Posted 5:07 PM by Blah blah

My Tummy Says Hi

More from Swami Raymond...

Yesterday the yoga teacher did something really strange. She lifted her shirt, told us to blow out all of our air, and showed us her bare belly. She began to ripple her tummy side to side, like a wave. This photo of a guy's belly shows it all!

"Eww," we said.

"This exercise," she said while sucking her stomach in fully, "is called uddiyana bandha." Says this site, "Uddiyana-Bandha ensures the correct functioning of the internal organs and fosters control of the abdominal muscles. It is a highly effective way of reducing the volume of the abdomen when distended by pregnancy." Another guy belly pic of it.

"Now this exercise," she said, doing the belly wave again, "is called..."

"Blue Crush!" I said.

"Good one," she laughed. "No, it's called nauli." It's one of six techniques (shat kriyas) to cleanse and purify your body. Nauli is supposed to massage your abdomen and help with constipation.

Some of these six "shat kriyas" make me cringe. For example, under kunjal kriya (rated PG-13):

"Jivha-shodhan dhauti

Join the index, middle and ring fingers together, place them into the throat, and slowly rub well the root of the tongue, and wash out. Expel the phlegm.

Rub the tongue with butter and milk, repeatedly. Then by carefully holding the tip of the tongue, pull it out gradually and slowly.

The rubbing of the root of the tongue prevents the accumulation of phlegm which occurs throughout the years, and which is responsible for stale breath and general lack of freshness in one's mouth; it keeps at bay throat infections, even tooth decay. The manipulation (milking) of the tongue stimulates the inner recesses of the oral cavity and greatly adds to the perfect functioning of various glands in the deep of neck, i.e. thyroid and parathyroid."

India has these "laughing clubs" in Mumbai (aka Bombay) where people group to LAUGH for exercise. True. Read The Essential Link Between Laughter and Yoga. They use nauli and uddiyana bandha too.

Milking the tongue. Yeah.

Posted 1:39 PM by Blah blah

From Shannon: Why Nerds are Unpopular, by Paul Graham. Too long, but fascinating. If you've ever done "nerdy" things in high school or felt awkward for your intelligence and tastes, you'll identify.

Typical "nerdy" things I did in high school:

- wore glasses and braces
- enjoyed competing in math contests
- competed in public speaking and debate
- hung out with kids who played hacky sack, and with other nerds
- studied on Friday night
- ran two clubs
- thought Crime and Punishment was my favorite novel
- enjoyed Moby Dick
- played violin in two different orchestras
- was in Boy Scouts
- led Bible studies
- sang in church cantatas
- took two years of math at Santa Clara University
- liked black and white movies
- wrote 120 page long diary for my senior English class
- got into MIT

Writers Sue Entertainment Industry over Age Issues (National Public Radio, Realplayer). How Hollywood discriminates against TV writers over 40.

Posted 10:25 AM by Blah blah

Unrelated News Placed Here in a Sham Marriage of Convenience

Google Buys Pyra: Blogging Goes Big-Time. Google now owns Blogger! It's about time, since Blogger's performance has really sucked recently. Look for cute cartoons on your blog during holidays.

Yoga Boy

I started yogaing again yesterday, after Sophia invited me to join her at her company's T/Th lunchtime class. It was pretty easy, since they aim it at total beginners. Not like those two hour ashtanga yoga sessions I did before, which left me sweaty and exhausted, but very relaxed. No headstands in this class.

Yoga is a great way to exercise your neck by looking at pretty women lying down in twisted positions while only thinking thoughts of purity and "ultimate communion...with the One."

Here's my yoga experience from over one year ago.

Our yoga teacher said hi after our lesson and said "You have muscular legs! You look like you're in good shape." I was about to turn around in confusion...oh, you meant me! "Well, hehe...not really. Must be the weekly rollerblading."

I have weird legs. People have said this about my legs even when I haven't exercised for months. Maybe one of these days a doctor will open up my leg with a knife and find it's really a rubber suit like Daredevil's, with foam muscles. Now I just need foam rubber arms...

