Off the Chart

This one night I used elliptical machine number 2 to do my cardio workout, because it was the only one available at the time. I entered my age and weight into the machine to get the calorie count, and set the difficulty level to 6, which was my normal setting.

I was walking away with my speed averaging 6-7 miles per hour. I felt that the machine was heavier than usual, but I thought maybe I was a little out of shape, so didn't think much of it. 15 minutes in, I noticed that I was huffing and puffing. I was breathing out of my mouth so heavily that I was so self conscious about bothering the person next to me. I checked my heart beat and it showed 175 bpm. I looked up this number on the heart rate instruction chart that was printed on the machine, and guess what, it was off the chart!

I cooled down at 25 minutes and finished at around 30 minutes. I burned about 345 calories in 30 minutes. I was totally covered with sweat, and was just thankful that the workout was finished. I was not falling over yet, but it was a good workout.

Two days later I mentioned this to Jack, and he said: "Oh yes, number two machine is one of those heavy machines. It's probably poorly maintained" Great, so I may not be out of shape after all!

Power foods

Over the years, I have tried to get myself into a habit of eating healthy. I would start with consciously shopping for healthy foods and eating well, but after a week or so, I would fall back to the usual habit, and the healthy food would eventually rot. I never seemed to be able to finish the milk and the bananas before they went bad, even though I only bought small quantities at a time.

Healthy foods are just not that fulfilling or tasty. While yogurt and apples awesome snacks, the temptation of eating Cheetos or Lay chips is just too powerful to resist.

If we can train our brains to take pleasure in eating only healthy food and dislike unhealthy food, then it will be so much easier to keep a healthy diet. For example, I don't like to eat sweets, bread and fried food. That's a good start, right?

This week seems to be one of those healthy diet weeks. I drank a cup of milk everyday, and ate a banana before I headed out to the gym. This was the first time I didn't have to throw away spoiled milk or bananas as far as I can remember.

Today we went to Costco to get laundry detergent, and I picked up an 8 lb bag of cara cara oranges, a box of organic spinach, mushrooms, broccoli, low fat milk, banana, and peanuts. These whole foods are power foods!

Doesn't it sound like I am going to live such a spotlessly healthy lifestyle? We will see...

Self peeling oranges

Jack and I went to shop for groceries, and when we were at the produce area, I asked if he wanted some oranges.

"Only if it peels itself." Jack replied. I smiled and picked 5 big ones from the pile hoping they are fresh and tasty.

That night when dinner was ready, Jack came to the kitchen and asked, "are there clean bowls in here?" He pointed at the dishwasher.

"Yes," I said, "there are self cleaning bowls ;)."

After dinner, I sat in front of the TV and peel a couple of oranges. I may not be good at picking oranges, but I'm pretty skilled at peeling them. I passed the orange sections to Jack one piece at a time. They are juicy, sweet, and just the way he likes it.

One should be so lucky to find self peeling oranges and self washing bowls.

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Literally the hardest workout in my life

I had the hardest workout in my life on Wednesday night.

I was a little bored with my normal workout regiment that night, and thought I gave the power circuit class a try. How hard could a gym class be, right? I guess I didn't understand what circuit training was, and boy I was in for a "treat"!

When I walked into the studio, there were only 2 other students and my personal trainer Juan, who was the class instructor. Juan was a friendly young fellow.

Juan prepared the studio by laying out exercise equipments around in a big circle: sets of weights next to a bosu, a high step with weights next to it, a pair of punching gloves and shields, a jumping rope, a set of swinging ropes, 4 hurdle hops, etc. There were totally 11 exercise stations. Meanwhile, another lady came in, so there were four of us in the class. I heard that normally there were six to seven people in the class.

Juan explained that we worked on a workout for 45 seconds, then took a quick break and move on to the next workout. When we were done with a circuit, we would start from the first workout again.

I started with bicep curl on a bosu. It was relatively easy, as I have done that before. The trick here was to be balanced on the bosu, and it was OK if I lost balance and stepped on the floor.

