Cleaning ritual

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , ,
21 May 2011
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We people are funny creatures.  We love to clean before we have guests over, or when a loved one returns from some time away.  Why is that?  Why is cleaning up so important before someone shows up?  I think a lot of it is a need to have control and orderliness.  After all, humans are always trying to control their environment, are they not?  Keeping things organized makes them easier to manage (aka control).  And so it is, we clean before any sort of occasion to control the impression we make on visitors and family alike.

Even I succumb to this.  Before Panda showed up this weekend, I put most of my things away and tidied up a little bit.  I tend to leave things around because I feel like a home isn’t really lived in if everything is tucked away perfectly.  However, I didn’t want Panda coming to my place to find nowhere to sit except on top of my clothes (my seating areas are perfect for piling up clothes).  I also didn’t want him to have to step over random bags or shoes to get around.  I guess it came down to a practicality thing.  But for most people, the appearance of a neat and orderly life is imperative to making a good impression.

Somehow along the way we decided that being messy was a bad thing.  The entire housekeeping industry relies upon this viewpoint.  To a certain extent, it is perfectly understandable; nobody wants to walk into a hotel room to find things in disarray.  Yet, in our own homes I think we could be a lot more flexible on the cleaning rituals we set.  What’s wrong with jeans thrown over the back of a chair or a ruffled blanket?  They don’t necessarily present health hazards.  Personally, I prefer to keep them that way.  Unfortunately that’s not how society views things and I know I’d get judged (however slightly) if I weren’t to change my habits when guests came around.  It’s too bad!  We could do with less time cleaning and more time focused on other things.

Flash fever

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags:
15 May 2011
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I was in class today, listening to problem solutions when I began to feel ill. My face flushed and I felt queasy – then before I knew it, I developed a bit of a fever. I was nauseated from not eating, so I quickly began to munch on some crunchy Cheetos. At the break, I rushed to a vending machine and got chips and cookies. It was enough to stave off the illness and stabilize my body. Crazy how it just flared up like that, in part due to being weak from hunger, in part due to the chilly room conditions. Even now as I lay in bed, it’s lingering there and I feel on the verge of getting sick. I guess the wind today affected me more than I expected.

Have you ever experienced a sudden fever like that? One that comes and goes before you fully react to what’s going on? I used to get it every afternoon in high school for awhile, but now I only get flare-ups occasionally. The nice thing is they go away pretty quickly, but they just as quickly and unpredictably come back too. I hope that rest will stave it off and not give it a moment of weakness upon which to pounce!

Baby monkey

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , ,
14 May 2011
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A little baby monkey has some fun ruffling up leaves at the Singapore Zoo. Meanwhile, the adult one climbs up to a treehouse lookout.

baby monkey from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

Helpful jetlag

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , , , ,
11 May 2011
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Ever since visiting Panda two weekends ago, I’ve been able to get up earlier in the morning (in fact, I can’t help but wake up between 6 and 7:30).  When I first wake in the morning, I usually take a look at my phone to make sure I still have time and go back to a light sleep until my alarm goes off at 8:30.  I then get out of bed in the next 15-20 minutes, shower, and get ready to head out.  I’ve been able to make it to work on time or 5-10 minutes early.  Fantastic!

Prior to my trip, I’d been getting in a bad habit – snoozing until 9:15, when I’d jump out of bed, throw something on, brush my teeth and hair, wash my face, and rush out only to be 5 minutes late to work.  While nobody is watching the clock when we start showing up at work, I always felt a little guilty that I just couldn’t make it on time.  Who knows if anybody else noticed.  All that mattered was my own conscience, nagging at me silently.  I’d been slipping into a funk and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t fix it.  I even slept a good 8-9 hours once and I think it actually made matters worse.

I guess getting up at 3:30 AM PST to get to the airport and hop on a flight that would get me to LA by 11:30 AM PST did something to adjust my biological clock setting.  Even though I did sleep quite a bit on the plane, none of it was very restful and as soon as I landed I headed back to work that day.  By the end of my work day, I was so exhausted I wanted nothing else but to rest.  Maybe what I needed was just that one day of extended exhaustion to make me tired by 11 and actually willing to sleep before midnight.  Now I get plenty of sleep and while I always want more, it is much easier to get up on time in the mornings (and even sneak a shower in!).

So you see people, jetlag isn’t always a bad thing!  Maybe it’s even that restart or jump start that your body has been waiting for.