Posted 9:13 AM by Blah blah

Looking for Chinese Women's Stories

Hi Phoenix,
I met you at the SVASE meeting. You had said you were researching and writing a book on Asian American women's stories, right?

How did you get involved in this, and are you looking for more women's stories? I know a lot of people who write. For what do you look?

Best wishes,
Raymond
_______________
Raymond:

Thanks for thinking of me.

I've had my book idea for almost 10 years now but never had the chance to put it together until recently. It started with a video biography of my mother, who's a first generation immigrant. I don't think her trials and tribulations are unique, as I've heard lots of other second generation women talk about their mothers in similar ways. These often are women with limited English language skills and social networks. Needless to say, their ability to voice their cognitive and emotional journey has taken different forms. I'd like to capture them.

If you know someone who'd like to collaborate, I'd love to meet him/her. And yes, I am looking for candidates to interview. The profile is pretty general at this point: first generation immigrant, from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or other Chinese speaking countries, has lived in the US for over 10 years, works in some capacity.

Thanks for your interest.
Phoenix
_______________
Phoenix is from Taiwan and used to be a management consultant at Accenture. Now she works for a nonprofit company. If interested, please email me.

Posted 8:17 AM by Blah blah

Limits of Human Endurance

Why do I think stories of suffering and cruelty are good for me to read? Because they force me out of my laziness, my spoiled comfort. Because I see how a human being can be stretched to a much further limit than I ever dreamed and still endure. Because they make my daily problems all seem incredibly petty and make me never want to complain about my life again. Because they reveal some of the smoldering anger and unrelenting drive that fuel Nazi survivors, like Intel's Andy Grove and director Roman Polanski, to success. In the end, I bow my head in humility before them, survivors all, and lift it with a new gritty determination.

Some people ask me where I get my ideas. I write about whatever has reached boiling point after cooking in my head that day. And my brain is weird, as you already know. Stay tuned for more on:

1. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing. Oh my God. If Nazi occupation was an extreme of human cruelty, this book covers Nature's ruthless cruelty to man. Horrifying and riveting. It's about British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's voyage in 1919 of 28 men on the first attempt by mankind to cross Antarctica by land. How they struggled for life every mile of the journey, completely alone, for years. I've never found a more grueling and chilling true adventure story, filled with determination and leadership against insane odds. Makes TV's Survivor look like a kindergarten lunch break.

2. The Good Women of China, by Xinran Xue. Netneur0 cried when she read this book. For every tale in the book, she can relate it to someone she has known. It tells the true, secret tales of several women in China who endured sexism, abuse, adultery, persecution, and more from their men and Chinese society. Tales that many women in China have undergone but are afraid to speak about in public. Eye-opening and painful.

Time article about this book.

3. Joyce (who wrote me a nice letter)
4. The Pianist, which I recently saw. It gave me the chills. This Roman Polanski film is the most emotionally gripping and horrifying film I have ever seen since Schindler's List. In some ways it's MORE effective than Schindler. The Pianist and its main actor, Adrien Brody, richly deserve Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor of 2002. No one else comes close. I literally felt that I had just lived through the Nazi Holocaust. At the end of the movie, no one left until they finished playing the music of the last haunting credits. We all watched in stunned silence.

This film is more scary than any horror movie I've ever seen.

The Pianist won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm), the top award at the Cannes Film Festival. A dream deferred: Brody finally gets recognition in 'The Pianist': "the highlight of Adrien Brody's career...would have to be the emotional 20-minute standing ovation The Pianist received from a 3,500-member audience during the film's world premiere a few nights before the Palme d'Or was bestowed."

Watch The Pianist, if you dare. I plan to read the original book by Wladyslaw Szpilman. It's his true story.

Posted 12:09 PM by Blah blah

Run Linux from a Single CD

Geek note: Review of Knoppix and KDE 3.1 (Ammai.com).

