The Importance Of Doing Nothing

Mother and Daughter Roadtrip

The last time Mom and I did a roadtrip together, was about 2 years ago when we travelled to Kuching and Sibu in Sarawak.  There, I got to reunite with my aunts, and members of my Kuching family whom I had not met since I was a child.  We revisited old family history when Mom shared with me stories about her grandparents and life in Kuching and Sibu.

During that trip we ate the entire Kuching and Sibu, enjoyed a good laugh and long chats over family reunion meals, explored caves, trek forests and streams, hunted orang-utans (with the camera)  and visited markets. We had so much fun and that was definitely a meaningful trip, particularly when I got better insights into my family history.   More on that trip here:  http://thecrazyangmoandhisangrywife.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-road-trip-with-mom-to-rediscover-my.html

 A Peace Of Pairadise

2 weeks ago, Mom and I embarked on yet another roadtrip.  We decided to change the game abit and travel to parts unknown.  So Pai, about 3 hours up north from Chiangmai was the choice of our mother-daughter roadtrip. 

Pai, known for its wide expanse of rice fields, scenic mountains, fresh air, backpackers and backpackers with bandaged legs and arms from bike accidents was definitely a piece of paradise found.

Before the trip, the control-freak in me planned everything from booking a 5-star hotel because I was not keen on slumming it in a bug-infested hut with no air conditioner, right down to the private driver that I hired to transport us from Chiangmai airport through the 762 dangerous twist and turns up the mountain into Pai.  Yes I am a princess like that.  I did not want to start my vacation with bed bugs or a helicopter extricating my body from the depths of the ravine along the way to Pai.

I even had an itinerary drawn up with places in Pai to visit, like the Pai Canyon where we could view the exquisite sunset, the refreshing waterfalls where we could cool off from the summer weather, and the picturesque rice fields where I could practise my photography skills with the new camera bought for me by the hubby from Toys R Us.

The Importance Of Doing Nothing

That week of pre-trip research would have been better spent getting my motorbike licence because apart from the hotel and my driver, we did nothing touristy that I had planned in my itinerary.  In fact, because we did nothing, Mom cooed, ” This is my favourite vacation.  I had the most fun in my entire life.”

It made me think about the importance of doing nothing.

My routine back home, on work days, had always been an endless cycle of work before 8am, gym at lunchtime, or lunch meetings sometimes, back to back meetings, conference calls, gym again after work, consultation sessions with my clients and back home late at night to wolf down a light dinner.  This routine is set on repeat again the next day.  On weekends, apart from a yoga session, I focus my time on the family, juggling commitments between joining Joel at the gym, helping David with his photography work, visiting Mom and taking the dogs out for a run. 

I had absolutely no time for me.  My me times were specifically spent with my boxing, strength and conditioning and yoga coaches.  And when I viewed that from a different perspective, I realized I was truly exhausted.  I needed recovery.  I did not know how to recover.  Sleep was not recovery when I had troubled sleep spent thinking about my schedule and plans for the next day.  

Desperately, my body, mind and spirit were crying out for rest and recovery.  Mom had always told me to take a break but my usual response was, “I rest when I am dead.”

It was rainy season in Pai.  This trip was planned at a good time believe it or not.    It rained every day without fail. From the patio at our hotel room where we hung out most each day, we could see that the rain cast a mysterious mist across the mountains in the horizon and formed ripples in our pool. It was therapeutic to watch.  Time actually slowed down for us in Pai as we sat and watched the rain.

We did not rush to go to a tourist spot, whether it was the canyon, waterfalls or the famous memorial bridge.  We figured that we could see them from the web, so why bother right? We just went with the flow.  We spent a lot of time at the Pai Walking Street, lounging at cafes, people watching, sampling street food, watching impromptu street performances by the students from the Pai Circus School, striking conversations with backpackers, some who had been there a day but stayed on for 2 years, and taking photos of everything that were not really touristy, but I found interesting.

