To reason

It is almost 2 am and I cannot sleep. Partly because of world cup conditioning that drove my REM cycles kaput and partly also because I am in pain.

Training ended at 11. 30 pm just now. The focus on the class was to prep us for Jakarta. In one of my previous posts, I wrote about my shoulder injury. Although I had been told by my senseis here to rest it, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Last week, at about 9pm, I had gone to the dojo and brought back 6 mats, with the help of the husband of course. We assembled in it our library and I practiced my ukemi again and again, in desperation. I couldn’t face the fact of going to Jakarta without knowing how to do good/nice ukemi. I couldn’t face the prospect of being in Jakarta with a whole camp of aikidokas who would watch me do lousy ukemi. Against better judgement (which I later realised was sheer stupidity) I trained, daily at home and almost daily at the dojos. Something was the driving force behind this. I am not sure if it is determination or sheer desperation. But just now during training I found out which one. It was neither of those two.

Training daily was ok, as long as I do not fall on my injured shoulder. But sometimes, in the midst of the action, I just forgot I got an injured shoulder UNTIL the fall happened and the sharp pain pierced through. My senseis here allowed me to train but they were careful on which side I fall. But just now there was a point I went overboard and I heard something snapped and it was so painful I simply ran off the mat at into the storage area and burst out crying silently. It was not the pain that I was crying about. It was going to Jakarta and not able to fall properly and having to face it through.

I wiped my tears, blocked out everything and return to the mat to resume training. I lasted for an hour until when I sparred with my sensei and he did shihonage and in the heat of the moment, I gave him my right hand, he pulled it before we both realised that’s where the injured shoulder is connected to. I yelped. He asked whether I been practising ukemi at home, I confessed that I did and he was blardy pissed at me.

I was asked to leave the mat the extra time after the final bow out. The rest of the class would be practising advance ukemi and he specifically called out my name to leave the mat. It was a blow too hard for me to swallow. I had to sit out, watching my classmates swish and swoosh beautifully in their hakamas. I felt useless and disabled.

That was when it hit me. I am not hard up on wanting to do beautiful ukemi because I was either determined or desperate. I was not hard up on wanting to do proper ukemi because I wanted to be prepared for Jakarta. I was not hard up to do nice ukemi because I needed to at this point of time. The very reason I had been so hard up to do proper ukemi, despite knowing jolly well that I have an injury is because of my blardy big ego, which kept telling me, I cannot let people see me not able to fall properly.

This lesson had been a physically painful one. And the last I heard, physiotherapists are expensive. So yeah, egos are both painful and expensive and I had to be stupid enough to listen to it.

Staple

So good I can even eat it, on its own…

The ball is round and whiny Carrie

It was really a nice feeling waking up today after an hour’s sleep with a big grin across my face. Why not, when my two favorite teams, Argentina and Germany qualified for the quarter finals and will be playing against each other. And that means, I am guaranteed of at least one of my teams in the semi-finals by hook or by crook and that’s really nice.

We watched the Germany-England game at the mamak restaurant near our house and it seems half the neighborhood had the same idea. It was choc-a-block and we were lucky to be early to be able to plonk ourselves in front of one of the 4 big screens they provided…

We got this close to the tv screen, I was ready with my chocolates and pokka green tea and my halia sarabat. Unexpectedly, those who were here, were NOT English fans! So when Klose scored the first goal, the whole restaurant went into a frenzy, much to our delight. And it roared again when Podolski scored the next goal and by then we were pretty sure, we had chosen the right tuft for Germany supporters. When Matt Upson scored the first goal for England, only one voice was heard shouting and cheering and it died down as quickly as it started, probably that man was being self-conscious that he was one of the two English supporter that night in the Germany camp. 🙂

Even the wrongly disqualified goal by the referee against England did not seem to stir the crowd where we were. But when Mueller scored in the 67th and the 70th minute, many rose from their seats, hands in air and the shouts of “GOALL!!!!’ was both hilarious and deafening, not forgetting fun! When the game ended, the crowd stood up and gave a standing ovation for Germany who played beautifully despite their young age and inexperience. We left grinning like a Cheshire cat after a good meal. An English meal, more like it… 😛

Back home, I tried to take a two hour nap but I couldn’t. RTM1 would be showing the Argentina vs Mexico game and would I want to miss watching Messi in action? Of course not! So more coffees later, I was thrilled with a field full of (ehem good looking) latinos and especially amused by my old time favorite now coach, Diego Maradona. If there is the clown of the match award, he should win it hands down. 3-1 by Tevez and Higuain and I went on to take an hour’s nap after the final whistle, mindful to wake up at 6 or get caught in the jam to Subang.

It was such a beautiful day, perhaps because I was smiling and grinning like some doofus on on the street. But as the saying goes, smile and the world smile with you. It is Monday after all and after a long string of things for me to do, I rewarded myself with SATC2. It is hilarious with witty dialog but in this one, compared to the first one, Carrie grinds on my nerves with her whining and her incessant neediness and self-pity in the first half of the show. So much so that when she asked Big “Is this because I’m a bitch wife who nags you?, I had that sudden urge to shout out YES YOU ARE Carrie, get over yourself!

But of course, I didn’t.

I love the development on Miranda’s character here. In SATC1, she’s the mess, but in this one, she cleans up the mess and I love the way they turn her character around into someone happy and empowered. Between Miranda and Carrie, I see Miranda as someone with issues, but level headed enough to handle it without making it into some huge drama, while Carrie, bad enough she has issues, she is also an emotional mumbo jumbo who turns things around into a reason to self-pity herself. Big must have a biiiggg heart. Otherwise, it must be tiring to live with someone like that, I think.

