WhiteGhost: Deep Thoughts

[raptron]

Ooo wall walking is so neat.  

[Mad Hatter]

On 4/30/2019 at 6:52 PM, WhiteGhost said:

I wouldn't do any of these movements as a progression, I was just going to try them for fun to see if I could  

Sorry I misunderstood!

 

Wall walking looks so rad.

[Renate]

I concur on the wall walking! In the awed type of way, not the "I would like to try that out" type of way, :p but still!

[WhiteGhost]

On 5/1/2019 at 3:10 AM, raptron said:

Ooo wall walking is so neat.  

It will be neater when I get better at it  

 

22 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Sorry I misunderstood!

 

Wall walking looks so rad.

No need to apologize!  Your comments are always appreciated  

 

19 hours ago, analoggirl said:

I concur on the wall walking! In the awed type of way, not the "I would like to try that out" type of way, :p but still!

Who knows, maybe at some point you will get to the "I want to try that out" phase.  I wasn't interested in doing them until I was  

 

 

In holiday mode here, so missed a couple of updates. 

 

Wednesday was the first day of the holiday, but we didn't go anywhere to avoid all of the traffic.  Instead I cleaned up a bit around the house (we had some mold growing on the wall above the workout area so I cleaned that up) and then helped Ghostlet with his holiday homework.

 

Thursday we were invited to visit one of Ghostess's coworkers who has a vacation home near the great wall (not far from where we went last holiday.  It is about 70km away but it took us more than 7 hours to get there.  It was probably the worst traffic we have ever experienced.  Once there we climbed an unrestored section of the Great Wall which was kind of fun.  The trip home in the evening only took 1.5 hours.

 

Today we went with some close friends to a nearby park to look at the flowers, and then we all came to our house and watched Captain Marvel.

 

Doodling - I have tried 4 noses but so far none of them even look like noses.  I watched some more tutorials so maybe I can make some improvements over the next couple of days

 

Exercising - No workouts happened, but I was able to put to use all of the stuff I have been doing at the great wall, with deep step ups, single leg squats, pulls and dips trying to get into and out of broken down guard towers.  Also loads of walking.  

 

Eating - Food has not been great, but considering we are all in holiday mood it could certainly have been a lot worse.  

 

Playing - no trampolining has happened

[raptron]

10 minutes ago, WhiteGhost said:

Thursday we were invited to visit one of Ghostess's coworkers who has a vacation home near the great wall (not far from where we went last holiday.  It is about 70km away but it took us more than 7 hours to get there.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

5 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Thursday we were invited to visit one of Ghostess's coworkers who has a vacation home near the great wall (not far from where we went last holiday.  It is about 70km away but it took us more than 7 hours to get there.  

That's a hard no from me.

[KB Girl]

What raptron said- holy (@*%)@*#

[Lara]

6 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

It is about 70km away but it took us more than 7 hours to get there. 

Holly shit! How's that even possible?

[Scaly Freak]

27 minutes ago, zenLara said:

Holly shit! How's that even possible?

 

Very easy, assuming you walk or ride a bicycle those 70 kilometers.

[Sloth the Enduring]

I think China needs to go back to everyone riding a bicycle everywhere. It’d be a lot faster.

[WhiteGhost]

11 hours ago, raptron said:

I didn't know they got a video of my reaction

 

6 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

That's a hard no from me.

Yeah, I don't recommend it

 

6 hours ago, KB Girl said:

What raptron said- holy (@*%)@*#

It was quite unpleasant

 

5 hours ago, zenLara said:

Holly shit! How's that even possible?

Allow me to illustrate by this one hour left turn:

 

2:15pm:

 

2:40pm

 

2:55pm

 

3:15pm

 

5 hours ago, scalyfreak said:

 

Very easy, assuming you walk or ride a bicycle those 70 kilometers.

We probably could have gotten there faster walking...

 

41 minutes ago, Sloth the Enduring said:

I think China needs to go back to everyone riding a bicycle everywhere. It’d be a lot faster.

