MINDFLOW: P90X (Wordpress Original Archives)

15 minutes in and my arms and legs are jelly. My head feels woozy as well right now. 

 

 

 

It's been about 20 mins after I stopped working out and I'm still feeling pretty knocked out. Damn, I just noticed as I'm writing this that I'm having a hard time breathing, so windows now. The program thinks people have all those dumbbells, pull up bars, pressure bars and shite laying around their house. Because I sure don't.
Now, I have the whole video collection of P90x in mpg format which totals to about 7 to 8 gigs with 700mb each for individual one hour work outs. I figured that will not fit in my Psp so i prompted to re-download a whole new torrent of it in mp4 format about 300mb for each video.

The whole last  week  has been chaos - Midterms. Man, talk about stress. Not only that, tomorrow I have to start the national distance learning program or whatever the fuck it's called at the embassy. Basically a series of open book (not supposed to be) exams that I have to go to the embassy to take. It obviously is making mom crazy because of the placement of the schedules of whether it's in the morning or night.
The sound absorption sheets from Audimute I received right after my sociology test on Thursday. Took a whole fucking day of delay should I add on UPS's part. In tracking info, the delay was because 'no one was home to sign the package'. My ass. I live in an apartment with lobby people downstairs and they're there 24/7 to take in the shipment for us.

I set up the sheets in my dad's closet and moved my drums and 3 days later, Saturday when I was playing in the fully padded room, there was knocking on the other side. WHAT the FUCK. Can't I play my drums in peace? It's in the middle of the day 1 pm and who the fuck sleeps at that hour? First time I heard knocking, I stopped. I thought it was my call to eat lunch. I came back, heard more banging on the walls when I started playing. I didn't give in. The bangs went away. After playing for about another 45 mins I knew I needed to relocate my drums again. But where?
Come Sunday, I hammered nails on the walls and hung the sheets where I thought they would suck up most of the sound. Dad went outside and told me to try playing the drums to see how loud it was outside. He came back looking as if he'd seen death and told me it was too loud. I realized he was probably exaggerating the results and I went ahead and listened as he hit the drums. Surprisingly, it wasn't as loud as I thought it would be. They were about as loud as you would expect listening from a quiet corridor.

This is going to be a sucky week for me. I'm not looking forward to Halloween, I'm not happy with my neighbors, I just spent $100 of my ride cymbal money on shit I don't even need,  I'm exhausted from one workout video, I'm not looking forward to ANYTHING, and have to write a what the heck 4 pages of writing tonight.  I'm depressed, basically. I'm going downstairs to my local deli and getting me a can of redbull.
I don't think I want to continue the P90x training. It's proven to be too much for me. Maybe if i can get it to play in my psp by syncing the video I need for the day everyday and taking it with me to the gym downstairs, that might be another story. It all depends on how much I'm willing to work at it. Maybe Ill just give up, maybe ill put a little effort in, maybe a lot. I don't know. Cause these voices in my head keep saying love, just don't stare, reveal the word when you're supposed to.

-November 2009

Mike Portnoy part 2

Octavarium Era.

Drums are an intenseful, demanding, instrument. They aren't like ANY other instrument in a modern band musical setting, (guitar,bass,etc.) and requires you to have independence on all four limbs. Not only that, as many people know, drum are the heart and the pulse of the song. you speed up, everybody speeds up so it's ultra important our job as a drummer is to keep a steady rockin' beat.

Those are only the basics of course. Master veteran drummers like Portnoy, on top of doing what is already very hard, breaks through the mold and acquires what you would call, your own voice on the drums. I have heard that having your voice on the drums is many more times harder on top of being just a drummer. Surely, it takes decades of playing and/or a sheer amount of talent to achieve that.

Now I fell in love with drums or more importantly, percussion in my 8th grade high school music class. It was made mandatory at the time to purchase an acoustic guitar. I had already been down that road once in 5th grade of my middle school when the same thing was asked of my teacher so I already owned a guitar. Once again like three years back, I tried learning the chords, really learned the strumming but alas, nothing.

