My first 5K Race

I run my first race yesterday and despite not being into it couple of days prior to the race, and totally ready to skip it, I did well. Seriously, I would have been a no show if I had not talked my best friends into running the race, and so because of them I couldn't not run!

Last week was not a good week! After three weeks I met with both my professors face to face. And both of them, separately, told me that I should take advantage of having lab-mates, that I should discuss with them my projects, get their opinions, and if I am stuck somewhere, to ask them for help, and not to waste valuable time trying to figure everything out on my own!

Right away these advices got translated in my mind as my professors being disappointed in my progress! I was able to handle one professor's constructive criticism but when the second one voiced the same concern, I got really mad at myself.

My critical internal voice is very brutal and unforgiving! In my own eyes I could suddenly become the biggest failure there is! So I started blaming myself that I was going to fail my project, I was going to fail my thesis, and thus fail in finishing my program, and thus fail in finding my next exciting and challenging job.

I am embarrassed to admit that being almost 40 years old, and having worked with some difficult people for almost 20 years, I have not yet learned to have a thick skin, to not take criticism too personally, to appreciate and take advantage of it instead, to accept and try to fix my shortcomings, to learn from my mistakes before they become a gigantic failure. But no, I take criticism very personally, and react to it in a passive aggressive manner.  I suddenly want to distance myself from everyone so that I could put myself down all by myself!

One of the ways I am able to quite my internal voice is to eat. So Thursday night when I headed out to go home, having forgotten to eat lunch, I started thinking about ice cream, chocolate cake, tiramisu, and cheese cake. I was trying to decide if I want to go to a grocery store to buy these or should I find the nearest Burger King to go for a double cheese burger, extra large fries, and extra large regular Pepsi!  Good thing I am broke, so I talked myself out of spending money, while thinking about my upcoming tuition I went home.

Another way I can quite my internal voice is to have a good cry! And so I started having a pity party for myself and cried for a good couple of hours.

Friday morning I had no energy to get up and go for a run. But decided to put on my running shoes and just go for a walk. After a few minutes suddenly I wanted to just run. So I did, lol! I hadn't eaten anything since the previous morning and so truly I had no energy to go far or fast, I run about 2.25 miles in half an hour.

After my run I decided to stick to my usual routine as much as I could and looked forward to J's visit. Thankfully, J had decided to come early, and just after 2 pm he called and said that he was here. I was so excited. I had not eaten lunch yet, so we headed out and had lunch while sitting outside. Thankfully, it had stopped raining.

I told J what my professors had advised me and asked him how much he thinks they were disappointed in me? He said that he does not know my professors personally, but most professors he knows, if they are disappointed in their students, they clearly voice their disappointments. He said that he thinks my professors can see that I am working hard, and am trying, and they are just pointing out to me the options that are available to me. I asked him if he too advices his students to approach their classmates or himself when they are having problems? He laughed and said, he has advised a few of his students in the opposite way, as in he has advised them to think about the problem they are trying to solve for a while before approaching someone for help!

J told me to approach my project and my thesis the same way I had approached my work projects. That is actually what I tried to do last week, to arrange a quite place for myself to think, to set a deadline for myself, and basically to give my day some structure.

I realized something! When I first started working in the mid 90s, if I encountered a problem, right away I turned to my colleagues or my boss for a solution. If they too had no idea, then I turned to texts or manuals. But the past few years, I had frequented a few forums and whenever I had problems, I would search those forums for a possible solution. Usually I could find not one but several solutions, and as a result, I always learned a few new things that I never thought I should know!

However, I think the difference between problem solving in industry and academia is that in industry, the problem one is facing, probably has been solved by 100s of people before; people who had taken pride in their work and had decided to share their solutions for others benefits on various forums. However in academia the problem one is facing, the way one is approaching it, probably is being worked on by only a handful of people. It is highly possible that there have been no publications yet. It is also highly possible that one of those handful of people working on the same problem is very well a lab-mate, so why not turn to him/her for help!

Yes, I felt very foolish taking such a simple suggestion by my professors so out of context! I thought to myself what J thinks of me; that I am such a child, that I am such a drama queen, that I am so immature!

