wandernut

I was a couch potato on Friday night.
Made a comforting bowl of tomyam fried rice, sat in front of the tele to watch Olympic replays and some live games and finished half a bottle of wine all by myself. Nice.

Woke up reasonably early the next day.
Walked to the Wagas at The Loft in Jianguo Xi Lu to meet MY for breakfast. It’s about half an hour away from my place, but because it was tucked behind another building, I walked right past it without knowing, and walked all the way to Ruojin Er Lu. I must have walked for like an hour. Worked up a little sweat but it felt good after a week of feeling sickly. Good thing it wasn’t too hot that day, and it was quite interesting to see a different part of the city on foot.

Breakfast at Wagas was good. 50% off if you get there before 10am.
I like the fact that they have freshly squeezed juice! None of the orange concentrate nonsense. The coffee was good. And they have really nice muffins too.

After breakfast we went window shopping at Parkson and Times Square, and I went to the gym after. Managed to run for about 40 minutes (interval training) and did some strength training for about an hour. Showered in the gym for the first time after and I was in for a shock. Chinese women were a lot less modest than I thought. So many of them were starkers on their way to or from the shower stalls, all of nature’s gifts hanging loose (and then some). Some were even sitting in front of the mirrors naked while they blew their hair dry, applied lotion or did their make up. Young or old, it was too much skin. Even for the closet perv in me.

I left, did some grocery shopping and went home to make dinner. MY and KN came over and we had ABC soup with pork ribs, some roast pumpkin and grilled chicken wings. The gang came over later and we watched some sports on TV.

Sunday morning felt like a repeat of Friday night minus the alcohol.
Made another batch of tomyam fried rice (it’s the easiest thing to cook when you have cold rice in the fridge). Had some kopi with it and watched a replay of the Djokovic and Nadal match (of course I didn’t know it was a replay then, silly me).

Then it was back to the gym for RPM class (they call it Fly Wheels here). The tracks were very different compared to RPM back home and it involved the standing attack pretty much all the way. Quite bad for the knees but I was sweating buckets. It felt really good. I coughed a little but I could feel my air passages unclogging itself. Fortunately this time, there weren’t any nudies in the shower room (maybe cos there weren’t many people anyway).

After gym I met up with CY and HF at the flower market, followed by a trip to the Giant bikeshop near Wanping Lu. Eventhough it’s a made in China (or was it Taiwan) brand, the bikes and accessories were more expensive compared to KL. An aluminium bike with Shimano 105 specs (like my bike back home) was priced at RMB 7498 (RM3750). I got my Scott for RM3300 back home. I don’t know if I wanna burn that kind of money here, and I don’t know how often I’ll actually be cycling. Bikes with Tiagra or Sora gear sets were cheaper (about RMB 5k and 4k plus respectively), but I don’t know if they are reliable. Only plus point is, the Giant shop offers free service and maintenance for all Giant bikes. And it’s not too far away from where I live. Hmmmm. Tempting.

Had dinner at MY’s after that that. She made bak kut teh, with really yummy Hainan style rice and mushrooms and taufu and lettuce complete with yau char koay. The yau char koay bought here is slightly different from the ones back home though. I think it’s the absence of kan sui or lye water. We sat to watch Malaysia’s very sad defeat in the men’s badminton final against China, drinking MY’s cloud ear and pear tong sui. Yummy yummy yummy.

Woke up aching all over today.
And I love it.