Touristing is Bad for your Health
Touristing can make you sick. Tomorrow I'm off to the zoo, leaving Sunday for recovery.
Interpreting it strictly, "touristing" can give you diseases such as Miliaria rubra. You see, touristing involves going outside a lot -- since just about everything indoors is lame and boring -- which exposes you to hot, humid weather.
I diagnosed myself with this on Monday. While the rest of the country was in an Orange Alert over H1N1 and doing manditory temperature screening of all university staff and requiring students to be screened before allowing them into exam rooms, I was trying to cover up the "unsightly red blotches" (as one website put it) on my upper arms and legs. I found that splashing cold water on it helped, but I couldn't splash water on my chest and back while at university. After three days of showering twice a day, the chemical balance of my skin was restored, so everything was back to normal.
Oh, for the non-condescending people out there -- this disease is more commonly called "heat rash" or "sweat rash". Not at all contageous, and only irritatingly itchy. No, I wasn't talking about anything serious like malaria. :P
And yes, I'm delightfully aware of the irony of my previous paragraph. :)
Interpreting it loosely, "touristing" can give you diseases such as Americanus Shapus. You see, touristing invoolves going to a foreign country -- since the grass is always greener in the Sahara desert, or something like that -- which exposes you to foreign food.
I diagnosed myself with this on Monday. While I was sorting through the pictures from Sentosa island, I found myself deleting pictures because they made me look fat. Then I realized that I was fat. Apparently eating a lot of hamburgers -- both at Burger King, and at food courts -- makes you gain weight. What a surprise!
I'm kind-of stuck. If I don't eat enough or get enough sleep, I get sick. I can't get enough sleep -- my 25-hour schedule clashes horribly with a steady work week, and there's still enough meetings and whatnot that I don't feel that I can go back to 25 hours while in Singapore. So I'm never getting enough sleep. To keep myself healthy, I try to make sure that I eat enough.
However, most of the food here is Asian. What a surprise! Ok, not a surprise at all... but it still makes eating problematic. I mean, I have problems eating in Canada. Scarse wonder that I have problems here!
As a result, I tend to go to a Western food place (Subway, Burger King, or a pizza place) once a day, to make sure I have at least one real meal. Yeah, that's pretty bad. But the alternative is worse... I mean, although my long-term health is degrading, at least I can still do my work and whatnot. If I tried to survive on non-Western food only, I'd end up spending days in bed.
Oh, for anybody who hasn't figured it out yet -- Americanus Shapus is more commonly called "being overweight" or "looking like a pig". No, I wasn't talking about anything serious... at least, not anything that can't be cured with a better diet and running 10km three times a week.
As I did when coming back from Belfast, within 24 hours of the plane touching down, I'll run 10km. And soon after that, I'll do at least 30km each week. Don't worry; for the first week or two, I won't push my speed.
By the end of summer, I want to run a marathon a week (not necessarily in one go; two 20km runs and one 5km would be fine), and also be able to run 10km in 40 minutes.
I also need to regain my musical skills, so I'm imagining an hour of practice at least every other day. Basically, I'll spend one hour a day on self-improvement, alternating music and running. Oh, but by "music", I mean "serious practice", not fun stuff like chamber music. The above will be put aside for one week in July (where I'll be playing music for 8 hours a day or so).
Only 19 days until I return to Vancouver!