sexy heavy

i was talking to my daughter a few years ago and she was telling me about winning a race and how good it made her feel. we were discussing her successes in life and how good she felt about it. which was when she brought up how others might look at her and see her as heavier than a star swimmer and captain of the tennis team is expected to be. she laughed at it and said she was happy with how she looked and felt, society might expect thin as the norm, but her body let her feel strong while she was kicking some skinny girls ass in the pool. i had to smile, because attitude goes a long way.

i have been on a roller coaster of weight for most of my life. i have fallen into a 7 to 10 year cycle of loss, maintenance and long-slow gain. to be fit, i need to exercise. i don't mean go to yoga, or take a walk, i mean hard work to burn the weight off. the last time i did this, i took a break from work and got control of both diet and exercise. i kicked my own ass as often as i could muster. i was taking my bike out into the mountains, and dragging my fat ass up hills that i didn't think i could make it to the top of. when i did find the crest, gravity added to spinning hard in the highest gear would provide an endorphine rush of speed that balanced the pain of the climb.

i dropped so much weight so quickly that summer, rumors started that i had cancer. i was actually very healthy, but even at the most dedicated, deep inside i knew i could not sustain the effort and denial it took to be 195 lbs (88.5 kg). i looked great, i felt great, i was able to take my multi-sport varsity athlete out on the bike and crack him open like a walnut as he struggled to climb with me. but it was not enough. i like to sit in front of a computer, fly on an airplane, or lay on a couch more than i like riding up those hills. i put my need to tri below my groups chance to win.

the difficult part of forcing myself to stay in shape is that i don't see myself falling out of shape. yes, i have noticed that i have gone through two sets of clothes since moving to KL. the shirts i was wearing when i first got here are now dress-down friday options for my girlfriend. i have written about being offered business cards by attractive chinese women who want me... as a client for their weight-loss program. i am not beyond understanding that people no longer see the high-school athlete, the college lifeguard, the twenty-something runner, the thirty-something cyclist or the 40 year-old triathlete. they do see the out-of-shape workaholic, who always seems to have bronchitis but who is surprisingly still happy with how he feels.

i know people who get upset by putting on 5 or 10 lbs. i am not sure if this is the norm, but i don't feel it. i have the ability to gain 5 lbs in a single week, and tend to do so when i am flying on business. the issue is that it takes me 50 lbs to really get motivated to do something about it. less than that, its just not enough of a challenge, or enough of an issue to worry about. i feel more guilt from having someone walk into my office while i am running than i do at the thought that someone sees me as fat. i would rather be a slacker for not exercising than to be accused of doing something for myself when i could be working.

besides, i am not unhappy with the way i look. i don't love the shape, but my personal impression of myself isn't something i dislike. i am not perfect, but overall i am far from worried about how i look. i can still exercise, last year i climbed one of the highest areas of the great wall, faster and stronger than the younger people around me. in many ways i have never been more at ease with who i am.

but, i have reached a tipping point. i have known it was coming, it really is getting harder to run. i feel less comfortable moving around. it's time to feel the burn, to drive the demons of my inner-slacker away. i am 46 years old, i have gotten my allergies back under-control after a week in beijing that tipped me over into two months of asthma induced coughing. work, at least this week, does not appear to be in crazy-mode so i am going to recover from the past 5 years of not taking the time to ensure there was less of me.

i ran 4 times this week, i cycled twice and all of it felt great. i weigh in at 285 lbs (129 kg), 50 lbs more than i could be. i like myself as sexy-heavy and as beaten into shape. it might be unfortunate that i do like both, if i disliked the over-achieving-weight of myself more it could be easier for me to start the burn earlier.

but happiness comes from within, and inside i am good and happy. that being said, the inner athlete needs to dig his way out. i am older, but i also know i enjoy the pain more today than i ever have. let the pain begin then, because we are now on the down hill, and that is when the speed picks up and the endorphines flow.

when i get there, just remember, i am still that sexy-heavy guy. he is inside no matter how hard i try to burn him off. and, i am always happy the ash is there.

prosecuting gandhi

when i was younger i considered a career as a lawyer. my liberal family would have hoped that i would become a defense attorney, maybe not a public defender, but someone who would stand up for the accused and provide them with the best defense possible. the problem i had with this was the collection of friends i had as an early teen. they had provided me with the insight that most of those accused were guilty. rather than getting guilty people off, i wanted to help put them away, protecting society from the mayhem.

