Nikola Novak

I’ve had this cough for a couple of years now and my doctor kept telling me I’m healthy. I saw a different doctor at a private clinic recently and he’s told me that it’s possible that I have asthma. I’ve done some additional tests and now I’m waiting to finally go back for a definite diagnosis.

I’m not convinced that this is asthma, and if it is, then there’s something more going on because I can feel my throat is being clogged constantly and I can’t cough it out. Well, sometimes I cough out something but I can still feel there’s much much more where that came from. The doctor must have misunderstood me as he wrote that this is recent whereas I said that I constantly feel it in my throat, but only occasionally do I cough out some of it – and lately more than usual. I’ll be mentioning this to him when I go see him again.

What’s this got to do with getting in shape? Quite simple, really. I can do some push-ups, pull-ups, weight lifting and such, but that won’t really improve my endurance, and while it may grow me muscles, it won’t necessarily burn off my fat. For that, I need to do some running. I used to run and once my body heats up properly I’m not bothered by the cough – but this thing that’s in my throat starts shifting around and occasionally it just so happens that it shuts off the air supply. I can straighten things out by forcing a cough and then it’s fine again for a while, until that thing shifts back into that unfortunate position. And this wears me off, this breath catching – just try running and have someone put a plastic bag over your face unexpectedly! Even if they remove it after a second or two it will wear you down like an additional 5 minutes of running!

It was a problem even back then when I was almost fine. Now I’m nowhere near fine, although I’m still healthy according to my old doctor’s standards.

Allowed myself some of it today for a full week of no sugar intake (except that fructose which wasn’t as dramatic as I’d hoped).

On a side-note, this week I lost almost 2 pounds. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the number 76 on my weight scale (kilograms, that is), even though it was 76.8. Nice to see I’m below 77 finally. This makes it 5.7 kg left to lose, which is about 11 or 12 pounds.

Nikon D80 with a Nikkor 70-300 mm lens for my photos of landscape. I’m still getting a 67 mm polarizing filter soon, along with bags and spare battery and SD card.

In the future, I still plan on buying an 18-200 mm one, as well as a macro lens.

This would really help my goal of losing weight.

I’ve completely forgotten I added this goal. But I’ve been at it constantly. Though, for the past two weeks, my progress has been really slow. And still will be for the next couple of weeks. Although, I think I weighed less yesterday evening than I did today in the morning (and I didn’t eat or drink anything in between). Though, I can never know. The new scale behaves a bit odd.

Anyway, so far I’ve lost a grand total of 4.5 kilograms, which leaves 5.6 kilograms to go. I’ll weigh myself again in the morning for an update (because of the scale weirdness I haven’t had an update in a couple of days now).

Yep, I used to bite my nails. And then I figured out how ugly that is. And then I stopped, but my fingertips looked awful. Took years to heal properly. Glad it’s done.

Visual Studio .NET offers a better way to make Windows applications in C++, so why bother? The reason is that as soon as I compile anything in .NET, the programs require .NET Framework to be installed and I hate this.

I’m thinking of switching to Borland C++ and use MFC there to create Windows applications. Basically, the only thing stopping me now is lack of cash (I got Visual Studio .NET through MSDNAA for free… which is another bummer because this way I’m not allowed to develop commercial applications). So, MFC, brace yourself – I’m coming!

I’ve updated my daily routines to include exercise as well. Wish me luck. :)

I’ve been brewing this story in my head ever since high school. It wants out! But alas, there are so many things that need to be done, fine-tuned, various events linked together properly, and still invented…

For this purpose I have started writing a series of short stories which will cover the events prior to the time when the plot of the novel will actually start. I have four by now, but I put just one on-line because the rest need some fine-tuning. They’ll be up soon, though.

If you want to read them, go to
http://nikolanovak.com/index.php?id=4
and bookmark. There will be a lot of them coming, but they may be confusing as some crucial events will not be described because I don’t want to spoil the novel for when I actually write it.

So today my trainer said I would try for the first time to gallop alone, with no help. And he told me to switch to another horse. I wasn’t very thrilled about that because I never rode that horse and I really didn’t want to go about figuring out all over again how hard I need to press my heels to get it to move and stuff, especially not when I’m galloping by myself for the first time. But I said OK.

So as I was preparing the horse, he told me to be a little gentler than with the horse I rode by then. Like that would be a problem.

So I sit on the horse and he tells me to throw away the whip. And I was like what?! I can’t get the horse to move without a whip and now they want me to throw it away?! But OK, I suppose he knows what he’s doing. So he said go.

And BOOM! I barely used my legs and the horse was already trotting. I was like WTF? Soon enough the horse was galloping and I was thinking about whether or not I should scream “HOW DO YOU STOP THIS THING?!” But then I remembered how. So I stopped it for a moment and the trainer said I should try and stand up from the saddle while galloping, into a half-sitting gallop.

I was like yeah whatever; I mean, that’s the least of my troubles! My old horse is like a massive boulder – I push, pull and huff and puff and whatnot and barely get it to trot, although it’s still a kind of a lazy trot so I need to also use the whip to wake it up. This one’s a freaking bullet – I just need to pull the trigger and BANG I’m supersonic! Like there’s no speeds between zero and 400 kph. I was nearly shocked by this change and all the trainer had to say about it was “stand up from the saddle”. Like – yeah – and the fact that I could move this horse with two feathers in place of my legs is completely irrelevant.

I mean, they DID use to say how other horses (other than the one I always ride) are like racing cars and mine is like an old diesel engine and whatnot. But that comparison is the greatest understatement I’ve ever heard.

Not to come through as if I’m complaining. I’m not! I’m just – WOW!