We signed up for a lesson at the Pai Cookery School, cooking red curry, Pad Thai and Chicken with Cashew Nuts, and had a great time laughing over my lack of kitchen skills.  What I would usually render as inedible when it was cooked by myself, was actually made edible by Gaew, my cookery teacher.  Mom was useless.  She did not help me at all, because she was busy trying to buy Gaew’s entire kitchen, from the pots and pans to the Tamarind-wood chopping board to the set of knives!

So apart from perspiring during the wee stint at the cookery school and that walk up and down the walking street, we really got to enjoy the art of doing nothing.

Here are some other ways we did nothing:

·     Yoga – Sat and watched the sunrise, then stretched for abit before breakfast.

·     Culinary Adventures – Hopping from pushcart to pushcart along walking street to sample streetfood.

·     Trek through the mountains – Took photos of the 762 twists and turns on the way up the mountain from our mini van.

·     Cookery School – Feigned ignorance and made the cookery teacher cook most of my dishes.

·     Enjoy cultural activities – Booked a masseuse auditioning for WWE for a Thai massage and foot reflexology.

·     Tucked into indigenous Thai food – Took photos of  bamboo worms, skewered scorpions, crocodile, ostrich and deer meat from afar.

·     Experienced Thai unique architecture – Sent Mom whose afraid of heights, across the Pai Bamboo Bridge so I could take videos for a laugh.

There must be some science to the art of doing nothing because this was the only vacation I had taken where I felt fully recharged and ready to go back to work to reactivate my mind.  I felt refreshed and my body was ready to hit the gym for an intense workout to burn off my 2 weeks worth of Som Tam and Pad Thai. I felt completely ready to be present for the rest of my family when I headed back to Singapore.

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  She is a passionate observer of life bent on inspiring others to live life positively through her writing by combing through moments worth celebrating every day.   Due to her ardent love for sports especially boxing and MMA, she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing articles to several sports media when time permits.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She enjoys Boxing and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

I Need To Be Gentler With Myself

Rewiring The Brain

 

Did you know that childhood experiences could wire one’s brain in a way that could cause one to create perceptions in adulthood, that might or might not be the truth?

When I was a little girl, Dad was incarcerated for alternative political views. However when he was released, he had continued to hold political views that were not aligned with the establishment, and was still quite vocal about it amongst his friends.   I felt that when the family had already walked through the struggle of his detention, he should just stop taking too hard a stand against the establishment and learn to be more open to the intent behind some of these policies and indeed be more open to the political opinions of others.  I blamed Dad’s continuous anti-establishment rhetoric on my not being important enough for him to just “shut up”.  When my parents chided me for grades that were not within the top percentile, I blamed it on my not being intelligent enough and my lack of discipline.  When my brother hurt himself while playing as a toddler, his nanny told my parents that I had bullied him, and of course I had a scolding for it.  I blamed that incident on my failure to take better care of him. 

 
That wiring in my brain had over time, made me extremely critical of myself.  When my performance appraisals at work saw general comments like “needs improvement”,  I blamed it on the fact that I might not have delivered a project well, had not been detailed enough with my work or perhaps I was too lax in the management of my team.  When I struggled at the gym with boxing, always making the same mistakes repeatedly, I blamed it on my age and my lack of agility.  When my Mom fell a few months ago on her way to church, I blamed it on the fact that I had not spent enough time with her and had not taken better care of her.   When my son went through the phase of acting like an imbecilic teenager by spending lavishly on his girlfriend without thought of the value of money, and covering up his lack of control over his expenditure with lies to David and I, I blamed it on my failure as a mother.

 

Putting So Much Pressure On Myself

 
I spent the weekend talking to Mom, to my best friend Molly, and then to my mentor Alixe last night and there was a common thread that ran through each of their advice. They said that I was putting too much pressure on myself.  Every day, I juggled multiple roles, trying to be a good marketer at work, a counselor and mentor with my clients, a student at my boxing training, a mother, wife, and daughter at home.  I had inevitably placed my own set of evaluation criteria on myself within each of these roles, trying to over-achieve all the time, trying to please everybody, and trying my best to take care of everyone’s needs but my own.  In some of these situations, I had bitten off more than I can chew, taking on everyone else’s responsibilities and worrying for the people in my life that mattered most to me. 
 

