Tag: gym

My daughters will extend my life by almost three years

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Okay: recent study suggests dads with daughters have tendency to live longer, with each daughter adding on average 74 weeks of lifespan

When this story was fed to me, I couldn’t help but smirk as I often do whenever I read anything related to girldads or being a girldad.  The notion that by virtue of them being daughters instead of sons, my two girls will be responsible for keeping my ass alive for 148 weeks longer than my life expectancy should suggest, nearly three entire years, is amusing to me.  Even more so, that it’s pointed out that sons, add no extra life to their dads, comparatively.

The thing is, the story could have ended with that, and kept it vague, yet still sweet, but in this day and age, where everyone is expected to show their work, when they dive a little deeper, it’s mostly attributed to the notion that when said girls become women, they’re way more apt to nag their dads about health and preventative care, which is the primary reason why they tend to live longer.

I mean it makes sense, since harping on their dad to go see doctors and get checkups and critical milestone tests probably is more useful in the long game versus daring dad to see how long they can go without farting, how fast they can go in the rental car, or can they take a spinning power bomb off the top of the couch.  But it does take some of the sticker sentimentality away from the general headline, but not enough to where I can’t make a brog post about it.

What’s interesting to me though, is that I wonder how much truth this will hold in my particular case.  A lot of the longevity is attributed to what seems like a bunch of out-of-shape dads who view their children as a sudden reason to get into better health and pick up better habits, which would naturally be beneficial to their life expectancy.

I’m no Zac Efron, but I’ve always been consistent and routinely with exercise, and mythical wife has already gotten a handle on egging me to go to the doctor at least for annuals, so the things that my daughters would’ve been expected to drive me to do in order to give me 148 weeks more of living, I’m already doing.  Of course, I want to be around when they graduate schools, maybe get married, or any other life’s milestones.  Maybe there’s another level of physical improvement to reach, probably when they’re not little brats who are sometimes shits about their food, and I end up eating a ton of shitty leftovers on account of not wanting to waste food.

Conversely, there’s always the easy joke about how my kids, regardless of their gender, are solely responsible for taking years off of my life on account of the sheer amounts of stress they put me through with their childish insubordination, stubbornness and constant power struggles.  Maybe that’s something that the study doesn’t account for is that daughters might each give me 74 weeks of extra life at the tail end of my life, but they’re sure as fuck siphoning a lot more of it on the front end.

Either way, let’s choose to ignore all the background noise of this study, and choose to believe that my two little girls are going to be the reason why I live three years longer than I really should be, solely by existing. ❤️

A funny thing happened at the gym today

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My gym isn’t a very large gym.  Considering the small number of tenants in the building, the people who do come on the regular are pretty familiar with the existences of one another, even if we ultimately have no idea who we are.  That being said, I think it’s never a good idea to exorcise bad habits around people you coexist with on the regular.

Every now and then, I’d come into the gym, and there was typical asshole evidence of gymslobs; weights left all over the place, not putting anything back, most likely nothing wiped down either.  But when you’re the only one(s) there, you feel like you can get away with being a slob, so a slob they were.

This is something that asshole gymslobs can get away with at like an LA Fitness or a Gold’s Gym, gyms so crowded and churning with people, that it would be nigh impossible to pinpoint who the culprits were.  But at a tiny office gym the size of mine, it wouldn’t take long to narrow down the list of regulars who come, especially if one were so determined to run the badge log to see who has accessed the gym on a given day.

Today, I went into the gym, and these two dudes whom I occasionally have overlapped with were there.  Typically, they’re fairly early goers, but I guess their schedule had something that made them be there when they were there today, overlapping with my time there somewhat.  But I noticed the two of them hit the lockers, leaving all of the shit they used all over the place; a barbell laying out on the floor, a few dumbbells left out on a bench rolled into a very inconvenient place.

Normally, I wouldn’t say anything to anyone about it and just grumble internally or blast them amongst my friends in group chats.  Society has conditioned everyone to avoid not just conflict, but just speaking to people anymore, and in doing such, invites people to be dicks and exorcise dick behaviors like being a slob at the gym and not putting the shit they use away like any normal civilized considerate human beings.

