Spending Report Week 7

I'm going to double up the Spending Report with the Personal Development Report from now on on Saturdays.  I think Sunday is a much better day for me to write about Tourism and such because I should be back home from any trips I take.

Push ups:  I sucked this week, I didn't actually do them Wednesday and Friday was kind of a half job.  I'm going to redo the first tier of week three to re condition myself.

Sit ups:  I'm goin strong with these, Friday was tough as the total was over 130 with all the sets together.

Language:  I'm frustrated that I again didn't go anywhere with French (the Scottish language teachers singing numbers didn't help).  I'm also frustrated with myself because I'm not making an effort to attempt to pronounce anything correctly.  I was talking to an Italian co-worker about cheese and pronounced Burrata as any American would and it took her about 10 seconds of thought to understand what I was talking about.  She kinda laughed and pronounced it in a way that made it sound pretty... I didn't even attempt correct pronunciation before hand though.  On a positive note I have been asking the store owners at my regular shops for the names of products in french and make sure to ask for it in French.  I'm still not communicating, but I'm not ignoring  anymore either.

Overall:  96.49

Stuff: 20.00

Transportation: 19.20

Miscellaneous Food: 15.59

Restaurant: 15.00

Tourism:  18.50

Beer: 7.00

Groceries: 1.20

Stuff:  I got a web-cam.  It helps a lot to see the people you miss in real time.  I'm not big on photos so the web cam was a lot more natural way to say hi to family and friends.

Transportation:  One round trip ticket to Bruges AND one round trip ticket to Antwerp (post tomorrow)

Miscellaneous Food:  I'm pretty big on waffles when I'm being a tourist, and I had two tourism days this week = a lot of waffles.

Restaurant:  I bought lunch twice this week and then got dinner while I was in Antwerp.  A toasted panini with prosciutto, cheese and tomato is 3.50 Euro at a store right around the corner from the office.  This is my go-to sandwich.  They're also pre-assembled and I don't have to think too hard about naming what I'd like in the sandwich.

Tourism:  This includes the two dumb museums in Bruges.  It also includes a ticket to the Cinema on Friday.  I went to see "Watchmen."  I would have liked to take advantage of the Belgian release date (Wednesday) but didn't' have a chance.  The theater was impressive, but I found it strange that it cost more to see the movie than take a round trip to Antwerp.

Beer:  I got a few bottles (3) from the "Bottle Shop" in Bruges.  There is some stupid number of beers there, and its usually very easy to find the Trappist and Abbey beers but a little harder to find the Lambic beers.  I should have gotten more of the Cantillon Gueuze but I thought it would be cheaper at the factory here.  

Groceries: I didn't go grocery shopping today because I was in Antwerp all day instead.  I'm going to have to go all the way to the Sunday grocery store (most aren't open).  That one purchase was a loaf of bread I got for sandwiches.

Anyway, It should be obvious that I took the planned trip to Antwerp.  I had a good time with a bunch of folk from the office.  I may actually include a picture of myself being a tourist this time around.

Defeat at the hands of an Alarm Clock.

I went to Bruges.  I slept through my alarm clock on Saturday and deemed the trip not worth the money if i was going to be there so late.  I have time, oh yes.  Instead I decided I'd take a trip to one of two locations: at trial trip.  I would go to Bruges or Antwerp, and I flipped a very special coin to find out where I'd go.  The toss ended up pointing towards a sleepy tourist town:Bruges.  Yes there was a Colin Farrel movie about Bruges in the past year, and no I haven't seen it yet.  

This was a good trip for me because it helped me understand how easy the trains and 

tickets and such are.  I've got two or three good easy local trips that I can do for a single day.  I woke up nice and early, walked down to the train station and bought a ticket.  There are two major trains out of Belgium that I understand:  IC and Thalys.  IC is 'innercity' which is a strange phrase for Americans but it goes to most of the cities in Belgium and a bunch in Holland from what I can tell.  Thalys is the high-speed;  I may use this for a trip to Paris.  One fun fact on Belgian train travel... weekend trips are super cheap.  My round trip was 11.40 euros and took about one hour each way.  I was really happy with the day because the weather was so nice, it ended up around 50 degrees the majority of the time.  And SUNNY!  

