Turning 31

11:59 PM

It's weird being in your 30s. I remember 2018 as being pretty recent, and I was only 24 and 25 in 2018 (I turned 25 in 2018). That was six years ago, quite a decent amount of time, and yet it passed by instantaneously.

When I was in college in 2012, I made videos on YouTube in 2006 when I was in middle school (and got hundreds of thousands of views). I remember reflecting back on those videos in 2012, and feeling that 2006 was such an eternity ago, yet it was only six years. That's the same amount of years between 2024 and 2018, yet I feel different reflecting back on 2018. To me 2018 felt like it was just yesterday.

I've done countless things since then. I got countless new items, including laptops, electronics, even a car, even a home. I moved to a new place, met hundreds if not thousands of new people, walked a tremendous amount of steps, traveled to 10 or more countries since then, eaten countless vegan foods (imagine if I were a meat eater how many animals would have been needlessly tortured and killed for me in 6 years). I've gotten over a thousand followers, millions of views, completed a lot of work and projects, just so many different and countless moments and events.

Yet it all passed by in the blink of an eye. I think the next 9 years will pass by just as quickly. I'll be 40 before I even know it. We'll all be 9 years older then. Where would we be and what would we have done? No one knows the answer to this.

Today I worked a lot. There was a man that came in to fix the heater, and he worked for an extremely long time. He probably came in at around 9 AM, and he was there until around 3 PM. Six hours he was working on that thing. He did take an hour lunch break, but still. I work with computers so it's not a physical job, but his is. He was also obese, let's say easily the heaviest person that's been in my parent's home, and I was 230+ pounds at some point. After his work ended, my mom and him chat for a while. He said he lost 40 pounds in the last 3 months, he just eats salads for breakfast and dinner, and other foods throughout the day I guess. That's really impressive.

I've lost 4 pounds the past 3 days. I was 183.7 pounds or so this morning, when I was like 187.5 pounds a few days ago, when I wrote about weighing 85 kg. Tracking my calories and keeping them under or around 2500 calories every day, while walking 9k steps minimum and going to the gym to do some strength workouts too, really helped. I am shocked and surprised I didn't do this sooner. Why didn't I track my calories sooner?! Just making sure I ate 2500 calories or less basically did the trick. Honestly some days I was eating 4000+ calories, pathetic.

Today my dad bought a bunch of vegan food from 4 different places, two vegan restaurants, one grocery store, and a non-vegan place with vegan options. We ate at around 4 or 5 PM, because we all didn't eat or prepare anything while the guy was working on our heater. I would go to the freezer every now and then and grab a popsicle. I was freaking hungry having eaten nothing the whole day. My dad got an Abe's vegan birthday cake from Whole Foods.

I'm very sleepy. I had terrible sleep last night. I thought I was going to have a dentist's appointment at 9 AM, and I fell asleep at 4 or 5 AM, and due to thinking I had an appointment my body didn't sleep as well and woke me up automatically at around 7 AM. I don't know if we all have this ability, but if I tell myself I have to wake up early for something, my body will wake itself up early even without an alarm. I usually just sleep and wake-up whenever.

I fell asleep late because I was reading this manhwa (manhwa is Korean manga, while Manhua is Chinese manga) called Medical Return. The artwork and effort put into random manhwa is insane. I can't believe how good they are either, they easily put American comic book art to shame, really (although they do use computer graphics art which is probably why). I would say this manhwa and I Will Die Soon are my top favorite manhwas. The most famous one back in the day was The God of High School and also The Tower of God. I think both of those weren't very good, I did not get far into them. My favorite Manhua is probably Tales of Demons and Gods. My favorite manga, tough to say because so many of them are good, but it's probably Naruto.

I also really enjoy reading light novels. I've written some light novel stories myself, they have some thousands of views. One light novel I wrote in 2019 was called Isekai Wa Overpowered, it has 3k reads, I posted a screenshot of these stories for proof. Back then, isekai was a newish trope, I mean The Familiar of Zero was probably one of the first ones, written in 2004.

The trope of being "overpowered" and so on, was just getting around 2018 though. There was no anime or manga or light novel with the name "Overpowered" relating to isekai at the time. I'm pretty sure I came up with that. Before coming up with that title of Isekai Wa Overpowered, I made sure to search for overpowered anime/manga/light novels and couldn't find any with that word in their title. Now there's a few anime, manga, and light novels with literally "overpowered" in their title.

Here's some excepts from Isekai Wa Overpowered:

"My name is Renji Watanabe and I’m just your typical normal 17 year old boy attending Bansai High School. I have average grades, average looks, living in an average home. I spend most of my time reading manga and playing video games and I don’t know what I want to be when I get older. The love of my life is Kazuko Kiyoko-chan, the school’s princess beauty. Ahhh, just thinking about her makes my heart swell up… but I will never be a match for her."

