Anotherblog

May Contain Traces of Buddha-nature

May Contain Traces of Buddha-nature
The title is a quip that arose during our lunchtime Zendo game frenzy. I’m going to put it on a t-shirt.

iPod

iPod
The iPod got repaired rather quicker this time than last time.: three days instead of three weeks. I just got the call saying I can pick it up. Of course, I won’t really be able to pick it up until Saturday, but it’s the thought that counts.

Zendo
Many more games of Zendo today: our lunchtime gaming group consisted of ten people, playing two simultaneous games. Very enjoyable.

Jog
Went for a forty-minute jog last night, and finished it feeling rather comfortable. This is definitely now the fittest I’ve ever been. I can’t think of any other time in which I could have gone forty minutes without collapsing and curling up into a ball to hold in my lunch. Of course, now I want to take it further: start timing myself, buy better shoes, talk to Dad about jogging, go out for longer runs, and so on. This is my obsessive nature talking, and I shall resist it, because it will invariably end with me burning out on the whole thing and never doing it again. I’d rather keep the jogs to about the same length and frequency that I have been doing for the last three weeks, and continue enjoying them.

Zendo

Zendo
We’ve been playing a bit of Zendo at work recently, and came across an absolute stumper today. We spent about an hour on it, and then opened the floor to answers, modifying the koans at will, and still needed many, many hints. It was, perhaps, the most perfect Rule I have seen, because the “Oh, of *course*!” moment of Enlightenment was so profound that several of us laughed out loud, and all of us agreed not to kill Allen (the Zen master for that game) but, perhaps, give him the status of Master For Eternity. Or something like that. I shall reproduce some of the koans for your elucidation.

Moosic
Concentrated on Suzanne Vega’s “Blood Makes Noise” on Saturday’s music session. The bass part is extremely funky and rather difficult, but I think I have a handle on how to do it; it’ll just require a whole lot of practice. We made various soups and watched movies, and I completely failed to feel guilty about the many things I ought to be doing.

Su Doku!
I went to Kinokuniya on Saturday, and bought a book of Su Doku and a japanese puzzle magazine that contained many Edel puzzles. Many, many Edel puzzles. Edel is pretty much as addictive as Su Doku. Nurikabe is also rather fatal. I may be suffering puzzle overdose. I also discovered that my Dad does So Doku every day too, and does so without any crib notes either. Gak!

Happy birthdays
In descending order of age: Happy birthday Jen! Happy Birthday Anna! Happy birthday Hana Renee!

Jogging

Jogging
I’ve gone jogging four times now, and I’m quite pleased with how it feels. I used to hate jogging a lot. Dad would wake me up at 5:30am, drag me out of bed, and make me jog with him. I would jog until I got a stitch and felt like throwing up, and then I would walk or sit on the side of the bike track waiting for Dad to get to the end of the path and come back. As such, it has never felt particularly healthy, especially since it also makes my shins hurt from all that impact.

However, I’ve been playing squash and badminton a lot recently, and I have been losing a lot. One of the reasons I lose a lot is that I run out of fitness after the first two or three games. So I figured I should improve my fitness, and since I’ve recently decided to re-evaluate many of the things I used to avoid, I thought I’d try jogging again. I did it twice a few months ago, and it went OK, though the weather was a bit too hot. But now the weather is nice and cool, and I can go jogging at night. So I’ve been giving it a try.

Most of the problems I used to have don’t seem to apply any more. So far, I’ve limited myself to half-hour jogs, and I’ve deliberately done a very slow, comfortable pace. It used to be that jogging for more than ten minutes at *any* speed would leave me exhausted, but I’ve gotten to the point now where I can more or less keep going at the slowest non-walking pace. Nice! Although the longest I’ve gone was forty minutes last night, there were quite a few hills (ascended at a pace slower than most people would walk, but still “jogging”) and I felt like I could have gone a lot longer. Which brings up the question: is this the healthiest I’ve ever been? Could be. I don’t recall ever being this comfortable with jogging ever before.

iPod
After spontaneously recovering, dying, recovering, dying and recovering again, it has now properly died. I think. I shall return my iPod this weekend, along with the stupid “Road Trip” thingy that I think killed it.

Movies and other distractions

Movies and other distractions
Let’s see: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Mr. 3000, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, new Dr Who, and the Six Feet Under pilot episode, the last bought for Anna’s birthday, which is today. But she wanted to open it early. Went over to Jon & Kate’s place for music-making ’cause Kate had twisted her ankle. Went for another half-hour jog and got rained on. Ate much birthday cake (again with the early), slept a great deal, frittered away the moments that made up a rather relaxing long weekend. Yourself?

Exercise devices and gym memberships

Exercise devices and gym memberships
Buying exercise devices and/or gym memberships rarely works. However, using other people’s exercise devices or gym membership works much more often. Data: Anna has bought an upside-down machine, an exercise bike, and a walking exercise thingy. She has not used them after the first week. I have used all of them frequently. The reason? I have no feeling of guilt or obligation attached to them, and so can use them for their intended purpose. Had I bought any of them myself, I too would have stopped using them.

Exercise bikes represent a change in lifestyle. Any deliberate change in lifestyle rarely sticks, because as soon as there is a lapse, guilt is sufficient to make the lapse permanent. It’s the same with my fads. I’ll obsess on something, then continue with it long past when it is interesting out of guilt.

And so we come to Film Forensics. My attempt to change lifestyle is to do one FF per week, which started, as with all my fads, with a big burst of enthusiasm, and then has trickled away. In this particular instance, I’ve been avoiding working on it for weeks and weeks, refusing to do the Hulk review. I know what I should do: give myself one hour in which to finish it, and immediately put it up. It doesn’t, as the “National Novel Writing Month” mantra goes, have to be good. It just has to be done.

For quantities of one or greater, quantity is better than quality.

Sudoku!

Sudoku!
Stupid logic puzzle has me totally addicted. Every lunchtime, I copy the SMH and Telegraph sudoku puzzles and solve them while I play other games (at the moment, Formula De, a fun racing game). I greatly enjoyed the learning process with it, as well. There are a couple of different strategies you can apply, and I discovered several of them myself before going to the rather good UK fan site that lists off the known strategies and, more importantly, gives a couple of puzzles of varying difficulty. They’re pretty hard-core: even the puzzle listed as “beginner” is leagues more difficult that the Sydney Telegraph sudoku.

Anyway, I’m hanging out for a book of ‘em, now. I am copping much mocking at work from people such as DMM, who can’t understand the attraction. He has, however, never tried it.

Weekend
The Girlfriends got together a reasonably decent version of the U2 song Summer Rain on Sunday. My bass playing was more competent than usual, Jon’s guitar playing has flourished, and Kate’s drumming/singing and Anna’s singing are coming along leaps and bounds. We watched some more of the Pink Floyd “Live in Pompeii” DVD, and were inspired to play some pseudo Pink Floyd, which turned into a big session of “Wish You Were Here”, which Jon recalled from deep ancestorial memories. Also didn’t suck.

Sleep
For the last week, I’ve been conking out at about 9:00pm every single night, and waking up only after about eleven or twelve hours of sleep. Must be fighting off some illness, but I don’t feel ill - or more generally tired - at all.