Dhiren Shingadia

Having kick-started training again, I needed to get some healthy calories on-board. In order to circumvent the purchase of Maxishit products, I began to concoct my own vegan smoothies. I’ve named my favourite, ‘Incredible Hulk’ because it’s green and tastes, well, surprisingly incredible and nutty.

Recipe:

- Half a cup of soaked porridge oats
- Two scoops of natural hemp protein powder (gives the green colour)
- One generous teaspoon of unsweetened, wholenut peanut butter
- Drizzle of honey (makes the medicine go down)
- Water or oat milk to get right consistency

Chuck it all in blender, blitz and drink.

(photo props)

Cycling became a way of life for me in and around two thousand and nine. I’d changed jobs, needed to find a new way stay fit and get to my local train station without a car. Buying a bike was an obvious and exciting way to meet all three needs.

The child in me leaned toward a mountain bike. I’d grown up with one, used one to do my paper round, and the gravel paths connecting neighboring towns weren’t very forgiving to road bikes. Besides, there were things about road bikes and road cycling I didn’t find very appealing: the kit was expensive, road cycling was becoming fashionable amongst fat accountants going through mid-life crises, and, well, local roadies just seemed quite pretentious and unfriendly. Weird, really.

Fortunately, Marcello, a local friend and jack-of-all-trades, was selling his very own custom XC mountain bike. He’d kept it polished like a trophy and offered it to me for an agreeable sum. At last, I was on the road, pedalling to the station, pedalling through London, pedalling to the pub at weekend, and pedalling to get milk, bread, eggs and cheese.

The bike then became priceless when my father was receiving treatment for his valvular heart condition at The Royal Brompton Hospital. Each day I would leave home at seven AM, cycle to the local station, jump off at Paddington, cycle to Kennington, and then cycle from Kennington to Chelsea, and then from Chelsea back to Paddington. I would reach home at nine PM on most days.

I didn’t mind all the pedaling. I seemed to have a knack for it and I began looking into joining clubs and taking mountain biking seriously. An act of necessity bloomed into a hobby. Sadly, my father never pulled through his treatment. I had to shelve hobbies, work and life in general.

The dust settled months after his funeral and I needed focus; something to keep me occupied, a goal and target of sorts. I began making enquiries about joining mountain bike clubs again and I was soon a fully-fledged member of Bucks MTB.

I regularly attended club rides and spent my own time at Swinley Forest. Climbing a blistering ascents, trying not to crash on heart-pounding descents, and looking for lines kept my mind from wondering, kept me away from people and kept me outdoors. Cycling was helping me, again; I was dealing with what had happened.

At some point, I’m not sure when, I recognized a personal connection to The Royal Brompton Hospital. They conducted pioneering keyhole surgery on my father and had flown a specialist in from Belgium to conduct the procedure. I was awestruck by their work and the level care they provided for one person. Although my father didn’t pull through his treatment programme, I felt obliged and committed to help them in some way; give something back.

It was during a group ride, out in the sticks, that our ride leader suggested I enter the club’s tenth anniversary enduro: a two hundred kilometer endurance race across The Chiltern Hills. Horrendously unfit at the time, I looked for shorter sportives, but then I began to question my weakness. If my father was brave enough to face his treatment, I should be brave enough to take the offered challenge.

I paid the fee, filled out the forms and registered. It was on. Mother of god, I had to get fit. I stopped drinking, started to eat well and gave up my weekends for three months in order to focus on four-to-five hour rides and technical rides (twisty, scary stuff over tree roots) on Sundays. I was getting fitter, tougher and pushing myself to new peaks. However, training wasn’t a smooth process: I pulled a muscle after coming off at The Forest of Dean and bent my suspension forks as result of over-torque on my front hub (basically, I broke my bike).

Luckily, things serendipitously came together two weeks before the big weekend. Without much shouting, I managed to raise over five hundred pounds for The Royal Brompton and Harefield Trust and my suspension forks were fixed under warranty by RockShox, which effectively saved me a thousand pounds!

The enduro took place at the end of March. Having never entered an enduro before and an intention to merely complete the challenge, I was surprised when I came fourteenth on the first day and finished within the upper twenty-fives. The training paid off and I managed to out-pedal many of the supposed, ‘seasoned riders’ on four-to-five thousand pound, full suspension bikes.