China tried that last year, it didn't work well

 

 

 

[Sloth the Enduring]

Those cubed bike shares gave me the sads.

When I was a kid the National Geographic had an article on China that showed intersections crowded with folks on flying pigeons going to work. That struck me as the way it should be.

[@mu]

3 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

China tried that last year, it didn't work well

 

Woaaa what a waste, it's a pity really because the idea is good.

 

How do you wall walk exactly, on your way up or down? are you supposed to flip and catch the wall? I have seen it sideways but the config in your pic looks different?

[Lara]

5 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

China tried that last year, it didn't work well

Oh, yeah, that. I remember when you post those pictures and made us guess. Awful.

[WhiteGhost]

On 5/4/2019 at 11:17 AM, Sloth the Enduring said:

Those cubed bike shares gave me the sads.

When I was a kid the National Geographic had an article on China that showed intersections crowded with folks on flying pigeons going to work. That struck me as the way it should be.

Yeah, that is a great concept in theory.  The idea this time was to have mass transportation to get people close to their destinations and then shared bicycles to get people the last mile.  Unfortunately it is human nature to not care for that which you are not responsible for. As such, the bicycles were abused and misused and left abandoned without regard for anything beyond maximum convenience of the user, which created way more problems than it solved.  Which is really a shame, because the idea behind it sounds great.

 

On 5/4/2019 at 2:43 PM, @mu said:

 

Woaaa what a waste, it's a pity really because the idea is good.

 

How do you wall walk exactly, on your way up or down? are you supposed to flip and catch the wall? I have seen it sideways but the config in your pic looks different?

Yes, quite a waste  Intentional overcapacity to maximize market share was a key driver of the collapse

 

Walking happens on the way up and then again on the way back down (or maybe just at the peak?)  I will try and get a video next time to show you how I do it, or at least try to do it  

 

23 hours ago, zenLara said:

Oh, yeah, that. I remember when you post those pictures and made us guess. Awful.

Indeed

 

 

Yesterday was spent mostly cleaning and organizing the house.  Ghostess and I went through the kitchen and the fridge/freezer and threw out everything that was expired, which surprisingly wasn't all that much.  Mostly just a lot of buns that were buried in the freezer and some old jars of sauce.  In the evening I made hamburgers for the first time in probably 20 years.  I had that with some leftover baked beans, some chips and some root beer to make it feel like a Star Wars Day BBQ  

They were super tasty. 

 

Today I went to church by myself because Ghostess was at work and Ghostlet at school (today is a work day to make up for getting last Friday off) and then in the afternoon I finally finished up the beginner bodyweight exercise section of my bodyweight library that @sarakingdom asked for and then did some more sketching.

 

I also uploaded some pictures of the great wall section we visited on Thursday for your viewing pleasure:

I felt very much like and Adventurer/Ranger from the stories exploring ancient ruins.  Much fun was had (and it was quite a good workout too!)

 

On Friday we went to a local park to look at the flowers and they had these really beautiful ones I had never seen before

They had tons of them in every color imaginable

 

OK, week whatever is over now, time to do a recap

 

D. Doodling 5x - I drew 6 "noses" but they were soooooo hard.  In the beginning I was following the advice of the tutorials to "forget that you are drawing a shape and just try and get the lines and shading".  That didn't work so well:

 I watched some more tutorials that explained some the underlying fundamentals which helped:

 

E. Exercising 4x - Missed my target for this one.  I got in a pull workout on Tuesday and then a play workout at the Wall on Thursday, but that was it for this week

 

E. Eating 5x - Only 4 home cooked meals this week, unless you count the lamb kebabs we BBQ'd up at the great wall.  Including those I got my 5 in for the week.

 

P.  Playing 1x - I got my trampoline session in on Tuesday, but not much training happened because of all the kids there.  

[KB Girl]

Damn those bike graveyards are sad.. It's a concept that could work- it's done quite well in Slovenia's capital city.. but you get a HUGE fine if you don't return the bike to one of the accepted drop off 'stations'. 

