It's probably not surprising but since phase 2 of P90X, I've had to sit in the toilet with my shower at highest heat... spraying it at my thighs, calves and knees, at descending order of priority.
Plyometrics is a killer on my thighs, so much so that if I only thought of it the first time because by evening, after sitting down for a few hours after the workout, my thighs could not handle standing up and would cramp up when I get up, and sometimes stay cramping even when I sit back down. This is the sort of fatigue-led cramp that DOES NOT go away by stretching.
When it first started, after stretching for entire minutes in vain, I guessed that hot water might help it relax. This cramp was possibly caused by a lactic acid buildup from anaerobic activity during the 1-hour long session of jumps and squats, so enlarging my blood vessels should help my blood rinse it off.
It probably did, since this works. Also tried to look for a bath tub but they're at least S$80 for one that I can rest in, since there is no tub that holds just my lower body as I sit other than the walk-in tub, and walk-in tubs are not popular for reasons I have mentioned in an older rant years ago.
Not willing to spare S$80 when I could just spray hot water at my legs for half an hour while reading on my phone.
Despite the brutality, I persist because the weekly Plyometrics session works. Seriously, it used to seem like an insane idea to do lunges for an entire minute just for warmup, but now I can really do it solely to raise my heart rate a bit. My mouth doesn't even need to open up to breathe by the end of it, which is awesome.
31st Dec 2020
Last day of probably the nadir of a generation, though not the nadir of my life. Physically, could be one of my best years; romantically, could be one of my most confidence-boosting years, mentally, could be one of those strange years that let me understand myself better; financially, hopefully it is the nadir.
As in all of life, one cannot assume most things - worse things may be on their way. Who really knows?
I got the impression that lots of people thought a vaccine would end this pandemic issue, but with the concerns regarding the multitude of vaccines available, it is not feasible to make it compulsory for the public.
Therefore, it will take yet another array of various means to get the herd immunity we need to end these measures we have now to curb the spread of the virus.
2021 will be a year of a completely different set of challenges, including paying for whatever people have done in 2020 that should not have been done.
What will historians think of this entire period?
The world is definitely changing, eg in the airline industry. Everyone who had been betting on big planes with large business class cabins is going to pay for the gamble because with online conferences being forced on everyone now, companies are realizing that you don't need to pay a fortune to get so many people to those meetings. Some will still have to meet personally, but in a drastically reduced number.
In fact, ZipAir is already offering flat bed economy recently in Japan. Flat bed used to be solely the luxury of first class, then in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was brought to business class. Simultaneously, you may have noticed that first class has been gradually disappearing, eg even in some of the largest Airbus planes during trans-Atlantic flights, I have seen only 4 of those in the cabin, and in many planes they don't even exist.
This is the trend, and it is being sped up by the pandemic. Soon, we should see flat bed economy seats, and as someone who's tried flat bed business class, I can safely say sleeping makes a world of difference in our flights. I may have said it before in that post about my business class experience, but I'll say that again - the main selling point to me is the bed, the food and champagne are just bonuses.
Anyway, I'm, of course, stressed. Wondering if I should do something completely different career-wise or if that's the escapist in me talking.
Legs and Back was reduced in intensity yesterday. Right knee felt funny - no pain, no ache, just weird, so decided it was better to play it safe, and just stuck to the toughest alternatives that were still comfortable, eg 80/20 speed squats (80% on one leg, 20% the other) became more like 60/40 for the right leg.
Not worth it to take the risks like I used to.
Butterfly pea! One actually sprouted! I had given up hope when the two on top starting becoming mouldy, but it's been 2-3 weeks since they were planted and one actually grew! And this is after another plant was transplanted into that pot because I didn't want to waste the soil.
Now it's going to be weird.
In the meantime, my brinjal sprouts seem to be doing well. I had to keep my windows ajar because crows were coming in to bite the leaves, one a day. They don't touch my gingers though, strangely.
Looks like if you want to stay healthy by avoiding large glucose spikes, go for a walk soon after a meal, or just about any mild physical activity.
02nd Nov 2020
Phase 2 of P90X classic is insane. First session today - Chest, Shoulders and Triceps. In phase 1, chair dips were more lenient, you were encouraged to start with bent knees. In phase 2, chair dips go with one raised leg and it is assumed you can do proper chair dips. Yes I could - 2 whole reps of it!
For pushups, it is both harder and easier. The slow pushups where you count 4s going up and another 4 going down were absolute killers, but one of the people in the video was constantly doing knee pushups so that eased the pressure to some extent. But then the claps, ie plyo pushups, came along and seriously, they don't get much easier on your knees. Plyo pushups are pushups where you jump up with your arms, and claps mean the same but with a clap in mid-air.
03rd Nov 2020
Today is Plyometrics. At least that's something I'm familiar with.
06th Nov 2020
Ok Back and Biceps was a killer. Also, maybe it's because of age, the aches from these sessions sometimes come after 2 nights. Back and Biceps was 2 days ago, yesterday was Yoga, and yoga never hurts, so it has to be the session before.
