More Milk, Less Moo

2012: My bunker is secure

2012-01-04T22:36:00.000+09:00

I have been reading (or listening) to a couple of really good books lately. First, Reamde by Neal Stephenson. The gist is, Russian mafia boss' hard disk becomes encrypted by a Chinese hacker, so the mafia boss goes looking for him. It's a big book, 1,000 pages, or about 35 hours of audio book, so it took a month to finish. Great story, never boring. I haven't tackled any of his other books, they have always intimidated me, especially Anathem, which I heard was great, but I might give it a look now.
When I finished that, I was really keen to read Dan Simmons' new book Flashback. He wrote Hyperion, which is one of my favourite books. I listened to the first few hours, but it was... ugly. I just couldn't get into it. So I dumped it. Easy to do when you haven't paid for it. Next I started with Stephen King's new book 11.22.63, which I heard was really good. I'm not a big fan of Stephen King. I don't know why, probably a bit of snobbery there. I've started two of his books in my life, Dreamcatcher and Pet Semetary, both of which I enjoyed, but both times I ended up getting the movie just to see what happens, and both times thinking, wow, what a sucky ending. His premises are great, but I think resolutions are hard for him. Some of his ideas are just so out there that any ending is going to fall flat. In 11.22.63, a man travels back in time through a time gap in the back of a diner owned by his friend, back to 1958, and he decides to try and stop the Kennedy assassination. I'm half way through it and really enjoying it. His books are very American, and some of his themes don't really work on this Australian. Yes, there's a murderous clown. The main character of the book the main character is occasionally writing is a serial killer who dresses up as a clown. The American guy I work with says his greatest fear is clowns, so there you go. But I can recommend both if you want something to read over the holidays.
Jo Jo had a stomach bug over Christmas, so I got woken up more than a few times to the noise of 1) chucking 2) splashing 3) crying.
On the other hand Will was very excited of course, excited about getting his Nintendo DS from Santa. Only Santa didn't bring him one of those wretched, boy-stealing devices. Instead, Santa in his wisdom brought a dinosaur book and an indoor soccer kit. No mention of the DS no-show, which was a relief. We had our reasons ready, "Santa doesn't want you and Jo Jo to fight over a toy", "You are too young for a DS", even "Santa didn't think you were a good enough boy to give you a DS," but they weren't required. He loves the soft soccer ball. Jo Jo got a book, and some Lego that he didn't touch, he just wants to play soccer too. I can't wait to take them home and introduce them to a better sport, Australian Rules Football. They are going to love it. You get to use your hands, too. And jump on heads!
Willy's got chicken pox now. Not too bad because he had a vaccine years ago, but he's itchy and sooky. Jo Jo will have it in a couple of weeks, the doctor said.
So that brings me to News Years Resolutions. Mostly the same as last year. Get fitter, get better at Japanese. Get a job in Australia. Read more. More quality computer gaming, less watching Liveleak and Youtube. I've been playing Limbo, which is a good puzzle game, one of those running left-to-right games, there's a word for these kind of games, but I forget. I've also got a WW2 flight sim game called Wings Of Prey waiting for me when it's done. If you aren't on Steam, you should be. Lots of great games on there, and the sales they have are awesome. So many times you find a game that you heard was awesome two years ago or so for just $5. One click, and it's yours. Too easy. Speaking of too easy, Amazon. I ordered books 5-8 of the Magic Treehouse series for Willy for $14, and it'll be arriving today, about 40 hours later. If Australia gets an Amazon, you can say goodbye to the retail industry. You'll be going to the mall to try on clothes so you know which size to order on Amazon.
Getting off Facebook has changed my life for the better, reduced the BS in my life enormously, and given me a lot more time. I miss it occasionally, but when I see the latest garbage news story about it, like "Man arrested for abusive Facebook comment", or "Store apologizes for Facebook thread", or whatever has been going on in Australia recently, I think, thank god I have nothing to do with that craziness anymore. I have come to think it's a bubble, and Facebook will go the way of Myspace and Second Life, somewhere for 15 year olds and pedophiles to meet and chat. In ten years we'll look back and think, how on earth did we believe that was going to last? Something else will come along, and it'll fade away like everything else. Or maybe it'll end up running the world. Dunno. I just know that it's good to be out.
I want to read less news. It's funny, but this year I have noticed a pattern. When I'm tuned in to what's going on in the world, the more I'm convinced we are on a precipice, about to tumble into an age of desperation, class warfare, and martial law. Then, when I don't read the papers or blogs for a while, I think everything's going to be okay. I do think we are at a critical time in history, and that is exciting, and I think people want something to change. Problem is, any kind of change probably won't work out for overpaid, petulant, semi-skilled underachievers like me. We'll see what happens.

Japanese TV

2011-12-23T23:09:00.000+09:00

Most Japanese TV is crap. People always think it's awesome because of some of the stuff they've seen on Youtube, and I'm telling you it's not.
But there are exceptions. There was a show I used to watch a few years ago by a comedy duo called London Boots. It's a late night show, really funny. I managed to download one of them recently, and I'll run you through it. Probably the best TV I've ever seen.
The show, London Hearts: Idol Trap, goes like this. A woman writes into London Boots, wanting them to test if her boyfriend is a cheater or not. So they set the guy up. They arrange it so this guy, Nobuyuki, happens to run into a guest celebrity, someone who the girlfriend says Nobuyuki likes, in this case a young starlet called Sakura Uehara. She is wired up, and she has an earpiece so the comedian can tell her what to say. There are hidden cameras everywhere.

Sakura Uehara

In the studio for this episode, you've got the two comedians with the girlfriend in between, and a couple of other celebrities with them. One guy, the older guy, Masaki Kanda, is an actor, and he's not really impressed with what they are doing. "I never watch this show," he says. "Don't like it." "Do you think you can stay till the end?" they ask him? "I'll stay until I want to leave."

So Nobuyuki goes out with a mate to a bar/restaurant and order a beer each, then Sakura and her manager arrive and sit next at the next table. His friend leaves to go to the toilet (he is in on it), and her manager leaves to make a phone call, and they are alone. He looks over, and double-takes. Shit, it's Sakura Uehara! To his credit, he does not hesitate. "I've seen you on TV, you're really good" etc.

They start talking, and she really turns on the charm, and touches his arm when she laughs. He gives her his friend's beer when the drinks they ordered come. "How old are you?" she askes. "23." She is a couple of years older that him. "Do you like older women or younger women?" she asks. "I've never been out with an older woman, but I'd like to try," he says.
Cut to his girlfriend, who is 25 too.
She says that she's sad because lately she's so busy she can't have any fun, and ends up asking him for his mail address. Then her manager comes back, and says that something has come up and they have to go, and they leave. Nobuyuki's friend comes back, and he tells him what happened, he just met Sakura and she wanted his number, and his friend is like "Bullshit!" "Look!" says the guy, "her lipstick's still on your beer!" He obviously can't believe what just happened.

3 days later, they've set up a fake photo shoot for Sakura in a park at night, and she mails him. "Are you busy? I'm bored. Come and cheer me up," she sends. So he comes, watches the photo shoot, and then they sit and chat. Very friendly.

Fireworks go off in the distance (all set up by the show). Very romantic and sweet. He tells her of his dream to train dolphins and do a dolphin show. "You would be the first person I'd let swim with my dolphins," he says. His girlfriend says "He told me the same thing!"

"On my next day off, I want to do something fun," Sakura says. "I want to go to an amusement park." "I'll take you," he says. So, they are going to go on a date! He can't believe it! Neither can his girlfriend!

So the big evening comes, and they meet outside an amusement park. This is kind of a typical first date in Japan in summer, like going to dinner and a movie or something. The girl usually wears a summer kimono, and Sakura does, and he is wearing a men's Summer kimono, called a jinbei. They ask his girlfriend if he owns a jinbei. No, she says. He must have bought it for this date.

They walk around, and go on a roller coaster. They hold hands walking up the stairs! She is scared, he comforts her. It's all wonderful. Then the comedians bring in the Otaku Fan, an actor posing as an extreme fan of Sakura.

Japanese celebrities like her must have thousands of fans like this guy. Total nerds, but kind of perverted, too. Everyone hates them. So he approaches them as they are sitting and talking, and wants to take a picture of Sakura. As he is taking the picture he says, "Sakura, could you squeeze you breasts together a little?" "Hey!" yells the guy. The Otake is also wired, with the comedian telling him what to say. "Could you undo your kimono and show me a little skin?" "Hey!" the guy yells again, and chases the otaku off, slapping him in the face a few times. Then he grabs Sakura's hand and leads her away from the otaku. Briliant.

Then they go to a ferris wheel.

They get to the top, and the ferris wheel stops. Sakura pretends to freak out a little, and he hugs her close, telling her not to panic, it'll be okay.

[Danger!!]

The girlfriend can't watch. The studio guests are loving it, but are a little uncomfortable. This getting is dangerous, they say. The older guy looks disgusted.
Then it's a chat on a park bench. They get really close, and he puts her arm around her.

Do you have a girlfriend? (Mind you, everything she says is what she is told to say by the comedians.)

No, but I'd like one.

[Isn't this getting a bit dangerous?]

Please make me your girlfriend.

Will you go out with me?

[Unprecedented Reverse Love Confession!!]

There is pandemonium in the studio.

Sakura: So what do you want to do now?

Nobuyuki: I want to go to your house.

Then he moves in for the kiss.

[State of Emergency!!]

She pulls back, and pretends she's upset. "I'm an old fashioned girl!" she said. "What made you think you can kiss me?" she asks.
"Your lips were inviting me," he says.

They get a taxi back to her house. They had a camera car trailing the taxi, but they couldn't get one inside, so Sakura pretended she was a little flustered and insisted on sitting in the passenger seat reclined with the window down while the guy sat in the back. An uneventful trip, by all accounts. They aren't really going to her house, they are going to an apartment set up by the show with cameras and mikes everywhere. By the time they arrive, she's feeling better.

She changes, and he sits sipping a drink, looking around, thinking he's gonna get laid with this celeb hottie - it's like a dream. That's what they are telling the girlfriend back in the studio. Don't be too upset, it's a dream, it's a dream.

So she comes out and they have a drink, a little shy. They flirt some more. He's waiting for the right moment...

Then they send in the dream breaker. Masaki Kanda, the older guy. He is pretty famous as an actor in tough, gritty cop dramas in the 80's. Pretty scary. They send him into the apartment (the studio guests are actually set up the apartment next door).

He just walks in without knocking, yelling"Oi! Oi! Sakura!" Sakura jumps up, scared. "What are you doing here? Why didn't you call first? Are you drunk again?"

Nobuyuki gets up and immediately grabs his phone and wallet, ready for the quick exit.

[Preparing to escape!!]

Masaki comes in. "Who's this guy?"

"A friend. I wish you had've called."
Masaki sits down. "Get me a beer!" he yells to Sakura. "You, sit down!" he says to Nobuyuki. They sit down. Really awkward.
They exchange greetings. "How many times have you met Sakura?" Masaki asks. "2, 3 times," he says. The guy asks the Masaki, "Are you two seeing each other?" "Yes," says Masaki. "Have been for 2 years." Sakura brings in two beers. "No snacks?" Masaki yells, and she races back into the kitchen.

[No snacks?]

They have a sip of beer. Awkward! Then the older guy says, "Okay. The dream is over. Piss off."

"All right, piss off!!"

"Okay," says the guy. And he leaves. Shattered, of course, but probably glad to get out of a really awkward situation. Not a good scene in there.
...only to find his girlfriend, cameras, and the studio guests waiting outside the apartment! Holy shit!

He can't believe it, obviously. The girlfriend is pissed off, "What do you think you're doing?" etc, they joke about him trying to kiss her in public, ask him what his favourite moment was ("The ferris wheel").
Then he apologises to his girlfriend, then to everyone.

Incredible stuff, obviously not possible in Australia or America or anywhere. I don't think I have ever laughed so much in my life watching a TV show. I remember watching it when it was on in 2003, and they did this kind of stuff every week for ages. It was brilliant. When you imagine the planning, the preparation, everything they do to get it all on camera. Often, in other episodes, they had five or six phones set up, all mailing each other, all thinking they were mailing this hot celebrity chick or guy, when really it was these two comedians. It was a huge hit in Japan. They are still on, but not so bold now. Can't blame them.

The Kim is dead

2011-12-19T22:14:00.003+09:00

Dear Leader, perhaps the greatest golfer who ever lived, is dead. And have a look at these people carrying on.

I love the guys who pound their fists on the ground, like they can't believe it! Like it's not fair! Don't think for a minute that it's genuine. It's a show for the neighbours. If it's anything like Japan, which I think it is, they'll have a schedule for crying, with overseers with clip boards stamping the names off of the mourners who grieve adequately, and a gold star for those who really turn it on. And then you have the true believers who say "look how much I'm crying!" and everyone else worried that they are not crying enough in comparison. Mind you, if your neighbour can dob you in and have you shot for not crying sufficiently, it's probably a good idea to cry. Cry for your own ignorance and cowardice for letting it get this bad, you North Korean fools. Cry for that. Someone should have put a bullet in that guy's head a long time ago. And someone should put one in the head of his fat ugly son, too, before it really gets out of hand. I bet Toyota and Foxconn and Apple and Nike can't wait to have a go at these people. What a pliant, gullible, weak, passive lot they must be. Pay them with rice.
Meanwhile, here in Japan, this morning it was my department's turn to turn up to work half an hour early and line up outside the entrance and yell "good morning!" to all 600 workers who enter. I didn't, of course. I am much too cool to do that. Really, I'm serious. I am too cool to do that.

So close, yet...

2011-12-06T21:02:00.001+09:00

Here's what's happening. Thursday lunch I get a call from the guy about a job I applied for two months ago. Translator and interpreter at a Japanese-owned factory in Melbourne. "They just called me and they want someone, and I thought of you" he said. "Got a webcam?" I said I would get one. When can you be ready for an interview? Tomorrow morning? I felt like he was thinking more that afternoon, but I was at work, and it was almost 3 in the afternoon in Melbourne anyway. Okay, tomorrow morning, he said. Let me call them. So he called them, and called me back. Tomorrow at 1 okay? 1 your time. Ok, I said. I applied for the next day off, bought a webcam and set it up that night, and went over what I was told to expect. Short translation test, chat with someone in Japanese. My stomach was churning all night and all morning, and in the morning I went to immigration to get a return visa just in case - three weeks ago I went there to renew my visa (it had expired two weeks previously, and I thought I would be going to jail, but no dramas in the end). Did that, came home. Put a shirt on, tried to go over what I should say if they ask me the usual interview questions. So I get through to a HR lady with Skype, and she sends me two documents to translate, one E to J, and one J to E. The J to E was really easy, stuff I do in my sleep here at my work, like "Problem: a strange noise coming from the left gasket. Countermeasure: Clean and lubricate gasket." Thing was, is was about twenty sentences, a lot of stuff just to type, so it took 15 of the allotted 20 minutes I had to do both. The E-J was easy too, but of course it's harder because I'm not a native J speaker, and I never have to do this at work, but I managed. Sent them back a little late. Then the lady comes back with a Japanese woman, and she asks me a few questions in Japanese, like what do you do in your job, can you interpret, can you start next week? What? They want me to work a week, then come back, then if everyone is happy to give notice to my company and start there after the Christmas break. Until June. Any chance of the position becoming more permanent? I asked. No, not really, they said. Hmmmm. "Something you might want to think about when making your decision," said the HR lady. I took that as, "I wouldn't accept this job if I were you".
The interview basically fell on it's arse about this point. Double whammy of next week start and five month contract. I didn't say no, but I was definitely thinking it. Ah well, nevermind, maybe next time, all that stuff. Then I said goodbye, kind of relieved that I did well, but kind of flat, too, of course. Then the guy calls and asked me how it went. I told him about the temporaryness of it. Mate, he said, this job will get you to Australia. And frankly, if they like what you do, they're not going to let you go and work somewhere else. Happens all the time. And if not, you've got five months to find another job, and you'll have me helping you. You don't have to stay at this place if there's a better opportunity. Much easier to find a job when you're living in the same country it's in. Plus, this place is the biggest factory in Australia. Looks good on the resume. He was very persuasive.
I spend the weekend going back and forth. The first thought I had every morning when I wake up was "No". The last when I went to sleep, "Yes". I don't know what to do.
So after talking to lots of people, this is what I decided to do (as of now, Monday morning). I might not have done as well as I thought in the interview. Maybe I'll be knocked back. But I don't think so. I expect I will get a call today. Yep, they want you, can you start next week? Contract until June. I will say "Yes." See you next week. I will go and work there for a week. What I hope to find when I get there is that I am the best Japanese reader, translator, and speaker, with more experience dealing with Japanese people than anyone else there. The Japanese lady said they need someone for next week because they are expecting visitors from Japan, and they need a translator. It sounds like they have no-one there who can do it. Of course, this lady could do it, but she's a woman, and in Japanese culture, women are people who are there to make tea and giggle. I can do it, though I don't know how well. So I want to go there, show that I have something to offer, that I can fill a need. After that, if they still want someone after their little emergency has been solved, I might say that I want a one-year contract with a three-month probation period, with an eye to permanency. I did, after all, fly in at a week's notice and help them out (I would get paid, of course, but still). If they agree to that, I did it. I got a job in Australia. But if I go there and I feel like I am in over my head, like I'm interpreting at high level meetings and shit like that that I cannot do, and/or there's no movement on the five-month thing, I think I'll say, sorry, maybe next time, please call me when there's something a little more permanent and I'll be down in a flash.
At the moment, I have all the time in the world to find a job. If I accept this five-month deal, I have five months to find a job or I'm unemployed. Why put myself in that position? Unemployed in Australia? Been there, done that. Not much fun either.
After a lot of thinking, this is the best path to take, I think. It has been really helpful to talk to people about it, because I have a tendency to hastily rule stuff out and then not reconsider it. At first I thought, nup, next week, can't do it. Maybe after the Christmas break? But I had a coffee with Nori and he said "How about go next week, and if you like it, go again after Christmas if you want. You will know exactly what's going on, and you can make the decision then. If you don't like it, don't go, or hopefully they will really want you, and you can ask for something a little more solid.
Fuck! Perfect! I hadn't considered it. Before I met Nori, I was ready to reel off all these... demands, really. Like "I'm not going before Christmas. I want a one-year contract" etc when all they would be hearing is "no". Now I can say "yes", and then decide "No" later if I want to with a lot more understanding of what's in store for me, and I'm sure with some goodwill saved up, too, which wouldn't hurt.
...
Monday evening, no call, no mails. Still the same answer, but Jesus I'm sick of waiting for mails or calls from this guy. Tomorrow, hopefully.
Tuesday morning, still no contact. Checked on the internet, not many flights left to Melbourne on the weekend.
Tuesday evening. Just turned 5 in Melbourne. Nothing.
I'm guessing someone has popped out of nowhere and pipped me. When I say nowhere, I mean Melbourne. OR, they are just really slack at responding to stuff, which has been the case in the past.
BTW Tiger won again, didn't he. Not much of a tournament, a charity event with 17 players in it. Not a real tournament. The man is scum, but jeez he can hit some pure golf shots. He played awesome at the Presidents cup, especially the last round, just killed Baddelly who played well too. Hard to beat a 65 though.

The Stone Roses?

2011-11-08T23:24:00.000+09:00

My favourite band The Stone Roses are getting back together! That officially means I'm old! Holy shit, the Stone Roses are back. I can't believe it. It can only end in disaster, but it'll be brilliant. Watching the press conference, they all look pretty pumped, except John Squire who looks embarrassed. But it's not like they were huge and squeezed everything out of themselves and then faded away like the Eagles or Blur or something. These guys were massive for a couple of years, the whole world wanted them to succeed, but they couldn't do it, and the whole thing shat itself. Maybe this is what will make it different. I'm guessing the buildup will be huge, and the album a vague disappointment, like another Second Coming. Who cares. I'd love to see them again though. All of them, this time.
This clip manages to sum up the Stone Roses career in a couple of minutes.

World Party!

2011-11-01T19:55:00.004+09:00

So last week I look on Seek and see a job for a Translator/Interpretor in Melbourne for a "globally renowned" engineering company. I sent my resume off Monday morning. Friday comes, no response, so I call the guy up. Voicemail. I hang up, thinking I'll try again on Monday. He called me back a few minutes later, but I think only because the number came up on his phone as a Japanese number and he was curious. He had not looked at my resume yet (WTF?), but he seemed interested as we talked and I guess he was looking at my resume. He said that the company wants to have week-long trials for prospective employees, so if I was willing to come down and work for a week next month (starting the 21st of November he said) then I was every chance to get the job. "Hey, even if you don't get the job, you get a free holiday! See your family and friends, do some work, get paid!" He said the company wants to do this because they aren't really expecting any applicant to have much engineering experience, which I have nearly 5 years of, so I'm guessing I'm one of the top applicants. Pay is 30% more than I get here. I told him I'd talk it over with my wife and call him on Monday, but I said I can't see why I couldn't take a week off here and do that, and I would call him on Monday. Mail me, he said. I'm rarely able to talk on the phone. Always in meetings or on the phone already. Too busy. Okay. He seemed like a great guy, and really understood my situation. "I like bringing good people back to Melbourne," he said.
Wow. It might happen! I thought. This is it!
Mailed him Monday, yes, let's do this, flexible with the dates, looking forward to hearing from you. Mailed him Tuesday, giving him my work e-mail (just a bullshit excuse to mail him again). Now it's Friday, haven't heard back from him.
So here I am again, waiting for the "Thank you, but unfortunately..." mail that's going to fuck up my week. That's if I even get a mail
In other news, it's a world party! Fuck yea! The bankrupt European economies are all okay now! The uncertainty is over, and it's time to party! Uncertainty. Yes, that must have been the problem. Only that.
I'm just relieved everything is back to normal, and people who are owed billions and billions of dollars aren't really fussed about getting it back anymore, and that hard-working people who save money don't mind giving handing it over to lazy, selfish tax cheats.
It's all good!
Wait... No! It's not all good! Dammit, why isn't it good?

Ow again

2011-10-13T23:10:00.000+09:00

Hurt my left shoulder a little bit again, so I'm going to have to tweak things. Pisses me off. Can't swim, can't do this, can't do that. Aging - is there anything good about it? And don't give that "gaining of wisdom" BS. I'm as fucked in the head as I have ever been.
So upper body workouts are out for a month. Let's see. Mondays were Chest & Back. Now? Light exercises to strengthen the rotator cuff, and ARX. Tuesdays can stay Plyo. Wednesdays? "Just Arms" from One on One, and ARX. Thursdays? Yoga is a tough one. I don't think I should do any downward dogs for a while, maybe a couple of weeks at least. So, X Stretch. Fridays used to be Legs & Back, but I can't do the Back part anymore. So I will do "Bun Shaper" from the one on One series, and, of course, ARX. Saturdays, rest. Sundays, the jog. I just overdid it is all. It's not as bad as last time when I could hardly get dressed. It's a good chance to really work on technique, work on not eating crap, eating right, sleeping right, and making sure my shoulder heals up okay. I'll do this until the end of October and see how I feel, and if I feel okay, get back to my P90X schedule, starting at phase 2.
Loved the grand final the other weekend. The first three quarters was the most captivating footy of the year. It was a shootout, and the skills were incredible, even in the crappy weather. I was glad the Swans weren't playing, because we would have got thrashed. Then Geelong rolled them, like we rolled the Saints in the '05 Prelim. Must have been great for the supporters. Tom Hawkins looked Cary-ish. I don't know what it is about him. Maybe everyone thinks he's a natural because he's a big good-looking guy, when actually he's just a young, okay player. Had an awesome final series though. Bartell, amazing. I wish he played for the Swans.
I think the greatest achievement by Scott and the team was to ignore expectations. It would have been fine with everyone if Geelong finished fifth or six, maybe even won a final, and then dropped out. Something like the Swans did this year. Everyone would have excepted that. They are on the way out, lot's of good but oldish players, new coach learning the ropes, playing the kids, rebuilding phase, all that stuff. Can you imagine the enourmous task of turning those expectations around? Like turning around a battleship. But they did it. Great stuff.
Other teams need to look at that and not accept anything less than a premiership. I can imagine the Swans getting complacent with making the finals and then not doing much. There's no reason why we can't do what Geelong did. (Got to get rid of Jessy White and Jetta first, though.) But teams like Richmond, Melbourne, Port Adelaide. The complacency at those clubs must be suffocating. They all have (had) coaches that make excuses. Apologise for their players. A stuffy, privelidged air around the club. Fuck that. Get people in there that only accept success. That's why I feel okay about Voss at Brisbane. They guy will accept nothing but success. Same as Buckley at Collingwood. Hird at Essendon. I am surprised that so many first-time coaches have been picked for next year, especially no-name first time coaches. If I was in charge at a club looking for a coach, I would be asking Leigh Matthews, Paul Roos, Mick Malthouse, Mark Williams, how much would it take to get them at my club? Eade even, though I don't think players like Eade enough to want to win a flag for him. How can Gary Lyon not be coaching Melbourne? The guy would straighten Melbourne out in a week. The whole world knows he would be great at it. Instead they (he) hires some guy no-one's heard of. Again. They lost Scully because he wanted to get to a professional club where he could improve just as much as he wanted the millions. Embarrassing for Melbourne.
The other day I woke up after having a dream about a woman close to me (I don't know who it was, just that we were friends) was diagnosed with cancer. Then on Longreads.com first thing over breakfast I read an article written by a woman dying of liver cancer like mum did. What's up with that?
Also, I quit Facebook. Feels a little strange, but I think I'm going to be okay.

P90X

2011-10-01T15:46:00.000+09:00

Apparently the sequel to P90X, P90X:MC2, comes out on Christmas eve. That's about 90 days from now. That's wierd, isn't it. Yes, I'm doing it again. Everything I've done since my last round of P90X has been a compromise. I know that now, after four days of the new round of P90X. I am as sore as a bastard. It's been a long four days. 86 to go. A couple of things; I'm not doing Kempo X. I'm doing a 5 km jog instead. And I'm not doing Yoga X. Too long. I'm doing Hummingbird Yoga from the One on One series instead like last time. Also, my rest week is a little more "resty", with more yoga and stretching. Apart from that, it's the same as the normal schedule. Finding the time, getting into a routine is tough, but I'll get used to it. Legs & Back today...
So the Grand Final is on tomorrow. The most homesickiest day of the year. I did think about flying down to see it, but with the job hunting and money and allotted days off and the kids and everything, before I knew it it was only a week away. Ah well. Next year for sure. I'm actually going for Collingwood. I tipped them at the start of the year, with just about everyone else. I tipped a nightmare year for the Saints, which it was, but I tipped them to miss the finals, which they didn't. I tipped Goodes for the Brownlow, didn't get up though he had a chance. I tipped Freo in the Grand Final - way off. I think I tipped an assault charge for Fevola - still plenty of time for that. I don't know why, but I found myself barracking for Collingwood last week, even though Buddy's goal was awesome. I think it was because the Hawks knocked the Swans out the week before. I have had enough of the Hawks being in Grand Finals to last a lifetime having grown up in the 80's. The Cats? I don't like a lot of their players. I don't like Hawkins, Ottens, Jpod, Stevie J, those two little black-haired guys, the one who got busted dealing and his new clone, the list goes on. All this rags-to-riches stuff about Geelong makes me laugh, too. From a Premiership to *gasp* a Prelim, then back to maybe another Premiership. Spare me. So I hope Collingwood win because they are the best team. Anyway, I'll be watching it on Sunday morning. I hope it's a great game.
I'm quitting Facebook. It's a difficult decision, and perhaps it's going to come to some personal cost to me, but let me try to explain why.
1) In ten years, Mark Zuckerburg will be the richest, most powerful man in the world. Facebook will be the one of biggest economies in the world, with it's own currency (apparently going to be called "credits"), and with access to the personal information of billions. This is disturbing because Zuckerburg is a dead-eyed, Asperger's Syndrome suffering computer geek, with seemingly no concept of personal space or personal privacy, and mentally incapable of understanding human relationships (symptoms of Asperger's). He will be influenced, swayed, and fooled by psychopathic power-hungry men and women who want what he's got. Whether or not it's Zuckerberg or a bunch of shareholders, that's too much power in the hands of too few. Me quitting Facebook won't stop any of it, but at least I won't be a party to it. And when the Facebook death-squads start rounding up dissenters for work camps, hopefully I will be totally off the Facebook grid by then.
2) Facebook is becoming less about keeping in touch with friends and sharing photos, and more about performing for an audience. I have the suspicion that Facebook is ruining the lives of millions of people (maybe more women than men) around the world. The pressure to present their lives as idyllic and perfect to other women must be enormous. Agonizing over how to comment on a photo of an ugly child "Looks just like you!", or an overweight friend "You look so beautiful!". The only other option is to say nothing, and you can't say nothing. Facebook is engineered this way. There is no [Hate] button or [STFU] button. So we end up pressing [Like] to acknowledge that we have indeed reviewed the photo or comment, but have no response to it. "So sad today. My Grandmother passed away last night. RIP Nanny." "Jim likes this". WTF kind of communication is that? Facebook could have a million little buttons to choose from. Jim loves this. Jim thinks this awesome. Jim hates this. Jim thinks this is bullshit. How about a choice of even two or three? But no. One. [Like]. Such a flat, nothing word. And you know what the next button will be? [Like like]. This is keeping in touch? So let the performances continue, but I won't be watching.
3) I don't want everything I do on the Internet shared, recorded, and sold to corporations. "But you can select a checkbox somewhere and they can't monitor you" they say. Yea? Where is it? I think it's bullshit. And I don't really want to know what everyone else is doing all the time, and I don't want them to know what I'm doing. I don't want you to log in to Facebook one day and see "Jim is masturbating to [Midget fucks pregnant ebony slut] on Youjizz." I don't want that. When you know you are being watched, your behaviour changes. It's the same for atoms, lions in the desert, people on the streets in London. I didn't sign up to be modified.
4) And finally, when you strip away all the bullshit above, this is why I want to quit. I don't like how I am always looking at Facebook and slyly trying to check out what other people are doing or saying, or if they are fat or bald or still hot or whatever, kind of like spying on them. I want to stop doing that.
It's a shame because I liked looking at the photos my friends put up, and the message function is convenient (though a bitch to navigate), but the other stuff is just too much. Maybe there's something else. Maybe there's no way to do anything on the Internet that can't be monitored, recorded, and sold. But to be honest, I have never been in less contact with my friends and family, despite Facebook. Or maybe it's because of Facebook. I don't call or mail anyone because I know what they're doing because it's on Facebook, and vise versa. The two letters I've written to friends this year were to friends who aren't on Facebook, and it was great. I got nice long letters back about how they are, what they're doing, etc. I'm going to do more of that.
So that leaves me in a bind about this blog. I could write this crap and not post it, but I think that while I'm living here and not really able to express myself much, this blog is useful. Knowing it is being read is an integral part of it. I'm sure that when I finally find a job in Oz and I move back down, I'll forget all about this blog. But it serves a purpose, and helps me organize my thoughts and set goals. Anyway, catch ya later.

Google translate

2011-09-16T08:01:00.002+09:00

I have hit a bit of a hump after going great last week. I have hurt my rotator cuff in my left shoulder. Otherwise known as "swimmer's shoulder". I might give the swimming a miss from now on. Shame. Maybe another jogging session. I didn't actually do it while swimming. I went swimming last Thursday, killed it, felt great, then hurt it on Monday night playing with the kids. It just started aching. I think I might have done it during the Chest & Shoulders workout after work last Monday, so maybe it wasn't swimming. Whatever. I've taken it really easy the last week.
I took the day off work and we all went to Nagashima Spaland last Tuesday, which is a massive amusement park. We just went to the pool section. Jo Jo lost his mind in the wave pool and Willy went on his first proper waterslide. "It was very crazy" he said. Fun day. Mind you, I didn't have to go to work, so it was always going to be an awesome day because I am hating work at the moment.
I'm thinking of changing the oil in my motorcycle so I consulted the manual and decided to translate a section of it because I was bored. Maybe you are interested in where Google Translate is at. I am. Here it is.

ORIGINAL JAPANESE
エンジンオイル
エンジンの性能を維持するためには、定期的なエンジンオイルの点検・補給が必要です。
汚れたオイルや古くなったオイルは、エンジンに悪影響を与えますので、早目に交換してください。エンジン停止直後のメンテナンスは、エンジン本体、マフラやエンジンエキゾーストパイプなどが熱くなっています。ヤケドにご注意ください。
この車の潤滑装置はドライサンプ方式を採用しています。
エンジンオイル量の点検は下記の手順で行ってください。
エンジンを始動して、オイル量の点検をする前に、以上の点検を行ってください。
１．右側サイドカバーを取り外します。（３２ページ参照）
２．オイルレベルゲージを外します。
３．布などでオイルレベルゲージについたオイルを拭きます。
４．車体を垂直に立て、オイルレベルゲージをねじ込まずに差し込みオイルレベルゲージにオイルが付着するかを確かめます。
５．オイルレベルゲージにオイルが付いた場合は、７１ページ記載の要領でオイル量の点検をします。

GOOGLE TRANSLATION
Engine oil
To maintain the performance of the engine, check engine oil supplement is required periodically.
Old oil and dirty oil, so can adversely affect the engine, please replace early. Maintenance after the engine stops, the engine body and the engine is too hot exhaust pipe and muffler. Please note burns.
The car's lubrication system is adopted as the dry method.
Please check the engine oil is doing the steps below.
Start the engine and check oil level before you, please do more inspections.
1. Remove the right side cover. (See page 32)
2. Remove the oil level gauge.
3. Wipe the oil with a cloth and oil level gauge.
4. Body upright, but check to be deposited into the oil to the oil level gauge oil level gauge Neji込Mazu.
5. If the oil level gauge with oil, then check oil level in the manner described on page 71.

MY LITERAL TRANSLATION
Engine Oil
In order to maintain the functionality of the engine, regular inspection and supply of the engine oil is necessary.
Dirty or old oil has a bad effect on the engine, so change it beforehand. The engine, muffler, and exhaust pipe are hot when performing maintenance immediately after stopping the engine. Take care not be burn yourself.
This motorcycle uses the dry sump style lubrication unit.
Follow the instruction below to check the amount of engine oil.
Perform the following inspections before starting the engine and checking the amount of oil.
1. Remove the right side cover (see page 32).
2. Remove the oil level gauge.
3. Wipe off any oil on the oil level gauge with a clean cloth.
4. Stand the motorcycle vertically, insert the oil level gauge without screwing it in, and check the amount of oil on the oil level gauge.
5. If there is oil on the oil level gauge, use the guidelines on page 71 to check the amount of oil.

