Liver Cleanse Aftermath

i did it. Last night i drank the gnarley concoction of olive oil and grapefruit juice and boy does it leave a gross taste in your mouth, but it actually goes down easier than the epsom salts. i went immediately to bed as per the instructions, but maybe because my stomach was too empty, or maybe because i was trying to remain fixed on my right side while sleeping, i couldnt sleep. i probably went to bed about 5:30 in the morning, and my girlfriend said i kept kicking her and stealing the covers. Man i was miserable. It was an eternity of waiting for an oblivion that finally crept up, put a bagover my head, and knocked me out. i dont remember falling asleep. i do remember that when i first laid down i started itching almost immediately and worried there was a mosquito that would keep biting me all night. Turned out to be ants crawling on my legs. Much better. They eventually died off though.

So this morning i felt like i had to give birth, but before that i got myself to the fridge and drank 6 more ounces of the epsom salt and apple juice. That jump-started my bowels so fast i thought i would drop anchor on the living room rug, but i didnt.

The short of it is my innards were fully cleansed until i could only squirt water, and according to my friend who is a yoga teacher and a fasting veteran, the floating little round bits that came out were the stones, actually crystallized cholesterol, calcified salt, or a mixture of things. Pretty cool eh?

i guess i would have to recommend doing this for the experience at least once. i definitely felt cleaner, lighter, more evergetic right after. Ended up getting alot of house cleaning done this morning which i think i normally wouldnt have done. Also my meditation the last couple of days has felt clearer, more improved, much like thinking seems sharper during a fast.

Thats it for now. Tune in next time...

Apple Fast, Liver Cleanse

So im on the third day of a three day apple fast. It entails eating nothing but apples for three days and is supposed to detox your body and clean out the old pipes.

Its the first time ive done this particualr fast. First day wasnt too easy because i was a little weak, though i wasnt too hungry. Second day i felt better and trained jujitsu at night with no real fatigue. i of course drank alot of water, distilled. Today, day three, i am back to being a little weak but not too bad overall.

i stopped eating apples around 6:00 today because i am doing the liver cleanse tonight at 2:30am. To prepare for this i drank 2 six ounce doses of organic fresh-made apple juice mixed with epsom salt. Pretty disgusting. Epsom salt is super bitter and nasty, but the fast calls for it so im using it.

The grand finale at 2:30 is when i will drink a half cup of olive oil mixed with fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice. Right after drinking i will take my last leak for the night and then straight to bed, laying on my right side so as to drench my liver somehow with the oil.

Tomorrow morning i am supposed to awake and drink another six ounces of apple juice with epsom salt, at which point i will have an overwhelming urge to be purged. The most interesting part of this is that stones from the liver are actually supposed to be expelled from my body into the stool, and it doesnt get much better than that, right?

i will be sure to take photos of anything unearthly that appears.

May the force be with me...

Poo-Flinging Monkeys

I dodged the first volley of poo. I was deep in a strange tropical forest in the mountains and i had no idea there were monkeys here. i suppose they were aggravated by me eating bananas in front of them, or getting naked to go swimming in the creek. Either way they were upset, and monkeys upset is one thing, but poo-flinging upset monkeys is quite another. Soon their friends came and i was largely outnumbered. Poo missiles rained down from trees like falling fruit and the inevitable happened. i was hit. i got pretty angry when that happened, so what else could i do? i dropped my pants and prepared to return fire, using the percolating storm i had been brewing all day, apparently for this occaision. i figured that if i could just hit the lead monkey with my poo, the others would disperse, feeling their leader had been outmatched by the greater size of my weaponry. Taking dead aim i launched at him as he bounced angrily on the branch nearest me, and just as he was opening his mouth... Whammo! Right in the kisser! i had won, humiliated him, freezing his minions in their tracks, and they started tree-hopping away, one by one, ashamed looks on their hairy little faces.

This didnt really happen, but you can imagine what it'd be like if it did, right?

The real story is almost as good, and it did involve nudity and bananas at some points. My friend Gary moved up to the mountains once upon a time in the hills behind the Taipei City Zoo, which is a pretty sparsely populated area just outside of Taipei. Basically he lives in a shack in the woods. It had no walls when his roommate moved in, so they both have constructed walls out of throwaway vinyl sheets that had once served as billboards. Pretty durable stuff actually. They even hold up in a typhoon, which is a big necessity in Taiwan. Gary and his Chinese roomy have 6 dogs, two cats, a venomous snake, and they even had a ferret until it ran away. The place is sweet. Gary built his own loft complete with tatami mats, a small window with no glass, and a mosquito net (but oddly enough he says there are no mosquitos, so he doesnt use the net)

Nearby the shack is an old trail, part of which is made of stones set into the hill. But the stones soon disappear, giving way to a shoddy narrow path that seems as though it has not been traversed in years, with the exception of ourselves. Ferns and things grow over it so that one worries about lurking snakes. But if one chooses to avoid the path then they can go rock hopping up the middle of the creek which leads to Monkey Village- that is what i have dubbed it.

