To be honest, I feel quite ashamed that I can’t even remember the birthdays of my grandpa and grandma clearly. Fortunately, my mon reminded me a few days ago.
To my mind, my grandma is a very traditional Chinese senior who was born and grew up in the coastal countryside throughout her entire life. She was not the youth who was at the forefront of the era having the chance to get a higher education. In her early young age, she got married to my grandpa who was one of her neighbours. As a result, she hasn’t experienced the time of feeling the love that young people are accustomed to these days. Throughout her life, she has experienced the founding of New China, the Cultural Revolution, and reform and opening up, while there have been no major ups and downs in her mind. what she often says are all about us.
I suppose I am the one who is the least aware of my grandma among my peers. Like, I can’t realise that pair of badminton bats in my house was bought by my grandma several years ago, cuz we did not even see her doing any sports. My grandparents have moved to live in the countryside since my cousins growing up. They always said they feel much more happiness than other seniors in the village. Their children are filial and their lives are rich. However, she must be always looking forward to being asked if any kid would like to play badminton with her. Like, she used to be a beautiful woman. In my memories, I have sometimes been asked for seeking some skin cares effectively for freckle removal since I studied in the city, while I did not care it a lot. After working, I used to buy clothing stuff for my grandparents several times, but every time she was not satisfied with them so much. Once I knew the reason from my young sister that she actually likes those clothes. My grandma once told her that she thought these freckle on her face made her not confident even in delicate clothes. I guess she may have accepted the fact that she is getting old, but there has always been a lovely girl in her heart.
Since my childhood, I have not paid much attention to the so-called ‘matter of adults’. So far, they still treat me as a kid and have not completely told me what happened in my family over the years. Now that I think about it, I seem to understand her love for us without expressing it. She was keeping saying it’s not necessary to celebrate her birthday when we brought out the cake. After I tried to persuade her, she pushed me slightly away and went into the bedroom. After a while, she was coming out with tears, and all of the families were enjoying this peaceful joy. My grandma made a wish with for nearly more than two minutes. She just had too many wishes to fulfil. This celebration came too late so that everyone did not know how many candles should be put on the cake so that our love for her was so full and so deep.
I would ‘appreciate’ the epidemic that I could have the opportunity to stay at home with them for such a long time, from the Spring Festival to my grandma’s birthday. But of course, I really hope that it will go as soon as possible and everyone will keep health and return to a normal and happy life.
I had a quite thin body when I was a kid, and I always felt envious when I saw those muscular people. In addition to being more powerful, they always emit more attractive charm. So I have tried to doing fitness since high school. But for many years, the time to walk into the gym has been intermittent, and the real “effective” effort for me in the gym can be said to be almost zero. Even if it went smoothly and gradually, there was no destination for that equipment in vain. But I feel very fortunate that I finally made up my mind and successfully persevered in the end. This should be one of the great things I made recently.
I believe the moment to start fitness was after buying these types of equipment. At that time, I also left something on some social media: “I always think that fitness is a very ritualistic thing. I must choose a good day to start it. For example, on the first day of the year, the first day of the month, or at least the first day of the week. Before that day, a minimum of two sets of fitness clothes and a new pair of shoes should be prepared well. Then, I must own a long-term membership card once I first time come to the gym nearby. The entire process went down, I couldn’t help feeling that I had grown a strong pectoral muscle. ” I admit that I am a fairly ritualistic person.
At the same time, I also prepared a variety of fitness supplements and diets that are ‘very necessary and healthy’ to my mind. I suppose there must be some friends who are just starting to work out, just like me, who are keen to buy fitness supplements without any theoretical support. However, after learning from some popular fitness bloggers and my own feelings over the past few months, I have selected several supplements that I personally believe have significant effects in fitness, including pre-workout, BCAA, creatine, whey and casein. Of course, some pre-workout and BCAA also contain creatine. But on fitness rest days, I think creatine is also helpful for the body properly. When it comes to protein, I was always confused at the time and dosage of protein supplementation. Then I learned that protein powder is just an additional way to supplement your protein and doesn’t need to be treated specially. Now in my daily fitness, in most cases, I would drink whey after the workout, and drink casein every day before going to bed. As for the dosage used, I did not calculate it so accurately. I just basically consumed 70g to 140g of whey and 70g of casein per day. There is a saying that if you add excess protein daily, you will fart more often than usual. According to this funny ‘mechanism’, this amount is quite appropriate for me. As for my daily diet, I have a few requirements for myself. But while living in the studio near the uni, I was very fond of yellow fried eggs with shrimp, one avocado and two hashes, and served with 200ml American, 200ml orange juice and 500ml water. This was the only meal of my day. Almost no starch intake kept me full of energy in my afternoon study. For almost a month, I gained 3kg but lost fat from 18% to 17%. sounds not bad.