MY FINISHED TRANSLATION
Engine Oil
You should regularly check the engine oil in order to maintain the performance of the engine.
Dirty or old oil can damage the engine, so it should be changed before this happens. Take care not to burn yourself when performing maintenance immediately after stopping the engine, because the engine, muffler, and exhaust pipe will be hot.
This motorcycle uses the dry sump lubrication method.
Follow the instructions below to check the amount of engine oil.
1. Remove the right side cover (see page 32).
2. Remove the oil level gauge.
3. Wipe off any oil on the oil level gauge with a clean cloth.
4. Stand the motorcycle vertically, insert the oil level gauge without screwing it in, remove it, and check the amount of oil on the oil level gauge.
5. If there is oil on the oil level gauge, use the guidelines on page 71 to check the amount of oil.

Notes:
Google translation: is shit. Steps 1 and 2 are the only acceptable translations. I like the [Please note burns]. "Oh yes, I have burnt myself here, here, and, oh, here. I also note the pain these burns are causing."
My job is safe: for now. And for a while, it seems.
Literal translation: This is my translation using the Japanese as a base. So it sounds stiff and strange, but hey, that's what is says.
Finished translation: A clean up, attempting to make the English more natural-sounding. Also fixing up any unclear sections, like in the Japanese (and the literal translation) it says "insert the oil level gauge without screwing it in, and check the amount of oil on the oil level gauge". That would be pretty hard to do without removing it again. So I added the bit about removing it again.
The hard part is making it sound natural after being distracted by the original language. If my boss told me to just write out a section from scratch about how checking and changing oil is important and how you do it etc for the English edition of this manual, it would sound much better, and it would be different, too. But the translator has a source, and if the source has a look at the translation and can't see that this means this and that means that he might think "WTF? I didn't write this!" and talk to the translator's boss. So it has to be recognizable as a translation, if you know what I mean. Maybe not so much in an enlightened workplace, but you won't find one of those here in Japan, unless, ironically, you go to the Google offices in Tokyo.
Anyway, back to the workouts sans swimming this week.

Week 2 & 3

2011-09-04T09:44:00.001+09:00

What a win by Sydney last week. I really expected them to be a little bit flat after the sadness of the week, but they came out fired up. Reminded me of when we played Collingwood earlier this season. In that game it looked like they had really committed to doing everything they can to win. Couldn't beat Collingwood, but we got Geelong. They look really flat, and are in danger of going into the finals with 2 losses. I'm not sure they can make the Granny now. They look shaky. Swans will probably play the Saints first week of the finals. Probably the best outcome for us.
Workouts going well. Running, swimming, stretching, lifting. All good. I feel stronger. I was a bit flat after not getting the IBM job in Brisbane. I keep thinking how cool it would have been to get it. At least the reason I didn't get it has nothing to do with me, more to do with the job. Hopefully a position I am suitable for will open up there in the near future. It has spurred me on to get better at what I do. I don't want to be given the chance to work there and then flunk the interview.
The Chest, Back & Shoulders workout is the problem. It's long and hard. I think what I'll do is take out all of the pull-up exercises out of it, which cuts it down to eight exercises, and with the pull-ups, I'll "grease the groove". That means, every time I walk under my pull-up bar, I do between 5 - 10 pull-ups. So instead of doing them during a once-a-week workout and doing, say, 25 of them, I'll do some every time I go down to the garage, with might be many times a day, meaning I'll do 100s a week without the fatigue.

Day 7 & 8

2011-08-26T21:59:00.000+09:00

Fire Up Your Abs the other day was pretty good. Not too strenuous, but the last round got me sweating. And the 900 m swim last night was pretty cruizy. 6 lots of six laps. Funny, three weeks ago I struggled to swim four laps in a row, now I can do 6 x 6.
At the pool there were two swimmers (me and another guy) and four lifeguards.
My bike motor is making a pretty loud clicking noise each rev. I usually listen to my ipod while I'm riding, but I can still hear it. Tick tick tick tick. I might take it to a mechanics this weekend.
Fear is compelling me to study Japanese, fear of finally getting contacted by IBM and the flunking the Japanese section of the interview. You know that little voice that says, "Hmmm, it might be best if you didn't leave this to chance, do a little preparation even though it appears the interview might not happen", the voice that competes with the other voice that says, "Ah, fuck it". There's always voices in my head telling me to do stuff.
*Just got a mail from IBM. No good, as expected. They wanted a native Japanese. Anyway, I'll keep at the study so I'm a little more confident going into Japanese interviews.

Day 7

2011-08-24T22:09:00.000+09:00

So it's 20 years since Nevermind. Holy shit. I remember driving to Rosebud with Adam and Craig and Max listening to it over and over, and we all loved it straight away. By the time Kurt Cobain was dead I had moved on to the British pop, then a few years later to techno, and then that pretty much did it for me with music.
I have given up on the Lee Child's book. I'm four chapters in, but I've already worked out the two twists so far in the story ages before the protagonist did, which can't be good. Harlen Coben is the best popular thriller writer around. I'll get one of his books next, I think.
Chest, Back, and Shoulders on Monday was good. I didn't go crazy, just focused on form, and didn't really push it. Next week I hope to get a couple more reps in for each exercise. I'm feeling it today though, two days later. Yesterday I had my rest day. Got the Rev Abs workout tonight.

Day 5

2011-08-22T17:53:00.001+09:00

Days two, three, and four have come and gone. The stretch was good. The Arms workout was fine, though it appears someone has stolen my 15 kg dumbbells. The garage door is left open sometimes, and they are right near the entrance, so there you go. Funny how they only took them, and not anything else, like my toolbox or ipod, which were also there. So someone ran in, grabbed 30 kg of weight, half the body weight of most people here, and raced out again. Weird. Maybe I have misplaced them, but I can't think where else I would have put them. So I did all the exercises with the 10 kg dumbbells, which isn't really enough. So I'll either buy some more, which I don't want to do, or every Saturday go to the gym and do it, which I might do because it's more interesting than doing it in the garage and I'll get better results. Day four was the 4 km run, no dramas.
Still no word from IBM, though I noticed they re-posted the position vacancy last week. Weird. Lots of weirdness recently.
Finished the Hyperion Cantos. Great stuff. Wish I could erase all memory of it and read it again for the first time. Started reading Killing Floor by Lee Childs. Only a couple of chapters in, but I like it.
Great win by the Swans this week. It feels so good beating St Kilda. I don't know why, it just does. We are still carrying too many duds. They must trade White and Jetta. White would be okay if he could kick straight, but Jetta costs us every time he gets the ball. Granted he can run fast, but if you can't run and kick, or run and think, what good is running? So we will get pumped by Geelong next week, and then have to beat the Lions in Sydney. Too be honest, I don't have good feelings about the next two weeks. I think we might limp into the finals, but not do anything. Won't matter in the end, because it'll be a Geelong/Collingwood granny. Hope so, anyway.

Day 1 "I got dis"

2011-08-19T19:07:00.003+09:00

Day 1 went well. The pool I go to is in Toyota, kind of on the way home from work. It's a completely stainless steel pool, which is kind of unusual. Even more unusual is that there is always only a handful of people in it. Go to the local pool in my city and there are at least fifty people in there at any one time, most of who are walkers, old people who just walk up and down the pool, creating this really strong current. Of course, the Toyota pool has kyukei time, meaning rest time, and at 50 minutes past the hour, every hour, everyone has to get out for ten minutes. Why? I don't know. To rest. The two lifeguards on duty are changed over in an elaborate and choreographed routine involving raised hands and whistles, where the empty pool is never left unmonitored, not even for a second, as the old lifeguards leave their raised seats and are replaced by the new ones. Then the radio calisthenics song comes over the PA system, which is a five minute stretching song that everyone knows. They play it here at work every morning at 8:25, though I have never seen anyone do it here. Too much like hard work maybe. But at the pool, everyone does it. Old people, kids, everyone. Except me, because I don't know the routine. So I sit there while everyone does this stretching routine, thinking, come on, I just want to go in the pool. It's probably one of those things that a newbie would think is charming or delightful, oh aren't the Japanese cute, sort of thing. I just think they are the Borg.
I'm an okay swimmer, though of course my endurance is crap. I can swim 200 metres non-stop, but that's about it. I'm trying to breath every three strokes, alternating left and right sides. Right is fine, but left is hard. So I did my 32 laps and got out. A guy in my lane must have done 100 laps while I was there, and he was still going when I left. Amazing. But I know swimming is like running. If you keep it up, you pretty quickly get good at it. My neck is still a bit stiff from last week, but not any worse. Tonight I've got the ol' X-Stretch. I will listen to the end of the Hyperion books while I do it.
Can I just say how great all the footy panel shows are? How do guys with Foxtel stay married? The first one I watch is Footy Classified. It's probably the most gossipy of the shows. I like the panel, especially Garry Lyon and Caroline Wilson. Then it's On The Couch, which is a little drier, but Paul Roos has saved it. I have started watching AFL Insider, which is interesting because they have a current coach on the panel. Then there's AFL 360, which is quickly becoming my favourite, surprising because everything they're talking about has been talked to death already. Then there's The Footy Show, which is always good value. Then there's The Winners, which I don't get to watch much because the torrent always come late. There's more if I wanted, like the one with Quartermaine and Walls, or the jokey one with Dunstall and Frawley, and the Final Siren, or the Before the Game shows, heaps of them. It's crazy.
I'm halfway through watching The Change Up. Much funnier than anything I've seen this year. It's not really the story or anything, just the two actors in it, Jason Bateman (who I'm pretty sure played Malory Keaton in Family Ties) and Ryan Reynolds, who wasn't man enough for Scarlett Johannson. I like the swearing in it, the tits, and when the baby shits in the man's mouth.
Haven't heard anything from IBM about the job in Brisbane. The job is still being advertised, and the computer says my application is still under review, but I'm officially assuming it's not going to happen. It's been three weeks. And if I'm not getting a call back for a job I am more than qualified for, then I can't help but think that I'm stuck here forever, listening to two of the biggest dorks in the world behind me chatter non-stop about fonts or something. Someone get me out of here! On the other hand, it looks like the world has shit itself again today, so maybe Disneyrand is the only place to be. Going to be an interesting few months.
Willy had a fever last night. It's funny, because it was only a few days ago Junko and I were saying we can't remember the last time he was sick. Karma police. He jumped onto my bed this morning at about 4 and I woke up instantly. It felt like he had just gotten out of a really hot bath or something. I spoke to him on the phone just then and he sounds alright.

Autumn 2011 - "I got dis"

2011-08-19T19:07:00.001+09:00

I'm as flat as a tack from the job hunting failures, Richmond rolling the Swans and all but crushing our finals chances, the life-sapping nature of the weather, and being back at work after a week's holiday, but I'm going to start a 90-day round tonight with an 800 m swim. I did a kilometer last week, but it ruined my neck, and was probably over doing it a little.
I have done very little exercise since I hurt my back a month ago. That was after a two week break, so I haven't done much at all for six or seven weeks. Time to get back into it.
Swim Thursday, stretch Friday, then Arms, a run (starting at 4 km, working up to then staying at 8), then Chest Back and shoulders, a rest, the one Rev Abs workout called "Fire Up Your Abs". That's the week.
I come in at 84.5 kilograms, the heaviest I have ever been. I like feeling strong and heavy, but I have seen the tone disappear in the last month. This should sort it out.

Autumn

2011-08-10T21:05:00.002+09:00

I've watched a few movies recently. Last night I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes. A really good movie. Best movie I've seen this year. Nothing amazing, just a well made flick. I watched Super 8 the other night, too. I liked the stuff with the kids, but the monster plot was pretty weak. I watched it to the end, which is probably how I rate movies now. No stars, just "If I didn't watch the whole thing, how many minutes did I get through". Hey Jim, how was Super 8? Well, I didn't turn it off! Wow, that good, huh? How about Cowboys & Aliens? 20 minutes. It has Harrison Ford in it, so you know it's bad. Also, apparently if you wake up and you don't remember who you are, most likely you are an assassin. The first sign is when you beat the shit out of the first person you meet without even trying. Maybe the stress of being an assassin is causing this spate of amnesia cases. The International Assassin Association should look into it.
You know what I'm sick of in movies? Unrealism. Like when a guy beats up five armed men who have him surrounded. Have a look at movies like Frantic or The Next Three Days. Most of us aren't, or weren't assassins, or CIA operatives, or Navy Seals. Most of us wouldn't have a clue how to shoot a gun or knock someone out. I am sick of watching characters who apparently do not have super human powers do shit that is impossible. Jason Bourne in the Bourne movies is about my limit. Anything more than that, and it falls into the BS category. Again, I want to express my admiration for the movie The Other Guys for tackling a lot of what I am talking about. The death scene of Samuel L Jackson and the Rock was awesome. I also watched Bridesmaids. Pretty funny. Watched the whole thing, just. She got the man in the end, which seems to mean that it doesn't matter that she's unemployable or broke anymore, because someone else is going to take care of that for her now. She can heal herself through baking. Awww. And she found the only person in the movie with a job, which was lucky. When I say job, it wasn't like he seemed to do anything, but he wore job clothes, so...
Tiger fired his caddie. That's good news. And like the true asshole he is, Steve Williams cannot keep his mouth shut about the guy who has made him the richest New Zealander in the world. I don't know if that's true, but it must be close. Sure, he probably has a right to feel a little burnt, but he is a completely classless individual, which is why no-one believes him when he says he had no idea what Tiger was getting up to. Great caddie though.
More than a year ago I wrote this to a friend. "The one chance that Tiger's got will be if his mother has stepped in and taken over. This is what I would do if I were her. 1. Get my son out of the papers. Pay someone to watch him 24/7. Pay off all these women he shagged to keep their mouths shut. 2. Create a confidential two year plan that slowly but surely gets rid of everyone who let this shit happen, or even assisted Tiger in throwing his life away, TEAM ENABLEMENT someone called it. Management, caddie, coach, everyone. Wife even. And replace them with people I trust, and who are answerable to ME. 3. Restrict his endorsements to golf companies only. Why should he be asnwerable to Gatorade, Buick, Accenture? Who are they to tell my son what to do? Bottom line: She has to get all Asian mother on his ass."
Since then, he has gotten rid of his wife, coach, and caddie, and hopefully a few other people behind the scenes. He's been pretty quiet. I wonder if this is what's happening? His golf was ordinary this week, usual stuff. Driving and putting. At least he's actually going to be playing in the upcoming PGA. It has sucked not having the best player ever not playing. I don't know about Rory McIlroy. he seems like a bit of a bitch. I have become a big fan of Ricky Fowler though, despite what he wears. Good golfer, likes the big time, interesting story. Apparently Puma shafted Geoff Ogilvy in favour of young Ricky, but you can't argue the decision. Goeff hasn't done much for a while.
Still no word from the job in Brisbane. Surely, for a job I tick all the boxes for and then some, I've got to be in the running. But you never know, do you? Nothing like job hunting to make you feel invisible.
Will's birthday was on Friday. We had a great day. Actually, I had a better day on Thursday when I took the day off work (my first sickie in six months) to look after the kids while Junko went to Costco in Osaka. Around dinner time I thought, it's days like this I'm going to remember when I'm old. We had a nice breakfast, I brought out the inflatable wading pool and the kids had a great time, Will and I did some drawing while Jo Jo had a nap, hung out with Jo Jo at the mall while Will had his puzzle school, a really great day. But Will's birthday and the weekend was good too, but I think everyone is a little burnt out (might be the heat), and it is taking Will a little while to understand that not every day is about getting stuff.
This shit with the stock exchange is amazing. Look what has happened in the ten years since 9/11. A dozen men with box cutters. That's all it took. The Western world is totally owned by the banks now. Our security depends on their success. If they are not continuing to drain billions and billions out of us every three months, we feel insecure, like the world will somehow end. 2008 was our last chance to be free of them.
BTW starting a new round tomorrow. Got some swimming in there this time, too.

Rev Abs

2011-07-29T21:37:00.003+09:00

I hurt my back really badly a couple of weeks ago, doing the dishes. I felt the muscles rip, and there you go. Couldn't really move for a week, then a few days of discomfort, now it's feeling pretty good, though still a little stiff. I've taken it easy, eaten lots of chips, pretty much done no physical activity. Now it's time to get back into it. Easy at first, though.
I'm going to do Rev Abs. Looks okay, not as hard as P90X, so that's good. I want to get back into the groove of getting up, pressing play, and working out. Also, I want to start going to sleep earlier during this round. Which means I have to control my leisure time.
TV essentials
Football - Swans match. Footy Classified. AFL 360. The Footy Show. The Winners.
Other stuff - Breaking Bad. A movie now and then.
If I'm not watching any of these, I'm wasting my time watching people falling over.
Also, no chips, coffee, or chocolate, blah, blah, blah.
Either this is as fit as I'm ever going to be, or I'm going to get fitter.
I have applied for 3 jobs in Australia this month. Golf club assembler at Mizuno Australia in Malvern (I pissed off the woman in HR with my persistence), Assistant Tournament Organiser for the PGA of Australia in Frankston (heard nothing back), and Translator at IBM in Brisbane (the computer says my application is currently under review). For the last one I didn't even have to lie in my application - the job is doing exactly what I do here. Plus, I know a guy who used to work here at my company in Japan who works at IBM in Brisbane now, and mailed him, and he's like "Hey! Yea, it's really good working here, I'm loving it!" Shoe-in, right? Except he said that the guy who left was a Japanese guy who translated English into Japanese, so they probably want to replace him with similar. So shit. Not having much luck. At first I was hesitant about living in Brisbane, but really, it would be interesting to live there for a while, wouldn't it. Melbourne's only a two hour flight away, and the weather is awesome, and an hour from the Gold Coast. But while I wait in vain for some kind of positive response from anyone about anything from Australia, something to go my way employment-wise, I think about getting out of here and how much it excites me. I can't shake the feeling that this place is finished, and I don't want my sons to grow up surrounded a hundred million old, tired, radioactive people.
So this month has been a roller-coaster. Trying to keep a lid on my hopes, trying not to think about how the phone could ring at any moment and two days later I could be on a plane going to a job interview for a job I really want and completely change our lives. I am excited about the IBM job, but even though I'm perfectly qualified for the job they advertised, I can't see how it's going to happen. I applied using their application website, a bunch of drop boxes and check boxes, and I just feel like a computer somewhere will soon send me an automated response wishing me all the best in the future. It is so hard to get passed these HR departments and employment agencies. I live in Japan, and the job's in Australia. End of story. Anyway, mustn't become despondent, because one day it'll happen.

Oh Shit, Special Announcement

2011-07-11T21:10:00.002+09:00

Tiger's got a special announcement. My tip? Out for the rest of 2011. Maybe treatment for painkiller addiction. Bottom line - finished. What a fizzer to the greatest career in golf.
Had a shitty week myself. A job opens up at Mizuno Australia in Melbourne just the week I've decided I've had enough of living in Japan. Funny how the universe works. Just have to get over the Mizuno HR department and then... Nah. No good. I got a "thanks but unfortunately" letter, and then when I wrote another letter basically pleading for phone interview, the lady in HR sounded pissed off that I was asking for something that was hers to give. So I'm really, really flat. So fuck it, if Tiger wants to finish, okay.

Wish I was on Hamilton Island

2011-06-24T22:41:00.002+09:00

Warming up here lately, a couple of 30+ degree days. I went for a run on Wedensday and found it really hard to cool down afterwards and had an uncomfortable sleep. The seasonal headaches have appeared to have stopped, which makes living a lot easier. I do have a bruised coccyx though, which makes it uncomfortable to sit down for long periods, which is exactly what I do every day. I don't know how I did it, and I hope it goes away. It might even be a consequence of my hips being so tight. I'm going to do X-Stretch tomorrow and really concentrate on doing every stretch the best as I can. I've got Chest, Back and Shoulders tonight.
Swans got pumped by Carlton, and we are going to get pumped by Collingwood this week, like every time we play them at ANZ stadium. Probably my least favourite fixture of the whole year. Ah well. We are doing okay.
For some reason I have become pretty motivated to study Japanese, though I'm finding it hard to come up with some kind of structure to my study. All I'm doing is working on my vocab and reading at the moment. It's just so hard to get those words to stay in my head.
Anyway, god luck to Fitzy and Naomi who are getting married this weekend at Hamilton Island. Have fun you guys!

Summer '11

2011-06-08T06:36:00.001+09:00

So Round 6 Redux died a protracted death. I did about half of the workouts, but it was hard to get out and run in the rain, and I didn't bother with the stretching or yoga, which I probably should be doing more than the resistance workouts. So I started Round 6 Reloaded, which will see me through the Summer. I did a 5 km run on Sunday, and an Arms workout last night. Got a rest day today, then Chest, Shoulders & Back on Wednesday, another run on Thursday, abs workout Friday, and Yoga or stretching on Saturday. And repeat for 12 weeks. Should keep me in pretty good shape.
Other goals I want to achieve, nothing new - Cut down coffee and chocolate to 1 can 1 kitkat a day. Nothing to eat after 7 in the evening, except popcorn with a bit of butter or salt. More reading. More trips to the golf driving range. Less clutter in my life.
I'm reading Pet Sematary by Stephen King. I haven't read any Stephen King books except the first half of Dreamcatcher, which I liked and got the movie out. I like this one too, but I'll gladly put the book down and watch the movie, and then that'll be it. I might try one of his earlier novels next time, see what they're like. I find his work unsatisfying for some reason. Maybe his ideas are better than his writing, I dunno.
Swannies going great. The win against the Lions was a pleasure to watch, not the usual gut-wrenching experience that watching the Swans is. We've got Richmond next. Sweet.

Hey

2011-05-24T21:46:00.001+09:00

Seve Ballesteros died the other week. One of my golfing heroes. I had been thinking about him for a month or so before he died. I even linked to a video of him on my Facebook page a few weeks ago. I knew he was poorly, but not that bad. Watching him on those videos, wow. The swing, the passion, the soft hands. Some of the shots he hit were amazing. Has there ever been a more talented golfer? And the celebration on the 18th at St Andrews in 1984 when he holed the birdie putt to seal the win is probably the best celebration in golf. No-one came close to him in the 80's. His Masters performances in that time were amazing. Won it in '80 and '83. '85 - Lost a duel with the great Bernhard Langer. '86 - Had it won! After his second shot on 13 to three foot for eagle, his caddy stupidly offered to shake his hand. And Seve shook it! The Golfing Gods don't like that kind of thing. They gave him that putt, but then he put it in the water on 15 and 16, and Nicklaus shot 30 on the back nine to beat him, Norman, and Kite, in probably the best Masters ever. '87 - he was in the play off along with Norman and Mize, but missed a three footer at 10 and was out, and then on the next hole Mize chipped in to destroy Norman forever. He had the lead in '89 too, but dropped away. Quite a performance. He starred in the British Open too, especially in '88 when he and Nick Price had a shootout. That was an amazing tournament. He was a little before my time, but he definitely set the scene for the European dominance of golf with Lyle, Faldo, Woosnam, Olazabal following him. It's really sad to see him go so early. I've mentioned it before, but there is an interview with him on the eve of last year's British Open when they invited him to a past champions dinner but he couldn't go, so the BBC sent a reporter to his house to interview him. He had that faraway look that Alzheimer's sufferers get, understandably seeing how they had to cut out a lot of his brain out to get rid of the tumour, but otherwise he seemed okay. It's a great interview. Tiger's out injured again, and out of the top 10! Sometime this year we'll get the news that he's hooked on painkillers. I have no doubt about that. He has looked stoned off his nut in some of the interviews I've seen of him.
Swannies beat the Bulldogs in Canberra! Amazing! And a good win against Port, too. Shocking loss to Hawthorn though. Buddy has never really played well against us in the past, but he sure did on Sunday. North this week. Hate 'em.
Can I just say that it is hilarious that someone died planking. And there's another guy in a coma from planking, I hear. He should die of embarrassment.
I'm reading Hyperion again, or at least listening to it. Books have become like movies to me. I no longer feel the compulsion to watch or read something to the end if it doesn't have my full attention. I've got heaps of movies on my computer that I've watched the first hour of but turned off, never to return. Never Let Me Go, sorry, had to let you go. True Grit, nup. Tron, nup. Same with books. Even the latest Iain Banks books have failed to see the end. Is it me? Kind of. But if I'm not compelled to keep watching or reading, whose fault is that? The tragedy would be if I stop starting things. But sometimes I just want to watch or read something I know I will love. So I have gone back to Hyperion, and I will read it until I don't want to anymore. Which will probably mean I'll read the whole series of 4 books again. This book is one of those things that I envy people who haven't experienced it, and I wish I could go back and experience it again for the first time. Seven people on a pilgrimage to meet the Shrike, a mythical killing machine who grants the wishes of one and kills the rest. As they make the journey, they decided to tell each other their story, and the book consists of these stories. The first one is about a priest's journey to find the Bakira, descendants of the crew of a colony ship that is thought to have crashed on the unexplored side of Hyperion hundreds of years ago. A great, nightmarish story.

Round 6 Week 2

2011-05-08T09:25:00.000+09:00

I've done all the runs and the resistance workouts, but I can't seem to get up for the Insanity workouts or the Yoga. I haven't done one of them yet. So this round is basically abandoned seeing as though I'm only doing half of it. I'm just wondering what to do. Just start doing them, I guess.
I have to work today, a Saturday, which sucks. Only about a third of my department have bothered to come in, so it's a quiet day. Still got a shit load of work to do. Things haven't calmed down much since the March madness. Just do it, I guess.
I had a good Golden Week. Went to Toyohashi Zoo again, though this time it was packed. Hung out with Will and Jo Jo a lot. Ate a ton of Subway. Did I tell you a Subway had opened up recently in my local shopping center? I thought Subway were gone from this country forever, but they seem to be attempting a resurgence. I hope they do well, though not so well that I have to wait in queues for ages. The way I see it, they are ultimately doomed because children make the majority of food decisions here, and no child will choose to eat a sandwich, especially when there's a KFC or MacDonalds around. Except my child, William. He loves the ham 6-incher (with capsicum!). Superstar. BTW, is broccoli an optional topping anywhere else? It is here. And the other day, I ordered a ham, and the chick misheard me and thought I said Chicken tandoori. WTF?
Me: Ham, please.
Chick: Certainly sir. Chicken Tandoori. What kind of bread?
Me: WTF?
Swans beaten by Carlton in Sydney. Another crappy day weather-wise. What's up with the weather in Sydney? Anyway, Jack holds Judd for the first half, Jack does ankle, Judd dominates for the last half and wins the game for Carlton, and Jack is out for 6 weeks. No good.
Regardless of whether Longmire can coach or not, we missed out on that fresh breeze that a club gets when a new coach takes over, because he's been at the club for six years or so beforehand. I think we needed a new approach after Roos to lift the older players and give the club a different perspective. We are losing games from three or four goals up, which we never used to do. It's a problem. Still, only early. We need a win though. Shame we've got the Bulldogs in Canberra, which we never win.
Congrats to Stevie and Sarah! I hope you had a great day!

Round 6 - First Week

2011-04-25T22:22:00.004+09:00

On Day 1, I did Yoga Meltdown 2 with The Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels. It's interesting doing different kinds of Yoga. I haven't done too many, but Tony's is still the best. This wasn't easy though. There were a couple of moves I couldn't do. And there were a lot of exercises. It was more like a 30-minute warm up for P90X Plyo than the Yoga Tony does. Hayfever hit me hard. Felt really ordinary.
I'm down to one can of coffee a day, and I feel I have achieved something. I've gotten it under control. It seems that the busier I get, the more coffee I drink, and the more agitated I feel.
On Day 2 I ran 8 km. It was pleasant. But that night I had an irregular heart beat. We had just put the kids to bed, and I was about to settle down and watch a bit of Footy Classified, when it happened. I don't know if it was the run, or if it was because Will jumped on my chest five minutes before they started. The first one lasted a couple of minutes, then stopped. Then it happened again for another couple of minutes. It wasn't painful. It feels like my heart skips a beat every few beats or so. I turned the TV off and went to bed, but if it had have happened again I probably would have driven myself to hospital. But it didn't, and it hasn't since, so what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, right?
On Day 3 I did Killer Abs, from the Tony 1 on 1 series. Good stuff.
Day 4 I missed my Insanity workout. Maybe on purpose because I was worried about having an irregular heart beat again. But I missed it.
Day 5: Arms.
Day 6: 10 km run. In the rain. I don't mind running in the rain.
Day 7: Chest and Back. Missed it. I played golf though. Played pretty bad. I played with clubs I haven't used before which seemed to hook everything. And if I hit a bad shot, the next one seemed to be tougher, like a bunker shot to a close pin, or a pitch over a bunker or something. I didn't get away with anything like you do when you are playing well. And I putted like a moron. Highlight? Second shot to a par five, 210-yard water carry, hooked a 4-wood into the front greenside bunker. Not much of a highlight, but not much to choose from.
Cats beat Swans last week. Crappy weather, not a bad game, but hard to tell how we played. Gotta love the Cats' intensity. Chapman was great as usual. Shaw was doing okay this year until he kicked it straight to a guy twenty meters out who kicked it straight back over his head for a goal. I think we were only a goal back with ten minutes to play at that stage. Can't blame him though. We need LRT, Bradshaw (he does still play football, right?) and Kennelly back to be a force this year. We've got the bye this week, so maybe in a couple of weeks we'll see some of them. Next game: Carlton on a Friday night at the SCG! We've got the wood on them at the minute, but it'll be a great game.
I saw Sucker Punch last week. Here it's called Angel Wars. They only have the dubbed version at the cinemas, so I was never quite sure what was going on, but never mind because every scene had young women in underwear. But I have decided that Zack Snyder makes better trailers than he does movies. Maybe he should just make a few trailers every year.

Round 6 Preliminary Thoughts

2011-04-17T22:29:00.004+09:00

On Monday I start Round 6. And I'm going to stop putting crap into my body. And by crap,I mean cans of coffee, cakes, doughnuts, and chips.
This round will consist of an eight day cycle, which consists of two 8 km runs, two Insanity workouts, two resistance workouts, a Yoga or Stretch, and a rest day. I hope to lose a couple of kgs, because I am now at 84, the heaviest I have ever been.
I couldn't do the 15 km run, which was disappointing, but oh well. I did 13 km a few weeks ago, which is something I never thought I would do, or even wanted to do. But this time I gave up after 6 kms. My hips had been aching all week, they were aching a little when I was running, and I was scared of what another 9 km was going to do to them. I'm not a young man anymore, and it's becoming clear that my hips are going to be an issue as I get older. They pop a lot when I move my leg outwards as if I'm getting out of a car. After walking a lot, they pop easily and painlessly and it doesn't ache, but when I'm inactive, they pop harder, and it doesn't feel any better. It's not really an issue at the moment. I think the worst thing I can do is stop exercising. But they will always be an issue, and if I need hip transplants when I'm sixty, I'll do it. But in the meantime I'll get some fish oil tablets, multi vitamins, and go easy with the running. I don't think the running is causing the problem. It's probably more the poor posture and hours and hours sitting down in front of a computer at work. My back and shoulders gradually get pulled out of shape which puts pressure on my hip joints. I might get a massage next pay day to sort it out.
The Masters was weird. The guy who won it played awesome. What's him name, Swartzel or something, will join that guy who won the Open and the other guy who won a major last year as someone you'll never hear of again.Jason Day was great, but boy he has to learn to calm down when he's in contention. He was amped. I think Adam Scott was just relieved he didn't choke. Tiger hit the shots, but like just about every Masters since '05, if he had putted well, he would have won it. I thought when he knocked it to six foot on 15 for eagle, I thought 'he's done it. He's going to win.' But he missed. Then missed the putt on sixteen. Then it didn't matter. And I was really pissed off with his interview afterward. The guy asked the perfect question - "Do you think you played well enough to win the Masters?" His answer, "We'll see." The guy tried again, giving Tiger the chance to reflect on his round, how he feels being in contention again, his life, his golf, and all he got was that shit. "We'll see" and "You never know." I'm not sure if it's just a superstar being guarded about what he says, like he's been burned by the press, or maybe he's afraid something will be misconstrued or something. But I'm beginning to think he's incapable of reflection, just an empty man who can only talk in competitive, never-show-weakness terms. His demeanor on the course reminds me so much of Greg Norman in the late 90's. Bored of losing. Going through the motions. Cynical. He'll end up like Norman, too. Unpopular, a businessman, divorcing his wife after a fight and marrying the next woman he lusts after. Excited more by his golf course architecture business and vineyard more than playing competitive golf. Never looking at anyone while on the course. Just looking off into the distance, looking bored, pissed off. You know why people love Phil Mickelson? He seems to actually enjoy playing golf, and he actually seems to appreciate that people come out to watch him play. It's no wonder they hate each other.
Swannies did it again. 3 games, 2 wins and a draw. 3 thrillers. Cats this week. I can't remember the last time we beat the Cats, probably the Prelim when Davis went crazy in the last five minutes in '05, and I doubt we can do it this year, either. But the Swans are an amazing team, and it looks like another year in the finals. We are spoiled as supporters.

