apple morning

I got some gala apples from the grocery yesterday. I have been craving for fresh fruits but I am flabbergasted by how expensive they are. I got a few apples and a couple of grapefruits.

I had strange dreams last night of moving into a new office that looked like a house. People had typewriters instead of computers.

It really depends on the apple... but I would love a David Tennant doctor anytime.

What am I up to today? Surprisingly, maybe because I took time to wake up slowly, and then made myself breakfast without rushing, and then I made time for taking photos (all photos taken with my digital SLR), I am actually feeling benevolent about working. I have lined up my frogs and it will be a rather long day.

But on the side I promised myself I will 1) read 2) draw or paint in my small notebook 3) write at least one scene for the novel - there is a character who has been hovering in my head trying to catch my attention.

bits of the new (and re-newed) in my daily life

I'm training myself to sleep early and wake up early. I am also trying to complete 8 hours of sleep so I would not feel so easily tired and always craving for a nap in the middle of the day. My sleep patterns, according to the Sleep Cycle app, leave much to be desired. I find it very difficult to fall asleep and I keep on waking up at 2-3AM regardless of what time I went to sleep. This is one of the better nights:

But in the past few days I have been already able to get up at 6am from a routine of getting up at 8-9am. Next target is to get up at 5am.

I now swim everyday. Except when the pool is being cleaned or when there are noisy rowdy kids in the pool. I like swimming in the very early morning, right before breakfast, around 7:30 or 8AM. By that time I would have had my first cup of coffee, written my morning pages, cleared the work email inbox, reviewed my to-do list, made up the bed, fed the cat, and gotten the breakfast food ready for cooking.

I stay in the water for 30-45 minutes. I do laps until I'm out of breath and my arms are aching. I also do some yoga poses in the water -- standing poses in the middle of the pool and some sitting poses by the stairs of the pool. I use the fountain faucets as water massage on my back and shoulders.

I eat a full breakfast almost everyday now. Since I wake up early I do not feel the need to rush. I also try to eat fruit as often as I can. Fresh fruits are bit expensive but I get lucky sometimes and find fresh fruit packs at a discount or like the other day, a friend sent me a bagful of fresh sweet mangoes in season.

I go out of my way to buy and include vegetables in every meal. I love vegetables. But they wilt and spoil quickly and making frequent trips to the store is not efficient either. However, the fresher the vegetables, the longer time they will keep. So now I make a special trip once a week to another, farther, supermarket that sells much fresher vegetables and even offers organic vegetables. I turn the long walk into an exercise and also a chance to do a walking meditation.

my quick-to-prepare chicken and vegetable noodle stir-fry

I use public transport or walk whenever I can to save on gas. I also save on parking fees.

I have further distilled my possessions down to the essential. Even my home decor is down to the essential -- I only kept those that really make me happy and that really mean so much to me. I have put out for selling a good portion of my stuff -- anything that I am ambivalent about, haven't used for months, forgotten, postponed/ put aside too many times, all the extra extras and just-in-cases that escaped previous de-clutterings. Since I have become clear on what I exactly want I will also be less susceptible to impulse purchases and the lure of retail therapy.

I have reduced my entertainment collection (movie, anime and TV series DVDs, music CDs, and video games) to these two Muji towers. Before there used to be an equivalent of about double that. I expect to reduce that collection further.

I clean and clear as I go all the time. Even when I am very tired especially in the evenings. The kitchen has to be clean. The dishes have to be washed. Everything must be put away in their proper places. Believe me, the joy in the morning when you are greeted by a bright clean home!

I make time to read everyday. I love books. I have always had a passion for reading and gaining all those tidbits of trivia and knowledge that eventually become contextual reference points for various situations in real life later on. My weird habit is to read multiple books at the same time. Don't ask me how I can keep up with all the plots and stories, I just do. This week I added a few more to my current reading list and I am absolutely happy about it. I used to put off reading because of work. Now I give time to reading, not just work.

I make time to write everyday. In addition to my morning pages, I scribble into my notebook or type into my Evernote all my thoughts and ideas and feelings. Later on I process some of them to see if anything needs to be resolved. Ideas are weighed and stored in a file where it will be used, not forgotten. Writing is very cathartic for me and my one ultimate dream job is to be a writer. So if I will somehow make that dream come true in some way I guess I should get as much practice as I can. Like reading, I used to put off writing for doing work. Now I use my work as an excuse to do more writing. I brainstorm with myself by writing. I thresh out ideas in writing. When I started writing more I noticed that it became easier to handle stress. When I am starting to feel stressed (I get stressed so easily!) I start to write. Sometimes writing a blog post helps calm me down. Like right now.

