Ok, I’ve been cycling to work for over a month now which means about 8km a day, 5 days a week (minus a few days here and there due to weather). I work up a pretty good sweat and it’s a pretty good cardio and aerobic workout. My legs I feel have become stronger and my overall fitness is definitely up but I still have a tummy and have not really done any upper body workouts so it’s not really balanced right now.
On Digg a couple of days ago, someone submitted a website one hundred push ups which provides a fitness plan for doing, as the url states, one hundred push ups in six weeks. I think it’s a good start since no special equipment is needed and the plan needs just three days a week of training. I can foresee I’ll be repeating some weeks but from comments I’ve read in forums and other sites, it seems quite common. But people eventually do hit one hundred push ups. I just did my initial test and only managed ten good-form push ups! I got some work to do.
For my tummy, I’ve searched the web and the most effective ab exercise without the need for special equipment is ‘the bicycle crunch’ a.k.a ‘the bicycle ab exercise’ or simply ‘the bicycle’. The lady in this demonstration video (which is really helpful) suggests up to 20-30 reps for beginners, 40-60 reps for intermediate and 80-100 reps for advanced which seems like a good addition to my push up regime. Hopefully I can match them up and try to do the same number of each until I can do a hundred consecutive push-ups and a hundred bicycle crunch reps (not in the same day of course).
I don’t want to complicate things too much as I’m afraid I may get lazy to actually do different exercises and this is just a starting point anyway. So I’m sticking to just push ups and bicycle crunches for starters.
Mondays – Fridays: Cycling 8km/day
Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays: Push ups according to the weekly plans on the website.
Tuesdays & Thursdays: Bicycle crunches matching my push ups.
Weekends: Rest & Recover!
I’m not sure if only two days a week of bicycle crunches are enough but I’ll adjust the plan accordingly if I need to. I realize this is not a complete workout yet but it’s a start so here’s to a trimmer, fitter and healthier me.
So Farhan, Shah, Izzdin and I went to watch The Dark Knight on Thursday night and it was fucking awesome!
***Spoiler Alert***
The movie is so well written that it still keeps me thinking about it. I’m not going to write a review but here are some of my favourite talking points:
- The entire movie is paced so well that the two and a half hours doesn’t feel draggy at all.
- The Joker is portrayed not just as a villain for the sake of being one or just as a bad guy for Batman to beat but as a believable terrorist. The way he terrorizes the city is on a grand scale. The fact that they have to call in the National Guard to Gotham City later in the film attests to that.
- The Joker giving Batman the opposite addresses to where Rachel and Harvey were being held so Batman ends up saving Harvey when he thought he was going after Rachel. And then Harvey thinks Batman chose to save him instead of Rachel and thus creating his hatred towards Batman.
- The scene where Rachel knew she was going to die and just kept telling Harvey it’s okay and it’s alright really got to me. And the fact that she DID die also was a surprise to me.
- The creation of two-face was done brilliantly. First they gave him this habit of flipping a coin which had heads on both sides. Second, the way his face was burnt from the explosion and fire. Thidly, the death of Rachel. If this did not happen, Harvey’s transformation would just be superficial.
- The more social aspect of how Gotham needs a hero and that Harvey was to be this hero, the white knight and Batman was the dark knight.
- Heath Ledger as the Joker. Sheer brilliance. I know everybody keeps talking about how it’s possibly an Oscar worthy performance and I too say it’s at least worth a nomination. A special mention is the scene where he’s walking out of the exploding hospital, all shot in one take and that’s actually him walking though the corridors and away from the hospital while it was exploding. No green/blue screen effects.
- The ending where Batman and Gordon are talking about how Gotham needs a hero and that Batman is not it right now and that the police have to chase him, because he can take it.
The Batman universe is so perfect right now that it’s hard to imagine a character not rooted in reality appear in the movie. Characters like Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and Clayface just seem too fantasy like to blend into that world. So the next movie can possibly have The Riddler or Bane.
Farhan and I are planning to watch the movie again this Tuesday because it really does deserve a second viewing.
Most of you who read this post will notice I’ve changed the blog theme to something darker. I actually prefer websites with light text on dark backgrounds. White backgrounds are ok for a books, magazines, newspapers(obviously) and all other printed media but on a computer monitor, it gives me a headache. I feel a headache coming on right now just typing this in the wordpress admin section.
