Interlude

Well, happy Chinese/ Lunar New Year to all those who celebrate it. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and I realised I made a mistake with the Canberra post because it was meant to be 2 days 1 night (I wrote 1 day 2 nights LOL HOW DOES THAT EVEN CALCULATE CORRECTLY UNLESS I ARRIVE THERE AT NIGHT AND THEN LEAVE AT THE FOLLOWING).

What have I been up to lately? Well I had a consumerism post in the drafts but abandoned it because I’ve been so busy torrenting stuff to the point it makes my Internet unusable while I am downloading. 

Time out – exercise. Relax and ease your mind.

I’ve also decided to take some time out for myself every night – instead of 9gagging or doing nothing in front of my computer, I’ve taken the liberty of camping out on a yoga mat in the living room. At first it was just stretching (because I am the most unflexible person ever) and some lame attempts at doing push ups. 

I used to be able to do most things in high school – minus the stretching and doing splits or cartwheels or flips. I am just surprised that even though I feel like my body is stronger, I can’t do half as many push ups or whatever as I used to. Before yes, they were hard, but doing 20 or 30 wasn’t too difficult. Perhaps it was peer pressure because everyone in the room was doing it and you were determined to not be the weakest one. Now when I try doing it again, damn, it’s hard.

It’s a bit like that in every day life – if you don’t keep up with something, it’s hard to catch up, especially if it requires effort. Just because you did it before, doesn’t mean that you can do it again now or later. Just like how bodies grow old and incapable of performing certain tasks, people change and some things can’t come back or can be redone.

To my utter displeasure I was saddened that I was unable to do a candlestick (used to do them perfectly with ease), but on the 2nd night I tried, I was able to do it – along with sore arms. 

It has been a really long time since I’ve had my body ache (the last time was when I went out for a jog and that was a really long time ago – or perhaps the time I jogged on the spot for an hour. Hmm.). Yes, it’s painful and uncomfortable but I think when I was younger, I never fully appreciated the positive things associated with overstrained muscles lol – I’m starting to appreciate it now because I never embraced those things when I was young.

When I was younger I never appreciated these muscle pains – or how I could fit my feet into small shoe sizes – or how long I could grow my hair. I never thought of working towards a healthier body and always assumed for some reason that it really had to do with genetics. I never appreciated a hard workout that would make my face flaming red and leave me soaking wet in sweat – I found that so unattractive and a nuisance. I never really cared much about a lot things that I thought didn’t matter, but actually did.

Anyway, it sounds really silly in a way but I youtubed some pilates workouts (not following them that intensely or closely, but just noting the positions and the movements via le doodles) to give myself an idea of what I could do in a stretching routine. So far, the move that is killing me the most is the plank (which consists of your entire body being supported by just your elbows and your toes) because it really works out my arms. After my successful candlestick, the next move that is working me the most is doing several of these “candlesticks” by slowly rolling my legs/feet over my head and then slowly lowering them onto the ground. This actually puts a lot of stress onto my arms (which is surprising because you wouldn’t expect that). I’ve also managed to touch the ground with my toes now, so tomorrow night will be super fun.

Although this is just night number 2 trying out these moves, I must say, I am having fun and I think I have improved and grown stronger. The first night I literally couldn’t do anything – I’d simply fail, topple over and then laugh at how much I sucked. Now I’m actually sort of doing something that vaguely resembles what I am supposed to do – and hey, that is a start.

Honestly, I am having fun. Stretching and working on building my strength takes my mind off things – so much that I am concentrating more on what I am doing than what I am playing on the television screen. I feel more energised, and I feel like I’ve accomplished something in the respect that I haven’t been wasting my time after work which I usually waste on doing useless things.

Last but not least, I think I am sleeping better – and this started when I was just starting to do my stretches. I am a very light sleeper and if I am anxious, I can hardly fall asleep. I stir a lot in my sleep and I can wake up to any slight movement or sound. If I am sharing a room with someone, the sound of their breathing (not even talking about snoring) is enough to keep me awake – and I’m able to report the next morning how many times they have turned or started to snore; that’s how shallow my sleep is. Lately though, I think my sleep is deeper and perhaps I just stir about once per night, which is an improvement to maybe 3 times or whatever it was before. 

