Automobiles

So its been close to a year since I got my first new car, the 2009 Audi A4 2.0T.  Since then, I’ve spent tons of money and time modding it.

Here’s a list of the mods I’ve done to it.  Some are very subtle, and only car enthusiasts can tell.

- Carbon fiber filler plate
- 5000K HID’s
- Hoen yellow fogs
- Gloss black vinyl roof
- Matte black grille trim
- Gloss black window trim
- Debadged
- Blacked out rear rings
- Silver carbon fiber interior trim
- Carbon fiber license plate
- 19×8.5″ matte black VMR v710′s
- 255/35/19 Kumho SPT
- EAS white time attack stripes
- H&R sport springs
- Audi S-Line shocks
- H&R rear spacers
- VAG-com’d
- Valentine V1 hardwired
- Black brake calipers
- 50% front, 35% rear tint
- Black front splitter

Here’s a most recent picture of it.

And I have just barley started…I’ve got tons more planned for her.

New-ish Job

Employment.  I’m going to have to say its something I am actually thankful to have right now, especially after hearing and experiencing how terrible the job market is right now.  I graduated from UC Riverside about an year ago, finished two quarter earlier than my classmates thinking “hey, it gives me a better chance of landing a job, right?”.  Wrong.  The job market was as its worst state when I graduated December of 2008, many of our professors actually said “I think its probably better for you who are graduating to stay in school”.  But at the time, I’ve had just enough of school.  Constant deadlines on projects, night of cramming right before midterms/finals just took a toll on me, and I seriously didn’t want to deal with all that again.  In the end, I graduated early and decided to test the water in the job market.

I was being lasy as fuck after I graduated, and that’s probably an understatement.  At first I just thought its a “long deserved break” after 3 and 1/3 years in college, but the break turned out to be a long one.  I wasn’t being lazy in the sense of not being active though.  As shown in my othe posts, I’m pretty into weight lifting, so I actually went to the gym either daily or at least every other day.  I was being very lazy in the sense that I wasn’t in any hurry to look for a job.  I’m not going to lie, I’m fortunate to be in a decently well off family, so yeah, I was pretty much leeching off my parents.  I wasn’t exactly focused on looking for a job, but if one came my way, I definitely took a look at it.  So Anyways, after almost half a year, I finally “found” a job thanks to a friend of a friend.

He brought me into a small privately owned clinic and I was doing a full range of tasks, ranging from billing patients to planting trees.  I thought the job was okay, but I knew it really has no future since the medical industry is not something I’m interested in.  However my lack of interest probably showed, since the management there was questioning my work ethic.  After being there for a couple months, we came to the mutual agreement that this sort of job just is not a good fit for me.  We shook hands, I thanked them for the opportunity, and we parted ways.  The funny thing is, after leaving that job, I became really focused on finding another job – and I did, but I think that’s a story worthy of a completely new post.  To make the story short, I experienced my first multi-level marketing scheme.  Now onto my current job.

After quitting the multi-level marketing job, I was again feverishly looking for employment.  It was pretty unsuccessful and I had several talks with my father regarding my employment status.  My dad owns a company in Dong Guan, China, and has always told me if I am interested, he will hand me the company.  As great of an opportunity as that sounds, its a really tough decision and definitely not a decision I can make on the fly.  The obvious advantage would be being the boss of a pretty profitable company, I would make tons more there than I can ever make holding an entry level position here.  The downside (depending one’s view) is moving to China.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against China.  I’ve been there plenty of times on vacation, and think its great spot to relax and have some fun, but living there is a completely different story.  Anyways, it was something we discussed from time to time but the plan never came into fruitation.  In the end, my dad decided to use his network to help me look for a job.

Currently, I’m working in Air Tiger Express, a freight-forwarding company that does land, sea and air transportation of goods.  We’ve also got our own customs brokerage department and warehouses.  My position right now is customers service, and mostly likely a sales in the future.  My father’s friend is the sales director here, so his referral probably contributed a great deal to my hiring here.  Right now, they are basically cross-training me in all the departments – air import, ocean import, brokerage and export.  Its a pretty typical office job, but since I’m completely new to the industry, it is a lot of information to take in.  This post has been the longest I’ve typed, and my hands are getting pretty tired.  I think I will continue the description of my current job onto another post.

Weight Lifting & Starting Strength.

I was a relatively skinny guy in High School, standing at 6’1″ and weighing around 150lb.  But of course, Freshmen year in college fixed that “problem”.  Instead of the infamous freshmen 15, I overachieved and got the freshmen 35.  But weighing 185lb isn’t ridiculous at 6’1″ (actually quite standard depending on body fat %), so I wasn’t obese or anything, just overweight and out of shape.  Anyways, about a year ago, I decided to take up weight lifting and since then, I’ve gotten pretty passionate about the subject.

