4 posts tagged “birthday”

Once again, I have been called out for being lazy with updating this blog. My apologies :(

Apart from work, music and the usual small pleasures of everyday life, much of my energy recently has been going into training for the Rhody Run, an annual 12k running race held in Port Townsend, a small town on the Olympic Peninsula (around 2 hours' drive from Seattle). The race was on Sunday, and it was my first fun run since early high school (shocking!) so I was pretty excited. Here are some pics from the race, and from time spent exploring the beauty of the Peninsula beforehand:

I finished in 77 minutes, which I was very happy with because I was aiming to finish in around an hour and 20 minutes. I also have to say it was very satisfying blazing past a lot of skinny girls whose bodies usually make me feel jealous and inadequate - for once that day I actually felt good about being a stronger and more ahem, solid girl. And here's an interesting statistic: the overall winner of the race, a 35 year old guy from Seattle, finished in almost exactly half the time I did - 38:59. Meaning he basically ran seven and a half consecutive 5-minute miles. Amazing!

Training for this race has obviously helped my fitness a lot, because at boot camp (the twice-weekly outdoor fitness session I attend at my gym) on Wednesday, I did my bi-monthly testing and shaved a minute and a half off the two-mile run time I clocked two months ago. My cardiovascular fitness has also improved noticeably, I can run a lot of miles and only feel out of breath for a few minutes afterwards. Very satisfying.

The weather is great now, and it just feels like the natural thing to do to be outdoors and active. I run outdoors three days a week before work and then usually do a hike or some other fun activity on the weekend. I think this is the way it's going to be while I'm living in Seattle - a ball of hyperactivity in summer, and an atrocious bum in winter (apart from skiing).

I'm starting to understand why so many animals hibernate for the winter though - it's just so rainy and cold...and LONG. It would be alright if you could ski the whole time, but there are these ghastly limbo periods in October, April and May where the weather is still shithouse but all the ski slopes have turned to slush. There have been times over the last few months when the longing to lie on a beach or even see some blue sky and sunshine has been almost physical. It's hard to believe now how much I took for granted being able to be outdoors all year round when I lived in Sydney. When I think of that plus all the bummy vacation time I had as a student I want to kick my former self very very hard.

Self-flagellation aside, it was Nabeel's birthday yesterday, and we decided to surprise him with a trip to Agua Verde, a restaurant in Portage Bay with the dining facilities on the upper floor and a paddle club on the lower floor. We hired kayaks and paddled into Lake Union, which has a fabulous view of the Seattle skyline and the whole downtown area. We turned around just after Gasworks Park and got to see the sun set over the lake on the way back. It was an amazing evening.

(Photos courtesy of Aparna)

This weekend is a long weekend, I am hitting up the Sasquatch Music Festival in Eastern Washington with the Waterloo mafia. Should be an absolute blast, I have my fingers and toes crossed that the weather holds up.

I haven't been updating this blog much since I made the move downtown - I blame the fact that I now have a roommate, which makes it much easier to spill what's on my mind over a cup of tea, rather than trying to get it into a coherent written form here. On the upside, the fact that people have been calling me out for not posting anything proves that somebody apart from my mum actually reads this thing (not that I don't appreciate your readership, Amma :]).

So, updates.

A couple of weeks ago I organised a dinner party for my friends who helped me move. It was Prasad, Ricmoo, Radhika, Shivani and Astha - Sean was still in China so couldn't attend. It was my first time cooking for guests in my new place, and I decided to go for a Malaysian/Indonesian theme - I made laksa (from the amazing laksa paste my mum sent back with me last time I went home), nasi goreng, a crunchy Asian salad, and almond jelly. It was fun to make and I was very happy with how it all turned out. I don't find myself cooking as often these days - the commute gives me less time to do all the organisational stuff around cooking, it just gets easier to pull something out of the freezer or make some quick pasta or stir fry. I need to make more time for it though.

Prashant and Pooja got back from their wedding (in Delhi) and honeymoon (in New Zealand) last weekend, and incidentally the day they arrived was the day after Pooja's birthday. We decided, in true Quirkmeister style, to break into their home (okay... we had a key), decorate it, and jump out at the bewildered weary travellers as they walked through the front door. I haven't been seeing much of my east side friends since I moved downtown, so that was fun. We looked through all the wedding photos - they'd done a mixture of north and south Indian ceremonies (Pooja is Punjabi and Prashant is Tamilian), so it was interesting to see all the costume and mood changes through the albums. And I have to say, Pooja looked absolutely stunning.

Went to a couple of shows this week - Bright Eyes on Tuesday and the Decemberists on Friday. Bright Eyes was pretty good - I'd only heard his most recent album, Cassadaga, which I quite liked, and the songs he did from that one were great. I didn't like his older stuff that much - it seemed very emo and in parts sounded like the missing link between noise and sound (apologies to Danny Bhoy for ripping off that phrase). And the frontman was a little too  much of a primadonna for my liking. I guess that's what happens when people start calling you a "young Dylan" when you're sixteen. The show was definitely entertaining though. He had three percussionists, a full string section, and great backdrops.

The Decemberists gig was simply stupendous. I have no words to describe how good this concert was. Just try to imagine a totally packed Paramount Theatre with every single person in the room laughing, jumping, singing, and dancing, completely rapt in the experience of seeing and hearing an amazingly talented band who are at their peak and having just as much fun as the audience. Incredible. I am still buzzing. And I want to know when they are coming back to Seattle.

Apart from that, work has been really busy, and I have been getting into a really good exercise routine, running about 4 miles three times a week. I am training for a 8 mile run which is happening in two weeks, and that's been a motivating goal for me. I've also gotten back into piano - Punit now has one at his place (minding it for a colleague who is overseas for a few years, I believe), and we've been trying to put a few songs together, him on guitar and me on piano. It's good to be playing again - I am a little rusty but it's coming back slowly but surely.

This week will be busy again with preparations for a bachelorette party and mehndhi for Aparna, who is getting married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout. Also some big deadlines at work this week, I just hope I manage to fit everything in!