Sometimes, out of nowhere...

...in the middle of my day... I get a call from my daughter K...and we talk for three to five minutes. Just a little chat. "Whatcha doing?" she will ask. Or sometimes, "Where are you?" And I tell her. And I ask her how her day is going and tell her how mine is. Then she says, "OK, bye bye, Mom... love ya!"

It's a solid pick-me-up that glistens like a seashell does on a sandy shore of humdrum, banal moments. It also makes me profoundly grateful for the person she is, and doubly glad that I live in this age of mobile phones.

A conversation between a mother and her eight-year-old son

Mother: Do you think you want Mom to stay at home and take care of the two of you?
Son: What do you want?
Mother: That's it. I don't know.
Son: Think about what you want. That's what's important.

Life strategies we tend to forget

• SPELL IT OUT. Regarding what you want or expect from other people - be specific. No one is going to read your mind, after all.
• TALK ABOUT IT. I tend to go a little overboard on this, perhaps because I feel very strongly about it. But talking helps. Pretty much anything can be resolved with a 30 minute conversation.
• WRITE IT DOWN. If it's clear on paper, it will be clear in your mind.
• FIND OUT WHAT THE OTHER PERSON FEELS. We can get very caught up in our own feelings, never once thinking what it's like in another person's shoes
• GIVE IT AWAY. If it's occupied the same place for over a year - you haven't touched it, you don't use it, and you don't need it. Give it to someone who does.
• SAY NO. There's no point in doing something that you don't want to do. If you can't figure out why you're doing it or what good will come of it, then do yourself a favour and just say no.
• MAKE TIME FOR HAPPY. Take time off and do things that will make both you and the people you love happy. Life is short, after all.
• EXPRESS YOUR FEELINGS. People don't do this enough - especially when they're feeling good. Tell someone you love, you love them.
• READ. Don't ever stop using those muscles. They were meant to be used and often.
• GET PHYSICAL. Whether it's exercise or lovemaking or doing something really basic like walking from one place to another. Use your body.
  

I saw Gandalf play King Lear

I must give credit where credit is due. The above was a T-shirt line from our friend TS - unfortunately, there was no actual T-shirt with this line. If there were, am pretty sure our little theatre-afficionado troupe last night would have stood in line to buy it. As for the show itself, it was quite absorbing. One of a number of the Bard's works I knew only very loosely - not having read it nor studied it nor seen it, until last night. As the firstborn in a family of three daughters, I had always meant to read it. But the closest I got was Jane Smiley's Thousand Acres which is actually a very different thing indeed, what with the incest and all.

It was surprising though. Always though that Shakespeare explained as well as portrayed human nature - and yet, King Lear does not do that at all. It is actually like a gun that never goes off - in the line, "What force of nature makes such harsh hearts?" Lear asks. And there is no ready answer for it it seems.

And after all that, it is a rather frightening thought - as it is also a frightening story. Positively Greek is perhaps another way to describe it, but also...mythic.

Some neat things about the performance: seeing Ian McKellen of course. But it strikes me that we paid for the wrong play. That we should have seen him doing Chekhov in The Seagull as opposed to Lear. Lear seems to me, too simple a role in its broadstrokes - in the way that Chekhov is not. Not that he wasn't a great King Lear. He was. But of course, my point is, he would be.

The other neat thing was the sets - the production itself.

And how, when Lear's fool was hung just before intermission - his dead body was taken down by the props people, just as members of the audience were standing up to get their refreshments and stretch their legs.

Coolness.

It's amazing

...what one can do just out of sheer will.

The funny thing about writing

The more you do it, the easier it gets. Today sped by like quicksilver, and yet, I managed to finish all my work and leave promptly as well as guiltlessly at six. For this new post I'm at, it's all about volume apparently. Over the past two weeks, I've written six full-length articles as well as a rather challenging six page section on new products for the body. Apart from this, I reworked three pieces from the inhouse staff and three pieces from outside freelancers. I have discharged my editorial duties and now, the special project assignments are about to begin. It's hard not to feel smug and satisfied. But the question remains - how long will it be possible to do this? Unfortunately, only I can answer that...and the answer seems to change with every day that passes.

It was a pleasure to go home early and have nothing hanging over my head though. Instead, I changed and headed to the track for six rounds. It seems running is just like writing - and I know I'm not the first to discover this either. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

The Return of Badminton

I've been missing it so much. And despite my requests on various lists, there were no takers for forming a new group. And every group I do know of is completely full up. So I stuck my neck out and looked, as it were, in my own back yard. The office.

It was easier than I expected. Send an email. Get the numbers. Book the courts and voila! We played for an hour last Friday - and this evening, we played for two hours.

If you build it, they will come.

Flying By

It's a little bit frightening how the days are flying by. Wasn't it just Sunday, and now, here we are again? The kids have read three of the Harry Potter books (I haven't even read one). K is now on book 5 and C is on book 4. I am also the only one in my family not taking Tae Kwon Do. So that makes two things that everyone else has done but I haven't. I did manage to run six times this week and make it in to a Power 1 class, so not all was lost. Work is absorbing. Not just one but two new magazines, and another one in the works - specifically my works.

Wasted a lot of time this week finisheing up the 3rd season of Grey's Anatomy which for me has started getting completely bonga. As JZ says, bobo na, tanga pa. The worst episode was the one with the ferry accident - so many needing medical attention, and the heroine who is now just plain annoying, falls into the water and drowns and needs the entire surgical unit to attend to her. Good grief. I truly regret the time I spent.

Sigh. For a productive tomorrow. Mandarin. Getting into the new house and taking photos and measurements. Prepare for moving out. To look forward to? Badminton on Friday... hopefully, this week goes as quickly as last.

Fitting it all in

Exercise and eating right, especially when it's for the entire family, requires an almost hyper-awareness.

Or maybe, it's just hyper to begin with. Saturday, we got K and C up first thing in the morning, even before breakfast for a run on the track. The kids did two rounds, T did four and I ploughed through my six. But while I did that, they played dodge ball - and kept the movement. Interestingly, we tried something different at our usual Pepperoni pizza haunt dinner, cutting down our usual order to just two linguini vongoles, a salad that everyone shared - and not two but one pizza - with no apparent feelings of the lack. At Estivo, instead of each of us getting one serving, we shared two servings among the four.

Sunday, T didn't have the heart to wake them again - so it was just the two of us, doing the six - before breakfast and before an intensive Mandarin session. And at lunch, instead of parking right where we were going to eat - we parked two malls away - and walked through Raffles City and Citilink to Marina Square for lunch, and then walking back. C even reminded us to take the stairs instead of the escalators so we worked harder. And as all the books advise, we kept dinner light - just soups at the Kopitiam in VeloCity.

Onward ho.