BUPA 10K RUN - 27th May 2012

Currently fundraising for my first 10k run to take place in May. The charity I'm running for is Bridge 2 Aid who provide dental support in Tanzania and other third world countries. Everyone knows how painful tooth ache can be, this charity helps to relieve this pain in other areas of the world where they aren't so lucky to be in close proximity to a dentist.

Any donations much appreciated at: http://www.justgiving.com/rosie-10k/


This is me after running a 5k for Starfish charity back in September, looking pretty sweaty. Bound to look much worse after the 10k!

Fitness attempt

Just endured one of the most humiliating experiences I’ve had for quite a while now. Decided to productively spend my day off in the gym, followed by an aqua aerobics class. Gym was amazing, on full form, helped along by this morning’s coffee and an interesting interview with the only female sumo wrestler in the UK for treadmill motivation. Finished in the gym 15 min before the start of aqua aerobics so went for a short swim to warm up, pool is freezing at the moment due to broken heating. Things started going wrong when it got nearer to 12.15 and I noticed that, apart from the plucky instructor in colourful board shorts, there was only one other woman in the vicinity. She was probably about 20 years older than me, with a tribal tattoo on the right shoulder and a permanent scowl. As I looked at her, sat in her loose, black bikini I contemplated a, “pools cold today, isn’t it?”
Taking the silent option, I waited and finally along came an Indian woman in a red swimsuit, an ageing man with a huge belly and another girl around my age, who was pregnant. The warm up involved waving our hands in the air and walking back and forwards in the 15m meeting pool looking like complete idiots before squatting in a line around the circumference. The jumping up and down continued whilst I lowered my gaze and tried to avoid eye contact as the instructor looked at me encouragingly. At the 20th call of ‘come on now guys, kick, kick PUNCH’ I started to panic and look round desperately for some idea of the time. None was to be found, and, after turning round doing star jumps in some sick version of the ‘macarena’ I considered my escape.
Settling for the ‘I’m too tired after the gym, this is too much for me I think I need to get out’ excuse, I started to make my way towards the steps – just as the pregnant woman climbed out and murmured her apologies. At this point the instructor starting passing out the foam ‘noodles’ and I decided to stay in the hope that this might improve things. It didn’t, it actually made it worse, particularly as it was nearing the end of lunch hour and people were filing from the gym, past the pool and into the sauna. Armed with a new excuse (I’m feeling a bit ill at the moment and I think the water is too cold for me to stay in), I again started to make a move – just as the instructor enthusiastically screamed ‘Right guys now we’re going to have some FUN! Get into pairs!’
Eyes wide in terror and now fully disheartened I was jostled into position behind the woman with the tattoo and told to vigorously push the noodle back and forwards to knock her off balance. Water was splashing everywhere and the instructor was leaning over us, her huge smile turned sinister as she boomed, ‘ISN’T THIS FUN?! AHA HA HA!’
At this point I couldn’t take it anymore and scrabbled away from my partner, to the steps, climbed out, past the instructor and ran to the safety of the sauna. A guy in there asked, ‘are you waiting for them to finish before going in for a swim?’
I shook my head, told him I’d just managed to escape, sunk my head into my hands and closed my eyes. Luckily in the sauna I could still hear the crashing 80s soundtrack, allowing me to hide out in safety, until the coast was clear.
Despite the fact I won’t be attending another aqua aerobics class in a long while, I look forward to the week ahead. When every scrap of dignity and self respect is finally gone, anything’s possible.

Long Time New Year

Currently breaking under the
complete misery of having to write a dissertation.
Had a break through today at the speed of
100 words/ hour and some skillful copy
and pasting. Even resorted to Wikipedia
at one point. Exam results on Friday
and new term limping along, still
haven't decided on modules.

After much complaining about statistics
I was coerced into watching the following:

'The Joy of Stats' -

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/the-joy-of-stats/

Actually quite interesting towards the 
end where he visualizes population increase over time.
The last section on data handling for 
companies such as Google is also interesting.
Plus the guy has a pretty amazing Swedish 
sense of humor and accent.

Still... I'd rather leave it up to the experts.

Busy week this week with final 
dentistry interview at Queen Marys and.... 
thats it actually. Having a jaunt round Soho
afterwards which I'm looking forward to.

Oh! Also just realised why I haven't 
achieved anything all week. Sliced my 
thumb open at work and had to take a trip
to A&E. In hindsight I think I was 
over dramatic but it was really scary. 
I thought I would lose my thumb and never play
piano.

Supposed to be going to salsa tonight
 but missing it because I am fat and lazy.

Next week: new beginning.

London for X-Factor

Everyone is sitting around the TV watching X Factor whilst I type from the kitchen table. Marina disagrees with Cheryl Coles new choice of hair colour. I have a glass of tap water with ice from the freezer, really thirsty but stuffed full with pasta and ice cream so there is no room. Went to a Sabrepulse gig in Shoreditch at Public Life. Amazing glass entrance leading underground with £3 bottles of beer and a pointillism light display. I preferred support band Comptroller to Sabrepulse, Max preferred Sabrepulse as it was powered by Nintendos.

