Ten Minutes in the Morning

Well, trying to find ten minutes in the morning to do some toning muscle exercise shouldn't be tough. I have got half an hour after the significant other leaves for work and the smaller significanee wakes up. If I cannot be a gym-rat, at least I can try to turn the home into a gym using the only equipment I need, my own (heavy-haha) weight! That I can say, is a massive weight, at this point in time! Sigh...

Trying however, to fit all that needs to be done in the morning, now that is another challenge altogether. Let me see, what's there to be done every morning?

1. Wake up the same time the significant other does
2. Prepare the breakfast, put on the bread spread, pack it into a bag, leave it next to her bag, clean up the kitchen
3. Fill the water bottle for the smaller significant other, ensure that all is packed for the day.
   
4. Do my ten minute muscle toning work out and exercise. [Could be longer if I can only stick to it more]
5. Brush and shower
6. Wake up the small one
7. Go through the entire routine
8. Well... you can probably figure out the rest...

What can I say, Gen-X'er, my parents have taken care of me, now it is my turn as a parent to take on the job of being one myself.

Feeling Great!

Wow, today is a good day! Cos I get be a gym rat! Spent over an hour in the gym first thing in the morning at 9am. What was even better was being able to run 5km on the treadmill. Feeling great! Gym was quiet at this time, so managed to grab a run before the hordes came in.

Haha, but honestly, need to have greater frequency if I am to shed some kilos. Cannot believe that I am now at 93kg. I really have to address the other side of the equation- the eating side. So, from this week on, I am consciously going to be very careful of what I put into my mouth! Fingers crossed.

Just glad I pump in a 5km circuit and started slowly at 7.4km/h before gradually pumping it up to about 8.3. So overall, I was on the treadmill for over 40mins!. Which frankly, at this point in my state of conditioning, I surprise myself! Managed also to get in some weights. Spent at least 60% of that time in the athletic zone, at over 160 bps! If the Polar heart-rate monitor can be believed, this bumped up the caloric count to over a thousand! Regardless of the figures, it sure feels good to be able to do just that.

As a result of the great workout this am, could eat lunch without any guilt. Went to a German restaurant selling weiners and stuff and had a pork weiner with pork chop combo, with a side of potatoes and a stewed vegetable that tasted just like 'mui choy'.


The rest of the day was a bore, especially with heading over the in-laws and trying to find something meaningful to do, but of course couldn't. Harmony, just keep that in mind! Should have brought the Mac to blog, and not have to do this only now, in-between all the household chores and trying to stay positive in spite of the few hours left of this weekend! Haizz...

Think for the rest of the night will lie low as well. The significant other is spoiling for a fight, no prizes for guessing what time of the month this is! Sometimes, I try to be accommodating, try to go whatever I can- but to no avail. If someone is spoiling for a fight, no compromises can work.

In a paradoxical way, I am hoping the day will end, but at the same time, hoping for this would mean the onset of another work-week. AND that is something I am not looking forward to!

The Spirit is Willing, but the Flesh is Weak

Was supposed to go running this morning. Set the alarm, put it beside my bed. Went to bed, thinking that when that alarm rings at 6.20am, I am going to go running...

Well... guess what... it did not happen! Sigh...

And to make matters worse, had a big fried seafood dinner with my family last night. One of those fast-food type of preparation. Fried sotong (calamari for all you who don't know what a sotong is!) fried prawns (tasted like tatters!), fried breaded fish.

It is not rocket-science to say that we humans love fried food! Why? Simple! Because frying has the highest caloric content of all the different types of food preparation. And we humans are calorie-storing machines! You see, we cannot deny our ancestry, human beings have developed some pretty seriously efficient way of storing energy for that 'proverbial rainy day'. Those days when food was not easy to hunt/ track/ gather, when our meat came on four feet, our fish from us jumping into the water and our grains from gathering it from fields.

So, in order to overcome the instability of food supply, our evolution has seen fit to bestow us with taste buds that crave high caloric food... fried foods, sweets, sugars- all which fit into that category. So you see, our destinies are written in the stars! (Hahaha).

Anyway back to my run- or lack of will to do so. Will have to find ways of coming around to pumping up the exercise now. Clothes are getting tighter, especially that pair of jeans bought last year! And people are now beginning to call me FAT again!

Really gotta go do something about it!

Reviving this

Hmm,

Let's see how this can be done.

