Fashion Shows & Formula 1 (part 1)

A very good friend of mine just shared with us his very interesting point of view on automobile racing. He says,

“Gallons of fuel is burnt during car and bike racing competitions, just to whet the egos of automobile majors.”

Being a huge fan and an arduous follower of both F1 and MotoGP, I couldn’t stop myself from pondering over the thought. For  a moment I thought, ‘Is it really so? The sport that I love so much is actually just about auto-companies throwing away millions of dollars to prove who’s the fastest? Is it just a showcase event where everyone gets to flex their muscle in front of a crowd and gather applause?’ But then, the true blue racing fan inside of me (remember I’m the Adrenaline Junkie) rises from the very depths of my heart and mind to quell any such sentiment that goes against my very identity. The racing fan says, ‘No, can’t be! The likes of Ferrari and Porsche, Mercedes and McLaren, Honda and Toyota, Yamaha and Suzuki, Audi and BMW, Ducati and Jaguar, Ford and Alfa Romeo, Renault and Aston Martin can’t be racing just to whet their egos. You name the best of the auto-companies in the world and chances are they are into some form of racing or the other (Lamborghini seems to be the lone exception, but that’s for completely different reasons). These auto-majors cannot be putting in the best of their engineering and technology and human resource apart from huge amounts of cash into something that trivial, can they? What is it then? I do seem to have an answer.

(You might be wondering what’s a fashion show got to do with racing. Don’t worry, I will come to that later in the article)

Formula One today stands at the pinnacle of all motorsport in every aspect, including technology, difficulty, budgets, competition level, viewership, global reach, and its been so for more than five decades. The world’s best drivers, racing engineers, car designers and engine makers dream of participating in this event. No wonder that F1 today commands a global audience of more than half a billion per race, exceeded only by the Football World Cup and the Olympics, both of which are not annual events unlike F1. Even India has almost 60-70 million dedicated viewers, and that’s when we don’t even have a racetrack or a driver featuring on the F1 calendar! Imagine a Karun Chandhok or an Armaan Ibrahim driving a Force India in the Indian GP, what sort of potential numbers are we looking at?

The eleven F1 teams’ combined budget in 2008 stood at more than $3 billion, a major portion of which is provided by the team sponsors who recognize the event’s advertising potential due to its immense global viewership. Which bring us to the debate – is there a point in spending so much money when it doesn’t concern the common man apart from providing a fun and glamour filled weekend? Does it directly affect us or our automobiles in any way? The answer is – yes, it does.

Formula One also stands at the pinnacle of innovation in automobile design. Technologies like disc brakes, aerodynamics, engine design efficiency, energy recovery systems, turbo/super chargers, all have their origins in racing. For example, Ferrari road cars are designed, manufactured and tested under the same conditions and in the same factory as their F1 cars. Their road cars derive their engines, transmissions, gearboxes, braking systems, suspensions, aerodynamics, wheels, traction control and even their paints directly from their F1 cars. After manufacturing, these road cars are tested by their best racing car drivers on the very same race track as their F1 cars. And its not just the high performance super sports cars for the uber-rich that get the best of the world. These technological breakthroughs eventually trickle down from racing cars to the very passenger cars that common people like you and me drive. And Formula One, apart from speed, also prioritizes safety, cost and energy efficiency. Currently the FIA and manufacturers are discussing adding bio-fuel engines and regenerative braking for the 2011 season. FIA believes F1 must focus on efficiency to stay technologically relevant in the automotive industry as well as keep the public excited about F1 technology. The energy recovery system, or KERS as it is popularly known in F1 (which denied Force India their first ever victory in an F1 race) is a recent example of a technology which I’m sure in few years time would be regularly seen in our road cars. Therefore, saying that all the money spent by F1 teams is just to be the fastest over a weekend race does sound quite unfair to me.