Round 5 - Day 85

2011-04-05T21:34:00.002+09:00

I only ran 9 km on Sunday. Kind of talked myself out of it, but my legs were really aching after a Legs & Back on the Friday. I'm still confident about being able to do the 15 km on Sunday, but I have to shut the voice up when it gets hard. I've been able to do it every other time, but Sunday I had to agree with it when it said "Ow, my legs hurt. You should stop. 9 km is plenty, etc." Apart from that, I've enjoyed this round a lot. Again, the shorter workouts are great, and I'll continue to do these in the next round. At this stage I use my ipod to listen to the warmup of the workout I'm doing, mainly just for timing's sake, then turn it off and refer to a sheet I made with 12 or 13 exercises on it while I listen to an audiobook or watch something else. It probably still takes 40 minutes to do, but that's because I have a lot of rests. I think that next round I'll completely ditch the videos, make some kind of warm-up routine for myself, and eliminate some of the exercises I think are a waste of time and put in other stuff. I'll also do two short runs of 8 km a week instead of one really long one. I was thinking of just maintaining until P90X 2 comes out, and then do that full-on.
Swannies! I love beating Essendon. I didn't think we would, because they are the glamour side going in, and I didn't think we would win in the third quarter when we are getting rolled after hitting the front for a couple of seconds, but as usual, Jude Bolton inspired the team to victory. What a player. It's only round 2, but there have been heaps of great games already. It was a shame to see the Gold Coast Suns get pumped by so much. Everyone says Gary Ablett is "underdone". Was he injured during pre-season? I hope they win a few games. Richmond haven't won anything yet, but just like every year we all have to agree that they've improved. I don't think so. I picked them for 10th, and that's probably where they are right now. Collingwood are awesome, and I hope they pump the Blues this week. We've got West Coast. Another thriller? Surely not.
I watched "Limitless" on Sunday night. Good movie. Moral of the story: Drugs are great. Coming down sucks, so make sure you don't come down. Actually, I've seen a few good movies the last couple of months. The trick is staying away from movies you know are going to be shit, like the Green Lantern, or a Nicholas Cage movie, anything with Nicole Kidman, anything animated (except a Toy Story movie). With Limitless, it was a bit disappointing to see how quickly the guy ditches making art for making money, like finance is the pinnacle of human endeavours, and writing books is for losers. But then he ditches both for politics. Wow. A movie for our times, for sure.
Well, it's that time of year. The Masters. Again, the question is, just like last year, what will Tiger do? Phil Mickelson won last week, and he is a form player, so he is definitely the favourite. But Tiger? He has played some good tournaments, but also some awful ones. He's come close a couple of times, but lately he has been playing pretty badly. Why he is attempting a swing change during the most turbulent time in his personal life is beyond me. His swing looks terrible these days. Cramped, stiff. He appears to have fallen into the trap of becoming too analytical about his swing. If you are worrying too much about the angle of your left wrist at impact or stuff like that, you just can't get any feel. I read about how in 1983 when Seve was at his peak, he had someone film him hitting the golf ball and measure everything about it - distance between him and the ball, angles, time, feet positions, hand positions, etc. His theory was that if he wasn't playing well, it was because he somehow gotten out of whack, and all he had to do was go back to the data he made when he was playing well and make sure he was doing everything the same. It makes sense, but of course this didn't work. Things change over time. Your body loses flexibility, you lose or gain weight, your back feels lose or stiff. He ditched it after a couple of years and concentrated on doing what felt comfortable or natural, and he had two or three years as the dominant player in the world and won a heap of tournaments. This will happen with Tiger, too, I hope. Golfer's swings tighten up naturally as they get older, but Tiger's swing when he was twenty is so different than it is now it's amazing. He is physically different, too, from all the growth hormones he has taken over the years, probably. He hasn't lost any mass since the downfall. He is still huge. I doubt this is helping him hit good golf shots, either.
Still, it all comes down to putting, so if he can putt well at Augusta, then he can win it. In fact, I will state here that the winner will be the person who putts the best. Not the person person who hits it the furthest or hits the most fairways or greens, or gets up and down the most from bunkers, but the person who misses the fewest short putts. Tiger has putted poorly the last few Masters, and would have won a couple if he had putted well.

Round 5 - Day 81

2011-04-02T21:39:00.003+09:00

So there's a home-buyers strike going on in Melbourne. Hey, I've been on a Ferrari-buyers strike for twenty years, and I will not give in! Stupid. But if these stories are making the papers, then the great housing boom in Australia might finally be over. Thank Christ. But I shudder to think what will happen to all those young couples who earn 50K a year who bought or built half million dollar houses. People think if you buy a house, you've sewn up your future. You're set. That might have been true twenty years ago when houses were affordable, but I don't think it's true at the moment. It might be true in another twenty years, but not after a lot of pain. Look what has happened in Ireland, the U.K., Spain, America. People are in all sorts of trouble because they bought an over-valued asset with the assumption that its value will only increase. A house is only worth what people will pay for it, and what people will pay for it is based on how easy credit is to get from the bank. When the banks make it tougher to get money, fewer people have access to money, prices go down. That's what is happening. And when the house across the street won't sell at 50K less than what you paid for yours, you have no equity any more. It's gone. You are paying more than you can afford to keep an asset that is worth much less than what you bought it for, and will be for the next ten years. You can sell it and lose your down-payment, at least, as well as all the money you've spend paying interest on the mortgage, but then you're back to square one looking for a place to live, except this time you have no money. Or you can wait it out, praying you don't get laid off, trying not to hit the wife or kids, trying not to drink too much, not being able to afford a night out at the movies or a holiday to Queensland ever.
As soon as it became speculative, it got dangerous. The smart people bought ten years ago, and sold last year. Or early 2008, if they were geniuses. The smart people have spent the last two years getting ready, getting liquid, getting rid of any asset that they can't sell in five minutes so they are ready when the world falls apart again like it did in 2008. Do you think they are going to let themselves be caught out twice? Not a chance in hell.
Watch for the politicians and bankers to come out of the woodwork this year and position themselves as the mavericks, the ones who warned everybody of the impending doom before it happened. Look out for bankers and politicians warning people about being indulgient or reckless, so when the shit hits the fan, they can say, well, I warned you! Ask them if they supported the doubling of the first home owners grant in 2008 when it was clear the bubble had popped, effectively zombifying the housing boom, damning millions of young people who have since mortgaged their lives away in a propped-up, DOA housing market to a life of slavery. Ask them if they support negative gearing, which inflates rents. Or, more to the point, ask if they have recently sold any their own investment properties. Bet you they have.
Will it be as bad as it is in America? Or Ireland? Or Spain? Probably. Why would it be any different? The Spanish have an expression they use when they talk about their housing boom. Instead of saying "Back in the 2000's,...", or "During the housing boom,...". They say "When we were rich, ..." Is that what it's going to be like in Australia? What effect will there be on the economy, on society, when millions of "working families", to use one of Acting Assistant Regional Manager Kevin Rudd's favourite phrases, are under incredible pressure week after week for years on end, watching their dreams of a secure retirement vanish, with a mortgage they will never pay off, stuck in a house they can't afford but can't sell? Have a look at America. How's it going there? An absolute catastrophe.

Round 5 Day 76

2011-03-29T06:48:00.001+09:00

What a great game between Melbourne and Sydney yesterday. A draw! We probably should have won it in the third quarter, but then Melbourne probably should have won it in the last, so a draw was a pretty good result for us. Melbourne look good this year, especially up forward. Their back line was pretty vulnerable all day. We played well too. Sydney are usually shocking starters to the season. And a great game to watch, too. I heard that the Geelong St Kidla game was an abomination. Glad I missed that one. I saw what Fevola did, jumping onto that guy's back. I'm enjoying watching his life fall apart, too be honest.
The Masters starts in a couple of weeks. Please be exciting. Golf is in all sorts of trouble. I'm not sure that having Tiger back at No. 1 would solve the problem, either, except that there would be some awesome golf in there somewhere. My tip for the Masters (going 2 for 2 because I tipped Phil last year) - Rory Sabatini, the firebrand South African.
I ran 13 km yesterday, and boy, are my legs tired. It takes ages to run that far. I'm two weeks away from my goal of 15 km, and after that I have finished round 5. Next round I might do a few shorter runs of maybe 6 kms every week instead of the really long run once a week. 3 runs, 3 resistance, and a stretch or yoga. I have to try and get more sleep, too. The coffee and kitkats are under control.
It was Jo Jo's second birthday on Saturday. One of Junko's friends came over with her boy who is the same age as Jo Jo, and we had a cake. Jo Jo's a good boy. Funny. Happy birthday, Jo Jo!

Round 5 - Day 69

2011-03-21T23:21:00.003+09:00

You'll be glad to know that, after 2 years of whining, I've cut down on the coffees and kitkats. Instead of 4 cans a day, I'm on 1. Instead of 5 kitkats a day, I'm on 1. It's only early days, but I feel good, much more relaxed than usual. I bought a flask to bring milk to work, so I'm having my milk cocoa and my milk tea, but no sugar.
Footy starts in a few days. Good to get into the rhythm of all the panel shows and stuff. For me, it's Footy Classified and On The Couch on Tuesday, AFL 360 on Thursday, Footy Show on Friday, then the game on Sunday afternoon if I'm lucky, usually Monday. It's all I watch for six months. My favourite is Footy Classified, and I usually skip over On The Couch until the interview, Footy Show is good for a laugh. AFL 360 is the new one in my rotation. I don't mind it. It's probably positioned as a less combative version of Footy Classified. I don't know how they are going to differentiate themselves from it though. Regardless, they all talk about the same topics, so after I watch one, the others get a bit repetitive. It just so happens that Footy Classified is the first one I watch. If I had to dump one it would be On The Couch. Mike Sheahan shits me. But I'll watch it for Paul Roos, if what I hear is right and he's on the couch instead of Hird this year.
Predictions? Essendon - finals. Saints finished - nightmare year for them, dream is over. Maybe miss the finals. Richmond - 10th. Sydney, will get beaten by Collingwood in the Prelim, who will go on to win the flag over Fremantle. Brownlow - Adam Goodes for number 3. Off-field, one player will be done for performance enhancing drugs. 1 rape, 2 bashings, 3 DUIs. Fevola will be arrested for attempted murder.
A couple of things recently have got me thinking. One is a video I saw on Liveleak. Apparently there was some kind of viral outbreak among pigs in South Korea, and they had to put a lot of them down. Kill them. So this video is of a massive ditch in the ground, probably the size of an Olympic swimming pool, and about 4 or 5 meters deep. so what they did is herd hundreds if not thousands of live pigs into the ditch, over one of the edges, and just filled up the ditch with these pigs. You should have heard the screaming. Imagine killing the children of a thousand women in front of them, and you might get a sound like that. Inside the ditch (it was nighttime, and the whole area was lit up so they could do the work) was writhing, screaming pink mess. Then I'm assuming they just buried them all alive.
Another thing is a book I got from a friend here at work. "Meat" it's called. It's kind of a horror/sci-fi story about one group of people who treat another group just like we treat cattle. I'm really enjoying it.
Lately I have come to see vegetarianism as probably the most radical political act a person can do without breaking the law these days. Eating meat supports so many terrible things, all in the name of efficiency and profit, always at the expense of the animals and the poor. You see something like the video of the pigs and wonder, what right does anyone have to treat another living being like that? Their lives are less than worthless. Here it is if you really want to see it.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=086_1300057764
I gets you wondering about your own culpability.

Earthquake! Day 62

2011-03-14T20:04:00.004+09:00

So I'll give a rundown of my experience with the earthquake.
Friday afternoon, the boss is away, not much work to do. Everytime I look at the clock, it's 2:23, or 2:37. But it's Friday afternoon, and I'm thinking of stuff to do on weekend.
Then I start to feel a little dizzy. I think it was about 2:45. It's like feeling lightheaded. I've been here long enough to know that I'm okay and it's probably an earthquake. We get an earthquake probably once a month, usually really minor ones. Part of life. A few times a year you get one that gives the building a jolt, and the blinds start swaying, and everyone gets a little excited, but they are rare.
So I look around and a couple of people are looking around too, so I know it's an earthquake for sure. "Jishin!" I hear people saying.
This is when they usually stop, but this one just kept going. Then a hard jolt, and that's when I started thinking about the three floors above me. The building is really rocking, and the blinds are smacking against the window, and some of the office ladies are, not screaming, but exclaiming. Then everything calmed down a little, and I guess our building kept swaying for a while after the earthquake stopped, because it took ages to stop feeling dizzy.
My initial though when it finished was that a lot of people had just probably died somewhere. I didn't think about tsunamis or anything. I mailed Junko, who was driving at the time and didn't notice it. I updated my Facebook page. I went outside to check that my motorbike hadn't toppled over (it hadn't). Then I had a coffee with a friend, then went back to my desk and back to work. Of course everyone was buzzing, and a couple of co-workers asked me if I was here for the Hanshin earthquake in '95 (I wasn't). They said that was stronger. My dad mailed me, and my sister called at 5:10 and asked me if I was okay, and said that there was a tsunami and it was wiping out villages in Sendai. That's north of Tokyo, and I'm in Nagoya which is hundreds of kms to the south. Then I went home and turned on the news, and saw what everyone else was seeing.
Everything's as it usually is here where I live, except the TV is all about the earthquake, every channel. A chain text mail is doing the rounds telling everyone to use less power, but I don't think it's official. I haven't seen any damage at all around where I live. Shops open, no one panic buying water or food or anything, although my friend said he went to a hardware store on Sunday and all the bottled water was sold out. The roads were a little quite this morning (Monday) because Toyota and a lot of other companies around here have closed factories due to an uncertain power supply, but that's the only real difference I can see. On TV it looks crazy, and it's weird to think it's happening in the same country I live in.
The nuclear reactors are the big news now. I don't think it's anything sinister by the Japanese authorities, it's just that people here have a hard time recognizing a problem until it reaches the level of catastrophe. Having lived here so long, you see it over and over again. I'm not sure why they do it. Maybe it's a fear of admitting defeat. So when they say that yes, some radioactive gas has escaped, but don't worry about it, IT'S NOT A PROBLEM, that's when people get scared and start running. People don't know this about the Japanese, but they are terribly reckless. They think about things long and hard, but then often make the same decision as an impulsive idiot would have made. It's weird.
They say that another big earthquake is coming, because things have shifted around so much that it is highly unstable. We'll see. Who can predict these things? I feel bad for all the people in Sendai. A whole village just wiped away. Amazing. And I hope that if the reactors do blow up, the wind is blowing away from me. Or if not, I hope that I mutate into some kind of super being.

Round 5 - Day 58

2011-03-11T06:37:00.002+09:00

Weekly, I consume approximately:
18 cans of coffee: 1800 yen.
20 Kitkats: 1200 yen
6 bags of chips: 700 yen
3700 yen a week. Holy shit.
I do this because I like this stuff. But I want to stop. I'm eating and drinking more sugar than ever, and the chips are just something to do while I watch TV.
So what are the alternatives?
Popcorn. I bought a popcorn maker, but it kind of sucks. I can only put a few kernels in at a time or else it gets jammed up. I'm lucky it didn't catch fire the first time I used it when I put a whole cup in there. But if I take the time, I can make a nice bowl of popcorn, and with butter it's good tucker. So that's the chips sorted.
The coffee. Drink milo. Or tea! I'm sick of the restless, jittery feeling I get after lunch when , let's be honest, I've had my morning can of coffee, my morning tea can of coffee, and my lunch can of coffee, and I feel like a tweaker. I must find a way to bring milk to work. Keep it cold somehow. There are no fridges here at work because I don't know why. Maybe I will buy a flask or something.
The Kitkats. I can have one for lunch. A fun size one for 20 yen. What's the difference between having one, and having three? When I have three, I smash through the first one, chomp on the second one, and then I don't remember that I've eaten the third one until I reach for it thinking it is still on my desk in front of me. So I don't need three. Or two. I should just eat the first one slowly.
This isn't about health, really, though my sugar intake is pretty high. It's about relying on shit that is bad for me. So I can have my kitkat, and then maybe some nuts or trail mix. I can have my hot, milky cup of beverage, only it's milo or tea, and there's no sugar in it. I can have my crunchy snack while I'm watching TV, only it's popcorn and not chips.
So my weekly consumption now looks like this:
5 cups popcorn: 400 yen
6 Kitkats: 120 yen
1/2 bag of Milo: 200 yen
1 kg Nuts, trail mix: 1000 yen(?)
I have never seen trail mix here in Japan. I'm sure it's on Amazon, though.
At most, this is going to cost me about 2000 yen a month, probably closer to 1000. I will buy a small flask tonight for the milk, and it will have paid for itself in two weeks.
I ran 10 km on Saturday. Easily the longest I have ever ran. The first few kms were really hard mentally. I just kept telling myself that it's always like this, and everything will find it's own rhythm and the last half will fly by. Which it did. It took me 56 minutes. I assume that's pretty slow. I didn't buy any runners, but I should because I got a pretty big blister on the ball of my foot and maybe the sneakers I'm wearing now are to blame.
I fixed my motorbike up and I'm rolling again. I have an old BMX that I would like to do up to give to Willy some day. On Sunday I wanted to buy a stand that I could clamp the frame to to make working on it easier. I went to the bike shop down the road, and they had a "Display stand" with hooks for $40 that was not exactly what I had in mind, so I thought, and it's always when I'm in a shop that I have this thought, I'll check the internet! So I went home, and checked Yahoo Japan auctions. There was a nice proper stand with a clamp, used, for $100. I did a search for the stand on Goolge, and for new it goes for double that usually. Good quality, seemed sturdy, some good reviews, so I decided that I would bid, and see how it goes, though the auction had another four or five days to go. I'll check Amazon Japan first, I thought. Bang! New ones for sale for $105 dollars. Sold! Arrived Tuesday. Umm, winning!
Amazon is awesome. I order something on Thursday, it's on my doorstep Friday when I get home from work. If they let Australia have an Amazon, you guys can say goodbye to things called "shops" where they buy shit and put it on a shelf hoping that someone else will buy it off them for double what they paid for it. No. Actually, you'll need a place where you can go to try out the products you are thinking of buying on Amazon, which is basically the role shops here in Japan have now.
I was thinking of starting with the BMX rebuild tonight, by sanding down the handlebars and prepping for painting. I'll keep track of my progress on this blog.

Round 5 - Day 48

2011-02-28T22:11:00.003+09:00

Ran 9 km on Saturday. Couple of shaky moments here and there, some thoughts of capitulation, but got it done in the end. Next week I get to run 10 km. I'm actually looking forward to it, and I might buy some new sneakers for the occasion, seeing as though the ol' Adidas' are getting a bit frayed. They have a massive heel too, which goes against what POSE running is all about, mainly keeping off the heel and running as if you were running barefoot. It's funny when you think of it, but humans went millions of years running barefoot, or certainly running with footwear that offered little protection, and then we invent sneakers and put 1 inch of foam on the heel, so now everybody runs making contact with their heel first, smashing the force of that impact up the whole leg. It seems natural to go back to what we used to do as cavemen chasing our prey. So I want to buy a nice pair of sneakers with as little heel padding as possible. Maybe not the five-fingers deal, but something close to that.
What else. Not a great deal, actually. Missed my X stretch on Friday because I was tired, but apart from that, did everything on schedule. Might even squeeze the stretch in tomorrow. Tired tonight, so I'll skip the workout and have an early night.
Watched "The Descent" last night. Holy shit that was scary. A good B-grade horror movie.
The kick bar, or kick pedal, or whatever it's called (the thing on my motorbike I have to kick over to start the engine) busted a couple of weeks ago. I was riding home from work in the dark and in the rain and I was waiting at a set of lights when my engine stalled. I ran out of petrol. I flipped the switch over to the reserve tank and tried to start her up again, but she wouldn't even turn over. I was a little worried. When it runs out of petrol it usually gives you a little warning by spluttering and carrying on, giving you a few seconds to switch over to the reserve tank. In most cases the engine does not stall. (BTW this is all normal procedure. Most basic (cheap) bikes don't have a fuel gauge - you just ride until the petrol runs out, switch to the reserve tank, then fill up at the next servo you see. You usually have about 20 km of petrol left). But every time it has run out I have been actually moving. This time I was at the lights and the motor just cut out dead. Got my attention. So as I was trying to start it up and it wouldn’t turn over, I was thinking, maybe it's not the petrol. Maybe it's something engine-y. Then, that concern suddenly became secondary, because the kick pedal (that's what they call it in Japanese) broke. It didn't snap, but a side of it at the joint sheared off, and a ball bearing fell out, and it just went limp. Things just turned to shit in about 10 seconds! No chance of being able to turn my motor over, and even if I could, the thing wasn't starting anyway! I pushed my bike onto the footpath.
I haven't felt this feeling since Uni, since my old Cortina. A churning in the guts. How the fuck am I going to get this thing home? Then I tried what I used to try with the Cortina - a jump start. I've never tried it on a motorbike, but it was my last shot. So I pushed my bike along as fast as I could, hopped on, put it in first gear, and let the clutch out and gave the throttle a turn. Yes! First go! Got home no dramas. Apparently it was the petrol.
It's not much of a job to fix it, I just need a new part. Checked Yahoo auctions and was the only bidder for a Honda CB400SS kick pedal and got it for about $25. (Interesting aside: EBay is basically unheard of here. It's all Yahoo auction. And no PayPal either. Bank transfer (like Bpay) or COD.) This was over the weekend, so I haven't got it yet. Next I wanted to take the old part off. I have no tools, and I remember growing up with a dad who never had any tools so I decided to do something about it. Actually, he did have tools. They were in a bucket which was black with grease and full of old nuts and nails, with a ratchet bit here and there, but never the tool you really needed to get the job done properly. So I bought some nice tools. And not cheap ones, either. Quality. Will and I went and got a tool box yesterday and put them all in there. I was going to get a big set, but that would be full of crap I would never use, like wire strippers and stuff like that, so I'm just going to buy stuff when I need it, and buy the good, expensive stuff. Kyoto Tool Company seems to be the best here. One ratchet (no bits, just the ratchet) was about $60. Bought that and a few bits. It did the job, so I'm happy with it. So now I'm just waiting for the kick pedal to arrive, and then I'll wip it on there and be riding again. The chill is out of the air, so it'll be nice to get on the road without freezing my tits off.
Yesterday Will and I gave the bike a wash, and I loosened a few bolts and got him to tighten them. These are the moments boys remember for ever, aren't they? Working on the car or the bike with dad.
When the weather is nice I'm determined to go for a long rode. I say that every Spring, but this time I mean it.

Round 5 - Day 42

2011-02-22T21:29:00.003+09:00

Hey. Still working out. Day 42 already. Holy shit, nearly half way through. My next run on Saturday will be 9 kilometers. It's funny, but the 7 k run a couple of weeks ago was tough, but the 8 k run last week didn't feel so bad. Still hurts my right calf though, every time. I really should buy a new pair of sneakers. With the resistance workouts, my numbers are up there with where they were at the end of last round, which is nice. Now I can make some gains. Oh yea, there's going to be sequel to P90X this year sometime. "P90X:MC2" MC means muscle confusion. Looking forward to that. I should buy it, really. Give Tony some of my money.
I'm reading "The Hunger Games" at the moment. Really enjoying it. The next "His Dark Materials" maybe? They'll definitely make it into a movie. Let's just hope Nicole Kidman isn't in it. I have watched 127 Hours, which I loved. The Pat Tillman Story, not as good as the book I read about him, but it was good to find out more about him.
It's starting to warm up finally. We had a real cold blast a couple of weeks ago with lots of snow, but now it's nice and sunny, and I almost bought a chilled can of coffee this morning, though I think that's because it's so hot in my office. Will and Jo Jo are going great guns. Will's Michael Jackson fever has abated, thankfully not as severe as cousin Joshie's was. Back to Dinosaurs again. Jo Jo can say apple, bee, ball, mama (food), and hikouki (aeroplane) and he's trying to jump, which looks so funny.
The kick bar on my motorcycle snapped last week, and I'm thinking of buying a kick-ass set of tools to fix it up with, and anything else I might want to do later. Cheap = better than expensive, but expensive = quality, which also = good. Age old dilemma.
I'm really interested in what's going on in the Middle East. Bush's Children of Freedom anyone? Cairo was portrayed as something it wasn't, and when Lara Logan got raped, fuck 'em, they don't deserve it. China and Bahrain are where it's at. I hope China falls apart, because the whole world is depending on this criminal Communist regime keeping 5 billion people ignorant and dirt poor so they can make our iPads for cheap, and that isn't right. And Bahrain, because there is a real chance that the revolution could spread to Saudi Arabia where we buy our petrol from and where they hang teenagers for being homosexual and stone women to death. $2 a litre for petrol will slow things down, that's for sure. Put things in perspective. Interesting times ahead, anyway. 2011, what a year, and it's not even March yet!

Round 5 - Day 4

2011-01-15T21:33:00.003+09:00

What's up? MC&aHNY. We had a great trip to Australia. We all had our moments, but all in all, a lot of fun. Highlights? (no particular order) Shooting 79 on Boxing Day (holing a birdie putt on the last, and the footage posted onto Facebook), roast lamb at Auntie Pat's, driving through swarms of locusts on the way to Avoca, Christmas morning with Leigh and Tim and the boys, jumping off the boat in the bay, Puffing Billy, seeing Willy lose his mind at the zoo and museum, hearing the truth about Mikka's DUI, popping in to Uncle Mick's and Willy getting handcuffed and deputized, Willy at the beach in Coolangatta, JoJo walking like a champion, and actually trying to run once. Lots of great times and memories. Thanks to everyone who looked after us, especially Leigh and Tim and the boys, Stevie and Sarah, golf partners Shannon and Prentice.
This year is a big year. I want to try a lot of things this year. I have started another round of fitness, "Round 5 - Response Ability" which will culminate in a 15 kilometre run on Sunday, 10th April. I want to get real lean, too. I want to try to get a little "Paleo", which is a movement happening in America right now, which is about returning to how we used to live before we got all smart and shit. Lots of fruit, vegetables, meat. Few or no grains, sugar, or dairy. Also, and perhaps a little radically, no soap or shampoo! I'm going to give it a try. Apparently the first two weeks are rough, because the skin is so used to having it's essential oils and stuffed stripped away by chemicals every day that it overproduces, but once it gets used to that not happening, it sorts itself out. Of course I will still have showers and wash my hair, but just with water. And of course I will still use soap to wash my hands, because it's the most effective way to prevent colds and flue, but otherwise, let's see how we go. The last time I used soap and shampoo was... the morning of Tuesday, 11th of January. It's Saturday evening now. I'll give it two weeks. Unless I really start to stink.
Anyway, it's snowing! Yea!
Here's a pic of Will at Phillip Island.

Round 4.1 - Day 111 - Done

2010-12-20T07:26:00.003+09:00

Yesterday I ran 5 km non-stop, and today I'll do X-Stretch, and we be done.
We are off to Australia today and I can't wait to get out of this place. My work has been a pain in the ass and it's cold. My company has given every employee a handbook called "Bonding: 7 Habits". Every morning we have to read one of the 7 habits. This morning's was "Challenge". チャレンジ：不可能を可能にする。高い目標を掲げ、勇気をもって挑戦する。"Challenge: Make the impossible possible. Aim high, and fight with courage". Everyone feels so stupid saying this because it is so irrelevant to our experiences working at this company. Then the boss talked about how you have to keep going, even if you fail, never give up. I like to look around when he talks like this, and see everyone in my department. How would you describe the atmosphere? Downcast. Despondent. Sick of hearing this bullshit every fucking morning.
Rant complete.
This last week, I have been doing everything in my workout schedule except yoga. Yoga is probably the one thing I should be doing but I don't have time. Regardless, I'm feeling strong, fit and healthy. I did Chest & Back last Monday night and busted it up, and I was really sore yesterday. To get sore now takes a lot of work. Watching the Biggest Loser, I would love to have someone yelling at me while I workout. Maybe that will be the next home fitness DVD trend. Instead of "You are worth it, you can do it, do your best" stuff, we can have an instructor that screams at you. "You make me sick!" "Look at you, you fat piece of shit!". Just a hardcore asshole. That would be awesome. Anyway, Bob and Jullian just destroy these fat people. It's great to watch. The results they get are phenomenal.
I've been thinking about some New Year's Resolutions.
Number 1 is to improve my Japanese. Get my Level 1 in December '11. This is going to be a huge task, requiring a daily commitment. I have to find some motivation. At the moment I just want to get as far away from this place and these people as I can. Probably not the best frame of mind to begin from. But I find that a trip home does wonders, so before I go I'm going to draw up a study program and get going as soon as i am back. Lot's of listening, reading, and talking. I will need to get a tutor. You might think it's strange that even though I live in Japan, I need to pay someone to talk Japanese with me. I have to pay to have someone correct me if I make a mistake. That's the difference. I would like it to be a man, too. The words and style of male and female Japanese are very different, and because most Japanese teachers are female, a lot of foreigners who learn Japanese sound, well, gay. I have been thinking about working something out with Nori, I think I've mentioned it before, which I might do. But I think I should get a professional teacher. Maybe this blog will become more of a motivation for my Japanese study than for my exercise.
Number 2 is Health. Stop the stuff that does me no good, like chips, coffee, chocolate, and fucking around on the computer, and start doing stuff that makes me feel good, like golf, meditation, and ideally a new sport (maybe free climbing). I want to get fitter, stronger, and take advantage of my health.
Number 3 is finance. I have money in the bank. I have no debt. I have a good job. I'm in a great position to take advantage of the clusterfuck that is going to be 2011, I just don't know how. I want to spend the first few months learning about how I can kind of sew things up, and then maybe see someone or talk to someone about it.
Number 4 is Australia. I want to put a few irons in the fire regarding employment in Australia. I'm seeing someone when I'm down in a couple of weeks, so that's a good start. I will have to be careful not to let that be an excuse to slacken off with my Japanese studies, and my job here (this fourth year here has definitely been my worst here in terms of performance. I'm just lucky that it doesn't really matter). Still, the last three years has seen some huge changes in my life, so all things considered I'm doing okay.
Anyway, Will and JoJo have been sick all weekend, and I feel like I'm coming down with something, but who cares? We are outta here.

Round 4.1 - Day 103

2010-12-12T14:53:00.001+09:00

I'm watching the American Biggest Loser. It's emotional. There was one lady, pretty fat, and when they did the weigh in I was, you know, disgusted, like I was meant to be. Then they showed a clip of an interview with her and she was talking about how her three year old son died of cancer. Man, if one of my boys died of cancer, I hope the only thing I did was overeat a little. So I kind of teared up when she was talking and they showed pictures of her and her beautiful son and she talked about how at the end they were sitting on the rocking chair in his hospital room and she fell asleep and when she woke up he had died in her arms. That's so sad, but is there a better way for a child to go? Safe in the arms of their sleeping mother? I'm emotional thinking about it.
There's a girl in Will's kindergarten class, she's just had a leg amputated because of cancer, and there's a fair chance she will die from it before she reaches Elementary school. I don't know. Kids with cancer. If you believe in God, and you want to try and convince me to believe in God too, then you've got to account for that. Explain to me why your God gives children cancer and why you think that's okay.
This lady was one of three contestants chosen to represent their area, and they had to run one mile, and the loser didn't get to go to The Biggest Loser camp. So they start the race, and half way through, she's screaming "Oh my God! Oh my God! I'm going to die!" The woman trainer, Jillian, I think her name is, is trying to get her going, pulling her, motivating her, but she wouldn't run! It was pathetic. So again, I'm disgusted. It's an emotional roller coaster, and that's why I love it.
One guy, before the mile run, said "I'm going to run and run no matter what, until my body gives out." Sounds good, but then when he collapsed ten meters from the finish line and lost, I thought, hang on, that's exactly what you said you would do. Why didn't you say, "I'm going to run and run, and finish first"? I am convinced being fat, and I don't mean a bit chubby, I mean so obese that you can't get out of a chair, is totally mental. Genes, DNA, whatever, might make it a little more difficult to lose wieght, but come on. 200 kilos? That's years and years of negligence and indulgence. Stop eating so much. Do some exercise. It's not easy, but neither is eating three pizzas, and they do that all the time. I would rather go for a run that overeat now. The last time I overate was when we went to a yakiniku restaurant for Jo Jo's first birthday, and I ate too much meat. That was in March, and I haven't eaten yakiniku since. The smell turns my stomach. I hate that feeling of being full.
So less than two weeks and we'll all be in Melbourne! Holy shit, it's gone fast. I'm going to have to get off my ass and book a round of golf and organize a night out with my mates.
I'm looking forward to a lot of things. You know what's a shock after living here for so long? Seeing people who are obviously in a lot of trouble but not really aware of it. Every time I go home it amazes me seeing stuff like junkie couples arguing in the street, or people begging for money. Basically, people with no shame. Here, shame is huge. There's too much of it. And the thing about people without shame is that they are so confident! It's like they've got it all figured out, but they still need two dollars for a bus ticket. I love it.
One afternoon a couple of years ago, I was getting a bus home from Knox, and I caught the wrong one, so I went the long way around Ferntree Gully before getting to Bayswater. On the bus a guy was drinking, a real bogan, chipped teeth, beenie, shitty beard, tracksuit pants, Collingwood supporter. The driver told him to get off the bus. The driver was Middle Eastern, so the drink guy denies drinking (even though he's got a can of Jim Beam and Coke in his hand) and said that because we were fighting in Afganistan the bus driver should be grateful to us Aussies and the bus driver stopped the bus and told him to get out and then the drunk guy called him a terrorist and the bus driver started screaming "You are rasicm! You are rasicm!" and calling the bus depot and the drink guy's yelling "I'll call the Cops!" trying to dial on his mobile phone, and meanwhile me and another passenger, a young woman, are just sitting there. She looks scared, and I am fuming.
I'd never done anything like this before, but I yelled, "Hey!", and they both looked up. "You!" I pointed to the drunk guy. "You're drinking, man. I can smell it. You shouldn't be drinking on the bus. You!" I pointed to the driver. "We just want to get home. Can't you two sort this shit out later?!" I managed to make them agree to sort it out at Boronia Depot and we got moving again. Then the drunk guy's like my best friend, saying stuff like "I was going to Boronia anyway," or under his breath, "fucking ragheads". The bus driver is talking to me like I'm going to back him up at the depot, saying "He is drinking, yes?", "He said racism, yes?" Yea yea. I got off at Boronia and caught the train to Bayswater and walked home. The point is, when I go back to Australia I find that I have very little tolerance for scumbags, and I'm worried that it might get me into trouble one day. I think it's because you just don't see them here in Japan, but at home they impact on just about every facet of your life. In shops, on the road, at a restaurant or club, they are everywhere. Drug addicts, losers, dipshits, racists, assholes, you name it. Last time I was down, it was impossible to walk past a talking scumbag without hearing the c-word. Impossible. Here, I can't remember the last time I met an idiot. But when I go home I am liberated by being able to understand and be understood, which is huge. Here I can yell "Hey, what the fuck are you doing?!" but if they answer back, I might not understand what they say, so that kind of makes you think twice before confronting anyone. You can't say "Hey! What they fuck are you doing!?" and then ask them to repeat what they said back to you because you didn't quite catch it and could they speak a little slower this time please.
2010. Not an eventful year for me. A trip to Hawaii, that was nice. I rode my motorcycle a lot. No golf, which is a shame. I might be able to squeeze a round in right at the end, though.