Today’s Menu

1. Freshly roasted English lambs.
2. Free flow of saurkraut.
3. Buy 4 get 1 free.
4. Specialty by head chef Joachim Leow
5. Served by top waiters Miroslav Klose, Lukas Podolski and Thomas Muller

Alles Gute!

Guten Appetit!

Kismet

Training today(err, yesterday by now) was hard but I enjoyed it and lunch was served at the dojo. The day was hot and we wanted to go for a nice cold sugarcane drink but we couldn’t find any stall selling it. We drove round and round the area but everything looked so blah.

Although there were many eateries, kopitiams and cafes in that area, we just couldn’t find one that we liked. Then we drove by the nearest LRT station to see the eateries/cafes near it but again, despite their colorful settings etc, we just didn’t feel the pull nor attraction to be in any of those. So we parked the car at the station and somehow had this out of the blue ‘snap’ impromptu moment of ‘let’s take the lrt to KLCC’. That spontaneous decision made, we were in KLCC 20 minutes later, heading towards our favorite foodcourt on the top floor, RASA.

I walked ahead pushing through the crowd, as usual blindly and non committal to my surroundings. I was actually quite far ahead of the husband, almost reaching to the other side of the foodcourt when I heard him holler out to me. I turned and the next thing I knew, I saw a familiar person squealing in delight running towards me and the next split second, I recognised who she was and we hugged and squeal in disbelief of the chanced meeting.

Em n Chris are on holiday around Asia. They took a month off from work to go from Shanghai, back to visit Em’s folks in SG and then drive up the coastal road of Malaysia. Em is an old, old friend from my island whom since  a decade ago, has been a PR of Australia. Her mother is this endearing Malay cikgu I simply love and who shares my adoration for Hetty Koes Endang. Em was one of the common friend I had with my husband before I even knew or met my husband. Chris is her Austrian husband and they now live in Melbourne. 3 things us and them have in common are travel-books-food and the last being teh tarik, but that’s under food, no?

We didn’t know they were in KL .They decided to just hang out in the city for a day after the long coastal drives. They didn’t know we would be in KL today and thinking it would just be 24 hours here, they decided to look us up another time they make their way to our side of the world. But kismet, as it is had better plans. And it was as if unknowingly, we were led to bumping into them at KLCC. And what’s more creepy, my hubby was wearing the T-Shirt he got from Melbourne, for the project he was working in partnership with Em in Melbourne years back, of all days, today. The t-shirt which has seen better days and of late usually found at the bottom of the cupboard, for some reason was worn today in all of its ratty-tatty glory.

The very last time we met them was also by chance, in Frankfurt. They were visiting Chris’ hometown somewhere near the Austria-Germany border, while we were visiting my husband’s sick grandfather in his village in Oberusel, Hessen. The wonders of technology made it possible to see that all four of us were in Germany, and going to be in Frankfurt on the same day at the same time, so in all spontaneity, decided to go for latte at the train station. That was fun! And today, it was as if it was written that we would be reunited. Awesome was not quite the apt word to describe it. Strange more like it. Like how, had we given up and just went back home after not finding a suitable place to have a drink, the reunion would not have happened.

But kismet is always strange, ain’t it?

Chris insisted that the next time we run into each other, it will be in Spain, considering that all four of us have a common fascination — Andalusia, albeit all for different reasons; Chris for its weather and beauty, Em for its art, my hubby for its engineering system which is the core content for his postgrad thesis and myself, for its history and of course, its brush with Tariq bin Zyad. We shall see if Chris will be right… because as it is, kismet is always mysterious like that.

(Homemade)Lunch

Aglio Olio with Tuna Chilli Padi and a whole bunch of Thai chilli padi. Not for the faint hearted

Bored@Work

Trying out the ‘fish eye’ function of my camera while I was getting really bored with the journal I was reading

Current (Read)

Trying out the ‘pop art’ function of my camera. And the book is interesting by the way…

Fall now, please

12.30 past midnight and we just reached home. My right shoulder blade is injured. It is less than a month to the aiki.camp in Jakarta and I still cannot do my ukemi properly. I got so frustrated just now to the point I wanted to cry.

I got frustrated that each time I do the ukemi, I feel the pain. And in aikido, if one feels any pain during any technique, he/she is definitely not doing something right. So I am definitely not doing something right. The saying ‘no pain, no gain’ doesn’t work in aikido, it seems. If I feel pain, then I am not doing the right thing, and hence I am not gaining anything.

I even had to be excused from the main class, for my own solitude training of the ukemi. And that was the greatest ego crusher that can ever happen, what with the whole class then  knowing that I was at the side of the classroom because after all these 3 years, I STILL cannot do my ukemi properly–yet.

During my 5 min break, it suddenly dawned upon me that I am not doing the proper ukemi because I am afraid of falling. But why was I afraid to fall? The dojo mats are thick enough for me not to land and break any bones in a crushing way. So why?

Was it my conditioning? Am I that afraid to fall because I have been brought up with the notion that falling means failure or that falling equates to injury? Hence that even in a situation whereby falling down gracefully and getting up again immediately seems a task too difficult for me to achieve because I am too afraid to fall in the first place?

I have fallen many times, both in life and on the mats of the dojo. But I still cannot shake off this fear of falling. And this has to stop. Otherwise, I won’t survive Jakarta in one piece, and that is something to really fear.

Satisfaction