Also, going by the logic that money spent on F1 is a waste, what would you call the Olympics or any such worldwide sporting event where national governments spend billions of dollars to host a 15 day event that does not even provide guarantee that their investment would return? What would you call India’s bid to host the Commonwealth Games even though more than half it’s population lives below poverty line? The reason is that the Games provide a major opportunity for the host city and country to promote and showcase their culture, infrastructure and economic might to the world and hope that it would ultimately raise their own standards of living by luring huge foreign investments.

Besides, would you like to watch a sluggish 80bHP Maruti Wagon-R slugging it out at 80kmph against a sluggisher Hyundai Santro on a racetrack? No, right? You want a roaring 800bHP superfast, super agile Ferrari racing at 320kmph against a super noisy, super powerful McLaren, because that is what gives you the ultimate thrill and adrenaline rush. But all this does require money, millions of it!

The F1 part got a bit long, so I decided to give Fashion its own space…to be continued…

CAT ke Side-Effects

 

 

Now that I've decided to take the plunge…

1. Conversations I have with one and all somehow, in spite of my best efforts, tend to veer towards the dreaded ‘C’ word. This includes parents, relatives, friends, neighbors, family friends, friends’ friends, dad’s friends, mom’s friends, colleagues, colleagues’ friends, classmates at coaching and their friends, people at the gym (yes,them too!) and their friends, etc etc. Even the smirking stationary wale bhaiyya can’t stop himself from saying “CAT de rahe ho…badhia hai…lage raho…”
2. Conversations at the dinner table usually begin and end with dad giving advice on how to prepare better. Undertones like “beta MBA bhi thik se nahi kiya to tera future dark hai” can be clearly picked up.
3. I mostly prepare by giving computer based tests, since CAT has gone online. Which means, contrary to tradition, I spend lesser time with books as I do glued to my computer. This strange way of preparing does not go down well with mom who thinks I should spend more time “studying” rather than wasting my time on the computer.
4. Mom thinks I ought to be studying and doing nothing else with the computer, which she constantly keeps reminding me of. She tends to forget that like any other normal 24 year old I do need to have my daily dose of Facebook/Orkut apart from checking mails, read news online, get updates on EPL and other sports, listen to music, an occasional game of Pool’emUp/Pocket Tanks, a few laps on MotoGP, a once-in-a-while chat with friends, and of course a movie at times. Its a multitasking computer for god’s sake, not an abacus!
5. My TV time has drastically reduced from a few hours per week about 2 months back to a few minutes now, reserved mostly for EPL Super Sundays and F1 races.
6. Believe it or not, I have dreams about ominous numbers with wings and pointy tails spinning over my head and me trying to run away from them. Seems a bit over the top, right?
7. My head’s usually spinning when I wake up in the morning, mostly due to nightmares of not securing admission into a good college.
8. All the tension seems to have caused some sort of hormonal imbalance within my body, leading to a teenager like unusually pimply face. The solution provided by mommy dear is a daily dose of Safi which, I can bet my ass on, tastes worse than horse-shit!

One more thing - my respect for the other 400,000 or so poor souls who appear for the CAT every year has gone up a few notches. God save their and my soul!

images courtesy: rediff.com & cartoonstock.com

MAAAN KAAAN RADION

Travelling singers in India (the ones who sing in trains as they ask for alms) should be delighted. Their messiah/Indian idol/biggest song contributor is back in a new/rediscovered avatar- a fresh crop of "hair", a slightly trimmed beard (could someone hand him a razor please!), a voice "he" thinks is not in the "teraaaan teraaaan teraaaaaaaan surrrooooorrrrr" mode, and as an "actor"(ouch, again??!!). Woefully enough, we humans/radio listeners are subjected to this soul-stirring (brrrr!!) rendition of MAAN KAAN RADION at least a couple of hundred times a day. HR "sings" his composition looking in a somber mood and with a straight/emotionless face (enhanced due to his acting "skills"). The lyrics of course are superlative and need special citation.

At some point HR seems to forget that he's just vowed to keep away from the SUROOOOOOR mode. In other words he really comes into his element.

(I just didn't think this post deserved blogging space, so i decided to put it up on Facebook instead. But as it turns out, Facebook doesn't allow such long status messages!

