living, thinking and writing
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| PRACTICE living, thinking and writing |
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Sunday, May 02, 2004 Exercise while alive… and eat to the last breath… I have been engaged in different kinds of workouts since I settled down: yoga, Pilate, weight, tennis, jogging… It doesn’t necessary result that I grow a West LA body, which is supposed to be lean, tall, and tan and looks fabulous on short top tank and low-rise chino shorts. Oh, no, though it is always my ultimate fantasy, I have much more practical goal for my workout: keep burning calories so I could feed myself more ice cream. The intersection of Pico Blvd, which is three block from my home, has three ice-cream shops. On the Northwest, Baskin & Robbins is one of the famous chain stores and has assorted fancy sweet and creamy things; On the southeast, Big Chill sells healthy non-fat and non-sugar yogurt, with only two flavors-vanilla and chocolate (which not really reminds me the real flavor); and Penguin on Southwest is something in between, with both healthy and unhealthy food, and its ambiguous traits makes it the first one tossed out from our visiting list . In the weekend, you will see long line of adults through the big window of Big Chill, and swarm of kids and parents in Baskin & Robbins. From consideration of our age and long-term health goal, we should join the long line of adults; but after licking the flavorless yogurt twice, like adults do, we decided to return to innocence, joining the screaming and scampering group in Baskin & Robbins, but sure without much screaming and scampering ourselves. Baskin & Robbins in Sunday afternoon is as fixed in my life as the gym in Sunday afternoon. Heading for ice cream place after gym makes me a laugh stick to Bin, “why do you have to go to the gym in the first place?” well, otherwise, “I could not have ice cream”, I rolled my eyes. This is the guy who has no problem to keep his slim figure for no matter how much junk food he takes in; surely he has not a bit of understanding on the redemption for a bite of Praline’s N cream, the Vanilla ice cream with praline-coated pecan pieces and a caramel ribbon, which has become our favorite. This is the guy who has become so insatiate that has to order a whole quart of Praline’s N cream instead of one of two scoops, for our 30 minutes of stay, and dozed off happily after the whole quart. Well, I am not that lucky. I have to run my butts off on the treadmill for the moment of sensory joy of mouth and suffer the fear of more fat under belly. Is such a sensory joy worthwhile the whole ordeal? Think in the other way, I could have spent only 5 hours, instead of 10 hours, in gym, just to keep my old body from rusty, if I don’t have such a good appetite (not only for ice cream, a lot of other things). If I could be more self-restraint, I could have spent these extra 5 hours on some more profound things, like music, book or research, instead of repeating the same physical movements and sweating and puffing and blowing. Is it the price I paid for the joy of life, just like people have to keep busy on their boring jobs for sake of house and car? Well, I could live without big house and fancy car, but not without good food. Just watched the interview of Hugh Jackman in “inside the actors studio”, when asked the last routine question “If heaven exists, what do you expect God will say to you at the gate”, his eyes gleams with joy and amusement and he answered “there is excellent food here”. Wow, that’s exactly what I would say. For it, his ranking in my actor lists has climbed several places up. posted by lmeimei @11:18 PM| permanent link| | |
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