The Gym at Home Is Rather Useful

The gym in the estate has finally been refurbished. The gym closed for a short week to get renovated, and re-opened. They even rolled a pineapple into it for fun. Heh. When many residents use the gym and don’t abuse it, that gym is worth the cost.

I like it! Loads of improvements made. Brighter lighting was done, more mirrors installed. A full rack of dumbbells and kettlebells. Brand new machines. A squat rack! Cables! Pull-up bars. Shock-absorbent flooring. I am pleased.

I’m not about to give up my fancy gym membership at Virgin Active. But a home gym that is actually outfitted with proper equipment and machines is useful. It's great for random days when I just want to do pull-ups and quick squats. 

The other day I went by the home gym to do some weights. I went to the squat rack to set up, and in between, did shoulder shrugs and negative pull-ups. A woman came in to look around, and commented “Where are the machines and things for women? Looks like all for men.” I amost died. Since when is a gym gendered? I didn’t know they make ‘machines for women’. Like what types?! 

The woman was blocking my way at the squat rack. She was clearly not going to use it. I asked her to move, and loaded up 40-kg as a warm-up for my back squats. Her eyes bulged and she promptly shut up. And yes, she moved very far out of the way and primly watched me use what is presumably a man's machine to rack the weights on the barbell and do my back squats. 

7.5kg a side. Very conservative. Bahahaha.

A 1-kg Pomfret

I have been over-doing it on the carbs and alcohol. I need carbs to bulk and build muscles. The alcohol was unnecessary though. So I've been feeling FAT. Bloated. During the luteal phase, I've been bulging out in all the wrong spots. This month, I have been consciously cutting back. Festive period? No issues. I can control my portions. I have a very healthy relationship with food.

Dinner that night at Black Society consisted of one item. We ordered a giant cauldron of fresh pomfret Teochew style in soup, with tofu and beehoon. I didn't even bother with alcohol. Had loads of water and decided to have a glass of chilled sour plum and cucumber juice thingy to soothe the throat, and that was quite enough sugar. 

The 1-kg pomfret was happily polished off between the man and I. The kitchen seared the fish nicely before boiling it up in the soup. The beehoon was the bonus that we didn’t mind a few mouthfuls since it was tasty. That wasn’t going to contribute that much to the carb count. Didn't even want to get a bowl or rice to share — the beehoon was quite a lot, and more than sufficient to fill us up. 

And that was all we wanted for dinner. Fish. Protein. Carbs. Fibre. We were good. It was a huge and hearty dish. We didn’t even bother with another plate of vegetables since there was cabbage in the soup. Mmmmm.

Sayur Manis

Stopped by for a casual dinner at Beast’s Hideout since we were already in the Clover Way area. It’s a zi char restaurant with quite a fun menu. The young owners and their friends also really like their cars and modifying them.

We’ve popped by with friends and had other items, like the usual fried rice, fried beehoon, prawns paste chicken wings, salted egg yolk pork, etc. Skip the whole fish. They only seem to have grouper and seabass, both of which I heartily dislike. I think the kitchen isn’t into fish. Tonight they offered us a small red snapper. I wasn’t keen but the man wanted to try it. I said NO to Teochew-style steaming. This red snapper cannot be done that way. Gross. So to steam it in soy sauce it was. Unfortunately, I didn’t taste what I’m looking for in a Hong Kong style steamed snapper. That said, the kitchen can do shellfish, crabs, prawns and squid and the sort really well. 

Tonight, we had different stuff. There was chye poh omelette. I wanted a non-meat protein. Put enough chye poh and don’t over-do the eggs, and most kitchens can’t screw this up. The pig’s trotter beehoon was delicious!

The server recommended “Man-ni 菜” to us, and we said okay. But we had no idea what the heck it was. When I saw it, I laughed. Alamak, just say sayur manis lah! I don’t mind this vegetable at all, but I must have it with some sort of chilli. It was done quite nicely in the classic style with eggs and chilli padi.