运动后的水是最甜的

  I've been attending some kickboxing classes for a few weeks now. The first few classes were tough as heck. Well, it's still tough, but at least I'm slowly getting the hang of it. I'm still horrible with my leading leg kicks though, it doesn't come naturally to me. 

  So the kickboxing classes are at night, which means I have to walk home after the class at around 9:40pm, which means I'll reach home at around 10:15pm? It's kind of a long walk. I also don't like the route because somehow there's this stretch that always smells like dog poop. 

  Other than the dog poop and the lack of sidewalks (some of the side walks are just covered with ploughed snow, the others just non existent), the walk home is rather nice. The sky would be dark, sometimes you get to see the stars. And around 9:50pm, you get to see the usual night time suburban activities. You know, walking by some houses and you get to see what tv shows they're watching; or my favourite: the odd but frequent guy coming out of the house to smoke a cigarette. As the dojo is 5 minutes away from some sort of old folks home, sometimes you get to see some old people with their cane walking around the compound, and then you get to go "good evening" and then they smile and nod. 

  The dojo is also around a 24 hour supermarket and some fast food restaurants that are somehow still open at that hour. One of the hardest thing to do after classes is to resist the urge to enter one of these places and just buy something (probably ice cream or some sundae). I always have to tell myself "the water I have with me is the best". 

  And then there's this huge thing which I am trying to enjoy the best I can. You see, if you've been reading my blog, you know I want to move to the city. I've also been talking to some of my friends. These friends are those who are also kind of like my classmates? So we're finishing our degree around the same time frame. We've been talking about our future, and how a lot of them are planning to move away, probably to the city, which means that one day, I will leave all THIS behind. And one of "THIS" is the privilege to simply walk around the dead of night (of course one should avoid the shady spots). 

  I've been skyping with my family, and they're constantly worried about random drunkards and what not when I walk around at like 10pm or 12am or something, but everyone knows that unless you decided to go to some unsafe places, you're generally safe. It's one of those pros of a small town then. I can't blame my family though, you probably can't do this in the city where my brother is living (in Australia), and there's no way in hell you should do this in Malaysia. But surprisingly, everywhere else I lived (Heidelberg and Linköping), it felt alright to walk around freely (again, with limitations). 

  Heidelberg is a really, really, REALLY, small town. I believe you could visit the entire town if you were to bike nonstop for 90 minutes, it's that small. Linköping is bigger, definitely, and not every place is somewhere you should "visit".

SIDE NOTE: When I was in Linköping, I used to go to this place called Skäggetorp, which is like North-West Linköping, to play board games. When I asked the guy why is he living there when all of the other students were kinda living in Ryd (some other place), he said rent's cheap (his apartment ain't small either!). Turns out Skäggetorp is the "slums of Linköping", and after being told that, I noticed that there are constantly police cars patrolling the area, neato!

  I don't think I fully visit the whole of Heidelberg. I mean, I visited the usual spots, like the museums and the castle. I even did the university thing, which a few friends (there were only 3 of us), and we went by the riverside and just drink and talk. The drinks didn't last long, not because we were super drinkers, but my friend bought a pack of 10c beer (in this case, the can deposit is actually more expensive than the drink itself), thinking "hey, it's Germany! Beer is cheap and good!" Turns out, really really cheap beer is awful, and we kind of just drank half a can and gave up and went to one of the friend's place to watch Dirty Dancing because "we totally have to see it, Patrick Swayze is so hot ahmagad". But I did visit most of Heidelberg compared with the rest of the international group. You see, during the weekends, there are weekend excursions to nearby cities and countries (Heidelberg is located in South West Germany), and it ain't free. Being the cheapo that I am, I decided to stay in town, and what better way to visit the city than, at-that-time, Geocache? Before the Geocaching app went for the subscription model, I dedicated one weekend to geocache around the city. I met up with other geocachers. Apparently one of the things that a geocacher should do is to look for a cache inconspicuously. But the problem is that caches are usually located in the strangest places, so there were like 6 of us in the alleyway, just circling around the area, not speaking to each other, while casually turning over rocks and what not, looking for a very well hidden cache. When one of them found it, all of us flocked to him and we all kind of laughed about it.

Now that I'm working, I could consider paying for the subscription. But then would I have the time?

  But yeah, walking around at night. When I do move to a different place, do I still get to do that? These are the kind of questions that make you go "hmm, maybe I should stay instead..." but then I constantly have to give myself a slap in the back, and go "No! Bad thought! Shoo!" 

  But yeah, change is scary... and impending change is scary too... but hey~ gotta keep my eyes forward!