I had a relatively short walk into the center of town around 9:30 and saw the main square relatively empty.  That was the last time during the day I was without tourists.  Bruges is a really tiny place, I don't have anything to scale against it.  Take my word though, I was able to walk around the entire city in half an hour.  It is also one of the most popular tourism city's in all of Belgium.  By mid afternoon the place was packed, mostly Brits.

This was a nice contrast from the usual French, but I have actually just started getting used to French signs.  Bruges is in Flanders though... which is dutch instead of french so I've gotta figure out dutch signs now.  Though, at the same time... everyone speaks English because of how important tourism is.  I actually watched the waiter in a cafe greet all the people that came in, he kept his hand on one of three different menus (English, french, dutch).  Depending on how "bon jour," "hello," or whatever the dutch greeting is, he would grab the corresponding menu.

Anyway, I'm gonna leave you guys hanging for the real information from the rest of the week.  I've got at least one more post on my four hour tour.  In addition I have to put in a follow up to to Laurens post on Frites (I went to a frite museum today to study up).  I'd also like to write a bit about my deadline week at the office.

Oh, I'm not gonna do a real "personal development" post.  The short of it is this:  I did my m'w'f of push ups and sit ups even during the dead line.  It was a little rough doing 80 push ups and sit ups at 4am but I got them done.  I didn't do any language stuff... which is frustrating.  I really would like to get somewhere with french before I leave and I'm afraid I won't.  I'm going to make this a week where I push a little harder with it.

I'm here I'm here.

SO, I've missed two days.  In a row.  Don't worry, all is well and I'll catch up.  Friday I went out with the company and wasn't really "awake" enough to post when I returned home.  We all went out to celebrate.  Celebrate what you may ask?  Well, Friday of course.  It doesn't really have the same effect since I went to work Saturday and Sunday, but I enjoyed the night anyway.  Last night I made it home early (from work on a Saturday...), unfortunately our building had some weird Internet outage that delayed my posting until today.  Instead of trying to catch up in a few different posts I'm just gonna put up my two weekend posts (personal development & spending report) into one.  

I brought my spending WAY down this week, and it woulda gone down even further without Fridays get together.

Overall: 58.15

Restaurant: 27.80

Beer: 15.30

Miscellaneous Food: 13.55

Groceries: 1.50

Clearly restaurant and beer have gone up.  This is what happens with a super busy week, it could very well happen this week as well.  I went out to lunch more often because our office had some US visitors and it was nice to be a little social.  The only thing that went down this week is Groceries.  Basically I was a little hung over and then worked Saturday and missed my chance to do my grocery shopping.  I went today and kept it pretty low.  Then I spent some money on Sesame oil and Soy sauce to flavor up my fried rice cooking.  Overall I'd like my spending to stay this low from now on, maybe lower if I can but not soooo much on beer.  

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT:

I'll keep it short for this week.  I'm happy to report that I've followed the push ups and sit up schedule almost exactly this week.  I skipped Friday but caught up on Saturday.  In addition to my regular M-W-F schedule I added things on the "off" days.  Total for the week I ended with over 300 sit ups and over 150 push ups.  Most of the push ups were under the scheduled daily events and next week I'm on Week 3.

As for French?  I'm getting there pretty slowly.  I did about two hours of Rosetta stone which is starting to sink in a little bit and five lessons from the "coffee time."  I haven't really tried using it but I'm starting to "hear" things a little differently while I'm on the streets or in the office.

That's about it for this weekend update.  We'll be back to our regularly scheduled posting this week.  I've got one partial guest post (about POMMES FRITES) and a back tourism post or two to fill in.  I've also scheduled a trip to Rotterdam for next weekend so I should have some good content for next week.