"Knoppix is a distribution of Linux, the open source operating system, that runs completely on a single CD, making no use of the hard drive. This is perfect for people like me, who have always wanted to try out Linux, but never could because they didn't want to completely install a new operating system."

Sounds cool! Wonder how users are responding to it and Lindows, which lets you run Microsoft Windows on top of Linux. Review of Lindows.

Posted 6:11 AM by Blah blah

Ooh, another great writer I found from Ida. Her name: Joyce. Her blog has so much romantic juice I could drink it with my bacon and eggs. Joyce also has a sharp sense of humor that makes her writing bittersweet and memorable. It's hard to imagine she's still a student at the University of Michigan. She sounds more mature.

A Random Woooo!

Edie wrote something that reminded me of this insightful interview with Conan O'Brien in that funny newspaper, The Onion. I find Conan the funniest of all the commercial network TV talk show hosts. He's the comedy host I personally relate to most. I would sooo like to hang with him on a Sunday afternoon and just throw water balloons. One time Martha Stewart came on his show to show how to iron shirts. While she lectured, Conan picked up her iron behind her back, clawed the air with his fingers, made his trademark dorky face, and went "HISSSSSSS! Rahhhh!" I fell out of my chair laughing. He's a brilliant funny mind:
_________________
Conan: ...There are other audiences that are too frat... I get depressed if I do a joke that has something to do with alcohol or pot or something, and a whole audience of 20-year-olds with backwards baseball caps goes, [adopts low voice] "Yeah!" I feel my soul leaving my body.

The Onion: It's no good pleasing people you don't like.

Conan: ...It's more like I like to get a laugh, or not get a laugh. There's this phenomenon now in America of just, "Yeah, woo!" People go "Woo!" If you ever watch Total Request Live, everybody does that. It's a phenomenon that depresses me. I think it's partly daytime talk shows like Jerry Springer and stuff. It's encouraged on so many shows. "Woo!" It's encouraged, so all they know is that when they want to be part of the show and they're having a good time, they want to "Woo" in the correct spot. They're not really listening. So they wait until after I'm done with a joke, and then they go, "Woo! Oh, yeah!" It's kind of not why I got into comedy. If I wanted that, I'd have become a jai-alai player or something. I like an audience that's listening and then laughing or not, because if they listen and then don't laugh, I can usually have fun with the fact that they didn't laugh. Or I can play with the fact that I failed. That's fun, because that's just reality that people respond to. "Oh, look, the professional comedian/talk-show host is in a little bit of trouble out there." I think people like to see me work my way out of a situation.

The Onion: It's honest reaction versus a Pavlovian reaction.

Conan: Exactly. But when you're out there and they just hear, "I don't know if you heard, but a woman in San Antonio was arrested with 800 pounds of marijuana in her truck..." "Yeah! Woo!" I get sad, because I think, "Oh, I'm just the host of American Gladiators." There are crowds that think you want a standing ovation or something, because they see that on other shows, and they think that's what you're supposed to do. The ladies of The View get a standing ovation every day on their show, and I think, "How much have we devalued the standing ovation? That's just ridiculous." Johnny Carson got one standing ovation, the last night he did his show, and it was really cool. It was like, "Wow, he did 30 years and then ended it on a classy note, and he got a standing ovation." And then you realize that Maury Povich is getting a standing ovation every day on his show. I don't like that. I don't like that stuff. Sometimes I think audiences are too... They've picked up bad habits from watching these things on shows. I like people to just be honest, and if I'm funny, laugh. If you're not so sure, don't laugh. I'll try and win you back. But let's have it be honest. If I wanted to get "woos," I'd have become the dictator of a South American country.

Posted 7:34 PM by Blah blah

Mating in the Concrete Jungle

From New York City, check out A Mating Call in the Concrete Jungle, a dating blog by "Edie." Remember all those dull efforts last year like The Date Project? Well "Mating Call" beats them all with wit and lots of juicy appetizers.

She even has been trying "speed dating" (Hurry Date). Read her speed dating story!