Step Back and Take a look around

A week maybe 2 ago, I posted a status on Facebook aimed directly at a former roommate of mine. His necessity for cleanliness seemed to only apply to us roommates and he had some sort of godlike exception. The status read “ I can’t stand hypocrisy, complain about a mess when you are the one leaving a snail trail.” I am not one to take this passive aggressive, but evidently being direct hadn’t worked and he is a Facebook whore for this kind of thing.

The arrogance and elitist attitude of this particular guy couldn’t handle a simple request of “ Hey man could you clean up after yourself” /ignore. A second attempt of “Hey Dude, I am not sure if you heard me earlier but you are leaving a mess all over the apartment” /ignore. My third request now came at midnight with requests being spaced by no less than 3 hours.  “ This is the third time I have asked today, clean up after yourself, you’re being a F’ing slob.” And to no surprise /ignore. I felt I would deal with this in the morning.

The morning started in a way I could never have expected. I was up relatively early for a casting with one of my other roommates. Who am I kidding it was hardly early it was 9:30 when shit went down. A hunt for coffee cups, led to the demise of respect for said individual early. A dark side appeared, an orange hurling, pillow tossing, raging pompous prick. 

When no coffee cups appeared in the kitchen, or either bedroom unfortunately the habituated themselves in the dark mysterious room of Princess (I use princess for just about every guy I know at some point but that’s how I will refer to him from hereon).  A few quick light knocks and no answer so my other roommate peaked his head in to the coffee cups on his bedroom. Quickly and quietly these dirty cups were plucked from the room and just as the door closed I could here, “Allo?”

Such a simple thing should be nothing to bad an eye at, unless of course you are the particular guy that aggression has been aimed at before. Luckily I am not the guy, but the other roommate sure as hell is. 3 or 4 minutes later a grape smuggling pumped up princesses comes out of his shadowy depths and throws an orange (yes an orange and for the record it was quite tasty) and a pillow. Ranting and snorting and raging princess screams about his territory.

I will help paint a better picture. Imagine a 6 ft. tall, 80 kg model, standing there in his nut huggers, veins coursing through his forehead, chest puffed threatening to beat up and even kill my other roommate. The other guy also 6 ft. tall as well but giving a 20 kg weight advantage to princess, sat on the couch in a docile surrendering position. In defense of the younger smaller guy I stand in the middle, preventing a confrontation that neither of them would win. 

Homophobic slurs are sent left right and centre of me, I personally took a stronger stance for as long as I could. My responses were mostly thank you, and is that how you really feel? My degree of calm only aggravated the beast more, it was time to give this bitch a reality check.

“Have you ever thought the world isn’t out to get you? Princess you are always playing the victim, yet you are the one attacking. If you don’t know who the asshole is, sad fact is that it’s probably you. Get your head on straight, you are the problem not the others.” That was my reality check for him. Shortly before saying this I was fed up with these antics and decided to get the owner of our agency on the same page as everyone else.  The owner scheduled a meeting with princess, to which I don’t know the outcome. Fortunately it was now time to disperse to my casting.

Wait! It gets better. In our contracts it explicitly says, no guests at any time.  There is a lot of trust in this aspect as we do not constantly have someone watching over us.  I have always treated this rule loosely as long as it doesn’t get in the way of my living. Well war was on between princess and the roomie who was threatened. 

This character from the most recent season of the ultimate fighter most closely resembles princesses attitude. 

The lack of foresight on princesses behalf shocks me. After the events of the morning he had the balls to bring his lady friend to the apartment that evening. The roomie was having none of it and immediately called the agency. More death threats ensued and a swore enemy was brought to attention. Followed by a literal evil laugh. Muahahahhahahaha. Muahahahahaha. Muahahahah, you’re going to die. Like I said no foresight for his words or actions. Fortunately the girl convinced him to go to her place. Disaster averted.

We all knew that princess was a little odd, but that just contributes to character. Beneath this evil beast he is a very nice guy. This same character made me breakfast my first morning in Korea, has no issues picking up a coffee for anyone or sharing in a bottle of soju. Negatives strike a longer lasting cord than positives, and for me this cord struck hard and boisterously. 

A few awkward days later, he departed. Things calmed down, underwear was no longer found on door handles, no more empty chocolate milk in the shower, and dishes/compost was kept up and clean. 

Who are you?