OH YEA, I'VE BEEN ABROAD ONE MONTH! WOO!

I'm Learning French.

So after ALMOST a month of being here I finally decided to dive into the whole french thing.  I'm very motivated to learn a language while I'm here because I'm not sure when I'll get another opportunity to learn a language in a native environment again.  I've been frustrated with myself since I got here just because I haven't been able to make the time to fit in the french.  THUS, I will add my french language time to my weekly report on my "working out."  Not only will you know how many sit ups I do in a week, but how many hours/minutes I spend trying to learn french.

For those of you that are interested, I'm doing two things to start.  I'm trying to spend half an hour to an hour on Rosetta Stone every day to get a weird basis of vocabulary.  Rosetta stone is really good for vocabulary because they never give you English words just images and you pick up the language through context.  I haven't gotten far enough to see how useful it is for conversation or grammar just yet but hopefully I get there soon.  In addition I've downloaded a "coffee time lesson" set from Itunes.  There are almost 60 lessons and they're around the range of 20 minutes.  This is perfect for me because I can listen to one going each way on the Metro in the morning and sometimes I can repeat them during the day for reinforcement.  The podcast is free and I'll let you guys know if I like it soon.  Know this: If you follow the same program, you will also be taught French by a Scottish guy.  Think about that accent.

Once I work up the courage, I'll start embarrassing myself in the name of education.  It won't be hard, I can already guarantee embarrassment.  The hard part will be making sure I learn something from ever occasion.  

If anyone has tips on learning sources leave them in the comments or send me an email.  I'll share how well I deal with them.

Pushups plus

Time for the weekly mini-post.  This wasn't a great starter week, I definitely slept in a little more than I would like almost every day.  There are two causes, the first is a perfect black out shade on my one window.  The second is staying up super late calling the US to deal with some banking issues.  Oh well, I still did my Monday Wednesday Friday.  My overall goal is to do my push up and sit up schedule M-W-F and then T and Tr do supplementary stuff like the indian pus ups and maybe some cardio... but I'm pretty sure we all know that won't happen.  

According to my msword diary I followed both the 100-push ups and the 200-sit ups schedule perfectly.  Sit Ups:  M-18 W-25 F-38.  I recognize this is a small number, but there's no reason to rush into something.  Moving slowly helps me see that its not so hard and I don't get frustrated with it.  I didn't really feel much Monday, but Wednesday I noted that I felt I was doing them correctly.  I'm still feeling a little bit from my Friday session, so I'm excited to start up again Monday.  I didn't work on breathing or my break times yet because it was a low number but I will need the correct break starting soon.  Push Ups:  M-28 W-43 F-51.  This wasn't hard, like I mentioned in the first post about push ups, I need to get back into the rhythm.  Friday I did the normal sets, but in the fifth set they tell you to do as many as you can with a minimum.  I think the minimum was around six and I decided to see what I could do and went for twenty straight.  This isn't my max number, right now I can probably do twenty eight to thirty in a row but it is a good start.  

Like I said at the beginning, I didn't wake up as early as I wanted but before the end of every day I accomplished what I aimed for.  This is a good start for the following weeks.  The image at the top of this post is a hint about the weekend post.  If I am sober enough before I go to sleep I'll try to write it up.  Otherwise, everyone enjoy their Valentines Day;  I'm gonna go cook a romantic meal for one.

Routine, Pushups and Personal Development

In my first blog post I mentioned that I'd like to speak about Personal Development. So far I have yet to "tag" anything in such a category. I'm getting there... slowly. Before I left NYC I started quite a few things that I think were helping me grow into a smarter, stronger person. I believe this was because some portions of my life had become SO routine that I was able to start to push those routines around a bit to make room for new ones. My life in this new place is different. It is starting to feel better, more comfortable and easier every day. In a later post I will write about my problems with this concept but for now I'll say this: Pushing myself into new personal growth routines is difficult when I have to move towards an entire new set of routines that are just based on Survival.

