New exercise equipment?

Forget the Doorway Pull-Up Bar or the Push Up Bars, I need these products!

Though I suspect I could probably make do with what I have... :-)

Inspiration #2

... Or perhaps not ...

The Qantas Shopping Experience

My flight from Sydney to Buenos Aires was on the 747 that has been recently refit to model the A380 (or something like that). Whatever the case may be, the Customer Service Manager reasoned that this is why they were unable to sell any duty-free items on the flight.

"Owing to the new interior design of the aircraft, we regret to inform you that we are unable to  offer any duty-free shopping to passengers today."

So far so good. I don't buy things on planes, and I don't quite understand why the refurbishment of the cabin should prevent Qantas from taking advantage of stationary and gullible passengers, but this didn't bother me.

"However, we are delighted to announce..."

Brace yourselves. No sentence that started like this ever ended well...

"...that we can provide you with the contact details for our suppliers so you can purchase it from them direct!"

Way too much enthusiasm with this guy. But it gets better... pause 4 beats...

"Please note, however, that you will need to pay for shipping costs for each of these duty-free items.... (pause 3 beats)... in addition to the duty..."

Fricken genius!

Chau, Australia!

So it seems that the weather gods are ready for me to head off for Buenos Aires this morning. The mother of all storms that they unleashed yesterday that was threatening to keep me from leaving Australia for the next couple of days would appear to have morphed into an uncharacteristically blue sky without a cloud to be seen.

I have no idea as to the length of the flight; I'm traversing far too many time zones for it to make any sense. All I know is that I leave at 11am this morning, and arrive at 10am the same day.

I had toyed with the idea of checking out the P90X DVDs while I as on the plane, but I doubt any of the exercises are 747-friendly... I don't envisage being able to doing push-ups in the aisle, ab crunches while straddling the drinks trolley or pull-ups using the overhead compartments with my crotch bouncing up and down in front of the faces of other passengers... I think this is a niche in the fitness market that could quickly be filled - Airplane Aerobics! Think about how much fuel the airline would save if people started shedding weight mid-flight! Genius!

Inspiration #1

It's results like these I hope to replicate... except for the kids. Cute kids, but not looking to replicate at this stage.

Day 0 - Feel that blubber bounce

"I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it" - Jonathan Winters

It would take an impressively audacious creative license to describe me as obese. If anything, I've always been on the hopelessly scrawny side. So much so that I hated going to the beach, and if I did go, then I'd prefer spending my whole time in the pacific ocean with my torso submerged, risking my life with the 6-7 foot high waves and circling sharks¹ rather than baking on the beach with the Pec People. My friends would say that I avoided the sun like a (pre-Twilight )² vampire because I'm a ranga, and I am therefore genetically incapable of looking like anything other than pasty white cadaver. That is wrong. I'm not a ranga. End of that story.

I don't know that my parents are particularly intuitive, but the Force³ did seem to be strong enough in at least one of them such that they sensed that I wasn't entirely happy with my lot in life, and so bought me a one year gym membership at the local gym where the owner seemed to take some kindly interest in this 14 year old short and bony kid. I'd like to say that what followed for the next two years was an inspiring "we-need-a-montage"-esque⁴ body, lifestyle and social transformation where said scrawny kid turned into a muscled jock, but it didn't. When I look back and do a post-mortem on the past 15 years of my life to try and divine why, with all that training and guidance, I didn't grow into a bigger, more muscular person, I'd say it has more to do with nutrition than anything else. I simply didn't eat properly.

Now I'm in my early 30s, and I've made the decision that something needs to give. I couldn't maintain my career and lifestyle in Tokyo and tick off each of the items on my bucket list (one of which being to improve my body and general fitness), so I decided the career needed to wait for a bit. Truth is that it wasn't a horrendously difficult decision to make. I remember I was skiing down a slope in northern Japan, and hit a long, flat but fairly rough section of the slope and I could feel it; I could feel the blubber in my midsection bounce as I careened over bumps and grooves on the slope. It was unpleasant.

So here I am, about to relocate to Argentina, unemployed by choice, determined to be a fitter and more fulfilled person. I've decided to try the P90X program to see what kind of gains if any, I can make. I dated someone (for a very short time!) who swears by it, so I figured it couldn't hurt. From what I understand, the program will generally run for 90 days, and is divided into 3 different phases (3 x 30 days). Each day I am to watch a different DVD and ostensibly am expected to train at home. I bought the program, and will get started once I get to Argentina (next week) and have recovered from the jetlag-induced delirium that will no doubt ensue. I plan on posting at least a few times every week, if not every day.

Wish me luck!

Footnotes

Footnote 1 - I recently got my PADI diving certificate and went swimming with the sharks in the Melbourne Aquarium. Loved it! It probably helped that they'd been fed before I jumped in... 

Footnote 2 - I'm an expert of various vampire (and zombie) mythologies, and the Twilight mythology suggests that vampires don't actually die in direct sunlight, but rather sparkle like glittered-up twinks at the Sydney LGBT Mardi Gras. This is patently ridiculous. It is known to all and sundry that vampires are vaporised, or at least gradually burnt, upon contact with direct sunlight, and the author's sloppy insistence that they shine like a damn disco ball at prom is a weak way of avoiding the fact that Edward should have been a more sinister and sexually aggressive character. 

Footnote 3 - a Star Wars reference. Star Trek is better. Just saying. 

Footnote 4 - a Team America: World Police reference. Increasingly relevant following the death of Dear Kim...