今年端午的鹹肉粽子

Chinese rice dumplings are one of those things that I really like, but I don't want to eat a mountain of it. I only eat Hokkien rice dumplings for the savory intense flavors. It's hilarious when every year in May and June, when the Double Fifth Festival comes round, and I find a few rice dumplings in my freezer that are from the previous year. Hahahah 

But last year, I made concerted effort to eat them before this year. And I didn't anyhow stock too many. So this year, I only found two in the freezer before the new ones came in. Hahahaha. Two are fine; they're like psychological safety keepers in case I suddenly need food. Like how I always keep an unexpired can of spam in the larder. Heh.

This week was rough. The quarter is closing, and it's hectic for both the husband and I. Cleaning up Choya's liquid poop or taking her out to poop and seeing her in pain added to my stress. I told the husband to compartmentalize and let me handle it. He needs to expend more brain cells to sort out his work. He has been on calls till midnight, and up again at 7am. 

We needed easy and quick meals. We have sous vide chicken breasts frozen, and these are easy to thaw out to add to any meals. I steamed sweet potatoes and grilled pumpkin. So we have easy carbs too. And rice dumplings came to our rescue. I'm very lucky to have the friends' Papa Tan's rice dumplings again. It's a privilege to receive these homemade gifts when the friends' parents are still robust enough to make them. 

I also hopped in on the shipping when J ordered rice dumplings from Joo Chiat Kim Choo. They offered mini-sized dumplings too. Perfect. I can't eat that much glutinous rice! Got five pieces for myself. I generally don't need any additional sauces to go with rice dumplings. I'm conscious of sodium levels and such. But adding a dash of sambal or XO sauce is often fun. 

Metronidazole Round 3

Choya got the runs again. Round 3. And the culprit is a clostridium overgrowth. Again. Within two months of the previous bout, and a week of tapering off the last bits of metronidazole. WTF. She has gut dysbiosis, so it isn't strong enough to bear any bit of clostridium overgrowth. If I don't heal the gut and make it resilient enough, she's not going to be able to fully heal.

I was glad that I made the call to take Choya to the clinic at 8pm to do a fecal swab and insisted on antibiotics on standby. The fecal swab was absolutely necessary to eliminate a parasitic infection. She is clear for giardiasis, amebiasis, and worms, eggs and other parasites. That fulfilled our socially-responsible obligations to her fwens. 

I know Choya too well, so I recognize this kind of diarrhea. Once it begins, it wouldn't stop. This is not something ProKolin/ProMax or psyllium husk can heal. She didn't have much appetite and she was in pain with terrible tummy spasms. Purging 6x in 18 hours, and in this worrying manner made me give her the first light dose of metronidazole at 2am. It worked. That gave her some rest and sleep.

She didn't have the runs the next morning. That 9am walk was to decompress. She also ate a small meal. I'm almost glad that it didn't turn into hemorrhagic gastroenteritis. Most things don't faze me. Except Choya. Seeing her in pain made my heart break. 

I was desperately trying to trace back what the triggers could be. Too much cheese... a too-rich dehydrated surf clam and white bait? A blade of grass that she licked that held terrible bacteria? Thunderstorms? Where did I go wrong? When this dog also has chronic IBD, stress and anxiety can also cause a clostridium boom. The tapering off from the previous round was done with just tiny sprinkles; they wouldn't have had this effect of allowing clostridium overgrowth this fast within a week. I need to be stricter with food, and also not allow her to lick or sniff that much. Boring is the word.  

I had a little cry, and got on with it. I'm going to throw everything in the arsenal to sort out her gut dysbiosis. No more complacency. I have never once felt resentful for this choice to stay in town to be with Choya. I'm glad I'm around to handle this one. The husband wouldn't be able to do so. This is crunch time at work for him, and I'd rather him focus on that. I have no issues to be the one to manage the dog. She's Momma's girl.

All right. Here we go again.

In My Non-Hyrox Era

Pilates and Gyrotonic stretch and rotate all the kinks out of me, and to keep the fascia nimble. I work out fairly religiously at the gym not because I love weights or strength training. I do it because I don't have a choice — aging muscles — keeping fit. Also, it has become an outlet for stress (and anger) management. 

I'm having some fun training with friends at their gyms for their Hyrox race prep. It's not a recent thing. I've been training with them since early 2025. They're the mad people who would fly to Seoul, Hong Kong and Paris to race. I wouldn't mind tagging along as a spectator, but my traveling inclinations are curtailed by a floof. 

This training usually means doing a lot of squats and running. I can do barbell squats on my own. Wall balls are so painful when it's the last station and you're literally dying. If you have no strength in those quads, hamstrings and glutes, you will cry.

Then you need a ton of upper body strength and a solid core. Somehow, you'll have to figure out how to build strength to push a sled of 102kg, which will feel easier than pulling a sled of 78kg. Of course I'm not doing Pro weights lah. Walao. 

I have to do all the stations that I hate, especially running. It's ridiculous to push me to run so far. Ugh. I'm made to run 8km and I detest that. My max is 5km. That's my comfortable distance. I'm not racing, so I refuse to run 10km. Ha! On normal days, I don't even like running outdoors, but these people do. Grrrrrr. Thankfully, we run at the stadium (nice track) or around the Kallang Riverside, MBS and Esplanade area, both of which are acceptable to me. I refuse to run elsewhere. NEVER ON A TRAIL. Running is utterly unenjoyable.  

You can analyze the best positions and form for each station. You delve all you want into how to improve strength, stamina and timings. But Hyrox is first and foremost, an endurance and a running race. If you can't run 10km comfortably without collapsing at the end, don't do Hyrox as an individual. I know people said don't bother about timings, just train and just aim to finish injury-free. Ehhh, people do bother about timings. So you can talk to all the enthusiasts to figure it out.

I have done the simulations, and I'm pretty impressed with my timings for the 45-49 age group. LOL However, I'm not joining a race at all. I won't because I'm not interested in joining any sort of competitions this way. It's not me lah. I don't have the bandwidth to do it. I can't commit to Doubles or Relay because if Choya needs me, I tend to drop everything for her, including any potential races. 

No matter. This is my non-Hyrox era.