and Royal Palm is back in my good books

Played in Royal Palm today. After a break of almost 8 months. Why? Cos they started serving grog again. I do not see the logic of paying more than 2000 rupees in green fees if I can't get a drink after the game. Anyway, got really plastered as I brought also a bottle of Laphroaig quarter cask single malt and we polished it off in addition to the Carlsberg. Good day out. O yes, the club actually cut the rough down. Common sense prevails. When your fairway is only 25 yards wide, cut down the fucking rough !

Michelle Wie's back (and the LPGA's prayers are answered

So the ex phenom and much maligned Ms Wie got the runners up spot in the SBS open. Good for her. The LPGA needs her. I cannot understand why the Champions Tour gets more TV coverage and prize money. Wouldn't you like to see attractive women golfers on TV rather than that bunch of old farts. The guys in charge of the LPGA really suck at marketing their tour. Hopefully she gets into contention every week, and no I am not a fan. She really needs (1) a new PR team to teach her what to say rather than saying "I played pretty good" etc etc when she just shot 80 (2) leave the PGA tour the fuck alone (3) get a speech tutor - going "you know" 500 times in an interview really confirms the impression that you are dumb, girl, and an insult to Stanford (4) get some humility and shyness (even if it's pretend) - see Ryo Ishikawa

Cut Michael Phelps some slack

So, the guy was caught smoking a bong. Not so smart, but hey surely you don't expect athletes to be geniuses. Give the guy a break, he won 8 golds. probably spent the last 2 years of his life in the pool 8 hours a day doing fuck all but training. Let's see all these people hanging shit on him train with no breaks, entertainment, R&R for even A MONTH.

Asian food Channel

Back in KL. Channel surfing and hit the channel which really irritates me. Can someone explain to me why the fuck it's called the "asian food channel". Every time when I happen to surf past it, (a) there is no asian on it (b) there's no bloody asian food featured. It's all western food and western chefs. They should just rename it "food channel" or "food channel for people to watch in asia" or whatever. The only asian who I have seen once on it is Kylie Kwong and don't get me started on her. She's not even halfway Chinese. That's another rant for another day.

gyms in Lahore

OK more random ramblings. Had lunch at Angeline's and Jimmy's after golf on Sunday and got semi plastered under the nice spring sun. The 2 SIA guys there decided to go look at gyms to join, and me being slighty inebriated said why the fuck not. So some reviews.

First one we went to was the gym at Residency Hotel, a little boutique hotel off Zafar Ali road. Pretty good actually. Large cardio section, about 7 treadmills(with individual LCD screens !), 7 cycles, steppers etc. Downstairs were the weights and equipment. All Cybex, which IMHO is the Rolls Royce of gym equipment. Had a small lap pool and the place was new, and seemed to have an expat crowd. O yes, had aerobics classes (mixed to boot ie not segregated), with white instructors. Fees were like 6000 rupees per month and 15,000 joining fee (I think, was still a bit drunk to be paying attention). Anyhow walk in use was 600 per session. And you have to pay extra for massage and refloxology (yes there is, I apologise for earlier comments, I am an idiot). The place had no segragation, so I would expect the crowd there to be a bit more open/young. What I like was the weight bag and the gloves/pads that came with it, and many swiss balls.

After that went to Sukh Chan gardens, which was bigger but equipment older, monthly 7000 I think (again, half drunk). It was set up like a normal "club" with F&B etc. BIG plus point had BICYCLE classes ! (all pay extra of course, but prices were not unreasonable, 2-4k a month). Had pilates too (wow) but no mixed classes cos the male members were not interested apparently. Anyway didn't see any expats except for the 2 Kenyan instructors. There were some female only areas and also mixed areas , so probably clientele maybe a bit more traditional.

All in all I was pleasantly surprised that with the facilities. Hey when there is not much to do these places are "it".