Friday Fast Track

I got home last Friday and was talking to dad about work when he suddenly experienced really bad pain on his left thigh.

From the expression on his face, I could tell this was serious.

It was the fourth time he's experienced it that day and it was getting worse.

I rushed my dad to Sir Charles Gairdner hospital to get him checked. My dad said the pain comes and goes, but when it comes, it was really bad. When asked by the triage nurse how bad it was, where zero was no pain and ten was like getting your limbs cut off, my dad scored it a ten.

That answer got my dad 'fast tracked', so he'd be seen by a doctor immediately.

I was told later by my brother who's worked in ER that 'immediately' in Emergency means in the next 3 hours.

Which was about right.

Long story short, we spent five hours Friday night waiting for my dad to get examined and tested. And in the end, the doctors couldn't really explain it. Just gave my dad pain killers and put it as a 'muscle inflammation'.

But even though we were annoyed by the doctors who seemed to be working at the speed of snail (they were just chatting and oblivious to the many sick people of emergency), we were very thankful that the ultrasound didn't find anything. We were afraid my dad got DVT, because he had an operation the week before.

Five hours man! There were people with swine flu in there!!!

Anyways my dad is heaps better now and we're all really glad and happy that he's okay.

He even went to Ikea the next day.

H1N1

Not much to update on really. I haven't really been doing much since the Sydney trip.

Plus I've been playing (too much?) Grand Theft Auto 4.

Thankfully I've finished the game, so I can now continue on with other things I've been neglecting.

Like the bills, taxes and my health!

Speaking of health, I had a Swine flu scare yesterday.

I was shivering at work, light headed and nauseated. Uh-oh. Sounds like Swine flu symptoms.

And I work in a place where there's a high incident of Swine flu, so things didn't look too healthy.

When I got home my brother didn't want to take any risk and locked me up in my room! Quarantine he says!

This bothered me at first, but when he started bringing food up, I was like "yeah.. I can get used to this!"

Thankfully I'm feeling much better today. No temperature or headaches.

I think it was just a case of food poisoning from the cafeteria.

Confessions

I was keeping a secret.

The last weekend saw the truth out.

And with that, I may have hurt and upset my girl.

It wasn't suppose to turn out this way.

But then again I'm not surprised.
I was consciously hiding something from her and I would be upset too if she was hiding something from me.

But I assured her this was all innocent.

And she had nothing to worry about....

except maybe me turning to a diet coke man.


****

Now before you let your imagination drive you to some steamy back seat affair with a Eurasian model... (which sounds pretty good actually :P) I want to sidetrack to my muffin.

My muffin top to be precise.

Early this year, holidays, stress, eating out and the amount of inactive computer work I've been getting myself into has allowed me to grow nice curvy love handles.

When wearing jeans (which all seemed to have magically shrunk), skin would spill over to form the muffin top I've been ashamedly fearing.

I wouldn't say I've gotten fat.

But it would seem that I've let myself go when I'm too embarrassed to use the Wii fit because I'm now in the yellow 'obese' zone (even though I'm just heavy boned).

When my girlfriend and I went to a dinner party back in April, the topic of conversation was the exercise regime everyone was doing.

Oh goody.

I felt very left out because the only exercise I did was standing up to go to the loo when playing Left 4 Dead.

And even that was chore.

I preferred the bottle method.

But what was really embarrassing was seeing my girlfriend work so hard to keep herself fit. She really pushes herself and puts in that extra effort on top of her busy schedule. Where I just enjoy the spoils her work and get myself lardier.

I couldn't do that to her.

So when the stuff for my house finally finished, I got back to scheduled exercising!

Yes! By gosh it feels good to be back exercising. Our work gym lets me do cardio and lift weights during this cold winter season.

But rather than tell my girlfriend I've been working out, I figured it would be a lot funnier if I surprised her with something like this:

Will: Hi Anh. Thirsty? Would you like a drink?
Anh: yeah sure!

Will: How about grabbing something from THIS six pack!

*lift up shirt and show ultra rock hard washboard abs* Oh yeah!

Anh: *blush* Oh my! Now I'm really thirsty!!

That can SO totally work!

Or maybe we go out walking at night;

Will: Hey it's really dark around here...
Anh: It is... but you'd protect me right?!
Will: Of course baby! Me and these guns will look after you

*pull sleeve, flex arms and expose huge biceps* Oh yeah!!

Anh: *blush* Oh my! Shoot me now! Bang! Bang!!

Sadly I'm still a long way from six packs and killer guns. It's only been around seven weeks. And my gym attendance has been rather sporadic.

Nethertheless, my arms have gotten a bit bigger so much that the shirts my girlfriend arranged for my birthday were too tight.

This confused her because she thought she knew my size really well. She thought she knew everything about me.

So it was a bit of a shock when I told her I was doing this 'for Sparta'.

Mythbusting - Coin in Egg

My workmate Peter was going on and on about a home remedy his family uses to treat flu and fever. 

He says its 100% effective.

