Counting my blessings, not the calories

"Florence Griffith Joyner, the fastest female sprinter, dead or alive; her best time 10:49 seconds", a channel on YouTube chimed, like a wake-up call, as I tried to turn off my phone alarm one groggy weekend morning and inadvertently turned on the video-sharing app.

A controversy surrounding the use of performance-enhancing drugs notwithstanding, Flo Jo's world record is still out there, I think, but what are the odds of a video clip about the deceased United States athlete popping up on my phone screen to remind me of my awkward 100-meter run, in roughly as many seconds, to catch a train from Tianjin back to Beijing.

Hungover from a night of binge drinking and yet oddly hungry, I zombie-walked to the fridge and fished out a slice of walnut Napoleon from behind yogurt bowls, before subjecting myself to a short session of self-admonition.

Now, it wasn't always like this. By that I mean two things: first, I was agile enough to race against time after class and catch the late-afternoon "local" (a term used in India for suburban trains) home from college, and second, I never before had complaints about how my maker had granted me an overabundance of adipocytes (fat cells).

Genes didn't matter. Despite being born to district-level athletes, I was a plump kid. And an overweight teenager. And an obese adult. In my defense, I did somehow win a 100 m silver in high school. But that was then.

Let's start here with the trip to Tianjin. Two colleagues and I made it to Beijing South Railway Station with time to spare, ordered coffee at Starbucks and took our seats on a train that clocked 347 kilometers per hour. In less than 30 minutes, we reached our destination.

A long (ish) walk along the Haihe River brought us to the European-style street. We visited the heritage museum, made our little contribution to the local economy in the form of souvenir purchases and indulged in fun photo ops with cultural volunteers in giant panda and monkey costumes. By then our ravenous insides were rumbling in revolt.