Getting to know you: The Basics

I’m always super curious to know what other bloggers do outside of blogging. I guess I’m guilty for this since I don’t talk about what I do too much aside from my wardrobe and kitchen experiments. I thought it would be fun to start another fun column that has been lovingly titled “Getting to know you”.

I wanted to kick this one off with a bit of the activities I do in my spare time. As much as I wish that my life could revolve around nothing but dressing myself on a daily basis and making (and eating) oodles of cookies, I’ve made a promise to myself in 2011 to take better care of myself. After years of being a huge junk food addict, I’m starting to learn that my metabolism just isn’t what it used to be. Curse those Big Macs for being so delicious but artery-blocking at the same time!

In all honesty, I’m not one for physical activities. When given the option, I’ll take an escalator instead of stairs. I’ve had my fair share of short-lived sport affairs starting with gymnastics (until I grew too tall for the uneven bars, hah!), then moving on to a few years of tennis, a season of basketball in high school, and then a couple seasons of badminton. After I moved out and started living on my own, I stopped going to the gym and being interested in physical activities. I just didn’t have the motivation to drag myself out to a gym. Not to mention whenever I moved to a new city, I was too shy to join any local leagues for fear of being the newbie of the group.

This all changed at the end of 2010 when I started playing squash. Buying a racquet was one of the most impulsive decisions I’ve ever made in terms of sport-related purchases. I remember messaging one of my friends and telling him that I was in the market for a workout partner. After agreeing to motivate each other to play squash at least once a week, we headed to the mall on a mission to find the perfect squash racquet. Having never played squash before, we were both quite confused about what to look for. Like said, this was an impulsive decision with not much thought put into it other than, “Squash gives an all-over workout, right? Right! Let’s go get equipment!!”

We both ended up buying the same racquet, which came with safety goggles and a set of double yellow dot balls. Being the noobs that we are, we had no idea that the double yellow dots meant that we would be in for a workout! Turns out these balls have very little bounce and have a slow speed, which forces us to run like crazy. Yes, I’ve since learned my lesson to research a sport before committing to it.

Aside from squash, I joined an intramural dodgeball team. A lot of people poke fun at me for playing dodgeball because they think of the movie Dodgeball and Ben Stiller’s shenanigans in the movie. Sadly, dodgeball is actually the one sport where I’ll get extremely competitive (which ends up being a huge motivator for pushing myself harder and working out more) since I’m one of a handful of females in the league. I was actually the only female on the team last season! I signed up for another season of dodgeball this year and it looks like here are going to be three of us ladies on the team together! YAY!

One last activity that I want to participate more in this year is yoga. I first tried Hatha yoga in January 2010 and found it to be quite challenging to keep up with. Despite being able to touch my toes after two sessions (having never been able to touch my toes since the age of 12, when I quit gymnastics), I wasn’t able to commit enough time to yoga. Life got in the way and I only ended up going to 3 or 4 of the 9 sessions I paid for. I tried Bikram over the summer of 2010 and called it quits after 2 sessions. As great as my body felt after the 90 minute class, I felt like I was going to pass out or puke during the class.

I’ve decided to give yoga another shot in 2011. I joined a yoga club with drop-in classes for various difficulty levels. I’m hoping that the drop-in sessions help with my ever-changing weekly schedule. The reason why the first classes in 2010 didn’t work out is because my schedule kept changing and I couldn’t devote my Thursday nights to yoga after the first couple of classes. I like the idea of being able to drop-in for sessions that work around my schedule.

I hope I’m not being overly ambitious this year. I want to take better care of myself and am trying to keep myself motivated through different mediums of activities.

What do you guys do to stay in shape?

I thought I would open up this column to you as well. Is there anything you’d like to get to know about me? Feel free to leave suggestions for future topics in the comments. I’ll try my best to make it happen!

Tagged as: getting to know you