Fill of life

So here I am on New Year's eve back to square one again.
I'm referring to my 2007 New Year resolution to loose weight, and how I've reneged on it for a god alone knows which year in running!

The last time I stepped on the weighing scale, the needle flickered on the over weight end of the scale. For a second it hoeverd around the 0h-so-promising 58 kg before settling on some uncalled for a number. (I cant be revealing my weight now after having done so with my age in one of my earlier blogs :)

Oh, the cruelty of this weight watching game.

Give or take a few grams here and there, I have been packing the same heft for the past two years since I moved to Singapore - an incridble scary hulk phase where I have piled on nearly 8 kg or so.

I blame the horizontal growth spurt on Singapore - the good clean air and and water, chicken rice and noodles and the lazy wet weather.
Ofocourse partly to blame is my 'punju' eating habit of chicken only and thus ensuring the liberal doses of the oh so delicious Singapore Chicken rice with the absloutely red hot garlicy saue............uuhmm divine.

Its not that I am not trying to fight the flab.
I wake up at 6 am every day (just about) and walk and really walk hard till my shins hurt, apart from a fruit and no-lunch eating regime and a BIG no-no to lucheon meetings.

But none of these methods have helped much, because I cant - and wont give up my love for the marvellous curry puffs and the junk food and the Indian maggie noodles (which I get thanks to Mustaffa).

So after two years of fretting and fuming about my weight, I have decided enough is enough.

No more feeling lousy about the extra kilos that I have gained. I am going to be ever so grateful for my spare tyre and thunder thighs that rub against each other when I walk.

For years now, its been the politically correct thing to crow that big is beautiful and that its the inner beauty that counts etc etc. So I will not be the first woman to celebrate being 'pleasantly not so thin' anymore.

My mother says - ' I have filled up' - whatever that ever meant!

I dont wish to be paper thin anymore (like I used to be once upon a time 10 years back - just 48 kg with a waist of just 23").
Have you ever seen the size 0 Victoria Beckham with a scowl always (despite having the most sort after husband and endless number of kids and moeny to role around) and Kate Moss looking perpetually sad?

I remember reading the theory of 2000 Nobel prize winner geneticist James Watson - that fat people were happier than thin ones. He found that extra weight on men and women had the biological effect of making them well-rounded in character. They are aslo likely to have better sex lives.

Though Dr Watson's propositions are a wee bit flawed because I am still ashamed of my extra weight because of all all those steal deals that I had to give a miss at the various malls and boutiques in Singapore these days, just because they dint have my size!

I, for one, certainly dont know if I need to feel guilty for not having kept to my yet another New Year resolution - and whether to wake up tomorrow morning to 'yet' another resolution.

But then, promises (resolutions) are meant to be broken - right?
You only live once and tomorrow is another day!

(borrowed) Uncanny truths

- Whenever I find the key to success, someone changes the lock.

- To Err is human, to forgive is not a COMPANY policy.

- The road to success??.. Is always under construction.

- Alcohol doesn't solve any problems, but if you think again, neither does Milk.

- In order to get a Loan, you first need to prove that you don't need it.

- All the desirable things in life are either illegal, expensive or fattening.

- Since Light travels faster than Sound, people appear brighter before you hear them speak.

- Everyone has a scheme of getting rich?.. Which never works.

- If at first you don't succeed?. Destroy all evidence that you ever tried.

- You can never determine which side of the bread to butter. If it falls down, it will always land on the buttered side.

- Anything dropped on the floor will roll over to the most inaccessible corner.

- As soon as you mention something?? if it is good, it is taken?. If it is bad, it happens.

- He who has the gold, makes the rules ---- Murphy's golden rule.

If you come early, the bus is late. If you come late?? the bus is still late.

- Once you have bought something, you will find the same item being sold somewhere else at a cheaper rate.

- When in a queue, the other line always moves faster and the person in front of you will always have the most complex of transactions.

- If you have paper, you don't have a pen??. If you have a pen, you don't have paper?? if you have both, no one calls.

- You will pick up maximum wrong numbers when on roaming.

