Fat fighters, let battle commence

I have been fighting the battle of middle aged spread, for three weeks now. I go about 5 mornings a week. I get up at 5 am and walk the short distance to the gym. I am usually the only mad person in there at that time. I program the running machine for 35 to 40 mins on a manual setting (no incline!) and run. I run alone and in almost silence. The only sound that can be heard are my feet and the noise of the machine whirring along. After that, I make my way down to the wights room, do 6 sets of 20 sit ups, sets of abdominal crunches and muscle exercises. I feel the burn. I used to go swimming but by 7 am the pool is full of fat people, of different roundness, all over 40 years of age, splashing about in the pool. The pool looks like a Moscow Road, busy and wild. I usually have a steam and a jacuzzi and then go home, I arrive back home ,clean and exhausted by 8 am.

Last Saturday, at the fitness club, a very big Egyptian man, with muscles the size of a small country, showed me all the machines. He had a kind of nervous facial twitch and at first I though it may have been me that caused it with my endless irritating questions to him but he later told me he was a champion world wrestler, so he may have suffered nerve damage in his wrestling career? I asked him if he liked Moscow? he replied "these Russian people, they wild people" I agreed with him, he summed it up very well in his broken English. I now know all the machines but only use about 30% of them. I am focusing on my stomach. When I was 20 or 25, if I got fat, I would exercise for a week and it would be gone, nowadays I exercise for months to lose it.

In Slovakia, where I used to live, I used to run every day by the river, the air was sweet and there were not many people. Here that's impossible. I gained a lot of weight when I moved here, as it was (and is) almost impossible to run here, unless you live on or near a park. I have lost weight, as I can see it in my face and feel it in my trousers. I don't believe in obsessively checking the scales every day, like some people do, as that can be very disheartening as its so damn slow. I find with exercise, you have to be hard with yourself and keep with it, miss a day or two and you will not go back to your exercise regime. I don't expect to look like I did in my 20's but I do hope to gain a flatter stomach and to keep in shape for my kid, as I hope to be around when he is older so I must stay fit........ The battle continues!

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Domestic bliss and crap

Today, I have stayed locked in my shoebox flat in the heart of city, too shocked by the metro attack and too lazy to go out. My kid has been driving me totally crazy. I am beginning to feel exhausted from 5 am starts and daily gym visits to the tread mill machine in my fat fighter attempts at weight loss. See other post on this issue.

Is there a honeymoon period when you have a child? I was over joyed to have him but today for the first time, I wanted the ability to be able to put him back in my wife's womb and take him out when I feel like seeing him. His teeth are coming through and he is making large brown sticky mountains of crap, his nappy at times is so full, I think its going to explode when I open it, much like a terrorists bomb, although not quiet as deadly. Perhaps he is going through a, "what happens if I push dad" or "touch that" time and time again? What will he do phase? Will dad snap? He pulls all the books off the shelves, puts my wife's shoes onto my size 44 feet, while I'm watching TV, Is he trying to tell me something? He can now reach the TV channel box and takes great delight in changing the channels and in crashing the TV reception. He also takes great delight in biting my arm with razor white sharp teeth almost till it bleeds and pulling the cats tail. Is this boy a future cannibal or hooligan?

I have cooked up a large bucket of bolognese, some for my wife and some for junior. I blend his into a brown glue and freeze it in recycled baby food jars. Domestic bliss, for a stay at home father, in terrorist, traffic clogged Moscow Russia. Cooking, nappies, bathing and walks. I try to have a strong heart, as we are here for the duration of up to 3 or even 5 years. Will we make it mentally, physically and financially? I can only hope so dear reader.

Moscow, Metro, Killers

For the love of god, is no where safe from terrorists? Today, many people were killed. I certainly won't be taking my child on the metro anywhere, ever again for the rest of my time here in Moscow. The news says it's probably terrorists, although we can not always trust the media or official reports, however it seems likely as a cause. I want to know why people kill themselves and others in the name of a cause or in the name of an imagined or real god. No god would want people to take the lives of others in his name. No cause anywhere is worth killing innocent people. Why take the lives of people you have never met or when they have done no wrong to you? it makes absolutely no sense!

