R2 Day 53 - Yoga, ARX

I really enjoyed this Yoga. It was the first time I have felt strong doing Yoga for ages. Ab Ripper X was hard as usual. I don't think it gets any easier.
I can't believe what's going on with Tiger. If he is shagging this skank, I would be stunned. He doesn't seem like him to make a mistake like this. But these gossip magazines are rarely wrong, are they, and there is the question WTF was he doing? My theory: He is shagging this chick, he had a fight with his wife, she smashed the window of his car as he drove off, and he lost control and smashed into the tree. Maybe he banged his head then, maybe she smashed his face before hand. That would explain the erratic driving better than just being surprised that his wife smashed the back window. Tiger is so private that it's hard to believe that this is out there. People say "what's the big deal? Why is this news?" It's news because everyone in the biz knows the truth, and they are just keeping it out there for when the truth comes out. Waiting like sharks.
The most disappointing thing about this is that it calls Tiger's mental toughness into question. Here's a guy whose wife has just had his second child, and he's working hard to provide for them. Obviously, with two young children, there's no real sexual attention being paid to him. His wife is probably tired from looking after the kids and physically still getting over the birth. He goes to work, and then when he comes home, tries to pay as much attention to the children as he can. He helps his wife with the housework, cooking, and cleaning. Outside the home he is getting offers, but he keeps knocking them back, knocking them back, for fear of being exposed and losing everything he holds dear. Instead, he focuses his energies on other things, like golf, and his health. Wait, who are we talking about again? Oh yea. Say it ain't so, Tiger.

R2 Day 52 - Back & Biceps

My arms are like jelly after this one. It is hard work, but I like it. I had no confidence going into the pull ups, and they sucked. A little disappointed in that. But after a week and a half of not doing them, what can I expect? Gotta stay on top of those bastards.
Got a shock this morning when I checked the paper. There are a few headlines I dread and I hope I never see them. Maybe just two or three. "Tiger Woods: Car Crash" is one of them, and that's what I saw when I checked out Drudge Report this morning. No, I thought. Please, no. Turns out he backed his car into a fire hydrant outside his house at 2 in the morning and cut his lip. It seemed he was unconscious for a while, though, so he must have bumped his head. Where was he going at 2 in the morning? Maybe he's still on Australian time. Maybe he had a fight with his wife. Probably he was going for a workout or something. None of my business, I'm just glad he's okay.
Didn't play Mass Effect last night. I went to bed really early.

R2 Day 51 - Plyo, ARX

Yesterday I did Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, which was tough after a two week break from it, and today I did Plyo and ARX, which is a monster workout but I did really well and I enjoyed it. Just finished four small homemade pizzas, so I don't really want to move much for a while. I didn't do a blog last night because I was playing Mass Effect. Hmmmm. After a couple of hours I'm hesitant to continue playing it, but I did spend fifty dollars on it and everyone says it's good so... First, I hate third person games. Third-person combat is so awkward and fiddly, and they have to put so much attention into faces and everything. Half-Life is ten years old, and still no-one else can beat it. I have choices of what to say when I'm talking to someone. The choices are I can sound like an asshole, a pussy, or a normal person. Wow, thanks. The game looks okay, though not as good as I expected, and the music is really good. I'll give it another go, but another ho-hum experience like last night and I'm back to Counter-Strike and Valve games, and I'll probably never bother buying another non-Valve game again. Even during the first cut-scene, I was thinking, this is going to end, and then I have to run everywhere (my character can't walk - I hate that) and ask people stuff and fumble my way through a gun fight and - sigh, I wish it was just a movie so I wouldn't have to do all this stuff just to get me to the next cutscene. The beauty of Half-Life was that there were no cutscenes. No stepping outside the first-person perspective of Gordon Freeman ever. Ah Half Life, will they ever make the likes of you again?

R2 Day 49 - Rest

I was going to do X Stretch and ARX, but when I got home from my lesson with Nori it was 10 o'clock and I was tired. So I went to bed.
All set for the next month and a half of P90X. Feeling good again.

R2 Day 48 - Cardio X

I felt pretty good all day, and was ready for this one. I took it at about 80% and while it was challenging it didn't destroy me. I feel like if I do X Stretch and an ARX tomorrow I'll be right as rain to go hard for the next month and a half.
I picked up on a funny Tony moment in Cardio X that made me chuckle. When there's a couple of minutes to go he's just crapping on about stretching and then he says "What am I saying? I don't know what I'm saying" like an old man. Just a funny moment that I only noticed today after doing this workout a dozen times in the last year.
I feel like I'm ready to get involved with a computer game again after years of mindless slaughter and 15 minute thrill killings. I've ordered Mass Effect, and it's one of those games where you have to talk to people and find out things. I'm so used to shooting people in the head that I don't know how I'll cope. Speaking of shooting people in the head, the Left 4 Dead 2 Demo. Good. Unless you live in China, whoops, I mean Australia, because the Government has seen fit to censor the game. Society must be perilously close to collapse down there if they felt the need to tone down a game about shooting zombies. As mild-mannered Acting Regional Manager Keven Rudd would say, "Struth, fair shake of the ketchup bottle cobber, in due season." I should get the game tonight, so we will see how I go.

Wow! Must Be Easy.

