Week 1: 01/08/2017

I was almost too lazy to make my very first post. Typical New Year Reso problems.

Schools starting today with our GI block. They were not joking when they said we will be sprinting out of the gate with anatomy lab the first day back and a patient encounter a couple days later. Anatomy lab isn't my forte so I'll have to double down this semester on that.

For my triathlon goal, I decided to add two triathlon-focused workout days to my typical exercise week. This month will be spent focusing on running and biking. I am hoping the weather warms up by March so I can begin gaining experience biking outdoors. I did a 15-minute stationary bike on 12 resistance on Friday. Yesterday, I did a ~3.25 mile run but I was not feeling too well so ended up walking around the 1.5mile mark and 2.5 mile mark for about 0.7 miles total. So roughly a 2.5mile run. Not bad taking into consideration the sedentary winter break and being sick last week. I am hoping for a better run this week.

I only had one opportunity to play table tennis over the christmas holidays so I am looking forward to seeing everybody at the Joplin club. I want to play some matches to get back in the groove of things. I am hoping to maintain my skill level and improve my serving this semester. Overall, TT will be taking a backseat to my triathlon goals until summer.

Learning mahjong isn't easy! I feel like I have a basic grasp of the rules. One blog really helped me especially through focusing on the most commonly made hands. I'll list it below. The toughest part is learning the terminology. I am googling and referring to terminology databases every other sentence sometimes. Fortunately, I am starting to 'see' and name the hands but it is very slow. I am also getting better at tile efficiency, if barely. If there was a website that asked you to choose the most 'efficient' discard for each hand by scenarios, it would be great practice. Some questions that I hope to answer, especially after reading the full rules (and not just a summary): How to score? How to count yaku/fu? When should you declare Riichi?

Helpful mj things:
1) http://osamuko.com/complete-beginners-guide-to-online-mahjong-part-1-how-to-play/
2) https://imgur.com/9luD7tQ

Thanks for reading! I plan to format my thoughts similarly in future posts.