Pain.

I have a high tolerance of physical pain. After a good workout, or the first after a hiatus, the muscle soreness is not only tolerable, but welcomed. In jointlocks, it takes much more effort to make me tap out, once to the point where I probably injured my elbow from stubbornness. But there's one type of pain that takes me straight to my limit: gas pains.

I had a grueling experience just yesterday where I had a near mental shutdown from an excruciating torment deep behind my solarplexes. It completely stopped me from being able to do any work. During this kind of knee-weakening, back-arching pain, any burp, any flatulance means instant relief. The bigger the better, the more the merrier. There is no time when you find more pleasure in your bodily functions than when taken by gas pains. But the relief is always temporary, and gas pains often last a couple days. Fortunately, in these cases, I can find asylum in OTC drugs like Gascon and Gas-X.

Too busy at work to blog these days.
Work's been crazy, and then I've been playing more sports lately too.
So bare with me and I'll get something up soon.

Tell me about your day...

Every freakin' thing.

In my last post, I mentioned that I took that link off the Freakonomics blog. For the few who of your who might have made a home under a rock, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is a best selling book written by economist Steven D. Levitt and author Stephen J. Dubner that I had the pleasure of reading last month. Freakonomics is a great little read that has no "main" focus, but speaks of a plethora of different topics, tying them all in from a economists perspective. Given that it's a best seller, there are reviews on the book all over the place - making little sense for me to write another one here.

From before reading the book until now, I've started doing some more regular reading of these authors' writing. Take a look at these places:
The Freakonomics Official Website
The Freakonomics New York Times Magazine Articles
The Freakonomics Authors' Blog
Steven D. Levitt's University of Chicago Website
Stephen J. Dubner's Official Website

I took this off the freakonomics blog...
Here's a neat website by Canadian Michelle Walters, FlapArt, from which you can buy fake book covers that will catch the eyes of people on buses, skytrains, and passerbys. A little pricy for what they are, but funny stuff.

Sunday afternoon, AC and I went to see Notre Dame de Paris at the new Taipei Arena. Months earlier, around the time I bought the tickets, I also went out to buy the DVD which seemed like a small price to pay compared to the tickets, and a necessity to best understand the story and lyrics in this French musical. [The musical also probably stays truer to the original Victor Hugo novel, and further from the world of Disney where all the bad guys die and the good guys live happily ever after.] Of course, the real thing was much better than the DVD, and we had a great time - especially since we knew the music. Familiarity with the songs gave me the freedom to paid less attention to the singers and words, and focus more on the performance on stage (the dancing, the visuals). At times, I found that if the audio engineer would turn down the volume a little bit, it would have been just right. When the performers belted out showing their impressive vocals, the amplifiers took it to the next level to give you an earache. I also did notice that there were a few minor changes to lyrics and who-sang-what between the show and the DVD, which was made 6 - 7 years ago. I'm sure they were improvements, although I wasn't paying that much attention.

On a radio interview a few days earlier, Matt Laurent (who places Quasimodo) said that the audience in Asia is generally more enthusiastic about musicals than other places in the world. I don't think so. After each number, they seemed to politely clap. It wasn't until after the finale that there were hollers and loud applauds. Whereas, when I saw The Lion King in London, each song was met with a huge applaud. Taiwanese people also need to learn to arrive to a venue on time. But that's perhaps a cultural thing.

All in all, a great show and enjoyable afternoon.

Smell that? Is that you?

Perhaps a question best answered by your significant other: do you smell? Each of us has a natural fragrance: a function of what we eat, our metabolism, the skin lotions/perfumes/colognes we use, where we spend most of your time, and yeah, probably sweat.

Some people say babies' heads smell like freshly baked bread, which makes your head smell like... sourdough? But baby smells are more like new car smells, sprayed on at the manufacturing plant. In the baby's case, it's really the smell of a womb. Just takes a few months to get rid of the bouquet.

Anyway, ask your husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/etc what you smell like, and report back here. It's okay to sign off anonymously, or maybe leave some initials so I can know who I'm snickering about.

Why do we need to "grow up"?

How much does one person's personality and attitude need to change as they grow older? I feel like most people around me haven't really grown up. We're mid-to-late 20s, even early 30s, and we're all just as giddy and immature as when we were young and stupid. It's fine by me. Growing old doesn't mean acting old.

Being young at heart has nothing to do with being responsible. We all "grow" as we do more in life, and having kids will probably make one think that s/he needs to "act mature". Maturity is subjective, and really doesn't need to be applied in certain aspects of life. Do maturity and responsibility go hand-in-hand? I'm not so sure. I know someone running a multi-million dollar company who still acts pretty immature at times. Trying to be mature all the time is not only draining, but it's boring. I'd advise against it.

Just rambling...

Public Service Announcement:

Get it right.

"DefinItely", not "DefinAtely"
"SepArate", not "SepErate"

I went on a company trip with A to Taichung County. In the morning, we started with potting plants at a private lot where we could cut segments of all sorts of plants and put them into little pots of soil and sand, which we take home to grow in larger plants. I had 2 small pots of: a plant that smells like chocolate, a plant that tastes sweet when you chew the leaves, rosemary, a plant whose flowers blossom 4 seasons of the year, and maybe one other. Of course, none of the English names of these plants are known to me, but it doesn't quite matter. Then we did some pottery acrossed the road at a place owned by the same people. I made a plate, because... I need a plate. We had lunch on "Mushroom Road", which was a lunch with different dishes of mushrooms. Besides being tasty, it felt healthy to replace meat with mushrooms.

Our afternoon stop was at a new tourist spot (name not remembered) on which there lies a European-styled castle (which country, no one explained to me). A significant amount of landscaping contributed to the beauty of the land. 800,000,000nt ($30M cad) was spent on its construction, and it's not quite done yet. It's a nice place to stroll with family or significant other, and probably a good place to sit down and eat if your budget is looser.

So, that was the company trip. I was up early (6:30am) after a long week of work, so I was tired most of the day, sleeping on the bus for as much as I could. And to end my weekend, I'll be attending a highschool friend's wedding reception in Taipei on Sunday.

(I just freaked myself out slightly while writing this blog. In the darkness, I was typing with the laptop on my lab, and then I looked up and saw my illuminated face floating in the mirror. It was quite a sight.)

Does death scare you? I mean, your death.

Let's narrow it down slightly -- natural death. I'm actually less afraid of getting killed than dying of old age.

When I was a toddler, I would often stay awake thinking about dying when I was old. The fear would sometimes send me running to my parents' room crying. And once in a long while, I still get those thoughts today, though I'm comforted by the fact that I know it'll be at least 40 years before that should happen.

The reasoning behind fearing this kind of death is because it's a certainty; and as you grow older, the certainty becomes closer and closer. When I'm 80 years old, I know that it will be only a matter of years (whether 1 or 20) before I go. So, what happens after that? I'm not religious, so I'm not expecting my 'soul' to go to Heaven/Hell or through a rebirth. As far as I'm concerned, it ends right there.

Maybe older people are more at peace with dying. They've lived longer, seen more, experienced more, maybe raised children and grandchildren. They're ready to go. And perhaps when I get older, I'll have the same satisfaction with my life and be ready and willing.

What are your thoughts on death?

(Hopefully this blog doesn't scare you... really, it's a natural process and there's nothing to be afraid of.)