A walk by Mumbai Bay

Kowshik, a close friend wanted to go walking this morning. I readily agreed. Until I heard the time. He wanted to set off from his house at 5.30 a.m. Which meant I had to leave my home at 5. Which meant, I had to wake up at 4.30. Finally with a little less enthusiasm, I agreed.

We met at 5.30 and drove down to Nariman Point, one end of the famous Mumbai landmark, the Queen's necklace. We reached at 6 a.m. and I was expecting to be greeted by a desolate walkway, with just the magical sea and a beautiful dawn for company. I got 2 of 3 right. The magical sea and the beautiful dawn. The desolate walkway I imagined, was filled with a zillion early morning walkers, joggers, gazers, ... And many of them seemed like they had been here for quite a while. We even came across several people who looked like they had spent the night here.

Sharing the space with all of them was both disappointing and invigorating. Disappointed with myself for not being as particular and inculcating fitness as part of my regular regime. Invigorating to be able to now attempt and make it part of a regular if not daily regime.

The people we shared our morning walk with seemed to be diverse with fitness being the bond. They were the young and the old. The fit and the unfit. Singles and couples. Families and friends. Just observing all of them made the walk enjoyable and fun.

An interesting phenomenon I found was that of clubs. There seemed to be several of them. That brought together its members who trained together. And then ran together. The group camaraderie made a normally tough and tiring workout easy and fun.

The most interesting group was the Yoga by the Bay. A joint initiative of the NGO I love Mumbai and Mickey Mehta, and supported by The Times of India, it was for anyone and everyone interested. There were a group of trainers who were training smaller groups of around 30 - 50. And all of them were enjoying the guidance. Most of them seemed to be newbies who were learning. And the trainers were making it simple for them.

As we were reaching the end of our walk after around 1 hour. I was amazed to see that it was just 7 am. The time at which I would normally start my day was the time I had already completed the days exercise. I guess the folks who practiced the saying "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" knew a lot more than me.

Gotta go. Time to go to bed. Early.

WhatsApp Freia

Earlier this week, Freia sent a WhatsApp to the family group.

"
hello! for work i'm writing about family whatsapp groups like ours. if you want, can you tell me in 1 or 2 lines what you like about whatsapp and how you think it has helped (or not) our family?
"

Here's what Ivy had to say
"
As a doctor, its excellent as it allows opinions to juniors and 2nd opinions to colleagues after reviewing reports n X-rays sent on WhatsApp.

Sometimes its a distraction and a waste of time.

And finally instant communication. For small things. End of feedback. For more, you need to call, not use WhatsApp.
"

And here's what I said
"
I think its a great tool. Its a beautiful fusion of instant messaging and email. :-)

The real life concepts of multiple spaces works well. 1-1, Immediate family group. Extended family group. Friends. Broadcast, ...
"

And finally Freia wrote and published her article. Using none of the feedback we and the rest of the family gave her. Which resulted in a beautiful, well written article.

WhatsApp brought my great big Indian family closer together

http://mashable.com/2017/04/18/whatsapp-families-india/#LFDEW75mciq7

The article got picked up by Yahoo. And was translated in French. And was critically appreciated by her parents. And family. And friends. And ...

But the largest impact was on our family group. Where everyone was discussing who the "Decades old aunt" was. Starting with the daughter. Who caught on before anyone else could even finish reading the article and posted the below message on the family group.

Freia's other articles are equally good. To read other articles by Freia, check out her page at:
http://mashable.com/author/freia-lobo/

Disclaimer: As Freia's Dad my opinion could be biased. Although I'd like to think its not. :-)

Lifestyle Guru

Part of my 2017 resolutions have me losing weight. Significant weight. In office, we've discussed this subject a zillion times. And while we all knew what was good and bad, we always ended up doing what satisfied our never ending cravings. And that invariably happened to be BAD.

This time around there was a difference. I started by talking about what diet I would do. And how I would lose weight. And so on an so forth. That's when my colleague Claudian rudely interrupted me. And made it clear that in his not so humble opinion, I was an IDIOT. What I was going to do, would not only not work, it would fail miserably. And I was doomed to be overweight forever. Unless, ...

Normally, I would argue or at the very least ignore such sweeping, general statements. Except for 1 thing. Claudian was looking slim and fit. And had lost over 10 lbs. So it seemed like whatever he was doing was working. And I immediately made him my Guru. And promised to follow his every direction. At all times. Well, at most times.

And I latched on to every word, aka "Pearls of Wisdom", that came from the Guru. His very first pronouncement. Dieting doe not help. So, stop dieting. What you need is a "Change in Lifestyle". Okay. So, what can I eat. "Anything and everything", Claudian, or as I now refer to as "Lifestyle Guru", said. I already loved him. And his pronouncements. Until he qualified it. "In moderation".

