it's cultural!

i made up my mind that i wanted to go to the gym and run on the treadmill today.
but at the same time, i knew that i wouldn't have time to go back home and shower.
which shouldn't have been such a problem, seeing that there are showers located in the src.

except

the showers in the women's locker room.. don't have doors to them. it's like a public showering area for women.
and i'm just not used to that. part of me is just so self-conscious about my own body and another part of me is uncomfortable with well.. just seeing other naked women.


i would easily have excused this apprehension as a cultural thing, like i'm asian and therefore conservative and a total prude
but if you really think about it, there are like public bathhouses in japan and china.. so in our oriental past, we have a rich history of being bare with one another in bathing facilities.

so.. that excuse kind of withers.

joking briefly about it with two co-workers at UP, it's even more interesting to find that the girl from alberta is amazed at how much 'body-flaunting' activity goes on in the gym locker rooms here, and how she concludes or guesstimates that this is a 'West Coast' thing
while the lady from the US who had been to a public bathhouse in china thought that i would be more used to the idea (seeing that she had felt like the odd one out over there when all these old chinese women nonchalantly soaked with each other in the water. )
she had used the cultural reason too, to explain her initial inhibitions about it.

so is it cultural?

all i can say is that it's not so bad when you get over your own embarrassment



anyway, the whole exercise shindig had its effects entirely negated later by an over-filling dinner with thi.
ha, so much for that.