The experience was immense. I met some great people, witnessed some nasty accidents (not so immense) and learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses. During training, I swore that I would never make such a commitment again, but those statements now seem forgotten as I find myself looking at other events and twitching for round two.

Bring it.

It’s OK to care about what you wear. The ritual of getting dressed and the clothes you wear should inject confidence into your demeanor. My Dad and Uncle were real men; old school. They had their own style, which was smart, clean-cut and timeless. Three-quarter length coats, combed hair, trimmed beards, ironed shirts and cologne. They always looked sharp and dressed for the occasion; however, fashion was seldom entertained.

Out to scoff a quick lunch, I walked past two men standing in line at a cash machine and talking about their shoes. ‘Nice Redwings,’ one said to the other as they gawped at pristine, Oxblood boots. Overly preened, they wore faux-lumberjack styles — in the middle of Marylebone. Dismissing them as hipsters was too obvious, and I began to notice their clones as I continued down Baker Street, onto Marylebone High Street. Seriously, what was going on? Why were guys to talking to other guys about shoes and why do they look like lumberjacks?

I trudged back to my office where I shared the post-burrito digression with a patient colleague. Luckily, he was intrigued and between us, after considered rationalizing, we satisfied our curiosities with two reasons: first, I believe gender-balanced work environments have softened machismo, misogynistic male egos and created the beta male, which is probably what I and most modern men are, and the beta male, due to a period of economic prosperity during the early naughties, evolved into the cosmopolitan metrosexual. Secondly, my colleague, Pete, assentingly added that male celebrities, upon gaining increased coverage within seminal fashion magazines, have heightened expectations of what women seek in male appearances. It’s all fair, I guess.

I’ve often, optimistically, wished for male friends outside of London to discuss something other than football — which I avoid because I think it’s used as a device to keep the, ‘working classes’ preoccupied — or mortgages and cars. Sadly, as trends spread and become the norm, they too will be paying each other cute comments about their shoes. Enough, already.

(photo props)

I put down On The Road a couple of weeks ago. It rendered ambivalence from the beginning; however, setting aside doubts about whether I could relate to anything, I dutifully respected its reputation. After all, I’m not very rock-and-roll and ideas of traveling without purpose, be it discovery, transcendence or enrichment, now seem bourgeoisie. Moreover, if I’m truly honest, I found Sal’s dependence on his aunt hard to swallow and disrespectful. The guy needs to be a man, stop dicking around and carry himself, I thought. Dean Moriarity, I understood. He was the product of never having the opportunity to know better coupled with a blind, drug-fuelled addiction to freedom. Raw intelligence tainted by an erratic, self-perpetuating craze.

Needless to say, Kerouac’s words were not lost on me and it was pages two hundred and twenty-to-twenty-one that really resonated with me. Dean and Sal are onboard a bus to Detroit and, as Dean sleeps, Sal endeavors to test his charms on a girl:

I completely I understood his disappointment. It’s a disappointment I frequently feel as so many people I meet lack deep-rooted passions, interests; greater expectations of themselves. Our modern, salaried lifestyles make us averse to taking risks, dilute our interests and fuel anxiety around trivialities. For nine hours a day we are batteries, powering the system, and mediocre media dictates the interests of most before pre-shift recharges.

Everybody likes everything and anything, but casual interests do not define a person. Actions do. You are what you do. Sadly, most people don’t do much; don’t do anything useful; don’t know what to do and have no idea about what they’d like to change. Zombies, sleep-living.

We’re under siege. Run for cover. Giant food is out to destroy society. I’m not kidding. A giant burger is going to walk through your door and smack you square on the cakehole. OK, I’m being hysterical, but can I be blamed? Slouched, I was aimlessly flicking through a plethora of seemingly infinite Sky channels and, after pausing on a food channel of sorts, I began watching Man Vs. Food and Dinners, Drive-ins and Dives as finger fatigue prevented me from voyaging deeper into the abyss of mediocre programming.

I was appalled by what the shows were: glorifications of eating competitions, gluttony and overeating. I couldn’t fathom why, at a time when obesity is rife in the western world and developing countries are more poverty stricken than ever, the presenters didn’t have anything better to do with their lives. Seriously, I thought they were corrosive, insecure people who maintained disrespect for food.

