body

Coughing, yoga, work

I’m getting over a cold so you know what that means: a hacking, choking cough.

I’ve had the cough since I was a kid. It’s dry and ticklish, and lasts for weeks on end. Last year I went to the doctor who said it was either asthma or allergies. Since I can run four miles without losing my breath, I figured it was probably the latter.

Allegra took care of it (along with my hives), but now that I don’t have insurance, I don’t get Allegra.

I have to make do with water, tea, and lozenges, and scaring people into thinking I have H1N1 or bird flu.

* * *

Had my yoga class yesterday and my arms are sore! But in a good way, not in a I-can’t-even-scratch-my-nose kind of way. I also ran four miles. Woohoo!

What keeps me from going crazy without a nine to five job is 1) staying in shape, and 2) being a productive writer.

* * *

Heard the most corp-speaky conversation at Bittersweet the other day. It was three young women in skirt suits, and one, maybe the manager, said “spot on” and “stay the course” at least half a dozen times. (Why do so many corp speak terms ape the military? “All hands on deck.” “Round the horn.” “Stay the course.” Planning a party is not tantamount to planning an invasion.)

Then the manager type chewed out one of the girls for seeming “disenchanted.” How much you wanna bet that the girl was doing her job just fine, but because she wasn’t a pollyanna, she’s seen as “disenchanted.” So not only do you have to do your job, you have to reassure manager types that you’re “thrilled” and “excited.”

WHY?

Is it insecurity on management’s part? Or is it somehow tricking you into thinking you need them more than they need you? It’s not enough to do my job, I have to walk around with an asshat grin on my face all day. Yeah, fuck you.

Gee, Angela, tell us how you really feel.

body — Comments Off
23
Jan 10

A simple beauty regimen

Now that I’ve been writing beauty articles for eHow, I’ve learned a lot about what is and isn’t effective, especially for hyperpigmentation (ie, freckles and age spots) and aging.

I’ve blogged about beauty products before. I LOVE beauty products, especially skincare. At its height, my utilization consisted of:

AM:

Wash with Philosophy’ Purity face wash
Moisturize with with anything with at least SPF 15

PM:

Wash with whitening wash (Shiseido, Pola, or Kose Sekisho)
Use serum with hydroquinone
Use whitening moisturizer

Once a week or so:

Use exfoliating mask
Use whitening mask

Did the whitening products actually do anything? Maybe at first, but I think I soon built up a tolerance.

Now I’ve streamlined my routine. I use the same face wash morning or night, a moisturizer with SPF during the day, and a heavier cream at night. I still do the exfoliating mask and occasionally a “brightening” mask. I’m not sure what the brightening mask does except that it feels and smells nice.

(Please note that this is the right routine for me, someone with oily/dry combination skin. If you have very dry, sensitive, or extra oily skin, you’d want a different routine.)

There have been some claims that using hydroquinone is bad for you, thought it’s still FDA-approved. Whether or not the claims are true, I’ve decided to stop using it since it doesn’t seem to do anything for me anymore.

Supposedly some botanical treatments have a similar effect, but you have to be careful about which ones you choose. Just because something contains “anti-oxidants” doesn’t mean it’ll do shit for your skin.

You have to look out for clinically proven effective ingredients, such as “retinoids (also known as retinol, retiny, or retinoic acid), alpha hydroxy acids, azelaic acid, growth factors, hydroquinone, kojic acid, peptides and salicylic acid” (quoting my own article, by the way).

Yesterday I was tempted to get this “all natural” serum to combat the freckles. While it boasted vitamin C and green tea, I wondered if those ingredients have actually been proven effective. I couldn’t remember so I decided against plopping down $50 for something I wasn’t even sure would work.

I’m quite proud of myself. In the past, I’d have been suckered in by the packaging and wording.

Another thing I read was that you really don’t need so many products. All you need is a gentle cleanser, a moisturizer with at least 15 SPF (some say at least 30), a good moisturizer for evenings, and a gentle exfoliating mask. (It’s good to regularly get rid of dead skin cells to avoid pimples.)

Anything else is pretty much snake oil.

sick / writing — 1 Comment
19
Jan 10

Next Nervous Breakdown post + cold

My next Nervous Breakdown post is up.

Before I moved to the Princeton area, I live in a town that was mostly Jewish and Italian, ie, not too many Asians, which messed with my head in terms of standards of beauty. Despite all the stereotypes of Asian women being trophy wives are whatever, my experience growing up was that Asian girls were not pretty. Or at least that’s how I felt.

