Coffee Shops

Yes, the 6th Weekiversary came and went and I totally didn't have time to blog that Thursday...anyway, today I thought I'd blog about Starbucks because of something that happened today which was a huge wake-up call for me.

When it comes to coffee places there's no dearth of them on the Red Dot. Walk down a main road for about 10 minutes and you're likely to come across one (unless you really live in the middle of nowhere) Apart from Starbucks, there's Coffee Bean (closest to my home), The Coffee Connoisseur (aka TCC which has really good food and interesting iced concoctions) and Coffee Club (which again is at the mall near home but which I've never visited to date). Each is good for its own reasons, but there's something about the smell of coffee that hits you when you step into a Starbucks outlet that catpults me into a state of ecstasy that is unrivalled by any other cafe.

I don't remember whether it was the first time I went to Starbucks, but my earliest memory of the place was meeting my dad there the first year I came to the Red Dot and he travelled here on work. We met up there and had coffee and muffins :) At the time, it was one of those places I never considered going to unless a parental unit was there to pay, and dad doesn't mind paying more for a good cup of quoff-ee!

So today after lunch at Pastamania (yes, maniac is aslo a pastamaniac), I dragged my best friend to Starbucks for my weekend treat of an ice-blended coffee (ordered the "light" base which is 1/3rd less calories apparently, must be low-fat milk and less sugar). So I dig out my wallet and realize I have exactly 4 dollars when in fact I should have about 40, having withdrawn $50 the previous day. Suddenly it hits me that the Pastamania guy didn't give me back $40 change, and I was sure I had given him a $50 note and not a $10 one!!!

I ran back to Pastamania, stuck the bill under the same cashier's nose and asked him to count the cash he had in there and check if he had $40 extra. And in fact he did!! Wheeee!! Thanks to Starbucks, I got my $40 back and learned a good lesson about paying attention during cash transactions!!! If I hadn't made another purchase after lunch, I may not have even realized till dinner, which may have been too late if they had cleared the cash register or something!

Ok, that's it from me. The gymming and light dinners continue, except last evening I had fries *hides in shame* I will work out extra-hard tomorrow to make up...

Lazinessss

So I haven't exercised at all since Thursday and feeling terrible! Was finishing the last 2 installments of Neil Gaiman's Sandman which I just could not put down!!

However, I have not been pigging out on food so its not so bad. Gym is closed today, and I have a lot of reading to do for the next 2 days. I shall try and work in a walk this evening...will be good to get some fresh air. Its a lazy Sunday sitting in the library with a friend and watching people walking across the campus green. Back to my readings and case studies!

5th Weekiversary!

Don't have much time to blog today (or for the next 2 days) with all the readings piling up. Just wanted to note that cereal breakfasts, good lunches and light dinners continue (exception for last night hehe!) and at the gym the instructors are stepping up the intensity with each session. My thighs are happy and long gone are any feelings of bloatedness!

One thing I can't give up some days is coffee. Perhaps its a cultural thing coded into my DNA? I'm enjoying my ice blended cappuccino right now :) Its a very balmy day... yoga class today was all about water and flowing movements... I need to get my assignment done now!!

Of core strength and random bicep curls

Almost through 5 weeks. Pilates yesterday had us all lying on our backs and pushing our kidneys to the floor. Gosh its harder than it sounds to flatten out the arch of your back. It uses all sorts of muscles you never knew you even had...anyway, my abs are all slightly harder and I like this feeling of soreness from newly flexed muscle, not just in my torso but also my legs.

Last evening I got home early and went grocery shopping. On the walk back home I used the shopping bags as weights and did a bunch of bicep curls as I walked. My arms are feeling tighter now! Its what I call integrating exercise into daily life at the expense of looking like a crazy person on the road...

Aerobics class in half an hour! Yay! I enjoy jumping about to the music and flailing limbs all over the place. Sorry if you stand next to me in class and get knocked out...will be jumping around like mad since dinner today is going to include homemade biryani and a carrot walnut cake from Cedele. Its my uncle's birthday and his fav type of cake is carrot. Walnuts are full of good cholestrol, considered "brain food" too. Cedele has all sorts of yummy foods, all without trans fats, no refined sugar, eggless cakes on request and all organic foods. A bit on the expensive side, but if you're one of those yuppies with cash and no time to cook I guess its a good place to eat healthy.