- The door bell or your mobile will always ring when you are in the bathroom.

- After a long wait for bus no.20, two 20 number buses will always pull in together and the bus which you get in will be crowded than the other.

- Irrespective of the direction of the wind, the smoke from the cigarette will always tend to go to the non-smoker


- (this one is for a friend who calls me pessimistic - an original!)
Positiveness is in my blood..... I'm B+ :)

CHEERS and Seasons greetings!!

imperfect happiness

Being happy does not mean everything is perfect - it simply means you have decided to see beyond imperfections.

So then is 'living with a detached amusement' the only way to enjoy life?

But then have we ever asked a soul loosing love, like life loosing blood!

Paradox of life

Whatever you want you dont get
Whatever you get you dont enjoy
Whatever you enjoy is not permanenet
Whatever is permanenet is boring!

Waiting is painful.
Foregetting is painful.
Not knowing which to do is suffering!

When we struggle with each other, we are struggling with ourselves instead.
Every fault we see in the each other touches a denied weakness in ourself.
Every conflict we wage is an excuse not to face conflict within.
Our "that" special loved one cant give something that is not already ours.
When we truly find love, we find ourselves! OR is it when we find ourselves, we find true love!

Its said that "true love is neither physical, nor romantic. True love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be, and will not be".
Then why dont we accept this and move on and along?!

Unfullfilled Skeptic

An easy life doesn't teach us anything.

We can have excuses, or we can have health, love, understanding, adventure, happiness. We design our lives through the power of our choices.

We feel most helpless when we've made our choices by "default", when we haven't designed our lives on our own.

Why do we get stuck in a never-ending opening? At first, it feels real, sheer delight. It is the part of the relation in which you are at your best : fun, charming, excited, exciting, interesting, interested. Its a time when one is most comfortable and in love with life - no need to mobilise your defences, so you are cuddling a teddy bear called life and not a giant cactus.

But beginnings cannot be prolonged endlessly. They cannot be stated and restated - endlessly. They must develop and move on, otherwise die.

We have visions of something wonderful that awaits us. Yet we cannot get there from here! We are faced with a wall of solid defences. We get frustrated - unable to go back and unable to move forward - in a state of constant struggle.

Life is a chess game in which each party has its singular objective even as it engages the other. Mid-game, we develop a struggle which intensifes and bits and pieces of each side are lost, both sides diminished. And end-game in which one traps and paralayzes the other.

I see life as this metaphor - a chess game. The king and queen are lost - an opportunity so filled with promise, so rare and so beautiful goes unfulfilled!

Once the game is over - both the king and pawn go back into the same box! And then I realise that "fairness is a virtue only because the world (life) is so unfair"!

And then, we wonder why we gave our life to become the person we are right now.
Is it worth it?

Timeless....vainty!

To quote a mug my friend bought me ........"you are only young once, but you can stay immature forever".

Age is more than just a number or is it?

In mycase the figure must be halved when I behave like I'm still 18, merrily trying to squeeze into my decade old jeans or get starry eyed when I see Tom Cruise on TV.

Other times, I'm double my age, hoarding plastic food contaniners and worry about osteoporosis!

I would like to believe I can still pass a twenthysomething (well maybe not anymore when I am trumpeting my age), but seriously whats the big deal admitting to how many years one has lived? What would shaving a copuple of years off accomplish?

I'm surprised though, by how coy some women and even men - supposedly the less vain half of the species - are about their age.

In Singapore, the newspapers are almost fanatical about revealing the age of the individuals. I was told by a journalist friend here that to believe the news about a Mr Tan, 19, biting a dog has a different slant from a Mr Tan who is 91!

For one, readers would wonder how an elederly Mr Tan at 91 is expected to have all his teeth intact :) Right?

So does it all boil down to vanity?

In my case, I dont know where I stand - timeless, ageless, I guess.

Far from being in denial, I'm very aware that I dont act my age - whatever that means - and this can hardly keep track of how old I atually am. Half-jokingly, my mother says : I'm an immature 30 something who did not get past 20. Not only do I not act my age, I'm constantly regressing".

