Halloween

Haha... so I thought my parents were going to be giving out candy to trick or treaters like they used to, but that is not the case. I got home from work a few minutes ago and although all the cars were there, the house was completely dark. Turns out my parents were holed up in their bedroom watching tv with the lights off like a couple of refugees.

Even funnier, when I went into the kitchen to grab something to eat, my mom came down and whispered "Turn the light off! Or just open the microwave and use the light from that."
"Okay Mom... but you don't have to whisper, it's not like the kids can hear us too."

Rainy Day

Hello, rainy day,
you make asphalt smell so weird.
Is that a mushroom?

also

Pitter on my panes,
at least useful for one thing:
sentra, white again.

I typically enjoy the occasional rain, especially when I'm back at home. It's been a good four years since I've been around for the changing of the seasons here in Cupertino... there isn't really a concept of seasons in San Diego. So everytime I see the streets littered with fallen leaves, frost on the grass and a gloomy rainy day I get flash-kicked with a sense of nostalgia.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of walking home from Regnart in the rain. It was one of those days where you could look up and see the rain coming down more horizontally than vertically, leading to overflowing drains and street gutters. My black nikes were soaked to the brim and made that disgusting wet rubber squeak with every step I took, and I'm pretty sure I was bright enough to forget my umbrella and wear my green shorts that day. I had the most unpleasant feeling in the world of wet socks to deal with since recess... and despite all of that I distinctly remember enjoying it. Maybe not Shawshank Redemption-esque, when Andy bursts out of the shit pipes, but it was just a hallmark of simpler times. Carefree.

Over the summer, Jon and I talked about this general topic a number of times. We would be sitting in the library studying and right outside the window would always be kids running around doing cartwheels. It usually went something like this:
"Dude, they are so carefree and they don't even know it."
"Yeah, I'm so jealous..."
"Let's go steal their scooters, we'll flank them."

It's just hard to determine at exactly what point I started taking life so seriously. Lucky for me, I've never been a stresser anyway. On the same token, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go live in the midwest, eschew all conventional responsibility and farm grain for a living.

I think the underlying tone is somewhere in this story, one of my favorites.

The investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal village when a small boat with a fisher docked.

Inside the small boat were several large fish. The banker complimented the fisher on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The fisher replied, “Only a little while.” The banker asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The fisher said, “With this I have more than enough to support my family’s needs.” The banker then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?” The fisher said, “I sleep late, play with my children, nap with my wife, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my friends. I have a full life.”

The banker scoffed, “I have a degree in business and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several more boats and hire people to do the fishing for you. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually you could own your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to a big city to run an ever-expanding enterprise.”

The fisher asked, “But, how long would all this take?” The banker replied, “Fifteen to twenty years.” “But what then?” asked the fisher. The banker laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time was right you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions?… Then what?”

The banker said, “Then you would retire! Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, nap with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends. Think what a full life you would have!”

Oh yeah, and I hope it rains tomorrow night so my parents don't have to deal with trick or treaters. That, or they should put out an empty bowl with a sign that says "Take one only! Happy Halloween!"

Discipline

I used to think that just because I was in good shape, I was a pretty disciplined guy. I went to the gym, I ate decently, went easy on the vices and all that good stuff.

A few years later, I realize... not so much. It's really a matter of degrees, and I was lucky enough that the lowest degree of discipline met the requisite minimum for my goals. The sad truth of it is that my body is probably just genetically predisposed to respond well to resistance training and etc, the same way some of you can grow full Amish beards and porn 'staches.

My goals and motivations changed over the years, from wanting to run 10ks, bench as much as possible to looking good naked, but I never once really felt super committed and driven towards them. I'm not saying that I didn't work at them, or that things were effortless for me; I was just lucky. In a way this was kind of a startling realization for me, because I had tied my concept of discipline, drive and commitment in with those achievements for a long time. Do I know how to truly buckle down and conquer something when I'm presented with challenges? Do I actually have it in me to achieve that which isn't in my immediate reach?

