Fallen Earth

In November last year I wrote a novel called ”Fallen Earth”, but I left the last 20 pages of it unwritten. I wrote about 200 pages, and then I just stopped. Well, thanks to Kei, I am finishing it now and I am going to publish it in Indonesia with her help. I am almost there now, just a few more pages and I can call it a wrap. It will be an important lesson in “letting go”. I am a perfectionist and 6 months ago, I would never consider publishing it because I thought it was not good enough. It is not about making it perfect, but it is about finishing something that I’ve started which is very difficult for me. I am ready to accept it like it is and actually get it all done for once. Thanks Kei!

Speaking of, only 9 days until I go! How exciting is that? A whole new world is opening up for me and Kei. I’ve been to Asia before, but I expect Indonesia to be a lot different from China. When I was in China, I thought like a westerner and I acted like one too. I was seen as impolite and rude by most people which surprised me, but it’s just so different. I learnt a lot by being there about other cultures and ways to do things. When I get to Indonesia I will be more aware of how things are. I will still be myself, but I can use my experience from China to make it a better experience for myself and Kei. I guess the most important thing I learned from China was to not assume anything. Assumptions always lead to trouble. I somehow assumed that in big cities like Shanghai that things would be like in western cities. How wrong I was.

This will me my last “normal” day at work for a while. For the whole of next week I will have RAS (Remote Access Server) training. I’m really looking forward to it as I get to learn a new skill which will be very useful in my work. RAS is basically all about connecting remotely to computers and do troubleshooting remotely. The only drawback of having training next week is that immediately after that I will be away from work for 3 weeks and would have forgotten a lot when I get back. Oh well I will deal with that when it comes. Have a great weekend everyone!

Inside a procrastinators mind

My internet connection is so slow this morning, and it’s testing my patience. I know that I will win though, because in the end it doesn’t matter if my internet connection is slow or fast. Wait, let me start over… I was supposed to get up 47 minutes than I did and that is not so good. I kept ignoring the alarms and I do have a lot of alarms going off. I am trying to see if I can do anything about my procrastination so yesterday evening I made a lot of tasks and appointments in Outlook and it’s those alarms that have been going off this morning. Since I overslept by 47 minutes, the procrastinator gets to live another day.

It’s interesting though, I was discussing this with a friend yesterday about how I can beat this procrastination habit of mine. I am trying a new approach now, not only writing down every task that I have to do, but I also made a formula. I am a numbers person and I love stats. That is why I can run on treadmill in a training studio and not outside for real. I need to see my heart rate, calories burned, how long I have been running, speed and distance. So maybe I can take this fact and bring it do my everyday tasks and appointments. Today for example I have 6 appointments and 3 tasks. I have given every one of them a procrastination level (PL) score and importance factor (IF) score. PL goes from 0.1 to 1.0 where 0.1 is something I will do anyway and 1.0 I will do if I get a gun to my head; maybe… well you get the point. Then IF goes from 0 to 100 how important I think it is for me personally. So I multiply PL by IF and get what I call life points. I will add these points to a spreadsheet and see what percentage I am at when it comes to doing my stuff. I want to reach 100% and obviously get as many points as possible. I’m thinking of having a reward if I get a 1000 points. It’s in the test phase, but so far I like this idea a lot. By the way, if I finish this blog I get 10 points. Yeay! I can get 177 points total today. Anyone got other good ideas?

The workout yesterday was amazing. Even with pain I tried harder, ran longer and overall killed all my previous records. Now my body is going to rest until Monday. After all, the muscles need rest to grow. I am thinking of a 4 day per week routine going from Monday to Thursday and rest from Friday to Sunday.

I miss Kei, but she has no credit on the phone right now. Hopefully she will get some soon so I can hear from her.

According to my morning tasks I need to take a shower in 2 minutes. I will not get points for this though because I do it every morning and I don’t see it as a chore, but it will be interesting to see if I can keep my schedule because I have been showering at different times. Have a great weekend!

My arms and legs aren't falling off yet

So my 2 first days of this new workout regime of mine is over and I am happy to say that my arms are still attached and my legs don't hurt too much. I was expecting it to happen, but I don't mind that it hasn't. Anyway, day 3 is today. I plane to do this from Monday to Thursday and give it 3 days rest before I start torturing myself on Monday. Saying that, torture has never been more fun!