In other news, I have my first cold of the year. It came on all of a sudden. On Friday I was perfectly fine. Then that evening I had a tickle in my throat. By Saturday my throat hurt, and by yesterday I was sneezing and stuffed up. Usually colds creep up on me very slowly. Hopefully this one will disappear as quickly as it started.

Trying to get my butt to the gym today. Will attempt a short run and then yoga. I usually feel better after a light workout when I have a cold.

In other other news, we saw The Lovely Bones this weekend. Two words: it sucked. Very boring and lame. So much of the book was glossed over or left out entirely. The only good thing was the acting.

body / san francisco — 1 Comment
08
Jan 10

SF Firsts: Yoga and EARTHQUAKE!

Two San Francisco firsts this week.

Yoga

I’ve been doing yoga on my own for years, but probably not intensely enough since I’m not very flexible. I mean, I can touch my toes and do downward dog pretty easily, but my hamstrings and inner thighs get really tight from running.

My gym offers tons of classes so this Tuesday I finally tried yoga. When I walked in, I saw that everyone had their own mats and were decked out in yoga gear. I wondered if I had to run home to get my mat, but then saw someone grab one of the foam gym ones. I followed suit.

I was afraid there’d be a lot of spiritual mumbo jumbo, but there wasn’t. We started off just sitting with our eyes closed and breathing deeply (which these chatty girls next to me didn’t get for a good minute, continuing to chatter while the rest of us tried to relax), and then went right into lots of poses.

I couldn’t really hear the instructor sometimes, and she didn’t always demonstrate the pose. Luckily there were plenty of people in the class who seemed to know what they were doing, so I copied them. Still, if I hadn’t been doing yoga on my own, I’d have been totally lost.

So actually that meant a good intense workout. She didn’t waste time teaching us how to do poses, we just did them.

Well, most of them. There were a couple where I thought, She wants us to do what? I realized how inflexible my arms and shoulders were. Also the balancing with one foot in the air was great but HARD.

About halfway through, I noticed I was sweating profusely and my mat was slick with sweat. (Nice, I know.) By the end my muscles were shaking.

I had run two miles before the class, and originally thought I’d run another two after. No way in hell. I was so tired I could barely lift my arms for the rest of the day. The next day I was massively sore, especially my triceps, pecs, and upper back. (My legs were pretty okay, except my tush was a bit achy.) MB kept massaging me while we watched TV, which was SO painful, but good for me.

Yesterday I was still sore but at least could lean against things without wincing. Today I’m a bit tender but much better.

I think I’ll be ready for my next class on Tuesday!

Earthquake

Yesterday morning I was sitting at the kitchen table working on my computer. First I heard the toaster rattling, then the coffee pot. I thought there were just cooling off, but then the table and my chair started rumbling.

I jumped up and stood in the doorway. There was another rumble and the bed shook MB awake.

“Holy shit!” I said.

He leaped out of bed and joined me in the doorway. Then it was over.

It was so short, we wondered if it was actually an earthquake, or if a heavy truck had just gone by outside.

“I’ve totally felt heavy trucks go by,” MB said.

“Yeah,” I said. “But they don’t make our furniture shake.”

Apparently, there was an earthquake with 4.1 magnitude near Milpitas, which is south of San Francisco and not far from San Jose.

The shaking lasted just a few seconds, but for an east coaster who’s never experienced anything like that, it was CRAZY.

body — Comments Off
31
Dec 09

You say Thai massage, I say mfg OW!

Tuesday night MB and I got Thai massages.

If you didn’t already know, Thai massage involves deep tissue work and yoga-like movements. In the “What to Expect” section of the linked article, it says that it’s done on a mat on the floor (check), you’re fully clothed (check), and it’s about an hour long (check). But nowhere does it mention the excrutiating pain.

Unlike western masseuses who use mostly their hands, in Thai massage the masseuses use just about every other body part – elbows, knees, and feet. At times I didn’t even know what body part she was using till suddenly I felt toes wiggling through the blanket on my hand (that actually felt really good).

I didn’t know my hamstrings and IT band (those muscles along the outside of the thigh) were so tight till she started ramming her knees into them, or that my inner thigh muscles were so inflexible till she twisted my legs into a pretzel and pushed them against my chest. I guess all that running stiffens them up.

I winced a few times but I could take it. I could handle the lower back, even when it felt like she was squeezing my organs, but then she started on my shoulder blades.

I’ve had problems with my shoulders for years. My right one because of mousing, and my left because that’s where I carry my bag. Surprisingly my left side hurt a lot more. Like a whole mother fucking lot. Oh. My. God. She just went at it for such a long time. I could have asked her to lighten up, but I wanted the full benefit and thought maybe it’s almost over, and then she’d go on, and on, and on.