Besides, no one reads my blog anyway and I absolutely HAD to share this one!)

The Dude in the gym

I’ve been going to this gym for 3 weeks now. Its near my home, cheaper than other “high-society” gyms around, not much crowded, and has a good enough trainer. So its been well worth the money. I haven’t been to a gym in almost 2 years so I'm still getting “in the groove”.

Yesterday was just like another day. I entered the gym at around 7 pm, stretched a bit, sipped some water, plugged in the earphones with Rage Against the Machine going full blast, and was about to begin my workout starting with bench press. Another person was using the bench so I had to wait for my turn. I noticed another gentleman waiting there to use the bench as well. This gentleman (referred to as The Dude hereafter) looked like he was either in the police or some other security force. He was tall, dark, lean with a thinish moustache, and was wearing the track pants and canvas shoes that policemen usually wear off-duty. The person using the bench was done with his sets so I took over, loaded the usual 30kgs, and started my set. I did my 18 reps and moved over so The Dude could use the bench now. The Dude does not change any weights, slips on to the bench and starts doing his set. Now just out of instinct, I started counting how many reps he is doing. So, he does 10…15…20…25… and goes up to 30 before he puts the bar back. “Not bad”, i thought. It was my turn now, so I added another 5kgs and did my set of 15 reps. The Dude’s turn, and yet again he blows me off by not adding any more weight and pulling off another 30 reps. Well, I was obviously surprised as to why he was doing so many reps, and if he does have the stamina or strength to do so, why couldn’t he simply add more weight to the bar and do fewer reps? Wouldn’t that make more sense? It didn’t look like he was trying to reduce any excess flab, nor was it his last set so he was trying to burn it up. So why the hell was he was doing so many reps with less weight? My turn again, i don’t add any weight and do another 12 reps. His turn, and he goes on to do another 25 reps. And now, I was really pissed off! I mean, wouldn’t anyone be? Either he was doing this just to belittle me or he simply had no idea how he should go about doing his workout for maximum gain. So I move over and watch what he does next. And lo and behold, this time he does add another 5 kgs and does another 25. Gosh, is he the terminator or what?!

I move on to my next exercise, the inclined press, and The Dude follows me. I move on to my next exercise, the butterfly, and The Dude follows me. Different times, different places, same story. The Dude wrecks havoc again. By this time I'm barely able to concentrate. I complete the sets with much labour and decide I’ve had enough for the day and decided to skip the rest of my workout.

I know some might point out that I should take motivation from the incident and work harder. But it didn’t really turn out that way. Instead, thanks to The Dude, I’ve decided not to go to the gym in the evening anymore. Even though its tough getting up in the morning, i guess its better than having one’s self-esteem eroded.

Co-incidence? Can’t be…

I was glued to the idiot box this evening and while channel hopping i came across VH1 airing the video of the very popular Daniel Powter song “Bad Day”. I’ve been listening to this song for quite some time now, in fact almost since 2005 when it was released and went on to top a few charts. But i confess to  having watched the music video for the first time this evening  on TV (don’t know how i missed it for so long!).

Now, i guess many of us remember this Ustad Sultan Khan and Shreya Ghoshal song going by the name “Leja Leja Re” which was released around the same time in 2005. I won’t say i really liked the song or not, but at least the music video stays in my memory mostly because every single TV channel used to air it at least a couple of 100 times a day, and it looked pretty decent once i muted the volume!

Now watch the two videos and decide for yourself - which is a copy of which. Its kind of funny actually, but “which video was released first?” The similarities are way too obvious to be cast aside as mere co-incidence! Going by the “reputation” of Indian producers, I guess the Daniel Powter video came out first. And if it actually did, the producer of the Indian version must have absolutely loved it and wasted no time in “being inspired” by it.