Knees weak, arms are heavy, mind racing, heart pacing, palms are sweaty; these are usually the reactions to an encounter with someone famous.  Naïve me, only managed to get a Hi how are you in before I was whisked away. Then again, I had no idea who I was talking to. To me she was a beautiful Korean model, to others she is a big time celebrity known as Nam Joo Kim.

In the eyes of a celebrity, I am sure that lack of recognition could be nice actually. I find myself by no means a celebrity in Seoul, but people take pictures of me on the street, ask for pictures at the coffee shop and congregate around me on the subway. And while I know that larger objects have a greater gravitational pull and I am bigger than the average Korean, I think those laws of gravity are flawed. Constantly afraid of letting this get to my head and develop an ego I fight that internal battle.

In the past week I have had 3 shoots, and actually have on more this coming Thursday. It was at the Macaw sportswear shoot where I bumped into this celebrity.  A fear developed quite early into the shooting when we learned that the wrong shoe size was brought for my monstrous feet. I walk around with a small clown shoe of 11.5 US. Unfortunately the much to small 9’s were sitting waiting for my feet to attempt to be jammed in. Thankfully there were alternative shoes that I could slide on.

Friday and Saturday I had the opportunity to shoot with Luel magazine again. This time I had 2 editorials in the magazine and will be on more than 15 pages. When there is that many photos of you in one magazine, you certainly need to be careful of avoiding the faces of Zoolander effect. This is a flaw in models where the fall back on looking the exact same in every photo. This Zoolander effect is what separates poor from successful models. The variation and ability to a demonstrate a chameleon like skill to transform and emphasize character in still frame is the key to success. 

There are times where I wish I could afford the clothes I wear in shoots, this shoot was certainly no exception. I had one Tom Ford set that was worth over 25k. But this wasn’t my favourite. A simple Turtleneck by Zegna made of Cashmere and Microsilk  and a suede jacket screamed Zach. I don’t know the price tag as of yet, but I know in a bellowing tone it beckons, HAHAHA when you win the lottery maybe. 

Relax, Happy Time at The Jimjilbang (D-a-i-y-e Spa)

 Relax Day Spa Scene - Zoolander

After a quick fitting and a casting, Meekus, Rufus and myself headed to a Jimjilbang. (Okay end of the Zoolander references). These are very popular in Korea. For a small sum of 10 000 won you can spend up to 24 hours in the public bathhouse and sauna.  

Not once in my life have I ever had an experience remotely close to this.  The facilities include an arcade, a pc room, a snack bar, a restaurant, amongst the standard spa services (which are extra of course) there are 9 different sauna rooms, and in the private bath part 4 maybe 5 tubs. Ranging from 5 degrees to 90 degrees the rooms can give you a full range of experience.

As if I don’t get enough stares in this country, walking around the Jimjilbang with 2 other tall white dudes; people can’t help but look out of curiosity. The sauna area is littered with mats and little blocks of wood to rest your head. The highly fashionable colour coordinated shorts and t-shirt, let you know your gender if you are ever confused (blue is for guys).  Many people will take a few hours out of their day to just stay there and nap, which is certainly easily enough to do when you don’t have silly ignorant foreigners interrupting the purity of silence. 

                                                 

After a few hours darting between hot and cold and lounging around, I partook in the bathhouse experience. Once you get over the fact that there are dudes walking around naked everywhere, this is easily the best part. Hot tub, cool dip, hot tub, cool dip, 90-degree sauna, hot tub, and shower are the optimal routine I discovered in my random quest to find psychological oasis.  The humidity is great for cleaning up your skin and scrubbing off all the dead dry skin. It’s been almost unbearably dry around lately so this just added to the experience.

Following the showers, I decided to indulge myself further. Each week we receive approximately 106 000 won. When I take out my pocket money I only ever take out 100 000. Slowly building up is that total. I used this additional money as a way to pay for quite possibly the best massage in human existence.  From head to toe, my entire body was relaxed (I actually drooled a bit), the intense pressure to release those stubborn knots in my back was much needed, along with the standing on my back, and crazy cooling face stuff.  

5 hours after I first walked into Central Spa Jimjilbang, I walked out in a state of euphoria. The ultimately relaxed form of myself was now ready to take on the world, or in this case some Korean BBQ. 

Restaurants have become more fun as well lately. I have taken to sharing soju shots with random people around the restaurant and the response has been wonderful. Every time we make new friends. 

Practice what you preach

The ideas floating around my head lately are driving me crazy. I have so much I want to say, but I am not taking the time to write about it.  Let’s start with this title though.

