Wednesday 31 October 2012

They don’t call it full time for nothin’


As is somewhat rather expected of me, I am lacking time to do the things that I want to do. This is not about some things being more important than others (ok, maybe there is a bit of truth in that). These days it is more about the fact that I run out of energy to do things. Like updating this blog. I am not going to apologise for this because as I have always said (in real life), life happens, I hop on the ride. Plus I am trying to run as much as I can these days; don’t worry, in case you think I am turning into some exercise nut case, the key word here is “trying”. It does leave me exhausted on the days that I do it, with the upside that I sleep better at night from exhaustion. Waking up is a lot harder though, so if you have insomnia, you may want to give exercise a try.

My life is not filled with glam and glitz, I don’t party every other night, I don’t go to events worth blogging about. My day is filled with going to the office, doing office stuff that I don’t want to blog about. Spare me, please. I like blogging, but as it is right now, it is a hobby and it is sporadic and intermittent, kind of something I do when I have time and occasionally make time for. Subsequently, it is hard to update every day, or even every other day. I am struggling with once a week. Yea, I know, they don’t call some bloggers full time bloggers for nothin’.

What is undeniably true is that, I am getting older. I hate to admit this, but as I get older, I feel like I have less energy. This means everything takes more effort than it used to. Surviving on 4 hours sleep was nothing, puh-lease. Now, it is a one way ticket towards me being grumpy for the whole day, plus patchy skin. I am not sure which one is worse, but I know that I don’t like myself when I am sleep deprived. I think I am trying to make up for the fact that I used to be so sleep deprived. Is that even possible?? It is like I have to pay all these sleep debts before I can start making deposits.

Anyway.

I woke up this morning missing Bangkok. It is kinda understandable given that it was only some time ago that I woke up to this view


I know, I know. It is kind of easier to miss beautiful things than ugly things. 

Friday 26 October 2012

I am inspirational

Just a short one today. 

Went running. Currently in pain. Woke up at 4am craving char kway teow

I have come to the conclusion that the dieting is perhaps the more difficult out of the lethal combination of dieting and exercising. The exercise is usually over in 1 hour and the pain I can sort of deal with. The hunger is more persistent and tends to strike at weird hours, not to mention has the ability to wake me up from my sleep. 

On a brighter note, I can now say that people find me inspirational! God, just thinking about that makes me so happy (yeah, I know, I am shallow like that). Little victories like this are meant to be celebrated okay. Plus I have so many encouraging people in my life, two of which ran with me yesterday and were explaining the science of running and dieting. As I have always said (in real life), knowledge is power!!

Thursday 25 October 2012

Happiness takes effort


Do you know what bugs me a lot these days?

Happiness.

No, it is not like I am allergic to it or something. And no, it is not like I am lacking it in my life or something.

Why this bugs me:

(1) I think the whole world is obsessed with it. It is like it is a sin not to be happy. It is like you cannot not be happy.

(2) I think through some twisted logic people in first world countries have delusionally associate happiness with lack of material possessions, in particular through romantised the notion of poverty. This is usually in the form of statements along the lines of “they are so poor, but they are happy”. Therefore we should shun material possessions and live a simple life so that we can be happy too. It is like we want a short-cut to happiness. (This is not a criticism for the minimalist movement. When you are minimalist, you are making a conscious choice to live a certain way because you think that way suits you better. There is nothing wrong with this.)

(3) And then there are people whose career is built on telling people that they are not happy and this is the sure way to be happy. Great. We are so desperate to be happy that we are willing to pay for its attainment. Another short-cut. If we are all truly so unhappy and not realize that, do you not think it is actually a good thing? Ignorance can be bliss sometimes.

I do not claim to know anything about happiness at all, except for the one that I feel occasionally. Yes, I do say occasionally. Happiness comes in short bursts, in unexpected moments, and when that moment happens, I enjoy it  with a massive smile and my arms flying on the air (although the latter is not always true). Sometimes, I let out a little giggle – a satisfied giggle over something I have been working very hard on that is finally working out.

Happiness can come in two forms – one is the unexpected kind, like you know, when your friend wants to spend time with you, or any other favours that other people do not have to do for you, but they do it anyway because they are nice to you.

