The frail human spirit

When things are going well, we mistakenly believe we are invincible. We continue to push and push in the name of progress. We hear miraculous stories from everywhere and tell ourselves, if it can be done, why don't I do it? All it takes is a bit of reality check when you fall sick. I am not even talking about terminal illnesses. Just some fever and a bit of flu and your perspective changes instantly.

It's been so miserable lying on the sofa, not able to work out, feeling like a weakling. The world seems so cruel. Its like the level of fitness I've been working so hard on all year is slowly wasting away. Together with the compilation of a business plan that is taking longer than I would like is not helping matters or my mood.

However, like everything else, good or bad, it passes. I am slowly recovering and the business plan is looking more solid now. Circumstances happen that I can make a trip to test out some of the theories that I need to formulate for the business plan, so today I can start doing the logistics for it.

I think my point today is the hardest thing in life is not preventing falls. The hardest thing is having the energy and spirit to pick yourself up again. Having enough self confidence to tell yourself, that's fine. Even if progress has not been as fast as you would have liked it. It always starts from now on. You can pick up speed from today, from now. Keeping away from being 'disheartened' is the real challenge.

Some tips

1. Forgive yourself. You are only human and learning as you go along. Show some loving kindness to yourself.

2. Don't indulge in self bashing. Sounds like an oxymoron but we love to do that when things aren't going well. It's non productive and only seeps your self confidence. Admit it, we all do that sometimes, don't we?

3. Understand that comparing yourself with others is a futile exercise. There will always be people better off and people worst off than you. If you get caught up with the.. oh wow we all started off at the same place and now they are all doing so well and I'm .. well not so well .. it's the beginning of a downward spiral. You are given your particular perspective for a reason. So work with that.

4. Establish pillars in life. Mine is exercise, religion and enjoyment I get from parenting my child. Again, at any point in life, you can just stop and work from that point onwards. Your pillars will act as a crutch when you are particularly feeling low.

5. Lastly, allow yourself some joy in life, as that makes any struggle a lot more bearable.

Cheers!!

A food filled weekend

Insomnia has struck. The boy and I have just returned from a two night trip to Ipoh and whilst he is snoring in bed, I am here, looking at the clock and as alert as an owl.

We managed to cover quite a lot of good food in such a short trip. I was craving some good old popiah and was told by a reliable source that Gourmet Square in Ipoh Garden had some at night. The only good ones I knew were in Kong Heng and only available in the day. Drove to Gourmet Square in about 5 minutes.. (the beauty of Ipoh traffic) and the rain started.  By the time the goods were purchased, it was literally pouring cats and dogs. Still, the mark of a true Ipohite.. braving all kinds of weather for good food! To be honest, I still preferred Kong Heng's version, but it was satisfying enough for me that night.


Had my routine curry CCF the next morning after running around several wet markets to do groceries. I've never been inside Simee Market, but it looked fairly interesting. Perhaps one of these days I will venture in. We had this for lunch... We pretty much covered all the food groups with this.. chicken, fish, mutton, vegetarian... Was very yummy.

My tummy started rumbling again at about 5 and that set me off to search for more food... ended up in Ipoh Garden packing away Mee rebus from one of my favourite rojak stalls. Ok I shared it with my mom, but I still had half. Dinner was at Overseas Restaurant requested by the boy. I didn't enjoy dinner very much. The steamed minced pork was too porky for my liking. Can't they just go a bit heavier on the seasoning? *shrug*

This morning before we left Ipoh we managed to fit in some dry wanton noodles w excellent caramelised chunks of charsiew. Topped it off with a hot, flaky egg tart from Nam Heong and a good cuppa of hot ipoh kopi....

There you go... two days of pure gluttony... and at the rate tonight is going, gym does not look very likely tomorrow either..

Silver lining

And every so often, life gives us a break and reminds us how gratifying it is to be a parent. I've had one of the better nights with boy I haven't had for a long while. With the ending of school holidays and the starting of school, it's been a tad rocky.

Boy has in the last two days decided to learn how to cook. Nothing too fancy, just eggs. I was just wondering when the culinary bug would hit him and it has. I'm so proud to raise a budding gourmand. I'm still not allowed to watch him cook, but he does allow the helper to assist. Tonight he made scrambled eggs, pretty impressive ones too.

What I actually wanted to blog about tonight was when we watched an episode of Desperate Housewives where Lynette had separated from Tom and was having a hard time dealing with his new girlfriend. She was advised to play dirty and went on to influence her daughter against daddy's new girlfriend. I looked at Marcus and said, aren't you glad you are not subject to that? What really amazed me was what he picked up from that. He pointed out accurately the sly and snide facial expressions Lynette had when she was unduely influencing her daughter. I thought that was spot on and pretty cool. I mean, dealing with the fact that your ex has moved on with a new partner is never easy, and I can feel Lynette in here. Luckily she realises in the end that's not what she wanted to put her daughter through and came clean with her.

Boy also went on eventually to crack really adult insights and wound up the night by singing to me Josh Groban's song.. you raise me up... I was utterly shocked. Of course he did not mean that I had raised him up to great levels, more like don't complain about me, you raised me up to be like this.. See, this is what I love about him, he's got such a caustic wit.

Nights like these makes all the rest worthwhile... *content*

Insecurity

If there's one thing that marks us single parents, its insecurity. Society constantly tells us that we have already wronged our kids by allowing them to be in a single parent family... funny how they never say anything about kids in a dysfunctional marriage.