The other day we brought our girlfriends to a swimming hole at the top of the creek. Here there is a waterfall which cascades down long sheer rocks into the pool below. Nobody goes there. The place is completely isolated and untouched by man. It is so unbelievably beautiful there. A virtual paradise. There is moss growing on most of the rocks, the water is clean and drinkable, and above the pool are all kinds of trees with vines hanging down like ropes.

So we were sitting there relaxing, Gary and his girlfriend in the hammock that Gary put up between two trees, me with my girlfriend lying on a long flat mossy rock, enjoying the last rays of the sun. Suddenly we started hearing weird chirping or barking noises. Not knowing what to make of them we looked up into the trees and scanned the area until my girlfriend pointed out with glee that a monkey was jumping from one bending branch to another. i saw him, a small and curious thing, a round head and grey hair with big eyes. Then i heard more, started seeing more, and more and more. i looked farther away from us, high above the rocks and further into the forest and saw 4 or 5 moving together on the ground. One in a nearby tree started bouncing up and down aggressively on his branch and staring at us as if he wanted a response, like why the hell were we here? So i took out a banana and ate it in front of him, just becuase it seemed appropriate. Stupid monkey. What are you gonna do about it? Their numbers seemed to increase until i wasnt sure how many there were. i guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 20. After Gary and his woman left, me and mine kept hearing a barking sound almost right above our heads to the left of the pool, and it sounded like they were moving in for an attack, but we could not see them. Finally we did, perched high above in some trees, waiting, looking, probably thinking about flinging some poo, though fortunately for them they didnt.

The place is now even more awesome than before. Monkeys, our monkeys. i marveled at the little silly beasts, relishing in the fact that i am smarter than them, and being happy that they were there to entertain me with their monkeyness. i mean who gets to see monkeys do wild things in the wild like this?! It is awesome. i will go to this place whenever i can and spend time with them, get to know them. Who knows, maybe they will want to come home with me and be my monkey friends. Dont you want to have a monkey friend?

Being More Aware

The other day i played a little game with myself while riding my motorcycle home in teeming Taipei traffic. i had just gone to the Heping Flower Market to shop for a birthday present for my girlfriend (its a huge outdoor market set up underneath a freeway ramp), and i ended up with about six plants stuffed into my motorcycle bags and hanging from my handlebars. It's common to see scooters loaded down with all sorts of goods while slaloming through the plethora of vehicles, so i was not an oddity. But being that i felt burdened and awkward with all my plants, i started noticing other bikes which were laden with goods. One man had a huge crate mounted on the back of his cycle for hauling things. Others had various bulky objects stuffed at their feet for carrying home. It's logical that if you dont drive a car you're gonna cram as much as you can onto your only mode of transportation, and for most Taiwanese peole it's their scooters.

Noticing this phenomenon transitioned into noticing everything i was participating in - just for the hell of it. i started a kind of game in my mind: "What all do i have around me right now? What is this moving scene that i am a part of?" And so i began to catalogue everything in a way that seemed at once to amuse me, taking away my boredom, and at the same time bumping up my awareness a few degrees, which seeemed to make me more alert. It went like this: "i just left the flower market and am carrying a bunch of plants hanging in bags on my cycle. The sun is beating down and i am sweating pretty profusely. To my left is a portly man, not really fat except for his belly. Physically he could almost be the Chinese version of my father sitting on a scooter. He looks hot and is wearing an extra pair of sleeves that cover his forearms but are not attached to his t-shirt. Now he pulls up his t-shirt and lets his belly hang out and cool off in the minute breeze. In front of me are about 15 scooters, a few cars. On my right is the man with the mounted crate on his motorcycle. He must use it for his livelihood, whatever that may be. We're moving now, sluggish at first, lurching forward as one mob, gaining speed. The wind now is pleasant because i am moving. Interspersed along this road are openings under the overpass on my left, and taxis and regular cars perch at these holes, waiting to emerge, merge with traffic. Trees have began studding the road and they make me more at ease than where i just was." And so on...