But I don’t know, I didn’t feel like letting it slide today, and I thought to myself that if I addressed them calmly and without any aggression, I could at least make them aware that what they were doing wasn’t acceptable.

I happened to catch them on their way out of the locker room, and with my hands, I got their attention by pointing to the area of the gym which they left a mess.  I just simply said to them, hey guys, sorry to bug you, but could you put all those weights away?  I thought you guys might’ve been coming back out, but if you guys are done, could you please put those weights away?

And then the funny thing happened, they didn’t scoff, put up a fuss or show any sort of defiance, they were just like, oh my bad, yeah, and then went to go pick up after themselves and put their shit back; not perfectly back in order like they probably started, but baby steps here.  I said thanks to them, sorry to bug y’all, but thanks.

Granted, after they left the gym, they probably muttered about that fuckin’ Chinese guy on their way and in the elevators, and I’ve probably made gym nemeses now and should probably start considering bringing a lock to the gym to protect my shit from now on, but the point remains, I don’t think I’m in the wrong for calling out poor behavior, and by doing so in a calm and best-as-I-could non-confrontational manner, the poor behavior was corrected.

If I or anyone else never said anything to these guys, the behavior would undoubtedly continue, and honestly, one of these days, someone could get hurt, the gym would get shut down, and everyone loses.  At the end of the day, the people who have to straighten the gym out are the custodians, which are comprised of entirely smaller and older Hispanic women, and they shouldn’t have to be responsible for lugging around 30s, 40s and the 50s that some assholes left on the floor, and I would sooner straighten them out myself before them.

I get that people don’t like being told or even asked what to do, but if they didn’t do shitty things to begin with, then it wouldn’t ever have to happen.  This was entirely a situation where the only reason why correction occurred is because the violation was caught.

I don’t have a lot of faith that this won’t happen again, but at least these guys are aware that if they’re unlucky to be working out when I’m there, it’ll sit in their back of their minds that I just might call them out on their bullshit laziness, and as much as I don’t want to invite engagement, I’m hoping that they’ll want to avoid getting called out again and just do the right fucking thing in the first place.

Check it out, the lamer version of me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Inevitably when the new year begins, all gyms generally experience an influx of new goers, no matter how small a gym is, like my small but serviceable work gym.  There’s this one guy that I’ve noticed being new to the gym in my building, primarily because he’s Asian, and there are maybe like 3-4 of us in this entire building that I’ve bothered to know exist.  He’s probably around my age, give or take five years, and it seems like that he must have been casually active prior to coming to my gym, since it’s not like he’s a fat blob or anything.

But what has caused this guy to become the subject of a brog post is typically what lots of things elicit from my head do that ultimately end up as brog post fodder: questionable annoyance.

Basically by virtue of being Asian, going to the same gym I do, doing a few exercises that I do, having a similarly intended hairstyle as I do, and even wearing Jordans to the office, I’ve decided that this guy is basically a lamer version of me, ripe for criticism and immortalization in my brog that nobody reads.

Hear me out though, he’s not a lamer version of me just because he’s not actually me, it’s just that he falls overwhelmingly short in the world of standards that he isn’t aware of that I’ve set for him, making him, the lamer version.

For starters, the guy seems to barely works out for more than a half hour whenever I’ve seen him.  He does one set of a variety of things, and if there’s one thing that’s been engrained into me from exercise is that sets and repetition is where growth is, and the fact that lame me is doing one set of a few things, and then wraps it up, to me, seems like a tremendous waste of time and effort.  Like today, he did some dumbbell curls, walked on the treadmill for like five minutes, did some assisted pullups, and used the rower machine which is always a surprise because I was convinced for the longest time nobody but me used it in my building, which adds to his list of commonalities with me.

But when I hit the lockers after wrapping up my workout, he came in to start dressing out, which perplexed me considering how deep into my workout I was in when he even showed up in the first place.  Lame me couldn’t have spent more than like 20-25 minutes out on the floor, to which has me thinking, why even bother coming to the gym for such a short and inadequate workout?  Could it even be called a workout?