Decide for yourself people…

The inspiration behind Bucket List part 2

My Bucket List – 2. Bundesautobahnen

Imagine driving down a highway in your new gleaming black Porsche 911 doing some 220 kmph, feeling like you’re the king of the road. You keep smirking at other ‘lesser mortals’ (read-people with cars that cant go faster than 200!) as you overtake them. You’re having the time of your life, enjoying every bit of it, when you glance at the rear view mirror for a moment. You see a red blob ,somewhere in the distance but approaching fast. You think, ‘who can go faster than my 911?’, and dismiss it with a wave of your hand. But then, you glance back at the mirror out of sheer curiosity. Only this time you can clearly make out that the red blob is a Ferrari 430 getting ominously close to your 911. As you panic and try to gather your thoughts, you hear the 430 swish past you like a ghost and disappearing into the distance ahead. For a moment, your mind goes numb, your palms begin to sweat, you’re too dismayed and horrified to even think, the cockpit of your 911 begins closing in on you dangerously... And then, you realize, you’ve been dethroned! You’re no longer the king of the road. And as if this wasn’t enough, another noisy yellow Lamborghini  Murcielago thunders past your now timid 911.  You can almost imagine the driver now smirking back at you, the lesser mortal.

For those who are not familiar with the term Bundesautobahnen, it literally means - The German Federal Motorway. And what i just described might as well happen to you while driving on an autobahn, of course considering the fact that you’re wealthy and flamboyant enough to drive a 911 (even a 430 or a Murcielago for that matter)!

As Wikipedia correctly points out- German autobahns are sometimes referred to as "the last refuge of the high-speed drivers", since they have no general speed limit, though about 55% of the total length is subject to local and/or conditional limits. But considering that they span almost 12000km across Germany, I’d gladly take the remaining 45% any day. Even the recommended speed limit is 130km/h which of course is not mandatory. Spotting cars and/or bikes doing speeds in excess of 200kmph is not difficult here. You can easily step on the accelerator and test your car’s top speed if traffic conditions permit you to do so. And that is exactly what I(saying this with starry eyes…)intend to do with my Reventón and YZF-R1 as i tick off the 2nd task on my list.

O-bum-a just can’t seem to resist…

Poor Barack Obama just couldn’t help it this one time, as Nicolas Sarkozy smirks on…hahahahahaha…well i forgive him…its completely understandable, isn’t it ??!!

The bum in question here belongs to a 16 year old Brazilian lady named Mayora Tavares who was at the G8 summit in Italy as part of a group of people, aged between 14 and 17, there to discuss how the lives of young people around the world can be improved.

But Sarkozy aint no angel himself, is he??

Source…TOI article

The reality…The EYE opener

My Bucket List – 1. Kailash Mansarovar

Topping my bucket list is a place i know many were and still would be amazed to find on my list.

Kailash Mansarovar, as i earlier wrote (and erased!), is a place that’s amazingly calm and serene. The hardships that one has to face to reach the place make the breathtaking views of Mt. Kailash and the Mansarovar lake even more worthwhile. And i’ve confessed to being an evildoer, so the added incentive of being able to wash away the accumulated sins from all my previous births makes it a place that has to be visited at least once in a lifetime.

Picture courtesy - http://tibet-incense.com/blog/wp-content/images/kailash_manasarovar.jpg

My Bucket List (Prologue)

‘Is it too early to be making such a wish list?’, i ask myself. Wasn’t Jack Nicholson a cancer patient in his seventies and about to die in 3 months when he decided to make his list in The Bucket List.Maybe. Maybe not. There are moments, usually before i go to sleep at night, when i lay down and think…I’ve lived a quarter of a century already, completed 2 degrees, worked for 2 years, made a lot of great friends along the way, gained a lot of weight, began a love-hate relationship with saddi Dilli, watched a ton of movies, started blogging, etc etc etc. But how many moments in my life do i actually wish i could live over again, places i wish i could be to once more, crazy things i wish i could do again? Three, four, five maybe. Is that it? Is that what my life’s been worth so far?

There’s obviously no point lamenting. I can’t change the past. But i can most certainly look forward to a brighter, or rather a more sprightly future. Starting today, i’ll be putting up a list of things i wish to do and places i wish to visit before the bucket eventually gets kicked from under my feet!