i did this mental cataloguing in much more detail at the time, taking inventory of every possible stimuli my mind could process, until i got bored with the game. But i realized that my mind was active and working, and listing my environment was much more interesting than i would have thought. In fact, the act of doing it made me realize that the world around me was much more interesting than i normally would give it credit for. On most days we just commute to wherever, and if it's often the same location we won't give much creative thought to what is going on around us. We don't see much interest in the environment at all because we have "seen it all before." But i believe how much of things we really see depends on how actively our minds are engaged in the experience we are having. If we believe the experience is commonplace and mundane, then that is how it will appear. If, on the other hand, we delve a bit deeper into the multitude of processes occuring simultaneously before us, things become interesting, and our minds becoming enthusiastic about playing the game.

There might also be some memory advantage to this activity, meaning if you consciously calalogue events or objects in your mind, you are rooting them a bit more than you probably would otherwise. It's like with writing; whenever you have an experience and write it down, you are more likely to remember it than if you don't.

In any case, try the game and see how you like it. The next time you are commuting anywhere, start narrating to yourself what is happening in your life at this exact moment, all the things you see and hear and smell and feel. You will probably find that your awareness jumps up a notch.

Nuthin

i dont really feel like writing. Not sure why. I guess it's not instilling the same passion in me it once did. Maybe it's because i have been out of the habit for so long, or maybe it's because there are so many other distractions, forms of entertainment i can get sidetracked by. I just read this article about pictures off Facebook being used to incriminate a 20 year old in his drunk driving case. Sent him to prison for two years, and the judge said he was definitely influenced by seeing the "remorseless" photos of the kid partying so recently after the accident which left a girl hospitalized.

Although it is interesting to know we should be wary about incriminating ourselves on these social networking sites (and of course blogs like these), reading the story makes me think i should fast from the news in addition to fasting from TV. There isn't much good news out there. It's all bombings, murders, protests, disasters, and anything else sensational and dramatic that the media knows we'll buy into, and we do it because it momentarily suspends reflection on our own lives, just like when we watch TV and get ensconced in the problems of the characters so that we don't have to live our own stories. Our own stories are generally far more interesting, but we usually don't think so, or just don't pay enough attention to what is happening. We all have stories though, and i bet most of them would make great plays, books, or movies.

But i digress. This whole entry is a digression from... what? From i suppose the real story which i am currently living and giving attention to, a story everyone gets involved with at some point. I've hit the two year mark in my current relationship, and say what you will, there is something magically crappy that shifts the dynamic of a man and woman's relationship at roughly this 24 month point. I've encountered it before, and I've heard others tell the same tale; it's make or break time. Those little nothing arguments have started popping up in which i have no idea what we are squawking about. As a rule i think that i am right, which of course is what both parties think, so neither one concedes the stupid debate, causing it to erupt into a series of "things you always do that make me mad." These are usually proferred by the girlfriend because she seems to have an uncanny ability to remember every conversation in which you've abased her, and likely the boyfriend only recollects upon hearing said slander. "Always is never true," the boyfriend intones, thinking his logic will quell the barrage of angry words being flung mercilessly upon him. But once Pandora's Box has been breached, closure is a distant shore. When the silence comes it is thundering. Neither one speaks. Instead they sit on the couch waiting for some change to occur which never does. Energies simply have to settle, egos put on ice, and slowly, slowly, the disagreement is catalogued and stored away for another day in court.

But hey let's be positive about this. Maybe adjusting to these minute squabbles is part of the growing process during any long-term healthy relationship. Perhaps we are discovering one another's boundaries and learning how to let go of the ego as it adapts unselfishly to someone else. i guess the only way is to be unselfish, otherwise the ego continues its desire to be right, which is an exercise in futility. i remeber this story Wayne Dyer once told about him and his wife and their occaisional battles which would be heated until he figured out a little trick. He would start to try and empathize and would simply say in utter surrender, "You know, you're right about that." And instantly his wife's missiles would be disarmed and she'd stop for a second and things would simmer down as Wayne tried to adapt to her feelings. But of course after a hundred or so "your right about thats," his wife caught on and would get pissed and feel like he was bullshitting her. At least i think that's how the story went. Point is it worked for awhile, ok? And good old Wayne i'm sure came up with some other plucky way to make peace when this method wore itself out.

Hell i don't know, but i do know it sure as hell feels better to think of positive shit than negative shit. So i choose to be positive.

And that's the end of that entry.

