Monday, August 11, 2014

Cat Fight

It was 5am, and miniature tigers were roaring. Yes, that's right. Our neighbours' cats. 

There seem to be some ongoing feud because this wasn't the first time we heard them at night.

Once, our elderly neighbour had to come out at midnight to stop the feline stand-off involving his own cat and another. We don't know yet if it's a stray or a neighbour's pet.

So it was 5am, and it woke the whole house. Dh tried to shoo them from the room upstairs but it only quieted them for a few seconds before they started again. Oh agony.

I fell asleep during the quieter moments while they sounded like they were choking each other. They didn't snarl as loud. I hope none of them died. 

Thursday, July 31, 2014

Love strings

Last night, I had the sudden inspiration to pick up the guitar again.

This was triggered from the wonderful jazzy music that we heard on the church piano during the weekends. My admiration for expert pianists rose to a new level as I listened to the sunday pianist take control over the silence and filled the whole sanctuary with his music, jazz-inspired cadences and transitions that refreshes any weary soul that sat on those pews. Music uplifts.

So, armed with a chord book, I took out the dusty guitar and tried my rusty hands at it again. Oh boy. Rusty hands don't just happen on the fingers, but the wrist, joints and movement. Ow.

However, I soon fell in love with the experience again. My in-laws came into the room, surprised that I could strum a guitar ( messily, i'll admit. ). That's when I discovered that my father-in-law could play some mean notes, albeit rusty too.

After the brief father-in-law showcase, I brought the guitar to my dear husband. I knew he could play some songs. He sportingly turned on his charm and we ended up with a mini jam sing-a-long to those good ol' emo songs in our yesteryears when we were single and almost attached. O, what fun! It's nice to be nostalgic every now and then.



It's also a pity that over time, people tend to give up on their music abilities. I am very guilty of it too, not that mine was that good to begin with. But with what little we have and expand on, it will harvest bigger things with practice, whatever that harvest may be. It helps that playing music helps stimulate your brain development.

So, forget about new year resolutions, make resolutions in the middle of the year!

Mid-year resolution: Practice music!

Monday, May 26, 2014

22 Lessons Adversity Teaches

1. Patience
Enduring a difficult period of suffering not only requires patience of us, but builds it in us as we exercise that often-neglected moral muscle.

2. Empathy

The pain we have to endure helps us recognize the pain in others’ lives more readily. We feel for them, remembering the pain we suffered.

3. Tolerance

When we experience deep pain in life, the smaller stuff can become easier to tolerate. When you have lived in a box as a prisoner of war for 3 years, a cranky attitude from a store clerk is no big deal. What’s a sprained ankle to a woman who has undergone triple bypass heart surgery?

4. Humility

Life’s trials can have a humbling effect on us. We realize we are not almighty or self-sufficient, that we can’t do all things at all times relying on the strength of our own backs. We come to see the interdependency and importance of support from family and friends … and God. Trials tend to soften the rougher edges of the proud.

5. Inner strength

As we persevere and endure, we discover an inner strength we didn’t know we had. Sure, there are breaking points for most of us, but so much more inner power resides deep in the grit and fiber of our deepest selves than most of us are aware of … at least until life calls on us to discover it!

6. The importance of laughter

Have you ever been in the middle of a storm when suddenly the clouds part for an instant and the sun peeks through as if to say, “Hold on a little longer, this too shall pass?” This is what often happens with our personal storms as well, as the sunshine of laughter takes on new significance. Such seemingly insignificant moments can make all the difference in our ability to hold on and persevere another day. Laughter, at time, truly is the best medicine.

7. The importance of friendship

Our trials and tribulations are often all-consuming. As such, they can strain even the best of relationships. But when we have friends who stay the course, we start to realize the depth and sacredness of friendship.

8. The importance of family

Often when life has become uprooted, families pull together and focus their attention on a common enemy (cancer, natural disaster, loss of a child, financial collapse). Even when friends can’t be there, family often is. It is in those moments that the importance of family can suddenly transcend the memory of fights and contention, offense and rivalry.

9. The importance of being surrounded by positive people

Have you ever fought with all your heart, might and soul to keep your thoughts positive while you faced the monstrous giant of adversity? It is a tough ride. We are just so fragile when every ounce of energy is focused laser-beam-like on one goal … emotional or physical survival. Just one negative pessimist can pull the tower down. It becomes crystal clear at such times just how important it is to surround yourself with positive people.

10. The importance of positive thoughts

Dark periods of our lives often bring out our darkest moods. But this just exacerbates the problems we face. Our own thoughts become much more clearly linked in a cause-effect relationship to our ability to navigate troubled waters. We can clearly see how negativity shows up on a heart monitor, how we fail to follow up with calls to rebuild our finances, how the marriage further deteriorates. We can see more clearly the need for a positive attitude and a good dose of optimism when everything else looks dark and foreboding.

11. Compassion

Our hearts can be made both larger and softer when squeezed by circumstance. We can very quickly learn to appreciate the decency of others. We remember the pain we felt and the unexpected bright light others emitted when they showed compassion to us in our darkest hour.

12. Gratitude for the small things

When life is at its bleakest and it feels like everything is crumbling at your feet (or on top of you!), a flower blooming from a crack in the sidewalk takes on new significance, meaning and beauty.

13. Life is too precious to waste on petty resentments

When crippling life circumstances threaten everything, the petty things we store up in our hearts can suddenly seem as ridiculously trite as they usually are to begin with.

