구만 두는 거 아니

말하다가 구만 두는 거 아니
quit talking

읏다가 구만 두는 거 아니
quit laughing

걸어가다가 구만 두는 거 아니
quit walking

외치다가 구만 두는 거 아니
stop shouting

달리다가 구만 두는 거 아니
stop running

먹다가 구만 두는 거 아니
stop eating

가져가다가 구만 두는 거 아니
stop talking

잊다가 구만 두는 거 아니
quit forgetting

flat to fat

Here, let me just show you how I looked some two years ago when I was drilling ATS at least twice a week:

And this is me now, the fat-bellied girl in black and green suit on the right side, beside my bb:

Sad, isn't it? I can't even think of dancing again. I don't know how to get back to it. After I danced alone on the stage a year ago, I didn't want to try it again. It felt so lonely. The ones who knew ATS are in London and USA. How can I dance with them? I have to think about getting rich first.

Anyway, I've been juicing since three days ago. I got the inspiration from this blog: www.bastaigat.sikat. She followed the menu strictly and lost 8 pounts in one week but I was combining fruit and vegetable juices with egg, muesli, and wheat bread. Of course, I couldn't, wouldn't ever let go of coffee. I didn't have a juicer and was just using this blender from my bb's aunt:

The carrot combined with apple, pear, and cucumber and looked like this:

I strain the pulp bits and just drink the juice. On the second day, they consisted of much the same fruits, added with celery and singkamas, and a glass of watermelon fruit juice. It's the same combination today, but a dash of cinnamon will be added. I'm cooking potato soup for my hot-soup craving at night.

This has one regular potato, 10 cloves of garlic, one small onion, turmeric, pepper, and some salt. The basil leaf on top made it taste refreshing. BB downed one bowl too.

This has 3 pieces of apples, 2 oranges, 1 celery, a dash of cinnamon. I finished 2 glasses ad bb finished one too.

I weighed 106 pounds two days ago. I will give myself another two weeks of this juicers and low-carb diet and see what happens.

the courage to start, and the humility to start again and again

Has it been six months since I last posted here? It felt like a lifetime has been lost. And it was because one guy in the office messed up his job so badly, and I was among the girls who had to pick up the slack. In my work life, I have been through this a lot of times before.  The men mess up and the women clean up and put  humpty dumpty back together again.

As a result, I have grown a fat belly (34 inches, a first) and have known no other dimension about living but the pressures at work. Finally they got a new guy (hopefully a better one) and I can look at getting some time off. At least some time to sleep eight hours, and some time to cut up my fruits and vegetable so that I can at least eat healthy.

Most of all, I can find time to look at what's ahead of me. I am forty-four and frightened of growing old sick and poor. The years are catching up so fast, and I feel like never before that I have to be on my toes and plan and prepare well so that I won't get old cranky and a a pain in the ass to others.

The fascinating thing about this stage of not-anymore-too young-to-doubt-and-still-not-too-old-to-give-up is the certainty that I will know what I want to do in my old age and I will know what I will be able to do to get there, if given the chance for some ME TIME.

Needless to say, I am hating my work right now for taking up all my strength and time and energy.
I have forgotten how it feels to have a passion -- when I used to be passionate about dancing, learning a new language, writing.

But all of that is going to change.

If the now is going to stay bad for some time, I will make sure to have time at least for dreaming. I will no longer allow them to take that away from me.To pursue my passions, to be healthy, to be rich. To be of help to others in a really significant and tangible way.

I will stop focusing on the limitations of my current situation and start building a mental vision of my future. That is what I am going to do. To hell with the office who don't know the meaning of work-life balance. (I am still really mad.)

kamustang crush mo?

