Aerial yoga (Intermediate) + Justin’s bday dinner @ Westgate Greendot + Farmily dinner @ TungLok Teahouse + root canal treatment + Cultivate Creative and Critical Thinking for Workplace Success + Aerial Hoop (Beginner)

18/7/24 Thurs: Went for Paris’ aerial yoga (intermediate) class tonight and the class was packed with students! The 20mins or so of warm-ups were very tiring for both my arms and legs already and there were so many times we could bump into other students so I really didn’t like the placement nor how packed the studio was.

Indeed her warm-ups were very fierce so by the time she introduced the flow for us to do, I was already quite tired haha. Still, I don’t think the flow was hard to do, just required more arm and wrist strength which was do-able by me, albeit I was drained out by the warm-up, which to me shouldn’t be the case in any exercise class. There was a moment when my left ankle was entangled in the strap and I had a hard time getting it out by myself so I pulled my left calf muscle a bit there. Paris was rather helpful but she had many students to look after, and most people there were “click-ish”, which was also something I disliked. I’m fine with going to classes alone, but I guess if I were to go to such classes in future, I just have to take care of myself better!

19/7/24 Fri: Great sweat-out session at Bungee Fitness this morning… somehow couldn’t really keep up with the moves because I found the placement of the feet a bit awkward when we switched from one move to another.

Made teriyaki chicken with cherry tomatoes, Japanese cucumber and cold somen! Taste came out quite nice but because my head felt weird these few days and I’d been sweating so much, I wasn’t feeling very well.

20/7/24 Sat: On hindsight, I’m glad I took the whole day to rest. I slept like four hours away in the afternoon before revising a bit of Japanese language.

Potato cooked prawn tomato, shimeji and green capsicum spaghetti for us for dinner!

21/7/24 Sun: STC gave 5000 free tickets to racegoers at level 1 on the Singapore Derby meeting and so there was a long queue at the MRT plaza when I arrived for work. *Queue for staff was not organised properly hmph.* It’s been a while since we saw so many people on a race day, really. I met Godfrey, the one who will be penning STC’s book and also saw Matthew who came back from his racing season break from Conghua!

Did two stories so I went out for interview twice… nice ambience out there… but it was also funny seeing how those spectators kept waving when cameras pan to them lol. Jockey Tyler Schiller sounded like a nice guy and was good to speak to. *Had a lot to do at night and I still felt weird, so I didn’t eat much for dinner from my in-laws’ cooking.*

22/7/24 Mon: Second last Pilates reformer class with Chisa but my body told halfway through the class because I was just too tired. Still pushed through till the end. *I’m not exactly sick but I can feel I’m not in my optimal state now.*

Used up the leftover ingredients and made dumpling soup with carrot, shimeiji shroom and onion in chicken stock, fried eggs with onions and decided to stir-fry potato slices with green capsicum last minute lol. My potato slices were a bit burnt though. *Thankful Potato is ever appreciative.*

Did foot massage at night after my period ended and I didn’t sweat at all… when I used to even sweat in air-con room. We slept in air-con because the humidity had been so “heavy” and I thought the air was “stiff” the past week so I sweated a lot every day… turned out I thought I slept very well even though I dreamt too haha.

23/7/24 Tues: *lost close to 1.5kgs in a week because I haven’t that big an appetite the past week.* Bumped into Scott by chance at Yew Tee MRT during lunch so he treated me to Korean bibimbap at the basement of Yew Tee Point. Had a good chat on work and he spilled some beans of some “dirty dealings” in racing. Well, some are rumours but很多时候，传闻不会是空穴来风的嘛。

After dinner at mum’s, I went for Hatha Yoga with JE. Some stretches were also quite straining on the legs tonight. Some students had problem with doing padmasana (lotus pose) but I’m glad I could do it with relative ease… albeit it became difficult when we had to roll back and stay upside down on the floor in that pose lol.

24/7/24 Weds: *早知今日，何必当初？Still, Corp Comms team at STC really failed in comms.* Did my back massage and cupping this afternoon and HL said I had too much dampness in my body! Well, I’d been feeling under the weather for the past week really and there’s just a lot of phlegm and discomfort in my throat… as to what caused it? I don’t know. Hopefully it’s just a small viral infection and that I’m on the road to recovery!

Potato cooked hot soba with sutchi fish fillet for dinner~

25/7/24 Thurs: Treated Justin to his belated 34th bday dinner at Greendot at Westgate. It’s great to hear he’s doing very well at his sales job at a Mental Wellness start-up now and preparing for his wedding in August and BTO also coming in Q2 2025. *sneaky chap also got PotaTOHs a handwash as our belated housewarming gift after he randomly popped into Rituals, a shop that sells home and body cosmetics~ thanks!* As for his dream of opening a宫保鸡丁hawker stall when he’s 40… I told “the boss” can hire me if I need a job then lol!

26/7/24 Fri: Had Oyako don for dinner at Clare’s at night… nicely prepared by Potato and Clare, the “sous chef” haha. *It’s really tough for the mum having to cook and attend to his son at the same time haha.* Dinner turned out yummy and we had a good chat about Clare’s plan to join MOE and the education scene in general. It’s always nice listening to Clare, Potato and YJ discussed about teaching kids but it’s also sad that it’s so problematic nowadays and some parents are not educating their kids properly themselves yet expect schools to take responsibility.

