Cultural Oddity

Don't supersize me, exercise me

OK, I finally watched the documentary. I'm not going to wax poetic about what is overly obvious. Just some notes on what seemed "interesting".

The film is way too slow. I had to skip a lot of stuff to keep the minimal pace I was willing to tolerate.

It was highly important, I think, that in this experiment the amount of exercise was reduced to bare minimum. I suspect that was the key to ruining the guy's liver and kidney functions. He did not do it in two different ways, and I'm not going to experiment on myself. But there are many anekdotal evidences that people can tolerate junk food when exercising a lot.

I found it misleading that the movie focused on "fast food". I think "junk food" would be more appropriate. Fast food serves it's role in a fast pace society. It does not have to be junk though. If McDonalds and other Cos only serve junk food, well, here is your opportunity to change the world.

Finally, I was taken aback with the guy crying out loud about having gained 24 pounds. To my eye, he did not look all that different from before. It almost resembled a fatless model obsession with a quarter pound of gained weight which nobody can see.

The fact that he was breathing really hard after walking the stairs at the end of the month was highly significant though. Again, this might've been mostly because of lack of exercise rather than eating junk.

European travel chaos

Oh, glory of the overseas travel. Oh, the familiar sick feeling, when being asked if you are excited to go by somebody who went there for sightseeing and had a good time. She's typically aloof to the fact that you work around the clock for last few weeks to get results to present at a conference, and you are not really looking forward to have two jetlags over the next couple of weeks.

This time there was a new "exciting" twist due to Iceland's volcano ashes endangering airplane travel. And chaos, and airlines waiting out until the last minute to tell you that the flight is canceled.

This morning, my flight was canceled, but it was damn hard to find this out with certainty. It was a joint flight between United (U) and Lufthansa (L). For the 2.5 hours that I was on hold waiting for my next customer service rep, I learned that:

• U had flight status "not departed" on its web page, L had it as "cancelled".
• SFO also had information. This time U had "canceled", and L had no remarks.
• No cancellation notification from U, even though I enrolled in both phone call and an email options.
• This is the best. U had a phone number to call and check the flight info. It was drilled in my brain over the two and a half hours of music, commercials and "helpful" tidbits. I even called it twice. Today, that is, on Saturday morning. Both times I got a message that the flight number so and so is scheduled to depart on time on Friday (a clear lie, btw, it did not take off), and that it's about to land in Europe today (a "time warp"?).

The service rep, when I finally got to her, was quick, emphatic ("nothing is flying today!"), and efficient. That saved the day.

Not that I don't understand that some degree of chaos is bound to happen. But it would've helped enormously to get those automated notification systems working. Then I would not have to call for clarifications.

Only in America

The oh-so-bad-and-leftist media keeps showing every Palin's utterance. This time it was about Pres. Obama's statement on being the superpower : "It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them."

Seems clear, eh? No! Mrs. Opinionated countered: "I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to be a dominant superpower... I don't understand a world view where we have to question whether we like it or not that America is powerful."

It was a cultural shock for me here in America a while ago... It seems as if the country is full of people who are proud of NOT understanding something.

Coast near Trinidad, CA

It's beautiful, and still pretty much pristine in its nature.