Unfortunately, terrorists of the kind we are now all used to across the world, don't dress in black, wear the veil, wear camouflage combat trousers, carry a gun, wear a flag, wear a turban or army hat, have a "I am a terrorist" happy smiley badge on their jacket lapel, carry a rolled up carpet, carry a bazooka, wear a visible bomb belt, wear camouflage paint or anything else.

They are silent, invisible, insane evil killers. Unfortunately for us, the Moscow roads are so chocked with cars and buses that we can't use our cars to get around and so must play "Russian roulette" with our lives and take the metro each day. We have no choice! All we can do is follow our inner sixth sense and watch out. Stand back from the platform edge, stay behind a pillar or statue and if we feel nervous, get off the train.

We can only hope the authorities, whatever the country stop playing political correctness, playing denial games and get tough, now ! Sadly, authorities only act when its too late or when people die. I can't see any policemen approaching a person he or she suspects as being a bomber from fear of being blow up themselves, they will say "I'm not paid enough for that" and in some ways this is true. Maybe cameras, sniffer dogs and metal detectors at all metro and train stations across the world will be the only answer to keep people safe? Its a short term solution to a long term problem.


 

Do you believe in Angels?

Today my faith in human nature was restored. As I have got older, I have become more cynical about life, the universe and our society. However, sometimes a ray of light breaks through the black clouds and my naive trust and faith in human nature is once again restored. I have been in Moscow now since September and so far, I have found many Russians to be rather serious, rude and rather rigid in their attitude. This has come from my teaching experience here. I have also met a mad women who has been acting as an intermediary for English communication, at a well known English school franchise here in Moscow. I have since left that school.  Anyway, back to the topic. Today, I had to visit another school at a Metro station called "Chistyie Prudy". I took junior with me on my back in his backpack baby carrier. I left the station and arrived outside, blinking in the gray light, clutching my crumpled emailed directions to the school and feeling rather lost. I saw a girl with a map and asked her the way, she looked at my email and said, "follow me I show you" she held my arm as we crossed the snow and I'll admit a naughty thought or two popped into my male head then slammed the door and left feeling ashamed. We walked through a long park park, I made conversation, as I felt she wanted to practice her English. She took me right to the door of my meeting and left with a smile never to be seen again.

On my way back, I went down into the depths of the Metro station again at Chistyie Prudy, to make my journey back home. Logic would say that I would just go to the other platform on the other side and take the train back the way I had come but the sign did not have my station on it. Again, I asked a girl, because I know that most young Russians speak some English. She said I'll show you, we went back up the escalator and she said I have time "we will take the train together", I had worried momentary thoughts, that junior and I would be taken by this woman to meet some strange, unshaven men and that we would be bound and transported by truck to some far land and sold on as slaves by this unknown women, for I have an active imagination. Luckily, this did not happen. We took the train changed two stations and she took me to the train that would go back to my station back home. I gave her my business card, shook her hand and said goodbye. When I arrived home, I had a call on my mobile, it was her, she asked me if I got back home OK.

These girls were normally dressed and nothing amazing to look at but just very kind. It may have been my rare Hollywood good looks (said with tongue in cheek), or that they wanted English practice or the fact that I had a cute baby on my back or maybe they just took pity on me? I suppose you can say that there are good and bad people all over the world, in every city, town and village across this world of ours. Russia is no different. I believe there are angles out there, you just have to see them and find them.

Tea with Tolstoy.

