Made it to Bali

Sorry for missing the previous week!  I always underestimate the effects of traveling to and from this corner of the world.  I planned to pen this blog last Monday in the airport, but as often happens I was rushed, tired, and I didn’t arrive in Bali until the following evening.  From there I was jet-lagged for a few days, needed time to get settled in, and then it was Friday.  At that point I admitted defeat, but now I am back on it.

 

I was pretty neutral about coming back to Bali, and if we didn’t have friends who were planning to visit I’m not 100% I would be here right now.  Fortunately I’m very happy to be back!  Often I remember the good things and forget the bad, but here it was the reverse.  I remembered the close-calls on motorbikes in heavy traffic, never being able to have a quick meal at home because it is so cheap to eat out (thus turning into an inconvenience when you have to drive 3+ times a day just to eat), the heat, and being very unproductive.  It was a pretty easy fix for all of these problems ( the close calls while driving still occasionally happen, but having a better bike with working suspension helps a lot).  

 

I learned the hard way in March that Bali is below the equator and on opposite seasons.  Every morning I got used to leaving my airconditioned room and going straight to sweating through my clothes as I stepped outside.  It rained almost every day, sometimes for almost the entire day.  You get used to it, but coming here now in “winter” with 70-80 degrees and no rain daily, it’s like a different place.  I would highly recommend the summer/fall to visit, which for us Puerto Rican residents is pretty ideal (escaping heat and potential hurricanes).  

 

On the food-front I’ve been eating pretty close to ideal, with a few bites of a pancake, and one small bowl of spicy noodle soup (gluten-free rice noodles at least), but otherwise it’s been good quality vegetables and moderate fruit/protein/fat.  I just had the first meal on my Paleo meal plan, and it was really good!  Motion Cafe here in Canggu delivers for free Paleo/Keto/Vegan/Bikini Model/etc. meal plans, 6 days a week, for $120 a week (including my 10% discount that I get from Nirvana Strength Bali).

 

For getting work done I don’t want to blow anyone’s mind, but I’ve started to set an alarm clock and put myself on a normal human schedule.  It’s a work in progress, but today I trained at Nirvana from 745-10 am, 40 minutes to get sun, swim, hot pool, cold plunge, eat, and then 5 minutes motorbiking back.  I started working around 12 pm, and plan to work until 7 pm here at my new co-working space, Outpost Canggu. My Motion Paleo meals are delivered to the co-working space in the morning, I have a nice view and breeze coming in, and I’ve been getting a lot done.

 

I have two big things that I’m working on: my health, and my trading (wannabe) empire.  

 

Health is pretty much automated: I just have to eat my Paleo meals, get proper sleep, meditate, and show up to 1-2 classes a day at Nirvana Strength.  I’m really sore in weird places from the first few days of class; mostly my lower abs/hamstrings/hip flexors.  My mobility has already been noticeably improving since last Wednesday, and I’m excited to see where the simple combination of gymnastics plus eating right for a few months takes me.  

 

In the past I’ve had this irrational fear that if I’m not careful losing weight, I could lose all of my muscle and become manorexic.  I’ve been paranoid about not getting surplus protein, and often following nutrition protocols for people trying to gain muscle (like taking carb powders).  The reality is I need to lose weight, especially after letting myself go the last few weeks in Sweden.  I don’t care how much I can deadlift, and due to my body-type I’ll probably never have to worry about being too skinny.  I imagine if I survived on broccoli and tuna for months I’d probably be really lean, but if I lifted weights I’d look fine.  I was planning on giving you weekly numerical updates of my weight, but I haven’t seen a scale anywhere.  I do have some “before” pictures that are blackmail worthy, and I’ll post them at the end of my trip if and only if I can post current ones showing that the old ones were just a thing of the past…. a really long past.  Fingers crossed, but this past week was a good start.

 

Trading research and development has continued to progress in large steps.  Major credit to my brother Kevin who set up the servers and wrote the code for multiple data feeds to continuously store data into a PostgreSQL database for me.  I’m routinely overwhelmed with the infinite possibilities of data/education/strategies/research that I can do, and he took care of a vital piece of my workflow.

 

I have multiple related ideas that I’m excited about, and I’m hoping to have the first version of one of them running by this weekend.  I might have said that before, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know.  Sadly I still don’t know what I don’t know, but I’m convinced I’m close to getting something new working!  I’m very stretched intellectually with my current work, pretty similar to how hard doing middle splits training at Nirvana is for me, but that means that I’m learning major things almost daily.  It’s hard doing work when you feel like you barely know what is going on, and you often discover your big idea a few days ago is laughable, but you also see noticeable improvement that gives you the faith to push through.  To be fair I could have implemented one of my new strategies already, but I’m in this for the long-term, so I’m trying to make sure everything is done well enough that I can understand the results outside of “it made money and I always knew I was genius”, or “that strategy sucked and I suck even more”.  

 

I’ll keep you posted on the vague and uninteresting results that perhaps only my Mom cares about, and that’s mostly because I’m sure she doesn’t want me moving to her couch in suburban Michigan.  

 

With that I’m back to the working world!  I’ve been reading some motivational books that I’ll recommend next week if they stick with me.  Leaving you with a picture of food at a really good restaurant Milu by Nook (notice the vegetable drinks instead of alcohol cocktails — so much better), and a random angle of my yard at the villa here.