Oh, these are my new shoes. I’m really happy with them. Love the colours, the design, the comfort. That’s all I have to say about that.
Zhaki pointed me to a mrbrown’s blog where he had posted an article about bicycle commuting in Singapore. Pretty informative stuff. My own cycling journey is pretty short, like about 4km each direction and I do cycle in my work clothes (Jeans and Polo T-shirt). My polo t-shirt is the drytech one from Giordano too. I too have a shower before cycling to work and for the journey to school, I usually take it easy and don’t push too hard and arrive in school with a light sweat and I don’t end up stinking the rest of the day. The journey back though, I really pedal hard for the exercise and work up a huge sweat. Feels great.
I am still not confident enough to cycle on the roads. I usually stick to pavements but I always give pedestrians the right of way. I don’t have a bell to tell people to get out of my way. I usually get out of theirs and onto the grass and stuff.. I mean I have a mountain bike after all. Maybe later and with tips from mrbrown’s article, I might get back on the roads. We’ll see how it goes.
Okay… so continuing from my last post, now that I’ve got this job, I’ve finally got a bit of direction in my life.
When I quit my last job, I had plans to build up a demo/showreel of motion graphics and video editing work and get into the post-production industry. Well, that plan bombed badly due to me being a lazy bum. I was basically slacking off and procrastinating and living off of the kindness of my parents who gave me money to survive. I spent most of my time at home in front of my computer stoning and gaining weight as well. My wake up call came when I accompanied my sis to get her Permanent Resident Entry Permit renewed and she had to show like CPF statements and stuff as proof of employment for the past few years. You can see where this is going..
So since my skillset is kinda crappy when it comes to multimedia stuff (due to not practicing and being lazy in general), I decided to apply for jobs which involved my strongest talent – Computer Tech Support. I applied for lots of helpdesk positions but every single one of them required at least one year experience which made me wonder where they got all these one year experienced people from if these jobs don’t take inexperienced people.
So I applied to a lot of places. Mostly through JobCentral which in my opinion is the best online job site. I got an interview at Kelly Services which also refused to give me the helpdesk jobs and only offered some lousy customer service positions. I had an interview for a job doing tech support for schools in the west area. Went for the interview but both the interviewer and I agreed it was not a good idea since the job required me to travel all the way to the west side and work during school hours, like 7.30am.
But I thought that job was quite fitted to me, just the location was crappy. Then I kept applying for similar jobs and got a call from an agency called RMA Group. I applied for the job on a Tuesday I think. On that very night at about 8pm, someone from the agency called me up and asked if I could come down for an interview the next day, Wednesday. I went for the interview, and after a short quiz testing my computer knowledge, they said that I passed and explained the job in more detail which was basically the same as that previous interview I had for West schools but for the East instead and with better working hours like 8.30am-5.30pm.
They scheduled an interview with Hewlett Packard for Friday and when the day came, I practically pwned the interviewer with my 1337 skillz! Hehe.. well, the interviewer was quite pleased with my knowledge and told me ‘unofficially’ that I got the job and to just wait for a call from the HR dept. There were two different pay grades for the job as well. The call came just later that same Friday that I got the job officially and my pay grade was the higher one. So it all happened really quickly and efficiently.
So now that I got this job, I thought I’d go the networking route for my career and take the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification and go on from there and become a network engineer in the future. I plan to get the CCNA by the end of 2008 and hopefully get a networking job by May 2009, work two years and get the next level cert, the CCNP (Network Professional). I really need to fast-track my career since I’m getting older and the Cisco certs seem the way to go. A CCNP holder with just 2 years experience will earn an average of USD60k per annum and I’ll be happy with just 75% of that.
So there you have it, my current and future plans. Hope it all works out the way I want it to.
Since I don’t think anyone visits this blog anymore, I’ll just write for posterity.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted an entry here. I finally got a job and have been working for exactly two months now so far. The job title is Technology Assistant but what I really do is just first level tech support. I technically work for Hewlett Packard. MOE (the Ministry of Education that is) tenders out the service contract for their school IT infrastructure and support and HP is the service provider for all schools in the north, south and east zone. So I’m attached to a primary school currently.