Today I discovered a nice vegetarian stall at the Food Junction in Bugis. $5 for brown rice, 3 veg dishes, soup and small salad serving. The mock meat was quite nice and the soup was quite like rasam. It was a big plate of food but surprisingly not filling. A bit pricey for a food court but hey, with the inflation one ends up paying that much for a subway sandwich too, and anything cheaper is too oily for words...I forsee I shall be going back there again for more lunches.

I have a big case study on Texas Instruments due tmr at 3:30...am lazy to start typing the answers out ... haha better get back to it then!!

4th Weekiversary!!!

Hey hey hey!!! Yes, today marks the completion of the fourth week of the whip-maniac-into-shape routine. One month has gone by pretty quick, but a lot of adjustments have been made in terms of environment and routine since returning to uni.

So far I've started eating healthier and having light, non-carb dinners, tried to have breakfast everyday as far as possible by waking up before noon, and am in my 2nd week of a regular *crosses-fingers* exercise regime. Next week the exercise will be stepped up to cardio every weekday. Need to figure out if I can share my roomie's locker and leave some of my gym stuff there...alternatively, I need to come early enough every morning and get a seat in the library and just leave all my things there all day. OR, like I did yesterday, hang out all day in gym clothes and sneakers and go home once the workout is done.

Aerobics yesterday was more intense, but its easier to remember the routine and concentrate instead on jumping a little higher and pumping my arms a bit harder. The crunches were manageable too!! I wonder if cardiodance is very different, maybe I'll go for it on Monday! Beats treadmilling anyday :P Yoga this morning was fabulous as always! I'm all stretched out and serene now!

The realization dawned upon me today that the reason why its easy to give up diet and exercise is because its mentally taxing to keep it all in your mind, along with all the other remembering and planning you have to do all day in your head. Therefore, exercise and healthy eating should become HABIT. A kind of routine thing that's an automatic reflex and doesn't require too much thought or choice. A "Just Do It" phenomenon, corny as the phrase has now become. What do you think?

By the way, weighed myself this morning after breakfast, I seem to have dropped from 65 to 63.5kg! I thought my eyes were deceiving me...but it could also just be water weight fluctuation. I won't get excited til I'm down to 60, which is a reasonable weight for my height.
I was just checking out my BMI at fitnessmagazine.com:


I also found my target heart rate for when I'm doing cardio:


Yay for the internet and all its resources!

I had one more moment of realization, and that was that none of my fitness instructors have "perfect" bodies, they're all shapely and yet energetic, healthy ladies. Sometimes you have to just embrace the body type you have and learn to live with it. Not everyone was meant to be skinny and dainty like the women in the magazines and on TV, or a majority of Singaporean girls who eat a lot of fried chicken and fried fish but still don't have an ounce of fat on them. I guess their health problems will get to them later in life..

Wednesday's are not really off-days...

So yesterday I skipped pilates class because I decided it was best to catch up on lost sleep and not burn out barely 4 weeks into the term. Also stomach cramps need not be further aggravated by core exercises!

I'm thinking that from next Monday I try out stepping up my gym routine from just walking to a walk/run workout as described here by Shape magazine. As a non-runner, I often pooh-pooh my friends who get on the treadmill and run their butts off for like 5km everyday, but it seems to be a good way to increase overall metabolism. I usually just walk at a fast pace on an incline. Also, this plan gives me a schedule to follow for 6 weeks so I don't get bored and can pace the intensity through the week.

Try not to laugh if you see my running in the gym. I know it looks awkward, but I assure you I am more graceful in water than on land...

So now I go for aerobics class, get home and finish a case assignment due tomorrow afternoon. Who said Wednesday's were slack days? I've been busy all afternoon with an upcoming team presentation. And there's always more on the way...off to class now! Hopefully I'll survive the crunchy cooldown...

Lack of sleep

Last night I got 4 hours of sleep. But managed to get all my work done - a case writeup, my part of a report for service processes, and pretty much the whole proposal for the mobile apps project.