I feel the more stressful and busy work gets, the more important it is to be in touch with your inner juvenile delinquent. I know I can act serious and mature when the time calls for it, at work, but the rest of the time I am not too sure I act my age.

I cheekily proclaim.....the 30's are now the 20's! and I shall want to celebrate life outrageously, every day and forever!

Imagine this in a civilized world!

Try this for a scenario - a young woman is gang-raped in say usa or london. The rapists are given a few months, while the victim is sentenced to three months in jail with 90 lashes as well. But when her lawyer appeals for a stiffer sentence for the men, it is her sentence that is doubled!

Can you image the worldwide uproar?!

Except this has actually happened in Saudi Arabia. In much of the muslim world, this horrifying episode has been virtually blanked out of the public consciousness, with the media maintaining a discreet silence.

And to top it all, the judges have barred the defence lawyer from appearing in their court. Because according to them the lawyer has attempted to influence the court by going public with this story!

The tragedy began last year when this 19 year old woman got into a male colleagues car to discuss some last minute work. Some men enter the car, force them to drive into some deserted area, where they are joined by the rest of the gang. There, they gang-rape the lady and attack her male companion.

When the traumatised woman and her husdand report the matter to the police, she is accused of being the company of a 'na-mehram' (an un-related male), a crime in Saudi Arabia. She gets sentensed to three months jail and 90 lashes and when she appeals, the sentence is doubled.

Imagine this in a civilzed world!

Saudi Arabia - the planets biggest exporter of petroleum, the Saudi ruling family does not care what the rest of the world thinks of them or their country. Even the White House, normally ever ready to pass judgement or critise human-rights violations around the world are reduced to mumbling about "cultual differences"!

This whole epidode casts an unflattering light on the archaic laws, interpreted by judges or mullas with little or no formal legal training. How can the backbone of a country or a set of countries following a certain relegious law be a collection of tribal customs and rules imposed by men who seldom bother and are invariably harsh and anti-women?

No system in the civilized world allows victims of crimes to be punished and yet in a major part of the world its a the plight of half of the human race....women....... dont get the respect and regard for being the "continum of human life".

We are fighting to save the planet. How about saving the other half of the human race as well?

Is this a civilized world we live in?

'Arc of Prosperity' - Imagine a 3 billion market from India to NZ

Imagine selling maggi noodles or ashok masalas or maurti cars or bajaj scooters to a market of 3 billion people, stretching from the India all the way to the bottom of New Zealand's map - oh wow!

Mr Manmohan Singh, the humble economist PM of India, called it the "Arc of prosperity" in Singapore yesterday.

With the free trade deals among ASEAN and the 'big' economies of the rest of Asia - India, China, Korea and Japan and ANZ - the stage seems to be set for this huge umiaginable single market of 3 billion people.

This wont be as easy as the EU.
Its ambitious, its going to be tough, its got Myanmar! - but its not impossible.

Most countries in the Southeast Asia region dont have the individual economic muscle to dine at the high tables of India and China. Its the ambition to stay relevant in the global context that has brought about this concepet hence it comes as a gesture of great prudence and future planning on part of the thinkers and leaders of these 10 countries.

While India is facing its share of hassels in negotiating the India-ASEAN FTA because of the pace at which some countries are moving vary.
So the faster way forward is to go bilateral as well. Because ultimately it all comes down to practicality.

The slowest coach need not slow down entire train. For at the end of the day, the government and business leaders can only keep stiving to stay competitive, regardless of the merits of other parts of the world.

The sceptics have a good reason to point at the speed checks that are bound to come along India's way to progress, such as the complexities brought on by varying political systems.

But contries and people who get places are the ones who ...................KEEP MOVING!

Restoring Freedom

Restoring Freedom

There is nothing more certain in life than the eventual loss of whatever you become attached to. If you cannot yet be detached then you can prepare for the moment the universe will come to take away your attachments.

This is also a moment of freedom, although we do not appreciate it until much after the event.

Connection with life?

