I took a tape measure to myself this morning, despite last Saturday’s binge with friends which took us from Banapple to Dairy Queen to Mexicali and finally to Starbucks. To my surprise I measured vital stats of 33-26-33. The last time I took my measurements, I was at 34-27-35. For someone who’s been in the Battle of the Bulge for the past six years — in active combat, so to speak, for the last two years — it’s big news. Well, never mind that it spells trouble for the “twin peaks” (I still have enough, and at least my hips are the same measurement).

Thing is, I haven’t even been trying particularly hard. I have, however, started to internalize my job as a group exercise instructor more. Les Mills‘s push this year is all about fighting “globesity”; its instructors are “warriors” in the battle against sedentary lifestyle. This quarter’s launches have really challenged my fitness, and in the build-up to the launches I had to be wiser about food choices and lifestyle so that I could look the part.

I told a friend today, “Do what you need to do to perform well. If you get smaller, but you’re still healthy, that’s OK.”

Tags: Les Mills, Fitness

Someone landed on my website by searching for “why english necessary for filipino student”. I’ll let pictures paint the thousand words I need to explain why. (By the way, “Fugly Filipino English” is the result of that search.)

No Parking: Drainage Under CONSTRUCTED

You can use new bill and old bill. Please don’t use very old, wrinkled and torn bill. If you do, you may lose your bill and you can’t return your bill.

Beware of Falling DIBRES

Now, if you don’t understand why these photos show how problematic English usage is in this country, then clearly there IS a need for Filipino students to take English subjects.

Until the time comes when Mandarin is chosen as the new language for international business, English is still the language we Filipinos communicate with to the rest of the world. We might as well get good at it.

Tags: English language, Philippines

Fitness First Group Exercise held our first quarterly workshop of the year (we have two) at Fitness First Megamall last Saturday. It’s my third quarterly since I began instructing back in second quarter 2007. While I’ve had to cut back on participating in master classes of other programs (I used to attend BODYCOMBAT), that doesn’t mean I was less excited about the whole thing. It just means that instructing eight classes a week takes its toll on my body and I didn’t want to push myself too hard. I just wanted to kick around with my fellow instructors and experience the upcoming releases as a participant.

BODYBALANCE is once again innovating, and while I don’t want to go too much into detail, we have a lot of emphasis on spinal mobility and moving with the breath. The mat’s also horizontal for the entire class, so at least for this release no more messy mat transitions and people can simply focus on body part, direction, and intensity. Presenters Ben Tang, Jacqueline Wong, and our very own Peewee Sanchez led the BODYBALANCE team through the class, and though we’ve all been teaching for a year or more, we still felt strongly challenged. Watch out! Ü

BODYJAM instructors: aren’t we stylin’?

The weekend’s highlight was, however, the BODYJAM master class. Jam is one of our flagship programs at Fitness First and it’s eye-catching, so instead of the class being held inside the club, we Jammers were herded into a cordoned-off space at the Megamall Central Atrium.

Basically, it was a massive demo for Fitness First, with over 50 instructors seeing release 45 for the first time. Presented by Clark Amaba and Tania Sibon, the musical and dance genres in this release are as varied as the styles of clothing we all wore to class. (That’s me in the front row, by the way.) It felt like a massive dance party all throughout, and that Butterfly Jump is going to torture me all through our practice sessions leading up to the launches in July.

We all returned to the club, and some of us were signed up to do BODYVIVE. It’s a very new program from Les Mills and Fitness First Philippines is projected to launch it sometime in the last quarter of the year, so we got a taste of it. Combining cardio fitness, resistance training (with ball and band), and groovy retro music, it’s a light and fun workout. But after Balance and Jam, it left me pretty much knackered.

Now comes the hard part — learning the choreography!

To learn more about BODYJAM and BODYBALANCE, check out the official Les Mills website.

Tags: Fitness First Philippines, Les Mills, Group Exercise, BODYJAM, BODYBALANCE

These days, dancing is a major part of my life, and in the absence of any assignments from LAC, it is my life. But how far back do we go, dancing and I?

