Alright... I know.. I've been really bad at keeping up with my blog lately. However, like I said before, I've got a busy schedule and not much internet access. So, an update.
It's almost the end of November now. This Thanksgiving was the first Thanksgiving in my ENTIRE life where I did not consume turkey meat and all the fixings. A shame. A tragedy. No family and no American friends to celebrate. Hell, not even anyone to talk to about it. Explaining American Thanksgiving requires the explanation of turkey, the history, and culture of the whole thing. Far too much to get through the language/cultural barrier.
Ahh Thanksgiving.. I find that it is far simpler and issue-free to base center the objective of Thanksgiving thought on just giving thanks. Brining up the whole history just starts getting crazy. When you're very young, you think it's just about turkey. You get a little older and think it's about turkey and family. You get a little older and suddenly learn that it's about turkey, family, and something to do with some Pilgrims and Native Americans who loved each other. Then, when you start high school, and your Disney movie perspective starts getting dashed by real history and classmates trying to relive their parents' 1960s struggle against "the man", you learn that turkey day isn't all that simple.
Then, before too long, you're in your twenties. You know turkey day actually commemorates the alleged feast held by the Pilgrims and Native Americans after the natives helped the continental newbies survive. By doing so they assisted the newcomers in securing a foothold on the Eastern Coast of the United States, which would eventually lead to the decimation of Native American tribes due to a multi-century tidal wave of foreign disease, technology, genocide, and economics... But, after college, you also realize that just about everything in history, the present, and the future, has a bad side, and unless you've schmeegled your way into becoming president of some place, you should concern yourself with putting food on your plate and not with trashing the outcome of the past. We are here now. This is now. That's it.
I started my Thanksgiving day by waking up at 6am and heading to the gym. I got a huge workout in and then headed to work at 8, feelin' grrrrrrrrreat! (Said like Tony the Tiger). It has been great to get back to working out. My knee has been pain free after resting and sticking with bicycle riding for a few weeks and I am slowly working my way back.
I loved how I was working out before and was really getting my running strength up. My cardio recovery was killer before the knee went down.
The knee was a big influence in deciding to go back to the gym. I felt that running on a treadmill, with a slightly springy surface, would give me a little less impact on my joints. So far it has been cool. I don't pay attention to the distance on the treadmill because I always figure it's off somewhat, so instead I go for time and try to up the speed. I'm up to 25 minutes at 8 speed.... It feels like my lungs are still good, but my body is uncoordinated for running and must learn again, and I feel like I'm running scared, and my posture changes a bit. I just don't want to break anything or end up in the hospital... But, I'm on the way back. It makes me excited for the TOUGH MUDDER contest next October, which I really want to do. At first I was upset because I thought I would not be able to do it at all, but now I know I can, but just a little slower than if my leg was cool.
As for my strength work, I've really been keepin' it crazy! Full body movements... Movement, movement, movement... Working hard. Olympic lifts of all sorts... Deadlifts a must. Pull ups. Pushups... It feels good to stand far from the crowd here in Brazil where the combination of a lack of true training information and the abundance of machismo perspective results in a vast population of men who bench press, curl, and jog for 4 minutes (maybe) before swigging down a pint of TURBO EXTREME POWER PROTEIN!!!! and then heading to the bar to put down 10 beers. Also, when I go to the gym at night, it's always crowded as hell, but I find plenty of space.. I just go to the spot in the room where there's no mirror on the wall. I hope one day I can get these guys started on what I've learned in my fitness lifetime...
I don't hate on my Brazilian gym buddies at all. Their workout routines are a bummer if you're a fan of true strength and the body working as one piece, but these guys are beasts! Most Brazilians are a mix of German, Italian, Native, and African, resulting in guys who are jacked and ripped from not doing much! Man, if every guy in this country started working out with Josh V. the results would be crazy! With my mix of Fresno and Filipino, I have to work like an animal just to keep it cool. Most of these guys here just come out of the womb looking like Lawrence Taylor...
Fitness has really been blasting my mind lately. I've been thinking about what I want to do for a career and more specifically, what I can do when I come home during my off-time from Brazil.. I don't want a desk job. I have one now and it's good and easy, but I realized the other day that I want to make a difference in people's lives. And if I get a regular job back home, I'll never have time off to go to Brazil and, well, that's just no going to happen. I want to do something that I have passion for that I can use to spread the same passion to other people and make a decent living- the other day, I realized that I would like to make my own gym!
