stop waiting, start doing
This is my latest creative work that I posted on Youtube and on ESLinsider. It’s about teaching in Korea. If you are a first timer then to teach in Korea you basically have 2 options for schools to teach in.
You either teach in a hagwon or in a public school. Hagwons are private institutes. There are quite a few horror stories online about teaching in hagwons.
Yet they are not all bad, but I decided to make my own horror story to help promote one of the latest ebooks that I wrote.
I think I might have a little bit of an idea of what being famous is like.
I remember reading once about a famous actor who punched some paparazzi in the face. I totally understand. I have felt like doing the same thing countless times.
It’s about them it’s not about you. They don’t care about you. You look cool to them and having your picture on their Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram feed is going to make them look cooler.
I remember looking out the window of the bus the other day in Chinatown and this guy had all these pictures of himself with famous people: Yao Ming, Jeremy Lin, and others outside of his shop.
But I think his shop had nothing to do with sports. I think it was maybe a book shop.
Want to know what it is like to be famous? Dress up, paint your face, be weird, do something totally different that is somewhat appealing to some people and then you’ll get a taste of what it is like.
You’ll get attention and it can feel nice, but it’s not really about you.
A few months ago I made a post about sugar, the ketogenic diet and time restricted feeding. And not so long ago I completed 2 months on the ketogenic diet.
That diet is a low carb and high fat diet. Some of the benefits are:
Read more about the benefits of keto.
It was hard to adapt to at first. It definitely took a good month until I felt normal. I remember feeling a bit weak and irritable.
Ketosis is a state where you burn fat mostly instead of sugar for energy. If you fast then this is what happens. The sugar runs out, but the fat is a more sustainable source of energy.
I don’t know if I noticed any changes really. It hasn’t been long. I might have lost a few pounds, but not much. Before I started it I think I ate relatively healthy but I did eat a fair amount of carbs like potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, brown rice, bagels and fruit.
As of recent I haven’t been following it so strictly as I have been eating some beans. They are a cheap form of protein, but they are high in carbs. To remain in a state of ketosis it is said that you should aim for eating less than 50 carbs a day.
A can of beans has close to that or more.
But aside from that and a few foods my parents sent on my birthday I still have been following the diet. In fact I found some new yummy foods to eat since then.
It’s funny after you stop eating sugar and fruit you start to taste the more subtle flavors that you didn’t before. Like I never thought coconut flakes were sweet, but they taste pretty sweet now.
Then I ate a cracker with wheat in it and it tasted pretty sweet.
I have eaten very little fruit, but was thinking that raw cabbage tastes kinda sweet the other day.
There’s sugar and carbs in a lot of food. Vegetables have them too.
I don’t really miss the carbs like rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc. I can live without those. There are other yummy foods out there. I’ll continue eating mostly keto foods, but I probably won’t follow it so strictly.
Looking at a computer or your phone will give you forward head tilt if you are not careful. Forward head tilt can be learned as well.
So I made this video by doing yoga to improve your posture.
I think it may also be created by your mindset. Stand tall and confident!
For the last year or so I have been fasting on Sundays. I’ll stop eating sometime between 8 and 10pm on Sat. and then I won’t eat anything till 7pm or so the next day.
But this time I decided I would go a little longer. It wasn’t planned out, but I just thought it would be good. There was no jiujitsu this week so… good timing.
The first day is not that hard. Yes you still think about food, but you just drink water when you are hungry.
I found that it’s good to get work done. You have more time if you don’t eat.
I slept pretty good the first night.
By the second day night I was pretty consumed with thoughts of food. My energy was low and not so focused. Meditation is good when you are fasting I probably should have done that even more instead of trying to work on my website.
I remember lying in bed thinking about food. I did go 3 days (81 hours) once without food. This time seemed harder. Fasting is difficult.
Changes your digestion going off and coming back on. Fasting is difficult, but good.
I am going without dairy for 2 weeks too. Just to see if I notice any differences. Been doing the ketogenic diet and I will report on that soon enough.
I recently made a video called What’s your kung fu? I did a lot of editing in that video of little bits like ummm, ahhh or ughhh.
I edited it because it seemed to drag on and ughhh like slow it down. After I decided I would try to make something with it. So I did.
Voila!
I added a few more bits like a dragon fly from Shanghai and some rock jumping in New Hampshire.
So I tried to make a piece of art from my own junk. It was kinda interesting and fun. I think I like it too.
I have been making some changes to my diet. Experimenting with a few things that I have learned.
One thing led to another. I saw the first video below about sugar that was interesting. My teeth had been hurting so I decided to reduce my consumption of fruit including dry fruit which is loaded with sugar.
Sugar
It seems like pretty much everything breaks down into sugar. Well not everything, but potatoes, bread, rice, grains, pasta, fruit, etc.
So what’s the difference between eating brown rice and straight sugar? Is it just the vitamins?
Time restricted feeding
Then I saw another cool video about time restricted feeding. Sounded kinda similar to the fasting I was doing for the last year or so on Sundays.
Well actually sounded more like the first fasting I tried the Warrior Diet (eating 4 hours a day).
