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I’ve gotten some random pings from folks lately asking:

• What happened to that crazy lifestyle eating change you were on? Are you still doing that?
• Have any New Year’s Resolutions?

Good questions both. One quick note, I usually do 5 New Year’s Resolutions every year, but I don’t call them that because it sounds like they’re afterthoughts and the word ‘resolution’ now has a loaded connotation of ‘IMPENDING COMPLETE FAILURE COMING MOMENTARILY’.

Instead, I usually call them ’simplifying principles’ because they’re things I’d really like to actively focus on this year and they’re meant to simplify my life, not add some additional thing I won’t remember to do. Before I get to those…

The Eating Thing

If you’ll remember, last year I attempted (mostly successfully) to undo 26 years of awful eating habits and prepare myself for the distinct eventuality that the next 30 years of my life are going to consist of: 1) working a lot, and 2) a gradually slowing metabolism. Let’s be very clear about this: I know of (maybe) five Asian males over the age of 35 who are not noticeably overweight. That’s it. If you’re Asian and your Dad is not overweight, then I’ll take your word for it and add him to the list, though he’s probably already one of the five.

With that backdrop, and because I often like to pit myself in games of will power against myself, I spent some time reading up on “What does eating healthy really MEAN?” last year and then attempted to live by that for 12 months. The results were largely good and I think the number of meals I strayed was probably less than 30.

This year I’ve made one slight adjustment to the approach, which I don’t think will make a material difference in practice, but I think will make an enormous difference in my personal mental state when driving by an In-n-Out. And that leads me to the five simplifying principles (of course non-work-related):

1. Eat healthy (as defined in 2008), with the exception that for every week in which I work out 3+ times, I get one free meal to eat whatever I want. Hopefully for all parties involved, that will be 52 weeks.
2. Write a short story. This was originally “Write more,” but in the name of setting actionable, measurable principles. Regardless, “Write more” is baked into this.
3. Read and thoughtfully review at least 12 books
4. Visit at least one new foreign country
5. Launch a couple (at least 2) useful, interesting sites

I would have added a sixth and a seventh (”Tailgate at least 10 times” and “Lower the beer to other beverages ratio”), but a) they seemed to work directly against one another, b) the seventh is pretty much covered by my #1, and c) I just really wasn’t ready to commit to seven different principles.

Let’s all have a solid 2009, people.

For those of you wondering why I would have possibly gone to Portland a few months ago, nytimes.com has a great article about the prominence of Portland as a dining/drinking town now.

To be fair, I didn’t really know how good it would be until I got there, but the combination of great wine in the Willamette Valley, tremendous breweries, and fantastic restaurants turned out to be a lot of fun. It’s not laying on the beach drinking a margarita, but it’s good too.

so i’ve been in miami (for work) for over 24 hours now and i can say, definitively, that some things you see on television are not true:

1. i have yet to see a high-speed boat chase scene, a la miami vice. in fact, i haven’t even seen a single high-speed boat fly into the air off one of those marineworld-style ramps (what the heck is going ON here?)
2. i have yet to see shaq, dwyane wade, or damon jones (or as jones put it on tv once, “the king and two princes of miami”), a la NBA tv (which makes it look like you can’t walk outside without running into one of them).
3. i have yet to see anyone doing lines of coke off a glass table, a la “every miami movie/show you’ve ever seen”.

that being said, there are some very “miami-ish” things (which i only know from the fantasyland of TV/movies) that i’ve seen:

• incredible percentage of men walking around with women that are completely f’ing out of their league
• these men usually also have prolific chest hair and seem to have lost the top four buttons of their shirts (perhaps they were torn off by the copious chest hair. must send someone not gross out by forests of chest hair to investigate further).
• highest concentration of escalades on one street (ocean ave.) anywhere in the world
• tons of very miami-looking buildings with 70’s era white concrete architecture
• hundreds of men wearing bright teal or white sport coats.

i made that last one up.

as you all know (maybe), last weekend ivy and i went to portland. in doing so i determined, among other things, that portland has the best microbreweries in the country. how do i know this? well, i just simply went out and drank every single possible brew in the city of portland.

kidding. because i would have died. there are a lot of them.

anyhow, if you’re ever in portland (or even just at your local whole foods), you should definitely try a beer from rogue ales. really delicious and probably now my favorite brewery that i canthink of. great-looking dive bar feel too.

you know how there’s that sonoma winery that has the motto”no wimpy wines”? well, rogue could just as well go by the motto “no wimpybeers.” definitely strong, hoppy, and fantastic.

my two favorites: dead guy ale (left) and imperial stout (right)

14.55.05: unintentionally spin around backwards, now descending headfirst on my back. this perspective allows me a view of amazon woman. she is descending perched atop a miniature avalanche, giving her the appearence of an ice goddess in a frozen chariot pulled by snow stallions. she is also moving faster than me.