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.