I talk about one routine; Get home, make dinner, write blog. I've done this sequence almost every night I've been here, for better or worse. I'm basing this routine concept on the writing of Leo Babauta from ZenHabits. This is a blog I've read for a little while and is generally pretty motivation to get off your butt and do something new. A lot of his writing comes off as repeated fluff, but some of the more simple posts click with me. He came up with a challenge this new year to "begin a new habit." The idea being that you make 5 minute concrete goals on a daily basis always after a similar "trigger" event. This is how I am doing my blog... though its not really a 5 minute habit. I had a little more practice with this idea from summer of 2007 until I left.

In the months leading up to New York I started practicing a bunch of different daily rituals and other things to test me physically and mentally. Two I really enjoyed were basic Arithmetic and Push-ups. Arithmetic... sounds dumb for a 24 year old to practice, but even before I left I learned the idea that Americans have an awful upbringing in mathematics, specifically arithmetic. Eastern cultures teach the basic algorithms like adding and subtracting in a completely different way. I began practicing these methods for a little while every day and it was very satisfying how much growth I saw in a very short period of time. After about a week of practice I could add a stack of five or six digit numbers in a fraction of the time it used to take me.

Secondly: push ups, lots and lots of push ups. I will be the first, and maybe second person to admit that I am not a physically in shape person. I'm pretty sure I paid fat tax (wherein you belong to a gym and don't go for a month) more than once in the year I belonged to my gym. I found some challenge on a website to do 100 push ups in a row. I have absolutely no idea what attracted me to this concept except that it had an incredibly structured spreadsheet for me to follow. It had a plan for three days a week for three different levels of competence and lasted for six weeks. This was something I was dumb enough to follow. Let me tell you, the first week was rough and I have no idea why I followed up. The second week the numbers jump up enough to scare you... but you can do it. It wasn't the adrenaline of push ups that drove me to continue, it was the results of small daily growth that pushed me further. I made it through four weeks and was doing five sets of over twenty-five push ups in a single session. I recognize the fact that that is more than 100 push ups but they had timed rest sessions in there. In a relatively short period of time there was not only a noticeable difference in how MANY push ups I could do, but in my physical appearance. Then I took off a day for a dumb reason and stopped doing them all together. AWESOME!

(Now for the meat and potatoes of today) In a previous post's comments someone suggested they would start doing the 100 again if I did. SO, I will. I'm starting from scratch because it helps build the routine more than the muscle. In addition I will be adding two more small exercises to my morning routine. I found a similar challenge for sit ups... 200! sit ups in a row. Look it up. The last exercise is the most fun for me, the Indian Push up. LOOK IT UP. Now, to keep me honest I will do one of two things. I'll make a once weekly post of my daily commitment: What percentage of the exercises I completed, was I happy with my routine, my morning timing? what are my triggers? Did I do it no matter what? If I find I'm not keeping up with it, I'll move to keeping up a side bar post to show my day to day progress. You can track me loosing my mildly overweight American butt daily or weekly, its up to how lazy I am. I'll post tomorrow about other things I'd like to add to my growing list of things to do. But for now its late and I have work tomorrow (yes, Saturday... maybe no extra tourism reports for a little while).

Making the Move

A few years back I was fortunate enough to take a short (4 days) trip to Copenhagen, Denmark.  This was my first trip to Europe, and I was amazed at how comfortable I was in such a foreign place.  Fast forward to 2008 and I am given the opportunity to work for a Danish Architecture firm whose work was inspirational to me during my first trip to Denmark.  I jumped at the chance and decide to make the move, the catch is that I need to do an internship period in Brussels, Belgium before I can move up to Copenhagen.  

This blog is meant as a recording of my experiences in moving and working as an architect abroad.  I will be documenting travel, personal development, food, work experiences and what it takes to move overseas.