It's a long way down the road. There is so much to learn, so much to figure out, but man, I would love it. Probably I would have to start out without a facility and build up my cliental with personal training at my house or at other places, but man it would be so cool. Wake up each day... Get healthy, faster, stronger, and help other people to do the same. There are a few people out there who I have helped with this kind of thing before and I would like to help more.
I envision opening a small place with no mirrors, no machines... Simple tools for hard work.. Good people who come together to have a good time getting healthy. Field trips to other gyms and training camps... Visiting friends (Arcata folks) would be welcome to come down and spill some sweat. All kinds of good stuff. An amazing place called Body Tribe Fitness in Sacramento, which I have never been to, but want to attend, is, for me, an amazing example of what I envision... Of course, I would have my own twist to anything because being original is what's up, but man, this place is crazy close to what I've imagined before. Fitness, Art, chillness. Check this place out here:
http://physicalsubculture.com/
However, realism is a bitch. I've never been to this place and never met any of these people. Maybe it sucks... But I respect the ideas and concepts depicted on its site and I give made props to its community on the basis of those things.
Ok.. So.. All my friends out there! Who wants to workout with me and pay me?! :) It'll be worth it, I promise. Those of you who have asked me for help with exercise and diet before, know I'm not fooling around. As for credentials, I have none and I still have MUCH to learn, but I feel I know enough to start helping people.
Whoever wants to get down on this, hit me on facebook or my e-mail, and I will get it sorted. Ok, ok, enough with the fitness.... Thanksgiving day. After the gym I went to work.
At work, I spent my day tracking down cheap external hard drives and figuring out which companies were scammers and which were legit... Caught myself a scammer. PCBESTE.COM, Andy Lin. Never buy from this guy... I almost closed a deal with him until I saw a report from another buyer saying that this guy had mailed him a box of the wrong products and none of them worked. So long sucka..
I've been here for a while now and it's not like China, where I was speaking English everyday to people who would speak English back (My expat friends). When I speak English here, it's usually only to myself. When I hear it come out of my own mouth, it sounds strange now. I can really communicate with people now and have really upped my tenses and comprehension.. I think this is due to both the duration of time that I have been here and the fact that no one speaks English at my work. Everyone communicates with me in high speed, slang filled, mineiro Brazilian Portuguese. It is an experience. Making small talk with my co-workers is getting a little easier and we enjoy taking time from work to share our favorite YouTube MMA fights with one another.
I miss my family and friends, and my house and everything, very much. With holiday season here, the homesickness is big time, but I have mixed emotions and reasons to get me through it.
1. Changing my ticket to come home early is going to cost me more than the original round-trip ticket, and with my $3.50/hour job, that's not happening... And despite the financial horror for folks in America, my salary is very good for Brazil. If I save up and chill, I will have enough to come in March or later (about $550)
2. Leaving now would be like quitting... The thought of it makes me feel like I'm four years old again, crying for my Mom after being left at school for 5 minutes. I don't like quitting and I've learned that most times, when things just suck, good things come after... The night is darkest just before the light.
3. In China, I stayed for 5 months and left, just when my language skills were really getting good. I think if I stay here through January, and come back soon after, it will be awesome for my Portuguese.
4. I've got a job and my apartment is paid for, which means that I might as well sit tight and make some dough.
There are millions of other reasons and you can theorize this and that, but the bottom line is that I'm staying until January 26th as planned. I'm just gonna roll with it.
Like I've said before, this place is tough. It'll eat you up if you're not careful. However, you can make it if you stay smart, do good things, and hang in there. I love this place and I feel like it loves me. I used to feel like people couldn't really know me here because I'm not speaking in English, but now I think that the real me is the Portuguese-speaking me... The Brazilian me. LOL. I think when I speak English I'm either weird or an asshole and people look at me all suspiciously back in America... Here, I feel like people can really see my deal... I just want to be a good guy. I've got good intentions. And I've got an alarmingly obnoxious, vulgar, and childlike sense of humor combined with a completely unrelated, non-matching set of abilities, life experiences, and physical attributes. I think for most people back in the States, I'm not what they expect and this freaks them out. Brazilians don't give a shit and don't expect anything. Brazilian's are just like; "Hey.. It's the crazy Chinese gringo guy. We love you man. Are you gonna eat or what?" They're not really trying to figure me out. I'm just here and that's cool.
These days I miss my family and friends a lot. And I also miss smells... The smell of my house. The smell of my bed. The smell of my town. Dew in Humboldt. Damp Oak leaves and Berkeley pavement after rain. The way my piano at home smells. Smells. Damn I miss those smells.
