The Journey Within

I was doing so well… 27 days straight with no break in training (see my goal for 2009). And then, I stopped for 1 day – the day I had my wisdom tooth extracted. I thought I could do it, and then the wound opened up… To spare you the gory details, I decided not to risk it. So here I go again, starting the streak from zero…

Streak: 1 day, Failure rate: 18.8%

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I asked my teacher if I should follow how I feel when doing Tai Chi, or try to correct each movement by the small adjustments. He said I should do both.

Now, I’ve been trying to do the small adjustments, and it came down to me feeling robotic, i.e. it became a precision game, see how good can I change myself to suit the rules. It’s not enjoyable, and I don’t feel like I’m learning, just getting better at copying.

I’m always on a look out for elegant solutions – the one answer that’ll solve a few problems at the same time, which is why I’m focusing now on feeling, because only through that that I believe the minor adjustments should come. Unfortunately, sometimes the feeling will not come unless the minor adjustments were made first. Sounds like a chicken and egg problem.

So I guess my teacher is right, you’ll just have to do both.

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After setting my one goal for 2009, I assumed nothing else can go wrong with just the one goal, until I missed the goal on the first day of 2009! Which is something I would like to write about – the seduction of distractions. Let me take your through these seductresses one by one.

1. The bed

The number one of all seductresses. How many times have I found out that putting out the alarm is preferable to getting out of bed. The invisible arms of the bed are always ready to pull you in. It’s warm and cuddly, and peeling myself away from these arms doesn’t seem to be an option…

2. Food

When hunger strikes, food trumps exercise. If I wake up in the morning feeling hungry, I might grab a bite first and then another, and then another… If I come home from work, and feeling frustrated and tired, dinner always sounds better than exercise. There’s always tomorrow…

3 other “important” things (OTMs)

Now, OTMs are a different breed altogether. They first appear not to be there, but then they call you out almost in a whisper. They seem to work in unison, like having a collective consciousness (read Borg for Trekkies out there). Once you give in to one, others will follow. Like putting on the kettle, rearranging the desk, looking for that pen, reading the latest news, emailing a friend about a party in 2 weeks’ time, check if another friend has replied your invitation…

Conclusion?

There is none. As Oscar Wilde put it, I can resist anything but temptations. But I found a way round it. Hope the tips in there will keep me distracted.

Streak: 24 days, Failure rate: 18.6%

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It’s rare that a very good martial arts movie with a strong story comes along. Rarer still that the martial arts are really good to watch! They don’t make films like these anymore, until Ip Man.

This is a portrayal of a true martial artist who learnt the art of Wing Chun. It shows the light and dark side of a period where I can only imagine what it’s like. It’s set in a place where the streets are filled with martial art schools, which makes it a very competitive place for learning martial arts. It also shows the hardships during the Japanese occupation, and how, through kung fu, the spirits of people are lifted to new highs. Do watch it.

p/s: It’s pronounced Yip (as in yippee) Mun (as in Bun), and not eye-pee man…

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Just to highlight a point in my previous post about how little words we use, I’ve analysed that same post and according to UsingEnglish.com, the following are the statistics:

Word count is 388.
Number of unique words used is 176.
Number of words in the dictionary, say a conservative 100,000
% of unique words used is 0.176%
Top 10 most used words: the, to, this, of, and, i, a, is, art, techniques

I’ve used less than 1% of the total words in the English language to write that article. Cool huh?

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Hua (化) is an important word. It’s usually translated as “yield”, as in “I yield to your force” which usually means “I give in to your force”.

I find that even “giving in” is inadequate. You have to really let go.

When I started thinking about trying to hua, it’s actually counter productive to actually doing it. Even the mind has to yield first before the body does so. Thinking about doing it makes it worst. I suppose Nike has always got it right. You have to Just Do It.

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Ever since I started the 20 minutes routine (see my 2009 new year resolution), most days consist of only doing the stipulated 20 minutes. It seems I have created an artificial ceiling on my training time. However, I have to keep reminding myself that this ceiling is only temporary, and it’s meant to be a floor so that I will always train beyond 20 minutes. If I can keep up a 20 minutes routine everyday, it’ll be quite an achievement for me on its own.

As of 31 January 2009

Streak: 12 days. Failure rate: 25.8%

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I’ve put off blogging about iPhone because I want to really try it out first to see if it really meets my expectations. As expected, it sucks as an organiser, but do well combining both a phone and my iPod. I know this even before I got the iPhone, but end up succumbing to temptation…

The weirdest thing I have to get use to about iphone is the typing. I type on a virtual screen, which only appears if I need to type something. The “official rules” recommend typing with a single finger first, then proceed to 2 thumbs typing. I started straightaway with the 2 thumbs. Initially typing very slowly because of all the errors. But once I can live with the typing errors, the correction engine actually works very well. I end up just typing what I think i’m typing, and the correct words will most likely come out of the wash. It’s ok for most of the things I type. If it’s unique words like names of people or places, the correction engine won’t do that well.

The default applications (apps) that comes with every iPhone do not actually do well. It looks pretty, but not too much functions. I guess I am comparing with Palm. For example, the default apps do not include a ToDo list. So i had to search for one I can use easily (read Paying for software for more details).

Also, birthdays, anniversaries, etc do not show up in the default calendar, which is a bit annoying. I downloaded an app called “Upcoming” to show this list. The default calendar cannot include the Lunar Calendar as well, so I had to include another app that does this. And there’s no “year view” in the default calendar, which again I downloaded another app for this. Happy that all these apps are free (for now).

All these iPhone apps can get a bit unwieldy after a while, and there’s no obvious way to organise these apps (unlike the simple categories which you can use on Palm). Even for a simple calendar, I need 3 other apps to support the one app on Palm, which will increase the number of Apps required on iPhone. The hacked iPhone seems to be more user friendly than the default one. I might consider hacking it one day.

Of course, the things that people normally gripe about (cannot copy and paste, cannot forward SMS) did not bother me too much, as these are hardly used anyway. I use the iPod function more now as i carry my phone with me all the time. I just need to remember to carry my earphones.

In summary? A quick typer, with nice phone and ipod combination. Better default apps on Palm although the growing third party softwares should be a good sign. You just need to keep looking.

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