Earth Day: For the Planet we live on

A mother tells her child to keep the house clean while she is away. The kid agrees. But when the mother steps on the road, she checks her handbag and throws unwanted papers and dirt on the street. Why? To keep her bag and her house clean. But what about the street she's walking on? Doesn't it deserve cleanliness?

They say Save Water. Its scarce. How many of us do? They say Plant Trees. They'll help us breath. How many of us actually plant trees? They say Avoid Plastic Bags. But its one of our daily necessities, so we ignore. Such ignorance towards most of the good things has landed us here. Today it has become a priority to look after nature. Let's not ignore our nature and our earth. We have just one.

Earth day is celebrated on 22nd April. But is just 22nd April the day when we should care about or spread the awareness? No! It has to be 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A small step taken by us and simple good habits will lead us to a better future. Here are few steps which can be part of your daily life.

Let that water tap be off when not needed. Scrubbing your palm with soap or brushing your teeth in front of the wash basin, you can put off the tap.

Plant a tree/sapling at least once in a year. It could be any day: Your birthday, Earth day, The new year or on a bright Sunday.

Save trees by using lesser paper. Why not work digitally when you can? The more paper you use, more trees are made to fall.

Keep your environment clean. Its not just your home that needs cleanliness, your surrounding does too. While traveling, preserve the waste till you find a dustbin. Isn't this one easy?

My shopping bag made of cloth

Avoid plastic bags and if you have one reuse it. Preserve those plastic bags for next use instead of throwing them in the bin. Purchase or get cloth bag for your grocery shopping which can carry the weight and will last long. Obviously they are washable too. Trust me, money spent on a cloth bag never goes waste.

Walk or ride a bicycle: Human powered transportation are always better than those powered with fuel. So let's ditch the car and bike, and choose bicycle for short distances. It will not just be earth friendly, but save your fuel, get away from the traffic and help you stay fit.

Let your actions inspire others. Good deeds begins from home. If you  have started your contribution towards saving earth, spread the word. Educate others. Let's end the ignorance.

One organisation which spreads awareness to save earth is Green Yatra. Let's join the movement and do our bit for the planet we live on. Here's a soothing music video by Studio NH47 for the auspicious Earth Day.

World Heart Day - Is your Heart Healthy?

Ideally, there shouldn't be a World Heart Day. After all, the heart has to be taken care of every moment of our life. The modern day eating habits, busy schedules, stressful day doesn't permit our heart to stay healthy.

The World Heart Day is not the only day when you have to take care of your heart. It is the day on which the awareness should be spread by each one of us.

Some simple healthy routines if followed, will keep our heart pumping with joy. The first step towards a healthy  heart is to do a check up and see how healthy your heart is. Believe me the health checkup report will give you the confidence and the necessary boost to keep yourself healthy.

Here are few tips which you can follow if you really care for your heart.

Happy Women's Day

Rocket science or recipes they manage each with expertise. They run proficiently marathons or countries. Ingenious, artistic, intuitive, creative at dinner tables or boardrooms, they bring fresh perspectives. They are empathetic and kind, they can read between the lines. They are beautiful inherently, they nurture unconditionally. Mothers, partners, professionals, friends they play multiple roles successfully With their strong sense of ethics, they enrich the social fabric.

Source: jaltembabaylife.com

Despite infinite qualities, they are often under-estimated taken for granted, discriminated objectified, abused, battered, bruised. But they never give up the fight for fairness and equal rights. In the face of challenges, they are resilient and relentless. Let us join their struggles, share their pain fight inequities, inspire change. On International Women's Day let us resolve to make a difference.  Our worlds revolve around them..

Let us celebrate women…

Get prepared for Mumbai Marathon 2014

Finishing a marathon is an accomplishment that less than 1% of people in Mumbai will achieve. If you have registered, be proud to be one of them.

Source: theguardian.com

If you have went through the upcoming Mumbai Marathon 2014 registration, then you have certainly thought of preparing for it. Because be it half marathon, full marathon or dream run, preparation is a must. Even a 6 km walk needs some effort for a person who workout regularly, although the homework required for them would be lesser. So if your schedule is set for early morning or during sunset hours, you have to follow few healthy guidelines to move in the proper direction for getting ready for the marathon rather than getting yourself injured just enough to skip the great event. Oh! by the way, Mumbai Marathon 2014 date is 19th January.

Here are a few tips which you shouldn’t miss:

• Ensure your stomach is not full before you go for the walk/jog
• To avoid injury, increase your time and distance gradually. Walking for 10km on day 1 is not an achievement.
• When you are not in mood/too busy/very sleepy etc etc, take a small step and cut short your training time but avoid skipping it completely.
• If at all you have missed out a day or two of workout, do not cover up for it. Instead go a level back and get your body prepared again for the workout.
• Choose a good jogging track or smooth road with least people on your path, so that you can look straight while you walk/jog and go on in a regular speed without dashing others and without hurting your foot. Being a Mumbaikar, it’s difficult to avoid but try to go for roads with least potholes.
• Do not walk to look good, walk for the goal with your own comfort.
• Wear a comfortable outfit so that you concentrate on your workout and not on what you are wearing.
• Breathe as deeply as possible while you are on your feet
• Let your hands be empty while you workout
• Have a short warmup exercise before and after the walk/jog. This relaxes your muscles.

