Yuan Yuan the bear

My plank-holding times are steadily improving, but Yuan Yuan, whose body is some kind of mystery of science / voodoo, is gaining on me quickly. When we started out a few weeks ago, I could do 2 minutes and a bit. Today I hit 3 minutes 45 seconds, but then I had to lay there and drool on the floor for a while, until there was enough of a buoyant force for me to get up without popping an absicle. Yuan Yuan started out at a max of 40 seconds or so, and hit 2 minutes today, though she was whooping like a Native American at a scalping for the last 30. In a few weeks she'll catch up and overtake me. She could always do handstands longer than me (1 min 24 seconds), she can hold a bridge for 3 minutes, and she holds the record for jump-roping - 650 in a row. Mario would just shrug and say "that's impossible, I refuse to believe it," when she would beat us both at some new exercise. I often call her bear-related affectionate names, but I'm starting to think she might really be part bear. She sleeps a lot, 15 hours a few days ago, 10-12 regularly, she's super strong but she can barely do 5 push-ups, she can eat twice as much as me easily and being full is no deterrent, she's got a big head and her yawns are closer in shape to a banana (vertically) than an apple, she runs uphill faster than downhill, and she's covered with 3-inch long thick brown fur all over her body. The only thing not in her favor is that she's completely indifferent to meat. Maybe that's the only thing standing between me and a bloody puddle of me-leftovers.

Vovochka strikes again

Looks like some of these 30 day trials I'm on have to get restarted. Several of them died horrible deaths. The ones still going to strong are the vegetarian trial and the blogging every day.

The others, may they never rest in peace but get revived until they are completed are:
1. Pushups / planks. Sadly around a week ago, when I got sick, my arm also started hurting and not at all in that nice way like when you're getting scratched or a pretty girl is lightly biting you while you're trying to work and you give her dirty looks but don't punish her just yet because maybe if you don't, she'll keep going. But then of course you have to punish her so that she wants to keep doing it. Anyway, where was I? My arm hurt, and it wasn't from the sin of Onan, although if God were to pick one arm to go to Hell for that sin, it would be the same arm. Which reminds me, I read a great joke today about the apotheosis of Russian childhood mischief - Vovochka.

In case you don't know, Vovochka is a cornerstone of Russian joke culture. He is an irreverent reprobate, whether he happens to be age 5 or 30 in the joke, and he thrives on tearing down teachers, parents, and other grown-ups that stereotypically demand respect. Vovochka is also extremely sexual, which renders all innocent classroom questions dangerous territory:

"What does your daddy do?"
"How many watermelons could you carry and how?"
"Any questions?"

(Note: If you can't think of a filthy answer to all of those questions, you've probably never heard a Vovochka joke, or graduated from elementary school.)

The teachers typically know this and only call on Vovochka when completely exasperated with the other children's demented answers. Then Vovochka of course makes them regret it for the millionth time.

In this joke, probably one of the cleanest Vovochka jokes, Vovochka is inexplicably attending Catholic school:

Teacher: Remember, those children who get A's and B's are going to Heaven, and those who gets C's D's and F's are going straight to hell! Yes Vovochka, you have a question?
Vovochka: does anyone leave this school alive?

Here's one more:

Vovochka brings home an F in math.
Dad: why??
Vovochka: she asked me, how much is 2x3? I said 6!
Dad: but that's right!
Vovochka: then she asked me, how much is 3x2?
Dad: what the f*** is the difference?
Vovochka: exactly! I mean, that's exactly what I said!

Classic. Next time I'll tell you my favorite Vovochka joke of all time. Sadly I have to translate all of these from Russian into English by way of Chinese, so they lose some of their juice. Just don't tell Vovochka I said that.

So the pushups / planks trial is getting restarted officially tomorrow. I've been warming up for it during the last two days and the looks like my arm is back to full health.

2. The no eating sweets trial. This trial was actually going really well. Then I got sick. Usually when I get sick, I try to up my vitamin C dosage, even if just as a placebo. So I drank this just-add-water vitamin C orange mix for a few days. No worries, the craving is mostly gone, so this trial got restarted 3 days ago.

3. Reading with Yuan Yuan in English for 30 minutes every day. This one just didn't work out, Yuan Yuan went to Korea, and then when she came back she went on a tour around Beijing for a few days, coming home and crashing immediately every day. But we'll try to get it going again...though she's off to Korea in a couple days again.

4. Stretching. Restarting? Fine, I had to beg myself to restart it, but I agreed. Restarting this one today.

Superday #30

The 30 day supertrial is officially over in ninety two words, no, eighty nine words, no, eighty six words...if there were only some way to write it down without changing it...damn observer effect. I'd draw a picture but I don't want to be charged with going over quota for drawing today.

