Escape from Mexico

It's too hot here in Caye Caulker right now to be outside so we've escaped into the
Cybercafe to give an update (every internet cafe in Central America seems to be called Cyberspace or Cybercafe).

Well, Mexico is behind us thank God, people are really freaking out about this Swine Flu apparently, although we had no idea until the frantic calls to our family at home in Canada. On their urging, we cut our trip short and booked it down the Yucatan Peninsula, skipping Cozumel, Tulum, and Chetumal to get to Belize City. The first bus ran from Cancun to Chetumal (border city to Belize) and it was almost snowing in there. Apryl had to get her sweater from below because the air conditioning on the ADO buses is cranked! Then after missing the first bus to Belize City by 20 minutes, we sat in a packed Chetumal bus station as everyone donned their health masks around us. After getting rid of our remaining pesos, we boarded the bus to Belize City which was straight out of the 1970s judging by the brown and tan seats, no air conditioning, and cracked windows. The drive was rather harrowing, with the driver staying in the middle of the road until oncoming traffic came, when he would swerve to the sides. Driving through rural Belize was an eye-opener, everyone was in thatched roof huts, dogs or chickens running rampant, but everyone with a smile on their face.

Arriving in Belize City at 5:20, we were shocked to learn that the last water taxi to Caye Caulker leaves at 5:30 and we hired a taxi to take us there ASAP, though we needed to hit a bank first to get some local currency. Of course it was the rush hour before Belize's labour day and we missed the water taxi, forcing us to spend a night in the dodgy caribbean town of Belize City. As guidebooks say, the city feels dodgy. We made a quick trip to the grocery store to get some beer and snacks and rushed back to our guesthouse before the sunset, as was suggested to us by the taxi driver and employee of the guesthouse. She also told me to make sure my wallet wasn't visible when we left, charming. The taxi driver took us to the Seaside Guesthouse which is a funky little backpacker house owned by a corn-rowed ex-pat hippie from California. We met some cool people (who we met up with again on the Caye) and the house had a decent view, although it was pretty expensive. Needless to say we got the hell out of there on the first water taxi to Caye Caulker.

On arrival to Caye Caulker, it was all worth the hype. This place is paradise, home to less than 1000 chilled-out locals, it's the backpacker paradise. Reggae and barefoot acoustic tunes accompany the pristine ocean views, amazing seafood, and cheap hotels. We decided we'd spend an extra couple of days here after our long trip to Belize and we're glad we did. The weather's been amazing and we haven't done much besides soak up the sun, drink cold Belikins (the local beer, and pretty much the only one available here), and meet tons of cool travelers from all over the world. Many have been abroad for over a year with no plans to go back home except for the occasional family visit every year.

Our plans have changed slightly for the upcoming weeks, on advice from other travelers and also the loaned version of Lonely Planet's Central America on a shoestring Guidebook. We plan to head into Guatemala in a couple of days, to Tikal (a favourite among backpackers doing this trip), then Panajuchel on the coast of Lago D'Atitlan where we might get our PADI scuba diving certification for $200, and then the colonial city of Antigua. From there it will be into El Salvador to attempt to learn to surf in the funky surf and fishing village of Playa El Tunco and then to the mountain village of Perquin where the FLMN held headquarters during the revolution of El Salvador. That's all we're sure of for now, and our timelines haven't really changed much.

Hope to update soon with some pictures, but the internet time on the island is fairly expensive.

Super Bowl Party Guide

The fully comprehensive guide to enjoying Super Bowl Sunday.

Beer

Super Bowl Sunday festivities tend to start early in the afternoon, and the game doesn't end until 6:15 PM and change (and doesn't finish until 4 or 5 hours after that), you need to set a marathon pace. For this reason, it's best to choose a light beer. I like the American light beers for Super Bowl for a couple reasons:

1) They usually don't have a particularly strong flavour which is great for washing down hot wings and chili.

2) They're cheaper than imports, and I'm a student. Busch light, is pretty cheap and made the top 10 for Consumer Reports light beer suggestions.

3) The American beers have all the cool commercials that you'll be seeing during the Super Bowl.

Food

I'm not a huge fan of the breaded chicken wings, which is good because wings are way easier to make without breading. Buffalo wings are a pretty good Super Bowl staple and they're not hard to make at all. Heat some oil, dump in some wings and cook them until they're goldenish and crispy. Heat up some butter in a pan, add some Frank's Red Hot and some vinegar and toss the wings in the sauce. Traditionally served with celery sticks and blue cheese dressing but no one eats that rabbit food. If I wanted to chew on a roll of dental floss I'd choose a bubble gum flavour.

