Work vs Exercise

I decided to talk about this topic today basically because my friends noticed that I have been gaining weight and some have even noticed a loss of muscle mass in my body. Immediately I felt the need to go home to work off the flab that I gained over the past few weeks, but at the same time a part of me felt that I needed to sit at home and study instead. I must admit that it is hard to find a balance between the two (especially since as a Singaporean studying requires less physical work and is more looked up upon than exercise) is pretty difficult, especially with the temptation to play games to relieve stress instead. 

In Singapore you tend to get the extremes. You get those who only care about sport, and those who only care about studying, of course those studying include those who play games a lot at home as well. It's quite sad to say that I'm the latter.I guess it's partly because of the intense competition here in Singapore. As a child I was told by my parents that " you have to fighting for one of the ten job openings in a firm against a thousand other people (or if you're my mum, a thousand other Chinese people)." Seeing those who did sport fall behind did nothing to encourage me to join them. In retrospect, seeing a lot of Moose Mason when I was young in the Archie comics probably didn't help the stereotypes of jocks as well. 

Another reason was probably because of the weather. There is a two hour space where the temperature drops below thirty degrees celsius and that time around evening is when we come home from work or school, knackered to the bone. Emphasis was never put in sport, and we found grades to be much more important. I was never a morning person as well, but that's just a bad personal excuse. 

It was only when I was in Jakarta did emphasis in sport come to me. There, being cool mattered. You needed to have many friends, and sports then became important. You needed sport to be in with the 'cool kids' and it was only then did I start to do a bit more exercise and body building (although still minimal in my opinion). In Singapore that is considered superficial and that people only looked at you for what your physical attributes are rather than what is on the inside. In my opinion, Singaporeans place to much emphasis on the lack of physical attributes. Nobody in Singapore in general tend to care of what they look like in public and aren't ashamed to say that they don't do sport and play games instead. I think we need to strike a balance between the two. Which basketballer wants you to play with him if you can't play basketball? Which soccer player would want you to play if you can't play soccer?

I think that although it is important to keep up your grades,  a life in sport is just as important and Singapore is not doing a good job of undermining it. Luckily Singapore is starting up sport again with the construction of the new sports hub, providing facilities for almost every sport you can name. Hopefully in the years to come, we will see a different mentality in Singaporeans. 

I hope to see healthier ones anyway.

Cheers,

Matthew Tan