One of my clients is tiny, probably 5 foot 1 and 110 lbs, and the amount to which I push her is borderline excessive. But I do it because she's got the discipline to keep with the workout and not give up so she's seeing great results accordingly. Yes, there are contextual social roles at play here, and yes people that get trainers are probably self-selected to have more discipline... But coming to a session and really bringing it to a session are two entirely different things.

Anyway, I tend to use the analogy of video games when I think about traits like that. Everyone has a certain amount of "trait points" that they can assign to themselves, and they can either max out some certain traits or spread them around in alarming mediocrity. So for me, this has no doubt come at the cost of my sense of direction (zero points), allergy resistance (zero points) and resistance to awkwardness (one point).

Portrait

http://www.futurama-madhouse.com.ar/misc/FuturamaCast.png

Deterioration

I didn't touch on it earlier, but another reason that I created this blog is because of my law school personal statement. As I was editing and revising it, I was getting increasingly annoyed with the sentences I was constructing. They seemed wordy, awkward and repetitive in structure. I used to consider myself a good writer, or at least a level above what I was producing in my PS. I think I had to write a grand total of 4 papers my last 2 years at UCSD, so let's say I'm out of practice.

I also blame it on the fact that the last time I did any kind of consistent reading for pleasure was, get this, in elementary school and jr high. Hell, I read Lord of the Rings in elementary school, so I guess I peaked about 14 years ago.

Point being, here we are. Reason #x: an exercise in writing.

Modesty

Last month on the Caltrain, I looked around to find a seat where I wouldn't have to sit next to anyone. It was surprisingly packed for a Friday night, so I settled for sitting next to an older gentlemen... let's face it, even we feel a little more at ease sitting next to someone like that than a younger folk that looks more like us. He made an idle comment about the surroundings, and that kicked off an hour-long conversation.

He was on the Caltrain going back home to Millbrae from viewing the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit that was on loan from Italy that his wife refused to accompany him to. The way he expressed his fascination with the inventions kind of reminded me of my Dad, just a little too curious for their own good but ultimately that's what got them to where they are. Now to the moral: I asked him what exactly he did, and he just replied that he was a doctor. Having seen a bunch of people study and take the MCATs recently, I asked him about them and the whole admissions process, to which he jokingly replied "Well.. I think I passed." I asked him where he practiced and went to school, and he said "Oh, in the area," and when I finally asked which school, he just curtly said "Stanford." Oookay then. But that was the twig that held the dam, as details came spilling forth after that: he went to UCLA on a full scholarship, shared ideas with a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry and had actually retired the day before as a successful clinical trials researcher.

Still, his show of modesty and the fact that he didn't feel like he needed to come outright and impress me made me admire him that much more. I'm sure he probably felt no need to show up a random 22 year old kid on the Caltrain and just wanted to go home to his semi-retirement, but I still think that behavior like that hints at deeper traits.

Let's put this is terms that are more applicable and relevant to us. You meet someone at a party, and within the first five minutes of talking to them, you discover that he lives to ski, only does triple diamond courses, and, for the hell of it, was in the Olympic trials. How would you react? "Oh, that's so cool!" but what's with the need for all the self-affirmation? Thanks for blowing your wad prematurely all over me. They already know it's cool, so what's that stank of? Maybe... a sense of identity that is tied up only in skiing, insecurity, a braggart and low confidence. Conversely, you meet someone at a party and they only bring up skiing when you mention it first. They say they're alright at it, and don't go into anymore detail. Then a mutual friend comes up and tells you that he was in the Olympic trials... Now who are you going to be more impressed by?

Anyway, I admire modesty and wish I had more of it.

Tickets

Big WTF LMAONADE ROFLCOPER LOL@ME and whatever else there is to express my latest traffic ticket. Fine, this is the second time I've gotten this exact ticket in this exact spot, so maybe the onus is on me to have learned a lesson, but as Gob would say... CMON!

Violation of: CVC 22500(F) Parked on Sidewalk.

