Up and out bright an early for our last day with the team at CSC.

The clinic was alive with people waiting to be seen, and the medical team were doing their rounds by 8.30am, checking on the patients in the two wards.

The priority today was to go and visit the CASC (Cambodia Acid Survivor Charity) house again, but this time with Dr Jim, his daughter Lara, his cousin Anne and his friend Chip, all of who were in town helping out at the surgical centre.

We arrived shortly after 11am and Ian and I were quite amazed at how much progress had been made in the two days since we were there last. You can see from the pictures below that a lot of work had been done on the second house, and that the first house is pretty much finished. (That’s Dr Jim in the white t-shirt, and Anne in the yellow shirt)

The newest arrivals at the house, the 11 puppies, were a favourite with the girls, and Ian! Two separate dogs, each of whom had undergone surgery to prevent new puppies being made, had 11 puppies between them a month or so after the operation… I guess that vet won’t be getting much business when word gets out!

And here’s a half-an-Ivy with the puppy who was getting tired of being picked up!

After we’d toured the grounds, we went into the house where we were greeted with the piano genius of one of the acid burn survivors playing his piano. This is the same gentleman was the one we met last August who sang for us – he has an incredible talent for singing and playing the piano, and I wouldn’t rule out him being a contender if there is ever an X Factor Cambodia!!

In the evening, Dr Jim and Kanya had kindly put on a fantastic spread where all of the visitors joined them at his house for a lovely party, and a wonderful end to yet another inspiring and humbling visit.

There is a documentary being screened on Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st that will present an insight into the amazing work that goes on in CSC entitled Cambodia Surgical Ward. Click Here for show times in your region.

Up and out at 7:45am with the ever smiley Emma collecting us from our Hotel.

Arrived at the ever busy surgical centre where we did the ward rounds with Dr Jim. The wards, split over two floors, had the post operation patients, some of which had been there a number of months. One of the residents, who I remembered very well from my previous visit in August 2009, was a Vietnamese guy. This particular gentleman was a commercial diving fisherman in Vietnam, and he used to fish at depths of about 4 metres. He was sent to Cambodia where he was sent down to a depth of 40 metres, and on that particular day, he had done two dives. This unfortunately resulted in him getting the bends, and whilst they transported him the 8 hours back to the mainland to hospital, they left him in the engine room to get warm. To cut a horrifically long story short, the paralysis from the bends made him unaware that his body was against the engine which was slowly burning away his skin. He had to have his legs removed due to the irrepairable damage caused, and he is now working on rehabilitation and physio to make him stronger to try and live a normal life. This is just one of the many stories that, whilst incredibly sad, also shows the incredible power of human kindness in Dr Jim and the CSC folks, who never gave up on this guy, even when he’d lost all hope himself. When we were here last August, this guy had had enough… This guy now has more colour in his cheeks and Jim is talking about his long term rehabilitation plans for this guy. He may never dive again, but CSC have given him hope, and given him back his life.

After work, we all went out to celebrate Australia day, which was fun, but I couldn’t quite get to grips with the strange accent! First we went to Snowy’s, which was a quaint little place on the river, ran by a cool character who has been a resident of Phnom Penh for a long, long time. Here is quite a nice picture that I took from their balcony.

After a few drinks there, Emma booked us into Romdeng, which is a restaurant I would recommend to anyone who comes to Phnom Penh! On the way there, we passed this chap who was only too happy to pose for his picture

The menu, amongst an array of fantastic food contained a stir fry of wild red ants (wrong!) and deep fried tarantula (wronger!). Monster Mullane, however, clearly enjoyed this particularly wrong wrong wrong delicacy

T’was a lovely evening, and from all of us at CSC, I wish you funny talking natives a happy Australian day!

p.s. the eejit wearing the scrubs has watched way too much E.R. and in the words of Adolf Mullane “he didn’t realise when sitting opposite me, how un-Clooney-esque he really was”

An early start this morning, as Ian, Ivy, Suzanne and myself caught a 6.35am flight to Phnom Penh for our visit to CSC (Children’s Surgical Centre). Getting up was a real struggle, but a distant memory at 5am when I was sitting in Starbucks inhaling caffeine!