It's comfortable at work these days. Most people are on vacation so the calls are less. I get to read my RSS feeds and chat with Kei and my friends. The soup is still good and the lunch is delicious. Happy days!

Kei and myself are doing great, even though we don't call each other as often as before. It gets ridiculously expensive really fast, so we decided to send a lot of text messages instead and of course chat when we can.

Workout

So how have you all been? I've been very good, but I haven't been writing much recently. I've been sleeping a lot though.

Yesterday I was in the gym for the first time for 8 years. Imagine that! 8 years is a long time. I was in Aalesund at the time working as a graphics designer. I remember I wanted to commit to a training regime, so I paid for a whole year in advance. I went there with great enthusiasm and did a proper workout. The next day I could barely lift my arms and taking on my jacket almost killed me. I never went back to the gym. I'm hoping this time will be different though. The gym is basically for people working at Shell Oil, so it's a private gym. It is very cheap too, so it won't cost me the world like that gym 8 years ago. They have a lot of equipment and 3 rooms including a great hall for team activities.

I thought I was in pretty bad shape, but I was mistaken. Yesterday I started the workout by bicycling for 15 minutes before doing 10 minutes on the cross trainer. Then I did some leg exercises before I ran 1 English mile on the treadmill. To be honest with you, I thought I could last maybe 2 minutes running, but I could have run even more than I did. I was really impressed with myself. How did I feel after the workout? Dizzy, but great. I was really lightheaded actually, but I haven't exercised in 8 years so that is to be expected. It's a little after 5am now and I just woke up. There is no pain at all. Today I am going back there, but I'm giving my legs a rest and will work on my arms and tummy. Can't wait!

So anyone looking forward to the last Harry Potter book? I have only read the first 3 myself and watched the 4 movies. Still haven't seen the latest one, but I will. I am not a big fan, but it's a highly enjoyable series. What will J.K. Rowling do next? I mean, she is Harry Potter through and through. She has hinted that maybe book 7 isn't the end, but I kind of hope it is. I want to see what she does next. I really love her writing style which is great for both kids and adults. How do you best Harry Potter though? She will have a lot of pressure to write something great. Everyone will be looking her way. If I should ever become an author, I hope to build a readership gradually by getting better and better instead of writing my masterpiece in the beginning. Not that my first book will suck or anything ;).

Plans

Are you the kind of person that plan your days ahead, what you are going to do in the weekend? Does it work for you? I am usually not that structured, but isn’t dreams some sort of plans or is it just wishful thinking? As we grow older, we get new dreams all the time before we make our old dreams come true. I remember one dream I had when I was young. I wanted to be a professional footballer. I was playing football for my local team hoping that a talent scout would come and see what a great footballer I was. Of course that never happened, and I probably wasn’t such a great footballer anyway. Over the years I’ve probably had lots of dreams and I still do. I wonder if any of my dreams came true.

This weekend I actually had a plan and was so excited about it. On Sunday I was going to a beautiful place called Edale with my friend Katy. Unfortunately her back was a mess today and couldn’t go. So I spent today with the people I love instead, not a bad substitute I have to say. I have another plan, but it is more long term. I want to go to Indonesia for a 2 week vacation in August/September to see Kei. In order to make that happen I have to do some serious planning. The biggest issue will be money (isn’t it always). I have just started a new job, so money will have to be saved rigorously during the next months. I have the best reason in the world to do it, so motivation won’t be a problem.

Even more long term I have dreams about more regularity with me and Kei. The how and when isn’t yet planned, but things are going really well at the moment. I bought a web cam on Friday so Kei could see me “live”. She bought a webcam as well today but we had some troubles with the internet connection so I could only see her 20 seconds at a time. I’d rather have 20 seconds than nothing at all. It was fun! Her smile is just amazing.

Tomorrow is a bank holiday both in the UK and Norway so I don’t have to go to work. I have no plans, but that means there’s no chance of failure. I am looking forward to this week as my training is almost over. I have one training day on Wednesday, but then I get to do some real work. Hope everyone is having a great weekend!