Gone surfin'

I realized that the summer is over and I had not even tried surfing.  First thing this morning, I googled surfing schools in Sydney and found one nearby at Manly Beach.  Only an hour bus ride from home.  Nice!

At the surfing school, we first did some stretching.  Then, they taught us about water safety, as the beaches here in Australia have strong rips.  We were given big, soft boards as they are much safer to use for learning how to surf.  After each of us got a board we were given a quick tutorial on how to lay on the board, and how to jump up into the surfing position on the board.  Looked easy enough.  Time to hit the water.

I was wearing a body suit so water temperature was not an issue.  First, I had to head out far enough with the board to get to where the decent waves were.  Australian waves are hard enough to get through even when you are not pulling a 2 meter board beside you.  With the board beside me, it was very challenging.  After taking sufficient pummelling by the waves, I got out far enough and tried catching a wave.  No luck.  I fell of the board immediately and did it with very little grace. Being a subscriber to "If at first you don't succeed, try again" thinking, I got right back on the board.  And right back off it, this time head first into the water.

Fast forward 90 minutes and you will see me still trying to get up on the board, and (more gracefully now) falling off quickly thereafter.  In that time, I had drank so much salt water that it had stopped tasting salty.

Just as I got back up from one of these falls, I got a full brunt of the board (the part that you stand on) RIGHT in the back of my HEAD!!!!   I could hear my teeth go 'crunch.'  I fell into the water and it took me a while to get back up.  Grrrrrr!  The culprit had blended in with the surfing crowd, so I could not tell who did it.  I was in no mood to continue after that, and taken that as the cue for me to get out of the water.  Sometimes you feel like getting out of the water, while at other times you need a good whack on the back of your head to get you to call it quits.

I have realized that surfing is much like golf or snowboarding.  Looks so simple and fun.  I can't say that I've mastered golf and snowboarding, but at least I am at the fun parts of each those two sports.  It is time to put in some time getting my surfing skills to a level where surfing is fun.

As a last note, I would like to say that I am a lucky man, because I have a supportive wife who loves me and who is proud of me for even trying.  That's all I can ask for from life!

Funny Name of the Week

This week's pick for a funny town/city name is:

MINNAMURRA

Good Habits - The beginning

Going through life, a person collects a lot of habits, some good and some bad. I have spent the last ten years trying to develop more good habits. Bad habits fall off as you focus your energy on good habits.

It is a great feeling to actually design your daily and weekly habits. That way, you will actually do the things that you know are benefical for you, as opposed to doing the things that just happen to you on that day.

For example, lets say you want to design a workout habit for the week. You decide that you will go to the gym on Tue, Thu, Sat because you know that on Monday mornings you always feel tired. You have just designed a successful good habit, because you have taking into consideration the events that prevent your from establishing the good habits (tiredness, lazyness, lack of motivation, etc.) Most people would pick Mon, Wed, Fri, without actually looking at their schedule and seeing if this is realistic. They would not consider that maybe they will stay up late on Thursday watching TV or at a friend's place, which is going to make it really hard to make it to the gym early Friday morning.

As you establish a routine, it becomes a habit. Why do people smoke? Not because it tastes great, because it does not. Not because it is good for them, because it is not. People smoke because it has become a habit!

Why do you brush your teeth? You probably can't even remember, because it is such an entrenched habit. Wouldn't it be great if you could create MORE good habits. Well, you can!

I have collected a few good habits and will be sharing them with you in the coming months. With each habit, I will share why I do it, and how I have integrated it in my life. Another reason I am writing about good habits is to remind myself for when I forget.

It is too easy to disrupt your routine with a week-long vacation, or busy week at work or school, and stop a good habit alltogether. It is kind of like a computer after a reboot. Most programs start up automatically, but not all. You know something is missing but don't know what it is. With this blog, I hope to make that life reboot an easier experience to overcome for you and me.

Your body clock

I just finished watching a great BBC documentary called The Secret Life of Your Body Clock. Lessons learned:

1. There is an optimal time for any activities based on your body clock - and it is scientifically proven.
2. Increased light intensity throughout the day had the same positive effect on patients with Alzheimer's as did prescription drugs, without the added side effects and costs.
3. Timing chemotherapy to your body clock greatly increased the effectiveness of the treatment.
4. Early risers have a faster body clock, while night owls have a slower body clock.
5. Eat big meals in the morning, and progressively smaller until supper.

Your body clock is in charge of activating various hormones and processes in your body. The scientists have come up with optimal times for most of the activities. The recommendations are: getting up between 6-8am, working out between 4-6pm, best thinking is done between 10am-12pm. There is a need for a quick nap around 1pm. Let me know if you come up with a justification that your boss will accept!

Daylight resets our body clock and starts it in the morning. If you are a person working night shifts, you really have to watch your sunlight intake, and when you get the sunlight. Older people's eyes let in less light so they need to live in brighter environments. Wearing sunglasses is actually detrimental for older people, from the perspective that it allows less light in and their body clock does not get reset at appropriate times. This is one reason why they have problems sleeping. In the evening, minimize the use and intensity of light, to send the signal to your body that it is time for sleep.

There was a 3-year experiment conducted on Alzheimer patients using increased light intensity throughout the day. The scientists have found that by increasing light intensity during daylight hours for these patients, they were able to achieve positive results equivalent to what drugs could achieve. Patients had better sleeps, were able to function better, and their deterioration had been slowed down greatly. They also did not suffer from side effect that people on drugs experienced.

