I just registered for the Singapore Marathon by Standard Chartered (or SCSM), scheduled for end November this year, but this time I’m playing it super safe. This is my first fun run in 6 years (I ran SCSM in 2018), and I have to see where I stand with fun runs first before I go back to where I was before.
So I’m starting with 5K. I was running in the 10K’s last time, but I have doubts this time. And 5K is still a good initial measure of whether I can do 10K again.
Ever since the pandemic essentially ended, I’ve been itching to do another fun run again, at least outside of a treadmill’s at the gym. But this time, I felt 2024 was as good a starting year as any to do it again. And SCSM seemed like a good fit – well-run, lots of people, scenic route – so I pegged it as the race to start running again. Or at least semi-regularly. I want to go back to doing 10K’s again.
But I knew I reached the 10K comfortability stage by running more and more fun runs. In 2016, I joined 4 of them 10K’s back home in Manila, but I only did so after 2015 and I got decent times in 3 events where I did 5K each. Note, I did not have a gym subscription.
This time, I plan to 1) get a decent time in 5K (anything under 50mins), and 2) use my current gym subscription to train. However, I’m split a bit on whether I should change my current regimen or just tweak it a bit to squeeze in running training. I’m on a cardio/weight-loss routine with leg and chest weight exercises. I want to go under 210lbs by November so by December I could go home around 200lbs.
As of this writing, I’m thinking of switching my gym schedule. I currently go by Wednesday and Saturday, targeting 150mins a week. Maybe I could split it to Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday with the Saturday being just running exercises at the treadmill and keep T and TH on normal inclined treadmills and chest/leg work.
I want to keep tabs on the runs in the treadmill so I could target under-50, and if that becomes increasingly comfortable I’ll upgrade to under-40. Hopefully it gets my competitive juices flowing and I get my groove back to run more events. Maybe a Malaysia running event too someday? 🙂
So far on Honkai Star Rail, I have finally decided it to be my “primary” gaming schedule dominator with Fate Grand Order settling into my “secondary”. What does that entail?
I just made HSR my daily go-to app for collecting and grinding, and just play FGO on big banner events, and maybe including returning ones, and maybe every 1st of month to buy the HP/ATK thingies.
I basically reached anpoint with FGO that I had almost everything I wanted. A few weeks ago, I got a lucky roll with the free golden tickets on GudaGuda and finally landed Avenger Nobbu. If only I can get Morgan, my waifu list is basically done and I could be like Thanos at the end of the Infinity War movie. I have LOTS of upgrade mats, I have upgraded all gold and silver Servants to their basic max level, I have several Lv100 5-stars, and I will never run out of apples on any grindfest. I have reached a comfort level that I could coast a lot of parts, I have wave-clearing reliables for every situation already.
My competitive desires for challenge in FGO has clearly waned. 5 years playing and grinding got me power, but it’s way too much power. The only thing I could be really proud of is that my total expenses for FGO’s gacha is laughably minimal by gacha players’ standards – under SGD300 all in all, 5 years. I relied on freebies and dailies for so, so long.
Now, I feel it’s time to shift the competitive focus to Honkai Star Rail. I have lots of characters not yet at Lv80, I have only two Light Cones maxed, I have only a decent handful of Golds but a lot of Violets. I have a long way to go with a game I just started on a few months ago. So the attraction’s now there.
And it’s also way fun to make my own character builds for Relics, Ornaments and what Light Cone to use for them. I always look at the official HoyoVerse and Genshin.GG recommendations for “best”, then I go do mine based on what I like most. Sometimes optimal isn’t that fun.
Well, I’m currently playing through FGO’s Halloween event to run the epilogue after I did my daily collections on HSR, but maybe later tonight I finally finish that Borisin storyline I put a pause to last week. And save a few for the new characters. Man, when’s the next Kafka roll?
Inserting a small rant for this week.
Another thing that disappoints me with the current Westernized society is their unhealthy parasocial and tribalistic relationships with either famous people, people in positions of influence or even companies. Definitely unhealthy. I do not know how it happened or their rationale behind it, but it seems to me that they tend to prefer that their celebrity or famous person of choice have largely the same opinions and preferences as them, or else they get the “backlash”. They must be on the same “team” and hold the “pre-approved” set of values or they get chucked out like an unwanted appliance. Basically, tribalism as extended to people’s preferences. Like, I have a team and I want everyone of my favorite people in it or else they get these hands.
