What I hope to accomplish today if not in the next couple of days

I’ve been wanting to go to the dentist to get my tooth fixed, look at new apartments in a more interesting area, study some web/design related ideas, sign up for a month or so pass at a gym possibly with swimming possibilities, and potentially get a bike + look into the idea of getting into tri training, except for the fact that my swimming is probably very weak; also look at ideas of studying and going to school again. I also want to figure out how to publish my wordpress posts on facebook, but unfortunately china wall is to strong, so might have to look at doing it at work;

Second, recent sickening thought/ comment, I am slightly disgusted by the notion that the entire universe is being restricted into the internet. It is good in a sense of opening up the world, but bad in the sense of creating extremely anti-social behavior. In terms of existing as a human being in some sort of a natural state, sitting in front of a computer may offer communication possibilities in a reading sense, but it only appeals to a few senses, so I would prefer if the future were able to deviate from the internet instead of being totally consumed in it.

Last thing I need to accomplish is to try and get in touch with a few graphics design companies here, preferably today.

Food today

Tonight I had xiaolongbao, tea, oranges, and tomatoes + cucumbers in lemon juice. As usual I always enjoy the cucs and lemon, the xiaolongbao were also great, but nevertheless I’m still feeling not totally satisfied food wise. Am trying to move away from the usual hot pot, grill, + korean fried beef rice at night every day or a piece of bread on its own, with mcdonalds every other day. So, whats the best direction to move in here. More fried dumplings and more spicy food are two things I need more of in my life. The nice thing about spicy food is that it wakes up my mind alittle and makes me talkative, social etc, pretty personal info eh

NCKIU quizzes

In dealing with work + boredom + nothing wrong with making money while bored but trying to figure out how to be productive at the same time, having been taking some simple chinese quizzes online at nckiu.com; keeps time flowing and seemlingy productive, trying to work on HSK list, although i’m sure there could be more productive ways of doing it, second playing chinese memory games on another website, both entertaining,

3 things done today 1) making a transition from eating at restaurants every day to making food / eating at home; first step to this has been based on buying easy to make but tasty foods; current favorite new easy to make discovery is ‘xiao long bao’ small dragon loaves, very easy to make using a rice-maker converted to a steamer, simply put the buns in, let them cook and eat with vineagar, the negative side of being that the frozen buns don’t have the juicy goodness that regular buns have on the inside- missing most of the juice, but nevertheless extremely delicious, I brought some but not enough to work

second thing I have been pigging out on has been baby tomatoes in lemon juice with salt, these are easy to get, easy to cut up and taste, I’m not sure exactly how nutritious, but can eat a lot of them and still enjoy it, these two things are a start at least at changing my diet from the usual mcdonalds + hotpot + grilled meats which I have been living on for the past 7 months,

On the tea front, I made a massive cup of green tea at the start of work today, after waiting for the tea leaves to wilt, I drank it without having to get them in my teeth, and it gave me a massive boost of energy / adrenaline to a freaky degree, which ran out after about 4 hours,now trying red tea will see how it goes

Running and Right Knee Pain

After running the marathon, didn’t run for about 3 weeks, and than the weather started getting so cold that I was becoming a potato, so finally went out on a treadmill the other day. Unfortunately, my right leg started hurting after about 5k, same thing happened again the other day, right leg started hurting after 5k. It does’nt hurt when I walk normally, but speeding up will start to ache around the knee, will hopefully be able to work this out in the next couple of weeks, also going to be an interesting challenge figuring out how to run during the winter, especially given hatred of the treadmill, in addition trying to figure out some other cool events to run in marathon/ triatholon something, would need to learn how to swim if I want to do that though, but would probably be a good experience. My major dislike about the Beijing marathon was that it was extremely flat, combined with the fact that my right leg started hurting. It is extremely boring going for such a long period of time without any change in elevation, so the best tactic is possibly just to hang on to some one in front of you and simply keep on going with it. I really have to figure out how to get into another marathon in the next 5-6 months and finish it at a better time, because I know I can do much better. A major issue is going to be making sure that my right leg can hold out for longer.

