Truth is stranger than fiction

They might call me crazy. I don’t blame them. Who else would travel 92 km in the wee hours of the morning in a foreign land, with just 5 hours of sleep? A runner of course. Yet this was no ordinary run. It was the armed forces half marathon, organized by the US armed forces inside the naval weapons station which was otherwise off-limits for civilians. Who would pass up such a golden opportunity to run inside an area that served as an ammunitions depot for several wars fought in the past? Not me for sure. Concord is a city which is situated north east of San Francisco. It took about an hour and 20 minutes from Stanford during the day in peak traffic hours. Driving through the reserves, foothills and wildflowers, I reached Todos Santos Plaza, situated in downtown of concord. Registered runners had to pick up their running bibs and T shirt here. It was a beautiful area, surrounded with a lot of restaurants and shops. The park was picturesque with green lawns, rose bushes and a prett...

  The great barrier reef is an enchanting world by itself. I could see it through my saucer shaped snorkel masks which looked more like a window rather than a pair of goggles. In a way, it was a window to a whole new world that wasn't visible to the naked eye so easily. I had to put on a suit that made me look like an astronaut, carry a cylinder on my back-they call it the oxygen tank and wear those elongated pair of flip-flops that was commonly referred to as fins. On top of that I had to enter deep waters to witness this scintillating world of corals and shoal of fish present in different shapes, sizes and colors.  Since the time I had read Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’, I was fascinated by the mystical underwater world. My childhood was spent on the sandy beaches watching the waves lash against the shore, sometimes in a friendly manner and sometimes angrily. I secretly hoped to see a mermaid on the shores but I was scoffed for this futile fantasy of m...