Life and freedom – It’s just a feeling; freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit to oneself - what is best for the individual!

The more it’s rejected and denied, the more interested we become. This scenario will simply keep recurring as long as we refuse to risk everything for what we believe to be our real reason for living. "All we have to do is to pay attention; lessons always arrive when we are ready, and if we can read the signs, we learn everything we need to know in order to take the next step".

But what happens, where there is "no next step"!

We humans have two great problems: the first is knowing when to begin, the second is knowing when to stop. We suffer because we refuse to understand one another.

We try our best not to remember and not accept the immense magical potential we posses, because that would upset our existing neat little universe. Yet.........

People are not unhappy all the time. They love. They enjoy work. They enjoy friends. Yet they feel this profound sadness, as if their soul is losing love as if it were losing blood!
We don’t have the courage to follow our dreams and to follow the signs. Perhaps that’s where the sadness comes from.

We all live life with the basic principal "what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over"!

The universe takes care of correcting our mistakes. Suffering and tragedy, they happen because they are a part of life. The universe tells us when we are wrong by taking away what is most important to us! In love there is neither good nor evil, there is neither construction nor destruction, there is merely movement. And love changes the laws of nature.

In contradiction, love grows in strength. In confrontation and transformation, love is preserved!
Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.

Despite this there is hope.

Believe in signs, believe in fate. Every single day life offers us a chance to make the best possible decision.
Why should we then fail?

Why, then, do we loose connection with our life and freedom?

Chinese Soft Power

Soft power, a term coined by Harvard professor Joseph Nye in 1990, refers to the ability of a state to get what it wants by attracting or persuading others, as opposed to using coercion, most often represented by military might.

Soft power is about people volunatrily seeking to assoicate with, or emulate another country's culture, lifestyle and values. Dipolmacy, cultural exchanges and dialogue forums are soft powe tools; more abstract examples would include democractic ideals, hollywood, bollywood, nike, coke - anything that makes the weilder of soft power appealing to others.

Brand China seems to be in deep touble. This week, flammable childrens pyjamas, formaldehyde laced clothes joined a growing list of China-made goods that foreign regulators, particularly USA have rejected. This incldes recall of 20 million unsafe toys, tainted food products and faculty tyres.

Chinese officials have gone on a PR offensive.

China has retunred a few USA goods alleging them as sub-standard, and hitting back calling it "Whasington's increasing protectionism".

China at home is like America during the industrial revolution - struggling to develop rules for its chaotic factories - China abroad resembles the USA of that time, too - far more influential nation than other exisiting powers care to admit.

Apart from "Made in China" crisis, other problems bedevil the image China presents to the world including environmental diasters, human rights, corruption and rampant piracy.

Yet (a small example) , unlike the IT system which was still not in place a month before the start of the 2004 Athens Olympics, China has already completed the IT infrastructure for next years Beijing Games.

For any country, hosting the Olymoics is a matter great Pride. But for China, a nation so self-conscious of being a nascent superpower, the games are also been explicitly linked to its "soft power".

A super power is emerging over the long haul and its establishment is viewed with a complicated range of emotions - desire, fear, loathing and suspicion.

Just ask the USA.

Hey, India - where are you?

Making good men Better men!

Last evening my friend took me to this amazing place for dinner. Its called the "Freemason Club"and is located across the road from my office, in a discreet heritage building, which for some reason I ignored since I first landed in Singapore in end-October 2005.

While the menu boasted off serving pasta, continental and north Indian cusine, we had some amazing Chicken Tikka Masala, Palak Paneer and Prawn Masala with Naan.
Excellent food and service in the least expected place!

All evening, we were very curious to know about this Club which has some amazing history attached with it.

The uncle (in Singapore everyone is either called Uncle or Aunty, irrespective of age) outside at the parking lot told us this used to be an "all male member" club! and has only recently allowed non-members and non-males to partake its food and revel in its history!

So after a good meal we were indeed proud - two women, have yet again conquered another male bastion :). We were actually the only 2 women (She a local Chinese Singaporean and me the proud Indian) at the club last evening.