Every now and then a bunch of brochures do the office rounds from companies that will give us a discount if we by their stuff. My friend John picked this up. It's for little LED stands to put in your garden. Just another hint that this place is not part of the real world.

R2 Day 47 - Recovery 4 Results

I'm feeling a little better, but not much. My eyes hurt when I move them around. I am lightheaded, and although the hayfever medicine I took last night has dried me up, I can't taste or smell anything. I don't want to take it again today or I will pass out. All in all, I'm probably not in the best shape to approach Legs & Back, the hardest workout of the week. Another couple of easy days then I have to man up and and show my body that it's had its time to heal, and now it has to start bringing it again.
Hey, another one of my stories is up on 365 tomorrows. Check it out. It's part of my 'novel'. It's weird when I read stuff I wrote ages ago and have kind of forgotten writing it. I can see where my ego has gotten in the way, or something is phrased confusingly that I should have picked up but couldn't because my eye wasn't fresh. The way I see it, if I can get rid of anything that does not explain the story clearly, or doesn't say something about the character, or that pulls the reader out of the story like a word like "breathless" to describe Alan's voice, then it might be readable. I'm surprised this one got published because it's from my novel that I have never finished writing with a little twist I put at the end to give it some structure, though I don't think it did really. It should get some criticism in the forum. I sent another one in the other week which is better, so I hope that gets published.

R2 Day 46 - Yoga, ARX

So back on schedule today.Still nowhere near one hundred percent, but getting better. I did Patience Hummingbird Yoga, which is from the One on One with Tony series. It's a little different to Fountain of Youth yoga, which is the one I usually do. It's easier. I still made a mess of it, though. My balance was awful and my stamina way down. I hope I can bounce back hard from this cold/hay fever and get the energy levels back up quickly. But I'm glad this weekend is over because it sucked.
What I'm going to do is add the three workouts that I missed to the end of the second last week (second last because the last week is a recovery week).

R2 Day 45 - Recovery 4 Results

A tough, tough day. Still feel like shit, but my wife and two kids feel worse apparently, so I did everything today. Laundry, cooking, cleaning. My wife is wearing a mask and is mumbling all the time so I can't understand what she's saying and she gets upset when I say "What?" I swear, I am one arguement away from packing my bags. It's been that kind of day.
Who knows when this sickness will end? And it's not even swine flu. Man, if one of us get that in the next week I hope I'm the one who gets it and I hope it takes me out. Till then, I'll keep doing Recovery 4 Results until this headache stops, the congestion in my lungs clears up, and I feel like living again. I bought some hayfever medicine today. Damn it is strong. Dries me up good, but it spaces me out big time.

R2 Day 44 - Recovery 4 Results

I bought a ice-cream maker yesterday to take back another of my staples from murderous corporations that will gladly sacrifice my health and the health of my children for more money. I watched Food Inc last week and it made me think of a thing I heard on the Counterpoint podcast about Black Swan theory a couple of weeks ago, which is about the impact of highly improbable events on systems. When you create an incredibly efficient system, such as the food industry in America and probably to a lesser extent everywhere else, it becomes more vulnerable to outside events because it is so dependent on everything working correctly. One thing messes up, then the whole system collapses because it depended on this one thing along with a million other one things. A virus worse than Swine flu or another crash and everything will hit the fan. By the way, it's common practice in rural China to store chicken cages above the pig stys because the pigs like the bird shit and it saves space. They reckon that if swine flu, which is highly contagious but not very lethal, ever joins up with bird flu, which is devastatingly lethal but really hard to transmit, this is where and how it is going to happen. It really makes you want to start filling up empty PET bottles with water and storing them in your garage. And when you watch shows like Food Inc, and you see governments doing the exact opposite of what is in the public's best interest because the people who give them money tell them to do it, holy shit. I really want to separate myself from Western systems as much as possible because they seem to be behaving so recklessly. It's like the space shuttle disaster when every time the shuttle didn't blow up on the launching pad that became the new norm. Of course I can't separate myself totally, but food is a good start.
So I have taken back bread, pizza, biscuits and cake, butter, and now ice-cream. Long way to go, but two out of three meals I had today, plus snacks and dessert, I made from scratch. Anyway, I bought it yesterday, and Will wanted to make grape ice-cream. He is obsessed with grape, which I have always disliked. You know that purple flavour shit. "Daddy, do you like grape?" "Will, I told you, I am not answering that question again. You've asked me a hundred times if I like grape." "So you like it?" "No, not really." "I like it." So he's all excited about making grape ice-cream, so we go to the supermarket and grab some grapes. I get the recipe out, peel the grapes, puree, egg yolks and sugar, add hot milk and cream, then the final step, pour it into the ice-cream maker bowl (which has been placed in the freezer for at least 18 hours). Fuck. I probably should have read through the instructions before I started. So to keep the whole experience of ice-cream making a positive one for Will and I, we drove down to Baskin Robbins and had a cup of grape ice-cream. He loved it.
So this afternoon when he got home from school we sat down and completed the job. The end result wasn't that sickly purple colour, but it had a purple tinge to it, and there were real actual bits of grape in it. Will was skeptical at first, but I tell you what, it was really nice! Much nicer than the shit we had yesterday. Victory!
I did Recovery 4 Results again today. I was flirting with the idea of doing Ab Ripper X after it, but nah. I don't feel any worse than I did yesterday, but i sure as hell don't feel any better. Cold plus hayfever. Yay. I think I'll go easy on the wekend too, and hopefully by Monday I'll be well enough to start bringing it again.

