Cherries for better sleep?

Breakfast was my leftover lemon blueberry scone and half a avocado mashed with a hard boiled egg. 

This was followed by a cup of cappuccino, a kiwi fruit and some cashew nuts (less than 10) while I roasted vegetables in preparation for the evening meal. How did I live without an oven for almost 2 years!! 

Lunch was soup with sweet potato noodles and vegetables, and a serve of oven baked dory. 

I went into the city early to walk around before work and ended up leaving Woolies with a bag of cheese rolls. Needless to say, I had one fluffy and doughy roll. My love for carbohydrates is so difficult to control! 

Dinner was a mixed bowl of roasted vegetables (zucchini, tomatoes and carrots), beets steeped in vinegar, soya beans, pasta and cottage cheese. 

I had to help with desserts in the kitchen and due to an error where I squirted butterscotch syrup instead of caramel syrup, I had some ice cream. A cup of hot chocolate ended my shift. 

And then it was home where I had a bowl of cherries in the hopes that the natural melatonin would help me have a good night's sleep. 

Thermomix party

The day started out with me being rather disciplined in terms of food intake. Instead of ravenously gobbling down whatever I could get my hands on for breakfast, as I am usually wont to do, I made a batch of lemon and blueberry scones to bring to Kate's house, so I ended up having one of them with a cup of chai tea for breakfast. I did have a handful of cherries (the last 23 in the packet, to be exact) while waiting for the scones to be ready. 

I also managed to squeeze in a 30 minute gym session (4km run, 4km bike, 1km rowing) in the later part of the morning. 

Lunch was a big bowl of my favourite soup with the vegetables in the fridge, some sweet potato noodles and chicken dumplings. The dumplings were on half price from Woolies and were surprisingly tasty! 

Dessert was a banana with peanut butter. I also had a green apple for a snack.

Things went downhill for dinner. We had a Thermomix gathering where a consultant came to give a demo of the machine and fed us a 6 course meal. Everything was so good and I was amazed at the functions of the device. On the menu were a strawberry sorbet, garlic and herb cream cheese dip and crackers, potato and leek soup, rosemary and garlic pizza bread, paprika chicken with zucchini and carrot zoodles, and vanilla custard. 

Although I was stuffed after the demo, I had an orange and another scone for a late supper. 

Food journal - Day 1

I fight a daily battle with food and my weight. The tiring struggle has affected me emotionally and physically, and I think the best way to keep up healthy eating habits will be to journal down my activity levels and food intake. So here goes!

My morning began with an easy run around the neighbourhood and I rounded it up with 10 minutes of high intensity exercises.

Breakfast was a hard boiled egg and half an avocado with 2 pieces of Ryvita crackers, and a side of cherries and blueberries with greek yoghurt. I washed it all down with a cup of lemon water and coffee with milk. 

Lunch was leftover mashed potatoes, beetroot rice and oven baked dory fish. I had a handful of cashew nuts (approximately 30) and a large banana as well for a snack (not pictured). 

And then it was off to work. Since I was trying to stave off sleepiness, I had a cup of cappuccino before my shift. 

On the passing of time

"Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally it seems to go missing - until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return."

Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes

The other day, I was trying to express the tug-o-war between two places that I felt upon the sudden realisation that my time back in Singapore has been whittled down to three short weeks.  A month after the holidays began, for want of something to do, I was raring to head back to Adelaide. Now that February has arrived, my heart begins to ache at the thought of leaving my family and friends again and going back. Sometimes it feels like I am torn between two places.

Nevertheless, the break has been a fruitful one. I have managed to bid my grandfather a final farewell, spent good quality time with friends and loved ones, read some great books, watched good TV shows and movies etc. May the new school year be full of promise.

