Year: 2009

I have a slight confession to make. While I got my undergrad degree in engineering, I’ve always enjoyed reading and try to read quite a bit. By all rights, I should detest grammar, and in many ways I do. (Probably because I never really learned it properly.) But that said, I’m fascinated by the ins and outs and twists of good and proper English grammar.

If this sounds like you at all, this is a webpage you must bookmark:
http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/after-deadline/

Each week, the New York Times goes through grammar mistakes it’s made in the last week and explains what was wrong and how the stories could have been better written. I mean… wow! It’s great to see self-reflection but also what a teaching tool for up-and-coming journalists and interested writers like me!

I hope this particular blog lasts for a long, long, time.

President Barack Obama’s multi-ethnic background and refusal to get tied down to stereotypes has made him a cultural Rorschach test.

The definitive proof? This song: There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama

(Lyrics here) And a better video can be seen if you click on this link. The band disabled embedding videos…

So a little over a year ago or so I was thinking about Twitter. Twitter is a tool that is both a type of social network (like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) but is also a type of communications tool. I noticed that certain people posted on Twitter constantly, and used the communications tool functionality constantly.

Trying to be a bit cheeky, I put up a post titled “Voyeur vs. Exhibitionist (on Twitter)”. Virtually no one read it, and I was a bit too simplistic in my categorisation anyway; I was trying to say that users either broadcast everything they do or just listen in on everyone else.

But through the Law of Unintended Consequences I am now on the first page of Google results when someone searches for “exhibitionists blog”!

I’m guessing that anyone that actually clicks through to this site is sorely disappointed. But if anyone has started a blog, it shows that you’ll need to be careful what you post about… you never know how Google will look at it.

So exercise is clearly linked to thinking better. Depending on who you ask, that and reading are the two keys to life.

But let’s face it, exercise isn’t easy. If you’re pushing yourself, it’s pretty painful. Rowing, for example, at any sort of serious level involves legs and lungs feeling like they’re on fire. It’s great to win, but it can be a tremendous sacrifice to get there. Because it’s not easy to do, it becomes easy to skip. And once you start skipping exercise, you can pretty rapidly lose fitness.

One solution is either getting involved in exercise classes (anonymous and generally not tailored to your needs) or seeing a personal trainer (expensive). A personal trainer can sometimes be trying to mold you into what they want you to be, and not what you want.

If you’re in London, there’s a new solution. Two friends of mine and LondonAnnie have established a new Personal Training company that’s specifically geared to what YOU want to do in life: Point2Fitness. For older people, that might mean being more active with their grandchildren. With others, it may mean training to become an Olympic athlete or climb Everest.

The two founders, Baz and Carla, are World-class athletes themselves. (They won bronze in the 2007 Rowing World Championships in addition to World Cups, Olympics, and more.) LondonAnnie in particular has seen and experienced them in action, as they are long-time members of Thames Rowing Club, and have been experimenting with new fitness routines at the club recently.

Please check out the Point2Fitness website and look into it! Baz and Carla are both talented athletes themselves but also incredibly down-to-earth and focused on making their customers happy and their business a success. It’s great to see what international-level athletes are able to do with their careers when they choose to stop competing, and I wish them the best of luck!

(I particularly like that all of the photos were taken in/around Thames Rowing Club; it’s a very professionally produced website.)