I promptly put down the 5 stringed instrument in one class thereafter and searched around the room for the next most interesting instrument. My eyes caught the snare drum which was laying on top of a corner chair; it was badly tuned and the heads needed replacing. The snare wires on the underside were damaged but it was still a 14" snare nonetheless. The christmas concert was in weeks. I had no real intentions of playing the guitar with 7 other classmates, fail or not. It wasn't that exciting at all.


This post went about 6 or 7 years back of my life. This was before anything. In part 3, I'll talk about my first experience with a real drum set and more. To be continued. Stay tuned.

Mike Portnoy has been nothing but a huge influence on my life.

Portnoy with his son, Max. Playing along to A7x's nightmare.

Mike Portnoy, best known as drummer for Dream Theater ( now currently touring with A7X) is a major influence in my drumming career. Early on in my Rock Band days with the plastic drumset, I always felt most songs, tier 1 - 8 has extremely boring drum parts. Till I came to unlock the tier 9 songs that is. It is also how I discovered Dream Theater and Portnoy's epic drumming. Immediately upon hearing the song Panic Attack! from DT, I was hooked. Instantly. Odd time signatures, awesome bass intro, intricated and  technical guitar solo and of course, Portnoy's epic drum parts. That was just the beginning of my descent into prog music. To be continued.. comment and follow if you want to hear the establishment of my musical drumming career.

Started new blog

BLOG 1 YAY

Just another something I can't live without, with me being your typical procrastinator.

I now have this app on my mac called Self Control. It lets me enter a list of sites I want to block. I decide how long it blocks said sites.

Woah, this status will appear on 9 diff sites including what you see here.

Is it worth the wait for RB2 drums?

Here's a quote from Albert Einstein: "if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." Well, guess what? The bees are disappearing. In massive numbers. All around the world. And if you think I'm being alarmist and that, "Oh, they'll figure out some way to pollinate the plants…" No, they've tried. For a lot of what we eat, only bees work. And they're not working. They're gone. It's called Colony Collapse Disorder, when the hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, and all that's left are a few queens and some immature workers — like when a party winds down at Elton John's house. Also, if your stinger stays up more than 48 hours, call your doctor.

But I think we're the ones suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder. Because although nobody really knows for sure what's killing the bees, it's not al-Qaeda, and it's not God doing some of his Old Testament shtick, and it's not Winnie the Pooh. It's us. It could be from pesticides, or genetically modified food, or global warming, or the high-fructose corn syrup we started to feed them. Recently it was discovered that bees won't fly near cell phones — the electromagnetic signals they emit might screw up the bees navigation system, knocking them out of the sky. So thanks guy in line at Starbucks, you just killed us. It's nature's way of saying, "Can you hear me now?"

That is freaky.. so in the end, it's the bees that killed mankind eh. Wow, who knew?

Yesterday, another creepy/weird/unexplainable event occured in the bus on my way back to home from summer school. I caught the #31 bus that was about to leave in the bus stop. I hadn't even seen it go past the road I was walking to be honest. So there I was in the bus, which was again, oddly full of people. It's the friggin 2nd stop and the whole bus is full?? That never happened to me in the past 2 months of coming back midday in that bus but I might have never noticed it after I got in. Then there was this loud mouth asian/american bitch talking her ass off not in english, but french. Yes, it annoyed me more than usual because of that. Not only that, she even made a 2nd call after she hung up from the 7 bus stop non-stop chatter. I wasn't in my usual comfy seat in the middle of the bus, but a blackman came in and sat in it as soon as someone got up. So there i was, and then even after the man left my favorite seat, i didn't 'feel' like switching seats. Soon after the cellphone bitch left, I don't know what I did, but I went for the back seat instead. That's when this odd event happened. This girl sitting right beside cellphone bitch in the corner back seat apparently left her cellphone there on the seat. I saw it. I was panicked at first but then I looked out the window, and saw her face sinking as well, so I first knocked on the glass window, not hearing that, she went straight for the entrance while i told the whole bus someone forgot her cell phone, rushed from the backdoor and yelled miss miss. She finally heard me and so lost in joy, she again dropped her iPod which i think she didn't step on lol. The backdoor nearly closed on me as I made my way back in and surely enough, the driver was fuckin pissed at his job as I saw him shaking his head sarcastically as we picked up another handicap near the hospital.

