Category: Uncategorized

So for the last couple of months, I’ve chronicled how I lost weight over the summer through a combination of eating better, exercise, and getting enough sleep. After some analysis though, I realized how I got fat in the first place.

While lack of exercise certainly had to do with it, I’ve come to accept that it was my diet that really added on the pounds. Before I only focused on not eating a lot of fat. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to carbohydrates which was my undoing. While I was working at PopCap, I had some terrible eating habits. Often my breakfast would consist of either an English muffin or potato chips. The muffin was probably better but it contained carbs. For lunch, I’d fall victim to more carbs. My go to lunch was from the Chinese place from the food court. It was kinda fast food lunch where you’d pick from several items which they’d stuff into a take out container. I’d usually select three items but invariably at least one item was either noodles or rice but very often it’d be both. The third item would be meat or vegetable one but there was a lot of carbs from the noodles and rice. Then in the afternoon, I’d snack on more English muffins or potato chips. Imagine doing that five days a week for months on end.

It continued to get worse after I got home. I remember for a week straight, for whatever reason, I became enamoured with teriyaki chicken on fried yakisoba noodles for dinner. It might have been more than a week actually. Imagine a huge helping of noodles with teriyaki chicken on it. I ate the whole thing for dinner. The noodles were chock full of carbs.

Now that I’m working again, I’m trying real hard to avoid both fats and carbs. I had a sandwich for lunch today but that’s ok. The bread itself won’t get me fat. I didn’t have potato chips today nor any English muffins. Let’s see if I can keep the weight off going forward.

I started work last Wednesday which means I made it past my first week today! Yay for me!

I’m taking it one day at a time and not looking ahead too far. For those keeping track though, I have not worked longer than a year at a single job since leaving EA in late 2010. The closest I’ve come to that one year mark since was two nine month stints, one at Radical Entertainment and most recently at PopCap. One day at a time!

I’ve mentioned it on this blog before but today is a very special day for me and the rest of my immediate family. Four decades ago, my parents got married on this day (actually, is it 41 years, no I’m pretty sure it’s 40). Marriages don’t last as long these days so staying with your spouse for four decades is quite an accomplishment. I took my parents out for dinner on Sunday. It was a very low-key affair but I’m hoping they have a nice dinner by themselves tonight to celebrate.

I’ll be forever thankful to them for staying together all these years through thick and thin. It must have not been easy to have been my parents over the years and I’m sure they leaned on each other for support during the many times I was unemployed or just sitting on my ass trying to figure what my next in life was going to be.

Congrats to my mother and father!

I was already on the train this morning when I realized I didn’t have my access card with me. In the four years I worked at Black Box, I think I may have forgotten my badge once. In my last job, I didn’t forget it once in the nine months I was there. On my fourth day of my new job, I’d already left it home.

You might be wondering why I don’t put the card in my wallet. That’s actually what I did at PopCap but it was more convenient at that location. How many access-controlled doors I need to go through determines if I put the card in my wallet or if I place it in a holder attached to a badge reel. At my new studio, there are a lot of doors that are access-controlled. It’d be a pain if I had to fish out my wallet every single time to open those doors. So I have it in a handy reel attached to my waist.

For whatever reason, I just left it at home this morning. When I got to work, I sheepishly told the office manager I had forgotten my card. She was very nice about and said that since it was Monday, she’d expect a few more like me to come through the door. I was given a temp pass which solved the problem for the day.

Maybe I’m getting forgetful in my old age. Getting old kinda sucks.

I had a three day week at work as my re-introduction to the world of the common working man. It felt I had worked three straight weeks instead. To be fair, it wasn’t the job itself that made me feel this way. I would have felt the same had I been flipping burgers or the executive producer on Donahue. I’m still getting used to the act itself of working. You know, the getting up early, commuting, sitting at a desk for eight hours, and then commuting home again. Did the four months off make me soft? You bet it did. So when Friday rolled around, the phrase TGIF had considerable meaning to me for the first time in many, many months.

As you might expect, I did not do a whole lot on Friday night. I came home and ate the rest of a rack of lamb I made earlier in the week. I then played some video games and went to bed relatively early for me for a Friday night. On Saturday, I slept in but still was able to meet a friend for tea just after noon. I then came home and decided I wanted to enjoy the somewhat sunny day. I went for a long walk in the nice weather. The end of the walk culminated in going to Walmart to get some groceries. A very quiet evening followed though I probably stayed up a bit later than I wanted to. Sunday morning was a bit of a lazy one. I woke up earlier than I wanted to but I just laid in bed surfing the Internet on my tablet. I did, however, get up early enough to get to Stanley Park before 2pm. I did a long walk around the iconic park before returning home to get ready to meet my parents for dinner.