Chili - I've never made this before, since my old man prefers to keep his recipe a secret. However, Stagg's makes a great canned chili that you can pick up at most grocery stores and your friends won't know the difference.

Pizza - The busiest day of the year for pizza delivery companies, but it's way easier than making your own.

Avoiding the Pre-Game

This might be a bit late, since the pre-game analysis started a week and a half ago, but do not watch the stupid pre-game show. Play some poker, re-watch a cable TV classic, or play some video games (pre-playing the game on Madden is a corny choice). Spike TV has a "When Animals Attack" marathon going on that afternoon, so...

I hate the Patriots. F U Ryan "Mrs. Tom Brady" Eastriver.

Miscellaneous Ramblings and Updates

Hello faithful reader! How's London? I'm kidding, I hope a couple of others have left this link on their RSS feed reader in hopes that I might update this masterpiece. By the way, if you don't use one, get an RSS reader. I suggest Google Reader since it runs conveniently in a web browser, allows you to share items, and makes it super easy to find cool new blogs. And we all know that anything Google has ever made is spun gold.

Alright, it's been about 5 months since I updated so here's a personal update:

I'm single, it's sweet. The downside is that of my three best friends, one is in a serious long-term relationship, one is engaged, and one is in England. My roommates are all single but make terrible wingmen as they are in school (read: have fag practice every morning and have to wake up early to get there) and our schedules are clashing right now since I'm on a workterm.

Oh yeah, I moved out of my parents house. I've been having a great time living in a student house for the first time and lucked out with cool roommates. It's hurt the finances, but I had a lot more fun last term than I ever have. It was also my most successful academic term, with arguably the toughest course load I've ever taken.

I started working out again this month. The rugby season starts up soon and I want to be in shape. I'm about 80% sure that I'm not going to grow anymore barring some kind of terrific thyroid gland issue so I've resigned myself to playing some of the positions that require speed more than strength. Since I'm pretty low on both that puts me in rough shape. The workouts have taken on a new intensity level thanks to NaNoVapor which is basically caffeine, taurine, and creatine and a bunch of other crazy stuff. You mix a scoop in like 3 oz of water and you better hope you're near a gym because it makes you want to hurt something. After a week of taking it my lifts increased by about 20%. The only issue is that you have a pretty serious crash after your workouts from the caffeine and the intensified workout. I've also dropped about 6 lbs of fat since I've been doing lots of cardio and sprint training at the track.

Some things I like right now:

Banana Protein Shakes - mmmmm.


Adam Carolla Radio Show - Funny and smart podcast.

Audiobooks - I'm on Harry Potter 4 right now, makes it really easy to kill 30 minutes on a treadmill or waiting for a bus. Just throw a couple on your iPod.

Delicous giant Samsung LCD - I picked up a mini-DVI to DVI adapter for my MacBook for like $20 and gained some significant screen real estate - THANKS DAD!

Stone Hammer Pilsener - Do yourself a favor and order a pint of this, Kick Off in Waterloo usually has it on tap.

Funniest video ever.

The Giants to upset the Pats on Sunday! I doubt I'll remember the actual game as the festivities tend to start around 1 pm, but I'm sure someone will let me know the score...likely with a Sharpie...likely on my face.

Stuff I don't like right now:

My iPod. The stupid headphone jack went awry. I took the iPod apart but the housing of the jack is pretty custom and secured to a piece of flex that would just melt if I tried to solder anything. I ordered the piece of flex from an iPod parts dealer for $50 including tax and shipping. Hopefully I can install it without breaking my iPod though. I got a 4 GB microSD card for my BlackBerry and I'm currently using it as a media player - it's doing the trick.

Wide-grip pull ups. I just can't do them, I don't know why. I can do 8-10 regular pull ups and not even 1 wide grip. Damn you Will Smith in I Am Legend.

Winter. I hate winter. Especially when I don't have the money or transportation to go snowboarding. And I think I'm probably the only Canadian guy that's never played organized ice hockey. At least I'll be in Cuba in a couple weeks. Hell to the YES!

Something to chew on (inspired by Adam Carolla):

How often do you hear of stories where people nearly die but are saved by someone arriving with a background in first aid? Or what about people that bleed out, drown, or choke because an ambulance doesn't arrive in time to treat them? Why don't we offer first aid certification in high school? Why do students instead take Home Ec. or "health class". Puh-leeze, you can learn all that on the internet these days. First aid could easily be worked in to the Phys-ed curriculum and about 5-10 years from now we would have an army of fully certified first aiders and we would save a lot more people.