Round 4.1 - Day 100

2010-12-10T06:48:00.001+09:00

What I've done, to postpone my 5 km while I'm feeling a little vulnerable to the seasonal cold that's going around is to extend round 4.1 another 20 days to when I go to Australia. It comes to the pleasing number of 111 days. Triple 1, or, El Treus. Does that even mean anything? I was also a little worried because I had run out of Ventolin for my asthma, but I went to the doctors the other day and got the Japanese version of the same stuff. So I'm good to go.

Round 4.1 - Day 90

2010-11-29T21:37:00.001+09:00

Only a couple off days to go now. Can my body hold out? It is under attack from germs. The bastards got me. I think I'm getting a cold. But I've loaded up on the Vitamin C, and I'm drinking heaps of water, so I'm giving myself every chance. I've stopped drinking dairy too, which has left me mucus free. However, I am not willing to run 5 km non-stop if I'm not feeling well, so we might have to put that one on hold. X-Stretch tonight, and if I feel up to it I have a Chest, Shoulders & Triceps that I owe, and then if I feel up to it tomorrow, the 5 km run. I think that if I'm going to do more running, I'm going to have to buy a small nano ipod. I love my ipod, but it's a behemoth, an anachronism, a weight holding me down. It inhibits me. Maybe it's time to put the old boy to bed, and get me one of those tiny, light ones.
Will had English Play Group yesterday, and loved it as usual. Only a couple of other kids came, and the whole endeavor is kind of fizzing out, but I think it's worth another go at it, so next year we are all going to try again, this time with a little more structure.
Holy shit, only three weeks till we are off to Australia! I can't wait, though I'm a little apprehensive about the flight. Have you experienced the look you get when you walk onto a plane holding an infant? People hate you instantly. I just have to try and relax. Remind me that I have those painkillers from my mole extraction surgery that I never took.
I watched The Next Three Days or whatever it's called, a Russell Crowe film. It's pretty good. I like watching normal people in movies. Not just cops or gangsters or superheroes. I also bought Left 4 Dead 2 yesterday, five bucks from Steam. Man, I can't look at the Steam store without buying something. They always have some sale going on. $5 for one of the biggest and best games of the year? Yes, please. You can't buy the same game in Australia though, because our betters in the Australian Government think we aren't grown up enough to play it. Too gory for our delicate Antipodean sensibilities. If it wasn't for them, you guys in Oz might have played it, and god knows what would have happened. It's lots of fun. I like it when a zombie rushes at me, then I smash the butt of my shotgun into it's face, sending it sprawling back against the wall, and then when it recovers and goes for me again, I blow it's head off. Yea! Dayum!

Round 4.1 Day 84

2010-11-23T21:32:00.005+09:00

On Friday night I went for a 5 km run, 5 x 1000 m with a 2 minute break in between. This is the distance I'm going to run on the last day of this round, but I'll be doing it non-stop. I'm not sure how I'll go, but, unusual for me, looking forward to the challenge. Sunday I did Just Arms at another local city gymnasium. A little disappointing, not as good as the one I went to last month. They only had dumbbells up to 10 kg. I don't think I'll go there again. It seems all people go there for is to lay about on the stretching mats watching TV. I felt a little embarrassed exerting myself. Saturday I did X-Stretch, and got my nose to my knee doing seated hamstring stretch. First time.
What else did I do? I watched "Buried". Meh. Picked the ending half way through the movie. I played with the boys a lot. Jo Jo is now walking sometimes! Miracle. He can say "ball" too. Not bad for 12 months, except that he's 20 months. William still likes dinosaurs. He's going to bore everyone stupid in Australia. I have visions of people saying "Really? Carnivore? Ok mate, I really have to go now. I - ah, Parasaurolophus? No, I didn't know that" as they slowly back away.

Parasorolophus

Anyway, round 4.1 is almost over, only a week to go. I've enjoyed this one, and I feel really strong. I've broken through the plateau this time, really lifting a lot. The last month especially. So I'm keen to step it up next round after Australia. I might do a little more cardio next time and try to lose a few kilos. Running is okay but it's hard on the ol' hips, so maybe some Insanity again. Now that the temperature has dropped, it's not so scary. I do feel a little heavy though. I've got Legs & Back tonight, then it's the home stretch. I think the key to this round has been the shortened resistance workouts. I've been able to do them in the evening without feeling like I've sacrificed the whole evening, and without getting worn down. An entire P90X workout goes for one hour, and that's without taking breaks, which I like to do, a few minutes here and there. It's too much. A couple of times this round I have done the whole thing, usually on a weekend when I have time, but most of the time it's half workouts. And I have been disciplined. I have only missed one workout, and I plan to catch up on it this week. So that means every workout I scheduled three months ago, I've done. I'm going to reward myself with a trip to the chiropractor to get my neck cracked, because it's feeling a little tight, and I'm getting small headaches occasionally. It's sitting down all day at this fucking desk all day that does it.

Had to happen

2010-11-15T21:34:00.004+09:00

A hologram singer. Keep in mind that the crowd are all, ALL, men aged around 30.

Almost the same, but real, are AKB48, a 48(!) member girl band, average age about 18. Crowd are the same bunch of people, the famed "Otaku", which the media around the world insist are cool, until you actually meet one and you just want to slap the fuck out of them.

Somewhere in the world, men are fighting for their freedom. Here they masterbate over cartoon schoolgirls.

Round 4.1 Day 72

2010-11-11T21:42:00.002+09:00

I got the mole cut out of my back yesterday. I went to the dermatologist about lunchtime, and then I was taken upstairs to the surgery, then told to strip and put a gown on. I wasn't sure if the nurse had asked me to completely undress, or just take my top off. It sounded like she had asked me to completely undress, but I thought, that can't be right. I had visions of me walking into the surgery completely naked but for the gown and the nurses screaming "No!" and me feeling like a complete dumb bastard. It's like when I went to the chiropractor, and went to take my T-shirt off before we began, and the nurse screamed "No!" You keep your T-shirt on, jumper on, when you go to the chiropractor in Japan. I didn't know that. They massage you through the cloth. So just as the nurse was leaving I asked her, my jeans too? and she said, no, leave your jeans on. Victory for Jim.
I thought this would be a little procedure, like a jab with a painkiller and then a few swipes with the knife then cauterize the wound and off we go. But the doctor is scrubbing down, and there are two nurses, and it's a full on surgery. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to be getting prepped for serious, life-or-death surgery, and I thought fuck that. They took my gown off (I wore it for about ten seconds, from the change rooms to the operating table) and they got me to lie on my left side. Then the doctor gave me an injection of painkiller and when to cutting and burning. It took about twenty minutes. I wish I could have seen it. They didn't even show me the stuff they cut out. After that I got dressed, and waited downstairs. They gave me shit-load of pills (anti-biotics, which I might take if it starts aching, some stomach medicine for god knows what reason which I won't take, and some strong pain killers which I might save for the flights to and from Australia). All up it cost about $150, and the results of the biopsy will be back next week. My karma lawyer advises me to state I have absolutely no comment to make while the investigation is being performed. The large strip of gauze I have on my back is a little uncomfortable, and to make matters worse, I did Legs & Back before going yesterday and I am sore like a bastard. Today is a rest day, and tomorrow we are back into it. The Doctor said I can't workout for a week, and I said, "Don't tell me what I can't do!" and he said "What do I know? I'm just a doctor." (The first line is from Lost. 10 points if you can tell me which movie the second line is from. Hint - I associate this movie with plastic Pepsi Max bottles filled with tissues.) No, he said no such thing.
Other than that, an uneventful week.
PS Any reporters in Oz golf pick up on the fact that Tiger isn't wearing his Buddhist bracelets anymore? He said he'd wear them forever.

Friday Movie Rant

2010-11-05T22:33:00.001+09:00

Can I just say how awesome TV has been the last few years? Lost, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Friday Night Lights (which I've kind of gone off, but still a good show), Dexter, Battlestar Galactica, Californication, Bill Maher, The Office, Daily Show, Colbert Report, and many more. Every time I reach the point where I think I've watched everything, along comes another show. The Walking Dead, a zombie series! Why hasn't anyone done this before? And on top of that, Sherlock. There's only three episodes, but they're good. I haven't read the original books, but I think I will. Oh, and I haven't watched one episode of The Wire yet, which it seems is everybody's choice for Best Show Ever. Dunno, it can't be better than Babylon 5, can it? Anyway, I'll always have that to fall back on in lean times, but at the moment there's no need.
I watched Inception the other day, too. Blown away. Great Movie. Kind of like the Matrix where I was never confused enough to totally lose track of what was going on, but I still can't bring myself to sit down and think it through totally. I do think Dicaprio should cool it with the stressed-out guy with the crappy wife characters, though. Three in a row, by my counting.
I was web surfing the other day and I came across The Independant's list of Top Ten Sci-fi films. Before the list had a chance to load I closed the browser and wrote down my own top ten first. Here it is - mind you, I put in all 5 minutes of thought into this.
1. The Empire Strikes Back
I love this movie. It's so good. The characters are so defined, and so cool. I saw this in the cinema before I saw Star Wars, so I must have been 6 or 7, and I didn't get it. I thought Luke killed Darth in the tree on Dagoba, so then he meets up with him again in Bespin, and then beats him again, but then Darth shows up again, and Luke keeps beating him until Darth cuts off his hand. I thought there must be a whole army of Darths. Now I know that Darth was just messin' with Luke, hiding, taunting, testing him. And the tree was Luke's own fear made manifest. But I was confused after the first time I saw it. C3PO is hilarious in this movie. Such a bitch! When he interupt's Lea and Han's first kiss with "Sir! Sir! I've isolated the main power somthing!" When he gets all upset after Han calls him the professor. When he meets that other protocol droid in Bespin and the other droid tells him to fuck off ("Etchutta") and C3PO says "How rude!" (which Lucas has Ja Ja Binks say TWICE in the Phantom Menace. WTF is up with that?) What else? Walkers, Yoda! Asteroids, Luke and Darth battling, Han with the lightsaber slicing open the Tan-tan guts! Lea: "I love you" Han: "I know". You see Darth with his helmet off for a moment. I could watch this movie again and again.
2. Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
I must have watched this two or three times with my dad growing up. The last half an hour is incredible. You forget that this guy ditches his kids and flies off with the aliens because you get so wrapped up in it. The lights and the clouds that form whenever the big mother ship comes and the music. I love it.
3. Star Wars
Just a part of my childhood. I've always had Star Wars. I was 9 when the Star Wars movies finished, and it was guys like me and my friends, all over the world, who kept it going when it could have just faded away like the Matrix movies or Lord of the Rings. Stickers, figures, games, books, anything to do with the movies we ate it up. And when the videos came out, we watched it again and again.
4. ET
Lucas, Spielberg, Lucas, Spielberg. Grew up in the 80's much? This is the only movie that makes me cry. When ET's sick, and Michael finds him in the river all white and weezy, I tear up every time. The menacing adults with their fucked up lives, and you know that if they get their hands on ET, they will kill him. The BMX chase was huge for me. So much Spielberg in this. The missing father, the humour, the perfect ending. Real endings, nothing left untied for a possible sequel.
5. Couldn't think of one. Needed a gap to seperate the top four from the rest. because the next five movies are movies I saw as a adult, and are just movies.
6. Contact
When I saw this I was deep into my degree and thinking about stuff like how and where meaning is created, and this movie kind of tapped into that, so when the alien appeared as her father, I thought, exactly. Some people felt ripped off, but the point is, how can you conceive of something totally outside your realm of understanding? You can't. The alien had to appear to her as her father for her to be able to see it. All through the movie she is battling the religious characters in the movie, asking them how they can beleive in something they can't perceive, becasue she can't, and the alien honours that. A really, really, smart movie. Had me from the first scene when they start zoom in from the edge of the universe into the girl's eye. There are some technical shots in this movie involving mirrors that I can't work out how they did.
7. Alien
I could have put Aliens in here instead, but I don't think it's necessarily a sci-fi movie. It's just like Predator, but in space. Or maybe Predator is a sci-fi movie. Dunno. Seems more like action-horror to me. There's no real sci-fi motifs in Aliens, just hunter and prey. Alien was really creepy though. I have liked all the Alien movies, though I wish they'd keep control of the brand. The other day in the video shop I saw a DVD called "Alien vs Cube". Yep, the alien is in the cube. Here's a movie for you. "Alien: We Need To Talk". Alien, aging and alone, discovers she has a teenage daughter, and together they explore love, sadness, and finally, acceptance. Then she punches through her daughter's skull with her internal jaws.
8 to 10. Terminator, Galaxy Quest, Moon, District 9, The Fly, Total Recall, Robocop, Enemy Mine, Starship Troopers, 2010, Matrix 2, War Of the Worlds (the new one).
Any of those, and a lot more. Moon was good, Starship Troopers is just so clever, Disctrict 9 was the best movie of last year, all good.
So here's The Independant's list.
1. Blade Runner
2. 2001
3. Star Wars
4. Alien
5. Metropolis (the old one)
6. The Day The Earth Stood Still (the old one)
7. Terminator
8. Planet of the Apes (the old one)
9. ET
10. Solaris (the old one)
Couple of things. First, boring list. Why bother? Anyway, hands up if you've seen Metropolis. Solaris. The Day the Earth Stood Still? And can some one explain to me why Blade Runner is always up there? Which Blade Runner? The one that was released in the cinemas, or one of the many versions since? It looks great, and I like the premise, but god it's boring. I have never been able to sit through it. Metropolis. Another one no-one has seen. In the hundred years of cinema since, only 4 SF movies better than it. Really? I liked Planet of the Apes. Did you know the guy who wrote the book was a prisoner of the Japanese during WW2? Makes sense. 2001, okay, I liked the start.
The best sci-fi makes you think about the present or past from another perspective. Can you watch Planet of the Apes and not think about how we treat animals? When you watch Moon, are you just waiting for that robot to double-cross him, because everyone knows you can't trust a machine? Can we behave ethically towards beings that are not human? That's a tough one. If you don't think of someone or something as fully human, then you can own them as slaves or exterminate them in ovens and think nothing of it. Have you ever felt for a zombie? What is it about zombies that makes it okay to randomly slaughter them for laughs? Why are clones in movies always searching for their original? Why are originals so threatened or repulsed by their clones? And that's why, in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Lucas had a CLONE army fighting a ROBOT army, and that's why nobody in the world gave a shit who won. Clones with New Zealand accents no less! I still don't know who won the clone wars. Apparently it's still going on TV.
I think CG has done a lot to hurt sci-fi. I can still spot it. It's bland, flat, and rather than freeing up the director to do anything they imagine, it makes them lazy. The Star Wars prequels will always be exhibit A. Ridiculous how much crap Lucas squeezes into each scene in these movies. Can't just have a CG beast of burden walk across the shot, it's also got to do a shit, and then a robot has to step in the shit, and then it has to say "pu do" or some other rip-off from the original trilogy. Thirty years ago, the beast would have cost a million to make and operate, and if it walked at all, that was a stunning achievement. Normally they wouldn't have bothered, and they would have had to think of something else. But now it's a guy at a computer scared that if he doesn't have his beast do something eye-catching, Lucas won't notice, and he'll lose his job. If you watch the making of the prequels documentaries, it's computer artists competing against each other to catch Lucas' attention. And you can see that in the movies. Crap!
But also, all aliens look like bugs or lizards now, because bugs and lizards are easy to do CG. And they compensate for the inhumanity by putting in big, wet eyes, which can't be done properly yet. They look like transluscent glass balls.
Dinosaurs, sure. They look great. The gophers and monkeys in Indy 4, garbage. Garbage! Young Jeff Bridges in the new Tron trailer = absolutely shithouse. They still can't do a living creature with any soul, so they shouldn't even try. Gollum looked great, but they could have starved a midget who can act and it would have looked better, and his eyes were a problem. And we are talking about one of the greatest fictional characters in literature, so they had something to work with. There is an explosion in the new Rambo movie that is laughable. They still can't do smoke. Avatar looked okay, but the CG characters have no mass. They can't touch each other. It doesn't look real.
I think there will be a return to models and puppets and suits. Not robotics though. Too troublesome. Facial recognition, like Gollum and Avatar, obviously has great results, and work for humanoid faces, but never human faces. It's called the Uncanny effect. Our brains are so good at identifying and interpretuing human faces and movements, that anything remotely false ruins the whole thing.
In my ideal movie, I don't want to see CG explosions or smoke, bug or lizard aliens, or WIRE WORK! God I hate wirework! It looks shit. If a stuntman or woman can't do it, then it can't be done. Just because you have erased the wire doesn't mean we can't see it. No CG critters (fuck you Indy 4, with your gophers and monkeys), no fake blood spurts (Rambo). No camera wobble when something flies past the camera. Who thought of that? I never saw that before GC. Imagine that famous scene in Star Wars when we first see and hear tie fighties as they fly past the camera in a shot establishing the Death Star. No wobble. It would have one now though. And it would probably have seven Star Destroyers in the background, and a hundred other tie fighters, and an animal having a shit somewhere in there.
No unrealistic camera positions. Yea, CG frees up the camera, but that doesn't mean the camera is free. You can't be zooming and flying and moving around all over the place, because it would be impossible with a real camera. Again, Lucas in Attack of the Clones, and Jackson in LOTR. As soon as they start doing that, I look for little CG men running around like a PC strategy game, with their fake capes billowing out behind them. Another example, though a little more interesting, is Panic Room, where the camera moves through the handle of a kettle. Clever, but jarring.
I guess what I'm saying is this: If a film uses CG the way I want it to be used, then it would not be noticed, but from the filmaker's point of view, if it is not noticed, then what's the point of using it? That's the dilemma, isn't it. The filmmaker who says "Look! CG!" is a poor filmaker, not sure of his capabilites as a storyteller. There needs to be some restraint.
Probably the most diasspointing CG I have ever seen is the zombies in I Am Legend. Who let that happen? They looked ridiculous. Ruined a good movie.
I like what Zack Snyder is doing in his movies. He uses CG really well. 300 and Sin City look awesome. It's kind of an uber-reality. More real that reality. That's fine. Use CG for what it's good at. If they are trying something new, like Gollum in LOTR or the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, fine too. What I want is not to be able to tell. The first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan, awesome. If I can tell that it's fake, it pulls me out of the movie, and reminds me that I'm watching something manufactured. If you are going to use CG smoke instead of real smoke because it's easier and cheaper, then you damn well better do it right, or I will be insulted, and pissed off if I have paid to see the movie.
So the next big CG movie is Tron Legacy, and I have heard that executives are having fits about the Jeff Bridges face. So they should. Just get someone who looks like Jeff Bridges! Or put some makeup on the actual Jeff Bridges! Or do what they did with Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button, which I heard looked really good. Sucker Punch looks awesome as well, and I like the samurai in the trailer. But then I saw the trailer for Clint Eastwood's new movie with Matt Damon, about a psychic or something, and just in the trailer I saw the shitiest CG I have seen since watching the Discovery channel. Rubbish. If I had seen any hint of wirework in that amazing scene in Inception in the hallway, that would have been so dissapointing. But I didn't, and I was sold on the movie. That's quality. There is still a "Wow, how did they do that?" factor in movies. You can only get it by spending a shit load of money and building special stuff and doing it right.
A word about Indy 4. I loved the first three movies. I loved the third one, which for some reason it is cool to shit on. "And ziz is how ve say goodbye in Germany, Dr Jones." Brilliant. Well, bring me Indy 4 and I will lay a steaming turd on that one, becuase it is TIOLET!
Before seeing it, I followed it's progress. Lucas pushing and pushing until Speilberg threw up his hands and said "fuck! OK!" Then I read the reviews and heard about monkeys and aliens and shit like that. The trailers looked okay. But I wasn't looking forward to it. And then I saw it, and I hated it. Outside the cinema, a friend of mine, way into his Star Wars and like a brother to me (like all my friends back home) said that it was like I wanted it to be shit for some reason, and though he said it wasn't great, he enjoyed it. I didn't deny that there might be a grain of truth in that, though I was surpised that after the energy he spent sticking up for the SW prequels he was going to stick up for this too. But since then I have wondered, "Was it really as shit as I thought it was?", so last week I got it and tried to watch it again with an open mind.
It's hard. First shot is of a CG gopher. Reminds me of Caddyshack, except Caddyshack is good. Then there's the suicidal kids in the hotrod. Okay, not a good start. And it doesn't get much better. The Russians are okay, Kate Blanchet looks wierd when she should have looked a little bit alluring, and her mind trick falls flat as a brick. Then there's the CG gun powder. Anyway, it redeems itself with the nuclear test scene. Except that Indy survives being hurled five kilometers in a fridge. And then when he gets out of the fridge (unharmed) to watch a really cool nuclear mushroom cloud, hey guess what? The gopher is there! My god. It's just like watching the prequals again.
Then I started to enjoy it a little. But every time I started to enjoy it, something happened! Indy's boss walks into the middle of Indy's class while he's teaching, and basically fires him in front of his students! Holy shit! I enjoyed the motorcycle chase, the funny line in the library, and the searching for the skulls. Why did Mutt bring his motorcycle? No idea what happened to that. And then they found the skull, and the Russians came, and the crazy guy, and I had stuff to do so I turned it off, and I never had the urge to go back to it. So I'm sticking by my initial impression. It wasn't me. I was right. The movie is shit.
I've heard Lucas is pushing for another one. I don't understand. Sometimes I try to imagine that if I had a billion dollars, and someone said, you do this and you'll get fifty million dollars, and I feel like, meh, would I do it? Why would I waste my time doing anything I didn't passionately want to do? Whatever I did would not be for the money. So either he's doing it for the money, which is hard to belileve, or he really wants to do it and this is the best he can do. I watched the Making of Phantom Menace with this is mind. He makes terrible decisions, but seems so sure of what he's doing, and everyone around him so scared of him, and so scared of saying the wrong thing. It's horrible to watch. Like when he says to Speilberg, we've got these robots, and the Jedi just cut them down like butter, it's so cool. Cool if you're a Jedi, but really boring if you're in the cinema watching it. But wait, not only are they inneffectual, they also behave lilke buffoons! "Roger, Roger," all that shit. Is that an ode to Flying High? I remember watching it the first time and thinking, did that piece of shit robot just make a joke? My god.
I'm betting Indy 4 changed Speilberg's and Lucas' relationship. After all of the good and interesting movies Speilberg has been making for so long, I bet the whole Indy 4 experience sucked for him. The question I asked myself the most while watching Indy 4 is "Why?". Why did they make it, and why am I watching it? Why? Why!?

Round 4.1 Day 64

2010-11-03T06:56:00.000+09:00

You may have felt a little different yesterday morning when you woke up. Like something was not quite right. Maybe you thought you were coming down with something, or maybe you had one of those feelings that today was not going to be your lucky day. Well don't worry. It's not about you. It's just that Tiger Woods is no longer the world's best golfer. Lee Westwood is. He has won once this year, once more than Tiger. Welcome back to what golf felt like before Tiger. Boring.
Has a professional athlete ever had a worse year than Tiger has had this year?
My latest theory is this. I think Tiger was seduced by Michael Jordon. I think Michael Jordon enjoyed corrupting Tiger Woods. They have the same kind of personality, they are so competitive. I think Jordon would have taken some delight in watching Tiger be torn down doing stuff that Jordon has gotten away with for years. Early on, Tiger was warned to stay away from Jordon but didn't listen. John Merchant, Tiger's first lawyer, says “I told him, ‘Stay away from that son of a bitch, because he doesn’t have anything to offer to the fucking world in which he lives except playing basketball, which he did yesterday."
What do you do if you're young, and rich, and the best in the world, and hanging out with your hero, and your hero is teaching you how to pick up waitresses and how to gamble millions away in a night and how to keep the wife from knowing, and it's fun and easy and you can't stop? I think that's what happened. I wonder if they are still talking?
Workouts - no dramas. I did spend about $150 last month on crap - kitkats, coffee, chips, etc. Convenience store food, or vending machine food. That's a lot of money. And a lot of fat, sugar, and salt that I'm putting through my body. I'm going to cut that down to half this month, and then cut it out completely in 2011. Okay, maybe a can of coffee occaisionally, but not the three a day I have been having.

Round 4.1 Day 55

2010-10-25T21:30:00.000+09:00

Wassup? Trip is all booked, and now I'm just trying to work out what days I'm going to do this and that, and how I can squeeze golf and beers in there somewhere. On Saturday I went to the doctor's. Last week I visited a dermatologist about a mole on my back that is getting bigger. I think I've mentioned it in the past. It doesn't hurt and it isn't itchy, but it's there, so I should do something about it. So the doctor refers me to another doctor, and Will and I went there. When we were called in Will asked the doctor if I was going to get a needle. The doctor said maybe not, but I did end up having to give some blood. Will told me not to cry. I didn't. They are going to cut the mole out in a couple of weeks. First time I've gone under the knife. I hope they sew it up properly so I can keep exercising without having it ripping open on me. Will was wearing a Tyrannosaurus Rex hat his auntie Tokie gave him, which looks like he's carrying a T-Rex on his shoulders, so all the nurses had a giggle.
I've had a big weekend workout-wise. Chest & Back Friday, more push-ups and pull-ups than ever, then a 4.8 km run on Saturday (6 x 800), and then Just Arms yesterday. The run was interesting because I resolved to do the entire run in POSE style, trying to stay off my heels and get that "4" shape going. After a while it felt really good, but my calves are killing me today. The workout is going to culminate in a non-stop 5 km run, something I don't think I have ever done before, and I expect to do it easy, and I'm actually looking forward to it. I think at some stage I'm going to spend some dosh on a good pair of shoes and a nano. Carrying around my big old classic ipod when I run is a pain in the ass.

Round 4.1 Day 52

2010-10-22T06:23:00.002+09:00

So I'm at day 51 of round 4.1, more than half way through already. I feel great. I'm getting pretty ripped, too. The last couple of weeks my reps have gone up. I don't know what it is, maybe the cooler weather. Maybe the HGH. I just feel really fit. I'm not really taking any HGH.
I've booked a trip home for Christmas, too. With the family this time. When I bought the tickets I went through the process on the Japanese Jetstar site and reached the "確認" page ("Confirmation") which I really wish was in past tense but was just that one tense less word. I checked for a button or something to push to save or print or something, but there was none, so I guessed I bought them. I thought I would receive a confirmation email, you know, hey just letting you know you have in fact spend thousands of dollars on plane tickets thanks etc. But nothing. So I called them up today and spoke to an Indian guy I couldn't understand (I would have done better in Japanese) but I eventually confirmed that I had bought them and he said (I think) that he would send me an email saying as much. Anyway, arriving the morning of December 21, and leaving on the 10th of January. Still have to buy tickets from the Gold Coast to Melbourne, but we're trying to squeeze in a couple of nights at the Gold Coast at the end of the trip, but hotels are filling up, so still up in the air on when we will be leaving Melbourne. Definitely arriving in Melbourne on the afternoon of the 21st though. Everyone's coming, Junko and the boys, so it's the big one. Infant on a plane. This will be Will's third trip to Oz, and Joseph's first. Anyway, will let everyone know when plans are settled, and I hope I get to see everyone! BBQs, golf, Puffing Billy, Penguins, beach, it's all good. That's my thinking.
I'm looking at the schedule, and I'm already wondering what I'm going to do when I finish this round. I've got three weeks between the end of round 4.1 and the trip. When I first started P90 I thought, wow, when the 90 days is up I'm going to have a rest and relax and take it easy for a while. Which I did, going to Hawaii. But as I approached the end of it I didn't really want to have a long break. Two weeks, then a week, then a few days. I wanted to keep on going. Working out had become a habit, and I didn't want to break it. It's the same now. I don't want to get soft and lazy again. That's my thinking.
So round 5. What form will it take? I like the shorter resistance workouts, so I might stick to that, but I'm thinking I'll leave the P90X videos behind and make my own resistance workouts using some exercises from them. I might edit some of the videos, just cut out the stuff I don't need, and use them if I feel like I need some structure to the workout. That might be the best thing. That's my thinking.

Round 4.1 Day 30-something

2010-10-13T22:51:00.002+09:00

Busy long weekend.
Saturday was pool, then some shopping. It was supposed to be Will's sports day at school, but it rained all day and was posponed until Monday, a public holiday. Sunday was English Playgroup, but Will and I were the only ones who turned up. Disapointing, but oh well. I guess everyone was pretty busy with their kid's sports day and stuff. Then on Monday we had Will's sports day. It was pretty fun, if long. Will did really well. Last year he suffered because he had no idea what was going on at the starting line, and missed the start by about 2 seconds. This time he was ready. He was poised to go, and Junko and I shouted something about listening to the teacher and being ready to go and he shouted "Wakatta!" (I know!") and everyone laughed. He did good, finishing second behind a really fast kid. He was pretty happy. So a big few days, then I took yesterday, Tuesday, off work and we went to Japan Monkey Park, which at the moment has a dinosaur display! Since Will found a brochure about six weeks ago he has been dying to go, and then yesterday we finally went. Three huge robot dinosaurs, growling and roaring etc, and some activites like digging up fossils and riding a small triceretops. Well, it took us an hour to get there by train and bus, and he balks at the entrance. Too scary. You could hear the roars from outside the pavilion. I tried dragging him in, but I feared I might do some mental damage. He was crying and shaking. All I thought is that if I don't get him in there now, all he will want to do as soon as he gets home is come back and see the dinosaurs. I'd put up with a month and half of it, and I was going to end it now. So we sat down, and I delivered a speech. "I know you're scared, but you're brave, and you're going to do it anyway." I drilled this into him and got him pumped up, and said "C'mon!" and high fives and then we went in, just hammered in until we were face to face with the T-Rex. He was scared, but I think that's okay. I think it was exhilarating for him. There's no point reading about and watching and drawing dinosaurs for weeks and weeks without being a little scared of them, because they would rip his guts out in a second if they were around now, and you should respect that. Anyway, he had a great day, and Japan Monkey Park isn't a bad place. You can get pretty close to the Monkeys. Here's a picture of Will and his friend Kai with a King Julian monkey.

Workouts good. Ran 4 km on Saturday, X-Stretch on Sunday, Shoulders & Arms on Monday, and Killer Abs yesterday. Got Legs & Back tonight after Nori's lesson (if I have a lesson with him, he's cancelled the last two weeks). Going to try for 40 pull ups tonight.
Did you see the article in The Age this morning about a study that says house prises will rise 20% in the next three years? The Sydney Morning Herald called the company that created this study, BIS Shrapnel, "a respected business forecaster ". It is a PR company and was commisioned (paid) by QBE to do this study. QBE owns and runs LMI mortgage insurance, which makes money when you take out a mortgage, and probably makes more money when you can't pay it. It's advertising. It's criminal. Do Australians know that Perth and Queensland are already crashing? Not if they read the papers they don't.
Anyway, I'm sure everything will be fine. Australia is different, you know.

Round 4.1 Day 37

2010-10-07T22:59:00.001+09:00

On Tuesday I took the day off because I was sick (of work). I wanted to go to the city gym and do Chest & Back, but when I got there I found out it was closed for the day, so I went to a newer city leasure centre-type place. They had a gym with plenty of weights and pull up bars and stuff, so I paid my 400 yen and off I went. Gyms are funny places. Lots and lots of machines, people watching TV on these machines. I'm starting to think cardio is a real waste of time. I'm sure there is some cardio-vascular benefits, but if you're doing it to lose weight, it just doesn't make sense. The calories lost in one hour on a treadmill can be wiped out by a donut. Rigourous excersise is the only way to go. Lifting till you can't lift anymore, running until you can't run anymore, doing somethign until you can't do it anymore, that's the only way to go. And then not rewarding yourself, not eating any crap for weeks and weeks. That's the hard part. Walking for an hour won't do much except grease the moving parts. Better than nothing, I guess. It just seems so boring, walking and watching TV. Especially here, with the TV as boring as it is. Then there are the machines. People lifting really light weights, 10 reps, hardly raising a sweat, filling out the form when they finish. Waste of time.
I wish there was a Crossfit gym here. I'm sure there are some in Melbourne, and if I were living there I would definately join up. If you are serious about getting stronger and having your ass kicked every single time you go to the gym, go to a Crossfit gym.
But anyway. I guess I'm lucky that they had weights and a pull up bar at all. One thing I've learnt living here: take nothing for granted. I took my time doing the workout, and I think doing it in a different environmnet made a difference, and I really did well. I didn't have my previous workout details on me, so I wasn't sure how I was doing comparitively, but when I went home and checked I killed it. Most pushup and pullups in a Chest & Back workout by far. I did the full workout too, not the half workouts I've been doing.
Tonight I've got a 4 km run, which will mess me up, I'm sure. I'm not a very good runner. And then when I get home I will read the chapter of "Where Men Win Glory" where Pat Tillman gets killed. I'm not looking forward to that at all. I wish I had paid more attention to it when it happened. I remember seeing his photo when it happened, the one of him in uniform with a beret, and he looks like a typical thick-necked jock, and if I thought anything about it other than "more lies" I don't remember. All I remember is that 2004 was a year when a lot of awful things happened, like the war in Iraq, the Tsunami, just death and destruction one after the other. Anyway, I'm ashamed that I didn't bother to find out more about it, and especially ashamed that I judged him so quickly and wrongly. I saw his brother on Bill Maher a couple of weeks ago, and that got my attention. There's a documentary out soon too. I tell you what, the US Army fucked with the wrong family when they messed with the Tillmans.
I watched "The Other Guys" the other night. Not a bad movie, got a few chuckles out of it. I've never been a huge Will Farrell fan. I get sick of him after a few minutes. But he was good in this, probably because he's playing a pretty normal guy. One thing I don't like about his films is how one character says something stupid, and then they talk about how stupid it was. Like the tuna/lion thing. Yea it was stupid, but somebody wrote it in a script, so that kind of just makes it lazy. But then his character liked the Little River Band! Hah! Genius!

