sports

Yes, I bitched out of deactivating my facebook account. I originally posted in my blog that I was going to be deactivating it to avoid potential-employer-spying and because it was too time consuming. However, through sub-conscious embarrassment, I have drastically decreased the amount of times I check my facebook. Probably by like 90%. So I guess in the end, it all worked out. I would definitely not consider myself a facebook whore and can most likely live without it, but there are just too many convenient functions facebook has... as you all should already know.

Anyways, onwards to things about my life... I am currently taking three fire-tech classes at Santa Ana College (junior college) and will be taking three more, yes three more, classes at UCI. Upper division writing and two Chinese minor classes. Yes, I know, I already walked and did the whole graduation ceremony thing but I felt like I was going to miss the "college life" so I decided to save upper div writing for the fall and didn't take any classes in the summer and I wasn't planning on finishing my Chinese minor since I don't see much use for it, job-wise. However, now I just realized I probably will not miss college life THAT much and wish I took upper div writing in the summer. I am now finishing my minor since the price difference between part-time student and full-time student isn't really that large. Anyways, the point of me putting this on my blog is because I dont want you coming up to me on campus and saying "Didn't you graduate?" or "What are you doing here?" and making me feel like a retard. Although, I'm pretty sure that is still going to happen... a lot.

So while I was sitting in my fire class today, I realized something that I have thought about a while ago but never did anything about. I don't know shit about sports. Seriously, I don't. I don't even know enough to pretend like I do. Sometimes I can't even tell if the team they are talking about is football or baseball. The type of people taking fire classes, although very diverse, can still somewhat be generalized into one type of person, which is the macho, or wanna-be macho type of person. Apparently most of them really like talking about sports. I was sitting in the middle of class today during break and people were coming up to my table and we were just talking about a lot of random shit about the class and fire and whatever. And everyone was going blah blah blah and it was all cool and then all of a sudden they started talking about college football. I guess I am pretty used to not knowing shit when people talk about sports so I just do the usual which is smile and nod. So while I was smiling and nodding, even the teacher (who is a woman and also a batallion chief) comes over and starts yapping on about baseball or whatever. Then I realized, hmm... maybe it would be to my advantage to be able to hold a small conversation about sports. I mean, usually I don't really care and when people start trying to get me involved in the conversation I just tell them a team I "like" and try to throw out random facts I hear on the radio. I can't really tell, but I think it usually works. I don't really see myself trying to memorize the sports section anytime soon but perhaps I will start learning how to discriminate baseball and football teams.

On another note, I recently learned how to forward ports in my router and can now create Starcraft games. If anyone still has their CD... start playing again! I recently started playing again and damn, it is so fun. More people need to play so we can get in house games going. And no, I will never move on to Warcraft! Also if you want to learn how to do port forwarding visit www.portforward.com. Hmm... just realized these two topics don't go so well together in the sense of me trying to not sound nerdy. So, if you do not know me and are reading this... I just want to note that I am not nerdy. Or at least I am not that nerdy.

mail man

I hurt my wrist the other day. I can't tell if I injured it from lifting or typing but it hurts when I do either. I think I will just tell people I hurt it from lifting because that sounds a lot less gay. So this morning I was just sitting on the couch in my boxers watching T.V. when I heard the doorbell ring and someone knock on the door. I was pretty sure it was the post office guy dropping something off at the door. Yes, I was correct. So I opened the door in my boxers and bent down and picked up the package. Before I could close my front door, the post office guy yells from the sidewalk "HEY! Do you have a band-aid?" He had cut his knuckle while stuffing mail in our mailbox. I said yeah and went around the house looking for it. I haven't been home for a while so I forget where my mom keeps all the stuff but eventually I found the band-aids and also found some neosporin. When I went to give it to him, I noticed his other hand was full of mail and he didn't seem to be putting anything down so instinctively I just applied the neosporin on for him. The neosporin was some special neosporin or something because it also had "pain relief" and the cream was all white instead of clear and was hard to apply. I couldn't get the cream to break off from the opening of the tube so I had to use my other hand to apply it on his wound. First of all, it was already pretty awkward that I was even talking to him on my front doorstep half naked and now I was applying cream on his hand. I failed miserably at getting the neosporin on the cut so I decided to just apply it to the bandaid and then stick it on. So I unwrapped the band-aid and carefully put some neosporin on the white cotton part. I then carefully put the band aid on his extended hand while only touching the sticky parts with my fingers. I put so much neosporin on earlier that the bandaid wasn't even sticking it was just like gliding around on his hand. I asked him if he wanted another band-aid but I'm pretty sure he felt really awkward too and was just like "that's a lot that's a lot thank you thank you thank you" and left. I guess it isn't everyday you have a random naked guy put a band-aid on for you.

