In my last personal post, I mentioned how I was focusing on three things this semester: time management expectations management novel-drafting I mentioned how I need to get all three in the bag if I’m going to fulfill my goals for the semester. Allow me to back up a bit to explain. I came to Korea, in part, because I knew that in academic jobs, I could have more hours free during the day or week. This has materialized in a half-completed draft of one novel, a completed (first, roughish) draft of a second novel, and nothing else in long-form …
Tag: fitness & health
Oxytocin and Social Networking
This article is interesting, though its title, “Social Networking Affects Brains Like Falling in Love,” should have a question mark at the end, since the experiment (with Twitter) was a simple one-off. I’d be very curious to see studies of people who use Social Media professionally. (Like, say, someone like pro SF authors twittering like mad at a science fiction convention, or low-level political candidates using Twitter.) I’d also be very curious to see how mediated interaction works compared to non-mediated interaction — how much difference in oxytocin do we see in couples talking on the phone a few hours …
Back on my feet (sorta)
All the posts that have gone up in the past four or five days have been prewritten, in fact were pre-scheduled a week or more ahead of time. Why am I mentioning this? Because anyone following along on my blog might think I was okay the past weekend, when in fact I had the worst case of food poisoning I’ve had since Jakarta. Unfortunately, I think I know where I got it. I wish I could say it was my own fault… well, maybe it was, but I don’t know. I will say this: whenever I eat anything at Times …
What Is and Isn’t Fun About a Sigmoid Endscopy
Don’t worry, I won’t give you the gory details, but: WHAT’S NOT FUN ABOUT A SIGMOID ENDOSCOPY… Er, well, there’s the obvious. Like, those alien abduction reportees? They picked a doozy of a procedure for their imaginary aliens to perform on them. (1) Various other minor side effects afterward, like, er, well, scentless flatulence (2) and mild discomfort from being pumped full of air. WHAT CAN BE FUN ABOUT A SIGMOID ENDOSCOPY… Cheap, legal narcotics. I was flyin’, folks. Well, until the procedure began. Then I was just dizzy, but, hey, whatever. It didn’t hurt, at least. Seeing your insides. …
I’m Back in Korea, And Yes, It’s Just Food Poisoning
I got back to Korea this morning. Just in case anyone was wondering. No major delay in the flight, no big problems. I am sleepy, but had to bang out a syllabus for that Business Across Cultures course. Yay! The Corporation is available online. (In a few places.) By the way, as the KCDC gotten more paranoid or something? I handed in my health questionnaire form, with check marks on diarrhea and vomiting among my experiences in the last ten days. The guy who was collecting the papers gave me a shocked, slightly horrified look — which suggests a lot …
A Robot Dream
Last night I dreamed of robots; big, huge, slightly abstract impressionist robots made out of lattices of material; huge, primary-colored lattices of stuff. They were fighting. Laser blasts. Projectiles — more of this primary colored lattice-stuff. They were shouting at one another in weird, digitizal-static voices that sounded like a parody of the voices of human beings. I took cover, but while I was safe from the laser blasts and projectiles, those voices were inescapable. I listened, trying to figure out what they were saying, but it was no use. It soon became apparent that they were exchanging way more …
Fever, What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Trip to the Local Immigration Office, and a Final Positive Turn
I’ve been quite ill this week — not quite just food poisoning, but something a little more vindictive and involved, though not in a sentient sense. The same intestinal upset as last time, but with an added element: a burning fever on Thursday night, and fever (slightly less severe, but much sweatier) again on Friday evening. It was the kind of fever where you say things you don’t recall saying the next day, and dream of Japanese Solutionatronic devices shaped like giant wok lids except that they aren’t physical objects but rather abstract mathematical structures which, given any question, can …
Losing Wonmisan
Okay, okay, I’m being dramatic. But, then, it was dramatic. Mark and I were hiking up Wonmisan as usual, except we found a couple of new features on our dirt trail. Now, if you don’t know Wonmisan, you should be informed that, unlike some mountains in Korea, it has both stairs and a diirt trail to the top. If you ask me, stairs are for shopping malls and apartment buildings: I don’t go out into nature just to climb stairs. Especially crappily-built, unevenly-sized stairs like you see on a lot of mountains. So Mark and I, we usually take the …
Back!
One of the great tragedies of the film version of The Lord of the Rings, in my opinion, is the fact that the ending was left out. You know, the part where the story seems over, the world is saved, the journey finished, and then the characters get home and have a big mess to sort out there? That always seemed to subvert expectations in a way I respected, and seemed also to reflect the messiness of real life in a way that makes more sense than the kind of “one great act saves the day everywhere” kind of stuff …
Health Update: Neti & Workouts
After a couple of weeks off, due to a foot injury, a cold, and a root canal, I am finally back into exercising daily. I’ll be honest: I’m not going as hard as I was going before, but then, that doesn’t mean I’m not pushing myself: by the middle of April, I was going for at least three hours a day, and often four. (Usually it was two hours of hiking, about an hour on a stationary bike, and an hour pumping weights.) Now, I’m back down to a couple of hours a day at most — though I’m getting …