R2 Day 43 - Recovery 4 Results

I felt ordinary all day, like it could go either way. I have a phlegmy chest, and a small headache, but no fever or chills. I did Recovery 4 Results. I just saw Wikiki go down in 2012. Not a bad movie, I'm looking forward to seeing it on DVD or in the cinema. I felt awesome after doing the workout. Well, not awesome, but much, much better. I really hope I wake up tomorrow feeling like I'm on the mend.

R2 Day 42 - Cardio X, ARX

Every morning the train to work is packed. Not quite like what you may have seen of Japan where station staff are pushing and squeezing people in, but on a bad day it can approach that level. I used to get on a carriage that was in the middle of the train and it was like that every day. You literally could not move. On days when I couldn't deal with it, I used to stand outside the toilets in the reserved carriage just to avoid the crush until one morning a couple of years ago when I was approached by a conductor. "That's 340 yen please."
"I have already bought a ticket," I said.
"Yes, but it costs extra to be in this carriage. It's the reserved carriage."
"But I'm not sitting down. I haven't reserved a seat."
"Yes, but it still costs extra. 340 yen please."
"I'm not paying."
There were other guys around me who where obviously doing the same thing as me, and didn't want to go into the sardine carriages. Some had their money ready to pay the conductor, but I'm sure they were thinking, Awesome, this foreigner's going to lose it! A fine morning's entertainment.
"You have to pay. Or you have to go to the general carriage. 340 yen please."
"No way. It's too crowded. I bought a ticket for this train, but it's too crowded. So I came in here."
"But this is the reserved carriage. You have to pay extra. 340 yen please."
"No way. You should have more trains, so when I buy I ticket I can have a place to stand."
I could feel public opinion was on my side. I was calm, yet defiant. Two more minutes and I would be at my station.
"350 yen please."
"No. There is no way I'm going to pay."
The conductor took a different tact.
"Do you catch this train every morning?"
"Yes."
"Then you know it's like this every morning."
"Yes, it's terrible."
"You should catch an earlier train."
Bastard had me.
"340 yen, please."
"No."
Then one of the men standing around asked me what my station was.
"Chiryu," I said.
"That's the next station."
"Yes." In fact, the announcement that the train was approaching Chiryu had begun.
The guy looked at the conductor and shrugged, like, Too late, dude.
"Okay," said the conductor, "but if you are in here tomorrow you have to pay."
"Okay," I said.
I got off and Chiryu, and so did the guy who intervened. He gave me a nod, because I just saved him 340 yen.
So since then I have been catching the very front carriage, which is still crowded, but at least I can breath. And in that carriage there's a woman on the train that is always looking at me. I see her once or twice a week, and she is always looking at me, and she doesn't look away when I look at her. She's small and kind of cute, maybe mid-20s, but sometimes she would be right next to me, and I could tell she was looking right up at me. And when I looked at her, she would be looking right into my eyes until I looked away. If I smiled, she smiled, and if I gave a little nod, she gave a little nod, but after several months it was getting really creepy, and I kind of dreaded it. Riding in the train in Japan is like anywhere in the world, but more so. You don't look at anyone, or talk to anyone. Especially when you are pushed up against five people at once. If you and a friend are talking then everyone is listening. But this chick would just stare at me. So after about a year it got to the point where we were saying good morning to each other. She was cute, but her teeth were terrible. Brown, broken, all over the shop. Pretty typical Japanese teeth. Then one morning she was standing right in front of me looking right at me, and I turned the volume up on my ipod because I couldn't hear it over the train noise, and I saw her gasp and turn away quickly. I realized that she had seen my wedding ring.
Look, if I wasn't married I would have talked to her ages ago. But I'm married. Bad luck for both of us.
But she kept on staring that once or twice a week we would be on the same morning train. Then one morning she ran into me in the station convenience store. We said good morning. I asked her her name, Tomomi, and she asked me mine, and then we got on the train together and shared an awkward seven minutes. That was a few months ago, so now when I'm waiting for the train she will come up to me and tap me on the shoulder and say hello and we chat until I reach Chiryu. She still stares at me. She invited me for a coffee when we happened to be on the same train going home a couple of weeks ago so we had a coffee at a coffee shop in the station. She has no interest in learning or speaking English. I have no idea what she wants. I even asked her, "What kind of a relationship are you looking for?" and she seemed stunned that I'd ask such a thing. So I guess she's my train buddy. I'm not in the position to be turning down any kind of friendship, so I'm just relying on my natural charm and personality to repel this woman like it does all women, but it doesn't seem to be working. She seems pretty interesting though. She does Japanese paintings in her spare time, enjoys flowers and gospel music, and always has something interesting to say, like "My sister has swine flu!" or "I have decided to study to become a lawyer."
I told Nori about this and he said she sounds crazy. Nori's great. Even if I wasn't married, the teeth thing would be a big hurdle. I shudder inside each time she smiles, and it's hard not to look at them.
So there you go. Just part of my push not to become a fossil.
Today I did Cardio X and Ab Ripper X after my lesson with Nori. Last week for some reason or another Cardio X was really hard and I had to take breaks, but I powered through it today. ARX was rough, but I did it.
Will has a fever and it looks like he does have the flu. My chest is feeling a little raw, but hopefully I can get through it without it being too horrible. I've read a few things about how exercising when you are sick doesn't really make you sicker, though of course I won't be able to power through Plyo or anything that intense. I have Recovery 4 Results which Tony made just for this situation, so I might be using that this week sometime. See how we go.