27/7/24 Sat: *Started watching “The Double” and it’s a nice drama about revenge hehe~* PotaTOHs met Ian for dinner at TungLok Teahouse because he had a $40 discount voucher… came up to about $35 a person in the end. The 1.5h dimsum buffet was a somewhat disappointing because most of the dishes were meh.

Had gelato ice-cream with waffle ($18.50) at Sweet Cheek near Ian’s after that. I picked the blue pea chrysanthemum with chocolate and the hojicha-flavoured ones… not bad but they preferred the former. Then, we tried the Blue Glacier gin with tonic water~ really quite refreshing, even for a non-drinker like me.

28/7/24 Sun: Last Lion City Cup won by Lim’s Kosciuszko and Ruan Maia bound for South Korea after a win on his last ride this afternoon. Came home to dinner cooked by Potato~

29/7/24 Mon: Damn I was almost half an hour late for my last Pilates reformer class with Chisa this morning because I saw the time on the Whatsapp reminder message wrongly tsk. It was an okay workout but I will miss classes with Chisa! *Took bus 871 home too for the first time~*

Did my root canal treatment with Dr Ting this afternoon. We took a mini x-ray of my upper left pre-molar tooth to check the condition of the tooth and he also ascertained that the root/tooth was “dead” because it’s not sensitive to a cold patch test. Dr Ting explained the risk and the costs of doing the pre-molar ($590) and crowning ($890) later for reinforcement and I estimate it to be below $2k for the whole procedure~ ouch.

The whole surgery took about an hour where he removed the old filling, drill a hole in the pre-molar, removed the dead pulp, put medication to clear up the infection in the gums before sealing it back with temporary fillings again. I only felt slight pain when he injected the LA into my gums and the left side of my mouth was numb and swelled up in minutes. Throughout the whole process, I did not feel much except hearing the noises in my mouth and when he touched the neighbouring teeth I think. *kept swallowing my saliva while he applied medication and it felt like a long time there* Paid $321.50 for this visit and was given amoxicillin which I must finish in five days and Panadol in case there’s any ache after the surgery. Will return in two weeks for a second visit to seal up the tooth. *Numbing effect took about three hours to go away…*

Mistook king oyster mushroom for oyster mushroom in my salt and pepper mushroom dish~ my tamagoyaki was a bit out of shape like a onigiri haha~ the pan-fried chives dumplings were burnt at the bottom though haiz.

30/7/24 Tues: First day of “Cultivate Creative and Critical Thinking for Workplace Success” Zoom lesson. Instructor Allan Chia from the Psychology space seemed like someone with heaps of experience and knowledge, but us being typical Singaporeans, we’re just not that “responsive” haha. He shared a famous quote Alvin Toffler, an American writer and futurist, said which I thought was very true: "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

We talked about egocentrism and sociocentrism, about people conforming to groupthink after being in a workplace for very long etc which can’t be more true.

Had a tiring but good Hatha yoga workout at night.

31/7/24 Weds: Continued with class today. Allan mentioned about the VIA character strengths survey.*They don’t use “weakness” but say “lesser strength”. We can’t remove it but can improve on it. In positive psychology, they strongly encourage optimising your strength than working on your weakness.* He disapproves of DISC and MBTI test as a psychologist because he said the validity don’t last and the results have been confirmed that they’re not valid. He also mentioned about Gallup and Strengthsfinder… calling them “adult stuff” and not “child’s play” haha. I did the VIA survey and found that Self-Regulation is my top strength!

He taught us that learnt behaviour and strength is different. Learnt behaviour goes to a certain level and you reach your limit, but strength is the more you do, the more you gain inside. Persona changes but personality never change. We had interesting questions to answer too. Had some items to pick and choose from and explain our choices at one point and I chose the “train or plane” category in which I chose the former. I think it is closer to the ground, more脚踏实地like me and I can take my time on the slow journey. Also, I don’t like to see things from high up but be close to those on the grounds. There’s also “wind or tree” and if I picked, it’d be the latter for many reasons.

He gave us a primary 5 maths question from UK too. Apparently, 85% of the students there got it right. Attempts were made in my class but typical Singaporeans like us were bogged down by invisible rules in our thoughts so we probably thought symbols and numerals cannot “interchange” … so it became harder to solve.

Had Japanese class again at night and it’s been three weeks since the last class. We were doing revision and teacher Kurihara challenged me to reading the Hiragana characters and it was intimidating to some extent~ my mind’d go blank, especially when it came to translating numerals to Hiragana or vice versa!

1/8/24 Thurs: Went for my first session of Aerial Hoop (Beginners) class with Kay. She’s very patient as usual. I thought the hoop would be easier but it clearly wasn’t the case. The metal hoop was hard and when one changes pose on it, it can get very painful at times. Training our arm strength on it was a challenge too and I could feel calluses forming after only a series of simple pull-ups! I struggled even with the basic poses on the hoop and spinning got worse when I tugged my legs upside down. However, maybe because I wasn’t spinning too fast, I thought I could tolerate it better this time than the last time when I tried her Aerial Hammock class. *Well, I better work on my basic strength before going to such classes lol.*