Did I mention this sidewalk was right in front of my house? My first gripe with this is that 7 Springs is supposedly private property, so cops should not be allowed to patrol the area or ticket violations they may see (kind of like when cops find evidence illegally, it is disallowed in trial). Second, there is a grass/cement island in my court that cars always park next to with their left wheels to the curb and I didn't see any tickets on those winshields. Third, being that it's the end of the month and the ticket was written just before midnight, it seems pretty obvious to me that this fool had a quota to meet. I realize it's Cupertino and the heart of suburbia, but isn't there something more productive our tax dollars can pay for? And fourth... WTF? In front of my own house!

Sadly, this might only tie for my dumbest ticket ever... with getting pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt. Thank god it was before this whole "Click it or ticket" campaign or I would have gotten royally fined.

Tidbits:
-Getting fingerprinted is inkless nowadays.
-Welcome back, NBA season! I missed you.

Regulars

As predicted, I sit here once again in the library with the Jons, Ronald and Hank. Oh, Hank. I'm going to stray from movies today though, partially because I already looked and found nothing of interest, but mostly because I think I could be more productive with my time. So instead of grabbing Brokeback Mountain like Jon does on a weekly basis, I decided two things. First, to start broadening my horizons musically by listening to the library's jazz CD collection, and second to replace the DVDs I check out with books. The fruits: I'm listening to Count Basie's Greatest Hits right now and have two books for later tonight, one by Vonnegut and another by Lovecraft. Suggestions would be appreciated, as my scope of books is mostly limited to sci-fi and fantasy thanks to my older brother.

On average I've spent probably 25-30 hours a week in the library over the past couple of months. You definitely start to notice the regulars at that point, and my favorite is probably the petite library clerk with the thin goatee. Always clad in khakis, he walks around with a magnified sense of purpose although the only thing I've ever heard him say is "The library is closing now, please clean up your things" in a nasally voice. A close second is confused Asian woman that wears a hat. Sometimes I watch her for a few minutes at a time, and all she really does is walk around, sit at a computer or desk for a few minutes, then get up and walk around aimlessly, all the while looking like she's waiting for someone or something. And who could forget the guy that's the spitting image of Santa Clause if Santa only had one arm. Maybe the Elves revolted against low wages and unrealistic production quotas. To cap it off, there's also the prim woman in the neat pant suit and a guy that I dubbed "the mutterer," who is insane.

So that got me thinking about retirement and what the hell people do with all that free time. Is frequenting the library simply a time-killer? Me, I apparently kill time by blogging about random things, but this is bearable because I know I'm going to be back in school next August. Sure I know that the grass is always greener on the other side, and that once school starts I'm going to be ripping my hair out.

Ideally, you've got a lot more disposable income, 401k's and are tapping into the social security system, so there's an easier avenue to do things you want: travel, eat at expensive restaurants and buying a mid-life crisis Corvette/Harley. The biggest factor might be the natural mellowing-out with age, so maybe wandering around aimlessly in the library with a hat is just a tootin' afternoon for some. No one likes to picture their golden years like that, but I guess not everyone's Jack effing LaLanne.

Tidbits:
-Harrington wants out of Golden State after Nellie just made him a captain? Fine, but he better be traded for a legit starting PG because our little tagteam of Nelson, Williams and Watson is pretty shoddy.
-Why would high school kids come to the library as much as they do? Is Monta Vista turning that much more competitive? I know we sure as hell didn't study in the library back then... but I don't remember doing much studying at all anyway.

Clients

My clients are all pretty laidback, and I really like them for the most part.

They are typically in their 30's, single, Indian and looking to lose some weight for one reason or another. One is heading to India to meet his fiance, arranged or not, so he figured that he should shape up beforehand. Conversely, one gained a massive amount of weight last time he was in India that he is now trying to shed. There's another bride-to-be, and two skinny guys that are trying to build mass.

Anyway, one of my favorite clients, a guy that was trying to slim down, didn't renew his sessions this time around, so that was a bummer. At the end of 10 weeks with me, he honestly didn't need me anymore as I had gotten him through his plateaus (3 to 11 pullups, 30 to 50 pushups, lost about 3% body fat) and shown him a mess of exercises... but he was extremely intelligent and always a pleasure to talk to. As a trainer you want to be able to teach your clients, but there wasn't much that he didn't already know. Proprioception? Deadlifts work the erector spinae? Nutritional value of greens? Oh... read about those. His legs were actually probably stronger than mine too.. but maybe that's because I stopped squatting for my pants' sake.

