Singapore, Stealth Cardio & the True Cost of Poorly Fitted Trousers

Hey :)

This is an email I send to keep in touch with friends and share a bit about what I'm up to and thinking about. This month, I’m:

• Exploring Singapore

• Measuring drumming’s stealth cardio benefits

• Learning the true cost of poorly fitting trousers

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🇸🇬 Exploring Singapore

We spent a few days in Singapore to break up the looongg flight to Australia.

Most of it was spent walking and eating our way through Chinatown, Little India, Fort Canning, and the obligatory trip to Gardens by the Bay.

What made this trip extra interesting was learning about Singapore beforehand. I’d visited several times before but never understood much about its past.

I enjoyed reading about the city state’s rapid growth, the decisions driving it, and Lee Kuan Yew – the highly-regarded leader who made many of those decisions.

The most interesting thing, I think, is that much of Singapore feels like it’s playing a long game. For example, for every square metre of land that’s built on, a square metre of greenery must be created on site. Which, in a city with the second-highest land values on Earth, comes in at an insane cost…

…If you’re optimising for the short-mid term. But Singapore isn’t. It’s playing a long game, putting global warming mitigation, liveability and foreign investment attractiveness above short-term growth.

Coming from a country where few decisions are optimised beyond the duration of a political cycle, this was refreshing.

Measuring the stealth cardio benefits of drumming

I re-activated Whoop this month and was surprised to see a high “strain” score on a day that I didn’t exercise.

I dug a little deeper and realised it was from drumming.

Leading me down a rabbit hole measuring my heart rate data while drumming to everything from Scandinavian metal to the Hamilton soundtrack to see how good actually is drumming as a form of exercise?

The gist: Anything north of 150bpm (power metal & drum and bass) resembled a moderate-high intensity workout, burning ~600 kcals/hour with an average heart rate of 145bpm. Dragonforce pushed it up to 174bpm.

Incredibly, I found this has already been studied by measuring the VO₂ max of drummers blasting out Lamb of God songs. It concluded that heavy metal drumming meets the guidelines for the development of aerobic fitness.

So, here’s a niche idea: Peloton, but the bikes are drum kits and the excessively enthusiastic fitness instructors are bearded middle-aged metal drummers.

The true cost of poorly fitted trousers

January 3rd began with my golf trousers ripping in the crotch and went downhill fast.

I stop at the tip and get out of the car. Shut the door and lob a cat tower in the tip.

Walk back to the car to find it’s locked itself with my phone and keys inside. Fuck.
It’s also -1°C and my coat is taunting me from the driver seat. Fuck fuck.

I borrow a phone to call Skippy to remotely open my car via her app. No luck. She woke Keira and drove to try nearer the car but still couldn’t open it. We call roadside assistance but, again, no luck – we were in an Internet/signal dead zone.

A man at the tip, drunk on schadenfreude, turned this into a mediocre gameshow by telling me "You’ve 3 hours before the gates close and we get broken into every night”.

Brilliant. So, I guess I’m getting towed?

Nope. The handbrake’s on so it’d have to be lifted. Except there are height restriction bars at the tip – a moot point because all local lift recovery vehicles are in Scotland today for no explainable reason. Fuck Fuck FUCK.

90 minutes remaining
With the manufacturer and every recovery company affirming I’m screwed, I reach the conclusion that I’m smashing the window, so I pack a bag of items I assume will help.

Maybe it was the floral gardening glove, or the three slices of plain bread I inhaled for sustenance, but Skippy clearly recognised the signs of my unravelling and delicately suggested I call my insurance before putting a hammer through the window.

Which turned out to be good advice – they found a man who breaks into cars as a job who could be there within an hour and smash my window, for a fee.

15 minutes remaining
The man arrives. And this is where it gets a bit anticlimactic.

Instead of taking turns externalising our feelings about the car with a hammer, he unpacked what looked like a selfie stick. Three minutes later my car door’s open, I sign a waiver to say it’s no biggie that he just broke into my car, and we all move on.

Reflecting on the drive home, I realise none of this would’ve happened if my trousers fitted properly. I never put my keys/phone on the passenger seat – but I did today because I didn’t want to make the rip… worse.

It’s possible this is not the right lesson to take away.

🔗 Bits & Bobs

• Something I started using: Double progression - A simple method for knowing when to safely progress to lifting heavier weights.

• Something I’m reading: Lion City: Singapore and the Invention of Modern Asia – This book made visiting Singapore significantly more enjoyable.

• Something I’m working on: Building a little tool with Cursor that compares setting up an entity vs. using an employer of record in 180 countries.

• Something I enjoyed: Learning that I’m destined for good fortune this year via “official avenues” providing I visit the dentist in July, give blood in January, and avoid casinos. I’d be less skeptical if it didn’t recommend renovating the house months before expecting a newborn.

• Something on my mind: We’re in Melbourne for the next few weeks with side quests to Tasmania and Newcastle – if you’re here or have any recommendations, I’d love to hear them.

That’s it for now! Feel free to write back and let me know what you've been up to.

Cheers,
Marcus