The flight was uneventful, but the scenery was breathtaking, as from 35,000 feet all the way to landing, you could see the ground…

We breezed through immigration and baggage collection and went from plane to outside world in about 10 minutes! Emma was waiting for us, and after we dropped our bags off at the hotel, we came straight to the surgical centre to get straight to work, and the reason, after all, why we are here in the first place.

It was a typically busy Monday morning with scores of people waiting to be seen, and the clinic was even more efficient than I remember from my previous visit with patients ranging from shortened legs due to an untreated break, to kiddys with cleft lips. CSC never fails to drive home the fact that medical treatment is too easy in the western world, and I swear i’ll never again complain about the NHS! Here at CSC, there’s not a hyperchondriac in sight, and to quote “if it’s not blindingly obvious what’s wrong with them in the first few minutes, then we probably won’t be working on them!” The people that come through here understand hardship, and it’s great to see that every penny of the funds raised from the White Collar Boxing is being spent well!

Around 11am, we went to the new CASC (Cambodia Acid Survivors Charity) house set on 1 hectare of land about 22 kilometres outside of Phnom Penh. This house is the latest vision of the ever inspiring Dr Jim where he intends to not only house acid attack survivors, but also rehabilitate them with training, and give them some independance through growing and caring for crops and livestock.

Besides the fantastic potential the house and the land have, they are also building additional housing for the residents. The pictures below don’t quite do them justice, but you can get a good idea from them.

In the afternoon, we went into the operating room where all three operating tables were occupied with a hip replacement, cleft lip surgery and an acid burn victim. It’s a real priviledge being able to get so close to the work these amazing people do, and with my near-obsession with cleft lip/palate surgery, I am constantly in awe of these guys who can work, what I consider to be a miracle. These gorgeous babies are given the gift of their smile, and in a country that seems to have a significant number of cleft lipped kids, CSC is a godsend for each and every one of those little beauties that pass through.

After a few drinks in my favourite Phnom Penh bar, FCC and dinner at Cantina, it was an early night after a very long and gratifying day

Session 4 – Monday Jan 18th

I might not be very smart, but I can conclude with absolute certainty that deciding to do hill sprints and stair climbs out the back of my place at Kent Ridge on Sunday was a massive error in judgement. To quote Ron Burgundy “I immediately regret my decision”………..well maybe not immediately, but by the time I rolled into the Havelock Rd gym Monday night I was most definitely regretting it as my body was barking at me (and not one of those little dog barks either, but one of those big F^&K Off dog barks).

Monday’s session was pretty similar to Week 1 with one exception……….weigh ins. This seemed pretty formal with Andy yelling something as you walked into the gym and gesturing towards the scales. I would tell you what he said but I’m not sure what language he speaks, and I definitely don’t understand it. The boxers (use this term loosely) would tell Andy their weight in Kg’s to 1 decimal place and he would record it on a laptop………..all very professional. Somehow Alexis took over with a scrap of paper and a pen and from what I could tell just started rounding the numbers up or down……..you were either 80kg, 90kg or 100kg and nowhere in between (in reality he was just rounding up and down to 1kg). This numerical approach is best evidenced when someone asks Alexis his weight and he replies “90+kg’s” (real weight 99kg)………if that’s allowed, then ladies I am 30+ years old in case you were wondering. I am going to make a lot of fun of Alexis throughout these posts (and rightly so), but in all seriousness he is a great trainer and a better bloke……….plus he has a fantastic comeback when you take the piss out of him………… “We can always get in the ring if you want?”……….90+ it is then.