Friday night we went to my parents for dinner, and I was fortune enough to be busy and not think about my foolishness. Once we go home however, the brutal internal voice was back! I tossed and turned the whole night, thinking I am going to lose J, why would he wants to be with such an immature drama queen, and I don't think I can survive losing him! The morning could have not come soon enough! Finally I got up at my usual time when J declared that he wants to run the race too.

Our plan was for my best friends and me to run, and for J and my friends' families to meet us at the finish line.

J declared that he is so ready to break the men's record! I hold back not to laugh; I knew the records, for men it is less than 15 minutes! No reflection on J, but I don't think too many men can run that fast! He asked don't I think he can beat that time? I told him, I only know that he was going to run his best, and I was going to run my best while trying to keep up with him! It felt so good, thinking positive, believing in my capabilities!

I text my friends that we were going to see them at the race's starting line. The venue was one hour drive away from us. So around 6 am J and I headed out. Stopped for tea and beagles on the way and got there right around 7:30 for J to register and for us to pick up our numbers and t-shirts.

Then my best friends got there and we were all ready to run. It was raining, windy and cold. But I kept up with J and finished at 29:46. My goal was to finish sub 30 minutes and I made it. I knew J just run the race to be by my side. I am not sure if I could have run this well if J was not by my side.

If I could give one advice to runners training for their first race, I would tell them to have a partner, or 2 or 3; the more the merrier. Having a running partner to train with and run the race with is priceless. As I said I don't think I would have run the race if it was not for my best friends running it too, and I wouldn't have run so well, for me, if it was not for J setting my speed.

I just remembered something! I was reading about an interview, last week, with the first lady. She was asked what advice she gives her daughters when they fall in love. She said, "Choose people who will lift you up. Find people who will make you better." I can't believe how lucky I am to have found someone who believes in me and who helps me and encourages me to be better in everything I want to do. I want to be able to return the same to J!

Happy father's day and a few other things!

1. I am so grateful for my dad. He is and has always been someone I can turn to for encouragement, support, and guidance. I have been very lucky. I LOVE my dad and I show him and tell him every chance I get. He is the one who tells me all the time it is never too late to start something new! Even though I never voiced it out loud that I was thinking about graduate school, also thinking I was too old to go for it, whenever we were alone, my dad always had encouraging words for me to take a chance, to step outside my comfort zone, to try and find my happiness again. I think the happiness and satisfaction I feel right now in my life, for a large portion, is because of all his encouragement. I cannot tell my dad enough times how much I love him and appreciate him.
2. Our small running group is going strong. We have met three weeks now. I picked a reservoir for us to run around where two loops is a 5K. The first week my two best friends and I met around 6:30 in the morning. The weather was amazing. I run with them, keeping our speed to around 13 minute miles. They were able to keep up for two rounds and didn't need to take walking breaks. Then they walked while I run another two loops. That was my third week running six miles. Thankfully, my friends enjoyed the run. We then went for a big breakfast, and it was so much fun sitting there and talking.
   
   Last week J was in town and I told my best friends that he was going to join us. So their husbands decided to join us to make it a couples run. We started later in the morning, so that my friends' kids would wakeup, have breakfast, and have a babysitter, before their parents can head out. It was raining the entire time we run, we were soaked wet. J and I run five loops. After the run we decided to go home, clean up and then meet again for lunch. We had a great time, and J fit right in.
   
   This week it was the three of us again. We run the first three loops together, averaging 12 minute miles. Then I took off for another two loops and finished in little over hour and half, 92 minutes and 14 seconds to be exact, lol. The weather was great, a bit on the cool side and enjoyable. We then went for a over an hour breakfast and were done by 9 am. I just love this time of the year when you can feel you have accomplished a lot by 9 am, lol!
   
   The coming Saturday is our first race. Yes, my best friends also registered for the race and so we all shall run it. We are starting together, but probably are going to separate, since we decided to push ourselves to run our best run. Hopefully it would be lots of fun. I am getting a bit nervous, but I am glad I would be with my best friends! J shall be here next weekend.
   