My friend, all the way back home, kept wondering what "Freemasonry" was all about. So I very relegiously did some research for her this morning and here is what I found out.........apprantly, Freemasonry has been called many things (some untrue and unflattering) but, in short, freemasonry is a system of learning designed to make good men better men. Spirituality is a part of freemasonry but it is not a religion.

Freemasonry began in Singapore in 1845.

Last evening, my friend and I created our own little history, meeting at a century old English Lodge, meant for making "good men better men" .

BTW - Sir Stamford Raffles was a Freemason. A good man, who laid the foundation of a better Singapore.

A Fortune Teller Once Told Me

When someone sees the same people everyday, they wind up becoming a part of that persons life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry.

Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how others should lead their lives, but none about his or her own!

And when each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recongnise the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.

At a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what happens to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. People loose the ability to choose their own destinies. And this seems to be the worlds greatest lie!

People learn early in their lives, what is their reason for being. Maybe thats why they give up on it so early, too. But thats the way life is.

I dont know what my destiny is? I dont know if all I want to do is settle down, have a high flying career or keeping searching for that elusive treasure called 'ultimate happiness'. Utopia!

Apparantly, destiny is supposed to be what I have always wanted to accomplish.
But what it is that I want to accomplish?, I still dont know!

If its happines I am after, then it seemingly is around every corner. Becuase I remember an old chinese monk once telling me that the "secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon"

But I'm like everyone else - I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does. Perhaps thats why I still dont where I am headed. I am still restless.

But the fortune teller has convinced me that God has prepared a path for everyone to follow. We just have to read the omens that he has left for you. And they say, "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it"

"Patience is genius" - thats a virture I still waiting to fullfill, in turn for the Uninverse to conspire to fullfill my ultimate destiny.

The life and time of Baaji - my late grandfather

Many many years back, I once asked my late grandfather (my mom's father) - the only man I really really respect, admire and loved to death - "why people are sad" ?

"Baaji" (we all used to call him that) - was a very tall handsome man, looked like a Pathan - very fair with silvery hair, who had seen many horrors in his lifetime (during partition) told me "Thats a simple answer Beta" - "all of us are prisoners of our own personal history. We all believe that the main purpose of our life is to follow a plan. We never ask if that plan is ours or if it was created by another person. We accumulate experiences, memories, things, other peoples ideas, - all this is more than any ordinary person can possibly cope with. AND THAT IS WHY WE FORGET OUR DREAMS"

I remember telling him that he was lucky he knew what he wanted out of life, despite all the tragedy he went through in the early years of his life (just before my mother was born in 1947, during the India-Pakistan partition), whereas I dont even know what I want to do!

He brushed me off saying "ofcourse I knew".

He asked me how many people I knew who say - "I have never done what I wanted but then, thats life!. If they say they haven't done what they wanted, then, at some point, they must have known what it was that they did want."

"As for life, it just a story that other people tell us about the world and about how we should behave in the world"

He went onto say that " even worse are those people who say : I'm happy because I'm sacrificing my life for those I love"

(I have always meant to tell him that I know he perhaps was reffering to me and my life!)
(BTW - whatever he said - its still applicable to me! I am still the same old drifter not knowing what I want to do with myself and my life!)

God granted Baaji dignity and respect by giving him a very peacful death on 5th September 1995.

I me myself

I remeber reading somewhere, sometime, something which I thought as attributed to me......which I think went like this......

Its important to let certain things go. To release them. To cut loose. People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards; sometimes we win and sometimes we loose. Dont expect to get anything back, dont expect recognition for your efforts, dont expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Just complete the circle of life. Not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply becuase whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust, Stop being who you were and become who you are!

If I was not I, I would be nothing - and that seems to me quite marvellous.

The choice?

Mediocrity and annonymity are the safest choice. If we opt for them, we'll never face any major problems in life. But if we try to be different........then?!!

Freedom of the Self

Free - are we as individuals? Its just a feeling.

Feedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit to oneself - what is best for the individual!