The Journey Within

Despite what I said about illness and the rest that comes after, I don’t like to fall sick. Come on, who does?!! Let’s not count those that fall sick for the sake of not needing to go to work. But I think the number one culprit causing me to fall ill is the lack of sleep. I don’t like sleeping. Period. I wish I don’t need to sleep, so that I can go on and on doing things, whatever those “things” are.

But sleeping is so important. It’s the rest before the action. It’s the calm before the storm. It’s the moment before shit happens. All actions are preceded with inaction. Otherwise, we can’t really define action. Well, you can go from one action to the next action, like doing a karate hand chop and then a flying kick. There is a point of rest in between the hand chop and the flying kick, no matter how good your skills are…

So why do I hate sleeping? Something like “I can sleep all I want when I die” comes to mind. So is it death that I’m running away from rather than sleep? Maybe. It’s probably the fear of dying prematurely. But how do you define premature? Now? Tomorrow? 10 Years from now? 20 years? 50 years? If I live for another 50 years, I’ll meet the average life expectancy now. But the average life expectancy may change over time. Who knows? 50 years later, everyone might live to the age of 100 due to medical advances. What kind of life will they live? I don’t know. But still, that doesn’t justify sleeping less isn’t it? We all die at some point.

Sleep when you must. Die when you must. It’s all very simple. And yet very complicated.

I’m going to bed now…

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I hate getting sick, despite what I understand in why do we get sick. I always feel that time getting sick is time wasted. And I would rather get sick on a weekday than on a weekend. A weekday, I can get a doctor’s certification and I don’t have to go to work. On a weekend, I wasted my weekend…

My western doctor gave me flu pills because i got the flu. She gave fever pills because i told her i had fever. That’s about it. I felt really tired after taking the flu pill. So i went to bed. I didn’t want to take anymore after that.

Somehow, the body knew how to heal itself. So I left the body to do its own thing, while I went about doing my own thing. Sure enough, the body broke down again.

I went to a Chinese doctor this time, and he listened to my pulse, I said “aaah..” and he measured my blood pressure. My blood pressure is on the low side, and he said since I exercise often, that’s normal. However, I have a condition he diagnosed as cold with inner heat (外寒内热).

I can’t tell you more what that means because I don’t understand it myself. What I can tell you is how the doctor listened to my body, and prescribed medicine based on what he knows. I believe all doctors try to do this, but apparently fails on more than half the time (some research I read somewhere, but this article is not about that research).

What I want to tell you is that with all the medical advances, we haven’t learnt to listen to ourselves intently. Of all the doctors in the world, no one is as close to your body as you yourself is. We might be the best diagnostic tool we have for ourselves, yet we haven’t capitalised on that fact.

With all my training in push hands trying to listen to the opponent, I don’t even listen to my own body. I haven’t done my body much justice by ignoring the signals its been trying to tell me. I let it do what it’s suppose to do, and I do what I want to do. I forgot that we (the body and I) have to work together in order to let the body do what the body do best, and let me do what I do best.

So talk to your body often. Listen to what it has to say before it’s too late. You only have one body. Treasure it as it allows you to experience life itself.

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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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I have been trying to clock more distance for the Nike Charity Run. I’m glad to say that I’ve met my own target of running at least 40km for the charity. That’s worth $200! I’ll try to do a bit more before December 5th. I really don’t know how someone can actually clock close to 300km within 3 weeks!

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Have you had an injury but you just can’t pinpoint where the pain is? You know it hurts, but you just don’t know where it hurts. And if you don’t know where it hurts, you don’t know the source, and if you don’t know the source, you can’t fully heal the injury.

From my basketball days, I know sometimes that the source of the injury can be obscured by the lack of nerve endings. If you prick your finger, you’ll feel the pain immediately, and you know which finger was pricked without looking at it. We have plenty of nerve endings there. But if you sprain your ankle, the pain won’t be as sharp. The pain is an area. There is no pin-prick precision to it. There’s no X-marks-the-pain-spot. You struggle to find where exactly does it hurt.

A recent wrist injury was like that. I know it hurts my wrist, but i’m just not sure where on the wrist. And I didn’t try to test the wrist on where it hurts most, until I visited a doctor. The doctor basically twisted my palm around the wrist until he found out where it hurts most and started therapy based on that information. He was a doctor trained in both Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and the mainstream western medicine. For the purpose of the wrist, he used some physiotherapy techniques and some TCM.

The thing is, finding where it hurts most seemed like the most obvious solution to him, but my layman brain did not find it that obvious at all!

Whenever I’m down with sickness, I go to the doctors, and something is prescribed. I normally rotate among a TCM practitioner and a western doctor, without knowing the difference between the two. I was once told that TCM practitioner focus on the root of the problem, whereas a western doctor focuses on the symptoms. Although this could be true, to enhance the credibility of Traditional Chinese Medicine, I believe both systems try to find the root cause whenever they can, but just fail to find it on certain occasions, if not most occasions.

My most recent visit to the doctors due to stomach upset painted this picture vividly. The diagnosis process went like this:

“So, what’s wrong with you?”

I have diarrhea and vomitted several times.