I now have a stricter work schedule. Being clear with where I want to take my life (that will be shared in the next few posts), I make sure that the work I do in the meantime does not overwhelm nor take more than its share of fair time and effort for each day. So I have allotted time for work in the early morning until 3PM only. If there is a need to do "overtime" work then I extend until 5PM. This means that future projects will have to take this into consideration. With this strict schedule and a clearer image in my head of the boundaries of work in my day, I have also succeeded in controlling my procrastination to a much, much better degree.

These are just some that are more firmly in place. They were much easier to do when I became clear with my life goals because every little bit of these daily habits contribute to the bigger goals. As I recalibrate my day-to-day I am able to comprehend better how the little things matter and I also learn to be more patient while trusting that all the effort will amount to something significant.

What new habits are you trying to learn?

a solo morning swim and a full breakfast

I've been trying to wake up earlier for the past few days. I want to get a very good working system in place before the two simultaneous work projects start on the hard parts (i.e. fieldwork and analysis).

So far what has been consistent is that I do my best work in the mornings, before lunch. And then I could sustain it after lunch until about 3PM. And then it all starts to go downhill. So if I have a lot to do I am better off waking up early so I can have the big chunk of the morning available to me.

On the other hand, I also have to make sure that everything else is in place -- an exercise or fitness activity, a full breakfast for brainpower, and an organized (and doable) goals list to keep me on track for the rest of the day.

Today has been good so far. I got up at 7:30AM. Did some yoga stretches and then headed for the pool for a 30-minute swim (nonstop laps until right before the noisy kids start to arrive at the pool area). Then I cooked myself a full breakfast and instead of a newspaper I read articles from Zite - an iPad app that lets you customize web news and articles according to the topics you want. My favorite subjects are mostly on Productivity, Psychology, Happiness, and Writing. No use ruining the day with bad news and gossip from standard news websites.

coffee, egg, salami, honey oat bread, cream cheese

Work flowed smoothly after breakfast. Although the real test will be when fieldwork and analysis stage happens. Right now it's mostly preparation and getting a lot of details in place. It's demanding and time-consuming but it's made up of little bits of tasks that are easily divided and clustered. Fieldwork and analysis are huge tasks like tough meat that need extra work to be handled well. But I am optimistic.

snapshots

I am still trapped with work so to keep this blog alive I am posting stolen snapshots throughout the super busy days. My sister has been staying over at my place to help me out with data transcriptions.

My sister has been taking charge of breakfast to help me out with the daily tasks and chores. This one is scrambled egg with toast and butter.

Lots of caffeine keep us awake at least until midnight. Then we start nodding off no matter how much coffee we take.

My sister's version of Omurice for breakfast : first she fried rice in onions, a bit of soy sauce, and a bit of tomato catsup.

Then scrambled egg cooked into a pancake shape is put on top.

And then it's ready to eat! I would like to try this with fresh tomatoes instead of tomato catsup.

The occasional treat -- caramel sundae especially after an intense kendo practice.

Kendo practice has to fit into the schedule somehow because of the exam in February. It's pretty tough pushing myself physically after days of incomplete sleep hours and full days of mental fatigue.

Fruits to help refresh and revive the mind. Dragonfruit is soooooo delicious!

Pasta with salmon and cream which I invented for lunch yesterday.

Mogget caught sniffing at the onions... 

Mogget : What the heck is that smell?

Mogget : Seriously, what is that smell?

A special thank you to Chrystina who has been visiting and commenting frequently -- I'm definitely appreciating the online company especially through the wee hours! :)

Also happy to see Hana back to posting about her happy adventures and dropping by to visit this blog a few days ago. :)

Am loving all the visits from happy creative people!


Have a great Friday everyone!

travel story : hong kong, day 2

This was on the 25th of October. Breakfast was at the hotel from the stash we bought from 7-eleven the night before.

I mapped out our walking path to Kowloon Park, with every intention of spending the whole morning there. An effective way to avoid shopping was to avoid going into the shopping malls. We were reserving whatever little we had for the street markets. Besides, we were never really patrons of popular (often expensive) branded products.

Kowloon Park turned out to be a very enjoyable and pleasant surprise. I love the idea of so much greenery and nature in the midst of a bustling city.

Lunch was at McDonald's because we wanted to try how its food tasted in other countries. In Hong Kong, everything was less salty and more flavorful. It also had more ice cream flavors. And bigger regular sizes.

We took a peek at Muji just to see if it sold the same stuff as back home. It sold a lot more.

We went inside the mall that sold only Chinese products and we almost drooled over the handmade tablecloths and pillow cases and bags - basically anything cloth and embroidered. But they were also very expensive.

We walked along the rest of Nathan Road from Kowloon Park to our hotel at Eaton, checking out all most of the Sasa, Watsons and Mannings stores. In the Philippines, Burt's Bees is exclusively sold in a high-end beauty store. In Hong Kong it is just part of the regular inventory of Watson's.