He also gave me his 10 commandments.

1. Thou shalt not have Tea, first thing in the morning.
You may have a glass of warm water with lemon.

2. Thou shalt not drink any aerated waters. Or sugary drinks.
You may have sparkling water.

3. Thou shalt have 5 meals a day.
Snack on nuts or fruits or salads.

4. Thou shalt not overeat.
Satiate your need. Not your greed. Eat whatever you want. In moderation.

5. Thou shalt not have high calorie foods.
All natural products are low calorie and healthy.

6. Thou shalt not remain hungry.
Starving leads to binge eating.

7. Thou shalt not avoid foods you love.
Avoiding things you love, aka desserts, will lead to binging on them when you do see them.

8. Thou shalt exercise daily.
Being fit ensures a healthy metabolism.

9. Thou shalt learn to say NO.
Always saying Yes when food is offered, leads to eating more than required.

10. Thou shalt follow all commandments.
Today. And until kingdom come.

And as I start this journey from Dieting to Lifestyle Change, I need to give my Guru, Guru Dakshina, which is a gift for the Teacher. And that's this Blog. Which could be the beginning of a new movement. A healthy movement. Led by its dynamic leader. One who practices what he preaches. The Lifestyle Guru.

p.s.: A Huge Shout-out to Ruby. The Inspiration of the Lifestyle Guru. His better half. And most importantly, the Chronicler of the Guru, aka Mobile Photographer.

Algorithms in Medicine

I was waiting to pick up Ivy, my better half in her car. I was bored and looking around, saw a medical journal on the seat. Not having anything else to do, I picked up the thick book. I flipped through it and all I could see was lots of fine print text, drawings and images that made no sense to me and more text. I was about to close the book, since I figured I was better off being bored doing nothing, that I spotted the word Algorithm. Being adventurous, I read either side of the word and saw, "A medical algorithm for assessment an treatment of ..."

I was intrigued. I had no clue that medicine used algorithms and not only in their medical instruments and equipment but in the practice of medicine.

On checking I found that not only was it a common practice in medicine, it was a specialized methodology that was becoming increasingly popular.

"
A medical algorithm is any computation, formula, statistical survey, nomogram, or look-up table, useful in healthcare. Medical algorithms include decision tree approaches to healthcare treatment (e.g., if symptoms A, B, and C are evident, then use treatment X) and also less clear-cut tools aimed at reducing or defining uncertainty.

Medical algorithms are part of a broader field which is usually fit under the aims of medical informatics and medical decision-making. Medical decisions occur in several areas of medical activity including medical test selection, diagnosis, therapy and prognosis, and automatic control of medical equipment.

In relation to logic-based and artificial neural network-based clinical decision support system, which are also computer applications to the medical decision-making field, algorithms are less complex in architecture, data structure and user interface. Medical algorithms are not necessarily implemented using digital computers. In fact, many of them can be represented on paper, in the form of diagrams, nomographs, etc.
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_algorithm

I was even more surprised to find that a company exists, "Medal", that defines itself as "The Medical Algorithms company" and has over 20,000 (Yes, Twenty Thousand) algorithms for medical practitioners.

https://www.medicalalgorithms.com/

And while I was looking at this subject, I came across a related subject, that is even more fascinating. Artificial Intelligence and Medicine.

"Artificial Intelligence has to and will redesign healthcare"
http://medicalfuturist.com/top-artificial-intelligence-companies-in-healthcare/

Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare – It’s about Time
Casey Bennett

Doodle to Art

I've always wanted to draw. And just like most things I've wanted to do, to say I wasn't very good at it, would be an understatement. Even my parents had difficulty in making out what I had scribbled. And that was after I had explained what is was.

Finally, decades later, even I can draw. Google's AutoDraw seems to have been designed exactly for people like me. Which is a whole lot of people.

As in most things, the creators summarize their creation the best. And here's what Google, the creators of AutoDraw have to say about their Awesomely Amazing product.

"
AutoDraw is a new kind of drawing tool. It pairs machine learning with drawings from talented artists to help everyone create anything visual, fast. There’s nothing to download. Nothing to pay for. And it works anywhere: smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, etc.

AutoDraw’s suggestion tool uses the same technology used in QuickDraw, to guess what you’re trying to draw. Right now, it can guess hundreds of drawings and we look forward to adding more over time. If you are interested in creating drawings for others to use with AutoDraw, contact us here.

We hope AutoDraw will help make drawing and creating a little more accessible and fun for everyone.
"

AutoDraw has been "Built by Dan Motzenbecker and Kyle Phillips with friends at Google Creative Lab."

https://aiexperiments.withgoogle.com/autodraw

Here's a quick look at AutoDraw: Fast Drawing for Everyone

Check it out:
https://www.autodraw.com/