Hardest thing to do in the world

What's the hardest thing you have ever done?

Express your feelings to a girl you had a crush on?
Waking up at 5 am to catch an early morning flight?
Go on a diet and lose weight?

For me I would say none of the above. The hardest thing for me would have been getting off the couch and hit the gym to start working out again. Yes, "again" because I start working out once in six months and give up within a week. Yea! Sigh! Its such a pain to make your body undergo such torture. When I put on weight, the only way I try to reduce is by trying to burn off all those calories by exercising. Yea, no shortcuts for me. But getting up to do all of this which needs to be done is so much of a pain!

I have put on an obvious amount of weight in the past few months. How do I know? My general meter for checking how fit I am is the Staircase Meter. If I am able to climb up 4 stories without panting then I'm in shape. Otherwise I guess I need to work out. In the recent past I was out of breath before I reached the 2nd story. Which meant I was awfully out of shape. I have a Plan B to counter this argument. That is the trouser fit check. I fall back on it in case I want to pretend that I'm ok even if I run out breath climbing stairs. If my 5 year old jeans fits then I'm ok. Otherwise, its otherwise. Which was the case again. The jeans did not fit. Time to get off the couch. Ouch!

The inertia of getting up from the couch and moving your muscles is enough to call it off. Eventually when you do overcome it, its an achievement to gloat about. And when you exercise for 45 minutes its like you've climbed Mt. Everest, without oxygen. But its the day two which is the most agonizing. Getting out of bed means, falling out of bed because the limbs go on a strike demanding more food and less work (its a mighty strong trade union, if you ask me). Its times like these that I fantasise a good massage. And its times like these I can relate to the agonies of heroes from MacLean's novels who have been shot, have been used as a punching bag and have been left for dead. You get to know about muscles that you never knew existed before. Every joint pains and every muscle aches. It is a cruel reminder that you're a weak mortal.

Forget the staircases, I'll take the elevator. Its faster. And who says that jeans should fit you everytime you wear them? Jeans is cotton and eventually they shrink. Yea right! If I believe in this baloney then its like closing my eyes and pretending that I'm invisible to everyone because I cannot see them.

So, I have been exercising for 4 days straight now and hope to continue it for sometime till results show. My shoulder is loosening up a bit and am able to get some movement into my limbs after all that initial resistance. My hamstrings are allowing me to walk (at least!) like a robot, for now. It was worse earlier. I hope its making some difference. Its such a hard thing to lose off fat in the wrong places that I'm making a New Year resolution of eating right and not to put on more weight. Go easy on food? Hardest thing for me to do in the world!

What it takes to be a Super Spy or "iSpy"

Its been quite an eventful month for me with work keeping me busy most of the time. By work I really mean some useful work. So whenever I got some free time, I tried to avoid turning on my laptop and used that time for chores such as spring cleaning the house, catching up on sports, reading books (the ones printed in ink on recycled paper) and so on. Sigh! its such a pain! spring cleaning, I mean.

While I was not cleaning and not working, I caught up on my reading. It has been a long time since I came across any good well-written novels concerning espionage and spy thrillers, which happens to my usual interest in fiction. Some of my favorite writers are Alistair MacLean, Colin Forbes, Frederick Forsythe and John Le Carre. The latest addition include some contemporary spy fiction by Daniel silva. Silva's novels follow the exploits of an Israeli spy by name Gabriel Allon. Gabriel hunts ex-Nazis and other enemies of the Promised Land. Cleverly written, the plots weave between facts and fiction and sometimes actual events form the basis of the storyline. While Gabriel is not hunting baddies or working for his boss in King Saul Boulevard, Tel Aviv, he works as a full-time art-restorer in Venice and restores renaissance masterpieces. Quite a feat!

This set me thinking. How can a person with one full-time profession have two full time occupations? Somedays, I can't have proper dinner considering the kind of time I spend on my single bread and butter job. The other thought that struck me at the same time was, if an art restorer can be a spy then why not a guy from any other profession? For instance why can't an accountant, or a doctor or for that matter a software engineer/consultant be a spy? After all, spying means gathering bits and pieces of information (a lot of bits and pieces), piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle, analysing that info and then coming to a conclusion as to where the bad guys are or what evil deed they are upto next. Other times you keep a silent watch on your enemies to stop them from striking you first. All this while, you also ensure that no one is watching you or planning to put you out of commission. I'm sure most of you will agree with me on this. So, what if I were to write a spy fiction and put a Software professional as the main character? Software engineering as the profession because that's the trade I know most about. Art-restoration is something I wouldn't venture into. I wouldn't be able to figure out which side is up for a Picasso.