Last night, I drew a circle on a piece of paper and wrote the names of the people within my network that were closest to me. I then wrote a bunch of words that automatically described my immediate thoughts about them and things I had done for them or wished to do for them.  Finally I circled the words that were repeated most.  These were the words that got circled the most -  Save, Support, Salvage, Nurture,  Heal, Sorry, Please.  These words told a story of how I had always felt I had never given enough, done enough or delivered enough.  There was always something I had to save someone from.  There was always a situation I had to salvage for someone.  There was always someone that needed my support.  There was always someone I had to continuously nurture.  There was always someone that had an open wound that needed continuously healing. There was always someone I needed to please. There was always someone I felt so sorry to, for not being able to further save, support, salvage, please or heal. So I often held myself accountable for someone else’s issues or mistakes.

 
Being Gentle To Myself

 
Acknowledging my own limitations and my need to draw that boundary around me, I  decided today that I had to be gentler to myself.  I had to stop taking responsibility for other people’s problems, faults and failings.   I needed to take time out to rest for a bit.  I needed space from some people.  I needed time to nourish my soul and nurture my mind, body and spirit back to a state where I can take back control of my personal power.

 
Taking Care Of Me

 
So I will take care of myself over the next few weeks. 

 
I had to stop being anxious about Joel and his lack of accountability for his frivolous spend. Whatever little he earned from his national service stint belonged to him after all and he had every right to spend it in the way he wanted to. How he managed his money today would go a long way to teaching him about the value of savings and wealth management as he grows older, manages a career, owns his own home and have a family in the future. 

 

I had to stop nagging David about his lack of discipline with regard to his diet.  His health was his responsibility. The quality of life that he wanted to live in future as he got older, would be determined by how he managed his health, lifestyle and fitness today.

 
I had to stop stressing about Mom’s well-being and whether or not she was getting enough attention from me. Mom had a huge circle of friends, and she was often surrounded by my uncles, aunt and cousins who often spent time with her. She would have to assume full responsibility over the way she wanted to design her new lifestyle after my Dad had passed on.

 
I had to stop getting annoyed, when certain clients did not take my advice and kept returning to consult with me on the same issues. They were afterall masters of their own destinies and needed to take charge of their own happiness by choosing to accept things that they could not change, or make changes to things that they could.

 
 I had to stop being “mother-hen” to my team at work, worrying that they would get bullied by other senior managers when I could not be at certain meetings.  I needed to trust that my team members are capable enough of fighting their own battles as these experiences were essential to their development as future leaders.

 
What impacted my emotions most would often be the people and things I cared about most.  On hindsight, I felt grateful for the angst, anxiety, anger, sadness, frustrations, disappointments and all the negativity from incidents that had triggered my feelings of fear of lack of control, lack of approval, and lack of security because these feelings helped me acknowledge my vulnerability and my own need for help, support, nurturing and space. 

 
So, be warned. When I need a hand to hold, I would be asking you for it soon.  When I need space and time to myself,  please know that I am not trying to avoid you.  When I indulge in a few more glasses of wine than usual outside of my cheat day, please try not to judge me for my ill discipline.  When I need to go for a vacation longer than I had planned, please allow me that time to take care of me.

 
What I truly need most now  though, is to go walk barefoot on the grass, listen to birds sing, feel the wind in my face, hug a tree and feel the wet sand between my toes at the beach. Please try not to think I am "hippy-wierd".

 
I am just learning to be gentler with myself.

 

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Boxing and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

Making Peace With My Inner Child

I did not like kids. They were tiresome, demanding, and often a potential liability in a way that required my making plans around them.  When Joel was little, I was every parent’s nightmare when it came to my turn to babysit the children or do the school run.  My way of entertaining these kids was to feed them with a buffet of sweets, chocolates, crisps and lots of fizzy drinks while I did my aerobics in front of the TV.

