Earlier tonight, I went Broadway Dancing.
Like Jane Austen's Mr Darcy, I don't often dance. I don't think moving my feet on a Dance Dance Revolution gamepad or jamming to MC Hammer in the privacy of my own home counts- so it's been a while since I've submitted myself to public humiliation of the dance-dance kind.
My friend Kris had gotten us a six-class pass from a silent auction, so off we went to the dance studio for a class of Broadway dance. We figured it wouldn't be too challenging as compared to say, Argentinian tango- surely Broadway just involved some mild clicking of fingers and stepping of heels?
WRONG.
We went at Beginners Level. Y'know, the EASY level. I hate to think of what intermediate, let alone advanced, must look like.
As soon as the class started, the entire group of 40+ people suddenly launched into an explosive, maddeningly fast routine which involved not just finger-clicking, but stepping and swinging and pointing and oh dear God, we were terrified.
Swing, step.
Fuuuuck.
Swing, step, cross, lift, point, step...
(Woman on my left glares at me as I almost swing into her)
Step, up, step back...
(Kris, from my right: "We're dooooomed....DOOOOOOMED....")
Our instructor was a short, perky blonde thing with too much rhythm and too much bare midriff.
Kris and I somehow stumbled our way through superfast routines involving Cabaret, A Chorus Line and Saturday Night Fever, whilst all the practised members of the group glared at us (possibly because after screwing up the moves, we went into fits of quiet wailing.)
Oh, and they made us pretend to have a bowler hat and do chorus line dancing, which was exceptionally bad as it involved flailing of arms and it took everything in my power not to injure any other innocent dancers in the vicinity.
Next on our list is hip hop/funk. Surely pretending to be cool and black will not be as hard as pretending to have a imaginary bowler hat in a chorus line...
Monday, July 7, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Detoxing Is For Chumps
I got back from Sydney earlier tonight, after one week of sunny bliss, massive overspending (mostly on copious amounts of food) and the company of two very, VERY patient friends.
And yes, I should probably be sleeping but today they had this COFFEE FESTIVAL at the Rocks. They had Segafredo lattes for only ONE DOLLAR. ONE DOLLAR!!!
(Thus, why I cannot sleep.)
Anyway...I will not regale you with the full details of my trip tonight, because I probably need some measure of shut-eye (I'm going for a Broadway dancing class tomorrow night...I haven't taken a dance class since my early attempts at hip hop in second year so this is going to be highly amusing...) but there is just one aspect of my trip which I just had to share.
Our 'detox'.
On Friday night, the three of us (myself, Kris and Katherine) hit the streets of Sydney. We went for cocktail happy hour first (two for one!) then trotted off to this pizzeria/gelataria where we had some Baileys and Kahlua, then ate our way through two pizzas and then one extremely large Kahlua soaked gelato sundae each.
Anyway...after our sundaes we made a slightly drunken pact to detox for 24 hours. This was probably not the smartest idea in the world because we cut out every single food group from the food pyramid except the fruit and vegetable part. Oh, and salt. In fact, this was a stupid idea, period, except we shook on it and agreed not to renege on the pact unless it was a mutual, unanimous decision to break it.
To use the old defence, it seemed like a good idea at the time. We had been eating pretty badly for the past five days, and ingested quite a lot of junk and a fairly decent amount of Strongbow. AND IT WAS NOT MY IDEA. Never promise to do anything without:
(a) being 100% sober
(b) clarifying on what exactly the pact entails
(Are we beginning to see why I almost failed Contract Law last year?)
Anyway, we met up with one of Kristine's friends in the city afterwards. We celebrated our last detox-free hours by shooting tequila. As the clock ticked into 12:01 a.m into the first minute of our detox, Kris' friend sat there with a giant brownie sundae calmly digging in with a spoon. (To be honest, our massive dessert at the gelataria meant that we weren't tempted anyway.)
The next morning, Katherine and I decided that the best way to cope with our self-imposed detox of stupidity was to sleep through as many hours of it as possible. We woke up at 11:30 a.m. Kristine had already gone to breakfast with her cousin, and faced terrible trials of self-restraint (which I am sure she will cover in her blog at some point) and came back with fruit. Lots of fruit.
We each had a lovely little fruit salad for lunch. It wasn't exactly the same as ripping into a steaming hunk of meat but we coped quite nicely until we wandered down to the markets, where they were selling hot waffles, hot dogs with fried onions and fresh pastries.
This was the first test of our detox.
The only thing we were able to eat at the market was corn-on-the-cob. This was safe as it involved no dairy, no meat, no salt and no sugar. Although we could have probably chowed down on some vintage threads...they probably would've been full of fibre. We ordered three corns-on-a-stick:
Woman: Would you like butter on that?
(Dairy was forbidden. Thus, so was butter.)
Us (somewhat morosely): No.
Woman: Would you like salt?
(Salt was also forbidden. In fact, anything that made FOOD WORTH EATING was forbidden)
Us (even more morosely): No.
Woman: Would you like pepper?
Us: No.
