Self challenges

It is one of my good habits that I would try something new to challenge myself every year. This year challenges include hot yoga and couchsurfing. My mom has always been into yoga and she taught me and my sister to do it as well. At first, we both were rather skeptical. Glaring at her doing those yoga postures, I couldn't help wondering if it would be physically engaging at all. What a wimp and girly exercise. It turned out my sister and I were quite wrong, and we really enjoyed it. My shoulder pain from sitting down in front of a computer went away gradually after I started practising yoga. Then I stepped it up and tried hot yoga. It was both physically and mentally challenging that I almost fainted in my first class. Certainly, I have come a long way from that and it does really helps getting my body toned for the upcoming Australian summer!

Stretch and keep smiling (and sweating) :)

Let's surf

Recently, I had a road trip to Canberra en route to Sydney. The initial plan was that I would be staying with my old high school mate but it turned out that he couldn't host me. Couchsurfing suddenly came to my mind since I didn't want to stay in a hotel and would like a local to point me around. After searching on a couchsurfing web, there was a interesting profile of a female student and she had a number of good references from people who stayed at hers. We met in front of her place which was house shared between five other people, including her boyfriend and a cat. It was a great experience meeting new people in a total unfamiliar environment. I ended up staying with her again on my way back to Melbourne. We had great conversations over drinks about her sexuality, namely intersex, her open relationship with her current boyfriend, me being gay and how her friend's gaydar detected me etc. Sometimes, good friendships are built over some alcohol and pots. C'est la vie!