Today, Mee and I went to the pilates class. It was full. I guess almost all the classes now are full as most people are trying to get rid of the weight that they gained over the holiday period. The gym area was crowded too. The pilates class was a bit different today as we used resistance bands which kind of help us to stretch further than usual. It’s not often that we use some kind of equipment in this class though it should make the class more interesting. The instructor, I believe, is the best among others in that gym. She monitors the progress of the regulars and will often encourage us to go a bit deeper each time. As for other instructors, they just show you the moves and it’s up to you to follow through.

Come Saturday, we will be going to our second body balance class. It’s a good class but again, the instructor only minds her own business. I did a step wrong last week and she didn’t bother to correct me, or anybody else. Well, I think I just have to be careful myself and not overwork in the body balance class in order to avoid any unwanted injury.

I have been feeling feverish since Monday. I was not quite sure what happen but I just felt my body’s temperature rising by the minute while at work. I had two panadols on that day but it still didn’t help. I was feeling weak at night and my temperature was about 37.5 degrees Celsius. Mee and I are all too wary about what happened a year ago. Mee was sick a couple of weeks before last year’s Christmas and it took her a week to recover. I must had picked up some of her viruses and I became ill after her. Well, it took me two weeks to recover. Yeah, my last Christmas and New Year was plagued with an illness. This year, we are better prepared. As soon as we felt something is wrong, we will start taking panadols and lemsip. Personally, we feel that lemsip is more effective compared to paracetamol tablet. Anyway, when I am ill, I normally feel better at night. I feel a lot worse when I wake up in the morning and I would wish that I could stay in bed the whole day and not worry about work. I thought I got enough of rest during the Christmas period but clearly, I hadn’t.

It’s the first week of work and time seems to go very fast. It’s already Friday tomorrow and I hope that I will be able to rest more than usual this weekend. Well, you might be thinking that I should have rested a lot during the Christmas and New Year holiday but in fact, it’s busier than before. In the past, I would only be busy for the first couple of days after Christmas, that was to accompany Mee to sales in London. After that, we stayed at home most of the time or even when we were at our sister’s place, we would not go out very often. We shopped less this year, a lot less. However, we were at our sister’s place for a week and we basically went out every day; shopped a bit, window shopping and ate a lot.

When we arrived home, we saw a letter from our landlord. Our rent increased by more than £60 per month. That’s really a lot considering our pay rise is a lot less than that. By the way, I don’t even expect in getting a pay rise this year. I know that the landlord never increases our rent since we moved in. However, we would really appreciate if he increases the rent gradually rather than the £60 immediately. We had a discussion and hopefully, he will change his mind.

The weather has turned cold since coming back from my sister’s place. Oddly but not, it is still bright and sunny in the afternoon.

Mee and I also started our first gym class yesterday. It was body attack. The class was full of people. Every evening classes that I look now are almost fully booked, even for next week as members are allowed to book 7 days in advance. The spinning class that I usually go to on Thursday is now fully booked. The body attack class for next week has only 4 spaces left. I havent’ booked it yet as we might change our mind and go to body pump which is the next class. I guess, we will only be doing Pilates for today.

We watched this movie the other day at my sister’s place. I watched it once already but it was still nice to watch it again. I believe that my sister and Mee thought the same too because they both watched it from start to finish. In that movie, there were a lot of lab furnaces in the lab where the lead actor was working with the chimpanzee. I didn’t think lab furnaces were relevant in that movie especially the type of medicine, which was used to test on the chimpanzees, was for treating Alzheimer. Maybe it is beyond my knowledge but it’s just a movie and maybe I shouldn’t treat it that seriously.

I have to say, I watched a few older versions of planet of the apes but they always start with apes dominating the world and human beings as slaves. They never sort of explaining the beginning of the apes and I believe that is why I am attracted to this movie. I do hope that there will be more sequels of this movie since it’s one of my favourite movies this year.

On another note, it’s the last day of the year 2011, Happy New Year!

A few months later, I will have my car checked and MOT-ed. I am quite nervous when it comes to having my car checked because I had my car’s catalytic converter changed twice in two years. I asked the mechanic if there were other problems in the car that’s causing the catalytic converter to fail but he couldn’t seem to give me any satisfactory answer. Hence, I made use of the free exhaust check and had my car’s catalytic converter checked twice this year. Hopefully, it will be problem free this year though I am sensing the I might need to change some of the thrust bearings. The gear changes doesn’t seem to be smooth nowadays.

Just yesterday, my sister, Mee and I went to PC World to buy TomTom XL IQ Routes Edition 2 for £99.99. I thought long and hard before deciding to purchase the TomTom which is exactly the same model as the refurbished one that I bought from TomTom website previously. Mee saw another TomTom on sale at Argos earlier which cost less but it was quite an old model. Other TomTom models are significantly more expensive and I am not really interested in other brands of satellite navigators.

My sister was very kind to pay the TomTom as our this year’s Christmas present.

Originally, we had planned to eat dinner at Cosmo, a buffet restaurant which serves mostly South East Asian cuisine, after PC World. However, there were a long queue. Hence, we decided to come back another day but with reservation. Our dinner was at McDonald in the end.