One of the things I would like to have would be another adult to bounce ideas and opinions off when I'm parenting. Because of my situation in that I separated when boy was very very young, it's not like I've had someone to bounce ideas off and then I lost him. It's all been a matter of picking it up as you go along. I've decided that will be my approach to parenting as well as other aspects of my life.

I doubt myself sometimes when I am parenting. But all that I need to fix that is to be in the company of a regular family and I'm instantly cured. I see that kids from ALL families act up. It's normal and different people have different approaches to making things work for them. That usually calms me down somewhat... and I regain confidence in my parenting.

That's really life isn't it? When you are not going down the beaten track in life, instead forging new paths and cutting down stray branches that get in your way, you really have to fly by the seat of your pants and go with your gut feel. As long as your inner compass and your priorities are in place, I'd say that whatever you decide would be just fine.

Here's to giving a break to yourself the next time you feel like flipping when things get tough. Have a breather and then come back recharged....

Remember, you need to fill your own cup before you can fill anyone else's.

Not a good couple of months

If i have somehow misled you, dear reader into thinking that life as a single mom trying to make it in a new city and crafting out a new career is a bed of roses, I sincerely apologise. It's not. I try to keep it together as best as I know how but sometimes, life has other plans.

And when it rains? It pours. I have been seeing several people in the profession that I have chosen to focus on and they all have the same verdict : It's fine as a hobby, but don't count on making money from it. As you can tell, it's hardly encouraging hearing that from industry pioneers. Well, looks like I need to diversify and find other more profitable things to go into and soon. It is a real bummer, let me tell you. The lack of a successful career chips away at your self esteem, bit by bit. You may think that going into work day after day is mundane and boring, but try having days stretch out endlessly in front of you and knowing there's nothing in there. That's worse.

I just had a talk with boy's teacher after picking up his report card. His grades are great, but there is mention of the fact that he's naughty at school. He apparently picks on other kids and the teachers focus on him because of his grades are good (teacher's words, not mine). No doubt there's a lot that can be interpreted from there, but let's look at it this way. My son misbehaves in school. I need to stop it.

I swear, that's where the coaching comes in. Instead of telling him what I thought, I basically just asked him lots of questions and tried to understand what was going through his head. Ajahn Brahm had a talk on bringing up children and in it, he said, make your children know that they can tell you anything and not get punished. They can open up to you about everything they've done wrong and you just acknowledge that it's a mistake and you go on from there thinking of ways to fix it and prevent it the next time. I wonder how many parents can do that. Still, buddhism teachings are always there for you to aspire to, so any little bit towards that direction helps.

I am trying not to flip but to work through these issues methodically and sensibly. I will do it even if it's the last thing I do!!! (Gargamel inspired)

Winding the holidays down...

Holidays. The light of every child's life and the bane of their parents. The boy is finishing up a 3 week school break and to be honest with you, I can't wait for school to start!! It's been more challenging than other days. It's like if they have no structure that school and other activities provide, they go haywire. Default setting becomes argumentative, fault finding and generally, a pain in the butt.

Ahhh.... that's where grandparents come in. Since they love each other's company and the older ones are more prone to spoiling the younger ones, we shall just go with the flow. I brought boy back to Ipoh at the start of his holidays and he's had a ball. Ipoh.. the land where he runs around, cycles around the garden, goes out for food expeditions with the grandmother (they went to Tualang for prawns - I got shown the picture when they returned) and the odd catch up with his old Ipoh friends and cousins.

I did what I could to ferry him to daily swimming lessons and arranged for some Mandarin tuition for him.. but i think the days passed by in a blur of TV, storybooks and running around. Now that we are finally back home in KL.. it's the final countdown to school back on Monday. I'm just allowing ourselves to adapt back to routine next week. TV is still constantly on and the whining is still around sometimes, but we shall just take it easy and regain control of normal life by next week...

fingers crossed.

The frog

There is a Malay saying "katak dibawah tempurung" and also a Cantonese saying "cheang tei chi wa - frog at the bottom of the well". Both mean someone who has not been exposed to the world. The poor frog that only knows what is around it because that is the only thing it is familiar with. 

A : You know, I’ve changed my imported car into a local car. Since then, it’s sooo good! I can drive up and down and still remain low profile! No one recognizes me at all!! I can do whatever I want!! No one knows!

B : What is it that you are doing that you need to be so low profile???

The above conversation I had with a certain professional acquaintance I have from Ipoh prompted this post.

As I have mentioned before, I am born and bred in Ipoh. I have been living in Ipoh for a large part of my life, discounting stints in Australia and KL.

Ipoh is a great place to live in and bring children up. There is none of the hustle and bustle of the big city traits, the air and water is of much better quality in here and we’ve got such excellent local food at great prices in here. However, it does tend to breed a certain type of individual that are peculiar to small towns.

Anyway, back to Mr A. It blows me away to interact with someone like that. I am not able to get through to them with the huge ego getting in the way. After some sharing with a particular girlfriend, it seems like this kind of behaviour is normal for small towns. 

These people tend to think that their particular town is the center of the world. I am guessing that that’s normal since they have obviously chosen to reside in there. It is still odd behaviour they display. They work at the same job for years on end and probably end up very good at what they do. With the amount of free time on their hands, they become intensely political, backbiting and making life difficult for other people.

The good news? This behaviour is easily cured. Travel. Go out of your comfortable town or city and visit other places. See how other people live, realize that there are other bigger, more accomplished people out there. If nothing, at least it reduces your ego to the point other people can get through to you.

The more successful in life you are, the more modest you become.