My days consists of hard work … hard hard work. No, I'm not stressed out, but some people around me are very very stressed… for what reason, I have no idea. It just annoys the hell out of me that when I walk into their space I get sucked into that 'I'm so bloody tired and so tied up with work' kind of energies.

I think when the day ends, and when you shut down to go home, its time to leave your worries behind. It's hard, but its necessary. You can't carry that kind of weight around you all the time, no one can, we're all human bodies and we're not designed to carry burdens 24 hours a day. When we sleep, we're supposed to 'release' it all, and let it go. It can be done. I can't say I'm successful at letting my worries go, but I think I am able to park them some place temporary and pay full attention to 'relaxing' when I need to relax.

And God knows, everyone needs to relax every now and then.

Like say for example, if you're an attention seeker (and I know most people, including myself, are, to a certain extent), you need to be very, very careful about the kind of attention you're seeking. Because literally, you will always reap what you sow, what happens in life will definitely work in a way that returns and gifts you what you are begging for.

So if you are begging for pity, for the 'oh you poor thing, I so pity you, you so stress at work, you better eat more, aiyoh you so sad,' … if you want that kind of attention, then you need to work on yourself. Notice that you'll probably get it, but because you get it, you'll probably have a pretty sucky life with all the problems that will allow that kind of loving, pitiful attention to gravitate towards you. So do you have a 'I am too thin, problem, and no matter how much I eat I keep losing weight?'

Or do you have a, 'My boss is a slave driver, problem, and I have to stay in the office until 2 am every day.'

You do get stories to tell your friends every time right?

Well I don't like you bitching too much about the choices you make in your life, and constantly asking me to go, 'aiyoh you poor thing, aiyoh, don't lah like that, you hang in there.'

I think… you should just go hang, because you make the choices in your life, you live with them.

…

Wanna seek attention also, seek the ones that matter lah. Seek the ones where people will envy you. It's WAY WAY MORE gratifying, far far more fulfilling and it gives you a lot of energy to create positive energies in this world (me going new age here, don't mind me).

Dunia ini, macam-macam ada.

Eric would be super pleased. He says he likes me best like this.

I don't like me best like this. I like me best when I am normal.

1. I can finally eat bread and butter again. I've been allergic to it for a few weeks, no apparent reason!
2. I found this awesome place in Kepong that serves super yummy ULU YAM LOH MEEN. Smackingly delicious!
3. Had a fun training session this week – I loved the ultimate closing line: the silver rule of closing is: STFU and let the client sign your PO.
4. We're having very fruity weeks at home these days. My fridge is stuffed with apples, oranges, dragonfruit (they call it pitera now, eh?) and kiwi!
5. 'I love how you look these days, Choo Ki.'
6. I had someone flirting with me just now. Its nice, when you're happily married to the love of your life, and still get flirts. Even though he probably was just looking for a fling. Ah. haha.
7. TRANSFORMER's COMING UP next week. I can't wait!!
8. Eric's coming home bearing huggy hugs tonight (he's in Singapore right now).
9. I am meeting someone very important tomorrow at around 11 am.
10. And then going to Tenji at noon tomorrow where I can binge.

All weeks should be so fun.

Ironic, because just a few months ago I was bitching over how boring it was to be where I was. Well, never complain about where you are.

I was checking out my archives again and then I found this set of photos… of my favourite impress-em-at-potlucks special: The Simple Baked Chicken. I got the recipe from the super cook Adeline from BLC, and have been faithfully relying upon it each time I get invited to 'contribute' a dish.

It always, always impresses.

Now I'm not very good at documenting recipes but this one should be blogged. So here goes my agak-agak something like that version:

Ingredients:

1 Whole Medium chicken, cleaned with feet, head and wing tips cut off
Potpourri of ROOT VEGETABLES:
2 Medium Potatoes, cleaned and cut into cubes
1/2 Small Pumpkin, cut into cubes
1 Large Green onions, cut into 8 pieces
(you can throw other types of root vegetables in, but I stick to these)
1 Whole lemon, skewered with a satay stick

Marinade:
1 small cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon paprika powder
3 tablespoons chopped chinese parsley
1 tablespoon coarsely grained black pepper

So what I do is I mix the marinade up and rub it all over the cleaned chicken (I massage it even under the skin of the chicken. Then I leave the chicken for about 4 hours in the fridge to soak up the marinade. Sometimes when I'm lazy I do this a day ahead, and the chicken gets to bathe in the marinade overnight.

