Small things grow to be big things.

"Small things grow to be big things."

This is my husband’s favourite phrase as he often uses it to describe my shape. (as in I was slim, but grew to be bigger….)  It is very funny for him, just not to me....However, actually I like the phrase, too, just not the way that he uses it.

Very often we dismiss importance of small things. As you know, small things can grow into very big. How lucky it would be if you won a lottery and became instantly rich? But this kind of luck is unlikely to happen to 99.9999…% of normal people like you and me. So we need to save small money to grow big one to secure our future. Small steps can open a long and big journey and small attempt or try can offer you priceless experiences.

Down below are the small steps taken to complete my latest picture. I took these photos as I thought it would be a fun to trace my small steps which can eventually a completed picture. I think this is very similar to our life journey as every single day will be added up to a month, a year, years, and our whole life. Every step I had to put my best to continue further to the next step until I completed this picture. I would like to share my steps with you and have a deep thoughts on our ‘ Today’, and how important to make the Today valuable for our bright Tomorrow.

Enjoy!

 

Today is all we have!

"What the FFFFFFF...!"

This is exactly what my husband said at that time.

When he ‘calmly expressed his thoughts’ on a unknown matter, I had turned my back to him for at the time, I was looking for our destination on the map so, I did not really know what had happened,  for him to display his eloquent knowledge of the English language

"F..., F..., F...!  A, a  dog, dog just jumped up and bit my aaaaarmm... FFFFF....!"

I could hear through his ‘slightly disturbed’ voice and that he was quite shocked. It happened all so fast and suddenly, that it had left both of us speechless for a long time.

"I can’t believe this.....” was all I could think of to say at the time.

We were looking for a bus terminal to head to one of most well-known temples in Chiang Mai. As we always do, we decided to walk quite a long distance to the bus station. Everything seemed to be fine. We were talking about funny events and incidents, laughing, and stopped to look up a map in order to get to right direction at the corner of two streets. I was still carrying on my speciality (not -stop talking) to him while checking the map and he was leaning against the wall at the corner of house to tie up his shoelaces again. In a flash, a dog from the house had jumped up over the wall, and bit his left arm/shoulder, and quickly ran away. Bad things often happen like this, implausibly, unexpectedly, and very, very suddenly.

 

Lucky enough however, the wound was not too deep but he had to go to the international hospital just in case, to receive the Rabies vaccination. We eventually made it to the temple we had been dying to see, but were unable to concentrate on the scenery, due to the incident that had happened just recently . Ironic much? We had been so careful of mosquitoes’ bites (We used very strong local mosquito spray 24/7.)as we caught ‘Dengue Fever’ from a trip to Lombok, Indonesia three years ago, but a dog bite was the last thing that we had ever expected to happen in Chian Mai.

 

                                       Emergency room at the International hospital in Chiang Mai

Speaking of which, a couple of month ago, we learned that one of our friends had to undergo a big operation due to a brain tumour which was growing behind his eyes, and fatal, of left untreated. Luckily it was not cancerous so he got it removed and got the all clear even though the operation was quite serious (8 hrs). I still remember his facial expression when was talking about what he went through. He looked like someone who had just been to hell and back. He simply couldn’t believe that could happen to him, even after the operation.

I have just found out that one of my colleges is fighting with the similar health problem at the moment. He is only early 30’s. I am very sorry about what he is going through and wish him all the best in his struggle.

Now, before you all get the wrong idea, I am not talking about bad luck or asking you to worry about the bad things all the time which could happen to you at any time very suddenly. I want you to think about ‘Today’ and ‘This moment’ and how lucky we are to have this moment. How often do we complain instead of appreciating what we are having and who we are? I want you to take today, this moment more seriously and get the best out of it. We never really know/even guess what is waiting for us at the corner of today and this moment so enjoy every single moment of your life and do not let it go pointlessly. How many times do you put off things you need to do or you want to do to tomorrow or whenever in future? How often do you leave aside your lovely family, friends for doing things for yourself?

We have only today to do what we want to do so do not waste today.

Appreciate people around you and do what you like to do. Steve Pavlina,  (www.stevepavlina.com), an author  of a book called ‘ Personal Development for Smart People’ which I am reading at the moment says,

"We do own only now, not past or future so we do have power on only now not in the past or in the future."