Round 4.1 Day 32

2010-10-02T09:17:00.000+09:00

I'm currently reading John Krakauer's book about Pat Tillman "Where Men Win Glory". Pat Tillman was a hero, the kind of guy I think every man wishes he was. But he's dead now. And the US Army lied and used his death to recruit more young men to go and die. What a waste. If you let your leaders lie to you they will, because it's all they know how to do, and their lies will kill your best and brightest. I think if a politician is elected and then knowingly lies, they should be hanged. It should be the only capital offense there is.
I once watched a documantary where a group of American solders are trying to talk to the elders of a small Afgan village.
"Where are the Taliban?" they asked. Nobody says anything. One American guy pleades "Why won't you help us? You have to help us!" Then one of the elders looses it. "Why do you need our help? You have tanks, planes, satelittes! We have nothing! How can we possiblly help you?" What a nightmare that place must be.
Reading about Pat Tillman has inspired me to do better than I have been doing. Better with my health, better with my Japanese, better with the people around me. I know I don't have the charisma or the self believe that Pat Tillman apparently had, but that shouldn't stop me from trying to do the stuff I want to do.
Ablett is going to the Gold Coast. I think it's great. He's done everything at Geelong. Premierships, Brownlows, Norm Smiths, B&F, what's left? When you think of the money, and where he will be living, and the fact that he won't be recognised most of the time, which I'm sure he hates, it's a no-brainer. I reckon we'll see a couple of years of Ablett winning games off his own boot, and that will be awesome. I can't wait. At the very least he might stop his whining and bitching on the field.
Hird at Essendon too. I hated watching Hird playing the Swans because he never did anything wrong. He was such a good player, I'm sure he'll be an awesome coach. But they do seem a strange bunch at Windy Hill. Spoilt. Also, why do most of the footy panel shows finish BEFORE the grand final. Every year after the grand final the only show that actually reviews it is the Sunday Footy Show, and that's a bit of a joke show. This year has been good because all the panel shows have had to come back for another week. It seems like normally the biggest and most important game of the year doesn't get the review it deserves.
Beware of an October suprise. It seems lke everything is going to shit itself at the same time. The EU will disintegrate, America will run out of money, and the housing bubble in Australia will pop. I'm predicting a big month. The banks are going to want their money back, and they are going to suck the country dry.

Round 4.1 Day 29

2010-09-29T06:03:00.001+09:00

What a game it was on Saturday. I planned to sit down as soon as I could and watch the whole game, and the torrent came up late Saturday afternoon (Japan time) and I downloaded the 1st quarter first and couldn't help myself, so I watched the first quarter then waited for the second to finish downloading then watched that, and so on, juggling watching and downloading. I watched the first half on Saturday night, then the second half Sunday morning, the last quarter on the big TV using my ipod, but the batteries ran out with a minute to go so I had to race upstairs and watch the end on my computer. So a weird finish, and I'm glad I've got another chance to do it properly this week. I just hope I can have the patience to wait and watch it all at once.
I thought Collingwood were going to win, but those misses by Cloke in the second quarter, especially that last one with 6 seconds to go, that would have put them up by five goals at half time! Sport Karma is so real. You can't get away with anything in sport. It's amazing. Goddard was awesome, and I can't believe he didn't win the Norm Smith, but then I've watched most of it again since, and Hayes is awesome too. Can't split them, really. Did you see on Footy Classified, Stan Grant said that that goal Hayes kicked in the last quarter was the first goal he has ever kicked from outside 50 in his career! Wow. Impressive.
I had a horrible moment when Leon Davis kicked that goal in the last, I could see him kicking another one to seal it and becoming the hero. The wouldn't have been right. The guy has done nothing ever, but keeps getting a game, and then to become a Grand Final hero? No way.
I also have a theory about Milne. He thought scores were level when he let that ball go through for a point, and he thought that point put them in front. That's why he clapped when it went through. Surely you don't let a ball go through for a point to tie the game up with 30 seconds to go giving them possession, and then think, "Yes!" You would think, "Oh, shit! I should have tried to kick a goal!" But to admit that would be to admit you were a dipshit. I don't it's any great secret that he is a dipshit, but you know, why remove any doubt? Then again, it could have gone through for a goal. I kind of feel for him because there's all this "can't perform in a big game" pressure stuff with Milne, like he's a great player or something. He's an good player good at kicking celebration goals. Then again, he's probably a rapist, so I don't feel that sorry for him. It's kind of like expecting Shneider to rip a teams defenses apart, when he's good for a couple of goals, maybe one under pressure. He's not that kind of player, and to expect more is not being realistic. I still think St. Kilda have too many iffy players to win a flag, and Collingwood will win this Saturday. But I did like St. Kilda's immediate reaction to the draw, and I thought Collingwood were a little negative. That's important.
I see channel 7 have taken a page out of channel 10's book and tried to put every single person attending the game on TV at some stage. Watch any other coverage of any other sport around the world, and they never show the crowd. Why do we cut to the crowd all the time? Look everyone! People! Watching! There's a ball up. Director - "Quick! Cut to the guy talking to his mate. Shit! He saw us! Go back the footy! Go back! Shit, he pulled a face. Damn!" How many times did I say "What's going on?" watching the game because apparently Michael Kwim is enjoying himself and we have to see that instead of the footy. I remember in 2005, they kept cutting to the same guy in the crowd the whole last quarter. Some young guy in a Swans jumper. Why? An American watching that would probably think he's Prince Bruce of Australia or something. Weird. It's not some quirk of the game that makes it unique, it's just stupid. I watched some guy yell "You're a fucking cheat, Del Santo!" and I don't know how many times I saw someone yell "Fucking bullshit!". Leave it off the crowd, TV stations. Especially in Collingwood games, because most of them are scum and I don't want to see them. Having said that, let me say this; have they found the guy who took the mark from Milne's goal in the last? Nice one.
Of course the great fear is that this week will be a blowout, and will take something away from the first one, which was an awesome game. I reckon this will probably happen, because it would be such a struggle to get up for it mentally, I doubt both teams can do it. It's like a US Open playoff in golf, which I have heard some footy commentators use to SUPPORT a GF replay. Have you ever watched a US Open playoff? They suck! There's a reason why every other tournament has changed to sudden death playoffs (or a four hole playoff, which suck a little). They are great! They don't take anything away from the result. They ramp up the tension, the pressure, every thing becomes more intense. I would have liked two ten-minute halves. You've had 22 games and three finals to find the best team, that's enough. You don't need another game. There. That's my opinion, which I'm sure will spark discussion and probably force the AFL to make changes.
Having said that, let me say this. It's awesome that we get to watch another game, and I can't wait. I guess that's how most people feel. It sucked because we have to wait another week, but then again, it will be awesome! Conflicting emotions. Suck vs. Awesome. Hard to reconcile.
I will be supporting the Saints, but I think Collingwood will win by... 22 points. Norm Smith goes to Brown. Is that his name? Big guy, cut his eye last week.
Workouts going well. I'm in a rest phase this week, some yoga, some stretching. My legs and hips are tight, which I attribute to riding my motorbike to work instead of cycling/walking. They aren't popping like they used to. I've only got a couple of weeks of riding left before it gets too cold and I'm back on the train.

Round 4.1 Day 22

2010-09-22T21:08:00.009+09:00

So it's been two years since I started working out. Man, a lot of hard work. But I sure am glad I did it. What price can you place on having energy all the time, not to mention the years doing this will add to my life (touch wood). But having said that, at this moment I feel like I'm dogging it. If there is one area that hasn't changed all that much, it's diet. I'm sure it's improved, but not much. Certainly less alcohol. I have a can of beer a month, if that. I was having a can or two a day for a while there two years ago. Hardly a drunk, but there you go. To be honest, I think a couple of drinks one night a week would help me loosen up a little, and is something I might try. A couple of strong bourbon and cokes or something. I still drink too much coffee. God, I feel like I've talked about this so many times. I have to get an alternative. Same with the Kitkats. Or at least cut down to one a day, and not four. The point is, I could do better, and I want to do better. But these last two years have been fantastic, and the great thing is I'm free of that fear that every smoker has, something I seriously wondered if I would ever be free of. My hips are still a little tight. I think I might need a little "Bam!" action.

A year ago I was just about to head to Australia to watch the Grand Final. A year already! That was quick. I'm looking forward to this match too, and I hope Collingwood wins, though if St. Kilda wins that's okay too. I just think Collingwood is the better team, and I want the best to win. I still think the Swans had a real opportunity to get to the granny, though I doubt we could have beaten Collingwood. We haven't beat them for years.
I've been watching Tosh.0, a really funny show, and playing a bit of Counter Strike, too. AK-47 is the tool (Don't make me act the mutha fucking fool! - that's for you, Whits). Apart from that, just keeping going. I went for a nice motorcycle ride on Monday, which was a public holiday. Respect for the Aged Day. Fine, as long as they stay out of my way. The roads out back in the mountains are great for riding. Here's a picture.

Anyway, got Killer Abs tonight, then I'm having a coffee with Nori, and then I'll sit down and watch the end of a documentary about Blur and their reunion. I don't know how they stayed together so long with that guitarist they have. He must have been unbearable to be in a band with. Good documentary though. Brought back a few memories.

Round 4.1 Day 14

2010-09-19T08:09:00.000+09:00

A little bit shattered that the Bulldogs beat Sydney. Watching our lead evaporate was somehow worse that when Carlton came back the week before. I think is was because Carlton was playing so well, and Judd was basically going to win the game for them. This week, however, the bulldogs were still playing crap, and their goals were all stinky, but it just seemed like we couldn't counter that smelliness not matter how well we played. They are my new least favourite team, and I hope St Kilda smash them next week. They should. Swans finished fifth, which is about right, and they'll be better next year. Shaw played really well, too. I was actually feeling confident every time he got the ball. Did some good things. Jude Bolton knocked out again, and played great. Maybe it's time to draft O'Keefe though. Didn't do much this year. I like Kirk, toughest player ever, but that toughness has always compensated for his lack of pace and skill. I don't mind that he's going. He could have stayed another year and ended being a joke like twinkle toes Brad Johnson. Bulldogs supporters must hate it when he gets the ball. I think Kirk has overdone the Buddhist warrior thing, but maybe he's pushing for a spot on the Channel 7 boundary team next year and needs to have a brand for the Sydney market. Has his wife been on that Dancing or Celebrity Masterchef or whatever yet? Can see it happening.
So same top four again. Will the result be the same? The only improver is Collingwood.
Moving forward on the workouts. It's still bloody hot here, so they are still sweatfests. Yesterday I did a modified Crossfit workout called Barbara. It's supposed to be 5 rounds of 20 pullups, 30 pushups, 40 situps, and 50 squats with 3 minutes break in between. I did 4 rounds of 10, 20, 30, and 40, but still with 3:00 in between. I did it in 23:37. I was going to do it properly, but there's no way I could have. And I was going to do five rounds, but there's no way I could have, because I'm a pussy. I should have. But after 4 rounds I was a sweaty heap of pissweak lying on the ground, and I couldn't go on.
The food intake has been ordinary. Some doughnuts (Krispy Kreme - worst doughnuts ever - Mr Donuts shits on KK), Kitkats, coffee, usual stuff. The shame has not worked. I need to get dedicated with the food. Shopping tonight to get what I need.

Round 4.1 Days 4, 5, 6

2010-09-06T22:01:00.002+09:00

Went for a run on Saturday. It was 38 degrees, so I waited until late afternoon to do it. 6 x 400 with 2 minute breaks in between. I was trying to run POSE style, keeping off my heels. It feels really good, but hard on the calves which are not used to it. If I revert back to the normal style I feel sluggish and short, which is sometimes how I feel when I'm running poorly. Anyway, I couldn't find a cheap wristwatch with a stop watch so I had to use my phone to keep time, and I messed it up. I was able to measure the last 400 metres, which I ran at 1:42, so I'll use that as a time to beat next time.
Yesterday was X Stretch, which I was looking forward to, but never managed. Too many things to do, too much football to watch. I'm glad Geelong lost. Kind of over them. If they're good enough, which they are, they'll be in the Grand Final, but it would be nice to see a couple of new teams in there. Bulldog are finished, and that's why it's so important for the Swans to beat Carlton. I have watched the first quarter, and we are playing well, but Cartlon are hanging in there. Wow, if we can win, then beat the Bulldogs, who knows... We did roll St Kilda in '05 to get in the Grand Final. We won't beat Collingwood though, regardless.
Then this morning I did Shoulders & Arms. No dramas.
Weekend shit file: 4 cans of coffee, 1 can of Coke, 2 Kitkats, 1 ice-cream.
EDIT: OMG what a match. The Swans have given me some great moments the last few years, and that was another one. GO SWANS!

Round 4.1 Day 3

2010-09-04T07:01:00.000+09:00

Killer Abs today. Like Fitbomb said in one of his posts, I would be pissed off if I had paid money for this workout. It's just the ab routine from P90 and the ab routine from P90X clumped together. Did okay. I'm being a little careful not to reinjure my hip flexor, which I pulled a couple of weeks ago.
Shit file: 2 cans of coffee, 4 Kitkats, 1 bag of chips.

Round 4.1 Day 2

2010-09-02T22:03:00.002+09:00

I saw a man running for his life, carrying his infant son, and a bullet rips through him and through his son and they fall to the ground. I saw soldiers tear a girl from her mother, and then incinerate the child and then chop the screaming mother's head off. How can I reconcile what I've seen? How can I just resume a normal life?
I think Rambo: First Blood Part 2 fucked me up when I was a kid, and now Rambo has fucked me up again. Holy shit! Violent much? Great stuff. I'm watching it now. Don't tell me he makes his own knife! Hah! He does. Killin's as easy as breathin'. Tell me about it.
So Yoga went well tonight. Yoga is awesome. If I had to choose one workout to do for the rest of my life, it would be Yoga. Love it. I did Patience Hummingbird from Tony's One on One series. I like this one because the poses are held for longer. Tony's entertaining in it, too.
Let's talk coffee. Specifically, Suntory Boss Cafe au Lait. 190 mls of creamy, sweet coffee. Hot or cold. Cold now, because it's Summer, but in a month or two the vending machines will start offering hot cans, and for a while it will depend entirely on my mood which one I chose. Then, when Winter comes, it'll be hot all the way. So hot I can't hold it a single hand for very long. They cost about AUD$1.20. Awesome value. Hard to give up.
I have my first one when I get to work. I have about 500 mls of water with breakfast, which recently is a piece of toast and a fried egg, so this is my morning pick me up. I'm afraid I'm turning into one of those "Don't talk to me before I've had my cup of coffee" people. ("Only if you don't talk to me after you've had it." - Bill Maher.) Then I have one at lunch, with a few Kitkats. I should probably skip this one, because I get jittery. Then occasionally I'll have another one in the afternoon, though I usually regret it afterwards. I'm having one now because I'm doing overtime.
3 is too many. 2 is probably too many too. I hate to think how much sugar and caffeine is in one of these things. I'll try and find out tonight (I've been warned about my Internet use at work). But then if I cut down to one, that one will become so precious to me that I will never be able to go without, which is the ultimate goal. I might bring in some alternative like milo. But then I just find that I drink the same amount of coffee, and less water. I drink a ton of water every day, 2-3 litres easy. So my shit list hasn't improved yet, but I've only started. My goal is for it to be 1 can and 1 Kitkat. All I have to do is do it, and it's done.
Great line from Mad Men last night. "Nobody knows what's wrong with themselves, but everyone else can see it right away." What a show. After watching shows like Lost and Dexter with their big secrets and cliffhanger finishes I was kind of reluctant to start the 4th season of Mad Men. I forgot how good it was. There are clunky moments, but they only stand out because the rest of the show is so good. It looks this season, all the drinking is starting to catch up with Don. He's a mess.
Shit list: 3! cans of coffee. 4 fun-size Kitkats. 4 Pino.

Round 4.1 Day 1

2010-09-01T22:54:00.000+09:00

Chest & Back. I almost didn't get up. But I did. I had my protein shake while I did the workout, so there was no fatigue or nausea. 144 push ups, 32 pull ups. Can only improve. I felt sluggish after a week and a half off. I've also had a stiff neck for a couple of days now, which is uncomfortable. I've got Yoga tomorrow, which might help loosen things up a little.
Shit list: 2 cans of coffee, 4 fun size Kitkats. 1 ice-cream.

Round 4.1

2010-08-31T21:24:00.000+09:00

I had a cold all last week, nothing too serious, but I didn't do any workouts. I haven't done anything for a week. It's been a nice rest, but I'm keen to get going again. So Round 4 is a write-off, and round 4.1 starts tomorrow, the first of September. One thing I've learned from working out and from stopping smoking, if you don't have the right attitude from the start, you won't keep it up. If you do have your mind right though, it can last for as long as you want it to. The main thing is not to quit when you fail. For each round of P90, P90 Master, or P90X I have completed, I have started two or three that I didn't finish for one reason or another, usually a cold or an injury. That's okay. I don't have to get down on myself, think stuff like "I never finish anything" or "it's too hard, I can't do it". I know that I can do it because I've done it, but it takes a few goes to get the mind right.
This round I want to concentrate on a few things specifically, and it's going to be a little different that the previous rounds. I'm doing abbreviated P90X rounds, same as before. I do about half the workouts. P90X workouts are long, so it's still challenging. I will be able to lift heavier weights because I won't be so buggered. When it cools down I might go back to a full-length workout, but I doubt it. I think the next step will be making up my own workouts from the P90X exercises that I think work for me. But that's round 5 stuff.
I want to do more running, increasing the length from about 2.5 kilometres with breaks at the start to a full 5 kilometre run at the end of the round. This is a really modest goal, but I have never really liked running, though I appreciate the benefits of it. I was impressed with the muscle aches I got after doing it last time, which means it's working my legs like the other exercises I do don't. I might even get to liking it at the end.
Also, I want to incorporate a bit of Crossfit. I tried last time, but to be honest, I whimped out and chose the running because those WODs scare me. But I'm going to do it this time. They are timed workouts, so I'll be able to see the improvements I'm making as I go.
A typical week looks like this:
1. Chest & Back (or another P90X workout)
2. Yoga
3. Rest
4. Shoulders & Arms (or another P90X workout)
5. Killer Abs
6. Running or Crossfit WOD
7. X Stretch
So that's the workout aspect. Nothing too strenuous, but certainly not nothing.
The next is to cut down on the shit I eat. I'm going to work on the principle that with shame comes change, so I'm going to keep track of the shit I eat. Let's use yesterday as an example. I had 2 cans of coffee, 1 can of 7Up, 4 fun-size Kitkats, 1 ice-cream, a couple of biscuits, and a piece of cake. That's a heavy shit-eating day. I'm not fussed about calories or carbs and all that (not yet, anyway), but it's just common sense. Shit food is shit food, and I want to put less of it in my body.
So by December I hope to be in really good shape. And by December it will be cold! Oh, to be cold. Wearing jeans and jumpers. Sleeping under the covers. Enjoying a nice warm coffee or milo. Seems so long ago now.
Anyways, pumped up for a big AFL finals season. Go Swans! I hope we can give them all a big fright. Like in all sport, the winner is the one who wants it the most. How bad do the big boys want it? We've won it from fifth before, we can do it again.

Week 4 Already

2010-08-16T14:59:00.005+09:00

I really enjoyed watching the Swans Freo game last night. They've had the wood on us for years, and this year they've been playing great, though recently they've suffered some injuries. We played really well, much better than Freo, but it seemed every time I looked at the scores they were three points in front! We got up in the end, and the young guys did really well, and there were some inspirational attacks on the ball that were awesome except that they took themselves out of the game. Jack was sensational. He plays a lot like Gary Ablett Jr., except that he doesn't whine constantly like Ablett does.
One thing about whining. I really hate that "Why didn't you kick it to me?" thing that a lot of players do. Typically it goes like this. A midfielder evades a tackle or two and has a shot from forty and misses, and there's a team mate in the goal square with his arms up like "I'm right here!", whether he's covered by an opposition player or not. Fevola does this when he is playing like shit. Most teams have players that do it. If I was the coach, I would absolutely ban it. Any player that does it is off. There is one player at Sydney who does it all the time. Rhyce Shaw. The Human Turnover himself. He's always yelling at teammates when he thinks they did something wrong. The arrogance of this is astounding, especially considering the amount of errors (mostly unforced) that he makes every match. Ted Richards has been doing well lately, but Rhyce, I hope this is your last year at Sydney.
The Chinese guy sitting next to me at work is back from a week in Shanghai, and is as sick as a dog. That's what happens when you don't wash your hands after going to the toilet. And I'm guessing Shanghai toilets are pretty bad. Maybe it's some mad new virus, pig-chicken-human strain that hasn't made the news yet. Maybe it has already killed tens of thousands, and the Chinese government is desperately trying to keep this lethal new virus under wraps for fear of it ending the economic bubble, and this man has somehow slipped though the net. Maybe this man saw some things in Shanghai that made his blood curdle, societies being torn apart, parents dumping the bodies of their dead children, dogs tearing at the corpses on the side of the roads, and he thought he got out. But then he woke up this morning with a runny nose and bleeding rectum, the first symptoms. It's just a cold, he thought. I'll be okay. And now he's sweating up at his desk next to mine, wondering if he's going to make it until lunchtime.
I'd better go check my rectum.
Workouts are going well. I did Just Arms yesterday. Tony is in good form in this one. Funny.
I'm at work today, but tonight I'm joining the family at a hotel in Shizuoka, and spending tomorrow at a pool park. I'll take some photos. The last few days have been Obon, which is traditionally when Japanese people go home and see their parents, or go to the cemeteries and clean up grave sites and all that. I was visited by the dead in my sleep last night. I had a dream about mum that had me waking up like they do on TV, gasping and covered in sweat (actually, I'm always covered in sweat because it's so fucking humid here, but anyway, even more sweat). Mum was sitting in a chair in the blue (or green?) dressing gown she always wore the last few months, and I saw her and came at her, arms out, blubbering, mum, mum, mum, and she kind of started backing away like she was scared of me and she wouldn't let me hug her. Nice, thanks dream-mum. I liked the one I had last year better, when I was walking through the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne talking to her on the phone, saying mum! Where are you! Where are you! and she said "I'm right here" and I could hear her real voice as well as the voice on the phone and I looked up and she was picnicking with all her friends on the lawn right in front of me and we hugged and cried.
Dunno. Messed up. I've been a good boy, and I don't know why mummy is upset at me.

Round 4: No Retreat, No Surrender - Week 3

2010-08-09T14:35:00.000+09:00

I've incorporated a little bit of running into my workout, on Saturdays. This is my Crossfit WOD day, but without the equipment there's not much to choose from, so I chose a running WOD. 6 x 400 m, with 2 minute rests in between. The first Saturday I went to the city athletics track. It opens at 9, and costs 100 yen to use. I wanted to get my run done early, so I thought I'd get there early and jump the small gate and just hop on. So I rode my bike there at about 7:30 am, but someone was already in the office. Damn. I got my 100 yen out, totally certain of what was about to happen. I walked into the office.
"Excuse me, it costs 100 yen to use the running track, right?" I held the 100 yen out for the lady to take.
"Yes, but it doesn't open until 9 o'clock."
"I just want to use it for half an hour. 100 yen, right?" Take the money.
"I'm sorry, it's closed. It will be open at 9 o'clock, you can use it then."
"There is no way I can use it now?"
"I'm sorry, it's closed."
"You fucking people and your rules." I said that last part in English. I'm sorry, was that racist? Oh my.
So I got back on my bike, and rode to the river beside the freeway, where there's a bike track. Not a bad place to run, really. I found some measurements the other day, so at least I now how far I'm running. I guessed the first week.
The first week I pulled up really sore. I was surprised, because I've been do lots of cardio and squats and plyo and all that, but my thighs were really sore the next couple of days. On Saturday I tried POSE running. I'm sure there's lots of technique and practice involved to get it down perfect, but basically I ran pretending I was running barefoot, concentrating on bringing my heels up off the ground using my hamstring. I felt like a prancing horse, but it was definitely easier on the body than smashing the heels into the ground and rolling onto the toes.
Until yesterday, when my calves hurt real bad. It's hard to walk downstairs. Just my body getting used to it. But I will continue to run, if only because it hurts so much later on, which means I'm doing something new involving new muscle groups. I'll have to buy a decent watch with a stopwatch though.
Busy weekend. On Saturday I ran, then we took the great grandmother out for sushi (some nice expensive stuff), then Will and I went to the pool (he can go underwater now!) and then we went to the fireworks festival after dinner. Then on Sunday we went to English play group, then out to lunch, then I did Back & Biceps (half of it anyway) and then dinner, and then sat down to watch the footy.
I'm glad we beat Hawthorn, because I don't like them, but then I watched Collingwood and Geelong, and the game was totally different. Geelong do what the do well, but it's getting old. Play-on, kick over the top. Kind of a waste of a good forward like Mooney, who really has nothing to do at Geelong. First time I've really watched Collingwood this year, and they look pretty good. Didak is a gun. Leon Davis - how does he get games? Anyway, if those two make it to the grand final, it'll be a beauty.

Round 4: No Retreat, No Surrender - Update

2010-08-05T14:02:00.004+09:00

I've had the Nirvana song "Dive" in my head for weeks. It's an awesome song, way better than anything around now. What is around now? No idea. Here's an interesting fact. It's sixteen years since Kurt Cobain killed himself. Holy shit. He'd be, without checking Wikipedia, forty-two now? Probably doing a Tribute to Motown album or something. Duets with Elton John. I remember in music class at high school the teacher telling us that that day was the 20th anniversary of Sargeant Peppers being released. It felt like ancient history.
So I downloaded Incesticide, which I remember buying at (the much underrated) Boronia Mall the day it came out, and put it on. Come to think of it, Boronia Shopping Center was always more interesting that Knox. It had Kmart, the Mall with the record shop, Toy World (is that what it was called?), that diner with the milkshakes, and then it had the Snoopy cinema, Max Cycles, and some cool shops in those dark alleys off Dorset Road.
Anyway, Will loved Nirvana and started jumping around. Why am I not surprised he loves Nirvana? Hah.
Speaking of Silly Willy, today is his birthday! Happy Birthday, my boy. 5 years old. Wow. I've enjoyed his fifth year, though at times he has been trying. He was diagnosed by lazy doctors as having PDD-NOS this year. This means he exhibits some symptoms of stuff like Asbergers or Autism, but not others, or that something's NQR about him but they are not sure what. Of course I read up on these things, and I read blogs of parents with kids with PDD-NOS, and I always think, he doesn't do that, he's not like that. He doesn't eat his clothes. He doesn't freak out if we don't use his cup. He doesn't stim, or spin around, or endlessly blather on about stuff. He's not troubled by noise, lights, any of that stuff. He doesn't wet his bed, attack the cat, break stuff (on purpose). He doesn't really like eye contact, he can get a little obsessed with the TV shows he likes, like Thomas or the Penguins From Madagascar and likes to act out the scenes as he watches them. He often doesn't respond to questions. He gets upset often if he doesn't get his way and sulks. He not sure what to do around other kids, and will often copy them, which pisses them off. Very mild stuff, and I'm sure every parent of every child can relate. One thing I have noticed is that in English group, he's the most outgoing, fun-loving kid there. He would be the last kid you would say has a developmental disorder. But in the Japanese world you can see his uncertainty. It may be because he has an English-speaking father. Dunno. I do worry about him, like everyone worries about their kid, I guess. But he's funny, and friendly, and very handsome, so I think he'll be okay. Two things I want him to be able to do when he's older; speak English, and fight. The other stuff will take care of itself.

Happy 5th Birthday William!

First week of Round 4: "No Retreat, No Surrender" went very well. I'm enjoying the shorter workouts, and even enjoying getting up at 5:30 to get them done and out of the way. The first workout last Monday, I did Chest & Back, and ran out of energy early. A little yogurt isn't enough to power a workout, even a short one. I felt sick, and my numbers were really low. I had to drink my protein shake while I took a shower just to stop the shakes. Lesson learnt. Since then it's been good, though I missed last Friday's workout. I forgot to set my alarm. Doesn't matter. I think it's important this round not to overdo it, especially in this heat.
Here is a comparison to where I was two years ago and where I am now. I must admit, this has motivated me to keep going, and especially to eat cleaner.

I look really sick in the first photo. Mum was really ill at this stage, on the way out. I was flying to and from Australia all the time, smoking, drinking (not a lot, 2 cans of beer a night, maybe 3 or 4 on the weekends). Eating lots of chips. I wasn't taking care of myself. When I'm stressed or busy, I don't eat. Look at my neck! And my collar bones are sticking out, too. I was having dizzy spells, and every now and then chest pains. I remember that summer two years ago I was always falling asleep in my clothes at 8 o'clock because I was just exhausted. My shoulder ached! Man that used to give me the shits. A restless, uncomfortable feeling that I couldn't get rid of.
I weigh about 8 kilos more now, and you can see it. No more aches and pains, no more exhaustion, no more dizzy spells or chest pains. The headaches continue, but that's a stress thing, something I'm working on. Feel okay today, actually.
Anyway, laters.

レゴ

2010-07-22T17:51:00.003+09:00

最近、ウィル君がレゴというおもちゃを気に入った。僕も小学生のときにレゴが好きだったからウィル君と一緒にレゴを遊ぶことは楽しいです。レゴの組立説明書を見ると、言葉がなくて、イラストがしかありません。イラストだけで組み立て説明書を作ることは難しいと思います。もし自分の会社のマニュアルをイラストだけで作って見ればどうかな。できれば翻訳者が要らなくなりますので、それは困ります。

Round 3: Day 119 - That'll Do, Pig.

2010-07-21T14:02:00.008+09:00

I'm bringing Round 3: With A Vengeance to a close, a couple of days before scheduled. This round has been tough. It was a little aimless, undisciplined, and mentally draining. If I don't do the workouts in the morning, which I don't, I really struggle to do a workout in the evenings. The last two weeks have been especially tough for some reason. I am feeling aimless myself, not able to find enjoyment in anything. Interest in my job is way down. I'm at a loss with what to do about William, who is getting more and more caught up in his own world and losing touch with people. Joseph is endlessly sick, coughing and crying. My wife has become a person I have lived with for a really long time, and not much more. I dread weekends, and on weekdays my day is repeated over and over again, to the smallest detail. I am in the best shape of my life, but my enthusiasm for life has gone.
So this slump on the endless roller coaster of culture shock, sleep deprivation, a boring job, no sex ever, living in the stalest society in the world, the relentlessly brutal weather, whatever the cause of this particular bleh period is, something has to change. If I can change it before my subconscious butts in and does something silly that would be great. And if I can change it without losing my wife or my children, that would be fantastic.
Having said that, the next round starts on Moday. Round 4: No Retreat, No Surrender. I have split the P90X workouts in half. No routine is over 40 minutes long. I'm going to bring it, just not as long. And I'm throwing in a Crossfit Workout Of The Day once a week, just to mix shit up, 'cause I is crazy like dat. The Crossfit WODs that I can do are limited because I don't have a barbell or rings, but I think that this is the way I want to go next year. Crossfit looks wicked, and is definitely the future. Oh yea, and there's a P90X sequel in the works, called P90X: MC2. MC stands for "muscle confusion", though the title is a play on Einstein's formula for energy. That'll come out next year. No shortage of stuff to do, but at the moment, with Summer here, and my motivation in critical condition, just getting in the room and doing the thing is the main objective. Knowing that I'll be done in less time that a normal episode of TV is a huge bonus.
So, just to do something positive, as round 3 draws to a close, I thought I would run through my own personal highlights of P90X, little moments that make me chuckle or give me a little motivation every time I see them.
1. Chest & Back
"Too many people, when they exercise, stop way before they should," says Tony. Every time I hear that I know he's talking about me. This workout isn't the same anymore since I saw the girl Marin in this video in a hard-core porn clip.
2. Plyometrics
"Jesus. I mean Jeepers."
3. Shoulder & Arms
Nothing about this workout is memorable. It's a solid workout though.
4. Yoga X
I don't do this workout, I do Fountain of Youth Yoga from the One on One series. Whenever Tony says "I love it here in Santa Monica California", I wish that I lived in Santa Monica California.
5. Legs & Back.
A lot of memorable moments in this one.
The controversial "off the charts, like chicklets" moment, when it is clear that the video has been edited to fit that comment in, solely because someone thought it was worth putting in. I don't even know what chicklets are.
Dreya doing chair pose and groucho walk. Is there something wrong with her ass?
Sophia letting go of the bands to fist bump Tony, letting the handles hit him in the face.
6. Kenpo X
I haven't done this for ages, but just watching whatshisname the Kenpo guy dogging it the whole workout is awesome.
7. X Stretch
Just Phil trying to do neck rolls. His neck isn't very flexible.
8. Core Synergistics
Adam saying he did 18 Prison Cell Pushups. Giving him the benefit of the doubt because he's not on the screen the whole time, the absolute most he did was 14. Why lie about that?
9. Chest, Shoulders and Triceps
"La Machina! That's Spanish."
10. Back & Biceps
The Arnold scream at the 38:10 mark.
11. Cardio X
Haven't done this one much recently. Can't remember much about it.
12. Ab Ripper X
Nothing funny about this.
This year's British Open was the most. Boring. Tournament. Ever. I didn't bother staying up to watch the last round because it was clear that nothing was going to happen. And nothing did. Some guy from South Africa won it. I've never heard of him, and now he's the British Open champion. It was just like the US Open when whatshisface won it. Golf is in all sorts of trouble. That's what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket, and those eggs turn out to be the rottenest eggs ever laid.
Speaking of Tiger, another embarrassing performance. Playing well, putting bad, ho hum, swearing, throwing clubs around. Don't take it out on golf, Tiger. It's the only thing you've got left.
My highlight of the week? This question Tiger was asked before the tournament. "Tom Watson has said you need to clean up your image on the golf course. Many of us have heard you use the 'F' word, we've seen you spit, we've seen you throw tantrums like chucking your clubs. Are you willing to cut out all those tantrums and respect the home of golf?" Brilliant. Didn't matter what the answer was. It was "I'm trying to become a better player and a better person" BTW. His fall back line this week. And he couldn't cut it out, apparently.
The best golfer when I started playing golf was Seve Ballesteros. What a story. Grew up hitting stones with sticks on the beach near his house in Spain, a physical genius. He dominated golf for ten years, 79 - 89, culminating in one of the best British Opens ever in '88, which my mum wouldn't let me stay up and watch, and which I wouldn't see until three years later when I finally got my hands on the video that was going around the golf club. I remember rushing home to watch it. He has been struggling with brain tumours for a few years now, and has had many operations. He's really frail, and a bit different now, very emotional. They wanted him to come to St. Andrews this year to celebrate 150 years of the Open, but he couldn't. They did a really nice interview at his house though, and he kind of chokes up about his life and his destiny. He was an awesome golfer, scarily talented, famous for his touch around the greens and his freakish shots out of trouble. Man I wish there was someone like him playing now.
Apparently rainy season ended on Saturday. Something about saying a season finishes on a particular day rubs me the wrong way, but it does seem to be true. A couple of weeks of nice warm weather, then BANG! Heat like you wouldn't believe. I hope to get my bike back from the shop soon so I can go for a ride or two.
I've started watching Dexter. The great shows keep on coming. Definately the golden age of American TV. Even though he's a textbook psychopath, I totally get this character, though I wonder how it'll go after a few more episodes. It's hard to feel for a character that doesn't feel, don't you think? If the writers are good enough they'll be able to do it, I think. I do love the way his foster father raised him, not trying to change him but more teaching him how to function. It's an interesting approach.
Anyway, I feel like this blog has served it's purpose. It has helped me stop smoking and kept me motivated to do exercise, and I'll probably post every know and then. I'll keep in touch with the friends I've made through it. I'll keep working out. But I need to work on other stuff now, which is probably obvious.