Rogers sucks.

I forgot how much I hate Canadian telecommunications companies. Especially Rogers.

I've been looking forward to opening day of the NFL season all summer, and when that day finally arrived, the afternoon was bittered by the Rogers Cable monopoly. I was most looking forward to the Patriots vs. Jets game as they've supplemented their receiving core with Dante Stallworth and Randy Moss - two new huge targets for Brady. Unfortunately, that game isn't on any of the channels we get, we get the Buffalo Bills game on EVERY freakin' channel. The channel information might say that the game is on, but nope, ALL BILLS ALL THE TIME. Considering the proximity to New York and New England, you'd think Rogers might consider giving some coverage to that game but I guess they're just huge Bills fans. I guess it's Global TV's fault too, but I still hate Rogers.

Complaint #2. As my housemate Ryan and I were whining to each other about how we want to see the Patriots game, we got to talking about how much Rogers sucks at other things too. Wireless data plans. As smartphones become more popular, more people are subscribing to wireless data plans on top of their voice plans. Apparently, it's a lot more expensive in Canada, strangely more expensive than Rwanda.



Also, Rogers offers great deals such as 0.5 MB per month for $12. And if you use more somehow, it will only cost you $22/MB over. They say this will easily be enough for 10-15 emails per day. Hmmm. 15 emails per day, at 1 kb per email (essentially empty), will run you 450 kb after 30 days.

Apparently they used to offer "unlimited" data plans as well, but the fine print had the catch that anything over 25 MB is abusive. T-Mobile has a real unlimited data plan with 1000 anytime minutes for $59.99. Rogers offers 150 minutes and 25 MB for only $95 per month. Apparently Canada just doesn't have the technological infrastructure to offer a cheaper alternative.

Rugby Update

For the first time in three years I am playing rugby competitively. I played throughout high school and in my senior year ended up captaining the squad, although that was probably due to the overall inexperience of the rest of the players, and probably not due to my leadership or rugby skills.

A quick rugby explanation for all my reader. Rugby consists of 15 players per side - 7 backs and 8 forwards.

The backs are usually assigned as follows:

Back 3 - Right Wing, Left Wing, Fullback: Usually the fastest players on the side, responsible for returning kicks and known for finishing tries.

Centers - Inside Center and Outside Center: Big, hard runners who can make a pass, run straight and hard, and tackle well. The inside center is similar to a full back in Football and the outside center is more like a tail back.

Fly Half - Quarterback of the team: he decides which plays to run and who should get the ball. He is also usually the best passer (along with the Scrum Half) and best kicker on the team.

Scrum Half - Usually the smallest, scrappiest player on the team. He is a very strong passer and is the link between the forwards and the backs.

The forwards are assigned as follows:

Front row - Loosehead and Tighthead Props, Hooker: These guys are the first row in the scrum. The hooker is the person who hooks the ball back into his side with his foot when the ball is tossed in to the scrum. The props are usually the biggest guys on the team and are used for their crashing and mass (Lineman in football)

Second Row - Locks: These players are strong tacklers and runners and usually the tallest two fellows on the pitch. They are the ones that are hoisted into the air during lineouts.

Flankers: The best tacklers on the team - think of them as line backers in football.

8: The back of the scrum. He controls the ball with his foot and must be able to run like a back but hit like a forward. One of the busier players during the game.

/* Start boring stuff about me - skip if you don't have time */

Alright, in my early high school rugby days I played on the wing which tends to be where many teams put new players to learn the game. You don't get very much action out there but it is a critical position if the team can move the ball around. Later that year and for the next couple years I played in the centers and enjoyed that position immensely as you get a lot of passes but you tend to get hit really hard really often. In my final year I played Fly Half which was a lot of pressure but a lot of fun. Our team really sucked that year so there wasn't that much pressure. This year I'm playing out on the wing again mainly, but I've played a couple of games at fullback as well. This league offers a much more competitive game than what I played in high school, mainly made up of university players and wiley veterans.