Green Tea

Been drinking green tea on a regular basis recently, thinking about how to make the tea taste best; seems like after a few pours, the tea starts to get sweeter, taste better etc

Winter Running + Job Hunting + killing these pumpkin flies on my desk

Extremely cold out all of the sudden, haven’t ran for about 3 weeks since the marathon, so had to figure out how to fight through this to get some exercise in; through help of gfriend managed to get a free run at a local peace square gym; managed to run about 5 kilometers before my right leg and feet started hurting a lot; going to be an interesting challenge trying to keep it up in this environment;

Other than that thinking of preparing to do the HKS 1, extremely low level Chinese test, but because of the writing side at least, worth passing, might take me 2 years to level from 1 – 8, but by the end should be able to read newspapers, hmm, one thought on this side is to apply for a february starting class at qinghua university for about 6 months, of course this would cut off my money income unless I can find some side english teaching etc, method of preparing for this, same as usual, practice practice,

going to have to start from the basics again and build up; what I wouldn’t give for 5-6 months of nothing to do but think and prepare right now, although work is nice because of money, plus giving me something to do;

Other thoughts options; applying to grad school in the US, looking for other good jobs in China, working through HP for a few years and trying to transfer somewhere else; going to Shanghai and trying to push into something ;being more aggressive in general; going on a trip and taking pictures, posting them on the internet; signing up for another marathon or triatholon and actually doing good on it this time, unfortunately too freaking cold outside, and I hate running on treadmills.

Third plan at the moment, related to recruiting graphic designers this side to work on design US and make US side profits (actually dads plan) but sounds nice because of the money + freedom associated, if I could get something like that started could just study most of the time and not have to worry about the rest of it;

 

Want to fly this chicken coop

Holy mackeral,

I’ve saved up enough Chinese money to last me for a year or more possibly, if I can manage to hold up till january will be able to save up s’more, but issue being at this point, although I may be living, I am quite possibly utterly wasting my time doing nothing whatsoever here, if my goal were making money, would easily be making more money in the US, nice to have a degree of independence here paying for things myself etc, but what is missing without a doubt is freedom -> any kind of freedom, because I am not looking to settle down, need to figure out how to drop into something bigger soon + need to decide whether or not to join a local gym soon + whether I’m gonna stay past january because this is getting really freaking old!

First Run With Wave Rider 12’s

I went ahead and bought the shoes ;

Have gone in one jog in them so far; first thing I notice is that they are
much thinner than the Adidas Response Cushion 18; I feel more of the road etc and my
feet may have been more tired after the whole trip, the Adidas in comparison are heavier
and I think I may be able to push further in them without getting any pain in my feet they put some heavy cushion between me in the road.

Striding in these Mizuno’s, on the other hand, is more of an entire body exercise because I’m not hoisted up on a tower, I will have to try a few more times in them to really tell though, because I may have been more influenced by the cold weather which has just started to hit making me stiff etc, I went on a relatively flat trip in them, and it seems like my feet were closer to the ground more of the time. I may have to build up tolerance over the next couple of weeks if I’m going to go extremely long distance in these, but they could be beneficial in terms of speed. Unfortunately my nokia was not powered up so I wasn’t able to measure the speed to compare with the adidas, but over the next couple of months it may be nice to compare the two on long versus short etc;

Failed/ Beijing/ New

Finally going to be going to Beijing in a couple of weeks to run here, have been getting running KM up to a higher level on a weekly basis, but still not high enough. From my sportstracker site, have been running around 20-30k a week, would rather be at around 40-60 a week, but in any case, time’s out now, so going to do some short runs for the next couple of weeks and than trying to do beijing marathon on oct 18th -

I recently bought a new pair of adidas for the purpose of protecting my feet, feel that during long runs, they hurt. Unfortunately, I did not review shoes well enough, and I think I may have ended up with a pair of shoes that have extremely hard heels. It is strange, but I am able to run up and down hills with little pain, but it almost seems to hurt more on the flats. I’m extremely tempted to get a pair of Mizuno Wave, the shoes are extremely comfortable, look cool and the name sounds cool. On the other hand it would set me back another $100, which combined with plane tickets to and from beijing is going to set me back around $400 for the whole deal. Of course, being not extremely old (although recently turned 26) money is meant to be spent, and running is important, so I might have to buy the mizunos.

nice shoes

Outside the box

Thinking about ways I’ve looked for jobs in the past and present. In the past it was mostly focused on a general area, I find a place I’m interested in and mass apply to jobs in the area. An alternative being the possibility of trying to apply to jobs more specifically related to career experiences, because it seems that at the moment the mass attack is not fooling anyone. So how exactly can I go about leveraging my skills to the point that I’m actually able to get a job that I’m really interested in. I need something bigger on my resume if its going to make me stick, but at the moment all I’m interested in is studying. I’m holding on with my bare hands to something, and it gets me through the days along with being a challenge, but I need to focus my energy into getting somewhere higher, because being stuck is not a nice feeling, and its bad for my health. It seems like the best thing I can do at this point is to network like crazy and get some exposure to the world etc, but how the hell can I do that in my current night – life style, its nearly impossible.