After the excitement of weigh in we moved through our standard warmups, some functional movement drills, rotating cones (for those potheads this isn’t as much fun as it sounds). We moved into some jab and parry work (which is where you pair off and face of with one partner throwing a left jab which the other parries (slaps the jabbing hand away whilst maintaining guard of the chin with the right hand………….for those baseball fans it’s kind of like A-Rod in the 2004 play offs…….only like a man) then fires back a jab of his own which is parried in return, rinse and repeat. Unfortunately I was born with “little girl hands” (Ladies there is no correlation here between hand size and…….………hangs head, stops typing) and constantly getting your hand firmly slapped hurts………..that really reads much worse when you write it down than it sounded in my head. I resorted to putting one boxing glove on my jabbing hand to reduce the pain and resembled that boxer dude (Art Jimmerson) from UFC 1 who entered the Octagon wearing one boxing glove………….needless to say it didn’t end well for Art……….hopefully this is not an omen. 

We also got some heavy bag work in the form of the 10second punchout drill. Basically you pair up and one person holds the bag for 10 seconds whilst the other person pounds it for 10 seconds then swap and continue repeating for 2 minutes (the length of a WCB round). This is very much like the plank in that it sounds really easy but it’s not, and it messes with time in your mind. 2 minutes on the bag seems so much longer than 2 minutes in bed and it’s really difficult to keep going, especially when in both cases you have someone screaming out “come on, keep going……faster” at you……….(don’t forget to delete………this makes you sound really bad in bed)

Monday finished with the same circuit and planks, nothing interesting to report other than it seems like everyone in the group is pretty cool except for that p^%$& Burpees……..nobody likes him.

Session 5 – Wednesday Jan 20th

Wednesday’s session was very similar to Monday’s except I felt tired and sore………hang on, that’s exactly how I felt Monday……………….. As these updates might get a bit same / samey in terms of exercises etc. I won’t go into detail in every post………plus I “skunked”** out of training early and don’t really know what happened in the second half. Therefore in conjunction with a rundown of the weeks training activities I am going to become a bit (more) self indulgent and introduce 3 new segments:

• The Sharing of Feelings (Pleasing)
• The Airing of Grievances (Displeasing)
• The Naming of Names (Very Displeasing)

Please note as a general rule I much prefer to concentrate on the negatives (it’s kinda my thing) so expect a lot of “Airing of Grievances” and some isolated positive “Sharing of Feelings” where warranted. Due to the fact that I rarely have much positive to say, I am going to take this opportunity to say it before people stop reading or Vanda cancels my self indulgent outpourings. In order to try and avoid the latter please read on for the inaugural “Sharing of Feelings”

Sharing of Feelings

When people find out you are boxing or training at a boxing gym they invariably ask how you got into it and if you have ever done it before. I made it a point to not do a “Who am I and how did I get here?” entry because I think they are self serving and wanky, but without further ado sit back and enjoy my “Who am I and how did I get here?” Actually we can forget the “who am I?” bit because that’s not really important…………..for better or worse I’m not much different to a lot of other expats who have been in Sing for a few years (although anyone reading prior entries would know I’m 40………I mean um 30+, bald, can’t wrap my hands and am looking for hot women and midget friends). The most important piece is the “how did I get here?” (And by here I am referring to the Vanda WCB program). If the following reads as a massive plug for Vanda then so be it……..but I really do have a lot of good things to say about Vanda and its staff and the training in general.

Early last year I ruptured my calf (jogging in the warm ups no less) of a football game. I went down like I was shot and by all accounts made a lot of little girl crying noises and rolled and writhed around in a manner that I am told was unbecoming. Long story short I was overweight, out of shape and now injured and facing 3 months without being able to run. I wandered into Vanda at Turf city with no prior boxing experience having ballooned to 100+kg’s. I asked if I could join up for the fitness classes because it was the only sport / exercise that I could do at the time whilst not being able to run (at least I could stand and punch).

