Chapter 226

I woke up late, with a smile on my face. I ate the leftover fried rice, with a tall glass of grapefruit juice, and did random stuff on the internet. Browsing Facebook, something caught my eye. My cousin is a hardcore endurance athlete, having completed several Ironman triathlons. She must be somewhat insane, like all the people who put themselves through such a grueling ordeal. Well her boyfriend (or at least I think it’s her boyfriend) is doing a 100-mile run, and she posted pictures of him at the starting line. Fucken hell, 100 miles?! 160 km?!?! I looked down at my beer belly, put on my running shoes and headed out. It was overcast and a bit chilly, perfect temperature. I did a loop around a lake, mostly on cute pedestrian/bicycle paths, it must have been around 8 km according to my estimation on Baidu Maps and it was enough for me.

Back home, I rehydrated and took the dog out for a bit, until it started raining. In the afternoon I watched a movie called High Life, about a bunch of death row prisoners sent on a spaceship to work on extracting energy from a black hole or some shit. It was slow, and quite creepy, with an unsettling scene of aging starlet Juliette Binoche getting her post-wall flabby body naked and masturbating with some kind of big mounted dildo. I didn’t like the movie that much, in a similar genre I much prefered Moon, and at least that movie has a denouement, it doesn’t just “end”.

I took a nap, then went to the gym and wrestled with the big Kazakh. It was grueling as all hell, freestyle wrestlers are another breed of humans, like ultramarathon runners. It’s already hard enough to try to move a body the same weight as yours around, but when he’s also trying to move you around and with better technique and the kind of gritty spirit of a nomad of the great steppes who’s been doing it all his life, well, you’re in for a smeshing. Interestingly enough, some of the words he used were directly from French, a testament of the francophilia of the Russian world and also because apparently modern wrestling has been brought to Kazakhstan by some tough French bastards at the turn of the 19^th century. For instance, the drill where you start on all fours and must resist takedown attempts from your opponent is called par terre.

I got home, dropped my sweaty clothes in the laundry, and made some a Thai soup. I browned onions and garlic and scallions, added ginger and various hot peppers, chicken broth, coconut milk, tofu, shrimp, bean sprouts, and a seasoning package I got in Bangkok last year. It hit the spot. We ate while watching a new adult cartoon called Close Enough, about a couple of millenial parents and their young daughter getting into all sorts of weird shenanigans. Then I watched another episode of the hip hop doco series, about 2 Live Crew and the Geto Boys putting southern hip hop on the map in very different ways.