We took a quick rest in the hotel in the late afternoon before taking on the Temple Street Night Market. My sister dropped by 7-eleven to get a bowl of fish ball curry udon to tide her over.

Dinner was rice topped with chicken cooked in a claypot.

My biggest splurge for the trip was a leather covered blank notebook (HK$98) that I intend to make into a photo and text journal about this trip and all future trips to Hong Kong. The kanji means "Smooth Sailing".

The night was concluded along Kansu Street with a fortune teller who gave us only good predictions and an amulet. She also took a bit of our money. That was the only thing that went off the plan in that whole trip. It was a purely impulsive thing and I guess I was looking for a bit of magic amidst all the scrimping and emerging questions in my head (and heart) and all the other things that were hovering over me even as I tried to forget about them for a while.

She said I would get married next year and that I will have two sons and that I will not lack for money and my husband will be very tall. She also said I have an honest heart and that really, really made me think and wonder because one of the main things I am bothered about now had to do with it. Well, I did ask for some sort of message from the Universe. Maybe this is one.

a little freshening up, a dozen donuts and making lists

If you haven't noticed yet, I've changed some fonts and colors and even put up a header with an image! The header is still a work in progress but I think it is much better than a plain scrawl of text, don't you?

My sister and I swam today and then I had a donut and a cheese sandwich for breakfast. The donut was from a lucky purchase last night -- I dropped by the supermarket to pick up a couple of items and Dunkin Donuts (a favorite) just opened up a stall in the supermarket on the same day. As a treat to opening-day-customers, they offered a dozen donuts for the price of six. How could I resist? I shared the dozen with my parents and my sister and took home some for my own.

Today I have to make preparations for a project I will do tomorrow. It's a one-off thing -- I show up and facilitate some group discussions and then I am done. I am being paid for my expertise in interviewing, a skill I have developed and honed while I was working as a consumer research expert.

Today I also update my lists as part of my practice in organizing and prioritizing. I have always been a list maniac but even lists have to have some semblance of art and science to it or they will just be another source of clutter. As a freelancer I also have to keep track of more things so random post-its won't cut it. My calendar planner sometimes looks more like a collage than a calendar but that's the way it works for me.

Be back in a bit.

braving the malls on a sunday sale

I picked up my sister at 9:45am. The mall opens at 10am. I decided to take the chance of bringing my car and finding parking. We were lucky. We found a pretty good parking spot.

Very cheap breakfast of multi grain bagels from a French bakeshop, at a buy-one-take-one deal for only Php48. My sister had coffee (with a free brownie) for only Php30 and I had a bottle of water for Php20.

Found the books I wanted in the bookstore and checked the prices. It would be much cheaper to get them via Kindle. Went to another bookstore that sold second hand books and I could not resist a book on sewing projects for only Php145. (I also decided I want to include selected vintage books in my vintage store.)

Found a potential replacement for the super-dilapidated kitchen shelf in my parents' house. Will see how I can fit it into the budget.

Found the camera I want at a discounted price with a special 0% interest for a 12-month installment. 3-year-warranty. I am seriously considering it.

I need to make more money.

counting the good and happy

While Mr. Time is playing hide-and-seek with me and my to-do list, I will instead focus on the things I actually got done and which made me really pleased:

Had a full breakfast after missing on it for the past few days.

Scrambled egg, sharp cheddar slices, pan de sal bread. And coffee, of course :)

Finally cleaning my kitchen extension (yes, somehow I managed to create a kitchen extension in my tiny studio heehee). I've been meaning to do it for days and I finally did it! I scrubbed and disinfected and wiped and re-arranged.

Picking up my new checkbooks from the bank which I was supposed to do last week. However as I was stepping out from the lobby, the receptionist called me to tell me that the electricity bills have been delivered. So I picked up mine and got to pay it in the bank before I claimed my checkbooks - two birds with one stone!

Passing by the supermarket (which was right beside the bank building) and picked up items I missed from last night's trip : panko, arugula, fresh mushrooms, fresh fruits and bread.

Walking all the way both ways from home to the bank/supermarket and back again.

Successfully making spiced garlic pork sausage patties!!! Been craving for something like it while reading Cleaving and the ready made ones were too expensive so I hunted for recipes and adapted a few into my own. Had it for dinner with fresh tomatoes and arugula. ^_^

I used a whole head of garlic of half a kilo of ground pork. Chopped it into tiny bits.

Mixed the garlic in the pork with salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika, sage, chopped coriander, 1/3 cup red wine; Shaped them into patties before storing in the freezer 

Fried in just a tablespoon of olive oil until the edges are a bit crispy (I like 'em that way)

Matched with fresh tomatoes and arugula

Dinner! (Dipped the sausage in red cane vinegar - yum!)