Going to the gym

 

Gyms have been sprouting up everywhere in the last couple of decades.

    There's one by the bus stop I use regularly, so while waiting for the bus, I see these people doing the treadmill:  on and on and on, I see them treading the conveyor belt.

    Each time, I think, "Why don't these people just walk everywhere?  This way, they get their exercise, as well as save money (bus/Tube fare; their gym subscription) and save the environment (energy / electricity for powering these machines)."

PS:  This blog is just a light-hearted take on the gym culture.  I know that there're all sorts of other facilities and activities they offer that are designed scientifically to produce health benefits, etc.  So put that brick away.

(2025)

Just make it up: 01 (Peru)

 

The guide book in 1986 for Peru said South Americans (or maybe just Peruvians specifically, I can’t remember now) will give you any answer rather than say they don’t know.

    We found this out first hand one day in Cusco/Cuzco when we were trying to track down a travel agency.

    The guide book said it was on Street X, which was a long road.  We walked up and down the entire length of Street X, but couldn’t see the travel agency.

    At some point somewhere in the street, we asked a local, who pointed us up the street, without any hesitation.  We were sure we hadn’t seen the travel agency on that stretch when we were there a few minutes earlier, but since the local man confidently and instantly pointed that way, we took his word for it.  Went the whole length of that stretch.  Nope, no travel agency.  

    Walked back down the street, saw a policeman at half point and asked him, who confidently pointed us down the street.  Ah, the local man had been wrong then.  Went the whole length of that stretch, but no, there was no travel agency there either.  So, even the policeman chose not to admit that he didn’t know.

    Two hours later, after having walked up and down that street n times, we found out (can’t remember how now) that the travel agency had moved to another street but the guide book had not known about the move or had failed to note it.

(Peru, 1986)

Just make it up: 02 (London)

An octogenarian student of mine (let’s call her Susan) texted to suggest going for a meal, mentioning in the next line that her daughter was visiting from abroad between Date X and Date Y (staying with her, as usual).

    I texted back, asking for the significance of the mention, wondering (in the text to her) if it meant that we couldn’t go for lunch during that period.

    No, she texted back, we could still go for lunch, the daughter had her own plans which wouldn’t affect her going for lunch with me.

    A few days later, she texted to say that she wouldn’t be going for the monthly gathering of a social club on Sunday because of her daughter’s visit.  My immediate thought was, “But she said only a few days ago that the daughter visiting her wouldn’t make any difference to her own movements.  She’s contradicting herself.”

    Another week later, she texted to say that she wouldn’t be going for the healing session on Saturday because her daughter was visiting her.  That’s the second time she’s contradicted her first text, I thought.

    I saw her for lunch the day after the daughter left, and brought this up at one point, as I was confused about the contradiction.

    She said, “Oh, it was too complicated.  We were going to have a meal with someone on the Sunday of the social club gathering, then on the Saturday of the healing session, we were doing something else with somebody else.  I decided it was too complicated to explain why I couldn’t make it to both those occasions, so I just said it was because my daughter was visiting from abroad.”

    I said, “But you did specifically say that your daughter visiting you wouldn’t affect your movements, so wouldn’t it be better to say, ‘Long story’, instead of plucking anything out of thin air, and confusing the reader because of the contradiction??”

    Ha!  I got a text yesterday saying she had felt a huge improvement in her health after the healing session, adding, “Long story.  Will tell you when I see you.”

    It is such a simple trick I’m surprised she had to be taught it in the first place.  So I wasn’t gaslighting myself then.

(London, 2025)

Presumptuous behaviour (China)

 

Presumptuous:  (dictionary definition) (of a person or their behaviour) failing to observe the limits of what is permitted or appropriate.

