Working on it





I am being a lazy piece of sh*t.

I realize this while lying bed, in my underwear, laptop sitting on my chest.

I wouldn't have had this bummer epiphany, but someone just did the old "Hey everybody! Look at me! I'm at the gym!" FB status update.

Taco Bell was a bad choice

Son of a bitch.


Is it really necessary for you to let us know this? Do I really need to know how your glutes workout is progressing today? 

No. I don't.
Now you've gone and ruined my whole plan of sitting here in a pile of my own filth, googling things like "chinese watermelon babies" or what Nicholas Cage would look like as your favourite Disney Princesses.


I had a nice little night planned. I just wanted to sit here and pretend that this was good. Kind of like pretending a "*" in the word shit makes it ok.



Instead, I'm now forced to remember what I had conveniently forgot.

It's time for me to go to the gym.  

I know that somewhere behind my laziness this is what I want to do.... but it seems so far away right now. I can hear the background buzzing of that Tony Robbins-esque voice in my head telling my legs to go but at the same time my legs are telling Tony to go suck a high hard one.


Ok. Just get off your ass and go. Stop being shitty. You know that you will feel better once you do it.
I hear myself say this and yet so much of me is saying "Fuck it. Just go tomorrow". In fact, I can already think of a thousand reasons why tomorrow's a better day to go....

But none of them are good ones. 

Dammit. I would rather do a trust fall with a pod of Orcha whales than go to the gym right now so

it's going to take some creative self-convincing in the form of a quasi-inspiring blog post to get me there.

For as long as I've been going to the gym, you would think I wouldn't still have to fight this daily battle anymore, yet there's still that part of me that just wants to say "pass" every time.

So why the suck? Is it me?

No...that can't be it. IMPOSSIBLE says ego. It must be the system. (when faced with your own bullshit, always blame the system)

It must be........The GYNASIUM itself.
Weird word isn't it?

Let's analyze this whole 'GYM" thing shall we?

When you stop and look at it, the gym is a pretty weird place and it's no wonder a lot of people don't subscribe to the whole thing. The very idea of a gym is ass backwards.
Think about it: You pay someone money to lift a bunch of their heavy stuff.
Isn't that supposed to be the other way around? Aren't you supposed to pay me to do the heavy lifting? 



Working: Getting paid to lift heavy stuff.

Working out: Paying to lift heavy stuff.

Am I missing something here?

Apparently the word "out" in that sentence is pretty important.

The gym is this weird bizzaro world where normal societal rules break down. It's like the Twilight zone, but more sweaty and smells like feet. For example: In the normal world, wearing clothing is kind of a given. In the gym however, you've got old dudes just hanging out in the locker room....
and when I say hanging out I really mean "hanging out". Those dudes are buck ass naked and free as a bird, just blow drying their balls.

Nothing quite like catching some old dudes ball-breeze in the face.

Thanks Pops.

Outside of the gym, people (white one's especially) tend to avoid doing things like running unless there's a ball involved or if they're being chased.

Or if there's waffle makers on sale.

In the gym however you see them lined up on treadmills running their little legs off.

Just kicking their asses to stay in the same spot like a bunch of Nike themed gerbils. For me, there's something lost in that. A big part of jogging involves actually going somewhere. Outside. Staying in the same spot just seems a little maddening. It makes me feel as if all the gyms have secretly tricked us into running on treadmills that make them electricity.
Shouldn't they do that anyways?


So ya. The gym is a bizarro world but is it really any wonder seeing as it's the creation of a heavily flawed creator? Humans can be a little Busey sometimes and our views on "normal" are anything but. Nobody born in the last 50 years is exempt from the daily face fucking of all-permeating advertising. With this lifetime of minute to minute barrages to our perception of what health and success looks like, how can we be expected to have a healthy view towards it? 




I can do a thousand now....

Let me know if you need a spot.

We grew up watching cartoon with heroes that looked like Greek Gods. I played with He-man toys that looked like steroid-induced lab experiments. My sister played with Barbie dolls with physics-defying measurements. Like it or not this exaggeration of the human form seeped into our perception of what healthy looks like. 





Now we crowd into mirror-panelled gyms where we try to run and push ourselves to an unobtainable perfection while secretly comparing ourselves to everyone working out around us. Sure, it all starts off innocent enough, with a casual glance to see how much someone is lifting but next thing you know, you find yourself checking out another dudes calves and shit gets weird....


Bizzaro world I tell you. At the gym you see these guys looking like steroid meat buckets, flexing for the mirror but chances are that under those muscles they have all the insecurities of an anorexic girl staring at her sweet 16 birthday cake.


How is someone supposed to workout around this? This is bullshit I say! I'm in a crowded gym and the only thing being used is the fucking mirror?!

