Home sweet home....

Sometimes, when you learn to appreciate different things in life, life becomes incredibly beautiful.

I've just returned from my trip to Indonesia, where everyone I've spoken to warned me about the horrendous traffic, the risky food and the dirty place. I'm happy to report that my experience with Jakarta was nothing but positive. To be fair, I was only there for 3 nights and today was a public holiday so traffic would have been much lighter, but it seemed no different than KL on a rainy friday arvo. Less angsty too.

First impressions... Very similar to Manila.. dusty, interesting CBD with lots of big buildings but majority of them had a 1970s feel to them with newer steel structures of hotels and malls interspersed within the city.

The people were really friendly. Everyone spoke to everyone, niceties like greetings and thank yous were bandied about... so unlike KL.

The food.. oh my god.... the food was amazing.. ( it warrants a post on its own with pictures) It was truly a food trip where every meal I sat around groaning and rubbing my overextended belly and swearing I couldn't fit in another morsel... until the next meal came around...

What I was amazed about was the hospitality shown to me by an old, dear friend. We had great times chatting over red wine, coffee, food or just in front of his tv catching up over the last 15 years.. his family have shown me what its like being a great host and I can't wait to reciprocate the favour when they come over to my country.

Thinking back, this year I've been travelling and have been the lucky recipient of many great hosts throughout the world. I feel really blessed to have friends like that all over the world, and can only aspire to be more like them when I have the chance to host them in return.

I've learnt that in the best trips....

1. It's not the plush hotel room, but the spare room in someone's house
2. It's not the best fine dining restaurant, but a meal where you are genuinely happy to share with the people around you.
3. It's the meeting up of old and new friends to connect and reconnect.
3. It's not whatever happens on the road, but the time you spend in each other's company in the car
4. It's not the expensive gift, but the homemade ones that really touches you
5. It's not the tens of pictures you take, but the ones that you keep in your heart that stays

* still blown away*

Jakarta here i come!

I'm flying off to Jakarta in a couple of hours time. It's the first time I've been to the city. In fact, everyone I've spoken to wonders why I'm voluntarily heading there.

Where's your spirit of adventure, people?

This time, it's going to be interesting as I have not done any research about the place. I will be catching up with a couple of very old friends I have not seen for a very long time and eat!

I love Indonesian food since I was introduced to it in Perth as a student. I want my chicken bakso mee.. my gado gado, grilled chicken, satays.. yummm.. I can't wait! This after a 9 day vegetarian detox will be like taking a trip on speed after a temple retreat.

Oh, boy is having fun with his cousins and grandparents in Ipoh while mommy is going to travel. I thought I'd enjoy the peace, but strangely enough I've been missing him. The apartment feels so empty.

Oh well, I'm going to enjoy these 3 days and will see boy again on Saturday!

Cheers peeps!! Let's see what Jakarta has in store!

Developing a rhino's hide

I have been into coaching professionally for about a year or so. It's not an easy career to set up in KL, where most people attach a stigma to needing help towards achieving their goals and to better themselves. What's wrong with me? I don't need no help...That seems to be the general feedback when we talk about coaching. However, that said, those open enough to give it a try are usually impressed with the results.

Recently, after attending a very inspiring conference on coaching I have decided to try my hand at using the coaching model to benefit parents. After all, if hard nosed corporates can benefit from it, why not parents?

I have been meeting up with people and trying the theory out, just to see if parents can see the benefits as clearly as the corporates can. I've been talking about this to many of my friends to see what they feel about it.

I have a friend who clearly told me that he doesn't think people will want to get advice from a divorcee and I have no authority to coach people on parenting. Besides going into the entire premise about what coaching is like, how we are process experts as compared to subject matter experts, how bloody insulting?!

I felt slapped.

Then I thought about it. Being single parents are kind of like wearing our scars on our faces. It's the first thing people see, and most people will attack us based on that. I examined my feelings of hurt and anger. I did not really mind if he thought my business plan will succeed or fail, I felt attacked based on my lifestyle choices. And really, what business is it of anyone's?

So my point today is take heart. Everyone has scars, some of us wear ours in front and some of us keep it buried deep. The key to it is to develop some smart alec answer to these insults and if you bother to, outline clearly to the person involved that what he or she said was not acceptable. It's interesting when you don't resort to yelling and shouting. I think the message comes across a lot clearer.

Also realise that what that person says reflects more on their thinking and perception than of you. So, be confident and know who you are. Never let people take that away from you. Be strong... like the rhino! Did you know that his tusk is only made up of hairs? So you can turn something fragile into something strong if you know what to do with it.

And today's post will end with an offer. If you are a parent looking to up your parenting game, let me know. I will be more than pleased to spend some time with you to prove the theory that coaching benefits parents too.

Drop me a line here or email me on fb... we will take it from there.

Cheers!

Satisfaction - a good pot of curry

I can't get no... satisfaction...

Wasn't that a popular song a long time ago?

Today I want to talk about Satisfaction. What does it take to satisfy you? Some people aim for an infinite amount of money, because enough is never enough.

Money allows you to consume more. We eat more, wear more, buy more cars, more houses, more of everything... simply because we can.

We are so obsessed with overconsumption these days fueled by advertisements, glossy magazines and just your run of the mill of wanting to keep up with the Joneses. Get off the treadmill people! It never works! Your consumption always increases with your income! It's never enough!

Today I am feeling buoyant, with the endorphins I have from a run in the morning. Well, more of a jog/walk than a run but I am still glad I did it! I'm now making chicken curry on a rainy afternoon for tonight's dinner.

Simple pleasures of life. My idea of a healthIER curry. Chuck in lots of vegetables. Potatoes, carrots, onions long beans and eggplants and finish off with some yoghurt. I tried it with coconut milk the last time and found it way too heavy.

Let's experiment and see how this goes. It turned out to my satisfaction, lucky me.

Come to think of it, a pot of curry is a lot like life, isn't it? It's delicious but you know overconsumption leads to high cholesterol and obesity. Too much of a good thing is baaaaad.

It's available everywhere in restaurants, roadside stalls but yet you can choose to make it at home. Immediate satisfaction vs slow cooking, healthier DIY style?

It's what you make of it. It's a great base for meals that you can have with bread, rice and noodles. As I am typing this I am having my curry with noodles and a poached egg. Curry is flexible, just like life. If it doesn't work on the first attempt, try and try again with different approaches until you get it just right for you. Don't give up!

So there you go peeps. Take life by the horns, accustom it to your needs like a curry by adding more vegies and changing the coconut milk to yoghurt but most importantly, do enjoy it.

That's really what life is all about. Curry on, baby!

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*