Perhaps I could spare some time in the morning before my routine kicks in the morning, just like today. In any case, between the last post and this, a lot has happened in-between. But, a lot remains the same.

Same crappy job though. Same pay, same higher-upper, same nonsense from the same people.

But wait, somethings's changed! I got more stuff to do! GRReeaaat! Sigh...

Exercise, that's the other thing I must say has not been the same. Accepted that I cannot be spending the same amount of time as previously, but, the current set-up is too extreme man. I got to get back into a routine. Cannot keep going like this or it would be back to square one!

Ok! Admittedly it would be an exaggeration to say exactly back to square one, but, one might never know. The amount of work taken to drop that MUCH amount of weight and for me to regain it back would be absolutely frightening, to say the least!

So here goes my plan... I am going to TRY to DO SOMETHING, anything, about this current malaise.... and I will use this to check in on my own promise!

Sweeney's Muse: Midweek hump

Sweeney's Muse: October 2006

No- get your mind out of the gutter. This merely refers to the mid week crisis that most salaried slaves are prone to being infected on a wednesday.

It has been a tough week! Work is finally moving and decisions made. The only thing to look forward to is really the weekend... and that is quite far away still, although the midweek crunch is coming to an end.

It is blardy COLD in the office... too little people and too much air-conditioning. But there's no choice, we are at the beginning of the chill pipes and if the temperature is adjusted to be just right here, the end of the line will be warm! Blardy waste of energy if you ask me, but wattodo? Illustrates how the whole world is inter-connected! So when a leaf drops in the jungles of Brazil, maybe there will be a tremor in Singapore?

Speaking of inter-connectedness, the smoke haze situation in SG is fairly serious. What is more serious is the dumb attitudes and thinking of Singaporeans who think that by 'shooting' the 'neighbours', they can solve the problem! Sheesh... if one is dumb, the best thing one can do is to shut that trap! Don't go around bragging your ignorance please!

Sweeney's Night Blog

Sweeney's Muse

Trying to get into the groove to move my butt to get off the 84kg plateau is tough. At least I am trying to get some new routines into the picture to fool the body to burn off the calories.

The wife has been absolutely sweet in letting me get to the gym on Monday and Wednesday and getting at least 1.3hours in. The muscles ache but it sure feels good that I can get to work out.

And work out I really have to, especially after the super duper Korean barbeque lunch on Wednesday. Reasonably-priced and the bulgogi is fabulous! AND so are the calories... hahah... but I got to work it out the very same night... slogging and huffing on the thread mill. Ahh.. well... simple math really, output must be greater than input in order for weight to go down....

And I'm still trying...

Sweeney's Night

Sweeney's Muse

Ok am here posting on my blog trying to discharge fully the battery on the Mac. Read that it is good to periodically do that to ensure that the battery does not lose its full capacity.

On the work front, it is good that for the last 2 days, I was able to leave the office with the sky still bright. Now that is something that is rare. What is even more rare was the fact that I could actually go to the gym last night and had a good workout. The first after a week of layoff due to the flu.

Predictably, every joint was stiff and muscles ache-y. Nontheless had a good session getiing back into the groove. At least it is a restart! And we all know that we must start somewhere.

Perhaps it is time to break out of the plateau and see if I can knock off the 84kg tag to go below it. It will be an achievement as it would mean that my BMI would then fall below 25- the technical cutoff for the condition of being overweight. Going below 25 would be a personal best and achieve a condition never before in all my life. Previously, I had been stuck at 101kg, 95kg and then now 84kg. It requires a 2nd burst of effort much like the middle of this year....

Conditions are currenlty not the same of course, but at least I gotta try....

Sweeney's Night

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Sweeney's Muse: Sweeney's Muse

Weekend Musing

Hmm... sitting at the same place, and at the same time, this weekend thingy is really hard on the butt man... sheesh... hard seating is like hard time, it makes time go sooo much slower.

Another weekend is more than half-way thru and the next few hours will see even the end of that in no time at all.

I am getting to know, and use, the Mac more. Somehow, its really easy to use, the software is cool, easy to use, and the interface is great. What is not so great it the keyboard. The keys seem to be spaced a tad too far, stretching out the fingers to reach the keys requires some getting use to. Perhaps it is also a function of the keyboard protector that I have on. But I suppose in one way or another, I better start getting use to it asap.