Now it’s bed time on Sunday night. Sundays used to mean nothing to me. It was mainly the night I felt sorry for people who had to go to work the next morning while I was sleeping away. Now, I’m one of those chumps. I get the feeling somewhere out there, there’s some dude who’s feeling sorry for me as he’s getting ready to stay up super late tonight. Whoever you are, cherish what you have!

So a few days ago I was looking at this app that I was using to track all the long walks I was doing during the summer. I’ve mentioned this a million times already but I used walking as the main activity to lose close to 20 pounds in the last four months. The app on my phone gives you a history of your exercise sessions so you can track how far you’ve gone, how much time you’ve spent, and how many calories you’ve burnt. Before I looked at the entire history, I had this impression that I was doing long walks just about every three days since the end of May. Here’s what the actual history showed:

I was a bit surprised to see that for June and July, I essentially only went on these urban sojourns about once a week. It seemed like a lot more to me. The interesting thing is, I lost most of the 20 pounds or so in the those two months. In August, I ramped up the frequency to almost double, yet that only contributed maybe two pounds or so of weight loss. I can only theorize what happened in June and July which had the greatest weight loss. I didn’t realize how much diet factored into losing the weight. Immediately after I stopped working at PopCap, I started eating better and actually less. This is something that I noticed a few weeks ago. While I was on my time off, I did not feel the desire to eat as much food as when I was unemployed. While working, I’d have this strong hunger when I got to work, even if I had some breakfast before leaving home. I’d then have this need for a big lunch in the afternoon. Finally, around quitting time, I’d get famished again and feel the need to have a big dinner. During the summer, I’d wake up after a good night of sleep, and have a very light breakfast/lunch, not feeling the need to eat a heavy meal. I’d then go hours before feeling the need to eat again. At dinner time, I’d feel hungry but not ravenous as before. I’d attribute this to probably getting enough sleep. When I’m working, I usually don’t get enough rest each night. Studies have shown this can cause increased appetite.

Now that I’m working again, I’m determined to break some of the bad habits I’ve had before and remain trim and fit. It’s hasn’t been easy thus far though. It’s been two days and I already feel very tired. I also felt very hungry throughout the work day. I’m hoping I’ll adjust to the changes. I know now it’s all about rest, diet, and exercise, it’s all three and not just one.

I woke up before 8am this morning because I needed to be at work at a specific time for my orientation. No one wants to be late on their first day, so I left myself with plenty of time. I can’t remember the last time I was awake before 8am. Actually, it was probably just over a year ago when I had my first day at PopCap. I had to be there at 9am to start my on-boarding with the office manager Linda. I never arrived at work that early ever again after that first day.

Back to the present however. So my first day was pretty standard. I’ve had my fair share of first days now, for better or worse. I signed a whole lot of forms. I met a whole lot of people whose names I forgot right away. I got slightly confused by some of the layout on one of the floors. I got dropped off at my desk and fiddled with my computer to get it the way I like it. I started reading a whole bunch of documents that only partially make sense to me right now. So yeah, all in all, that’s what I expected.

I also was shown where all the bathrooms were in the studio. Now most people won’t admit to this but every new employee, no matter where they start work, tries to figure out where the best place to poop at work. It’s true and you know it. I used to think I was the only one but I was dumb to think that. Case in point, my last place of employment. After PopCap was shutdown, we were all at the bar and I guess there wasn’t a lot of reason to be discreet about some things anymore. The alcohol might have helped too. Anyways, people were saying very candid things about the studio and some of our co-workers. One topic that came up was where was your favourite place to poop. It caught me off guard because so many people had favourite bathrooms to do their business. We were located in a building that had a lot of options. Apparently a lot of people used the bathroom on the fourth floor because it didn’t have a lot of tenants and it had a large handicapped stall. My own favourite was a restaurant bathroom that was located in the office building. I was able to get access to the bathroom via a shared staircase, which allowed me to not have to go through the restaurant itself. This bathroom was really nice. A big stall, modern fixtures, music on speakers, and almost deserted in the mornings when the restaurant was closed to the public (and when I usually did my business).

Today though, I was kinda dismayed by what I saw. There are three men’s bathrooms that I saw. None of them at first glance seem to be a clear-cut winner. It may take me a few days to figure out if there’s some hidden gem somewhere in the building that no one has told me about. I hope there is one. I may even discreetly ask around if there’s an unspoken secret location.

