Firstly an update on the 30 day without coffee trial. As I have mentioned earlier, the intention was to try and see if I can go without coffee for 30 days. Prior to that I was highly dependent on the daily intake of coffee to keep me alive at work. Programmers poison – they call us processors. We process caffeine into working code.

That said, the initial attempt failed at 18 days because I accidentally took a sip of coffee. I had to restart the cycle and I am proud to say that this time round, I’ve managed to complete the 30 days without coffee successfully!

I’ll address my workplace manifestations in a separate post later.

Cheers!

(If I can go without coffee for 30days, I can do anything!)

As with every other book I read, I try to appreciate the teachings and messages they try to convey. In this show, the male lead is the star basketball player of the high school while the female lead is a genius. They’ve been lead by parental expectations to excel in the things they do today. However  when the both of them try their hand, more like voices at taking part in the school musical. Everyone started going at them.

One of the songs went like this, “not another word, not another sound, not another beat, don’t mess with the flow, stick with status quo”.

One may hear that line often from our parents, whom based on their life experiences have their own vision of what constitutes a good life. However if we do not step out of our comfort zone and experiment with new stuff, we may never know what the world has in store for us.

Break Free today!

Visualizing a peaceful place you are comfortable during this breathing exercise - a misty beach with the waves rolling in or a lush mountain top full of flowers. Repeat for a few cycles to help your mind and body feel better.

What this actually does is when you do breath in deeply, your upper body expands and helps to stretch the spine. Do if as often as you need to!

The power of belief! Life is all about energy and since we know that energy can never be created or destroyed what matters is how we transmute our energy to achieve the goals for us.

Great book with a lot of re-read value!

He gave me quite a lot of insights into relationships and life, especially here in Singapore where housing prices are exhorbitantly high. A famous quote I will always remember from him is where he said “the tongue has no bone, whatever you say, can be forgotten easily. What matters is the action that you take”. Also he mentioned that we should always treasure our loved ones because they are the one who will see us thru our ups and downs.

The material chase is always on – earning enough cash to pay for housing, car, entertainment expenditure that eventually paves the way for settling down when one gets older. Its a pretty known fact that most people pay for their housing through loans with the banks. As a result, the actual owner of all these property are those anonymous lender of money. We do not truely own anything at all. What he said made a lot of sense to me. It’s the journey that counts and not just the ultimate goal. The gold at the end of the rainbow may just turn out to be cereal, it is important to enjoy the journey and also treasure the company that walks your life path with you.

Thank you uncle!

Sometimes we are blessed, our bodies are equipped with the neccessary attributes for us to achieve results in life. No one is born equal and some are blessed with greater intelligence, creative flair for the arts or they could simply be physically inclined.

Each and everyone of us have our strengths and leverages, as we progress through our journey in life, we will come to a realization of some of strengths. For example, I am thankful that I am all of 1.87 metres in height and with that height comes a decent pair of legs. Whenever I negotiate stairs, I climb two to three steps with each stride as opposed to the normal 1 step per stride. It is physically efficient for me to do so because of the way I am physically built. I’ve realized this and I’ve never looked back since. So assuming I am working equally has hard as a colleague walking beside me, by walking at the same frequency I climb the “ladder” twice as fast.

There are many aspects of life where this could be applied other than the mini-example I’ve just provided. A talented software developer may be able to churn out better programs for less lines of code, a salesman may bring enough deals to reside in the top 10% every month while others work equally as hard but find it hard to excel.

It is important for us to find our niche and use our strengths to propel us forward.

The book I finished earlier this evening was “Blink : The Power of Thinking without Thinking” by Malcom Gladwell. What sold me this book was this particular segment in the first few pages where researchers were examining the conversation between a married couple and thru subtle cues in their facial expressions and manner of speech were able to figure out the underlying emotional disturbances in the relationship.

The book focuses on those first 2 seconds of intuition when we come across events. Sometimes we get a gut feeling that something is going wrong but  are unable to pinpoint how we know it to be so. A nice read, makes you realize that our mind forms associations based on the cultures we are exposed to and even if we consciously think that we are unbiased, our judgement is usually impaired based on a combination of visual, aural and various inputs. Try this experiment to find out some of your implicit correlations. Some of the exmaples are really an eye-opener.

 The bull’s eye mark has been locked on 75kg. That will be the target I am going to hit. I want my abs back, I want my energy back and my zest for life!

 I decided to do a modification of this technique, especially since I haven’t been running for such long period of time. My goal was to be out there working my trusty heart for at least 30 minutes. Bearing in the mind the possible benefits of using an interval training system where I would run and walk briskly instead of being in continuous running state throughout the entire duration. This is quite different from physical education lessons back in school or in the army where we were told to try and keep running because the inertia of moving from a walk to run state is huge.

My timing kinda went like this, 5 minute fast paced, 3 brisk walk, another 3 minute fast paced followed by 2 minute walk, after which I went into a slower 4 minute jog with another 2 minute recovery  walk. The pattern followed until I managed hit the 33rd minute mark where I climbed the infamous slope and headed towards home.

I felt that without using such a system I would not have been able to exercise as much as I had tonight. The merits of such a system remains to be proven but at the current rate, I think I am going to stick to it for a 30 day period

 There is some truth when people say that one mind’s at peace when jogging. This time I was running without any tempo devices such as a mp3 player, so everything was based on my timer. I was more goal-focused as a result. If I had some music, I may not have been as conscious of the time.

As I was running at about 11 pm in the park, visibility was pretty low and certain bends were of low visibility. When I run in time segments, I usually set a visual marker for me to run towards and as I hit the marker I toss out another virtual marker some distance ahead. When I was heading back towards home base, I saw two to three exits that I thought was the goal. The place to stop and walk home while cooling down. Even though I wasn’t new to the park, I was surprised that I actually mistaken my goal twice, once almost stopping too early and the second time I almost missed my intended stop. This is pretty much how life is : you set a goal you want to home in on it but when you get close to the goal, you can actually be going off-tangent and if the mistake isn’t realized in time, one may end up further away from the goal.

There are different strategies for running distances in a circular track and running a scenic route. I can see the likes of it in the IT industry. Basically there are two kind of IT projects: one where the specifications are laid out at the start of the project and the other where specifications and length of project varies as the project goes on. The former kind of projects would be like running a known fixed distance on a circuit whereas the other would be running a cross country race in unfamiliar terrain. God knows how much time and how much effort is required.

Personally I prefer the running on a track because I know that satisfaction lies at the end of 6 rounds and the objective is met. Unfortunately, life journey is often like the 2nd classification of projects. There lies much uncertainty in the paths we pick and the decisions we make.

The only way to improve my perfomances in the runs (life) is to hone my stamina, judgement, continually strengthen various muscle groups and mind to handle the vigours and challenges that the run (life) may bring.

This shall be my direction and my immediate current aim – to hone myself to face uncertainty and ride the wave to success!

1. Laziness to brush my teeth (Sometimes I just fall asleep when I use the computer next to the bed)
2. Lack of Exercise – I keep talking about wanting to jog but procrastination takes over.
3. Too much coffee – I take at least 2 cups daily

Its been two weeks since I started the 30 day trial for coffee. The idea is that if I can keep coffee out of my system for 30 days, I can keep it out for 90 days and eventually I wont take coffee at all! At 14 days and counting, the biggest trial so far must have been at Starbucks last sunday where everyone around me was sipping their brews. It was almost torture that I was reduced to drinking a Mango Frap but I pulled through. Hurrah!