For example… the favorite choice of gaming platform. There’s four choices – Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo and PC. And a lot of people I see online in gaming forums and Discords and social media is all-in on at least one of them and habitually shits on anyone that is in the other teams. Kind of childish too, I’ve seen it in the old times with Sega and Nintendo fanboys. Their arguments range from “well you have some good points, I’ll cede those” to “wtf are you sniffing to say that”, rarely a middle ground to be honest. But kind of understandable, probably a decent percent of these forum trolls are underage kids and young adults looking for dopamine hits by posting bad takes and sitting back to see the bushfire. But when I see a legit adult post some horrific takes on console gaming, I’m like, “yeesh man, sure you spending your time here? You like that console? Happy for you man, but that remark was uncalled for”.
Another example, on Twitch, quite a number of the chats I see are of people sneakily ascertaining the streamer by asking the streamer their opinion about certain things or topics, ranging from preferred dog breed… to more serious topics like their preferred political positions. The things like dog breeds or favorite Korean food are innocuous and a bit charming, but the probing can start to get dangerous once the mods slip up. Like, why are you guys asking these questions and why the fuck do you want to know those things? These are people trying to play games and foster some culture, discussion and/or community (dunno about the rising number of wannabe pornstars there). They’re not looking for people to be on one team or the other.
And then on other social media platforms… ever heard of “Twitter Jail”? Supposedly, that’s where some famous internet people and celebrities were shepherded to after they get ganged up on social media by pearl-clutching safe-space megafreaks by doing something that they do not approve of, ranging from airing their own opinions or liking a certain book, and after their press picks up on it and makes an unflattering news article, those people had to quickly release a PR-crafted “apology” and “stepping away” for “reflection”. Or you might know this phenomenon by its more generic term – getting “canceled”. To me that’s the ugly part of the Westernized society’s relationship with persons of fame. Jeez, can’t people have different opinions there anymore? Can’t we like things other people might not like anymore? IDGAF about picking sides, I just want back the freedom to pick and choose things I want and not fear about losing tangible things.
To me as an Asian living in Asia, that was weird to hear about coming from over there, specifically the United States. Like, America was supposed to be the “land of the free” where free speech was so central to their rights that it was explicitly declared in their beloved constitution, right? And then you hear about these things happening to famous people that happened to have an unpopular opinion and they get ganged on by the social media people over there and gets “canceled”. Like, are you guys really that “free” anymore? And the increase in tribalism over there seem to be heading towards something mighty unpleasant that the rest of the world might be affected by. Either you’re on one side or the other side, with the moderates and independents being increasingly more rare as the years go by, because their society pressures them to always choose a “side” or else they’d force them.
What’s currently happening out there in the Westernized world is an iteration of a historical problem – the horrifically grotesque interpretation and handling of what it meant to have rights like “freedom of expression”. All because of a selfish desire of many people to be always right and the viewpoint of what they like should be what other people should like, or else they’re “bad people”. That ranges from a baffling “you don’t like dogs, you must be a dog hater” to a dangerous “my candidate is the best for this country and voting for anyone else is an assault on democracy”. I get it, everybody prefers they belong to a larger community. Doesn’t feel good to be wrong or be on what is seen as a “losing” side. But the West has become less of a marketplace of ideas and more of alienation and identity grouping. But also surprisingly, it’s a common theme across history that it seems we will never learn from. We think we learned from it and “will never happen again”, but we repeat it in different forms time and time again.
I also lament that the same near-explicit tribalism happens over in Asia too, but mostly in countries with some amount of Western predilection. Like for example, in my home country of the Philippines, years ago one famous actress got piled on by a certain presidential candidate’s supporters for being a very vocal supporter of that candidate’s chief rival, and hosted that person’s proclamation rally. Yes, this was about Toni Gonzaga. She got heavily piled on in social media by mostly the supporters of Mrs. Robredo for being a visible and prominent supporter of Mr. Marcos, and I always thought that stuff they hurled on her was unjustified cyberbullying. Shit, celebrities vote too. Their personal vote counts as just one on voting day, same as everyone else.
