Google?

I am not pickin up what's being laid down. It's not that I am not a digital guy but Google and it's many disjointed arms is Greek to me. I wanted to blog tonight, it has taken me so long to just get to where I can begin to post content, I'm worn out. Over and out.

Gettin Drunk as _ _ _ _ and eatin chicken fingers

Ok so I'm not quite there yet, but gang I'm in a bit of a low spot. I hurt everywhere, the season for construction is starting up, I fell in three holes in three days last week. Once I went right head over heals and another time I rode a ladder into a hole on my crotch, ouch. My Mom has sold her house and my brother no longer resided in Canada so it's pretty much up to me to move her. She has decided to move nowhere as she wants to travel so were selling most of her stuff and she's throwing out most everything else. I was dumping some bags she gave me to throw out and one split open and I seen all our old photos spill out. I mean 1950's photos of my Dad being potty trained, I had never even seen most of those photos before in my life. As my Dad is no longer with us I treasure anything I get of him. I spent the end of an already long day knee deep in garbage splitting open all the bags my Mom gave me. This journey I am on has been sped along with questions like "if we don't ever look at photos years later then why do we have camera's?" "Why do we build projects like model cars only to have them sit on shelves taking up space?" "What is the point of a nick nack?" "Why do we ever buy anything other than food, toilet paper and soap?" In short I am becoming a minimalist, I am putting far less value in physical things. The next time I do a project like build a model plane, I will undertake it with the comforting thought that it will sure be cool to watch it burn when I'm done. I am still very far behind on my reps but I can say with pride that today I did 200 situps in an effort to catch up. Thanks, Carson.

Glad to be back.

Thank you everyone for your patience while I was away. I will give you all a little rundown own why I was away and what I was up to. Although I own my own company locally called Cobob Pumps & Services I am also involved with a company called LevLert. My duties at LevLert are almost entirely in field application of monitoring technology. Like security and home automation products, controls for pumps and water valves, cameras, sensors of all kinds. I work with the LevLert product to implement it in the field and try and break it, push it, pull it and make it do all sorts of things that it was never designed to do. Late in February the company had meetings with Norscan Instruments the manufacturer of the product and Home Depot the hopeful distributor of the product. The head of sales had a conflict come up late and had to go to Florida for training and I was selected to fill in. Sales is not exactly my forte' but someone had to do it. I left for the trip, lost my carry on in Toronto... I was traveling with other people in the company and somehow my carry on got left on the little bus that brings you to the airport from the hotel. The bus driver just set it on the sidewalk at his last stop and drove off. As it was my carry on, I had no tag's or other identifying markings on the bag, just black, samsoniteish, with about $5000 worth of film gear in it. Mac book with 750 gig hard drive and 16 gigs of ram, boom mike, sound recording equipment, cannon D50, lenses and other small support items... Such as a Kung Fu uniform with Silent River Kung Fu Patches, my form studies and belt. To say the least I thought I would never see that bag again, especially after you consider it was left on a sidewalk, outside the airport in Toronto. I have renewed love for Toronto and all Torontonians after having received my bag back from the lost and found at the Pearson International Airport one week later.

I continued my trip to Costa Rica where I would spend the week and then back to Toronto for more meetings. My phone stopped working after the second day in Central America, all the wifi worked but no calling. I didn't suspect anything amiss as I did not expect my phone to work in Central America. I did not have my cameras but took full advantage of the phones camera to remember the trip. When I got back to Toronto I stopped in a Telus store as my phone was still not working. The well meaning Telus employee said he would have to wipe my phone back to factory and then I would be good to go. Before he did that though he sold me an SD card, backed the phone up to the SD card and went ahead with the factory reset. Well as it turns out that did not fix the phone and my SD card is blank. No beautiful pictures of the trip... no contacts... no record of how many reps I have been doing for the I Ho Chuan. Wiped clean, I was using an app to record my reps, it was a bad app but until I could find a better one it was the one I was using, all information has been lost. In addition to that when the laptop was lost I asked my wife to quickly change all my passwords, I could not do it just then as we were taking off for a 5 hour flight and a laptop in the wrong hands can do allot of damage in 5 hours. Most of the passwords work fine but my wife can't remember the password to my facebook, until William Choy replies to my request for him to verify me I can't get in, and he has yet to verify me. Facebook just chooses some of your friends to verify you and it chose William Choy for mine.
If you see him please let him know.

I am slowly coming back from my near total digital death, and this is the first blog I have written on a real computer with a real keyboard since I left. It was sure great seeing some of you at tonight's class, I missed working together on Kung Fu and having someone to push me. I do have a question for you all though, Does anyone else feel kind of weird about counting all the good deeds you do as a requirement for the I Ho Chuan? I make the extra effort to hold the door, pick up peoples dropped stuff, help people with luggage or groceries and I get thank you's all the time, it just feels weird to be counting them. Thanks, Carson.

Hay gang

I had to fill in for another sales person for a presentation and trip very last minuet. I have been away since Feb 20th. My luggage with computer was lost in Toronto so I have been a little quiet. Because my computer was lost I had my wife change all my passwords. Unfortunately I can no longer access my Facebook as we can't remember the new password. I am in Central America and can't wait to get home to my family and friends.