Corny as it sounds, I’m excited to continue what I’m doing now and I’ll be searching up more movements I can do. I think I should also buy a book perhaps – that can help. Either way, it’s something I’m ready to invest in, and it’s probably the next best thing I’ve been excited over since I bought my hula hoop. WOOP. LONG BLOCK OF TEXT IS LONG.

Last but not least I’ve been seeing the influx of posts on 9gag and meme sites about skipping leg day – which is saying how some people have a muscular upper body but skinny legs since they’ve neglected their lower body training. Just saw a parallel universe post about someone skipping torso day – well guess what I am in that parallel universe >_> Not that I super muscular legs or whatever, but I must say my legs are at a level where I am satisfied with them. My upper body however, OMG FLAIL ARMS.

Seriously considering buying a wii and getting the balance board so I have something to force me into doing exercise :3

Meet up with ALL your friends!

The second half of January and first half of February was important to me because it meant that I was able to see friends that I haven’t seen in a while. It was great catching up with everyone. Although I like to whinge and complain and be a complete bitch about things, I really do appreciate it deep down. Whether it be “I’ll see you soon!” and then turn up hours later *shakes fist* or not replying my questions – I am glad to have you all in my life. So I thank you all for the things you’ve done – some of you have made a trip out to travel and see me, others have actually made the extra trip and came over to MY suburb to see me. I am also touched for friends who have taken time off work to see me – using a precious day off and letting me er waste most of it is pretty awesome in some respects.

I had a few different variations of the above the past month, and it was pretty different to the boring lifestyle I was so bitter about. It’s a good thing in a way. Be it the spontaneous dinner or random phone call saying “hey I’m downstairs at your place, come out now” – as long as it brightens up my social life I WELCOME YOU.

I can’t pinpoint any one encounter that was more important than another – I just had a good time each time. Outings designed to just simply relax and think about nothing? That’s exactly what I did. Catch up? Did that definitely. Hopefully I can keep this up for this year – it’ll make life a lot better.

The past week I’ve been pretty busy with the company’s new year’s dinner (I would list all the food I ate, but I shall refrain or else it will make me sound like a fatty fat fatty) – Friday was a blockbuster since I was out all day and only got home at about 11pm (that night I was out with friends and then bumped into MORE friends).

Beauty matters.

So I’ve ended my clothes shopping and I’ve ended my beauty hauls for this entire year. Recently I’ve been breaking out with pimples I usually don’t get… it’s really burdensome because it’s rare for me and I don’t really know what to do to fix it lol. The most common solution is to simply buy more shit I don’t need and hope that it fixes it. WELL NOT THIS TIME ROUND.

Will do more beauty posts. Hopefully I will also take more photos of myself. Go out and go crazy. I want to do a lot of things I didn’t manage to do when I was younger – still can be considered young now, but if I do anything crazy later on I will be too old to do so. Maybe one day I’ll do my makeup so crazy nobody can recognise me one day. I always wanted to do that once for uni (just turn up looking super different), but never did 😦

Holidays holidays

So I am hopefully able to go overseas at the end of March/beginning of April. In the talks of going overseas with a friend… it was Fiji but then it was somehow mutated into a place named Singapore. Not that Singapore is bad, I want to go to Singapore (probably more than Fiji), but the main reason why I wanted Fiji was because I was in the mood to go somewhere super quiet and different. I really wanted to just sit in front of the sea all day, which is totally not me.

Singapore’s good because it’s easy to get around. Their dollar is very similar to ours and it’s clean and safe. Probably my biggest question is what to do there – I’m not sure if I want to go shopping because I haven’t quite saved up enough for it. Well correction – last year I moved the majority of my savings somewhere I wouldn’t be able to touch, which was probably the smartest thing I’ve done considering how much I spend on stupid things. 

Hopefully it goes through and I get to go on my holiday. If said friend doesn’t go, I will genuinely consider going myself, so I have about a month to decide on whether or not I want to go, where to stay and what to do there. 

I’ll be going for just a very short trip – I was contemplating on doing a stop at Hong Kong somewhere along the way but it wasn’t very economical. Not sure if there is something wrong with their computer system… but the prices look shocking for now lol.

Anyway it is getting late. That’s just a small update on where I’m at and I’m happy for now. Hopefully I will have an awesome year this year – if not I will MAKE it so 🙂 Later!