Some of the benefits of that which appealed to me were a leaner body: less fat and more muscle. Apparently some studies of mice showed that just restricting their diet to eating in a window between 8-12 hours made them less fat even if they ate crappy food.
More interesting it also made them more muscular. So I have been mostly keeping my feeding within 10 hours and still fasting for 21-24 hours on Sundays.
I used to eat all the time. From when I woke up to until I went to bed.
Apparently eating many meals over a long period of the day isn’t as healthy.
She also made some interesting comments about sulphuraphane and the benefits of eating cruciferous vegetables.
Ketogenic diet
The first video with Gary Taubes mentioned this. I got curious and looked it up and then it showed up again. First with this video.
I guess your body can burn fat instead of sugar and carbs. There are a lot of benefits I guess to this diet. Lower inflammation, less fat, etc. It’s supposed to be good for fighting cancer as cancer cells can’t feed on fat or something like that.
Basically it’s a high fat diet, some protein and few carbohydrates – no pasta, no potatoes, mostly no fruit, etc.
I have been experimenting with this a bit. I haven’t been real strict yet, it’s been a little tough. I was gradually reducing carbs like potatoes, brown rice and sweet potatoes to none.
I guess it can take 6-8 weeks. It’s different for everyone. We’ll see. And I’ll post a future update.
I have been meaning to do this for a long time. I find pictures sometimes around the web that people have taken of me street performing and I thought it might be cool to put them up.
For the last 3 years I have been painting my face blue (or occasionally white), dressing up and going out into the streets performing and trying to make some money. I have been doing a bit of beatboxing, miming, and storytelling.
This was a recent interesting pic that was taken by Trevor Ryan in Chinatown. Those were actually people walking by, but it sort of looks like some paranormal activity or something.
It looks like I was trying to scare someone here. That’s pretty fun. I have seen some pretty fun things. Laughter is good.
I think most figure you are real, but sometimes you can catch someone off guard.
There’s a fair amount of picture taking going on. Which I don’t mind if people ask and if they tip something. Otherwise I don’t really like pictures.
That’s just me and although I may look kinda cool, but it’s just like normal for me. If you had people pointing cameras at you wouldn’t you get tired of it?
Maybe not. People are different. I am an introvert for the most part and can live without them.
Can’t imagine what it’s like being a celebrity.
I am not surprised some of these celebrities flip out and punch people in the face for it. Always ask.
Here I am telling a story that I made up. It’s about “my boat trip” to Taiwan and an encounter with a pirate I had.
This one is old school. It’s probably close to 3 years old. Those hats are cool. They’re great for keeping the sun and rain out. Guess that’s why many farmers use them in Asia.
Doing some beatboxing.
This is a close-up thumbnail from a video I made called a day in the life of a street performer.
See my more recent costume.
When I lived in Tainan, Taiwan I took some kung fu classes. Downstairs was a guy who owned a t-shirt shop. He said his kung fu was making t-shirts.
That’s actually the real meaning of the word. Kung fu can be pretty much anything. It can be skill like a martial art, making t-shirts, coding, writing, teaching, playing golf, etc.
I find myself sometimes in awkward positions reaching for something sometimes and then ask myself, “how’s my kung fu?” or just notice that my kung fu is bad.
What’s my kung fu?
Nowadays it’s jiu-jitsu, art (scratching records, beatboxing, performing, etc.), yoga, meditation and ESLinsider.
What’s your kung fu?
3 years ago when I started jiu-jitsu I realized I couldn’t kneel without pain. I didn’t know what happened as I used to be able to kneel. But my left knee cap would catch and I couldn’t sit back on my heels.
In fact I used to do it when I did yoga. In yoga there’s a position called child’s pose that is similar. However, somewhere along the way I stopped doing that and lost that mobility in my knee.
I was kind of obsessed with kneeling though as everyone did it in jiu-jitsu, but I couldn’t do it without pain. Then I remember seeing some squatty potty videos and others about deep squats.
It also seemed like the natural thing to do. But that had become a little painful to do, but I decided that I was going to push through the pain a bit and deep squat more often.
FYI, I pretty much never sit on public toilets
Probably TMI, but…
I share bathrooms with many other people here where I live. So since I do I never sat on these toilets or touched them, but decided to go back to standing on them. For a long while I had been hovering.
I also started doing deep squats just here and there and gradually I found myself able to kneel in judo and jiu-jitsu.
My advice…
Do deep squats for your knees. It may hurt a bit, but if you do it consistently I think your mobility will improve.
I think it’s also good for your hips and low back.
Previously a doctors told me that it puts a lot of pressure on the knee. Like 50X or something. He sort of suggested that it wasn’t good, but now I can see how it benefited me.
And you can also sit on your knees on a yoga mat, rug or carpet. Bit by bit for a little longer each time. With time you mobility will likely improve.
This can hurt in the beginning, but if you consistently practice bit by bit I think it will improve.
And as the saying goes…
If you don’t use it you lose it.
I had done a bunch of rehab exercises which didn’t seem to do much or improve the mobility. Deep squats improved it though.