3. According to my mom's scale I have lost over 6 pounds in the last five weeks. My skinny jean is becoming more comfortable. I thought it was my imagination, lol, I thought I was getting used to it, but I have lost weight. I am really happy with this loss. I am very surprised at the rate I am losing now; as I am getting closer to my healthy weight, I am losing faster! I think there are three factors helping me lose weight at this stage: detox I did in April (I shall write about it in detail later), running over 25 miles a week, and drinking lots of water. Of course I am still following a vegan diet mostly, so I think that helps too. I like to lose another 6 pounds to go under 120, and then I am letting my body decide on the rest.
   
4. My research and project are not proceeding successfully! I have been getting distracted easily; working in close proximity with few other people who are very sociable and like to discuss their works often, is enjoyable and distracting at the same time. It had not help that my fellow lab-mates kept interrupting me to ask questions about the tool I told them I know well and offered to answer any questions they might have. They have been asking the same questions over and over again! Not having a deadline, or weekly meeting with my professors to keep me accountable, has also contributed to the difficulty of staying motivated and concentrating on my work.
   
   I know it is not a good time to slack off. I needed to make changes! As a starting point, I asked my lab-mates to email me their questions, and I told them I would get the answer to them that same day, but might not be right away! I also created a Q&A page with the questions that had already been asked and the answers I provided so that they could refer to that page before sending me their questions. Even if they decided not to read that page, I could easily get the answer from that page when replying to them. Hopefully, this would take care of the problem of questions from my fellow lab-mates.
   
   I have also been thinking, starting tomorrow, I should go the library in the morning, to have a quite uninterrupted few hours to read and think about my thesis/project. Then make it to the lab around lunch time, since I enjoy being part of our little group, having lively people around me. This way I am getting my work done, hopefully, but I am not making myself be alone and isolated all the time. Also, I have decided to try and write at least a page of my thoughts and understanding of my morning readings every day.
   
   Hopefully these changes would help me progress better.
   
5. About the Syrian blogger I talked about a few posts down. I can't believe how wrong I was! According to the last post, the blogger was not Syrian, was not Arab, was not a woman, was not in Damascus, and was not captured and jailed because of the posts in that blog! In the last post the blogger apologized for the fiction that he had feed his readers in the name of truth, said he was a male, who was writing from Istanbul, Turkey, and his name apparently sounded Westerner! I never had a chance to go read that post, by the time my Syrian born lab-mate told me about it, the blogger had deleted the entire blog. According to my lab-mate he did not even understand the damage he had caused, how he had discredited other authentic bloggers, who were putting their lives on the line by blogging, while trying to inform the world what was happening to them, to their families, to their neighbors, and to their countrymen, describing how their government mercilessly kills young, old, men, women, and children, opening fire in the residential area, killing whoever was in front of them. But my lab-mate thinks even that last entry is a lie! She thinks the person behind the blog was in fact a woman who had Syrian ties, and who is living and going to school, in Scotland, since the IP address she used repeatedly at one sited that has been published it, is from the University of Edinburg!
   
6. A few weeks ago I received an email from a former colleague, who is looking for a job! He was one of the two colleagues that I thought they would never have a problem of finding their next exciting and challenging jobs. They both implied that often they are approached by headhunters, former colleagues, and people they meet at various conferences they attend, asking them to consider other opportunities. The colleague who emailed me apparently has been looking for a permanent job since January, while still consulting. Apparently his consulting job concluded in mid May, and since then he has been looking for a job fulltime. I am very bothered by this. I am thinking if someone like him has been seriously looking for a job for over a month and has not been able to land one, I am in a bigger trouble than I thought I was. I shall write more about this later.
   

Advantage of living in the basement ...

no need for AC!

The tenant informed me last week that the AC is broken. I guess the hard winter that we had damaged it. 

I called the technician who services my AC and heater every other year, who was at my place last year servicing the AC, and who I was hoping that I didn’t need to hire this year, and he being very busy this time of the year, could not make it until yesterday, another very hot day. I felt bad for my tenant.

Anyhow I notified my tenant upstairs that the technician shall be there yesterday. I said that he would fix the AC and leaves the bill. I asked them to please be home between the hours he said he would be there, and also asked them to give me the bill afterward.

The tenant emailed me back, said that she would be home, but asked that if I could be home too. She said she is not comfortable dealing with the technician! 

