Who am I posting irreverent, humourous and heartfelt LinkedIn posts?! Three of them consecutively!
I was feeling quite unhinged when I wrote and posted them. The writing felt like a FLOWWWW. The words had to come out. They were inside me FAR TOO LONG!
It feels good.
The joy of writing.
The coalesce of thoughts that used to pop in and out.
Writing combined with doing some “art” in Canva.
Breakfast has always been such a CHORE! At home, it was easier for me to eat nothing for breakfast. I didn’t like cold food in the morning, e.g. yoghurt with oats (yay fibre!) and I really don’t want to spend time cooking too much aka frying eggs. Nani?!
So I finally settled on pouring hot water into rolled oats (not instant oats) and adding sugar. It’s kinda uninspiring and not very appetising, but it sufficed.
I did feel that rolled oats didn’t keep me full for long, but I thought it was because I ate too little of it. This meant that I was dang hungry BEFORE lunch. Boo. A friend told me that this was true for her too, so I thought, maybe this isn’t the breakfast for me.
When my TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) doctor suggested I eat an egg for breakfast, I groaned inwardly. Hard boiled egg tastes BLEURGH to me and I wasn’t keen on too much cooking effort. Until a Tiktok video showed people cooking cracked eggs in the microwave.
THAT WAS AMAZING! It took some trial and error, and… now I’m happy as a clam eating egg for breakfast. The egg looks like an omelette and is very slightly runny. From egg out of fridge, beating it, adding salt and pepper, microwave, all adds up to 5 minutes. Another 5 minutes for me to eat it. 10 minutes of breakfast and my belly is satisfied!
I can have this before heading to office next time, or even make it in office!
SLAY! *ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚
Noting down what my TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) doctor has told me to do and the explanations.
1. Drink about 1.5 litres of plain water a day. Why?
2. Poop at least once daily.
3. Eat breakfast before 9am. Why?
4. No fruits after lunch. Why?
5. No food after dinner.
6. No cold drinks and food.
7. Is ok to never eat fruits, so as long I eat vegetables.
8. Sleep by 11pm. Why?
This post will be updated as my TCM tells me new things!
The depth of the human connection fuels me. I can meet friends once a year or less, and when we connect, it feels like we were continuing a conversation from the previous time that we met.
That is the real joy and electric connection that I enjoy.
In the meaningful conversations, I laugh so hard and want to hug the other person so tightly.
Quality of the encounter wins frequency all the time.
(っ◔◡◔)っ(•́ᴗ•̀✿)
An Instagram friend, Elisa, opened her house to strangers on her account, inviting them to come and be co-creative. Meaning, do creative things together. I had never met Elisa in real life. We exchanged occasional direct messages on Instagram over the years and I felt like we vibed.
At the first session, two of us showed up. I mended clothes, the other person practiced a cello (loaned by Elisa) and Elisa painted chives.
It was quiet, chill and cozy. I felt like I had front-row seats to a concert. Elisa baked a cake, topped with berries and whipped cream for us. In two hours, I mended a bolster case and tightened beads on a top.
At the second session today, three people showed up. I mended a vintage dress, one person practiced on Elisa’s piano, another wrote and Elisa whittled wooden earrings. We all (except the pianist) commented that the live music was fantastic and applauded at some parts. ( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ )
It feels so nice to have a small ah-hoc gathering of people who are ok to give each other space to do their thing, whatever their thing may be. We didn’t ask about each other’s jobs, instead chatting about creativity, asking what each other were making with our hands and generally being encouraging.
Accompanied by tea, home-baked chocolate cake topped with whipped cream and blueberries, listening to the chirping of birds, I felt so calm and productive.
This is THE life. ♡‧₊˚
I love visiting my TCM doc. She’s so wise.
Today I visited her and asked if my Other Half needed to visit her.
She said, “Do not pressure or force others to do what they’re not ready to do. You do it yourself, you get better. Others will see you get better, then they will ask you what did you do. For example, you’re doing acupuncture. Slowly your body will get better, then you will look prettier. Your Other Half will notice that you look prettier and ask you what did you do.”
Facepalm.
This is exactly what I did when I resolve to reduce my usage of single-use plastic bags. I would keep bringing a spare cloth bag out with me to put groceries or whatnot inside. Initially, I would nag the Other Half to bring a spare cloth bag, then later on, I decided to stop nagging. Instead, I would always offer my cloth bag.
Later on (a year or so later), the Other Half started bringing his own cloth bag!
Girlfriends would ask me how did I convince my Other Half to bring a cloth bag along, because they couldn’t convince their Partners to do so. I explained that I had to start first, then he decided to do it later. Then I asked the girls, “Do you bring your own cloth bags?”
(๑ > ᴗ < ๑)
Anyhoo, I forgot my own advice and needed my TCM to remind me.
Onward! ₍^. .^₎⟆
Decided to re-buy the ruiqing.blog domain last night and set this blog up again. I’ve been quietly blogging, and I’m ready to share this publicly. We are all complex beings with differing thoughts and ideas, and I can’t expect others to read my mind, when I don’t share my mind.
So in a way, this blog is part of my mind, my thoughts. A stream of consciousness. A cabinet of curiousities. (´｡• ◡ •｡`) ♡
I love the symbols making faces. So darn cute. Better than emojis.
Ecstatic that today I managed to:
I used to be a total bookworm when I was a child. Till social media came along, then I’ve been struggling to read for 30 minutes consistently. It felt so good to be completely immersed in a thought-provoking book.
