Good game peeps! Also one of the most hillarious episodes to start the year. 🙂
Gym Training – Month 11 Update
Measured again for the first time in 4 months. I had been travelling for the past several months however I managed to keep my training consistent by making up the following week.
Right now I weigh in 60.5 kg, a 2.3 kilo drop since last October. And so is my body fat percentage, now 15.1%! It was 16.4% when I last measured.
However this also means a drop in overall muscle mass.
Which is ironic, considering the past three weeks all the intensive trainings were focused on muscle building workouts.
The hardest part for me isn’t in the training itself; it’s the eating part. I am not a big eater. While my appetite has improved since before I started my training, it was only marginal. I get nauseas easily when I am near full and there were so many embarrassing moments I was struggling not to vomit out my food when I was in public or with friends over a meal.
I wonder if it is a medical condition? To think of it, I got this nauseas problem since 1st January 2009. I remember the exact date because it was also when I started to have chronic eczema. Only months ago the skin problem had dissipated to the point of nearly vanished (still holding my breath on that though). However my nauseas problem remains.
Now I need to gain at least another 4.5 kg to reach 65 kg. Bulking is going to be tough in my nauseas condition, I plan to see the doctors at Pathlab when I go to Johor again for the Chinese New Year holidays. About time anyway – it’s been 3 years since I last went for an overall health check up. I am confident they will strike out ‘high level cholesterol’ this time. 😉
The Malayan Box Turtle Discovery!
This is something that doesn’t happen all the time! Not long ago, Ashley stumbled upon a stray turtle walking somewhere outside our Lakeview house. 🙂
It might have walked away from the lake so Ashley was carrying it back, only to realize its legs were injured and there were scratches underneath the shell, possibly from walking on the hot tar road.
So she decided to take it back home and nurse it to health. 🙂
Initially shy, the stray turtle (we name it Nomad Kura) now stays in our backyard pond with the rest of our red ear sliders. Ashley and I discussed this over the phone and since it’s a stray animal, it would be best to let it go again after it is fully healed.
Days later, Ashley read about the illegal pet trade going on in Malaysia and coincidentally this turtle type was mentioned. It’s called the “Malayan Box Turtle” although it goes by many other names.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Its current species status is “threatened” or “vulnerable”! There was an article about it in The Star last Saturday (10th December 2011) – I am unable to find the article online but this older article pretty much sums it:
http://thestar.com.my/news/
In short, this turtle is a prime target for poachers. Common tactics of duping include a guy coming over to tell you it’s illegal to possess it; he will take it away and what you don’t know is that he’s a poacher.
That said, we cannot risk returning the turtle to the lake since people go there to fish now. As of now, we are taking care of Nomad Kura until further notice. Fortunately, for a stray animal, Nomad Kura seems to adapt well with our pond and our other turtles! 🙂
Gym Training 6 Months Later
A quick update on my progress…
It’s been nearly 6 months since I’ve started my training by my personal fitness trainer, Koay Qunling. On the average I train 3 times a week and I’ve not missed a substantial part of the training at all; weeks that I trained twice I would make up the following by training 4 times.
The routines were changed slightly every now and then as seen fit, but generally each training day focuses on a specific body part: chest / back / triceps, legs, and shoulders & biceps.
In the latest measurement, I’ve successfully dropped by body fat percentage to 16.4%! It was 17.2% just one month ago, and before I started my training my body fat level was flirting with the danger of touching nearly 19%. (that’s unhealthy!)
This time’s fat loss came at the expense of 500g of muscle mass, however in the grand scheme of things I’ve definitely put on more than 3 kilos of muscles since the time I started my training while my overall body weight remained consistent. This time I weigh 61.0 KG, just a month ago it was 61.4 KG.
(Back in November 2010 I weigh 64.1 KG – not good because for a long time since high school days I weigh anywhere between 56 – 59 KG!)
Overall appearance right now, my muscles had regressed a bit also owing to dieting and being more selective with my meals. Ultimately, I’m still lean and mean. 😉 In many ways I’m thankful that genetic wise, I’m having it easier than a fat guy in a hurry to cut off dozens of pounds. I don’t have much body fats to lose to begin with.
I figure this would be the best time to put my BEFORE and AFTER photo really. While I can post my results as of now, I realized I’ve accidentally deleted my BEFORE photos that were taken back in November last year… damn!
Seriously, that would have made posting my current photo more meaningful. It would had been really awesome and feel good to see I lost a lot of that flabs around the tummy and how the chest and triceps hardened since!
