hong kong day 3

Managing to wake up reasonably early (5am yesterday, 7:30am today -- note to self: re-open the curtains if the made closes them; WAY too dark and the sunlight won't wake me even if I set the alarm improperly and it does not go off in the morning as planned) and crank out my 15 minutes of jumps whilst watching BBC World News (digression: CNN, CNBC, FoxNews...basically ALL the US "news" channels can absolutely and utterly bite me. BBC is actual, factual, NEWS. Delivered by seemingly intelligent, often British-accented newscasters who do not, in fact, have any blatant left- or right-wing tendencies. Amazing.) and then proceeding through the workout for the day.
As the sun feebly attempts to spill through hazy rain clouds and the smog of muggy downtown Hong Kong's sky, I sweat and grumble through triceps, biceps, situps, and other self-torture.
A new discovery: when I am bored of 8 Minute Abs, I simply do 400 crunches: 100 straight, 100 each side, and 100 leg-ups. That generally hurts enough to feel like I have worked the abdominal muscles for the day.

Did my off-site and team-building group fun yesterday: at the beach south of Lantau, built a raft out of bamboo, rope, and plastic barrels. Raced in the warm ocean, water-balloon fight.
Skipped out on the beach BBQ to head back into town and have dinner with my old boss. Had some excellent Cantonese cuisine at the superfly International Financial Center and spent the time talking smack past, present, and future. Had a craving for icecream but luckily could not find anything open at 10:30pm so ended up back in my hotel room, read a bit, and went to sleep.

In the HK office today catching up on work, work, WORK!

dinner in hong kong


dinner in hong kong
Originally uploaded by renfield

Salad from DressedSalad, carrot tahina, veggie samosa, grilled veggies from Seibu food court grEAT.

not quite

The Tonchabeast had herself a nice 38°C fever this morning, so she crashed out on the couch and I skipped my morning workout to sit with her and help her nibble breakfast.
Decided to hit the gym at lunch to do some exercise for the day, but the studio was being used for a meeting (?) so I started straight in on the workout: triceps. Lots and lots and lots of triceps work, to failure. Dips. Double-katanas, ski-jumpers. And some shoulder work just to round it all out.
When I finished the lunch-time Power Yoga class was about to start, so on a whim I jumped in.
Wow: putting the POWER in Power Yoga. And my arms and chest were already totally shot from working out, so I was even more shaky and unstable that usual.
Things I cannot do:
  • balance on one foot whilst twisting into all kinds of neat poses
  • holding up my entire body with just my hands and my body precariously balanced on my arms
Things I can do:
  • deep leg stretches
  • back bends
  • nearly unnatural torso twists
Yoga is...fun! And this Power Yoga stuff is quite a workout. Think I might have to make an effort to keep this up once or twice a week. Nice change to round out the silliness I usually do to my body during the week.