Last weekend we went to see the house of Tolstoy. He married a girl sixteen years younger than him! Dirty old man, remember they had no TV or radio in those days, so entertainment was self made, sex was an easy and fun way to pass the time. They had thirteen kids, five died tragically in their childhood. His house (or should I say houses), are in a region called "Tula" on a big estate. Its about 3 hours slow driving from Moscow. You drive along a bumpy highway to get there and the signs to his place are not so good. I went with my wife and her friend plus my screaming child, so I had two women telling me which way to go plus my friendly satellite navigation "Bart Simpson" giving me the wrong instructions. My windscreen washer was frozen despite the fact that I put - 30 anti freeze in the window tank, so I had to keep stopping to clean the widow of muddy snow every thirty minutes. I must have been cheated when I bought the product from my favorite shop here called "Auchan" (see other post). By the time I parked the car, having driven up the old snow covered road to Tolstoy's place, I felt a total nervous wreck and just wanted to lie down in a dark quiet place to be alone.

The house must have been grand and luxurious in its day, now it looks a bit old and smells of dust and damp. You wait outside and they slowly allow small groups inside the house. They give you strange shoe cover slippers to put over your shoes to walk around the house. They don't like crying kids and the guide angrily asked me and junior to leave the tour. I don't think Russia is very child friendly, but Russians do like children which seems strange and in conflict with their thought for them at tourist and restaurant businesses establishments.

Tolstoy's house, is as if the cleaner had just been and he had popped out to write another epic book in his garden. Everything is as he left it. He seemed to have been a small man or maybe he shrank in his old age? His bed looked tiny, you can also see his writing desk, I think he wrote most of his books by hand there was no Windows Vista in those days or whitener correction fluid. Not surprisingly, It took him five years to write "War and Peace" He wrote many books. I have not read any of them, I am ashamed to say "War and Peace" would not make fun holiday reading for me and I would only use the book as a door stop or table leg prop. I think if you have read Tolstoy, if you are fan and like his books, then his place will be interesting to you but for me it was rather boring and certainly not worth a three hour drive over bumpy Russian roads.

Tolstoy: A Biography

Food shopping in Moscow- A Journey into hell.

I can honestly say, that shopping in the large hypermarkets such as at Auchan here in Moscow, is a kind of living shopping hell. Luckily for me, I have a car and can venture onto the Moscow roads at weekends when its less busy with traffic and go to the cheaper hypermarkets outside the city for my food. I went there early today, on Saturday, thinking it would be less busy- Wrong. It made no difference. I had dreams of enjoying my food shop, I would casually look through the vegetables and fruit slowly inspecting possible vegetables for my cooking pot, push my shopping cart round the food isles, choose some fish or meat and dream up some nice new recipes- Wrong. Instead my heart raced and my nerves screamed to me "grab it man, throw it in the cart, pay, run and get out!"

The experience is really horrible, shopping carts everywhere, people of all shapes and sizes and smells, pushing and shoving their way round the shop. There are no traffic lights or give way signs for shopping carts, no road rules, so its a clash of the titans, a shopping cart road duel, Who will give way? Who will move out the way to let me pass with my cart? Carts crash head-on sending passengers flying over the edge. A lemon or packet of rice becomes, another road victim in a shopping cart accident on a Saturday, at Auchan in Moscow. The casualties of shopping cart crash accidents are many, just statistics in an overcrowded hypermarket.  The backs of my legs and heels bloodied and bruised from endless bumps, I make my way to the long check-out ques. A man tries to go in front of me with his cart, our angry eyes lock, mental imaginary knives are drawn, who will back down? Luckily he does and we que in silence, blood boiling.

The only sound that can be heard is the endless echoing bleeps of check-out machines scanning the shopping items, bleep, bleep, bleep. When you finally stack up your cart with bags of shopping and head for the doors, you feel like you have escaped from a sinking ship. You exit the sliding doors blinking into the gray Moscow light, breathing in the car fumes, just happy to be outside, free until the next shopping trip excursion next month.

P.S Language: Shopping "carts" aka shopping "trolleys" UK/American English.

Cars, dirt and drunks

Yesterday, after 6 months of hard crusty black dirt, about 3 cm thick all over my car, I decided it was time to remove its winter shell of dirt and give it a good clean. Like many, I live in a flat, so cleaning a car is not much fun. I had to go up an down in the lift several times with buckets of soapy water. Russians passing outside, looked at me as if I had just escaped the local mental hospital. God only knows how Russians clean their cars here? I have seen just one car wash facility here in Moscow since I arrived last September.

