Accu-amazing

Pardon my going on about accupuncture. But it really is amazing. My accupuncturist, a Chinese physician, holds clinic on the second floor of an HDB commercial complex in Chinatown and refuses to give appointments. "Come when you come," she shrugs.

She is a card, a real character - and I warmed to her in the same way I find myself inclining toward quirky women. She takes cash only. She and her receptionist have a very giggly schoolgirlish relationship. And although her English is on the elemental, primordial side - she has that winning instinct of making herself very easily understood.

Yesterday, perhaps as a result of a difficult week, I was inspired to make time to escape to her for an hour. I got there at 11:30, blissful that the clinic was empty and she could see me right away. I went through the restorative cupping along my entire spine and the exhilerating needling and she gave me unlabelled pills to take - so that I could get "an - bocked".

She also showed me (with the help of a rubber and plastic model) that the human ear is
exactly like a human fetus. How great is that? Last night, once again, I slept like a baby and rose this morning with verve and energy - completely ready for doctor's appointments, a hundred errands, writing homework and choir practice.

Am so going again next week.

Who are the Van der Luydens

Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence is a novel about New York society as most of her novels were. To put it bluntly, who is in, who is out, who are the right people and who are the wrong people. And "right" seems to have no other discernable meaning beyond that of shared family and or socio-economic background - not necessarily shared interests, world views or humour.

The explores what happens when someone wants to leave the "right" people, deciding that he will no longer adhere to the usual conventions of who is right and who is wrong, but simply be with the person he wants to be with - in fact be himself, the person he wants to be. Of course, he is thwarted in the end. The book strikes a real chord with me every time I read it, because of its parallels with Pinoy society - and perhaps most especially, Pinoy society outside of the Philippines.

And while the whole Ellen Olenska-Newland Archer-May Wheeland triangle is the central plot, certain details and sub-plots have taken permanent residence in the way I understand social patterns today. The Van der Luydens, in Wharton's world, are an older couple whose approbation and estimation is valued, whose opinion is sought even though they studiously make their presence quite scarce as Ellen Olenska intimates, in part perhaps to ensure
that value.

It can be a tremendously amusing past time to characterise real people according to the roles of characters in a Wharton novel. Who is the Ellen Olenska who finally and irrevocably turns her back on the conventional norms, preferring instead to live life according to her own choosing despite the loss of a love affair? Who is the Newland Archer who struggles to with his desires for a different kind of life but is too trapped in the rules and norms of the society he himself has helped create. Who is the May Wheeland who has no other thought nor interest beyond what she has been taught to value and find worthy of attention. And who, who are the Van der Luydens?

One of the many wonderful things about great literature is the truth that it lends to what would otherwise be mundane, fairly ordinary life.

My career counsellor

From the mouths of babes

It is a wonderful thing to be able to talk to your children and listen to their opinions. After a difficult day at work that had me figuratively clutching my emotional tether with all fours, I came home last night beleaguered and bewildered, close to tears. I asked my son C for a hug, and he genially gave me one and I let myself whimper in his chubby arms.

With great presence of mind, the seven-year-old asked, "What's wrong?"
"Bad day at work," I replied.
"Tell me," he said.
"A lot of things not going to plan. Am having to face things I didn't think I would have to face."
"So what do you feel like doing about it?" he asks in utter seriousness.
"I don't know. What do you think?"

"I think you should wait and see. You don't know how it's going to be yet. Wait and see how it goes. Then see how you feel," he said, with all of Solomon's wisdom.

Today, when I reached home, he greeted me with, "How was it today? Did you follow my advice?"

I hugged him him and thanked him and told him I did.

Binge

Bad day. Tomorrow has to be different.

Theory

Consistently good sex is rooted in a relationship that contains a measure of conflict and contradiction, something with crests and troughs as opposed to one that is placid and smooth-sailing and always genial. It is to be found between two people who drive each other crazy, and not always in a good way. It thrives when two people have differences of opinion as well as just plain differences. And one of life's greatest ironies is that a relationship that is 100% pure mutual admiration, respect and caring seems to make for sex that's kind of boring.

Of course, that's just a theory.

What's happening to me?