For all of you who have a favourite private spot, appreciate what you have!

Tomorrow is the first day at my new job which means this “summer of me” is drawing to a close. I can honestly say I have enjoyed every single minute of these four months. You can go back through the archives of this blog and read what transpired but Friday, April 26, 2013 was a very significant day. That was the day after the studio closed and I woke up unemployed again. On that particular day, when my eyes blinked open around noon, I wasn’t 100% sure that I’d be taking the summer off. I find that there’s a certain inertia to things, it’s perhaps human nature. If you’re doing something, sometimes you just want to keep on doing it, just out of habit and for no other reason. As I crawled out of bed, part of me wanted to see if I could join another EA team in Burnaby or another studio elsewhere. Three things happened later that day that gave me a strong argument for just taking the summer off.

The first piece of business that I got around to was getting tickets to a matinee for Oblivion which had come out just a few weeks earlier. I love going to matinees because the tickets are cheaper and the theatre is usually devoid of people. It’s a great time to just watch your movie in peace. When the movie ended, I realized the summer movie season had just started. I could do this all summer with all the big movies I was looking forward to seeing. I know this sounds like a pretty odd reason to not work for a few months but sometimes it’s the most simple and trivial things that push you in one direction or another.

The second thing was undeniably the most important. As I was heading back up to my apartment, I saw a new e-mail from one of the PopCap HR representatives. They had reviewed my severance package and decided I was owed more money and an extension to my benefits. I was floored. The original amount was already very, very generous but the additional money they added made my decision almost automatic. It’s a very unfortunate truth in the world we live in but money does give you freedom to do things, which you wouldn’t have had the chance otherwise. The money gave me the freedom to choose.

The last thing was just a simple realization that wrapped everything up for me. I’m not sure what I did that Friday night, I might have stayed home or I might have gone out. What I do know is that before I went to bed, I thought this was the start of the weekend. It occurred to me that if I really wanted it to be, every day for the next four months could be a weekend. There would no more Mondays or having to look forward to Fridays. I could sleep in every day if I wanted to. More importantly, I could stay up late as late as I wanted to, every day. Each day of the summer could be as big or as small of an adventure as I wanted it to be. I also thought of it this way, EA was going to pay me every day to do whatever I wanted for the entire summer. How many people get paid to enjoy the four sunny months of summer? In fact, it had already started. I was essentially paid that first day to wake up late and go to the movies. So when I finally fell asleep on that glorious first day, my mind was convinced the “summer of me” was the way to go.

The four months went quick. I’ll throw in a couple of clichés here. I remember that first day like it was yesterday. It was cloudy and grey. When I walked out of the theatre, it looked like it was going to rain. Time does fly when you’re having fun. The sixteen weeks went by like it was a week. I remember we got to the end of May and I was surprised that it had already been a month.

My last thought on the “summer of me” is how different it was from all the times I had time off in between jobs. Tomorrow will be the start of my fifth job in just four years so I’ve seen a bit of downtime. I had two months off in late 2010, three months off in early 2011, and four months off in late 2011. Each time I went back to work in those occasions, I never looked back at my time off as wistfully as I do now. Some of you might think it’s because I was hurting for money and was just happy to making a salary again. That’s not true as I received a hefty severance in one case and I had substantial savings in the other two.

This time was remarkably different for two reasons. First, this was the only time so far where I’ve had time off during the summer. Those other times happened in the winter when the weather sucked. The sun never was out, the sky was grey, it was raining all the time, and it was cold. This time around, the weather was spectacular. I was outside, getting fresh air, and enjoying the sun. Lastly, I made these four months productive and worthwhile. Those other times, I basically just sat on my ass and played video games. There wasn’t a lot of personal growth there. This summer, I worked to make the time valuable. I did new things and saw new places. I got in better shape and stopped being tubby. I learned how to cook various meats and plants. I like to think I became a better person since that day in late April.

I used to question if I would enjoy retirement, if I even got there, because I was afraid it’d be too boring. I don’t question that anymore. I am so looking forward to retiring. This summer has taught me how rewarding time off can be. It doesn’t have to be just about sitting on your ass. There’s so much about the world and yourself to learn. So while I think I’ve managed to snag a pretty good job that will start tomorrow, I will always think back fondly to this “summer of me” and hope there will be another one in my future.

