making money - out of nothing at all

Seigniorage – Simply explained, this is the profit that the government makes from printing money. Your ten rupee note doesn’t cost the government ten bucks. It costs much less. Hence for a fraction of the cost the government can pump money in the economy. Of course things are not so simple. Here is one nice podcast by planet money on the topic. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/04/19/150976150/should-we-kill-the-dollar-bill . Transcript at the bottom of this post. You should be able to broadly understand seigniorage while listening to the benefits of the coins versus notes in circulation. One of the most interesting stuff is the argument that the government makes a lot of money by having coins as opposed to notes is because people don’t put coins back into circulation because they don’t like them in their wallet. And to add the fact that coins tend to get lost between the cushion on the sofa! That’s all profit for the government. But obviously there is a cost to such seigniorage, which they correctly identified. Moneys made through inefficiencies are what you count as profits. It is stupid. It is not your primary job. The primary job for money is to pass around, not sit in the vault like McScrooge. Do you guys remember this cartoon of Donald Duck’s uncle jumping and swimming in his vault with tons of cash stashed around?

Cash in your wallet and in your jars and under your sofas are profit from the government but are absolutely useless for the economy. The money has to be in circulation and put to productive use. If you save it, put it in the bank, so that a portion of it can be lent out. Accounting for accruing money from lost coins is the same as black money you can store in your vaults. It’s the same problem. It’s not simply the tax that is saved. Legitimizing the flow of money has a much larger positive effect of the economy than simply the tax being collected.

Similarly, even corporations try and earn money through inefficiencies. The finance industry’s famous one is called ‘float’. Simply – if I owe you money and I write a cheque to you and give it to you one day late, I will earn interest income for one day. Not that you mind it too much. You don’t care about the one day interest on your small amount, but added up in a large amount of payments and you have a very large float for the organization. So if you ever wondered why they love you to pay online, instantly but they always like to pay you by cheque, you have an answer.

Even in mutual funds and other such organizations, you will have tons of money that is lying with the organization which is pretty much forgotten. Some body once told me that UTI would have hundreds of crores of money that would always be invested with them because of people who simply forgot or have dies and their heirs are unaware of the investment. I am not sure, but it’s likely that even insurance firms would accrue such seigniorage. The fun of policies sold and lapsed due to non-payment created a happy boom for them till the new rules set by IRDA disallowing the firms to benefit thus.

I think we get too clever for our own good. We forget our core job, which may be to provide a service in the best possible way for the customer. It should be a firm’s fiduciary responsibility to ensure efficiency in the system. One normally blames the regulators but the Indian regulators brought in some semblance of order to the insurance industry causing abnormal inefficient profits to be wiped off, also the regulators forced the banks to pay daily interest. Otherwise they were paying only on the lowest balance of the month with some other complex calculation. Ditto for getting rid of prepayment of home loan charges.

Even in the other firms I have worked for, not just financial firms, I see this problem. The finance guys get over smart and start controlling the system. They make an excel sheet to prove how paying payment a little late and getting payments a little earlier can cause great amount of ‘savings’ and profits to the firm. Money is an interesting topic. The structuring of money and the economic, monetary, banking systems are lopsided towards making tons of money through inefficiencies. The ones in the know can hugely benefit from those not in the know. In India this is popularly known as the Gujju mindset and this particular breed seems to understand this better than others. Gujjus and Marwaris are typecast thus. Or if you prefer the Brahaminical order, you would call it the ‘banya’ mindset. Use your trader mindset to make money. You definitely need a trader mindset while doing business and understanding cash flow is critical but using it to overrule simple customer centric thinking is pure stupidity.

But forget all that. When we went to Matheran a few weeks ago I did something that made the government a teeny bit richer. I remember as a kid once we had a trek organized to Matheran. We went up the hill station from the back road and came down the main road which at a few points crosses the Famous Matheran Light railway. At the time, my friend had pulled out a few coins and put it on the rails to see how they become when the trains run over it. This time around I had the chance to do it and show Jispa. We saw a train coming and I quickly put in a one rupee coin and a five rupee coin on the tracks. Jispa was wondering what I was doing. Sure enough the engine passed over it and flattened the coins. Jispa was pretty excited and we could send it with her the next week to school for a show and tell. That was a pretty unique show and tell and it benefited the government by around five bucks (I am assuming it cost one buck to make the two coins). Here are the two profitable pieces of metal for the government.

The Transcript of the podcast as follows.