 

On days I hosted the baby group, I would have some of these kids’ parents calling me at night to complain that their children were hyperactive from the sugar overload or had lost their appetite for dinner. 

 

My Weekend Getaway

 

When the girls at work planned a weekend getaway in Malacca recently, I was informed that Susan was going to have her daughter, Sophie, come along with us. I was worried initially.  A weekend trip away with the girls always meant miles of walking, eating lots of spicy Malaysian food, and plenty of coffee stops.  “Did that sound kid-friendly to you, Susan?”  I thought.

 

I decided to keep my mind open.  A 5-hour bus ride to Malacca could be a nightmare with her running up and down the aisle of the bus with little or no chance of me gagging and tying her to the roof of the bus.  I decided, the fizzy drinks, sweets, chocolates and crisps tactic would not work if I wanted to have a peaceful nap for 5 hours.

 

Well, I was wrong about kids.  At least, I was wrong about this kid.  I did have a peaceful bus-ride.  I did have a weekend filled with so much fun and laughter. I did walk miles, shopped and ate plenty of spicy Malaysian food, with little Sophie in tow.

 

Little Miss Sunshine

 

After a great weekend, my post-vacation blues really was not inspired about missing Malacca, its food, its café culture and its history.  I realized it was inspired by my missing Sophie.  And here’s why.

 

Sophie sprinkled a lot of sunshine throughout our trip.  She made us laugh with her antics, especially when she choreographed her special “jelly dance” to entertain us.   She chattered non-stop, and every opinion from her was made from the observation of a pure and innocent heart of a child. 

 

Her inquisitive nature inspired her to ask many questions.  I saw her learning new things, shaping her perceptions with everything she touched, heard and experienced.

 

She taught us to let our hair down, and look at everything and everyone around Malacca through the eyes of a child.  From that vantage point, we saw everything from a fresh perspective.  A wall mural was not just a wall mural.  We played with it and engaged with a piece of art on the wall just to have a wee bit of fun.

 

We became children again.  We visited the Mamee Cup Noodle factory on Jonker street, decorated our own cups and customized our own cup noodle ingredients.  It was like a school excursion.

 

We were not fussy about sticking to the breakfast, lunch and dinner routine.  We ate when we wanted to eat and with an adventurous spirit, tried all kinds of food that I would otherwise not have tried. 

 

Sophie’s love for life, inspired us to live the moment, enjoy the now, appreciate every little thing around us. Without her, I would be spending the trip checking my emails every hour on the hour like I usually did when I travelled.

 

I was grateful for Little Miss Sunshine’s presence throughout our weekend getaway.  Sometimes, children can teach us so much more than we would ever admit.  The most important lesson from her for me, was that, if I wanted to live the moment and truly love my life, I needed to start with an open mind.

 

 

Postscript:  Now I would usually have thought that I  had lost my mind to be drawing something like this together with Sophie during our bus-ride home from Malacca. However, on looking back at it,  this was to me, our most beautiful piece of artwork together!

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Boxing and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

 

 

Off The Beaten Track In Hong Kong

The Mad Rush

 

My visits to Hong Kong were always a whirlwind rush against time and traffic to get to workshops and meetings, and hurried dinners or drink sessions with friends in Hong Kong.  The final hours of my trip would also see me zipping from trams to malls, to train stations, and across the island to more malls because I had grudgingly agreed to purchase several tins of a popular brand of cookies that could only be found in Hong Kong, wait for a roast goose from a famous restaurant to be cooked, packed and ready to sit with my clean and nice-smelling clothes in my luggage or snap up a bunch of cheap cosmetics from a Hong Kong-based cosmetic chain store.

 

I did like the hurried meals though.  We had a hurried lunch at a traditional dim sum restaurant that served its dim sum in trolleys that whizzed past our table at the speed of a space shuttle. They were pushed by harried waitresses who shouted at the top of their voices to ask if we wanted them to throw a basket of barbecued pork buns at our table in a bid to practice their Ultimate Frisbee skills.