Liberace

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has been commenting on my blog and giving me some great advice in class and at the Saturday training. Friday night I Ho Chuan class was... scary, I think if anyone could run through the middle of that class and make it from one end of the room to the other it would be a talented individual indeed. Sifu Prince thank you for showing me some of the basic staff moves, I love the "nunchuck" move, I have been practicing and practicing that move. Sihing Tymchuk and the signature Liberace move. Sihing told me to make the two handed spear figure eight move work right you have to "Loosen up your hips, work it" Think Limerace. Last year I bought a guitar I have wanted for almost 20 years, the Ibanez Artcore AK - 85 with bigsby bridge. They had one at Axe music, I went to have a look, It was pearl white... I told the guy "That guitar is a little to Liberace for me" But I wanted to play it anyway to see what it was like to play the Artcore, I bought it, that thing could have been covered in sequins and I would have forked over the dough. So as luck would have it I have been learning to "Work my hips" and I think I will two hand figure eighting in now time! Thanks everyone for the work out diet tips as well, cant wait to swap some recipes.

Messing with the Kernel

It's not that I have had writers block or anything, the ideas just keep coming, but coming up with the time to blog is of course one of the biggest challenges. The main idea that has been consuming me lately is that on my journey I have been seeking change. In order to change you have to consume yourself with focus on those things that you want to change, negative things about yourself. Focusing so wholly on what is wrong with your personal chemistry can be disheartening. Thinking back I would say to myself "Ok so your disorganized, even though you often forget to accomplish the things you promised to do, you are always good intentioned and with enough pressure will finish what you start" I think to myself now the only thing I finish once started are things like climbing an ice wall, where I have no choice but to go up or down. Now let talk about pressure... many things motivate different people. When I was talked into being a car salesman, by my brother... I remember Jimmy Piatrarca my sales manager pulling me into his office. He said to me " Did you inherit a lot of money, did you win the lottery? Why can't I motivate you with the promise of a bonus like all the other guys. You make just enough to survive and then stop, you go on holiday!" Jimmy brought to light a great truth about me, I am not motivated by money or material wealth... don't start celebrating yet. I asked myself "What motivates me?" The answer PAIN. I won't begin to achieve my true potential until I am up against a wall and I am about to loose it all. Then I pull out all the stop's kick some butt and deliver like never before. It is however very difficult for those around me to maintain relationships when the boat needs to rock that badly to get things moving. The question I put forward is this "Can you change something so fundamental as what motivates you at your core" For those of you that know a bit about computer programming, at the heart of any program is a kernel, so I am looking at messing with the Kernel.

The confession

     I am not Catholic, but this is probably going to seem more like a confession than a blog... I had a plan, I believed in the plan but life has thrown a bit of a curve ball and my plan is out the window. You see I wanted to succeed at the I Ho Chuan and so I knew I needed to loose weight in order to have a chance of completing the physical components. I went on a very restrictive diet... Too restrictive, it was so few calories I almost passed out at Kung Fu, my head was spinning and my heart was racing, for the first time during warm up I had to remove myself to the back of the class. I consulted my Dr. as well as some other trusted advisers and the result is, I am no longer on the restrictive diet. If I am going to complete the physical component of the I Ho Chuan I will need to train and have that training change my body so I have a chance of completing successfully. I guess I thought the diet was a bit of a card up my sleeve, I was going to loose 65 lbs and sail through the physical components with no problems. I mean wouldn't your pushups get easier if you lost 65 lbs?Now those extra pounds are going to be with me on every push up, every sit up, every mile. Until they just aren't there anymore.



 

I guess this is as good a time as any to let everyone on my team know that I have eating issues. An addiction to bad foods that has left me in poor physical condition. It has been a long fight and I am slowly winning as I adopt better habits and loose bad habits. In 2007 I was as heavy as I hope I ever get at 310lbs, today I weigh 265 lbs but only a couple of years ago I was down to 212 and I felt great. I had used the restrictive diet to achieve the results and it was not sustainable so in the words of Sifu Brinker "Whatever you implement to loose the weight has to be sustainable otherwise whatever you achieve will not be sustainable." I hope that paraphrase is close Sifu Brinker, I didn't write it down.

     The card up my sleeve is out, I have no more secret cards to play I am going to have to do this the hard way one push up at a time forcing my Body to change in order to survive the on slot of 50,000 anythings. I wanted to quit before the I Ho Chuan officially started, I was having second thoughts, the idea of "There is no quitting" made me want to withdraw, I thought to myself "Withdrawing isn't quitting is it? No, everyone will understand. If hasn't started then it's not quitting." I couldn't do it, I am committed no matter what happens. I am drastically behind in my Push Ups and Sit Ups, Ok so I took the first week off. Well not off but I only did 200 sit-ups, 40 Push Ups and walked 7.5 miles. I have some work to do.

Which brings me to my next point, I am the hare, not the tortoise. This is probably my greatest challenge. In business, as I am a business owner, I do nothing then I run like crazy any make a prolific amount of money, then nothing and cycle continues. Since I was a child I was like this, and I convinced myself that I wasn't flighty or unfocused I was just a lateral worker doing lots of things very slowly. I would read10 books at the same time, and not finish a single one. Dozens of projects on the go with no end in sight to new ones. I would not admit to myself that I have a problem following through, finishing what I started. Well I take great solace in the idea that admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. Since I started Kung Fu I have been changing slowly and it's really freaking some people out. People that were used to who I was, instead of just saying "ya, will do that" I whip out my smartphone and say "What day and time works for you, I have Wednesday morning open" Not only have I been accomplishing more but I have more free time. I am not free of my old ways yet, it seems they are hard to break, my old habits. I will succeed, especially with a great team of people on the I Ho Chuan. As a kid I liked to watch Jerry Lewis, and this one movie in particular called Cracking Up had a skit where Jerry went to a stop smoking agency and signed up. With a 100% success rate he felt good about his chances. Anyway, any time he would go to light up for the rest of the movie a great big guy would show up and punch him in the face, just clean his clock. I may need help like that this year.