The Journey Within

How thin can you slice a carrot? I tried. And it’s hard.

The purpose? To fill a sushi roll I’m making. One carrot is more than sufficient. By the time I finished a quarter of it, I have more than what I need. And yet, it’s still not as hair thin as I want it to be. The movies make it too easy. I did take a picture of it though. WIll see how I do the next time.

The obsession of slicing it thin? Well, it was quite therapeutic.

There was only 1 focus, to slice it as thin as humanly possible. You have to adjust according to the shape of the carrot. The carrot changes its shape with every cut. The stability of the carrot changes with every cut. The fingers can only hold so much of the carrot to avoid it moving around (and to avoid cutting your fingers of course!). You can say that a good knife is key. But then, the knife is only half the story. You must be able to know where to slice the carrot, which way is best to get the thinnest possible slice from the carrot. And because the carrot is big relative to the hair thin slice I’m trying to achieve, it took me almost an hour to cut the carrot. And it’s just one carrot. I wonder how the restaurants do it.

But I start to get what Zhuang Zi is trying to say. I love the story extracted at Cook Ding’s Kitchen, where the butcher no longer see the ox he is cutting. He sees it with his mind. The best part of the story? The knife doesn’t need sharpening even after 19 years!

The trick is not to butcher the knife you’re using to cut.

I’ll still be sharpening my knife for a while now, until I can see the carrot with my mind.

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I find a very strange response when I tell people that I’m going to a Tai Chi class soon and what I’m going to have for lunch. It seems that if I were to do Tai Chi, I’m suppose to eat healthily as well, well, healthily to the standards of the society i guess. I believe in “eat everything in moderation” and just keep the variety going. But somehow, others have the idea that I should be a vegan! Well, maybe not to that extreme, but just to prove a point, it seems that I shouldn’t eat oily food, deep fried food, sweet food, rich food etc.

Although I like all those, I don’t eat them all the time. I enjoy fruits as well as chocolate. I enjoy fries as well as rice. I don’t like to eat the same thing all the time, so I keep my food rotation going and try new stuff once in a while.

A recent book I read on food is In defense of food by Michael Pollan. He advocates:

“eat food, not too much, mostly plants”.

I haven’t been able to try this, but I would like to give it a go.

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I don’t like going to the dentist. I’m not sure if anyone does. But for the very first time, I was very happy to be at the dentist, coming out from the dental procedure beaming with my new adopted tooth.

I lost a tooth to food. It’s unreal how much junk I stuff myself Continue reading »

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Chinese New Year brings with it lots of yummy food. Due to commercialisation, you can actually get these food any time of the year, not just during the festive period, but there is just this little bit more temptation during the festive season to try out the food. As I hop from one house to another (it’s tradition to visit relatives and friends, especially those you haven’t met for ages!), I just “had to” sample the different food on offer at each place. I think I over ate…

Sore throat, fever, the usual suspects came to visit me instead. That I can deal with, since it’s quite common. What I haven’t tried is a whole day of hiccups. I’ve tried some home remedies such as rhythmic drinking, scare tactic, not breathing (!) etc, nothing helped. I end up trying silence, which worked for some brief periods. Better than nothing i guess, so it was a whole day of silence. A day of silence during festive season.

Silence to usher in the new Pig year. Maybe this is a sign. To listen to the music of life, rather than being just the source of noise.

Happy Chinese New Year!

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Get instant hard muscles. Get results in 10 days. Eliminate the flab. Get the six packs. Get it in steel hard form. No effort necessary. Get results without even trying. Just drink / eat this.

The first thought to my mind on reading such a pamphlet – what do I do with all those muscles? What is the purpose of all those muscles? I’m not required to lift a ton of bricks. They have machines for them now. The muscles I build up would most likely be useless in carrying the crates of coke bottles anyway. So why have them?

Of course, I might just be jealous of having one pack instead of six. I might just be jealous of not getting clothes to look good on me (by Hollywood standards anyway!). But with all the diet plans out there, dishing out scare tactics on what to eat and what not to eat, I would find it quite confusing to keep up.