Additionally, lame me didn’t even shower.  I get that he had what could barely be construed as a workout, but he still went through some physical activity, and I know myself, it takes next to nothing in order for me to get a sweat broken, especially if I’m mentally prepared to workout.  And if I sweat, I want to shower, and the shower is almost as important and critical to the whole ritual of hitting the gym, to the point where if showering is not available, then the workout as a whole, can be in question on if it will even happen.

But lame me goes straight to the locker, and starts pulling out his clothes and gets right back into his office slave garb, content to be potentially sweaty and potentially stinky from exercise.

And this is where I notice his choice of sneakers, which are a two-tone navy and white Air Jordan 1’s, the best shoes there are.  Now I typically save my J’s for special occasions, but I do rock my Pandas as my daily shoes, to which Dunks are basically J1 clones, so lame me also shares a similar aesthetic when it comes to sneakers, annoyingly adding to the correlations that make him, a lamer version of me.

So to summarize, man is Asian, goes to my gym, does a few similar exercises that I do, tries to wear his hair similarly to how I do, seems to like the same shoes that I do; but works out significantly less than me, doesn’t shower, and based on his conversations in the locker room with company that I wouldn’t keep, seems to kind of be an Uncle Tong right-leaning Republican.

In conclusion, a lamer version of myself.  And to anyone who understands the gif above, I wouldn’t really lose any sleep if a similar fate happened to my lamer version as what happens to Harold and Kumar’s.

Things White People Like: Not showering after working out

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In all my years that I’ve been going to gyms, this is something that I can’t say that I’ve really paid attention to until more recently.  Maybe it’s because my current gym is very small and has a very small sample size to analyze, but it’s through this observational process do patterns begin to emerge, and lead to me being able to spout off bullshit brog posts like this one.

But as the title of this post reads, I have observed a disturbing trend that has occurred enough for me to widely brush stroke the statement that white people don’t shower after working out.

Once or twice, sure, maybe we’re short on time, maybe something has come up.  A meeting you’re cutting too close to, or the workout had been underestimated and time is no longer on our side.  But I’m witnessing the same people with regularity, who work out, and vanish into the locker room only to emerge just minutes later, with not nearly enough time to make believable that any sort of bathing had occurred.

Look, I’m not a complete psycho who’s following every white guy into the locker room after their workout, but I know from my own experience with expedient showers, that even when trying to be quick and timely as possible, I still need like 10-15 minutes in the locker room to shower, dress, groom before I’m ready to go back to the office.

These Ben Afflecks are in and out of the locker room in under 5-7 minutes in most cases, and the laws of physics are saying that these motherfuckers ain’t showering, full stop.

And it’s always white guys.  Much like myself, all the black men who also work out at my gym, they always shower after working out.  It doesn’t matter if they’re doing weights, or spending any amount of time on a cardio machine, if they exercise, they’re showering.  It’s only the white guys where it’s more of a surprise to see one actually taking time to bathe and clean themselves after a workout than not.

The thing is too, a lot of these guys I’m witnessing on a regular basis who don’t shower, it’s not like they’re doing some wimpy pussy workouts where they don’t build up a sweat or put themselves into situations where they should probably consider cleaning themselves up for the courtesy of the people they’ll spend the next half of the working day in close proximity to.  Lots of these guys are doing cardio and building up a considerable amount of sweat and perspiration, the chief ingredient when it comes to generating BO.

And then they finish their workouts, get back into their white guy uniforms and hop on the elevator to get straight back to the office.  This kind of lack of regard for the olfactory comfort of others is equal parts selfish, arrogant, disgusting and just plain dickish.

My brain can’t wrap itself around the idea of not showering after a workout.  The shower is practically the best part of the workout, the reward for taxing the body and now we can cleanse ourselves of all the sweat and strain of exercise.  I love the feeling of being clean, and especially in the workplace where feelings of positivity and physical pleasure are often being worked against, why would I deny myself something that I could realistically indulge in?