growing up with near-hippy parents, and wanting to be the protector of the conservative social order could sound strange. but having lived in a chaotic situation, you begin to understand why rules are put in place. as one of my college professors said, "there are lions and there are lambs, you need to decide which you want your children to be". i somehow grew up with the shaggy hair, and protective demeanor of a shepard dog. sitting on the hill, watching the flock and ready to intervene to keep the lambs from the lion.

but when i came time to go to college, i did not find a pre-law track, i went education. i believed it would be better to intervene earlier, to teach the lambs to think for themselves rather than needing to be led through life through fear of the shepards crook. none of this turned out as planned, i never taught, i found a path that allowed me to design and build automation rather than social systems. but as the years have passed my desire to tightly control has been replaced with the original freedoms of the liberal environment i developed within.

spending 4 years watching the cloistered monastic communities of my university years struggle against the modern realities of the post-enlightenment years, trying to reconcile a conservative framework with the the entitlements and opportunities of the educated futures they were building, convinced me that closed was not the way for me. the portraits of human greatness ended with mahatma gandhi, the father of modern india and creator of non-violent civil disobedience called ahimsa. reading the material, brought into sharp contrast how a conservative regime can be overcome by allowing them to attempt to strangle freedoms from their people.

the intervening years have allowed me to learn much more about myself and the the world than i ever could have known during college. i have resisted change myself and felt the irrationality of trying to hold back the tide. i am currently witnessing change similar to the 1960s collapse of the conservative order of post-WW2 america. a country pushing itself in two directions at once, and feeling the tension of straining against itself.

i am very glad i didn't become the protector of conservative order i thought i wanted to be in my youth. embracing the liberalism of modern-life has given me the opportunities i have so throughly enjoyed. i once said i was not a role model. at the time i was quoting charles barkley without thinking about the new role i was taking on. a life and a half later, i recognize that i am a role model, but maybe not the one my early conservative self would have expected.

there was a story in the journal a few months ago that discussed a new book on gandhi. the title of the book is great soul, the message is that gandhi was a complex man who lived in a time when the modern world was evolving. he is also a man who embraced a celibacy while married to a woman, wrote letters to a man describing him as the love of his life, and who lost close associates from his inner circle based on his "experiments" of sleeping naked with young girls. the book only focused on these points by publishing gandhi's own words, and never drew conclusions. the book, of course, caused strong reactions from those who have put the man on a pedestal and refuse to accept him as a man with personal demons.

the issue with taking a conservative view, and attempting to defend it, is that new details come to light, and you are forced to square them with an out of date set of believes; this can cause intense pain. conservatism comes from the latin conservare "to preserve", while liberalism comes from the latin liberalis "of freedom". as the world opens up, and conservative threads continue to unwind, those who give themselves the freedom to learn and experience life are in a better, less painful, position. they are not trying to hold back the tide that is coming no matter how hard they resist.

gandhi more than the symbol, he was a man and lived a much more complex life than we were led to believe. that does not diminish what he accomplished or change the freedom he brought to his country. there is no reason to prosecute him today for the life he lived then, but there is also no reason to shy away from understanding what that life was. understanding is always better than ignoring, it gives you the freedom to adjust to the new realities.

why preserve an out of date view? its like last weeks fish, the smell isn't going away no matter how much you try to cover it up and if you continue to feed on it, sooner or later you are going to wish you were a vegetarian.

top matters

it's interesting how a small idea can begin, be sidelined and then continue to resurface, bobbing up into view at the most random of times. i picked up a book a few weeks ago, and read it with a gusto of enjoyment. since then i have formulated an exercise of discovery and ruminated on how easy it is to live life if you believe the results of the exercise. the hard part of this is understanding that pleasure is fundamental to life, but what gives someone pleasure is not what you expect.

the book i read was "the compass of pleasure: how our brains make fatty foods, orgasm, exercise, marijuana, generosity, vodka, learning, and gambling feel so good". first of all, look at that title. do you really think i could have passed that book by and not bought and read it immediately? could you have passed it by? if you could, then learning must not be one of the things you gain pleasure from, or is it that pleasure itself does not interest you. the point here is many people do not have a strong handle on what gives them, or those around them, pleasure and why.

