Review: True Girt

Leave a reply

Review: True Girt
True Girt by David Hunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At the outset, it’s probably a good idea to clarify, this book is not “True Grit“ by wee-drinking author Mr Bear Grylls. Although if you’re after a tale of desperate and deprived actions of slightly deranged people in perilous conditions, you may not be disappointed. *sound of tucker bag being zipped up*

I enjoyed this follow-up to Girt.  Both books provide a great antidote to the shiny history of Australia we were taught in schools ‘down under’. Many of the key figures in founding the land became celebrated as place names, but it took a volume like True Girt to aptly describe how many of these characters were.. well.. a bunch of pricks.

Along the way, we appreciate how unique Australia is.  Where else is there a such a massive convict past, a sponsored horror of injustice against the original inhabitants, an unexplorable land so enticing to work-experience explorers, and then an uprising culture of rebels who appear to this day as tattoos amongst proud pre-grownups? And then there was the discrimination against other religions and races – glad we sorted out that issue long ago.

Australia has a history that beggars belief, but it’s what a few of us call home.

Many gold nuggets were shared, like Australia inventing what became standard democratic processes (with a few oversights).  And we finally learn the collective noun of Hipsters. It makes sense.

True to the author’s word, this follow-up has even more hilarious moments where I laughed out loud before looking around nervously.

I look forward to whatever next installment comes.

A good thing about history, it doesn’t stop.

 

View all my GoodReads reviews

Review: The Princess Diarist

Leave a reply

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Audio books usually lack something compared to regular books. It’s not the case when you can hear the late great Carrie Fisher reading her own brilliantly funny account of the wonder days of Star Wars and its ensuing fame. It made me smile every day. Perhaps a more appropriate title would be “My infatuation with Harrison Ford”.

View all my GoodReads reviews

Giving your customers the Downward Dog

Leave a reply

Never mess with your devout yogis or yoginis!  Behind that calm, grounded and pliable exterior, quite a lot of the yoga community seem on-edge and ready to go for your jugular at a moment’s notice.

What am I talking about?

I’ve been doing yoga for a few years, almost entirely thanks to the Yoga Studio App.
My inflexibility and devout maleness prevents me from venturing out into public yoga. The app works for me, and I’m sure yoga classes everywhere work much better without me.

But last week when I wanted to do yoga, I found I was locked out.

Gaiam, the company who acquired the Yoga Studio App, changed the business model to subscription-based.  The app now gives nothing but a sign-up page. All the loyal premium customers lost access to the content they paid for.

The effect was immediate.

The communication was nil.  But the outcry was massive!

In one day the company’s Facebook reviews and appstore ratings, went from 5 stars down to 1. And as the ratings reset with each new version, some users said they will keep giving 1 star reviews. Others mentioned, they would share alternatives on the appstore reviews.

Hundreds of nasty responses came to the company’s eventual tweet to outline what happened.  And the company cowardly replied to only people who had subscribed; not to the existing mass of upset users.

Some iOS customers quoted a breach of apple’s app store review guidelines, 3.1.2(a): specifically,

If you are changing your existing app to a subscription-based business model, you should not take away the primary functionality existing users have already paid for.

(My emphasis added.)

Others suggested this commercial ploy was pure ransomware.

I wonder if it was just tough talk in the hope the company would switch their decision.

I didn’t comment or reach out.  I figured common-sense would prevail.

And it seems Gaiam has changed their position.  Their latest message suggests they will restore the original content for premium customers, once an update is released.  Users would then need to subscribe only if they wish to get new content in the future – which seems fair.

Perhaps it’s too little, too late. Many folks have switched to one of the many alternatives.
I myself have begun assessing alternatives, like Yoga with Adrienne‘s YouTube channel, Downward Dog, Fitstar Yoga, Yoga Academy, and Asana Rebel.  They all have their benefits (and downsides).  It’s sadly just an evaluation exercise I didn’t want to do.

One the irate customer’s observations is probably correct. We might have all subscribed to Yoga Studio App if it was communicated in advance, and our existing experience wasn’t taken from us without warning.

We all learn. Sadly too many learnings, come the hard way.

Namaste.

 

#AlcoholFreeApril

Leave a reply

Once again, I challenged myself to drink no alcohol for the month of April. And I pretty much succeeded.

I failed to check in on one day – which does stand out on the calendar.  It happened after a lot of deliberation with myself. I decided a friend’s (all-inclusive) wedding was a reasonable excuse to enjoy a few drinks. I convinced myself it’d be rude of me not to.