How bad was it? Imagine a 110-pound woman pressing all her weight through her knee directly into those nerve endings between your spine and shoulder blade. Not just pressing – digging digging digging. The room was cool, but I was sweating.

Finally, I had to ask her to ease up, and then it was better though by no means a soothing-potpourri-Enya experience like at some chi chi spa.

Then came the yoga-like movements. This involved her lifting me straight off the mat. She did one move that was painful to my right shoulder, but afterward it felt awesome. She lifted me into a cobra pose, and then to the left and right, which was great. I totally heard my shoulder pop. Then she rolled me and I ended bent backwards over her knees. Again, very nice. Then she punched me in the back.

Bitch.

Just kidding. She was a very sweet woman, apologizing profusely whenever I asked her for less pressure. But the whole time I was thinking I should take up serious yoga so that I’m in better shape for my next Thai massage.

Like I said, afterward I felt all loose and relaxed. The next day I was sore but in a good way, like after a workout, and I had a really good run. Six miles! It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to do that somewhat easily.

The experience is making me consider taking a yoga class. I do my own poses but I’m sure I don’t push myself hard enough. Plus I’ve been doing the same ones for years. Maybe I’ll try a yoga class at my gym. It’ll definitely be less painful than another Thai massage.

body / family / sick — Comments Off
30
Jun 09

Bad medicine

Last night I took some Nyquil, which evinced by the fact that I had to show ID before I bought it, is basically blue Jack Daniels. Sensitive to all things stimulant/depressant, I took a fraction of the recommended dosage – 7 ½ ml as opposed to 30 – and it still knocked me on my ass. Less than an hour later I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and when I woke up a while later to pee, I could barely walk straight.

From the time I was a kid, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with cold medicine. The moment my brother or I showed any symptoms, our mother would say, “Kuai chi yao!” Quickly, take medicine! as though some Tylenol Cold (which my mom called “Co-Tylenol”) could stop one of a billion viruses in its snot-inducing tracks. While I loved that the stuff knocked me out when I wasn’t feeling good – the way I loved the “sweet air” at the dentist’s, so much so that I hoped for cavities – taking too much could leave me a bundle of nerves.

For standard colds, there was “green yao yao,” chinglish for green medicine (in my house there were actually two green yao yaos, one for the sniffles and the other a menthol gel that my mother insisted cured everything from bug bites to pimples to infected cuts ). I don’t even know what it actually was, but I do remember it was the least foul-tasting of the bunch and the mildest, putting me to sleep in a soft, slow way.

Sometimes for a mild cough my mother gave us pi pa gao, a syrupy Chinese herbal concoction, which I found really disgusting and literally had to choke down. For the cough that wouldn’t quit, there was Contact, red and gross. My brother and I would take the dose fast, always in a Chinese soup spoon, and grimacing and convulsing, immediately afterwards gulp a tall glass of water.

Contact not only made me drowsy, it made my whole body feel strange, like I was wearing a giant body-sized glove made out of my own skin. And too much of it gave me the jitters. Nowadays we know about the dangers of giving kids too much cough medicine, but back then my mom thought, She’s still coughing, she needs more medicine.

When I was 8, I had the flu and lingering hacking cough. Contact to the rescue! But as the weeks went by, I developed a bad case of insomnia. I had strange dreams and a continual ringing in my ears. Already a nervous kid, I was even more nervous, bursting into tears for no reason. It didn’t help that around this time I watched the Exorcist for the first time, or at least part of it, and managed to convince myself that I was possessed, and that soon my bed would start shaking and I’d be ramming crucifexes up my crotch. It got to the point that I couldn’t sleep alone, and made my brother sleep in the same room with me, to his annoyance I was sure. But I didn’t care.

The insomnia and fear of sleeping alone lasted a good year, maybe longer, till finally I decided to wanted to be back in my own room, which my parents would have to pry me out of for the rest of my adolescence.

Today, while occasional sleeplessness and catching z’s solo don’t bother me, I’m still wary about the likes of Robitussin, Sudafed, and yes Contact and green yao yao. I take it only when absolutely necessary (ie, when I feel like a pillow has been stuffed up my nose and sinuses) and in very small doses, though sometimes I still wish for a cavity.

body / library school london / london / sick / travel — Comments Off
25
Jun 09

London, Day 12

Hey whaddya know, I still have internet. I thought it would be shut down by now. Maybe I have it till midnight.