The other one is the one that takes a lot of effort and hard work. It is the realization of your goals and efforts – including the ones whereby you help others realize their goals. It is about working, either solo or together with other people towards a common goal (which is sometimes supplemented by personal goals that are realized at the same time).

So in the drbelle’s kind of extreme simplification of reality, it goes like this. There are two ways to achieve happiness. One is to be kind to other people – because this is a guarantee that there are people out there who will be kind to you. The other one is to work on your goals and to assist others in realizing their goals. Both of these things require effort: physically and mentally for starters. I don’t really like venturing to psychological and spiritual realms – I have no idea what those things are, although I know that I get psycho-analysed on a daily basis.

If you think that you can be happy without doing anything, well, sorry to say this: you are severely delusional. Everything in this life takes effort. I personally believe that if you work hard on something, you will be successful. This has served me well in the past few years of my life, so I am sticking by this at least for the time being.

Maybe, just maybe, you may want to give it a try too. Because maybe, just maybe, you may end up actually being happy. Imagine that.

Tuesday 23 October 2012

The choice to be fit

Life is full of choices. One of these choices is to be fit or unfit.

I guess that time has come that I am sick and tired of being unfit. In case you don't know me in real life and think that I am a fat sloth, well, that's 50% correct. I am somewhat a sloth - I am lazy beyond words when it comes to exercising. I am not fat though. This is because I watch what I eat. No, I don't count calories (trust me, I do enough counting on a daily basis that if I can avoid not counting, I would choose that any day).

And no, I am not one of those people who would do things in the name of charity either - like, err... running the marathon to raise money for some organisation, or cycling for the benefit of children's cancer society (if there's ever such a thing). I applaud those who do this, I have enough Facebook notifications from my friends who want me to support them in these. I am just not doing this right now. Will I do it in future? I don't know. I don't really have anything against it, at least not right now anyway.

So today, for some reasons that I am yet to comprehend, I went running. Actually, it started yesterday when I decided to sign up for the firm's JP Morgan competition. What the fuck was I thinking?

Because every single person who subsequently found out of that fact were looking at me in disbelief. They are very familiar with my aversion to exercise and they just cannot believe that (1) I have signed up for the comp, and (2) started training this afternoon.

What I was thinking was that I think it is time that I take my health seriously. You know, now that I am on the verge of turning 30, maybe, I should start getting serious about fitness. MAYBE I should start taking some form of responsibility for my health and my well being. And maybe, just maybe, I want to look better than I do now. *blush

So I had my first training session today courtesy of my boss and my work mate. In short, I felt shit and I hated every moment of it and I remember why I have the aversion to exercise in the first place. I don't understand why people want to put themselves through all of that. Such torture. Who actually do these things voluntarily???

I am a very lucky person. I had so much encouragement and praises and I have people who told me that I did a great job even when I felt I did a crappy job, in addition to feeling really shit about the whole thing. I was not even a nice person - I cannot be nice when I am exercising. I cannot be nice when I am doing something that I loathe with a vengeance. (Ok, maybe I can, but that takes so much self control and discipline, and those things were used up to just simply keep breathing, otherwise I might die, you know.)

Anyway, point of the story is that I am of view that sometimes in life, we have to do things that we do not like because these things are supposedly good for us. For me, right now, that thing is exercising. To enable me to do this, I enlist help left, right and centre, and I have people who are happy to run with me. Maybe that's because they have not run with me yet. I should ask running companions today if they would run with me again. (Please say yes. I will be good*. I promise.)

*good is defined as running more and walking less.

One of the ways I enjoy life is to immerse myself in beauty. This can take many forms - usually it comes in the form of beautiful people. You know, like Anne Hathaway, the Catwoman in the Dark Knight Rises. She's gorgeous right? I know!! That body is a lot of work, okay. She just made it look so effortless because she is paid millions to look like that. I mean, seriously, if someone is paying millions to look like that, maybe I will be more motivated to exercise and diet.