It's almost the end of November now. This Thanksgiving was the first Thanksgiving in my ENTIRE life where I did not consume turkey meat and all the fixings. A shame. A tragedy. No family and no American friends to celebrate. Hell, not even anyone to talk to about it. Explaining American Thanksgiving requires the explanation of turkey, the history, and culture of the whole thing. Far too much to get through the language/cultural barrier.
Ahh Thanksgiving.. I find that it is far simpler and issue-free to base center the objective of Thanksgiving thought on just giving thanks. Brining up the whole history just starts getting crazy. When you're very young, you think it's just about turkey. You get a little older and think it's about turkey and family. You get a little older and suddenly learn that it's about turkey, family, and something to do with some Pilgrims and Native Americans who loved each other. Then, when you start high school, and your Disney movie perspective starts getting dashed by real history and classmates trying to relive their parents' 1960s struggle against "the man", you learn that turkey day isn't all that simple.
Then, before too long, you're in your twenties. You know turkey day actually commemorates the alleged feast held by the Pilgrims and Native Americans after the natives helped the continental newbies survive. By doing so they assisted the newcomers in securing a foothold on the Eastern Coast of the United States, which would eventually lead to the decimation of Native American tribes due to a multi-century tidal wave of foreign disease, technology, genocide, and economics... But, after college, you also realize that just about everything in history, the present, and the future, has a bad side, and unless you've schmeegled your way into becoming president of some place, you should concern yourself with putting food on your plate and not with trashing the outcome of the past. We are here now. This is now. That's it.
I started my Thanksgiving day by waking up at 6am and heading to the gym. I got a huge workout in and then headed to work at 8, feelin' grrrrrrrrreat! (Said like Tony the Tiger). It has been great to get back to working out. My knee has been pain free after resting and sticking with bicycle riding for a few weeks and I am slowly working my way back.
I loved how I was working out before and was really getting my running strength up. My cardio recovery was killer before the knee went down.
The knee was a big influence in deciding to go back to the gym. I felt that running on a treadmill, with a slightly springy surface, would give me a little less impact on my joints. So far it has been cool. I don't pay attention to the distance on the treadmill because I always figure it's off somewhat, so instead I go for time and try to up the speed. I'm up to 25 minutes at 8 speed.... It feels like my lungs are still good, but my body is uncoordinated for running and must learn again, and I feel like I'm running scared, and my posture changes a bit. I just don't want to break anything or end up in the hospital... But, I'm on the way back. It makes me excited for the TOUGH MUDDER contest next October, which I really want to do. At first I was upset because I thought I would not be able to do it at all, but now I know I can, but just a little slower than if my leg was cool.
As for my strength work, I've really been keepin' it crazy! Full body movements... Movement, movement, movement... Working hard. Olympic lifts of all sorts... Deadlifts a must. Pull ups. Pushups... It feels good to stand far from the crowd here in Brazil where the combination of a lack of true training information and the abundance of machismo perspective results in a vast population of men who bench press, curl, and jog for 4 minutes (maybe) before swigging down a pint of TURBO EXTREME POWER PROTEIN!!!! and then heading to the bar to put down 10 beers. Also, when I go to the gym at night, it's always crowded as hell, but I find plenty of space.. I just go to the spot in the room where there's no mirror on the wall. I hope one day I can get these guys started on what I've learned in my fitness lifetime...
I don't hate on my Brazilian gym buddies at all. Their workout routines are a bummer if you're a fan of true strength and the body working as one piece, but these guys are beasts! Most Brazilians are a mix of German, Italian, Native, and African, resulting in guys who are jacked and ripped from not doing much! Man, if every guy in this country started working out with Josh V. the results would be crazy! With my mix of Fresno and Filipino, I have to work like an animal just to keep it cool. Most of these guys here just come out of the womb looking like Lawrence Taylor...
Fitness has really been blasting my mind lately. I've been thinking about what I want to do for a career and more specifically, what I can do when I come home during my off-time from Brazil.. I don't want a desk job. I have one now and it's good and easy, but I realized the other day that I want to make a difference in people's lives. And if I get a regular job back home, I'll never have time off to go to Brazil and, well, that's just no going to happen. I want to do something that I have passion for that I can use to spread the same passion to other people and make a decent living- the other day, I realized that I would like to make my own gym!