Know Thyself

Are personalities prone to change with age and novel experiences, or are our underlying traits stable but our behaviours that change? I've always thought that I tended more towards extroversion as a young girl but lately, have identified more with the stories of individuals in the book 'Quiet'. Perhaps I withdrew inwards as I aged, or maybe the perception of being extroverted was just me longing to be the type of person that I desired.

Recently, I took the Myer Briggs personality test again and came out as INFJ. I usually take such test results with a pinch of salt but the description was really accurate. I've always felt like I was torn between two worlds, and a little bit bipolar. For example, I enjoy going out and socialising with friends but too many of such days in a week tires me out and I retreat like a snail into its shell. Yet too few of such days makes me depressed. I may come across as aloof but crave for social approval and love. I may be a dreamer but am able to take concrete steps to make my dreams come true. Case in point, my crazy decision to quit my deeply unsatisfying job, wipe out my bank account and change careers. While it may seem spontaneous, it was carefully considered and planned out. Finally, I am reserved, but hold strong opinions about certain matters and can have passionate arguments about what I stand for. 

And now that I understand a little bit more about myself, I feel a little less alienated and more appreciative of who I have become in spite of all the emotional baggage from being misunderstood. In learning more about my personality type, I am also forever thankful to being able to stumble upon the idea of this new profession and the opportunity to make the leap. It is definitely suited to my personality and my values. Let's hope the passion continues burning brightly in the years to come. 

Ah Kong

I pushed a full cart pass the laxly policed scanners before finding my way into mummy's embrace. The joy at having finally arrived in the land that I called home, and relief at the end of a long and tiring year, dissipated upon hearing the uttered words.

"Ah Kong is in the hospital."

"We didn't want to tell you because you were having your exams."

Time is experienced subjectively.

A stressful year seemed, to me, a long time. That, and the fact that the move to another country was a high stakes one. A do or die kind of thing (I exaggerate of course. But it sure felt like that).

Yet a year for Ah Kong seemed to move too rapidly. How could a person who appeared so in control of his mind and bodily functions at the start of the year deteriorate so much by December?

I would like to believe that Ah Kong waited for me to come home. Thank you for giving me the chance to see you for the last time. You lived a long and fulfilling life.

Rest in peace dearest grandpa.

Thought provoking documentaries

I am thoroughly enjoying every bit of my three week break by spending just a bit more time snuggled under layers of blankets (the reverse Princess and the Pea due to the chilly nights), and borrowing films to watch from the school library (I paid so much in school fees so I might as well make the most of it!). That's what I did during my time in National University of Singapore and in Leeds University as well, and it exposed me to and made me fall in love with a whole new world of film outside the typical Hollywood types.

This time however, I stuck with American-centric documentaries that I have been wanting to catch, Walmart, the High Cost of Low Prices, and Food, Inc. After watching those, I am reminded of everything wrong about our current capitalist economies and wonder when things will unravel to make way for a new system.

So let's talk about Walmart first. It was definitely not unbiased and felt like a revenge against big multinational corporations at times. But it was a thought provoking film that made me think about all the times I smugly patted myself on the back after scoring something on the cheap with not much thought given to the origin of the goods.

The evil that is Capitalism

I particularly enjoyed the end of the documentary, which showed people power at its finest. Ah, so we are not powerless after all. It makes my heart sing that a big MNC's plans can be thwarted.

Moo.

Next up was Food, Inc, a documentary that is close to my heart due to my love for food. This was an enlightening and at times, scary, film tracing the sources of our food and how (again) big corporations and government policies predict food prices that shape food culture. And how human greed is skewing our food system and ultimately killing us.

Do you know what goes in your food? 

I love my farmers markets and hate the thought that they will one day become a thing of the past as these big corporations drive them out of business and replace our whole foods with processed ones, so I'm taking a stand and choosing to be an educated consumer and choose whole food for the sake of my earth, my fellow human beings, my loved ones, and my health. 

"Why is it that you can buy a double cheeseburger at McDonald's for 99 cents and you can't even get a head of broccoli for 99 cents?"