Getting married!

Considering what a milestone this is, it seems only fitting to log it in my blog.

Finally I am getting married to the first guy I dated. After all the trials and heartache and of course plenty of good times, and all the other headaches with the preparation, it's finally going to be done.

And make no mistake about the trying times. I can't imagine how I managed to get through all the expectations and all the demands in my mind, because certainly at that time itself I was certainly upset enough over it.

Then again, I think it's something in a book I read that helped. I began to see that any unhappiness of mine, though maybe caused by other people, was also in part there because I let it be there. I was letting myself dwell in the unhappiness and so partly responsible.

Maybe in the end the lesson to derive from all this is: Look at the big picture. After all our planning, the important thing is not the church or dinner or the house or his mother's opinions. The most important thing is that we're married in the eyes of God.

Who cares if I clash with his mother? Who cares if the speech is not right? Who cares if things are not done? None of these will contribute to our future happiness. It's the way we get through all these disagreements that counts. And doing a Bridezilla will not.

So if I ever read this again, I say Let it Go. Learn to forget the unhappiness of the past, Learn from it certainly but not dwell in it. And even with all the grief from others, they have still done plenty to bless u too. And never forget that.

Ok time for this post to end, last post of my single life. Like the psalm says, put thy childish ways behind and become an adult. May God bless me (mightily) on where I am about to tread.

'Too sweet'?

I do not understand a particular combination of 2 words in the English language: 'Too' and 'sweet'. They make no sense to me.

Rubbish

This is a post about rubbish, special request by my friend Yenn:

O ye stinking heap
I gaze upon thy rotted leaves
And thy half decomposed fruit
How nature has treated thee
Once so abundantly alive
Now nothing but... Rubbish.

Dedicated to my faithful fan of poetry, Yenn.

(bows)

Resort World Sentosa

A day at Resort World Sentosa


Since someone say I never blog anymore... Here are a few iPhone shots from today's trip:


Now we know what he thinks... Or maybe that's us after being told to wait an hour for a table...



The view as we entered the hotel from the restaurant area. Such a welcoming sight......



Even Breadtalk gets in on the act...


And can you believe it, the carpark is so big we had to take a tram there...

Ok I know this is very duh from the usual diary entry but just had to do something different... Hehehe... Interesting afternoon though, felt like tourists, in Sentosa of all places...

Ps this blog entry was written on iPhone, hooray to free apps... Lemme know if something goes horribly wrong here....

Funny how social we all are as human beings. No matter how much people drive us nuts, we can't live without many of them.

We are all born to be social creatures. It is biologically hardwired into us to rely on parents when young, socialize in our teens, get a mate, reproduce, and spend the rest of your waking life taking care of that young offspring.

This biological need has been used to explain all kinds of human behaviour. For example, gossip fulfils a need to keep oneself in touch with the rest of the pack. People like to follow and keep in touch with celebrities so that they feel they are in touch with the Top Dog of the pack. [People who are more known to more people have this aura of seeming important, otherwise why would so many people know you.]

I read once that humans help each other out of an altruistic neuron in the brain. Apparently, when you do something to help other people, you get a shot of the feel-good endorphins. This is nature's way of encouraging to continue doing good stuff to help the tribesmen. So nature encourages us not just to keep in touch, but also continue to contribute to the well-being of the pack.

And this comes up time and time, under the Courtesy campaigns, and various Pay It Forward schemes. All kinds of people from Jesus to Oprah encourage you to give to your fellow man for the good feelings that you will get.

Maybe part of the reason I'm coming up with this post is that I'm starting to get bored silly while on MC. Yes, it sucks to have to go to work with laryngitis, but it also sucks a bit to be stuck at home while the only thing close to human companionship is Facebook. -_-!!! Facebook is nice, but when all the human interaction from a friend is a status update, it leaves you a little lacking. If I had to be sick, it would have been nice to be sick with people looking out for you, cooking for you and talking to you.

Perhaps that is why Facebook is so popular. It gives you that little bit of human interaction, and then leaves you hungering for more. So you do more stuff on Facebook to get closer to your friends, maybe plant a few carrots or something. Despite its shallow nature, it does help us to fulfil that much of a social need.

