Monday, October 24, 2016

The Highlight of 2016

Early this year, I visited my sister in Adelaide. She's been there for over ten years and I've never once gone. Seriously. It was about time. It was long past time, in fact. I love the place, for sure, in spite of the scorching summer sun. Adelaide is beautiful.


The highlight of this highlight of 2016 is the three-day, thousand-kilometer, road trip that we took from Adelaide to Melbourne, along the Great Ocean Road.

The Road Trip, reconstructed on Google Maps

My sister and I took turns driving and it was a great experience for us. I've never enjoyed myself more driving a car so much in disproportion to myself!

 
Our rental car and me

I intend to share some of the photos I took on this trip, on a platform slightly more contemporary *ahem* than a blog. Do follow me, dear Reader, on my relatively-new Instagram account, to view them. I'd also be posting (hopefully more regularly than what I've been doing here!) random photos that I deem pleasant to behold.

Enjoy!

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Tales From The Gym

This is the first post of 2016 and I really didn't want it to be a rant. This is a rant.

A while ago, my gym served some finger food in conjunction with an event they were holding. I'd just come out of a Fitball class and the ladies (my "classmates") headed straight for the buffet table. I wasn't about to walk away from "free" food, even though I had dinner waiting for me at home. So, I took some fruits *ahem!* and a curry puff. (The curry puff was sooo good, but I refrained from having more than one, because, obviously, it makes no sense to undo the whole hour of crunching and lunging!)

A few of the ladies sat near me and started conversing. I don't know why it is a necessity to talk when one could just focus on eating. Anyway, they started talking, and casually remarked that it was "so nice" to be me. Yes, me. They don't know me by name, yet they were sure it was good to be me.

"She's thin... she can eat what she wants without ever gaining weight!"

If I wasn't enjoying my food so much, and could speak in Cantonese well enough for people to understand me, I would've rebuked them so hard they'd never talk with food in their mouth, ever again.

Firstly, although I am not fat, I am far from being thin. Thin is when one's BMI is equal or less than 18. Mine is a healthy 21.5. Secondly, how dare they! *Ahem* I strive to maintain a more or less constant weight by watching carefully what (and how much) I eat, and counting the number of hours I workout every week (hours are so much easier to count compared to calories). I worked hard to make this my lifestyle because I am not, and never had been, one of the lucky ones who can "eat without gaining weight". Anyway, it wasn't a big deal. I just wanted to tell the story.

Yesterday, in yoga class, we did a succession of inversion poses (with the support of the wall). One of the last ones was the Scorpion. Most of them were either too tired by then or too afraid to try. I, on the other hand, obstinately fighting fatigue and pain, swung my lower body up without a grunt.

"Of course she can do it," I heard a lady say to the one beside her, "she's so thin!"

Were I not half-inverted and fighting the increasingly excruciating cramp in my shoulders, back and butt, I would've told her off. It's the strength, not the thinness! Of course, in building or conditioning the muscles, one naturally loses some fat, but in the end, it is strength that gets one up there, not the lack of rolls. Speaking of rolls, I have quite ample. When I get into twisting poses, sometimes, they pinch each other so hard, it positively hurts.

Oh, well. I'm not really that bothered. Once again, I suppose I just wanted to write it out.