Operation: asian skinny

With every meal I consume coming with a side of rice (cow) I wonder how  Thai people are so damn skinny. It is not that they have food poisoning every second day (yes, I thought that trick may work), nor are they too impoverished to consume three meals a day...I think it just comes down to portion control.

Every lunch, my office manager, Khun Thany, orders us our meals from the local street vendor. Most days it is chicken with excessive chilli, with a side of chilli, Chicken Chilli Basil with extra chilli or as we had today, mixed vegetables with chicken...and chilli. Each is served in a polystyrene container with a heap of rice. Khun Thany lays our a sheet of the Bangkok Post on the coffee table, provides me a spoon and we sit next to eachother on the couch awkwardly trying to speak to each other in a thai/english combo. I manage to finish each meal in half the speed he does and then wander to the closest 7/11 because I am still starving.

The other day Knun Thany asked me why I was always hungry. What can I say to that? Then, when I was eating to FAT FREE yoghurt in the afternoon he said to me "ohhh you are hungry again, Monina brought something for us". Thinking this lovely Monina had dropped off some food for me, I was over the moon. Then Khun Thany produced a set of scales. OH MY GOD. Khun Thany got on them and said he weighed haa sip sam. Surely I know my numbers by now and he didn't just say, 53! He then proceeded to invite me to use the scales.... I advised him that I knew I weighed a shitload more than that! He laughed when he saw the weight...oh dear god. Quote of the day from him was that "Don't worry, I have hardly any legs". It is true that his legs are the size of his arms as he had polio when he was a kid... so yeah...all those kilos, they are definitely in my legs!

As mentioned in my last post, I have joined the gym 'California Wow'. As the name suggests, it is somewhat americanised. Each time I go to the gym it is an interesting experience...this week's interesting class was RPM.  First, a girl rocked up in jeggings and high heels. no shit. How can someone do RPM in heels! Then the whole class was in thai besides "up, turn it up now"...seems they don't know 'down' in English so I swear I did the whole class with higher resistance. Our instructor also liked to sing into the mic in not so beautiful English the lyrics to quality english pop/dance songs. shoot me now. People continued to walk into the class up to about ten minues before the end...seems there is no worry about liability issues here! So after all this, we limp out of the classes - sweaty and red faced - while the thai girls walk out with their make up still on and hardly sweating a bit.

I think I will put it down to the lack of the word 'down' in the instructor's vocabulary.

xxxx