As both a member of the health and fitness industry for a number of years and being fully immersed in a disordered eating ridden industry I think this is a subject worth bringing up.  And as the title says, practice what you preach.

This came to me while I was entering the gym the other day. Of all places the gym would be one where you expect to see an environment that encourages healthy behavior. But to my dismay, not all the staff are on board. As a matter of fact walking through the entrance the manager and of the personal trainers were smoking, and eating a chocolate bar.  Now as I have previously mentioned if you want to cheat do so within reason.  This is a league of its own though creating an image contrary to what you are selling. 

Tell me if I am wrong, but would you like to see the person training you partaking in such activities? These vices are human, but choose a time and place to do this. 

It’s well known and documented that the modeling industry is chock full of eating disorders and obsessive eating habits. While this is changing it is still in a brutal state. Korea is no exception to this, as a matter of fact looks and your waist size are very important to people here. So these habits are likely more pronounced here. 

Most of this relates to terrible agents saying terrible things. The result: Half a tomato for breakfast and a chocolate bar for dinner. I kid you not this is the diet of some models.  I cringe when I discover this and put in huge efforts to help educate these girls (many of which come from uneducated backgrounds).  For men its frequently cutting carbs and working out tons with an end result the same, malnourishment.  Of course malnourishment will lead to a number of health problems, but the tell tale signs are chronic fatigue, brain fog and moving forward with women amenorrhea (loss of or irregular period).

I hope to do whatever I can to help change both these images. Sometimes the message gets across and other times its ignored. Usually its because some friend lost 10 lbs (which didn’t need to be lost) drinking cayenne, lemon juice and maple syrup or some other ridiculous snake oil. 

The best tool that I use and we can all use is leading through example. Frequently I will share experiences of new recipes or new foods (my next post will be a total Korean culture explosion). Creating a healthy relationship with food through example I personally feel is one of the best methods to stem change. Activity is crucial to long term health but no one needs to lock you into the gym to achieve that, we all find something fun be it boxing, ballet or yoga, your method matters not.

Let’s take a look at goals once again, I like looking back at my progress as you should as well:

-       well I am sitting in a coffee shop in Seoul drinking an incredible tea (it tastes like Swedish berries, my favourite candy and I can’t even buy it here.)

-     -   I managed to get my hikes in and even ventured through a park here in Korea

-      -  My body fat didn’t get to where I set my goal. That’s okay though, I will strive to improve because evidently decreasing the food wasn’t the smartest move (altered eating habits turned thing negatively)

Weight loss can and is without a doubt a challenge. Sometimes because we are trying to unnecessarily lose something that need not bed lost. Other times, we aren’t ready for change and sometimes we just don’t have the tools yet.  Of course if you don’t have the right tools for the job, you can always ask.

There are always hypocrites out there, ones that will tell me I don’t know what it’s like. Well you are right, I have never struggled with being over weight myself.  But saying I don’t know is completely false as I have put in the time to understand and motivate close to a thousand people towards the changes I feel so strongly about. Many of them check in or even this this blog themselves.

The reason I don’t struggle could be a good metabolism, but could the biggest reason be, I practice what I preach?

A world, yours for the taking

Fingers crossed, jet lagged has been conquered. After a day of fighting to keep my eyes open at 4 pm and struggling to close my eyes at 1 am, I think I have fought off that evil beast.

Stationed in a futuristic utopia where everyone drinks coffee (there are thousands upon thousands of coffee shops here), the floors are heated (talk about central heating) and cars ride on elevators, I look forward to adapting to Korean life. People here are more addicted to their cell phones than you can imagine. Hopefully that will turn out well for my hunt to find a nice case for my Korean made Samsung S3.

Tinmanfish

I spent my first day at castings, and figuring out how to buy groceries. My natural habits are to eat healthy, but this will undoubtedly be reinforced as the only foods I can ensure are gluten and dairy free will be fruits, veggies, meat and rice, oh and buckwheat noodles. Interesting isn’t it how that’s essentially what we all should be eating anyway. There is the odd food with English ingredient list, like the peanut butter I found for $7, but I can’t live without peanut butter.

I haven’t continued to as of yet, but with my gym literally at my doorstep and castings not typically until mid-afternoon, I will likely be doing more 2 a day exercising. In the meantime, I am in a new city with so much to explore, there is no harm is walking for a couple hours as I aimlessly lose and find myself in this large city.

Jagerbombs at the theatre 

This past weekends adventure brought me to a temple, an aquarium and none other than an opening weekend visit with my old buddy James Bond.