Cable TV: Nevermore!

In the interest of saving money and saving our brains, Yilin and I decided to cancel cable TV. That's right, we don't have TV anymore. We're keeping our "high speed internet", which is only $40/month, but we knocked $70 off of our monthly bills by ditching cable TV. That's an incredible amount of money for something we didn't use that often.

According to the A. C. Nielsen company, who handles the TV show ratings, the average American watches 4 hours of TV per day. Four hours! The only way I could get 4 hours of TV-watching into my schedule would be to stop exercising and start eating dinner in front of the TV every night. Even then it would be tough, as I go to bed around 9:30-10pm.

The average American household has 2.6 people. (Well, kids are smaller than adults.) The average American month (ha) has 30 days. The average American household pays $60 per month for cable TV. Therefore, the average American household pays about $0.19 per person per hour of cable TV.

Yilin and myself definitely watched less TV than 4 hours per day, each, and probably paid upwards of $1 per person per hour of cable TV. Ultimately, not worth the price. Anyone else going without TV, or are we the only Luddites?

Triathlon

On the weekend of July 19th, Hyunmi, Mike, and Rusty competed in the New York City Triathlon. Afterward, there was a party at Mike and Hyunmi's apartment. During said party, I was pressured into agreeing to sign up for a half ironman triathlon with them. It took them all of 5 minutes to get me to do it. How sad is it that my friends know exactly which buttons to push to get me to do anything?

On July 22nd I signed up for the race, to be held on Sunday, October 5th. This gave me about two and a half months to train for the Bassman Fall Half Ironman, aka Bassman Half Distance Triathlon. This race consists of a 1.2 mile swim, 58 mile bike, and 13.2 mile run. Considering that I had only ridden a bicycle maybe 2 or 3 times in the previous 3 years, and swam even less, I had my training cut out for me. With 11 weeks to prepare, I had to get in shape. Did I mention that I couldn't swim freestyle? Yeah, I'd have to learn to do that, fast.

Rusty, who has competed in many triathlons, put together an aggressive training schedule for me. The workload varies from week to week, with the intention of decreasing the intensity right before the race, in order to be fully rested and peaked. I have been following this routine since July 28th, with a lot of success.

Basically, I exercise twice a day, everyday. On weekdays I swim before work. After work I either run or bike and lift weights. On Saturdays I usually have a long bike ride in the morning, followed by a long run in the evening. Sundays are typically even longer morning bike rides, with short runs in the evening. Once in a while I've had a morning off, or even an entire day. (Not counting days I missed entirely due to travel or family events.)

This past weekend was my toughest set of workouts yet. On Saturday I biked about 40 miles in the morning, and in the early evening I ran 9 miles. Sunday was killer. On Sunday, Mike, Hyunmi, and I rode to Nyack (in upstate NY) and back, for a round trip close to 60 miles. I was supposed to run for 40 minutes that evening, but I was dead. The return trip was hot, sunny, humid, and killed me. But it was good.

My goal for the triathlon (besides finishing) is to finish in under 7 hours. I figure it will take me about an hour to do the 1.2 mile swim, 4 hours to do the 58 mile bike, and 2 hours to do the 13.2 mile run. That's actually a slow time. Last year there were 3 people who finished in under 5 hours, another 58 who finished in under 6 hours, and only 18 people who took 7 hours or longer (a 60-year old guy took 8 hours 40 minutes, while a 59-year old guy finished in 5 hours 18 minutes).

It is sad that the medal ceremony will occur exactly 6 hours after the race begins, which means that I won't even be finished before the medalists are finished, rested, changed, and awarded their prizes. Even more sad is that Rusty has a chance at winning a medal, and I won't be able to cheer for him. Perhaps next time.

Surprisingly, my body weight is the same. I've leaned out a lot, and put on muscle to offset the fat loss, keeping me at about 191 pounds. I am in much better shape than I've been in a long time, albeit a different kind of shape since I was mostly a strength/sprint guy instead of an endurance/distance guy. However, I think this has been a fantastic way to prepare me for the winter ice climbing and mountaineering season, where endurance is important.

Yilin has been supportive, but I think she's getting tired of not spending time with me. I wake up at 5am, swim, come home to eat breakfast and get ready for work, go to work, come home and immediately leave to exercise, get home to shower and eat dinner, and then maybe spend 30 minutes to an hour with her before getting into bed at around 9:30pm. Weekends are better, as I can spend more time with her.

I'll be sure to post my results of the race, and perhaps photos if I can persuade Yilin to take some. It's going to be a long, boring morning for her on Sunday, October 5th. :)

New Job Follow-up

The morning that I blogged about my new job, Mike emailed me the following screenshot from CNN.com's front page. Read the top headline under the "Business" section. Needless to say we were both amazed and laughing after the "What the..?!" moment subsided.


The link to the CNN story is here.