When I'm ready to bake the chicken, I heat up the oven first, at about 200 degrees Celsius. I layer my baking dish with the root vegetables. Then I get the chicken out, and with whatever marinade's that dripping left, I pour it all over the vegetables. I take about 1/2 tablespoon of Himalayan Salt and rub it all over the chicken (under its skin as well), stuff the lemon into the chicken cavity, rest it on the vegetables, pour half a cup of water into the side of the baking dish (so that the vegetables won't dry up so soon… and then I chuck it into the pre-heated oven for about 45 minutes.

At 45 minutes, the bell will ring, but I don't take out the chicken immediately. I let it rest for another 10 minutes or so, take it out, cover with alumimium foil, place it into a nice basket, and I'm off to impress my buddies.

Nehehehe— Baked Chicken is a good trick to show off at potluck meets!

So you see, that's probably why so many concerned factions desire no change in the status quo of continuing stupidity. All in the name of not burdening our students (in the rural areas) further with the need to pass English in order to get an SPM certificate.

After all, in their eyes, this country doesn't need to grow. This country doesn't need to move with the rest of the world. Never mind that Hong Kong is considering to revise their curriculum and to reinstate English as the teaching medium for Science and Math. Never mind that corporations across the nations are lamenting on the quality of English amongst Malaysians up and coming bunch of 'highly employable' workers. Never mind that we have thousands of people scoring straight As and crying foul because 'boo hoo I can't get to become a Doctor, and I don't care that its because my results can't verify how good I am, I deserve to be a Doctor cos I got 20 As for SPM damn it!'… well, the 'increasing' number of splendid scorers in the country proves that we are a developing nation of on-print geniuses.

So by the time, the next bunch of inept people come out with an A in their SPM English paper, and you wonder why they're fine with saying 'I is very happy today', without blinking and eye, and that they have no idea what 'grammar' really means, you can't blame them. Nah. We have a caring bunch of older adults who can speak and write proper English, NOT willing to allowing an already inept government to do something right for a change.

I think the next time we want to blame the government for their stupid, illogical tactical decisions, we really want to stand back and pause for a moment. They're never allowed to make right decisions anyway, so who cares? Me? Given the choice, given the situation, if I were the government, since the people won't make me do anything right, I'll do my best to be as corrupt as possible. It's what they're rooting for anyway.

Peace is providing everyone else his/her space to live by the tenets of their own beliefs.

Faith is trusting that God has already resolved all the issues in our lives, even the ones that we don't see happening yet. Even the ones that revolve around contradicting beliefs in God.

However, over the years I have grown to understand that many people in the more developed (and surprisingly, unexposed) western, 'I am better than you are' regions of the world consider thousand-year-old practices like Zen Buddhism and Yoga Meditation 'New Age', padahal the concepts within these teachings have been around far longer than both Jesus and Muhammad.

My peeve about the anti-Yoga conscience especially, is how their argument about 'why you cannot do Yoga' can get ridiculously illogical, as if when considering whether to redeem or not redeem these ancient practices, they've grown a mushroom in place of their neural cells. I don't know about you, but I have personally received many concerned e-mails about how yoga is crazy dangerous because it 'invokes the snake at the bottom of your spine', and the bible says the devil comes in the form of a serpent.

Or the other concern that, Yoga has this particular pose called the cobra, and you mimick the actions of a spine, and 'Why Christians must be careful not to pretend to be serpents like the cobra.'

Also the part where Christians who like Yoga anyway, and try to be apologetic about their choices, start writing about what they do during their yoga practice: 'I get a bit worried when the yoga teacher tells me to empty my mind. We cannot empty our minds as Christians, so I choose to think about Jesus when the teacher tells us to empty our minds. I thinks its better that way.'

All these apologizing and blaming doesn't seem in anyway spiritual or bible-loving, IMHO. I don't know about you, but I am hardly evangelized into a faith purely because I see miraculous actions, experience massive floods that kill millions, attend funerals and suddenly get worried over where I will go to after I die. I don't watch David Blaine levitate and get converted into Blainism, you know? Religion is pure man-made, God is in the realm of the spiritual, and I doubt that the currently available man-recorded conceptual understandings of yoga (or tai chi, or qi gong) will even bring us close to who God, or what God really is. Whether He is One or Three or Many, I'm of the belief that most of us have already made up our minds about that, or, that by the time we die, we'll have some sort of concept about who God is like. And that belief will take us to where we belong, and we'll have to just live with (or die with) whatever and where ever we end up.

I wonder what will the fundamentalists think when they realize at the end that reincarnation is the real deal? Will they struggle like mad, or will they be insistent that they now belong in hell?I

I really wonder.

Sorta everything in between.

Shhhh…

So I can't.

*KNNCCB*