White people, man.  I just don’t understand these motherfuckers sometimes.  For as much as they think they own the entire planet, they sure conduct themselves in some truly mind-boggling, third-world manners.  I feel very fortunate that of all the white guys that I’ve seen not showering after sweaty workouts, that I don’t have to conduct any business with them; I just know that if I saw them in the actual office, I would just know that they probably reeked of varying degrees of BO, and I wouldn’t be able to hide the displeasure on my face, and nobody wins when unpleasant interactions occur.

Is this anyone else’s experience or just mine?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously, it’s arrogant of me to assume that I’m the only person in the world who deals with this on a regular basis, but who really knows; I might be the only one who thinks about it to length enough to blab about it in a brog that nobody reads.  The point remains however, that this is still a phenomenon that I deal with on a daily basis, and I’m curious to know just how much this is the case in places all around the country and the rest of the world.

But I can’t help but feel like this is a behavior that spawned from life after the murderous peak of COVID.  I’ve said it many times, that I kind of miss the COVID era, minus all the senseless death and tragedies to people who really didn’t deserve it, but if there was one thing that was really nice about the whole pandemic is that it sure as hell made the roads really, really nice to drive around on.

I never really minded the early onset of return to office, because I quickly learned how much more efficiently I worked when I was in the office setting, plus it gave me the opportunity to formally return to a gym regimen.  But the commutes to and from the office were that of dreams, being able to leave the house at 8:45 and make it to the office at 8:57, almost nobody else walking into the building, almost always having an elevator to myself.

Now, I’m fucked if I leave the house at anything after 8:35, and I usually get to the parking lot at 8:55 if I’m lucky, and there’s always a ton of other people headed into the building at the same time, and I often have to get into an elevator with 2-4 other people where inevitably someone will be coughing, peaking my anxiety about getting sick because we’re long past the days of masks in public.

And in the midst of my obnoxious commute, is a whole fucking lot of this bullshit behavior; people camping the left lanes way long in advance, because they need to get ready to get on the highway, a lightyear away.

I really feel like this really started happening after COVID, because during COVID, driving behaviors in general kind of reset all over the place, and lots of common sense behavior and tendencies were forgotten all over the place.  Left is the fast lane, right for slower drivers, right-of-way rules, all of that shit seems to have been forgotten, as lots of olds have died off and stopped driving outright, and there was even a point where dumbass 17-year olds didn’t even have to take behind-the-wheel training in order to get a license.

But left lane camping, as what I like to call it, seems to have gone way the fuck up since COVID restrictions and return-to-office mandates have come into play.  There are two major left turns that I have to make on my morning commute, and it’s ridiculous the amount of camping that goes on, every single morning, by people who want to get in their lane that inevitably takes them to the left-turn lane they eventually need to be in, as early as humanly possible, regardless of how many other motorists might need to be in them, get into them, for them to make sooner left turns than they do.

There’s a stretch that’s jump into every morning where it’s around four miles until you get to the highway; every single morning, commuters pile into the one lane that inevitably dead-ends into the left turn lane of said intersection as early as humanly possible.  It doesn’t matter how empty the adjacent lane is, people will fight gangbusters in order to get into this particular lane so they don’t have to worry about switching again for the next four miles.

And not only do they give no fucks about getting passed or how much they’re inconveniencing motorists who need to turn in one mile, two miles or three miles, nobody is going to move them out of their lane to where they might actually have to put some effort into driving.

Heaven forbid you try to squeeze in at any point, because once these types of drivers get into their desired lane, they will defend their spot like they’re a Spartan warrior against the forces of Xerxes.

Naturally, the second major left turn that I need to make every day is the one that takes me to my office building.  The thing is, there are three different ways I can enter, but they all require a left turn to get in; my preferred one is the last one, as it is the closest to my actual building, but I’m not picky, if I see that the first or the second one has a green light, I’ll do it, just so I can get out of the petty rat race of left lane campers who will trudge along in a voluminous lane, because they need to get onto the highway that’s five miles away.