Then again, this could just be me lonely at home with MC. Wait till I get socially overloaded at work tomorrow and see how things turn out. -_-!!!

I've been thinking lately about women, and our obsession with our looks.

Maybe it's partly due to the influx of weight-loss advice -_-!!! I've been receiving because of the wedding. This ranges from the practical ( "eat less and exercise more" ) to downright absurd ( "5 apples a day" )

And of course, comes all the advice on clothing. This colour/style will make your butt/arms/breasts/waist look fat. This makes you look old. This is better. That is better. Wear a corset. ( Back to the Victorian pre-lib days we go! )

The advice irritated me to no end. First, slimness is not a prerequisite to happiness. Yes, being slimmer may be good for me healthwise, and would make me look better in photos, but will it make me happy? Do you mean that if I was fat on my wedding day, I would be unhappy in my marriage? That my husband would leave me at the altar?

Of course not, all these people would tell me. But it would be better for you. And healthier of course.

( The irony being that most of these people telling me this would be the ones who either eat loads of fried/grilled foods, or can't even jog 500m to save their own house burning. Me, who eats sashimi and subway sandwiches after 1.5 hours at the gym -_-!!! )

But if I scrape away the unintended advice, and my own reactionary irritation, I find something a bit more fascinating underneath all these. Namely, that women, from prehistoric to modern times, have not gotten rid of the unhealthy obsession with their bodies. We are still as preoccupied with our bodily image as ever.

Because if you listen carefully to all the advice ever dished out, you would realise that the main message being given is to slim down. All the other health risks of obesity: clogged arteries, weakened joints, etc are merely afterthoughts. ( "...and you will also get health attacks!" ) The driving point of all the advice is that I have to lose weight so that I will look slimmer and better, and also so that I will reduce my chances of heart attack etc. And definitely all the bad dietary advice I've ever received never even takes these health risks into account at all. Hardly anyone ever says, "Eat more veggies to reduce the clogging in your arteries so that you can have a healthier lifestyle." Rather it's more "Eat more veggies to reduce your weight, and your arteries will not be clogged as well."

Notice the slight difference in emphasis?

So you take all the comments people ever give you about dieting, and it comes down to this: That as a woman, you must look slimmer.

Funnily enough, despite all our advances and our supposedly modern thinking, this has not changed since caveman eras. That our outward bodily appearance is the sole deciding factor in whether we women score a date, a husband and subsequently get to reproduce our genes. You would think that given all the bras burnt, the pants worn, and the higher salaries, we would have had time to reconsider our criteria for a mate, but no, it remains woefully prehistoric.

And even this. Given our higher education, salaries, and increased women's rights, do we even need to score a husband at all??? Yes, laughable, coming from me, but surely there are tons of other stuff we could be doing, reading Shakespeare, curing cancer, saving dying dogs, other than spending the time on looking pretty for the men. Also, don't most of the dating advice out there start like this: "Love yourself first. Spend time on the things you like doing."? If he's not coming to you, and the waiting is making you miserable, then why not, instead of waiting, do tons of the other stuff that you like instead?

Our own bodily obsessions are our own undoing. We get together and gripe about the various men who have rejected us because we were the wrong size and look. But yet we also spend tons of time and money trying to get the 'right' size and look. In all this, we neglect one simple thing: If only perfect-looking women got married, then how about all the other 'imperfect' women that have gotten married over the centuries? And how about the 'perfect' women that have gotten divorced?

Ladies, it's time we stopped thinking in terms of waist size and kilogrammes. These are not prerequisites to a happy life. They are not going to open the door to Magical Happy Land, no matter how much we want them to. It's time we acknowledged that the key to our own happiness lies not in our stomachs, but in our own hearts.

What I learned from Indo:

1. I am incapable of posing for the camera. Unless it's a corny one.

2. Aunties everywhere are the same all over, they just speak different languages.

3. Always pay good money for professional work.

4. Singapore has a world class traffic system. Yes, we do.

5. People will do anything to eke out a living if they have to.

6. Humming Lady Gaga will get your mind off anything.

For more details, meet up with me over a cup of coffee... :)

It's been almost a month, so here's the Great Hamster Escape that happened just 2 days ago...