So this will be the last post in my blog that I will be posting up on facebook. I plan on deactivating my facebook when I return to Irvine just so I will stop wasting time and potential employers can't spy on me. So if you have a blog, add me as a friend or however that works. I'm still a bit confused on how people do all that stuff with their blogs but yeah. I am a blog noob. Anyways I am going to stop typing now since I hurt my wrist from lifting the other day.

Crossfit

For those of you who have noticed, yes I have been posting a lot more in my blog. It is because I have been in Norcal, home alone with not much to do. Even though nobody I really talk to is back in Fremont, I have not exactly been that bored here.

So I got a one month pass to this gym in Milpitas called Milpitas fitness. It is kind of different from other gyms I've been in. It is a bit more hardcore, doesn't have as many decorations and it's workers are hell of a lot less anal. They pretty much just asked for my name in order to get the month pass, where as 24 hour fitness would ID you, sit you down and talk to you for about 30 minutes. Anyways, there is one section of the gym which is dedicated to Crossfit training. I have briefly heard about Crossfit before but didn't know anything about it. I peeked into the class several times on numerous occasions while I was lifting and really liked what I saw. It seemed like they did a shit load of powerlifting and compound lifts in a very high intensity environment. Everyone that I saw walk out of the class was completely drenched in sweat. They also kept their music blasting at all times. Intrigued, I went over and asked the instructor if I could try the class out. He was extremely nice and gave me his number to schedule a time.

I contacted him and came in the next day. I was under the impression he would be re-teaching me the basics of power lifting (which is what I wanted) but I guess he had something else in mind. When I entered the weight room, everyone immediately introduced themselves to me. Some people seriously formed a line to shake my hand. They were incredibly friendly and I felt very welcomed. Apparently that day they were doing something different. They were doing this workout which I guess was kind of like a competition. It was a circuit of five different exercises which consisted of the push press, rowing, throwing this big ass ball in the air, high pull (I think), and box jumping. Each exercise lasts one minute and you try to do as many reps as you can do in that time and then immediately switch to the next exercise. After you complete all five exercises, you rest for a minute and you do it again. You are finished after three rounds. I am well aware that I have only been training for strength this past year and have not focused much on endurance. Three rounds sounded like a lot to me but I figured the weights were not exactly super heavy and it should be fairly easy for me to complete.

They broke us off into pairs. Your partner is responsible for counting the number of reps you did for each exercise and writing it down. I was paired up with a guy named Reagan. He looked relatively fit. The instructor told him to go first so I could see how everything is done. I counted enthusiastically for every rep Reagan did and tried to give him encouraging comments. Such as... "You can do it!" and "You're almost there!" I tried not to use his name because I wasn't 100% sure it was Reagan. Anyways, in my head I was thinking, "damn this guy is not really listening to me... he seems to be slowing down I wonder why he isn't giving it his all... when it is my turn I will surely do this faster..." Boy, was I wrong. Holy fucking shit, that shit was so fucking tiring.

I started out pretty good... for about the first 30 seconds. Then I realized oh.... shit this is going to be tiring. I began to pace myself and finished the first round with a relatively good score. Don't get me wrong, I still felt like dying and looked like I just took a shower. The second round was not as good. I realized I was nearing my limit and understood why Reagan was ignoring me when he was doing it. You are so tired and concentrated you don't have time to say anything. That shit is a lot easier when you're just watching. Anyways I pushed through the rest of it with Reagan's words of encouragement. In the second round, I scored about 60% of what I scored in the first. While I was sitting there heaving during the sixty second break, Reagan showed me my scores and politely yelled at me, telling me I better not decrease that much in the third round. I then pushed through the third round doing better, slightly improving from my previous score. When the final timer bell rang I had to try my best to not collapse on the floor. Definitely did not want to look like a bitch on my first day. Note, there are a lot of chicks in this class. I would say at least half of the class is made up of girls. Incredibly strong girls.

