Book

During the holidays, i read a book by Jack London called White Fang which depicts the harsh life of a part wolf, part dog in the wilds of Alaska. It is a sequel to "The Call of the Wild. The story begins with two prospectors, Bill and Henry traveling across Alaska with a team of sled dogs. The men are low on food, provisions and ammunition. They are being stalked by a vicious and hungry pack of Arctic wolves. One by one, the wolves kill and eat the sled dogs. Even Bill is killed by the wolves and Henry finds himself alone. Eventually, after a grueling struggle with the pack, Henry is rescued by a group of prospectors.

The story then follows the wolves. The leader of the pack fathers a litter of cubs, only one of which survives. The surviving cub, named White Fang eventually finds himself in the care of a tribe of Alaskan Indians. White Fang is not accepted by the tribe's resident dogs and is treated harshly by them. This harsh treatment forces White Fang to grow into a rugged, strong and clever animal. After the dog is fully grown, the Indians trade White Fang to an unscrupulous man named Beauty Smith. Smith purchased White Fang in order to gamble on him as a fighting dog.

White Fang's toughness and strength make him almost unbeatable and he defeats every challenger. One day, for the first time, White Fang faces a stronger dog that nearly kills him. Fortunately, White Fang is saved from the fight by Weeden Scott. Scott adopts White Fang and spends a great deal of time trying to domesticate him. Eventually White Fang yields to Scott's attempts and the two become friends. Scott takes White Fang home to California with him, where the wild animal slowly adjusts to the peaceful and easy life of a domestic dog. At the end, White Fang becomes the protector of the Scott family when a criminal attempts to take the life of Judge Scott. White Fang is injured during the altercation, but saves the Judge. This story closes the circle with The Call of the Wild. White Fang now lives comfortably in the Scott home, exactly the same place that Buck started his adventures in the Call of the Wild.

White Fang is in many ways, the opposite of The Call of the Wild. The first story depicts the transformation of a domestic dog into the leader of a pack of wild wolves. The second depicts the transformation of a wild animal into a peaceful domestic dog.

Yesterday's gym practice

Yesterday at HCI, i had my regular gym practice. The gym practice started off with a "comfortable" stretch which almost caused me to scream and cry due to it's positioning. First, the coach placed a mat on the ground and had me sit on it. Then, he got me to grab on to a bar that was placed in front of me. Net, he sat behind me and grabbed both of my legs, giving me about a second to rest before pulling my legs behin me such that they reached his shoulders. He also had my friends hold my arms in front of me so that i could not resist. I had to endure this for 40 seconds which translated to hell literally.
Next, we started on the pommel horse where i had to do circles on the pommel horse. I was assigned a set of exercises in which i had to do 8 circles on the pommel horse which is known as the 马头（I'm not sure if i spelt this correctly so please excuse any spelling errors.)  I had to do this 10 times in a row. This added up to a total of 80 circles.
Next,we did a few other apparatuses before moving on to the worst part of the training which was the conditioning. This depended on what the coach had decided to do. Yesterday it was strength conditioning.
We first started with "fu ji" on teh uneven bars.

The  uneven bars is the apparatus as featured above. We gripped the higher bar and lifted our legs till they were almost parallel to our bodies. We were also not allowed to bend our legs. Fortunately, we only had to do 16 of these.

Next was dippings as shown above. However, instead of doing it at the edge we did it in the middle. The coach placed a sponge on the bar and forced us to touch it each time when we were doing the dips. The agony that soared through me each time was really unbearable. I even had to do twenty with only a break when i had done 10. I was also not allowed to sit on the bars or all the dips i had done before not counted.
This was more tiring than i could imagine. Try going to a pair of bars at your nearby park and trying to do one dip in  which your feet almost touched the floor and then coming up. It will really start to hurt after 3 or more times.

Next was chin ups. I had to do 5 chinups . Each chinup consisted on me going to the posture above and holding there for 5 seconds. I could not even complete four chinu ps. I could only do 3. I kept on trying and kept in failing. It was the toughest excercise i had ever done.

Next was tuck jumps. I had to do 60 of them. This "killed" me.  I was not able to walk normally for half an hour after this.

These exercises tired me out so much that i slept through the whole bus ride home , missed my bus stop and  slept for a whole three hours upon reaching home without eating lunch.