The series I’m watching at the moment has a scene where the two boys (late teens) arrive in Guangzhou (old rendition Canton).  As they disembark from the train, some of their bags are grabbed by two men who are freelance porters looking to earn a bit of money carrying people’s bags for the short distance from the platform to the front entrance.  When the boys challenged them, they reduced the original fee of 5 yuan to 3 yuan, then called the boys penny pinchers when the boys said no.  This is set in the late 80s.

    It reminds me of something that had happened on my second trip to China in 1997, with my brother and a then-student (a Westerner — let’s call her Mary).

    It was a two-destination trip:  first to 厦门 Xiamen (old rendition Amoy, famous for the soya sauce brand name) in 福建省 Fujian province, then to my father’s birthplace in the 潮州 Cháozhōu / Teochew dialect area of 广东省 Guangdong province, both in S.E. China.

    My brother had been to my father’s village a number of times, and had asked me more than once if I’d like to go.  He’d caught me in a nostalgic mood when he asked yet again in 1997, so I thought I’d give it a go, although I’d sworn in 1988 after my 37-day film shoot that I wouldn’t go back there ever again, nor have anything to do with the people or the culture.

    After a few days in Xiamen, we took a long distance coach bound for 汕头 Shantou (old rendition Swatow), the nearest town in 广东省 Guangdong province for my father’s village.  The coach driver had forgotten about our request to be dropped off at an earlier spot in the outskirts (where we were to be picked up by my brother’s contact), so Mary and I were left standing somewhere beyond the meeting point while my brother walked back to see if he could find his contact.

    There we were, two women (one of whom was a Westerner) standing by a main road leading to Shantou, with luggage and other bags sitting at our feet.  We could’ve been wanting a minibus into town, it’s true.  All the minibuses heading that way would slow down and ask if we’d like to get on board, to which we shook our heads and said no.

    One of them, however, actually came to a halt, in spite of our having declined.  The conductor got off, grabbed two of our bags and started to get back on the bus.

    Incidentally, he had picked out the two most expensive-looking bags:  one was my brother’s leather attache case, the other was an airport duty free goods bag with a couple of bottles of whisky in it.

    I grabbed his shirt from behind, shouting, “Hey, put those bags down!”

    He held on to them, saying, “Oh, Miss, I’m only helping you to put them on the bus.”

    I said, “But we’d said no, we didn’t want to go into town.  Put those bags down, or else…” and at this point, I’d picked up a huge plastic bag with a big tin in it, swinging it, à la cowboy with a lasso, in the air above my head.

    What he didn’t know was that the tin was filled with pastry called Kueh Kapit*, each shaped like a hollow cigar, therefore very light.  The hollow cigar-shape pastries take up a lot of room, hence the size of the tin.  It was this big tin in the huge plastic bag I was swinging in the air above my head, threatening to whack his head with it, that the bag-grabbing minibus conductor saw.  He immediately put the two bags down, and they scooted off.

    This story with the dramatic last bit had my family laughing for days after that.

(China, 1997)

PS:  I’m normally a flight, rather than fight, person.  Having been brought up to think that it’s unfeminine behaviour to fight in public, my brain freezes up when there’s any friction or potential confrontation.  Even if I was in the right or being wrongly accused of something, I’m unable to react.  I might come up with the right defence some five days, if not weeks, later, so I don’t know where I got the courage from on that particular day, or how I managed to react so quickly.

* (AI overview) In Singapore, a hollow, cigar-shaped pastry resembling a love letter is called Kuih Kapit. It's a thin, crispy crepe-like biscuit, often enjoyed during Chinese New Year. The name "love letter" comes from its historical use in conveying affectionate messages between lovers. The pastry is made by pouring batter onto a hot, patterned mold and then rolled into a cylinder while still warm.

The guardian angels in one’s life: 14 (The young man I met in the mountains)

 

The details of how I came to meet this young man, three years my junior, a final year high school schoolboy at the time (July 1975), will have to go into my A Collection of Spooky Stories, because it’s too long a story for this blog.

