To Another Year of Health

After a whole year of scheduled medicals and blood draws, bone density tests, the usual annual consults with my doctors, fitness check-ins, research and observation, and anecdotes and chats with similarly-aged girlfriends, I think, I'm not even in perimenopause yet. I don't know when I'll step into it. My estrogen levels have remained consistent and within range for the now. 

There's no definitive clinical test for perimenopause. Hormone tests are absolutely unhelpful at this point. I suppose I'll know when the hot flushes, night sweats, brain fog and odd aches begin. And perhaps insomnia. I love my sleep, and I still need to sleep at least 7 hours a night. I can live with 5 hours, but not for consecutive nights. 

Since I'm not in perimenopause yet, the threat of sarcopenia is low, although my metabolism has slowed. I always eat very well. So that's not an issue at all. I have already been watching my food intake even more conscientiously when Covid lockdowns happened. Luckily IBS helps me in filtering out the things I'm not supposed to be eating anyway. I'm not putting on weight randomly. Whewwww. To that, I have decreased alcohol intake by a truckload. Going light on alcohol is the fastest way to tone up and cut out the flab, bloat and shitty hangovers. 

I'm a lot fitter than the average women in my age group, in terms of strength, bone, heart and muscle health. My immune system is keeping up. I would like to keep it that way. At this point, I'll just continue the strength and resistance training. I need to build the muscles while I still can and keep them. I can't prevent accidents... or fate intervening. But I would do my part to stay strong for as long as I can. I want to be independent and mobile and nimble. As I age, this is what I want to hold on to. Health, is wealth.

Rice, Cabbage & Lemon Soda

The Ippudo that I pass by often is their OG outlet at Mhd Sultan Road. It has amazingly existed for years. It opened in 2010 and seems to be still in decent business. It re-branded, went through countless teams of kitchen and floor crew and I have avoided it for some years when it was really badly managed and they managed to screw up every food item. 

They have also secretly accommodated dogs outdoors from way before and of course, legitimately so now. So I've always thought I should patronize them when I can since they've been kind. Now the thing is, I do not like ramen. And I most certainly do not even want to eat ramen anywhere in Japan. I'm not a fan of any style of ramen, even if it's in fish broth or yuzu broth. I'd avoid it if I can. It's the noodles I'm not hot about. 

Whenever I go to an Ippudo, I'd simply order items that are not ramen. They used to have a chilled and dry ramen salad; I didn't mind it. However, most days, I order a bowl of rice (which is not on the menu, and you'd have to ask the servers to put it in the table's bill), and a yasai itame of sorts. That bowl of steamed rice isn't too bad too. The quality of rice used over the years didn't exactly deteriorate much, and they don't use the worst grade of grains that some other 'Japanese restaurants' use. Ippudo calls their yasai itame it 'Ramen-ya styled Happoitame', which loosely translates into 'stir-fried eight-treasures'. Cabbage and pork with fungus, peppers and such. Okay can. 

If I'm still hungry, there's always pan-fried gyozas to the rescue. This menu at Ippudo offers plenty of food for me that isn't ramen. Teheheheh. I always prefer venues that are accessible to me, accommodating enough for me to dine alone since I can't rack up a big enough bill by myself and still occupy a table for say 90 minutes, and importantly, comfortable for Choya too. I love their lemon soda here. I love places that just gives me the whole can of soda like that. Ippudo has been doing so for years, and hasn't stopped.

A Chopper to Chop Off Your Head!

Picked up Christopher Fowler's 'Bryant & May: Oranges and Lemons: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery' (2020). This is a long-running series featuring elderly English detectives Arthur Bryant and John May solving the most bizarre crimes. 

The whole Bryant & May series set in London started in 2003 with 'Full Dark House'. It ended with the 20th book in the series 'London Bridge is Falling Down' (2021). I have heard of it but I've never picked up a book.

Apparently this book is a thematic sequel to 'The Lonely Hour' (2019); that's like Book 15 in the series. I haven't read that. Never mind. Book 16 'Oranges and Lemons' works as a standalone too. In this book, a prominent politician Speaker of the House survived after being nearly crushed by a fruit truck on its delivery route to a festival at St Clements Danes Church. 

Now, the Peculiar Crimes Unit (PCU) has been disbanded; and the old office is being turned into a vegetarian tapas bar. John May has been missing for a month and Arthur Bryant is recovering from surgery for a gunshot wound. We see Sidney Hargreaves introduced to the team. She's the new addition, gung-ho and full of attitude. The book rosters its narrators and shares different perspectives. 

It's a classic whodunit. It's a convoluted plot done by Professor Stride, a disgruntled academic. He uses nursery rhymes and folk songs in his attacks on other prominent figures in town, seeking to destabilize the establishment, exposing the rot within the church and government.

The title of the book came from an old English folk song 'Oranges and Lemons'. It's damn creepy lah because it's also a children's ring song singing about church bells, debts and payments, a candle to light you to bed, and a chopper to chop off one's head. LOL Anyway, the locations in the story also takes a page from the folk song — from the church bells at St Clement's, to St Martin's, Old Bailey, Shoreditch, Stepney and Bow.

I also felt as though I went on a tour of London. Ha.

It seems I am the only one who'll be left without a new position, which suits me perfectly, as I plan to retire and go as far off the grid as possible, in this case a bungalow with faulty wiring on the Isle of Wight. I no longer want to live in a metropolis that thinks it's acceptable to charge fifteen quid for a cup of artisanal coffee that's been passed through the digestive system of a tapir.

Adding insult to injury, I have received a letter of complaint that our most senior detectives used inappropriate language during the last investigation and are guilty of being, I quote, "old white males in a woke world.' I don't know about 'woke' but Mr Bryant certainly needs to be woken in our meetings. I imagine being old and white is somewhat beyond his control unless he's planing to reincarnate.