Oh well. Right now, training is going another notch up. Weights are still going up with each set I take in, the reps are anywhere from 10 to 20 each, and running the treadmill in between is now 60 seconds instead of 30. This is where I burnt most of my body fats, in spite of it being one of my most hated workouts, the other being dead lift!
Until the next gym training results…
Absolutely Freaky Fishy (Ghost Story?)
I don’t know where to start. And I’m not certain if we’ve seen the end of it yet. Two of my little turtles are missing now and none of us could explain how a stray fish appeared, disappeared and reappeared in our backyard. The electricity throughout the neighborhood was out for hours and of all times, this happened.
Feels like I’m in my own episode of X-Files. Here’s what happened…
It’s been at least two months since the last time I came back to Johor to see Mom and Ashley. And 3 nights ago on 1st August, the electricity throughout the neighborhood was out and we were in pitch darkness by surprise.
We lit candles inside and outside the house. I asked Mom how often this happens and she recalled this is the second time it ever happened; first time it happened was last year.
It was the start of the Ramadhan fasting season and the neighborhood security guard was not around. Call me paranoid but I felt it all to be too good a coincidence. So vigilantly, I set up my powerful flashlights outside the now dark backyard.
For more than an hour, I sat outside in the backyard, surfing on my Iphone. When I entered the house for a few minutes, this was when the first freaky thing happened: Ashley found a fish in the drain… still alive! She called me out and in a hurry, I went to check it out too.
I was surprised but I quickly fetched the fish net, scooped it up and put it in our grotto to save it. It was flopping around and it took a bit of effort to scoop it up. It was upside down when I put it into the pond.
Ashley and I turned to each other, and we looked around. How the heck did a fish get there??
It’s not one of ours (it looks like your average fish you’d see in a morning market).
No one else could have thrown it there (we stay in a corner house and we have a clear view of anyone or any car passing by).
And it’s definitely not the work of a stray animal (there are no cats in my area and even if so, the fish would have been dead). I must add that when we found the fish, it was dry.
What transpired next was further unexplainable: in the less than a minute we both looked away from the grotto, we came back only to find that fish disappeared!
NOW, THIS IS ABSOLUTELY F-R-E-A-K-Y. We turned off the valve to the little fountain to have a clearer view on inside the grotto, and we couldn’t find the fish at all… it just VANISHED!
We looked around the pond as maybe it jumped out. But it was nowhere to be seen. Again that’s highly unlikely – no fish or turtle are strong enough to jump out of the grotto, let alone a dying fish. The night was quiet and still and we would have heard it anyway.
Was there an intruder in the house compound? No, our dog Auwlithe would had been the first to know.
I was already uneasy with the whole episode that just transpired in the window of time when the electricity is out.
While Mom and Ashley had to go to sleep because they have to start their next day early, I remained outside and highly alert, with a baton resting by my side… just in case. I already had a bad feeling about this whole shit.
I also paced back and forth the grotto and backyard in search of the fish that disappeared without a trace. The electricity came back at 1 in the morning and with all the lights in the backyard on, I still found nothing. I went to sleep.
The next morning when the maids came over to clean the house, they found the fish in the backyard, near the drain where we first found it – it was already DEAD and teeming with flies.
I was shocked again. I spent most of the previous night in the backyard and didn’t find it, and mysteriously it reappeared there! I text Ashley to let her know before I disposed it into the bin. All of us were still surprised and could not explain it.
Then another shit happened: later that evening, I fed my turtles in the grotto as usual. But when I counted my turtles, I noted that one of my baby turtles was missing!
I love my turtles a lot and of course, I panicked. I quickly scanned the backyard again and couldn’t find it.
There’s absolutely NO WAY it could leave the grotto (even the big ones couldn’t do that).
Work of a stray animal? Nope, there are no cats in my area. And red ear sliders are known to be deceptively fast when approached by a prey as they slide into the water.
Or did someone intrude the house compound deliberately? Nonsense. Auwlithe is a trusted guard of the house. And if there was a thief, he wouldn’t settle for stealing just one baby turtle.
I was growing distraught about the whole episode. I was to drive to PJ that night and as I was driving home, I already felt in my guts that my next baby turtle could be the next to go.
And… I was right.
Just this evening, my sister phoned in to inform me the next baby turtle is now missing without a trace! The other turtles seemed unharmed or untouched, probably because they are big. Our grotto fishes are fine too, and their numbers are correct.
So some random fish appeared, disappeared and reappeared in my backyard. And then I have two baby turtles that vanished without a trace from the grotto. And we have no explanation as to how it happened.
I’m feeling angry right now and probably the worst part is, I have no idea what or who is doing all these. And I’m not certain that the episode is over yet.