For dinner, we went to a restaurant called db Bistro Moderne Singapore, at the Marina Bay Sands to celebrate a friend’s Birthday. The restaurant, part of the Daniel Boulud empire, specializes in burgers. I had the amazing “Original db Burger”, a Sirloin Burger filled with Braised Short Ribs and Foie Gras. Heaven. Oh, and their Pretzel Rolls – wow!!

I did two batches of beans that I’ll be freezing and eating for the next 2 weeks or so. First, a batch of Orange Lentils (seasoned of course), and second, a simple batch of Black Beans – plain.

Tumeric Orange Lentils

I added about 400mL of Lentils, and about 2 times that of water. Tumeric powder, Chinese Five Spice, Coriander powder, Cumin powder, black pepper, and tons of garlic.This batch will give me enough for 18 meals!

Boring Black Beans

These are exactly that – boring, but flexibly useful.

Dried, and then frozen, these should last about 2 weeks.

I especially like the alternative to conventional wisdom he presents (based on clinical research) on how Insulin affects fat storage and weight loss, more-so than Calories. To augment what I am learning from this book, I’ve started reading The Primal Blueprint (written by the guy behing Mark’s Daily Apple) which goes into a great more detail on body chemistry and how certain foods affect your chemistry and longterm weight gain, or loss. Like, for instance, did you know that Cholesterol, by itself, may not be all that bad?

“Excessive insulin is also now believed to be a central catalyst in the development of atherosclerosis. Insulin promotes platelet adhesiveness (sticky platelets clot more readily) and the conversion of macrophages (a type of white blood cell) into foam cells, which are the cells that fill with cholesterol and accumulate in arterial walls.” from The Primal Blueprint, Kindle location 1912

The biggest thing I’ve learned from these two books (they really complement each other) is how Grains, both processed and unprocessed, aren’t as healthy as we have been lead to believe.

I began my “eating habits change” (I don’t want to call this a “diet” – because of the connotations associated with the term and high rate of failure) 2 weeks ago and have already seen and felt results. I am down almost 6kgs (at least, before yesterday’s cheat day!). I’ll happily stick with this and see how far I can go. My goal: 30 kgs of body fat in 6 months.

Each day I feel a more consistant amount of energy throughout the day – most likely a result of bringing my blood glucose/insulin levels into more consistant levels with the sharp reduction of crap carb intake during the day. (Oh and an elimination of weekday beers).

This is some of the awesome healthy stuff I’ve been eating:

Sadly, I’ve had to give up some of the stuff I have grown to love: Bread, potatoes, deepfried breaded foods, sugary stuff, and beer (at least for 6 days of the week). But, It really isn’t that hard – healthy stuff, much to my surprise, can actually taste excellent!

I hope to continue writing entries in this blog to detail my progress and what I am doing to support said progress. Until Next time…

Things around the city seem to be pretty much the same – the car ban is still in effect and they still x-ray bags in the subway… I imagine these measures, and many more, will remain until at least the end of the Paralympic Games in September.

The question I have now, is whether our restaurant on the Siemens campus here has green beans (bian dou) and tofu (doufu).  During the Olympics, these two items (and maybe more, I don’t know) were not available “due  to the Olympics”.   Don’t ask me where the logic is here…

I’ll check during lunch today if I can get some toufu.  Let’s see if they try giving me the excuse “because of the Olympics” again – I’ll shoot back last night it ended.  So where’s the toufu?

BTW, I am a bit late, we saw some more events since the baseball photos I uploaded last week.  On Friday, we went to an Athletics event in the “birds nest” and Sunday, we went to the Men’s Volleyball final!  That was an exciting match!  Will upload photos in due time.

In my office building, there’s a sort-of cafeteria where there are many different kinds of food stalls, and you put money on a charge card.

Well, apparently, the landlord is kicking these guys out (the whole operation) because they claim they haven’t paid rent since moving in.  After getting off the elevator, the landlord posted a big A2-sized notice stating what’s going on and how today is the last day!  They are also making announcements every 5 minutes or so informing the patrons to hurry up and get their money back.  I can tell the landlord is damn pissed!

Of course, the cafeteria management is claiming otherwise, but nonetheless, there was a mad dash to reclaim the stored money – big mash up of people at the counter, tempers flaring, kind of an interesting situation.

I got my RMB 103 back, so I’m happy.

So, now, 100+ people don’t have a job to go to tomorrow, and my colleagues and I will have to find alternative ways of getting lunch (along with the rest of the building occupants).  All around ma fan, no?

Even though this was a last minute, unexpected trip, I managed to get a relatively acceptable air ticket on Northwest Airlines – Round trip Beijing to Baltimore BWI (via Narita and Minneapolis), RMB 6,700 inclusive of tax.  Not to shabby.

And, I’ll be sharing the first leg to Narita with H.  We’re going to do a food experiment, where he gets the Kosher breakfast (there are Asian Jews, you know…) and I get the Muslim breakfast (no comment).

I suppose a good result of this trip, if there can be one, is the what was going to be a 9-day work week* (due to Chinese New Year) is now back down to a 5 day work week (Friday Feb 1 through Tuesday Feb 5) – I then fly to Hong Kong on the 6th.

Unfortunately, the Narita to Minneapolis, and return, flights are on the older 747′s, which means, us slaggers in the back (economy class) don’t get individual TV monitors.  ugh…

*Oh, to my friends who don’t know what is going on with the 9-day work week, Chinese New Year is a “Golden Wee” holiday, where we get 3 days off, plus the weekend, plus a shifted weekend, that results in a 7-day straight holiday.  The shifted weekend is made up either before of after the holiday.  In this case, we make it up on February 2 and 3.