Hey, a new Tinder match. Hsu. I think that's pronounced kind of like "she". Not exactly obvious. Lives in Edinburgh. She doesn't have any clear picture of her face which is never a good sign. Couple of pictures of her with a horse. She does have a close picture of her eyes, though. A lot of wrinkles for 25. She might be fibbing.

Although, it says that she's a student. 25 is on the upper limit for being a student.

And no loans for these Chinese students. They pay it up front in cash. How can they afford it? Well, I guess the one-child policy helps. The parents just focus all of their time and money into the one child.

It's too bad that I didn't have Chinese parents. The ones I got were duds.

You know, in college (or "university" if you prefer) I had an English professor return an assignment to me with the words "You write well!" with "well" underlined.

I was so jazzed that I went home and told my mother about this. Her response: "You're not supposed to underline words."

Can you believe that? Not a single word of encouragement. I can't remember any encouragement from her ever for anything. She just brings you down.

You know, if you don't want kids, if you lack the ability to parent, don't have kids. These weren't accidents. She made a deliberate choice to have a child every four years. The idea was to give each child their own space. This was a considered decision. So there's my eldest sister who's eight years older than me, my older sister who's four years older than me, and me.

Why would this woman choose to have children? She can't parent.

And there were books back then. Loads of books. The 70s were a boom time for child-rearing literature.

Okay, she was an immigrant. Who cares? Immigrants don't know how to parent? You might not know how the local school system works but every other aspect of parenting is yours for the parenting.

Maybe this is how things are done in Finland. Parents bring their children down instead of raising them up. Maybe that's how she was raised. But recognise that it's shit and if you can't do better, if you're too lazy, if you're too stupid, if you're too inept, don't have children.

Grade school basketball. I was awful. Worst player on the team by far. But in the seventh grade, our school's team was so big that they split us into two teams. Effectively, all the good players were on one team and the bad players on the other.

For some reason, I was on the good team. I guess the idea was to help me improve because I was markedly worse than the second worst player. So I go home.

Me: I'm on the blue team and they put all the good players on the blue team.

Mother: So why are you there?

I was good at tae kwon do. The best in every school I went to. Where did I go with this? Nowhere. No encouragement. The same blame can go to my tae kwon do instructors. I was told that I'm the best in the school by one guy (a Korean guy, as it happens) but...then what? If I'm so awesome, suggest that I take this more seriously. Start working out. Go to tournaments. Try out for the Olympics. Enter the fledgling UFC.

I don't think that this would happen if my parents were Chinese. They value their children there. Do everything they can to make sure they succeed. They go overboard and this is destructive too but there's a happy medium.

So chicken. I'm getting sick of it. My last batch was pretty bad. I'm going to go shopping tomorrow. I saw a promising recipe for chicken chili. Has sweet potatoes in it. I hope that I can find sweet potatoes. If not, I'll omit them, but the potatoes would be good. I haven't made a potato ever.

It's also a slow cooker recipe. That's another thing I was looking for because the slow cooker is the only large container that I have. And I want to make a large pot of this stuff so I don't have to cook for a while.

Here are the ingredients:

2 medium sweet potatoes
1½ lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast
1 (15 oz can) black beans, not drained
1 (15 oz can) pinto beans, not drained
1 (15 oz can) diced tomatoes
1 cup onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
½ tbsp chili powder
½ tbsp cumin
salt and pepper to taste

1.5 pounds of chicken...most recipes for chili that I employ use 1 pound of beef. So...a bit more. That's good. I was hoping for a recipe that uses 2 pounds of chicken but whatever. This thing will be overflowing anyway.

I mean...1.5 pounds of chicken...that's like six chicken breasts, I think. Then two potatoes. Two cans of beans. Hopefully, I can find those beans. If not, I'll just get kidney beans. Then the can of tomatoes. The onion and pepper won't take that much room. But yeah, you need a pretty big pot for this. I'm not sure if my pot is big enough.

And a lot of the recipes had all kinds of bullshit ingredients and spices and particular brand names of products that only exist in the US and shit like this. This one was very straight forward. Chili powder and cumin. Can't beat that. That's textbook chili seasoning. I have it already. I'll also use my garlic powder instead of fresh garlic because it's always a waste buying a whole garlic just for two cloves.

But yeah, I'll try it out. Get some tortillas too. They suggest them as a topping. A Mexican thing. I think that should be good. A substitute for crackers. I like it.

It'll have to be better than this marinated chicken breast that I've been eating. Holy crap. So bad.

Still working out, though. Today was my 14th day. I'm feeling improvements. And I enjoy it. It's not really a chore. I enjoy putting the time in. There's a satisfaction in being able to do it. You see the progression.

Probably going to have to get new weights soon. I have adjustable bars so it's just a matter of buying some more plates. I guess 5kg plates will be the next purchase. They're not that expensive.