As is my luck goes, as I was going to the car for its first wipe clean, when a drunk arrived outside our flat crawling towards my car. Now I have been drunk a few, many times in my life, but this man was so drunk he was crawling along the road like a baby, his trousers were half off and he looked more pickled than a pickle. He wore glasses, although both the lenses were missing, presumably smashed while he was drunk. He kept talking to me from his position on the floor in a very slurred Russian. He had wet himself and had blood all over his cheek, from his continued failed attempts to stand up. He stank of a Vodka factory and I have to say of urine. I ignored him as best I could and continued to clean my black car, slowly wiping away its black shell. It was amazing to slowly see its colour appear through the black, like blue a sky through the clouds. I had almost forgotten its original colour. After several tips up and down with more buckets and with just a tiny washing up sponge, the job was eventually done.

I enjoyed it and it was exciting, as you can see, my life here is rather very dull. After I had finished admiring my work, I turned my attention to the drunk. I tried to find a person to help him or to call the city Police and one women attempted to ask him where he lived but got know where in her communication attempts. When I went back down stairs twenty minutes later to see if he was still there, he had just disappeared, all that remained was a single unopened beer can.

Today, after my hard cleaning efforts, its snowed again and so my car is now buried under new snow. This may explain the strange looks I got from the Russians while I cleaned my car. They knew something I did not! You live and learn.

Those soft, honest Russian Police

Last week, our Filipino baby sitter had a bad experience. She is a very nice and good lady and it made me very angry to hear what happened to her in a 21st century Russia. Her passport is currently at her embassy, being extended so that she can stay here longer. Her only reason for being here, is to work hard to send money back to her husband in her country. By bad luck or stupidity, she and her fellow flatmates moved flat two weeks ago. They rented a flat of a Policeman. Last week, she had a knock on her door, she answered it to see two tall, large fat Russian Police with machine guns standing in her doorway. They shouted at her to give them her passport and 500 Dollars, she told them she did not have 500 dollars, she was then put in the Police car and taken to the station and kept in a cell for three hours. They then went back to see her in her Police cell and demanded the money again. She told them she only had 200 dollars so they took her home and took that money from her. This money was to be sent back to her husband for her children. She told me she was shaking and crying the whole time and was terrified. She came to us crying. She is usually a very happy laughing woman. I know she was stupid to have rented a flat of a "Policemen" but she did it because he is a Policeman, because she thought she could trust him better than another flat owner.

I expect the two Russian Police, went out that night and got very drunk. I suspect, the flat owner, phoned his friends to tell them that he had six Filipino women in his flat and did they want to make some fast easy money. What a bastard. Its beyond belief, that this kind of thing still happens in a modern developed Russia. Whenever I see a Policeman, I look the other way and I am white and not a criminal. When will things change here within the Police?

The bad guys give the good guys a bad name.

Fitness clubs and keeping fit in Moscow - Part 2

Well, I've been "fat fighting" for just over a week now at my new second home, "Planet Fitness" Moscow. This has proved hard since, I have had a bad cold all week, my 3rd in as little as three months. I rise at 5 am, blindly throw on my running clothes drink a revolting herbal tea and make my weary walk, in the dark, to the club. Its only about a 10 minute walk luckily for me, but I don't see anyone on my way there, apart from a snow clearer or two and the occasional drunk or tramp. I get on the tread mill at about 5.45 am. There is no one there, only me and the occasional man cleaning the exercise machines. I watched him the other morning, as I pounded the tread mill, he was going from machine to machine with a bucket of dirty, almost black water, half heatedly wiping the pedals of each machine, what a job! He was not even wearing rubber gloves and the water had no soap in it. You can set the running screen to shows track or a nice mountain run. I run to that for 40 minuets round a mountain, somewhere in the virtual world of the running machines computer memories. Note to self, get some music to make it less boring. The same man arrives each morning, just as I am finishing. He wears glasses, tight Lycra shorts and a yellow Lycra vest stretched over his large stomach.