And yet even as I write that I know I'm being a total hypocrite.

I would be lying if I said that I don't like to see the results of my long hours at the gym when I look in the mirror. Of course I do. It's a feeling of accomplishment to see your hard work carved into your body in the image you wanted.

This face says "I have sand in my underpants"

But even as I say that I can hear Tyler Durden's voice whispering in my ear if it was really me that chose that image? About how he "He feels sorry for guys packed into gyms, trying to look like how Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger say they should".

Damn you Durden. You win this round.

You are not your khakis.

As much as I agree with our favourite soap making anarchist, my situation is a little bit different. 


Currently I'm working overseas on a modelling contract (and yes I know how dickish that sounds) so I'm hired based solely on how I look. I don't book jobs for being a "swell" chap so as as a sheer necessity, I need to be in the best shape possible within my means when I walk into that casting room.
What that translates to: it's my job to get my ass to the gym and kick it into shape.

There's not a lot of work for a guy in this industry who doesn't have abs. If there was I sure as hell wouldn't put myself through this workout every other day.


It's somewhat unfair in that aspect because it gives me an added reason to get off my butt and go to the gym. If I don't, I won't get paid. It's that simple and as ridiculous as it sounds; its the reality I'm living these days. When I think of someone who has a full-time job along with a couple kids, it's crazy to hold them to the same standard and yet after years of TV and movies we all can't help but want perfect bodies with 300 style abs.

Can I just paint them on?


Maybe it's time to break out that Ab grill.

Looks legit.

Today's reality is that our lives are so easy now that we pay money to go to places that are hard; to win back our couch inspired midsections. We do this because our bodies miss that feeling of doing. We humans are do'ers. We need to fight for what we have but our current world is lacking the good fights and full of all the wrong ones. We are geared to fight predators and the pains of hunger; not the mind-numbingness of traffic and loss of attention span.

MUST.......INSTAGRAM!

With a fridge full of pudding pops and an endangered species list of predators, our days of fighting to stay alive are over. Instead, we cram into over crowded gyms to kick our asses so that we can feel alive again. We do workouts like "Insanity abs" that make us look like insane people while doing them.


As much as all this is about being in shape, and about itching that urge to battle, I think the deeper reason all of it is for stillness of mind. We run for the calm of the storm. The oneness that comes when you're focused on pushing yourself past the pain. Past a body screaming no. The real reward is the stillness of mind that 99% of the time won't shut the fuck up. The cleansing of our mental palates. Sure, working out is a physical challenge but it's the mental and spiritual reward that rings loudest. Maybe self-improvement isn't the goal.... Maybe self-destruction is. That weird desire to beat the shit out of yourself just to see if you can take it.

To feel alive.

Or maybe you're just vain and want to look tight for your next Mexico trip. Whatever it is, we strive to have hard bodies that tell of hard lives but the reality is that we don't have the type of lives that lead to hard bodies. Our lives are pretty damn easy (physically anyways) and our bodies can't help but show it. Back in the day people had hard bodies because life was hard. They had to.
You grow up eating dirt and rocks and you're gonna look tough. 

Now we look soft because it's representational of our lives. Our physicality has been forgotten. 

Not too long ago, a wine and cheese party meant years of planning. It meant raising a cow, feeding it, milking it. Then turning that into cheese. At the same time you also had to make a field to grow grapes in. Harvest them and mash them up with your bare feet and bottle it for a long ass time before It would be ready.

"Extra large diet coke please"

Now you press some buttons on a phone and someone brings it to your couch.
Welcome to the end of using your legs.
There's a price to pay for anything anywhere and that lazy uninspired body staring back at you from the mirror is screaming the cost. 

You have people sitting at home watching shows like the The Biggest Loser and the only burn they feel is pizza-induced heartburn while they talk about finally starting to work out.

Tomorrow.









Inertia is the name of the game and when you haven't worked out in forever, tomorrow seems a hell of a lot more do-able than today.



So it's on us to close our laptops, turn off our TV's and get our heart's pumping again. While myself I'm keen on things like running, swimming and the odd humbling yoga sweat-fest; for the most part, I focus on weight lifting.
I just think it's kind of a cool idea: Lift heavier weights than your body wants to thus tricking your body into adapting and growing stronger. Your body thinks "Hmm, Kevin seems to feel the need to lift this stupid heavy thing over his head a bunch of times; must be super important. I better get good at doing it". You're basically bluffing you body into thinking it's life or death that you get stronger because after all; only an idiot would lift a bunch of heavy stuff just for the fun of it right?

Hey look: a mirror.

Right.