April 19, 2012 -:

Subway riders here in Washington were recently the target audience for an unusual ad campaign. The ads show giant one dollar bills and asked, do you heart the dollar? They're part of a small lobbying war over the fate of the dollar bill. There's legislation in the House and Senate that would eliminate all $1 bills and replace them with dollar coins.

NPR's investigative unit and our Planet Money team checked into the debate over coins versus bills. And David Kestenbaum and Robert Benincasa think they have a winner.

DAVID KESTENBAUM, BYLINE: Here's the question. Given that we need to have some form of money out there worth a dollar, which is more cost effective, a bill or a coin?

ROBERT BENINCASA, BYLINE: Before we tell you who the winner is, let's hear each side's case.

KESTENBAUM: In one corner, arguing on behalf of the dollar coin, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat from Iowa. He told us coins are a clear win. They last much longer than bills.

SENATOR TOM HARKIN: The most important thing is it's just more efficient. It's way more efficient than a paper dollar.

BENINCASA: Dollar coins last something like 30 years and he says switching to coins would save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

KESTENBAUM: Coins are also, he says, easier to stick into vending machines. Harkin's office put out a video of him struggling to buy a snack with a worn out $1 bill.

(SOUNDBITE OF AD)

HARKIN: Has this ever happened to you? You try o put a dollar bill in the tray, but it won't take it. Well, that's why I've introduced bipartisan legislation to replace the dollar bill with a dollar coin.

KESTENBAUM: Harkin can rattle off a long list of countries that have replaced bills with coins.

HARKIN: Canada has a coin that's worth $2. England has a coin worth about $3 U.S. Switzerland has one worth about $5 U.S. And yet, what have we got? We got a 25-cent piece.

KESTENBAUM: Republican Senator John McCain has also signed onto the bill. And it's worth noting that businesses in both senators' states would benefit if this bill passes.

BENINCASA: Harkins' state, Iowa, is home to a company called PMX, which makes the metal sheets that get turned into coins.

KESTENBAUM: Senator John McCain's state of Arizona is home to some big companies that mine copper, the main ingredient in dollar coins.

BENINCASA: So, that's the coin side of the fight. In the other corner, fighting for paper, you'll find an organization called Americans for George.

KESTENBAUM: Because George Washington is on the $1 bill. Americans for George put those ads in the D.C. subway and again, here you find a lot of money behind the arguments over money. Americans for George was started by the company that makes the paper the $1 bill is printed on. Crane & Company.

BENINCASA: Doug Crane is a vice president there. As you might imagine, he says paper dollars are better than coins.

DOUGLAS CRANE: A dollar bill is made from a blend of cotton and linen fiber.

KESTENBAUM: Paper bills are cheaper to manufacture than coins, he says, and they last surprisingly long. According to the U.S. Federal Reserve, a $1 bill lasts about four and a half years.

CRANE: U.S. currency, you know, it's some of the most durable banknotes on the planet. And, you know, the $1 bill is probably the hardest-working note there is.

KESTENBAUM: So, what to make of this. The coin people say coins are better. The paper people say paper is better. Both cannot be true.

BENINCASA: And to make things more confusing, both sides point to the same official report to make their case.

KESTENBAUM: The report was written by the Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan arm of Congress that's often called on to settle questions like this.

BENINCASA: We talked with the GAO's Lorelei St. James who oversaw the report. The GAO has recommended switching to coins.

LORELEI ST. JAMES: That still stands.

KESTENBAUM: She says switching to coins would make the government money. Over 30 years, a lot of money.

JAMES: We show that there would be a $4.4 billion net benefit to the federal government.

KESTENBAUM: But it turns out that $4.4 billion does not come from the fact that coins are more cost effective to make. Coins do last longer, but they also cost more to manufacture. No, according to the GAO, the extra money for the government comes from this other weird thing. It's going to take us a minute to explain.

BENINCASA: It turns out if you switch from dollar bills to dollar coins, you can't just do a one for one replacement. You actually need more coins than you would bills. Why? Because people don't like carrying coins around.

JAMES: A lot of people when they take their coins out of their pockets at the end of the day or their purses, they'll put in what we call a coin jar.

KESTENBAUM: The coin jar effect. In Canada and the U.K., the governments had to put out all these extra coins, over 50 percent more, just to keep enough money circulating. The GAO says these extra coins mean extra money for the government.

BENINCASA: Because the government makes a profit from every bill or coin out there, so more coins, more profit. It's called seigniorage.

KESTENBAUM: So case closed, right? Not so fast. We're here to tell you there is something big missing from that GAO report, which is where all that money the government is getting comes from. It turns out it comes from us.