After finishing my master’s project, my studio also expired, so I moved to another city not far away. This life was even more singular, with almost nothing for fun except for the gym in almost three months. And I felt very happy that the best gym in the city was only around fifteen minutes away from where I lived. I was very impressed with the door of this gym. It is not necessary to take a card or other credentials. I just need to remember the password to enter and exit. What I want to say is that compared to domestic, the cost here is very low. And the experience in all aspects is far better than most commercial gyms in my country. There are no sales or fitness coaches to promote fitness classes, also no stranger eagers to give you some suggestions on your fitness. In my view, the reason is that people in the two countries have different attitudes towards fitness. The proportion of Britons who consider fitness as part of their daily lives is far greater than that of Chinese people today. Of course, this is just my such subjective feelings from the experience during this time.
Next, I would like to introduce what I had done in the gym those days.
At first, I would do some warm-ups, such as swinging the shoulders with both arms and the upper back using lightweight dumbbells. Then proceed directly to the workouts. I have been doing upper body exercises these months, so dumbbells are essential. The following are my common training methods for different muscle groups. Shoulder: Dumbbell side press, dumbbell front press; Biceps: Attached curl, Up oblique curl, Standing curl; Triceps: Attaching to the back arm flexion and extension; Pectoral muscles: downward slanting birds, downward slanting bench press (the reason why the downward slanting method is compared to lying down and upward slanting, downward slanting can effectively relieve shoulder discomfort due to excessive gravity).
Compared to dumbbells, this following one is more suitable for me to fully practice my upper body. I love it so much.
After workouts, I would run 1 mile on the elliptical machine.
The last step is stretching. I usually stretch my waist and legs. The whole practice costs me around 2 hours.
This was the picture I took when I last time went to the gym in the UK. It was still winter, and the weather was not as cold as usual. The sky is still so low, the sunset in the sky was pink-orange.
Next to the gym is a fine brewery. It was Friday, music and noise came from inside before it was dark. The sunset on Friday evening shows the signal for the party beginning.
This is a basketball court on the way home from the gym. It often rains here. And in the evening on a rare sunny day, more children are playing football here. I can remember when I just moved here, I met a handsome local boy on my way home and played basketball alone. I was very excited to join the game. After that, we had a few chances to play basketball together. At that time I really hoped that he could go to the gym with me. Glad to meet him.
Fitness can be said to be one of the very important things I have learned in the UK. It is a very effective way for me to release stress and build confidence. I think I’ll keep doing it no matter where I am.
I have been really long time no writing something.
Human always gets lazy without any pressure. The last several days in the uni, I suffered from extreme stress due to the final project. Feeling nervous, getting insomnia and even losing my hair… And after that, I have had some travels to Switzerland and Turkey. To be honest, I would really like to share those travelling experience here after finishing each trip. However, as you know, I always get lazy without any pressure.
And after that, I also have something to do actually. I put three the most important goals into my wish list. Til now, one of them I have known is I got the distinction of my master’s degree. So I think it was worth losing so much hair and I also never regret that I had no one trip out of the UK during the academic period. In fact, in the study abroad circle in Europe, many Chinese students often use their free time to travel to neighbouring countries. So basically every day in my social media, there were many photos of different people in different countries, and with positioning. Who does not like to have fun! So my times was basically spent in envy and anxiety. But at least, I am masted in being self-controlled and also got the not bad result. The second one is successfully inviting my mon to the UK to attend my graduation ceremony. It must be a very nice experience. The last goal is about a specification I am trying to apply. It’s about project management. And because of this, I made a decision of my future career plan that I would like to be a software project manager. Indeed, it’s hard. But it’s because it’s hard. So I suppose only after I get this certification, I will be ready for the next work. Also because of this, there are so many thoughts about software project management, daily management and agile I would like to share and discuss. So I promise I will find some time to write them down!
Alright, let’s say something I really feel exciting. I bought a set of suit recently! And this is the first formal suit of my life! Maybe because I didn’t have the opportunity to wear a formal suit in my previous life environment, so I didn’t have a set. When I first wore it, it was like the feeling of stealing my dad’s clothes when I was a kid. I felt that I really grew up at that moment. And it looks nice right!
Nic 