    I’d given him the nickname of 胡老大 Hú lǎodà / “Hu old big” because he was the oldest of the group of three boys I’d met in passing.  (老大 = “leader / the oldest / the boss”.)

    We hit it off (platonically) right from the start up in 梨山 Líshān / “pear mountain” where we met, and kept in touch for the rest of my time in Taiwan (1.5 years until November 1976) — me in Taipei in the north, him in 嘉義 (Chiayi / 嘉义 /Jiāyì) in the south.

    We kept up correspondence after I returned to Singapore and after I came over to London, by which time we’d known each other for only about three years.

    Yet, knowing I didn’t want to take money from my mother, he offered financial help.  I got a letter from him (snail mail days) saying that should I need any help financially, his father had a sugar cane field that they could sell in order to send me the money to live on in London.

    His family wasn’t stinking rich — it was only a sugar cane field they owned.  Still, a sugar cane field at that time could go a long way towards the cost of living in Taiwan, yet he offered to turn that field into cash for me.

    I found a part-time job in the end, as a telex operator with British Monomarks which saw me through my university course, so I didn’t need to take him up on his generous offer after all.

    It’s incredibly touching, though, that a friend of only three years’ standing should offer to sell off a piece of family land to see me through my studies.  It’s not like I was in hospital, or in serious trouble that I needed to be bailed out of.

    Thank you, 胡老大 (d.1979), for the thought behind that kind and supportive, not to mention generous, gesture.  It was enough to see me through spiritually, knowing that there were friends out there who would step forward to help me out should I end up needing it.

    I’m eternally grateful, and feel honoured to have met you.

(London, 1977–79)

The guardian angels in one’s life: 13 (The ex-schoolmate)

 

I’d saved up over my two years of working in Taiwan in order to support myself for my first year in London, studying for my ‘A’ levels to get into university.

    The advice I’d been given was not to work at all during my ‘A’ levels but to focus completely on my studies and get good grades for getting into a good university, because once in, I’d be fine until the end of the course, barring failing my Year 1 end-of-year exams.  That was the practice at the time:  once you passed that Year 1 end-of-year exam to confirm that you’d be able to last the course, there were no more exams until the final year.

    Knowing how strongly I felt about taking money from my mother, ex-RI (Raffles Institution) schoolmate Wilson wrote from Australia and said that he’d send me money if I was ever in need.

    This was only a schoolmate, not even a distant relative, yet he offered to help me financially for living in London which wasn’t cheap even in the 1970s.

    As far as I know, he wasn’t that well off himself either in Australia, so if I’d appealed to him, it might’ve meant a bit of deprivation in his own life, all alone in Australia, just to help me out.

    I didn’t have to turn to him after all, because I found a part-time job as a telex operator with British Monomarks, which saw me through my university years, but it was a godsend to have that offer on tap should I ever need it, settling any panic that might surface.

    Thank you, Wilson, for being such a supportive friend.  I’m very grateful and feel very blessed to have a friend like you.  God bless you.

(London, 1977–81)

Language labs (London)

We used to have language lab sessions for Japanese at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London).

    The version they used was a Yale University recording, which was fast.

    The arrangement for our Yale University tapes was:  the tapes would play a sentence, leaving a gap for the student to repeat and to be recorded onto the tape — this bit was for the teacher/student to listen to if needed, for feedback.  It’d then play the next sentence, and so on.

    The tapes would then get wiped for the next batch of students.

    The tape I had during my session didn’t get wiped properly somehow, so I ended up hearing the previous student’s recording.

    As the Yale recording was fast, the poor chap was struggling to keep up:  before he could finish repeating Sentence 1, Sentence 2 would come on, and so on.  

    I could hear him stumbling and stumbling, and his verbal frustrations (some four-letter words) uttered at being overtaken before he could finish repeating the sentence.

    At one point, I heard him bawl at the tape, “Oh, slow down, you stupid woman!”

(London, 1978)