Tiger starts fast enough, and the applications all seem to load fast enough to allow me to want to use them. The little widgets are great too! The best thing is that all these applications all add up to an integrated whole, allowing me to easily listen to music, search for stuff on the web and type this blog at the same time. It is great! I am sure that there are more stuff to learn as I get to know more of this white-Mac. Ahhh... if all software and hardware were made this way!!!!

Sweeney's Muse: Sweeney's Muse

Sweeney's Weekend

Ahh... the weekend is around the corner again. This week has been one helluva week! Got stuff stuffed and boxes packed. But I am going to enjoy the weekend as far as I can before the madness starts again on Monday! It's gonna be mad!

Week has been good on the exercise front: THREE times this week, and Saturday's another session! Can feel the difference in the body. But the question topmost on my mind now is am I getting into that vain thing. I would like to think not, but imperceptibly, I am always thinking of having that next exercise fix, that next series of weights, reptitions and triceps etc. Yesterday's run was good, especially so when it was on 'company' time and the company itself wasn't half as bad! The pace was fairly blistering, slowed donw right at the end and couldn't keep it up, really must think about how to improve the pacing.

The other achievement was the incline thingamajiggy on the treadmill. Again, I am trying to 'trick' my body with a mixture of exercises different from the past. The two yoga postures were also very good- never knew how many muscles one has until one tries yoga!

It's almost midnight here and I have done my household chores.

Sweeney's Muse: Sweeney's Muse

Waiting, waiting, waiting

Here I am sitting in a canteen waiting for others, such is life! Got 1.5hours to burn on a Sunday. Thankfully, there's a FOC connection here. Good stuff! Surprised that one can still get FOC items around, even if it is just signals, or maybe it should be the next precious commodity in the world.

Good thing about Mac OS and Safari then is that one can surf with less worry than XP. Frankly, the need for XP seems to be dimishing by the day. Hahah... seems that only the significant other needs to have XP. Oh yeah, and one more thing before I 'SHIFT' all blame.... the need to ensure that office documents done in Mac can be read back in XP! Guess I have to 'find' some time to really suss out the platform and to ensure that the MacBook is not DOA!, unlike Stans!

Hmm.. that leaves really little time to write a longish-post, even though there 'SEEMS' to be 1.5hrs of sitting around twiddling thumbs. Okies, better go and do something else to ensure that the whole Macbook is working.

Sweeney's Muse: Sweeney's Muse

Waiting, waiting, waiting

Here I am sitting in a canteen waiting for others, such is life! Got 1.5hours to burn on a Sunday. Thankfully, there's a FOC connection here. Good stuff! Surprised that one can still get FOC items around, even if it is just signals, or maybe it should be the next precious commodity in the world.

Good thing about Mac OS and Safari then is that one can surf with less worry than XP. Frankly, the need for XP seems to be dimishing by the day. Hahah... seems that only the significant other needs to have XP. Oh yeah, and one more thing before I 'SHIFT' all blame.... the need to ensure that office documents done in Mac can be read back in XP! Guess I have to 'find' some time to really suss out the platform and to ensure that the MacBook is not DOA!, unlike Stans!

Hmm.. that leaves really little time to write a longish-post, even though there 'SEEMS' to be 1.5hrs of sitting around twiddling thumbs. Okies, better go and do something else to ensure that the whole Macbook is working.

Sweeney's Muse: Sweeney's Muse

Sweeney's Stuck

Hmmm... seems that things have begun to turn a corner and maybe, just maybe, it might begin to look better.

There are options and avenues that have not been there before and the dawn seems near.

As for how the morning will turn out, I guess it will have to depend on what options I take from now.

Better go out of the door quickly, I have a meeting (yawn) to attend and people to meet, decisions to make and tid-bits to add to the calories...

New Toy

Hey, got a new toy to play with. It's a Macbook. Guess the choice to buy one was motivated by the ability to run XP on the bootcamp platform. But now that I have a few days playing with it, bootcamp to run XP doesn't seem so hot anymore now. Especially since now that I found out that my powerpoint and word document can run on Tiger. The need seems to be diminishing by the day. However, still am trying to come to grips with the interface and the organising philosophy behind Tiger. One day, I will be able to master this... and I figure this day isn't too far off.

On the work front, things seems to be slowly changing for the better. Hope the positive vibes and turn of events keep coming. I could do with a break from the long run of negativity since July. Fingers crossed.

Ok, gotta go, this one is a short entry. Gotta go catch some zzzzzs, have been keeping a fair number of late nights recently.