I've played about 7 games with the club and we aren't doing very well (2-5) but we are starting to come together as a team. The club has 4 teams - Waterloo County 1, Waterloo County 2, Cambridge Pirates, Kitchener Knaves. We all practice together, but are in different leagues. WC1 and WC2 are in the Ontario Rugby Union Keenan I and II leagues respectively (one and two leagues beneath the Ontario premiership). Cambridge and Kitchener play in Niagara Rugby Union A and B respectively which are competitive leagues but not as tough as the ORU league. I play for the Pirates and absolutely love the group of guys we play with. Good attitudes, tough players, and they love to party after the games. The reason we aren't doing so well is because the other teams in the NRU A put their first team out every week. We tend to get the second and third string players from the club since the first string players and lots of second string players all play for Waterloo County. However, another year as a group and we'll be much more competitive.
/* End boring stuff about me */


There are so many reasons I'm attracted to this game:

1. You get to do everything! Play smashmouth and knock some lights out or play with finesse and precision. Every player on the pitch gets to tackle, kick, pass, and run. In football you have one job and you probably don't get involved in most of the game play.

2. You can play as long as you are able. Similar to hockey, soccer, and slo-pitch, there are plenty of men's leagues around the country and there is no age limit. Many places also have old-timers leagues that you can play in if you're over 40.

3. Sportsmanship. You pound some guy's face into the mud all game and then he buys you a beer after the match. The so-called "third half" is the beer up that always takes place after the match and it is mandatory. Lots of chugging competitions and sing-a-longs.

4. Culture. Due to its origins in England, the rugby culture feels very British. And its a nice change of pace. The field is called the pitch, your cleats are called boots, your uniform is called your kit, out of bounds is called "into touch", a game is called a match, speed is called pace, and so on.

5. Fitness. Rugby is more running than any other sport I can think of. It's very sprint/stop with a lot of physical contact which keeps its players in really good cardiovascular shape as well as keeping overall strength and speed up.

Anyways, we have about 3 more matches left this season and then I can finally heal for a while. Anyways, hopefully that is the last self indulgent post that comes up here. More insight next time.

iPhone Madness.

Wow it's been a while. I don't have any excuses, other than the fact that I basically haven't had anything to do this summer and now that I do (PDEng assignment), might as well write a blog entry.

Today I had the opportunity to play with a real, live iPhone and I have to say I was pretty impressed. Like any other gadget-blog reader, I've been completely overwhelmed by the iPhone news over the past month and had to start filtering out any post about the iPhone because it was getting so annoying. I don't think there's ever been this much hype about a gadget, although any news coming out of the cult-like Mac community tends to hog the newswire around release time. Despite my frustration with all the iPhone coverage, I was still pretty excited to play with one.

First impressions - sexy. Apple is known for having incredible industrial design and they have produced some of the sexiest technology out there - from the iPod to their operating system Mac OS X. I am a huge fan of minimalism and thankfully, so is Steve Jobs. The iPod managed to succeed with only 5 buttons and revolutionized the mp3 market. The iPhone has one button - home. Everything else is accessed via its glass touch screen. The touch screen has a very good resolution (both optical and capacitive) and although smudges are awfully annoying, the glass is much more scratch-resistant than typical plastic LCD covers.

Navigation is fairly intuitive with lots of flicking, pinching, and tapping. However, exiting programs was not very simple and I usually just hit the physical home button to return to the homescreen. It supported a bumch of email programs such as GMail Yahoo! etc and it was a breeze to configure my gmail account and read mail. Replying to mail was simply impossible - the iPhone keypad is as bad as the reviews say. It is simply unusable. It would be convenient if the keyboard would flip horizontal when you flip the device horizontal (as all images and web pages do) since this would make the keys a bit larger and perhaps increase the accuracy. As a BlackBerry user, I found thumb-typing on a touchscreen with no tactile feedback nearly impossible. I was typing approximately 6 words per minute.

The reason I was impressed with the iPhone was its media playback. Looking at the photos on the phone was a very enjoyable experience. You can easily zoom in/out, flick around, start slideshows, and view in portrait or landscape view simply by tilting the device (complete with pretty animations). The iPod portion of the phone was really cool as well - cover flow is just as cool as the commercial, and scrolling through songs/artists/albums flows really well. I thought there would be a character-based search option but I couldn't find it. This would really make the iPod for me. Another downside is that the headphone jack is the standard 3.5 mm but they sunk it into the plastic so that only their earbuds will fit in it (my sennheisers won't work without an adapter).

Overall, the applications all look cool, and navigating around was really cool. As a phone or smartphone, I would never buy one of these. The crappy keyboard, ridiculous AT&T contract lock-in, and lack of GPS are all dealbreakers for me. However, if Apple uses all the technology in their next video iPod, I would definitely buy one. Especially if they can mimic their 9 hours of battery life during video playback (as reported by the engadget iPhone review). Verdict: wait for the next iPod and buy a BlackBerry ;)

Anyways, I'll be trying to update this bad boy once a week from here on out. Thanks for reading.

