An American In Taiwan

I’m sure you haven’t run into any of those on the blogosphere lately, right? Right.

So, how’s everybody doing with their resolutions? Did you make any? Was your resolution to stop procrastinating, or to start working out, or was your resolution to stop making stupid resolutions you’ll never keep anyway because life is stressful enough without having to force granola down your gullet after running in place for one hour just to make up for that one moment of weakness at lunch yesterday when you should’ve ordered the salad but you got the bleu cheese burger instead?

I’m sure you resolved to go to the gym every other day, stay away from junk food, and I bet you’re kicking ass at it, too! Right? Right.

Have you ever found yourself having made changes in  your life that you never consciously meant to make? Positive ones, I mean. Things that, had you thought of them beforehand, you would definitely have thought, “Yeah, that’ll improve my life. I’ll do that.”  Like when you suddenly stop smoking or find yourself eating only whole grain wheat bread. Still, it almost seems like if those were “resolutions”, you’d be less likely to stick with them.

But, just to jump on the bandwagon (because you know how much I court popularity), I’ve been going to the gym. It’s not a resolution, oh, no. It’s a lifestyle change. Schmoopie started going to the gym when she first got back to Taiwan during winter break and went religiously five days a week for an entire month. And you can tell; she looks great. So, when she got back, I decided to go with her 3-5 times a week, depending on my schedule and/or workload. I mean, it’s not like I need to work out; I’m a regular Adonis, 5′9″ and 178 pounds of pure man meat. That is, if by “man meat” you mean “sedentary, post-beer-belly atrophied muscles and flab.”

Thirty or more minutes on the elliptical machine does a body good, ya know? It’s weird, though. I’ll spend 30 minutes pumping away with my heart rate hovering at 170 (which is where I feel like I’m actually doing work), but I barely sweat. I’m drinking water like crazy and… nothing. A little wet on the temples. I wonder if it’s because I’m kind of bald, in that most of the heat escapes through my head. That makes sense… right? Right.

The trouble with going to the gym is the obvious one: it’s boring. Exercise is boring unless you’re one of those people who naturally gets a high out of physical exertion. If you are one of them… you’re strange and I’m assuming you’ve never tried LSD. That’s why they put all those TVs in gyms: to distract people while they’re doing something they really, really don’t enjoy. The other thing you see is trashy gossip magazines (yes, I’m talking to you, Schmoopie! haha). Mindless entertainment, in-and-of itself, is not a bad thing. I’m just snobby.

No, really. I’m a total snob.

Of course, when I’m pumping away on those machines, I don’t want to watch television or read. I can’t. It takes too much concentration and it messes up my rhythm. I used to watch Good Eats when I worked out. If I’m exercising at home, I watch the previous night’s Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson because, well, he’s goddamn hilarious and he makes me forget that I’m riding a bike in my living room. When I’m at the gym, know what I do? I listen to things like the Chemical Brothers’ Live in Chile concert. It’s brilliant. What I wouldn’t have given to be in Santiago that October in 2004. The set is nearly perfect. It’s almost like it’s made to be a workout mix. It starts out kinda slow, chill, and then speeds up, pumping out over an hour of technoey goodness at varying tempos and levels of auditory intensity. And, if you know anything about the Chemical Brothers, its that their music will get your ass moving.

I have just one complaint about going to the gym: old men that feel it necessary to walk around naked in the locker room. Put a towel around yourself, for Christ’s sake! I do not need to see that. Then again, it sure gets me the hell out of there and into the gym as quickly as humanly possible.

I really don’t understand that. What is the motivation behind it? It’s not like they’re just sans towel. Oh, no. They holding the towels as they strut about the locker room, naked as the day they were born (just with considerably more skin and hair), like peacocks displaying their plumage. And, let me tell you, some of those old men have nothing to be proud of, if you know what I mean. I’m not Ron Jeremy by any standard, but that’s just embarrassing. For me and them. At least, it should be. They definitely don’t look like this guy.

They don’t wear shoes, for one.

I want to know if this is universal, this tendency for old men who have no business showing their flabby asses off to anyone aside from their poor, poor old wives, walking around as God so surely did not intend. Does it happen in Taiwanese gyms? I know the Russians are quite fond of it. In fact, they tend to oil up and beat each other with plants. I don’t want to be culturally chauvinistic, but that’s a little strange to me.

Oh, well. One man’s strange is another’s mundane. I hope this is my only blog of 2009 in which old mens’ penises play any part whatsoever.

I guess that can be my New Year’s resolution.

ps: Did you notice? On the right sidebar you can see my Last.fm recently scrobbled songs! Now you can see, in real time, exactly how impecably wonderful my taste in music really is. (See? I told you I’m a snob.)

Tags: exercise, music, naked, penis size

This entry was posted by 美國人 on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 0:00 and is filed under Daily Life, Non-Taiwan Related, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.