Welcome 2013

I welcome 2013 with open arms and not because 2012 hasn't been good. It's because 2012 has been good, possibly one of the best years of my life, and 2013's going to open doors to greater things!

So maybe, very quickly, a look back at some bits of my life that are worthy of mention in 2012, and that I have plans for in 2013.

Relationships
When it comes to people I guess I have been spoiled. I let go off more people than I should have, mainly because I didn't know any better. So now I do know better and I count my blessings. I will fight harder for you to be in my life, family and friends. You deserve it as you've stuck around when I deserved it the least. It's the most wonderful feeling in the world and I know it. I don't take it for granted and maybe now it's time to show it. Now I see it's not important that people share the some interests, come from the same background or speak the same language. It's the willingness to stay in contact and believing that through our connection, we become better people.

It's something I sincerely believe in, that we learn and love and are enriched by the people around us. That's the basis of relationships, human interaction, and our connection.

Money
Dammit I promise to only buy things that are on sale! Or not. Maybe lesser on iTunes. It is my new year's resolution not to go to weddings? If only I could. Not that I don't like to celebrate happiness, of course. This tradition is particularly stifling and money draining. Save up on the small stuff and gun for the big purchases. I'm glad my laptop is still around after 5 years, going 6 I believe. It must survive one more year. I'm not ready to get a new one. I hate eating expensive food. I enjoy the ambiance. I like hanging out with friends at restaurants over delicious dinner. There's something cosy about getting together in an excessively well-furnished interior. But is it necessary? I hate spending money on food.

Like many people my age, getting a place of my own and possibly a car are the two things that I really want but seem so out of reach. Ridiculously out of reach. That and constantly feeling upset about public transport are some of the things I have to deal with living here. But if you think about it, that's pretty tame compared to living elsewhere in the world.

I'd love to get my own place. Save on the small stuff, the expensive stuff and the stuff in-between and hope this will happen soon.

Fitness
Stellar, really. I've never been more fit in my life. I've never had to train so hard. I've never had to run so much, so far. I've never had to work out till I feel like throwing up. I've never had to expend so much mental energy to find physical strength I never (knew I) had! It's an amazing collections of challenges, from races (Men's Health Urbanathlon, Sundown, King of the Road Malaysia, Standard Chartered Half-Marathon) to IPPTs. There were also work out sessions at Sweat!, a little bit of trekking at Taman Negara, cycling in Darwin... It's super fun to engage my entire being in such activities. It's when I feel most alive!

So this year it's going to be more of the same. I'm going to continue my circuit training. I'm going to continue running, but will definitely cut down on the races. (I think I managed to complete something like 10 last year!) I hope the strength and endurance I gain will not only help me in new sports that I may take up this year, but also exploring the world around me. Hopefully I'll have the chance to go overseas to race, climb mountains, canoe in rivers, hike in forests and cycle in the countryside.

Of course, looking good in a pair of boardshorts for Zoukout 2013 will be awesome too.

Writing and Teaching
I'd like to pretend that being chummy with people is a skill, but clearly it isn't! What I'm left with, I think, is writing and teaching. I enjoy both very much and hope to really do more this year. It's getting tougher because the tuition well is drying up and I haven't been making enough effort to find kids. I guess that's my fault and also possibly my word-of-mouth among parents hasn't been particularly outstanding, despite what I think, is my rather outstanding track record teaching upper Secondary School Mathematics! And writing, well, I'll start with stringing together more words for this blog! I've been neglecting it severely last year, partly because, well, it's sort of an identity-crisis for me really. I no longer know what to write about, when so much of what I do is work. And also then there's a lot of laziness too.

But no more excuses. Maybe a few more posts what I've been through outside of work, and also a bit of insight on the work I do. No harm in that alright! Not as if I've been shutting down my social media presence. I'll get down to it. My review of Wreck-It Ralph tomorrow maybe?