Teaching ESL at Google

So, i often go to interesting business locations for teaching English here in Taiwan. I've taught at several different government offices, and today i just finished a class at Taipei City Hall. Taipei City Hall is pretty close to the Taipei 101 building, the tallest building in the world and massive center of commerce for the country (unless of course the even taller building in Dubai has finished construction, in which case 101 is now number 2). So next week i'm going to start teaching at Google in Taipei 101, which is pretty interesting considering i often tap away in the Google search engine, and yet have never had a more concrete experience of the company. I didn't even know they had an office in Taipei. Go figure. So it should be interesting and will hopefully have a good view since the office is on the 36th floor of the building.

Small Legs Dangling

Riding home the other night i saw this woman sitting on the back of a scooter in front of me. i looked down at her legs and saw that they were abnormally small and scrawny. Then it occurred to me that these were a third pair of legs, in between her's and the driver's. They were a child's. Now this in itself is not a strange phenomenon. i see little kids dangling from scooters all the time around here. What was strange was the optical illusion that three pairs of legs smooshed together created for me as i sat atop my own motorcycle. And the fact that the legs in question did indeed belong to a child reemphasized to me the appalling nature of such a frail body having quite a lack of protection.

The other day i saw a man cruising his scooter across the street at no small speed with 3 children crowded together in front of him with no helmets. To the kids i'm sure it's super fun careening around with the wind in their faces and the objects speeding by. To the parents it must simply be a matter of necessity. I'm not sure why it isn't illegal to barrel down the road with a few helmetless kids on a scooter, but i've never heard of anyone getting a ticket for it.

Teaching

I have to admit i am a lazy teacher. Lazy meaning i do the least possible work to produce the end result, i.e. student learns a little something and is happy for having been there, which makes him come back. The happiness is the key ingredient, that and simplicity. Today i was thinking it's high time i started teaching how to teach. Why the hell not? i've been doing this crap for almost 7 years! can you believe that?! Where on God's green earth has the time gone? So recently i've realized the manifestation of a pattern that i previously was only slightly aware of. It's a pattern of teaching, specifically related to larger group classes, 15 or more. i teach alot of private students - in fact i mostly teach one on one - so the culmination of my group teaching skills have been slow to manifest.

Basically i come in, make some chit chat to make people comfortable, then i make em chit chat with each other to loosen up their respective tongues. After that i bust out a dead easy to follow grammar page with pictures - everybody loves pictures - and after they've robotically done the drills i make everyone walk around the room and use cues that i've written on the board to interact with each other. They like this. For some reason it is funny. i haven't figured out that part yet. To me it is just beautifully killing time. Next, i give them new vocab words from a pre-arranged sheet that also has discussion questions using the new words. This is brilliant. It almost completely takes the teacher out of the equation so he or she can sit back and play video games on their cell phones.

Then there is the classic, guess what word i am holding on the little scrap of paper that Kurt gave me. They have to desribe the word without saying it. They love this one too, and again it gets em up and interacting, hopefully not with me.

So these are some examples of my master plan of success through laziness.

Not bragging or anything, i've gotten lots of repeat business and positive feedback, students wanting me to keep being their teacher and whatnot. It doesnt go to my head or anything (i am the greatest man that ever lived), but today i was thinking shit; i know how to maximize student talking time in class, make everyone feel smart and happy, and get them feeling like i did all the work, when in fact i did next to nothing. If this crap isn't marketable, then i don't know what is! That's when the thought occurred that i should take my show on the road and make people pay me to train their teachers. However,our company doesn't have any such program for incoming instructors. They - along with most Taiwanese companies - pretty much throw you in the water and see if you can swim. If you can, you get more students. If not, good luck. So my crafty plan may have no market value after all. Still, i gotta try. And if i get paid to teach teachers how to be lazy and be loved for it, i rule!

But hey, i rule anyway.

My Hood

I walk out my front door and dont almost get hit by cars like i did in several of my old neighborhoods. Thats because in front of my current place theres a driveway of sorts, so there is space between the apartment's front door, and the scooters which occaisionally zoom by. Actually my hood is quite quiet, considering its Taipei, and considering the number of shops just down the road from me. i guess the only reason my particular road isnt positively insane is because its a pretty narrow one-laner; traffic has to be pretty careful when it squeezes through.