I started researching online, visiting different sites and forums on weight lifting and learning the numerous exercises available.  In the end, my research lead me to the book “Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training” by Mark Rippetoe and let me tell you, it is an amazing book for novice lifters.  Coach Rippetoe’s lifting philosophy is to focus on major compound exercises involving the barbell.  In the book, he dedicates a 30-50 page chapter on each of five main lifts: Squat, Deadlift, Bench Press, (Overhead) Press and Power Cleans.  He preaches doing exercises/lifts where it works your body as a system instead of individual parts.  The five lifts he emphasizes in the book provides functional strength, as in they are actually useful in real life.  Furthermore, he mentions the exercise machines available in  modern gym and says:

“For instance, there is no way for a human being to utilize the quadriceps muscles in isolation from the hamstrings in any movement pattern that exists independent of a machine designed for this purpose.  No natural movement can be performed that does this.  Quadriceps and hamstrings always function together, at the same time, to balance the forces on either side of the knee.  Since they always work together, why should they be exercised separately?  Because somebody invented a machine that lets us?”

Coach Rippetoe especially emphasized Squats in the book, saying it is a poorly understood exercise since its fairly technical.  Wrong forms of squatting can lead to injuries and knee problems, which is one of the reasons why squat has a bad reputation among ignorant weight lifters.  He summarized the importance of squats in any training routine in this quote:

“There is simply no other exercise, and certainly no machine, that produces the level of central nervous system activity, improved balance and coordination, skeletal loading and bone density enhancement, muscular stimulation and growth, connective tissue stress and strength, psychological demand and toughness, and overall systemic conditioning than the correctly performed squat.”

After having squats as a regular exercise in my lifting routine, I can say I strongly agree with coach Rippetoe.  There is nothing quite like doing a heavy, deep squat.  It truly works out the bar down, which is basically the whole body.  I personally actually despise doing squats, since it is such a tough exercise and really demands a lot from the person both physically and mentally.  Every time I finish squatting, I always think to myself “Phew…don’t have to do this for the next couple days”.  But since I know the benefits of doing squats, I really got no other choice but to suck it up and do it.  Especially after reading coach Rippetoes infamous line “There are very few certainties in the gym, except that if you don’t squat, you’re a pussy”.  Anyways, Strength Strength is an amazing book for new lifters and is universally considered as novice lifter’s bible in the weight training community.

Onto my own progress.  When I started lifting around a year ago, I was obviously weak as hell.  I was barley squatting 115lb, benching 110lb and I was too scared to do the deadlift.  Fast forward to a years time, I would have to say I’m doing pretty well.  I am currently squatting (these are all in 3 sets of 5 reps) 235lb, bench pressing 205lb and deadlifting 250lb.  Plus, I can do dips with a 45lb dumbbell attached, not too shabby I’d say!  As for my weight, I actually haven’t lose much weight in terms of numbers, but appearance wise, there’s a huge difference.  I am currently still floating around 180-185lb, but I have much more lean muscle and cut down my body fat percentage.  My quads, chest, shoulders and arms all got much bigger and more defined.  All in all, I’m still trying to get stronger and improve my main lifts while keeping around the same weight.  It’s really tough as diet is a very important part of working out.  But all in all, I’m really glad I picked up weight lifting, it has become more than a hobby, but more of a life style for me.  I am much healthier now, and much more confident about my appearance.

I’ve always wanted to start a Blog, let’s see if this thing is any good.

I’ve been wanting to start a blog for the longest time, not because of the trend (it’s not even trendy to blog anymore!), but just something to write my random thoughts (Ding ding! It’s the page title!) down.  As cliche’d as it sounds, I think it’d be interesting to look back at my blog posts to see what I was thinking on that particular day.  Plus, I regretted not keeping a blog while I studied abroad in Hong Kong during my first semester in Junior year at UC Riverside.  BUT, I’m not exactly a picture guy, so I have no idea how that would have turned out with the lack of pictures and what not.  Lastly, I suppose blogging will actually make sure I still know how to think and write properly.  I’ve been out of college/university for quite some time now, so outside of a couple of long forum posts, the opportunity of me writing anything longer than a paragraph is quite rare.

I’ll probably post a couple of entries I’ve been wanting to post but never got the chance to since I never had a blog, so bear with me here!

Since this is the first post, I’ll end this here and keep it short and simple.