Tag: exercise

Dad Brog (#168): an odd period of calm

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even though it’s still summer break for mythical wife and kids, I’ve still been waking up at the same sequence of alarms used throughout the school year, with the first going off at a horrific time that leads with a 5.

Part of it has to do with still dealing with some lingering jetlag from returning from Asia; I’ve been hitting hard walls of fatigue at around 1 pm daily, and by 10 pm, I’m yawning uncontrollably, but I’m fighting it to one, keep myself on track for the kids’ nightly bathroom breaks, and to hopefully get back to my old bed habits.

But also because waking up at the ass-crack of dawn gives me a few hours in the morning of quiet peace; it’s not different from the time in which I regularly awoke during the school year, except now I don’t have to wake any kids up, so that time in which I had been making and serving breakfast for #1, taking a break to Duolingo before #2’s wake-up time, and then repeating with #2 before I headed off to work, I’ve just been keeping entirely to myself, doing my Duolingo with a morning cup of coffee, and then I’ve got this chunk of time of really nothing to do lately before I feel the need to start breakfast, and I’ve actually been utilizing it to do some writing over the last week or so.

Parenting has taught me that no routine lasts forever, and I should be grateful for this oddly un-parenting-like period of calm, and I’ve actually caught up with some of the topics I wanted to write about to where the only thing left to write about is the period of calm itself.

Even work has been uncharacteristically calm, also almost spookily, because my company has had a lot of turnover this fiscal year, and all of the internal clients in which my position supports went gangbusters on frontloading the year to where we’re almost at a point of doing nothing but pre-planning for 2027, barely at the halfway point in 2026.  Frankly, I don’t like how calm it is at the office, because I’ve witnessed more layoffs at this employer over the last two years than I did at six years at my prior, which makes me feel like we’re like a WWE/TKO ecosystem of employment instability, and my biggest daily anxiety is wondering if my name is ever going to show up on the bean-counters’ ledgers as being viewed as expendable and placed on the chopping block.

This is the world we live in, or at least I live in, where calm and quiet is met with paranoia and concern for the future.  What I wouldn’t give to be independently wealthy and to not have to worry about this kind of bullshit.

Next school year, both girls will be in elementary school, and will effectively be on the same schedule, which means instead of needing to be on dad-mode effectively twice a morning before I go to work, I’ll only have to do it once, and then I’ll suddenly have nothing to do until it’s time to go to work.

Going back to sleep isn’t an option, because to me, it just doesn’t seem like it’s enough time to let myself fall back asleep only to be jarred awake by another alarm, before needing to go through the trouble of waking back up again before heading into the office.  More realistically, I can see myself heading out to the office earlier, with the possibility of hitting the gym before general working hours begin because I anticipate it being calm and empty, but then that will remove the 60-75 min reprieve I give myself in the middle of the day to workout, which means I’ll ultimately net work more on a daily basis but this is about as first-world problem as they come.

Or, I can keep that time to give myself like a calm hour at home, and do basically what I’ve been doing this past week, and dick around on my phone and laptop in relative peace, possibly write, and then head to the office, closer to my usual routine.

Who really knows, although I think I already know how I’m going to treat the scenario when it arrives.  But the point remains that gaining any measure of peace, quiet and calm is always jarring and feels awkward, because parenting conditions me to be on edge and anticipating kid-related things at all times, so when things do get to actually slow down, it almost feels alien and wrong.

Thoughts on Singapore, Hong Kong, and cruising out of Asia

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although Korea was priority 1A on this vacation, 1B was very much the Disney Cruise that mythical wife booked, leaving out of Singapore.  Frankly, the way I looked at things, seeing as how both mythical wife and I had a lot of plans, ideas and goals we wanted to do in Seoul, the real vacation wouldn’t be until we were sequestered onto Mickey’s boat, and had no other choice but to relax.