Woke up at 7, had a bath, went to class, went to meeting, snoozed in the library, did some work, went to the alumni networking session at 7, went back to work, ended up not accomplishing much due to sleepiness, went to Komalas and got some curd rice for dinner, and now off to Sophia for my best friend's birthday cake-cutting and stuff. Going to go home, bathe, sleep. Wake up at 6, read 2 papers, write-ups for 3 and hopefully by 10 I can be at pilates class. Go for class at noon and then hopefully will be able to get some rest.

Life....it never stops.....

Weekend shenanigans

While eating healthy is daunting task, one cannot completely forsake the more sugary/starchy/fried temptations that taunt one's day dreams when hungry. So what I like to do is save one indulgence per week to the weekend. Last week it was fries, this week it was ice cream. So on Friday evening I treated myself to B&J's Chocolate Therapy, and I had a blackforrest cornetto last night. Ok, so I cheated and had ice cream twice, but hey I totally burned it off by dancing for 3 hours!

Dinner last night was at Sofra, a Turkish restaurant. I had the chicken kebab which came with a small side of broken wheat and chickpeas and lots of salad- not too bad. I would have liked a slice of lime for the kebabs though.

Going to Clarke Quay to celebrate a friend's turning 21 is beneficial in that you get to spend time with friends and listen to a good live band and dance about to some good hip-hop for the cost of a glass of house wine ($10 - the same as going for a movie) and dancing is highly aerobic exercise in my opinion. Not to mention I had done 30 minutes of brisk walking on the treadmill before that.

The only trouble is that you end up collapsing into bed at 4am and waking up the next afternoon at 1:30 with aching muscles and piles of work to finish for the next day. This slight upsetting of the body clock works counter to the rest of the week's healthy habits. Therefore, it should be practiced in moderation, and not too often. I'm becoming quite a stickler for routine...

Yoga makes me happy =)

So its been 3 weeks now, there has not been a single heavy dinner of pasta/rice/bread-based food and boy does it feel good!

Fitness classes have begun as well, and I hauled myself out of bed for yoga this morning. It was totally worth waking up for, the instructress is good in that she goes at an easy pace and guides us on the proper alignments, breathing, etc as we go. She tells us exactly what we need to be stretching at what point, so if we're not feeling it we know we're not doing something right!! My challenge is always with the poses that require a lot of balance, but hopefully that'll sort itself out soon enough.

I've also been very easily irritated the past few weeks. Going for pilates/aerobics/yoga or just doing 30 mins on the eliptical trianer helps a lot to just breathe, calm down and be aware of one's body, especially the muscles you haven't used in a while. The "prana" or "life flow" one feels after yoga is probably just better circulation of oxygenated blood to every part of one's body. It makes me happy! :P Not overly excited, but serenly happy...

Pilates is less about the stretching and more about the building of core muscles. Aerobics gets you jumping all over the place to techno remixes of your fav early 2000s songs (Lady by Modjo anyone?) and remembering the steps can be a bit confusing at first :P But it leaves you sweaty and red in the face and when that happens you know its a good thing! However, the "cool down" for the aerobics class is.....CRUNCHES!!!!! LIKE 80 OF THEM! NOOOOOO! Haha, I hate crunches...

I already feel way more healthy, balanced and generally lighter on my feet. Yay for unlimited fitness classes at only $10 per week!!

Yesterday I hopped over to watch Puccini's opera "Turandot" at the Esplanade - Cooky was in it and so cute as a Chinese peasant girl :) The opera was good, costumes amazing, subtitles could have been better, orchestra was awesome! Had dinner at the Esplanade mall, tried out the Minestrone soup at this place called The Stock Pot. I find it better than Soup Spoon because there is much more variety of veggies in all the soups. In soup spoon the tomato is just tomato soup - nothing else in it. Same with the mushroom. Boooring! Here the minestrone has chickpeas, black beans, chunks of yummy tomato and green peppers. The serving size is just right, doesn't fill you up too much. They also have sandwiches and salads the size of Texas which looked very yummy.

Later I passed the Cookie Museum, Chocz and Haagen Daz...managed to avoid them and gulp down my hot green tea instead. Met up with some of my school friends too...quite a lot of them at this show! Ok, time for me to get to class - Quality and Sustainability in Business Operations. There never was a longer title for a course...