The Active Lifestyle

It has been a very long time since my last post. Honestly, I even forget that I created this blog years ago. I first started this blog to fill my spare time as I didn't have much things to do in my mid twenties and I was still figuring out what I wanted to do in my life, what I am passionate about. Here I am, 30 years old, and still learning what I really want in my life.

One thing I realize that It is never too late to learn something new.

June 2017, with the hype of active living, the growing number of fitness enthusiast, more and more sports events, and sports fashion is dominating the catwalk, I admit that I now realize that good health is the greatest blessing in life.

It all started two and a half years ago, around December 2014, when my sister invited me and my brother to try Muaythai class, the famous cardio self defense originated from Thailand. The whole training took place in a non air-conditioned room during the hot daylight, we were literally dead. That time I realized I was so weak and many silly thoughts came into my mind, for instance, what if there is an earthquake and I cannot save myself, what if I was born in Dauntless faction like in Divergent movie and I cannot even run, and what if there is a zombie apocalypse. From that day on, I forced myself to have some sporting activities, even though 5 minutes jumping jacks can easily killed me.

After a while, surprisingly I enjoyed the feeling after a good sweat, I figured out that my body is capable of change. I realized that I was not as weak as before. I loved that I was actually getting better at Muaythai and my punches were not as wobbly as before.

A year after my first Muaythai class, I checked out the newly opened fitness center nearby with my sister. She suggested that I try this cycling class called RPM by les mills. I was hesitant at first, because I think it is my nature to stay in my comfort zone and I am always afraid to try new things.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.That was my motto.

So I joined a short term gym membership for a month to see whether I liked it or not. The first day of my workout, I tried les mills cycling program, I was out of breath and cursing myself. After 45 minutes constant pedaling, my legs were all shaky and felt like jelly, I had to hold on the railing when taking the stairs. At first, I thought I was fit enough to finish the class without all the struggle remembering that I have been doing Muaythai and Boxing for a year. Not only that, that day I also checked my body fat percentage and it was pretty high at 30%.

Then I started going to RPM class regularly and I also combined it with yoga once in while. I began gaining lower body strength and my endurance improved. It didn't take long for me to become a regular class member. Then I started to peek other classed provided such as body pump that includes some weight training. Tried it. Hated it.

Imagine

When in doubt, pray

One random pencil drawing I made, the praying hand

IMF Exclusive for European?

The candidates for the new head of IMF will not be announced until June 10^th but the talks about who’s going to be the next number one person in IMF are everywhere. The position as managing director of IMF was held by Dominique Strauss-Kahn of France who was abdicated from his duty as after his attempt to rape a hotel maid.

France’s president Nicholas Sarkozy nominates his finance minister, Christine Lagarde to fill the vacancy. Lagarde also gets big support from the G8 leaders even though the issue was not brought during the meeting in Deauville (Reuters, 2011). However, despite the ongoing tradition since 1945 that IMF leader has to be from Europe, many say that the next chief should be from other non-Europe strong countries; such as Singapore, India, China, Mexico, South Africa and Brazil (Bloomberg, 2011).

The reason that the next fund leader should be non-European is due to the fact that “IMF was criticized for causing severe damage in its handling of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Not all the critiques were fair, but Asian leaders correctly feel they received far less favorable deals than Greece, Ireland and Portugal recently got. The IMF initially lent Greece, for example, almost twice what Korea was able to borrow in 1997, relative to each country’s size.” (The Economist Newspaper Limited, 2011).

Here are the strong candidates besides Lagarde.

Agustín Carstens, head of Mexico’s Central Bank and a former official at the fund.

Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of Canada and had thirteen years finance experience with Goldman Sachs.

Stanley Fischer, the Governor of Israel’s Central Bank and a former number two at the IMF.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore’s Finance Minister and head of the IMF’s policy advisory committee.

Or Sri Mulyani, former Indonesia’s Finance Minister and currently serve as one of the three Managing Director of the World Bank Group.