Some time in June, I forget when exactly, I came up with this idea that I wanted to see the Grand Canyon. As this was the “summer of me”, I knew I had to travel to at least one place that I’d never been to before. After doing some research, I quickly discovered visiting the Grand Canyon included a wide scope of activities. On one end, I could fly above the Grand Canyon, spending less than 30 minutes above it, never setting foot near or in the canyon itself. On the other end, I could spend several days at the canyon, hiking down from the lip all the way to the floor, camping, and exploring the national park. Either the ends of the spectrum didn’t exactly work for me. A simple flyover wasn’t in-dept enough, while hiking and camping in the canyon itself was a bit beyond my current physical abilities. If I had decided to hike it, I probably would have had to do it alone, and it’s not recommended to do so as you could get into trouble and no one would know about it.

While I was getting my haircut, I mentioned to my stylist that I wanted to go the Grand Canyon but was unsure what the best way was to go about it. She suggested I look at going to Las Vegas first and then heading to the canyon from there. I did some more research when I got home. It was way cheaper to go to Las Vegas than Flagstaff, Arizona, which is the largest city close to the canyon. Once in Vegas, I’d just to have figure out how to get out there. I really had two options: a bus or helicopter. I knew two people who did the bus tour. They had to wake up super early and get on the bus by 6am. The trip itself to the canyon took about five hours. The ten hours or so on the bus in a single day didn’t really appeal to me so the helicopter option seemed like it was the best way to go.

There are several tour operators that fly out to the Grand Canyon but I wound up booking with Papillon and their Grand Celebration Tour. I initially balked at the listed price of $450 but there was a special going on and I was able to get it for less than $300. I had convinced a friend to come along to Vegas with me but he wasn’t interested in the Grand Canyon. No big deal for me.

We arrived in Las Vegas on a Sunday and I had booked the tour for early Monday afternoon. I wanted to get the tour out-of-the-way right off the start because in my experience, you start to feel tired at the end of most Vegas trips. I wanted to fresh and excited for my visit to the canyon.

Around noon on Monday, I was picked up from my hotel and driven to Boulder City, Nevada and the airport there. It was about a 30 minute drive which was quite interesting at times since I had not seen much of Nevada outside of Las Vegas itself. Boulder City is interesting in that it is only one of two cities in the state where you cannot gamble. Once at the airport, I got myself checked in and had to wait for my helicopter to arrive as it was coming back from another tour. As a sign of things to come, I was told my helicopter was late and it’d be another twenty minutes or so before it would arrive. To the company’s credit, they gave me a free drink voucher at the airport convenience store. As I waited, more bad news came. A sudden thunderstorm cell had formed and it was right where my tour was headed. It was explained to me that the chances of the storm dissipating in time for the tour was very slim but they’d wait another ten minutes. Ten minutes went by and nothing had changed so the tour was cancelled. I was given a few options. I could either re-schedule or I could get a full refund. I decided to re-schedule as I still had several days left in my trip. There was a spot free the next day for a 11am departure. With that booked, I boarded another bus and I was driven back to my hotel. It was a waste of about two hours but I had to take it stride.

The next day, I repeated the whole thing again, getting driven out to Boulder City again and checking into the airport once more. This time, no weather was going to stop the tour. I met my pilot for the trip, a young-looking Norwegian man who I later found out was getting experience flying so he could transfer over to working for oil companies. He was going to trade Grand Canyon tours for flying guys to and from oil rigs which sounded like a very lucrative job. The six other tourists with me were a French couple and a German family.

I lucked out when they did the seating arrangements as I got a front row seat next to the right side window. I had a great view from where I was sitting. Previous to this, I had only been in a helicopter once, when I did a short tour of the island of Oahu in Hawaii. This helicopter was much larger and seemed newer as well. As we took off, I almost got overwhelmed by the sight of the ground just feet below me, whizzing by in a blur. As we gained altitude, I felt much better.

Higher in the air, it was plainly obvious that we were in a desert. There was basically nothing around us for miles other than grey and brown. Even though the helicopter’s A/C was on, I could feel the hot sun was trying force its way into the cockpit. It was a definite hot day in the desert. The trip out to the canyon would take us past Lake Mead, which I didn’t realize was a man-made reservoir. Through headsets that everyone was wearing, the pilot narrated the tour and gave us some key highlights about Lake Mead. The reservoir is huge as we’d fly over different parts of it for minutes at a time. The pilot also flew us over the iconic Hoover Dam, which previously I had only seen in movies. The dam is a great looking piece of modern engineering. The bus tour I mentioned earlier actually stops at the top of the dam, which would have been amazing to see.