Round 3: Day 110 - Fountain of Youth Yoga

2010-07-12T15:59:00.005+09:00

Once, weekends meant golf, friends, good times.
Something to look forward to. A promise.
I took Friday off to go to William's school because they had a party for all the kids whose birthday is in July/August. It was fine, but there was a girl there who yelped like a dog the whole time, and it gave me a headache that lasted until last night (Sunday night). It rained all three days too, so no going outside. Will was mental, and Jo Jo was either yelling for food all the time or banging his head against the floor to make himself cry.
Anyway, back at work now...

Will and a party crasher at kinder

Round 3: Day 103 - P90X Stretch

2010-07-05T16:52:00.002+09:00

Good weekend. Had a hit of golf at the driving range with Will and Nori on Saturday morning. He's playing golf with some work people and doesn't want to look stupid, so he asked me to give him some pointers. I tried my best, but I think he's still going to look stupid.

Grip it 'n Rip it

Then the family spent the afternoon at the library hanging out. On Sunday Will and i went to the English playgroup. A little more structure would be good, but Will had fun. Next time I think we need more toys and group games and stuff. Someone brought Operation (the Shrek version) which freaked Will out a bit. He was very, very interested in it, but he wouldn't try it. He would just walk around saying "if you touch the sides, his nose will go buzz!" He's probably still a bit young. I was actually looking at that on Amazon last week, so I'm glad I didn't order it. Maybe in a year or two. The place we had the playgroup is great. A converted hospital. Music, lots of games and crafts and stuff. Will loved it.

Old people!

Then lunch at Macca's, then home. Big day. I did Back and Biceps when I got home. A few improvements here and there, and I'm getting back to the numbers I got before the humidity hit, and it's actually a good, satisfying feeling when the sweat is dripping off me. In Winter I sometimes felt like I wasn't working hard enough because I wasn't drenched in sweat. Not a problem at the moment.
I've got my bike shaken (roadworthy examination) next weekend. Shouldn't be a problem. You have to do this every two years in Japan. Bike or car. Three years for new cars. It keeps old bombs off the road, and keeps Toyota and Nissan and Mitsubishi and Mazda and Honda ticking along, selling new cars. One of the pleasures of going back to Australia is seeing cars from the 80's, and even 70's, on the road. You do not see anything like that here. It'll cost me a few hundred dollars, though I'm half expecting them to tell me I need a new back wheel. We'll see. One problem I can foresee is this: You have to pay city tax every two years, and you need it for your shaken. It's fifty dollars, and I paid it at a convenience store a couple of weeks ago. So the chick at the desk stamps the receipt, and says "oops". She stamped the date as 2008. "It should be okay," she says, and hands it back to me. Yea. Thanks for that. The proper date is printed on it and everything, it has barcodes and stuff, so according to any scanner you care to pass over it it's okay, but there's this big ugly stamp that says it was paid three years ago. Hopefully no-one will notice.
So I'm doing overtime tonight. I've got nothing to do, but it doesn't appear that I have nothing to do, and that's the most important thing. How things appear. Since the boss pointed out that my department does the least overtime in the whole company, the amount of overtime my department does has increased by five! In just two days! Remarkable how busy everyone has suddenly become. Remember this when the guy at the shop tells you that the reason you are paying so much for your Sony DVD player, your Mitsubishi Lancer, your Ricon camera, is because the quality is better. It's not. You pay for all the overtime Japanese office workers do to appear to be busy.

Round 3: Day 100 - P90X Chest, Shoulders, & Triceps

2010-07-02T15:48:00.003+09:00

It's rainy season now, and apart from a day or two here and there, it has been raining a lot. And it's hot, low 30's. It'll stop raining soon, and then it will just be unbearably hot for a couple of months. Summer does have a special feeling here though. There are lots of festivals and fireworks, which I'm going to make more of an effort to see this year. I might even buy a yukata (a summer kimono, but not like you think. More like thin loose pajamas), even though I know I will look like a dickhead.
I've been looking at stuff that we can do over summer, maybe some new parks or pools or something. I have been looking at some blogs of people that come here to study. Okazaki has a pretty well-known Japanese language school that people from all over the world come to to stay for a few months. I went there myself for two months, and it was okay, but I'd already been here for years, so doing the whole tea ceremony thing and going to the sushi restaurant didn't do much for me. Mainly it's for well-off American and Canadian kids who like manga to come and experience Japan. It's pretty expensive. But anyway, a lot of them start blogs, and they talk about places they go to in and around Okazaki. They do a lot of stuff, and everything is strange and new, and they are single, so they definitely get out more than I do. But the overwhelming impression is that they would give anything to be able to stay here, and they study their asses off and have no fear of speaking Japanese. Me? X, X, and X.
I have to do something about my own attitude to this place. I should start thinking of myself as a tourist, and let go of my pride and be prepared to make mistakes and smile more and have fun. That's my mission this summer. To see more of this place, and to share it with William. Also what I want to start doing is presenting a picture of the day. I will start carrying my camera around and snap anything that takes my fancy. And hopefully I will do a few big rides over the Summer, and I will present some ride reports. Like I said, become a bit more of a tourist and less of a jaded, 9-5 wage salve immigrant.
My workouts have been going well, though my numbers are down and so is my motivation. I think it's the weather. The humidity just saps the energy out of me. It might take a few weeks to get used to it. The other night I did Yoga, and it was the strongest I've felt since I finished working at the factory a month ago. Got to back there in two weeks, though the boss has put in a request that we stay here in our own department because it's busy, but our boss is a pussy and they will tell him no. I am not looking forward to working there again. When I hear speeches from the president and the boss trying to gee everyone up and let's do our very best and all that stuff, I just think of all the sleepy, lazy Japanese people I work with and how I'm going to the factory to do the lowest job in the company so they don't have to.
Starting tomorrow (the first day after the Friday of a week in which a new month began) I want to concentrate on another couple of things. First, is diet. I want to cut down on the amount of chocolate I eat and coffee I drink. It's not a large amount, but it's become a habit, and I'm sick of it. They can't be doing any good for my mood. It doesn't help that, inexplicably, imported Coke cans have appeared in the vending machine upstairs. I cannot drink Coke out of pet bottles. Only glass and cans, preferably cans. So I had a can today. Very nice.
Update: Welcome to a Japanese Company
As you know, the English translating team has been selected to take it in turns to each go and work at the factory for two weeks at at time picking parts. It's a sucky job, and I'm sure all the Japanese guys in our department were relieved that it's us and not them. Why were we chosen? Because our group had done the least amount of overtime out of all the groups in our department ( which includes the manual group, Chinese translation group, parts list group, web group), and our department has done the least amount of overtime in the company.
We have all had a turn, and are scheduled to go round again. We said we were very busy, and maybe someone else could go instead this time? So the boss asked his boss and so on, and we had a meeting today.
That's when we found out that our department does the least overtime out of all the departments. You have to understand that this is a bad thing. It doesn't matter how hard or how efficient you work, all that matters, all that is measured, is how long you work. And the longer the better. There are guys that do 50 or 60 hours of overtime every month without fail. One guy I met at the factory does 100 hours a month overtime. Management pay lip service to "work/life balance" and we even have "No Overtime Fridays" (Japan's equivalent to "Wacky Hat Day" I think), but these guys are heroes. The amount of work they do is irrelevant. They are killing themselves for the company. Wow.
So the English group sat down with the boss. Here's how he explained it. We didn't have to go back to the factory. Yes! But there's a problem. There's usually four people in the English group, and there's a certain amount of work shared between these four people. Take away one person, and this amount of work is shared among fewer people, meaning more work per person. The problem is we still don't do overtime. Which is not exactly true, but anyway. We tried to explain that we all have young families, and we want to go home to help our wives, and we manage to do the extra work by organizing our time better, and working harder throughout the day to get the work done. I said that I know this isn't Australia, but if it was, our boss would think this is marvellous and would probably use us as an example of an efficient, effective group. But the boss said that when the personnel department sees this, they wonder if there really needs to be four people. I know the boss doesn't think this, but he's just saying that this is how it looks. So by helping out at the factory, which we were chosen to do because we appeared to be the laziest and least busy people in the whole company, we have effectively exposed ourselves as even lazier or less busy than they thought. It must be a source of amazement to these fuckers. I'm not sure which they would find more incredulous; how it looks, or that we don't know/care that that's how it looks. So, bottom line, we all need to do one or two nights a week overtime to show that we are busy, regardless of whether we are busy or not, and then people will leave us alone. This will cost the company tens of thousands of dollars a year, but hey, appearances are all that matter here.
I know this, but it is hard to except this as the reality. I keep thinking, well, perhaps they might take into account the volume of work we do, the quality of it, but no. The numbers don't lie. You can show them study after study proving that working long hours does not mean more work is done, of that it is done any better. They just won't believe it.
So we have to play the game. I have a question: Why do the Japanese people purposefully make their life harder than it needs to be? Answer: Because they are all insane.

Round 3: Day 91 - P90X Chest & Back

2010-06-24T16:26:00.001+09:00

I haven't done a workout for three days! The night before last I was really tired and went to bed at 9, and last night I taught Nori and went I came home I got stuck in front of YouTube watching nothing in particular. There were so many other things I wanted to do, like work out, play me some Portal, put the finishing touches to my fiction blog. Yes folks, it's ready. Control Damage. You can read the first part now.
It's the rainy season. It's a nice day today, blue skies, but it had rained pretty much non-stop for three days. I saw my first cockroach this morning too. I just picked it up with some tissues and put it in the bin. It wasn't dead, but it was strangely listless. Probably been hanging around the traps a little too long. As a side note, the company that makes the insecticides that we use to kill cockroaches is called the Earth corporation, which in Japanese is pronounced aasu, which in Australian sounds like ass. The spray I use to kill bugs is called, in Australian, ass jet. Chuckle.
So three days without working out, I'm questioning my motivation. Can I hang on for another month? I would like to think so. What I'm going to do is plan a big ride for the last weekend of July, maybe take a day off work and head out on the Saturday and come back Monday. I would love to go up to Takayama or something, up in the mountains. Use that as motivation somehow.
Wow, Kevin Rudd is gone. That's amazing. I thought he would be Prime Minister for as long as he wanted.

Round 3: Day 90 - P90X Chest & Back

2010-06-22T16:15:00.004+09:00

In twenty years, only Graeme MacDowell and his wife will remember that he won the 2010 US Open. The course was playing really hard, and he was the only one able to keep his shit together. The rest of them, except for maybe that French guy I've also never heard of, hit some awful shots. Dustin Johnson, the three-shot leader before the last round started, I think he literally pissed his pants on the first tee. Hey, I can't imagine the pressure he must have been under, but I'd like to think I would do better that start par-triple-double-bogey. It was expected that he would come back to the field, just not in five minutes. What wasn't expected was that the three best players of the last 15 years (apologies to Vijay), Tiger, Mickelson, and Els, could not even mount a challenge. Ernie looked good early, but he fizzled and was not in it at the end. Tiger putted like a spaz again, and Mickelson as usual played without a brain. Still, the US Open is the US Open, the original grind, and this year was no exception. MacDowell is a good player, four wins in Europe, and a Ryder Cup appearance, so not exactly an unknown.
A couple of highlights though.
1. Ryo Ishikawa - It was great to see him up there for a while. I really wanted him to hang on and get into contention, just to see how he would do. He seems to be able to hit the shots that he needs to hit under pressure, a bit like Tiger, but it was really tough this week. He did okay, but an ordinary third round knocked him out, and then an 80 on Sunday didn't do his week justice. I would say that his goal this year has to be to get into final round contention in a PGA tournament. If he can do that, regardless of whether he wins or not, that is an awesome achievement for an 18 year old. The PGA is TOUGH.
2. Tom Watson tearing up on eighteen on Sunday. This guy has being playing quality golf for nearly forty years. So it was sad to see him holding back the tears as he walked up the eighteenth in probably his last US Open. And fittingly he missed a two footer for par, because if it wasn't for his putting he would have won everything since 1970.
3. Tiger on 18 on Saturday. It is seductive. a "fully engaged" Tiger Woods. Awesome shot, 280 out, cuts a 3-wood around a tree to about fifteen foot. I'm sure you all saw it on the news. One of those shots that we were so used to before... before we found out what an asshole scumbag he is. But he does hit the shots, and the only way to appreciate them is to separate the man from the golf. If he's not delving into the odd skank here and there again already I would be surprised. He seems just as aloof and controlling off the course as ever, and nothing appears to have changed. And the journalists have learnt their lesson - don't ever, ever talk about it, because you will be blacklisted. He still can't come from behind... on the golf course. He still can't get it in the hole... on the greens. He still likes it rough... in the rough, I mean. See? You just can't separate the man and the golf. He's not back, like everyone says. He will never be back.
So that's another major down. The British open is in July at St. Andrews, and Tiger is a huge chance to win that one. You don't have to drive the ball any good, just hit solid irons and putt well. Apparently last year's British Open his wife flew in unexpectedly and found out he was screwing someone and hit the roof, and he subsequently played one of the worst tournaments of his life, missed the cut, and was gone. It seems like this is when people in the biz realised what was going on, and Tiger's world began falling apart. He still won four tournaments between then and the car accident in November though.
On Saturday night I went to the bar I sometimes go to in Okazaki to kind of watch the soccer. A guy and his hot wife were there with some friends and buying drinks for all the foreigners, and trying to speak English. It's hard for me to get excited about speaking to Japanese people now. The same questions, same stereotypes about Australia (this guys theory was that swimming is the most popular sport in Australia because we all live on the coast, and we are not good at athletics because we are not on dry land often - I said it sounds like we are basically salamanders, but he didn't understand). I had a couple of beers and left. The bar is owned by a guy who has a son who is retarded/disabled, and is doing it tough. Here's an article about him.
I feel for the guy. A Japanese judge called him a role model father, and he is. But every time I go there he tries to get me to sign up to this multi-level marketing thing, kind of like Amway, but where a fraction of the profits go to children's charities. You know that feeling you get when you realise they have started their pitch, and you don't want to be rude, so you humour them, but you don't know how long it's going to take? I'm getting that from the owner/bartender while I drink a beer in his bar. Meanwhile his disabled kid in the corner is screaming for someone to vacuum the saliva from his throat because he is unable to swallow. Really desperate blood-curdling screams. Like I said, I really feel for the guy, but I just want to have a beer and relax and maybe make some friends in Okazaki where I live, but I'm beginning to suspect that one reason why the bar is always empty is because of him pitching this pyramid scheme to customers, and, to be honest, the intermittent screams of his disabled son that make your hair stand on end. I'll have to look for another place.
On Sunday Will and I went to playgroup organised by a guy I used to work with when I first came here and who found me on Facebook. It's for parents and their half Japanese kids to get together and have a couple of hours a week hanging out and speaking English. It was really good, and Willy did so well. He's probably got the best English of any of the kids, and he easily had the most fun. I was really proud of him, and I hope he keeps enjoying it. It's quite a trek to get there, a train and a bus, but we'll have MacDonald's for lunch when we go as a reward.
Hey! It's day 90! 30 to go. Extended due to the trip to Hawaii, and two sucky weeks at the factory. Workouts are going well. It's getting pretty warm here now, so I'm naturally eating less and losing a bit of wait. I'm at 83 kilos now, much heavier than what I was two years ago (I was about 75 kg), but I've been around this weight for six months or so. I expect to be down to maybe 81 by the end of Summer.

Round 3: Day 85 - Insanity Cardio Power & Resistance

2010-06-17T14:13:00.003+09:00

I woke up this morning at 5 and lay there for a while, and then decided to get up and do the workout that I missed yesterday. P90X+ Upper Body. The X+ workouts are shorter, and not really harder. Just faster. They are more time based instead of rep based. I had a good workout, nothing real intense, but it got me moving and sweating, and the shake afterwards was awesome.
I'm having problems with the Insanity workouts though. I can't get through them. I had a bit of asthma on Saturday, and I just couldn't get the thought out of my head as I wheezed through the warm up, "Why am I doing this?" The last two Insanity workouts I have thought this, and they have both sucked. I got halfway through the last round in both of them and then I turned it off. I'll keep going though, and maybe one day I can get my head right and complete one of them without stopping. That would be an achievement.
So the world cup is on. I see Australia got spanked. Perhaps it's because I'm a golfer, and golf karma is real, but I hate how soccer players celebrate when they get a goal. Hey buddy. You haven't won it yet. Celebrate when it's over. Or maybe they're just celebrating the new contract Nike will surely offer their manager in the next few days. I especially hate when they celebrate kicking a goal from a penalty. Dude, you were supposed to kick it. Anyway, it'll be over soon. I just can't get into soccer.
I threatened this last blog, and it is very close to happening now. I'm going to start a writing blog. The story is about a young Lebanese rapper trying to make it on the mean streets of Sydney, battling racism and the pressure to join a violent street gang, all the while trying to win the heart of his blond private school girl sweat heart by winning a rap-off. No, not really. It's about the first manned mission to Mars and a problem they encounter. I'm trying to get the blog template set up, which is a bitch. HTML stuff, of which I know nothing about. I'll do a couple of pages a week, and see how long I can keep it going. Some of the names are going to be familiar. I just use names that I know and like, and I don't put much thought into them, and now that I've written some stuff I couldn't be bothered changing it. So don't worry too much if a character called Jim is stabbing to death someone with your name. Means nothing.
I see everyone hates Kevin Rudd now. Strange what's going on. From my understanding, it seems that he wants to increase taxes on mining companies, who have made billions and billions of dollars taking natural resources from Australia and selling them to China and America. But the long held belief in Australia is that we avoided the global recession because of this mining boom, and what Kevin is doing threatens everything. EVERYTHING! Probably not a good sign if the mining companies, beholden to China, have more support than our own Prime Minister. Anyway, Abbott for PM! Why not? Who gives a fuck. He's mad too.
Speaking of Prime Ministers, Japan has a new one! Kan-san. The eighth one since I've been here. Let's run through the list.
Obuchi - Stroke made him a vegetable.
Mori - Continued to play golf after being told that a US sub had accidentally risen up into a Japanese ship, killing a few Japanese on board. Finished.
Koizumi - Probably the guy most people know as the Japanese PM. He had the hair. Was PM for 4 years or something.
Abe - Quit because he had a bowel problem.
Fukuda - Famous for his quote to a journalist "I am different to you."
Aso - I don't know why he quit. Maybe he's just an aso.
Hatoyama - Reneged on a promise to shut down an American base in Okinawa, I think. His wife claims to have met aliens.
So now we have Kan, who recently said that he wanted to created "a society with a minimum level of unhappiness." Stirring stuff. But from all accounts he seems a pretty sensible and capable guy. He also threatened everything by saying that Japan faced a Greece-style collapse if they didn't do something soon. Whoa. A little too real, Kan. Calm down, you're gonna get yourself voted out pretty quickly if you keep that up.

The Greatest Sport

2010-06-15T00:01:00.004+09:00

Is it just me, or does soccer suck?
This is football.

Round 3: Day 76 - 30-15

2010-06-08T14:09:00.001+09:00

I hadn't done Plyo for ages, maybe six months, and it was hard. But I don't think my legs were quite over the punishment inflicted during the last couple of weeks at the factory, because they were finished by round three. But I kept going and finished in fine form. Had a shake, watched the Swans beat Essendon, and went to bed. A fine day.
I'm going to start another blog, a serialized fiction blog. I will release a chapter a week, I think, and see where it gets me. I've got the first few weeks ready to go, and the ending, but I don't know how I'm going to get from one to the other. Do me a favour, though, and rave about it to your friends so I get heaps, or a bunch (have to get used to writing to an American audience) of readers. There is F all work to do at the moment, so I need something to do that makes me look busy.
One on One 30-15 tonight. 12 sets of 30 push ups and 15 pull ups, though for me, it's 25-8 for the first half, then 20-5.
Also, I've added another two weeks to this round, to make up for the two week recovery of sorts that I took while I was working at the factory.

Round 3: Day 75: P90X Plyometrics

2010-06-07T13:39:00.001+09:00

Kind of losing the motivation to rant and rave on this blog. I haven't written for ages, and I have just spend a couple of weeks helping out at the factory where I couldn't get to a computer, so now that I'm back at my desk and ready to type something, I just don't have much to say.
Standing up all day in the factory made my legs ache so much, so I did a lot of stretching and Yoga, with a couple of upper body resistance workouts thrown in. I feel in good shape after two weeks of tough work.
The job in Melbourne didn't eventuate. I got a mail saying I didn't get an interview. The first week in the factory I was waiting for the phone call that could change everything, ready to immediately book a flight to Melbourne to get to the interview and wow them, but it never came. By the second week I knew it wasn't coming, and when I got the mail I was oddly calm. I thought, well, I'll be back at my desk next week, and to be honest, I need to concentrate more on my reality than would could be.
What else. Nothing much. Maybe I'll be in the mood another day this week. Maybe I'll just write about working out for a while and leave it at that.

Lost Finale

2010-05-26T23:05:00.008+09:00

Trying to work this one out. I honestly thought Jack would be the only one to reject this life they had on the island in favour of the fantasy life, and by rejecting it become the new smoke monster to Hugo's Jacob. This is what the original smoke man did, I think. He goes into the light, discovers that there is this alternate reality where his life is great and he has a family and a great job and everything, then wakes up back on the shitty island, except now he can turn into smoke and kill people and rip out trees. Wouldn't he desperately want to get off this island and go to this other life and find out if it is real? That explains why smokey wanted to get off so bad - because they never really explained why in the show. And wouldn't you look at all the people on the island running around with their pathetic lives, not even aware of this other reality, with contempt, and kill them and think nothing of it? Like he did. Why would Jack so easily and suddenly give up a thriving medical practice, and, the big one, A SON, for this reality on a crappy island where he has nothing! And is dead! It was weird that they all seemed so calm when they realised that their lives were fake. Throughout the whole show, Jack has avoided reality, ignored the obvious, and plowed on regardless. When Jack on the island woke up in exactly the same place and exactly the same pose as the smoke monster man did when he went in the light, I thought, Wow! Jack's the new smoke monster! Didn't see that one coming. Perfect. Hugo is Jacob, the purest of all the survivors, and Jack, probably the most deluded and blocked, is his opposite. Nice. All because he refuses to give up his son in the fantasy world who he loves (probably should have shown that more, in retrospect, instead of the busy father gradually losing touch with his teenage son). Instead we are told that this fantasy world is just their collective imagination while they wait to be together when they are all dead. I don't get it.
The problem with alternate endings, and I bet there will be two or three on the Special Edition Box Set, is that writers can cop out, making one ending to please most of the people, and one ending for the 'real' fans, the one's that will buy the DVDs. I don't know if that's what has happened here, but it sure smells like it.
A lot of people have already said that this Lost finale reminded them of the Star Wars prequels. Whoa. It wasn't that bad. It didn't take what had happened before which you loved and then rape it and then try to sell it to your nephews like the Star Wars prequels did. I love Lost, and while it had a weak ending, it wasn't really about the ending. So many of the episodes, especially the back stories of the characters, where so good. Some of my favourite TV ever. I'll miss it. But there's still Breaking Bad and Mad Men and heaps of other stuff I haven't watched yet. Plenty of things to keep watching.

Round 3: Day 55 - P90X Chest, Shoulders, & Triceps

2010-05-18T15:05:00.003+09:00

Swans lose to Bulldogs again at Manuka or wherever. Every year (except last year when we were awful) we win the same games and lose the same games. I don't know about other clubs, but does it feel like your team is playing the same fixture year after year after year? How about mixing it up a bit. Do the Swans have to play St Kilda round one every year? Do we have to play the Bulldogs up in Canberra every year? Anyway, thrashed by Geelong, then thrashed by the Bulldogs. No good after all.
I bought a nice motorcycle jacket on the weekend. I went to a nearby shop with what I wanted in mind, and they were about $350. A bit steep, and they didn't have my size anyway. They never do. Apparently I'm an XXXL here. Nothing I wear fits me. So I went home and checked it out on the internet, and picked one up for about $200. I will get in in the next day or so. How can shops stay in business? I'll put up a photo when I get it.
Yesterday Will and I cleaned my motorbike. First time in the nearly two years I've had it. It was surprisingly clean to begin with.
Ages ago I told Will he could have a ride on the bike with me when he's five, and he reminded me of that yesterday when we were soaping up the bike. A kid with a memory is a scary thing.
I had a parent moment with him yesterday. When we were cleaning the bike and the water was rolling along the gutter, we noticed it was being blocked by something. It was a small, dead bird. Will was curious. I told him it was dead, hesitantly, but he doesn't know what that means, so I said he was sick and having a rest. He poked it a little, and he asked me if it would feel better tomorrow. I said yes, and I picked it up (something I have never done - I hate touching dead things) and put it on the grass. We'll let him sleep, I said, and I bet when you go to school tomorrow morning, he'll be gone and flying around with his friends. He liked that, and left it alone. He had another look as we cleaned up, and he asked me about it last night after dinner, so after he went to bed I went outside, and using my phone as a light, found it and tossed it into our neighbour's yard (no-one lives there). I'm sure he checked this morning, and it makes me feel good that he will think the bird has woken up and is flying around. He doesn't need to know that everything that lives dies, not yet.
Tomorrow I'm applying for a job in Melbourne. I've applied for three jobs at this place over the years, so maybe third time lucky? I was talking to the guy I work with here, and he said that if I say in my cover letter that I am willing to come down to Australia for an interview, then they will more than likely avoid giving me an interview because if they asked me to come down for an interview then it would place enormous obligation on them to give me the job, and they would rather avoid the whole thing. I would be better off to say that I just happen to be coming down for a friend's wedding in early June and would be able to pop-in for an interview on this day. Thing is, I'm not. So I have to say I am coming down, and then be totally prepared to buy a ticket and get down there if they ask me for an interview. Then if I actually get the job, well... we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. It would be a nice problem to have. But, like me dad used to tell me before every job interview, don't be too disappointed if you don't get it. The money isn't great, about $15,000 a year less than what I earn now, but the job certainly has more prospects than the one I have now. It does suck that age has become an issue in any interview I have from now on, and that if I do get the job, I will be earning a fraction of what my friends the same age are earning, but hey. Are they any happier? ... They look happier.

Round 3: Day 51 - P90M Cardio Intervals

2010-05-14T13:44:00.009+09:00

Last time I was down in Oz I asked my mate Mick what the kids were listening to these days. Sorry I didn't ask you, Stevie, but you've said so yourself; Mick's tastes uncannily mirror the wider population's. So he mentioned MGMT. September '09, I had never heard of MGMT. I think I might of heard a song of theirs on the radio once when I was driving and I thought "That's pretty good," but I had no idea who they were. I have since downloaded their album Oracular Spectacular and I love it. I listened to it all afternoon on Saturday while I rode my bike around the hills of Okazaki. I was having a great day until I ran over a cat. A wide road up in the mountains, no traffic, and this fat old ginger cat starts walking across the road, oblivious. I saw it immediately, and I was always going to hit it, but I froze. I was doing about 70 km/h, and half of me was waiting for this bloody cat to notice me, and the other half didn't know what to do. I didn't brake, I couldn't move my thumb down to the horn. I just yelled (okay, maybe I screamed) and the cat's head swivelled around, but too late. I shut my eyes and heard a da-dum as I ran over it. It wasn't like riding over a speed hump, but more like riding over (ironically) a cats-eye. Dead, I thought. I was sure I ran over the middle of its back. I looked in my mirror expecting to see a ginger M-shaped lump, but instead I saw it running into a house on the other side of the road. I have no idea what happened to it after that. Maybe I only ran over its tail or something. Maybe it crawled into a dark place and died. No idea. I felt that horrible rush of adrenaline you get after a close call and felt sick. Mainly I was pissed off because I had been enjoying myself up to that point and now I had this stupid cat to worry about.
The freezing is a concern. When I took my test we did braking tests and counter-steering tests and all that, but if that was a child or a car pulling out onto the road I would have been in real trouble. Something to think about. I'm going to spend the next couple of months buying motorcycle gear so I'm a little better protected, and then in August or September go for a long ride up to Takayama or Shirokawa or somewhere. Camp for a couple of nights.
I got my license in Melbourne a couple of years ago. I went and did my learner's, and then the next time I was down did my license test proper, both at a place in Kilsyth. A lot of fun. I recommend it just for a good day out. Everyone who took the course passed everything easy, even though there were some pretty unsure riders there, myself included. So I got my license, and then came to Japan.
The rule is that you can change licenses over no dramas if you have had your license in your home country for more than three months. It prevents people from going home for a weekend, getting their license, and then coming back and changing it over. Fair enough. I was one week short of this three month requirement. I despaired for a while, and then I realised that the Victorian driver's license does not have an issue date on it. So using a colour photo copier, I backdated a letter from VicRoads and used that as proof that I had had my license for three months and five days or something. Was that wrong?
Saved me a LOT of time and a LOT of money. Getting a license here, car or bike, takes months of lessons and often many, many attempts. And it costs a couple of thousand dollars, too. Me? Took me two Saturdays (admittedly a year apart) and a couple of hundred dollars. The down side is, of course, I'm not a great rider, and I don't know the Japanese road rules. But I've done almost 3,000 kilometers now, and I know my bike and I don't ride recklessly.
I did Legs & Back last night, and my legs are hurting today. The headache has subsided, though it was hurting a little before lunch today. Not so bad at the moment. I've got P90 Master Cardio intervals tonight, one of my favourites.

Round 3: Day 47 - Rest

2010-05-10T15:47:00.001+09:00

Been a while! I just couldn't be bothered typing out a blog when I'm not getting paid to do other things, it seems. Well, Golden Week is over, and I'm back at work. Had a good break. I went to Tingas and had a beer with Johnny on the first Friday night, who later on took me back to show me his place which his parents in law gave him, a beautiful 100-year old Japanese home, all wood and tatami, which he saved from the evil clutches of his wife who wanted to tear it down and build a crappy plastic house in it's place (and have him work 40 years to pay for it). I would consider staying here forever if I could get a place like that with a yard and stuff. Then I just hung out with the kids, trying to keep them happy. We went to Beachland, an aquarium with a dolphin show which the kids loved. I was left to lie on the grass under a tree with Jo Jo while Junko took Will to a wading pool for an hour, which was probably the most relaxing hour of the whole week.
On the health front, I've been getting headaches daily, which is giving me the shits. they come on about 9 in the morning, and hang around till after lunch, and I have no idea what's causing them. This has been going on since Winter. Months! A dull ache at the back of my head, and sometimes really throbbing pain behind the eyes. So I went to the doctor, and he said I had common migraine headaches. When I think of migraines, I think of auras and debilitating pain and all that, and they definitely aren't that bad. I think it might be more tension headaches, because I am really tight in the neck. It feels like I have a hangover every morning. So I had an MRI, which was exciting, and it's not a tumour! He gave me some pills, plus I've been taking aspirin, which helps. I'm usually fine by the afternoon. When he showed me the MRI results, the doctor said my sinuses were all stuffed up and I should probably get that looked at, which I will. I probably should have an eye test sometime, too. All in all, out there, makin' a difference. Part of the reason it shits me is because I'm in awesome shape and I feel like I should be able to enjoy life more, but when your head is thumping and you can't move, you can't really enjoy anything. But once the headache goes, or more likely the drugs block the pain, I can do my workouts and play with the kids and I forget about the headache. I doubt the workouts are causing the headaches, because honestly, I can't see how mild to rigorous exercise for 40 - 50 minutes four or five times a week can cause headaches every day, though it probably does contribute to my tight neck, which I can do something about with stretching or massages. The headaches are annoying though, and I am worried about it. I'll give it another few days, and then I'll have to give the workouts a break for a week.
In other news, Tiger missed a cut! Only the sixth time in his professional career, which is astounding. Even the best players in world like Mickelson or Els miss two or three cuts a year. This is probably THE stat that so clearly separates Tiger from the others. Geoff Ogilvy had a point when he said that the Masters probably let Tiger get away with poor play more than other tournaments because poor driving accuracy is not really punished at Augusta, while at other tournaments it is. And Tiger is driving really poorly at the moment. His swing looks all closed and awkward, and it's a wonder he can hit anything straight. Ogilvy is probably the world's best golf commentator at the moment, and is easily the go to man for thoughtful and funny quotes. Listen to anything he says, sports fans. Probably the best interview in sport.
So the Cats beat the Swans. I am getting bored of Geelong now. Bored of Ablett. I'll tell you why. How many times do we see him brilliantly shrug out of a tackle in the center of the ground, take off with scintillating pace, dodge and weave around two or three defenders, run into the fifty, and then softcock a pass that might have been a shot at goal that lands 15 metres short of goal, maybe somewhere near Moody, who would struggle to get a game for Richmond if it didn't mean Geelong would have to play the delicate Tom Hawkins at full-forward. Ablett is scary good, but he's not scary. Chapman and Varco are scary, and Johnson is like a retard-savant. Damn! We have the same problems as usual. A couple of injuries, and Bang! Ted Richards is back in the team, and Rhys Shaw is providing run and turnovers from the back flank. Nothing really against Richards, but if the youngsters are all playing as well as everyone says they are, why is he in the team? Surely someone else can do better? The only difference this year is Kennelly, Jack, Grundy, Moore, and White are playing really well. Bulldogs next week. It will be huge if we beat them, because they have beaten us lots recently.

