Do you run?

This seems to be the first question folks from Austin ask.

And they are not necessarily talking about reasonable distances like 200 m. They start from half-marathons (13 miles and change), and go on to full marathons (26.2 miles) and ultra marathons (a hundred miles through hilly terrain?). I'm impressed. But I have to think for a while. I like my knees. :)

Most Austin folks run as if their life depended on it. I've been spending a lot of time with the folks who volunteer for AID and ASHA. I have to say that they are a very very cool bunch of folks. And I've gotten introduced to some very very nice efforts that are underway in India both in the infrastructure development and the educational outreach areas. Last Friday for example, there was this lady from India, Kanchi Kohli who works with this NGO in Delhi called Kalp Vriksh. She gave a talk on how major initiatives in India go through without a good idea of the impact they would have on the environment. And the impact they end up having is usually quite disastrous. Google her up. I'm sure the Google God will bring up more on her than I can hope to express in this column.

Notes from Austin

Every new place brings with it its own charm.

Austin is nice. Austin is probably the only place one would want to be in, if one had to stay in Texas.

Texas is, in some ways, like Punjab. And Texans are, in many ways, like Punjabi folk. They mean well. I think. They just lack polish.

Anyways, folks in Austin are urban. And the amount of culture in this town has to be seen to be believed. Wikipedia calls Austin the live music capital of the world. And if what I see around me is anything to go by, that might be true.

I haven't had chance to walk in and stay for any performance around town so far. I'm hoping I can correct that this weekend.