“Any more symptoms?”

My stomach feels bloated.

“Ok, i’m going to give you some medicine for the diarrhea, nausea and the bloatedness.”

Ok…

And i realised i forgot to mention I was running with a temperature as well. I’ve let myself out of the door already. And the diarrhea just ran its course for another 2 weeks. I didn’t want to go back to the doctors. I just kept my faith that the body will heal on its own and kept to light diet – less oil, mostly rice porridge, for another 2 weeks before I started on normal food again.

In this instance, the doctor didn’t know how to heal where it’s most painful. The body however, knew.

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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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An unusual lunch time for me, instead of heading out to feed myself first, I went out to feed others instead – with a little deposit into the blood bank.

Blood donation, you either do it or you don’t. Those who do it do it for a variety of reasons – feel good factor, another time to socialise, the chance to lie beside a pretty woman (different bed of course!), some time off work, peer pressure etc. Some even does it for monetary benefits! Those who don’t do it also carry with them a list of reasons – fear of needle, fear of seeing blood, fear of pain from the needle, fear of seeing people you don’t want to see, or just can’t be bothered.

Whatever reasons you have, there are plenty of others just like you. And when I arrived at the blood donation centre, I’m actually surprised by the response. There were plenty of people, and a lot of them has the “this is my first time” sticker on them – peer pressure does sometime do good.

The process is quite similar to the one I went through in UK. You go through registration, to make sure you are who you say you are. Then you answer a list of questions, to make sure you are in tip top health and do not have any blood related diseases. I was almost rejected when I told them I was in UK since 97. They were rejecting people who were in Europe between 1980 – 1996, apparently that was the mad cow disease period.

The qualifying next round is then pricking your finger and collecting a droplet of your blood to see if your blood is “thick” enough, i.e. if you have high enough levels of red blood cells (or more accurately, the iron-containing part of red blood cells). The droplet is then released into a bluish solution and hopefully, it’ll just sink through without dispersing.

After qualifying all those rounds, then only you’re admitted to the actual blood extraction. This is the only part that I found different from my previous blood donation experience. Previously, I was given the option to opt for local anaesthetic so that the blood extraction needle does not hurt. I didn’t want to experience 2 needles, so naturally I went for the 1 needle option. The nurse asked again just to make sure,

“so i’ll just do it straightaway ok?”

“er… do I really need to take the anaesthetic?”

“no, not really. only Singapore does it. my country doesn’t do it as well.” obviously, the nurse is not from around here.

“oh ok, just do it then”

And let the blood flow begin…

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Another bout of sickness. It’s just a short trip to Malaysia but the whole trip was spent indoors because I didn’t have much strength to go outdoors. With the body feeling weak, I just want to sleep all day, which gave me a headache that I can’t shake off, which makes me want to sleep again… aah… the all so familiar vicious cycle.

Today is a good day. I finally woke up feeling energised. Probably more energised than before I was ill. Whenever I feel this way, I think the illness was meant to wake up me up from some dreamy-lethargic state I am in. I don’t feel that way when I’m actually sick because then, you’re just trying to fight the sickness. But after that, I feel refreshed. So refreshed that I thought I can start to make some improvements to my normal days as suggested by Steve.

I started off with his first suggestion, to get an early start to the day. So I set my alarm to go off at 5.30am. I figured it has to be something drastic to actually make any dent to this goal. I woke up at 7.30am, officially got out of bed at 8am. I didn’t even hear my watch alarm. I think I need to change the alarm clock. ;P

Another one of his suggestion was to read habitually. So, I did the morning thing of washing my face and brushing my teeth, had some breakfast, and continued reading on the investment book. It’s taking me a while to read through this book not because it’s long, each chapter is on average 5 pages long! There’s only 20 odd chapters. But having read each chapter, I normally have to close the book to reflect what has been written, what I have understood, how has it applied to my own experience – basically to internalise what I have read. It’s a tiring process but the book just demands it. It relates so much more to the investment philosophy.

Next up, exercise! I’m going for a run. Lunch. Table tennis. and probably more reading.

All these activities immediately after I recover from being sick. It’s like someone pricked the lethargic balloon and all the gas escaped all at once. So, is this what sickness is suppose to do? To be a prick? (I just can’t resist to use that question in this context…

I believe there’s a 2-part answer to this question.

One, it’s suppose to remind me that I’m fallible. I make mistakes. I’m human. It’s part of the human condition. The body is trying to correct an error. Hence it shuts down some parts and make other parts work overtime.

Secondly, to adapt what Kennedy quoted, “ask not what the sickness can do for you, ask what you can do for the sickness”. It’s actually how we react to the sickness that’s important to any sickness. Let’s face it, everyone falls sick some time or another. The degree of illness varies. Some gets it more severe than others. It reminds us of the unfairness of life. If we surrender to this fact (that life is unfair), then, only then can we start to take positive action – be it something so common as sickness to the more challenging areas of life – career, wealth, family, relationship.

So, have you been sick lately? Try to be more aware of your feelings towards it. Maybe you can learn something amidst all the pain and suffering. Plus, it’s something to take the mind away from the pain and suffering!

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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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