Destress method

Whenever I feel tired or stressed, I will use the following method to relax.

First, find a quiet place and sit down comfortably with back straight. Then close the eyes and relax whole body slowly.

Start by relaxing the scalp, moving down to the forehead, eye muscle nose, mouth, face, ears and neck. Next, relax the shoulders, forearms, wrists, palm and fingers. Feel your muscles relaxing as you focus your attention to them.

Move next to the chest, stomach, groin, then to the upper back, lower back and buttocks, and on to the thigh, knee and calve muscles. Lastly is the ankle feet and toes.

Sweep thru the body from head to toe, and see if any of your muscle is still tense. Focus your attention there, and slowly relax it. Feel it let go, just relax.

After taking care of the physical body, move on to the mind. We have to make it soft and relax too.

Start by wishing our own self to be happy and care free. Free from all problems(work, money, relations, etc..). imagine we are happy and healthy. See ourselves smiling, happy and healthy.

Next, radiate this wish to our parents, teachers, relatives, friends, colleagues, and everyone around. See them happy and smiling in front of us(mentally).

After making our body and mind relaxed, we are ready to recharge and relax further.

Bring our attention to our breathing. Note the in’s and out’s of our breath. Notice when we are breathing long or short. If we get distracted(by other thoughts, eg bored), just gently bring our attention back to our breathing.

One method I find useful is to count the breathing as it goes in and out. I will count from 1 to 10, then back from 10 to 1. whenever I get distracted and lost count, I will start from 1 again.

After sometime, fully relaxed and recharged, I will slowly open my eyes, noting how my brain send signals to the eyelids to open, and how the eyelids slowly pulling up. Then slowly unfold my legs, lie down, and sleep…

I notice I will have less dreams(or less tiring ones, where I am working, or got chased around by monsters) if I do it before bed…

Guess I have to be more hardworking and destress before sleeping. Winks.

Idol

Since small, I was enthralled by detectives such as Holmes, Poirot and Dupin. They are my idols. Love the way they solve complex cases using simple logical deduction. It has influenced my way of thinking. Whenever I face any problem (non-mathematical) with limited information, I will try to link the available sources and get new info from the existing sources. It has worked well for me, and sometimes I cannot stand people who are too lazy to use their brain to dig a little further, and ask for solutions. Solutions don’t fall unto our lap, we have to work for em.

Oldies

Listened to some oldies, and love Over the Rainbow, elvis – are you lonesome tonight and it’s now or never, If by bread(played for mom on her bday once, and promised to play for someone…), To sir with love by lulu(according to mom, it’s a story about a group of white kids headed by Lulu who hated their black teacher, but their black teacher finally won them over, and they sang this song out of gratitude), red river valley( one of the earliest guitar song I learned)..and lots more…its like a trip down memory lane…

Deepavali

Went to Indian temple with colleague for his deepavali prayers. This year, there’s a lot more people. The temple is painted with a variety of colors, and the ladies also wore a myriad of colorful saris, with purple, yellow, blue, red, green…it really is a festival of colors. Then we had a simple lunch of putu mayam (something like mee hoon) and dhal curry, with a vegetarian curry puff. All in, a fun time : )

Bishan

Met a secondary school friend online, and she’s working in bishan, Singapore.

I asked whether its beside ang mo kio, and she remarked I’m familiar in sg. To which I replied no lar, just that I have a frenster friend who’s staying at ang mo kio (I call her tomato, cos and mo kio means tomato in hokkien), and mentioned bishan to me a few times.

Realized that I’m having quite a number of frens in sg, and can save hotel bill by squatting at their place next time I visit sg :P

Jelly Ice cream

Had jelly ice cream, and thought about my primary school days ( I had a tendency to think a lot about the past, I think it’s a form of depression…heehee…). During school report day, my mum will treat me to jelly ice cream, if my result is good (average of 80 and above), else she will treat me rotan…

I like jelly cos it’s a bit hard, yet it melts in your mouth, especially if you force it between your teeth, that way, you get to savior the full taste of it…imho…

Lee Bing’s (李冰 ) dam

Lee Bing lived 2,500 years ago, in China.

He was the governor of the district of Shu (蜀), present day Sze Chuan(四川). At that time, the place was plague by flood and drought. He studied the river and terrain , and came out with the following solutions :

1. Construct a divider to divide the flow of water in to 2 parts, with part A flowing into the sea and part B use for irrigation. The divider(bamboo cage) is built using local materials, and stones to weigh down the bamboo cage.
2. Blast open a nearby mountain to divert the flow of part B. To do that, he built a dam to block the water around the water, and use a lot of firewood to heat up the mountain face. Then, using manpower relay, he organized villagers to splash water on the hot mountain face. This will force the stones to crack due to expansion and cooling, and the villages can chip away the stones more easily.
3. Sand carried by the river will get stuck between the stones in the bamboo cage, and the divider will be submerged under water. In order to wash away the sand, he made use of back flow(water flowing in opposite direction) of a narby river. Again, another mountain has to be chipped off to make a new water way.

