How Am I Celebrating The Holidays This Year

The plan for today was just to cook, oops I meant prepare a dinner for my parents. Not much of a celebration but have never really celebrated Christmas anyway..

Well, as mentioned previously, I'm not much of a cook so I really "prepared" a dinner, inclusive of a fancy menu. Ha! 

The chips and cookies were store-bought, and parents were not interested in them at all. Katsudon and baby ribs were from Treedots and I only needed to follow instructions to get them ready. Salmon soup and stollen were both made by Axel last week. I only added tofu to the soup. 

So the only things I really cooked were the vegetable dish and rice. 🤣🤣 I really just put things together and made everything presentable and better! Might I add that the final touch of Hello Kitty beverage in pretty glasses round this up perfectly! 

5forSG55

August. The month we celebrate Singapore. Usually I get all hyped up when this month rolls round because I am really so proud to be a Singaporean. However this year the feeling is just different. Maybe it is because we are in a pandemic. Perhaps it is the negativity surrounding this year's election that had rubbed off me the wrong way. Or it could be that I was disappointed that the NDP committee had decided to provide a funpack for every household despite designating 2019 as the Year Towards Zero Waste. I guess my decision to opt-out of collecting said funpack also did nothing to add to the usual festive mood of the month. Hmm.... the biggest reason might be the grief of losing a dear colleague most unexpectedly just before the month began. 😢

Regardless of my personal feelings, the country was certainly in celebration mode. Practically every other post on my Facebook news feed was about a National Day promotion or a special 55 related offer or screaming red and white or a gratitude note that I might have written myself. The one post that really got my attention was one with #5forSG55 - a challenge to gather a group of 5 to pick 5 bags of trash from our East Coast Beach as a way to celebrate National Day.

As a diver, I am particularly aware of how our usage of plastic is causing harm to our seas. My first attempt at a beach cleanup was on a stretch of pebble beach in Bali after reading about #2minutebeachclean. There had been news about how the monsoon had been bringing in an incredible amount of trash to our shores and I knew I wanted to help somehow. The challenge just provided even more motivation for me to make this journey to the east. 😂 Thus I promptly joined the telegram group and created my own group. 

I was quite ready to do it solo but *surprise surprise* someone actually joined my group! And between the 2 of us we collected 7 bags of trash in under 2 hours. The best part of this cleanup was being able to encourage a stranger to help out with just our actions! We had been working silently and separately in a bid to cover as much ground as possible when someone approached my new friend to ask what we were doing and then if he could help! I gave him a pair of extra gloves I had and a recycled plastic bag and he went right to work!

A week later, I joined another group to do some "beach forensic examination" during which our focus was to document the source of the trash found on our shores. Unsurprisingly, most of the identified trash came from neighbouring countries but there were definitely some local trash too. In a shorter period of about 45 minutes, I bagged one plastic bag worth of trash. The best part of this cleanup was when 2 young girls approached me to clarify what I was doing. It so warmed my heart to see the acknowledgement in their eyes that what I was doing was not in vain. They started their own cleanup there and then.

Before the month was up, I organised another beach cleanup when some of my own friends decided that they wanted to do their part too!! This time round, I booked the use of Cleanpod 

                    

and really leveled up equipment-wise with a cart, weighing scale, pails, tongs and even sieves! The area we worked at did not have the usual large trash so I made full use of the available sieve and went after the microplastics! After about an hour's work, the 5 of us actually bagged just over 5 bags for SG55! 6.7 kg of tiny plastic and styrofoam kept out of the stomachs of sea creatures! But the best part of this cleanup had to be the ice cold beer we had before we even began work. 🤣

The plastic issue is such a humongous problem. I had been a lot more passionate about speaking against it in previous years. I wonder if I am becoming a little numb to it because you see it everywhere, even in the streets, by the roadside, on communal tables in void deck. Can I collect them all? Do my actions really make a difference? I don't have an answer to that. I just know I cannot do nothing at all.

Please stop trashing our planet.

 

My ideal CB day

 

Can we uninstall 2020 and reinstall it?

This one has a virus.

We are only one-third into the year and it already felt too long and too wrong. I should be on vacation in Germany right now but I am back home which I have not left since Monday. No work, no yoga, no meet-ups, null.

Had tried not to make too big a deal out of it in the early days but when weekly WCS classes became officially unavailable, it became impossible to ignore. I started a coronavirus timeline in my BuJo. It listed major events worldwide as well as in Singapore and I continue to update it..

As restrictions under the Circuit Breaker measure get tougher, I, like most Singaporeans can only stay home. Not that I am complaining as I can be quite happy doing my own things at home and it is quite amazing the variety of activities that can be done at home with internet access.