Well, I’m now in stage 4 according to this site: http://gregl.net/longhair/longhair.htm

I think that’s long enough to say that I now have long hair. Of course, my ultimate goal is to have it longer so I can have a better ponytail, but that will only come in time. In any case, I love my long hair!

I’ve been reading and re-reading what I wrote last time and I figured out that the best way for me to beat my anxiety was exactly through the avenue that I’d already described. I said that I have no trouble approaching people when I have something to say to them. This doesn’t mean that I have turned my thoughts into a long monologue which I then tell them, but rather I have something topical to say and then I say it, they respond and I respond back and then we have a conversation. :P

For example, today I approached a group of girls after my horse riding lesson to talk about horses a bit. I was a bit out of my league because I’m only a beginner at horseback riding and they are going to participate in tournaments soon, but they were kind enough to answer my questions. A couple of minutes later I started a conversation to another attendant of the lessons and we both exchanged our interests and goals we have in regard to horseback riding.

Did I feel anxious? No! I had something to talk about and I talked about it.

So this is my approach vector. I start off like this – talking to people who have the obvious same interests as I do about those interests; then I move on to people who have remotely similar interests to my own and try to find our common ground through talking, rather than by directly observing what our common interests are. I think that if I could do just that, the number of people I know and are on friendly terms with, would grow exponentially and with it would grow the chance of finding a true friend.

Another nice way is to just talk about anything to a stranger you’re stuck traveling with. I did that a couple of times (though it wasn’t my incentive) but it was just a one-time conversation and we never saw each other again. Nice for practicing. :)

I tried galloping today for the first time since my riding lessons began (well, and the first time in my life). I don’t really get how to do it properly, but my trainer said I’ll eventually figure it out and that I did good for the first time.

It was over too quickly, though. I want more! I wanna gallop all day, until I figure it out. But my next riding lesson is next Wednesday. That’s in 5 days! And I’ve been waiting so long!

Well, not exactly. I swam yesterday, but realized that I can’t keep up that way. I swam at a lake and it takes too long for me to get there. I’ll have to look for pools that are closer.

I’ve been running but I hurt my knee. Nothing too serious, but it’s better to stop if it hurts. So now I want to swim instead.

I wanted to get some muscles in my arms anyway so this, among other things, might be a great way to do that as well.

OK, so I can sprint 100m in 16.17 seconds which is just pathetic. Therefore, my target should be about 13.09, though with this slowness I suppose I’d be happy with 13.anything.

It’s no wonder, though, with all that fat around my belly.

OK I’m just kidding. I’m not really THAT fat. ;)

Aside from the two 100m sprints, I did jogging in between bursts. The first two were 16 seconds long, and the rest I measured in breaths (kinda annoying to look at the stopwatch all the time and besides it was dark). So, the rest of the bursts (5 of them) were 10 breaths long and in between each burst there was a 50 breaths long pause during which I was jogging. I think 1 breath is 1 second on average; at least I tried to make it so by taking deep breaths while jogging and even deeper breaths while sprinting. :)

In short, I’ll consider this goal done when all of the following conditions are met:

• I lose most of that ugly fat that’s built up around my belly
• I can put my palms on the floor while standing without bending my knees even slightly
• I can sprint 100m in (my_current_speed_in_seconds + 10 seconds) / 2 (actual numbers to come :)
• I can actually see the muscles in my arms

I could go for target weight, but since I want to build some muscle mass while I’m losing fat, I might never get there.

I’ve got a new dentist now. Someone I can trust, unlike my previous one. Wasn’t so hard getting one, though.

I’ve been growing my hair long for a while now, and according to this site
http://gregl.net/longhair/longhair.htm
I’m in the Bad-hair phase, stage 3, nearing stage 4. The site’s amazingly accurate in its time estimates, and descriptions of each of the stages. At least it was up to this stage, so I have no reason to doubt the validity of the final two stages.

This is the first time I’m growing my hair out long in my life and while I’ve received some opposition from my family, my friends have been accepting.

Every now and then I see a guy with long hair and I long for the day when my hair looks like that. I’m just excited about it!

...and I hate it. I have no control over my social life. People come to me, we talk, perhaps even become good friends, and then something happens; such as I start going to high school and lose all my friends from primary school; or I start going to college and lose all my friends from high school, etc. I haven’t had friends over at my place since my 18th birthday, if I don’t count my relatives.

As such, I have no friends which I could say are very close to me. I have good friends, but no best friends, let alone soulmates. All the people I hang out with I hang out with because chance made them walk into my life for some reason or the other. Even my flatmates; one is my relative, the other is a friend he introduced me to, and the third used to be my classmate.

The point is I never knew how to be proactive in acquiring friends. I HAVE approached strangers in the past, even talked to them, but I never befriended them even though I knew how great that would be. So, my case of social anxiety isn’t as general as it’s usually described – fear of any kind of social interaction. I CAN communicate with strangers WITHOUT feeling anxiety; but only as long as I have anything of relevance to say.

For example, I could talk to a shopkeeper about a certain product they sell; but if I particularly liked that shopkeeper I would get anxious at the thought of asking them out for a drink after working hours. The thing I felt most ridiculous about was when I had my body shaved at a wellness center; I had no problem lying there almost naked while a girl of about my age tore off my body hair and talking to her about all the ways to prevent ingrown hairs, but I got anxious when the little chat we had switched to the topic of my family.

So now I think it’s about time this charade ends. I figured I can’t go on expecting that the ocean will miraculously spew out great people on the shores of the island which is my life. I don’t care if this anxiety I feel makes me explode, but I will find a way to make friends of the kind of people I want to be friends with. I would live life by my terms, or by no terms.