#16 From Caifan to Chat Thai, Spinach and Soup to Steaks, Singapore to Sydney

Week one of being back in Sydney - a personal reflection

Hi guys

Hope you have had a good week!

It’s been one week back in Sydney and regular caifan meals have been replaced with home-cooked meals (and a cheeky takeaway from one of my family’s favourite Thai takeaways, Chat Thai), spinach and soup from the hawker centre with steaks that have definitely counteracted my protein deficit, and the Singaporean lah-s with Aussie yeah mate-s.

Sydney is three hours ahead of Singapore, so I’ve been starting my days at around 1pm local time (10am in Singapore), meaning that I have the mornings free.

One hobby that I am trying to improve is golf. And so having a chunk of time in the morning has been great for getting out to my local course with my Mum and hitting shots.

For such an objectively simple game - get a little white ball in a hole in as few shots as possible - it requires so much time to finesse and is definitely a game that is difficult, if not impossible, to master.

My Dad got me into the game in my second year of university and for the first couple of years my game was - quite frankly - embarrassing with tee shots going off at angles that were not exactly ideal for getting the ball in the hole in as few shots as possible (they sometimes still do!!).

Nonetheless, it’s definitely a game that I can play into old age and as I’ve told a number of friends back in Singapore, an activity that we can travel with and use as a reason to visit new places around South-East Asia.

In fact, it’s probably the only sport where you can travel, talk, eat, drink, exercise, etc. without losing breath or needing to shout to your fellow playing partners.

So I’ll be spending time in the mornings over the next couple of weeks that I’m in Sydney working on the game and hopefully next year, when travel opens up I’ll be able to take advantage of Singapore’s proximity to a number of amazing South-East Asia destinations, and with a golf game that has me more on the fairways and less searching for balls in the jungle!!

Work-wise, over the past week I think I’ve actually been more focused and productive in the day job than I have been recently in Singapore.

Maybe it’s the familiarity of sitting in my own room (after 3+ years, nothing has been touched) with a gigantic monitor installed by my Dad, maybe it’s the better nutrition in the form of frequent interruptions (in a good way!) from my Mum with breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, post-afternoon tea, post-post-afternoon tea, post-post-post afternoon tea, dinner, dessert, etc. (thereby saving my usual multiple trips in Singapore downstairs to Cold Storage and the hawker centre), or maybe it’s the timezone difference that allows me to “warm up” and start the day proper in the afternoon.

Whatever the reason, I’m glad that I’ve been able to keep up with tasks so far which is something that I was (and arguably still am) concerned about.

However, what I’m a little dissatisfied with myself about is that I haven’t been doing more intense cardio such as running, swimming or tennis. I’ve definitely noticed that after one week off, I’ve lost a bit of that “power” sensation in my arms and core and this is something that I hope to address in the coming week.

Also, I have not kept up with my reading outside of the day job (right now on my Kobo it’s The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans And Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown) - this is something that I also want to carve out more time for.

This was more of a personal blog this week so if you made it this far, thank you so much and hopefully next week it’ll be back to normal operations and I’ll have something of slightly more value to add for your week!

Have a great week ahead!

David