this is what i want

this is what i want. i want all the punks to take to the streets playing their guitars. this is what i want. black kids and white kids sharing all the songs that their grandmamas taught ‘em. and we’ll play ‘em on our horns, we’ll bang ‘em on our drums, we’ll play ‘em on our guitars. singing songs that our mothers sang to us when we were young. songs that we may remember reading. songs we heard a stranger sing or humming on the streets. songs we made up yesterday on the porch in the rain on our guitars. and we’ll never sing a song we heard on your radio, or a song someone else was paid to write or sing. and we’ll never sing of sex the fakest kind of love. those songs will not be played on our guitars. – this bike is a pipe bomb

Shaolin Workout Update

My last post was about how I started doing the Shaolin Workout from the book. And I’ve been doing it since and I feel great. I haven’t made it all the way to the end yet because there have been a some days where I didn’t move to the next step I just reviewed what I already learned. Anyways, I can already feel my flexibility getting better. I can touch the ground with my fingertips while my feet are not bent and I can hold it for a couple of seconds. I wasn’t able to really do that before. Also, I’ve been doing punches while in MaBu (Horse stance) and can feel my legs getting stronger. This is fun!

Shaolin Workout

I was at Half Priced books one day and I came across this neat book called Shaolin Workout
I had it for a couple of weeks just sitting there then I decided to start doing the workout. First off all, the Sifu has a really interesting background, of which you can read a little about on his Wikipedia page.

Anyways, the workout is really neat. It’s divided into four sessions, each session being a week long. Each day you learn a new lesson. You learn six each week, and the seventh day is used for review. From these you build. So for the first day you do the day one lesson, then the second day you do the day one lesson then learn the day two lesson. The third day you do day one and two, then learn day three. You continue this until you learn them all and can be able to do them all in the correct order.

It’s really neat. I’m learning stretches, breathing exercises, postures. I’ll be learning some basic kicks and punches too. I want to do this because I’m really a hypocrite because I don’t work out much and I’d love to gain flexibility and eventually get back into martial arts again. It’s pretty cool, check it out!

learning slowly!

So I’m starting to learn Mandarin characters now. I know the numbers from 1-10, and I know a couple of others. Not a lot I know, but it’s a process and there are a LOT to learn. So far it’s easy but I’m sure once I get a lot more down I will be confusing them all over the place.

I’ve been learning with my one book The First 100 Characters. I love it. They give you the character, the number of strokes, what it means, some phrases/words that contain it, it’s traditional form (if applicable) then they give you the correct stroke order and the entire rest of the page is where you just continuously copy it down like 50 times so you ingrain it into your memory. I also bought two sets of flashcards. One just has the character on one side and the Pinyin transliteration and English translation on the other. The other set is by the same company that makes that book and it has the character on one side and bunch of info on the other like stroke order, word meaning, transliteration, words/phrases that use it…etc. Rather than make cards I decided to buy them to save time.

I’m having so much fun with this. I love learning characters, it makes me feel accomplished and they look cool and are fun to draw. I’m taking it slow at the moment. The one book I own says the average rate of character learning is about 30 a week. I’m obviously not up to that point yet but in time maybe!

I also started drawing some on MS Paint and will be posting them in a Facebook photo album. Check it out!

再见 zàijiàn! (Goodbye)

You have diabetusssss

I was posting on Veggie Boards and there is a topic about Type II diabetes. Someone mentioned the American Diabetic Associations website for help with meal planning. I browsed the website BRIEFLY and noticed a couple of things that I thought was NOT good information. Let me start!

1. They mention sugar alcohols and then in parenthesis they call them artificial sweeteners. This is really stupid because they are not artificial. Xylitol for example, is produced in very small amounts by your body. It’s also found in many fruits and is most commercially obtained from birch bark. Erythryitol is found in some fruits and in fermented foods. Sorbitol is also found in some fruits. Maltitol is the only one that is really artificial but even then it’s made from non-artificial ingredients (maltose and starch in corn).