 

The top right nose on your first attempts looks pretty good- you work well with the shading to give it shape! just the eye shaped too close to the nose are freaking me out  

[DoubleTrouble]

1 hour ago, WhiteGhost said:

On Friday we went to a local park to look at the flowers and they had these really beautiful ones I had never seen before

They had tons of them in every color imaginable

 

Foxglove! They're poisonous for bunnies. That's all I know.

[Lara]

Thanks for the great wall pictures. Sure looks like you had a lot to explore, so fun.

 

It really is a pity that the bicycle system didn't work. Sounded like a very good idea.

 

Noses are superdifficult to draw, keep going.

[Mad Hatter]

1 hour ago, WhiteGhost said:

Unfortunately it is human nature to not care for that which you are not responsible for

I have to disagree here, I feel like this is very much dictated by culture and society. Of course there will always be a few people taking advantage of the situation, but even without fines I can't imagine anything like this happening in Finland.

 

Fox glove love growing next to motorways here, it looks so nice.   

 

Pics look lovely, it's awesome how much traveling you're doing lately.

[WhiteGhost]

3 hours ago, KB Girl said:

Damn those bike graveyards are sad.. It's a concept that could work- it's done quite well in Slovenia's capital city.. but you get a HUGE fine if you don't return the bike to one of the accepted drop off 'stations'. 

 

The top right nose on your first attempts looks pretty good- you work well with the shading to give it shape! just the eye shaped too close to the nose are freaking me out  

They tried the shared bikes that have fixed parking spots but they were generally unused because the fixed parking spots are no closer together than the bus stops.  If people would just park the shared bikes here in the designated parking spots things would be fine, but too many people just don't care enough to do that.

 

The noses were a lot harder than I expected.  I may do a few more this week for practice.

 

2 hours ago, DoubleTrouble said:

 

Foxglove! They're poisonous for bunnies. That's all I know.

Cool, they had the name in Chinese but only a Latin translation (which is kind of useless if you ask me).  The posters they had describing the flowers did not mention anything about them being poisonous to bunnies  

 

2 hours ago, zenLara said:

Thanks for the great wall pictures. Sure looks like you had a lot to explore, so fun.

 

It really is a pity that the bicycle system didn't work. Sounded like a very good idea.

 

Noses are superdifficult to draw, keep going.

Yes, it was so much fun.  

 

I agree, I would have used it if they had made the system more accessible to foreigners (the registration system for the associated apps were designed based on Chinese national ID cards, which we foreigners don't have.)  I don't know if they will keep trying to continue with this, but most of the companies that were providing the bikes have gone bankrupt.

 

Thanks, I will!  

 

2 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

I have to disagree here, I feel like this is very much dictated by culture and society. Of course there will always be a few people taking advantage of the situation, but even without fines I can't imagine anything like this happening in Finland.

 

Fox glove love growing next to motorways here, it looks so nice.   

 

Pics look lovely, it's awesome how much traveling you're doing lately.

I would argue that what a person or people have a sense of responsibility for is largely dictated by culture and society.  People in Finland perhaps are more socially inclined to feel responsible for their immediate environment and therefore would not leave bikes laying around.  But this is more of a universal concept.  People at work will put more effort into projects they feel responsible for, people get involved in political causes because they have a feeling of responsibility about a given area, people who feel a sense of responsibility for the planet will take more effort into conservation.  However, people in general have a natural tendency to not care about things they don't feel they have a responsibility for. 

 

I think the issue with the bicycles is exactly the same as the issue with littering.  Some cultures have a done a good job engendering a sense of environmental responsibility so that people don't just throw trash on the ground or out the window.  That is still a huge problem here - people who wouldn't think twice about throwing an empty candy wrapper on the ground are not going to care about where they park their bike.  Maybe someday...

 

The motorways here are lined with roses (at least right now) but they are certainly not growing there naturally.

 

Traveling would be so much nicer if I didn't have to travel to get there  

[Mad Hatter]

1 hour ago, WhiteGhost said:

However, people in general have a natural tendency to not care about things they don't feel they have a responsibility for. 