Fast forward a few months and I am weighing in at a lean 80kg’s and I am well and truly addicted to the training. For anyone who has ever thought about getting fit / back into shape or getting into boxing come down to Vanda. The training is a great workout, lots of good people plus it’s insanely addictive and fun. Alexis, Michelle and all the trainers are awesome and do a great job of teaching and making sure that workouts are tailored for all fitness level. A big thank you guys for all your help…………note to self: remember to ask Ian for free stuff in return for plugging Vanda.

The Airing of Grievances

A couple of weeks back I nipped into the Havelock Rd gym on the way home from work. Having done all of my fitness sessions at Turf City (no showers) I wasn’t used to bringing a towel to training. Anyways, I needed to duck into Vivo city after training so I jumped in the shower and came out dripping wet to the realisation that I had nothing to dry myself with. Surprisingly plastic shower curtains are not a good substitute for a towel. Luckily enough I spied a nice red towel hanging on the pipe beside the urinals……….someone must have left this behind I thought so I snatched it and quickly dried myself off and hung it over the shower railing and “skunked” off. My heart sinks when I walk into the toilets of those change rooms now as that same towel is hung over the urinals EVERY time…………….I am not 100% certain, but I am pretty sure I dried myself with a urine towel……….Genuinely not good times! (For any available women please ignore that last paragraph……..and also any midgets that are easily offput).

Naming of Names (in alphabetical order):

• Hyatt Hotel

For NOT offering a non alcoholic discount for their Friday Poolside BBQ buffet………….how hard is it to look after the temple?……..pretty f$%%^^g hard! $8 bottles of water last Friday night and now I have to pay the same price for the buffet as my friends even though they consumed an average of 27 frozen margaritas each (Kenno may even have gone close to a well made 50)…………..and if I wanted a sparkling mineral water I had to pay extra!!!!! In a desperate attempt to get value for money I attempted to eat my own bodyweight in meat (this is a lot easier at 80kg than it is at 100kg…….that last 20kg of meat is a killer). Sadly my attempt ended in the same way as all the others, severe meat sweats followed by a lapsing into a protein coma…….defeated.

** “Skunked” – “Skunking” / “To Skunk”

• To leave early without valid reason
• To avoid
• To slip away

At the risk of plagarising Homer J Simpson “Skunking is what separates us from the animals…….well except for the skunk”

Session 6 – Saturday Jan 23rd

Starting off with the breakfast of champions, stale wholemeal bread and peanut butter plus half a can of Redbull (I’m not certain what Manny Pacquiao has for breakfast in training camp but I am pretty sure it’s not this) I dragged myself in the Turf City gym around 8.20am. Going up the escalator with the ‘way too cheerful for 8.20am CEO Ian’, I decided to put my 5c in about 8.30am being WAY WAY too early to train. Ian happily replied that “all the White Collar boys say that at the start but they get used to it by the end”. I didn’t want to break it to him but I have been working for 15+ years and I haven’t got used to getting up early yet……….

Sensing I wasn’t at my best I skunked to the back of the group and used the ring to hide me and my pitiful attempts at Burpees / Pushups / Crunches interspersed with skipping and meat sweats………yes it really was that bad. Things picked up a little when the group split into 2 and our group did 3 rounds of footwork inside the ring which progressed to include punching and fast changes of direction. The ‘still far too cheerful for this hour of the morning Ian’ was barking something along the lines of “if you don’t have careers as boxers then maybe you might have careers as Line Dancers”. Now I don’t know exactly what Line Dancing is, but based on what I was seeing in our group I doubt that could possibly be true.  