What you do, he says, is boil an egg. Once hard-boiled, peel it.  Then put a coin in the egg (yes, you read right, put a coin in the egg).  Wrap the coin-in-egg in a handkerchief or towel then rub the wrapped egg all over your body.

The coin, he says, absorbs all the bad energy from the body and will in fact turn black from it.

Peter reckons his mom could tell if they were lying about being sick because the coin wouldn't turn black if they were faking it.

So when the girlfriend got sick, I took the oppurtunity to give the coin-in-egg remedy a go.

Hahaha. You should have seen how weird my girlfriend looked rubbing a warm egg on her neck and chest.

Suffice to say, it didn't work.  

My girlfriend didn't get better, nor did the coin turn black.

I couldn't get myself to eat the egg afterwards though.  

I was worried it DID absorb some sickly energy.

Update 30/4/09 - Peter told me that I can't use normal 20 cent coins! I need to get a silver coin.  And that I shouldn't have the yold in the egg.  I guess this mythbusting experiment is not over yet!!

Splashing around

3Willings
1) Steamboats
2) Almond jelly
3) Lil Wayne - Lollipop

For the past few weeks I've been teaching my girlfriend how to swim.

She's doing really well. She went from zero swimming skills to 12 meters in 4 sessions. Pretty good I think. Although I get the impression that the teacher favours her :P

I think swimming is a very important life skill.

I'd categorise it with essential things like reading and writing, first aid and Googling.

And I think once she's able to swim, we can finally look into submitting an application for The Amazing Race. (or maybe is should team up with someone who can already swim...)

Sadly, swimming and I have a love-hate relationship.

I love it coz it's a really good full body exercise and its really challenging mentally.

When you've swam 100m straight and your arms and legs are super heavy and tired and your chest is burning from lack of air and you've snorted about 2 litres of water, your mind starts taunting and ridiculing you.

"you can't make it... "
"might as well give up now.."
"the old lady is beating you.. "
"is that 10 cents at the bottom of the pool?"
"who's the girl in the black bikini.... damn those are hot legs "
"ohh. its the old lady... "

But you give it a bit more and push through.

And when you finally touch that finish wall you get this fantastic feeling of accomplishment.
Enough to make you want to do it again.

And I love swimming coz it makes chips taste really good afterward.
Nothing beats after-swimming hot potato chips :P

But there are a few things I hate about swimming.

Number one is the chlorine. Hate how it smells and it burns my eyes.

And I hate the fact that I get thirsty when swimming and I can't drink the water coz its got chlorine. I've drank it a few times, but I wouldn't want to make a habit of it, knowing how many times I've peed kids have peed in the water.

And most of all - I hate the changing afterward.

Always forgetting my towel is not the problem.
Nor is it the fact that whatever I do, my pants always end up being wet. Always.

What really annoys me are the old people parading around butt naked and flashing their shlongs as if I'm not there!

I mean, geeze man!! The only thing that I should be seeing that is pruney are my fingers! Talk about sight for sore eyes.

And for the not-so-old, damn!
I know I'm asian - no need to rub it in!!

Burger Love

3Willings
1) McAustralia Burger
2) Swimming at Beatty Park
3) Goodyear C Drives

There's no denying that I (heart) burgers.

I love them so much - I've gotten fat because of it (so fat that I'm investing on a Wii fit to keep my arterial flow going).

Me and my Finest Australian burger

I love burgers because they are what I call the universally complete meal.


Its a complete meal because they have protein (meat), fiber (vegetables?) and carbohydrates (bread buns) all in a nicely layered food tower.

And its universal because you eat it with your hands! Unlike other foodstuff like pasta or sushi where you need utensils like forks or knives.

Breakfast burgers from Burger King. I thought when they asked scrambled they meant just the eggs.

Double cheese means double the goodness. That's a medical fact! (last statement might be untrue)

What if you got stuck in a remote island with a bowl of noodles - how you gonna eat that?! huh?!

Burgers don't discriminate if you have forks or spoons or can hold chopsticks or not. That's why everyone can enjoy them.

The Mega Mac. Twice a Big Mac. Twice the perfection

These are but a few reasons why I spend quite a bit of my cholesterol quota on burgers.

Burgers >> Chicken Fillets

They're also quite convenient thanks to McDonald's and other burger joints littered all over the world.

If the cheese in a burger is almost translucent, there's a high chance its a 'healthy cheese'. Best to avoid.

I guess my only qualm with burgers is that they're almost always falsely advertised in fast food places.

What you see is not always you get.

Si-key

Three separate sickies in one month.

This has to be my slackest sickest month in my working career.... ever.

New to me this month are back pains. Damn I'm getting old! I had to see a physio! Thankfully there was nothing serious.

Twice I stayed at home due to the cold cold weather and me being stupid and not wearing something warm. Thus cold/flu/fever.

And as much as I'd prefer to stay at home, it wasn't particularly nice coughing up green blobs this morning.

Now I've seen worse times, but the radio ads are telling me to stay at home if I have the flu. Just in case I infect someone and it cascades over to thousands of people.

Plus the admin lady said I had heaps of sick leave left.
Yey for the sick leave.