(This was merely a taste preference. Pepper was allowed.)
Kath and I were so grateful to have something that wasn't cold, or fruit, that we went back for another one.
We last five and half waking hours into the detox.
Then we cracked.
At the bus stop, we formally reneged on our pact, with the words 'screw this' featuring prominently. Food was made to be ENJOYED.
Detoxing is for chumps.
I broke my detox in spectacular fashion. It involved fries, schnitzel and cream sauce. Kris had been fantasising about bacon for the past 15.5 hours so she broke hers with that. Kath had raisin toast with butter and jam. On the way home, we picked up another bottle of Strongbow. So in the end, we broke our detox in STYLE.
Hours spent in detox: 15.5
Hours spent awake in detox: 5.5
Conclusion: Detoxing sucks balls. We only did it as a little personal test, because we've never ever dieted at all and we wanted to see if we could get through 24 hours of excessive-veganness without breaking it or stabbing each other with forks.
And in the end, we could not.
Sometimes, failure is a very, very good thing.
And yes, I should probably be sleeping but today they had this COFFEE FESTIVAL at the Rocks. They had Segafredo lattes for only ONE DOLLAR. ONE DOLLAR!!!
(Thus, why I cannot sleep.)
Anyway...I will not regale you with the full details of my trip tonight, because I probably need some measure of shut-eye (I'm going for a Broadway dancing class tomorrow night...I haven't taken a dance class since my early attempts at hip hop in second year so this is going to be highly amusing...) but there is just one aspect of my trip which I just had to share.
Our 'detox'.
On Friday night, the three of us (myself, Kris and Katherine) hit the streets of Sydney. We went for cocktail happy hour first (two for one!) then trotted off to this pizzeria/gelataria where we had some Baileys and Kahlua, then ate our way through two pizzas and then one extremely large Kahlua soaked gelato sundae each.
Anyway...after our sundaes we made a slightly drunken pact to detox for 24 hours. This was probably not the smartest idea in the world because we cut out every single food group from the food pyramid except the fruit and vegetable part. Oh, and salt. In fact, this was a stupid idea, period, except we shook on it and agreed not to renege on the pact unless it was a mutual, unanimous decision to break it.
To use the old defence, it seemed like a good idea at the time. We had been eating pretty badly for the past five days, and ingested quite a lot of junk and a fairly decent amount of Strongbow. AND IT WAS NOT MY IDEA. Never promise to do anything without:
(a) being 100% sober
(b) clarifying on what exactly the pact entails
(Are we beginning to see why I almost failed Contract Law last year?)
Anyway, we met up with one of Kristine's friends in the city afterwards. We celebrated our last detox-free hours by shooting tequila. As the clock ticked into 12:01 a.m into the first minute of our detox, Kris' friend sat there with a giant brownie sundae calmly digging in with a spoon. (To be honest, our massive dessert at the gelataria meant that we weren't tempted anyway.)
The next morning, Katherine and I decided that the best way to cope with our self-imposed detox of stupidity was to sleep through as many hours of it as possible. We woke up at 11:30 a.m. Kristine had already gone to breakfast with her cousin, and faced terrible trials of self-restraint (which I am sure she will cover in her blog at some point) and came back with fruit. Lots of fruit.
We each had a lovely little fruit salad for lunch. It wasn't exactly the same as ripping into a steaming hunk of meat but we coped quite nicely until we wandered down to the markets, where they were selling hot waffles, hot dogs with fried onions and fresh pastries.
This was the first test of our detox.
The only thing we were able to eat at the market was corn-on-the-cob. This was safe as it involved no dairy, no meat, no salt and no sugar. Although we could have probably chowed down on some vintage threads...they probably would've been full of fibre. We ordered three corns-on-a-stick:
Woman: Would you like butter on that?
(Dairy was forbidden. Thus, so was butter.)
Us (somewhat morosely): No.
Woman: Would you like salt?
(Salt was also forbidden. In fact, anything that made FOOD WORTH EATING was forbidden)
Us (even more morosely): No.
Woman: Would you like pepper?
Us: No.
(This was merely a taste preference. Pepper was allowed.)
Kath and I were so grateful to have something that wasn't cold, or fruit, that we went back for another one.
We last five and half waking hours into the detox.
Then we cracked.
At the bus stop, we formally reneged on our pact, with the words 'screw this' featuring prominently. Food was made to be ENJOYED.
Detoxing is for chumps.
I broke my detox in spectacular fashion. It involved fries, schnitzel and cream sauce. Kris had been fantasising about bacon for the past 15.5 hours so she broke hers with that. Kath had raisin toast with butter and jam. On the way home, we picked up another bottle of Strongbow. So in the end, we broke our detox in STYLE.
Hours spent in detox: 15.5
Hours spent awake in detox: 5.5
Conclusion: Detoxing sucks balls. We only did it as a little personal test, because we've never ever dieted at all and we wanted to see if we could get through 24 hours of excessive-veganness without breaking it or stabbing each other with forks.
And in the end, we could not.
Sometimes, failure is a very, very good thing.
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