How to save paper?

Source:rlandkabaena.blogspot.com 

Did you know that 17 trees make 1 ton of paper? So saving paper ultimately helps in saving trees. But do we really do our bit to save the green creatures in our environment? It would be easier by simply following 2 steps: Recycling and Using paper only if required.

Recycling is a small way for us to show to our world and community that we care. Recycling helps us give back to nature what we take from it. Did you know that up to 80% of waste generated in your workplace is recyclable paper? If not disposed correctly this paper is wasted and cannot be recycled. Proper segregation is the answer to ensuring this does not happen.

Ensure when you dispose waste paper you dispose it in the correct manner. This not only helps in keeping your environment clean and tidy but also reduces your carbon footprint, decreases pollution and also decreases the load on landfills.

Landfills are an increasingly pressing problem. Less and less land is available to deposit waste, but the volume of waste is forever increasing. As a result, segregating waste is not just of environmental importance, but of economic concern, too. Use the dedicated waste paper disposal units and increase the recovery of waste paper and reduce associated carbon emissions.

Use paper only if really required. Here’s how:

• Opt for electronic options for you telephone bills, credit cards and bank statements, invoices etc.

• Use the back of paper by making a notepad out of such papers which have empty backside.

Source:flickr.com/photos/amitvermaseo/7095470301/

• Go for free paper saving software like Printfriendly, PrintEco etc. These softwares makes it easier for you to remove unwanted content before printing your document. Also, before printing you could preview the document and optimize the font size to reduce the paper being used for printing.

• Adjust your printer settings such that it gets printed on both sides of the paper.

Source: thinkbeforeprinting.org

Update your email signature and include a note to remind your email receivers to not print your email unless it’s extremely necessary. In addition to preventing the email receiver from printing it, this signature might even bring in a realization to the email readers that paper wastage is an issue to be looked upon.

• School students need to use a lot of paper. So why not buy recycled paper for your school going kids.
• The least an organization can do to save paper is by emailing the payslips in PDF format to it’s employees, instead of printing them and distributing it.

International World Water Day - How to Save Water?

The festival of Holi is coming up, so has International World Water Day arrived. How are these days related? We know well…

22 March of every year is celebrated as International World Water Day. This day focuses on the importance and management of freshwater resources.

Three fourth of the earth consists of water of which only 1% is available for use. It is this fresh water that is utilized to drink, wash, irrigate farms etc and hence it is very important for our survival. However, the fresh water level has begun to drop across various countries. While the global population increased by about four times between 1900 and 2000, the global water usage saw a six fold increase.  Thus water conservation is necessary to safeguard this fresh water from drying up completely. Less water will mean less food. This will lead not only to people dying of water-borne diseases, but also to people dying from starvation and malnutrition.

Source: http://energyprosandcons.org

So it is the responsibility of each one of us to start acting on water conservation. Below are some simple actions that you can take in your daily lives to save water :-

• Take necessary action to repair any water leakage in your facility.
• Close all water taps tightly
• Keep the water flow of taps to minimum
• Flush only as much as required and also avoid unnecessary flushing
• Take required amount of drinking water and avoid wasting the same
• At your workplace, don’t use Coffee/Tea vending machine to rinse your coffee/tea mugs. By rinsing the mugs you will waste precious drinking water and energy used to warm that water. Each rinse will consume 20 ml. of water and we are wasting about 30,000 liters of drinking water every month only for rinsing cups which is getting cleaned hygienically
• It's a good day to start spreading awareness about water conservation on International World Water Day.

Water is a shared resource and its management needs to take into account a wide variety of conflicting interests and all our support. How to save water has been well illustrated. Water is a basic requirement for all life forms and as a result water resources are facing an increase in demand and competition among users. The fulfillment of basic human and environmental needs along with socio-economic development are predominantly  dependent on water.

Effective management of water is challenging since it is unevenly distributed in time and space, the hydrological cycle is highly complex and perturbations have multiple effects. Rapid urbanization, pollution and climate change threaten the resource while simultaneously demand for water is increasing in order to satisfy the needs of a growing world population.


"Water, Water Everywhere, Only if We Save" !!!

Induction Cooker or raised cap of subsidised LPG cylinder? Whats your choice?

With the cap of 6 subsidised LPG price cylinders, people started switching towards to electric induction cooker. Now the cap has raised to 9, and we think now induction cooker is of no use.

With a family of four, it was obvious that 6 cylinders is too less. And spending Rs. 900 for the 7th one is unaffordable for a middle class family. An induction cooker is a better option cost-wise. It costs between Rs. 2000 and 5000 depending on brands like Prestige, Philips, Morphy Richards etc.