Round 3: Day 34 - Shoulders & Arms, ARX

2010-04-27T13:50:00.001+09:00

Lately my company's factory has been running on all cylinders trying to get machines built and shipped and orders filled, but there's not enough people to do it. So, the English translation team were volunteered to go there and help out. The four of us, and a sixty year old guy who should have retired last month but asked to be kept on in as... I'm not sure, but he's still here, though his desk was moved into the corner. It's kind of an insult, because the work sucks and no-one wants to do it. Just a not-to-subtle reiteration of our standing in the company, I guess. Get the wogs to do it.
It's not too bad for me, because the factory is about ten minutes away by motorbike from my house, so I can leave later and come home earlier. The other guys face 90 minute commutes, trains, buses, the whole deal. Kind of sucks for them. But every now and then I get shown my place. It's confronting, but it's the reality, and a dose of reality in Planet Japan can be useful.
Looking at my New Year's Resolutions, I need a bit of a reality check.
My fitness is fine. I'm eating less of everything, working hard, lifting more. I didn't do Insane Abs last night because I was tired. I have Shoulders & Arms tonight, and I'll do Ab Ripper X afterwards. That should mess me up good. I want to improve my cardio vascular fitness over the Summer. I will look into free-climbing during Golden Week next week, which is like Easter, but without the fairy tales. I have to sort out these headaches I'm getting too. I'll go to the doctor's, and also spent Golden Week off the chocolate and canned coffee. Look at making some fresh coffee, and maybe a juicer? I had some great juice in Hawaii, and it reminded me how good it is, and how little I drink of it.
My Japanese study is in serious trouble. I'm keeping up with the kanji study, though I'm not doing any reading or serious study. The lessons have stopped, though I should try again, maybe a lower level. Hopefully the teacher won't chatter the whole time. But if they do, maybe look at paying someone for lessons? Passing level 2 was very encouraging, and lucky, so I have to take advantage of that.
My writing is non-existent. Can't get into it. Just this blog, and a diary I keep for Will and Jo that I can give them when I'm older or if I die or something. Meh.
Job. Got my eye open if something pops up. During Golden Week I will contact an employment agency in Melbourne that specializes in recruitment for Japanese companies. Some proactivity.
Oh yea, I got Tie Fighter going on my computer, but there are no sound effects during missions. Minor hiccup. It was amazing seeing cut scenes that I haven't seen since about 1996. It still looks pretty good. Hey Lucas! What to make a quick couple of million? Put it up on Steam for $5, fully compatible for modern computers. Although I swore never to give you another cent of my money after that steaming pile of shit you and Spielberg called an Indiana Jones movie a couple of years ago, I'll make an exception for this. Consider it a belated payment for the copy of the game a guy I worked with at Coles gave me back in '95. Actually, no. Fuck you, George Lucas. I'll keep perservering with my pirated copy.

Round 3: Day 33 - Insanity Insane Abs

2010-04-26T14:36:00.003+09:00

Another glorious weekend of weather. This really is the best time of year in Japan. Clean air, green trees, people out and about. Will and I hung out on Saturday. It's turning into our day together. We went to the castle and had ice-cream, hung out at the library, rode the bicycle around town. I made us pizza for lunch too.
I'm reading Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanly Robinson, and really enjoying it. I did my honours thesis on KSR's Mars Trilogy. Did you kow that? Do you even care? I called it "The Ecologics of KSR's Mars Trilogy", and it was an exploration of a lot of things, mainly how Mars has always been a literary landscape for competing environmental theories. I know, I can't believe no-one would hire me after I graduated either.
Workouts going well. Getting stuck into month 2 of round 3: With A Vengeance. Insanity on Saturday, which wore me out, and Chest & Back yesterday. Insane Abs tonight. Good times. Fitness Ninja had a good point. It might be about time I tried to reduce the number of pushups and pullups I do by adding weight.
Anyway, a little busy at work today, for a change. Must get back to it.
Where was I? Oh yes.
"Click [OK], then [Next]."
*sigh*

Round 3: Day 29 - Renewal

2010-04-22T14:26:00.004+09:00

I did Insanity Insane Abs Monday night. Most of it, anyway. Will did some with me and then got tired and shirty and we took him to bed and I never got to do the end of it. I didn't finish it because I spent an hour trying to get Star Wars: Tie Fighter, my second favourite game ever after Half Life, to work on my computer, but I couldn't. I guess it's like trying to play a vinyl record on a CD player. So I went to bed.
We are weaning Jo off the breast milk. Junko came down with some kind of rash on Monday. We have no idea what from. We ran through a list of things she ate on the weekend, but it was a loooong list. My wife likes to eat. So she went to the doctors and he said it was stress (which means he doesn't know what caused it either) and gave her a shot of something with steroids in it. An anti-inflammatory or something. So, she couldn't breast feed Jo Jo for a day. So while we were at it, we decided to stop it completely. Probably about time, but when he woke up at 1 on Sunday night and cried for 2 hours, I just wanted her to give him the breast so we could all get some sleep. Well, me, more specifically. But he seems to be doing okay, though he does look extremely sad most of the time now.
I took the day off work yesterday because I had to renew my driver's license and renew my foreigner registration card. Renewing my license involved a two-hour lecture and video presentation. It wasn't that bad, actually. There were about twenty of us renewers in there, and the guy chatted about how dangerous it is driving, especially in my prefecture, Aichi. Did you know that in the mid 70's, around 16,00 people were being killed each year on the roads in Japan? It's down to 5,000 now. Still a lot. It makes me think of that hypothetical situation: Aliens come to Earth and offer us a transport system that would get us from A to B in a fraction of the time it takes us now. But they also say that due to uncontrollable variables, tens of thousands of people worldwide would be killed using it each year. Would we accept it? Probably not. But that's exactly the situation we have now. So I got my new license, and then went to City Hall to renew my foreigner's card. No dramas there. Then I went to Matsuya for lunch. A bowl of beef on rice, bowl of miso soup, salad, and tea, all for the amazing price of 350 yen (less than $4). And they say deflation is a bad thing!
Then I went home and did Back & Biceps while I watched Jamie's Food Revolution. It's kind of a nothing show, but I can tune in and out and not miss much. I couldn't watch Lost or Breaking Bad (it's back!) and do a workout. No chance.
It's raining again today! Yesterday was perfect - I could even ride around on my motorbike with just a T-shirt on! - but today is crap. It has rained so much the last couple of months. With the rainy season coming up in another month or so, it looks like we're only going to get a month of nice weather at most! That's bullshit.
Tonight I've got Patience Yoga, and then a rest day tomorrow, and then onto the second month of this round. I feel like taking more time to do the resistance workouts is the way to go, because my numbers have gone up considerably, and I'm feeling much stronger. They take a bit longer, but that's okay. I'm eating a little better, not so much chocolate or chips, and I'm eating smaller meals, too. I should start using my bread machine to make other stuff, like homemade pasta or cakes or biscuits or something. I feel like doing some more cooking.

Round 3: Day 26 - Insane Abs

2010-04-19T11:33:00.002+09:00

I took a rest on Thursday. and I did Legs & Back (edit) Friday night. Remember, the shortened version I told you about last time? Still a beast though. Then on Saturday I did Insanity Cardio Power & Resistance, and yesterday I did Chest, Shoulders & Triceps. In the very first pull up exercise in Legs & Back, I felt the pain in my head again. Fuck! I stopped immediately, and sat for a while, and it never got really bad. After a minute I was okay, when previously I had to abandon the workouts. I feel like I went to the edge, but pulled back just in time. I am no longer going to see how many consecutive pull ups I can do, when I would strain to do just one more. I'm going to do as many as I can until I don't feel comfortable, then hop off the bar for a few seconds, then repeat, then repeat, until I feel as though I have done as many as I can. There's no head splitting straining to get the last one in, but it's close. And it also means I can do a lot more pull ups. Last time I did Legs & Back I did 76. On Friday night I did 100. So while I'm never truly reaching failure, I'm doing much more, and I'm not getting these bloody headaches.
I did Chest, Shoulders & Triceps while watching Sydney vs North yesterday. The first half was shite, but we shook them off in the third by playing really well, and it was nice to see us have another good win. We're playing pretty well, though apart from St Kilda, who beat us, we haven't played any real quality. I loved it how in the first quarter the commentators were talking about how playing Richmond and beating them by ten goals or whatever may have adversely affected our game. Man, Richmond must really suck if that's what happened. It's like they "infect" other teams. Like a parasite that latches onto a host and then immediately dies, and it takes the host a week to overcome a vague feeling of "unwell-ness" as it eradicates the dead parasite's residual remains from its system. That's Richmond. Richmond and North Melbourne should merge, and become the Abbotsford Leaches.
I hate North more than any other club, I think. I'm always extra happy when we beat them. It's not that I hate them so much, it's just that I think they are illegitimate. If there is one team that feels like they shouldn't be in the AFL, it's probably the Freemantle Dockors, but then they are relatively new, and at least they have a massive fan base. North have been around forever, but still feel like they shouldn't be there.
On Saturday I had a great day with William. First, we went to Mr Donuts for a milkshake and donut, then we came home and we had lunch with Joey Jo Jo while Junko went out with some friends, then we did Insanity together, then we went to the bath house, where we had dinner and ice-cream afterwards, then we came home and did our reading lesson, and then bed. At the bath house some hobbyists had telescopes set up out the front, and Will got to see the moon up close, and I saw Saturn and her rings, which was pretty cool. First time I've ever seen that. These telescopes were pretty amazing, because you couldn't see Saturn with the naked eye. I really wanted to see Mars, but the guy couldn't seem to find it with his telescope. I actually had more fun on Saturday with Will that I did the whole week in Hawaii.
Very quiet recently at work. Not much to do. I spent the last hour of work Friday wondering how I can move all my money out of Australia when the crash comes. Can I have some kind of alarm or warning to alert me? It's going to be chaos when it happens. I wanna be like Go! Go! Go! and fax the application to the bank to transfer my money over here the moment before the banks go bust and people start stabbing each other and trapping dogs and using their pelts for warmth. Might not get that bad, but it's gonna be nasty. What do I know about economics? Nothing. But I can feel it in me water! I read an article about how after ten years of unprecedented growth, applications for home loans have dropped 25% this year. But sales are still booming. Whose buying all the homes? Nobody knows! Must be foreigners, they say. But no-one really keeps track, so they can't be sure. Hello! Trouble brewing.
Anyway, Insane Abs tonight. I've never done this before. Should be insane.

Round 3: Day 20 - P90M Cardio Intervals

2010-04-14T13:01:00.004+09:00

Done it! I have finally gotten up to date with Lost. Now I have to wait a whole week for each new episode like every other sucker in the world. I like the new season a lot, but I'm a bit sad that John Locke is... not the same. He does seem much happier in the other dimension, but apparently Desmond is going to show him it's not where he's supposed to be, or something like that. Hugo has really come into his own this season. I loved it in the other week's episode with Richardo when Richardo was under the tree screaming "Does the offer still stand? Does the offer still stand?" Basically offering to give his soul to the diablo after more than a hundred years working against him. A real heavy moment. Then Hugo appears from the jungle. "What offer, dude?" Is there anything else he could possibly have said? No. Great stuff.
Last night I did P90 Master Cardio Intervals. This is one of my favourite workouts, which is why I included it in this round to take the place of an Insanity workout. It's longer than an Insanity workout, and I would say just as hard. A few more chances to catch my breathe, that's probably the main difference. Tony is in a good mood, but Dreya's there too. How many workouts is she in? More Pam, less Dreya, please. I really like the P90 Master series. I'm not sure why more people don't use it. It's a little less intense that a P90X workout, but that's a good thing sometimes. But this Cardio Intervals workout craps all over Kenpo X or Cardio X, and is very similar to Core Synergistics with a bit of Plyo thrown in there. Perfect.

Round 3: Day 19 - Shoulders & Arms

2010-04-12T16:46:00.003+09:00

I really enjoyed this year's Masters, even though it wasn't a final hole finish. The main focus was on how Tiger would handle the pressure, and the answer was: not very well. Mind you, this year's final round of Tiger's wasn't too dissimilar to the last few years, except that instead of just his putting sucking balls, his driving sucked balls too. The most disappointing aspect of Tiger's final day was that he sulked and whined the whole way round. In other words, he behaved the way he always does when he's not playing well. Like a child.
A couple of things this week has made me think that nothing has changed, and nothing will change with Tiger. In his post-round interview on Thursday, a journalist asked him "What did today mean to you?" He pleaded. "What did it mean?" The guy may as well have said "Tiger, this is the part where you get an opportunity to show the public a little bit of yourself that does not involve pissing on pornstars or doing cocktail waitresses two days before your wife gives birth to your second child." Tiger? "It means that I'm two shots off the lead. That's what it means."
Wrong answer, dipshit.
His general attitude sucked the longer the tournament went on. His game deteriorated, though that was too be expected. The interest was whether he was going to throw clubs into the crowd again, like he did in Melbourne the last tournament he played. He didn't, but he did let a few "Jesus Christ!"s go. And an amusing "Tiger Woods, you suck!" Give it a few weeks and he'll return to the form that has made him the moist highly fined player in golf. Little to no change in his course demeanor, which is scary.
So, while most people expected a fresh, humbled, liberated Tiger, we get the same old heavy as before. I did not expect that. On Saturday, Nick Faldo even suggested that maybe, as a show of making changes or a new start, Tiger not wear the red shirts that he wears on Sunday. Nup. Not a chance. Black pants, red shirt, black cap.
I was happy to see Phil Mickelson win the tournament. He played awesome golf, especially on Saturday with those back to back eagles, and the second shot he hit into 13 today was one of the best shots I've ever seen. Phil's a bit of a phony, but last year his wife and mother both had bouts with breast cancer, so it's a great 'story', as the Americans like to say. Plus he probably doesn't try to mount every woman he meets. Anyway, he's always been the crowd favourite over Tiger. A US Open shootout? That would be awesome.
I had a good weekend, though I decided to do a fresh installation of Vista on my home computer, which had a few problems. I eventually got it done, and now I have a nice, clean hard disc, which doesn't tell me it's nearly full all the time any more. What it was full of I have no idea.
I have a new way to do my workouts now. I used to get upset if i started too late in the evening and didn't get a chance to watch TV before bed. Now I do the resistance workouts while watching TV. I have the worksheets to guide me, and they're enough. I don't need to watch or listen to Tony any more. I watched the footy show on Friday night while I did Chest & Back. I skipped yesterday's Shoulders & Arms because I was buggered from staying up late to finish the Vista installation, so I'll do it today. I think I'll watch Jamie Oliver. Doing a workout while watching Lost might be a little difficult. I might miss something.
The family did "Hanami" on Saturday at Okazaki Park, literally "flower watching". The chery blossoms are falling like snow, and everyone gets out and has a barbeque and some beers. Good times.

Round 3: Day 15 - Insanity

2010-04-08T15:51:00.013+09:00

So the Masters starts in the morning. My tip is Phil Mickelson. He's in okay form, played a lot of golf lately, and has won there twice already. I hope Ernie Els does well, but I fear he's peaked too early this year. If Tiger is in contention on Sunday, that is amazing. If he wins it, I will be stunned. If he misses the cut, I wouldn't be surprised.
It was great to see Tiger in the press conference the other day. It looks like he really missed golf and was extra glad to be back. But there are a couple of things that will continue to bother him until he decides to talk about it openly and honestly, which he hasn't so far. What really happened that night of the accident? "It's all in the police report," is the response. No, it's not. But hey, it's personal, I can let that one go. But the other grey area is not personal. Why did he associate with a doctor since revealed to be supplying performance enhancing drugs to other athletes? He says he has never taken performance enhancing drugs. Then why this doctor, out of the hundreds he could have chosen? The recommendation of other athletes, he said. Which athletes? No one asked the question. This Canadian doctor thing might hang around for a while yet. I doubt he ever took PEDs (that's what everyone's calling them these days), but hey, Tiger's a lying piece of shit, so anything's possible. Can't wait to watch him play golf again though.
I've got Insanity Plyometric Cardio Circuit tonight, and Chest & Back tomorrow. I'm ready to get back into it after my week off. I have added another ten days on the end of this round to compensate, so this round will last an even 100 days.
EDIT: I'm just about to watch the new Nike ad with Tiger Woods. Can I just say this - if I hear Earl Woods say something like "Before you help others, you've got to help yourself" I'm going to drop Tiger. He's been saying it in interviews and at the press conferences, and if it's in the ad, he's still all about the branding and image, and he and Nike have had meetings about the best approach and probably did focus group testing and all that. I don't like that he's bringing out an ad before he's hit a golf ball in competition, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt; probably not in a great position to argue with any sponsor at the moment. But all of this is a bit too slick for my liking.
...
Well, at least he didn't say that line. Weird ad. Taking the voice of your dead father out of context and applying it to this. I'm sure Earl would have reacted a little different if he were alive. He would have knocked him out.
One more thing about Tiger. Off the course, ever since he started, he's been prone to talk Oprah speak. Everything is about chasing your dreams, growing, learning, all that stuff. His approach to this scandal has been the same. This ad is in that style, too. What are your feelings? What did you learn? I don't think anybody is going to buy it. His brand is irreparably damaged, and I don't think he knows that. I'll still watch him play golf and marvel at his skill, but I don't think I'm going to care if he wins or loses anymore. Which really, really sucks.
Also, just heard that he screwed his 21 year old neighbor. Wonder if he told the wife about that one.

Back From Hawaii

2010-04-07T16:03:00.005+09:00

We got back from Hawaii last night. We had a lot of fun, but also a lot of aggravation with William. He was up and down like a yo-yo for most of the trip, and the wife and I had had enough by the end of it. Probably a couple of days before the end of it, actually. He loved the beach, and the trolleys that go up and down the strip, but there were a lot of tantrums, too. The weather wasn't great. It was warm when the sun was out, but it rained a lot, but we had a lot of great food this time though. All in all, not as much fun as last time, but still okay. I would seriously reconsider going anywhere with a four year old ever again.
One funny thing. We thought it would be a good idea to go to the Waikiki zoo twilight tour. We went in, and it's a really nice zoo. Beautiful. So we go to the first animal, the flamingo, and no shit, our tour guide spends fifteen minutes talking about the flamingo. Finally he says, okay, let's move to the next enclosure. So everyone gets moving, and then he says, before we do, I'd like to talk about some of the trees you see around us. Ten minutes. By this stage, kids are getting sulky, adults getting pissed off, and Junko and I are wondering who to ask for a refund. So then we get to the elephants, which are cool, but we spend fifteen minutes at the elephants, and after that, another fifteen minutes at the monkey enclosure. One hour, three animals! We went to see the hippos, which was really good. Nice and close to the hippos, and the kids liked that. By the time we go to the climax of the tour, the tigers, it was too dark to see them, and it had started to rain. "Everybody come to the classroom!" cried the tour guide, and we all ran to a nearby building for some shelter. The classroom? I thought. That doesn't sound good. And sure enough, we got in there, and the guide pulls out some plastic skulls of various animals and starts teaching us about them. The whole tour had an evangelistic feel to it, like we were all poachers or something, and it was their job to teach us about animals and how to love them. We had some biscuits and drink while we waited for the rain to stop, and Will and I started feeding biscuits to the skull of a tiger and munching them with it's jaw until another guide came over to tell us to stop. Then she taught Will about molars and canine teeth. We don't want to learn, we just wanted to see the animals! I'm actually going to write a complaint letter.
Every one in Hawaii needs to lose 5 kilos. At least. Some people need to be detained immediately and made to lose 50 kilos. I saw a lot of fat children. 12 year old kids with guts and double chins. Messed up. Every second add on TV is selling shit food, and every other add is for some pill or ab machine. Crazy times.
I ate pretty well while I was there. I didn't even have any Burger King! I did have a few packs of chips though. A couple of beers, too. I did a workout at the gym next door. At first I felt pretty stupid doing the Chest, Shoulders & Triceps routine in the gym, but then I looked around and saw that the people sitting around on the machines doing their leg presses were flabby fucks. Except for one guy who was huge, singing with his walkman on. Gyms suck, don't they. I saw the P90X infomercial one night, which motivated me to hit back hard when I got going again. I've got a rest scheduled today, then back into it tomorrow, in the morning.
There were plenty of homeless people living in the parks. Much more than last time. Gimme a nice tent, and I would love to live homeless in Hawaii. If I was single and had a good job, hell yea. The only problem would be the other homeless people, who rant and rage around Waikiki, punching bins and swearing and carrying on. Lots of them around. They are so melodramatic, homeless people. Everything's a scene. I had to laugh. I was sitting on the shore near a homeless guy, and this skinny, pale stoner dude walks up to this guy and says "Case dismissed!" and does a little dance. Awesome first sentence.
I couldn't understand anything anyone in the shops said to me. Either they were mumbling and not looking at me so I wasn't even sure they were talking to me or their co-worker, or they were from somewhere else and couldn't really speak English. I went to subway, and at the checkout the guy said "Cabulautyudsu sandwich?" "What?" "Cabulautyudsu sandwich?" "Yes, it's a sandwich" I said, and paid for the sandwich. I dunno. I did say "what?" a lot.
Anyway, I haven't even talked about Tiger's press conference or the Masters yet. Never mind, I will.

Round 3: Day 7 - Yoga

2010-03-31T09:39:00.001+09:00

I did Legs & Back last night, and I'm hurting already, barely 12 hours later. I did an abbreviated version of Legs & Back, and I'll think I'll continue to do it like this. The first half of L&B is fine. Well, not fine, pretty bloody hard. It just destroys me every time. Wall squats, balance lunges, one legged wall squats, deadlift squats, all that. Plus the pull ups. Then after the short halftime break, the workout gets a bit loose, in my opinion. So I skip the Dreya's 3-way lunges, and then I skip the sneaky lunges. I do the next two exercises, then I skip the toe-roll iso lunges, do the pullups, and then skip the Groucho walk. In the past I have never done these exercises with any intensity anyway, so I may as well just skip them and make the whole ordeal shorter and more appealing. It shortens the second round by about 10 minutes. When I do it like this, I see the first round as a lot of leg exercises with some pull ups thrown in, and the second round as a lot of pullups with some leg exercises thrown in. I like it. Well, I don't like it, but you know what I mean.
Tonight I've got to squeeze in Yoga between meeting Nori and packing for Hawaii. We leave tomorrow night, Thursday night, and fly all night, and arrive in Hawaii Thursday morning. Weird.

Round 3: Day 5 - Rest

2010-03-29T14:46:00.004+09:00

It seems that as soon as I wake to go to work recently I have a headache. It's a day to day thing now. Every Spring I get them for a month or so. It gives me the shits. I was okay on the weekend, though last night I could feel one coming on, and today it hurts. I might try to go to the doctors and seeing what he says.
I have changed my type of canned coffee. It's still Boss, but it's no-sugar. I'm reading the can. It is called "Amakunai Ore" coffee which means "not-sweet Au Lait". But amai, sweet, also means to be indulgent, or kind of spoilt. It's a pretty common word here, and according to some psychologists, the key to understanding the Japanese personality.
Anyway, the "Au Lait" in Japanese is written as "ore", which is also the male informal word for "me", or "I". So it's called "not-sweet Au Lait", but also something like "I'm no pushover".
How can the same sentence have two such different meanings?
Swans got beat on Saturday. St Kilda where just too good. Sometimes I feel that Sydney work too hard for their losses. We never get thrashed, so we always have our chances, which means we are always playing %100. We never have easy loses. Goodes played really well, and so did Grundy, and it was great to see Kennelly back, though his faceplant in the last quarter made me feel sick. Welcome back to AFL, where a guy can just smash into the back of you and ram your face hard enough into the ground to break your nose. But I feel like our second tier players, Ted Williams, Ryce Shaw, Marty Mattner, those guys, who are good when the pressure is off, are always going to give it up when it matters. They did all last year, and will this year too. I suppose there just aren't enough good players around to fill a team with them. But Geelong and St Kilda's second tier are better then ours. Bottom line.
Workouts going well. Thankfully my head was fine when I did them, or they would have sucked. I've got my rest day, and then Legs & Back tomorrow. The hotel I'm staying at in Hawaii has a sports gym apparently, so I might do a workout or two while I'm there. It's funny, I've been checking online reviews of the hotel we are staying at, the Pacific Beach Hotel, and they are so wildly varied. Some people say it's the best hotel ever, the only one they'd stay in, and others hated it, worst hotel ever. It must be infuriating to actually run one of these places. The hotel we stayed at last time was good, except the breakfast was utter shit. Stuff like donuts, pastry shit in batter, warm greasy pancakes, and everything wrapped in plastic or in polystyrene boxes. I wept for the Earth seeing the bins full of this shit every morning. "Best breakfasts ever!" someone wrote in the review of that hotel. Amazing.
Actually, one of my missions this time in Hawaii is to find a place that sells better food that Burger King, which topped the list last time. I had some awful food while I was there. We went to a buffet, and I saw they had roast beef. Roast beef! I hadn't eaten roast beef for maybe a year or so. I went over and the chef sliced me a piece of the sickest, greyest, ugliest roast beef you've ever seen, and slapped it on my plate. I took one mouthful and spat it out. "How was your meal?" asked the waiter at the end of the night. "Very ordinary" I said. He smiled, probably not listening. It cost $80 for two adults and a 3 year old kid. We'll see how we go this time.
Speaking of food, I think I cured myself of Yakiniku on Friday night. I am pretty close to vomiting now just thinking about it. We went out for dinner on Friday night for Jo-kun's birthday, and we ordered too much meat. Yakiniku is when they bring you a plate of raw meat and you cook it yourself on the griller in the middle of the table. I ate too much, and I was bringing it up all night, reflux, I think it's called. The thing is when you go to one of these places, your hair smells like meat, your clothes smell like meat, and when you eat too much you can still smell it when you go home. it turns you off severely. There is a bit of a stomach bug going around, and I've caught a bit of it, so my appetite is way down.
Are you watching Jamie Oliver in America? He's doing what he did in England about school lunches. A great show. It's amazing the resistance he's up against when all he wants to do is feed the kids better food. People look at him like he's a madman. Mind you, try telling a Japanese person that eating a bowl of rice with every meal is probably not very good for you, and they think you are crazy. Every day at lunch I order a small rice by saying "komori", but the person at the counter thinks I've said "omori" which means large size because that's what everyone says, and they start piling mounds of rice into the bowl. Every time! I have to say "KOmori!", and then as soon as they start piling the rice in I'm ready. "KOMORI!" They look up in shock, see a foreigner, which explains the anomaly of someone wanting LESS rice, and then start shoveling the rice back out of the bowl, muttering something. But you'd think it would be easier to argue that kids shouldn't be eating pizza for breakfast, but apparently not.

Round 3: Day 2 - Masters Memories

2010-03-26T16:10:00.011+09:00

The Masters holds a special place in my heart, and I always look forward to the start of April when I can turn on the telly and see the beautiful green hills of Augusta National. This Masters is extra important because Tiger is coming back (I am curious how the fans will receive him), and the last few masters have been dull as shit. I remember watching it when I was a kid, and the most outrageous stuff would happen every year. Larry Mize's chip in in '87, Hoch's missed putt in '89, Tiger's 12 shot victory in '97, the '04 Masters which was just insane, and Tiger's chip in on 16 in '05. More of that, please.

Augusta. Your dogwoods and pines... I'll be singing that all day.
Well, once again the Tigers got pumped by Carlton in the first game of the year, though according to the newspapers the Tigers were fantastic, only losing to Carlton by nine goals.
Can I tell you what a blessing the Internet, and in particular, illegal downloading is? Three years ago, I decided that I would like to watch AFL football here in Japan. I hadn't seen a game in years, and I missed it. My parents would send me a VHS tape of a game once or twice a year, but really the only footy I saw was on the news clips I could watch on-line. So I did some investigating, and it turned out that I could watch the football through the AFL website, at a special site for International members. So I paid my $60 and organised my week around the games. Of course, they were not up until a couple of days after the actual game, so I had to stay away from news sites, Facebook, etc, until they were up. And there was no pre-game or post-game analysis, no interviews, nothing. The game started with the first quarter siren, and ended thirty seconds after the final siren. Also, I watched them via streaming, meaning the quality was poor, and I couldn't actually see the ball. I just kind of knew where it was because that's where all the players were going towards. And then sometimes it would start buffering, and I would have to sit and wait for five, ten minutes. And then sometimes it would not start at all. Still, I watched a lot of games, and despite the problems, got to enjoy the majority of them. Basically it was like watching AFL football on Youtube. Youtube three years ago. (For my Australian readers, Youtube three years ago in Japan is about the same viewing experience as watching Youtube in Australia will be three years from now. If the Australian government hasn't banned it by then). I was quite happy to pay the money and go another year.
The trouble began when I went to the usual web page to watch a big game on a Monday night, chips and beer at hand, when I was redirected to another site, "Aussie Sports TV". Yes, they had sold the international streaming rights to a large European Internet sports group specializing in soccer, F1, and other sports, with AFL waaaay down the list. Don't let the name fool you. And the game wasn't up yet. It was up for Australian viewers, but not for International viewers. By Thursday night it still wasn't up, and by then I had lost my mind, and I sent them an irate mail telling them how much I hate them.
I need not have lost my mind. What I did, and what I should have done from the start, is find a bit torrent site specializing in AFL football, and download the games illegally. Free. HD. Pre-game and post game analysis. In addition, more panel shows that I can possibly keep track of. I wrote another mail to "Aussie Sports TV" telling them I had begun to illegally download the football and would not be requiring their services any longer, and gave them one last spray. Now I watch AFL games the day after they're played at home, at work, anywhere. And my providers are just people with a HDD who think other people might want to see some football. I just thank god I live in a country that does not restrict the amount of data I can access, because in a typical footy week I download over 2GB of footy.
I will pay someone who can provide me with better service, but I don't need to justify or excuse my behaviour. I just want to watch AFL football, and this is the easiest way. I would rather not break the law, but it's not like the cops are going to bash down my door. They might bash down the door of the torrent site owners, but I donate $20 every year to make myself feel better, and let them know I appreciate their efforts.
Insanity Plyometric Cardio Circuit went fine last night. Again, nearly got through it, but not quite.
Today is Joey Jo Jo's birthday! 1! Happy birthday my little ruff n' tumble baby boy. I love you.

"Hi. Nice to see you."

Round 3: With A Vengeance- Day 1

2010-03-25T11:18:00.008+09:00

Springtime is here, though it has rained for three days straight here. Time for a new round. What I've done this time is broken the 90 days into three blocks. But wait. What I've done then is break up each block into two two-week long blocks. That's the genius of it. I do four days of workouts, then take a rest day. Then I do three days, then a rest. Then four days, then a rest. That's fourteen days. Repeat, and there's a block. The first fourteen days look like this.
Insanity Plyometric Cardio Circuit
P90X Chest & Back
One on One Killer Abs
P90X Shoulders & Arms
Rest
P90X Legs & Back
One on One Fountain Of Youth Yoga
P90 Master Cardio Intervals
Rest
P90X Chest, Shoulders & Triceps
Insanity Cardio Power & Resistance
Insanity Insane Abs
P90X Back & Biceps
Rest
That's basically the pattern for the whole three months. Not as strenuous as a normal P90X or Insanity program, but nearly. One extra rest day every two weeks, and a couple of easier days thrown in there too. This round is called "Round 3 - With A Vengeance", or just "Round 3" for short. The "With A Vengeance" is because the last two attempts I've had at Round 3 have had to be aborted because of illness. This time I'm playing to win.
Footy starts this week. Richmond and Carlton tonight. Remember last year when Carlton destroyed Richmond's season in the first half of the first game of the year? Do we dare wish the same thing happen again?
Swans, meanwhile, had their slump last year, finishing 10th or something, and this year we will be back in the finals where we belong. No dramas there.
I had my morning speech yesterday. I talked about a problem gripping the nation, much like health care has in America and racism in my home city Melbourne. The quietness of hybrid cars, and how to let pedestrians know that there's one behind them. Yes, there's a growing fear in the narrow streets of urban Japan. The hybrid. Imagine walking down the street, perhaps texting or chatting to a friend, oblivious to the world around you, only to turn around and discover a Prius waiting patiently for an opportunity to pass you. How long have they been waiting? you wonder. I have been extremely rude without even realising it. And what about the poor driver? Oh dear, what should I do? If I toot my horn, I will frighten them. I will just have to wait patiently. The best thing to do would be to roll down my window and say "excuse me," but it is cold/hot outside, and I would be uncomfortable for a moment. Oh dear.
I'm sure some company somewhere has come up with an alternative to the horn that you can put in your hybrid car that sounds a pleasant little melody to alert pedestrians. But anyway, the gist of my speech was that sometimes new technology presents problems that cannot be predicted. The boss loved it because he drives a Prius, and I don't have to do another morning speech for a month or so. You beauty.
Nori's omiai went okay, he said. The girl is plain-looking, and didn't have big tits, which disappointed him. He said that his uncle not supplying him with a photograph was a mistake, because it just built up expectations. She is a really nice girl though, he said, and they have become text friends, and he said he will probably marry her(!). His mother is putting a lot of pressure on him to get married, he said, and he wants to make her happy/shut her up. Anyway, he has a couple of months to find someone better before "crunch time" (a phrase I taught him last night) when the decision has to be made.
Look at it this way. The worst thing that can happen is that he will have a nice wife who will cook and clean for him and his mother, and bear and raise his children. That's the way it is here. Most people get married because it's expected of them, and most husbands and wives like each other, but have their own lives and hobbies, and their marriages are based more on a benefit/obligation balance. The woman keeps the home, cooks the meals, does the laundry, and gets to spend the money the man earns on shopping or coffee and cake with friends and trips without question. The man goes to work, gets the money and gives it to the wife, and gets to have their food cooked, their clothes cleaned etc, and the occasional raucous evening with friends in a bar or club, no questions asked. I would like to say things are changing, but this is Japan. And besides, is it much different in your country? Who cooks your meals? Who cleans your clothes? Who raises your children? Who pays for your coffee and cake?
Anyway, his new car is really nice. Subaru Outback. His boss is a little upset that he didn't buy a Toyota, seeing as though he works for Toyota and they are in the shit, but like Nori said, why would he? He's not crazy.
Here's a picture of the T-shirt I was taking about the other day. You be the judge.

And here's a picture of my handsome boy and his new haircut.

Go Tigers! (That's for you, Stevie and Shannon.)