                                                     
 I have always loved McDonald's commercials. This one takes it away the most for me.

hogalbi

we've been planning to try this restaurant. it is hidden from a high wall just  a few meters upon turning right from Land Bank Shaw Boulevard. it has been drizzling since morning and traffic was heavy, thus the huge parking area of hogalbi looked inviting as well as this announcement by the gate:

we were greeted "Anyong haseyo, good evening!" by the friendly restaurant staff. while they laughed at their goof, we learned that the actual price is already PhP359.00, but that was okay. food looked and smelled authentic.

my mood immediately lifted while putting these stuff together. i suddenly missed Korea!

i went immediately to get my bulgogi. it was good~~i liked the beanpaste!!!  kimchi was good, as well as the samgyupsal.

my bb took some chapchae but didn't like it (too sweet it was almost good for dessert). but she enjoyed a lot of samgyupsal, and noticed how the people in the nearby table didn't know how to eat it properly. somebody taught her how to :)

anyway, at the end of our meal, this bowl filled to brim with oil. we made a mental note to buy this pan from a Korean store nearby to save us from unhealthy grease.

we will be going back to hogalbi, definitely.

weekends into weekdays

i used to know weekends like this: a trip to the parlor and an unhurried stroll in the mall.  it has been a long while. how i miss these little things that make me happy.

but more than that, this weekend is a turning point of sorts. i finally figured out what to do for the next two decades of my life. for a long time, i was only sure of what i no longer wanted to do. but it took me a while (like, four years?) to figure out what i really, really wanted to do next.

it should have been a no-brainer, for there have been just these few things that made me look forward to weekends: writing, dancing, and sewing.

it has been a journey trying to know what about writing that is meant for me, and what about dancing that is meant for me. it has been a mystery trying to know what about sewing that i find hard to let go.

at any rate, i don't have big dreams...just a longing to commit myself to these passions day by day. i have forgotten how to plunge with both method and madness. as i begin to see what this means, i feel happy to find my old (actually, younger) self back. i feel i am going to begin life again, at 43. how cliched is that, huh?

just for the record, it has crossed my mind to take up MA in Linguistics. it has crossed my mind to venture into some fusion tribal practice as ATS has been making me feel lonely. and it has crossed my mind to sew another set of 15 yard skirt. it has crossed my mind to pick up my Korean and Spanish language lessons. let us see five years from now what becomes of these.

i am happy to find my song again.  but it doesn't feel like having to start all over again, not like the way it happened in the past twenty years after my parents died and my ex-es left. i am simply picking up the pieces that have fallen by the wayside during my journey, and seeing them now for what they were really worth-- my valued properties rather than excess baggages.

i used to get embarassed at the thought of having started projects that i never managed to finish. but, they never really left me.maybe i picked up projects that i didn't  know had a lifelong enrollment. maybe i am finally learning by heart this one simple lesson: there are a few certain things that  i can not live without, and they don't have to wait until weekends to get done. if they are something i really liked to do, they will get done.

welcome back into my life

I can’t exactly remember when and how I lost it. I'm not sure if its fair to say it happened when I moved into someone else’s life. But that was pretty much the long and short of it. I never imagined I would survive a life without writing. It has been five years (half a decade!) and I couldn’t say it was a life lacking in substance. I just wasn’t writing. I am surprised to have still learned many things about myself without it.

Tonight, in fits and starts I try anew. I really doubt if I could ever write the same silly way again. But it has been crawling like a monkey on my back, pulling my hair and tugging me from behind with that familiar force that used to make me stay up all night. I used to slave beneath words and shadows while humanity sleeps, wrapped in the only world that makes me truly free.

Tonight as I look back and wonder about the years gone by, I find none of the contemplation that used to mark my younger days. There is a kind of self-absorption in my meanderings that I had unknowingly let go.

Tonight, like an old friend it has come back after many years of absence. Tonight I am sitting up until midnight for old time’s sake, coffee by my table and the darkness around me, to catch that one last sentence that is trying to kill  me.

Welcome back into my life and please, please never leave me again.

(Photo from http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Things-That-Should-Never-Stop-You-from-Writing-Your-Story)