I was already vegan since 2013, so yeah I even had stuff like this in there:

"Renji-kun had found himself in the spirit sorting department where all spirits and souls of former living beings end up. All around him were floating balls of energy in every direction for thousands of miles, above and below, he was surrounded. A human might think that these were all human spirits floating about, however human deaths are very few in comparison to animal deaths. Sadly speaking, most of the spirits here are from the billions (yes billions) of animals slaughtered every day."

Probably my favorite of the fiction works I wrote is when I parodied Xianxia light novels and manhua. There's this story I wrote called Cultivation Practitioner to Master (Oneshot) and it's a parody of Xianxia. Xianxia is basically about Chinese cultivation and mysticism, there's a lot of stuff involved in it, sort of like how Fantasy involves dragons and magic, Xianxia is its own genre. I doubt most people will realize it, but this story I wrote is a parody, and I laugh out loud when I read a bit of it again.

Here's an excerpt from Cultivation Practitioner to Master:

"It was the voice of my father Yazhu Xiu. He was one of the top 10 general ranking cultivation experts in the city village. He was very powerful but very old now in his 70s. Though he will live a longer life than most due to his cultivation level, he has far too many responsibilities in the city village and this depletes his energy without fail every single day. Due to this he has not been able to train me and delegates the work to my mentors Lubai Chin and Wei Zhelan, though due to my strength in my previous life, they have nothing to teach me.

The place I live in is the city village lake town called Holy Monkey Sanctuary, named for the holy monkey that inhabit the forest. We have 10 general ranking cultivation experts in the city village and the city lord is of Jing Star General rank, a very powerful man. We have been invaded several times by neighboring villages but have always won in defense.

“I am awake now my father,” I say to my father.

“Xiaou Xiu, this is about Lai An. Though the marriage was arranged before your births, the An family has decided to renege the deal. Despite putting up our treasures the Porcelain Elephant and Jade Figurine, they have decided not to allow their Lai An to marry you."

I just threw around random Chinese-sounding names. This is pretty much how Xianxia reads. They just throw around random references and things like the Porcelain Elephant and Jade Figurine, as if you're supposed to know what those are. They also mention arbitrary cultivation levels like 6 Star Flame ranking or Green Gate Heaven level as if there's any hierarchy.

"My name is Xiaou Xiu and I am on the floor after having lost a battle against Bao Jian who is a mere one star sapphire ranking level. I say mere, even though he is far stronger than me for I am only of one star flame rank cultivation."

The rankings are all arbitrary because in the beginning of some stories, it might say there's only like 7 levels. Some of these Manhua are over 1000 chapters, and the main character might actually reach the top level within 30 chapters, so they literally make up new rankings on the fly. In chapter 200 they might have a guy that's unbeatable god level ranking, and then in chapter 800 it turns out that ranking was apparently super weak compared to where the main character is at that point. So they keep making up rankings and it never ends.

That reminds me of this one light novel called Quan Zhi Fa Shi. It involves mages and having to inherit a certain element. There's only like 5 or elements, in the beginning of the story. That's all they talk about. All the adults and teachers, all the most powerful people in the beginning of the story only have one of the 5 elements. The main character is special because he has 2, the weakest one which is fire and the strongest one which is lightning. Throughout the whole beginning story spanning tens of chapters, and several years in the story itself, these elements are widely emphasized, and there's only 5 or so of them.

Then at some point, they just randomly decided everyone has a Tier 2 element, like summoning or controlling trees or shadows or something. Yeah. Literally the entire beginning story none of that was mentioned, and then in the second arc suddenly everyone has tier 2 elements. They literally already introduced supposedly the most experienced magicians, professors, mayors, etc, and they only used one of the 5 or so elements. Now suddenly these same people had another power they had all along but never used or brought up until this second arc.

And then after tier 2 powers, then came tier 3 powers, so characters had even more powers than they had even when tier 2 was introduced. There was this whole invasion arc where these demons or monsters from another dimension started invading, and literally the entire city armed itself to defend against it. The only powers they used was one of the five elements. They had all the police, every magic expert in the city involved, and they only had the elements. When Tier 2 powers were introduced, suddenly everyone had these other powers all along, that they never used during the city defense? Half or so of the city was destroyed by the way, so it was a big deal.

Yeah that's just one very blatant example because it involves elements which are easy to understand. It happens a lot but manhua rankings more subtle because the names for the new rankings can be so random and ambiguous. How do you know which rank is better than another? You can't when their names are Ruby Yin level and Black Dust ranking. Which one is a higher rank? You can't tell.

Anyway, I'm very sleepy. I do have a lot more I want to write about, but I'm so sleepy and I have to wake up at 7 AM tomorrow.