sports

Quick gym update

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Pretty pleased with myself so I thought I’d record it.

Started going to the gym in mid June. Body was pretty weak, and I’m kind of old now, but hey. Gym + rugby in mid thirties after not exercising “seriously” for about 16-17 years… why not?

I’ve been hitting it hard though, usually 3-4 times a week. Really enjoying the “noob gains” on linear progression and seeing the transformation.

Managed to hit 3 personal records today for the final session of the year. Wanted to hit the 1000lbs club (or 450kg) for combined totals on squat, dead lift and bench. Managed to get 1012lbs (460kg)! So that was cool.

150kg squat: Plan was to go for 140kg, but that felt really good. Pumped it to 145kg then 150kg and still felt good. Wanted to go for 160kg but decided to spare myself this time and stay on goal. Doing low bar squats are so much easier for me and my lack of flexibility.

200kg deadlift: Plan was to go for 210kg. First attempt my eyes nearly popped out of my head. Dropped to 200kg. Similar result. Dropped to 180kg and managed to hit that (was doing 175kg for 3 reps last week). Raised to 190kg, hit that. Raised back to 200kg. Hit that. Not sure if it was a warm up thing or just psychological. Probably both. Was glad to put 10kg on the squat goal because I dropped 10kg on the deadlift goal.

110kg bench: Plan was to go for 105kg. Went for 105kg and hit it first go. Felt ok. Decided to up to 110kg because it’s a nice number. Made that up without too much stress. Left arm is still a bit weaker. I feel I could probably pop out 115kg for one next time, maybe 120kg with a spotter. I wanted to finish on a high though so I just left it at 110kg.

My celebration was to get a chicken kebab with the lot and a beer.

More general update can come in the new year. Happy new year!

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Tere

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Life in general has been very very ok. I left my job back at the end of March and have really enjoyed all the free time I’ve had since. Who wouldn’t?

I started jogging a few times a week and was showing gradual improvement, was doing some weights in the garage, a bit of P90X on the side and even 10-12 minutes of “decent quality” skipping each session. I think it all helped a bit but I wasn’t really seeing big results for the two months I was doing it. Having a bad diet is probably the major reason why.

I also started going through some programming tutorials. I have always enjoyed tinkering with programming but never really stayed up to date or even committed to it as a hobby. I have some little ideas I’d like to try out, mostly for fun but if they’re any good maybe for a little money. I also figure that if I want to get some more work in IT in general it can’t hurt to brush up on my coding experience. Sadly I fell into a common trap for me which is to get too caught up going through tutorials and not spending enough time practising and experimenting on my own. I think I’m a bit scared my ideas will demoralise me when I discover they are inevitably more difficult to create than I anticipated. Still, there’s only one real way to progress, I guess.

Then it was June.

Our little family of three flew out to Tallinn via Singapore and Helsinki, as we often do. This time we decided to stop over in Singapore for 2 nights, primarily to give us all a chance to sleep after the “short” 8 hour flight and mentally prepare for the 14 hours of travel coming up. It’s worth it with a toddler, for everyone’s sanity. We stayed in the airport hotel, which was a great decision. Singapore airport is a fair way from the downtown area and we didn’t really want to lug a sleepy, cranky baby that far after the flight. The hotel was pretty deluxe, for us at least, and it made everything simpler. We booked it for our return flight, so there’s the proof in the pudding.

I’ve only been outside Singapore airport once before and that was in maybe 2003 or 2004. I may have even mentioned it on here. Let’s see… Yes, 2004. Fuck, I’ve had this thing a while now. Anyway, it’s still 40°C and 300% humidity there. I thought I was struggling but then I saw how sweaty our kid was and I just felt bad for them. So, I think we’ll just hang around the hotel pool this time.

We survived the trip to Helsinki primarily due to our sound decision to purchase “comfort economy” seats. It’s amazing what an extra 15cm of leg room can do on a plane. It also helps that Finnair have new planes. Finally. Finnally? I’ll pay for that option every time from now on.

Estonian summer was not bad. Perhaps a little cold. We stayed in an Airbnb through June. Cute place.

In July we moved into our new apartment. Woohoo. A nice big one. We’ve been splashing out on decor and kitchens and all those things. It’s nearly complete. It looks good.

So yes, we’re moving here to live. I even got my residency visa sorted out in August. Just in time, because my holiday visa was due to expire after another week. A bit of back and forth with immigration and forms and some stress and phonecalls and meetings and boom… Pink card.

Now we’re here until November. 5 months. Long stay. I’ve been keeping busy by working in the bar from time to time, going to the gym 3 days a week and playing rugby for the local team. I’ve lost 7kg since we arrived, which is nice. I’m really enjoying the gym as I’m making steady progress and after an initial period of crippling pain, I’m loving rugby again.

It took a few weeks for my body to adapt to the physical contact/abuse but now I can actually move about the day after a match. We’ve won the minor premiership on debut in the Finnish league we joined. The semis and hopefully grand final will be coming up at the end of September. Go Kalev!