Throughout the year I feel I’m a moderate drinker.  Some nights I enjoy a beer or two.  At times though, it feels a little too much of a habit. And the reasons to enjoy a drink seem to outweigh the many positive reasons to not have one.

April is a good enough Cold Turkey demonstration that I don’t need alcohol in my life.

I knew I could do it. Although the notes I logged through the month don’t seem to show an unwavering resolve:

Once the month was done, I joked that I could wake up at 12:01am on the 1st of May and get smashed, or wait until breakfast. Instead, I stayed alcohol free a few more days into May, which is a good sign.

I might now consider a few further teetotaler initiatives which people refer to through the year.

There is the increasingly popular Dry July fundraiser, and the month of Oc’Sober’, and “No Alcohol November” which might be a good lead-up to the excesses of Christmas.

Let’s see.

In fact because of Christmas excesses, in January I used to reactively take a month off alcohol.  The results were impressive. On top of no alcohol, I would return to eating normal foods and quantities, and easily drop around 4 kilogrammes.

 

The end of this #AlcoholFreeApril made me think further into an idea I had for a supportive system – dare I say it, mobile app.
Its goal would be to help people understand their own drinking habits. It’d do this objectively, and set such clarity that it’s easy to follow progress. And intelligently it would encourage/”gamify” when it would be better to not have a drink.

Here are a few of the features I’ve considered:

  • Help to identify a goal you record & track against, which highlights how well your weekly behaviour is aligning.
  • Set a particular day or two where you never drink. Breaking this comes with a penalty.
  • After drinking for a few days in a row, there should be the right encouragement to pause.
  • And likewise, after drinking certain quantity of drinks, there is a baseline to get you back to your goal.
  • On the positive side, perhaps it could give a green light to have a drink, after a length of time or after certain physical activities/stresses .. perhaps you can save these up for the right time.

 

OR, you could just go through life using your own will-power; supplemented with the occasional month off.

Although, where is the fun in that?

Staying in Emirates Park Zoo – 5-7 April 2017

Leave a reply

We had anything but a proper vacation for this Spring Break. Lewis had chicken pox for the first week.  Then on the weekend, Owen was hospitalised with pneumonia. My work was also busy, so with just a few days remaining of the boy’s holiday, we opted for a Staycation.

We decided to stay at Emirates Park Zoo & Resort.
The boys could clearly benefit from a greater appreciation for wildlife:

 

We arrived and I wondered if this was the right place to bring the kids when Owen loudly announced that the place smelled like poo.

We were shown to our adjoining rooms and realised what a cool place this was.

Outside our door was a sandy enclosure with seven deer. Owen didn’t know who painstakingly painted the white dots on them.

And through a window on the other side of the enclosure we could see lions staring back at us. Or they were probably staring at all that sweet venison they’re unable to get at.

The zoo sold bunches of green leafy grass to feed the animals. We fed monkeys, farmyard animals, tortoises, camels. Having turtles for pets made the boys spend mossssssssst of the tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime feeding the tortoises. Which actually weren’t as slow as I had expected. Some of the animals like camels and donkeys were able to reach quite far beyond the fence. This actually looked dangerous with their huge heads and massive teeth. There were signs warning people of the risk. The boys appreciated this and made a disturbing song to the tune of Frozen, “Do you want your nose bit offfff?”

Some time after seeing all sorts of exotic animals, we came across our compatriot kangaroos. Myles naturally started a normal Australian conversation with them, “G’day mate. Have you been drinking any XXXX lately?” The zoo also had kookaburras, and sulphur-crested cockatoos.  I seemed to spend more time with them than any other birds – just like when you’re at a party and you find someone you went to school with.

We attended just one of the scheduled shows, which was mostly an educational segment. What we learned was that one of their South American birds awkwardly wasn’t in the mood to perform. All “Tookie” had to do was hop across the four poles that the two people from the crowd were holding. That evening at the buffet I asked Myles if he also thought the meat in our biriyani looked anything like Tookie.

Myles compared the variety of animals on display to what he saw on his recent African trip. One observation was the goats here looked less like horses on drugs. And Ugandan giraffe were much taller.

I woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night, not to the sound of noisy neighbours or construction site activities, but to the roar of lions and nature. From the safety of a locked hotel room, this was brilliant.

For quite some time, each shriek or noise got our attention and led to a “What was that!?” Some sounds were quite clear. Others were contested. For instance, we couldn’t agree if one particular recurring noise we heard was an elephant or a chair moving.

The next morning it was apparent the folks next door had no zoo food to feed the animals.  Instead they improvised and gave our deers something resembling red chutney for breakfast. Thankfully the parents stopped the daughter before she gave them cocoapops for a second course.

