“Satellite News” by Feeder kicks Tuesday off with a smile… “Cause you will never keep me down. You can never keep me down. I wanna lift myself up to the sky, serenade the stars as I pass by. Wanna leave it all just for a while. I’ll be satellite news. I wanna lift myself above the clouds, cut the ropes around me. You’ll see me shine. Shine like the sun…”
Every routine in nature has a special number. It takes 28 days for the moon to orbit the Earth and 28 is also just one day shy of a significant cycle in life that all women can relate to. But when it comes to exercise, 20 is the magic number. If you want to lose weight, make no mistake, you’re going to have to exercise for at least 20 minutes each time. 20 minutes is the cut-off point because that is when your body stops using your stored energy and starts pulling energy from your fat deposits. When I was out running with Kev yesterday I had to make sure I didn’t run over nature’s magic number. At the moment I’m concentrating less on cardio because I’m already feeling quite nimble, so instead I’m concentrating on increasing mass. I remember those days I used to struggle doing 15 standard press-ups, but now I’ve noticed I can pull 15 off without even feeling much of a rise in temperature in the arms. My record per set now stands at 30, which kind of shocks me because I don’t think I’d ever done that many in a row in my formative years. Yup, I’ve always considered myself to be a weakling, but now it seems that when all other men are going through their mid-life crises, I’ll be approaching my peak. This should hopefully delay any mid-life crises for me till I am at least 60.
I’ve noticed lately that there has been a sharp increase in the number of South-East and Far-East Asians in my area, most of whom are probably in their early to mid 20s, i.e. students. I’m usually a bit blind to it all but am only really able to notice because they’re the only ethnicity of people to stare at me unashamedly when I pass them. I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with people staring at me since it started about 2 years ago. I’ve gotten used to it over time because now I don’t even notice it anymore and even when I do I usually smile or nod at the starers as they walk past. More often than not, when I do that they turn away. Now, if I had a piece of brocolli stuck in between my teeth, that’d give them a real valid reason to do that.
Yesterday, my uncle was around the house so we decided to go catch The Ring at the cinema whilst my parents went to see Chicago. I wasn’t so keen on going to see Chicago but admit it sounded interesting since it’s one of the few famous jazz musicals I can think of. The Ring was good even though it seemed so Americanised. I just didn’t find it scary as much as creepy or chilling and it was only that at best. It doesn’t give me much faith in Hollywood’s plans to remake the excellent South Korean movie My Sassy Girl (Yupgi Girl). With The Ring remake, I just feel that the meanings and symbolisms were lost in the translation from Japanese to English. The biggest thing lost was the symbolism of the female character (Sadako), dressed in a white gown with her raven black hair drooped down over her face as though she was a human weeping willow. Even the name Sadako lost its meaning (renamed to Samara in the remake) because the name in Japanese translates as “chaste child” (”sada” means “chaste,” and “ko” is the suffix for “female child”).
In Japanese folklore, the image of such a woman with the same attire and hairstyle is enough to strike fear in many hearts since those are the characteristics on which a few Japanese mythical figures are based. For example, one such ghostly figure is a variation of the story of Kuchisake Onna, where she wears a white coat with a veil covering her face.
The weather had been excellent the last few days. It had been a while since I saw the sky that shade of blue where it started to do justice to the colour, “sky blue.” For some reason, when I went to sleep last night I had a feeling that the sunshine wouldn’t last and when I woke up today my hunch rang true. When I woke to the sound of rain, I opened my curtains to be greeted with a concrete coloured sky, reminding me I was in London again.
When the weather is warm and the sun is out, it brings out the best in most people, especially us Londoners. At the start of the week the weather seemed to have affected all the car owners on my street because in the past few days it seems that everyone had been out at some stage to wash their car; myself included. Maybe the hot weather does that to you, instilling a fine excuse to just catch some rare London rays for a while. Today my car was washed again. Nature always has its way.
[Left to Right: Daffodils; Magnolia tree (all from front garden)]