It's the back of my right shoulder blade, the side near the spine. At least there's an easy way to stretch it.
And both my biceps hurt, of course.
18th Nov 2020
I am starting to find supermarkets redundant. My last grocery purchase was still from a supermarket, but gradually I have discovered online stores that offer better prices as long as I can buy a lot of it. Used to be that this was only for frozen meats, seafood and processed food, but recently I have also found a fruit wholesaler offering good prices. My meals in the last few months have included a lot more fruits, with my meals now consisting of only fruits until dinner, so I can buy a lot. As for price benchmark, as long as it's under S$5 per 500g, and it doesn't have a lot of skin or seeds, especially heavy stones like peaches, it's fine. So apples and guavas, for example, I take them as seedless and all 500g is edible fruit (except for the apple stalks) hence they're usually good deals.
Anyway, with both meat, seafood and fruits/vegetables all found at good prices at their respective wholesalers, why bother ordering online from supermarkets.
I think the eventual endpoint of this is that we're going to be ordering directly from the farms eventually, as we already can do for some products. The main hurdle is bringing the farmers online and connecting them with good shipping companies and convenient payment platforms.
The original point of a retailer is to offer a large variety of different products according to the needs of the people close to them. Pre-internet, we had no way to buy directly from farms far away, and farms did not want to deal with customers constantly because it was not worth investing in a sales department and shopfront near the farm to deal with the few people who are willing to take the long journey to visit them. Moreover, farms and most manufacturers deal in humongous quantities, so selling a large grocery bag of apples to each of the 30 people who drove to an apple orchard every day doesn't make much economic sense to the apple farmers, it's a lot of sales talk and after-sales service for a pittance in profit - they would prefer to deal with a few entities buying at least a couple of tons of apples per harvest.
Hence the wholesalers, they buy those tons of apples from the orchard at one go, then sell them to the retailers who can't deal with that much apples. They have the capital, storage capabilities and the shipping system to bring the apples from the farms and to the retailers. Similarly, they would prefer to deal with tens or hundreds of stores each buying many cartons of apples per purchase than the individual customers buying a few per day, although if there are individuals who are keen to buy a few cartons at one go, that's fine too, but these are few so it makes little sense to have a salesman specifically for such customers.
Finally, you have the retailers from whom you can buy your five apples for a few dollars on your way home.
Reminds me of how the big fish farms in Vietnam work - you can only get their attention if you can buy hundreds of tons of fish in a single order, which explains why there aren't that many food importers in Singapore, although they're probably growing in numbers from all the niche foods gaining popularity here.
Anyway, the Internet is changing this. By cutting the cost of selling directly to customers, online stores is making it much easier for wholesalers to deal with them. Eventually, it will be the manufacturers who do that, even the big ones. Maybe it will take a few generations for it to be the norm, but if that happens, agricultural futures as they are now may go obsolete - it would just be pre-ordering your groceries before they're harvested, so the futures can be sold at the individual household level.
Things will get so much more streamlined and efficient, I feel.
29th Nov 2020
Just to clarify, I sometimes do feel that there are mistakes in the things I had talked about in the past here, and it does make me feel stupid. On the other hand, thanks to the adult ability to compartmentalize, I also rarely think about that. But if you ever disagree about something in previous posts, I probably do too, so meh whatever.
Going to the showroom to get the new stove was probably one of the better decisions I've made in recent years. Looked through the various stoves on Lazada, Qoo10 and Shopee, read up a bit about them all, and settled on Tecno.
After considering their catalogue for a while, I felt that a stainless steel one would be fine, 3 or 4 hobs are acceptable, and probably their own Tecno range instead of the cheaper Uno range.
Fortunately, at the showroom, the salesperson saw the model number of my current stove and told me for stainless steel stoves that would fit in the same hole aka cutout, it can only be the Uno one. There is no discount for getting the cheapest stove in the entire showroom for sure, but not saving the $20-40 is better than finding out it doesn't fit only when it's delivered, at which point I'd have to either reject it with an unknown penalty cost, or alter the cutout also at an unknown cost.
Could also have paid about double the price to get a hood but just didn't want to spend that money to get something I know doesn't really help much, plus I don't cook that much everyday. These days, most of my cooking is done in the pressure cooker or by microwaving anyway.
This really has major implications on a lot of aspects of our lives, foremost being the concept of vegetarianism or veganism... or heck, the interpretation of the Jain diet.
Obviously I'm not referring to all types of veganism/vegetarianism, just the ethical/moral sort, eg people who don't eat meat due to the terrible conditions farm animals are kept in, or they just don't want animals killed.
With lab-grown meat, no animals were harmed, no animals were killed. Even Jains should be allowed to eat it as long as they interpret their rules to mean no animal is harmed. As long as there is no nerve cell grown in there, you can totally forget about the idea of pain.
Life is now more complicated because instead of simply asking if a restaurant guest is a vegan, now you have to know what kind of vegan that person is.
As for Muslims and lab-grown pork, that's going to be a really
divisive issue - it boils down to what sort of "dirty" pigs are. Do they
see pigs as literally dirty because they roll in mud and etc, or is it a
more abstract or spiritual definition?