R2 Day 41 - Legs & Back

I am so glad that I got to bed early, because at around two o'clock Will woke up crying and shivering and burning up. Immediately we thought swine flu, or new-style flu as it's called here, because heaps of kids from his kindergarten have it and the girl he was playing with on Sunday has it now. So I agreed to take the day off work so Junko could take him to the doctor's and I would look after Jo Jo. There's no work to do anyway. Will finally went back to sleep (in my bed, so I'm thinking, well, may as well get this over and done with - if I'm going to get it, get it now etc), but when he woke up in the morning the fever was gone, but he had a little cough and was obviously not a hundred percent. So Junko took him to the doctor's, and it turns out he's got a normal cold. It was good news, of course, but it meant that the flu was still in our future somewhere when we we both kind of ready to deal with it now. Nah, it's good news.
So I thought, well, the day off work, let's really smash Legs & Back, and I did. 88 pull ups this week, 5 better than last week and 29 more than I did in week 1. It's amazing how quickly you can gain and lose pull ups. It's encouraging, and also a lesson as to how important a good night's sleep is, something I don't do often enough.

R2 Day 40 - Rest

I didn't do a workout today. I have been feeling a little run down, so I thought an early night was in order. In bed by 9. Legs & Back tomorrow, and then Kenpo X or Cardio X on Wednesday, which is usually my rest day.

R2 Day 39 - Yoga, ARX

So the Pac-man wins the boxing and Tiger wins the golf. And just to spare you the fake outrage next year, Tiger will not be coming back to Melbourne to defend his title. Man, two hours after he wins it's all, are you coming back? Say you're coming back, please! Yes! He kind of said he was! Melbourne is high maintenance. Remember when Jack Nicklaus came to Melbourne years ago? You probably don't, but he came to Australia many times throughout his career, but had never happened to play the queen of Australian golf courses, Royal Melbourne. So finally he plays on it, and everyone's like, it's the best course in the world, right? Right? And then he goes and calls it "a good member's course." He meant it as a compliment, sort of, but the stink it caused, oh my god. He had to backtrack and apologize or he would have been chased out of town. So everyone loves Tiger now and the money was all worth it and what a fantastic week for golf and Nettles or whatever his name is is the future of Australian golf, and he said he was coming back! No, he said he would love to come back. Meaning he probably won't.
So yoga today and another Ab Ripper X. A good workout. Got the big one tomorrow after work, Legs & Back, but to be honest, and I know this is the long hard road stage of P90X and my frame of mind is just a reaction to it, at the moment I'm struggling to find any meaning in it all. The intensity I am managing to create for my workouts comes from an empty place, and I'm just hoping it can get me through the next month and a half because I don't have much else going for me except for my health, and if I lose that then I will be really down. I think that's why I'm dreading getting sick so much, and also why I am an asshole to be around.
Anyway, no big deal. Work tomorrow, dishes after dinner, workout, TV, and bed. Do that a few times, then see where I'm at.

R2 Day 38 - Back & Biceps, ARX

This workout was shot to peices by Jo Jo. Junko and Will went out to one of his kindergarten friend's house for dinner, and I tried to squeeze this in while Jo Jo slept. I got 20 minutes through it when he woke up crying, so I went upstairs and tried to get him back to sleep. When it didn't work I gave up and put him down and did Ab Ripper X in the lounge room as he screamed. Which wasn't long, as it turned out, because he loved the Ab Ripper X and watching daddy do the same thing as the TV. He laughed and laughed. So that calmed him down so I put a video on for him and gave him some toys and made myself some dinner, then made him some milk. I watched the end of FlashFoward from last week, and then Junko and Will came home and I finished the workout. So the numbers are kind of meaningless, but I did it nonetheless. I'm really looking forward to the Manny Pac-man (can't spell his last name) and Cotto fight tonight. I hope I can download it quickly.
Tiger by two shots. I'm really glad he won it. He didn't have to beat much but he still had to hole the putts.

R2 Day 37 - Plyo

I had a really frustrating day. Sometimes I feel like I have nowhere for the energy that being fit gives me to go, except for the workouts that give me more energy. I pushed play just wanting to destroy it. I would have to say that this was the most intense workout I have ever done, and I had absolutely nothing left for Ab Ripper X. It was great to have something beneficial to put all of these destructive urges, and by the end of it I felt much better.