Olfactory perception

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , ,
08 May 2011
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I feel like I’ve become more sensitive to smells more recently.  I keep catching whiffs of things that have a stronger effect on how I feel, more so than ever before.  Usually it’s a sudden attraction or repulsion, depending on whether I like the scent, and for the most part I react to perfumed things and food.  Last night I kept waking up to the smell of my hair due to my new highlights.  A week ago, I got overwhelmed by the smell of the person sitting behind me in the airplane.  It isn’t so much that these smells are strong, but when enough wafts towards me, my nose overreacts and I feel slightly nauseous.  Meanwhile, I love to sniff my lotions before and after using them, and I always smell my food before taking a bite.  I can’t seem to get enough of those smells and it’s quite comforting and soothing to smell them.

Why are my olfactory glands working overtime these days?  They have taken charge of my perception and experience of the world.  I would think it would be due to some sort of hormonal change, but I can’t think of any trigger that would have caused it.  Perhaps this is just a normal part of growing up and all adults have a more sensitive palate.  I wish I knew how to control it more, so I wouldn’t get nauseated so easily, usually at night when I get hungry.  Or actually, maybe it’s my stomach that has gotten more sensitive and heightens the effect of the smells around me… I do find myself needing to eat more frequently and if I don’t, I start to feel a little unwell pretty quickly.  Hmm, now there’s a thought to consider!

Mini cultural adventure

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , , , , , ,
05 May 2011
1

Wow, I was in such a food coma last night that I totally collapsed on my bed and fell asleep soon after getting back from dinner.  Next thing I knew, I woke up sometime around 5 in the morning with the light still on!

I guess the Ethiopian food we had earlier in the night weighed pretty heavily on me.  Then again, it was a lot!  If you’ve never tried Ethiopian before (at least the Americanized version that is available in the states – who knows what real Ethiopian is out there), you should really give it a shot.  One of my friends who went last night – I’ll call her Duchess – had eaten it once before (like me) and we both enjoyed our experiences.  So there we were, many moons later, taking some others out for their first experience.

The place we went to was decided by a Tippr coupon that I bought a couple days ago, for a place called Little Ethiopia located in Little Ethiopia (hah!).  That’s a small strip out on Fairfax not too far from downtown LA.  It was a nice little place, though they had an entire room on the side that lay empty.  I guess when business was better they’d use both sides.  We ordered a veggie platter, tibs, and Little Ethiopian tibs.  The veggie platter had a variety of vegetables cooked in different sauces.  The tibs was chunks of beef and the Little Ethiopian tibs was those chunks of beef with potatoes and some other veggies mixed in.  Everything came out on a fantastically large tray lined with their special bread.

tray of ethiopian food with veggies and tibs

In the center is the Little Ethiopian tibs, the meat on either side is the tibs, and all those colorful splotches are part of the veggie platter!

basket of ethiopian bread

The bread - spongy and slightly sour and very soft and supple!

Oh that bread!  When Duchess and I were trying to describe it on the drive over, the closest thing we could come up with was a sourdough pancake.  It’s a dense, spongy thing with a hint of sour and there’s something wonderful about it.  You use the bread to grab some of the veggies or meat and then eat it in a little morsel (at least we think that’s the right way to do it).  Oh yeah, the thing about Ethiopian food is that it’s eaten with your hands, much like Indian food is supposed to be.  And so we ate, getting basket after basket of bread until we were stuffed.  The waitress then came and offered us some second helpings for free, since they had a lot of excess in the kitchen.  We couldn’t resist and spent another half hour trying to finish it all.  By the time we left, I was so full I could hardly stand.

But our adventure wasn’t over!  We decided to go for dessert and ended up choosing Persian ice cream.  The first time I went, I got the orange blossom.  This time I was too full to get a serving myself, but I shared a white rose with Apprentice.  Yes, their ice cream flavors are very flower-oriented.  I feel like I’m eating a garden and it is the strangest sensation.  It turned out to be a nice complement to the food we had earlier and both were awesome cultural experiences for the newbies.  When I finally got home, it’s no wonder I lay on the bed to recover and ended up sleeping for the night.  Next time I want to deep sleep, I’ll make sure to get Ethiopian again.  🙂

East coast

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , , ,
01 May 2011
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This weekend has gone by too fast, yet Panda and I were able to get a lot done!  It was really nice to get to see all the places that he has spoken about and also take a quick tour of D.C., since it’s been years since I’ve been here.  In fact, I haven’t returned since we moved out to California nearly 9 years ago.  I’d almost forgotten what the scenery was like around here, with plenty of greenery and bodies of water.  The weather has been so-so and I am looking forward to experiencing a real summer again in a few months.  The one thing I’ve always missed is seeing fireflies on those hot summer nights.

