闷

心情直播：每个星期三，傍晚过后，心情都会乱糟糟的。这种心情通常都会持续到周末，然后自我安慰一番，下个星期会更好。一直都希望能把Pilates学好，一来是为自己的身体好，二来是为了挑战自己。也许在学习的过程，我给自己注入了太多的expectations，所以心情才那么起伏不定。
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闷，开始觉得日子过得枯燥乏味。
在短短的新的一年的头一个月，
我竟然有种力不从心的感觉。
也许工作上得不到我要的满足感，
所以我的心也跟着一起乱飞。

庆幸我真的没有远走高飞，
要不，此刻的我可能已经闷得发疯了。
我就是一个静不下来的人。
现在的我，真的很怀念飞翔的日子。
日子很忙，很累，但很充实。
I feel I am ALIVE!

闷，所以思绪不断地飞，
脑筋不断地转。
在首一个月里，我已经尝试了许多新玩意。
烘cheesecake，Pilates，捐血，投资。
我想，我真的是闷到发慌。

闷，当然也有它的好处。
至少，我有多一点时间盘算自己的未来。
我一直在问自己，未来的路应该怎么走。
虽然到现在还没有一个明确的答案，
可是至少看到一丝曙光。

人，就是那么的犯贱。
忙得时候喊累，
闷得时候喊烦。
其实，生活不就是在找那平衡点吗？

Blood Donation Drive

Mood telecast: Was feeling inspired these few days by Pilates. I guess I was bored with my life and having some withdrawal symptoms at home. Pilates was something new to me and set me thinking how to "perfect" it through email exchanges with Jo. At least, I felt "alive". Hopefully this bright wave will continue....

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Recently, the blood bank is low on its supply of blood again and there is appeal in the newspapers to the public. It came timely as I am intending to do my first blood donation within these few days. It was supposed to be a "project" I set for myself last year. I made an appointment with HSA after Christmas, I thought it would a wonderful way to end the year by saving lives. Alas, I think I was overcame with fear of donating blood that I had a fever on Christmas day. Hence, I had to wait for 3 weeks before I am eligible to donate blood. I made an appointment, 18 Jan to fulfill my little wish to give back to society.

Yes, today is the day. Actually, in the morning, I was still gripped with fear. I never like drawing blood for they made me feel sick, it made me feel like a patient. Perhaps, it is because I have been drawing too much blood due to past aliments.

The process is a painless one. First, we need to fill up a questionnaire to declare our state of health. After that, we need to speak to a medical officer in charge to do a verbal health screening which is followed by a blood hemoglobin test. After that, I proceed to the blood donation room where the drawing blood procedure started.

It is not as scary as I thought. First, I was told to rest on the chair for 10 mins before the nurses attended to me. They checked my pressure, my veins to decide which hand to draw blood from. As it turned out, my veins are too fine and the junior nurse has problem handling my case. Luckily, a senior nurse took over my case. They took about 3 tubes to test for HIV, Syphilis and Hepatitis A, B and C. After 5-10 min, they managed to draw a packet of blood (about 450ml) from me. The nurse is very kind, after drawing the blood, she asked me to feel my own blood which is warm.

At that point, I really felt a sense of satisfaction. At least I fulfilled what I wanted for myself this year, to help people or to give back to society in whatever small ways that I could manage. Hopefully my one unit of blood will be able to save some folks.

After the whole procedure, I was told to rest for another 10 minutes before they bandaged my arm with a nice pink "Give Blood" bandage from HSA. My next appointment will be in April, just in time to give myself a meaningful Birthday present :)

The pink bandage which looked quite fashionable on my arm

Hopefully more people will come forward and help to save lives.

Pilates

Mood telecast: Was feeling a bit gloomy these few days for no apparent reason. Work is progressing in a good direction, but I can't help feeling low to the extent of bursting into tears. Just when I thought, I have come to accept the fact, I would get over it and continue my life, that I realised I have never let go before. Perhaps, giving part of me up was really difficult and I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. Hopefully time could make me get over it and start my life afresh.