Bored At Work

I have mentioned before that one hard thing about Japanese is the lack of a subject in a sentence. They say stuff like "Went shopping, met a friend, said, how's it going." But of course sometimes they have to include a subject to make it clearer who's doing stuff. It's really hard because there is no simple "I" and "you" in Japanese. For the "you", the best thing is to refer to the person by name. So I might ask Goto-san "What did Goto-san do today?" It sounds kind of weird, but you get used to it. If you don't know their name, call them their job. There's a guy at Junko's parent's supermarket that she has known since she was born, but she doesn't know his name, even though they talk every day. He is just "Fish shop man". If you don't know their name or job, you have to ask their name. Otherwise you have to call them "anata", which is mainly used by married couples talking to each other. "Anta! Where'd you put the keys!" etc. But of course, foreigners are taught that this means "you", which technically it does, and use it for everyone, which is stupid. But I want to focus on "I" today.
The first thing a beginner Japanese student learns to say is their name. "I am (Jim)." This would be "Watashi wa Jimu desu." Forget the grammar and the pronunciation and all that, you can pretty much assume that "watashi" means I. And it does. So for the first year of study, foreigners say "Watashi wa this" and "Watashi wa that". I also mentioned before that because the subject is usually omitted in Japanese, then it sounds strange to Japanese people when foreigners continuously refer to themselves. "I, myself, went shopping, and as for me, I bought a hat." So you gradually learn not to say it because you don't hear Japanese people saying it.
But then, like Japanese people, you sometimes have to refer to yourself to make things clearer. So you say watashi. But then Japanese people who are on good enough terms with you shake their head and say "If you are a woman, fine. If you are a man, no good. You shouldn't use watashi." WTF? You throw your hands up in frustration. "Why are they teaching me shit that no-one uses!"
This is a good point. The stuff you learn in Japanese school and books, you never here in the real world of Japan. If you use what they teach you in beginner text books, you come off sounding like an idiot. We don't teach beginner English students to say "how do you do?" or "you may call me Jim" the first lesson. People's first impression of you would be "who's this fucking idiot" wouldn't it? It comes down to the people who write the textbooks, and the people who teach Japanese. "It's important to be polite" seems to be the overriding rule when it should be "it's important to be friendly."
So after a few years of study you learn that men shouldn't use "watashi" when referring to themselves. It sounds gay. Great, I've been sounding gay for two years, you think. You should say "boku." Ok, boku. Never seen it in a textbook, but now that you mention it, that's what most of the men say. But then there's another one you keep hearing men say. "Ore." It seems like that also means "I". You ask your teacher if it does. She shakes her head. "Yes, it does. But never use it. It is not polite." WTF!
I don't want to be polite! I don't want to sound gay! I want to speak normal, everyday Japanese! If that means that normal Japanese is not polite, who cares?
I say "boku". It's the easiest and most common. But it took years to discover this and feel confident using it. I'm talking about this because I just read an article about the word and where it comes from. Literally it means "your servant". It's humble-speak.
Picture a guy having his his first Japanese lesson.
Teacher - "What is your name?"
Student - "Watashi wa Jimu desu."
T - "No."
S - "But it says 'watashi' in the book!"
T - "I know but it's wrong. 'Boku'. Not 'watashi'. What is your name?"
S - "Boku wa Jimu desu."
T - "No."
S - "But you said use 'boku'. And I said 'boku.'"
T - "I know but it's wrong. Don't say it at all. What's your name?
S - "Jimu desu."
T - "To be honest, you don't even really need the 'desu'. What's your name?
S - "Jimu?"
T - "Good."
S - "Holy shit."
That is so Japanese. Suspicious of anything easy.
Still, I appreciate anything that gets me thinking. Later.

R2 Day 36 - Chest, Shoulders & Triceps

Chest, Shoulders & Triceps today. I like this one. I am able to reach failure on so many of the exercises. Like the plyo push ups, where you have to push yourself up and do a clap in between push ups. I can do 15 or 16 until I do a clap and then I am unable to support my body weight and collapse onto my chest. That's the thing about this workout, you reach failure, and then a few minutes later you have to use the same muscles again. It's great.
I see Tiger shot a 66 the first round. Last night I was thinking, he probably hasn't played against a weaker field in his professional career. The only players that you would say are 'internationally' any good are Ogilvy, Appleby, Scott, and Baddelly, who have all had horror seasons (especially Scott, who should consider retirement), and you might throw in Pampling on a good day. By rights Tiger should win by ten shots. I'm looking at the leader board now - a smorgasbord of whose that? Dufner, Grace, Hall, Nitties? Villegas. You might have heard of him. Actually, you haven't. You've heard of his brother. Of course, if someone putts the lights out they might beat him, or if Tiger suddenly starts shanking it he might lose it, but looking at the top ten, who can come close? The way Tiger usually wins now is that he stays a shot or two ahead until the final few holes, when he makes a birdie and the others make bogeys. My prediction: Tiger by three shots.
I'm not feeling real flash at the moment. I've got a little bit of a headache and for some reason I'm making a lot of typing errors, in particular getting letters mixed up, like typing untli instead of until. I better not get the swine flu. I've been washing my hands religiously for weeks and staying away from the Chinese guys at work as much as possible because they are dirty fuckers (is it racist if it's true?) but those germs will find a way. Probably the place that will infect me is the train. Packed in a stuffy carriage for ten minutes a day will probably do it. My last recorded illness was exactly one year ago. I know I can't not be sick again ever, but damn I hate the thought of feeling shit now that I feel great.
Mad Men's over, Flash Forward is boring, and I've even lost the urge to watch Californication even though I enjoy it. Bill Maher's finished too. No footy either. I have been watching the HBO series 24-7 about the Manny Pacquiao vs. Miguel Cotto fight this Saturday. It's really interesting. It's a great idea, and it will definately make the fight more interesting knowing all of the people involved.

R2 Day 35 - ARX

I did this when I got home from my lesson with Nori last night. Doing ARX cold means that I haven't done a one-hour workout just before it, so I feel much stronger and fresher. I'm not sure if that makes it any easier though.