It’s hard to believe that the weekend is over and tomorrow, we’ll both be back at work, thousands of miles from each other.  The good thing is, he’ll be back to the West coast in a couple of weeks for work so I get to see him again.  It’s been nice hanging out back East and I look forward to coming again later this year.  For now, it’s time to pack my suitcase and return to my life in LA.

Get acquired month

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , , , ,
28 April 2011
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What’s the deal?  Did April turn into everybody get acquired month?  Suddenly I’m receiving email after email notifying me that various products/services I use have been bought by some big-name company and how that will affect my experience with them.  When the first two came through I thought it was an interesting coincidence.  But I’ve received 4 or 5 and at this point, it’s got to be a pattern.  I guess it’s because of the social media bubble that’s going on right now (which my coworker was just telling me about yesterday).

Has anyone else received these notices?  The last one was for Delicious, which apparently was owned by Yahoo (I never knew) and is now bought out by the founders of YouTube.  As with all the others, the notice was basically saying that I’d need to agree to new terms and conditions as outlined by the entity that the product is now under.  Other than that, most things are business as usual and my account would transfer seamlessly.  It actually kind of reminds me of the rebranding we recently did at my company.  I sent out many emails detailing the changes, but also reassuring clients that the people haven’t changed and neither has the service.

With spring in the air, is change always imminent too?

Yoga gains

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , , , ,
26 April 2011
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Well, right when I was first starting yoga, I wrote about “Yoga Pains” and now it’s all about my yoga gains.  While I still suck at a lot of moves and struggle to figure out how exactly each pose should feel, I’ve definitely gotten better.  From the first downward facing dog of the night, I can already bring my heels to the floor.  I was nowhere near that three months ago.  I finally started to understand this concept of pushing the floor away – no matter what I did when I first started, my palms just wouldn’t stay glued to the floor and I pretty much was only using the heels of my palms to keep myself up in downward facing dog and plank pose.  This created a strain in my wrists that was painful.

I’ve gotten better at regulating my breathing, but still feel like I fill up too fast and those deep gulps of air just don’t last very long for me.  I guess I’m still breathing in too much air right away.  My shoulders stay away from my ears and I’ve been pretty good at remembering to lengthen through everything.  However, a lot of this lengthening strains my right shoulder because I have to raise my arm above my head and the constriction there doesn’t help the looseness I have in the socket.  I have to try a lot harder to keep my shoulder in the socket, properly stored away.

I’m still working on keeping my legs engaged during poses and not getting shaky so quickly.  And while it’s getting much easier to maintain a handstand (with some help keeping my legs straight up), I’m still weak in a lot of areas.  I’ve noticed that I’m improving in all areas, but gradually.  My upper body strength has been pretty pathetic since sometime in high school, so it’s nice that I can work on that.  My low back has been troubling me for over three years and it’s feeling a little less strained when I stand.  Most of all I think it’s nice to take out an hour of my time twice a week to focus on my body.  I don’t find my thoughts wandering when I’m in class.  I just concentrate on what is before me and the moves that we are working on.  Then at the end, I completely let go for the resting part and sometimes even fall asleep from being so relaxed.

I still find yoga to be too challenging to be enjoyable (for the most part), but then again, I get bored when it’s not hard enough.  We’ll see if I continue on when I’m no longer living at this apartment complex.

Friends

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , , , ,
23 April 2011
0

Ah, the beauty of human interaction.  It’s been awhile since I’ve gone out to hang out with friends as much as I used to in college and I didn’t realize how much I missed it!  College is sort of a non-stop rollercoaster of social interactions and chilling with friends.  You’re surrounded by peers almost the entire time you’re there, which is a stark contrast to the loneliness of work life.  Nowadays I come home from work and plop down in front of the computer for the night.  I talk to Panda on Skype and maybe talk to friends via IM, email, or Facebook.  I rarely go out to meet up with my friends!

However, things seem to be changing pace a bit recently.  I’ve started to get out more and make more plans.  It’s nice to have social events scattered throughout my schedule and it gives me something to look forward to!  Actually, let me clarify – it’s nice to have social events with friends.  After all, I’ve been going to a decent number of other events, like yoga, networking events, and massages/facials.  Those types of activities don’t satisfy my hanging out with friends quota though.  You just can’t beat chilling with people you’re familiar with, whether it’s over a meal or on a couch.

I’ve got a lot of scheduling to do and I’m really looking forward to it!  It also helps that part of my chilling with friends gets to be chilling with Panda, finally.  🙂

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