It's a long way down the road. There is so much to learn, so much to figure out, but man, I would love it. Probably I would have to start out without a facility and build up my cliental with personal training at my house or at other places, but man it would be so cool. Wake up each day... Get healthy, faster, stronger, and help other people to do the same. There are a few people out there who I have helped with this kind of thing before and I would like to help more.
I envision opening a small place with no mirrors, no machines... Simple tools for hard work.. Good people who come together to have a good time getting healthy. Field trips to other gyms and training camps... Visiting friends (Arcata folks) would be welcome to come down and spill some sweat. All kinds of good stuff. An amazing place called Body Tribe Fitness in Sacramento, which I have never been to, but want to attend, is, for me, an amazing example of what I envision... Of course, I would have my own twist to anything because being original is what's up, but man, this place is crazy close to what I've imagined before. Fitness, Art, chillness. Check this place out here:
http://physicalsubculture.com/
However, realism is a bitch. I've never been to this place and never met any of these people. Maybe it sucks... But I respect the ideas and concepts depicted on its site and I give made props to its community on the basis of those things.
Ok.. So.. All my friends out there! Who wants to workout with me and pay me?! :) It'll be worth it, I promise. Those of you who have asked me for help with exercise and diet before, know I'm not fooling around. As for credentials, I have none and I still have MUCH to learn, but I feel I know enough to start helping people.
Whoever wants to get down on this, hit me on facebook or my e-mail, and I will get it sorted. Ok, ok, enough with the fitness.... Thanksgiving day. After the gym I went to work.
At work, I spent my day tracking down cheap external hard drives and figuring out which companies were scammers and which were legit... Caught myself a scammer. PCBESTE.COM, Andy Lin. Never buy from this guy... I almost closed a deal with him until I saw a report from another buyer saying that this guy had mailed him a box of the wrong products and none of them worked. So long sucka..
I've been here for a while now and it's not like China, where I was speaking English everyday to people who would speak English back (My expat friends). When I speak English here, it's usually only to myself. When I hear it come out of my own mouth, it sounds strange now. I can really communicate with people now and have really upped my tenses and comprehension.. I think this is due to both the duration of time that I have been here and the fact that no one speaks English at my work. Everyone communicates with me in high speed, slang filled, mineiro Brazilian Portuguese. It is an experience. Making small talk with my co-workers is getting a little easier and we enjoy taking time from work to share our favorite YouTube MMA fights with one another.
I miss my family and friends, and my house and everything, very much. With holiday season here, the homesickness is big time, but I have mixed emotions and reasons to get me through it.
1. Changing my ticket to come home early is going to cost me more than the original round-trip ticket, and with my $3.50/hour job, that's not happening... And despite the financial horror for folks in America, my salary is very good for Brazil. If I save up and chill, I will have enough to come in March or later (about $550)
2. Leaving now would be like quitting... The thought of it makes me feel like I'm four years old again, crying for my Mom after being left at school for 5 minutes. I don't like quitting and I've learned that most times, when things just suck, good things come after... The night is darkest just before the light.
3. In China, I stayed for 5 months and left, just when my language skills were really getting good. I think if I stay here through January, and come back soon after, it will be awesome for my Portuguese.
4. I've got a job and my apartment is paid for, which means that I might as well sit tight and make some dough.
There are millions of other reasons and you can theorize this and that, but the bottom line is that I'm staying until January 26th as planned. I'm just gonna roll with it.
Like I've said before, this place is tough. It'll eat you up if you're not careful. However, you can make it if you stay smart, do good things, and hang in there. I love this place and I feel like it loves me. I used to feel like people couldn't really know me here because I'm not speaking in English, but now I think that the real me is the Portuguese-speaking me... The Brazilian me. LOL. I think when I speak English I'm either weird or an asshole and people look at me all suspiciously back in America... Here, I feel like people can really see my deal... I just want to be a good guy. I've got good intentions. And I've got an alarmingly obnoxious, vulgar, and childlike sense of humor combined with a completely unrelated, non-matching set of abilities, life experiences, and physical attributes. I think for most people back in the States, I'm not what they expect and this freaks them out. Brazilians don't give a shit and don't expect anything. Brazilian's are just like; "Hey.. It's the crazy Chinese gringo guy. We love you man. Are you gonna eat or what?" They're not really trying to figure me out. I'm just here and that's cool.
These days I miss my family and friends a lot. And I also miss smells... The smell of my house. The smell of my bed. The smell of my town. Dew in Humboldt. Damp Oak leaves and Berkeley pavement after rain. The way my piano at home smells. Smells. Damn I miss those smells.
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