It's Resolution Time!

First off a very Happy New Year to all you beautiful chums who read my blog. Yes, all two of you!

2010 began with the makers of 3 Idiots and Chetan Bhagat bickering over the story-credit for the movie. Chetan Bhagat in his blog post, accuses the makers of giving him very little credit and that too at the very end. Interestingly the contract which the parties have signed says that's all the credit which Chetan will be getting. Is this a plain case of Mr Bhagat getting greedy after the film's success?

While this debate was raging 3 terrorists escaped from a New Delhi hospital on 2nd Jan. The same day when I woke up at 6:00 AM and looked out of my house to see a dreadful foggy morning. The Go-Air flight which I had to take to Bangalore took off 5 hours late. I spent those hours reading Dawkins' latest book "The Greatest Show on Earth" (which I managed to lose in the flight); chatting with fellow-distraught-passengers and watching the 3 Idiots' debate unfold on television. Meanwhile, the airline provided us with a lousy sandwich as "refreshment" (free food is always lousy).

The only reason I was a bit comfortable was because I had taken a TATA AIG Travel Insurance which covered flight delays -- 5 hour delay ... no problem ... if you pay me. Well turns out, that the insurance only kicks in if the flight is delayed for 6 hours or more. So no cookie for Rohit.

Anyway, back to the new year. A time for resolutions. And although I'm so tempted to go all contrarian,  self-righteous and say "You don't need a special day for resolutions, you can make them any day", I will resist. So what are mine? Presenting, in bullet points:

• Watch Avatar 3-D. "Doesn't count", you say? Well, you don't know how much I have struggled in the past 3 weeks (why are there so many 3s in this blog post?) to get a ticket to watch the 3D version. People, get over it! LET ME WATCH!
• Take up drinking again. Some day somewhere I will have a mug of cold draught beer in a frosted mug. The height of depression is to sit in a pub and have something called "Tropical Green" or "Spice Girl" and getting the feeling that everyone around is looking down upon you. So much so, that you feel this urge to explain it to the waiter, why oh why you are not having that delicious brew! Damn you Jaundice!
  
• Do a sub-20-min 5K. Turning to more serious things. This is something which I'm not entirely confident whether I will be able to pull off. My current 5K personal best is 23:52. Shaving off those 4 minutes is going to be hard and painful. I'm planning to start training after the Mumbai Marathon.
• Lose weight. This one, because it's so popular. Also so that I can achieve the above sub-20 goal.
• Learn to swim properly. I learnt swimming when I was in class 9th, the old school way: "throw him in the deep and hope that he stays afloat." Every time I try to swim with my head down, I end up drinking a lot of cholrinated water (no, I don't think that's how I got jaundice) and blowing it out when my head comes out. So, I want to learn the freestyle properly and then maybe go into the other strokes. If I get this done, it also paves the way for me to do triathlons (run, bike, swim).
• Learn a new skill. Contenders right now are Latin Dance (groundwork for which was already laid in late 2009) and Drawing .
  
• Decrease unproductive time, while increasing productive time. Also known as "Be more organized", "Stop Procrastinating", "Don't be Lazy", etc. Because I can't think of any more resolutions, and something like this usually covers everything else.