So yesterday, in the hot and humid midday, I had to get home to wait for the technician. I got home about 10 minutes past the time he said he could come, and was hoping that he had not arrived yet. I rang the bell upstairs, and when I got in, boy was it hot.

I asked my tenant to come downstairs while we waited for the technician, and what a difference in temperature the upstairs and downstairs had. I made lemonade and we waited.

The technician came, fixed the AC, give me the bill for over $300, and my tenant was happy to feel the cool air pumped into the house. 

My area was cool to begin with. lol.

Fiction blogging!

I had no idea such blogs excited! Even though I am fairly new to having my own blog, I am not new to blog reading. I have been reading blogs, mostly weightloss blogs, for 7-8 years now.

I have a lab-mate who is originally from Syria. The few times that we have gone out to lunch as a group, I had an opportunity to talk to her. I was mostly interested on her take on the uprising in the Middle East and North Africa. 

I had a Iranian born coworker, whose parents emigrated to the US when she was a toddler. Even though she said she could not speak Farsi well, but she said she was still very interested in the future of Iran, and so followed Iranian politics. Couple of years ago there was an uprising in Iran too, and she told me what was happening there.

I found it fascinating to get informed about current situation in Syria from my lab-mate to compare it to what I knew from the Iranian uprising!

Almost all my lab-mate's information come from blogs she reads of bloggers living in Syria. I thought that was a major difference between the Iranian bloggers, I had heard about, and the Syrian bloggers, during their uprisings. In Iran as soon as the uprising found momentum, all bloggers had to stop posting, since the internet speed was brought down to almost a halt by the Iranian government. Most my former colleague could find about the happenings in Iran, at that point, was by reading tweets, even those from people inside Iran were sporadic. My former colleague told me that Iranian in Iran coded their information to Iranian outside and those from the outside did the posting.

I actually became very impressed when my lab-mate told me that an American born woman, Amina, who has dual citizenship of US and Syria, has included her sexual orientation in her blog's title, posts under her full name, from Damascus! I thought she is so brave. The horror stories that I read/hear about how women are treated in that part of the world is terrifying even just reading/hearing it. I thought here is this woman, admitting that she is a lesbian, in a country that probably does not tolerate these kind of openness, especially from a woman, and she posts from within the country, when there is an uprising going on, criticizing the oppressed government, and posts under her real name. I was an instant admirer!

Earlier this week, my lab-mate informed me that Amina was abducted in broad daylight. Since then I have been following her story closely. International media had the story on their webpage couple of days ago, but since yesterday, there are doubts about Amina. Neither State Department nor media investigation have been able to find information about someone with that name born in the US. Some have voiced that she is not who she says she is! Even her being in Syria has gone under the question! Earlier in the week there was a picture of her circulating websites, a picture she had sent privately to someone she emailed regularly, pretending it was a picture of her, however later in the week, it is determined that the picture belong to a Croatian woman living in UK!

Here are a few links on the story: CNN,  Guardian, Huffington Post, MSNBC.

My belief is that there is a woman, who has posted at A Gay Girl in Damascus, who is in Syria, where she was abducted on Monday. She might have not been able to post her posts directly, but I want to believe that she has written them all. And they are very much her honest thoughts.

To some extend I think it was smart of her not to give her real name. But then I have been thinking why didn't she just pick a name that would have been obvious it was an alias!

I have been wondering if she pretended that was her real name to make her blog more authentic! Would blog readers pay less attention to anonymous bloggers? Would blog readers pay less attention to bloggers who do not post a picture of themselves? Would blog readers pay less attention to bloggers who do not say where they live or what field they are in?

For me, as a reader, it has not mattered, if I think I know the real name of the blogger, or I know that the name they post under is an alias. It has not mattered if I know where they live, or if I know approximately where they are. It has not mattered if there was a face to go with their posts or not. And it has not mattered if I knew what they do exactly, or if I had guessed what they do.

For me, as a reader, as long as I was interested in the topic they write about, being it weight loss, surviving as a graduate student, entering industry after being in academia for a while, or vice versa, or running; I read their blogs regularly because of the contents of their posts. And as long as the blog I read provide suggestion, and motivational posts that I know I am learning from, I don't care what the bloggers' real names are.