Celebrities don’t have to be just on “one side” of lots of things. They’re human too, same set of human rights as everyone else. They have their own opinions too. They can be left, they can be right, they can be middle. They can be on one side of an issue, they can also be not. Same with other people in our lives too – colleagues, teammates, family, friends. Everyone has an opinion, but people shouldn’t be antagonistic if they have a difference with their opinion, they instead should be respectful and empathetic. Do not make light of the other side’s problems and gripes as well, or else you’d never see the problems within your side. If the West and the lot of the Westernized society just put the brakes on their rampaging tribalism and again recognize the decency of “agreeing to disagree like civilized people, so let’s just find common ground and get along”, that would be perfect.
You know what are the scary consequences of such tribalism and classification of people to be on one side or the other? A generation of people too scared to join in a public discussion using their own name or face, lest they have an unpopular opinion and suddenly they get fired from jobs or be denied opportunities, so they vent it all anonymously in the Internet. A growing number of businesses that implicitly cater to just one political side. Politicians being harassed out of restaurants during their private time. Forums, Twitch and Discord channels begging for “no politics please” because the discussion around it has become so divisive. Small pockets of social media becoming echo chambers. TV networks that seemingly lost neutrality and people already know which “side” these networks were really on. Oh wait… all of that already happened in America. Literally all of what I said. Not surprising though, the “land of the free” but seemingly not brave enough to maturely handle a difference in opinion or belief.
… whew. Off my chest. The only reason I ranted this one out was because I’ve been increasingly encountering these types of people online – the type of “you on my side good, anyone who oppose my view is a bad person”. The type of people that insert politics and tribalism in any discussion they go to. Given their use of words and grammar, I assumed they were American. Well, even if I said I did avoid social media, I still try to visit some old forums I subscribed to, like ResetEra. I am strongly considering to pause reading them for a bit until next year again… or at least until they finish their election season. My God, they are becoming near unbearable.
When it comes to what I talked about earlier on losing weight for December, I find that logging in my daily meals and trying to stay within 2000 calories a day helps a lot.
I now use the YAZIO app on my phone to help me log my meals and do instant tracking on what things need attention. Like, I can see if I am hitting my protein targets or I’m getting close to my fat number limit. And consciously logging helps me in staving off the things I just do mindlessly, like stress-eating.
The app also helped me think of myself when making meal choices. Breakfast is always under 500cal, as I just go for a decent bowl of oats with a tablespoon of nuts and around 150ml of low-fat milk, weekdays overnight with unsweetened cocoa powder, weekends made on the stove like a porridge. Lunch is my two-sided sword of a cheat. I don’t mind if it exceeds 1000cal, as long as it’s a healthy or decent meal. Sometimes I just do normal cai png with two vegetables and one meat, and eat just 3/4 of the rice. Dinner is always payback. If my breakfast and lunch combined for 1500cals, I just have a light dinner, like a bowl of lightly sweetened soy pudding, sometimes plain or with 5 pieces of taro balls. But if I somehow made it under 1200cals, I go for a decent option, like steamed dumplings or a bowl of Thai noodles. Snacks are usually free for all, but often it’s just a cup of kopi siew dai or a pack of Orihiro konjac jelly. I have like 30 packs of the sippable packs of that konjac jelly in the fridge at home. Delicious and doesn’t count on my calories.
Lunch then became my thing, because it dictates my dinner choices. So I always give a greal deal of thought on what my lunch will be. Will I go for economic rice? Or go Thai for now? Maybe a bibimbap for a change? Or maybe I should go for a light yong tau foo and grab a bread to eat? Lots of things to think.
But I do miss my old shit. Like a big 20-dollar serving of mala xiang guo. Or those greasy fried chicken skins. Or having extra noodles for my ramen. Or the big heaps of rice I could get with my mutton dum biryani at Little India. Or the wok noodles like char kway teow. I still could get some, but I kind of know I have to go to the gym that night to burn those shit off, or at least half. I have really gotten conscious of my food intake, partly because I know I have to burn them off at one point.
Currently I’m at 211lbs this morning, and I feel good that I’m manageably moving towards a goal for weight loss. I’m not cutting like a maniac nor I’m doing extremes. Just normal, sensible choices and I just shed the pounds bit by bit.
Hopefully I’m closer to 200lbs by December. Holidays are where you get fat a bit.
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
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