I'm very happy that the first week of 2013 has gone by smoothly, except for the weather. The rain has got to stop, especially when I get off work. Other than that I had fun ringing in the new year with people I love, cosy celebrations, happiness and activities (mahjong, mahjong, mahjong) I enjoy.

To a fruitful 2013.

Working out at Sweat!

I’ve been going to Sweat! since late June (21st to be precise) and people have been asking me about it.  If you're interested you can check out their facebook page. The first introductory session for newbies is free so make a date and I could go down with you if you want!

I've waited till now to blog because I wanted to go through enough to gain something from it and see some results before sharing here. Anyway, the place is situated at Cantonment, relatively far from my work place and also far from home, but I keep going back because Sweat! has made working out fun for me and I enjoy the experience.

Working with the trainer and boss, Wai Yee, is great! She's professional, knowledgeable and passionate. The motivation she provides is also priceless. A large part of my improvement in fitness is due to her cheering me on when I thought I was done! The best part about going through the session is knowing that you’re going to get something intense but you can give it your all and you won’t get injured. She'll make sure that you'll be doing it right. For those who have injuries or unable to do the exercises, she can tweak it! So no worries about that.

I remember trying a kettlebell exercise at home and injured my back, causing it to be wonky for awhile. After a couple of sessions back at Sweat! doing the exercises properly, strengthening the smaller muscles around the area that hurt, stretching out the pain, now I’m as good as new.

There’s more than one type of session, the most common being circuit training. With minimal rest after each station, you’re pushed to keep your heart rate up. At the end of it all you feel like you've done a crazy cardio session but at the same time, your muscles are aching like you've lifted an elephant. Amazing. Exercising to the music and hearing the *beep beep beep* signalling the end of each set before counting down the rest time to the start of the next, it’s a cycle that keeps you on your toes and out of breath!

No two sessions are ever the same. That’s the cool part. I’m never bored. I’m always challenged. Every time I step through the door, I don’t know how hard I have to push or what we're going to do. But I know I've to give it my best to make the best of the one hour! There's a lot of co-ordination and balancing work for each station. It’s tough but also fun. It’s FUNctional training, not strength for strength’s sake, or for bulking up. It's what I want for myself and what I believe in. It's what makes me committed.

And that leads me to the next thing, which is learning something new. When faced with something different really refreshing to see what your body can do! I learn to do new variations of exercises, like the push-up, I learn the limits of my endurance, I learn how to move my body in different ways, I learn new stretching techniques, I learn how to have good form, I learn how to balance, I learn to “enjoy the pain”. That keeps me going back for more, the opportunity to train and to learn.

Learning with "classmates" boosts my motivation as well. When the exercises are announced, you can always expect to see someone who, like you, has his eyes wide in shock! I like the feeling of working out in a group – there’s a lot of motivation, people to follow, and the feeling that you’re all in it together. Seeing people who are able to handle it makes you able to handle it. And that’s how I manage to push myself. It’s one big family there, full of familiar faces and it’s nice knowing that you’re not alone.

After going to Sweat! I'm more knowledgeable about how my body works. My approach to fitness has changed. I challenge myself. I've never worked out so hard, even during army. I take it really seriously but it's also a lot of fun.

I feel fitter. Maybe I'll see some improvement in my scores when I take my IPPT next Saturday. I do feel like I'm ready to climb a mountain or something though!

I look fitter. For that, you'll just have to take my word for it!

Halloween Horror Nights 2 - 10 Things

1. Be there at 8pm sharp. You need to get a head start on the crowd. The earlier you are, the more you get to see, the less you have to wait!

2. If you're in the normal queue, don't hate the people with the Express Pass. If you have the Express Pass, don't hate the VIPs. If you're VIP, try not to gloat openly. (R.I.P Tour passes are available for $148.) Moral of the story is be prepared to wait a little and self-entertain!

