Running At Midnight

Singapore has a lot of good food. Now I’m going to be honest here – I have a crippling fear of trying new foods (particularly when they still have faces). In the last five months I have managed to break out of my comfort zone just enough to discover several dishes I really like…so that I can eat them on a day-to-day basis without having to partake in anymore dietary adventures. One of my go-to food providers has been a vegetarian stall in the hawker centre below my office building. For weeks on-end I consumed this “vegetarian food” by the chopstick-load…that is until I discovered that most of the dishes contain meat. Yes, vegetarian food made from meat. Don’t get me wrong - I am not a veggie-exclusive individual, but I am affronted that both the stall’s sign and the Chinese uncle who runs it would lie to me about my lunchtime cuisine. (Although in retrospect, I am not sure the uncle knows what I’m saying – he just grunts and nods whenever I ask him questions). In response to this "betrayal" and as a means of promoting honest advertising, I have decided to boycott the vegetarian stall. Also, the veggies are all deep fried and make me gain weight like crazy. So far, I have held out for a whole two weeks. I’m still going strong and my digestion has improved inordinately. This, however, does not mean that I have put my monstrous consumption of raisin bread, bubble tea, or the peanut sauce that comes with satay, to rest.

Exercising in Singapore is another issue. As you may know, Singapore is hot. Actually, hot is an understatement. Let me put it this way: After five months of living on the equator, I can honestly believe that dressing people in regular office apparel and forcing them to stand in a steam room for several hours would serve as cruel and (highly) unusual punishment. But this seems to apply only to a rare-few and, of course, me. The remainder of Singapore’s population, apparently, does not sweat. I am painfully aware of this fact every time I get on the MRT on my way to work. I’ll be drenched in perspiration, trying to determine the best way to inconspicuously un-stick my shirt from my back while everyone else around me looks totally normal! In fact, they look better than normal. Most of the women look like they're ready for New York's Fashion Week! (To add insult to injury, I am about a foot taller than them and I am afraid to make any sudden movements when the train is crowded for fear of knocking people over.) So while the majority of Singaporeans stroll in wearing their snazzy business-chic outfits and their hair down, looking like they've come in out of temperate seventy degree weather, I look like I’ve just dragged myself out of a lake. It’s sad, but I digress.
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The problem I faced my first few weeks in Singapore was this: How do you prevent yourself from becoming supersized from delicious, pseudo-veg food (which is appallingly more apparent in a place where you are equal to one-and-a-half normal women in size) while also avoiding extreme dehydration, melting, hysteria, and any other unsightly side effects that accompany exercising in such a hot climate? The solution I found was simple: run at midnight. It’s cooler and there’s no one out to see what a ridiculous sweat-machine you are.

Now, running at midnight was my answer for several weeks, but at last my host-mother (Auntie) asked that I stop my bizarre exercise habits until my mother signs an indemnity form. In the meantime, she has placed a 9pm curfew on my runs so that I don’t get into any trouble. Although, I am beginning to develop a solid argument for why I shouldn’t run until after 9pm — namely, to prevent me from getting anyone else in trouble. Case in point: I frightened three individuals on my last nighttime run. First I startled a young couple that was strolling hand-in-hand, blocking the sidewalk, by saying, “um…excuse me.” Interestingly, the young woman jumped, but it was the guy who screamed like a little girl. Later that same evening I came across a mother walking with her young son. The little boy had run ahead of his mother a ways and before he turned back to look for her, I came running up between them. Unlike the couple, the boy just froze to the spot with a look of sheer terror in his eyes. The poor thing probably thought his mother had morphed into a pale, slippery giant. But the clincher of the evening came as I was letting myself into my flat afterwards and the dear elderly couple that live next door were coming out of their own apartment. The woman took one look at me and said, “Oh my! Is it raining?”

In my opinion, the benefits of running at midnight are quite clear: to prevent Singapore’s children from being emotionally scarred and to stop confusing elderly people about the weather.

11 Months Later...

I am not what you would call a consistent person. I wish I were, but I’m just not. Which is why, almost a year after starting this blog to record my various post-grad adventures, there is only one post. It might be important to add that I am actually living in Singapore now and have been for the last five months. There’s a lot I could probably say about my time living abroad – stories concerning merlionesses, learning about personal-space boundaries (and how far is too far), bubble tea, antisocial people (and awesome people), vegetarian food that’s made from meat, the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte, and what to do when a deluge pours forth - not from the heavens - but from your air conditioning unit. But I won’t. It would take me far too long. Instead, I’ll start from here. But as I said before, I’m not a consistent person. So no promises (Jennani)…

To be fair, I don't know how many people will read this thing anyway. But since my one and only "follower" requested that I revive this blog, I've decided to give it a try. Besides, I turn 23 this month and I am feeling particularly ambitious - perhaps it's time I take a stab at consistency?