Seeing as how I logged the steps probably for about 125 miles while in Seoul, a vacation while on vacation seemed like a good idea and sufficient reason to tear ourselves away from the Motherland.

But not to go overlooked, were brief stops in Singapore before the cruise, and a whirlwind night in Hong Kong, both of which added value to the trip, and seeing as how neither of us had been to either before, were good toes dipped into the water to realize that both are worth seeing again in the future.

So Singapore, we actually spent two nights before cruising out, although the first was pretty much an arrival day at night.  But with one full day and a morning, I felt like I got a good taste of the place, from a lot of walking around, as well as eating pretty much nothing but hawker stall food.

One of the observations I made about Singapore is that food is cheap, but booze not so much.  I’m pretty sure all the food I ate for breakfast and lunch on our first day didn’t cost as much as one of the Singapore Sling cocktails we had at the Line Bar.  And maybe it’s because it was at a touristy location, but Tiger beers costing the equivalent of $8-9 USD seemed kind of steep for what’s basically the Budweiser of Singapore.

Speaking of food, I wasn’t really a fan of Haianese chicken rice in spite of all the suggestions to try it.  However, the satay from Satay Street was fantastic, but if I had to name a favorite food from the entire country, it was the curry puff pastries, that I housed like four of them in my short stay.  They’re basically samosas, but still so fucking delicious.

I also made a point to go see the Merlion, which I summed up to being kind of like what the Mannekin Pis is to Brussels, some arbitrary statue that somehow has the identity of the city baked into it.

Honestly, Singapore felt kind of like the Chicago of Asia to me, since it’s such a diverse mixing bowl of cultures that all seem to converge in one harmonious city and country.  Natives co-exist with people from India, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Korea and Japan, and it all seems to work out.

9/10 for Singapore, would visit again, even if it were ball-sticking hot and humid.

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Dad Brog (#166): Back in mah’ day

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes as a treat, I take my kids to Waffle House for breakfast.  Or when I’m completely out of ideas of breakfasts for them, I throw my hands in the air and think F it, Waffle House.  Anyway, so I’m at Waffle House, my kids are going to down on a chocolate chip waffle, and out of the corner of my eye, I see a boy, probably somewhere between 11-13 years old.

He’s by himself, and he’s wearing a bicycle helmet.  A few minutes later, I see one of the very-Waffle House servers handing him a plastic to-go bag, that couldn’t have had more than a single person’s food in it, he takes it, walks out of the restaurant, hops onto an e-bike, and rode off, presumably going home or wherever.

Now before this gets too ‘back in my day’-ish, this wasn’t uncommon behavior for me, or any kids that age when we were that age, it’s just that most of the time, we were on foot, because most of our bicycles back then didn’t have adequate storage capabilities outside of dorky wicker baskets that sat at the front of your handles, and the fact that most restaurants weren’t nearly as reliant on take-out service as they are today.  Kids in the 11-13 age ranges back when I was there, were more than likely going to the nearest fast-food burger joint, and if they were taking anything to go, it was in a paper sack.

However, what this line of thinking grew curious about was the fact that the kid got on a e-bike, and after 3-4 pedals to get the bike starting, it was full-motor from there on, and before he could leave my sight, he was no longer pedaling.  E-bikes have basically become actual motorized forms of transportation for those under the age of 16 and legally unable to operate a four-wheel consumer-class vehicle.

I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing yet, but above all else, it is just one of those things that really paints the picture of how big the chasm is between kids of now, to when I was a kid, and especially to those in the generations that preceded my own.  Who knows, maybe having access and experienced with actual motorized vehicles that are expensive, and require maintenance will help build a better sense of ownership and responsibility in the kids of tomorrow.  Or, it’s the first step to heading down the path of Wall-E, where kids no longer have to walk, or even pedal their own bicycles anymore, and they’re destined to become fat immobile blobs of humanity after eating one too many Waffle House takeout meals.

