Tag: Gym

Take it up one notch

I am all for PE (Physical Education).

This trend has picked up in Vietnam; all the powers to young people.

Gold gym, Cali gym, NVK gym, Nhat Dang Nhi Da etc…. Let’s go. One and two.

Lift those arms, kick those legs.

Be healthy and be green.

(I have blogged too much about death and caskets, since I live near a funeral parlor).

This morning I saw a tennis tournament take place at Lan Anh Club.

To be fair, Vietnam’s young demographics are ensuring their fighting chance.

Vietnam got Talent. Got health and ambition.

Pressures from below and pressures from above.

Between the rock and a hard place. You are in between hot oil and the frying pan.

Find the optimal medium.

Work hard and work smart.

Spend wisely, and invest heavily (in people and connection).

Meanwhile, lift those muscles, not letting the scooters and machinery do all the lifting.

Industrialization and its discontent.

Coming to the machine near you.

Soon, Vietnam will get over its first love with smokestacks.

It will step back and look at its polluted landscape (Dong Nai, Binh Duong).

And ask itself, is this worth it all, our health and our grandchildren’s health!

Nguoi Viet Khoe. NVK.

A gym near you.

It doesn’t cost much to join. But it takes pain to tone those unused muscles.

Then the alteration folks are standing by to hem those lines and fit those loosed shirts.

Have a great work-out. You will definitely break some sweats here in Vietnam. The weather will always cooperate to make that happen.

Get fat, get fit

I was crunching, when the PA system announced “free pizza at Planet Fitness, 1st Monday of the month”.

Might as well. Indulge.  After all, it says “No judgment zone.”  Get fat, get fit.

Carrot and then Stick.

In a blog I recently subscribed to, I found : ” the extent that we help fulfill other people’s dream,we fulfill ours.”.

We know that life is not without paradox.

Past choices limit future options.

(We did not then have the benefits of hindsight).

Pleasure and pain intersect right there on the exercise mat: one more crunch, reverse crunch etc.. just to build up a better appetite (which gets us right back to the beginning).

Who among us lives without self-conflict, let him cast the first stone.

We want the oil, but also a  clean beach.

We dress up to see Les Miserables, at Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, but hurry up across the street when a homeless guy approaches.

And we can’t wait to tell others ” I told you so” when the chips are all down.

Pundits, politicians and pollsters, were in denial about the “black swan” of the Financial system, which gave us all a “black eye”.

A suicide here, and a robbery there. Not sure how the consequences will play out. Wall Street watches Main Street. Main Street waits on Wall Street. All one-way streets (as of this edit, unemployment in Greece still at 26.9 per cent).

There have been more migration to the dust bowl, where not too long ago, Dorothy couldn’t wait to leave home on a Greyhound bus. These states now seem attractive with tax incentives, and rural broadband connection.

And a story that we all missed: Vietnam was at the top of Emerging Countries chart 3 years in the row (2007-2010) even when they have yet exploited the wheels of industrialization. Just cheap and surplus of labor. But everyone seems to be fit, not by going to the gym, but by default (no “free pizza” every first Monday of the month.)

Here is our last paradox, in the absence of plenty, everything tastes sweeter. You should see how aggressive people were with Moon Cakes during the weeks that lead up to the Festival. It’s not the mix of flour and sugar. It’s flour and sugar that have been denied for years, and only recently made available and affordable to all. Free Moon Cake for every sign-up at Planet Fit.