The instructor came up to me and said I got a pretty good score for my first time. I was not sure if he was just saying that. Either way, I was feeling so great from finishing it. My head was seriously spinning and my vision was a bit blurry but I was all smiles. Everybody in that class was so friendly and the environment was so intense. I was really hooked. I wish I didn't have to go back to Irvine just so I could enroll in the class. I was just sitting there and looking at everyone else who also looked incredibly tired but incredibly happy. I didn't feel the awkwardness you feel when first meeting a group of strangers at all.

I really really liked this Crossfit class. Apparently it is actually a really big thing and they have a lot of classes all over. I plan on signing up for one in Irvine if I get hired for that SAT job I was talking about. I don't think it will really get you that huge, but will definitely increase core strength and endurance. Also it seems like a great way to make friends. If anyone in the Irvine area is also interested in signing up, let me know! (girls can do it too)

Hu Nan

I went to visit my grandparents in San Jose today. I particularly like visiting my paternal grandparents because my grandpa always acts like it is a big deal when I come home. Anyways he called me yesterday because he wanted me to drive them to a BBQ an association was hosting. The association is made up of people who were originally from Hu-nan province and now live in the San Jose area. Apparently 我是湖南人. The BBQ is comprised of a lot of random people, however, I am quite familiar with how these Chinese get-togethers made up of strangers work. I've been to a few in the past.

Now let me tell you something about Chinese people in large groups, especially old Chinese people in large groups. They don't really like to wait in line for food and they really will crowd you if you give them the chance. Personal space is not a big deal. So I was standing there with a plastic plate waiting my turn while people kept passing me up. I'm cool with it because I don't want to seem really eager to eat and when you let someone go in front of you everyone will go in front of you. You can't show any weakness with these people. Haha just kidding. On another note about Chinese BBQs, the last Chinese BBQ I attended was for my father's school reunion. It was similar to this one, just that they had a keg. So basically... Chinese people cant drink... and they also like free shit... I think its easy to guess what happend at the end of the BBQ. The keg was still full and people were crowding around and filling up water bottles with beer so they can take them home. No, I am not making this up.

Anyways, eventually I got to the food and was mainly interested in the meat. They had a whole plate of BBQ chicken legs but every single piece was black as shit. They were so incredibly burnt I actually started laughing out loud. Everyone was walking around with a burnt ass piece of meat on their plate. It was incredibly funny. So after I ate my burnt drumstick I went over to the people who were bar-be-que-ing and waited for some Korean BBQ ribs. Watching them cook was kind of painful. One guy kept flipping the thing like every 30 seconds and I watched like three of them burn while I was next in line. Anyways, I got my meat and went back and sat with my grandparents. My grandma insisted I wore her straw sun hat becasue I was sitting in the sun. She took off her own hat and put it on my head and then she got out a little wooden thing which was like a lot of wooden pieces attached to a hinge which turns into a hat. So now the three of us are sitting at the picnic table eating korean bbq and wearing sun hats.

The meat is hard to eat with just a plastic fork. My grandma goes into her purse, pulls out a paper envelope, opens it and then pulls out a piece of wood and a metal knife and begins to cut the meat using the wood as a cutting board. I thought this was hilarious. Apparently she has been to a few bbqs in the past also. She says her teeth are not good enough to tear the meat. We eat the meat and my grandma talks about how bad the people who were cooking the meat were. I agreed. I thought it was really funny because usually when I talk to my grandma we have two separate conversations because she is hard of hearing. I would say something to her and she would say something totally different and then I would try to tell her again and she would respond as if I had said something else. Eventually it would be so far off I would just nod and smile to her. Later my grandma surprised me again when the Hu-nan Chinese Association moved onto the next part of their picnic celebration. The entertainment. So they had this lady up there singing some song in the old Chinese style with a megaphone. My god it was fucking horrible. Not only that, the song lasted like 10 minutes. My grandma came up behind me and whispered in my ear something which roughly translates into "Wow she fucking sucks!" Just kidding, she just said that she sings really bad, but I thought it was funny that she had even said that. Hanging out with my grandparents was actually really fun. It was funny seeing how excited my grandpa got when he got lei'd for being one of the oldest members there. He got over excited and went up before they even got to his age bracket. All and all, it was a good Sunday.

So while I was writing this post, I was watching TV and someone lost my remote and it is stuck on MTV. I think "Daddy's Girls" is the only show where I look forward to when the commercials come on.