I will think of a better name for this blog one of these days.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Guess what fat girl eating noodles?!?! Wo hen yo kong!

I'm not really sure why but for the past few years I've thought about running a marathon. I remember making a pact with my friend a year or two ago that we'd both do the NY Marathon that year. That if one of us didn't run we'd have to pay the other a certain amount of money $100 or something. . . i guess that was supposed to be the motivating factor. It's pretty obvious nothing happened of that. There was no monetary penalty if neither of us did it.

I've decided I'm gonna give it another go. I have no excuses this time. I live right next to a waterfront park that stretches for miles and miles in both directions. The weather this time of year is very good, especially at night and I'm in pretty good shape right now.

Actually, i think the real reason why I'm doing this is because of the annoying TV commercial for the marathon that's shown 100 times a day. You can see it here(might be useful if you understand Mandarin). I'm so easily influenced by TV ads. :( Guess what fat girl eating noodles?!?! Wo hen yo kong!

Some stats:
The distance for the marathon is 26 miles (42 kilometers).
The record is 2 hours 12 minutes , that's an average speed of 5 minute 5 sec. a mile. I can't even do that for one mile! :(
Last year supposedly 100,000 people participated in the Taipei Marathon making it the world's biggest marathon.

So far, yesterday I ran 8 miles (13 km). I have only 10 week before the marathon (Dec 17). I got a long way to go before I'm ready to run 26 miles. I'm not sure I have enough time, in a few weeks I'll have a better idea if this is even possible for me.

Monday, September 18, 2006

What's that smell?

Awhile ago I got my shoes completely soaked riding my scooter in a torrential downpour. Yeah, i know I'm a genius. It takes an long-ass time to for things to dry here. . . took like 5 days for my sneakers to air dry. No biggie since I'm a patient guy. I only started wearing them today. I really should've examined them before I did this.

The reason why? While in the middle of explaining to us the historical background of why noon is referred to as "zhong wu", the teacher stops and says "Does anyone smell something?" I think nothing of it, I honestly didn't smell anything. Then she briefly walks around the room and looks underneath the Korean girl's chair for some reason. Finding nothing, she continues her explanation of "zhong wu". Then she pauses again and asks us if we smell something a bit sour. . . no response from us. This part is kinda funny, she asks the two Korean students if they brought kimchee to class. We all laugh. . . stereotyping people is funny!

For some reason this is when I started to link previously soaked shoes with sour stink. I crossed my legs so my feet are as close as possible to my nose and . . .

DAMMIT, IT'S ME!

My feet stink. So embarrassing. :( The stupid part is that now I'm aware of this, i can't help but notice my feet getting sweatier. I never have a problem with this normally but now that I'm so concious of my stinky feet, it's somehow making my feet sweaty. Which makes me feel like the odor is getting stronger which makes my feet feel like it's getting even sweatier. I've become my own biosphere of stinkyness. Somehow I make it through the last hour of class and I'm first out the door. Not one of my best days. . . nope definitely not. :(

On side note: I got 100% on my last exam. EXCEPT I actually wrote my name wrong in chinese. The teacher announced that to the whole class while passing out the graded exams. Hahahahahaha funny. C'mon. . . i was in a hurry. I'm not that stupid. . . reallly!

Monday, September 11, 2006

i hate monday

I hate waking up on Mondays. No matter how many hours of sleep I get, I still have trouble getting out of bed and i feel like crap.

The only thing I'm kinda looking forward to is that I'm going to see a college friend I haven't seen since backstreet boys were popular. haha backstreet boys. Anyways, should be fun.

ain't no lie, baby bye bye bye!

Scooter story of the day:
Riding to school this morning was fun. It was still raining so the roads were a little slippery. A lady on a scooter decided to stop when the traffic light was still yellow. C'mon lady, you from america or something? Green means GO, Yellow means GO faster!, Red means Go if it just turned red, otherwise stop, watchout for cops, then go. It's not that difficult lady. Anyways, I was behind her so I had to brake a little harder than I wanted to. . . ended up locking up the rear brakes and briefly doing an impromptu rendition of Initial D on a scooter. Of course I acted all calm and everything like I did it on purpose.

Rain ruins my weekend

I miss having a car. It's been raining a lot for a few days here. Starting to get on my nerves . . . is there such thing as a "dry dance" I could do? Anyways, my main mode of transportation here is riding a scooter. If you look at the sketch I drew, you might think that your feet is relatively safe from the rain.


I wore sneakers. It was the wrong choice, even going barefoot would've been a better choice. I didn't account for cars + puddles = BIG SPLASH, it doesn't matter that my front of my legs were covered since the splashes came from the sides. As i was cursing at myself and thinking how much fun two hours of walking around going *squish* *squish* *squish* was going to be, I wondered to myself how the heck do other people keep their feet dry. Then I noticed everyone else riding their scooters wore sandals or flip flops. Oh. . . I felt a tiny bit stupid. When I finally reached my destination, soaking wet. I reach for my cell phone to find out where my friends are. . . phone not there. I forgot it at home. I feel extra stupid now. Too many possible locations, i'm not going to search every spot in this downpour and in soaking wet clothes. Game over. An excellent way of wasting 30 minutes and getting soaked for no reason.

While riding back I realized something interesting. At 50+ mph raindrops actually hurt a little. Not painful enough for me to slow down but painful enough to make me go "Hmm. . . i gonna post this on my blog".

Saturday, September 9, 2006

Holy crap! I started a blog.

I guess I'm a bit late to this bloggin' thing everyone's been doin'. Whatever, i'm slow. . . deal with it.

school just started.
I think I'm retarded.
They put me in the remedial class
cuz I farted. . .

Seriously though, I'm retarded and i'm in the remedial class. This will be my third attempt at learning Chinese. First time was when i was in elementary school (failed/dropped out), second time was during college (passed but i remember nothing). This time I'm serious! No joke. . . yesterday I studied so hard a pocket protector spontaneously popped out from the front of my shirt.

Highlight of my first week of class: The teacher asked everyone in the class (all 6 of us) to draw a cat. Then she asked "Shei de mao shi zhui hao kan de?" (Who's cat looks the best). Everyone pointed at mine. Even some random kid out in the hallway came in and pointed at mine. I thought to myself. . . all those games of cranium finally paid off! Here's my rendition of it done in MS Paint.


I thought the Japanese kid in my class would easily win this competition but surprisingly his drawing was. . . what's that word . . . oh yeah. GARBAGE. He ended up dropping out of the class a few days later. Hmmm. . . I wonder if this had anything to do with that. We may never know.

We may never know.

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