traffic, paper, strawberry

on saturday b and i spent the afternoon in hong kong. when we were there the first time we walked around in the stifling heat (hk is unbelievably hot and humid, we were unprepared for that). near the end of our time there we came across a hop-on/hop-off bus tour. we didn't have the time, and wanted to limit how much money we spent before reaching our destination, so we decided against it. but on our return trip we knew where the tour company was, we knew how much it cost, and we had plenty of time, so after arriving in the city via the train we beelined it to the big bus tour office and hopped aboard. it was really great because we got to see all of the island, while at the same time learning about what we were looking at. it was very cool. hong kong is an impressive place.

when we got back to the airport we had a fist full of money left over, and when we browsed the bookstore we both found magazines that interested us. brendan is a big fan of the new yorker, and i like glamour magazine. however, they were $81 and $53 respectfully (hong kong dollars - which is 1/6 american). so we counted up our dollars and had just enough for both. as we sat in the lounge reading i came across an article about sugar. i discovered that (as a society) our intake of sugar has gone up 34% in the last 30 years, and that sugar is added to everything, even bread! this is a problem because sugar is the greatest cause of weight gain. so, being a person who wants to lose some of my extra weight, this was valuable news to me. this morning i googled how much sugar we should have each day, it said that aside from naturally occuring sugars (in fruit, milk, etc) we should only have 40 grams (8 teaspoons) a day. up until 2004 i had 4 teaspoons of sugar in each cup of tea. i wanted to cut down my sugar intake so i cut it back to one, but gradually worked myself back up to 2. on average i have 4 cups of tea a day, so that's my 8 teaspoons right there! so i'm going to retrain my pallate. i'm scaling it down to half a teaspoon, i may increase my milk content to compensate. i'm glad i came across that article.

the thing about weight loss is that it involves a certain amount of obsession to make headway. a person has to be very dedicated and diligent if they're going to change their eating or exercise habits. when i've really given it a lot of attention in the past i made a lot of progress. a friend of mine from college lost 60 pounds in one summer because he was so obsessed with losing weight, he didn't keep it off in the long run because he went back to school and well.. simply... life happened. certain stages of life lend themselves to things like weight loss or reading or sports or cooking classes. i'm hoping to find a balanced life-style, i don't want to neglect working out, but i don't want it to be my first priority either. i'm happy that limiting sugar intake is something i can do fairly easily, it'll work with my life-style pretty well.

we are collapsed in the act of just being here.