And honestly, it’s getting worse; since the school year started, and commuters are in an adjustment phase to their daily routes, to account for school buses and elevated traffic, I’m finding that on my route home, there are tons of people now camping the left lanes on my way home, where this was not the case just a few weeks ago.

It’s among my biggest pet peeves now when it comes to observing the behavior of the drivers all around me, and it’s times like these when I’m stuck behind a bullshit line of cars in a left lane, while everyone in the adjacent and right-er lanes are flying by, I begin to pine for the days of coronavirus, when so many of these shitheads were simply off the roads altogether.

Thoughts on Cruising with Virgin for the first time

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mythical wife and I recently went on an adults-only vacation, probably the first one since well, we had children.  Sure, we’ve had a quick jaunt away here or there, but nothing like a four-night cruise on an adults-only line, where we had no real objective other than the pursuit of relaxation and feeling not just like parents.

So let’s get it out of the way now, yes, which meant that we were Virgin virgins, as we had never cruised with Virgin Cruises before.  We’d both heard lots of good things about them, and it seemed as good of an endeavor to embark on before mythical wife has to start preparing for the next school year.

It was kind of weird preparing and embarking on this trip, seeing as how like I’d said, we’d never really had such time away from the kids under these circumstances.  We got to fly somewhere instead of driving because the cost of two adults is way more feasible than flying five humans, where none of them are lap-rider eligible (read: free) anymore, and we had nothing but carry-ons instead of the maximum baggage allowance allowed to travel with.

I got to enjoy a legit Cuban sandwich and coffee in downtown Miami before we departed which is definitely worth mentioning considering how neither seems to be capable of existing outside of Miami and presumably, Cuba itself, but from the very start, Virgin Cruise Line seemed to be a breath of fresh air compared to other experiences we’ve had cruising in the past.

As all sorts of identification, passports, and documentation are logged in advance of travel, we basically show up to port at a general assigned time, and then we’re through in a jiffy with minimal waiting.  There was little feeling like cattle, slowly moving through the pen before we’re on the ship, and we go straight to our stateroom, where a nifty tablet is waiting that controls everything, and fresh canisters of water, as if they know the process of embarkation can be a pain in the ass and it’s important to replenish the hydration of being in South Florida.

Admittedly, I had some concerns and thought that it would temper my enthusiasm when doing some recon prior to the trip, because there were some things about the branding, the presentation and general vibe I was getting, that Virgin Cruises might be a little on the douchey side; I mean, the ice cream joint on ship is literally called “Lick Me til Ice Cream” which is about as cringey to type out as much as it is to see it on a fucking wall (but it didn’t stop us from going there a few times and enjoying some decent quality gelato), and the cruise line’s general importance placed on drinking and partying.

But a lot of those preconceived notions were put to rest pretty early on, and other than like, the temperature of our stateroom, and the occasional clunkiness of the app, I really don’t have anything bad to say about the entire experience, and I can say without hesitation that we had a fantastic experience, and we would without hesitation do it again in the future, which is all but guaranteed, seeing as how we’ve capitalized on their future voyage bait of a large amount of on-board credit for putting a deposit down for a future cruise.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Cruising with Virgin for the first time” →

Clearly I am the weirdo, for valuing hygiene

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to gym going habits, I always factor in the time I need to get dressed, take care of any bathroom needs, changing back, but most importantly, showering.  If at any point, it doesn’t seem like there’s enough time to get a shower in, I just won’t go to the gym; period, full-stop. 

I will alter my workouts and drop down from three sets of everything to two sets of everything.  And/or I will drop weight in order to ensure I’m not getting gassing and taking excessively long breaks in between lifts, all in order to make sure that I have adequate time to get my shower in, because like I just stated, if I can’t shower, then there is no workout.

Over the span of the last year, I’ve often witnessed men, and well women, who come to my little office gym to workout, and after they finish, they’re dressed back in their slave office attire and leaving within the next five minutes.  Obviously, they did not shower, which always has me scrunching up my face in varying amounts of disgust based on how sweaty and gross I think they probably are, depending on the seriousness of their workouts, which in most cases I can usually observe and evaluate while I’m doing my thing.