Our group then rotated down to the “Power Circuit” which is basically a circuit of exercises that include dumbbells and body weight exercises designed to increase power and it includes my favourite medicine ball slam (note this is not the same exercise that where I put the medicine ball through the wall, although I did note that there was a poster in place of the medicine ball shaped hole in the wall). Each person is allocated a “station” and completes that exercise for a set period of time before moving to the next until you have completed the entire circuit. Now you really can get unlucky during these circuits; we have already covered Alexis and his inability to “keep time”. Not wanting to harp on this (he is a cop after all so we wouldn’t want to upset him), but sometimes Alexis gets “distracted” and forgets to yell “change”. This becomes apparent when you realise you have just completed 70+ push ups……..and that seems a lot in 20 seconds. The moral of the story is you don’t want to be stuck on the burpees when he gets distracted.

We then moved on to 3 rounds of Punch Out only doing it whilst running on the spot. This is another that is way, way worse than it sounds and much harder than doing it stationary. Funnily enough it all seemingly goes one way………things are only harder than they sound here, there is nothing we do that is easier than it sounds.

We finished up with our friend ‘The Plank’ (3x1min………or thereabouts……..who the hell knows with Alexis on the stopwatch) and that was the end of the official session. I stayed back to do a Leg Matrix (which is just a wanky way of saying leg exercises), which unfortunately would come back to haunt both me and my bum on Sunday.

Week 3 is where the intensity is turned up so stay tuned for lots more whingeing and whining next week (imagine what these reports are going to be like when they actually let people start hitting me in the face!).

Things We’ve Learned – Week 2

• No good can come from having “little girl hands”………except if you are in fact a little girl
• The combination of stale bread, peanut butter, redbull, and 5 hrs sleep apparently cannot overcome post traumatic meat sweat disorder
• Sparkling mineral is more expensive than either beer, wine or frozen margaritas
• I can’t Line Dance……….either as an amateur or professionally
• 30+ is the new 40
• Nothing good can come from a urine towel…………Ever!
• Whilst plastic shower curtains are not a good substitute for a normal towel they are generally accepted as a superior option to the urine towel

Monday 18th January – Session 4
Quite a knackering session tonight, especially with the usual mild left arse cheek muscle pain left over from the weekend.

Alexis was in great form, and took great delight in watching a few Hollywood type tumbles. If nothing else, a few of the lads should pursue movie careers, as some of the drama was comparable to “Platoon”. Being face down in a muay thai ring populated by sweaty barefoot men isn’t my idea of a relaxing lie down…. You’ll spot who it was because he’ll hopefully get a verruca on his face as punishment for pretending he was dead.

The breakfast exercise of Guantanamo – the burpee – once again nearly killed me, but I got through them with my experimental crack at tourettes, which does seem to work after all. I was, however, quite surprised when the Charlie Sheen wannabe told me I was good at them!

Got home and had a great big portion of shepherds pie and chips…. I need the carbs for boot camp tomorrow morning!

Tuesday 19th January – Self Training
Dragged my aching arse out of bed this morning at 6.25am to go to boot camp… The run down to Fort Canning was achy from last night, but I was good and loose by the time I got there…

The trainer was late, as per usual, so I was left making small talk with the two girls who made up the class of three. From the look of them, it was clear they were there as part of a short lived new years resolution, and was quietly pleased that the session would be easy enough.

How wrong could I be….

The hills and steps of Fort Canning were the centre of the workout, and between hill sprints and stair runs, my legs were like jelly by the end. These constant sources of skinny disappointment don’t know what’s hit them!

Neeedless to say, the two girls weren’t impressed, and one of them claimed to be aching all over and feeling faint after 11 minutes (yes, I did check my watch!)…

After a million billion lunges, steps, squats, press-ups, hill runs and steps runs, I wobbled my way home for a big bowl of hearty oatmeal with extra wallpaper paste for flavour.

Wednesday 20th January – Session 5

I’ve just googled burpees, and was most pleased to find that they are hated worldwide (read this!).

To quote: “Burpees are also known as “Up-downs”, “bastard sets”, “monkey fuckers” or “Bell-end Bashers”.”. Brilliant!

Another great session with Alexis tonight – he really is an inspiration, and his entire demeanour makes training fun! Top man!