I would like to suggest a hopefully easier way to remember:

• Everything in moderation, and the body will take care of itself.

I find it difficult to justify to myself to create a set of purposeless muscles. I also find it quite difficult to justify staying away from unhealthy food – they normally taste better.. much better! So as long as i eat the healthy options as much as the unhealthy ones, the body should be able to balance itself out. It’s certainly a much easier formula than keeping tabs with how much calories I’ve taken today and how much I have burnt.

Having said that, is it easier to keep tabs on the healthy vs unhealthy food? The body will tell you, if you listen to it closely enough.

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I’ve recently been quite wary of buffet style food offerings (it’s about food again!). With the “eat only what you need” mantra in my mind, buffet style seems to go against the very grain of that mantra. It encourages eating a lot, and you don’t care what you eat, just so you eat a lot, or try the lot. If you need further reasons not to go for buffet, it encourages waste because you’re paying for excesses which most likely you don’t need.

Not convinced? How much of the food does it come out the other end? Certainly not the same amount as that went in! much much less. Now.. the food don’t just disappear, they appear elsewhere. My tale of indigestion in Bak Kut Teh has said enough about this.

If you need inspiration to start exercising, maybe this post might help you. Still too difficult? Take the public transport! It’ll force you to walk a longer distance to get to where you want. Plus, you’re helping the environment by having less cars on the road. You don’t even have to contend with the traffic. No more cursing in the car.

If you really need to take your car, just park further. At a grocery store today, there were plenty of cars contending with the parking space nearest to the store! Those cars were causing a lot of fumes both inside the car and outside the car, not to mention the congested traffic. Just one row down, there are much more car parking spaces, less cars to contend with, no traffic jam. And it’s only one row down! So please, just park further, it’ll help walk off the extra food if you did go for a buffet lunch/dinner.

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Why the obsession over food these days? Choosing the “food” tag, i’ve got 3 food related articles in the past 10 days alone! Must be the sudden drop in food intake that’s making me crave for more! Since I can’t get enough of it through the mouth, I might as well let it out of the mouth, as words of course!

A very unlikely source of food related article came from a book i’m currently reading, Education and Peace by Maria Montessori. She drew an analogy using food with why we don’t recognise peace as it is but need to refer peace as the victory after war. She started off saying it’s surprising to see the science of war so advanced, and yet there’s no such thing as the science of peace (i’ve read that sentence so many times, it strike me with such resonance…).

Without digressing too much into the war and peace argument (this is about food after all!) it took mankind a very high death toll to realise that the cause of epidemics is not another man (someone to blame, just like in a war), but a disease, caused by none other than mankind’s greed – eating too much. That’s why the focus has shifted from over indulgence, to eating only what’s necessary. From eating anything under the sun, to eating hygenically. From racing to the death, to racing for life!

So in a way, I carry with me mankind’s greed from ancient times. I find myself very grateful to have also carried along the lessons learnt from ancient times, that eating too much will kill you! Please eat sensibly, and remember to exercise.

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After writing how to find good teachers in my Tai Ji article, I thought i can extend the same logic in looking for good food. So here goes… signs of good food:

A. lots of people eating it
Power of numbers. Lots of people eating it must be good right? Or the chef’s marketing technique must be superb!

B. lots of regulars eating it
If people come back for more, it must say something about the food!

C. a diverse lot of people eating them
Different people has different taste. If one particular food can cater to all the different palette out there, it must be really good!

D. it tastes good to you regardless of what others say
The ultimate test, you must like the food. If you don’t, what others say don’t matter!

E. it sits well with your tummy
This goes without saying…

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I’ve been in Malaysia/Singapore almost 3 weeks having moved from Scotland. Spent most of the first 2 weeks recovering from fever and indigestion. It’s like the climate here is rejecting me! Trying to flush me out of the system… Of course, I fought back, using a method inspired by Mahatma Ghandi – abstaining from food. Ok, not that extreme, but I did cut down on my diet.