On the flip side, he taught me a whole bunch of stuff. He worked at Microsoft in their gaming division so I learned about the technology industry and Microsoft. He talked about politics a lot, so I actually started reading more to be able to keep up with him. Indian culture was also a big part of our conversations... did you know there's a whole state in India that's waterlogged like Venice, Italy? On the occasions that I brought my mp3 player into the gym, he would recognize most of the artists I had, most surprisingly Kraftwerk, which is an early 80's German electro group. So I'll miss him.

Things I've picked up:
1. Perception is everything. My boss told me to "dress like a trainer," which meant to dress in form-fitting clothes and market my own body. Are you going to want a trainer that's overweight themselves?
2. People want their trainers to do all the thinking for them. And they'll take most things trainers say as the gospel.
3. Women have fairly predictable goals (hips, thighs, back of arms, stomach), while guys goals run the gamut.
4. Despite 3, women are a lot more fun to train because they are inherently weaker, so there is a far greater variety of exercises that are effective for them. Similarly, weaker guys are more fun to train. Also, women talk a lot more.
5. If nothing else, facial expressions are a great read on people's exertion levels. Of course I don't tell them that because a couple of them would probably fake it.

Fitness

So the reaction that people typically have when they find out about my job is.. well, funny. A good half of the time, its something like "Oh wow, hey, how can I get rid of my love handles??"

Well. It's not like there's an EASY button that I can provide for you. Yo mama owns that one. I'll begin by saying that I lost about 21 lbs last summer (2007), and it sure as hell wasn't easy. One of the things that made it easiER was that I was working at a law firm, and had a pretty routine day full of busywork to keep me occupied and my mind off of food. But let's recap what I did.
-I started intermittent fasting (IF), which Richard recommended to me. This is most effective when done in conjunction with weight lifting, or some sort of physical activeness. Basically, this is where you are eating for 8 hours a day and.. not for the other 16. Example: my eating hours during that summer were usually 3 pm - 11 pm. It's not easy. For those that decry the omission of breakfast, tell me why exactly you feel that way and we'll hash it out. IF also allows you to actually feel full on days that youre eating less, so that's a pro.
- Additional macronutrient breakdowns. Carbs + proteins for lift days (3 days a week) and fats + proteins for rest days. Think about what your body breaks down first, what is stored, and it'll make sense.
-Calculated my caloric requirements and followed them to a tee. I don't quite remember them now, but I was about 170 and to trim down to my current weight of 150, I'm sure I intook somewhere around 1,900 calories on lift days and 1,500 on rest days.
-Three trips to the gym a week, not including running sprints twice a week.

So this is a rather lengthy answer to "How do I get rid of my love handles?" that's really not for everyone. But here's some stuff that's for everyone.

1. Eating before you sleep doesn't affect your metabolism, automatically store food as fat, etc. Why would your digestive system work any different when you sleep? If you ate a big meal and then sat in a chair for a couple of hours, would you store all that as fat too?
2. Insulin insulin insulin. Let me try to recap my physiology here... Food (carbs and sugar especially) = insulin. Insulin = less glucagon and GH. Those hormones in those proportions means that there is an emphasis on storing fat rather than lipolysis, which is the breakdown of fat stores for energy. So what do you do? You avoid high glycemic index foods and exercise. Pretty common sense, but for reasons other than you might suspect. This is also where intermittent fasting rears its head, as no food = no insulin = eventual ketosis (fat burning state).
3. No, hundreds of crunches a day won't work. This is a false belief in "spot reduction," which is reducing fat in one particular region, such as the stomach. Depending on what your goals are, doing that much ab work might increase your waist size from the muscle density. In the same vein, let's examine the thigh adduction machine. Can't lose fat from your thighs specifically... making the muscles larger... so isn't that actually counter productive to your goals of slimming and toning? The only way for those to happen is to reduce overall body fat %.
4. Those hours of cardio on the elliptical? Not ideal. I feel like I'm playing a broken record because I tell this to my clients all day, but for fat loss, it's useful... to a point. And that point is reached within a couple of weeks. Other benefits are obvious, such as cardiovascular health and sports-specific training. However, cardio burns fewer calories than sprints/weights mainly because sprints/weights elevate your metabolism for as long as 24 hours afterwards, which is where the bulk of the calorie burning is done. Muscle mass also burns calories.
5. In a related point, I realize that many females are reluctant to use weights because they feel that they will become too bulky. If only it were that easy! You possess neither the genetics nor the testosterone to become like that.. and you won't be intaking the nutrition that you need to build all that muscle either. Seriously, you won't get big.
6. Whether your goals are fat loss, mass building, strength, etc, just remember that 80% of the battle is in the kitchen.

