serialdeviant.org(y)

Sigh. I’ll be back soon.

My morning at the gym was bad today. I was late because I’d called my sister with SkypeOut (to try and use my credit before SkypeOut is blocked in Xiamen, destroying market order my arse).

So here’s a tangent. If they block me from using SkypeOut in Xiamen, the time limit on my credit will expire, and I will have wasted Euros for a service I cannot use, because the monopolistic incumbent cannot handle any hint of competition. Useless bastards.

After all my gabbing with my sister, I got to the gym and found myself feeling a little thirsty. So what do I do? I down half a cup of water.

BIG MISTAKE should have scrolled across the projector screen in the treadmill room at that point.

I got a stitch. I am a complete wimp when it comes to stitches; they are worse than a sprained ankle, because they hurt like fuck but technically do not affect how my feet and legs move. When I was in school, my athletics coach advised sucking your gut in when you got a stitch while running. I’ve been trying that trick for years. What she didn’t say was that after you think it’s gone away and you relax, its wee brother (or sister, it’s hard to tell) comes by to exact revenge because you killed their hero.

Try to explain to your guilty conscience that exercise-related transient abdominal pain has caused you to dramatically decrease your speed on the treadmill. I was wracked, wracked, I tell you. Or it could just be the stitch that was wracking, I’m not sure.

On top of having to watch myself very carefully to make sure I don’t fall off the bloody treadmill by having my ankle or knee collapse (and this could definitely happen), I now have to attempt to focus on my breathing to become a ‘left footed exhaler’ and figure out how to breathe with my diaphragm as naturally as possible (I can do it with some concentration, two years in the school choir have finally come to some use).

I’m not the most coordinated person on the planet, so this should be fun. For the studio audience. Goddamn, they won’t even need a laugh track.

Fine words: “If elected officials hear enough insistent yet polite voices tell them that they expect an independent Katrina investigation, that the votes these insistent yet polite voices hold will depend on whether or not there is an independent Katrina investigation, then there will be an independent Katrina investigation.” — Marn’s Big Adventure

• had dinner at Tutto Bene with Gary and Georgie
• had a few drinks at The Londoner
• had a final drink at Glass House
• did nothing all day
• had dinner at a Korean restaurant we’d never tried before
• had a hot chocolate at Javaromas (and started reading Snow Falling on Cedars)
• watched The Blues Brothers on DVD
• lazed around all morning
• went for a walk around the back streets of Xiamen
• went over to Gary and Georgie’s for dinner (Neil fixed the barbecue on which our dinner was prepared)

Via Bleepblog, an iPod (nano) I can finally say I like; still, I’m not convinced I should abandon my preference for cheap, no-name MP3 players that I don’t mind sweating all over for an expensive Apple product I will be too afraid to carry around in case I scratch it. 4 gigabytes of memory, on the other hand, is helping to tip the scale in Apple’s favour. But… nah, still not totally lusting after it.

Just because I haven’t mentioned going to the gym in a few days doesn’t mean I’m not going. I’ve even managed to nag Neil into getting out on his bike and doing his mad crazy dash to the exhibition centre and back while I’m puffing away on the treadmill — and he goes, because he said I’d kill him if I get home from the gym and found him sitting around, still in his boxer shorts.

He’d be right. Nothing like a little intimidation for motivation to exercise, eh.

I have a completely unscientific, unendorsed running plan that exists purely in my head. No tables, no boxes to check, no schedule. It’s more than the Couch-to-5k (I’m already doing more than five kilometres), and definitely less than anything military, and I’m no longer thinking of going for a marathon (not right now, anyway).

Here’s what I do:

1. I set myself a time limit on the treadmill.
2. I start with a brisk walk, then take it to a slow jog.
3. I speed up to a fast jog for X minutes.
4. I slow down to a slow jog for five minutes.
5. I finish with a walk.

My goal is to get my speed up over the time limit, increasing my ‘fast jog’ time till it tops 30 minutes. Once I get that done, I increase my ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ jog speeds. Once I reckon I’m going as fast as I want to go (I haven’t worked that part of the goal out yet, and I’m not sure what’s practical), I will start upping the time limit in small increments. It seems logical to me, and I’m not pushing myself too much because injuries and me seem to coincide far too often.