Started off with the usual routine of warm-up exercises consisting of kicking yourself in the arse, lunges with side twisty carry-on, Hitler kicks, gay skips and that hip-twisty thing that makes you look a bit of an idiot. Then we moved onto circuits, including skipping, shadow boxing and bag work. The skipping ropes are like fecking hosepipes, so me arms were buggered by the end of that! Then we moved onto the bags and 10-second punchouts. As is a regular occurrence in my misfit life, I was the odd one out, and ended up doing 1-minute punchouts which buggered me arms even further…. I was a close relation of the chimp family by the end of it the way my knuckles were dragging along the floor!

We finished up with another load of pressups, mountain climbers, crunches and bastard burpees…..

The highlight of the night was shadow-boxing with Michelle, the only female in attendance, and Alexis telling her to be careful because I’m fragile, and the last woman that hit me broke my rib! Fecker!

Thursday 21st January – Self Training

7am bootcamp this morning, so up and out of bed at 6.20am. There is nothing more beautiful that the sounds of the birds singing as the sunrises over yet another wonderful Singapore day – I love early mornings!!!

Bollocks – I hate them. I was right in the middle of a lovely dream about moving house when the alarm went off… Funny how moving house in dreams isn’t stressful….

Ran down to Fort Canning with my eyes half open cursing the black cat that ran into my path only seconds from home… it’s not that i’m superstitious, the bastard made me side step and no one should have to side step before breakfast.

As predicted the two New Years resolutioners weren’t there – one had apparently cancelled with a sore throat, and the other text to say she couldn’t get out of bed…. whadda loada shite – they had both been struck down with a common illness called lazy fecker.

On the flip side, I was lucky enough to have my own personal boot camp… I was later to realise that there was feck all lucky about this.

Skipping, lunges off steps (gay), pressups with Michael Flatley leg action, hill runs, hill runs with squats and lunges (Forrest Gump has more prowess), sprints with star jumps (I looked liked an idiot out of Fame!) and a load of core stability work on the grass, in the broad daylight, with a million people driving past pointing at the idiot one all fours, with one leg in the air, and one arm in the air, pretending he’s Superman – but the idiot version.

It certainly was a knackering, but great session with Faz…

Saturday 23rd January – Session 6
Got up extra early this morning to have my oatmeal and yoghurt goo combo before going to training…. I figured that it would be good to get some fuel for what I expected to be a hard session.

Arrived at the Turf City gym at 8.20ish and did some skipping to warm up. Ian “Adolf” Mullane was there to bark some warm up sessions at us – skipping with regular Hitleresque demands of “FASTER”, “TEN PUSHUPS”, “STAR JUMPS” and “KNEES UP” to get the muscles burning. It was quite surreal really, as it didn’t just smell like a concentration camp for once!

We then did ring-a-ring-a-rosey type skips around the ring with the occasional “JAB” and “CROSS” from mein fuhrer, along with the usual taunts of how crap I am. I bet Goebbels never put up with this shit!

Then onto power training with Alexis which involved 20-seconds of pushups, crunches, dumbell lifty up and twist things, situps, dumbell lateral raises, bouncy ball with a big fecking medicine fella, farmers walks (don’t confuse these with the cockney medical condition) and squats – three rounds with one minutes break between sets.

Then we moved onto some heavy bag action (wife joke in there somewhere!) where Adolf had us Irish Dancing whilst punching the bag 15 times, before handing over to our partner for the same again… We did this for two lots of about 2-3 minutes.

Then the most brilliant plank which turns the entire gym into what sounds like a huge public toilet…. the noises some of those fellas make when doing the plank is quite magnificent.

A most enjoyable workout.

I’m going to miss next Monday and Wednesday, as i’ll be in Cambodia visiting Dr Jim et al at the Childrens Surgical Centre. I have no doubt that this trip will be as insightful and inspiring as it was last time, and I look forward to coming back with increased motivation to raise as much money as possible for this excellent cause.