Hairy Barbarians » Personal

How Do You Like India?

Tim — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 08:32:16 +0000

I realize that people are just trying to be friendly, but I hate answering that question. The fact is, I don’t know. I don’t know how anyone can get a handle on what this country is all about.

India is one of the fastest growing economies on Earth, but the new skyscrapers exist next to abject poverty.

India gave us such incredible thinkers the Buddha and Gandhi and Indians are rightfully proud of that legacy, but the country is still cursed with tremendous discrimination and suffering.

The people I get into conversations with are evenly split between those trying to aggressively cheat me and genuinely warm and friendly individuals.

I don’t mean this as praise or criticism. You have to understand something before you can praise or criticize it. It’s just how I see it, and it’s the reason I feel idiotic when I have to answer the question with the insipid “It’s very nice.”

Just Passing Through

Tim — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:35:42 +0000

Killing a few hours in Bangkok before my flight to Delhi. Angkor Wat was amazing; beyond what I had expected. Cambodia itself has problems, but in many ways it reminds me of Thailand 20 years ago. I hope they do as well.

Wat a Trip

Tim — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 02:08:26 +0000

It always turns out the only time I can take a lengthy vacation is between engagements. So now that I have the chance, I’m off to Cambodia and India. Places I’ve been meaning to get to for years, but never got around to it.

Goals for 2010: Music

Tim — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 11:56:07 +0000

This is the last of my posts about my 2010 goals. I’m hoping my friends will help encourage me and hold me accountable.

Area Three: Music
I what now seems like another life, I was a professional musician. It was without question the hardest, most time-consuming, and lowest-paying job I ever had, and I had a love-hate relationship with it. I loved the music, and hated the profession. I don’t care it I never working in that business again, but over the past few years, I have not been spending much time on my music, and thats not good.

In fact, that gap between my abilities then and now is so large it can get really frustrating when I start up again. So some simple, modest goals that I’ll enjoy.

By the End of 2010 I will:

Learn at least 60 popular songs
Sing on stage at least twice
Agree to go to karaoke when my friends ask
Practice until I can recognize all chords and intervals again

Goals for 2010: Japanese

Tim — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 11:28:14 +0000

I’m continuing to post about my 2010 goals hoping my friends will help encourage and hold me accountable.

Area Two: Japanese
I’ve been living in Japan for over 20 years. Twenty long, stinking, painful years. No, seriously only about three of those years were long stinking and painful. The rest ranged from “same as the old year” to unbelievably challenging and fun. I’ve married into a Japanese family, served on the board of a public Japanese firm, negotiated the sale of a company, given countless of business presentations, three hiroen speeches and not a few public presentations; all in Japanese. But you know what? As far as I’m concerned my Japanese stinks. I must be getting my point across using some combination of facial expressions, hand gestures and telepathy, because I lot of the time even I don’t know what I just said. That changes starting now.

Goals for 2010: Health

Tim — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:50:03 +0000

There are three areas of my life that I plan on improving in 2010. My goals are modest when I look at them individually, but achieving all of them would make life at the end of 2010 a bit better than it is at the start of it. I’m putting my goals up here on my blog in the hope that my friends will hold me accountable vie encouragement, gentle prodding, shame, mental abuse or swift and blinding violence as they deem appropriate.

Area One: Health
I don’t think I ever fully recovered from the trauma of my seventh grade gym class. You see, I was a fat kid (not chubby mind you, but 30-inch-inseam and a very tight 36-inch-waist rotund) and had a crew-cut sporting gym teacher with a who liked to call us fat kids “jellybeans” and make snarky remarks when it was our turn at the chin-up bar. Even though I eventually dropped the weight and got pretty good at baseball and the martial arts, I (shamefully) never managed to do more than three chin-ups.

Truth be told, last year was supposed to be my get in shape year, but things didn’t work out. A nasty back injury led to a knee injury, which shut down all exercise for much of the year. Thankfully, yoga and stretching averted the surgery my doctor suggested, but 2009 was a step backwards in health. This year is going to be different.

By the end of 2010 I will:

be able to do 10 perfect pull-ups
run 5k in under 30 minutes
have a 90 cm waist as measured across the belly-button
do a downward dog with my heels on the floor

No Laughing Matter!

Tim — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:27:28 +0000

I’ve been listening to comedy albums on my iPod during my daily commute recently. I arrive at the office in a much better mood, and I end up getting more space on the train than I normally would.

Since its considered rude to laugh out loud so I try to suppress it, and everyone stays away from the scary gaijin giggling to himself in the corner.

Bill Hicks is a riot!!

Pink Trauma

Tim — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 04:35:26 +0000

I was in LA yesterday and took Ami to Pink’s — the best hot dogs on the West coast! A month back, she begged me to take her, but when we actually picked up our order, Ami sat there staring down at her 12″ Jalapeno Dog with a mixture of shock and disgust. After some not so gentle prodding I got her to try it.

For the next several minutes Ami expressed her amazement that Americans could eat such things, at which point she realized that she had finished her dog and reluctantly admitted that it was pretty good.

Another Pink’s fan is born!

Back at the Gates!

Tim — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:30:55 +0000

WIth all the friending, tweeting, and facebookin’ there is so little time for logging. Such a shame. I’m back on the blog today — with some help from Sajjad — because today is my mother-in-law’s birthday.

Now, for those of you with an attention span longer than a tweet, I’ll explain. I’ve decided that the perfect gift for the woman who has everything (and those of you who have met my mom-in-law know what I’m talking about) is her very own blog.

All well and good provided I don’t get suck doing tech support.

Life in The Fast Lane

Tim — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:28:01 +0000

A number of people and articles have recommended multi-day fasts for health reasons. As strange as it sounds, I don’t think I have ever even gone a single day without food, so I decided to try a 32-hour “mini-fast” just to check things out.

I was really surprised that I did not fell particularly hungry at all. No strong desire to eat or anything. I did feel a bit light-headed, but not in a bad way. Think I’ll try a few more of these mini-fasts before committing to a three-day affair.

P.S. I’m not even bothering to give any excuses for not blogging for so long. Please feel free to make up your own. They will undoubtably be much more interesting than the truth.