Since I’m no sports doctor (or any sort of physician), I have no idea if what I’m doing is healthy or safe. But I am taking care to make sure it’s gradual, and I warm up and cool down (the bike ride to and from the gym is great for that), so I can’t be doing too badly.

(Basically, I don’t think I need to go as fast as Ben or Bertrand, and definitely not Angela, but I don’t want to feel like such a snail if and when I go out running with them again. It’s so bloody embarrassing to get beaten soundly by smokers.)

My aunt likes to send forwarded e-mails, usually inspiring religious messages about friendship and God and stuff like that. This joke, while mentioning God and Jesus and Satan, is not religious and is pretty funny.

Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who was better on the computer. They had been going at it for days, and frankly God was tired of hearing all the bickering. Finally fed up,God said,”THAT’S IT! I have had enough. I am going to give you a test that will run for two hours, and from the results, I will judge who does the better job.”

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away. They moused. They faxed. They e-mailed. They e-mailed with attachments. They downloaded. They did spreadsheets. They wrote reports. They created labels and cards. They created charts and graphs. They did some genealogy reports. They did every job known to man. Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster than hell. Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power went off. Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld.

Jesus just sighed.

Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted their computers. Satan started searching frantically, screaming: “It’s gone! It’s all GONE!! I lost everything when the power went out!”

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work. Satan observed this and became irate. “Wait!” he screamed.

“That’s not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his work and I don’t have any?”

God just shrugged and said, “JESUS SAVES … “

Boom tish. Thank you, thank you, I’m here all the time.

Most tormented Princess No-One-Wants-To-Leia,

I’m so sorry that you have been afflicted so. It’s Neil’s fault, he suggested a doll with your name would be just the ticket to continue my collection of unauthorised hand made Star Wars sock doll collection.

Please, hear me out.

(Read more.)

Check out this auction Flickr group that is selling photographic prints; proceeds go to the Red Cross for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

• had dinner at Little Chilli
• had a few Bloody Marys at The House (Bloody Marys are my new drink)
• had a few more drinks at The Londoner (and some barbecue)
• boogied a little at Park Latin
• slept all day
• had Xinjiang food for dinner (mmm, garlic)
• watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Johnny Depp is a genius)
• watched Stealth (I have a sneaking suspicion it’s a satire — I really, really hope so)
• had an early dinner at Tutto Bene
• watched Danny the Dog (the one time Jet Li’s haltering English helps, but why does someone raised by Cockney gangsters in Glasgow have a Chinese accent?)

Late to the party (again), and I really cannot understand what it is about the people who get their knickers in a twist about having their posts linked to on Tomorrow. I won’t re-hash the arguments that if you put in on a public website it’s free for the linking, but the editors at Tomorrow ought to ask for permission before linking, etc.

Aside from pointing out how fucking retarded the Web would be if we actually had to ask for permission for every single hyperlink we made (and many companies attempted this in the early days, as I recall, I think some still do), maybe Singaporeans need to be reminded that the Internet is a free-for-all. Some sites, according to national laws, may be illegal, and I’d agree with those laws, but you can put anything you like up on the Internet as long as there is someone willing to host it. And whether you like it or not, if you post something on a publicly-accessible website, someone you may not want to link to you links to you.

That’s just tough shit. It may suck, but life can really, really suck. What are you going to do about it?

If you want to write something down that is intensely personal, use a pen and paper, for God’s sake. I do that. No one said you had to publish it on the Internet; follow the rule I have since I uploaded my first website in 1996:

Don’t publish anything on the Internet you wouldn’t say in public.

I don’t know what the other ambassadors are saying about the statement, but I definitely didn’t know that the UN’s full name was the United Nations Should Do Whatever The United States of America Wants Otherwise It Is Shite.

Episode 4

… and it’s not necessarily a good thing!

(I don’t really wear a sweat band, so that’s not it.)

(I don’t worship Richard Simmons either.)

Cutest. Penguins. Ever. I looooove penguins, they are fat and waddly and these fellas have no feet.