A few months ago, I started experiencing a loss of appetite and it has been really disconcerting.

If you have been following my blog over the years, you might have concluded that I was an irredeemable glutton, such was my penchant to share endless gastronomical conquests, replete with mouthwatering photos.

I have loved food, especially unhealthy junk food, all my life. Barring the occasional loss of appetite due to temporal sickness, depression or jetlag, I’ve always lived to eat and looked forward to every meal with hungry impatience, always dreaming of all sorts of savoury delights rolling around my taste buds.

And then, all of that suddenly gone. Almost overnight.

I woke up one day and found no urge to eat. No food excited me, not even my favourite things, and I have many of those, trust me. One day rolled into two days, which rolled into one month, two months.

Piers would ask me, “If you could have anything to eat right now, anything at all, what would it be?” And I would say, “Nothing at all!”

Putting something into my mouth to chew and swallow started seeming a bit like a chore, even when I was hungry. I did still occasionally enjoy tasty food, but the enjoyment would be at about 30% of what it should have been.

“O.M.G. I’ve died and gone to heaven” became “Okay, this is quite tasty so it’s less of a chore to eat”.

At first I thought it was because I was sick of the food in England, since the variety there is quite limited, and I’ve always craved variety. I thought my appetite would go back to normal once I was back in Singapore and I looked forward to eating all the food I missed.

But I came back to Singapore and nothing changed. Faced with all the best food you could find in the whole wide world, my appetite remain unmoved.

It has been two weeks since I’ve returned to Singapore and I have woken up with dismay every day, no urge to eat, thinking of each day wasted that I’m not scarfing down chwee kueh for breakfast, chicken rice for lunch and chilli crab for dinner. I’m only in Singapore for six weeks.

But I just have no interest in eating, whatsoever.

My mind ruminated all the possible reasons. Prolonged jetlag? General malaise from having finished my course and undecided on my next step? Old age? I did use to wonder as a kid why adults never seemed to want to eat tidbits all day, even when they had all the money and freedom to do so.

And then, today, I suddenly put two and two together and discovered the culprit of my malediction. It is the stupid Omega 3 fish oil capsules I’ve been taking daily since Novemeber last year!

It didn’t cross my mind that something like that would suppress my appetite. I started taking it a month before my exams because our psychology lecturer told us that fish oils supplements have been proven to boost brain function. After that, I continued taking it because I noticed that my skin was getting smoother, too.

I think my appetite might have started buggering off around that time. I had then stocked my snack cupboard to the ridiculous brim for the exam period, expecting it to be all gone within weeks. After my exams, the cupboard remained untouched, still stocked well enough to last me through an apocalypse and a half.

(I don’t have a photo of my snack cupboard in England, but it’s bigger than this one I had in Singapore about 5 years ago.)

After my exams, I would literally not eat until about 7 pm when Piers would get home from work and we would have dinner together. For a couple of months, there were many days in which I ate just one meal a day. (Other days, I would force myself to eat something in the day.) But dinner would be a huge meal, which made up the calories my sedentary lifestyle needed, although it was probably not too good for general health.

So, today, I woke up and I looked at the bottle of fish oil capsules on my table and something clicked in my brain. I got up and Googled “fish oil suppresses appetite” and there was my answer.

While the evidence is compelling — the articles confirm it and my timeline fits — I can’t say for sure that fish oil is the main cause of my lost appetite. I suppose I will have to stop taking it for a while to see if the good ol’ appetite comes back. I only have 3.5 weeks left to eat my fill in Singapore!

If I am right, then I have found a way for me to maintain a healthy diet while at the same time benefit from the multitudes of health benefits of this supplement. I’ve never been able to stick to a healthy diet plan for my junk food cravings always got the better of me.

So, yay?

I do miss foodgasms, though, so now I’m kinda undecided what to do.

By the way, this is not an advertorial for fish oil or a recommendation to try it or whatever. Take it at your own risk and stick with reliable brands!

I’ve been thinking of getting back into running. My Nikes and Adidas fell apart a couple of years ago and I haven’t run since then.

I have been putting off getting new ones because there are so many other things I need to spend money on in England, such as warm clothing and… even warmer clothing.