3. The main attractions are definitely the three Haunted Houses! Hit Death Alley first, to get a taste of the underbelly of Chinatown before putting your gall to the test at the Dungeon of Damnation. It was, for me, the highlight of the event. The last house is The Insanitarium, which is all the way in. Give it a miss if you run out of time!

4. Be brave. You're here for fear. Open your eyes. Peer through the corridors. Keep your eyes trained on nooks and crannies. Every turn a surprise. Watch where you're going. At times, you might even want to look up at the ceiling!

5. Try not to stay too close to the group ahead of you. You'll see all the tricks prematurely. Where's the fun in that!

6. Bring your cameras with you! Handphone cameras don't do the pictures justice in the scare zones. Total Lockdown and Bizarre Bazaar are fantastic, but for different reasons. There's a lot to see and you'll definitely slow down to admire the destruction and er... torture. Very S&M some bits. A+.

7. Rides are open this time round. They're not the essential but if you've time to spare, Battlestar Gallactica's queue moved quickly last night. The Transformers was the absolute best - the future of storytelling, I must say! Amazing, but extremely popular. Average queue time was 60 mins for Express Pass. The Jurassic Park ride was good too and a great way to cool off if you're feeling hot.

8. There's a Halloween musical called Monster Rock at Pantages Hollywood Theater. Take a breather from the heart-arresting attractions and catch the 11.30pm show (but be there at 11.15 for good seats). Great music, energetic dancing... 21 minutes of great entertainment!

9. Don't wear expensive jewellery. We saw this girl looking for her bling on the floor for a good 15 minutes, with staff and friends searching fruitlessly with her, and her throwing a bitch fit. No loose items in general!

10. If you're not scared, play your part and scream a little maybe? It gives the scare actors a bit more motivation and you get a better show! Well, of course, hopefully it doesn't come down to that and you pee in your pants instead.

Justin is the new Britney

Big Hits, Baby
Such a coincidence that their biggest hits have the word "baby" in them. For Bieber, then 16, Baby erupted all over radio as the song you could not escape from. Annoyingly catchy, distinctly bubblegum and possibly childish to the point of puke-worthy, it brought me back to '98, when Spears, then 17, released ...Baby One More Time. I remember feeling the same way - that it was pop at its most straight-forward, catchy and it was a track that was impossible to run away from. I also almost puked when Sometimes was released but radio refused to stop playing BOMT. Both tracks were monster hits and shot them to pop royalty with the music world waiting to see/hear what would happen next. Sonically, Bieber matured faster as the current album straddles between bubble-gum (Beauty and a Beat) and something slightly edgier (Boyfriend). Spears continued to pander to her teen audience with Oops! before hitting the big time with the adventurous Slave 4 U. I'd like to see Bieber find his Slave with the next album. It can only, like Britney's sound, go uphill from there.



Never Say Never...
... to lip-syncing. When you've become such an electrifying performer that the spectacle you put on stage surpasses the need for people to hear you sing live, you lip-syncing. There comes a point in time where you're on huge sold-out tours - the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts - and you've to put on a show! Thankfully Britney has never thrown up on stage with the backing track running (well at least not that I know of), so it was rather unfortunate when it happened to Bieber on the first night of his Believe world tour in late September this year. Regardless, I've seen his recent performances of As Long As You Love Me at the Teen Choice Awards 2012 and his energy, intensity and playful facial expressions reminded me of a young Spears. However Spears is clearly the more tantalising of the two - just look at this A+, take-notes-all-teen-stars performance from the VMAs  in 2000. With time, hopefully Bieber will be ready to have his carry-a-snake-around-his-neck or I-kissed-Madonna-and-I-liked-it moment very soon at award shows to come.