BENINCASA: To help explain how this works, and to render the final judgment, let's meet one more person, Robert Whaples. He's an economist at Wake Forest University.

KESTENBAUM: Whaples weirdly came to us via the dollar coin lobby, a group called the Dollar Coin Alliance. The Dollar Coin Alliance said make sure you talk to him; he's a pro-coin guy.

BENINCASA: So, we called Whaples up. He read the GAO report, thought about it, and he said the choice is very clear: The paper dollar wins, the coin loses.

ROBERT WHAPLES: It's clearly an inferior substitute. People are going to be putting them on top of their bureaus instead of spending them for transactions. And that seems like a big waste of resources to me.

BENINCASA: Whaples says all that money the government makes on the dollar coin, all that extra money, it doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from us.

KESTENBAUM: Think about it this way, if I have a paper dollar, I'll probably use it or put in the bank. But if stick a coin in a jar, I'm not getting anything from it. I'm not earning any interest on it. It's like we're paying a tax.

WHAPLES: That is exactly how I would see it.

KESTENBAUM: Well, but the Dollar Coin Alliance said I should talk to you because you favor the...

WHAPLES: Yeah, I guess they made a mistake.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

KESTENBAUM: There you have it.

I'm David Kestenbaum.

BENINCASA: And I'm Robert Benincasa, NPR News.

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whats worth more?

When we grew up we hardly had any swimming costumes to choose from. You just went to some sports store and picked yourself a costume. I used to swim regularly in Dubai, that is till the third standard. When we shifted to India we stopped swimming. No club, no pool. One big posh building (Avanti) in the locality had a swimming pool which was empty. They repaired it a few years later and started it, but it was out of bounds for outsiders. The only accessible pool was the municipal pool at Shivaji park, which was some distance away.

As a kid I went into the pool but I hadn’t really properly learnt swimming. So after a long time when I finally went swimming with my friend at the Avanti swimming pool, I realised I had completely forgotten to swim. I used to do some variation of the underwater stroke or something, which just about kept me afloat. So there was no swimming for me for many years. Till one day V-inu and I in the first year of college (F.Y.B.COM) decided to swim properly at the Shivaji Park pool. We figured out when the forms come out (once a year), got the forms, filled it in and started swimming. We saw what the coaches taught and learnt that one has to hold the sides of the pool and splash ones legs to learn to float. So we sat and splashed. Slowly we figured what we thought was free style and swam.

We also had started doing odd jobs as sales promoters. One assignment was at the defense canteen. So there we used our contact we had built up and I remember buying for myself a swimming costume. A defense canteen would have heavily discounted stuff, thanks to the non-applicability of taxes. I don’t remember the brand but it was some home grown, possibly Jalandar made brand. I don’t remember too well, but I think I couldn’t afford and hence did not even dream of buying swimming goggles or a swim cap. I did try and buy ear plugs but quickly released that they didn’t help a bit. Speedo was a brand that was not available in India and was something I could only drool over. OOO… Speedo swimming wear.

So when Jispa started swimming seriously we went and picked Speedo swimming costumes. They were an upgrade from her home grown ‘mad max’ or some brand like that swimming costume.Speedo. Wow. She had not one but three speedo swimming costumes. When you go for competitive swimming, you change your costumes after every race so that you can remain nice and dry while you await your race. Speedo costumes, cap, goggles. Not bad eh! Till recently we realised that even Speedo is not it. Now Jispa is a walking talking Arena billboard. She prefers that material over Speedo. Slowly we are seeing Arena  taking over. Speedo seems to only stock during the summers. Most sport shops are out of stock of Speedo or any decent swimwear the rest of the year. Whereas Arena is slowly building credence with the serious swimmers. This is a serious marketing lesson. In the last three four years, I have noticed suddenly Arena swim wear on the bodies of the athletes. This has an effect greater that what we can imagine. If the champions in the pool start wearing Arena, then the others will slowly see and realize that Arena is ‘real’ swim wear what champions wear. Even the casual swimmer will see this and slowly gravitate towards Arena. Speedo is in real danger in Mumbai at least of being the lower performing swimwear brand.