But I am finally putting my feet down to have them fitted for a new pair of running shoes.

Now, Bournemouth (where I live now) is not a shopping paradise like Singapore is. You can’t just take a short MRT ride to Orchard Road and immediately have access to 500 sporting stores offering pretty much the same stuff but all the brands and models are represented within a 500m radius.

(That means if you don’t like the attitude in one store, you can walk 10 seconds to another store to get exactly the same thing.)

You can even find trained consultants who professionally flirt with you and make you run on gait analysing thingies, then know exactly which pair of shoes you need to instantly improve your speed, stamina and intelligence by 300%.

In Bournemouth, on the other hand, you could choose to walk 10 minutes to a small sports supermarket (and I’m using the term “super” very loosely here) offering products that would make all the fashion policemen in the world vaporise from agony.

And there are two staff members in the whole place, one manning the cash register and the other bustling about pretending to be busy with stock or something.

Or you could drive an hour to a slightly bigger sports supermarket offering similary fashion-offensive products, and there are three staff members manning the cash registers or pretending to be busy.

I chose to go online.

And after a bit of looking around, this caught my eye:

I am partial to Adidas shoes. I had a pair several years ago which were the lightest and most comfortable track shoes you’d ever wear. I almost felt like I was flying in them. Sadly, they didn’t last very long because I wore them almost every day, not just for running but for everyday use.

So I’m hoping to find another pair that feels the same.

I was quite excited to find the pink and black Adidas because I love the colours and design and it’s really hard to find running shoes with nice designs. Most branded running shoes seem to me to be designed for aliens. Which makes them only marginally better than the ones in Bournemouth.

I quickly MSN’ed the link to Piers (who was at work).

I said, “I’m going to buy this!!!”

It took him just one second to reply, “Those trainers look ugly!”

“What?!” I said, “They don’t!”

“They do to me!”

I said, “You’re just saying that cos it’s £75!”

He said, “I am not!”

Then, he was silent for two seconds and came back with this:

“These ones look much nicer!”

I said, “That’s £8!!!!!!!!!!”

“Oh! Are they?” he said, “Wow, that’s good value!”

“Yeah, right,” I told him. “Too bad, cos I need an Adidas.”

Then another three seconds and he sent me this:

“These look nice!”

I said, “Those are man shoes!!”

“And old!”

“Oh, yeah,” he said.

Not to be deterred, he took a few more seconds and came back with this:

“Nice!”

Indeed, it was time to change strategy.

“Thanks,” I said, to lull him into a sense of false security, “I love that.”

He doesn’t know that I have gone ahead to order the £75 Adidas. With his credit card! Mwahahaha.

I suppose he will find out when he receives the bill at the end of the month.

Or when he reads this post, which will presumably be sooner.

But that’s okay because I have suddenly and mysteriously turned into a good cook so I will distract him with some nice Chinese cooking.

He liked the wat tan mai fan and curry puffs I made in the last week, which is saying a lot because men’s taste buds are as good as their fashion senses are bad.

Vermicelli in egg gravy

Curry puffs

I don’t mean all men, of course. Just the ones who equate expensive with ugly and cheap with sublimely gorgeous.

Which is why I will never take a man shopping with me. The best strategy is to go online to buy anything and everything you want while the man is at work. It’s fast and convenient and when the packages arrive, you can feign ignorance. “Goodness me, where did that come from?”

Just remember not to send him any links.

Or if you must, send him eBay links of really cheap stuff to drive him into a permanent state of deep, deep security.

In other news, I am micro-blogging on Facebook more than updating this silly blog so I would respectfully suggest that you go to Facebook for quicker updates on my superfluous life.

Thanks!

Every three months, Master Steve conducts a grading session for the whole class, each grade taking turns to be tested, starting from the lowest grade (that’s me).

I happened to be in England when the grading was on, so decided to join in even though I felt I hadn’t attended enough classes yet.

Here are the senior guys, all in black, doing last-minute practice:

On the right are the newbies, in assorted colours, standing around discussing how nervous they are, lol:

Okay, to be fair, they did get serious after a while of standing around.

The newbies were the biggest group for this grading. There were eight of us! Or seven. Thereabouts. I was the only female in the newbie group.