 

I felt that I have never had enough time to see Hong Kong for the gem it truly was, apart from the mornings when I would wake up to a fantastic view from my hotel window which overlooked the Victoria Park.  I loved watching various group of old folks “doing their thing” amidst greenery.  Apart from the usual groups that did Tai-Chi and Qi-Gong, there was a group that did a fan dance, and another group that did a kungfu display while brandishing swords.  Then there were groups that focused on activities that had questionable efficacies.  One group walked backwards, another kept flapping their hands and then there were the “moon-walkers” who walked in slow motion rather than walked at a slow pace. Fascinating!

 

Squeezing In Me Time

 

Inspired by old folks energetically performing their daily exercises, this old lady here thought to squeeze in some time for my own workout too.  So I booked a session with Bresson Brel, Head Coach of Boxing at Jab MMA. Bresson who was a World Champion boxer with 14 years of experience. 8 of those years were spent as a professional boxer. He came highly recommended as his specialty was in specific boxing conditioning drills.  That sounded safe enough for me to know that I would not be losing a tooth when I trained with him.

 

Bresson had possibly communicated telepathically with my boxing coach in Singapore.  After warming up with 30 push-ups which made me feel rather pumped, he very politely told me to repeat another set of 30 push-ups because “Let’s not count those because they weren’t low enough shall we?” He was a great coach and I had a great workout.  I wished I had more time in Hong Kong to train more regularly with him.

Even David got his act together and booked a training session with Professor Rodrigo Caporal who held a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and was well-decorated to the hilt with world championship titles. David learnt a lot from that training session and it was hilarious when he admitted that his "sit-on-him-and-hope-for-the-best" technique did not work.

Off The Beaten Track

 

I was glad that I included David in this recent trip though, or I would never have found that piece of tranquility beyond the urban parks in Hong Kong.

 

We spent a day at the sleepy fishing village of Tai-O on Lantau Island where time almost stood still.  The journey to Tai-O itself was an experience.  It was almost a “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” type of experience.  We took the tram to catch the ferry to Mui Wo, then hopped onto the number 1 bus to Tai-O which was quite an interesting ride if one was ever in an adventurous mood. As the bus drove through the hills, it rolled around the bends almost always nearly missing an on-coming bus.  It trimmed the trees at breakneck speed a few times, and we saw our lives flashed past our eyes throughout the whole journey.  When we arrived at Tai-O, we felt like we were in a time-warp. It certainly was not the Hong Kong I knew.  The pace felt much slower, the air was cleaner, and the shops, homes, schools, and almost every aspect of the little village seemed to belong to a different dimension in time.  

 

Everyone who lived in Tai-O was in the fishing industry, operated a seafood restaurant or ran a shop that specialized in dried seafood.  It was fascinating to see families living in stilt houses that lined a river bank, busy with their daily activity of salting fish, drying them in the sun, and mending fishing nets.

 

Some of the houses looked like aluminum containers and we wondered how families living in those could withstand the sweltering heat.

 

We stopped for lunch at the Tai-O Heritage Hotel which was a respite from the heat.  The charm of the hotel reminded me of the E&O Hotel in Penang or the Raffles Hotel in Singapore minus the glitz. The view from the hotel was stunning and I wished that we had booked a room for the night there. Maybe next time.

 

From Tai-O, a taxi took us to yet another sleepy village called Ngongping.  Many Buddhist pilgrims visited the Po Lin Monastery at Ngongping and one could not claim to have visited Ngongping without negotiating the challenging stairs up to the Big Buddha. However once we arrived at the top of the stairs, we were rewarded by a stunning view of the monastery, the mountains and the sea surrounding us.  It was so peaceful..almost a slice of heaven.

 

I was glad that we went beyond the malls and cafes in Hong Kong, and chose to get off the beaten track during this trip.  I finally saw Hong Kong for the gem it truly was.

Photo credit: Most pictures from this post were photographed by David

 

 

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Boxing and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.