the major discovery for me from the text was, what gives us pleasure is both learned and genetically pre-disposed. this is fundamental to a person's addictions, at the root of experience is the ability for our brains to reward and drive us towards certain behaviors. what i did not grasp was that behaviors that light up my pleasure centers do nothing for someone else. but when you feel a craving, it is the same addiction centers of the mammal brain that evolution has built to motivate us to get up seek out pleasure, regardless of what the specific pleasure is that drives you.

as i write this, i have am eating a burmese beef kabob and sharing a fruit salad with bananas, yogurt, and honey. i also have a orange and lime soda and an espresso romana (iced-espresso with lemon and sugar added). i am listening to the alternative soundtrack for catch and release, wearing cargo shorts and a t-shirt and sitting outside so i can feel the heat of the tropical weather. i am also typing away on my 17 inch macbook, which is too heavy to carry but i gave my air to my daughter and are waiting to replace it. i am waiting to raise the desire levels of making the purchase to the point that i get even more pleasure than i would get if i did it today.

every single one of the above items are based on decisions i made to bring myself pleasure. we all make these decisions all day, every day. the theory of desire at the end of the 19th century was that we made choices to avoid pain. we ate because we were hungry; and wanted to avoid the pangs of hunger. this aligns well with the late-victorian sense of morality that shied from the focus on pleasure across cultural realms. today's consumer driven capitalist society is focused on the economy, built on the acceptance of driving pleasurable "needs". i eat for pleasure, and i love doing it.

what intrigued me by the title of the book was how they equated gambling or generosity to fatty-foods. i don't gamble, i don't smoke... cigarettes, i rarely drop into temple and would never be driven to a multi-day connection with a friend; imagined or not. but, i ate a piece of lime cake last week, it was sweet and sour at the same time, each and every bite caused an explosion of pleasure for me. i am waiting to have another piece, i have thought about it all week and have only stopped myself to give it to myself as a reward for exercising this week. is this what a gambler feels when he puts money down on red and watches the roulette spin? i can't understand how that can be, i just can't understand it... and that is the point.

i was discussing this with someone i know and understand very well, she told me i am one of the top 3 people in the world who understand who she is and what gives her pleasure. in wanting to illustrate the relative pleasure of things i took a piece of paper, and on one side drew a vertical line. the top was labelled "complete pleasure" and the bottom was "almost no pleasure". i then listed the standard pleasures discussed in the book, "food, sex, alcohol, drugs, prayer, generosity, exercise, learning and gambling". i was going to force rank these, but decided there were gaps in the list.

these are the general items, and i had items i would add as my specific pleasures. i listed them out, "writing, travel, photography, reading, cooking, music". what i realized immediately was that this list would be different for each person, but that it would fall somewhere into the same force rank as the standard list. how interesting it would be to understand what gives people around you pleasure, but what about what gives yourself pleasure. make your own list, draw the line and then start ranking items against one another. you are allowed one tie on the entire list, otherwise you need to put the items above or below another item, making a decision of how much you honestly enjoy things.

i was talking to a newlywed this week. she admitted that her shopping was something her husband wanted her to do less of, and then said that she wanted him to stop smoking. i quickly explained the force-ranking exercise, and asked if shopping was at the top of her list. she smiled and shyly said, "almost at the top". not being allowed to dig into this more, i asked what was at the top for her husband. she smiled again and told me smoking was his favorite pleasure. she admitted she knew this before they lived together, and then agreed that asking someone to give up their most intense pleasure was not something you would do to someone you loved. this was always the root of the "pick your addictions" advice.

being a software engineer, i immediately jumped to the idea of using collective intelligence to match people based on their pleasures, and displeasures but that might be another blog to consider, not only that they like something, but how much they like it, and how it ranks against other items. until i build the system, you can do it yourself, rank your items, and have those around you do it too. i suggest the rule of thumb is that the items in the top third of someones ranking have to be accepted, or ignored. everyone doing this exercise needs to be honest and then you need to share the list, because if they don't match you will be a newlywed who is upset your husband does something you dislike and that he wants you to stop your pleasures.

for me, this means i need someone who loves to eat, enjoys reading and exploring language, doesn't mind my excessive use of wikipedia/imdb/dictionary.com to look up details and definitions. they must also love to waste hours in a cafe, accept an addiction to apple products and custom messenger bags, embrace an always on handphone and the effects of cyclical stress. an ability to watch shows on dvd, with heavy repetition on house, the closer, justified and dexter is a major plus, if not a deal breaker for someone who can't understand the comfort this repetition brings me.

i was explaining this last night, focused on the top third and how people may not understand how forceful the feelings of pleasure, or the drive to enjoy these things can be. i discussed the need to draw the line and allow things towards the top to be accepted, even if they are what some might not understand. my companion said angelically, " i get it..."

