Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Food (jídlo) and drink (nápoj) and other nonsense

I've made a commitment to writing every day for a week or so on the blog. I've realized from reading the great Hugh Macleod (more on his amazing book Ignore Everybody at a later date) that writing books is a fine idea, but writing and then putting your stuff up on a blog might just be a faster, more direct, easier, way to, etc. etc. blah blah blah. So for the next week or so I'll be putting up stuff every day. Perhaps a painting one day. Perhaps me rambling about what I think another day. Today's entry falls into the second category. Let's talk about food and beer and trying to be healthy.

I've been trying to get healthy for the last year or so. I was surprised to find out recently my cholesterol is high. Since I've lived here in Prague my diet's included healthy portions of butter and animal fat. One particular favorite is rendered pigs fat with bits of cracklings (aka burnt pig skin). Spread it on bread. A touch of salt. You're good. Another favorite is Tlacenka, which according to wikipedia is "head cheese...generally bonded with brawn - thick pigskin and hock/trotters broth - with various combinations of meat cutoffs (i.e. knuckle, head), offal (tongue, heart, liver) and fat with seasoning". Good to know! Add a beer or five and you're on your way. I'm just rambling here. I don't have a lot to talk about but I have to write something. I've stopped eating most of those delicious fatty foods I used to eat. I've started up running again in the morning. The public park near the apartment is great. The other morning at 7 there was a group of Jamaicans filming a reggae video. No joke. They had a shoulder mounted steady cam and everything. There's usually almost no one running with Marshall and me there in the morning. The few people that you see are inspiring and motivating because they're usually really intense. I don't run every morning because my knees start hurting then. On days off I'll go to the hotel nearby to swim. Today there was a man in the locker room who couldn't find his bathing suit. A few minutes later I saw him swimming in his boxer shorts. No problem. Who cares. It's the same thing, right? Last week there was an older woman swimming topless. Why not. So I get a good amount of physical activity daily. I also started meditating in the morning. Only ten minutes but I like it. I heard Tim Ferriss talk about it on a podcast. He asked a bunch of successful people what they would do differently if they could change something from their past. A lot of them said they would have started meditating earlier in their lives. I thought that was interesting so I've started it too. It helps me quiet my brain and narrow my focus. And it's also a place mentally you can go back to throughout the day just by going back into the same breathing technique. It's amazing. I've been trying on and off for a long while to completely quit drinking alcohol. It's a tall feat here because beer is basically $1 or less and it's where people meet and talk. And that's hard because it's become too much of a thing, a habit I don't see much of a benefit from. I want to meet people, just I would prefer a different way. It would be cool to meet people who are athletic and have ambition, but they don't spend their time in pubs now do they? I spent 7 long years sitting at a desk around good people who were stuck at their jobs and knew it. It zapped everything out of them, the energy they had and their hopes for the future. They loved going to pubs. So, yeah, it's tough. Anyway, wanted to write something. Wanted to try and keep it light. Most of the stuff I write on here is deadly deadly serious. Wanted to talk a little bit about life here and my experiences this week and as of late. Ahoj.

No comments:

Post a Comment