HEALTH Q & A SESSION

Everyone might have read this one somewhere sometime. I just  wanted to reiterate the importance of good health…

Q: I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life; is this true?
A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it.. don't waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?
A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.

Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?
A: No, not at all. Wine is made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that means they take the water out of the fruity bit so you get even more of the goodness that way. Beer is also made out of grain. Bottoms up!

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?
A: Can't think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain...Good!

Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?
A: YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!!! .. Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they're permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?
A: Are you crazy? HELLO Cocoa beans! Another vegetable!!! It's the best feel-good food around!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?
A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?
A: Hey! 'Round' is a shape!

Well, I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had about food and diets.

And remember:

'Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO, What a Ride’

The (mis)adventures of my spectacles

Last week I had to spend almost 4000 bucks to get myself 2 new pairs of spectacles because I had just broken the 8th pair in my life. And this is the first time I got 2 at a time as I seem to have become prone to losing/breaking my spectacles with an alarming regularity of late. So I just want to have a backup pair ready in case another such mishap takes place in the future.

I know most of my friends, family, colleagues and fellow bloggers wear either spectacles or contact lenses. When I look at a group photo of mine, its usually the bespectacled who outnumber the not-so-spectacled ones. I wear specs. Both my parents use reading glasses. Listed fellow bloggers are all certified specs/lens wearers. So are most of the Shanky_PP and SPDSPD (a group of 6,details of which you can find on my Orkut communities page) members. I think its fair enough to say that we would in fact be incomplete without these extensions of our body form. Well, almost.

I've been wearing specs since I was 15 and this piece of blog is dedicated to the numerous specs I've worn over the years, and broken!

Eyeglasses used to be equated with learned and profound men. Over the years, eyeglasses have become more like fashion accessories and don't remain just a medium of visual correction. I, of course, can claim to be neither profound, nor fashionable. I wear eyeglasses for the simple reason that without them I cannot read a book from 3 feet. Yesterday, I had to spend the entire day without my specs as I made the painful mistake of leaving them at home when leaving for office. I cannot insist enough the alleviation I felt when I reached back home and put them atop my nose. Ah, the clarity of vision provided by this noble invention of a noble man is such a blessing for us, the "visually challenged". You know the first thing I treated myself with with my first paycheck? It was a pair of power-sunglasses! I had begged daddy dear to get me a pair of power-sunglasses a number of times earlier. But again, to him its just a piece of fashion accessory and not something that can protect your eyes in the strong sun and wind. And these very power-sunglasses saved me from a certain tragedy yesterday. I could drive back home only because of them. Although I did have to leave office a little early so that I could get back home before dark or I would have looked like a complete jerk wearing sunglasses in the late evening (almost night!).

I'd like to ask people about different ways they've managed to break/crack/pulverize/lose their eyeglasses. I'll list here a few of my own. So, here goes...

1. The easiest one probably - sit on them as lay quietly on the bed/chair/table etc.
2. Hide them safely and forget where you  hid them.
3. Vent your anger on them.
4. Make them fall from an unsafe height.
5. Ride your bike with them hanging by the collar/neck/V of your T-shirt, reach home and find them missing from the collar/neck/V of your T-shirt (this is how I lost my last one!).

Hope this would bring back some life to my blog after an extended hibernation!

I even found this bit of poetry while googling around...

An Ode to Spectacles - by William Cow

Between Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose-
The spectacles set them unhappily wrong;
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To which the said spectacles ought to belong.

So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause
With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning;
While chief baron Ear sat to balance the laws,
So famed for his talent in nicely discerning.

In behalf of the Nose, it will quickly appear,
And your lordship, he said, will undoubtedly find
That the Nose has had spectacles always in wear,
Which amounts to possession time out of mind.

Then holding the spectacles up to the court-
Your lordship observes they are made with a straddle
As wide as the ridge of the Nose is; in short,
Designed to sit close to it, just like a saddle.

Again, would your lordship a moment suppose?
(‘Tis a case that has happened, and may be again)
That the visage or countenance had not a nose;
Pray who would, or could, wear spectacles then?