Days later – to add to my dismay – I saw a photo of a person trying complete, ‘The Subway Challenge’ on Facebook. That second act of food waste broadened my growing concerns about how the ubiquity of food, in the west, breeds a concurrent disrespect for its purpose. Knowingly or unknowingly, people are too comfortable with trivial food waste and unconcerned about sharing it with those whom need it critically.

Celebrity chefs, including Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall et al, have already made progress toward raising the awareness of conscious, ethical and sustainable food sourcing and healthy eating, which both foster an indirect respect for food and its core purpose: sustenance; however, their plights induced transient changes in public attitude, at best, and their post-campaign legacies are far from entrenched in our day-to-day routines. After all, we are creatures of habit and real change only takes place once we’re enabled to make it effortlessly.

I welcome initiatives like Go Halfsies, which encourage portion control and responsible eating, but more needs to be done to increase the respect people have for food and discourage trivial waste. First, I believe the directors of food TV need to frame cooking and eating creatively yet responsibility by taking items such as ‘The Omelette Challenge’ on Saturday Kitchen, eating competitions and giant food features completely off air. Secondly, supermarkets and restaurants need to start educating the public about calorie equivalents close to points of sale and simultaneously become change makers e.g. providing menus listing not just food, but the cost of sending equivalent calories to a deprived parts of the world, and then providing the opportunity to do it at the end of a meal—instead of merely requesting tips.

Of course, insensitivity toward food waste seems to be greater in the US where increased food choice has heightened expectations of uniform quality – at detrimental costs – and quantity. One can only hope it’s a culture that’s vehemently curtailed as opposed to primed for export.

(photo props)

Who said, ‘You can do anything, but you can’t do it all’? I can’t remember.  I’m hopeless with people and names yet possess a voracious appetite for wisdom. If only I could ingest it, digest it and learn via absorption. Unfortunately, wisdom isn’t a food group which strengthens our brain in the manner muscle utilises protein. However, biology aside, at some point you have to put a line through things, activities and recognise the infeasibility of perusing too many.

We have a tendency to collect hobbies and interests like germs. The internet and increased disposable incomes are partly to blame. Yesterday, you wanted to become a better poet and Bike Polo consumed your ambition the week before. As time passes, and our interests expand, we become Jacks’ of all trades and masters of none; generalists as opposed to artisans or specialists.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell illustrates how it takes ten thousand hours to get really, really good at something. Ten thousand hours to achieve artful mastery. Toward the end of last year, I questioned what I wanted to master? I took a step back, dissected everything I did, and analysed all the media I consume (books, magazines and social media). The experiment confirmed my core interest and supporting activities, which allowed me to strike through miscellanea.

We work, we live time-pressured lives and we as get older – and supposedly more responsible – we have less time to ourselves. Each day lived is a page of our own, personal story. How do you want it to read at the end of your life? Which talents do you want be recognised by? Unflinchingly, I want to focus on my core interest, chase mastery in order to become more talented, and acknowledge peripheral interests without – distractingly- being absorbed. I now, at the end of each day, reflect and consider how I moved the dial, practiced and made progress.

There’s something very satisfying about being on a calm, steady journey toward excelling in a few things – as opposed to falling through a chasm, into a pit of mediocrity.  Focus is a good thing. Try it. You might like it.

Photo props

(Yup, there’s a few Oxford commas in there. Feck you.)

The title of this post is misleading. I don’t know how to deal with being weird. More importantly, I don’t know how to deal with being weird and black, which is a double whammy for a lot of people. My ideas don’t fit in with people’s idea of me, if you know what I mean. People like to put people in boxes, but I fucking hate boxes. The sort of all caps hate people reserve for great crimes. I’d like to say that race affects me more as I get older but it appears I’ve been the colourblind one all this time. In my younger years. (anyone who’s actually got some years under their belt look away now, I’m about to get real over angsty here) when I was 21 or whatever, I used to think race didn’t matter a jot. I was gonna go into whatever field no matter what anyone said. And I still think that. But I’ve started to realise the world isn’t as evolved as I’d like it to be. And what’s common sense to me isn’t common to everyone else. Maybe I’ve been the fool all this time, I don’t know. I’d like some comfy trust fund parents and to have my only angst be ‘will my parents cut me off’ as opposed to ‘will I get paid on time?’ but you can’t change that. And I wouldn’t be the person I was today if it weren’t for the burning desire to succeed, to excel, to be great at something, anything.

