Overcoming fear.

It's always like this - I see a snake in my garden and for the next week or so, I do not dare to venture outdoors for fear of stepping on the snake. Soon enough, I forget about the snake and I am back to my normal self. That's the way to live life. You can't hold on to your fears too long. It makes no sense. I'm reminded of my non-naturist friend who asked me after seeing some of my pics how I could have the courage to go naked into the garden when the thought of a bee stinging the genitals is frightening enough. That's really silly. If a bee has to sting me either on the genitals or in my eye, I'd rather offer my genitals to it. Surely, a bee stinging your eyeball is much more frightening than anything imaginable. And yet even that friend of mine would not dream of sitting in a garden with protective  goggles on. Fear can sometimes border on the insane.

Anyway, here are pics of me watering my plants and trees. I went about barefoot and no, I was not afraid I might step on a snake. If I don't write an explanatory note here, I may not know if I  look at my photos years from now why I raised the hose so high up in the second pic. There was a squirrel that was eating the flowers of my heliconia and I was just telling it not to do that with the water hose. But it was fast. I couldn't even wet it.

My new Operation HULK

One of the problems I have is inconsistency - I can't stick to an exercise regime. I started Operation HULK ages ago but up to this moment, I have no muscles to show. I notice one problem I have. I am inherently lazy. Whenever I have the smallest reason not to go to the gym, I will skip it gladly. Last Thursday, I went to the gym and decided to work out 5 days a week as long as I am not abroad. But I will be abroad most of next month and in April. It can't be helped. My new rules are to go the gym every day from Monday to Friday as long as I am not abroad. These are the pics I took last Thursday, 21 February 2019. I will give myself a year and I will pose the same way again on Friday, 21 February 2020 and I will see if there is a difference. Will Operation HULK work? Seeing is believing. We'll just have to wait until this time next year.

Right now, I have a lot to work on. I won't bother with the development of my abs muscles because replacing my current thick layer of stomach fat with pure muscles is pure fantasy. Besides, I'm already a happily married family man of advanced years who's no longer in the mating game unlike those who are my son's age. But my arms need to be developed, not for aesthetics but for practicality. Having strong arms is always useful when you're doing gardening or carrying your rucksack when you are hiking or rowing a boat. My legs are naturally muscular from years of Kung Fu training as a child and so I only need to do some cycling exercises when I'm in the gym.

Let's see how I turn out on 21 February 2020. I am hoping that by making a public statement of this sort, I will be motivated to push on with this exercise regime. I pledge to post the same two pics of the same pose on that day even if I don't gain muscles or if my body turns out even worse, if that is possible!

NOTE: I've entered in my diary to remind myself to take the same pics on 21 February 2020. I hope there will be an appreciable improvement.  Until then, JUST DO IT!!!

Feeding my fish in the dark

Forgot to feed my fish this afternoon.

NOTE [24 Feb 2019 at 9.15am]: I posted this last night when I was already in bed. I wanted to see how easy it was to post a blog with a photo from my phone and honestly, it was a breeze. That's the beauty of Google's blogger.com. Since all my photos are on Google Photos, posting one of these on my blog is as easy as pie.

The Old Serpent

Ever since I saw a large black snake slithering across the grass in my garden into a drain, I have been very uneasy about it. I no longer read in my garden for fear that it might bite me. Whatever necessary work I do in my garden is done speedily and I only walk on very short grass and I look at the ground very carefully before stepping on it. I'm sure the snake is as frightened of me as I am of it but I don't want to step on it accidentally. There's no telling if it might be venomous.

Can you squat?

A friend recently directed me to this YouTube video. The video shows a Frenchman going around Paris getting people to squat and everyone seems unable to do it except someone who is a Kung Fu exponent. You need to understand the Mandarin spoken by the Frenchman in the video in order to understand that. That video was quite a surprise to me because I've always thought anyone who has no disability could squat.

Apparently, that video went viral in Taiwan and it was even reported in the Taiwan newspapers. Here's a link to Taiwan's English newspaper report.

I decided to put it to the test. My triplet brothers are still around and so I got them to squat with me. Apparently, all of us can squat.