I returned my 27 day old Rock Band drum set to Circuit City. I was surprised at the woman at the register for the fact that she had no idea what to look for in a returned box lol. I could have virtually got away with it by keeping the drum sticks for myself. But then again, one stick is broken in half so I'm glad i got back my $80 something dollars including tax back.

oh and how could i forget what my adorable drum set did for me before i returned it.. lol adorable.

yup, 5 friggin gold stars on Dani California which i couldn't manage even a 3 star the first time i played it. and no, i played it like 15 times prior to this honestly.

I tapped sarah on the shoulders and asked her what time is it yesterday. Today? I don't want to talk about. I need to grow some balls starting tonight. Psyche my self up in other words. I hate it when that happens. That old 'i cant talk to girls esp the ones i like' feeling. I have no problem with other girls. Sigh old me...

deeper personal thoughts~ not bad though, i thought i was never going to post again.. reality? im lazy because honestly, i thought i was going to post everyday or so after 21st the first entry. so yes, a week and 2 days after was not bad at all. maybe ill keep posting everytime something out of the normal happens. speaking of which, the so called 'webispodes' of the new heroes preview clips, the quality of actors has noticeably degraded to a level worse than your average tv show. loemon would still watch it nonetheless. and how i wished all the entries would write it self automatically all neatly piled in this web blog and how i thought im probably not that first one to think of that and probably the 1579th person. <- nuts lol

Day One

Why did i even feel the urge to start writing a diary all of a sudden? Maybe it's because I felt i needed to keep a record of my life? I have no idea. There I go, i have no idea! lol

Naturally at my age, friends and contacts of my father would ask me what I want to be I just can't conform to the oh-so-decided jobs like other kids. I feel the need to be more organized and have a better understanding of the future, my future. I knew this morning I needed to tell myself I want to be a lot of things when I grow up. An NBA star, a talented voice actor, a computer techie, a famous Hollywood director and lots of random occupations that I can't seem to make my mind up on.

The long and enduring third week of the summer school is as fucked up as usual. Pandolfino claimed my paper on Wars of the 19th century was copied from somewhere... and he was right, most of the words were from the one and only Wikipedia. Living environment class was taken over by the pony tail hair guy sitting in the back for the last 2 weeks. Mr. Eisen wasn't too bad, he definitely knew what he was talking about but as a n00b teacher, he lacked some methods and techniques Mr. Bailey the 13 yr old veteran chemistry teacher possessed. Note to myself that the really quiet Spanish girl who was in my group had a weird sort of accent and that's probably the reason why she dare not speaking out loud in class.
songNow we come to the interesting part of today's story. Coming back from school around 1 in the afternoon having ate lunch, I decided to rock out a bit on Rock Band before doing my paper that's due tomorrow. So basically, what happened was I got the the ranked score duel mode or whatever it's called and it's where you would be paired up with an anonymous gamer and then a random song would be chosen to play. I had two of the songs guessed correctly. The first one was Say It Ain't So. I started singing out the song aloud in the loading screen and amazingly turned out to be that song. Same thing for the second song, Dani California. My only proof is the idiot I have for a brother who I told him straight away when that happened. Why does these things happen to me sometimes? Déjà vu? Probably. I guess I'll never know and I probably don't want to if the truth is too shocking for me to handle.

deeper personal thoughts~
i wonder when newtopic92 a.k.a blairee would start posting new vids again because i like her and she's pretty. should i really return my rockband drum set because rumors are definitely there that rb2's coming out in oct but then it's 3 more friggin months and i seriously cannot wait that long. i like rb1. its good. i haven't even finished all the songs yet. the 2012 dec thing is definitely still on my mind. what if it really happens? ill just fuckin laugh about it 5 more years when im reading this i guess. i'll see xD

edit: just finished an excellent essay on belief systems: christianity and buddhism. turns out all the 2 researches i spent 45 mins on were mostly useless as the paper says it's limited to one monotheistic religion. oh well, it turned out to be really good anyways.