There were plenty of times that I wanted to eat more than what I’ve been eating. And to eat the things I want to eat. Doctor said I should stay away from dairy products, spicy food and sour food – which just about remove all the most “interesting” food! It does make me wonder how much do we actually need to eat?

I’m lucky that I’m not struggling to get my 3 meals a day. In fact, I can afford to eat more than 3 meals a day, and plenty of sides with them! Being forced to maintain a simpler diet does make me question how much do I actually need to eat everyday?

I don’t expend plenty of energy during the day. Now that I’m not working, my brain activity has reduced (which I was told is a significant energy drainer!). As for physical activities, apart from my daily Tai Ji in the morning, I’ve got the occasional badminton and table tennis in the evenings. Nothing back breaking. So, how much do I really need to eat?

I’ve been experimenting with less food everyday, just to see how long I can last before hunger hits. I’m actually surprised that I can do with much much less than I used to eat! Almost half as much. Maybe it’s the change in climate where a warmer climate does not need that much food to keep the core temperature up.

However, I have to say that most of the reason I eat more than I need is psychological! I don’t need the chocolate fudge cake at the end of the meal, that’s just too much. I don’t need to eat at 11 o’clock at night, just go to bed! And sometimes when I do eat, I choose to eat more than what I intended because of all the temptations placed on the table!

So, I guess I can actually choose to eat less, but my toungue tells me otherwise. I can remove all the temptations on the table, but that’ll be just rude to the others around the table. So, torn between heart and logic, is there no solution to this?

Inspired by a book i’ve read called “Slow“, maybe we can slow down our food intake. This will let the tongue savour the taste longer and will also allow the food taken to be fully digested before more is taken in. We are actually allowing the stomach a chance to put up the sign saying “FULL” when it’s full, not when it’s almost full but a lot more is coming down the throat but got stuck in the digestive traffic.

If you do try this, let me know if it does work. Just don’t eat when you’re really hungry. Eat at the same time you ate yesterday, the same time as everyday.

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Food is a BIG thing in Malaysia. Ask anyone about a particular food say “bak kut teh” or “roti canai“, and they’ll be able to tell you where’s the best place for it. Lost for an inspiration? They’ll recommend something they like best, or a new place, or food they haven’t had for a long time so that they can go join you as well!

Coming back to food heaven, you just can’t resist stuffing yourself. The temptation is everywhere, the taste palette is being expanded, so is the waist line. The exercise I’m trying to do is just insufficient to keep up with the calories intake. No wonder obesity is a problem.

Ok, obesity is not the problem, I am the problem. Obesity is just the side effect. Stage 1 – acceptance of problem. I give in to the temptations of food. But my mum always say, don’t waste food. Of course, I selectively not waste specific food over others, like chocolate over bitter melon.

Ok, mum’s words of wisdom is not wise when applied selectively. Back to Stage 1, acceptance of problem. I can’t seem to escape Stage 1, how shall I proceed on to Stage 2 – solving the problem? Incidentally, with one stroke of luck/curse, a solution presented itself which bypassed both Stage 1 and Stage 2 – i’m having food indigestion. Great, just what I need to resist temptations.

Sometimes, we just need something to kick start breaking a particular habit, like eating too much, or exercising too little. We know the signs – expanding waist line, trouble walking up the stairs, trousers not fitting, bragging about how active I once was etc… We see these signs coming as well, yet we choose to ignore them, or procastinate as long as we can, hoping the problem will just go away.

I guess the problems will not go away as what’s referred to as problems are actually side effects of the main problem – me. I need to change first before tackling the “problems”. The “lucky” ones, like me, will have indigestion, something mild that can’t kill you, yet. The unlucky ones will have something they couldn’t recover from, e.g. lung cancer from smoking, a stroke, or a fatal heart attack.

So, choose life, and make your own kick-start before something else make it for you!

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