2. They have a superfoods page, awesome! Yet they list low fat dairy and yogurt as superfoods even though there has been studies that suggest a link between dairy products and diabetes. There have also been studies that suggest a benefit from dairy with diabetes. Even so, the website fails to mention the negative effects of dairy such as it’s contribution to mucus forming, it’s actual calcium depletion role, and the fact that animal protein is inferior to plant protein.

3. There is a section on the site that says limit your consumption of solid oils like coconut oil because these oils are high in calories and saturated fats. The later is true however saturated fats don’t increase heart disease risk and the ones in coconut oil are short chain unlike the long chain found in animal products. Plus, coconut oil is really beneficial for diabetics.

4. They mention to drink water (which is good) or sugar free diet drinks (which is bad) instead of sugary drinks like soda (also bad). Diet drinks often contain artificial sweeteners which can have negative effects on people. Aspartame, Splenda, Acesulfame-K…etc are not desirable ingredients we want to be ingesting. Sugar alcohols on the other hand (which are completely sugar free as well although not completely calorie free) have many health benefits and are natural. Stevia can be used as well.

4. The website fails to mention doctors and nutritionists who are actually REVERSING Type II (and in some cases Type I) diabetes. The entire thing is about controlling your diabetes, not curing it. Everyone keeps saying they want a cure for diabetes but there are already doctors and nutritionists out there who are reversing this horrible problem.

Dr. Gabriel Cousins is one amazing guy who has a retreat in Patagonia Arizona. He has a documentary out called Raw For 30 Days in which 6 diabetics (some Type I) went there and went raw for 30 days. One dropped out of the program but the other 5 stayed. After only 4 days (4 DAYS) all were off insulin and some of these people have been diabetic for 10+ years. Amazing stuff. Has a book out on the subject as well. Check out his book There is a Cure for Diabetes

Dr. Neal Barnard is another amazing guy. He’s from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. He also has a book out.

If you have diabetes, check out those two doctors and their books. I wish you all the best of luck.

school, here I come!

I’m excited! I got accepted to Northern Illinois University. So I’ll be studying Anthropology with a minor in Chinese studies. I can’t wait actually. I really want to start officially learning Mandarin with a teacher.

On that note, today I picked up two great books to help with learning Chinese characters. I’m too lazy to find them online and link you to them, but one of them is called The First 100 Chinese Characters and it goes through 100 characters, tells you the correct strokes and how to write them, then gives you the entire page to copy them down a couple of times for repetition. The second book is really cool I forgot the name exactly but it’s something like Learning Chinese Characters and they give you the characters, they sometimes give you pictures for the characters for example the character for the word tent actually looks kind of like a tent so they have a picture of a guy sleeping in a tent and the draw the character over the shape of the tent. They also tell you the compound characters that make up the character and then they give you a little story with those compound characters to help you memorize. And, they also give you the correct way to right the characters. Pretty cool!

I can’t wait to start learning more Chinese…I love it! According to my book The Chinese Language: Its History and Current Usage the average rate of learning characters is about 30 a week. And it will take about 2,400 characters to learn to understand 99% of modern Chinese. On top of that, it will take about 3 years before I can expect to being to read newspapers. Fun stuff!!!

Take care everyone!

Chinese Students high scores come at high cost

Chinese Students High Scores Come at a High Price

You know me and how much I hate schooling and standardized tests in particular. Childhood is a time for doing lots of fun things, not spending it all studying to make sure you get into the university. The Chinese educational system needs a makeover (ours as well).

They need more independence, more capabilities to speak their minds. In China, the teacher is looked upon as being right and if it is consider bad to question them in really any way. However, the opposite is in America where we can question are teachers and give our own opinions on if we think they are wrong on topic. This is rarely done in China because elders are looked upon with great respect.

Tinnitus

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110112132130.htm

I wanted to share this because I have a REALLY mild case (at least I think) of tinnitus. My mom has it worse though. For me, I hardly notice it unless everything else is really silent. It doesn’t bother me that much.

The above article talks about researchers who have found a promising treatment for Tinnitus in rats, and they’re going to be doing human clinical trials soon.

hcg diet

I wanted to make little post about the HCG Diet because one of my friends is on it and it seems to be gaining in popularity. I’m doing this because I don’t feel the HCG is that safe or healthy and I think it is a waste of money.