I've done some research as to why some people can't squat and there are two explanations. One is an urban myth and the other is a proper scientific explanation.

We'll examine the myth first. First the full squat where your heels touch the ground and are not lifted above ground is commonly called the Asian squat, presumably because it's believed that Asians can do it. People who have the need to do the Asian squat for the first time in their lives are travellers who go to underdeveloped Asian cities where there are only squat toilets. So they draw the conclusion that people who can do the full squat have the ability because of the squat toilet.

This is a generalisation that I find quite amusing because Asia is a huge continent and it has the most diversified groups of people - far more so than any other continent.

The first time I encountered a squat toilet was when I was in the Himalayas in Nepal and I was already in my 20s. I've asked my kids and the first time they saw a squat toilet was in other parts of Asia - my daughter saw her first squat toilet in Cambodia when she was there on a school trip. It's a myth that the squat toilet is ubiquitous in Asia; one forgets how large Asia is and how different the national wealth of each state is. For people in my part of Asia, we have to do quite a bit of travelling before we get to see our first squat toilet.

Even if we confine ourselves only to countries where there are squat toilets, it's ludicrous to think that the governments of Nepal and Cambodia, for example,  deliberately designed the squat toilet that caused a whole generation of Nepalese and Cambodians to stumble and fall repeatedly before they got the hang of it and could teach their children the art of squatting. No, of course it must be that these toilets were invented because people in these countries already could squat. Just as my children and I could use the toilets when we visited these countries even though we had not seen such toilets before.

Now, let's look at the scientific reason. In my search, I found an explanation given by a physiotherapist most rational. He says people who can squat have flexible ankles. People who have inflexible ankles will have to go on their toes when they squat and that's not the correct form of squatting the video talks about. The 'Asian squat' as it's commonly called requires your entire feet especially your heels to touch the ground.

Why then do some people have flexible ankles and some don't?

Here's my theory:  If you come from a culture where people traditionally sit on the floor, children in such a culture will grow up with flexible ankles - the ankles will have to flex more when you get up from the floor in order to stand up. Sitting on the floor is very much a part of most Asian cultures: the Koreans, Japanese, South East Asians and Indians all have floor sitting as a part of their culture. The Chinese are the exception. In a traditional Chinese family, sitting on the floor is considered highly inappropriate. You are required to sit on very uncomfortable super hard rosewood chairs, the backrest of which is too far back for you to lean back comfortably. It's deliberately designed this way so you can't lean back and relax and you have to sit upright.

But most Chinese people are able to squat and that's because it's very much a part of Chinese culture to put children through exercises that give some flexibility to the legs and feet. I was trained in wushu or Kung Fu as a boy. But these days, most children do not do Kung Fu because it's too time-consuming. Most children in my country take up Taekwando (a Korean martial art) or Karate and Judo (Japanese). All martial arts that require you to kick will most certainly make your ankles more nimble.

But I think I am also generalising here. I'm sure there are people who can squat without having grown up sitting on the floor or taken up some martial art. Perhaps the video is a hoax - the people pretended they couldn't squat. I posted the video just a couple of days ago on another site and two of my friends have told me that they can't squat. They are perfectly healthy people. One of them is an athlete. They are both Asians and one of them comes from a floor-sitting culture. A friend also referred me to an article on the internet that talks about the 'Asian squat' and apparently Slavs can do it very well. They even appropriate the name for themselves and they call it the 'Slav squat'.

Perhaps there are just no reasons for this. Some people can squat and some can't. It's just like wiggling your ears. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne talked about this once and he demonstrated to the audience that he could wiggle his ears. You either can or you can't. It's in the genes and it's not related to ethnicity or culture.

My brothers and I are all able to kick quite well. Does that make our ankles more supple and hence we are able to squat? I really don't know.

Here's a pic of two of us doing the high kick. Because the kick is super fast, it's very hard to capture the moment when both our feet are at striking position. The third triplet took the photo which is why there are only two here.

We didn't want the third to be left out so here is a solo shot of the third triplet. This is a better kick - it's easier when the photographer concentrates on only one person.

It's difficult to photograph a kick properly because a kick has to be like a whip. You strike and withdraw all in a split second. It's very hard for the camera to snap a pic at the right moment. Even for this last pic, the precise 'strike' moment is not captured. The photo captures the moment just as my foot is being withdrawn.