As we flew towards the Grand Canyon, I was incredibly impressed by the sight of it on the horizon. Earlier, I had some slight fears that once I saw it with my own eyes, it would be a let down of sorts because I’d seen so many pictures of it. Those fears were misplaced because it was unlike anything I’d ever seen in my life. Pictures cannot fully capture the scope and striking beauty of the Grand Canyon. As we flew above the canyon, the pilot pointed out the Colorado River that runs through it. On this day, and I’m not sure if it changes ever, the river was a distinct and uniform muddy brown. I could see people in boats, kayaks, and canoes, floating down the river. I imagine that could be quite fun. Before the pilot descended below the rim of the canyon, he showed us the Skywalk, where people have a very unique view from the top.

The pilot fly us below the rim of the canyon and this was where I got to see the edges of the canyon up close. Words really cannot express the spectacular ways that nature carved out the canyon. It is something you have to see with your own eyes. We eventually landed on a flat piece of land near the river. There was no paved helipad or anything, just a flat piece of rock and gravel covered land. Next to us was a small covered area with a few picnic tables. Once we were allowed to exit the helicopter, the pilot explained to us the rules while on the ground. We were to throw away nothing. I believe it’s actually illegal to dump any garbage in the whole canyon itself. There are no garbage cans where we were. If we were to finish a bottle of water, we had to take the bottle back with us. We also could not take anything back with us. We couldn’t keep any souvenirs, not a single rock, pebble, plant, nothing. We were also on Native American land so we had to respect that as well.

Now the tour included a “champagne lunch” while we were on the canyon floor and that’s why the covered area existed. I previously had decided though I wasn’t going to sit and eat a boxed lunch while we only had thirty minutes or so to explore the canyon. The pilot brought the lunches out in a cooler from the helicopter and set them up. I quickly grabbed a brownie and a bottle of water and immediately went exploring.

For the next thirty minutes, I went as far as I could within common sense. It was a miserably hot day though. I’d guess it must have been around 40 degrees Celsius. Undeterred, I took a ton of pictures. Even though it was bone dry, there was a few plants here and there, mostly cacti. The ground itself looked almost alien. Lots of dry, small rocks, on dry brown dirt. It reminded me a bit like the pictures the rovers on Mars take.

At one point, my life was slightly in danger. I was well away from the rest of my group who was eating lunch. Another tour helicopter had caught my eye. As I watched it fly closer and closer, I began to realize that I was perhaps standing on the area where the pilot was intending to land. I had no idea if he saw me so I had to quickly run down towards the river as I knew he wouldn’t land on the edge of the cliff like that. The pilot wound up touching down very close to where I had been standing. I still wonder what would have happened had I not moved. After more exploring, I also realized that I should watch where I was stepping because there was a chance there could be a snake or something on the ground. Nature can be scary sometimes.

With the time drawing to a close, I headed back to my group, most of whom had spent most of the time eating a sandwich in the box lunch. We piled into the helicopter and flew off. The helicopter had been sitting in the sun this whole time so it was like an oven when we first got into the air. The A/C was still in the process of cooling the cabin down, so it felt like it was genuinely 50 degrees Celsius in there. I started sweating profusely. I cannot remember another time when I began to sweat that much. I had to wipe the sweat from my face and my legs and arms were glistening. I had to stop myself from resting my arms on my thighs because I was leaving wet marks on my shorts from all the sweat. Mercifully, the A/c eventually got the cabin back down to a better temperature and my sweat thankfully dried up.

Interestingly, the pilot took us back to the airport on another route, which was very boring. There wasn’t a lot to see at all on the return. It was another thirty minute flight back to Boulder City. Once we landed, I thanked the pilot for an amazing trip. A few minutes later, I was back on the bus for the drive to Las Vegas.

Overall, I was very pleased with my initial visit to the Grand Canyon. It’s a spectacular wonder of nature. The canyon is breathtaking in both scope and beauty. If I were to go again, and I think I would, I’d like to spend more time there. The canyon is huge and the views from the various parts of the rim are worthy of the trip. So perhaps one day, I’ll take the necessary time and money to go spend several days right at the canyon itself.

So as a reward for reading all of this, here is a link to some pictures I took while on the tour. Enjoy!

As it is a long weekend, I’ve given the staff here at et.com the day off for Monday. Did you know that Labour Day was originally observed to honour women and the hardships of childbirth? That’s actually not true but it’d be kinda cool to have two days to honour mothers. They work so hard for very little recognition at times. Well, Labour Day is pretty cool too I suppose. I always thought it was cruel to have a single day off to remind people how many other days you have to work.

We’ll be back tomorrow with regular programming.