Success all around I'm afraid, no way to break it gently. The supersummary:

Pushups: at 200 pushups a day, the max number of push-ups I could squeeze out per set went up from 37 to 53. It still surprises me every time though when I hit 40 and still have a few more in me before having to take a deep breath and start bouncing my pecs off the floor to make it up off the ground on the last couple. I wish there were some way to skip the first 45 and just do the last back-crunching, eyeball-popping, vein-dilating, sphincter-cramping 7 or 8. Do pushups on one hand at a time maybe? Or do Tenacious D style push-ups?

Drawing: still an effort to do 20 minutes in a row...oof. The cartooning book made it slightly more interesting though.

French: piece of cake, I can study it hours at a time. Little Nicolas is hilarious.

Knots: fun in the beginning and then boring and forgettable after the wonder wears off. Will review though.

Blogging: highly enjoyable and never gets old, like looking at like myself in the mirror.

In other news...

My newest student is taking her IELTS this weekend. I've prepared her twice a week two hours at a time for a month now but I'm not sure the impact on her English has been big enough. She's still a bit behind ("under" somehow doesn't make sense) that hump; she knows tons of English but can't get it out of her mouth unless I'm holding it pried open with a pair of garden pryers (priers? pry-openers?).

I noticed today that English is the only language I know that capitalizes "I." Are English-speakers the cockiest cocks on the planet?

And the last knot of the trial is...The Monkey Fist:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

I wish the one I made looked even remotely like the one in the picture. Alas, it looks more like a monkey tied into a knot and then fluffed up slightly with a shotgun blast.

They should have progress bars available as titles

Still on track as of yesterday. The real test will be Saturday and Sunday when I have class most of the day and am forced to do pushups at my student's houses to avoid killing myself in the evening. It's hard to fit pushup sets into my schedule as my mom has inculcated all these health-nut rules into my head: don't exercise for an hour after you eat, don't watch TV while you sleep, pull down your pants before you sit down on the toilet, etc. And I'm not so sure what constitutes a meal. Does a bag full of candy count? Or is that not digested, just sweated out...that must how the Blue Man Group preps for their shows.

I have noticed a few benefits already of this new lifestyle. I can wear far less clothes in the room because the pushups keep me warm for long after each set. If I space them out just right, I can probably heat the room more effectively than the fake Chinese heater with its fake heat.

Yesterday's knot, the bowline:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

Not too difficult for magic hands.

Today's, the slip knot:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

Even easier than yesterday's. But I browsed pictures of the more advanced knots and I'm feeling in equal parts confident and screwed. Does beginner's luck restart for each new knot?

French is going smoothly. It's also producing lots of feelings I haven't had in a while. During today's hour, I looked over about a million vocabulary words and realized that I know none of them, which made me feel very Bill-and-Ted-esque. Then I felt excited, as in: "I'm going to know all these words...some day!" Then I felt motivated to study. Then I felt nerdy for feeling motivated to study. Then I felt excited about feeling nerdy as there's very little opportunity to be nerdy in China; people here prefer eating, and when they're not doing that--drinking. Then I felt nostalgic for MIT, where nerdism is both church and state. Then I felt guilty for living in the past. Then I ate some candy and felt the mini-heartattacks coursing through my teeth. Then I had to go to class.

Oh yea, drawing. Went OK yesterday, time passed a bit faster than the day before, but the results are still very disappointing. It's hard for me to draw what I see instead of what I know. I see a bowl, I know it's made of circles and I have to struggle to draw the squished ellipses instead. Hmm, maybe I should just draw all round objects from head on. "Excuse me sir, can you sit with the top of your head facing me?"

Home Schooling

I started this book today that's supposed to teach me jazz guitar technique in 20 weeks - rougly 4-5 months. The stated practice regimen was a meager 50 minutes/day so I thought "why not?" Nuh uh. The right answer was "yeah, right! (accompanied by a sarcastic cocking of the left eyebrow)."

Unfortunately this 50 minutes/day claim was another case of false advertising. If you can complete the daily assignments in this book in 50 minutes, you are way beyond needing the book in the first place. No matter. I'm not letting some stupid book, that's not even a real book (it's a pdf), beat me in one sitting. I will give up tomorrow at the earliest.

Came across a couple of funny quotes while surfing GNX3 forums:

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." – Brian W. Kernighan

and

"Failure is not an option -- it comes bundled with Windows." - Unknown Smartass

Today, I made the true claim that there are more good actors and actresses. Unfortunately, I not only made it, but voiced it. I was in the car by myself, miles from home, thinking I was safe. No sooner than I uttered the fateful words "women suck," Mom materialized and began exercising her Constitutional right to feminism. I was treated to an interminable lecture on Women in Film starting with 1903's The Great Train Robbery.