Having done my running, I descend down to the floor below to do sit ups and other such painful things. There is always the same woman each morning, aged in her mid 40s but with a good body, she looks like Glenn Close. I then change into my swimming shorts and do my 5 lengths, yes thats what I said! 5 lengths, (don't laugh)  its all I can manage at this time and its exhausting. There are only one or two people there in the pool. By 7 am, large round people start to slowly arrive. By that time, the pool looks like Russian roads in Moscow, busy and ugly.

Imagine a whale being dropped from a helicopter into a swimming pool while you were in it. Well that's what I experience, most mornings. Very large Russian men, belly flop directly from the steam room (without taking a shower) into the swimming pool wearing their little Lycra swim wear and swimming goggles. What is about fat people, that they always have to wear Lycra stretched over their blubber? They make themselves look even fatter. A man jumped in yesterday and a small tsunami wave washed over my head. They swim up and down splashing and flapping about all over the place without consideration for other swimmers. I finish my visit to the gym club, with a steam and Jacuzzi. I get home in time for my child care responsibilities, feeling very clean, shorter from all the steaming and very thin and feeling a lot younger after mixing with large Russians in the swimming pool, its excellent therapy from Moscow life. Who knows dear reader, I may even lose some weight? I must go to bed early I must repeat this ritual again tomorrow.

My review, Planet Fitness:

1. Exercise machines? good, all work, plenty of running machines
2. Swimming pool? warm, good, clean but gets crowded
3. Jacuzzi? good and clean
4. Weight and weight machines? excellent
5. Sauna? old and needs updating
6. Steam room? old and needs updating
7. Male changing rooms? OK, clean but needs updating
8. Staff? helpful but hard to find, not many speak good English
9. Value for money? Not bad for Moscow
10. Children friendly? only certain times and days for using the pool and they have a child care play area
11. Type of people? mixed but mostly Russian, some a bit rude, leaving wet towels on the floor and not showing consideration for others when swimming
12. Overall opinion, good club for what it is, but needs a face lift and updating. I would say it was new in the mid 90's now a bit tired. Worth joining, the other end of the scale will be more expensive.

Fitness clubs and keeping fit in Moscow - Part 1

Last week, I started to go jogging as it gets lighter earlier in the mornings in Moscow. I open one old, tired eye and tear myself from my bed womb, put one foot onto the cold wooden floor, drink a disgusting fruit tea, put on my long johns (man tights!), socks, tracksuit, trainers (sneakers if you are American) and sleeveless jacket and walk to a small strip of park near my Moscow flat to go jogging up and down in a garden oasis in a sea of city traffic.

I run on the snow and ice, double chins are not a pretty sight and must be removed whatever, the cost. I keep both eyes firmly focused on the ground and run in a wobbly, delicate ballet dance of slip avoidance, up and down the park. I avoid big dogs, dog shit and park workers, who look at me as if I were a madman. I have an exercise bike at home, but its so boring and does not burn the fat as well as jogging does. I take my mobile phone when I go, in case I slip on the ice and need to phone my wife for an ambulance.

Today, my wife looked at me wearily at breakfast and said, "lets get you in a gym". I have kept saying I'd get fit "tomorrow", since January but now its March, so being a man of my word, I have decided now is the time to get into shape.We went to look at three gyms clubs. I also want to teach my child to swim, so I need a club with a pool.