Slave
As Bieber makes teen ovaries explode worldwide, Britney did the same to her fans, with many proclaiming "I'm a Slave 4 U Britney!" as she did her rounds in countless magazines, TV appearances, concerts and music videos. Ahh, music videos! They've got that genre under their belts! Also, both teen stars have the media fixated on their every move. Following in Britney's footsteps, Justin's been dating fellow teen-star Selena Gomez. When she had her belly-button pierced, Bieber got tattoos. Growing up in the media spotlight as the biggest teen star of the moment will inevitably give way to The Breakdown. With great success comes pundits taking bets on their big fall and the bigger the fall, the bigger the comeback. (The breakdown is only possible when you've attained an incredible amount of fame and are perched at the top of your game.) I wait with bated breath for Bieber's head-shaving, grabs-umbrella-and-attacks-a-car, Gimme-More-at-the-VMAs moment.

In my crystal ball, Justin looks like he'd be able to capture the world's imagination with the good-kid-gone-bad-gone-good story. Neither of them are Adele, but Bieber has what it takes to be the next Britney. Or he could become a boring, try-too-hard like Christina but I hope that never happens.

Love is like...

Love is like... just another thing that you need to sustain yourself. One shouldn't make a big deal about it. Just like one should not make a big deal about having air to breathe and having food to eat. When it's there... it's just there so you can move on with other aspects in your life. It's not supposed to cause you trouble and you shouldn't put in too much effort into getting it.

The people who are successful in life don't make a big deal out of love. It's there, they have it, they know how to maintain it, nurture it, but it's not what their entire life is about. Their lives are about their passion and their passion is not a someone, but a something. Changing the world with a business, a new innovation, taking part in philanthropy... these are worthwhile pursuits. 

We're constantly fed these terrible ideas, from movies, from music, from books, that love is life-changing and how it consumes you and how it's exciting and thrilling and nourishes your being and justifies your existence on this earth. Romance. Romance is a pain in the ass. It's great that people around you have it but it should be equally great if you don't have it. So you can concentrate on the real important issues, you know, like helping kids who need education, people dying from starvation and whether the eventual winner of the US X-Factor will have a #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

At the end of it all commitment is everything. You just need that one person, that one who wants to be together with you as badly as you do. After that you don't have to make a big fuss out of it. Nothing to celebrate, nothing to scream about. You don't have to come up with funny, special things - no anniversaries, no fucking birthdays. Just knowing the person is there should be enough. You draw nourishment from the relationship, just like how you would eat a burger or drink a Coke and then you can do other good things with your life.

I should learn to do just that. 

Gf.Bf

"We should have two lovers. One who loves me, one whom I love."

After spending an hour watching behind-the-scenes footage from the movie's official youtube channel, I've got a glimpse of Yang Ya Che, the director behind this moving piece of work. He's a demanding man, who was hard on his cast and crew, expecting the best from them. He had a vision. He wrote the script like a thesis of sorts. He wanted to make a film showing Taiwan in the 80s, when the three young characters, as well as the territory, was on the precipice of awakening.

The movie spanned three decades and in that time, the backdrop of Taiwan and her people changed visibly. The characters moved on with the times and watching the the three actors push their limits, it was as if you saw nine characters in a single movie!

I particularly liked that it wasn't written with a beginning-middle-end structure that's so prevalent, making films so predictable and you're just staying around for how it happens. Gf.Bf felt more like an experiment, three personalities thrown together and they delivered fireworks! At any one time there was so much tension between them, so much uncertainty, so much struggle it literally took my breath away. They were so intertwined with friendship and love that they couldn't tear themselves apart, like they were destined to be in an endless push and pull with each other.

They fought for freedom from each other and from themselves. Like life, nothing is certain. Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes you don't. You make sacrifices expecting something in return but that's not for sure. Like Yang said, it's a little selfish. You give everything to the one you love, but when you're disappointed and let down and hurt, you should have someone to catch you, someone who loves you, to make that fall a little less painful.

So much was said, but wasn't shown, just hinted at. And that's really masterful use of cinema. I started thinking a lot. And got a bit sad. I thought about my notions of love. I thought about how detached we are from one another, that it takes something to fight for that brings people together and how it's lacking in society now.

I'd watch it again. There's just so much more to uncover.