This emulation effect is larger than we realize. Big brands have understood this and that’s why you see the bad rush to pay obscene amounts of money to make champions wear your brand on the stage. But what Speedo is failing to see, is the fact that there are champions in every small nook and corner. The classic marketing case of Arena having really high end swimwear in stock, which probably doesn’t sell at all but defiantly has a strong rub off for the more boring models. They sponsor the Otter club meet where they have a stall. I glanced through the selection and quickly ran out of there when I saw my costumes for two thousand bucks. Hah! One other parent told me, forget that. There was a kid’s model for 12 thousand bucks. A high end costume which has to be worn in a particular manner. It probably took around 15 minutes just to wear it. Oh come on.

Then we got talking and I realized some kid champions were wearing real high end costumes, costing upwards of twenty thirty thousand rupees! Oh dam you. Some real special fast costumes. These costumes I had read reduce your drag and help you swim faster. The net effect would be something like one tenth of a second at best. One tenth! In these club meets and state meets, timings are taken by hand held stop watches. There are two time keepers for every race and then timings are taken at the end. One tenth of a second is the easily human error in the stop watch, it surely is not what the kid needs for now.

The most of the timing improvement at this age is not the equipment but strokes. The right strokes help you slash off seconds. Your improvement is measured in seconds. The coach works on this every day. For Jispa the coaching fees are around 900 bucks a month for 5 one hour evening turns and 3 one and a half hour morning turns. From which the gymkhana keeps a cut and shares the rest with the coach. For a coach that produces state and national champions, it’s hardly any fees. Jasmine and I find it really cheap.

The coach has a strict policy of not accepting any extra gifts or money. They refuse any attempt by the parents to give them anything.  They are extremely sweet. This year the club decided to honor them at a party (tomorrow) and the mothers are using this as an opportunity to collect and give a cash envelope with the felicitation. It interesting to see the reactions of the mothers and others while the hat gets passed around. For me the coach is paramount. I hold him in the highest esteem. It because of him that we are around. They make or break us. We did not know Jispa would swim so well. We had no dream about her swimming prowess. The coach has dreamt of her victory. We can only be grateful. I never had any sport coach. I value them immensely.

While we were have the discussion on expensive costumes I wryly remarked – ‘we can pay 30 thousand for a swimming costume that saves us one tenth of a second but we don’t pay much for the coach who helped our kid cut 20 seconds to start with’. It’s embarrassing for me to have Jispa’s swim bag contain equipment that is worth almost twice as much as what the coach makes from teaching Jispa in a year. Whats worth more?