14. The small stuff doesn’t matter much

Have you ever gotten so angry at someone you just couldn’t see straight, and then took a step or two back from the situation and realized how foolish it all was? Being confronted by life’s hurtles can have the same effect, drawing us into deeper moods of contemplation, causing us to see more clearly the pettiness of far too many of the things we ordinarily would have taken more seriously.

15. The big stuff does matter

But family and friendship, God and character, integrity to cherished values, attributes such as love and courage, compassion and forgiveness suddenly seem more immediately important than they ever did before, often to the point that the smaller stuff gets squeezed out of our hearts and minds.

16. The importance and power of touch

When life is churning around us and we feel ourselves sinking, a hand, a hug, a caress, a touch can be magical.

17. Perseverance

Each moment of pain is preceded by a previous moment of pain. Each moment of pain precedes a following moment of pain. That loop can begin to feel extremely heavy and like it will last an eternity. That’s when hope begins to fail and other more permanent thoughts of escape begin to seem preferable. It is a noble act of profound courage in perseverance to take the next step in life anyway. And that lesson of endurance in suffering can prove invaluable to those who have gained it on the bumpy terrain of life.

18. Life is fragile

As we feel crushed by our particular set of challenges, we can gain a better appreciation for just how easy life can slip away. If this lesson is learned well, so much more of life will be lived with passion and joy. It can also be lengthened by a renewed commitment to better health.

19. Time matters

Lying in a hospital bed for days on end or a lengthy bout of unemployment has a way of focusing our attention on the issue of time. The glimpses we gain into the fragility of life can lead us to value the seconds that tick away day after day in frivolous pursuits so much more – so much so that we finally start to fill that time with greater meaning and significance.

20. Prevention is a good investment

There’s nothing much more instructive of the need to brush your teeth than the loss of them. There is nothing more instructive of the importance of food storage like a natural disaster. There is nothing more instructive of the need to live below one’s means like an economic meltdown.

21. Procrastination doesn’t work

Similarly, we quickly come to realize that putting off the inevitable doesn’t change its inevitability … and usually makes what was already inevitable much worse than when we first noticed the need to take care of it. Procrastinated tasks have a way of snowballing into bigger adversities. And the pain of the adversity often acts to poignantly underscore the lesson learned.

22. The importance of living everyday with purpose, joy and meaning

When we lie at death’s doorstep — or even sit on the curb in front of the house of life’s non-lethal challenges — all the wasted hours and days and weeks of our short lives start to add up to something much more significant than it seemed at the time. We realize so much more could have been done with those fleeting moments, but wasn’t. We regret the love we didn’t express, the forgiveness we didn’t extend, the humanitarian project we never took action to begin, the lives we could have touched but got too busy to make the effort. Time starts to acquire a sacred quality.


- See more at: http://meanttobehappy.com/22-lessons-learned-when-sorrow-walked-with-me/#sthash.e54Lm254.dpuf

I Walked a Mile



“I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chatted all the way;
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow;
And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her,
When Sorrow walked with me.”


 Robert Browning Hamilton

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Masked on

For the first time, I wore a mask at work and it's not because of the haze. 

My client had bought a pack of masks for me because I was coughing my lungs out. My eyes were teary and my head hurt. I couldn't speak much as it would trigger my cough. I really wished I didn't have to be at work today. My mc had ended yesterday, we were short handed and deadlines were looming.

What should I have done?

While I know it's the more responsible thing to do to wear a mask so others don't catch the germs, but it does make me feel a little alienated. It occurred to me that some people may not care if a person is sick, as long as they get the work accomplished in their demanded timeframe. It saddened me a little. Such is the hamster wheel in our society. I could see among my management that they were conflicted on whether to let me stay home the next day.

Thankfully my day was short and I went back to rest. 

My first trip to the doctor was 3 days ago and my medication had finished. So I went back to see the doctor after my dinner for the 2nd time. And I was refused consultation. Why? Because there was a long queue and the assistant had to limit the number of patients so the doctor could go home on time.

I tried to plead for the assistant to squeeze one more person in but was denied. It occurred to me that I could get prescriptions over the counter if they don't let me see the doctor. 

It saved me the consultation fee and I got my medicine. Except no MC because only the doctor can prescribe one. 

How does a doctor can stay healthy and well when he sees sick people everyday? 

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

The Secret to Happiness

So, have we solved the secret of happiness?

"I believe so," he said.

Are you going to tell me?

"Yes. Ready?"

Ready.


"Be satisfied."

That's it?

"Be grateful."

That's it?

"For what you have. For the love you receive. And for what God has given you."

That's it?

He looked me in the eye. Then he sighed deeply.
"That's it."

- Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom

Monday, February 24, 2014

From a Sermon by the Reb, 1975

A man seeks employment on a farm. He hands his letter of recommendation to his new employer. It reads simply, 'He sleeps in a storm.'

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Making Selfless changes

Sometimes it seems we make wrong decisions in life, and when the consequences of those decisions hit us, we feel the fullness of regret and loss. We end up letting the frustrations of taking that step, or not taking that step, handicap ourselves for a significant portion of our life.

What we need to know to be resilient people, is that we can change our circumstances again. It would take effort out of us. Sometimes corrective actions have to be drastic. Sometimes we need to make some sacrifices for ourselves. Most times we need to have a picture of hope in our future. If we believe, believe in a God that can guide us, change us and prepare a way for us. For the greater good. 

Above all, never to hurt the people around us and to hurt ourselves.

Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial. 

The challenge here, is also not to be selfish while making these changes. We need to love ourselves too, but do good for ourselves and loved ones. Everyone can benefit.