Dad is calling me to do pushups. I've been obliging him lately. I hope this is what they mean when they say you should give back to your parents for all those years and dollars they spent raising you and teaching you to be grateful.

Wanted

Endurance test codename "Bella" failed miserably.

Whenever I convince myself to throw down a couple sets of pushups, pullups, layups, etc., the number of reps per set always decreases with each passing set. Yesterday I observed the same trend with a horrible drama movie (Bella). Turns out, I can only do 3 sets of hyperdrive drama - 40 minutes, 5 minutes, and 3 seconds. Let me summarize the plot so you can sympathize.

Chapter 1:
Flash back to a day in the good-old days when Jose was a star soccer player - the kind that can sign passerbys' faces and not get pounded for it. Don't finish the flashback, but allude to a bad ending.

Flash forward - Jose had a 5 inch beard, 6 inch eyebrows, and works for his slavedriver brother as a chef. Jose finds time every day to look down garbage disposal units, up at clouds, deep into people's eyes, and experience profound emotional turmoil on account of the girl his car turned into a puddle. ...No wait, that isn't revealed till Chapter 3.

Screw it. New summary: Jose meets...umm...damn!...can't even remember her name. Argh!

New summary: Jose and some woman with onions stuffed under her eyelids and lemons in her cheeks search desperately for a botox injection to arrest their facial twitching. Meanwhile, a series of flashbacks reenacts a little girl getting run over in increasingly artistic and provocative manners. I have a bad feeling now you're going to say it sounds interesting, but believe me, it was crap.

Saw Wanted today. First, let's get the bad jokes out of the way:

It should have been called Wanted: A Plot.
This kind of crap is definitely not wanted.
I just wanted it to stop, please! Make it stop!
It has been weighed, it has been measured, it has been found wanting.

Now the review:

Short version (SPOILER ALERT):
It sure was a load of crap.

Slightly longer version (SPOILER ALERT):
The plot is fairly simple. Basically it's a thinly veiled ripoff of the Matrix. A bunch of supposedly beautiful people (Matrix) run fast (Matrix), shoot even faster (Matrix), bend some laws of physics (Matrix), break others (Matrix), and do all of these in slow motion (Matrix). If the movie were played entirely at full speed, it would barely skid over the 10 minute mark. To make up for this, there are of course some excellent if ruthlessly abused plot twists.

One such plot twist involves identity of the main character's father, initially an unknown. The trend however is quickly established. Every successive man who dies in the movie is instantly awarded paternity. Not to point out the obvious, but this is dramatic! This ain't Gosford Park. I didn't stay past the credits to see the final act where Angelina Jolie finally receives the honor, but I have full confidence in her abilities as a father.

Another, equally excellent plot twist involves an Oracle - do I hear Matrix again? However, in this "remix," the Oracle turns out to be...can you guess? Is it a dragon? A hobbit? Kiera Knightley? All equally good guesses, but when you find out, you'll all be slapping your foreheads and/or slitting your wrists screaming "WHY??? WHY DIDN'T I GUESS THAT, IT'S SO OBVIOUS!" You've probably guessed it by now, but I'll tell you anyway - a loom. Yea, one of those thread gizmos.

Oh well, at least Morgan Freeman dies.

Guests

My cousin and grandma from Baltimore dropped by yesterday on short notice. My cousin is a business guru with grandma's thuggish good looks. We skipped the usual midnight movie showing, and talked in bed till 3 AM. He told me some wild stories about taxi drivers and hookers, and I reciprocated with my own wild tales of sitting on the couch in our lounge. He was so impressed, he passed right out, so I went to sleep as well. In the morning he was gone, but he'll be back for more stories. They always come back.

I've been breezing through The Time Traveler's Wife - an extremely easy and entertaining read. It is drawing near the end, and my magic 8-ball is growing increasingly pessimistic. The level of drama, nostalgia, sentimentality, and inevitability has gotten so high that my tear glands are begging for an interlude. I've been drinking a lot of Gatorade to replenish my fluids. The only thing that cheers me up is thinking about how hard Chun'll be crying when she's reading it. Other people's tears always provide for quality entertainment, and Chun also has excellent delivery. (Don't worry Chun, the fall of my reputation as a dry-eyed stoic will protect yours.)

Watched a sappy Russian movie from the 80's today, a close relative of my worst enemy - Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. Watch it (the French one) if you're ever feeling more than usually sadomasochistic. The Russian movie was entertaining in comparison, despite being a colossal bore.

Michelle has volunteered me for a set of pushups with dad. I miss my couch.