It’s a pretty ok job. Working hours are 8.30am to 5.30pm. Five day work week. I can wear jeans, polo t-shirt and sneakers. School holidays are quiet without all the students around. The pay is average and some might say it’s low but it’s still higher than my previous job so I’m not complaining. Almost everything about this job is better than the last one. Fixed working hours, no overtime, five-day week, off-in-lieu if I have to work Saturdays or overtime, and the school I work at is very close to home.
Since I work so close to home, I’ve taken to cycling to and from work everyday if the weather permits. I planned a cycling route about 4km long so I’m cycling about 8km a day and working up quite a sweat. I’m definitely losing weight now and I’m enjoying cycling more and more. I bought a cheap S$95 mountain bike from the bike shop at EastPoint but recently, I’ve started to look at better quality and branded bikes. One of the teachers in the school is an avid cyclist and he’s got one of those bikes built with custom parts and all. He says it costs about S$3k.
The rest of the usdudes have also recently stated they want to buy bikes as well and maybe we can all go cycling together. So I got our resident usdudes bike expert Boes’ feedback and decided I’ll save up for a starter custom complete bike and this is what I’m probably gonna get: 2008 Cannondale F7 DISC with CO2 frame technology
Costs S$620 from a bike shop called L&T Cycles. The shop is in Tampines so it’s pretty close to home which is good so I can buy it and cycle back. I’ll probably save up and buy it after Ramadhan.
There’s more to say but I’ll leave that for another post, hopefully not in another six months’ time.
So on 14 November 2007 I managed to capture on video for the first time, Yusof walking for more than just a couple of steps. So he finally started walking at exactly 15 months old. I got a little excited to see him walk as well and became a little bit giddy which you can tell from my voice. Forgive me for that.
Ok, so i’ve finally updated the UsDudes site. Well, the presentation anyway. I’m not good enough to create my own theme/template so I’m just going to use the same one as this blog and change the colours. I should probably update all the tags as well to make the tag cloud look better. Well, that’s that for now.
So right now it’s time to create some original content. I don’t really have any ideas at the moment. Well, we had some ideas for big features involving a silly short film. Though what I really want is something we could do regularly, something easy to accomplish and put out every week. It’d be nice if we could brainstorm on something at the next Mak’s Place session without getting distracted and deviating. We’ve put money into hosting this site and we really should do more with it. I’m partly to blame too of course.
Ah well. I think I should probably start carrying a notebook around again to write stuff down. It really does help to be able to jot stuff down right away when you think of them. And I guess it’s a good practice too if I want to keep up the habit of writing.
Seeing as how Zhaki blogs about his niece every so often, I decided to do the same with my nephew. I wish I’d done this sooner coz it makes me look like a really bad uncle to wait 14months before I even mentioned him on the blog.
Yusof Azhar is his full name and he was born in the 14th of August 2006 which makes him a Leo, just like his grandma(my mum). So he’s just over fourteen months old now and he’s still not confident walking on his own. He always has to hold on to something but I think he’s gonna start walking on his own any day now. I’m praying hard for that.
He’s really really smart and beginning to understand things pretty quick. Hopefully he’ll start talking in no time and I can start capturing some ‘Kids Say the Darndest Things’ moments. ahaha. I could go on and on about him but I won’t for now. I think he deserves getting his own category on my blog though.
Oh, and Yusof can give high-fives too, I just forgot to get it on camera. =b
Zhaki wrote a post about the trouble with resumes and jobs. I can relate to it SO much. Especially after I quit my previous job and became freelance(read:unemployed).
So the title of this post refers to the question I get asked all the time by old friends and acquaintances. My answer to that is that I’m freelancing although in reality I don’t actually have any jobs/projects where I get paid. I tried once when Zhaki asked me to help create a website. That bombed and I feel kinda bad about it and Zhaki probably secretly hates me for it but I just couldn’t do it.
I have been procrastinating a lot too. For about a year now. But things are picking up in the sense that I’m getting kinda motivated to work on stuff. This blog for instance is the starting point. It’s been revitalized and I’m quite happy with how it’s turned out (although it wasn’t that difficult to do anyway). I think I’m just about done touching up this blog so I’m moving on to the UsDudes site. I’m trying to think of it like a job and dedicate 8 hours a day to revitalize it. A secret dream I have is that the website will start adding more new original content and appear on the Singapore blogging radar and take off slowly from there. Hopefully, our brand of humour will reach the masses and we can actually start making money off the site. One can dream, can’t they?
