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5 Simplifying Principles for 2009

smallchou — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:43:45 +0000

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):

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.
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.
Read and thoughtfully review at least 12 books
Visit at least one new foreign country
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.

Portland

smallchou — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 05:28:44 +0000

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.

Not everything you see on TV…

smallchou — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 04:56:31 +0000

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:

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?)
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).
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.

Rogue Ales

smallchou — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 05:25:41 +0000

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)

These are my friends: How to climb a volcano!

smallchou — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 01:43:19 +0000

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.

Back!

smallchou — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 09:57:00 +0000

whew! i’m back. it took two weeks, but i feel like i really got a sense of what australia (specifically new south wales and queensland) has to offer. some things i learned about or while in australia::: sydney is most definitely a beautiful and mature international city. the harbor is gorgeous. it’s clean and crisp and sophisticated. really unlike any harbor or wharf that i’ve ever seen in a big city. the opera house really is one of those architectural marvels that you need to see for yourself. the streets are bustling at waking hours, but strangely quiet on crisp sunday mornings. a coworker described it a few weeks ago as “a cleaner san francisco, fused with los angeles beach culture.” i think that’s very accurate, though i don’t think it has the vibrancy and diversity of san francisco. it’s casual and formal at the same time. oh, and the food is fantastic, as one would expect from such a modern city surrounded by eclectic nations of diverse tastes. some quick photos:

:: australians, despite their insistence on being part of a “great beer-drinking nation,” have no idea what good beer is. i tried nearly every australian beer that i could get my hands on, playing havoc on my weight (more on that later), and i found only two that were even worth thinking about drinking again. unlike other enthusiastic beer-consuming countries (belgium, ireland, germany…), australia’s beers taste like ass. my theory is that australians adopt the american attitude of, “i’m gonna drink a lot of it, so might as well make sure it goes down easy.” when i got to the country, i laughed about how no one there actually drank foster’s. by the time i left i was wishing that i could find a foster’s.

:: i always thought lists like “the world’s top 10 beaches” were stupid. i mean, what could be so spectacular? then i went to whitehaven beach in the whitsunday islands. i’ll give you a few pictures, but suffice it to say that i will no longer doubt the worth of such lists (which mostly seem to include whitehaven). spectacular? incredible? a dream? the sand was supposedly silica, but it felt more like soft flour spread over 6 kilometers where the jungle met water. absolutely insane:

:: i was reminded on this trip how loved and incredible of a city san francisco is. yeah, you read that right. EVERY australian who mentioned visiting the united states raved about how much he/she loved our own city by the bay. even our b&b owners in port douglas, who talked about how unimpressed they were by america (“i don’t think people who live in new york are tough, i think they’re stupid to live in a place so beastly,” and “america’s so BORING. except for little pockets, it all looks the same”), praised san francisco top to bottom. i don’t know if they were correct, but they were certainly objective compared to americans. if nothing else: australians love san francisco.

:: the great barrier reef sounds so cliche, but you’re a fool if you don’t go see it for yourself. i’ve never snorkeled before, but moments after overcoming the initial panic of “holy shit, i’m in the middle of the fucking ocean and these waves are enormous,” i was able to calm down and take a look around. when you cross the water level, it’s like dipping into a whole different world of brilliant colors and plentiful marine life. i’m hoping some of my underwater camera pictures come out, but i have a feeling that my wounded duck swimming technique might have left something to be desired. we’ll see. but whether or not the photos come out, just know that it was one of the most remarkable sights of my life. go see it, you won’t be disappointed.

:: and lastly, i was reminded of how good it can actually feel to come home. yes my (new) room still looks like a disaster area, but it’s slowly coming together and it’s good to be in my own place. i’m not, by nature, a traveler. at some level, i find myself needing to emerge from my comfort zone just to immerse myself in a new and different place. my travel shyness means that i’m always a little relieved to come home to comfort, but it also means that i forever appreciate even short jaunts to new worlds. i’m lucky to have the means to travel.

like our rain forest guide said on wednesday, “when you’re heading home all you can think about is how nice it will be. but once you get home all you can think about is where to go to next.”

so where to next? i’m open for ideas

talladega nights!

smallchou — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:43:00 +0000

so i had some interesting little tidbits to share from my trip so far, but they were all overshadowed by this story:ivy and i were sitting in this old pub in The Rocks here in sydney. i decided to order another pint of guinness and, as i was finishing up the drink, i saw a couple of pretty big guys walking in on the other side of the bar. as i put my drink down, i couldn’t help noticing that the one facing me had one of those cool Ricky Bobby Wonderbread hats on. “cool,” i thought. “i wonder how he got one of those.” then i slowly realized that the guy looked a LOT like the real ricky bobby himself. as i blinked a few times and looked again, i tapped ivy on the shoulder and said, “hey, doesn’t that guy look a lot like will ferrell?” as we both looked back at him, his friend turned around and we knew that, yes, it was in fact will ferrell because the other guy was very clearly john c. reilly!

the tagline for sydney tourism should be: “Sydney, where Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly can go to have a beer without people bothering them.” we did score a sweet picture of the four of us though. awesome…

are there many things more

smallchou — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 04:26:00 +0000

are there many things more exciting than sitting in an airport bar waiting to board your flight for a two-week international adventure?

Investing in travel

smallchou — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 07:07:00 +0000

i’m excited because tomorrow i’m jumping on a long-ass plane flight Down Under. i don’t really plan on having absurd adventures while i’m down there, but hey, you never know.i think that when i’m at work and in the grind, i tend to lose focus on some of the more important aspects of being 24 with some financial freedom. for instance, i feel like seeing as much of the world as i can before i have real responsibilities is probably a really fantastic idea. when i think about it, there will be decades to work on a career, and only years to pack up and fly away to random places for indeterminate amounts of time. i need to remember to make that a priority more often.so in the theme of “tell better stories,” i think that someday i’ll remember spending two weeks in australia much more than i’ll remember sitting in a cubicle plugging on my keyboard to earn some extra cash. i think. and for that i’m willing to invest: time, money, and my life.

9/15: fly out of sfo to sydney
9/22: fly out of sydney to cairns
9/29: fly back to sfo

there are lots of things in the middle there, but we’ll start with that and fill in the details later.

my traveling friend…

smallchou — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 06:13:00 +0000

i’ll occasionally link to my friends’ blogs, but i almost never outright TELL people, “go read this stuff.” i think will’s new blog is probably worth your time though, so you should go take a look. it’s not really a blog, as much as it will be insightful glimpses into his trek through south america.the short background is that, having finished two years teaching in the new york public school system, will decided to take, oh, at least a half year to travel all of those countries to the south, accompanied by his backpack. i’m excited for him and proud that he has the balls to go travel in such a way. he’s much braver than i am, in countless ways.so far, he’s taken a 30-hour bus ride from atlanta, georgia to el paso, texas, before jumping (not literally) the border into mexico. so set your bookmarks, rss readers, or whatever. it should be at least interesting. oh yeah, and he doesn’t know spanish.

be safe, will. and write often.