Happy Human Day

Today is 人日 (Human Day), the 7th day of the Chinese New Year. In ancient Chinese mythology, humans were created on this day. You may sometimes be a little confused when a Chinese person says he's 31 years old but you know he was born 30 years ago. In the traditional computation of your age, you are a year older on this day (and your actual birthday later in the year is ignored). The Human Day is also called 'Everybody's birthday'.

In my country, most restaurants are fully booked tonight as everyone celebrates and eats 鱼生 (literally, raw fish). The one thing I like about Human Day is it emphasizes the fact that every human being regardless of our ethnicity and origin as having a common ancestry. It emphasizes the brotherhood of mankind.

Readers who have not read my previous discontinued blogs on WordPress or Tumblr may not know that I am one of triplets. My brothers who are here to celebrate the New Year with me agreed to pose for a pic this morning to celebrate the unity of all humans. Although my triplet brothers and I are different individuals, we share a common unity as humans. All human beings are essentially multiple triplets or multiplets.

My fish are getting friendlier

My fish sure look like they're getting friendlier this morning, at least the bigger ones. I have about three smaller orange coloured (pale orange)  fish which are of a different species and they remain very shy. One of the pale orange fish can be seen in the last photo. They are  very fast and you can only see a blurred orange when they surface very quickly to snatch the pellets and down they go again like a bullet.

When Internet Giants Change Their Policies

Flickr

Last year, Flickr announced that it would no longer give 1 Tetrabyte of free space for users to upload their photos. They said they would delete all the photos in a user's account, leaving behind only 1000 photos.

At that time, I had in different accounts a total of more than 175000 photos. I made it a point to download all my photos and before the end of the year, I had completed what seemed to be an impossible task. What Flickr wanted me to do of course was to pay them US$50 a year for the liberty to upload as many pics as I wanted. But I was determined not to give them any business. I removed all my photos and downloaded them in quite a few different hard disks. I bought quite a few hard disks and in the end, I paid more than US$350 for the hard disks and several backups. You may say I could have got 7 years of free uploads if I had remained with Flickr. But if they could go back on their promise to provide 1 Tetrabyte of free space for photos, there is nothing to stop them from changing their mind again. And Flickr kept getting sold from one party to another. It was once owned by Yahoo which sold it to another party which sold it to SmugMug which is known for its intolerance of nudity. Flickr is far too unstable and the good thing about my hard disks is they are all mine.


Tumblr

Tumblr recently changed their mind about nudity. It used to be the most reliable blog provider when it came to photos that naturists wanted to post online. But they suddenly decided to be prudish and they made it impossible for viewers to view posts that contained nude photos. But no work was necessary in the transition period because Tumblr was not going to delete anything. They just disabled the sharing of such posts. The owner still has access to his material.


WordPress

The result of Tumblr's decision has a huge impact for some users of other service providers. I used to blog on WordPress. But the horrid thing about WordPress is they provide very limited space for the posting of media (which include photos). Because of that, all my photos on WordPress were uploaded on Tumblr and linked to WordPress. In fact most of my blog posts on WordPress were directly linked from my Tumblr posts. But when Tumblr became prudish and disabled all my posts that had nude photos, my WordPress blog was badly affected.


Blogspot or Blogger 

This is the most reliable blog platform to use and it's what I'm using now. It's true that there was a time when Google wanted to remove all posts that had nudity. They changed their mind when they got negative feedback from users. The good thing about blogger is all my photos are stored on Google Photos. Posting photos in a blog is as easy as clicking a button. In one of my recent posts (the Review of 2018), I uploaded as many as 52 photos. That took me no more than a minute or two. I highly recommend Blogger.