• free movies/concerts/musicals/performances online
• yoga and zumba via ZOOM
• cooking with online recipes 
• clap/sing for #SGUnited
• volunteering (MADWISH) and doing good (SG Assist)
• online gathering and even an online wedding!

Yup, a very dear friend of mine got married! She calls it "Love in the time of corona" and it was beautiful. She looked gorgeous in an exquisite dress while her husband was all decked out in a traditional barong while her friends and family from all over the world celebrated with them via Zoom and a live YouTube screening.

However, the days spent within the same four walls do get blurred together and it is so easy to lose track of time... I decided to do one of the collections that I have been meaning to do, with a twist...
Hopefully, I can follow it better now because I have been sleeping at 2 am lately...... 👉👈 And the opposite page is also dedicated to CB because so much time and so many free movies now!!!

International Day of Yoga 2019

21st June - summer solstice - officially adopted by the UN as International Day of Yoga after being endorsed by 175 out of 193 member states. That is a noteworthy record where more than 90% of the countries of the world actually agreed on something. Yoga for better health of the entire world population.

Although this year is already the 5th year that it is being celebrated worldwide, I was only aware of it last year when I was on the search for a suitable yoga school to learn to become an instructor. Having decided to take up YICC at Vyasa Singapore, I was informed of the event for IDY 2018 held at CSC Tessensohn.

Then, I was a participant, quite a lonely one too. But this year, I was a volunteer and really glad to contribute as an instructor, a demonstrator, and an assistant alongside my YICC mates. Had assumed it would be a single day event but Vyasa, as one of the main organisers working with the High Commision of India, oversaw nearly 200 sessions across the island over about 2 weeks!

Preparation began a month earlier with weekly practice of the Common Yoga Protocol prepared by the Ministry of Ayuverda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) in India. Volunteers were also invited to a photoshoot at Esplanade before we were assigned to the various venues and sessions.

The photoshoot was set at 7am and it had been a long time since I woke up that early for anything. But upon arriving at the outdoor theatre by the waters, I was immediately refreshed and surprisingly stayed pretty alert for the entire session adopting various asanas for the photoshoot with over 50 other volunteers (an organisation nightmare).

My first assignment was totally out of my expectation. As a first-time volunteer, I assumed I would be taking on the role of an assistant, instead, I became the only instructor available for a session to nearly 20 participants at Boon Lay. Thankfully the teacher in me took over and the session went well. I had one participant inquiring the whereabouts of Vyasa after I mentioned it and another requesting for the sequence of asanas I taught... got to mean something right? 😃

The second one was comparatively relaxed as I was one of many assistants to a regular volunteer. In fact, the number of assistants was more than the number of participants in the beautiful Botanical Gardens. Outdoor yoga was lovely although I really did not enjoy the wet grass we were practising on. The calming and healing sounds of the singing bowls during savasanah were out of the world wonderful too.

Right after that, I went along to my third session at Sunlove Whampoa where I really could put my mandarin knowledge and limited dialect to good use as we guided a huge group of senior citizens in chair yoga. Had the pleasure to meet and hear the High Commissioner of India himself who graced the event.

Later the same day, we ended the day with the main event back at CSC Tessensohn with a full programme of speeches and performances before the yoga practice. It really felt like I came a full circle to where I first started with Vyasa. 😊

My final session was on the following morning at CSC Bukit Batok, semi outdoors in an open pavilion with the pool as our view. So fortunate that the 6yo who gave the speech the previous night was invited here too! I got a much better view to her outstanding performance!! Thereafter, I took on the role of demonstrator and managed to execute all instructions successfully.

Yoga has really become such an important part of my life and it means so much to me that I am now able to introduce it and its benefits to so many more people. Still unsure about becoming a professional yoga instructor as something about linking it to monetary value feels wrong.. Anyway, looking forward to the upcoming thank-you party! And of course, many more IDY to come..

Happy Loving Day!

I first heard of them only when the movie came out in 2016. Jailed for marrying the love of your life. For the Valentine baby in me, that is just totally unacceptable so although I did not watch the movie, I read up about this resilient couple who never gave up. Because of the persistence and courage of Mildred and Richard Loving, Americans can truly have the freedom to marry since 12 June 1967.

Actually in the context of Singapore, the Loving vs Virginia case is hardly relevant since Eurasians (persons of mixed European and Asian descent) first arrived in the 19th century, interracial marriages here are hardly out of the norm. I love the aptness of the last name of the plaintiffs but I would never imagine this unofficial celebration held annually in June would now feel this close to heart.

Happy Loving Day to my dearest hubby and all interracial couples out there! Although we come from such vastly different backgrounds, love is love, and love is enough to make a relationship (and all the work that comes with it) worthwhile. But yup, definitely glad I do not have to worry about being thrown into jail for loving you.