Monday 28.8.33 - We joined a gym!!!
My record with health clubs here has been patchy.I did try joining a few - David Lloyd, Esporta, Aurora. I joined them for the gym and the pool, but really I also joined them for the kids. When they were young, for years on and off we'd go there so they could run around and splash about. But these places were always cold. The gyms and the machines - well I only ever used the running one - dull and pointless, not to mention quite dirty and icky - and it was a lot of faffing about as I got the kids in and out of the pool. Of course Peter was never there. It would be ME bringing the kids and if he did come along - he never went on his own, well, he sucks the life out of a room, so really, it was actually easier to just go without him.
I stopped joining them because they were more work - and we didn't really use the facilities very much, PLUS they were very expensive.
Fast forward to 2023 and the boys are now complete self sufficient. They workout, bathe, dress themselves and more or less just leave me to it. Plus they WANT to go. They get ready and sorted entirely on their own. They make use of the place.
So, here it is - Kong Kong asked me to sign Ghin up to the Holywood Golf Club. Instead, we decided to have a look at a more gym based club which has the notion of a pool and classes which we can take.
Thus, we are now here... we are now members of a gym. Yesterday we signed up and then used the facilities. As I walked into the changing room, my memory of getting the boys washed and changed flooded back to me. I am so glad that whenever things got too much, I would stop and say, this, this will not last forever. Enjoy this. And so I did. I have no regrets. To enjoy the moment, or to recognise the moment, is to never regret.
Like yesterday I had no regrets when I was informed two former classmates were now basically working as lawyers for arms dealers and war criminals. Imagine, the flower of Singapore youth was we wer eback then, now working for the most disgusting scum of the earth. Where there are arms, the drug and sex traffick trade is not far behind. How do they sleep at night? And yet they do. What happens to them when they are in their old age? What memories will they have left behind?
It was not easy choosing this path. Don't anyone let you tell you this was easy - difficult is the walk to the light. Easy is the descent. But even in my darkest hours, I always, always knew that I would never never be able to look at myself in the face and say - this is the result of my greed, my shallowness, my complete absence of moral fibre.
Once again, it is always about the moment. The here and now.
Yesterday I went running at the treadmill. The treadmills now have TV screens which mean that you can watch something while running!!! This was the WORST bit about being on a treadmill. As much as I loved running, I ran outside to be part of the outside. Also the variety. The seeing things that you never see if you are in a car. Being stuck in a sweaty disgusting gym running - that was not the point of running. But say if my sons are in the gym, I might as well go there. There is now a screen and I watched the Into the Spiderverse on it, while the boys did their weights. I never stopped running. Never stopped swimming either. So I stretched after that and then went fo a swim and a sauna. It was divine.
I emerged feeling pampered. For £45 a moth to be pampered... I mean, what the heck right? David Lloyd was so expensive. It is great to see that good gyms are now affordable.
So I must now redo my schedule. We are all going to the gym together in the evenings. Then we will have dinner. So hopefully Ghin's day will look like study here, gym and then dinner where I cook dinner and provide him with the structure he needs to do the best he can.
The last few years, the last push.
Right so I guess... I am no longer running in the morning. Instead I do my exercising in the evenings.
Life is so so good. Really I cannot complain.
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