R2 Day 34 - Cardio X

I did Cardio X today because I've done Kenpo X a lot recently, and I don't want to overdo it because it's very easy to get jaded about Kenpo X. Cardio X is no pushover and I really brought it. It did it without ventolin which was probably not a good idea because I was blowing up a little bit towards the end and it's not a pleasant feeling. I feels like I can't breathe deep or fast enough to get my breath back. I will have to have a puff before I do my more vigourous workouts, and restrict it to that. I left Ab Ripper X for tomorrow, which I will squeeze in sometime between work and my lesson with Nori, if he doesn't cancel again.
Yesterday I was reading an article giving advice to students of Japanese. This is tip 5.
"Tip #5: Don’t become a fossil.
Bad for dinos, bad for you. Fossilization basically means that despite continued contact with the language you experience a plateau, or in some cases, a decrease in your linguistic ability. Fossilization describes the phenomenon where a speaker after two years, doesn’t progress much from four.
What makes us fossils? I think it is probably either because of a lack of motivation at either a conscious or subconscious level because we somehow feel we have “learned enough” in the environments we find ourselves in. Prime candidates for early fossilization are people who use Japanese in a limited context: e.g. the one-partner speaker who learns their partner’s vocabulary and syntax (and their partner learns how to understand the speaker’s more-or-less comprehensible Japanese), or the bar meister who can exchange pleasantries and short anecdotes with their Japanese friends, but can’t function well in other situations (e.g. business contexts).
The key to not becoming a fossil is perhaps to lead a more dynamic life – push yourself at of your comfortable environment so you learn to speak, read, and write in varied contexts."
That's me. I am a fossil. I need to lead a more dynamic life, it says. Totally agree.

R2 Day 33 - Legs & Back

Wow, I just killed Legs & Back today. 83 pull ups! I should say, like I said before in another post, not all of them are consecutive. I do as many as I can before I think that the neck muscle that was giving me trouble in the early weeks might start hurting again. Then I lower myself down (not just let go and fall to the ground) and shake it out a little, then do it again. I am careful not to jump up to the bar either. I start at the bottom and lift myself up. So all of the pull ups I do are genuine pull ups. For example, in the second round of wide front pull ups I did eight pull ups. I did five and then stopped, shook it out, then did two more, stopped and shook it out, and then I squeezed out one more. I'm very pleased with 83. That's 13 more than in my last week of round 1. But then I would just do as many as I could consecutively and then that was it.
I'm going to stop using Ventolin for my asthma. I've been using it too much and I don't think it's any good for my rosacea. Some people on the net have associated the two. I probably should stop using it anyway. Only for full-on attacks, which I hardly ever get.

R2 Day 32 - ARX

For some reason today I just felt worn out and lazy all day. I got plenty of sleep and ate well, but I just had no energy. I played with Will and got through the day all the while knowing that I had Yoga X coming up and thinking that it was just what I needed, but then also thinking it was the last thing I wanted to do. About dinner time I decided just to do a normal yoga and ARX, but when I got down to the garage and started Yoga the intensity was non-existent and I was just counting down the minutes. I knew it would be a waste of time so I turned it off, did Ab Ripper X, had a shower, watched some TV and went to bed. Jo Jo woke up in the middle of the night a few times, so I'm pretty tired now (Monday morning).
I'm thinking of buying some kangaroo burger patties. There's a place here that sells them, and I miss eating hamburgers and don't want to eat the shit that passes for hamburger mince here - usually a mixture of beef and pork. God knows how many animals and what parts of them are in those things. They're about ten dollars for three patties, so they're pretty expensive, but no more expensive than a fast-food burger. But then again I'm hesitant because I like kangaroos. The ones I've met have been pretty friendly, and they are our national animal. Still, cows are pretty nice two, and I have been personally responsible for the slaughter of thousands of them, so a roo or two won't make much difference.
My story appeared on the 365tomorrows on Sunday. Something funny happened. My story is about a guy lost in the jungle who is saved by the local tribespeople who think he is Jesus. I intentionally made him look like Jesus by him having a beard and wearing underpants and being all scratched up and stuff. But in the story I had him cut out some kind of responder from his hand, his palm actually, so the enemy couldn't use it to detect his location. So it looks like stigmata. But when I was writing it that thought never occurred to me. I thought, well, he's a soldier from the future, so he must have some kind of chip in him, like a GPS chip, and if he wanted to escape he would have to get rid of it. I think I originally had it in his thigh, but I thought that would be too hard to cut out, so I made it in his palm. No reason. That was the only conscious thought I applied to it. But of course, if a tribesperson was to think someone was Jesus, he would look at the palms and expect to see a wound there where he had been crucified. The only time I realised I'd done this was when I read someone's comments in the web site's forum yesterday. Weird. The subconscious is an amazing thing.