We keep 1 other hamster in the office other than Anthony, let's call her Spidey. Spidey is a hamster with the mind of a gymnast, because for entertainment, she would start climbing up the bars of her cage, and even climb upside down on the ceiling bars.

We always thought that was cute. And even on the day of the Great Escape, I was giving them breakfast at 9am, and watching her climb upside down.

Then at 11am, I went to check on them again, and I realised her cage was empty.

And the gate to the cage, on the ceiling was open.

*MAD PANIC!!!!*******

I shook the bedding in the cage in case she was hiding there. I searched the cubicles around her cage, kicking boxes hoping to frighten her out. I shook Anthony's tank and asked him "Where's she??? Did you see her???"

Obviously all did not work.

My colleague was also frantic. We tried looking around the office, kicking at boxes but damn she hid from us. My worst fear was that we'd only find her when we heard an "EEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!" from across the office and rush to see her dead under a stiletto. -_-!!!!!

Thankfully she was spotted at the end of the day. Cyn spotted her along the corridor of the cubicles and we rushed in and cornered her at (ironically) the messiest cubicle. Those in the office surrounded the cubicle SWAT-style and finally she came out and one of us scooped her up in a box and closed the cover.

*PHEW*

Here is a testament to the intelligence of hamsters. While we thought she was so cute for imitating Spidey, she was actually training her muscles to bring her to the only point of exit on her cage. Then she managed to fiddle with the latch enough for the cage door to open and for her to climb out, thereby sending all of us into a panic. -_-!!!

She has now been placed under house arrest. We tied the door and the cage down with raffia string, and I'm hoping she'll not learn how to untie knots. Now she sits forlornly in her cage in my house, perhaps dreaming of the brief foray into freedom.

Or plotting her next one.

Haven't been blogging for a while... I know... Somewhere between all the work, the friends, the man, the gym... Blogging life took a serious hit... Thank god for Twitter...

And after that hiatus now I have too much stuff that went on that I dunno what to blog about... -_-!!!

Ok I talk about weight first...

Because for the first time in a long, long while, pple have started to comment that I have lost weight.

Thus is a plus sized achievement for me. The last time anyone said that to me was at the onset of puberty. And it's been all downhill since then.

But not easy. For example, in front of me right now is a packet of freshly fried French fries from a BK meal. I finished the burger, ate some of the fries and left the rest of the packet aside.

Those of you who know me will understand what a miracle that is for me.

But came to a point where I felt things had to change. One day I looked at the weighing scale, and saw a number that I never knew I could reach. And that was after I had checked for zero error.

Sometimes , you reach that point in your life that you know it can't go on this way. And I knew I had to change.

Eating habits was one thing. I cut snacks out, and for the first time ever, made decisions to eat more greens.

Again, another miracle.

Exercise was another thing. I started going to the gym again and I changed my routine to include more strngth training. Ladies, don't worry about looking like Schwarzeneger. It helps, ok?

I'm not saying that I'm perfect. I still have to shop for sizes 14 and up, but the most important thing for me is the feeling of control.

At least I know that I am able to take the steps to (try to) bring my weight down. And that I am capable of saying no to (lovely long luscious) fries if I have to.

I also know there's lots of things more important than food. Fries and ice cream don't taste as good as when they are eaten with friends, for example. It's a double misery to be fat and alone, I think.

(which reminds me, friends must encourage each other to lose weight, ok?)

Books and TV can be enjoyed without chips or soda by the side.

My brain can still function during classes without massive amounts of food
beforehand.

And massages should be totally enjoyed without food.

I'm not perfect. If I was I would never have gotten myself into this state in the first place and I would be 20 kg lighter than I am now.

But now that I am here, the onus is on me and no other to pick me up and send me off on the right path.

I will get there! Not for my wedding, but for my long term health. Certainly I never want to be a potential contestant for The Biggest Loser.

And I definitely want to reduce jeans size.

