I just managed to get hold of Tim Ferriss‘ latest book, The 4-Hour Body, from a friend. I have read his first book, The Four Hour Work Week, before and I thought it was quite an unconventional way to look at things. And thus, I was pretty excited to take a look at what he has to say about the human body. Basically, it was about reaching the peak performance of the human body, and he segregates it into Fat loss, Building muscle, Improving sex (definitely a core indicator 😛 ), Perfecting sleep, and many other topics. Just 5 years ago, I was 68kg. At the peak of my physical health due to my physical activities, busyness of schedule, and basically just the lifestyle I had. Unfortunately, I am currently 80kg and lifestyle has definitely changed to one of a typical white collar worker. So when he mentioned the concept of Slow Carb diet, it made some sense, since it was not new information to me. Things about taking low glycemic index foods so that your body stores less fat due to insulin reaction are already concepts I knew. The biggest difference I got was that he managed to get his father to lose from 245lbs (111kg) to 203lbs (92kg) in 3 months with no additional change in physical activity. Just because of a switch of eating habits from typical diets to a slow carb diet. Now that got me thinking. How much of my excess fats can be trimmed using just a clean up of diet? Of course, physical activity does make a difference. Eventually his father reached 186lbs (84kg) after 6 months on the program. One of the biggest problems with diets is the sticking factor. The ability to make permanent lifestyle change to a person. Else, the weight will eventually come back on again. The slow carb diet does seem like a diet that makes it easy to stick to. Basically he has 5 main rules. 1) Avoid “White” Carbohydrates 2) Eat the...
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The internet has changed many things in our lives. One of the biggest change in the last 2-3 years is online shopping! In the past, people would go to shops to buy CDs, bags, shoes, clothes etc.. But now, CD shops have all but closed in Singapore, since everybody either use online streaming or amazon.com anyway. The blogshop phenomenon has pretty much taken the world by storm, seeing how blogshops are popping up like wild mushrooms! Essentially, anything that does not require you to physically touch can be sold online! The biggest consequence of this is that retail malls become boring. There is less diversity in shop types and almost every shopping mall would only contain clothing outlets or food outlets. Not only that, but the same clothing outlets would be repeated in almost every mall! One of the things I have been buying online for quite a while is nutritional supplements. Things like multi-vitamins, fish oils, probiotics and your standard vitamin Cs are my regular purchases. Places like GNC, Guardian, Watsons are seriously overpriced in terms of these supplements, especially since it is generic and so widely available. I used to get my stuff from other places, but more recently (okay the last 1-2 years), I have been getting from iHerb. One of the reasons initally is that they carry the highest rated Multi-vit, Source Naturals Life Force Multiple, which is still the same one I am taking now. Of course, after trying them out for sometime, I basically shifted all my supplement purchase to iHerb. For now, I regularly buy Omega 3 fishoils, Probiotics (since our diets consists of a lot of processed food nowadays), and vitamin C once in a while. The other good news is that shipping to Singapore can be as low as US$4 for orders below US$80. Pretty decent in my opinion. For those with bigger orders, they use the usual international shippers and the goods can reach as fast as 3-4 working days. One of the main reasons...
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Quite a nice sweet rendition of this song! Totally love...
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One of the nicest performance I have ever seen! Just like a ballerina in a musical box! This one is actually a competition in Singapore! Amazing. Apparently theres another mega event in June, and the famous Suzie Q would be coming to Singapore! Who’s interested to go watch?...
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Read an article on The Guardian recently about ‘Greece’s doomed generation‘. It basically talks about how Greece is hit with all the Austerity measures imposed by IMF after they hit the economic crisis in 2009/2010. Somehow, the more ‘developed’ you become as a nation, the less you are willing to give up. This seems to resonate with me in the recent Singapore GE, and this article. In the 1996-1998 asian economic crisis, the Thai, Indonesian, Vietnam, even Malaysia and Singapore got hit by a sudden crash in the currencies. Thailand and Indonesian were the worst hit. IMF imposed measures and controls on the Government then in order to rein in spending. Essentially, that means they gave the reins of the economy to an external party, who’s job is just to cut your spending. The citizens of these country then went through pain, because budgets were cut, non-essential services were restrained. Now we see the same in Greece because they have fallen hard from grace. The difference is that because of a higher education level, and that they are used to the material comforts in life, there is massive protests. I went to my favourite site, wikipedia, to look up on Greece and Singapore. It’s amazing how similar they are in terms of economy! Greece Singapore GDP $302 billion $235 bilion GDP per capita $29,240.00 $50,300.00 GDP by sector 4% agriculture 17.6% industry 78.5% services 0% agriculture 26.8% industry 73.2% services Labour force 5.05 million 3.03 million Public Debt 142.8% of GDP 117.6% of GDP Foreign Reserves $5.546 billion $187.8 billion Their demise came out simply because of falling state revenue and increasing government expenditures. How fast the ball changes. The Singapore GE that just ended made me wonder. We are like Greece, with no natural resources (typically), relying on a few economic engines and largely the services industry, but otherwise, essentially nothing to fall back on. I hope I would never have to see the day that Singapore falls from grace. Before 2008,...
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