Tough shit

In around Jan I twisted my knee to end my best ever cricket season. I was averaging 30 plus runs in every match. This was all due to a simple lesson that I overhead one coach at Shivaji Park give out to his wards. The most important one was to keep your hands close to your body while playing the shots. These 30/40 runs also could have gone to become higher scores if not for the fact that I used to run myself out so that others get batting. In all my cricketing outings, playing twenty twenty for the corporate team, I haven’t ever hit a fifty. I came close, tantalizing close to 50 once, around four five years ago. This season was the season to hit 50. Normally my job as a youngster was to hit and clear the ropes or as an elder to eschew all risk and ensure the team doesn’t lose all the wickets. Over the last two years I built the B team into a decent formidable team that had decent batsman and decent bowlers. So my role changed to keep one end up for around 7 to 10 overs while keeping the runs flowing and then attack the bowling from 10 to 15 overs. With the technical flaw getting ironed out, I started to score runs and keep my wicket guarded. The team was also doing very well and we were building a strong nucleus in the side. So I was pretty frustrated when this Jan I twisted my knee and was out of the action. The team then went on to lose two semifinals and generally morale was down. Yesterday I decided I was fit enough to play. I had been keeping my workout going in the intervening days. Swimming was on. I even started cycling in the gym and I was doing 10 kms in 30 min with a 5 resistance. So I knew my stamina and speed wouldn’t be an issue but I was very worried about being in touch. Also the issue of captainship. Men. We love to play politics and we hate giving up power. We play our game and we take every chance to play a little game. Even the game of cricket where there is probably nothing at stake, we will play our political game. In my absence, coteries had formed. The captain had formed his own favorite gang. I realized why the B team had lost its knockout matches. We lost our core and we lost it so bloody fast. I had drilled it into the team that we play, not to win but to enjoy the game. We play to have fun, and to give everyone a chance. Slowly in my absence the team forgot about this. The captain would over bowl himself and his coterie, possibly in his desire to win. The B team doesn’t have talent. They have potential. Untapped and waiting to be let lose. You will never know on which day, which player will perform. The key was to ensure enough guys get enough chances. That simple principle was thrown out of the window. People just don’t get it. “When you treat a disease you win, you lose, but when you treat a patient you always win” – Patch Adams. When you play to win, you may win or lose, but you play to give people a chance you will always win. Winning is not the objective of the sport I play. It is the happy outcome. Having such an attitude helped me unearth good talent that helped us win and build our side. But all this is complete bullshit. I left the team for a few months and we forget all that. We mess it up completely. Now I know why some guys just kept bumping into office kept asking me to come back and lead. They indicated that they would come in only if I came in to lead. In yesterday’s match I did not lead. I stayed around the fringes. The guy in charge made some stupid, silly noises and asked for my opinion as if to pay due deference. I also did not seize it as I wasn’t sure of my own fitness. I struggled on the field missing a few catches and letting a bowl go from under my feet. So I was a bit apprehensive going into bat. Opening the batting, my job was to hang around till a few overs. I hung around a bit. Hitting a few drives and a missing a few. I stayed there till the fourth/fifth over to realize that possibly we were a bit slower than required chasing 160 in 20 overs. I gestured to captain if I could start hitting. Affirmative came the gesture. I started playing aggressive, trusting my footwork and my drives. I started stepping out to the spinner. A few boundaries and a few shots played out. I was on a roll! My shots were connecting and my technique was supporting me. The heat was also oppressive, but my cycling and swimming kept me through. I was a bit tired but not dead. Ten overs and I was still going strong. I realised that we still had bench strength, which meant I could go for more shots. Up the run rate even more, if possible. In Mumbai cricket is played on maidans with the pitches never in the centre. So you will have one boundary closer than the other. Typically the spinner will always use bowl from eth end where he gets a long leg side boundary and a short offside. It’s a trap I have used many times. Get the spinner to toss up to a really long leg side field and tempt some BIG shots. You might giveaway a six but you will get his wicket next. It always works. I was not going to be suckered into this trap. I wouldn’t be able to clear that. Especially against the left arm spinner bowling away. But that meant I could get the ball to clear the offside with the spin. Easier said than done. From a Leg side player when I started playing maidan cricket twelve years ago I had slowly evolved an offside attack. I hit a few boundaries there and then… there… one of my big dreams of my life. I danced down the spinner on a pitch that was holding up and smashed the spinner with the spin for a lofted cover drive and cleared the boundary for a SIX. I have never been able to cover drive a six. I have once smashed one over point. But that was a fast swing bowler. This was the shot to unsettle the spinner. He had no option but to bowl short and that meant easy pickings. Anything on the offside was being hit hard. Your game is over. While batting I felt a twitch in my knee. The same knee. I felt my back a bit. Oops. While running and turning sharp I realized I might have hurt my toes (two blue toes when I saw them later). So now I knew I was close to my first ever fifty and I knew I might not play another match this season. What should I do. Slow down. No. never. The team comes first. So I continued hitting till one mishit and I was in the pavilion. I had batted for thirteen overs, ran like crazy for a lot of runs, hit 6 boundaries and a six and when I saw my score I wanted to kill someone. 48 of 41 balls. My god! Another chance missed. The form of my life and I had not converted it. Was I going to retire without a 50 ever? We won the match eventually and I was declared man of the match. A huge achievement for someone who never had formal coaching and learnt by reading, listening and playing. Playing cricket in my mind. Promising never to repeat my mistakes. That’s the way I learnt. The real hard way. Here is me getting my award….

And here is my scorecard, for my record. Sorry to inflict this on the reader...

But I still walked away completely tired and frustrated. Frustrated that I did not hit 50 and even more so that my team was getting destroyed. I could see the resentment on the few players. I could see that people would not come in to play in the next few matches. I could see my team disintegrate and I knew that my knee, my back and my toes would not allow me to play again this season. And hence I have no option. Shut up and walk away. I will have to rebuild the team next season. I can’t interfere from outside and I can’t change a dam thing. Oh dam, I tried explaining this to the fellows in charge but people just don’t get it do they? Simple principals are forgotten in our desire to win. We forget why we are there, to start with. All we want to do is win and we start doing stupid things. The current guy in charge is a good cricketer but he will bowl himself more than required and he will not experiment as much as he should, he will rely on old hands and do old tricks. They don’t always work for you. And you can’t build long term on short term tricks. So I walked away with a win, man of the match and a great shot with disappointment and anger. Quiet seething rage. No fifty and a team being killed and I can’t do jack. Tough shit. Really angry tough shit. I will wait for time. Possibly rebuild the team and possibly hit at least one 50. At least one.

