Passing Daze @passing-daze - Tumblr Blog

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'M o o n l i g h t S o n a t a'

#moonlight sonata #piano #classic #music #peaceful #instrument

Color Run Shenzhen 2015

#colour run #color run #5km #walk #run #fitness #colours #art #photography #marathon #china #shenzhen #chalk #sport

#MØ #new years eve #good times #memory #2015 #missing him #new music #tune #catchy #emotion #emo

Stylites Models: George & Scott (Dalian, China)

#models #modelling #dalian #china #fashion #stylites #men #male

Mount Hua, Xi'an, China

#mount hua #huashan #china #xian #weinan #mountains #nature #walks #climbs #high up #forest #adventures #exploration

Kinfolk (C) Passing Daze

#kinfolk #magazine #art #culture #dalian #china #recipes #echo bookstore

horrorgorewhore

#Edgar allan poe #poem #poetry #classic #quote #heart #fear #terrified #hunger #scared #thoughts #literature #noir #dark

St. Sofia's Cathedral, Harbin, China.

#St. Sofia's Cathedral #Harbin #church #catholic #cathedral #religion #china #architecture #old #interior #built #russian #chinese #art

Just workin' it, bro...

Only until post-university, all my experiences with exercising produced the kinds of traumatic memories that actors dredge up when they need to cry on command. As the healthy, enthused, sporty, young child developed into the lazy, unfit, late-teenager, I spent gym lessons and sports day faking T.o.t.M, forgetting my kit, or avoiding P.E teachers at all causes (who reacted to my fear and laziness like wolverines scenting injured rabbits). Forced participation did nothing to develop my sporting skills, unless you count forging sick notes and repressing shame as sports. I continued to hate P.E for most of high school. However, it wasn’t all sports and exercises. The hatred was more targeted towards Mrs. R. She was the spawn of the devil. She didn’t care about my fitness. She was merely out to get me. Or so it seemed. But the lack of participation progressed towards some serious lazy-osis and somehow even walking become a chore.

However, coming to teach in China - a nation popular for sporty people – meant I had no intention of every having to face another running machine, cross trainer, or trampoline again. But I recently made an American friend (ex-personal trainer) who has shown nothing but enthusiasm for health and fitness; as a cat lady would for cats. I have never met someone so passionate about the gym, weight lifting and fitness. But the worst part – he’s kind of contagious! Then you’re faced with realisation that walking up a single flight of stairs is not meant to be an intensive sport, but that you’re just an unfit lazy mother F.

In the past week or so, I’ve had to learn a whole new range of vocabulary circulating around the idea of “those are some swell lats you got there...” and I don’t even mean Latvians, I’m talking about the latissimus dorsi muscles. You know the broadest muscle in your back? What! You’re telling me you didn’t know that! Pfft! It’s amazing the things you know and learn when you’re hooked. Before, I thought I was a whiz kid when I could tell fat apart from muscle. Turns out there’s more than a bit of lard and stretchy protein tissue to our bodies. Suddenly being asked to do 50 squats, or drop down and do 10 wasn’t so much of a “man’s sport” but rather a step towards being able to breathe properly after pacing down to the shops down the block.

Lifting weights in a gym has always been quite a bro-centric environment. I still believe this, particularly being in China after being shooed out of the “buff-mirror-weight-zone” by a top-heavy short little Chinese man. Nonetheless, I have become more open to the idea that those beautiful hotties in magazines and on TV; men or women, come down to toning up using weights. I don’t mean a 4 feet lady, lifting up a 50kg dumbbell for 12 sets – I’m talking healthy, adjusted workouts depending on our goals and desires. Weight lifting of any sort has always been associated with muscle magazines and steroid-up’d men who have crammed as many calories as they could possibly intake to maintain those awesomely oiled up muscles. But since meeting this friend, I have often had my butt kicked when I declared that I didn’t want to “bulk up” and I have slowly accepted that perhaps this concept has all been misconceived. Women need to take more part in fitness and weight lifting so that we can tell the little short Chinese men; we too can be in that “zone” too.