Taken on my phone camera from one of my site visits...as well as I finally saw the ocean in the UK at last in my last cycle run. We were out east right up to Southend on Sea. So reminds me of NZ except that they have beach huts over here which is quite nifty to dump your clothes before heading out.

Work load UP, training load UP, eating UP. Hardly have time to be online lately but all is good.

And I still manage to squeeze time to make chocolate truffles! heh.Will post about that later...

It's similar to NZ's women's expo but different in a way that the people here display different products...but all for the main objective(s) :)

Held at Earl's Court 2 building, this expo is happening starting today till the weekend. I wanted to go last year but couldn't get tickets. As well as me being super stingy, I manage to get them for £5 instead of the usual £15 if I go today.


It was quite a great night as it wasn't too crowded either.


There were different type of stores but all divided to sections mainly broken into career and motivation, beauty, pamper, active and not forgetting food..in which I hung around that area more often for the free samples :P. There were also places to hear motivational talks, how to lose weight talks, and a cooking show area too. It wasn't super huge, it was just enough to cover for 2 hours unless you're willing to line up for a cheap massage or pedicure.


I shall not bore you on the amount of things I found from but there were 3 highlights from the shows. One being this Awesome Monitor where it can monitor 5 things: Calories intake and eaten, how many steps you take (pedometer), how much you sweat and how you sleep. It even knows when you wake up in the middle of the night! Very good technology since it was long applied in the hospital and is now commercialised.

Another cool thing from the show was how food was made gluten free, oil free and organic. Love the pure chocolate samples, the muesli, the seed snacks (they've produce apricot kernel that tastes ultimately delicious as a snack) and they have also got lactose free milk! Yumm.

Last but not least, there were quite cool nifty kitchenware in which I so wish I could buy such as a blender and stove in one. It's pretty much a blender, but has a heat feature. Gosh, tefal was there and a kitchen and knife company were there too.

As the weather brightens up at last!

Work load shot up to the roof last week but I'm not complaining at all, as well as been keeping up with training with extra precaution since I feel my old injuries are coming back.

Spent almost the entire Saturday doing the 40mile bike run as we didn't know the route well and we were doing it in a group, hence waiting up for others to catch up. It was amazing just to run through the country side getting fresh air, passing through farm lands, mansions, cottages, and bare fields for a change. Things like that is just worth getting up early for.

But yes, I had a klutz moment where I swore I slammed both brakes when the lady in front of me slowed down but somehow my bike just flipped over and I fell straight to the ground with my chin ><. Thank GOD for the jacket collar that I landed on, if not I'd be bleeding really really badly. Oh and yes, the bike was fairly new as it was bought the night before. But hey, I love it because it's so much lighter. Yay.


Anyway, it was then off to a Turkish restaurant for dinner where we went to Sofra to try out. T'was really good as my dish came with small portions of everything. Check out here for more of my reviews bout the restaurant.

And it has actually begun awhile back but thought I'd write something to give you a 'taste' of the life in a day of HG! Last week was supposedly Week 12 out of Week 21 of my 'training' programme to end of April, so yeah...here goes:

• Lunchtime - Boot camp aka Circuit training (press ups, sit ups, squats etc)
• After work - Spins for 45minutes, stretch 15 minutes

• Lunchtime - Spins (my fav killer instructor)

• Lunchtime - Circuits again
• After work - Spins (my fav killer instructor, don't know how he can do it)

• Lunchtime - BREAK, sauunnnaaaa weeeeee

• Lunchtime - tone (like aerobics classes but using weights)

• Woke up at 8am to make an appointment with Fitness First for spin classes
• Spin classes at 9am
• Abworkout from 9.45am to 10am
• Wanted to cycle out but it started raining, so I did an hour on the bicycle machine (ho hum so boring)

• I went into another Fitness First gym wanting to go for Boot Camp and wanting to cycle but the weather was just crap again.
• Did something like Taibo instead for an hour
• An hour on the cross trainer to kill time before Spins
• Spins for 45 minutes, then ab workout for another 15 minutes
• Started at 11.30am, finished by 2.30pm knackered
• Came straight home to bake and decorate for cupcake competition

First training on the road this Saturday! 30mile bike run, am excited :)

=)

This time we went to a bigger mountain in which we got lost on the first day! If you look at the map we are staying on the bottom left and on the first day we went as far as to the bottom right! haha.