The other kind of food you could purchase at the zoo was bags of nuts for the monkeys. We purchased these on the second day. The zoo’s monkeys though got hardly any, while my two big monkeys tuckered in.

The monkeys were overall very interesting to my boys. They loved seeing the monkey’s human-like hands reaching out from their cage to get the food. I had to correct Myles when he said they looked just like humans. They looked just like humans in jail. And some of their jail cells seemed small.

Myles spotted the Reptile House, and was quite accurate that for me it was like a Haunted House. In the enclosure for the anaconda, it was quite interesting/worrying to see no anaconda, yet a surgical mask was left laying on the ground. I wondered if this was perhaps evidence alluding to a horrifying story.

We thoroughly enjoyed the experience at the Emirates Park Zoo & Resort. It’s not far from the Yas area of Abu Dhabi – before you reach the city.

I highly recommend staying for a couple of nights, if you prefer to take more time watching and interacting with the animals, and not worrying about missing any exhibits.

I did notice they had some room for improvement. Their so-called “Mammal Cave” had no lazy guy on a couch watching TV with remote control in hand.

Another RAK half marathon – 2017

1 Reply

Yesterday the RAK half marathon impressively lived up to being the world’s fastest half marathon. Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya set a new world record for the women’s half marathon, in 65:06. I heard she was hunched over after the finish looking like she was about to vomit. No history books will mention that.

The weather conditions were absolutely perfect for running. Even before the race the announcer said there are no excuses for not running a personal best time today. I objected to the people around me, “This guy clearly doesn’t know me!”

I started the day with a thought that 1:40 would be a decent finish time, given the training I’ve done. In the end, I finished in a fair 1:39:59 .. And this time was with one toilet stop. If it wasn’t for that huge wee, I may have also finished the run in around 1hr and 5 minutes.

Soon after the start I was alongside one of Dubai Creek Striders’s most charismatic characters, and wellness gurus.  A lot of his recent social media posts have been relating the ill-effects of sugar on us. I facetiously told him to “Leave my sugar alone” .. then nervously overtook him – with an immediate worry that he’s probably right, and my diet will be my demise in this race and he and the rest of the group would overtake me with much cheer.

A single glimpse of something can lead me to think about it for huge stretches of time. Along the way I passed a guy wearing an Iron Man body suit. I pondered, at what point in a race would I deploy the jets. I don’t know how many kilometres I had completed at that point, but I was pretty sure I’d put on the jets right there and then.

That was a more enjoyable thought than when I passed a shirt slogan, “There is no finish line”.  I know their marketing folks are inspiring an ongoing lifestyle, and promoting a continuing journey of fitness. I know that now. At the time, I just muttered “Bugger”.

One distance milestone I do remember was passing the 12km marker. I remember this because the lady next to me said out loud “Single figures”. She didn’t seem to be running with anybody else. So maybe she was talking to us. I thought about it, then thought about it some more. It could have been 5 seconds later I figured it out, and apologetically verified back to her “Ah, [single figures] kilometres remaining!”

I wore the race shirt they provided us. Lots do. Why not, it’s the newest in my wardrobe. At one point I noticed a guy to my right was wearing not only the shirt, but also the same Nike “look-at-me” running shorts I had. He may have seen me looking him up and down, so I shared that we could be twins. He thankfully laughed. Then we both decided to split up before the camera people just ahead could take a cute picture of us together.

It was funny to hear Kat, the default voice of the Runkeeper app, coming from someone else’s smart phone. The guy was getting a comprehensive update on his time, distance, average pace, and I was curious if bladder levels would one day become part of the story. I told the guy I thought the Runkeeper lady only talked to me. But he was quick to explain. That app is important company he has during his away-time running.  It gets him through the many times he’s in the bad books for being anti-social, having to go to bed early & run in the mornings. Then he put up his hands and shrugged, “What else can we do when we love such a crazy pastime as running?” I agreed and wished him a lovely run.

In the final 4-5kms I maintained a pace between slouching off and feeling like I was about to vomit. After giving High 5s to my family (who was leaning inappropriately out over the fence) with 200 metres remaining, I sprinted to cross the finish line – with one second to spare.

I look forward to doing it again next year.

2017 Dubai Marathon

2 Replies

Yesterday morning I lined up to participate (not compete) in yet another Dubai Marathon ..

This year’s event had extra interest with a confident Kenenisa Bekele declaring he was going to break the world record.  On top of the glory of owning the world record, there was a nice $250,000 reward on offer for bettering the mark of 2:02.57 ..

Bekele’s campaign had the strong support of Nike and the Sub 2hr project sport scientists.  Unfortunately it didn’t help, as he sadly tripped at the start line.  It made the near impossible task, simply impossible.