On the whole it appears- and my argument shows,
With reasoning the court will never condemn,
That the spectacles plainly were made for the Nose,
And the nose was as plainly intended for them.

Then, shifting his side (as a lawyer knows how),
He pleaded again on behalf of the Eyes;
But what were his arguments few people know,
For the court did not think they were equally wise.

So his lordship decreed with a grave solemn tone,
Decisive and clear, without one if or but-
That whenever the Nose put his spectacles on,
By daylight or candlelight- Eyes should be shut.

The consequences of driving SLOWWW....

(I'm back to writing about something I like best - Driving!)

I say consequences because my reasoning might not actually make it clear in the end if it's good or bad to drive slow, although it's purely a matter of choice. And by slow, I mean slow by MY standards, considering that I usually drive in the 70-100kph speed range even in the city. So slow here means in the 50-60kph range, or putting it another way, in the 4-5k rpm range, the usual being 7-9k and redlining before every up-shift. But anyway, here's the reason I've been committing this "act" pretty consistently since about 2 weeks now. My new year's resolution this time has been to-quite unlike me-extract maximum fuel efficiency from  my bike. No, wait, please don't laugh, I'm serious. I know its very much NOT in line with my reputation of being an adrenaline junkie on the road. But these days of recession and the news of an upcoming trucker's strike and petrol pumps going dry has made my resolve even steelier. Apart from that, my bike's engine has been running-again quite unlike it-unusually smooth, thus making it harder for me get the ohhh so yummy vibrations when I rev the hell out of it! The performance hasn't been affected one bit though, so I'm happy anyway.

So let's start by listing out the the advantages-

1. My expletive-meter (while on the road) has gone down a few notches. This is obviously due to the fact that I'm driving slow myself and rarely in a hurry, so there isn't a need to give the "move out my way you .........." treatment to anyone.
2. Same reason why I honk a lot lesser.
3. It gives me that extra second to dodge any potholes and speed-bumps. At my usual speed I hardly care about dodging any at all.
4. It gives me an extra moment to gaze at a PYT on the road without risking an accident.
5. I can listen to even "soft" songs on my i-pod while riding my bike. That's partly due to the smoother engine. And at my usual speeds, the engine sound as well that of the air rushing past makes it difficult to listen to any music at all, even with noise-canceling earphones.
6. It's easier talk to anyone riding pillion for the same reason.
7. I shake less because of the chilling air. At 50kph you hardly feel any wind at all.
8. When a friend of your's is driving say a Splendor or Victor, which cannot go as fast as your bike, you need to slow down for him to catch up. But with my new found enthusiasm to drive slow, my "slower" friends can always keep up.
9. While cruising at 50-60kph and in the 4-5k rpm range, I know I still have at least 50% of the engine power in reserve waiting to be tapped on for a flyby.
10. AND The most important one- MORE MILEAGE! I know that extracting a decent mileage from a CBZ is like trying to find the holy grail. But I gladly take anything better than I normally get. So I'm up from the usual 35kmpl to almost 42-43kmpl. Not bad at all considering that for the Rs.300 worth of petrol that I put in at every re-fueling, I'm able to make an extra round-trip to my office which is about 25km from home.

And the disadvantages-

1. It takes me an extra 15 min. to reach office, so I have to start early, which means waking up 15 min. earlier as well. Now everyone knows how excruciating it is to sacrifice those precious last 15 min. of comforting sleep on chilly winter mornings.
2. This I miss a lot - revving the crap out of the engine.
3. Wow...i can hardly think of any other disadvantages...damn...
4. Ummmmmm... still thinking...
5. Okay okay...that's about it, I can't think of any more.

And here's another "observation", I can't decide if its an advantage or not. I'm still overtaking 9 out of 10 bikes/cars on the road. I guess it means there's scope to go even slower. Nahiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii..... I'm not even sure how long I would be able to carry on all this. Maybe till my bike itself screams one day "Abe aeee...ab chaleaga bhi? Kab tak chalegi teri ye nautanki?"

But for the moment, I'm happy saving a few extra bucks.