Ch-ch-ch--ch-changes

It's been a long time friends. It's not that there haven't been moments in the last few months that have been blog-worthy, but rather that there have been so many! The biggest event, the most life-changing, the most monumental, is the one that feels the most natural to me. I got married to the lovely and amazing Jigna Dalal on January 19, 2008. I'll soon post a re-cap of the festivities on our wedding blog and our pictures will be posted soon as well.

Marriage, at this stage of our lives, has been a true adventure. Since we got hitched, life has been so crazy hectic that we really haven't had that much time to chillax. With the post-wedding recovery, moving out of our home town and away from family, finding new jobs, trying to make new friends, and starting a new life together in our tiny but awesome apartment in NW DC, its been a roller coaster ride. On top of all that, we're getting used to each other's idiosyncrasies and eccentricities...

WARNING: Here comes the mushy stuff)

The important thing is that despite the craziness, it all feels natural. With Jigna, I feel comfortable, safe, and happy. There's no one I'd rather wake up next to and come home from work to and just chill with. We may not have a lot of free time, but we've made the time to just chill and enjoy each other's company. All the other stuff can wait-we've got the rest of our lives for that.

P.S. David Bowie is cool.

Amit vs. Cupcakes

Life flies by fast sometimes. I am engaged to an amazing and beautiful woman. I am working in an excited job in a new city. And I had a peanut butter and strawberry jam cupcake on Friday. Its like a muffin, with frosting...Needless to say, it was delicious. And I couldn't have said any of this last year.

I am here in Alexandria, VA, working for Research!America, and its great. The DC Metro area is exciting, the people in Virginia are friendly, and my fiancee came to visit a week ago.

Of course the pressures of planning a wedding, an uncertain job future, and the increasingly fast pace life is coming at me, I have been a bit stressed. But I have faith that things will work out for the best - I just need to be reminded of that sometimes.

Its been a while...part 2

Well, its been another long absence. Lots has happened.

I'm engaged! I asked Ms. Jigna Dalal to marry me a few weeks ago and its been a whole lot of craziness before and after the proposal. Lots of excitement in the air, but I'll have to update you more on that later.

More good news, a photo I took on vacation in Orlando was selected for publication! Check it out!

For a long time, I have been trying out different online photo sharing/printing sites. This definitely gives points to Flickr...but I still have photos on shutterfly, winkflash, and picasa.

A lot has happened in 2007, and I'm sure there is more to come. Stay tuned...

its been a while

Its been a while since my last post. The reason for the delay...its called a doctoral thesis. My apologies for the absence. I'm back.

Well, I successfully defended my dissertation a few weeks ago and now I am officially a PhD. But today, I want to write about today. The Dalai Lama visited Rice today and shares some of his thoughts. He is a cheerful old man who I am sure is a pleasure to hang out with. He wasn't as eloquent as I hoped, but overall, I enjoyed the opportunity to see him speak.

An interesting comment he made, which many may think odd for a religious man to made, concerned religion. He suggested that people should stick to the religion they were brought up with rather than convert to a religion that appeals to them. I think by this suggestion he was pointing out that organized religion is really more of a tradition. Your own spirituality is defined by much more than a title given to your faith. Spirituality is much much more than religion.

I like that. It also makes me think that respecting other people's religion is really about respecting their traditions, their upbringing, and their family. We live in a sad world when people hate and kill each other over religion.

Hmm, I'm not as eloquent as I thought I would be either...

Half-Marathon!

The half-marathon was a week ago, and it was awesome. It was a cool, slightly rainy day - perfect for running. George R. Brown Convention Center was packed with energy at 6:00 in the morn. I met up with some of my Asha friends (Ravi and Ankur) and we made our way to the start line. The starting canon boomed, but it was another 7-8 minutes before we finally go to the start line. I started out a tad slow, 11-12 min/miles, but picked up the pace when my friend Andrea caught up to me. She helped keep me going at around a 10:00 pace. Somewhere after mile 10 or 11, I accidentally lost her, and also suddenly had a burst of energy (maybe due to the crowds, maybe due to Gu). I raced the last 2 miles or so and was able to average almost exactly a 10 minute mile. I'm pretty happy with that. I was also really happy to see my friend Satish cross the finish line of the full marathon later that day. He survived muscle cramps during the run, but in the end, he showed the marathon who was boss.

The whole event was so much fun. A great day for running, and a great day to break some records too. Despite the pain in my right knee (IT band) which lingered for about 2 days, I really want to be involved next year. I'm not sure I'm in shape for the big show, but I definitely want to do the half.

Props to all the fans and supporters out there who made the whole event really special. A special thanks to Betty, Vickie, Thomas, Team Asha, Masa, Masi, Mom, Dad, and Arti, for your cheering along the way.

If you're interested, you can see my finish line video, photos, or race results.

no excuses

I remember about a year ago that I used to make a lot of excuses not to go running. After 6 months of heavy-duty training, I realize there are no excuses to skip a run aside from torrential downpours or sub-freezing temperatures. And those are lame excuses at best.

"Its too cold" - Your body will warm up after a few minutes of jogging. (A hat and gloves are especially important as your head and hands have very high surface area to volume ratios. That means you lose the most heat through these body parts.)

"Its raining" - Rain is cooling, and running in mud is fun.

"Its dark" - Its also peaceful - be sure to be in a safe place, and be wary of branches, roots, and other stuff on your path and you'll be fine.

"Something came up" - Wake up 45 min early and run in the morning. You'll feel good all day and you won't be tempted to skip an evening run.

I'm not sure I'll be doing any marathons in the future, but I will keep running way into my old age. I may have to run with a cane, but I'll do it.

Jambalaya

Once upon a time a friend asked me, "are you happy?" I was first taken aback and not sure how to answer. My instincts told me to answer both "yes" and "no" at the same time.

I think happiness is not binary, that is, its not a yes or no feeling. I think happiness is like a bowl of jambalaya. I choose jambalaya for this analogy because its fun to say (I've been a vegetarian for the past 5 or so years so a more appropriate food analogy would be my tempeh/brown rice/stir fry dish, but its not as fun to say). What I mean is, I think that at any given moment we have happiness, sadness, anger, peace, joy, love, hate, etc. all mixed up together in our bowl (like a bowl of jambalaya). There are things in the bowl we don't like, but have to deal with. There are some things in the bowl that we know we like too. There is some stuff in the bowl that we're not quite sure how to identify. Something in the bowl might even make us a bit queasy in the stomach. But that is life, and we eat it up and overall, it tastes pretty good.

Sometimes we don't see the happiness in there because its buried under some other stuff. That is when we have to dig a bit deeper to find it.
(I couldn't find a picture of jambalaya on my computer, so I put this one up. Its nice, isn't it?)