Therefore, we must be responsible in order to make today as the best day of our life. If you can't  fulfil today, how can you expect happy future?  Make the most of every moment. Be positive and happy, as well as healthy.

My husband’s unfortunate dog bite wound has been disappeared but I believe that my new view on ‘NOW’ learnt from the simple accident will stay in my heart for a long time. How often we live with ignorance in the fact, ‘Today will never come back again’.

So, let's make today the best we can, and be the best we can be!

How can I travel more often than you can?

“How can you go travelling all the time?”

“How can you afford all the trips?”

“You must be millionaire!!!”

“How much did you need? Must be quite a lot....”

“You must be VERY rich...  I envy you...”

“Well....”

These were our morning conversation I had with my colleagues a few days ago after I came back from another overseas trip, this time to Thailand. While I was answering their questions, I also wondered how much actually I spent for the 2 week trip to Thailand so I decided to disclose the cost and share my stories.  It will be a good practise for me to track down the travel expenses for our own sake. So, let’s start! As I have showed off how good travel organiser I am in one of my blogs, I must show they were not all pointless speeches. Hahaha... this will be a challenging.

1.       Airfare: $820 per person (Sydney-Bangkok, Bangkok-Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai-Bangkok, Bangkok-Sydney); The largest expense is normally airfare. I spent quite a bit of time searching for flight tickets online and learned that the cheapest one is around $1,000AUD which was for a direct flight to Bangkok. So I rang the Thai travel agent my Thai friend introduced to me and she offered me a special deal, $800 for between Sydney and Bangkok and $20 extra for between Bangkok and Chiang Mai return trip. It seemed an excellent deal to me so I purchased the tickets without any hesitation or doubts. I still believe that it was one of the best deals I could get at that time.

Thai Airways

2.       Accommodations: $720.72 for two people; we spent $720.72 for 13 nights, which was on average $55.44 for a night at 4 star hotels in 3 places in Thailand. The hotels were satisfactory and quite enjoyable to stay in. $381.70 for 5 nights in Bangkok, $200.28 for 3 nights in Hua Hin and $139.24 for 5 nights in Chiang Mai. I normally use Agoda hotel booking so I could use some of my points ($30 this time) to book the hotel in Chiang Mai. As I mentioned in my blog, I used Agoda site for finding hotels which meet my needs such as Swimming pool, Gym, Internet, Spacious room  and especially, location, and I chose hotels which have good reviews from tourists and bigger discount to get better value. I then went to Hotelscombinded site to compare the price and booked the hotels through them which saved bit more dollars for me. Chiang Mai Hotel was very pleasant surprise. With paying less than $30 per night, we had a very big room, close to the main attractions with excellent breakfast every day which made our holiday more enjoyable.

 Roof top Swimming pool                                      Our room -  a Hotel in Hua Hin

3.       Other expenses include: $1,150 for two people for 14 days. This includes $250 worth of medical bills which covered the cost of 3 Rabies Vaccinations for my husband’s unfortunate dog bite in Chiang Mai (I will write about this unbelievable (and slightly humorous) incident in one of my next blogs.) 26 meals (lunches and dinners), shopping for family, friends and myself, and (my favourite) delicious local fruits and cookies, were also included.

Roughly $40 for my cosmetic shopping (It was 3-5 times cheaper than here, and the quality was good, so I bought enough to use for the next year) and $70 for souvenirs for my family, friends and myself. I particularly loved the Thai style, very colourful summer dresses, so ended up buying 10 dresses for my sisters, mother, my niece and myself. The cost was $3 per dress, quite a worthwhile purchase. I hope my husband will not have a look at this story as I told him that I only bought 5… My husband bought his long awaited leather belt for $15 which would cost him about $70 here.

This also includes all the transportation cost such as trains, taxies, tuk-tuk and admission fees for Temples, Elephant camps, Wave Park, etc... , $90 for train tickets between Bangkok and Hua Hin (281km southwest from Bangkok), $100 for a half day trip to Elephant camps and admission fees for other attractions, and taxi fares between airports to the hotels.