I’ve even scored a try this season. That means no nudie runs. Phew.

Gossip.

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Suicide Girls is owned by a right winger who treats women like shit.

I’ve never been all that in to Suicide Girls, so this makes me feel more justified.

On other fronts: my project is moving slowly. So am I. It’s going to be taking a huge dump on top of my face in the next few weeks and I’m sure I’ll be grinding away for hours on end at something fascinating, like required outputs from a test file parser.

I must also get to work on performing a financial analysis on a fictional business for my “management accounting concepts” course by this time next week. Hurrah for stimulation.

I wish I wasn’t so lazy, but then, if I wasn’t lazy I wouldn’t be me. Whether to take that as a positive or not is up to you.

Last Sunday I played my first game of actionball. It’s basically netball but with some additions from indoor soccer, namely the fact that you can bounce the ball off the fencing around the court and use the fencing behind the ring to shoot “off the backboard”, as it were. There’s only 5 a side, too, I believe.

It was quite fun. It’s very fast paced (for someone who is as unfit as I am) and fortunately I only had to play for half the game, in rotating quarters. We even won, which was nice. This whole week my leg and arse muscles have been killing me and I can barely lift my legs up to move. It’s that “good pain” that people talk about. I’ve felt it before, many times over the years, as each sporting season begins. It’s never good. Why do people persist with the lies? Tell me.

A nice man from RailCorp is coming to my flat today to put more hardware in the server that I “acquired” from their offices. This should be interesting. I think I’ll have to sweep the floors a bit and wipe up all the fucking milk drop stains that Scott likes to leave on the wooden kitchen floor.

Oh yeah, Benecke and Byrne dropped by on Saturday for a quiet one. We watched Tromeo and Juliet whilst downing a couple of KBs. The next day, Benecke didn’t have his phone on and had stayed at his girlfriend’s place overnight. His mum got quite worried when he hadn’t come home or called to say where he was and started a phone call spree that resulted in me telling the truth as I saw it occur the night before versus Byrne lying about what happened trying to cover for Benecke as he assumed his mum didn’t know he’d had a girlfriend for 3 months and had been sleeping there on numerous occasions.

In the end it was all sorted out and I get the impression Benecke lost his balls to his mother’s fury. I think his upcoming 12 month expedition to France will only become more welcome in his own eyes after that.

I’m visiting my old mate Harris this Thursday night. He’s said he’ll cook a steak for me. The offer of a home-cooked dinner from some guy I went to school with and haven’t seen in years is both welcoming and a little odd. I suppose I can’t really comment on anyone seeming odd, though. It just sounds funny to get a call from a guy you’ve almost lost contact with and he says “come over to my place on Thursday night and I’ll give you some hot steak”. Undoubtedly, I’ll be there.

Mum has declared that she is coming here this Saturday with dad to “spring clean” the apartment. While I welcome the offer of free and thorough house cleaning, it’s going to be a little bit weird that she’ll be cleaning out everything in the place that I’ve lived in for nearly a year now while I’m at work. Never mind. It’ll be shiny!

Lou returns on Tuesday morning. I’ll have to make sure I have a somewhat early night on Monday so that I’m able to wake up and get to the airport to pick her up at the ungodly hour of 7:50am. Now that her return is imminent, it feels like it’s taking forever. Admittedly, the last 4-and-a-bit months felt as though they have progressed quickly, so maybe it’s just time evening itself out.

Next Saturday is a big day on many calendars. Partly due to the majority of female parents who become up the duff during Christmas and New Year. About 4 people I can think of off the top of my head are having birthday parties and another guy is coming back to Australia after spending a year and a half abroad. Good old ringo. I think he’ll be in for a surprise when he sees the current state of the gaming scene. Nonetheless, things should get a bit more interesting now that he’s back.

Fark. My feet hurt, too.

Fore.

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Played golf today at the Lane Cove golf club with Ross, Tooker and Lavery. Haven’t seen Laves in ages, it was good to catch up.

I’m my own handicap, it seems. I’ve pretty much only played golf 3 times, about 5 years apart each time. It shows. My slice is fan-fucking-tastic since it’s the only shot I seem to be able to play.

Hopefully I hold the course record for most balls lost in 9 holes. Honestly it reached around 12 balls I went through. It would have been more, but I found 2 on the way through the course that I decided to acquire.

Not much else has been newsworthy. I got an HD, a D and C for my results this semester. Not too bad. I was a bit disappointed with the C, but I figured I’d get around that anyway. That was the course I fucking hated, so I suppose I’ll take the mark. I was pleased to get an HD in project management. Woo!

Now I just have to make sure my project team gets the ball rolling well for my major project this semester. I’m expecting my management accounting (or whatever it bloody is) course to be relatively simple, so I’m confident I can do pretty well in that, too.

Bring it on, damn it.