Sometimes my sister and I lament about the differences of the generations, when comparing our kids to our own childhoods.  How kids today simply don’t know how to be bored and fend for themselves in a lot of applications, and how they have access to stuff like e-bikes, motorized scooters, apps to order takeout and services that can deliver all sorts of things same-day and immediately.

Much like our own predecessors lament, I suppose it’s kind of like a rite of passage for when every adult looks at the generation after them and opines, they don’t understand how good they have things.

Whenever I visit my brother, he takes me on bicycle rides, since that is something he’s grown quite passionate about since he moved to his current locale.  It’s something I always enjoy doing with him, and as the old adage goes, you really do never forget how to ride a bike.  But because he has more regular experience than I do, and for lack of an alternative, he lets me ride his e-bike while he takes his regular bicycle.

Shit weighs a ton, and is definitely not the typical bicycle that you dismount while it’s still in motion, leap off and let it come to a crashing halt on its side in the yard of the asshole neighbor, but it’s still a bicycle that anyone who’s ever ridden one can get the hang of in ten seconds.

Motor assistance is a really weird feeling at first, but I definitely see the appeal of it, and I liked having it available whenever I felt like I was really falling behind my brother, but for the most part, I was determined to pedal as often as I could.  I’d always get paranoid whenever the battery dropped from 94% to 93% and I’d be driven to try and pedal some juice back into the battery, but the point remains is that just because I had it, I didn’t really want to use it until I felt like I had to.

When I go on outdoor runs, I’ve been seeing clusters of mostly teens, now that especially school’s out down in Georgia, riding on either e-bikes or e-scooters; and the common denominator is that almost none of them are actually powering them with their legs, and just riding them around like personal vehicles.  I mean it’s cool that they’re able to get from point A to point B with less physical exertion, but not only is it eliminating any potential exercise for them, but it’s like that line from Cars: cars didn’t drive on it to make great time, they drove on it to have a great time.

Some of the best conversations I’ve had with childhood friends have often come on these leisurely, casual journeys, from one house to another, or the woods, the creek or the train tracks.

But before I wrap up this drivel, I’m curious about the people who take their motorized shit onto trails like the Silver Comet Trail, where I like to do my long-distance runs, when trying to accomplish the diminishing number of virtual runs that I sign up for.  It’s always an annoyance having to share with tryhard aggressive e-bikers, but it makes me wonder, if people motor their way for 25+ miles, do they really feel accomplished as those cyclists who actually pedaled the entire distance?

Not that I care, but that’s a curiosity that I wrap this up with.

Happy trails, Jeff

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Runner’s World: Olympian, legendary runner, Jeff Galloway passes away at the age of 80

I know that most people would look at me and not think I’m remotely what they expected to see when I say that I’m a runner, but I can confidently say at this stage of my life, that I’ve been steadily running for nearly half of my life. 

I ran intermittently between the ages of 18-23, but around the age of 24, I’ve been running very consistently since then.  I can count on one hand how many times I’ve had a stretch where I did no running that was longer than a week, and one of them coincided with both my first daughter’s birth and the arrival of COVID.  I’ve probably run more miles in my life than Forrest Gump had in the film, despite the fact that I look like a pretty unimpressive schlub on account of the fact that as much as I exercise, I still enjoy food and it’s safe to say that I exercise so that I can, eat like a shithead every now and then, and not have to put too much restriction on the stuff I eat.

I’ll be honest, other than seeing the guy’s name on a local annual run, I wasn’t actually really that familiar with Jeff Galloway until then-mythical gf got into running and wanted to train up for a runDisney race.  It was training with her did I learn what the Jeff Galloway Run-Walk Method was, and mythical gf was living proof of its effectiveness, considering she was starting from a pretty bare starting point in her running journey.