There are construction noises here and there. Not monotonous ones like you get some places. There is the sound of people coming and going from the parking garage right behind my house (i am on the first floor so i hear it all too clearly). It is one of those vertical jobs where the cars are basically stacked atop one another. When they come out - or go in, i am not sure which - the parking attendant always bellows "Lai lai lai lai lai (pronounced lie)" which means come. He wails pretty regularly, and sometimes it is annoying, but like i said, the noises in this neighborhood pale in comparison to some of my old ones.

A small block away is the bustling small-shops and market street. Basically there is everything but a grocery store. There are fruit stands, vegetable ones, tea shops, desert carts, sweet potato guys, breakfast stores, jewelry stores, and a hardware store, not to mention a few restaurants, a bakery, and a convenience store. You can walk this strip in roughly 3 minutes.

Right now im drinking Organic Vitality Qi-Strengthen Tea (it should be Strengthening, but they of course dont know grammar) So this tea is supposed to strengthen my chi and stuff, which is cool. It is actually really good and i dont think people back home have ever tried such a flavor in tea before. Cant really tell if my chi points have gone up or not though. i want a refund.

So yeah, its interesting to see people literally frying things in the street, or at least right on the side of the road. Right near the organic restaurant where i eat is one or two outdoor meat-eating places where old guys use huge frying pans to cook up who knows what on a hot day. Despite the increasing heat, Taiwanese people still sit outside and eat next to the hot stoves. The air next to some of these places is hot, unidentified-cooking-substance, mixed with the smell of burning metal (from the gigantic pans). But i guess if youre into that sort of food, it smells pretty darn good.

Up and running

Yeah so like it wasnt exactly a gigantic feat to get this blog going. What is a feat is the fact that i am writing, after having been lazy and not writing much in the last two years. Ive kept a journal for so long and now that habit has died out and ive felt the absence of it for some time. One thought that occurred to me was that i have had nothing much to complain about, in terms of life in general, or women. Looking back, lots of my journal space was spent bitching about girls. But i wrote alot of positive thoughts as well, along with cool experieces ive had.

And i was thinking, i could write in my journals and probably no one will ever see them until i die, or i could just put most of it down here, and maybe somebody will feel connected to my life by reading it.

So this is the beginning, and is a direct result of supplanting one habit with another, which you can read about in the TV Fast entry. An experiment in will power. Back in highschool when i was obsessed with getting huge by lifting weights, i would go on these extreme fasts, like "no candy and soda for a year." Well, ok maybe there was just that one. No, wait. i also did another TV fast that i remember lasted a long time. Point is, i think i can turn my bad habits into productivity. So that is what im gonna do.

Thats my plan, stickin to it.

Healthy Crap?

So i am a vegetarian right? And i used to do all that fasting back when i lived with the monks, and then continued a couple years after. Recently i havent really done it, except one day here or there, because i started getting really gaseous and bloated for a coule days after each fast. My crap over the years has gotten softer. And im not sure if i should attribute it to fasting, vegetarianism, or some nasty virus that Sam picked up in India, then gave to me in Thailand. No, its not AIDS. But it gave me the most massive diarrhea of my life, and since then i swear my poo has dwindled from its once solid form.

Not too long ago i pumped a clump into a cup at the doctors just to be sure. No parasites apparently. But i crap alot, like 3 or 4 times a day, and they are usually urgent poos, not slowly percolating ones. Why do i think you want to know this? Because who doesnt think talking about poo is funny? And in this case, educational. Bet you didnt know all of this about my brown logs, or vegetarian poo. In any case, I have decided to believe that my dumps are healthy, and their frequency a sign of said health, brought on by eating lots of fibrous things. But i still wonder about fecal density... Just how soft should this shit be?

TV Fast

New Things

I've gone on a TV fast for a year, starting about a week and a half ago. The fast goes like this: i am unable to watch any program on my TV that is not educational (and that will likely be sparing, as ive never had a habit of watching educational programs, though i have been watching Brazilian Jujitsu instructional videos of late.) Renting videos is also not allowed, though i think i will amend the rules to include renting educational stuff, like nature programs (be interesting if i got so hard up for TV that i went out and actually rented nature programs). There is one exception though, which is quickly running out; i am able to watch "Kenny vs.Spenny," a hilarious reality TV show about two best friends living together and competing in weird competitions like "Who can be tied to a goat the longest." i recommend it highly for it funny factor. This show has been part of my daily ritual these days, so ive nearly finished watching all of them. After that, the fast is completely on.

So my plan is to be more productive to compensate for the old habit. im enrolling in private chinese classes a few hours a week, reading more, meditating more, and of course, writing. We'll see how i progress. hopefully i get some stuff done.