a nice mix

It’s a bloody mela. Summer follows winter. And if you are the person swimming in winter then you tend to look at all the others who come in summer with a little disdain. They are not real swimmers. I dont see them when the water is cold. Real swimmers come and swim even in winter. They swim even when its 10 degrees. They don’t crib about the cold. I swam thru the coldest winter we ever had in Mumbai. But it’s also true that the only reason I swam was -circumstances. First reason - I had to come to the club in any case. My daughter had her swimming at 545 am. Second reason - I twisted my knee - that meant no squash no treadmill. Only option - swimming. But I can take credit - I decided to brave the water instead of lying around on my butt, waiting for Jispa to finish swimming. So I have some moral ground to stand on :-) even if it is a bit wobbly. Of all the things in the world, I never imagined I would be swimming alongside my daughter. I dreamt of other stuff. Like trekking, camping, cycling. Yes cycling.
V-nu gifted us a cycle of his. A nice expensive light cycle. Jispa had hers and we bought one more Jasmine. This was a few years ago. In our enthusiasm we dreamt of a family cycling together. We put a hook in the garage to chain the cycles to and we cycled a few days. Then the cycles just lay there securely chained. They stayed unused gathering lots of dust. Neighborhood construction ensured enough cement layers formed on the cycle. We got Jispa’s cycle up and kept it outside our door which meant it was relatively dust free. She cycled a bit. But for two years or more our adult cycles just sat and withered away.
A year back we sold one cycle to one of the maids working in the building. Her kid goes to school on a cycle and his cycle just got robbed. I had great intentions of fixing and servicing the V-nu’s cycle. Those intentions finally materialized last month. V-nu was in town and we hauled the cycle on a truck and took it to the repair guy for a complete overhaul. This was at Dadar. The day I had to collect it back from work, I decided to cycle back the 6 odd kms. I would assume that would not be too difficult. But I had never cycled on congested Mumbai roads in peak rush hour. Collecting the cycle I set off. At first out of sheer habit I hit the traffic and was waiting behind the car in front of me. It then suddenly struck me that I was on a cycle and waiting like this in a traffic jam is what you do in a car. A cycle would weave its way through the traffic between the cars. Whoops. I set off between the cars. The last time I saw a cyclist waiting patiently behind a car at a signal was at Geneva. He was taking the same amount of space as a car would, maintaining distance. This is crazy thing to do in Mumbai. I guess I would have been run over. I enjoyed weaving between the cars, going uphill then downhill. The cars I thought were pretty ok; the problem I faced was from the motorcycles. We were fighting for the same aisles between the traffic. I, with pedal power and them on their powerful motors. I had to cut lanes and out of sheer habit again, I found myself looking towards the imaginary rear view mirrors on the right. I really don’t understand how cyclists twist backwards in their attempt to see what’s behind. But on the whole I thought the experience was pretty much nice. I avoided the roads where one normally saw truck traffic and weaved through the bylanes. The greatest fun was crossing signals as a pedestrian and taking shortcuts through the wrong way. A cycle has many advantages in Mumbai.
Now with the cycle home and happily serviced, I could take Jispa to the garden cycling. With the long summer days I could cycle till late and enjoy. The first day Jispa went cycling, in some time she soon complained about her calves. Calves hurting? That too for Jispa. Thanks to swimming, Jispa has a very well toned body. She has a six pack stomach, muscular legs and a gazelle like structure. He calves paining sounded very funny. We realised that she does a lot of swimming. A WHOLE LOT OF SWIMMING. She has swimming muscles in her calves and they are different from cycling muscles or even walking or climbing muscles. The coach has given strict instructions not to swim on weekends and give the muscles some rest. So cycling muscles are different. So Jasmine and I decided to get her to cycle on weekends. Nothing as strenuous as her swimming but a bit of light cycling in the garden on weekends might do her good. Over the next three weekends, her cycling calves seemed to loosen up and she could cycle with ease without complaint. It’s probably a good thing. We really don’t know for sure, but we guess that a little bit of all round muscle development is good. I read once about Armstong (the champion long distance cyclist) complain that cyclists hate taking stairs. Its hurts them. I saw a variation happening at home. So light cycling is a nice thing, we assume.
This weekend, Jasmine packed some fries with mayo and ketchup along with some water and we took the hamper for a picnic. We cycled a bit. Now Jispa cycle a bit more on her own, take sa few rounds and then we sat down to enjoy our picnic. Just daddy and kid. Here…



I loved the time we spent. Just cycling away and then lazing around. A couple came in with their dogs with which Jispa played a bit. A nice way to spend your Sunday evening. Time well spent.