Started the 3rd season of Grey's Anatomy and I'm finding myself irritated at the characters - practically all of them. The only character I find myself liking at the moment is Miranda Bailey. She and Addison Montgomery - the philandering wife of McDreamy who tries her best to work at her marriage. Everyone else just pissed me off, and none more so than Meredith Grey.

Is this a sign of ageing that I no longer have the patience for simpering twenty-somethings and their whiny little problems? What's that about.

Have decided to finish this series before going on to Weeds, then to Studio 60. House I will save for last. Resolutions for tomorrow: the 4k run, the healthy lunch and a complete concept for the story I promised to M and J.

Not a manic monday

Thanks to diligent weekend work, I managed to deliver on all my work commitments today. As such, I felt perfectly within my rights to go off for a lunchtime yoga session - another power hour class. Afterwards, I had a lovely salad with grilled chicken from Doc Greens. Nice fresh greens, yummy dressing and garnish of walnuts and cranberries. Nice place that - the kind of place which makes you feel like you can eat there everyday. Got home early and was even able to fit in a 40 minute ralk to the track. Were every day like today...

The Power Of Yoga

Flashback to Friday
Finally made it back to the yoga studio after two months. Wanted to do a Hot Class...but work circumstances conspired to place me into the Power 1 class that took place 45 minutes later.
And it was exactly what the doctor ordered. Pure power. Pure exhileration.

New friends

Here's what is wonderful about life. Even at a time when you think you are past a certain kind of experience, you get taken completely by surprise. And you discover something. Or something lets you know in no uncertain terms that you are wrong. There are things that can still happen to you. Whether it's making a mistake or picking a fight or outgrowing a friend.

Or making a new one. So to A who I met at a work event and shared a taxi with and coincidentally to A at church - thank you for showing me, I still know how to make friends. And choose good ones.

So much to watch, so much to do, so little time

I've got Weeds 1 and 2. I've got Studio 60. I've got House 3 or part of it, anyway. And I've also got Grey's Anatomy 3 or at least some of it.

BUT

I've got a book review and a column to write both due on Monday. Not to mention all the rest of the family stuff that happens on the weekend....

So how

It's scary when it happens. When finally, finally, the story that you thought through in your head has finally been captured, trapped on the page...and it though it looks good especially in stretches, there's something missing but you can't quite put your finger in it. And there's no point in doing anything else except move on. Write another one.

Accupuncture Adventure

After hearing so many positive stories from friends and family about the wonders of accupuncture, I decided that the first chance I got, I would try it out. So went to Tanjong Pagar Plaza in Chinatown, a little mall-ette attached to an HDB complex. On the second floor, just above the bank, I met Dr. Theresa - a Chinese physician and accupuncturist. In a quick conversation during which she felt my pulse, she basically made some guesses about my body and my eating habits. She told me how often I would get hungry, the poor quality of my sleep, and how I was frequently thirsty. All of it true - just from feeling my pulse? It was hard to fathom, though of course, she eyeballed me quite a bit as well. The bottomline: I have plenty of heat and wind in my body - so the toxins including fat just hang out...like a lot of murk in still waters. Then she had me lie down on my tummy while she massaged me rather vigorously in the neck and in the back.

"Ow ow ow." I said.

"Does this hurt? Does this hurt?" she asked squeezing harder.

"Yes, it hurts!" I retorted my face down in a paper towel.

"Ah ah..." she said knowingly.

She then proceeded to skin me with cups and then placed them all over my back. Then she pierced me with needles at various points. Call me a masochist...I rather enjoyed the experience and the localised sites of pain. She then left me for a bit and I fell into the deepest nap I'd ever experienced. I only awoke when I realised she was giving me instructions about various herbs and tablets I should take. I didn't pay much attention. So much better to just think it's all magic and hocus-pocus...so much more pleasurable to have the entire process shrouded in mystery.

I yelped each time she unpopped the cups - it was a new and not disagreeable. She then had me turn on my back so she could needle me at certain points in my tummy. The sensations at each needle-prick were rather strange - like little balloons of fluid being burst. I asked her about it, but only got the answer, "Aah, ah." Like this was all the way it was supposed to be. Why even bother asking, I thought to myself.

At the end of it, she gives me various pills to drink and a bottle of a horrific brown concoction - I no longer bothered to ask what it was. And that was it. That night, when K came in for her nightly wee, I did not even hear her. Last night, I slept straight through like a nine month old baby - a powerful, heavy sleep. I see her again next week...