I’m totally coming down with a cold. At least three of my classmates are either getting over and are in the middle of colds. I asked the one who’s still suffering, “You came down with something?” and he said yeah, it seemed a bunch of people are sick. I thought, Not me! and literally an hour later my throat started hurting.

The sessions today were boring as hell. I thought the e-publishing conference would include more about books and trade publishing, but it seems to be all academic, which in small doses is fine, but for almost eight hours, is way too much.

It didn’t help that the room was too warm and I had dressed too warmly. The temperature shot up to almost 80 today, though it’s cooler now of course. And I was sitting next two people who didn’t think to move down into the empty seats so that we three weren’t sitting right next to each other. As soon as a seat opened on the other end, I got up and moved. The woman kept looking at me, and I was like, Fuck you, you didn’t think to move, I’m not going to sit up right up next to a 6 foot tall man radiating body heat in this 80 degree room.

So the cold is making me grouchy.

Afterwards I stopped at the reception for a short time, and then had dinner with one of my classmates. We invited people, but no one showed up, and sometimes it’s easier with fewer people anyway. We got Szechuan food, which was pretty good. I had a sweet corn and chicken soup, very nice for my throat.

No pictures today.

sleep — 3 Comments
13
May 09

I hear the secrets that you keep

Time: About midnight
Place: Bed

MB (asleep): I dreamed my alter ego believed in bubbles.
Me (half-asleep, thinks, Oh, he’s talking in his sleep again, then, Wait, that kind of made sense): Are you awake?
MB (still asleep): Yes.
Me: . . .
MB (not awake): I just felt the need to explain that to you.

He remembers none of this, btw. At one point there was also laughing, followed by, “That’s awesome!”

Either last night was a talkative night, or I’m usually asleep and don’t hear it. No more caffeine after 1 for me.

library / running / weight — Comments Off
06
May 09

A quick one

I can’t decide whether or not to go to BookExpo at the end of the month. I have till 5/23 to sign up for the early bird prices, which seems to be cutting it pretty close to the date of the expo. Maybe they have fewer people signing up this year.

The last time I went it was fun, though overwhelming. I heard some great talks, and got lots of free books. This time I’d have the additional perspective as a wannabe-librarian.

School is finally winding down. I’m nervous about my presentation tomorrow. I’m just talking about my corp speak project, but I don’t know if I put it in the right format. All this design science stuff is hard for me to grasp. I have another presentation on Monday but that’s on my patient sastifaction paper and I’m pretty familiar with that. Sunday I have a final but it shouldn’t be a big deal.

I’ve started trying to up the intensity of my workouts. This past year I’ve been sort of lax, or at least hit a plateau, and ended up gaining about 5-7 pounds. Not a lot but enough to go up a pants size. Actually I was relieved to see that small weight gain; I kept thinking it was more like 10 pounds.

I want to incorporate longer runs into my routine, but lately I haven’t had the time and/or motivation. So instead I’m including some “hill” work (i.e., increasing the incline on the treadmill) and speed work into my 4 miles runs. I think makes a difference. Plus it alleviates the boringness.

MB showed me some exercises he used to do when studying martial arts – they’re supposed to make your butt rock hard, including that area beneath the cheeks. You lift your pelvis off the floor, as high as you can, making sure your upper back and arms are relaxed, and your stomach is flat, and then just hold it as long as you can. I can do a couple of sets of ten slow breaths right now.

Then lift just the right hip,and the left, holding each for as long as possible. Finally, something like a pilates move: pelvis in the air, one leg straight up, and just holding it. In pilates you bring that leg down about 8 times, which is HARD. I don’t know if it’s doing anything for my butt, but my abs and quads are tighter. Maybe I’m doing the exercises wrong. :P

Aight. Back to work.

holidays / library / sleep / weekends — 1 Comment
17
Feb 09

So sleepy

Waking up after even 7 hours of sleep is tough after getting 10-12 hours a sleep a night for three nights. Hopefully this green tea and chocolate will help.

It was a low-key weekend. We don’t make a big deal of Valentine’s Day – MB cooked, which he probably would have done anyway. Trout and broccolini, our new favorite vegetable. Aside from running errands during the day, we were both caught up with schoolwork for most of the weekend. And I still had class Sunday and Monday as well. I keep thinking I have class tonight, but I don’t! Yay! Maybe it’s time to hit Sephora and restock on beauty supplies.

Two celebrity sightings: Blythe Danner, off of 8th Street, and the dude from Fringe. Actually, I didn’t see the Fringe guy, only MB did, and he didn’t see Blythe Danner, not that he’d recognize her. So one and a half celeb sightings.

Angela Tung Oversharing on the internet since 2005.