10th Dec 2020
This is certainly stupid - my PC has been giving me problems all these times because something inside was loose. It gave me this idea when it could crash when I knock or jerk it hard by accident, but the last time I tried to fix it, I only pressed the graphics card into its slot really hard, almost risking breaking it.
Yesterday morning, I pressed everything including the cables connecting to each component, because it could also have been the RAM being loose and since the casing has been opened, might as well press everything else and dust it too.
So I did, and the PC has been switched on and off at random times for the last 48 hours, and it's totally fine each time. Even if it does start giving me problems maybe a week down the road, due to the fact that it came back fine for a few weeks the last time I sent it for repairs and they told me nothing was wrong except the hard disk and it should be replaced by a SDD (bs just to make me pay more), I have any possibility in mind - the small form factor (SFF) of my desktop PC is somehow pressing the cables too hard, hence gradually loosening or bending out of position each time we press them back in.
So it is perfectly ok to ask her out almost right from the outset when you match with her in a dating app. Not "Hi, coffee?" but it seems to work when I talk to a match about her photos and lead to her preferences for cuisine or beverages, and then once she replies, it's time to ask her out.
Talking from very limited experience but it has worked twice in the last few months, for girls around my age.
Just restarted XCOM: Enemy Unknown and the previous saves still in the game gave me a shot of nostalgia because they began in 2012, when this part of my life began.
But now I'm no longer the perfectionist that I was then - having a well-trained member die no longer makes me quit. What did make me quit was assaulting the enemy base too early with my people still too inexperienced and under-equipped, therefore getting wiped before the boss, if there was a boss.
25th Dec 2020
Finished X-Com: Enemy Unknown a while ago. I did become more of a perfectionist as my soldiers got promoted, since they are hard to come by, especially the Colonels, although I was willing to let 1 die if that particular turn accomplished a tougher objective. Just not the ones with the Psy abilities.
Was considering replaying the game with the Enemy Within expansion but felt too similar in all the important aspects, so now I'm looking at buying X-Com 2 instead.
Somehow Xenonauts just didn't feel very appealing to me.
Also, merry Christmas. My Reddit secret santa is weird this year and wanted to drop it off at my door on Sunday, so I said I'd take a whole minute to get to the door to give him/her a head start to run away, but if he/she was still there, he/she can come in for coffee.
I mean, half the people who goes on Reddit in Singapore can do with more friends. I'm in the other half but since he/she is making the effort to come over just to drop off some snacks, might as well show some appreciation.
So, maybe I'm getting the hang of it, but having dates isn't hard, the challenge is in sustaining the dates long enough for a relationship to form. Too many of us are becoming jaded and guarded as the failed dates pile up, which leads to even more failed dates, so I am taking breaks to avoid feeling tired during these dates and hoping the ladies would do the same.
Egg noodles are so easy to make. Speaking of food, Lavo at MBS has the best oysters I've had in a very long time. The last time I tasted anything like this was probably 8 years ago in NZ when my aunt ordered a few crates of them from a nearby oyster farm. Now oysters are usually not my thing, but it's probably more accurate to say I only like the completely fresh and plump ones.
Clearing my home is going to be a long project. So glad almost all my windows can be opened now because the amount of dust bunnies everywhere is ridiculous. With the windows open, not only does it allow much more breeze through my home, I can also go to the side where the wind is blowing outwards (thanks monsoon season to bringing strong winds) and brush the heck out of all the dusty objects I find so that I don't have to clean up the dust that collect on the floor afterwards.
My new rule for my home is going to stay the same - all new furniture must be off the floor whenever possible, ie standing on legs with enough room for the robot vacuum to enter and clean. Absolutely do not like the fact that some bugs made a nest under a small cabinet that my brother used to store his terrapin equipment. They were gone by the time I flipped the empty cabinet upside down for inspection, but cleaning up the remains of the nest was not exactly my idea of fun.
Also found a new use for the old PVC yoga mat that my brother left me that I really dislike after getting a TPE one for free. It is going to be padding for resting my dumbbells and barbell. Yes, they are mine now. Rusty as some of them may be, they are still good solid weights.
Funnily enough, I used to think 10kg dumbbells are crazy heavy; now I'm building a 14kg one using my final remaining plates and single dumbbell bar hoping that that's the heaviest I'll be needing in a long while. Stripping my lightest ones (4.5kg probably) is not an option yet because they're still needed for tricep exercises.
But before laying that mat down, I want the TV shelf gone. It is my least favourite piece of furniture in my home because it is difficult to clean at the back and it has a huge block of wood as a central leg/pillar which blocks my view of the underside. I want a clear view of the entire floor as much as possible so that they can be cleaned and bugs cannot hide.
To remove the shelf, however, lots of stuff need to be removed, sorted and organized. Ugh.
After that, however, I'm getting a tiny TV shelf with long legs that's hopefully stable enough.
The laser printer my brother left me finally died after all these years, fortunately brand new ones aren't expensive, and can be found for under S$100.