Star lesson

"I realized that's what you have to do: You just say a sentence and hope the next one comes."
- Hugh Grant as quoted in February Vogue, on writing his book

Super Trouper

Despite her fever, K was a happy little girl today as only a nine year old can be happy on her birthday. All sweetness and hugs..."I don't mean to be rude, but may I open my presents?" No longer did she care about her party, once she found out that we could move it to next week. At breakfast, she gamely posed for her bday photos - surrounded by her gifts. And when she read the card her Dad and I had written out especially, she was visibly touched - "Thank you Mommy! Thank you Daddy!" she exclaimed in her little girl laughter-laced peal. Utterly utterly sweet. She set about preparing to see the doctor, all sensible and business-like. And during the day, she claimed, "I can't really lie down and rest..." and set about fixing her school bag (even fixing C's school bag), painting her craft sample (the one she had planned for her and her schoolmates to do), assembled her new dollhouse, played with it, and gamely did all her Kumon worksheets. In other words, she was a terrific trouper. The only time she started fading was when night fell - and she hadn't much of an appetite for her spaghettti bolognaise and pizza dinner. But again, she smiled and blew out the candle on her birthday cupcake (she decided she would save making a bday cake for when her friends were coming). We ended the day with six chapters of Dr. Dolittle. When I got to a word - obstreperous - I commented that I didn't know the meaning of the word, K piped up, "It sounds like angry to me..." Just marvelous - that's what she is. I am brimming with joy and pride that I am her mother.

The Dappers

After some 10 years working in women's magazines, I have entered the wild, weird, world of men's magazines. It is taking more than a measure of getting used to. To complicate matters, the company I've joined - it's now been a little more than three months - is a start-up. This means it's all the things you've ever heard, read or experienced on your own about start-ups - good and bad. It is interesting, though. And not boring. And in no way, automatic, the way women's magazines were getting to be. So far, the experience has taught me a lot about being a man. Some things happen fast, almost without warning. And some very important things are allowed to creep along unnoticed. A workplace laced with testosterone is very volatile, I must say. Decisions tend to be instinctive and all-of-a-sudden-like.

And then, there are the Dappers. I work for the Dappers. Was hired by them. They are not what they appear - but they are very comprehensively both as a group and as individuals very dapper. There is a lead one, a second in charge, one who supports and one who looks at the physical, day-to-day things. And there's a wise, yoda one - who is still very dapper. Sometimes, on the days I have time to think of things that do not matter, I am of the mind that they should also start a band.

Chaos!

While C has no more fever, he's not quite himself eithe r. So we go out for K's family bday celeb - she had requested sushi and ramen. We also go shopping for her bday gift - she picks out a wooden doll house. We run our various Sunday errands as a family, glad that we have already attended mass the evening before. And then all of a sudden K says she's not feeling too hot. Which actually means, she is feeling hot. 38.4 hot.

This means we have to cancel her little after-school bday tea party. She is livid and desolate. C is too out of it himself to even react. Tomorrow will not be fun - as it means I have to hie them off to see Dr. N - without a car. The time for resisting a prescription of antibiotics is past. Now we seek professional help. K bursts into hot, tormented tears of anger, resentment and self-pity. No one wants to be sick on one's birthday. Misery is a sick little nine-year old girl - abject misery.

TGIF!

What a week this has been! Kiddie medical business. Great good news in the family. Finding out about new responsibilities at work. Catching up with Cam from HK. Sympathetic supportive session with sunny side sister over Starbucks (Now, try saying that three times without stopping!). A visit from my dear kasin Ninarkitek and the wonderful four hour chismis session late into the night - just like old times, as though we were sixteen again. Topic: family business, real estate, modern relationships, men and ...well women, keeping sane and coping with failing memories, the multitasking life. Amazing how with family, you slip into your codes and there's no need to footnote references. She knew my Yentle lyrics. She got all the contexts. And laughing as only quintosians can about the perennial Pinoy romantic line, clearly considered courtship: "Have you eaten na?" That's a sign that a Pinoy guy cares about you more than just a friend. Even though, haha, that's a line T has never uttered to me. Ninarkitek tells of a version that's even one step higher: "O...make sure you eat well, ha?" We nearly died. I think we must have woken up the neighbors. (Note to Ninarkitek: You should start a blog called Ninarkitek... o...diba!)