And I always think it’s weird and gross that people are doing this, because even if I were to hop into the gym, walk five minutes on the treadmill, do some bicep curls or some push-ups or some lat pulls, I know that I’ll have warmed up my general core to at the very least, feeling a little bit sticky and un-fresh.  I know I’d want a shower from just that amount of activity, so I couldn’t fathom doing an actual workout where my chest has started sweating because that’s the part of me that apparently starts sweating first, for your daily dose of TMI, and I don’t clean myself off.

One of my greatest fears is being the guy that smells bad, because that’s a reputation that I imagine lasts forever to those who are unfortunate to have been hampered by it.  Frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever smelled bad, but I’m also convinced that most people can’t really smell themselves, and I’m always paranoid that in times when it’s hot out and I’ve gotten some perspiration going, I am someone that smells bad and just the people I surround myself with in my life are all too polite and considerate to ever say anything to me, or perhaps I really don’t smell bad, and I’d like to keep it that way, and the best way to ensure that kind of silence remains is to keep myself fucking clean, by virtue of taking showers, especially after working out.

Plus, I just love the feeling of being all clean and fresh after a nice shower, and I’m baffled that so many other people don’t enjoy it enough to want to alter their exercise habits to ensure that they can clean themselves up too.

I asked my friends in one of our collective group chats on I were being weird by being so grossed out by people who didn’t shower, and no matter how many times I’ve brought up the topic, the answers haven’t really changed much mostly because 80% of the people in my group have muted the chat because those of us who are active are often too fucking active and they’re tired of checking in and seeing 87 new messages about inane topics like humans that smell bad.  But a lot of them are seemingly okay with it, or defending or giving excuses for people who don’t shower after working out, and it doesn’t gross me out any less, as much as it makes me think that people need to prioritize their lives better to where they should probably concern themselves with their hygiene more than they do.

Take for example, there’s one dude, who is actually on my floor, who doesn’t work out in the gym, but he goes on long nature hikes on the paths that surround my building, but he comes back sweatier than a wildebeest, and he tracks in all sorts of mud and debris into the locker room.  And then, he doesn’t shower, ever, and just gets back into his default skin, probably takes a damp towel to himself and considers himself fine to go back to the office, and I’m disgusted by him every time I see him, especially after noon, because I know where he’s been and I’m sure he’s probably a guy who smells, but I don’t want to find out to confirm.

But more recently, and what spawned this revisiting of this topic is that just the other day, an extremely high-up guy in my company came into the gym to workout.  And I’m talking about like, not the CEO of the company, but like the #2 or #3 guy in the company, someone who is on the highest floor of our building.  He’s recognizable because he’s the guy who leads off the vast majority of corporate communications and is undeniably the highest positioned guy in the company on premises, because the CEO of the company, despite adding a fourth day of mandatory in-office a week, lives in fucking Florida in a grand display of hypocrisy.

Anyway, super high-up executive guy, he’s actually in pretty good shape for his age.  White girls might even consider him a silver fox.  Does some time on the rower, does some hindu squats, spends an adequate time on several machines, working out all over the body.  Has what would be considered a pretty full workout in the process.

He vanishes into the locker room, and I’m thinking to myself, does this guy, a major high-up executive for this $2B company on the rise, come out in five minutes, or does enough time pass to where I can believe he’s taken a shower because he had a pretty decent workout?

Of course, he emerges in five minutes, in his default skin for white guys, cornflower blue oxford shirt and khakis, and it’s evident that this guy who probably makes three times what I do and is the highest position in the building, did not shower.

Obviously, going back to the title of this post, clearly, I am the fucking weirdo, because I value hygiene and cleanliness moar than the rest of the slovenly sweat hogs that I work with.  And upon further reflection, I realize that there are probably fewer people than I have fingers on a single hand that I have seen who actually shower after their workouts.  And at this point, I suppose I really can close the book on the topic, and stop asking myself and all my friends on if I’m being weird for judging people who don’t shower after working out, because it’s pretty evident that so many in the world are completely at ease with being gross and stinky in situations where they can control whether or not they can refresh themselves.