Another mid-week hump to overcome! Sheesh... things are really getting thick like hay-koh... let's just try to hang in there and get it over and done with.

Hmm... observe a strange phenomenon this morning on the mrt, a lady putting on makeup! Right smack in the middle of a fully-morning-rush train carriage.... with nary a blink! This might be the same person whom I saw sometime last week, but cannot tell, I don't usually pay attention to people on the train, but would much rather prefer staring at my newspaper or book. From when I boarded till Kallang, she was happily prettying herself!

Ok... back at work now and the hump still exists! How am I going to get over it? Come back at the end of the day to find out.

Sweeney's Muse

Hitting the Gym

Wow... talk about a serious case of the Monday blues! Man... today was really hard on the mind! Couldn't concentrate on the work sia...

But, the good thing is that at least, I managed to get some gym time during lunch. No running, but at least the upper body got a bit of a workout over lunch... which incidentally was a sandwich washed down with water. But 4-ish managed to get out of the office to see a contractor, and got a cup of coffee.

Gym was great. Arms tired but good. Hopefully one day, I'll get there some upper body strength worth the name! Defined as being able to do at least 3 pullups unassisted. Don't hold your breath, this might take some time yet!

Tomorrow is yet another day, and damn... not looking forward to it man!

Sweeney's Muse

Another Week of the same shyt!

Welcome to the end of another shytty week. Hopefully things will begin to look up soon. Get it out of the way....

Have not been able to get to the gym much these days. Hoping to do so later and work out. Most dangerous thing now is that once the exercise stops, the eating starts. Sheesh, must really get the head checked! Who knows, if over-eating can be classifed as a medical disorder, maybe can use Medisave! hahaha...

But so far so good, tummy's got from one big pack to one big block! Who am I kidding, its gone to a BIG BLOB! Weight's the same, but the proportion of blubber/ muscle has definitely changed place! Sigh... running gotten to be shytty too! Slow and plodding... Hopefully can get to work out more often soon, maybe there's light at the end of the tunnel soon. Gotta pump up the execise to stop the eating.

Sweeney's Muse

Sweeney's Muse

You know... this blog is an occasional vehicle for me to vent/ rant on all the things that has been bugging me! And boy,while I have been quiet, it doesn't mean that I have nothing worth venting or ranting about!

Sheesh... talk about an*l retentive people! I am f&&king surrounded by them... or at least by those that hold the reins of powder! Alamak... damn siong man! How to live a happy life liddat?

Sigh... everyday, I sibe sian to drag myself to prostitute myself for $$, but hey... in Sin(happy)pore, all of us have had to do so....

I am looking at a possible alternative solution, but am not sure if it will work out... still trying to do the sums, and scrounge up enough gumption (ok.. balls) to do what I 'fantasize' about... But everyday, that path is looking ever-more-appealing...

Sweeney's Muse

Sweeney's Muse

Another Week.. another Dollar!

My goodness, it's Friday already this week! Thanks entirely to the Chinese New Year superlong weekend! Yaayhaayyy.. Althought short, it has been a good week at work.

This morning's meeting went great, everyone's up to speed and my staff is ready to take over the followup. Issues were dealt with and decisions made. I think the guys are adjusting to my style and workflow. Fingers crossed this will stay on track. Timeline for deliverables are tight but manageable. Just need to keep cracking on one person in the team! Why must there always be that one joker?

Just staying back a little to copy some files to work on at home and to blog on this.... Article in the week's papers on cyberloafing is relevant. But hey, who here has'nt surfed over to check on emails, read forums and online papers! Heck I am blogging now, although techically speaking, I knocked off half an hour ago.... but.... if employers want to get you....

Weekend's gonna be good, am going to Changi Point for dinner with the family. Guess we all earned it for a good week. Hmmmm... can taste the ghoulash already! ANDDDDD... there's gonna be a seafood dinner on Sunday night! Yum... !

ON the exercise front however, things are not going so great. Pigged out toooooo much over the CNY period, stuffing my face with cookies, sugared drinks but SURPRISINGLY... no booze! Showing up on the tummy... YIKES! But have been a saint enough to reject all lunch offers and head to the gym every afternoon. BUT boy does my body tell me when it is 'angry' with me... Runs have been horrible... only 4.8clicks for 30mins... that's only at about 9.5km/hr... Sh*t! Weight training is back down too, with the arms aching and the reps poor! Guess its payback time! Hehehe...

Well... gonna knock off soon, and will be back with more barbs when I feel riled enough!