Being screen-free meant that I didn’t record down any thoughts or notes. I’ll have to haul out the good ol' pen and paper next time.
Onward!
I use social media apps a lot, A LOT, and have felt my attention span really decrease. I miss inhaling the words on a physical book. Not literally, more that, that’s how fast I used to read books.
Adopting a phased approach to wean myself off Instagram stories and Tiktok, instead of opening those app, I try to:
There’s so many words that are spilling out of me. I write to structure them into coherence.
When I used to stream on Twitch, a Filipino viewer told me that in Philippines, Christmas “starts” when the -ber months start. Meaning September is when Christmas starts.
I LOVE IT!!
Christmas is my favourite season! Cozy vibes and cozy colors tones. Generally a warm and giving mood. 🎄
I’ve put up one piece of Christmas decor, and am wondering how to make the house feel more festive without purchasing more things.
Being retrenched, I’m sometimes asked, “what are you doing at home?”
Two possible assumptions:
The philosophical reply I would like to give, “I’m learning to rest, because that has been so hard for me.”
When I learned about Impermanence in Buddhism, I wonder what was the point of “creating things” when they are impermanent.
It took me many years to reconcile with that discomfort.
Here’s an attempt to articulate my thoughts, whilst accepting that they’ve yet to be complete.
I create and go about life with the desire to practice the Dhamma. In the practice, is the self-work. Not the solidity of the outcome.
#selfWork
Useful Notes Layouts: Use a Topics / Thoughts Log, for Meetings with Lots of New Information
via Analog Office
The Topics / Thoughts log allows you to track the questions that arise in your mind, and any points you want to make, during meetings where a lot of new information is coming at you.
Log the topics that come up in the conversation on the left side of the page; log your thoughts that come up in the moment, on the right side.
At the end of the conversation, when they ask, “Any questions?” you say, “Just a moment, let me look at my notes.”
Review the log of your thoughts to make sure all your questions have been answered, and all your points have been made before the conversation closes.
#productivity
It’s been a loooong while, but finally I feel more “me”, than I’ve been.
For quite awhile, I felt that I was inadequate or lacking in some way, that made me feel like I didn’t have a seat at the metaphorical “table”.
I’m not sure when exactly the change happened, but it was only when a friend commented on my revived sass, that I realised what had happened.
‘It’s gamified’: inside America’s blood plasma donation industry
“I also think a lot of people are being financially coerced to do it and, the way the system is set up, you get paid more per donation for each donation you make. It’s gamified in such a way that people are encouraged to donate quite often and because it is a hidden industry, most Americans haven’t really considered if this is who we want to be.
What fresh hell.
Then again, is it ok to donate blood and be paid to do it? I think in moderate amounts that do not affect the patient adversely is ok. But where do we draw the line and say, “oh this patient is fine even after donating blood over 100 times a year”.
After all, these for-profit blood donation centres are legal.
Technically, a lack of masking is a presentation issue — a sign that a theater no longer cares — but it can lead to projection problems, too. Cinemas generally show movies in one of two aspect ratios, the taller Flat (1.85:1) or its wider cousin Scope (2.39:1). Until a few years ago, motorized curtains were deployed to cover the unused screen space on the sides (for Flat) or top and bottom (for Scope). But some curtainless cinemas will let their pictures spill over the edges or adjust their projectors to crop the movies themselves, which costs viewers both light and resolution. “You’d probably only notice this if they put a test pattern on the screen,” says the maintenance tech, though it can be worse for movies with nontraditional aspect ratios. “Sometimes the end titles get cut off on the sides.”
…
One reason for the lack of urgency in resolving the projection crisis could be that the people who make movies see them differently than we do. Before industry screenings for members of the directors and writers guilds, an army of technicians attends to every projector, bulb, and screen to ensure that films look perfect. Meanwhile, the loudest proponents of the theater experience — Nolan, Scorsese, Spielberg, Tarantino — have custom-built cinemas in their homes that surpass any of the fleapits where you or I can see Tenet or The Fabelmans. (The Wall Street Journal describes one such sanctuary: “In his 1940s Art Deco-styled screening room, with frosted-glass sconces, cherry-wood ribbing and fluted bronze panels, Mr. Spielberg sits in the back, on the highest tier of the stadium seats, directing the entire experience with his remote.”)
To demonstrate how the other half watches, Theakston takes me to the private state-of-the-art cinema where he works, the Dolby 88 Screening Room on 55th Street, home to a pair of hulking Christie Eclipse E3LH high-dynamic-range laser projectors. I grab a seat near the center of the room, and Top Gun: Maverick fills the screen. As Tom Cruise saves the Air Force’s hypersonic-scramjet program by destroying an aircraft at Mach 10, Theakston hollers over the Dolby Atmos surround sound, “We get 32 footlamberts in here!” My corneas can feel the difference.
You had one job.
In The Practice of Letting Go of Mental Constructs by Leo Babuta
Everything we believe about ourselves and others is an idea, an image constructed in our heads. And these mental constructs can be some of our biggest obstacles and struggles.
Letting go of our mental constructs — our ideas about ourselves and others — can be one of the most liberating things possible.
I’m not saying it’s wrong to have mental constructs — we can’t help it, it’s human and often necessary for whatever we’re doing. But sometimes it’s an obstacle and cause of pain."
Leo then gives some examples and explains three steps to practice letting go of these mental constructs. Very useful.
#selfWork