Round 5 - Day 85

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.