In the past, people ate a large breakfast, medium sized lunch, and a small supper. There is a good reason for this. In the evening, your insulin production is not at its optimum, resulting in most of the calories being stored as fat. That is a valuable piece of information.

Another interesting thing about the body clock is that some people's internal clocks are 22 hours long. They are the one's that are really tired early in the evening. Others have a 25 hour internal body clock. These people stay up later and later throughout the week. These clocks can be reset with proper use of light and darkness at appropriate times of day.

I like to learn information that helps me to 1. understand my body and how it works, 2. provides me with tools to modify the behaviour into what I want it to be. There is always something that can be tweaked to get more out of life. Never Stop Learning.

Funny Name of the Week

This week's pick for a funny town/city name is:

CORRIMAL

News is the same around the world

Over the last six months, I have been closely following several news channels here in Syndey. Some channels focus on trash and sleaze, while others try to educate and inform you. All channels seem to deliver negative information.

At a flick of a finger, you can hear where in the world people are getting murdered, mugged, or abused by their presidents, police, business or family. I realize that some of this information is useful to know, so you can make informed decisions about government, business, investing, travel, etc., but do we really need to be exposed to this kind of information every moment of every day

I have lived on three different continents, and the news has always been the same. BAD NEWS! Imagine what kind of effect this has on us, our physiology, mood and productivity. I don't know about you, but it has a very negative effect on me. It becomes harder to stay positive, harder to see the good in people, and harder to work on making this world a better place.

Few years ago, I went on a news-free diet for six months. Oh, what a relief that was! I ended up being happier, because I did not hear all this negative, fearmongering information that was pumped into everyone's heads. "Terrorists could hit us any day now." "Housing is becoming unaffordable." "You will not be able to retire with your current savings." "It is hard to find jobs."

I have decided to start my news-free diet again. If something really important is happening, people will let me know. Otherwise, bye bye current affairs. I will stick to reading science and technology news as this is actually useful news, and is rarely negative.

How does watching news / reading newspapers affect you?

Blogging more often these days

I noticed that I have been blogging more often in the last couple of weeks. I think that one of the reasons for that is that I am not as swamped with work as I was in January and February.

The other reason is that I have changed my approach to work, so I am not nearly as stressed as I used to be. Before, I was killing myself trying to accomplish as much as possible, but my contribution was not recognized. So, after adjusting my pace at work, I am still completing an amazing amount of work, but I finish my workdays feeling calm, and having more energy to do fun things at home.

Thankfully, I was able to realize this pretty quickly and adjust my approach. A lot of people get in the position of giving their all to their work and sacrificing the things that are really important, like health, family and happiness. I am not going to let that happen to me!

Funny Name of the Week

This week's pick for a funny town/city name is:

JANNALI

Money transfers are easy!

One thing that is really easy to do in Australia is to move money between bank accounts.

If you need to move a $100 or $1,000 to family or a friend, you can do it quickly and without paying any fees. The money is there the next day. Depending on the type of account you have, you can transfer up to $20,000 in one day. Sweet!

Almost nobody takes cheques here, so having the ability to move money to someone else's bank account for free is a handy feature. A lot of European banks also have this capability.

Email etiquette in Australia

I have noticed that email etiquette in Australia is pretty bad. You can email people, and then wait for days for a reply. You also never get a reply confirming that an important email has been received. This happens even when dealing with business. There are a few businesses that do reply well on average, but good email etiquette is definitely not the norm.

I make sure to send out my emails within 24 hours of when the answer was requested. I also confirm receipt of emails that contain important or actionable content. If I cannot provide a response within 24 hours, I will send an email saying so, and I send that response in the first 24 hours. It's only fair to let people know that you will be late.

Installing Windows 7

I have been running Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate) on my laptop since June of last year. This was a freely available beta version distributed by Microsoft. It was so good that I installed it on Carla's new Vista laptop.

There was one catch with this version of Windows. As of March 1st, 2010, Windows would start rebooting every two hours, and as of June 1st, 2010, Windows would stop working. Well, I finally received my upgrade discs to official version of Windows 7 last week and was frantically trying to upgrade to the official version before March 1st.

Upgrading computers from one to another operating system is a big pain. It is pain^2 if you have as many programs installed on your computer as I do. I had to:

1. Backup all my media, documents, and configuration files.
2. Install new version of Windows.
3. Move back all media and documents back to my computer.
4. Install and configure all the software that I had running previously.

This whole process took me DAYS! Having learned from upgrading my computer, I was able to upgrade Carla's computer in 1/3 of the time, but even that took a few days. Sheesh! I am not upgrading my laptop for another couple of years. :-)

Everything seems fine on the new computer except that it won't go to sleep. It just goes to black screen and does not turn off. This is really annoying, as I put my laptop to sleep all the time, instead of shutting it down.

I believe I have found the cause of my troubles. It seems that the laptop would go to sleep just fine when the wireless card was turned off. So, I looked for newer drivers for my wireless device and sure enough, it works just fine now.

Lesson learned, get the LATEST drivers for your computer if you are having problems. Hope this tip helps others.

New addition to our extended family

Just wanted to share that Carla and I are Aunty and Uncle once again. Carla's brother and sister-in-law had a beautiful baby girl, Kimberlite Mika. Mom and the baby are doing well.