R2 Day 31 - Back & Biceps

New workout today. I like this workout a lot. It's quick and intense, and it really works your arms. My numbers were the same as the last time I did it in week 12 of the first round, except for the pull ups, which fell away a little at the end. I've never felt like I am on top of the pull ups, they are so damn hard. I tried to fix my bar, but I couldn't. No great drama though.
I just went down the shop with Will and bought a can of coffee - my only indulgence for the day. It's weird because as soon as I decided to cut down on the crap (really not to eat any at all, but I've decided I would like one treat a day, whether it be a can of coffee or a Kitkat, the kitchen seems to be piled high with doughnuts and mini croissants and ice-cream etc. Last week I would have gone nuts and ate a heap of them, but this week, nup.
Tiger will be in Melbourne in a couple of days. There's an interview with 60 minutes tonight, which I will definitely download. I should have scheduled my trip to coincide with him playing at Kingston Heath. I would have loved to have seen him play. I saw him at Royal Melbourne when he came down for the President's Cup ages ago.
I still can't believe what he has done. When I was learning golf, the best two players were Greg Norman, who you knew deep down was an asshole, and Faldo, who was my favourite. Golf exposes people. Flaws in their character, work they haven't done, presumptions they've made. Norman was exposed again and again. Those 'unlucky' things that happened to him, he brought about. Larry Mize's chip in in 87 was amazing, but like he said years later, it was Norman's shitty second shot that took the pressure off him and let him chip the ball thinking that he might be able to make a bogey and still be in the play off. If Norman put his second to fifteen feet, then Mize would have approached the chip knowing that he had to get up and down to stay in it - a completely different mindset. In 86 when Tway holed a bunker shot to beat Norman, Norman had shot a 40 on that back nine. He was already beaten. The other times Norman's technique let him down, and even though it cost him dozens of tournaments and millions of dollars, he refused to tackle the problem. Faldo, on the other hand, did the work, hit the shots, and for a few years was the most dominant player in golf since Nicklaus. He won 6 majors. Norman won 2. I thought Faldo was the best golfer I would ever see.
Tiger has won 14. The thing I love about Tiger is that all he wants to do is win. He's not Ali, or Shaq, he's not about changing the world or being in Disney movies, he's about winning golf tournaments, and he does what he has to do to win them. When he first came on the scene the media tried to paint him as some kind of saviour, a barrier-breaking racial hero, all that. They tried to portray his dad as some kind of crazy Korean tennis dad. Turns out that Tiger isn't really interested in race, and that his dad was a great guy who taught Tiger what he needed to know but was just as in awe of his son's talent as anybody. From a purely golf point of view, he's the greatest ever. I think only Nicklaus has a problem with that, and he's a proud old bugger. The shots he has hit over the years are just amazing. The pressure he is under week after week is intense, but the consistency of his form is untouchable in any sport.
Sometimes I wish he would be more... charismatic, so people who don't play golf take an interest in him like I might take an interest in Michael Jordan or Ichiro, even though I have no interest in their sports. It's probably why even though we have the greatest golfer in his prime playing, golf is in all sorts of trouble. Clubs are struggling, TV audiences are down. It's a shame. But fuck it. I'm a golfer, and Tiger is mine, and part of me is glad that he doesn't appeal to the shitkickers out there who don't know what it takes to do what he does. They've got their Koby Bryants and Lance Armstrongs and all those tennis faggots. You won't see Tiger taking steroids or involved in a nightclub shooting or smoking bongs. Sorry.
So good luck in Melbourne, Tiger. Hope you like Kingston Heath, it is a beautiful place. Hope you kick their ass and win.

R2 Day 30 - Plyo, ARX

Phew, big day. Day 30, actually. Nearly half way through already. Plyo then Ab Ripper X. This was easily my best Plyo so far in this second round. The intensity was very high, and I'm feeling it now like I haven't for a long time. Nice. ARX was ARX. I had a quick coffee before my workout, and that's it. No headaches, which is nice, and weird considering my caffeine intake is way down. I feel really good, really even-tempered.
I did a lot of looking after the baby today, and we went out for dinner. Ramen. Probably not the healthiest of foods, but damn I love ramen.

R2 Day 29 - Chest, Shoulders & Triceps

Phase 2 starts today. Chest, Shoulders & Triceps. This workout just hums along. It seems really quick, and it's hard to type now because my arms are kin of like jelly after all those pushups. Great stuff.
I have to say that straight up I had a can of coffee while walking to work. I think I'm going to restrict myself to one a day, and only when I'm working. So that's three or four cans a week, instead of three or four cans a day. A considerable drop. I didn't have any KitKats after lunch today, a radical departure from the norm, but I did have a cup of Ecco, an "instant cereal beverage naturally free of caffiene". It was okay.
Last night Nori cancelled again because he was still in a meeting in Nagoya, so I thought I'd do the same thing as last week and go to the same bar and see if the people I met there last week were there again this week. But when I got there, it was closed! How can a place be open one Wednesday night and not the next? Where's the consistency? So I had to go to a net cafe and kill an hour rather than go home and have my deception exposed. A bit of a bummer.
Today a co-worker gave me a Japanese rhinoceros beetle larva for Will. His daughter's beetle had babies, so they're giving them away. These things are huge in Japan, every young boy owns one and fights them with his friend's beetles, and they look pretty cool. I don't know how Will will go with it, because it looks like a big witchety grub at the moment and will for a while yet, until next summer. We'll see how we go.
Here's my Pre-stage 2 photo. I look pretty lean, and tired (I just woke up), and I don't know where all the weight is. I hope that even in only one month, the results will be clear.

