My wife wants to lose weight. This could be achieved quite simply by eating less, but weaning a Thai away from a culture of snacking would be as challenging as making a Scotsman teetotal. Thai eating involves at least three main meals, linked together by continuous consumption of snacks of indeterminate content and zero nutritional value. So she has determined that exercising more will be the solution, which is worrying because it will invoke another Thai cultural trait; the fear of doing anything alone. Whilst we Europeans might be perfectly comfortable eating or travelling alone, Thais have to do everything with at least one companion. This means that the wife will need an exercise buddy, and that buddy will have to be me.
I do like exercising, provided it involves riding a windsurfing board. A few hours of windsurfing a week keeps me generally fit and spiritually calm. A few minutes in a gym would leave me bored and stressed. So far I have been able to avoid the joint fitness programme by claiming a lack of shoes. Whilst my wife has more shoes than Imelda Marcos, I have one pair of beach sandals and rather snazzy pair of white sneakers for use on the rare occasions that I need to look passably respectable. I did have a pair of general purpose sneakers but the soles have fallen off so many times that glue no longer makes an impression.
Last night I was finally dragged to the shoe shop. I love shopping for techy toys, I hate shopping for everything else. We went in and I picked up the first pair of sneakers that looked acceptable. The wife did not approve. I asked her to choose something she liked, checked they had my size, and bought them. Ten minutes, sorted. Wife was amazed, normally takes her at least two hours to decide on a pair shoes (which she will bring home and immediately decide she does not like and deems them uncomfortable).
To celebrate the acquisition of the new shoes we went straight into Haagen Daz and filled up on ice cream with a calorie count which will take several hours of intense exercise to eliminate. I am advised that the first activity will be tennis which I am going to teach her because I played it briefly forty five years ago. I think I will claim the shoes are uncomfortable. Or cut them up and make them into Thai snacks.