The whole process took him 17 years. And the system is still in use today. The locals there said the Great Wall survived but is for show only, whereas Lee Bing’s dam survived and is still being used !

I admired and respect people, who do projects without worrying about how long it takes, as long as it is for the long term benefit of the majority.

“Kings and generals come and go, war and peace interchanges, and only the dam sees thru all this” – adapted from the local proverb in Shu.

Title change(?)

Sigh..with so many of my ramblings, maybe I should change my title to “Stories by brother Hau” (豪哥讲故)…. we’ll see how it goes…

Grandma’s cooking

Cooking reminds me of my grandma’s cooking…when I was a kid, whenever my grandma cooks, I will run up to her and shout “grandma! Grandma! What are you cooking?” and she will kindly say”be patient, my dear, I’m cooking something nice and delicious for you…” and whatever she cooks will be just plain delicious.

As I grow up, I will help her to chop onions, smash up ginger or garlic, peel prawns, peel onions(sniff), and be her assistant.

I tried experimenting a few times on my own, but I couldn’t get the same taste grandma did, the “childhood” taste. Once I asked her the secret of her cooking, and she chuckled and answered “my dear, I am your grandma, and you eat whatever I cook and nothing else, that’s why you will always remember my cooking. But you should always try to use fresh and natural ingredients, so that your food will always smell nice and taste good…:

Times had changed, as sifu taught me to eat for the sustenance of this body, and not for enjoyment, and I’m reminding myself before each meal. But there’ll always be the time where I will be reminded of grandma and her cooking, and the long gone days where I’m always her favourite baby….

Dinner @ home

Prepared a simple dinner for dad and myself. It’s simple, actually. Just throw in some baby shrimps(hea bi) into a pot of water. Throw in the maggi mee. Peel some cabbage in, chop some carrot in. Wanted to cut some tomatoes, but decided against it. Beat some eggs, and pour into the steaming soup. Stir the eggs till cooked. Couple with a piece of fried fish or a can of tuna/salmon/sardine, and you get a simple meal. Easy !

With all the copping, cutting and beating, I can even called it Kung Fu Mee, hahaha…Bon appetite !

竹林清谈

小时候，公公家前有堆竹子。咱爷俩闲时就在那乘凉。偶尔微风吹来，倒也清爽。
希望可在此，和诸位无忧无虑，无拘无束，在乡间林中，畅谈欢乐。

Story of Rathapala

Read this not long ago.

It happened long ago, in India.

. A king heard about a wise man named Rathapala, and went to ask him for some advice, to which Rathapala asked the king the following :

R : O king, how were you in your youth?

King : O, I was the strongest man then, able to carry a bull elephant about !

R : how are you now, O king?

K : Now I can barely stand, and sometimes I put my left foot forward when I intend to put my right.

R : Are you well now, o king?

K : I suffer from the wind ailment, and my attendants have to stand far away from me whn I’m ill, thinking “the king is ill, the king is going to die soon!”.

R : Is anyone able to share your suffering?

K : There is no one to share my pain in my body.

R : Are you endowed with riches?

K : My treasury is filled with the most beautiful gems, and people will spend a year looking at them and not get bored !

R : Are you able to take them along when you passed away from this world?

K : I won’t be able to take away a single gem…

R : If I were to tell you that there is a country to the west, full of riches, and slaves, will you try to conquer it?

K : I will conquer any country in the west, east, north or south as long as there is riches to be gained !

After which Rathapala sum up the following :

R : O king, there are this 4 things in life you should know :

1. All things are impermanent, subject to change. Youth and beauty and all that is around.
2. All things are helpless, swept in the current of change and decay, with no chance of turning against the tide, nothing to help them.
3. All things doesn’t belong to us. All the riches, slaves and land, none can be carried away when life passes from this world.
4. Desire is limitless. There can never be enough. The hole of greed is never filled up.

Therefore, O king, lead a life of virtue, doing good, with a mind with compassion, stifling all evil thoughts, and this will lead to your happiness for a long time to come.

I am so absorbed in the story that I always recite the 4 points every morning and before every meal, just to remind myself :)

Hope you all enjoy it. Cheers !

Title

I chose this title cos it reminds me of the bamboo clump in front of my grandpa’s house. When I was small, grandpa and I use to sit under the bamboo grove, and watch life pass in front of us. Occasionally, some neighbours would walk up and chat with him, and I will just listen, though I dun understand what they’re talking about. Sometimes there’s a cool breeze, and the rustling of the leaves is the perfect lullaby in the world….

When he is in the mood, grandpa will put me on his old bike, and cycle me to the sundry shop for sweets. Whenever I ask him for coins, he’ll give me a handful, cos he said he was poor as a kid last time, and he wanted me to lead a better life than him.

I would like to share some of my ramblings in this space here, under the bamboo grove, which reminds me of childhood days, where life is always in the present, with no worries for the future, nor regrets of the past. Winks.