Jason Dike is a great fashion writer, journalist and thinker. I’ve had his blog in my reader for the last year or so, yet this latest post (pasted above) moved me. He’s right: ignorance just won’t fuck off die. No, Sir. It’s just evolving and as I get older the underlying notes of class prejudice and racism in people adopt new forms and blend. I hate it when people say, ‘Chav’. Do they know what that means? Probably not.

At school I had to worry about the skinheads and now I get shit from middle-class asians for listening to indie and, apparently, being a, ‘coconut’. I wasn’t white enough as a kid and now I’m not brown enough as a grown up.

To hell with them all.

I’ve increasingly become interested in supply chains and the outsourcing of product manufacture (note: I’m only referring to product manufacturing and nothing else). The latter is shrouded in positive and negative opinions from everyone including economists, the government and environmentalists.

The detractors argue that outsourcing has a negative impact on our GDP and unemployment rates; socially conscious tribes, not so concerned with economics, believe that it exacerbates sweatshop conditions in developing economies and environmental damage as result of increased shipping. Their points are fair and you needn’t dig deep in order to excavate the evidence: FTSE 100 companies occupy headlines for using child labour and reports claiming that western countries are ‘outsourcing pollution’.

In addition to the real world problems, consumer perceptions of products made in outsourcing hubs have, historically, been less than favourable. Early outsourcing attempts resulted in the manufacture of poor-quality products and the tags, ‘Made in China’ or, ‘Made in Taiwan’ connoted cheapness.

However, times are changing and so is the world of product manufacturing. Thoughtfully governed operations such as KTC are providing high-quality, sweatshop free outsourcing and logistics companies now offer carbon neutral shipping, which offsets emissions through energy efficiency initiatives and investing in verified emission reduction projects around the world.

Take product quality, labour exploitation and environmental damage off the table and you’re left with local employment and the GDP arguments. Does outsourcing erode the local job market? Not necessarily. Even with outsourced production, people are required in business operations including distribution, sales and customer service. Additionally, jobs are created throughout the business web: the businesses that support business.

I first read about agile business webs in Wikinomics back in 2008 and I’m now starting to think that small, agile businesses, which leverage supporting businesses when required, are exactly what’s required to refresh the UK economy. Moreover, processes such as outsourced, just-in-time manufacturing and distribution lower commercial overheads and barriers to market entry, which in-turn stimulate the growth of new businesses, making markets more granular—and monopolies smaller.

Photo props

It’s cold out. Flecks of ice are starting to cover the road and I’m dodging frozen puddles each morning. When it’s not freezing, it’s wet and muddy most of the time. Cycling adopts a new meaning at this time of year: it represents endurance, necessity and commitment.

You won’t find many polished fixies outside coffee shops or see people cycling in rolled up jeans, converse trainers and vintage cycling caps. However, the die hard cyclists are still on the road, on single track, donning thermals and sticking to it throughout the winter. I’ll be following suit this year and, as a mark of commitment, I’ve signed up to group rides on Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.

Photo via ndanger

The effects of the financial crisis are now more evident than ever. There will be more job cuts in the public sector, the Euro crisis will not settle anytime soon and a recession appears to be imminent. We’re fed information by the media, yet it’s often difficult to see the immediate impacts on our surroundings; however, a walk through our local town centre, and an article in the Metro (I left the house without a book), confirms that a transition has steadily been taking place on the frontline of our economy: retail.

Chains, franchises and well known High Street retailers have been retreating or down-sizing, for over two years, since the closure of Woolworths. Premium retail space is now left vacant or occupied by independent traders selling low-quality, imported goods. In my opinion, the influx of independent trade erodes the cookie cutter strategy: the efforts of a group of holding companies to monopolise and replicate town centres across the country.

Next to Footlocker you will find Kaza Shoes and opposite Marks & Spencer there is Fresh Fashions. It’s all very interesting. Independent retailers are drawing in the masses once alienated by the chains, and now a walk through the town centre provides a realistic sample of the town’s population composition: Albanian and Polish immigrants, industrial estate workers from Britwell and Farnham, Asians from Cippenham and small Arabic and Lebanese communities.

Noting the changes makes me realise how local trade, through the influence larger companies, was geared to only cater for one class: the monied middle class, which probably accounts for 20 -30% of East Berkshire’s population. The town’s population hasn’t significantly changed as both grammar schools attract very well to do families; however, Middle Britain tightening its purse strings is evidently empowering small business owners and breathing life into a new, rebalanced local economy.