Most importantly an induction cooker consumes less electricity. I have experienced it for myself. I had bought an induction cooker 3 months back and our electricity bill doesn't show much difference in the numbers. Also, being strictly against energy wastage, I would prefer that energy doesn't get wasted while cooking too. In a cooking gas, the flame is not totally used to heat the vessel. Whereas in an induction cooker, this is not the case. The heat gets transferred to the vessel totally, hence heating the vessel faster than our cooking gas, resulting in electricity saving.

The vessel which should be used for an induction cooker should have magnetic base. Before buying new induction based vessels, do not forget to test your available vessels for such base, by using a magnet and touching it to the base of the vessel.


Advantages of induction cooker:

• Energy efficient
• Good replacement for cooking gas
• uses lesser space
• Cooks food faster and hence saves time
• Light weight
• Safer as there are no open flames
• Increase/decrease temperature based on amount of heat required

Disadvantages of induction cooker:

• The base of the vessel/cookware should not be wet or dirty
• Being an electric device, the induction cooker should not get wet and keeping the cooker clean is essential
• Needs vessel with magnetic base only

So, Induction Cooker or raised cap of subsidised LPG cylinder? Whats your choice?

Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2013 - Are you coming?

20^thJanuary is the Mumbai Marathon 2013 date. With the fast approaching Marathon event, I am sure many of us are getting prepared for the event, although with our busy life, it's difficult to get prepared practically.

Reference:Sulekha.com

The medical director of the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon has suggested fitness schedule for the 2 weeks prior to the event:

Full Marathon preparation:

WEEKS TO GO	MON	TUE	WED	THURS	FRI	SAT	SUN
2	Rest	5	8-10	X-TRAIN(45 min)	Rest	6	10-14
1	Rest	5	5-7	Rest	5	Rest	RACE DAY

Half Marathon preparation:

WEEKS TO GO	MON	TUE	WED	THURS	FRI	SAT	SUN
2	R	7	5	X TRAIN (45 MIN)	R	5	16
1	R	7	5	REST	5	R	RACE DAY

Dream Run preparation:

WEEKS TO GO	MON	TUE	WED	THURS	FRI	SAT	SUN
2	R	2-3	4	X TRAIN (45 MIN)	R	5	60 min run/walk
1	R	2-3	4	REST	4	R	RACE DAY

Distance in Kilometers, R-Rest, X Train- Cross Training, e cycling, swimming

Some facts about Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon:

• Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon turns 10 this year.
• Distance to be covered for Full Marathon runners is approx. 42 Kms, for Half Marathon runners the distance is 21 Kms, Dream run it's 6 Kms and Senior Citizens run the distance is 4.3 Kms.
• Registrations for the event was on from July-November (varied for Full Marathon, Half Marathon, Dream Run and Wheelchair / Senior Citizens run).
• Running number Bibs and runners kit collection has been scheduled for 11^th - 13^th January 2013 (11am – 7pm), at it's usual location – BKC, Bandra.
• An email confirmation is required for collecting the kit and bib. It could be in the form of print out or the email on your phone. Hope you prefer the email on phone option :)
• If you are unable to collect the bib and kit personally, then your representative can collect it for you. How? Visit their FAQs.
• Marathon race start timings vary for different race i.e. Full marathon, half marathon, dream run etc with the earliest being full marathon 5.40 am.
• Varied prize money and medals are awarded to the winners and runner ups.

I will be there at the event for Dream Run.

Are you coming?

National Energy Conservation Day - 14th December

As the National Energy Conservation Day / World Energy Conservation Day arrives on 14th December in India, have you thought of your first step towards conserving energy? We often preach of conserving energy, avoiding plastic, saving paper etc and point out a finger towards whoever doesn't follow it. But do we realize that while we point out 1 finger towards others, there are 3 fingers pointing towards ourselves? Great deeds should start from your own home. The world will follow.

National Energy Conservation Day is celebrated across India on the 14th of December every year. Also, the same date is observed as World Energy Conservation Day across the world. The objective of dedicating this day as energy conservation day is to inculcate the message of energy conservation in every walk of life. This is a nationwide movement for energy conservation and signifies our commitment to a clean development mechanism.

Energy Conservation focuses on using less Energy and avoiding wastage which can be achieved through increased efficient energy use and with decreased energy consumption. Conservation of energy is a trait that we need to embed into our lifestyle, it is something we need to consciously adapt.

Each one of us have a role to play in promoting energy conservation and efficiency. The amount of energy we consume is directly proportional to its impact on climate and our carbon Foot Print. Energy conservation also provides the additional benefits of lower operating costs and greater competitiveness for the industry.

Small initiatives on this National Energy Conservation Day can bring in a big difference:

• Switching on only very essential lights.
• Switching off the lights while you are leaving the room.
• Shutdown computers when not required
• Switch-off monitors when you are away from your computer desk.
• Unplug from the power socket, when laptop battery is in full charge. This will extend the life of your laptop battery as well.
• Use natural light wherever possible.
• Take the stairs if possible, it is a healthy habit.
• Reduce brightness & contrast on monitors. This will protect your eye sight as well.
• Car pool wherever possible.
• Print only when necessary.

On this ‘National Energy Conservation Day’, let us move towards a culture where energy conservation become a way of life.