As I got older and the mileage started piling up on my knees and legs, I began implementing a little bit of run-walk into my own methods, and when mythical gf wanted to go runDisney again, I joined her, and trained up to run the half, officially.  Typically when I got real ham into running, my goal was always to be able to run the Peachtree (10K) without needing to resort to walking, which I did accomplish a few times, and although I was adamant about not being so regimented to going run-walk from start to finish, my general policy was to run as long as I could, and once I began to feel the initial fatigue, switch up to run-walk.

Needless to say, in my first few forays into half-marathon running, I was able to achieve my goals of staying under 2:30 times, and someone as undisciplined as me probably wouldn’t have been able to without learning and implementing run-walk.

So all that said, especially as a runner, I e-pour one out for the passing of Jeff Galloway, a man who strived to make the world a better and healthier place by giving the community the knowledge of run-walk, and helping inspire thousands of people who thought they couldn’t ever run distances, the knowledge, support and inspiration that they too could.

Although I wasn’t that familiar with him originally, his knowledge still made its mark on my own runner’s journey, and without adopting his methods into my own, I probably never would have been able to achieve the longer runs I’ve done in my life, and for that alone, I am grateful for his existence, the knowledge he graciously shared, and the impact he had on the community of runners and exercise enthusiasts across the globe.

The world is a less fit and healthy place without him on it.

My feet are destroyers of gear

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of my least favorite feelings in the world is when you get that tacky feeling on the flat of your food from inside a shoe, and when the opportunity is there, you take the shoe off to check, and yep, there’s a hole forming in your sock.  Inevitably, this last gasp of my sock’s integrity happens when I’m at work, or out of the house and going to be out of the house for a length of time, which means there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it for at least several hours.

No matter the tech or innovation or special manufacturing methods done by today’s sock makers that claim to be more resistant to wear and promise to last longer than the package of boring ass tube socks you can get at your local Ross for 60% the cost of retail, there is pretty much no pair of socks that my feet are incapable of wearing holes through.  Most of the time, it is outer sole of my foot where holes begin because I grew up bowlegged and it’s clear that my weight applies more pressure to the outer parts of my feet, but I’ve had holes form near my heel, of course on the outer part.

Additionally, I have toes where the nails kind of angle upward, not to mention the fact that my second toe is long and sticks out further, which according to podiatry sources, is called a Greek foot, and if I do not be mindful of the length of my toenails, they basically become little blades that gradually saw away at socks, and holes will eventually form in the toes as well.

On that note, I was putting on my treadmill shoes in preparation for a treadmill session, and I noticed that the fabric on the big toe part of my left shoe had a hole in it.  I stuck my hand into the shoe, and apparently over the passage of time, the big toe on my left foot has worn a hole through the padding and now all the way through the fabric itself.  Which is kind of interesting in how the hole is very horizontally straight like it was stabbed through, because that means my big toe nail has managed to slice a hole through the shoe, which is made more interesting in the fact that none of the running socks that I use have sprouted any holes, so I guess this was some really concentrated friction in order to cause this breach.

Where I’m getting at is that it’s clear that I have some pretty fucked up feet that are complete destroyers of foot apparel.  Socks never last long before I eventually bore holes in them, which sucks because I’ve had to toss many socks with designs of patterns that I’ve enjoyed and been unable to find replacements for.  And it’s apparent that my feet are capable of ruining shoes in ways other than simply wearing out the soles.

Seriously, I like to believe that my feet would be some ASMR channel’s dream feet, as far as repairing them.  I need to get my feet out on the internet to entice one of these channels to do their magic to my feet, so that they can make some money on the content, but more importantly so that I don’t have to pay for it at all.

It’s one of those moments where I begin to ponder that my fortune should come from having footwear that is special catered towards people like me with brutal runner’s feet that seem capable of destruction, but if I actually took the time to research on the internet instead of assuming that I’m the first person in existence to ponder this, I’m sure there are hundreds of companies out there that already are doing it, and perhaps I should be looking to them to equip my feet, instead of settling for shitty plebe gear that can’t keep up any further.