R2 Day 28 - Rest

There's no way I'll be able to fit a workout in today. Too busy. What I'll do, seeing as though I owe a Yoga and an ARX, is do Yoga X on Sunday instead of the Fountain Of Youth Yoga I usually do, and forget about the ARX. There's plenty of ab exercises in Yoga X anyway. It begins again tomorrow, and I am ready to go. BTW I was apparently a little premature with the 365 Tomorrows story. Still not up yet. Also, I saw Zombieland last night. Really funny movie, maybe my pick of '09 with District 9.

R2 Day 27 - Yoga, ARX

Yoga and Ab Ripper X. No dramas. I'm starting phase 2 on Thursday, and I've decided to really commit to getting fit and strong, and that means raising the intensity of my workouts and not eating any more chips and chocolate, and not drinking any more coffee. Looking at myself in the mirror, I guess I look like an off-season AFL footballer at the moment. The muscle is there, but so is the fat. As I've said before, I'm not worried about my weight, but last night when I was doing Core Synergistcs I remembered how hard it was the first time I did it back in May, and how far I have come since then. Then I thought, wouldn't it be a shame if I was ever went back to that level of fitness after all this hard work, and if I did, I wondered if would I ever be able to do it all again. I don't know. The amount of work I did in the Summer was ridiculous. It was great, too, but every day I would be drenched in sweat and just wasted. But then I looked at it the other way. I've come this far, but I have never really committed to it except for the hour or so I do the workouts every day. I know I've said this heaps of times, but I've used working out as a justification to eat and drink (well, not drink, I rarely drink alcohol now, not here anyway, but certainly eat) pretty much the way I always have. I don't have the big heavy meals I used to, but I still have the chips, the chocolate, the cake, the ice-cream, the coffees, all that shit. Wouldn't it be a shame to come this far and not fully commit (for at least two months, anyway) and see where it takes me? I would love to have a photo of me aged 35 and just ripped and in the best shape of my life that I can look at in the years to come, and my boys can look at when they get older, and just think "Fucking hell, 35?" Know what I mean? When I hear people say that you can work out all you want, but diet is the most important thing, I think, nah, that can't be true. But it must be, because I'm not losing any weight. I think I've done the work to put on muscle, now I'd like to work on losing a couple of kilos just to see how I would look and feel. I think I'll go to the sports room here at work now and weigh myself. There's no work to do and it's really boring... Holy shit! 83.3 kgs! That means since I finished the first round of P90X I've put on almost 2 kgs! Probably the trip to Australia that did it. Ok. I won't weight myself again until after the last workout of the Recovery week after Phase 2 which will be on the 2nd of December, and my goal weight will be 80 kgs. That's pretty realistic, and I would fully expect to be in the 70's somewhere. Even if I do get down to 80, that's still five kgs heavier than when I started P90 back in September last year. I'll take a photo on Thursday before the workout, and a photo after the workout on the 2nd of December.
You know, I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now, like "On Thursday I'll really put my head down and work hard for two months and go after the results... which means I'd better buy a pack of chips tonight because I won't have the chance to do so in a couple of days." That's how I thought when I was a smoker, only now I'm applying it to chips. *sigh* Have your precious chips on the night of the 2nd of December, asshole. An early Christmas present.
So that's the challenge. Question is; do I have the minerals? Do I have the sack to do this? The little voice that is getting me to eat the chips and chocolate and that is sabotaging my efforts would say, gee, I dunno, mate. Sounds pretty tough. But the last year has been all about proving that little voice wrong when it says I can't do something because it's hard, or because it takes too long. I've been giving that little voice too much room to move lately. Too much space. I know I can never fully destroy the little voice. But I can tame it, and I can ignore it.
Only one thing left to say: BRING IT!

R2 Day 26 - Core Synergistics

I think Core Synergistics is the hardest workout in the P90X system. The middle 20 minutes is just torture. I don't like how Tony messes around with the Superman/Banana boat exercise either, changing them around so quickly. I ignore him during this exercise. That one minute iso run just kills me. I'm looking forward to getting back into the weights on Thursday. I've got two Yogas and two Ab Ripper Xs before then, one scheduled and one that I owe from last Thursday, so I should be raring to go. I want to make Phase 2 the most intense phase I have ever done. I want to increase the numbers, lose some weight, and get really lean.
So my first two weeks of scheduled Japanese study have gone reasonably well. I passed my bi-weekly test with flying colours. I might be a chance, you know. Regardless, December '10 will be my goal for reaching Level 1. Or actually, N1, which it will be called from next year. They are changing the system. In fact, I have been invited to sit a practice test two weeks before the real test which they are holding to establish the new levels and just generally see how the new system goes. Should be good practice.

R2 Day 25 - X Stretch

I had X Stretch today, which was awesome. The quickest hour of my life maybe. I really needed it, because I've been feeling really tight around the neck and shoulders.
It has been raining all day. I took Will to the pool this morning, which he loves. He gets his floaties on and just floats around. He can't swim yet, but it looks like his dog paddle is coming along okay. He started talking to a couple of little girls, and their father chatted with us too, and talking to Will he said "Where are your goggles? Get daddy to buy you some goggles." I had to laugh, because this is the second time someone's mentioned that we don't wear goggles.
The way these people get others to conform, it's kind of frightening. I hate wearing goggles. I'm not swimming, I'm just messing around in the water. Besides, they never fit right, and they leave rings around your eyes and you look like a freak for the rest of the day. You and your goggle buddies can kiss my ass. I'm not part of your system.