My "First" Job

Well, today marks the last day of my first week at my "first" job. I used quotation marks because arguably being a graduate student is a job. (I know this because some grad students have made successful cases for unionization at their universities. Luckily, these attempts have failed at Columbia.) But I don't count grad school as a job.

Starting September 2nd, I became a permanent employee at the scientific consulting firm that I was working for as a subcontractor. (I won't mention the firms name here because I'd rather they didn't find my blog in a Google search, even though it shouldn't be searchable.) My job title is "Manager", the most generic, feel-good, and vague job title one could have. What does that even mean?

I jest. The title doesn't really mean anything to me, and I am sure that I am one of very few people in the world who's actual job title is simply "Manager". In fact, I look at it like I did the idea of being a consultant (which I am still, even if it's not my title): I'm like Mr. Wolf in Pulp Fiction.

Random Guy: "What's your job title?"
Me: "Manager."
Random Guy: "What kind of title is that? What do you manage?"
Me: "Everything."
Random Guy: "Yeah, but what do you do?"
Me: "Manage."

Ha. From now on, if someone asks me that oft-heard but frustrating* question "What do you do?", my new response will be "I manage" or sometimes just "Manage". Ha ha. That won't answer the question at all, which makes it the perfect answer. In fact, I am glad that my job title is that simple and mysterious. At first I thought "How generic and... useless a title." But now I love it.

*This could easily be the topic of an entirely different post. I realize that almost everyone, if they ask "What do you do?" really intends to ask "What's your job?", and the question is meant to be one of identity: how do you identify yourself? I take exception to the idea that my job is my identity, or that it even tells anyone anything about me. OK, you can gain some information about a person by knowing what their job is, but I would argue not a whole lot that really matters. So everytime someone has asked me that question in the past, there was an internal debate as to whether I should answer the question as they meant to ask it, whether I should be almost pretentious and answer the question more philosophically (as a question of identity), or whether to be a smartass and answer it literally ("I live, breathe, sleep, and eat"). I almost always have hesitatingly just given them the stupid answer they want to hear: my "job".

In summary, I have begun my "first" job, it's going well thus far, and I'm happy that I finally achieved permanent employ after 9 months of job hunting. It's about time, right? I'm only 30; I should probably enter the workforce.

Shaolin Temple

As Yilin and I try to figure out which direction we want our lives to take, the talk inevitably turns to one of two things: where we will live, and kids. The second topic is not much to discuss, as we both want to have children. I suppose the total number of children is still open to debate, but there will be more than 1. The first topic, however, is a bit stickier.

We can break the problem down into progressively finer detail:

1. Continent
2. Country
3. Waterfront, mountains, or both (or neither)
4. Urban or rural

Well, that's how I break it down at least. I am open to the possibility of living on just about any continent, but there are preferences. I think Yilin would divorce me if I said Antarctica, so unfortunately that is at the bottom of the list. Next to last would be Africa. As amazing as it could be, it's probably too dangerous for us to raise a family there outside of South Africa. The other five I consider equal contenders, more or less.

That leaves me with over a hundred countries to choose from still. If we eliminate those in a near constant state of turmoil, under communist or totalitarian governments, or in outright war, we are still left with a large number of countries to choose from. Narrowing things down from here requires examination of the next choice.

Yilin would like to live near the water. Be it ocean, sea, lake, pond, fjord, inlet, whatever. Well, probably not swamp or bog, but you know what I mean. I want to live near mountains. Preferably in a mountain range, but certainly within a 30-45 minute drive. I have no objection to living near a body of water, so there's always the option of living near a mountain lake, or amongst a coastal mountain chain. This clearly limits us geographically from the 80 or so countries that would have remained on our list of places to live.

The last choice point, urban or rural, is really sticky for us. Yilin would like to live in a major metropolitan area, I believe in the thick of things, if you will. Those of you who know me well are probably now laughing at my situation. This is where Yilin and I disagree the most, because I want to go as rural as possible. My philosophy is that if I can see or hear my neighbors, they are too close.

At that point, the conversation usually degenerates and no new ground is gained. This is particularly so, since Yilin analyzes the problem differently from me. She looks at it this way:

1. Montreal, or what else?

Egads. There's little to work with there, eh? ;)

Fortunately, I was able to convince her of one thing: If we have kids before we move out of NYC, and if we happen to be here when they reach the age of 4, I am allowed to send them to the Shaolin Temple USA, which is the only Shaolin temple outside of China, and it's in NYC.

This is awesome for two reasons: First, my kids will be raised as Shaolin monks and learn kung fu from a 34th generation master. Second, when I visit them on the weekends they can teach me their kung fu secrets. Clearly this is far superior than sending them to NYC public schools. (NYC private schools cost upwards of $20,000 per year, even for kindergarten.)

So, if we can't figure out where we will leave in the near future, my kids will at least be the greatest fighting machines in the world.