hope the whole economic slowdown paces up soon. But as of now, I am what I am, jobless (and I’m single too, did I mention that? Never mind!).