Dad Brog (#158): I’m not ready for anything prefaced by “adult”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m in the middle of one of those weekends where I’ve sparsely had any time for myself; even more so than usual.  The kids are still in this weird adjustment period of daylight savings as well as simply adapting to their general schedules, and this particular morning, they were up at 7 am, not long after I had gotten up to begin my day, and I was completely unprepared as far as having breakfast ready, but it didn’t matter that my kids were ready to begin their day.

Instead of a 60-90 minute quiet time reprieve in the middle of the day, this was a day in which there were two concurrent birthday parties happening at the same time, so mythical wife and I decided to divide and conquer and take each kid to a different party, in different parts of town.  I watched #2 plow through three slices of pizza, a ridiculously gargantuan slice of cake, and a bowl of dipping dots, all while playing a bunch of really shitty games at Chuck-E-Cheese where kids are lucky to get maybe 15 seconds of game time before the credits expire and I can’t imagine paying actual money for gaming time with such absurdly unfavorable math, and I felt fortunate to be on a timed party free-play.

Needless to say, with the kids down, instead of relaxing, I found myself playing catch-up on things that I didn’t get to do on a typical Saturday, which meant hopping on the treadmill to get some exercise, while simultaneously doing my daily Duolingo that I typically prefer to do early in the morning before everyone else is really up.  And then I decided to go run some errands while some stores were still open, all for the sake of not having to them during Sunday, when I would inevitably have to have a kid in tow while trying to do them, and by the time I’m sitting here it’s past ten, and I don’t feel like I have adequate time to really watch something from my endless list of crap that I want to watch, so I bring myself to sit here to write in my brog that nobody knows exists.

But hey, at least I got to go be on top of the drop of Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus, and watched the first two episodes on Friday night, and the show was as good as I would have hoped it would be, so that’s something remotely positive amidst feeling buried by life and looking out the metaphorical window of the world to see the United States completely at peace with itself forcibly starving its own citizens but this post wasn’t meant to be political as much as I just wanted to take that dig in lieu of making a dedicated post about how fucked America is.

However, getting to the point of this post, the biggest occurrence to happen over this weekend was undoubtedly the fact that #1 lost her first tooth, and I’m just not ready for this at all.  Because when it comes to teeth, most everyone knows that the vernacular for them are baby teeth, and when they fall out, they’re supplanted by your adult teeth, and I am so not fucking ready to hear the word “adult” at all, associated with my five-year old child.

It’s crazy, it was just like a few weeks ago in which #1 pointed out to mythical wife and I that she had a wiggly tooth, and we were both having the same reaction about how, wtf has all this time flown by to where our kid is now having her baby teeth starting to fall out.  A cursory internet search confirms that five is a fairly common age for the first teeth to begin falling out, and I have memories of my own childhood of when I had my first loose tooth, where my dad tied a piece of floss around it before yanking it out, and the vague memory of feeling like I’d been punched in the mouth, with a similar result of there being a lot of blood.

But as unfortunate as it was that I couldn’t be there when it happened, there wasn’t really much blood when #1’s first tooth came out.  I had literally just taken her to the dentist just says prior, and I saw the X-rays showing the adult teeth rapidly growing underneath and how to anticipate the first tooth to come out soon, and it was still a harrowing moment seeing those photographs of all these adult teeth starting to grow beneath the baby ones, and again I’m struggling to hear the word adult at all when it comes to my kid, because she’s still just five freaking years old.

Inevitably, like the Korean blood in her body demands, questions about the Tooth Fairy and the whole concept of getting money for teeth came up pretty immediately, and now I’ve got to start ponying up cash to put under her pillow and hope to not wake her along the way.  Plus there’s the whole question of just how much money to give for a tooth; when I was a kid, it was $2 a tooth, but my parents quashed the whole mythos of the Tooth Fairy real quick and just gave me cashmoney on the spot after an extraction.

It’s going to be a tricky next few years, given the fact that I have two kids of close age who will be inevitably be periodically dropping teef throughout the next 8-9 years, and me having to keep up with needing adequate cash to fund all these damn teef and keep up with inflation.