Google Plus

This gave me a headache recently. I had a lot of posts in Google Plus and there were some that I wanted to save. Using their download feature doesn't help because the downloads were in a format that I couldn't open up. I found it easier to screen save the posts I wanted to keep which I did. It was a laborious task but I'm happy to say that I completed the task tonight.  I took a picture of me working on the laptop screen capturing all the posts I wanted to keep and posting them onto Google Photos of course.  This is my jubilant photo. I have completed all the work that I was put to because of these errant Internet giants.  I tried to cover up the messiness of my study but the stack of papers which my chair was specially positioned to conceal could still be seen in the photo. Well-meaning friends have cautioned me not to reveal too much on this blog and I have made it a point to look carefully at my photos to see if too many unnecessary details of my personal life might inadvertently be disclosed. Haha

Success!

I have been complaining that my fish are not friendly enough to pose for a pic with me. Yesterday, during feeding, I managed to get this pic.

This must be the best so far, at least for my new set of fish since my old fish all died, one after another. I have taken thousands of photos and this is really special. I'm going to keep a copy of this pic everywhere so I don't lose it. The file name for this photo is P2080098.

I have about 6 or 7 fish in my pond. Two of them can easily be seen but there is a third one that is closer to my right foot. This fish is extremely fast. It does not stay for even a split second on the surface. It darts out, grab its food and disappears before the camera can snap a shot. There is a fourth - a faint orange hue - just to the back of the second large fish. But it's still quite deep in the water and so you can't make it out clearly.

Eating 麻糍

The Chinese New Year lasts for 15 days on the Lunar Calendar and during this festive season, traditional food seems to abound in my house. I am eating 麻糍 (pronounced ma ci in Hanyu Pinyin) or machi or mua chi in the part of China my ancestors came from. What amuses me is when people tell me I am eating the Japanese mochi.

Like anything Japanese (including a large part of the Japanese language and its writing system), the Japanese mochi was borrowed from the Chinese a long time ago. Sadly, China has always been rather reclusive and in the 20th century, it  became Communist and it isolated itself even more from the rest of the world just as Japan started opening up especially after the Meiji Restoration. Japan soon became an expert at repackaging things that they didn't invent to make them theirs. The car industry is just one example.

Today, you are more likely to come across the Japanese mochi in any supermarket than the original Chinese 麻糍 which is hardly marketed and is usually prepared at home.

I never fail to be tickled when I am eating 麻糍 and I am asked if it's the Japanese mochi especially when the person asking me is himself an ethnic Chinese. I suppose it's a little like if you are driving a really cool car and you are asked if it's a Toyota. No, I'm wrong. It's not the same thing. That's because the Japanese are innovative and it's their mochi that is really the cool thing today. Their mochi now comes in a variety of flavours. I've even seen a chocolate mochi. I've never known the Chinese 麻糍 to contain anything other than sesame seeds and peanut. It's made by mothers usually in the spring and it  gets nowhere and nobody knows about it unless he's been brought up to eat it  and frankly,  if I didn't take this pic, my readers probably wouldn't even know the  麻糍  existed.

My fish are shy even in the dark.

Since it's so hard to capture my fish in the camera when I feed them, I thought that perhaps they would be less shy at night in the dark.

But no luck. They didn't even come out at all. The moment I stepped out and was about to go into the house, they started chomping on the food. This took place two days ago (5 February).

I suppose it takes a long time before they are comfortable with me. My previous fish which had all died got quite used to me. They would always swim on the surface and after eating the food, they would sometimes splash water on my feet. One of them would even leap out of the water just a little. I managed to take a shot of it doing that on camera once.

Here's another meme I just created.

A Review of 2018

Yes, I know it's not the New Year for most people but today is the Chinese New Year of the Pig and I can't help but reflect on my life in the previous year as a naturist when I am abroad.

Here's a review of my naturist lifestyle in 2018 in (roughly) chronological order.  I will let the pictures tell the story - with minimal comment.

Faroe Islands in April (or was it March?) 2018. Bitterly cold. Could hardly take off my jacket, let alone all my clothes:

 It was so cold outside that I could only go naked in my room. This is Raska milk, the largest milk producers in the Faroe Islands.

I bought a pair of reading glasses in Vagar. They give me a rather respectable grandfatherly appearance and I'm not even anywhere near being a grandfather.

The beer in the Faroe Islands comes in very attractive bottles with fanciful names.

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Around late April or early May 2018. A strict Muslim country that has been known to come down really hard on any form of public nudity, even when it takes place on a deserted island. I could only be naked in my own hotel room.

