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It has been a while since I published a full-length Life-Sparring round. My excuse? Stress! The perfect opportunity to take a closer look at my strange relationship with one of the strangest side-effects of our modern lifestyle.
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Picture: BigStockPhoto.com, Copyright: Felmeeeh
Life-Sparring is all about the exchange of ideas and concepts to optimize life in all aspects.
Creative ideas come especially handy when life throws some lemons at you. Being out of work is a such a test, especially in Hong Kong where you do not enjoy unemployment benefits like in Europe and even more if you have a family to care for and a mortgage to pay. A good friend of mine, JB, just recently was in this exact situation.
What impressed me immediately when talking job search with JB, was his positive energy and his unique approach to the existential challenge. An approach that not only proofed to be successful for JB but is also replicable by other job searchers for a wide range of positions. It was an absolute no-brainer to ask JB if he would be interested in sharing his job hunting strategy in a Life-Sparring round and luckily, he agreed.
Enter JB Deal, the master of what I call “the deal making approach to job hunting”!
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Photo: BigStockPhoto.com, Copyright: AGCuesta
Despite being occasionally whiny about my genetical uphill battle when it comes to athletic performance and body composition, I enjoy a reasonable bill of health and my life in general. This, however, does not stop me from occasionally thinking about death and I think you should do so too. Read to hear why!
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Photo: BigStockPhoto.com, Copyright: ieang
While in recent years I mostly read nonfiction, I strongly believe that novels can be just as powerful when it comes to broadening the horizon and understanding the big picture.
I think that to understand the world, our history, even contemporary and future developments, it takes both, reading history books for a factual framework and reading novels to get a feeling for the zeitgeist.
While the origin of my life-long interest in Asia will likely stay a mystery forever, I know for sure that there are a few brilliant books that shaped this interest. Among the many I want to highlight five that stood out in particular.
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Whom do you call fat??? Photo: BigStockPhoto, Copyright: Christopher Boswell
The quest to understand the roots of my appalling running performance is an ongoing topic of this blog. In two previous Life-Sparring rounds I looked at possible reasons like age and weight and my running form. In this article I dive deeper, literally going more than just skin-deep, doing a professional athletic fitness assessment at the Institute of Human Performance of the University of Hong Kong. If you are a regular reader, you can imagine that it was a humbling experience with a lot of insights.
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Make all moments count! Copyright Life-Sparring.com, Filter: Prisma
About four years ago I started to show severe signs of getting addicted to a popular mobile phone game. After reaching a point where playing the game began to disrupt parts of my life, I made a rather radical decision: I deleted all games from my phone and decided to get my fix from something much more productive, a flashcard game to learn Chinese. Interested to hear how that worked out?
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Pork Belly on a Bed of Brussels Sprouts and one lonely Sweet Potato - copyright Life-Sparring.com, Filter: Prisma
Tired of gaining weight despite a high level of physical activity, I decided to pull the nuclear option and go on a full-blown ketogenic diet. As there are a lot of useful resources on ketosis, but not many detailed jargon-free reports for beginners, I tried, to sum up the experience of my first week on the keto diet in this article. Enjoy!
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Tram on Hong Kong Island (2007), Photo: Life-Sparring.com
This article is close to my heart. I have problems to wrap my head around it, but it has been exactly ten years that I moved to Hong Kong. Time to look back and reflect on my love for this "Falling City".
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Two kinds of Bagels. Photo: Life-Sparring.com via Prisma App for iOS
Today’s Life-Sparring round is all about Bagel. No, I don’t mean the dry stepbrother of the doughnut, but another ambitious Kickstarter project I backed last year. The Korean team of Bagel Labs promised nothing less than "The World's Smartest Tape Measure". Does the sleek looking Bagel device live up to that promise?
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Older, Fatter, Faster? Old man on the last stretch, after 50 km of Green Power Hike. Picture: Life-Sparring.com, Filter: Prisma App
While I enjoy running in general, it constantly and painfully reminds me of my physical limits. Despite my almost life-long relationship with running, I am embarrassingly slow and technically bad.
As the stubborn and competitive person that I am, being slow and bad at running does not stop me from occasionally reaching for the sky. My recent participation in the Green Power Hike, a 50km trail running race over the full length of the Hong Kong trail, across the rocky backbone of the island was an example for me testing my limits. The 24th edition of the iconic trail running event was my fourth participation. How would my lack of training, five years of age, and five kilogram body weight since my personal best in 2012 affect my performance?
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