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I remembered last year, the first decision I made was to sign up for a PT course and it was a decision that I never regretted. This year, I have made another decision. I have decided to take up Pilates. Honestly, I never like Pilates nor Yoga and I never thought that one day I would take it up. I always feel that Pilates and Yoga are "soft exercises", exercises that would not make you perspire, hence I do not feel "alive". Perhaps, I am full of energy and I need to sweat it out to show that I AM ALIVE.

I think I am pretty left with no choice to take up Pilates. An accident that happened more than 10 years ago caused my spine to degenerate and I could only help myself by building up my core muscles, and Pilates is one of the exercises that is good for building core muscles. Life is really full of irony! So now I have to take up the "wimp" (no offence meant) exercise to prevent myself from further hunching.

My instructor Jo is an interesting lady. She really looked stern when I signed up for the class and it sorta of made me worry about my decision to sign up for the course. On the day of the class, she turned out to be such a humourous lady that I can't stop laughing while lying on the machine. I guess all of us (6 of us) were all new to Pilates and we were trying our ways and means to get the movements correct via brutal force. When she looked at us, she can't help but "make fun" of us that made us laugh non stop.

Actually Jo is right and I was right too. Pilates is about movements, it is not about force nor energy (yes, is a "wimp" form of exercise). It is about breathing. She looked at me and she shaked her head "You are using all your energy to pull, remember to relax relax, you looked so stiff up". Haha, she hit the nail all right. I am never good at soft sports, but good at sports that can release a lot of energy. I knew it myself and I really admired my courage for trying a soft exercise. But I guess life is about learning yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses and correct them as you progress. The more you hated something, the more you should try to master it and the more you learn about yourself.

I applied that in life and in work. Yes, I am a person who will apply "force" when things do not go my way rather than handling it gracefully. In short, I have a lot of "aggressions" within me. Throughout the years, I think I have tried to conquer it, to handle my aggressions gracefully. Sometimes I could, sometimes I could not. No doubt, I learnt a lot about myself. At the minimum, I do know where my saturation point of endurance is before I use "force" to settle things. It is never easy to handle all things gracefully as it requires the techniques and practices (just like Pilates). However, at least I am willing to try and I am more than willing to practise. I just hope in time to come, I will see results, regardless in Pilates or in moulding my character.

Pilates is not as bad as I thought it to be. It is not as "wimpy" as I thought to. Really, it needs a lot of skills to be able to do small movements with your body, to be able to control your body well. Just like it takes a lot to mould your character to handle all situations in life gracefully. It never dawned on me that learning Pilates could be so philosophical.

Really looking forward to the next lesson though I suffer from stiff neck and muscles cramps all over. Jo's words keep repeating: Remember to relax and smile!

Cheesecake

What a way to spend the first weekend of a brand new year. :D

The picture on my left showed my "masterpiece", cheesecake. Ok, the truth is, the picture is not too appealing (well, i was never good in art :P ) but the taste is still up to standard. At least, when I reached home just now, searching for the last 2 pieces of cheesecake, it was gone. :~( Credits to my mother and nephew for finishing the last 2 pieces and spared me from putting on weight due to the excessive fats and cheese.

This cheesecake was made by freezing and not baking. It wasn't too hard. All in all, it took me about 2 hours? The hardest bit was making the crust and that was where the failure was. I was trying to be lazy, my intention was to get a premade crust, unfortunately NTUC and Phoon Huat did not have that and I could not combat my craze for cheesecake that weekend. So in the end, I turned to the Internet for making a simple crust by pounding crackers. That was the weak link, the failure. I failed to pound the crackers fine enough, in the end, the crust was too flaky. Failure number 2 was it was too sweet. That was not too difficult to combat, next time add less sugar :) .

All in all, I was quite happy with my performance of my first attempt at "baking" (or freezing rather) a cake. The best part of it is, I get to eat cheesecake everyday (that spells troubles). Haha, I am known to my friends for being a cheesecake frantic. Anyway, I am sure I will perfect my cheesecake in time to come. This week, I will start baking chocolate chips cookies and see how it goes.

Till then. :) A good way to start a cheery brand new year.