We ate as much as we could (delicious) but it didn’t cost us too much. We avoided going to a restaurant where only tourists were sitting, because we wanted to taste the local food, not the one that was tailor made to suit the tastes of tourists. We often had food in a food court in a big department store to get variety options, reasonably cheap price (because the place was for Thai people). Most important reason we prepared to go there was that we believe it would have better hygiene standard/regulation. Our carefulness rewarded us so that we did not get any stomach problems at all. Most of lunches were 50 to 60 THB ($1.5 to $2) so we didn’t have to worry about our pocket at all. Dinner were various from $20 to $10 for both of us and we could enjoy mouth-watering seafood and fish with fresh vegetables as much as we could have which we have to think about price again and again before buying here.

We spent a quite big portion of our budget for the unbelievably delicious fruits, Mangosteen, Passionfruit, Papaya, Loom pong, etc...  We could enjoy as much as we can as we cannot taste the fruits especially with that price here.

                                                          Nothing left...

 

 

              Banana           Passionfruit                                      Mangosteen                     

                                                      Local bus - 10 THB (30Cents)

So, in total, we spent $1755 per person for 2 week holiday in 3 cities in Thailand.

I will leave the judgement with you whether or not this was an expensive trip or a budget trip as value of money is very depends on each person’s financial circumstances. The main point I wanted to tell you is that we spent money carefully from the planning to the last day of the trip. We tried to keep frugal attitudes on our money so we can plan another trips when we want to go. After I went through our travel expenses, I have to admit that we could have reduced our expenses on several occasions such as we could have found out more information about the train to Hua Hin so we didn’t need to get the most expensive train which was $30 per person (could be only $10) but I am happy for now as we all learn from our mistakes and next time we will be better prepared.

I hope this story can answer the questions for my colleagues. I am not so rich that I can go travelling anytime I want, but I do try to organise more and better, and keep frugal spending habits at anytime any situations in order to go trip more often than others. This travel style will not suit to everyone’s taste but this works really well with me so I would like to encourage you to experience this as well. One more thing I want to add is I become more aware of value of money and importance in modest life style whenever I come back from trips. $1 can be very valuable in elsewhere. This truly helps/improves my view on money managing and living standard.

So, you can make more trips like us. I promise you every single trip will make your life brighten up. It sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, happy planning!

Show off your weakness

“What is something you are not good at?”

If someone asks me this question, I would be speechless for a while, giving time to allow my brain to pick up something among the numerous things ,while at the same time, avoiding discouraging myself or diminishing my confidence, and not making me look like an utter fool. Let’s see…

I am a BAD cook.

It is not too difficult to admit that I am definitely not a good cook as I don't know how to enjoy cooking. Sometimes I feel sorry for my husband who is the only person who must try my food but he said that he is happy with my cooking skill as it keeps him slim… And I don’t think I want to ponder too deeply the reasoning behind this statement. As long as he is happy, I am safe. Right? :)

Here are some reasons as to why I became a bad cook.

Firstly, I am too busy. Now, before you all stop reading this because you think I’m just really making an excuse, hear me out. I am working full time and I have got various hobbies to fill my days such as daily exercise at the gym, running along the beach, painting, reading, writing stories, updating this blog, etc… These hobbies which make my days enjoyable, take up most of my free time. I have limited spare time and I chose to live doing what I love to do than what I have to do so unfortunately my cooking time/skill needs to be sacrificed.

Secondly, no one taught me how to cook and I did not try enough to learn. My mother is a great cook as she raised 5 kids by her own and she just loves cooking. Her attitude in the kitchen was “Don’t bother me when I am cooking. This is my world and I am enjoying myself too much to share this time with you right now…” when I was growing up. Sounds harsh, but that was our world. This demotivated my willingness to learn cooking and as a result, cooking became my weakness. This is the reason my husband bought quite a few cook books including his favorite Italian cook book but they are standing in a bookshelf and waiting to be used.

Thirdly, cooking doesn't interest me. I really love food and appreciate anything cooked for me but cooking does not appeal to me at all. I am not excited when I am cooking and this feeling makes me to cook as quickly as possible, just to get it over and done with. I believe that everyone has their own passion in certain things as I have in painting and writing. Cooking is simply not my cup of tea so I chose not to push myself to be good in cooking and decided to accept and be proud of my cooking skill. Trust me, ‘showing off weakness’ makes my life heaps easier to handle. We don’t have to be the best all the time, do we?

