Gym-courting?

Went to gym after work today and had a pretty good workout. Hadn't been there for more than a month and half expected the large numbers of members there in the late evening.

Yes, with the fitness center boom that KL is experiencing, now gyms are the hip place for the young and happening. When I started joining gym two years ago and it was still Sweat Club, the people exercising there mainly were there by themselves and all just minded their own business doing one thing - working out .

Sometime last year, Sweat Club Mid Valley Megamall had been bought over and now it has evolved and and been `upgraded' to what's called California Fitness Jackie Chan Sport. Not only it has a total face lift in its facade and facilities, but the demography of its members have changed dramatically. With a huge recruitment drive, now, the club is filled with many younger members, at least half or more I dare say are Chinese educated - I was hearing many Mandarin and Cantonese. And they always come with friends - Girl-girl, guy-guy, a girl-guy group AND also.. couples!

Not that I have anything against couples joining gym together. But today, in just that 40 minutes or so when I was working out on the bike and treadmill machines, I was kinda taken aback when I saw some PDA* going on in the exercising area!

Ok, before your imagination runs wild.. what I saw were these:

1. A girl - a SYT* - walking up the stairs and then a guy was running after her. She turned, smile and the guy grabbed her waist from behind and they held each other for about five seconds before walking up the stairs hand-in-hand.

2. A young couple, walking hand-in-hand, leaning closely to each other as they giggled and walked towards the cardio exercise area before choosing two machines next to each other.

The scenes just happened in front of my eyes when I was stuck on a machine, not that I wanted to be a KPC*. It was obvious that there many other couples aroud too but most more discreet in the PDA part.

What does this mean? Well, looks like the gym could be the latest `hang-out' place for young couples to `pak tor', in addition to the normal haunts like shopping centre, cinema, fast food joints..

I also observed another trend. May be I'm slow but my fitness centre is really becoming a place for social gatherings! Many of these young people especially the girls were hardly exercising. They spent lots of time chatting with one another, strolling and just sitting around. They they tried out some cardio or weight-training machines but the way they did it was so leisurely and only for a short while... All the time with their make-up (for girls) and hair in place and hardly a drop of sweat!

Is this just the trend of a Hong-Ki fitness club in KL I wonder? What about the others like Fitness First, True Fitness, Clark Hatch and others? If you're a gym-mer, let me know for I'm curious.

I still miss my `old gym', where members went there with only ONE mission in mind and not definitely not to pak-tor or catch up with friends..

Anyway, will do a chipmunkrock today and may be if I perservere, I will continue with a exercise account on my blog..

Exercise today:
20 minutes on the exercise bike
25 minutes on the threadmill
stretching on Precore
60 sit-ups on the sit-up apparatus.
Total calorie burned: 275 (from cardio machines)

Glossary:
*PDA = not your Palm, but public display of affection (if u don't already know that)
*SYT = sweet young thing (normally refer to nubile, pretty girls in their teens or early 20s)
*KPC = Kepochi, meaning busy-body in a Chinese dialect