So whatever it is that gets your fitness boner going all the power to ya but remember it doesn't necessarily have to be at a gym. The G-Y-M  shouldn't be our only refuge for physical activity as it's full of unhealthy stereotypes and ultimately; it's just some shrewd business mans way of charging you for something you could otherwise do for free. 

Obviously.

So why not start by popping in a VHS tape of your favourite 80's workout vid and crush some reps in the living room.

Or better yet; tune in to everybody's favourite chair-confined pensioner "The sit and be fit lady"!

If the living room is feeling a little crowded (Hong Kong this means you), then take a page out of the Chinese play book of living forever and make like these exercising Chinese elderly doing some WTF exercises in an outdoor park. How bad ass is it when you're working out while wearing a fucking winter coat?!

Now that's commitment.

But wintertime weirdo workouts in the park aren't for everyone. Sure, the idea of working out outside sounds nice. It would be great if everyday you could Hatha it up in that field from The Sound Of Music, doing downward dog surrounded by daisies and butterflies? Sounds just peachy but if you live in Canada like I do, where it's colder than a Russian smile outside, that shit just ain't happening.

These days most people live in urban areas and if you live in a big city with lots of traffic, your door can open to tailpipe smog that is about as fresh as the smalltalk on the View. This can be a serious nature bummer and can make it kind of hard to get outside and run around in the grass.

But we can still imagine:

So finally, when all of these options seem less than ideal, you can suck it up and go to a gym.

Just like I'm about to do.

Right after one last status update ;)

One fine city.

Back in April, after 7 or so months of traveling throughout Asia, I started to notice something:
my edges were getting a little frayed.

I officially hate myself for using a "funny cat" photo.

It seemed the daily wear and tear of the Amazing Asian race has left me in need of a little repair. So in my search for my next work contract, I looked to a city that had always interested me:

Enter Singapore.  

A city of approximately five million people, it's located off the southern tip of the Malay peninsula just north of the equator. Upon arrival, I immediately melted into a Canadian puddle of maple syrup by the mercury melting heat. After more than a year bouncing around SE Asia, I cockily thought that I had acclimatized to the daily punch in the brain box that are the temperatures here.
Apparently not.

I think I broke my everything.

Singapore heat is on a different level. That shit is seriously hot. To put it in perspective; it's about as hot as Charlize Theron......making out with Charlize Theron.

Because why not put this in a post about my time in Singapore?

Being this close to the equator, of course it's going to be Charlize hot, but the heat is red-bulled by the humidity to which my Canadiana ice blood was not accustomed. To kick things up a notch, the apartment I stayed in didn't have AC, so most nights I felt like I was sleeping inside a whale. Just a sweaty mess of gross non-sleeping. Most westerners try to avoid being sweaty and while Asia has taught me to suck it up, I still quietly loathe it. For me, sweat is like a hangover: I will tolerate its existence if it comes after a good time. That's it. I only want to be sweaty when I've earned it. Eating breakfast and sleeping are not acceptable sweat-worthy situations.
Singapore and I argued over this for every day of my time there.

My teeth are sweating.

Aside from the sweaty melting of me, Singa was a relief. It is a tiny little oasis in a desert of nonsensical Asian ways. While sure, they have their share of laws that make no sense and they have a weird fear of gum, but for the most part, they seem to be pretty reason based. They believe in "new age" ideas like not littering and having appropriately placed garbage cans (usually, trying to find a garbage can in the rest of Asia is like a bad game of "how long do I have to hold this?"). Also, the people of Singapore wait patiently without pushing through each other. They smile and are polite to one another. Not only that, nobody spits on you.
Really ground-breaking stuff.












Singapore is a big believer in aesthetics. They make sure absolutely everything looks top-shelf.
So many other countries in Asia couldn't care less about keeping it puurdy, instead looking like they took a page out of ThereIfixedit.com (worth the click). Not in Singapore though, because everything in this place is clean and nice looking. It looks like that first five minutes in a hotel room....before you tornado it with wet towels and boxes of half-eaten pizza.







Who am I kidding? There's never pizza left over.

Waking up in Singapore was kind of like finding myself in that movie "Pleasantville" (except without Tobey Maguire's movie ruining face).
It's just really...... swell.






Sometimes living in Singapore felt as if I was staying at some big resort. It just seemed so...maintained. It was a welcome relief from the daily wtf moments that usually come with Asia. After half a year of playing "what did I just step in?" it was amazing to be able to go outside for a jog.... although a jog in Singa isn't without its surprises...

