possessed by light

When you've got too many MacBook Air boxes and not enough rubbish skips. #privateschoolproblems #yourtaxdollarsatwork #thisisactuallykindofanembarrassment #therearesuburbssmallerthanthisschool #muchsocialjusticewow (at Knox Grammar School)

These seagulls have spent the past ten minutes furiously squawking at their own reflections. (at Kings Cross)

Behold, a thirty-page order of worship. #thisisthedoorstopofourlord

#27: Mardi Gras! In a fit of panic over the organisation of the Beyoncé float, I fell back into the welcoming and detail-obsessed embrace of David and Keith, and joined the Uniting Network float. This workout involved carrying a bass drum from Pitt St to Hyde Park, standing around wearing a bass drum for about an hour, then 45 minutes of wandering towards Moore Park whilst playing a bass drum. It's weights! It's cardio! It's agility! Truly, the Mardi Gras parade is a cross-training feat of endurance. (45 mins and 350 cal for the actual march; 4 dropped drumsticks; 30 seconds of live stream footage of me looking very concerned that people are standing too close to my drumsticks.) (at Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras)

#26: Combat, which I thought would be the Fitness First kind of air-kicking extravaganza, but turned out to be intervals of burpees, ab work and sprints mixed with actual punching of pads. As it turns out, I am not naturally gifted at boxing, and I *really* don't like classes that require you to partner up. I rate this gym, but would not combat again. Pros: I learned the difference between a hook and a jab. Cons: I hooked and jabbed my partner several times. (45 mins, 300 cal) #100workouts (at P.E. Dept.)

#25: Bollywood, which is precisely as much fun as it sounds. It's pretty energetic, but it's hard to resent the fact that you're exercising when you're rocking out to some Bollywood. The space itself is also chill, in an exposed-brickwork-and-nag-champa sort of way. I approve. Pros: legitimately super fun, and not too taxing on my limited coordination skills. Instructor was a total boss. Cons: the full routine is taught over a couple of consecutive classes, so you need to be able to commit for a few weeks if you want to learn a whole song. (60 mins, 260 cal) #100workouts (at Dance Central Sydney)

#24: Pilates. I've taken a few Pilates classes now, and I've noticed a pattern. Invariably, the instructors look like 16-year-old ballerinas from the neck down, and lead classes using the same lilting tone of voice favoured by yoga teachers and people who work with small children. Except that instead of telling us to breathe into our third chakra, they says things like "this is going to hurt...it should hurt...don't give up...now do it ten more times...how about ten more times except in the other direction...that's right, feel the pain", like very polite dominatrices. My most hated Pilates accessories, the little slippery discs, were absent from this class. However, as I unrolled my mat, the instructor passed around foam rollers with the sort of glint in her eye that suggested that she might have been involved in the Spanish Inquisition in a past life.  Pros: less expensive than paying a leather-clad professional to punish you. Cons: Foam. Roller. (60 mins, 160 cal) #100workouts (at P.E. Dept.)

He looks pretty chill, considering that some random girl in a Jesus t-shirt just ran up and yelled "GET IN MY SELFIE NOW". That was a bit weird. Sorry. (at Mardi Gras start area)

I have a backlog of like half a dozen workouts to post :P 24: Cross-training, a bootcamp-style workout in Rushcutters Bay Park. Pretty standard kettlebell/medicine ball/burpee/abs/etc circuit, but there are much worse places to do crunches than overlooking the harbour at sunrise. As usual, the instructor was super chill about having a ridiculous newbie in his class, which is something that's kind of surprised me about this whole project. If you, like me, are basically a Teletubby with a FitBit, be not afraid! Mega-gyms give me the heebie jeebies, but every small gym I've been to has been really nice. Also, there were people walking a delightful variety of dogs, and a little coffee shop which was open by the time we'd finished. Pros: location, dogs, coffee. Cons: the grass was all dewy and my new bird of paradise shoes now look a little bit sad :( (45 minutes, 400 cal) #100workouts (at Dangerously Fit Rushcutters Bay)

#23: Cat Yoga - 45 minutes of vinyasa, on a mat sprinkled with catnip, in a room full of cats. That's pretty much all you need to know tbh. We were encouraged to use the cats as inspiration during our practice. They seemed pretty happy to curl up on people's mats and fall asleep, which is what I generally feel like doing during a yoga class. Truly, I am at one with my inner cat. The class was occasionally interrupted by minor cat-on-cat scuffles, and an unfortunate incident where one tried to launch itself at a moth and toppled off a scratching post, colliding with several other felines on the way down. I actually hate yoga, but I would do this again. It's $20 to hang in the cat room for an hour and only $25 to do the actual cat yoga class, so for an extra $5 you can say you're exercising when really you're just watching cats do weird shit for an hour. I'm on board with this. Pros: they also have good tea. Cons: I now dislike regular yoga even more. I demand cats with all my workouts. Cat CrossFit, where you race cats across various gymnastic obstacles. Cat Pump, where you overhead press Maine Coons. Cat Sh'bam, where you only dance to remixes of the music from Cats. There's a niche here. (at Catmosphere Sydney - Space Cat Cafe)

#22: Surprise PT Session. I booked a circuit class and, for the second time this week, nobody else showed up. The instructor/owner/all-around-cool-person Vee stuck around and did a quick PT session instead, which was really nice of her. The push-ups, kettlebell squats, bicycle crunches and rowing sprints were decidedly less nice. I now have upper-body soreness to match the lower-body soreness from Monday's stick-fighting adventures. Pros: this gym is really nicely fitted out, and they do a lot of classes I'd like to try. Cons: I'm concerned that I've put some sort of curse on group training classes. Hopefully I'm not the only person who shows up for bootcamp tomorrow. (30 mins, 200 cal according to my FitBit, which suffered one of its regular HIIT-related meltdowns) #100workouts (at P.E. Dept.)

#21: Mardi Gras Dance Rehearsal, featuring several dozen people whose love of Beyoncé is eclipsed only by their love of downing a few beers and trying to learn choreography. Some choreography got ditched because it was too difficult to dance and march at the same time. Other choreography got ditched because, en masse, it looked a bit like a Nazi rally. By the end, we were left with a sequence of moves that even my desperately untalented booty could execute. WHO RUN THE WORLD, indeed. Pros: BEYONCEEEEE. Cons: the prospect of dancing to Beyoncé for forty minutes whilst navigating the parade route and not being hit by the float (a thing that has actually happened to me). (45 minutes, 200 cal) #100workouts (at Captain Cook Hotel)

#20: A Series Of Manoeuvres With Wooden Sticks. As it turned out, I was the only person who booked a place in this circuit class, but the instructor was kind enough to go ahead and run a little one-person session anyway. I don't remember his name, so I'll just call him French Fabio. French Fabio amused himself for half an hour with a series of broomstick-related exercises designed to develop my "physical intelligence", which presumably exists in a part of the brain I've damaged after years of tequila abuse. For thirty minutes I variously squatted, lunged and pirouetted around with my broomstick, interspersed with some broomstick-assisted shadow boxing. It was reminiscent of an action movie montage, except for the part where the protagonist improves by the end. Pros: it was super cool of French Fabio to bother teaching a class with only one coordination-challenged individual. Cons: there's probably CCTV footage of me fighting a broomstick. (35 minutes, 260 cal) #100workouts (at Savage Training)