A fitness post.

This may be of general interest, I thought I might post an entry about fitness. I've been into some form of fitness since grade 8 when I started wrestling and moreso in grade 9 when I started playing contact sports - namely rugby and football. I've picked up a lot along the way and I think it might be useful to provide some of this info for my friends and any other interested readers.

I obtained most of this over the summer of 2005 when I moved away to Ottawa and decided it was time to drop a few pounds. I will post a before and after although I am acutely aware of how embarrassing both of these pictures are.

This is the best before picture I could find, it's from the Winter of 2004 - I was about 185 lbs (at 5'7).



Here's a really embarrassing after shot I took of myself in August 2005 after around 4 months of exercise and dieting - I was around 153 lbs.





Here's what I did in terms of workouts:

I used the following four-day split:

Day 1: Chest and Triceps
Day 2: Back and Biceps
Day 3: Shoulders
Day 4: Legs

I tried to get to the gym 5 or 6 days per week which wasn't too difficult as I found a gym right across the street from my office. I would leave work at 5 and work out until around 6:45 every day.

Sample workout:

I usually did 4-5 sets of each exercise (15, 12, 10, 8, 6 reps) with increasing weight each set and 60-90 seconds rest between sets.

Day 1 -

-Bench Press (overall strength and mass)
-Incline Dumbbell Press (upper chest)
-Flyes (inner chest)
-Dips (lower chest, shoulders, triceps)

-Rope Pulldowns (good way to start your tricep isolation)
-Over-the-head Presses (any tricep exercise with your elbows straight up supposedly hit all three heads of your triceps)
-Skullcrushers (same as above)

Day 2 -

-Lat Pulldowns (V Shape)
-Seated Row
-T-Bar Row
-Deadlifts
-Bent Over Row

-Barbell Curls
-Hammer Curls
-Dumbbell Preacher Curls

Day 3 -

-Military Press with Dumbbells (deltoid mass builder)
-Lateral Raises
-Bent Over Lateral Raises (rear delts)

Day 4 -

-Hamstring Curls
-Quad Extensions
-Standing Calf Raises
-Seated Calf Raises
-Squats (with a rack)

I did abs twice per week and as you can see didn't quite get to the six-pack. I would choose 3 from the following set and do 3 sets of as many as I could.

-Fitness Ball Crunches
-Hanging Leg Raises
-Oblique Crunches
-Kneeling Rope Pulldowns
-Bicycle Kick

Cardio:
This was probably the most important part for me as I was trying to cut fat more than anything else. I did manage to increase my strength in every lift though - this probably sounds braggy. My max bench press went from 155 lbs when I weighed 185 lbs to 205 lbs when I weight 155 lbs. Anyways - cardio:

Everyday to and from work was a 4 km bike ride. Three days a week before lunch I would jog for 30 minutes and on weekends I would go for long bike rides (2 hours +). The city was beautiful and it was summer so it wasn't hard for me to keep up with the cardio.

Diet:

My diet was pretty gross and I don't know if I could ever eat as strictly again. I tried to eat 200 g of protein per day and consume around 1500-1800 calories per day in order to lose weight.

Sample Day (which was every day - boring):

Breakfast 7:30 AM - 3 egg whites scrambled, 2 pieces of whole wheat toast with natural peanut butter, one protein shake

Snack 10 AM - 1 package of plain instant oatmeal with frozen blueberries on top

Lunch 12 PM - Extra lean ham sandwich with fat free cheese on whole wheat bread and a diet coke

Snack 2 PM - Can of tuna with relish

Snack 4 PM - Protein shake with milk

Dinner 7 PM
- One broiled chicken breast, whole grain rice, steamed broccoli OR
- A lean cut of steak with sauteed onions, mushrooms, baked sweet potatoes with brown sugar, broccoli OR
- Whole wheat pasta with lean meatballs and a salad OR
- Fish and some combo of above stuff

Snack 9 PM - Cottage cheese with blueberries

I drank lots of water and coffee all day. I also supplemented with a multivitamin (important when dieting) and Glutamine (for muscle recovery). Also I never dieted on weekends - I think you need to have your cheat days to keep your sanity as well as keep your body from adapting to the diet.

Now I'm not saying this is the way to go but it might be a good starting point. Everyone is different and you need to try different things to get the results you want. Anyways, thanks for reading this boring post.