Saturday, October 08, 2005

BROWN RICE DIARIES | Chapter Five

When you're a psycho, your life is lonely and that's how you like it. You enjoy your uniquely psychotic existence. (Have you heard of a stalkers' society or a fellowship of brown rice?)

Alas, have been discovering to my disappointment that I am not alone. Met my JC comrades at a wedding tonight and one of them, Mr Tan, now gets out of bed at 5am - 5am! - on weekdays to work out, then cook the brown rice, greens and chicken breast to be taken to work. Not that I should be surprised. Mr Tan has always been a fascinatingly focused person. He was a straight A student who did his homework on the bus; he would work his way through a physics tutorial paper in pencil and his answers would be correct but so concise that only he understood them and no one could copy them. He has known his wife since he was 14; they have been together for 15 years - 15 years! - and now have two children. And he has always been on a gym-rat low-fat diet; but then it was white rice, egg white, greens and chicken breast every day and now it is brown rice, et cetera.

Then there is Ms L. We travelled together to Seoul on a junket months ago, found a fabulous mall there that opens at 10.30am and closes at 5am, spent hours shopping together and got on fabulously. I meant to talk to her more after the junket. We did not have a chance to chat, however, until the other day, when I saw someone a few steps ahead in a baby doll top similar to the one I got in Seoul. It had to be her. So I caught up with her and soon we were catching up. But before I could tell her about my recent yoga-and-brown-rice regimen - she told me all about hers.

"I've taken up yoga, it's been four months," she told me - I wanted to tell her that so had I but she went - "Lost 7kg leh, I didn't know you could lose that much weight from taking up yoga" - I could not say the same for myself so I went, "Wow," and she said - "I practised every day" - I wanted to tell her that so did I, um, on the days when I woke up early enough, but she went - "Two hours every day till I lost too much weight leh, now it's one hour every day." And she does the brown rice thing, too.

Next to the two of them, I'm a loser psycho.

2 comments:

darkorpheus said...

it takes time, madam. also, depends on the kind of yoga you do.

don't listen to other people lah. everyone has their own path to take. there is healthy weight-loss, and unhealthy weight-loss.

and to be honest, Mr Tan sounds *scary*

precious said...

nah i'm not listening to anyone lah, merely marvelling. don't have it in me to be a bigger psycho and don't want to be thin. want to be a neater version of me is all.