Birthday

2010-03-22T10:06:00.002+09:00

I had planned on posting a picture of myself on my birthday, all big and cut and stuff, but it hasn't happened. Those headaches I got last week put everything on hold. I have to stop what ever it was that was causing them or it would make life really difficult. On Friday I did X Stretch, Saturday I did Recovery 4 Results, and yesterday I took the plunge and did Back & Biceps. Everything seemed fine, but I was careful not to overdo it, because that's when the headaches start. I did go to failure a few times and felt fine, which is a god sign. I warmed up properly, which is something I wasn't doing before, drank plenty of water, and concentrated on my breathing. It's amazing how often I find myself holding my breath. I have to stop doing that. When I start my next round of workouts, my main focus is going to be on form and breathing. This might mean that the numbers will drop compared to last time, but it will mean I'm doing the exercises properly, and getting more out of them. I'm sure that there were a lot of causes of the headaches. Stress, not warming up properly, not breathing properly, too many caffeine and sugary drinks (canned coffee), too much chocolate (KitKats, actually. Being going a little crazy on the Kitkats), sinus problems. That last one is important, I think. Since that weird cold thing I had last month, and every time I get hay fever, my sinuses get messed up. They're still not perfect, but getting better slowly. I might go and get my eyes tested, because I'm sure sitting in front of a computer every day has fucked my eyes up. My neck feels a little out of place, but i just went to the chiropractor's a couple of months ago, and I'm hesitant to go again so soon. It can't be good getting everything cracked so often. But then maybe if it gets cracked again, I'll feel a million bucks. Maybe just a massage.
Speaking of my next workout round, I was wondering what I am going to do. Should I keep going with what I have been doing, a P90X/Insanity hybrid, or should I do a straight up P90X round, with Kempo and Plyo and all that? I have been thinking of another option, which is to work in units of two weeks instead of one, with more stretching and rest days. It is a huge time commitment to do a workout every day, and after a month or so I find that I just get burned out and tired. If I can get a schedule up and running that might have two resistance workouts a week, 2 cardio, a couple of rest days, and throw in there some stretching or yoga, that might be the best. Resistance, cardio, rest, stretch, with some abs in there somewhere. Basically something a little easier on the system. I'm going to do some research.
I was doing a little Spring cleaning yesterday, throwing out clothes that I never wear. I came across a T-shirt that my mother gave me for my birthday 2 years ago, my last birthday before she died. It's a shocking T-shirt. I remember unwrapping it, and thinking What the fuck is this? I have never worn it, and in fact it still has the tag on it. There is no way I would ever wear it, and no-one would call me the most fashionable man in the world. I'll post a photo of it when I get a chance.
So I put in it in the pile of clothes to be thrown away. Then afterwards I was thinking that I'll take a photo of it for my blog before I throw it away, because I've told my sister how bad it is, but she hasn't seen it yet. So I took a photo of it, and then I went to put it back in the bag of clothes to throw away. But I couldn't. It was, after all, the last birthday present I received from mum, and it does in a way represent how sick she was at the time. I refuse to believe that if she was healthy and thinking straight and not battling the cancer and all the drugs in her system from the chemo that she would have bought this T-shirt for me. Maybe she was too sick to really put any thought into a gift for me and just picked the first thing she saw hanging up in the men's section in Myer. I don't know. But I put it on a clothes hanger and hung it up again in my closet. I know now that I will have this T-shirt forever, and it'll confound me every time I see it. What was she thinking? I ask myself. Then I consider that question, and she was probably thinking, god I feel awful, where's the toilet, I'll grab this T-shirt and pay for it and hopefully not throw up before I can get to the toilet. That's probably what she was thinking. I threw away some other stuff she had given me in the years before she died, stuff I haven't worn because it would have been embarrassing, like a bright blue jumper a size too big for me from Country Road, but I could see her buying it and thinking Oh that's nice, Jim would love that, and she would be in her right mind. But she could argue that it's a nice sweater, and some people might agree. Just not me. But the difference is that this T-shirt is indefensible.
Did you see the mails Tiger sent that porn star? Holy crap. I hope he told his wife about it before they came out, or they might have put him back a bit. Can you imagine the conversation? "Anything else you want to tell me, Tiger?" "Oh yea, I did like a bit of ATM action with porn stars." If you don't know what ATM stands for, you sweet, Innocent thing, I hope you never find out. Can you imagine the humiliation and embarrassment he feels? One thing I see on the golf forums (I love to hang out on the golf forums. They're awesome!) is people saying "who are we to judge Tiger? What if we had women throwing themselves at us constantly, and all the money in world to do what we wanted?" In other words, is it only lack of opportunity that stops us mortal men from cheating? If you could have any woman you wanted, would you have her? Fair question. I'm not going to say that if I was the best golfer in the world spending weeks at a time away from home and I had women throwing themselves at me all the time that I would never cheat. But it's so weird with Tiger. If he wanted to get his end wet, why didn't he get someone to arrange a call-girl or something? I'm sure there are agencies that provide really fit women to famous or rich men, with assured confidentiality. That's the way I'd go. Why was Tiger stringing along these porn stars (and getting jealous that they do other guys? WTF?), trying to fit in a session between sponsor gigs, obviously shitting himself that someone might find out? I kind of hope that's it with the texts and phone messages and maybe videos (I'm sure there's one or two around someone), but at the same time they are really revealing.

Tiger back for the Masters

2010-03-17T16:22:00.002+09:00

Tiger's BACK! The Masters. This will be the biggest event in the history of the world. I'm a little surprised he is coming straight back for a major and not getting in some match practice beforehand. He really should have started his comeback last week at Doral, a tournament which has been really good for him, but he didn't, and Ernie Els won. I like Ernie, great player, but he's Tiger's bunny, so the victory was a little empty. They are talking about "the asterisk" that should be put besides the winner's name while Tiger has been taking these breaks. Spot on.
Will Tiger be rusty? It's not like last time when he was injured. He's been practicing like a madman for weeks, but nothing can compensate for match fitness. Can he concentrate for four days? At the Masters? On the flukiest course in the world? Doubt it. He chose the Masters because it's protected. The press and the fans won't get too close. I wonder if anyone in the crowd will risk getting thrown out of the Masters and give him some stick? I hope so. What will the hecklers say? Tiger's caddie and major asshole Steve Williams says he "will not tolerate" hecklers. Tosser. It's going to be awesome hearing what comes out of the galleries this year. The US Open, easily the rowdiest crowd in golf, will be bananas.
This is his third extended break. The first was after his dad died in 2006 and he took 9 weeks off. He came back for the US Open and missed the cut. He later said he wasn't ready emotionally. The second was last year when he had knee surgery and was out for nine months, and it took three tournaments to get back to winning form. This time it's different because he's fit, and maybe he feels unburdened and freer that he has for a long time. Maybe he feels like his life is back on track. But only a fool would say he's going to win the Masters. I'm not saying he won't, but if he does, I would be shocked, and it would probably say as much about the other pros on the tour as it does about him; ie. they all suck. My prediction? Tiger will miss the cut, which will suck but it will also diffuse the media circus shit-storm hysteria that will undoubtedly occur.
I've got a headache. Sometimes I wonder why I get headaches after I eat chocolate. Could it be that I get headaches after I eat chocolate because I eat chocolate? ...not sure. How about I don't eat chocolate? I guess I could try that. Going to tomorrow.
I rode my motorbike in to work today. It's still probably a little too cold in the mornings, but it's so much more fun and quicker that riding my bicycle to the station, catching the train, and working to work. Plus it gives me another ten or twenty minutes at home in the morning. My indicators weren't working properly, but now they seem to have healed themselves. I still find it amazing when electrical products break and then start working again.
We cut Will's hair last night. One of friends got his hair cut, so Will had to get his hair cut too. I was going to ask him what he would do if his friend jumped off a cliff and so on, but decided against it, and just cut his hair. I didn't do a bad job, except for the big chunk of hair I accidentally took out at the back of his neck trying to tidy it up. To even it out I had to keep going further up his neck and the back of his head, so it looks like the hair on the back of his head finishes around level with his ears. Who cares? He doesn't.
I did Yoga on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and took a day off yesterday. I'll do it again tonight after my lesson with Nori (still waiting to hear about the Omiai and see his new car), but I'm feeling really restless and want to start bringing it again soon, something to tide me over 'till Hawaii.

Yoga

2010-03-15T15:13:00.003+09:00

I've been reading up on these exertion headaches I've been getting, and the main consensus is that they are caused by tight neck and shoulder muscles, poor hydration, and just generally overdoing it. I drink plenty of water during the day, but the other two are probably right. So over the weekend I really tried to relax and calm down, which is harder than it sounds. But I did yoga both days, really concentrating on my breathing and form, and it was great. I have kind of dropped off the yoga recently because whenever it was scheduled it was too easy to write off because I was tired or busy or whatever. I have to remember just how awesome and hard and rewarding it is, and try to do it as much as I can. I'm going to rotate the One on One with Tony Fountain of Youth yoga and Patience Hummingbird and X Stretch for a couple of weeks, then really unwind in Hawaii, and then when I get back take a couple days off, and then if I'm feeling better and stronger get stuck into another round for the Summer. Hopefully it will have sorted itself out by then.
So I had a nice weekend, lots of time with the boys. Yesterday we went to the Kariya Highway Oasis. It's a park next to an expressway. Sounds crap, but actually it's okay. Will had so much fun playing with his friend who is a girl Kurumi-chan. He threw a tantrum at the end, but later we both acknowledged that it was just because he was tired.
The Japanese lesson on Saturday was a little disappointing. The teacher talked almost the whole time. I can't really complain because he's a volunteer, but if I was a paying customer I would certainly have a word with the staff. When I was teaching I was able to do a 50 minute lesson with only about 5 minutes TTT (teacher talking time - yes, there's an acronym). My dream was to have a deck of five or ten cards I could show the students so I wouldn't have to talk at all. Stuff like "Ask him ->" and "What do you think?". I never got around to it, but I could have, easily. And the students would have left my class thinking, fuck that was hard, but boy did I talk a lot! But this guy talked for forty minutes straight, then we had a break, and then another thirty, occasionally asking questions. My theory was, I'm an English teacher in Japan. What the fuck do I know? In my prime I could walk into a room with five students, sit down, and wait patiently for them to say something. I would not say a word. One guy who I worked with used to walk into a room of Japanese students with tape over his mouth. Once it took 17 minutes for someone to ask him a question. They all just sat there. If you don't believe me, you haven't taught English in Japan. Japanese people are quite comfortable sitting in silence with other people for as long as they need to, while us Westerners shit out pants if no-one's said anything for five seconds. It's quite a skill. Often, if I'm stuck somewhere with someone, say, an elevator or a waiting room, I'll feel the pressure. Then I think, hang on, I don't have to say anything. It's cool. But my teacher for some reason feels like he has to teach us about Japan as a whole, not just the language. He's a nice guy, and what he talks about is interesting and informative, but I don't go to listen to him. I go so he can listen to me and correct me when I make mistakes. Still, I no complain. Better than nothing.

Exertion headache

2010-03-13T07:13:00.003+09:00

I got another headache last night ten minutes into Shoulders & Arms. I had to stop. The pain is intense, and pretty scary. They're called exertion headaches, and are pretty common apparently. So I'm going to ditch my workouts until I get back from Hawaii in three or so weeks. instead, I'm really going to concentrate on my food, eat as well as I possibly can. I'm going to walk a lot, and do lots of stretching and Yoga. ARX, too. No crazy cardio, no weights. Obviously my head is telling me to slow down, take it easy. I can only put it down to too much stress. I've been so busy at work for the last few weeks, and at home I haven't had much time to just chill, so that's what I'm going to do.

3Resurrection - Day 23. Insanity, ARX Crash

2010-03-12T15:18:00.005+09:00

Last night I just crashed. I felt shit all day with hayfever. When I went home the family was grumpy. Will said he couldn't play with me because he hated me and I was stinky (which I wasn't), Joseph was sooky and crying, wife was tired and uncommunicative. The day was a right-off and I went to bed at a quarter to nine. No exercise, no Lost, nothing.
I'm watching Lost now at lunch, season 5 episode 1, and just then I was thinking, wow, look how quickly Ben changes his plans when the situation changes. He is very adaptable. That's something people like CNN keep telling us is that you have to be adaptable. Adapt to a constantly changing world, all that stuff. I thought, I wonder how adaptable I am? But then I thought, it's not about being adaptable. It's about sticking to what you know you need to do. From CNN's point of view, the world is a volatile, unpredictable, fluid place that is always challenging people to change with it. In my world, my job is dull, the work is the same, I wake up the same time, catch the same train with the same people, passed by the same cars on the way to work from the station, sit with the same people every day, and then after work catch the same train home. I'm sure it's probably the same for most people. My point is that the only thing I have to adapt to is everything being the same all the time. A lot of the changes in my life are brought about by myself, usually subconsciously. Like when I was let go by the Melbourne Institute of Chartered Accountants for "performance issues" (Oh? You're an accountant? No, I just answer the phones and get the mail out). Even though I could not afford to lose that job, it sucked ass and I hated it, and really I forced them to make the decision that I couldn't. Pretty passive/aggressive behaviour. I could easily do the same thing here with this job, but I'm not sure anyone would notice! I'm sure that if there was a big earthquake or aliens came or something then I would adapt pretty well. It's adapting to everything being the same all the time that is hard.
So, maybe a reaffirmation of my goals is in order.
Best shape of my life. I'm in good shape now, but I eat too much shit. 10 days till my birthday. "You can do anything for 10 days, right?" Stop eating shit!
N1 Japanese by July 2012. That seems like a long way away, but it isn't. And it's going to take that long to pass it. It's tough!
Australia before 40. Living where I want to live. I'm praying for a real estate crash.
If I don't keep working hard, none of these goals will happen. A couple of years ago I would have despaired looking at them, now I know I can do the work.

3Resurrection - Day 24. Chest & Back

2010-03-11T11:52:00.000+09:00

I have been smacked upside the head with hay fever today. I took a pill and now I'm all high and dry. I don't know which is worse. It's a beautiful day outside today, though. A nice change from all the grey skies and rain that we've been having lately.
Last night I did Chest & Back. I was ready to destroy it, but when I was doing my second pull up exercise I got that pain in the neck again, and it almost floored me. I hate it. It feel like I have cramp right deep inside my neck, and I get an instant headache. Maybe I had a stroke. My motor functions are fine, but if I was to lose 20% brain functionality, would I know? So I sat down for a few minutes and tried to recover. I thought about aborting the workout, but then I thought about how I'd been listening to that voice a bit too much lately, and I told it to shut up, and I would do this workout even if it was going to kill me. Pffft, the voice said, whatever. Dickhead. So I proceeded with caution and did ok in the end. But like I did the last time it happened, I'm going to have to avoid really straining to do that one more pull up, and when I feel like I'm trying too hard to eek out that last one, just drop off the bar, wait a moment, then do two more instead.
I see Corey Haim died. Hope you're not taking it too hard, Leigh.

Remembering the Kanji

2010-03-10T09:32:00.004+09:00

Over the last few months I have been studying Kanji using the book "Remembering the Kanji". It's a great book. The traditional way people learn Kanji is as kids in school, when they are introduced to the Kanji, it's core meaning, how to write it (stroke order etc.), then it's Japanese pronunciation (there might be several) and it's Chinese pronunciation. For example, 月. It means moon, or month. There are four strokes that have to be learnt in a particular order. The Chinese pronunciation is "tsuki". The Japanese is "getsu" or "gatsu", depending on the other kanji around it. Now this is a pretty simple example, and is one of the first kanji Japanese kids learn in school. But still, there are quite a few things to remember. Now, consider that there are over 2,000 kanji that the Japanese government have deemed to be standard everyday use kanji, and you can see just how herculean a task it is to learn all of them. Next, think about all the time Japanese kids must spent drilling and memorising kanji instead of learning about other stuff, like the world and everything in it. But they love their kanji, that's for sure.
So a poor foreigner comes along with a life, and job, friends, hobbies, and a brain already configured for another language, and they start studying kanji like the Japanese kids do. One by one, meaning, stroke order, numerous pronunciations, then drill, drill, drill. Impossible. So what this book does is teach you the meaning and the stroke order first, and then move on to the pronunciation (that's in volume 2. I haven't done that one yet). The author, James Heisig, argues that adult foreigners don't have the time or the developing brain to be able to learn kanji like the Japanese do. So he uses "imaginative memory" to learn the meaning and stroke order, and later, the pronunciation. He argues that Japanese people use it too, only in Japan it would be considered cheating. Here's an example.
厚. It means "thick". There are three "elements" in this kanji. The upside-down "L", which we have learnt means "cliff" because it looks like a cliff. 日, which is by itself a kanji and means "sun" or "day", and 子, which again is itself a kanji, and means "child". So you have to come up with a story, an image, that you can remember that incorporates these elements and the meaning of the kanji. For this one, I use "In Sparta, they threw unwanted babies off a cliff to die under the hot sun. Only the thick-skinned babies survived." You can see the story in the Kanji. Just to be clear of the positions, I put in "children under the hot sun". There you go. Some are easy, some are really hard to conceptualize. There is an awesome website where you can manage all the kanji you are studying, and is really the reason I got into studying kanji again. The stories people come up with are hilarious.
The argument is that when someone already knows the meaning of the kanji, it is easier to remember the pronunciation. That may be true, but in any case, it is easier than trying to remember everything at once. Sometimes it's great, sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my time because I'm not learning how to actually read them, but then again the alternative of just slogging through them trying to learn everything at once would drive me nuts. If you are interested in Chinese or Japanese characters, get this book. You don't need to be able to speak Japanese or anything, and you won't learn how to with this book, but you will know what all those tattoos mean.

3Resurrection - Day 22. Mammoth UML, ARX

2010-03-07T21:37:00.011+09:00

Man, these weekends aren't long enough. Went out for sushi for lunch again yesterday. Great Granma's shout. It's been raining a lot here, not as much as in Melbourne, though.
I did almost all of the workouts I wanted to this weekend, including an extra X Stretch, which was awesome. Friday night I did On One Leg, a One on One with Tony workout series. It wasn't very strenuous, but interesting. All it is is just some simple weights work on one leg. It's interesting because when you do these exercises you soon forget about the exercise you're doing and start concentrating on the foot and the calf of the foot on the ground, because it's just going crazy trying to keep you balanced. The core is working hard too. So on Saturday my calves had a bit of an ache, which is a good sign. Saturday I did Insanity Plyometric Cardio Circuit and Ab Ripper X. Damn this workout is hard. I nearly finished it yet again, about 95%. I feel much stronger than I did a month or so ago when I started doing Insanity workouts for real, but I just can't get over them. It's mental now, I think. It's when I get to the second to last round, and I'm sweating and breathing hard, and then the next exercise starts and I think, nah, need a rest. That's when I stop for ten, twenty seconds before getting into it again. The next time I do it I'll have to commit to not doing that, no matter what. I did X Stretch too, which I needed, and then last night I did Massive UML, also from the One on One with Tony workout series.I was halfway through Mammoth UML when the video on my iPod started messing around and I had to abandon it. It's the first time I've done this workout, so I didn't know the video was crap. Ah well. I'll do it again in the next couple of days. It looks pretty good. I was doing it with Willy, too. He tried to do a push up and hit his chin in the floor and cut his lip. Not too badly, though. Anyway, a big weekend, and I'm stiff and sore today. Good times. Really good times.
This week I'm going to try a news blackout. I have downloaded a shitload of audio books to listen to to and from work, and I'm not going to look at the news websites while I'm at work. I'm sure that if the world ends someone will tell me about it. It's just too depressing. Kids being murdered, politicians refusing to face reality, pages and pages of whining and bitching. I don't need it. I don't really care about the Oscars. I watched The Hurt Locker ages ago and I thought it was just an action movie trying too hard to be loved, but no real action or message. It's hard to feel sympathetic towards a main character that won't live very much longer, and who continuously endangers the men under his command who really do want to live. I didn't like him. But I guess it doesn't have much competition this year. I haven't watched a movie since Avatar, and that was what, two months ago?
I'm getting exited about next month, though. Hawaii for a week, then The Masters. If Tiger's not back for the Masters, I don't know what's going on. And if he's back for the Masters, he has to play in a tournament before that to get a rhythm going. So that gives him a month to come back. He's practicing every day all day, I hear. Probably better than being at home with his wife. The last few Masters have been really boring. They've been toughening up the course so Tiger doesn't win it every year, which is what the golf authorities have always done when a dominant player comes along, and they've turned the Masters, usually the most exciting tournament of the year, into the US Open, the most gruelling. I kind of hope Tiger comes back and wins it, but then I would rather Ogilvy win it or someone else good, like Mickelson or Els. I would love to see Ryo Ishikawa in contention. He's massive here, but it's hard to tell how good Japanese sports stars are internationally because they are so hyped here, but he looks the goods. He played awesome in the Accenture matchplay, beating Aussie Michael Sim (the best young Australian playing) in a great first round match. Won the last three to win 2 up. He seems to have that talent Tiger has of hitting the shot when he has to. He swings it like Greg Norman, with an amazing rhythm, and spanks it. He's only 18, too. I can't wait to see how he reacts to pressure. He might be the rival Tiger needs to get his mind off the skanks and back on the game.
Also, the Japanese lesson I went to at the library on Saturday morning was great. Perfect level. The old guy who teaches is a bit of a sleazy guy. I really enjoyed it. I just wish it didn't take a whole morning, which is a quarter of my weekend now!

The kids are calling it "hazing"

3Resurrection - Day 18. Insanity Plyometric Cardio Circuit, ARX

2010-03-04T14:20:00.000+09:00

I really enjoyed the 30-15 workout. It’s push ups, then pull ups, 12 times each. For the first half of the workout I did 15-8 – 15 push ups then 8 pull ups. For the second half I did 15 – 5. So that means in total I did 180 push ups and 78 pull ups. The pull ups were all I could do, but I could have done more push ups. Next time I’ll try doing 20 a set. I only did about half of what Tony does in this workout, which is just unbelievable. He’s fifty years old for god’s sake. He’s in good form in this workout, too. Funny.
I saw Nori last night. He’s excited because he picks up his new car tomorrow, a Subaru Outback, and then on Saturday he’s got an Omiai, which is like a formal meeting for a potential marriage. It’s kind of like arranged marriage, but only if the two people who are going to get married actually want to get married. An uncle of his who lives in Tokyo lives next to a woman with a daughter, and they are all coming down to Okazaki to have lunch with Nori and his mother. The pressure on people to get married here is pretty strong, especially when that person is not a weirdo pedophile cartoon loving freak. Nori has a great job at Toyota, nice guy, 35 years old, so of course he must get married. She’s 27. That’s all he knows about her. He asked his uncle to send him a picture of her, but his uncle said, looks aren’t important. It’s how you get along that’s the main thing. Not a good sign. We talked about what he should do if they don’t really get along. He said he would alright if that happens, but his uncle has to live next door to them forever, so he doesn’t want to make it tough for him. I gather that if they get along, then the odds are they would get married. Not a bad way to do things, I guess. So they are going to a nice Chinese restaurant for lunch, the five of them, and then Nori is going to take her for a drive in the mountains and have a coffee at a coffee shop up there somewhere, and get to know her. Then I think they go back to Tokyo that night, and then the phone calls begin. What did she think? What did he think? What do you think?

3Resurrection - Day 17. 30-15

2010-03-03T13:30:00.000+09:00

Tonight I'm going to do a workout I haven't done before. It's from Tony's One on One series, and it's called 30-15. It's a pretty simple workout. 30 pushups, 15 pullups. 20 times, I think. I don't think I'll be able to do 30-15, more like 20-8 or something. I'll do 20-8, and see how I go. I didn't do X Stretch last night, but I did do Ab Ripper X.
I was listening to a news podcast, and they were interviewing some guy about money in judicial elections in America. I wasn't really listening to it, until the guy said, "the optics aren't good". I thought he was talking about his eyesight or something at first, but then I realised he was talking about appearances, as in "it doesn't look good when judges are taking campaign contributions from large law firms". I predict that this will become the new "buzz" expression of this year. Who will be the first player, coach, or commentator in the AFL to use this expression? Got to be Craig Hutchison. My prediction is that it will take it's place amongst the greats, like "going forward", "don't have the cattle", "trust the process", and last year's champion, "tick all the boxes". The Brisbane Lions do not reprimand their troubled new recruit Brendon Fevola for making public a nude photo of star-fucker Laura Bingle. The optics aren't good. Gary Ablett stays at Geelong and also signs a million dollar endorsement with Cotton On, run by a Geelong businessman. The optics aren't good. Anyway, I'll trust the process going forward, and expect to hear this again soon.

3Resurrection - Day 15. X Stretch Rest

2010-03-01T13:03:00.010+09:00

I had a good weekend this weekend. I have been so busy at work the last couple of weeks that only on Friday did I feel like I had wrestled control over the volume of work that I have, and that's only after handing in two pretty shoddily-done reports that I hope I never see again. The problem with being busy in this job is that I am busy translating drivel that no-one will read, when I could be doing other things like studying or reading motivating blogs or writing a post myself. I get a bit down because when I'm busy it's kind of in my face that I have no interest in what I'm employed to do, and that's totally my fault. I should be trying to get into translating stuff about golf or something, only I'm not. Another thing to work on this year when I get over this hump.
I've booked in for Japanese lessons at the library starting Saturday. Will and I went down there and applied, and there were a couple of Americans hanging around the International Centre. "I love meat!" the American chick was telling everyone in the room. Living in Japan, I have come to appreciate how most Americans love life and genuinely seem interested in the people around them. I can see how when a Japanese student goes to America for a few years, they come back almost fluent in English. I'm sure it's a bit hard to take in large doses, but it seems everyone wants to talk and tell you about themselves and find out about you. I've been here ten years and all Japanese people are interested in is what Japanese food I don't like. So this American woman is all over Will, and gives him a chocolate, but it's a liquor chocolate. "Oh my god! I'm so sorry!" But Will loved her. "Why did she say sorry?" he asked me later as we shared the chocolate (I only gave him a little bit). "She said there's beer in the chocolate," I said, "and she knows you don't like beer." "Beer in the chocolate? That's crazy," he said, chuckling. I'm looking forward to the lessons though. I don't care how hard or easy it is, I just want to talk.
Will's kinder had it's farewell ceremony for the older kids on Saturday morning. When I walked into the community theatre where it was being held it looked like a press conference was going to happen with all the cameras on tripods that were set up. Gotta record these precious moments. GOT TO! Of course I take a few shots myself, but I like to watch my son do stuff with my own eyes and make an effort to commit them to memory. And! I want him to see me watching him, not fucking around with the white balance or something. So Will had a good time and did great on stage, but got a little tired and shirty at the end of it. Fair enough. So we went and had ramen, and Joey Jo Jo had his first taste of ice-cream. It is an amazing thing to be there when your child experiences something as simple and pleasurable as having ice cream for the very first time. He loved it, of course.
The workouts have been going gangbusters. I feel really strong, and after the Yoga workout tonight, I'm going to really concentrate on lifting my intensity this week. I've been hesitant to do so because of that cold or virus or strip throat I had, but this week I'm going to bring it!
Oh yea, we're going to Hawaii again in a month. Book a ticket and we'll meet up in Waikiki! First week of April.

3Resurrection - Day 8. Legs & Back

2010-02-23T10:06:00.002+09:00

Legs & Back today. I squeezed out one less pull-up than I did a couple of weeks ago, and that's okay because I've been out of sorts. 67. I'm still wary of giving it 100% intensity. I'm holding back for some reason. I've got to really start bringing it again.
For the first time, I skipped Dreya's 3 direction kicks and the sneaky lunges. They do nothing for me, and I usually just rush through them anyway. It shortens a long workout by about five minutes, which is welcome. Another thing, after the close grip overhand pullups in round 2, is it my imagination or is Tony about to pass out? He looks like he's in trouble, and then he kind of stumbles. "I'm falling over!" he says. Then the guy does 60 of those those 60-40 squats straight up. Wow.
Well, I bought dad a DVD player that can play DivX. Fuck it. It's only $70. Problem is, I bought it online at JB HiFi, an Australian retailer. It's a good chance they'll mess the order up. When I order books through Japanese Amazon, they often arrive the evening of the next day. It's unbelievable. I can imagine a group of guys standing at attention around the computer. "We have just received an order!" screams the stock controller, ripping the sheet from the printer and shoving it into the hands of a uniformed stock hand. "Go! Go! Go!" In Australia the I imagine the guy doesn't notice an order has come through for hours because he's too busy having bongs in his car out the back. We'll see. I figure it's probably the same amount of money as I would spend buying all the genuine Lost DVDs for him, and then afterwards he would have a DVD player that could play any downloaded stuff I wanted to send him.

3Resurrection - Day 7. ARX

2010-02-22T14:22:00.003+09:00

I was pretty slack on the weekend. I did Shoulders & Arms on Saturday after missing it on Friday, and then I only did Ab Ripper X yesterday and not the Insanity workout I was supposed to. I can feel the motivation slipping. I've also been eating pretty badly. There are a lot of little cakes and chocolate things around the house because of Valentine's day, and I've been helping myself to those. Usual stuff. Today is February the 22nd, exactly one month before my 36th birthday, so I'm going to get in the best shape that I can for the photo I'm going to take on my birthday. That means no more missed workouts, no more overdoing the snacks and stuff. So I'm going to catch up on my workouts today and tomorrow. Legs & Back tonight, then Insanity, ARX, and Patience Hummingbird Yoga tomorrow. Insanity in the morning, ARX after work, and Yoga at night. That will put me back on schedule.
I'm completely over this cold, except the lining of my sinuses and nostrils apparently weakened to the point of bleeding. It's stopped now, though my nose is full of scabs, and it's really annoying. It was unlike any cold I've ever had. I wouldn't even call it a cold. Let's see. Hay fever-like symptoms for a day or so, then a really, really sore throat, then bloody mucas, then a headache for a couple of days, amounting to about a week of suckyness. Maybe I have a new virus, and I'm now a fundamentally new type of human, changed at the DNA level. Maybe better, maybe stupider.
So what else? Will and I went to the Okazaki Nature Experience Forest, and we climbed a large hill together. There was some pooz on one of the steps, which he loved. As soon as we got home he drew a picture of us climbing this hill with pooz on the steps. Last night we had eel, which was nice. I suspect it's the sauce they cover it with that is nice, and the eel meat itself is not that nice. I watched "Capitalism: A Love Story", Michael Moore's new movie, and again marvelled at why Americans haven't taken the guns that they supposedly value so much and shoot dead every elected official in the country and start again. For all their bluster and bravado, they are great at putting up with being treated like pieces of shit.
I was watching Lost a couple of weeks ago and I thought, I wonder if dad would like this. So I bought the first season on eBay for $10 and sent it to him. You could say he liked it. He watched the entire 24 episodes in 3 days. Nothing if not compulsive, my dad. It'll be the only thing my sister and I hear about for years. That, and how he has just wants to be left alone. He can't just like something, it has to consume him. So now I have to get season 2 to him, and then 3, 4, 5, and 6. I hope he has a player that can play DivX or it's gonna cost me hundreds.

Tiger

2010-02-20T01:19:00.003+09:00

Anyone who knows me knows there is no bigger Tiger fan than me. He has meant so much to me the last ten to fifteen years, made me feel lucky to be alive.
Does he owe me anything?
That's the question I keep coming back to. And I have to answer that he does, because I feel betrayed by what he has done. Honestly, I feel humiliated. Only a fraction of what his wife is feeling, of course, but there it is. I'm a fan. I hoped my son would possess the same qualities as Tiger seemed to have. Dedication, discipline, a fearless heart. If it was just golf, then fine. But here was the greatest athlete in the world playing my sport better than anyone thought it could be played, and to top it off he seemed so... what? Square? Trustworthy? Dependable?
Your speech was fine. You seemed genuinely sorry. To admit your mistakes in front of your friends and mother (who looked really pissed off the whole time) took guts. Probably more guts than if you did it in front of the press.
Your foundation? Could not care less. Your wife? Yea, she's great, Tiger. And if she had any sense she'd never have anything to do with you ever again. But that two year non-divorce contract is probably too good to refuse. The paparazzi? They took a photo of your mother going shopping. So what? And the Buddhism? Spare me. I live in a Buddhist country, and there's seemingly only one commandment in Buddhism; you can doing anything if you don't get caught.
But you got caught. And only then did you think about what you had done.
When are you going to play golf again? I thought you were going to answer that question.
Anyway. Basically it was "I'm sorry. Leave me alone." Okay.
The irony is, after ten years of the greatest ever golfer, golf is in a terrible state, and it looks like 2010 will be disastrous. Golf put all it's eggs into Tiger's basket too, and now they're all broken and we are left with Steve Stricker and Jim Furyk.

3Resurrection - Day 3. Chest & Back

2010-02-18T16:39:00.003+09:00

I couldn't get up yesterday morning. I just couldn't do it. So frustrating. That meant I had to do my workout after my lesson with Nori last night, which meant I wasn't done until about 10:30. Still, it's got to be done. I decided to skip the warm-up and cool-down, which reduced the workout to a mere 40 minutes. Probably not the best thing to do, but time! I just don't seem to have enough of it now that I'm working 5 days a week. It sucks. I also had a headache yesterday morning, which a couple of aspirin took care of, but why? Not enough something? Too much something? The only difference between yesterday and every other day is that I had an extra hour's sleep. And I thought that was a good thing. Anyway, I did Chest and Back, and did it at about 80% intensity. I didn't want to go too hard after a week lay off and a cold.
Tiger's coming back! The shitstorm begins on Saturday morning. He's going to hold a press conference, but instead of answering questions, he's going to be sitting with a group of friends talking, and a camera will be there to record it. Is it going to be like that Elvis concert, just him and a bunch of friends riffin'? Jim, you have a question?
Yes, Tiger. Why wasn't holing putts to win tournaments, with thousands of people roaring, and winning millions of dollars, enough to satisfy you? Are you telling us that despite all your achievements and wealth, you still felt so incomplete and restless that, for example, you just had to fuck the waitress at your local coffee shop in your car in a church car park? And even when you got caught doing that, and were basically blackmailed into giving an interview to Men's Health, you didn't stop, but in fact became even more brazen? Did your dad know? Also, will you keep insisting on being a phony, even though everyone now knows you are a sleaze?
I watched a show on the golf channel last night, a review of the '09 season, which he dominated without winning a major. Every little snippet of interview they showed of him, I couldn't help adding at the end, ".. and now I'm going to go fuck a stripper."
My opinion? He will talk about how he will never talk about this, it is between him and his wife, he is sorry, all that. "He is looking forward to it," says his manager. WTF? He will be back at Bay Hill for Arnold Palmer's tournament, and then the Masters. He will not change. I kind of want to see how he reacts if the only thing that he has left, his golf game, leaves him too. But it won't, because he is the best ever.
Looking forward to the interview too.