My first formal training in dance came one summer at the Halili-Cruz School of Ballet in Quezon City. I was five years old and my mom enrolled me in ballet classes to rid me of my pigeon toes and general lack of body awareness. She succeeded on the first count, but I continued to be awkward and gangly through my teens. (Maybe if I’d been able to continue with ballet, I might still be able to touch my feet to the top of my head — that was my favorite floor exercise in ballet school.) Due to finances, I didn’t continue with ballet.

I always participated in school dance numbers, but I felt like I was too old to get better at dance even though I desperately wanted to. Still, watching tapes of Flashdance and Footloose inspired me to go leaping through our bungalow back in Paranaque doing pirouettes and grand jetes. (It’s also why I have a weak left ankle because I sprained it on a bad landing.)

Interesting how similar their poster art is.

When I entered college, people were raving about the Street Dance and Social Dance P.E. classes, which were notoriously hard to get enrolled in due to lack of slots. I never got into the Street Dance classes, but one summer I took up Social Dance and learned four dance styles — cha-cha, waltz, tango, and swing. Unfortunately for me, my partner didn’t know how to lead so I never learned how to follow. It was I who would remember the choreography and walk us through it.

P.E. was only required for four semesters in college, so I got increasingly less physical activity and ate more and more junk food. By the time I was in my last year something had to be done about my weight. My mom discovered that Music One was selling MTV The Grind Workouts, so she snapped up a copy of the first of the series, and we bought the next three as well. I simply followed along, dancing along with (not-really-a-dancer) host Eric Nies through oldskool hip-hop, Latin-flavored cardio, and whatever else the screen presented. Yes, laugh all you want if you thought the choreography wasn’t all that, but having actual choreography to dance was preferable to endless squats in a Buns of Steel video. It didn’t feel like work. And at least it was more up-to-date than ballroom dancing!

Then, of course, I saw Honey on video. I absolutely loved the movie, even though critics and dance aficionados hated it. It reminded me of Flashdance, of my old yearning to dance better. Opportunities presented themselves slowly, but I took them — from attending freestyle hip-hop, BodyJam, and Nike Rockstar classes, to competing, to training with the Stylettos, who helped me sharpen my technique and showed me even more how to dance with emotion and soul.

I’m glad I get to teach BodyJam classes every day, and I’m working hard to get better. I may not have the technique of someone who’s been dancing since Day 1, but I think I’ve got the heart of one.

Tags: Dance

I have loved LOLcats ever since I stumbled upon I Can Has Cheezburger last year while researching the O RLY? phenomenon.

Okay, backtracking a little if I haven’t lost you in the maze of Internet jargon… A LOLcat is a picture of an animal captioned with phrases written in a corrupted form of English called “LOLspeak” akin to baby talk (as if the animal were trying to speak English as a foreign language). Sometimes it doesn’t have to be a picture of an animal that gets captioned; in the case of LOLPilipinas, pictures of Filipino celebrities and famous personalities were captioned in reference to current events, to humorous effect.

Well, these days I find myself thinking in LOLspeak while going about everyday life…

And now you know I spend too much time on the Internet. Ü

Tags: LOLcats

The main reason I bought my EEE PC is its portability. I can slide it into a handbag, travel on the MRT, and arrive safely at the LAC office with no one being the wiser as to my precious cargo. Ü I can also now bring it with me on my travels — I had it during my most recent trip to Boracay and was able to blog from the island using free WiFi networks.

That’s actually my favorite part about having my EEE: being able to use WiFi. Everyone knows I’m a big fan of Robinsons Malls because they offer free WiFi in certain areas within the malls. It’s not really enough to go crazy with downloads, but if you just want to check Facebook while sipping your Ice Blended drink at the Coffee Bean, it’s great!

Then last month our home desktop crashed, leaving us with nowhere to turn but our laptops (and sub-notebooks). We eventually got tired of having to share one single LAN cable, so yesterday my dad bought a wireless router and I set up a network here at home.

Now my sister and I can be online at the same time, and in our own rooms, or in the living room, or upstairs in the attic (which is where I’m writing this right now). It’s really convenient. All we have to worry about is getting so addicted that our mom has to message us over YM: “Dinner’s ready. Can you come down to the dining room now?”

Tags: WiFi, Asus EEE