Public gyms in Taipei are beautiful. Aesthetically, they’re knock-out champions – most unlike the dull multi-mirrored vain-pods you so often find in Singapore. Wallpapered and themed, these Taipei gyms are made to look like an urban-looking backstreet alleyway, and others designed to look like a modern spaceship, the gym’s sleek machinery complimenting it’s cool grey interiors.
I was minding my own business one fine weekend, relishing in the bliss that accompanies having one’s squat rack all to oneself, and not needing to share with sweaty know-it-alls who ogle at your butt while ‘resting’ (That is, if you consider those 5-minute intervals ‘resting’).
I’m back from my work trip in Chengdu. It was unexpectedly great and so was the 3-degree weather, and it made for a marvellous way to break in my business trip virginity.
The trip lasted a grand total of 5 days, all of which were spent in overwhelming fascination that was (I suppose) my ‘big girl wonderment’ of the world around me.
This story is hard to begin, probably because this has only happened to me one other time in my life. I was 17 and having sushi alone in a seedy cube of a ‘restaurant’ wedged between a hairdresser and a neighbourhood gynaecologist.
Back then, I had only been just introduced to her for a brief 10 minutes before texting her half my life’s tragedy and the horrors that were my relationship. I don’t know what kind of reply I expected, but it wasn’t an “Okay, that’s cool. You’re cool.”
Nat’s been my best friend for (nearly) the past decade.
For years I never understood this statement. Even when I was back in school, I would proclaim to my weary parents that I, and I alone, would embark on the magnificent one-man-project-work-show.
I was arrogant enough – even when I was 7 and tiny – to somehow know that my groupmates would screw up the project work and I’d have to redo it.
I do not have photos of me before the age of 19. Thanks, hard drives.
Having flitted from external hard drive to hard drive throughout my teenage years – (Cloud wasn’t a big thing back then) all of which ended in broken whirring messes, leaving me penniless and laden with stress-induced migraines – I finally conceded that these supposed storage ‘life-savers’ and I were never meant to be.
I was in my Grabhitch this morning, making absolutely no attempt to converse with my regular driver. He’s nice enough and has endured my lateness on more than one occasion. Still, I didn’t have the patience to make conversation at 8 in the morning, especially when he was one who favoured monosyllabic replies.
