Mouth wide shut

I should have kept my mouth shut. But I oh so love shooting my mouth off, it's really a wen-hazard, my mouth is faster than my brain. Today we had a surprise QA audit, so of course we were all caught unprepared. There was a nice little granny-like QA lady, big granny hairdo and all that, but wah, she could sure grill like sotong. No sotong will escape alive and uncooked under her scrutiny. I thought I gave an appropriately correct answer, but when documentation was shown, man, I had to remove my foot from my mouth because it had just proven to everyone I didn't do what I said we were supposed to do. Aiyahh. Die. Actually, I think I didn't have enough feet to shove into my too wide mouth at that moment.

C would agree a lot that I let my motor smart-ass mouth run away too much. Gets me into trouble all the time because I don't let my "near genius" IQ head (no, he'll never let me live down that one either) process thinking before talking. Well, better hope granny QA lady has short term memory. Meanwhile I'll just carry on pretending nothing happened. Doodadeedadum.

R&R at last

At yoga today, my body is still very much tight, stiff and sure feels like a bag of creaky bones. As I bent over downwards I could feel the hammies and leg muscles protesting. Wah. I decided to get an hour at the foot reflex place to try to iron the kinks out, and as the uncle was kneding the sole of my feet, I could actually feel the 'knots' in feet. They felt like lumpy marbles, and my feet hurt in places it shouldn't normally hurt as the massage continued. Yeah, it's that bad. But the good news was, I started to feel better, and even dozed off. Off next to the spa to get a body massage, and wowwowowowow as my back was being kneaded by a really good new indonesian therapist, I could feel the tension giving way. I fell asleep, and pretty sure I snored somewhat. But I woke up feeling good, muscles and knots all much relaxed in days. Yum. Gotta go back for another one of those soon, and hope my yoga body will come back to me soon. I thought of sending my poor sickandtensedup boyfriend to the spa too, but he's too much of a massage wimp. But he sure could use some spa time to get relaxed. Hmm, maybe he would prefer those places with nubile youngish nymph types....heehee...

Oww my achy (BBQ) bones

I have gone too long without yoga, and probably even before that, too many weeks of gentle classes. My body is stiff in places today like a wound up toy. I mean, even bending forward I could feel my legs trembling and my hammies seemed to stll be dead asleep.. Took a hatha 1 class for 60 mins and that was it for me, I chose the coward's way out and decided to chew my avocado wrap at Toast rather than take another class. Wimp I am. Saw Stephen T at toast though, and contemplated briefly to go over and say hi, but thought better of it since I wasn't feeling uber friendly nor was I feeling conversational. I always got the impression that Stephen T is a somewhat intimidating and proud fella anyway.

BBQ at my boss' boss' place tonite. My contribution was a couscous salad from Tessa Kiros' Cloudberries book, and a thai pomelo salad which I had done before. The pomelo salad was ok, but there must be a whole lot more of ingredients that go into the restaurant version because those at the thai (in bkk) restaurants are so so so good. The couscous salad was a surprise - I'm not a fan of couscous but I could not find a pasta recipe and this was the next best choice. First time trying the recipe and it was an instant winner. I knew I made the right decision to buy the recipe book despite it's $80 price tag. Of course, the thing about BBQ's are that there's always too much food. The pomelo salad had more than 1/2 left by the time we ended the party, and unfortunately I witnessed it's sad demise into the trashbag. I spent more than 1 hr peeling the pomelos and was truly sad to see it go. Next time for a party of 20, I'll just use 1 pomelo.

Achy bones. Murphy's law says that all the spa slots for massages would be taken up and unavailable when you need it. Yeah Murphy's right. Wish bis or holly could step on my back for me now.

To be or not to be

Starting yoga again tonite felt a little strange, like my body wasn't quite sure what to do. Think it felt a little lost. And boy, was it stiff, hammies were tight, back was tight, neck was tight, shoulders etc etc. Going into a room packed with some 40 eager and mostly strong yogi types, the atmosphere was certainly highly charged. All these bodies stretching out, some with unbelievable and enviable flexibility and ease before class started. I just sat there and stoned out. Next to me were a few ladies, obviously in their 40s but wearing skimpy aerobics bra tops and their yoga stretch pants leaving a bare but toned midriff that looked 200% better than my overflowing over the elastic band waist. Wah, when I'm in my 40s, I want a body like theirs. These aunties are damn lithe, they must have been dancers in their youth. Even in pigeon pose, where it is always usually so easy for me, my body and muscles were so tight and wound up I could not sit properly into the pose. I must have aged lots in the past 3 weeks.

Often during class I found myself trying to keep my breath smooth and steady, breathing through the heart, with the heart. None of that huffing, puffing I could hear around me. When Stephen said jump into a pose, I chose walk or ease gently into it instead. My yoga has changed, I'm no longer keen in power classes. Wonder how long I'm going to be in this phase before I move back into before, or maybe, I won't. Maybe I'll just go forward being like this, preferring the slow, hatha and heart yoga. More zen, less power.