But heaven help me that there are anything at all in my little girls’ bodies that are considered adult, even if they’re pretty much right on schedule when it comes to the first teeth falling out.  They’re always going to be babies to me.

Unpopular opinion: weight dropping is weak

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I suppose it’s kind of an oxymoron that I preface this post with unpopular opinion; over the last few months of randomly commenting on public shit on social media, it’s safe to say that most of the opinions I have are typically unpopular and am routinely told by randos how stupid and how much of a loser I am for having them which in a way is not a bad thing because it makes me think twice about engaging anything on the internet and saving my opinions for my own personal brog where I will never have anyone telling me that I’m wrong.

But anyway, I’m at the gym, more specifically I’m in the locker room changing out to get ready to head back up to the office.  And then I hear a thud; right past the walls to the men’s locker room is the little alcove of the gym where the dumbbells are situated, and there are 1-2 benches for people to do some dumbbell lifts.  Usually once, sometimes twice in a work week, I utilize these dumbbells, especially since my gym has no barbells or any free weights that would be useful to really do some swole seshes.

A few minutes later, another thud, of weights being dropped onto the ground, after what was probably a grueling, failure-inducing set of god-knows-what to push a man to the limits to where he feels the only logical option is to abandon ship and drop their weights to the ground, completely unconcerned about floor damage, or any collateral damage of rolling or bouncing weights.  Granted, the heaviest weights available at my gym are two 50s, but considering the majority of the people in my building, it’s still sufficient if you know what you’re doing inside of a gym.

I’m in the shower, and then there’s an even louder thud, and I’m beginning to think that whomever is using the dumbbells is increasing weight in between sets and slamming heavier and heavier weights based on the sheer magnitude of the thuds.

While I’m getting dressed comes one last thud, that kind of shakes the ground, and one of those impacts that you can feel in your bones.  There’s some extra clatter, and then the sound of the weights clearly having rolled or bounced into the drywall on the other side of the wall I’m standing in front of and I’m finally thinking to myself, what the fuck, dropping weights is fucking stupid, and a sign of weakness, because anyone with any modicum of strength and control would probably be able to workout without hitting such catastrophic failure points to where they have to start slamming their weights on the ground like when Hogan slammed Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania III.

Yes, I know all about hitting failure and the importance of it in order to achieve certain levels of growth, but I actually know the guy in question who was dropping the weights like he were in a Rocky training montage.  He’s definitely not a bodybuilder, and is probably like 155-160 lbs., tops.  I know he’s into crossfit, considering the crossfit shirts I’ve seen him wearing, and it’s evident where he picked up the habit of dropping weights.  Which is fine, when you’re at the crossfit gym, and all of the crossfit clowns are flinging and dropping and slamming their weights all over the place, but not while at the minimally loaded work office gym.

Not only are there already holes and dents in the drywall from gee I wonder wear, the floors are minimally padded with an appropriate floor covering, but the fact that the floors are hollow sounding, I don’t imagine 80, 90 or 100 lbs of weight being slammed onto the ground is great for the long-term.  This isn’t a crossfit gym, and it’s barely a real gym in general.  It’s a repurposed section of an office building that had some basic gym equipment placed into it, that’s convenient for casual and/or knowledgeable exercise enthusiasts to come and get some work in, not for crossfit clowns to come in and fling shit around and lift weights with shitty form.

The bottom line is that, I think weight dropping is stupid, weight dropping is potentially harmful, and weight dropping is just weak, in general.  Fewer things seem a better indicator of strength and ability to harness that strength than being able to control not just the press of weight, but also the return of it, and I frankly don’t want to hear any nonsensical bullshit about how I’m not hitting failure and hampering my own gains.  I workout in order to maintain good health, not train for the next fucking Olympics, I’m not trying to break floors and walls and make tremors when doing so.