Before my start, after the obligatory toilet stop and obligatory follow-up toilet stop, I made the long distance back towards the start. There I passed a massive queue of people. I thought to myself it’s a relief to have gone to the other toilet block, as there was no waiting. I soon learned this throng of people wasn’t for the toilets. It was the queue for the bag drop, which I needed. It’s the first time I’ve seen such a massive delay to literally “drop” something.

What terrible organisation to put the bag drop so close to the start/finish area and have it single-file the whole way.

It wasn’t until after the race when I went through the recovery area, picking up drinks and a banana, that I noticed how convenient it was to have the bag collection right there as we exited. What wonderful organisation.

This was to be my ninth full 42.195km marathon event. Experience adds some comfort to know that you can complete it.  On the other hand it provides no comfort from the pain.

This year I had no real goal time.  Beating last year’s time would be nice, returning to near 3:30 form would be superb. Realistically I just wanted to finish in relatively good shape, and avoid grinding to a halt.

Along the way, I was entertained as always.

In the first 10 kilometres I saw a guy running in a Spartans shirt. He was relaxed and running quite conservatively. I imagined he was saving his energy to slay a few dozen Persian warriors at the finish line.

Another shirt that grabbed my attention was “fast food” brand McDonalds. I felt it pretty important to pass that one.

It was then quite a milestone to run past Superman at the 16km mark. He was a big hit with the many kids cheering along the side of the course.

To gain my own super advantage I resisted the urge to try some of the Sub 2 hour juice,

Instead I took some gu gels for energy. The gu were in each of my shorts pockets, and when I tried to get one out another dropped onto the ground. Bugger. Do I stop to pick it up, or forget about it? As I looked down, the packet magically slid along the road back in front of me. A runner behind me had kindly, and quite skillfully, kicked it back to me while in mid stride. Despite his efforts, I decided the energy to slow and pick it up would outweigh the benefits the gu would give.  So I just kept on running.

The weather was quite warm – the hottest Dubai Marathon yet according to some runners. I clearly remember feeling thirsty throughout the run. I drank from every water spot, multiple drinks at some. I even started availing the unofficial stations, like those of the Dubai Creek Striders, the Desert Road Runners, and Abras squads; as well as a random congregation of Chinese people – though I avoided their interesting offering for marathon runners, salty potato crisps.

Despite drinking as much water as I could, and using it to keep my body cool, I did struggle in the last stages. My pace dropped, thankfully it was a much later inevitability than last year.

I’d like to say my smile got bigger with each kilometre marker. Perhaps my grimace got no worse.

At 40kms, a helpful Arab encouraged me by telling me there were two kms to go.  “Hurry up and in three minutes you’ll be finished – yalla!”

The finish line, like all finish lines, was a blessing.  I didn’t track the run very accurately on my apple watch with some mistaken pauses. So I really had little clue about what time I’d see as I approached the line.  It was 3:51, which was a 3:49.58 net finish. Five minutes slower than last year which I can live with – and still thankfully under the four hour mark.

After I collected my stuff, I enjoyed the adidas rest area.  Some other runners enjoyed it a whole lot more.  A couple of ladies, looking fresh as daisies after their marathons, easily spent 30 minutes getting hilariously flamboyant photos next to the merchandise and posters. Then they’d get them taken again, from more and more angles.

I found watching it almost as tiring as running the final 5kms.

Before the race I took two Ibuprofen to help avoid some ongoing niggles in my hip & knee. I like to think of it as a proactive measure. Nope. Seeing other marathoners limping so painfully, the Ibuprofen was clearly cheating.  Cheating which I will do again.

All the marathon podium places went to Ethiopians:

It’s always a highlight to see how well the Ethiopians perform, and to see the passion of their supporters in the crowd.  They all look so beautifully happy, wearing their distinctive colours, singing for their champions.

This completed my ninth marathon in 10 years.  It would be quite neat to complete another one this year ..

First I must let my new shoes get broken in a little more, and let my blistered feet heal:

2016 goals smashed – just. Kind of.

1 Reply

In 2016 I again tried to make continual progress over 12 months in a couple of personal areas I find important:

  • Running 1200kms, and
  • Reading 12 books.

Both of these numbers neatly ensure each and every month I keep running and reading. Or, so I hoped.

In reality, it’s never that simple for me.

My 2015 goals became a real challenge when the priority shifted from running to looking for new job opportunities.
And this past year, after beginning a new role opening an ambitious new attraction I struggled to find the time & head-space to read for pleasure.

Unable to find time is such a cop out. The obvious truth is, if you find something important enough, you make time. But we’ll get to that shortly ..