The mountain this round is much higher but it wasn't superbly high as we thought coz the peak only has runs for advance skiers. Kinda ripped off in one way. But hey, can't complain when 4 of the 5 days was sunshine, had a nice 'panda' tan on the way back and waking up to exercise everyday is what everyone can dream for.

Not forgetting fresh water and french pastries everyday...Mmm, our trip this round was much more 'comfortable' with cab services taking us to the accomodation, cable cars and escalators to bring us around, train tickets to the airtport instead of the Easybus and we even manage to come back earlier than expected to avoid the school holiday traffic =).

As well as I have gotten much better with my snowboarding (almost tempted to try jumps) and I can't complain with runs going as long as 40mins and as wide as 3 football fields! T'was a great time just to get away in the snowy slopes.

Check out the pictures and videos as they say more of course ;) . Here's one for a teaser:

Alpe d'huez, France - Jumper in action from Gjin Ow on Vimeo.

Before getting into details, I actually took the initiative to post up my Singapore photos. Feel free to have a look.

Yes, after a week's work, I was off again to another Sunny place called Florida, particularly Orlando with dad. The trip was an Eye Opener in general to everything as well as being in the States adds more to that word summed up above.

I could summarise evenmore about Orlando: BIG. Everything here is in such a big scale from Cars to roads, to food, people and room size! We had 2 queen beds!! As well as I had to actually lean forward to avoid I don't spill in the sink. Funny thing is that the bath tub was smaller than usual. Haha.

So the whole trip was kinda balanced between going to the conference and having or trying to explore Orlando. The weather was quite interesting with it being super warm when I first arrived to flipping cold where I had to wear 2 jackets. So here's the brief timetable of what I did:

Sat (23/01) - arrived, registered with ASHRAE where dad had to walk about 10mins to get to one side from the Resort from the middle of the entrance. Headed to Member's night out where dad introduced to me yonks of his friends. He didn't realised food was available so I had yummy buffet that were in massive sizes. Sausages, hamburgers, salad, mini dessert cakes and complimentary drinks. People complaint that it was abit too expensive and the food wasn't that great.

Sun (24/01) - went to explore the Resort abit before I headed to my first talk that didn't have a conclusion. Was confusing and frustrating but the speaker was part of the WHO so it was an honor to actually see him speak. Went off to walk again to a nearby supermarket (that took about 15mins to get there) and pretty much fell in love with the offers. Wished I stayed here longer. Went to another talk after that and some casual meeting event before I met up with dad again. We had a Region's 13 dinner at Ming Court Restaurant. Oh Malaysia belongs to Region's 13. Apparently there were other people from other Regions joined in so it was kinda awkward but glad that I sat to a nice lady at the same time.

Mon (25/01) - Went out to check the Expo. Massive but was kinda worried about dad more so as he was sneazing and sniffing. Got a few freebies and there were 2 things that were super interesting. Will stop here as it may bore you hehe. The rest of the day was spent at the shopping mall similar to Dressmart but super cheaper. I didn't buy much except looked for gifts.

Tues (26/01) - Went to a couple of Technical conferences and visited Florida's Solar Energy Centre in the afternoon.

Wed (27/01) - Went to check out Universal Studios until we headed to the aiport in the afternoon. Was trying super hard to refrain myself from getting too many cute souveniers.

Was back early in the morning and went straight to work after only 3 hours of sleep. Yes, crazy but need the monie :P. Plan to give a presentation about my trip as it was an eye opener to not just me but everyone else. I guess this event doesn't really apply to the people here and I'll see how far I've practice my 'persuasion' skills at the presentation ;).

Now am back for a week before I scoot off again to the Snowy Alps for a nice snowy break! muahaha. Oh and yes, I didn't realise what I got myself involved to when I signed up and paid for a fundraising trip. Cycling from London to Paris in 5 days...that's 300miles in total, 60 miles a day! So glad it's not a race and from the way I time myself, I can finish each day in 5 hours when I have the energy. So I'll be busy training (have started this week) and eating more to get myself up to pace.

Thanks again to me couzie for her bike. I shall take extra care of it plus tweak it so it is extra comfortable when she gets it back ;)

Check out the videos and photos here for Orlando.