The hardest thing about exercising (for me) is not so much the exercise itself, although I might have given you that impression. The hardest thing is dieting, ok, terrible word. It is more like watching what I eat. I get more hungry, I crave carbs and when I get fatigued, all I want to do is swallow sugar. This is why, I think, exercise can make you fat. This is especially hard for me because even when I don't exercise, I am always hungry. Exercise exacerbates that feeling.

I feel so screwed, really. On one hand, I do want to get fit, and on the other hand, I do not want to get fat. I think one of the worst things in this planet is to be fat (this does not apply to pregnant women). I still don't know why I choose to exercise again (and risk being fat and being a nasty person at the same time). All I know is that this is hard and because it is hard, it must be worth doing.

Yes, that is some twisted logic. That was also the logic that I used to survive doctorate years, and it worked fine for that. If that was good enough for the doctorate, it should be good enough for life.

Sunday 21 October 2012

That mandatory first post


You know one of those people who are ‘location-independent’, who roam all over the world freely, and manage to fund their lifestyles through blogging?

I am not one of those people.

Back in 2008, just as I attended the graduation ceremony for my doctorate, an acquaintance that I was having dinner with (together with a bunch of friends) told me that I should be “one of those people who spend their lives travelling and have a website”. I am pretty sure she meant a blogger. In her defense, I don’t think she was familiar with blogging or blogs in general, but she sure knew that it existed.

I brushed suggestion aside. It is not that I am not interested in travelling or blogging. I love both equally, and I have been somewhat intermittent on both fronts.

The travel bug has left me, that’s what I say. Yes, I enjoy exploring the world, especially when it involves shopping, eating and people-watching. Yet lately I have not found a place that I actually want to visit. Don’t get me wrong, there are many places that I have not been to in this planet, and the reason this is so is because… I don’t want to visit them yet.

I have blogged before – many times. Here is the thing, most of the time, I have been blogging anonymously. Lately, I have come to the conclusion that anonymity is overrated. Actually, it is not so much my conclusion, but a friend argued his case pretty well and managed to convince me. Thus, it became my conclusion too.

Nonetheless, here I am now.

I have just been back from Bangkok, Thailand. My first time there. I was touched and humbled by the sincerity of the Thais. It is called the land of smiles for a good reason, everyone whose eyes I met was smiling. I have never come across a friendlier place in this planet.

My last trip (before Bangkok) was 3 years ago, when I visited home. I define the word home broadly, you will discover the reason for that as you read this blog. In this case, home is where my dad lives (hi Dad!). It was also not so much because I wanted to visit him (yes, I know it sounds bad, but it is also true, and he knows this fact), but rather I committed myself to doing something for someone who was pretty important to me. That trip was good and bad all at the same time. In retrospect, I should not have gone through with the trip, but I did, and I tried to make the best of it.

Of course I’d like to travel more in future – I have not come across anyone who does not want to travel and see the world. But that’s not the premise of this blog.

This blog is, for lack of a better description, about my life. My questions and musings in life, how I live my life, how I choose to enjoy my life, and everything else in between. Occasionally, I may decide to write about something sad and painful, and I promise that I am not going to brood over these things. Because I am of view and life is about change and about moving on, letting go, making room and embracing new things. Life is about growth, especially personal growth, the things that are not visible to the naked eye, but obvious to the voices of the heart.

Why am I sharing my life? Because I have benefited so much from other bloggers who are sharing their lives. I don’t even get to thank them – if I were to leave comments at every post that I find inspirational, I think I must have written thousands by now.  I hope that someone can benefit from this. I know that I will benefit from this when I look back on my life one day.

And I know that everyone writes the next sentence a lot – I want to become a better writer. Or even more specific, I want to become an honest writer. I do try harder to be diplomatic when I am writing and I have been told that I am not that diplomatic in my non-writing mode (which is basically the rest of my life). This includes the times that I blogged anonymously. I want to convey my meanings more clearly, with my name attached to it. This will mean that there will be things that I will not write here in a million years – some things are off-limits, okay. This is a trade-off that I am willing to take.

After all of those paragraphs above, in summary, this is a blog of a young, urban, female professional who ponders about life on a regular basis, survived two-rounds of quarter life crises, and just simply want to share her thoughts.