My next item was the hurdle hops. 4 innocent looking 1 foot high hurdles were placed in a straight line a few feet apart from each other. I hopped quite high and with my feet apart, so I saw myself looking funny in the mirror. Oh, after a couple of rounds my heart started pounding hard, and I could hardly catch my breath! I couldn't believe that it was just the beginning of the class and I was already worn out and wanted to quit.

Next, I did triceps extension, punching, shoulder press, jumping rope, swinging ropes, step up shoulder press, and crunches on a fitness ball. My heart was still pounding hard from the hurdle hop exercise, so everything became fifty times more challenging. At the end of the first circuit, I was already done, but it was only less than 10 minutes into the class. I was so depressed and thought I was going to eventually pass out. Juan was going around the room to give instructions:

"Feet together, jump, jump, jump."
"Come on, full extension."
"Give me a hard punch, you can do better than that."

I took every opportunity to slow down and take a break, when Juan was working on punches with someone else. I wish there were more people in the class, so he wouldn't focus so much on me.

I was huffing and puffing the rest of the class, and looking like totally out of shape. We did three more circuits. 20 minutes before the end of the class, Juan took pity on us and started the cool down early. I was more than a little relieved.  I wasn't sure if I would go back to the class again, but people reassured that the next class would be easier.

The next two days I stayed home and nurse myself. My neck hurt, my back hurt, my abs hurt, my torso hurt, my shoulders hurt, my arms hurt, my thighs hurt and my legs hurt. When I tried to get up from sitting, my thigh muscles gave in and my knees shake! When I laid down I didn't want to move, as my body felt so heavy, and any kind of movement brought pain and suffering.

The stiffness and painfulness started to subside on Sunday, and I could go back to the gym and happily resume my boring workouts.

App Store v.s. Appstore

I started to be pretty fond of The Wall Street Journal.  Every time I go to the gym, I read a few articles, and find them educating.

Yesterday I was waiting for Jack at the lobby for more than 45 minutes, so I read a few articles. One of the articles said Apple sued Amazon for using the term "Appstore" for Android application downloads, because they believed it infringed with their trademarked "App Store". 

The judge said: “There is no evidence that a consumer who accesses the Amazon Appstore would expect that it would be identical to the Apple App Store, particularly given that the Apple App Store sells apps solely for Apple devices, while the Amazon Appstore sells apps solely for Android and Kindle devices[...]”

So I guess the Apple lawyers and linguists didn't do enough homework to persuade the judge.

I was tickled, as I couldn't believe I would read something so entertaining and humorous in the famous Wall Street Journal. The article went on to say there were many other similar litigation lawsuits from Apple to other technology giants such as Samsung, Microsoft and Google.

I respect the late Steve Jobs for his creativity and technological innovations, but I thought he was a Buddhist. What on the above actions show any kind of Buddhism? I heard that business is not personal, but it is just difficult for me to understand this kind of nit-picking.

Consumption v.s. productiveness

In Jack's words, if you are not producing, you are consuming.

This is my life experience since I started working, and this life experience has been exaggerated the last 3 weeks. In fact, every year during the holiday season, this experience was exaggerated, and it constituted the dark side of me.

I don't believe in the modern economic measurement of double digit growth in businesses, because I think it is not sustainable, and it is irresponsible stewardship of the earth and future generations.

However, I hopelessly fell victim to American consumerism. During the Christmas and New Year holidays, I would spend hours shopping online for things I didn't really need, mostly clothing and accessories, just for the sake of finding good deals. Though I never really checked out my orders, I didn't really break my buck. At the end of all that, I was frustrated at my foolishness, because of the waste of time and energy. After all, one only wears one outfit and one pair of shoes at one time.

Luckily I seemed to have stumbled into a solution. In the later part of the vacation period, I started reading Yoga books that were laying around for months. I watched a DVD on digital photography using Canon T4i, which was my Christmas present from Jack. I practiced the piano and I blogged. When I was productive in this way, I was no longer obsessed with finding the best looking and most inexpensive pair of shoes.

No wonder there are 5 working days in a week. It all makes sense, doesn't it?