But then again, if the character was a computer professional, the story wouldn't be half as exciting. For argument's sake, let's imagine a software consultant being a super spy character. Just imagine!

So I let my imagination fly and starting thinking about creating this great character. For starters, he would have all the necessary equipment and gear and go anywhere without raising anyone's suspicions. He'd always carry a laptop which would store loads of info and not a soul would raise an eyebrow. He could carry hi-tech gadgets like a PDA-cum-mobile or a Blackberry, an iPod, a digital camera, a case of CDs/DVDs, and the list goes on. He could conceal all the info as program code written in some high level language (Trust me, even a fellow software engineer cannot read a software engineer's code). No microfilms, concealed chips under the skin, etc., that would cause bad people to shoot at him. Everything he carries would be his normal tools of the trade. Nothing out of place in his profession so long as he does not carry a gun, or some other exotic gadget that could cause bodily harm.

His mundane job also takes him places. His passport is stamped with visits to countries all over the world. So no fake passports and legends. He could be seen in Paris today and Casablanca the next, because he had a "presentation" to give. No questions asked and no eyebrows raised.

For that matter, he can do any so called covert activity of exchanging classified material without even disguising himself and contacting shady informers, night club dancers, sleeper agents, document forgers or visiting dead letter-boxes. All he has to do is receive encrypted e-mail from anywhere in the world on his Blackberry. The riskiest thing he might do is carry out a surveillance on a bad guy using a spycam or webcam his contacts might have set at the baddies' place posing as hardware engineers. Logon to the webcam URL and watch the things unfold on the laptop, of course.

And while he is "onsite" as part of a consulting project, he can take pics on his digital camera, upload them to picasa, and email the URL to his "controller". No danger of someone trying to stop him (whatever maybe the cost) and grabbing hold of the negatives while he's in transit. Alternatively, he can post all this data in his SSL enabled website or blog with restricted access or simply write a blog. As someone mentioned, the best place to get lost for a person is in a crowd. With so many people like me getting online these days, the internet is getting crowded, and then some. So all the precious information he would collect would be securely "lost" and "found" as per convenience in an obscure website which he should be wise enough not to list in Google search. Which means, a perfect guy for the job with no high life insurance premium. And way too boring. James Bond would be out of job in a day considering the kind of expense reports he submits to his bosses. So would Maxwell Smart of "Get Smart" fame. And of course no collateral damages and no getting into the line of fire.

And yes, in case he wants his government's laser-guided bombs to decimate the baddies' place, all our man has to do is get onto Google Earth and locate the spot, mark it with 'X' and email the map. The aerial bombers can finish the rest of the job.

On normal days, that is, on days he's taken off spying, all my character would have to do is get online every morning, check his emails while brushing his teeth and probably play some games online while at the job (because his company pays his broadband bills) or chat online with a handle like "DaSupaSpy" (no one would give a 2nd thought about it). After a late breakfast, get back to his cover "work" and do some coding on his programs and assignments whenever he would feel like, munching on a bag of chips and downing liters of diet coke. All in a day's work for a digital world citizen.

Which makes me get back to my point. All the above stuff would make my plot a whole lot less exciting and very normal. No guns, no fast cars (ouch! that hurts), no pretty damsels-in-distress or no pretty damsels pretending to be damsels-in-distress, no deceptions, hidden secrets, double-crossing, no black tie events at the baddies' mansions where you can have a tongue-in-cheek verbal duel with the top baddie, no exotic places to travel to (yes, no Venice, no Monaco, no Udaipur, geez!) wearing designer wear and designer gear, no cutting down bad guys with specialized weapons, no tortures, and so on. Yawn!

Any editor worth his salt would kill the idea of a spy-cum-software-consultant even before I start on chapter one. Some ideas are so perfect that they are not meant to be. The thriller/spy fiction world will not miss an internet savvy hero. Pity.

While on the subject of spies, I spied upon this recently launched Airbus A380 double decker plane at Changi Airport last month. It does look bulky but it seems that its fabulous interior makes up for that extra girth. Here it is.