From breathing the clean air to marvelling at the creative architecture that owns the squeaky clean streets, this is a city like no other. One that is overflowing with massive, Jumanji-like trees and lush vegetation throughout the dense downtown. It's an interesting mix. It's like Minority Report meets Jurassic Park but with more noodles and less Velociraptors:

So coming to Singapore was a relief because being from the beautifulness that is Canada, I tend to wilt  when not around nature for too long a period. Wandering around this stunning city replenished my red lining battery after the marathon of gross that is Shanghai and Bangkok (said in the most loving of ways).
But it wasn't just the landscape that got me. I had also forgotten what it's like to talk with people that actually understand me. Now, by understand I don't mean like me as a person or in the way that Gosling understands your love of scrapbooking, but instead in that very real sense of simply understanding wtf I'm trying to say. The words that are coming out of my mouth. You speaky English and I love you long time for that Mr. Singa.


And by the way, that's not racist.






This is racist.

Moving on.



Another awesome: After seven months of Asian taxi fails, I can't express the joy of just getting in a cab with a driver who speaks English. In a polite manner no less. One who understands things like directions and maps. This cannot be overstated.

For the most part, getting a taxi in Asia usually goes like this:

1. Get in taxi.
2. Get out of taxi days later with no money, twice as far away from your destination and confused about wtf just happened and life in general.

Slight exaggeration...

but only slight.

As happy as I was to hop in a Singa taxi, I rarely did because the country has really solid public transportation. After living in some of the worlds most congested cities, I have now come to love the freedom of not worrying about where to park my car. This is the exact opposite of how I felt before I started travelling. Alarm bells used to go off when someone would tell me they didn't drive because they "prefer to bike."

Can we take your car? Because mine is
kind of non-existent.

But my days of looking down on people who don't drive are long gone. After using the time-saving public transport in Asia, I no longer have a hate on for the whole bus thing. If anything, I think it really sucks that Canadiana doesn't make more of an effort in that dept. Good public transport=better city. Singapore's stellar busses and MRT are always on time, keeping the roads less congested and the air clean. Big win.

So for a city that is so easy to live in, it's no wonder there are so many foreigners. It is a haven for those looking for a western-styled life in SE Asia. 

And this is where I learned something about myself. After two months of living in Singapore, a place I had been very much looking forward to, a place with so many qualities that I appreciated; something felt.........off.
Something was missing for me.
It was like Puff Daddy (or whatever the fuck his name is) without Biggie.

Had Singapore been my first stop on this Asia trip, I'm sure I wouldn't have felt this way.
Life is just so easy in Singa and back when I first started travelling; easy definitely appealed to me.
I was....how shall we say..."skittish?"

Money belts: keeping your money
 and  losing your dignity.

You see, when I first got to Asia, I would usually go with the safe bets; whatever was easiest usually won me out. "Subway's up ahead? Hmmm....that won't make me sick....fuck it, I'm in."

But somewhere along the way, I guess something in me has changed.
I no longer want easy.
And I remember the exact moment I realized this:

A while back I had somebody ask me for my recommendations on a good all-inclusive resort in Thailand. A perfectly reasonable question to ask someone right? Well, I remember being flabbergasted (I'm bringing that word back)  at the idea of such a thing. Why on earth would you want to travel halfway across the globe to one the most beautiful countries in the world and then over pay for a western-styled misrepresentation of it? "Have you been to Thailand?" "Oh yes the chicken fingers and French fries at the resort buffet were delicious!" Using plum sauce instead of ketchup doesn't make it more Asian.

Fail.

It comes down to why you are travelling in the first place. Some people choose to travel to see the world, to learn other cultures and understand another point of view. Others travel to try and take their mind off work for a couple weeks and get a tan. 

I guess the days of worrying about my tan have long since faded. Kind of like my tan.
Maybe it was watching Asians slather on "whitening" cream to look whiter that put that shit in perspective for me.

Wait.... this doesn't make sense

And neither does this....

Singapore is often called the "fine" city and while that is a play on words about the truck load of things you can get fined for, it also hints of an underlying feeling that things are a little TOO perfect. That you're eating at a pretty little, Orwellian styled, resort buffet.
It's all nice to look at..... but it all kind of tastes like chicken. In fact, their most famous dishes is something called "chicken rice" and like you can imagine, it's chicken and rice.

Regardless of this, I did value you Singapore for what are. You were my vacation away from fucked-up shit like this...

Tastes like chicken?

It's just that after two months there I knew that I had to move on to a new challenge. A new Amazing Race. One that's sure to come with another round of WTF moments that will leaving me missing your easy vacation-like ways.
So Singapore, it's been real swell and I hope you don't take my thoughts on your fine city the wrong way. I mean it only in jest. Passive aggressive insults are just how we show love in the west and besides, If you think this is bad, you should see what I wrote about China.





So to you I say thank you. I came to your doors feeling like this:

and left feeling....

You gave me what I needed and showed me what I wanted. Thanks for putting it all in perspective Singapore.
Hope to see ya again soon.

 

A fine city indeed.