You might be thinking, “Ok, so this post is about your New Year’s Resolutions, right?” Kind of, sort of. It’s about exercising and how my effort to cross off the “do something new” resolution led to tackling my “read books” resolution, which then led to “watch movies” resolution, which in the end it turns out they all had a common denominator – exercise. Totally unplanned. Totally cool (at least in my happy head). Once I officially signed up for the obstacle course, I started my “training” which consisted of running outdoors in the 100+ degree Houston heat and building up upper body strength (which I have none of). It was hard getting into this at first, but I kept telling myself I’m being healthy, proactive and all those other go-getter things you see in health magazines to motivate you. I get pretty burned out after my work out, so I usually snack and mentally wind down. I’d watch TV to relax, but since that option isn’t available (I intentionally opted-out of getting cable and DVR to specifically do something more productive with my time), I naturally turned to reading.

A friend of mine told me about a book called Brain Rules, so I swung by the local bookstore and picked it up. It’s fascinating. I’ve watched the intro video and read the first four chapters, and for the last two nights I’ve woken up in the middle of the night with the light still on, one hand sandwiched in the book to keep my place and a highlighter in the other. It’s so good I keep reading it until, well, I can’t keep my eyes open for any longer. I’m digressing, I apologize. I brought up the book because the first chapter of it is about exercising! What a coincidence since that’s what I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. It goes into a good amount of detail of why it’s beneficial and important to do it, but here are the main things I grasped from it:

1. the risk for general dementia is cut in half
2. risk for Alzheimer’s drops by 60%
3. it makes you happier
4. cognition when you’re old
5. brain fertilizer (BDNF), which I want
6. all around improved health

I knew exercising was good for you in general, but it’s pretty neat (really neat) that a little physical activity goes a long way. I think it’s incredible that the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s DROPS by over 50%! I don’t think I’ve personally ever known anyone with dementia or Alzheimer’s, but I have seen The Notebook once or twice (x 2) and it’s a heartbreaking disease for you and your loved ones. If you have the ability to lower your chances of developing something like this, why not take a couple of days out of the week to sweat it out and listen to some good upbeat music? I’m all for it.

On days I want to sit around and be still for a long period of time ’cause I’m too sore to flip pages in a book (not kidding, those 45 degree angle push ups are killer!), I’ll succumb to watching a movie. Thank goodness for Netflix streaming and my roommate for movie recommendations. I think I’ve watched 3 movies in a month in a half…and that is REAAALLY good for me.

So, that’s that. My effort to play catch up with one thing lead to another and I feel a bit better about it all now. I just have to keep it up. Perhaps I’ll do a follow-up entry to this later on.

If you’re at all interested in running outdoors, I highly recommend the RunKeeper application for your phone. It has a ton of cool features such as tracking your running route on a map, keeping times of your first mile and subsequent miles, announcing your pace, and keeping track of your distance (although I don’t know if this is 100% accurate, pretty close though). It’s kind of having your own personal trainer in your ear. =D

I think the most obvious and most recent experience I had with nametags was during the summer before my senior year of college. Having zero restaurant industry experience, I made a conscious decision to work at one to get me through the summer while I took summer school. I’ve heard how insanely rough working as a server could be because of extreme physical, emotional and stress demands the nature of the job requires (I believed them after working at a steakhouse), but it didn’t stop me. At the time I was more interested in understanding how a restaurant operated. Anyway, until about two weeks into the job, every employee in the restaurant was required to wear a spiffy coppery magnetic nametag. It was nothing out of the ordinary. Once in awhile, after I had given my introductory steakhouse spiel, I received “thanks” followed by my name. I didn’t really notice when someone didn’t acknowledge me by my name, but it definitely stood out when they did. I have to admit, like Scott said in his book, it made you feel a little more appreciated – which by the way is a sure approach of getting you extraordinary service from your server. I also noticed that when I had conversations with various customers, most likely than not, it all started because of my name. I’ve received comments from people singing the Lou Bega’s, Mambo No.5 song to me “…a little bit of Monica in my life” all the way to referring to the Monica Lewinsky ordeal. Surprise, surprise!

Let’s just say I had some pretty interesting conversations. However, by the third week, our managers notified us that we were NOT to wear our nametags anymore because of restaurant policies. I asked why, but no one could give me a satisfying answer. It didn’t take very long to realize that the number of conversations I had with people dropped and when people needed to talk to me, I was referred to as the Asian girl. Eh. Even to this day I’m curious as to why the nametags got abolished. A lot of people took notice to it (and by people I’m referring to customers). Oh well.I think that Scott was right in saying that the nametag acts as a type of social icebreaker and in most situations, that’s all you need to make new friends. Kudos Scott! for being gutsy and so dedicated to your philanthropic steps towards making a friendlier society!