Almost two years ago, I had lost Wendy as a friend when I disagreed with her then-boyfriend’s insecurities and wrote about them here. What I didn’t reveal then was that before that he had also mocked my sexuality by calling me gay in front of her - it went on for the whole of that one night, annoying the hell out of me. It was illogical since I was the one who introduced them, but it made sense when I viewed it under the bigger context of him being insecure.
So yeah I didn’t like him and I wasn’t afraid to show it. But that distressed Wendy greatly, and we stopped talking or seeing each other for a long time.
Recently, about two months ago they’d broken up. Before that even happened though, as inevitable as I had always thought it to be, we had started to talk again. It was more or less forced upon us because Wendy had become Simon’s housemate. Being civil to her wasn’t that difficult because although I had been disappointed with her, I never hated her; he was the one whom I’d despised more.
No words of apology were spoken. I think we were both stubborn in our views in that we both thought what we did at the time was the right thing to do. Despite that, we gradually rediscovered why we became friends in the first place.
And it’s a nice feeling revisiting a friendship which I had written off. I’m not saying that it’s back to how it was - when you have a deep wound, even if it heals over there’d still be a scar, but what we have now is definitely nicer than before.
It’s a common perception that the working hours in Asia are longer. While it’s true for some industries, it isn’t for most of them. For example, it may appear that people leave work late but the truth is that they also arrive later.
And sometimes a lot of time is filled during the day either being idle or being unproductively distracted. Attending meetings where you don’t contribute or learn anything, and having lengthy cigarette or coffee breaks are not uncommon. Even worse (or better if you are a slacker) is when it’s a big corporation and being lost in a sea of people means that no one will notice you being gone for more than 20 minutes at a time.
So I never understood this appearance of working hard but hardly working. I’d rather show up on time, do my work and leave on time. A cousin who had work here and had gone back to Malaysia to become a self-employed boss had to educate his employees thus: I don’t care if you leave early, as long as you’ve finished your tasks for the day, and I don’t want to see you in here late just because you’ve wasted your day doing non-work related stuff.
Meanwhile over here in Oz, in some of my past jobs I’ve struggled to stay occupied and would look at the clock constantly like an anxious school kid waiting to get out of school. With my current job though, it’s the opposite. It gets quite busy and sometimes it’s hard to leave on time because I don’t want to leave things that I can do today till tomorrow, and thus compound my workload the next day.
Though for the sake of work-place harmony, I think I should try to leave on the dot more often. Because while I don’t want to be look like a slacker, I also don’t want to appear to one-up my colleagues by leaving later.
And I’m sure all of the above sounds just like Dilbert or an episode of Seinfeld: you want to look like you are working hard, but not too hard because no one likes a brown-nosing workaholic who makes everyone else look bad. Heh.
Me: Hey mom, you know that matrimonial charm you gave me?
Mom: Yeah?
Me: I lost it.
Mom: It’s ok. I’ve got spares. *goes to her room, comes back and hands me another one* Here you go.
Me: … !
Mom is kinda awesome like that. Or you know, she really REALLY wants a daugher-in-law.
Although I’ve enjoyed Adam Sandler’s movies, they never made me genuinely excited. Not until I read about his latest movie “You Don’t Mess With The Zohan” - just the title alone is funny enough. And it’s also the first time that I think anyone has ever used a movie to satirise the subject of the animosity between Israel and the Arab world.
From the excellent write-up in the New York Times about how the movie came to be:
About eight years ago Mr. Sandler conceived of the Zohan character, an Israeli assassin who has been trained to hate and kill Arabs; exhausted by the ceaseless bloodshed, he fakes his own death and flees to New York to become a hairdresser. There he finds Jews and Arabs living together in grudging if not quite harmonious tolerance.
Intrigued, I searched for the trailer and bloody hell it’s funny and it’s got a message to boot. Some people on both sides of the argument will probably get offended by this but I don’t think it’s more offensive than the realities on the ground. I think that it’s good that this will make people laugh and also stop and think a little.
I’ve always had a high metabolism and been slim. Even though in recent years certain parts of my body *cough* beer gut *cough* have gone a little bit more rotund, my BMI indicates that I’m not overweight.
Height = 164cm
Weight = 62kgs start of March
BMI = 23.1 (above 25 would be considered overweight)
My daily home gym routine is 15 minutes of free-weights, sit-ups, push-ups and squats. Plus I have a 10-minute run with Snoop every night. But since I’ve started the new job, I’ve stopped the home gym workout due to the shift work being tiring and the lack of sleep due to my thus-far propensity to go out on Friday nights, even though I’d be working the Saturday morning.
And so, in a bid to maintain my weight, I cut back on junk food and eat less than my usual amounts during meals.
Calories in (eating) = Calories out (exercising and metabolism)
The other day, I weighed myself the first time in 3 months and was surprised to see that I’d lost 4kgs. I had started out to maintain my weight and didn’t think that I’d lose any. The only reason I can think of is that I’ve been partying harder in recent weeks, sometimes two nights in a row. Partying is healthy?! Yay!
So I was pretty chuffed. The immediate thought that hit me right after I saw my weight was how much junk food I can eat again. Hahah!
Seriously though, as we age our metabolism slows down and the balancing act of calories in and out becomes harder. You have to put in more exercise to counter the same amount of calories. And weight gained around certain parts of the body can become very hard to work off even if you remain at a steady weight. That beer gut will just keep getting rounder and rounder if one’s not careful. I’ve actually seen skinny guys with prominent beer guts. Yeah, very tragic indeed.
At this moment, I’m not willing to cut back on my food intake any more (I love eating too much!). So I guess I’ll have to keep on partying on and maybe more so.
They say that no man is an island, that we all need to connect with other people to really live life to the fullest. However, if what surrounds that island is toxic, the island will never truly be healthy no matter how hard it tries.
Your effort at your own happiness will feel even harder than it has to be if it’s constantly being eroded by the negativity of those around you. However unlike an island, we have the ability to move away from toxic people.
It will feel hard to move away from friends whom we’ve known for a long time, even though those relationships are past their use-by dates. It’s even harder to move away from family and relatives because there’s a sense of obligation that no matter what happens, “blood is thicker than water”. But yeah, what if the blood was bad?
Therefore, it is useful to understand the sunk costs of personal relationships in these instances. A bad relationship currently is a bad relationship nonetheless, no matter how good it had been in the past. If every effort has been made to improve it and it just wouldn’t budge, then it’s really time to move on.
Happiness cannot be taken for granted. It will take effort, determination, and also courage to walk away from what’s keeping you down especially when what’s keeping you down are people whom you had once wanted in your life.
Yeah it may be hard but hey, we’ve only got one life to live. I prefer to spend it being happy most of the time. Don’t you? So go outside and seek out the positive people in your life. At the very least, the sunshine and fresh air will do you good.