Ganbarimashou!

I'm still not keen on the wedding.

Don't get me wrong; I want to have a marriage, yes. It is the wedding that I'm not keen about.

I'm still haven't entirely reconciled myself with having to comply with so many outside expectations regarding the wedding. Recently another aspect of the guest list popped up again which brought out all the old insecurities and fears. And I went back to zero again, after making myself ok with the local one.

It's getting easier to identify what about the overseas one is making me so worried. I roughly narrowed it down to loss of control and differences in taste.

Very little about the overseas one is decided by me. The venue was chosen w/o me, and I have an uneasy fear that the dress and makeup and hair will be decided for me, against my better judgement. I have this recurring nightmare that I will look dreadfully obiang on my wedding day and that no matter how much pple say that I look good, I will see in their eyes that they will never be caught dead in what I have on.

Terribly insecure, I know. And you may say that I think too much. But I honestly have not found a way to 'stop thinking so much'

If pple say you should lose weight, is it easy to start a new diet regime and lose 5kg by next month? If pple say that you get irritated too easily, is it so easy to restrain your anger and retain an aura of zen-like calm? Of course not. The same way, just because you tell me not to think so much... Doesn't mean that I can necessarily do it so easily at a snap of the finger.

And sometimes, to compound the problem, I won't even know the cause of the worry till much later, when
I can analyse it further. So pple wonder why I seemed
so ok about it, only to flare up again.

Put onto that the expectations of my family, in-laws, friends... It's getting exasperating. To have to do things not according to your wishes, but to everyone else's. To have to accomodate pple who want me to dress as such. To accomodate pple who want me to do as such. To risk offending friends and family because of my own fears.

Sigh... Tiring. Try to control... Get headaches. Let go of control to other people... Upsetting. How like that?

Somehow I know it inyself that I have to deal with the internal issues myself. If I don't there's no one that can help me. Identifying the fear is the first step. Now I have to repeatedly remind myself that the fear should not overcome me. That I should deal with it on my own terms and not let it take control.

Mantra: a day for a lifetime!

shitmydadsays: "I lost 20 pounds...How? I drank bear piss and took up fencing. How the fuck you think, son? I exercised."
Original Tweet: http://ping.fm/VvbkX

After my post on gym thoughts, thought this was rather funny... :p

Gym thought

Random thoughts while I was at the gym:

1. I feel more energetic after a good workout. I feel like I want to dance the lamboogie, the swing or the exotic... Anything as long as I move my body a lot.

2. I hope weight went down not due to water loss... Nobody loses over 1 kg in water loss, right?

3. Then again, my gym clothes can't be 1 kg lighter from last week's set, can they?

4. Doing weights makes me feel strong.., kinda like Xena. I feel like I can lift a kid in each arm.

5. But it can also make me feel drop dead tired. Like slop down on bed and sleep immediately kind of tired.

6. Lastly, is it time for me to get off this treadmill yet?

"Miss ---? This is Aki."

"Not feeling well today?"

"Yes, I... (voice caught off in a harsh hacking cough)"

"Ok! I get it!"

"Thanks."

I didn't go to work today.

The reason in the morning was quite genuine. A hacking cough that made my voice almost a harsh whisper. So a last minute decision to not go.

Had breakfast in an absurdly far place, then was dropped off at City Hall, supposedly to take the MRT back. Then looked around and decided, the morning was too good to waste at home.

You ever seen how peaceful every place is in the morning? I never quite realized because I was always at work ( duh ) and even during holidays when I did go out, it was in the afternoon when it was already crowded. So I looked at the streets as he drove past and I saw a different set of streets, though I had walked through them many times before.

I came out of the car and everything was peaceful. ( of course they were. Every responsible person was at work ) I walked through the street and I never knew the morning was so cooling.

I know most people in my position would have just slept, but I just had an aching feeling that the morning was too good to use on sleeping.

Maybe I haven't shaken off the holiday mood entirely. Because I felt a kind of peace with the world that I only felt... On holiday. And suddenly, I felt happy.

Yes, maybe the morning IS too good to waste on sleep. :)