Anyhow, one of the commenter at Amina's blog posted this link: http://bookmaniac.org/painful-doubts-about-amina/! That is where I learned the term fiction blogging!

I am kindof/sortof disturbed about this! I like to believe the little I know about the bloggers I read regularly is true. No one has twisted any blogger's arm to admit their real names, post a picture of themselves, disclose their whereabouts, or their job. Thus if the blogger does not want to say who she is, she is free to do so. Why pretend? As a blog reader I want to read an  honest post, that is all it matters to me!

I have been thinking we have enough deception in the world, I always felt that the world of blogging was truly honest since it was anonymous. But I guess there is anomaly here too!

Is vegetarian eating cheaper?

My older sister sent me this link and asked if I have saved on groceries since switching to vegetarian eating?

In this article the author has compared one day expenses of meat eaters against three forms of vegetarians: those vegetarian who include fish in their diet, those who don't eat any form of meat but include diary, and those (referred to as vegan) who eliminate any animal product in their diet. The author's conclusion is that vegan spend on the average about 27% less on groceries than their meat eater counterparts.

I am following the vegan diet. Actually, more accurately, I follow vegan diet when I am on my own; when I am at my parent's, sisters', or my best friends', and I don't have any other options, I do eat their meat dish. But lately, my mom especially, has tried to have a vegetarian option for me. Anyhow, the only difference between my typical day, and this article's typical vegan day, is that I have not tried any soy products yet.

My first impulse was to tell my sister, knowing approximately how much I had spend on groceries, during my first semester at school, in which I followed lowcarb way of eating, verses my second semester, in which I followed vegan diet, that my grocery expenses had more or less stayed the same.

In September, before school started, I went grocery shopping, got ingredients to make several dishes, and also 10 boxes of Atkins advantage bar from BJs. I divided the dishes I made, of 6 to 8 servings each, into approximately 35 servings, for 5 weeks worth of dinners. Atkins bar were for my breakfast, lunch, and snack, and I was hoping not to exceed 2 boxes (=30 bars) per week; thankfully, I went a bit less. Anyhow, I divided what I had spent on groceries that day by 5, and thought that was a reasonable weekly grocery budget.

The subsequent times that I went shopping, that semester, I tried to spend as much as I had spent the first time. I was successful and did not go too much over or under what I had planned.

Just before starting the second semester, I got inspired by one of my best friend's sister-in-law, who had lost a lot of weight after her pregnancy, and who was following a vegan diet, to become a vegetarian too, so I could continue to lose weight. I also felt that because of my limited kitchen, with no stove and small refrigerator, becoming vegan was ideal for me.

So I started going grocery shopping every week. On my way home from school, I would stop by the grocery and buy as much as I could comfortably carry home. If I couldn't do that in one trip, I would stop by the following night, to buy the rest of items I needed. I tried to stay within the limit of my weekly expenses that I had estimated the first semester.

The good thing is that I have been charging my groceries to the only one credit card I carry, to have a complete control over my expenses. Since my statements are convectively saved in a pdf format, I went to add up my grocery expenses between September 1 and December 15, to compare it with what I had spend between February 1 and May 15.

To my surprise there was over 23% difference between my two semesters grocery spending! I truly was amazed!

How come I did not noticed it?

I had estimated to spend about $60 +/- $5 per week on groceries.  On the average I had spend $62 during the first semester and $53 during the second semester. During the second semester, I remember, a few weeks when I spent over $60, which I tried to mend by spending less the following week.  I guess as long as I was staying somehow close to $60 mark I was OK. Actually, I think as long as I was spending less that was the best, lol! Anyhow, apparently during the second semester I mostly stayed lower while during the first semester I mostly stayed over, $60.

So yes, few dollar differences per week between the two semesters were not noticeable, but once adding them up, it is almost $170 difference, for the 3 and half month period. That is a great saving for an individual with no income.

Of course my comparison might not be completely accurate, since the number of nights I stayed at my parents during each semester is not taken into account. Also not taken into account is my careful observation of sales items during the second semester.  Since I was going grocery shopping more often during the second semester, I tried to buy fruits and vegetables that were on sale that week.

So yes, I did save money; another benefit of begin vegan, lol! I LOVE it when I get a positive side effect that I had not considered when making my decision, lol.