Yesterday we went to the V&A museum, I ran out of energy and needed coffee. There was a jewelery exhibit with stuff from 1800BC. It was interesting to think of the Romans that wore each piece, leading up to elaborate modern day designs, such as a catwalk gold cage face mask and gold bra. One coffee later and we were at a Yin Yoga class at the Life Centre. Ultra relaxing, more meditation style, I felt asleep so badly. Max went to yoga again today but I stayed back and spent the afternoon staring blankly at my dissertation spreadsheet, achieving nothing except a rearrangement of numbers.

The long awaited trip to Kew Gardens took place this morning. Just as good as I remembered it from a previous visit when I was a lot younger. My favourite place was the Princess of Wales Conservatory with 8 different micro-climates, starting with arid and ending with temperate. The best by far was the tropical wedged inbetween which has a big pond with large, spiky lily pads. There were also some tanks containing seahorses, puffer fish, sting rays and poisonous dart frogs. Sadly, the carnivorous plants area was closed off but we did get to see the Indonesian Corpse Flower and some orchids. I managed to find a rattan in the palm house which was great, Calamus rindorensis I think but already forgotten. Coming back on the tube, we got off at the wrong stop as both too engrossed in phone games. Me playing Plants vs Zombies on iPhone and Max playing Sudoku on my brand new state of the art Nokia, no camera but it has a flash light. And solitaire. We went to Itsu for a late lunch of sushi and have been fat lazing round the warm house till now eating ice cream. Leaving in 4 minutes back on the coach to Southampton

Managed to survive the fearful Batavia flight which turned out to be only half as long as expected. It was extremely creaky and there was a crack in the plastic part of the window. Not a very good take off and we landed super fast with loads of turbulence on the way down. I was shitting it but in hindsight it was actually OK and I’m really pleased we made it. The people here are SO short, like even shorter than your average short person. Our group are all quite tall so there have been a lot of photo requests from the locals and everyone so far has been extremely friendly. The second hotel is again another surprise. The minibus kept slowing down near shacks near the road, so I expected that to be our accommodation. Kendari doesn’t have that many nice hotel-looking buildings. However, this is a big hotel and our room of 5 people this time is amazing. It has a large lounge with a rocking chair, big TV and nice paintings. There is no pool or spa but there is a karaoke machine.

Just got back from a walk outside in the rain. Really warm and large raindrops makes it quite pleasant and it hasn’t been overbearingly hot yet. It was really slippy and Jess fell over and got covered in horrible green slime stuff and broke her flip flop. However, the incident was really funny and she managed to fix the flip flop. The currency, rupiahs, is all in tens of thousands and millions. I think I have about 2 million rupiah which is a bit less than £200. We are sharing with two guys from Portsmouth, Henry nearly had to share a double bed with them, but one is sleeping on the sofa. Me and Lottie have a massive bed can’t wait to sleep but we need to be out by 6.30am tomorrow to catch the next bit of transport: a 5 hour speed boat.

Been travelling for 2 days and we are now in Jakarta at the Resort Hotel near the airport. I’m sitting in the triple share hotel room with Henry and Lottie. Me and Lottie are sharing a rather small double bed. The hotel was completely above expectations; there is an amazing pool with hot and cold Jacuzzi, sauna, steam room and gym. I braved my fear of cold water and managed to go in the cold Jacuzzi once, Louise was the best at it and actually she quite enjoyed it which is a bit odd. Me and Jess shared 3 courses for tea and they were all super yummy, plus serious drink envy over her orange juice and Lottie’s banana milk shake which had vanilla ice cream in it.
I was eyeing up the fellow travellers at Newcastle Airport to see if there were any despicable possible seat next to me candidates. Luckily there were no obese people (salad dodgers). I was hoping to sit next to some quiet middle-aged man who just said hello and maybe an interesting tale or two but nothing more. Instead I ended up sitting next to a young guy called Tom which was a bit of a disaster because he wanted to talk the whole way and I just wanted to watch a film and sleep. Nevertheless, he turned out to be quite fun although we got super drunk on red wine mixed with coke and extra strong vodka oranges served by Yui. There was an amazing air hostman called Guille from Paraguay and we spoke in Spanish to him for a bit.
I sat next to Lottie for the Dubai-Jakarta flight which was possibly one of the longest flights I’ve ever been on as it was too weird time to sleep, yet too tired to read or open my eyes to watch movies. We watched Hercules together which was really good and I also watched How to Tame a Dragon, the black dragon was so cute.
So far Indonesia trip is turning out well after fearful expectations of terrorist attacks and plane crashes. We have the 5 hour Batavia air tomorrow and have to get up at 5am but I’m feeling OK about that one too now seeing as there are so many of us.

Here is the cutie himself.