The only cloud...C's down with a horrid flu bug and just not his old self. ("I hate this. I hate this," he mutters to himself almost unaware he is saying it out loud, his eyes and nose streaming. He is very good about expressing his feelings.) Taking him to the doctor later to make sure that it's not the new strain of staph infection that kills in 72 hours (What can I say - headlines affect me). The silver lining? T comes home tonight, I did five rounds on the track this morning. Let the weekend begin...

Productivity

Why does it all come down to getting up early and getting exercise, first thing? Listen to me, could I be more annoying? Yet there's just something about this run I've been doing. Maybe it's because of this track on Evans road ... it's so inviting, it just begs to be run upon, even though you're not much of a runner, not really. But you want to be. So you try. You don't try. Like Yoda, you just do it. And the result is you wake up, you really wake up, and all the rest of it - like energy levels and mid-morning munchies - it all comes easy. Or easier. Who would have thought that there would be a discernable difference between a morning walk and a walk with a real 400 metre jog at brisk pace right smack in the middle of it? Managed to reinstall my yoga membership as well as my bookstore discount card in one fell swoop. All ready for Hatha or Hat with Mahds on Thursday. And would you believe it, I even got parking for while T is not here.

Had scrumptious noodles for lunch today with a lovely older gentleman, also a Dapper. He very gallantly invited me to lunch to talk publishing shop. He was so nice about it, I agreed, even though I had errands to run. Who would have thought you could still get a lunch for 2.8o on Orchard Road. Good food and fascinating conversation.

Tomorrow, Day 2 and hopefully more of the same. Forming the intention of productivity actually does work. And as far as everything else goes, I should just make like a duck and have it all simply slide down my back.

Non-sequitur on craft. If you're in the habit of starting with a title, drop that. It can be more stifling than a fellow student in a writing workshop. Don't think about a title. Just think about the story. And think on Electric Company terms: beginning, middle and end. Yes, very especially end.

Later that night

Scratch that. Just had work interrupted by a terrified K who demanded that I take that book out of the house. Close to tears and near hysterical, she all but shrieked, "No more Roald Dahl!" I tried to calm her down. Come on, it can't be that bad. She wouldn't have me even utter the title of the book (Witches). "Take it out of the house. Please take it out of the house." Roused by her noise, C burst into the room all concerned. K dissolved into tears, all but inconsolable.

When we finally got her calmed down with hugs and kisses, rosary beads plus permission to sleep in C's room, I asked, "Was it really a bad book?"

She answered definitively, "Yes."

"Didn't it have a happy ending?" I asked.

"No," she replied flatly.

"But -"

"Just. Take. It. Out. Of. The. House," she chanted in a way that made the hairs on the nape of my neck stand on edge. What could be so bad about that book, I wondered to myself. Dahl wrote Danny Champion of the World and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and Matilda - all three of which K enjoyed, by the way. Sure, he also created the stories in Tales of the Unexpected, and the TV series scared the pants off me when I was a kid. But I thought that was more due to Alfred Hitchcock's creepy narration and the circus music that played in the opening credits. Not so much the stories themselves.

When she was finally asleep, I located the book and gave it a quick skim, taking more time at the final chapter.

In the book, witches are just like you and me. You just don't know they are witches. The three ways you can tell - witches are bald, so they must wear wigs. Witches have blue spit. I forget what the third one was. Anyway, the narrator/protagonist is turned into a mouse by a head witch. But over the course of the book, even as a mouse, the narrator is able to save all the children in England as well as defeat the head witch and the entire coven with the help of his grandmother, who is, naturally, human. In the final chapter, they are having a conversation about whether there are any more witches in the world. The grandmother answers that there must be. The narrator, who is at this point, still a mouse, is dismayed. Together they unhatch a plan to locate all the witches in all the world and defeat them. In the final paragraph, they agree to set off on a great, new adventure.

In short, it's a fairly upbeat, quite hopeful even. However, I must agree with K. While it's not a sad ending, it's not a particularly happy one, either. After all, how happy can it be if at the beginning of the book, you were human, and at the end of the book, you are still a mouse?