So basically, the HCG diet is a VERY LOW calorie diet in which you eat only 500 calories a day. That’s not all though, you have to also take Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG), a hormone which is found in pregnant females. Proponents claim that the HCG actually helps tell your body what type of fat to burn rather than just burn off any fat and even muscle. They also say the HCG helps so people do not get hunger pangs. So basically they say a 500 calorie diet isn’t good but a 500 calorie diet + HCG is ok!

Taking HCG is a waste of money in my opinion. Studies in a couple of major scientific medical journals and many doctors have shown that HCG does nothing beneficial in regards to weight loss:

http://www.ajcn.org/content/29/9/940.full.pdf

http://www.dietscam.org/reports/hcg.shtml

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1365103/?tool=pmcentrez

So people are basically spending their money on products that don’t even do anything. It is a waste.

You may know of some people who did go on this diet and have lost weight, but that is because they eat only 500 calories a day, which is pretty much a starvation diet. There is really no way you can get all of your nutrients you need on this restricted diet. If done for awhile deficiencies are sure to develop. You don’t lose weight because of HCG, you lose weight because you don’t eat enough food. There are also certain foods you can and cannot have and for every protein (meat) you eat you have to weigh out 100g.

This diet is dumb. If you want to lose weight do it the correct weight. Exercise and lose calories that way rather than not eat enough. Eat the right foods, mostly fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes, and if not vegan then small amounts of meat and dairy. Make sure all food is organic when possible and preferably locally grown and bought. Minimize processed foods. Eat more than 500 calorie (lol). Also green tea has some promise in helping with weight loss so you should drink that as well.

Fun fact: Kevin Trudeau advocates this diet in his book ‘Weight Loss Cures They Don’t Want You to Know About.’

college daze

I finally sent in my college application. It’s fun taking a year off. I think school is bogus in general but I guess if I wanna get anywhere in this world (I hate this world) then I better go. So my plan is to do anthropology as an undergrand, and for my graduate (Masters) I have to pick a sub-field and this is the tough one for me. The two choices I’m really diggin’ (no pun intended) are Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology.

I’m definitely minoring in Chinese studies so that means my area of work would most likely be China. I’ve always had an obsession with China and this is cool because I’ll get to learn Mandarin in a classroom. At the moment I’m kind of teaching myself through books, cds, computer programs…etc but being very lazy about it. I need to get with the program.

My goal is to ultimately do work in China. If I do my graduate in Cultureal Anthro then I’m not sure what I’d do in China. Living in a Chinese community and doing ethnographic fieldwork would be interesting although I don’t know how much fun writing a book would be. I’d live with them just for the fun of it. Plus, I’m pretty sure this has been done many of times. Also, I’m pretty sure you need a PHD for that kind of work. Working with the 50+ ethnic minorities in China would also be fun but then I shouldn’t be learning Mandarin I should be learning the language of one of the ethnic groups.

Archaeology is self explanatory really. I’d do field work in China. The only problem with this is that I think it’d be fun however the work seems tedious and rather boring in some respects. Like, doing field work for all those hours and not really finding anything important. The good thing about Arch though is that from what I gather (and what my teacher at MCC said) was that you can start doing fieldwork with just a Bachelors.

There is another problem with all of this. I’m unmotivated. All this stuff I read about how our culture is fucking up the world, as well as other things like how expensive school is and how you really don’t need it. Plus the fact schools don’t teach you what you need to know to survive. I want to help other people. I’d really love to work with indigenous peoples and communities to help them with rights, land…etc. This thing would fall under Cultural Anthro which would be good

I really just want to go to China and immerse myself with their culture and make friends there and study. I’d love to help them out to with the way there government is and everything.

Basically, I’m going to school for Anthropology but a little confused as to what I really want to do with the degree. All I know is that my area of focus would most definitely be China. In the near future I’ll make a blog post as to why I’m so interested in China and how I got interested.

Zàijiàn rén! (Goodbye people)