3 months of radio silence, a lot of things going on

One of those annoying things about having no real web access at work (nor to say any sort of privacy) is that it is near impossible to get any personal writing or work done at the office. Well you could say that you're supposed to be at the office to get work done but the the amount of time that people spend doing surfing the web and doing trivial things makes me wonder if there is any real value to having such stringent blocks on the web. There are of course other ways around web blocks to get things done but I just haven't bothered to do anything about it.

One thing that I've noticed about not doing as much online writing any more is that my depth of thought has mildly suffered. Reduction of introspection and the process of writing and reviewing written content for cohesive content works the mental muscle. Without sufficient mental exercise like muscle, the mind atrophies.

What have I been up to over the last 3 months. For the most part of Sept was brining online a new Tokyo based project for the office with large capital flows involving the movement of tens of millions of dollars in deals (the profit margin on these deals are a different story) but suffice to say that I am rather happy about what I've been able to accomplish over 3 months which was the time span of this project.

In other activities, I've been largely involved in Corporate Social Responsibility activities, which included a large amount of fund raising for a charity bike ride that was hosted in Japan this year where company members that participated needed to raise money to participate in the bike ride. I've managed to run several charity events, which netted about $3000 in profits that have been donated to the earthquake effected areas in Tohoku.

Finally outside of both activities, I've been very active with going to the gym. I haven't had a chance to make much of a note of this recently, but I've started going to crossfit, which is a popular kind of gym in the US (especially in California). The format of the gym basically includes people doing something called the "Workout of the Day" which varies from day to day and is composed of several exercises. Obviously doing this for some time, you'll do some of the work outs over again, but one thing that I like them most about this kind of gym is having a trainer which you can talk to, have them check your form, seek advise and learn how to use particular equipment that you would usually not use had you been going to the gym on your own.

I for one have been going to the gym on my own for 2~3 years before joining crossfit and never really had much success at improving my physique. I'll admit that this kind of gym is expensive (well especially for the location in Tokyo) as I am paying close to $200/month for the membership (includes 2 classes/week and use of the gym on the open gyms on Fridays). In addition to this, I also going to a standard gym that costs about $80/month.

How could you justify paying so much money going to the gym? some people might ask. Comparing this to the cost of say laser eye surgery which is in the order of several thousand dollars, going to they gym and paying a few thousand dollars for muscular augmentation with a good trainer is well worth it. In the last 1 year of training I've gained way more in strength than I have done in the last 3 years of going to the gym on my own.

By the beginning of next year I will (or will have attained):

• A 100 kg back squat (currently sitting at 95 kg)
• A 130 kg dead lift (currently sitting at 125 kg)
• A 60 kg bench press
• A 70 kg clean
• A 60 kg + push press
• Consistent ring muscle ups (just got my first one a few weeks ago)

This is simply just the strength training phase that I am going through right now that I'm performing doing during my down time at the other gym using the techniques learned from the crossfit gym. Once I've hit my strength goals, I'll move into metabolic conditioning and more upper body strength building with the goal of participating in the crossfit open.

One other benefit of going to a gym and taking group classes is understanding the upper limits of physical strength and endurance-- how strong other people are in comparison to you and knowing what is simply possible. Compared to what I knew before and how far I was willing to push myself before, I know that there are higher limits of what is possible and I've started working on that. Goes to say the real importance of having a good environment to understand context and gain motivation to push into what was thought of as inconceivable limits.