The fist one we looked at was big, with a pool and had enough weights and machines to turn the weakest of men into hard oiled, muscle bound, hulks within a month, so there maybe hope for me. We were showed round the gym club, by the club sales manager who showed us all the fitness machines, although one eye of mine was targeting a nice bottom (butt, bum) or two, in tight Lycra or one eye was looking at large bouncing bosoms, so ripe that they looked like large dew covered apples on a tree in early spring. I tried to look casual and to seem interested in what he was saying, but it was hard, if you forgive the pun but my ears were not really listening to a thing he said. I am a married 43 year old man, we can only have our memories, so please forgive my naughty indulgence. Sorry, back to the Moscow fitness story and my reason for joining a fitness club. The club seemed good and I will probably join "off peak" at 1,300 GBP per year for a 16 month membership, its a good deal. "Off peak" is strange deal, you can go from midnight till five the next day so if you wake up at three in the morning with the need to pump iron, you can go to the club. The freedom of choice we all have nowadays and our 24/7 society!

The second gym club, was slightly more up market (luxury) and would be 3,000 GBP per year. A pretty Russian girl showed me around the place. She was the kind of girl who silently screams, I am so pretty look at me, the type that tends to repulse me, even if she was attractive and so I ignored her, just to annoy her. The club was filled with Louis Vuitton'ers as I call them and there were men of ages in the changing room, wearing swimming drunks that were far too tight or far too small for them. They were stood in front of long full length mirrors, drying their hair with great vigor, as any women would do. It was very smart, but stank of money. People gave us dirty looks and looked at our child as if he were an alien or something you would find under your shoe from the street. No children wanted or "allowed in the pool" or so I was told by the pretty girl. It was too posh, too snobby and too expensive. The last place we looked at, was a hotel, cheaper but a bit dirty. That's Moscow for you, one extreme to another.

I am determined to claw back 10 years and get back the demi god of a body I once had..... or die trying or dreaming of it. A gym may be the only option to keep fit in Moscow Russia, as its rather dangerous to run on the snow and ice in winter and in the summer there are dogs everywhere and the roads are thick with traffic. There are many parks here but then you would have to travel on the metro to go running, unless you are lucky enough to either have a large flat with your own exercise stuff in it, or to be near enough to walk to a park.

If you have kids, you will need to pay a baby sitter while you go to your gym but if you join off peak, you can go very early in the morning before your wife or husband goes to work and return home in time to look after your darling well behaved kids or kid.  Alternatively, you could just say to hell with exercise and grow old and fat in a blaze of chocolate and blubber.

© All Rights Reserved.

Return to planet Moscow

On arriving at the airport in Moscow you can breath in that fresh Moscow air, look up to the blue sky and feel happy to be back in Russia. Well, you could if it were the reality. I know I often give Moscow a bad time in my negative thoughts and feelings on the place and I am sorry for that, but that's just how it is, or at least as I feel. It was good to get away and go skiing and to breath in fresh sweet air while were in Slovakia and skiing in Austria. blue skies, crisp white snow and fresh air, perfect. The ideal tonic for the spirit and mind. I honestly don't know how other expats cope here? perhaps you get used to it and its better in the summer? I will have to wait and see.

I have returned to Russia yet fatter than before I left having eaten lots of sausages and chips on the Austrian ski slope restaurants and having drunk lots of good German and Austrian beer. I do believe that lady spring may be near in Moscow, she has made the temperature a bit warmer and it's actually a bit lighter in the mornings now, as I lay in bed this morning and opened one eye on the new day from beneath my warm bed covers. I plan to start running before breakfast and to free my mind of this depression and gloom that is like a huge heavy blanket that covers me. I think early morning exercise will help my weight and my mind. Spring and lighter days are a good cure for the Moscow blues. People say Moscow is not Russia and I believe them, we plan to visit other parts of this huge country and I hope to be a convert to living here.

While I was away, I took my boy swimming for the first time in Austria, it was a wonderful experience and he liked it. He had two inflatable orange arm bands on each little arm and he seemed delighted to be in the water, I held his little body and he bobbed up and down in the warm pool water like a cork on the ocean. Things like that are golden moments in a fathers life, no matter how corny or soft that sounds to you. Ask any parent and they will tell you. I hope to find a pool in Moscow to teach him swimming.

Today is another day and we will go for a walk and brave the Moscow air and traffic. Back to reality and to planet Moscow with a hard cruel bump.