You eat the rice, I'll take the grilled fish.

I'm waiting for Jude to come home so we can go run. It's a painful but ultimately rewarding ritual (the rewarding bit comes later; for the most part, it's just painful). The thing about being in this part of America is that you only get to run that many months out of a year- of course there are people who trudge out in their fancy thermal gear in February but I don't talk to motivated people like that... So anyway, my point is, as long as the sun is out and it isn't too cold or dry, we run as often as we can, which hasn't been a whole lot since school has started, but we try. We are, after all, products of the Singapore education system- performance under pressure I say.

Running's not so much about losing weight although that was in the picture when I just came home from Singapore and needed to lose 10 lbs worth of South-east Asian indulgence; it's more the pump you feel after. Ironically, you feel refreshed after the run and that lasts long enough for you to believe you can get through tomorrow with just a celery stick and juice. Of course tomorrow comes, commonsense promptly takes over and you have a burrito with extra cheese for lunch. Then you run some more from the guilt and the circle of life continues...

Speaking of food, the South Beach Diet was good for a while. We stayed off sugars and carbs for 2 weeks, felt infinitely lighter and have pretty much kept the weight off since. Breakfast was tough though. Think about it, what can you eat for breakfast but carbs? No cereal, toast, even fruit. It was cheese, sausages and eggs for two whole weeks. Sounds like your typical all-American breakfast? Try that for 14-days straight. Ouch. If you had given me a slice of toast in that first two weeks, I would have named our first child after you.

Anyway, we're kind of off that now- Jude believes otherwise though: there's always that immense Catholic guilt when we have too much carbs for dinner. But we're still only eating good carbs like brown rice and multi-grain bread although there's finally room for sushi and that occasional dessert. And you know what the clincher is? I'm back to more than two cups of caffeinated drinks a day! I knew I wouldn't stay long on a diet that made me count coffee...