"it's important to be on top."

permitted skills

there are times when i go out looking for something to play with. when i first got here, i spent a year exiting the country every 3 months to keep my tourist visa status in place. the fact that this "work-around" had been suggested by a pseudo-governmental person seemed odd to me. the US is a cut and dry place, where having a work permit is a requirement to be working, and having the government suggest "work-arounds" is not expected. but getting my IC card was one the first experiences of waiting within the system, and has been fodder for complaint until recently.

the orginal process was stated to take a "few weeks", the reality was that it took 6 months from the beginning to end. this translated to two cycles of flights, while malaysia went through the procedural rigamarole of passing my application, often with no ability to get status other than "it is underway". the last 6 weeks of that process were spent waiting for two ministers to be available to stamp the visa. i remember not being sure which was more shocking, that ministers were only available every month and a half, that it took over a week for them to actually do the stamping, or that it took two of them to stamp in the first place. (there has to be a joke in there about how many X it takes to... but i would never go there)

the time and effort of employment pass processing is a common complaint in the expat community. one that the government argues they are addressing. this is related to the issues of malaysians who allegedly want to come back to the country, but can not because spouses are not able to get working permits. in standard form, the government announced early this year that a new organization, talentcorp, would be set up to streamline and expedite the processing of a new pass called the residence pass. three of the selling points on this program were:

1. it is specifically designed for highly-skilled people
2. the requirements were clearly defined
3. processing would be done in 21 days if submitted on-line

in many ways the added benefits of this program would not help me. i do not have a foreign spouse who needs an associated work-permit, my children are either to young or to old to qualify for their work permits and in the event my current role ends a malaysian work permit will not be a requirement for me. this might cause you to question why i am applying for this permit rather than simply extending my current permit that soon expires. the main reason is for the pure fun of it.

late last year i was reading an expat magazine and came across a summary of the coming program. the selling points above were outlined and i asked my companion if she thought i was highly-skilled. she smiled at me and asked why i was asking. i explained and said, "i have more than 18 years experience, i ran a consulting company for 10 years, i have managed teams on three continents, i specialize in e-commerce and mobile software development, i am a GM and i still do software engineering -- something that separates me from every other GM in the country, but i wonder if malaysia would consider me highly skilled."

so here is the update. we have been working on this for 3 months, MDeC now suggests that we apply for an extension to the existing employment pass in the event this drags on beyond the expiration date. the documentation that was submitted has now been declared incorrect, because it followed the directions. allegedly, the requirements have changed without being documented and we are in a holding pattern while someone figures out what is needed and which language it needs to be in. once the first semi-governmental organization does it's work, it will pass the application to a second semi-governmental organization, but the first told us this week they have no experience working with the second and are not sure what the overall process will be like.

as i am sitting on the side and smiling at this, its hard not to remember that this was an improvement put in place to streamline the previous process. the 21 day promised timeline has long past, the requirements are up in the air and there is apparently no way to make this go any faster. but i am still smiling, because i knew when i read the article that it would go this way. i told people that, and they looked at me like i was being unfair and was not giving malaysia a chance to prove that it could improve itself. how could they not be doing something better, the old process was a mess and three ministers, including the PM came out and spoke about the improvements they were going to make and how by cooperating they could change the impression of the ministries.

it feels good to give the country a chance to prove itself. it will also feel good to know that at the end of the process i will be told if the country considers me talented enough to be included in this program. i found not so desperate housewife's blog who has been approved, so i know it's possible for this program to work. it's good to know that housewives are being approved and executives in global companies are not sure if they will need to start exiting the country every three months and pretend they are tourists when they return.

but in the mean time, i will wait to see if i am "highly-skilled"