Lauterbrunnen in May/June 2018. There's a waterfall on the right of the photo.

May/June 2018.  I bought a hat in Zermatt which affords me good protection from the sun but everyone thinks I look clownish in it. But I don't care. I like it.

May/June 2018.  Lovely view of Lake Geneva. You can see Switzerland's most famous castle in the distance, to the left of the photo.

Same view as above. Reading in the midday sun.

2nd half of 2018:

BACK IN ASIA

July, 2018.  In a bar in Krabi, Thailand. There's nothing remotely naturist here but I thought it's good to show what I drank in a bar in Thailand. We naturists are decent folks!! Abstemious too. LOL

In a cable car going up to Kitzsteinhorn, Austria.

Drinking Lattela, a famous Austrian yoghurt drink.

Drinking Almdudler, a quintessentially Austrian drink which needs some getting used to.

A bit too much for a snack.

At a restaurant (the name of which eludes me now) up on a mountain.

In the same restaurant I was in two years before and did roughly the same pose I did at that time.

Group photo up on a mountain.

Lunch time but there are no crowds to worry about. You can sit anywhere and you get a great view wherever you are.

I'm on the top of the world.

This particular trail is unique. It feels like you're on Mars. It's somewhere in the Tyrol region of Austria but I need to check Google Maps for the name of the place.

Drinking buttermilch. 

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

This is where the Sound of Music was supposed to be but I don't pass off easily as Julie Andrews.

My throne

At the waterfall.

Group photo

AUGUST 2018

At the house where I stayed. It's just next to the Elbe River in Saxony.

Forgot the name of this mountain but it's beautiful.

Simply exhilarating!

Lunch with a splendid view

Cave exploration.

Posing with John

Just as the guy who took the pic thought that was all, I heard a train and I got him to take more pics. Like most selfie lovers, I love having a train in the background as my pic is taken. I have hundreds of such photos but I won't bore you with all of them.

Rowing down the River Elbe.

At an ice-cream parlour in the heart of town.

I love trains and railway lines.

Lovely view of a town.

At the National Park

The view is truly breathtaking

Cycling into the Czech Republic

A train!  A train!

This is the border of the Czech Republic. We had cycled more than 25km.

One wrong step and it's my eternal rest.

Group photo

It was a steep uphill and I told myself to continue pedalling but though the spirit might be willing, the flesh was, alas, weak.

Towards the end of 2018: In Bali for a break. The only place I could be a naturist in was my hotel room. If you are wondering why I needed so many power points, I had to charge my phone, my cameras, my laptop and my watch. This is the new age when everything has to be electrically charged. Only someone my father's age still wears an automatic watch.

Oops, I forgot to include this pic and will insert it now. I arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 8 Dec 2018 in the middle of high alert because of a government-approved giant rally to affirm the continuation of  racism against non-Malays and non-Muslims  in Malaysia. In Malaysia, the main victims of racism are the non-Muslim Chinese people and that includes me. Even though I am a foreign visitor, I am indistinguishable from any Chinese Malaysian and the Foreign Ministry in my country issued a travel directive against unnecessary travel to Kuala Lumpur on this day. When I took the skytrain into KL, I was a little nervous. There were huge pockets of people wearing t-shirts that extol the supremacy of the Malay race and telling Malays to 'rise and take action'. Anti-ICERD slogans were everywhere. I went straight to my hotel room which happened to overlook a part of Dataran Merdeka where the largest racist rally was to be held and sat naked at the window. I was on a very high floor in the hotel and there was no way anyone could see me but if they could, they might easily have mistaken me for  a fair Malay since I'm extremely tanned and could easily pass off for a Malay. Racism is all about skin colour and it's totally wrong. But the whole context of my visit to Kuala Lumpur makes this photo rather memorable to me. I love Malay food, I speak the Malay language almost like a native and I like Malays generally and I'm used to the anti-Chinese rhetoric made by Malaysian leaders but a racist rally in the heart of the capital of Malaysia in the 21st century was something quite new and disappointing.

This is roughly my 2018 review. I hope 2019, the Year of the Pig, will be even more exciting. When it comes to having fun, we should all go the whole hog.