OM stiff cow.

Freedom!

What happens when one is on the verge of giving a graded presentation in front of a roomful of people, and then feels a fart moving to the 'back door' waiting it's turn to move on out (with a bang, or maybe a stealthy ripple) and say Hello! to the world?

You let it rip.

Nah, of course not. That would almost be like presentation suicide. So one just presses on...err, I mean, hold on (or is it hold off)? What we learnt in yoga about lifting the pelvic floor, engaging the bandhas upward, yeah ok, whatever. As long it works. Think it's a well known fact anyway that cows and farm animals contribute a whole lot to methane emissions and global warming.

School is over. AT LAST. Well, for this year anyway. Exams in 2 weeks, and more assignments. But nevermind those, because finally I can go back to yoga soon. I miss yoga. I haven't been to classes in over 3 weeks, and my practice is as stale as an old fart (pardon the pun). Had a quick look at Pure's website and was really surprised to see Stephen T conducting classes this weekend. Happiness as his return, and then the uh oh! kicks in; Stephen's classes are not easy, and as one will expect, a lot of seasoned, athletic, competitive yogi types will be in that class. I just don't feel competitive, not in yoga, not especially after Mark Whitwell's workshop. In fact I've started to dread going to any 'power' yoga class. Power and Yoga are just complete opposites, in it's purest sense it really doesn't make sense. A real modern americanization bastardization of the essence of yoga.

Is it almost Dec already? Wow, time for Xmas shopping. Uh oh, I can hear Slick plotting for an xmas pressie.....

Anal R' Us

In the Entreprenuership module we each had to take some sort of personality-character profile assessment. Basically it classifies an individual into 1 or 2 out of 4 personality types - the logical (usually engineer types), the organized (administrator types), the feeling (sympathetic, nurses, social worker types) and artistic (IMO, the woozy floozy types). I guess it's no surprised that I fell into the Organized personality type, but according to the test profile, I'm the super duper wuper organized, planned, control dominant type. In short, I'm ANAL. Capital A. Super left brain dominant. My test scores ranked organizational personality over more than double of my logical, creative and emotional skills, i.e. I'm Anal dominant ...or should it be Anal Dominatrix...!!!? :O

Immediately I could see C falling into the completely opposite quadrant from me - the creative, woozy floozy type, the big picture type, who does not follow sequence and logic, a complete failure at organization, can't see the forest for the trees (or is that trees for the forest?). These people suck at time management, because the concept of punctuality is too vague to them. Yep, that's my CreativeConfusedCow. We're complete opposites, but as the saying goes, opposites attract. And it's no wonder he's prone to motion-sickness since most right brained people tend to be that; there was something in the detailed report that mentioned right brain people has the ability to eye-ear coordinate vs left brainers who could only do either one but not both. Ok so that's why he can drive, sms and do some other tasks at the same time. Me, I grip the steering wheel in a death grip and plow ahead. No one talks to me lest I get distracted. No radio, no nothing. Just stare straight ahead.

Now I know why I'm in my job, because my job is so befitting of my anal-personality. And I'm good at it too. Hmm, maybe I should show my test scores to my boss and ask for a raise. Born a planner. Wow.

3 weeks with hardly any yoga, is irritating me. I start to eat more meat, I get more irritated, my temper is shortened and I feel like giving some folks a well deserved kick in the shins. I rant more. Owww...I need to get back to yoga soon. I need to be zen again.

Invention of Time

School 2nd week in a row, boyo I'm exhausted. I've got econs assignment to hand in, marketing materials to read that are about 3 inches thick (which according to MrCannotTeachMarketingtoSavehisLife requires 100hrs reading time) and attending classes on how to be an Entreprenuerial being. Actually it's not exactly a How to Setup your own business class, it's more like a creative thinking class. How to think out of the box, how to solve problems creatively. Similar to those QC circle processes in production shopfloors. Guess if I harboured any hopes of milking a cow, bringing the milk to market and trying to convince the hdb aunties I'm actually selling a natural face-wash that g'tees fair smooth skin....well...I don't think it's the right class for it. Nonethelss it's a fun class. We have been assigned into groups to invent a product as part of our presentation on Thus. Invention is never easy, just look at the bizillion useless inventions and patents on some of the wierdest, wackiest stuff. I mean, people actually invent ear muffs for dogs??? I'm skeptical if we can come up with anything that hasn't already been patented or invented. Bleh. Oh wait, is there an invention I can use to stop Holly from kidnapping Codie??? You know what, the invention I would probably most appreciate is a money making machine. Real, spendable money of course. No wait...someone please invent more time in a day so that I have more time to get through my assignments and researches. Of course it does help that more time in a day means next (getting older) birthdays don't come so soon.

On the bright side, Flushed Away is a superly duperly hilarious animated film. Absolutely hilarious. Those singing slugs? Brilliant. If I had laughed any harder I'll be kissing the unwashed carpeted floor of the cinema.