Standing in formation waiting for further instruction:

Grading starts!

First set of tasks were done in a group. This was to test all our basic moves.

Some moves had to be done with a partner, so the senior students came to partner us. Why did I get the tallest guy when I was the shortest person in the group?!

And then we had to do our Fighting Form individually. That’s a short series of attack and defence moves.

Then back to group again for more basic moves. It just went on forever and ever!

Then it was done and our turn to sit down and watch the rest do their gradings.

Okay, now, some photos of other people! They had more exciting stuff to do than us.

Piers. =P

And now the fun part…

I took a video of Piers chopping wood! Haha. For his grading, he had to do a three-inch punch and a chop.

He had never done it before the grading. Only seen others do it. So he took his time measuring the distance between fist and wood before doing the punch.

He ended up punching through to the floor and gouging out a piece of flesh from a knuckle. Eee!

Here’s the video:

A few more photos of the rest of the gradings.

Piers and I both passed to the next grade, although I don’t know my marks yet. Piers got really high marks! Like 96% or thereabouts. So proud of him!

Hmm, really miss going to classes. My newbie classmates are moving on without me and I’ll miss the next grading because I won’t be in England then!

=(

Did my first Wing Chun grading yesterday after attending only about 10 classes, possibly fewer, didn’t really count.

Grading is conducted every three months, so you go for it when it happens, ready or not, or wait for three more months.

The results will be out in a few days or so, by which time I’ll be back in Singapore, boohoo.

It’s been fun! Would have to continue in Singapore, cos I can’t lose to Piers too much! Am currently three grades behind him.

Watching the seniors do their grading was really cool. I have tons of photos, badly taken ones cos the room was backlit as you can see, but I’ll share them when I get back to Singapore.

Am leaving in two days. Yes, finally. No more extending this time, haha. Got meetings and interviews and stuff lined up back home so I think if I still don’t go back, I will get killed.

See you all in Singapore soon!

Piers took me to Wing Chun class on Thursday. It was so fun seeing a room full of caucasians doing an Asian martial art.

They looked really good.

When Piers announced in Plurk last year that he was going to take up Wing Chun, everyone was so excited for him and many jokes were made at his expense.

To be honest, I never expected him to last so long (eight months now) but he did, going for classes two to three times a week.

I think he’s really good, from the moves he showed me in class. (But he’s one of the more junior students, so he can get a whole lot better. Most of the others have been doing Wing Chun for years, some over a decade.)

This was at the Lun Kuen Academy of Wing Chun in Poole (which is next to Bournemouth). The founder, Stephen Lyons, is a descendent disciple of Ip Man. The lineage goes like this:

Ip Man > Ip Chun (Ip Man’s oldest son) > Samuel Kwok > Stephen Lyons

Here’s Steve demonstrating some basic moves on Piers.

Apparently, he’s very, very good, having trained in martial arts since the early 1970s, and he’s personally recognised by Grandmaster Ip Chun as a Wing Chun Master.

But what’s more impressive is that he runs the school not for profit but for passion. He only charges £5 per two-hour class and holds them three times a week. So very nice!

I was lost in class half the time. Steve would show a short, sparring sequence with one of his instructors, then the class would get into pairs and practise on each other.

Piers said he was also lost in the beginning but, after a while, maybe a month or two, it started to click and then he got it.

I can’t imagine that happening for me.

It was really fun, though. In just half an hour, I learnt the basics of how to effectively defend myself while at the same time strike at my opponent to incapacitate him.

Of course, it takes a lot of practise to get good at it so you can apply your knowledge and not get killed when someone comes charging at you for real. In class, your opponent will pause mid punch and let you respond slow-mo if you’re a bit retarded, like me.

I think I shall take up Wing Chun when I get back to Singapore. I quite enjoyed my first class and look forward to learning more.

I will probably go for more classes before returning to Singapore, but I’ll feel better when I’m in a class where no one knows me and won’t laugh at my clumsiness and incoordination.

While sparring with Piers, I laughed in embarrassment every time I did something that looked stupid, so that was very unimpressive. But he was very kind and let me chop his throat (one of the moves I learnt) over and over again.

Well, I suppose there are some benefits to having a friend in class.