I agree if we reduce human nature to only its toddler state.  But I think we can do better, and as you say that's where our upbringing comes in.

Unfortunately the Chinese, at least when traveling, are notorious for being terrible, messy tourists.  

 

1 hour ago, WhiteGhost said:

Traveling would be so much nicer if I didn't have to travel to get there  

Some people are the complete opposite, but I'm with you!  

[deftona]

9 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

 

I think these are lupins. Foxgloves have different leaves. 

[Scaly Freak]

2 hours ago, deftona said:

 

I think these are lupins. Foxgloves have different leaves. 

 

What deftona said.

 

Foxglove looks like this:

 

 

 

[WhiteGhost]

On 5/5/2019 at 11:30 PM, Mad Hatter said:

I agree if we reduce human nature to only its toddler state.  But I think we can do better, and as you say that's where our upbringing comes in.

Unfortunately the Chinese, at least when traveling, are notorious for being terrible, messy tourists.  

 

Some people are the complete opposite, but I'm with you!  

Sure, I know we can improve but we have to overcome natural tendencies to do that.  Upbringing (including social norms) play a huge part in that.

Re: Chinese tourists, I think an appropriate analogy is a kid who grew up with a maid who never learns how to clean up after himself.  In China, there are literally more people employed as sanitation workers than the entire population of Finland, probably 3 or 4 times over.  People I guess assume that whatever they throw on the ground is going to get picked up by a street sweep so who cares?  It drives me nuts and I have to restrain myself from grabbing people and yelling at them when they throw trash on the ground within 5 steps of a trash can.  Also the blatant disregard for rules/laws if there is no apparent enforcement.  Breaking laws/rules and getting away with it is ingrained in the culture here through language (not getting caught is called making a profit and getting caught is called taking a loss).  I know people say you can't legislate morality, but it has to come from somewhere.  It sure doesn't come from slogans plastered on banners   /rant

 

On 5/6/2019 at 2:42 AM, deftona said:

 

I think these are lupins. Foxgloves have different leaves. 

Huh, you people sure know a lot about flowers.  I think I would be hard pressed to correctly identify more than 1 varieties.

 

On 5/6/2019 at 5:05 AM, scalyfreak said:

 

What deftona said.

 

Foxglove looks like this:

 

Oh, there were some of those there too, but in a different section.

 

 

Monday Update:

 

Doodling - Nothing

 

Exercising - I went to the park and did a pull workout

 

Eating - I made some bacon asparagus, but I have no idea what the origin of this is.  I have only ever seen it in 2 places.  When I lived in Japan, every Chinese restaurant had it on the menu.  Here in China, every Japanese restaurant has it on the menu.  I guess both countries think it came from the other but I suspect it probably originated somewhere else (somewhere that eats a lot more bacon)  

 

Playing - Nothing

[Lara]

7 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

It drives me nuts and I have to restrain myself from grabbing people and yelling at them when they throw trash on the ground within 5 steps of a trash can.  Also the blatant disregard for rules/laws if there is no apparent enforcement.  Breaking laws/rules and getting away with it is ingrained in the culture here through language (not getting caught is called making a profit and getting caught is called taking a loss).

Ouf, there is certainly a lot of work to be done. Spanish people used to be quite dirty about 20-30 years ago. Not that now we're as polite as other european countries, saying that would be a lie (when I moved back here from France it was like "omg, we're still awful"), but education in schools has played a big role. When I was young, children were taught some basics about being civil at school and then they would try to teach them to their parents. I remember many adults blushing when one of their kids would tell them "no, daddy, there's a trash can right there".

Still, I think the worst thing here is street peeing. Why oh why.

 

7 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

When I lived in Japan, every Chinese restaurant had it on the menu.  Here in China, every Japanese restaurant has it on the menu.

Haha. It's like they're blaming each other for raising the cholesterol levels of the population.

The dish looks nice and tasty, I might prepare it too.