SNU-SNU

For those confused by this blog's name...

-Hi... my name is Futurama.
-Oh, hey I've heard of you! Nice to meet you, man. So what are you up to nowadays?
- Oh, y'know, just doing the working thing for a while. Man, wasn't school so much easier and laid back?
-Don't get me started! Zomgz living at home is just so restricting, but I guess it's good to save some money.
-Yeah, tell me about it. At least grad school is somewhere at the end of the tunnel. So who do you still keep in touch with from around here?


Oh wait, that turned into a paraphrase of the beginnings of just about every conversation I've had since I graduated. We should just have nametags with all those fields provided so we can skip the awkward conversations.

My journal (masculine version of a diary) has been in serious neglect ever since I finished my last set of finals in June, and I don't even know if I could find it if I tried. The ensuing three weeks after finals and before I moved back home are a blur punctuated by Trent yelling "LET'S DRINK" so it could be anywhere. Except where I can find it.

Anyway, since my shunning of "the Man" and the corporate world for this coming year, I've had an indecent amount of free time. I figured that I'm going to have the rest of my life to rot in an office, so why do it this year? Most of the summer was dedicated to studying for the LSAT, but now that that giant dookie is over and my personal statements are about 99% done... well.. now what? Lately when I go to the library to work on applications, there just isn't much substance left so I end up watching the dvds in the library's collection: Bend it Like Beckham, Blue Crush (horrible), 28 Weeks Later, High Fidelity (how did I miss out on this one for so long??), Elf, Highlander (Academy award for greatest movie ever), Into the Blue (horrible), Match Point, The Prestige, Friday Night Lights, Austin Powers 2, The Benny Goodman Story and Saved. This is all within the past couple of weeks.

For those of you that don't know, I've been working as a certified personal trainer at Sunnyvale Fitness for a while now, and actually just got hired at YMCA today as a trainer as well. Who wants to see a really goofy picture of me? I guess this is the face I make when I'm told to snarl.
http://www.sunnyvalefitness.com/trainer/pei.html
It's okay, I'm a lover, not a fighter. In addition to working at those two gyms now, I've been "online training" my buddy Wilmar in San Diego and I'm happy to report that he's lost 12 lbs in 3 weeks! Pretty good show of discipline and drive, if you ask me: http://wilmarlosesweight.blogspot.com/ (I'm referred to as Willard)
And lastly, James' training has been coming along quite nicely as well. I feel like I forgot what he looks like when he smiles because everytime I see him we go to the gym, and everytime we're at the gym, I'm pushing him until he looks like he's about to throw up... which he actually did last week after some sprinting. He's got the potential to dish out some major retribution for all the times we harrassed him when he was about a foot shorter.. but he should thank us for his flexibility, I say.

I suspect tomorrow's post will fall somewhere between passively reading over application material and watching a crappy movie in the library.

Tidbits:
-John Legend has a new cd coming out! Evolver is out tomorrow... I mean, I already downloaded it but still.
-I have to get fingerprinted in order to start working at the YMCA. To show that I'm not going to ogle small children in the lockerroom?
-I started putting my alarm clock on the opposite side of the room from my bed so I don't keep turning my alarms off in semi-sleep. What a stupid adaptation to develop.