 

Run 1200 kilometres in a calendar year (supposedly 100km per month)

As it turned out, my running goal was quite straight-forward to complete this year.

In fact, I ran 1374km in all (exceeding even the cliched 110% effort).  This was mostly on account of running a second marathon in the year during my Australian holiday. It really wasn’t planned like this.
My parents coincidentally booked my boys and I into a wonderful resort on the Gold Coast on the same weekend in July as Australia’s premier road race, the Gold Coast Marathon. The marathon course passed two streets away from where we were staying on Surfer’s Paradise. And it happened to be where I ran my first marathon back in 2007. So I saw no alternative but crank up the training in the month before we left Dubai, and run the popular event.

It really boosted my kilometres. Usually my running tally flattens right out in July during Dubai’s summer.

 

Read 12 books in a calendar year (supposedly 1 book per month)

My reading goal on the other hand, it really came down to the wire.

I made almost no progress in the first half of the year. A couple of times I wasn’t sure I’d make it. November became such a stressful ascent, and December’s four books seemed almost insurmountable.

But I kept reading when I could, especially on my commute to and from work.

Right until the final afternoon of 31st of December, I was literally reading while running .. well, listening to an audio book on my final long runs.

Then after my exhausted return from 32.5kms I had to finish reading a final 40-50 pages.   But I managed.  I completed the final 12th book and my reading challenge.

S-U-C-C-E-S-S

It’s a good feeling to again complete these two resolutions, particularly after it seemed that one goal became near impossible.

Maybe it’s a strength to adapt to life and fit in such a variety of things, not focusing on a singular goal.

Perhaps my subconscious enjoys the drama of bringing things back from the seemingly impossible.

If so, perhaps I’d like to retire this part of my subconscious in 2017.

Making some regular progress each and every week would be wonderful to avoid getting into stressful situations with little time remaining.

Let’s see what 2017 brings.

But there was actually something I didn’t complete this year as planned ..

 

Publish 12 blogs in a calendar year (supposedly 1 blog per month)

When I renewed my 1200kms and 12 books challenges, I also thought to myself that I’d like to blog 12 times.  Again, at the start of the year this is a number which seems so easy.

In January an obvious blog for me is to write about the Dubai Marathon that I tend to run. And it seemed like a particularly good story this year as I had trained hard, and even employed a new training regime with an expert online coach. What an uplifting blog to write, in my 9th year of running to return to my best form. Though for a couple of reasons, I didn’t finish close to my goal time and I felt quite disappointed for many weeks.

I thought I’d get over it, and still share my thoughts from the day.  But this disappointing blot kept me from writing for a month. And it kept me from writing in the month after that when we had a nice trip to Ras Al Khaimer, a repeat of the trip we take each year – which I wrote about in 2015 (“Another RAK half weekend – 13-14 February 2015”).

Even in July when I holidayed in Australia I didn’t document my usual notes from our adventures. The fact that I had a resolution to write 12, demotivated me to recover the blog situation. I wasn’t getting back onto the horse.

Finally in December, I enjoyed the Striders half marathon too much and had to pen a few notes from the event, (“Yet another Striders half – 09 Dec 2016”).  And perhaps it was decidedly restarting the practice for the fresh running season and the coming year.

So the final score card has just one blog out of 12, for the 12 months.

Interestingly, when I was reflecting on my 2016 goals and I remembered the blog idea, it almost didn’t seem like a resolution. I gave up on it so early and so easily, I suppose wasn’t really serious about this one this past year.

2017?

I’ll take off the pressure for 2017, and blog as much as I feel – with no reference to any arbitrary numbers.

But I’ll definitely read 12 books & run 1200kms.
I’ve got two years experience that no matter how challenging it seems they are to achieve, I always have them COMPLETELY under control.

*Sigh*

Review: You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life

Leave a reply

Review: You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life

You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life written by Jen Sincero
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book might change some people’s lives. Not me. The occasional colourful language and blunt accounts were a welcome relief to many self-help books I’ve read. Though it was let down by the commandment after commandment after commandment of preachy lists. Some “Thou shalts” are no-brainers, some were interesting and helpful, but far too many were cringe-worthy.

View all my GoodReads reviews

Review: Give and Take

Leave a reply

Give and Take written by Adam M. Grant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I highly recommend this book for those turned off by the self-serving, the types who don’t mind who they trample on. In the environment of collaboration and knowledge and networking, those who just Take what they want (at others’ expense) hit a hard limit. Givers exceedingly and continually lead the way to improve outcomes for all. It’s a world I like.

View all my GoodReads reviews