To accept and be proud of my weakness, I would like to share with you my standard menu for dinner. I have seen thousands of famous chefs’ delicious looking food but I hardly ever had any chance to see someone’s food who can't cook well. So this will be new experience for you and I hope you enjoy it.

My strengths in cooking:

·         I cook very fast (no longer than 30 mins) including chopping veggies which takes most of my time.

·         I cook very simple food with simple way so very simple to learn. Chopping and mixing are my basic and also highest cooking skill.

·         I cook very healthy food (sometimes too healthy). I use a lot of vegetables and variety grains and beans, and prefer fish to meat. I do not use rich or sugary sauces so you can eat as much as you want! 

How to cook a very simple meal (Hereunder)

Hereunder is what I cooked for dinner few days ago. It took me less than 10 minutes chopping and roughly 8 minutes mixing.

Ingredient; pumpkin, sweet potato, onion, chilly, mushroom, carrot, asparagus, left over spinach and bit of rocket salad. These were all vegetables I had in the fridge. Don't forget to put some garlic.

Chop all the vegetables as you like. Mix them in a pan with bit of vegetable oil, put some salt and pepper, mix more, put some eggs, mix more till all cooked. Don’t cook too long as it can destroy all the good vitamins in the vegetables and crispy taste. Put some turmeric powder as it gives good color and special taste. When done, put some sesame seeds and mix gently. It is ready to eat.

What do you think? It is simple, isn’t it? You would already know why my hubby calls me the chopper or the mixer. I enjoyed my simple and healthy dinner that night.

I hope you enjoyed my ‘cooking show’. What I truly wanted to tell you is that being aware of your weakness and showing off them can be a good way to deal with your weakness, instead of hiding or being shy over them. I don’t agree that we need to try hard to change all our weakness to strengths. I don’t mean we should not try to be better but if you push yourself too much it can exhaust and damage your life and your confidence. Be aware of your weakness but do not be shame of it and try to hide it. No one is perfect and everyone has weaker points. So accept that you have weakness but do not let them ruling your life. Talk and show out your weakness. Funnily enough they can be not too bad as you thought and can entertain others like my cooking skill.



How to keep a good relationship with your partner.

I am happily married and in a fulfilling relationship with my husband. We have been together for 11 and half years so far, with minimal arguments or disruptions. As international students we first met each other in Australia where is very far from both of our homelands. (My husband coming from Czech Republic and I being from South Korea) It has been a very fascinating and worthwhile journey as our cultural back grounds are extremely different. There were immeasurable differences we had to overcome and we will need to deal with countless difficulties in the future, but I can proudly say we have built a very strong and stable relationship despite of all the differences and difficulties we had to go through. So I would like to share the 10 tips which helped us to keep an excellent relationship with you all. I acknowledge that these can be very personal and can be working differently with your relationship with your partner but my intention is to help you to keep a good relationship by sharing my personal experience and I hope that you will all benefit from these tips in some way.

1.       Set a common goal; Everyone needs to have a goal to their life. I would like to encourage all of you to have a common goal with your partner. Having a common goal makes you to have/share common vision for your future. In other words, you are able to have more in common with each other. While you are planning and discussing about the goal together, supporting and encouraging each other to reach it, and getting closer to the goal, your relationship will become stronger and you and your partner will become closer together in the long run. It will bring you invaluable rewards when you understand each other and work together towards to the common goal. Those who do not share their goal with their partner are more likely feel lonely in the relationship. When couples work together on their common goal and they can grow closer together and guide their life to the same direction.

2.        Be a competitor; Overtime, we can become too relaxed in our relationship (Can I say lazy?). You constantly need to learn from each other. When you challenge yourself to improve yourself, that in turn can encourage your partner to improve him or herself, too. My husband goes to the gym regularly and does various types of exercises such as soccer, tennis, surfing, etc... His efforts on making his life active and making himself fit make me become active and sporty as well. I exercise regularly and try to maintain a fit and healthy life style as I have learnt from my husband. His reading habits inform me that I should read more and (though it may be hard to believe) his carefulness corrects my recklessness and carelessness. I hope that I am as good an influence to him as he is to me. I believe that, in life, our partner is the closest person in our life and also the best person to learn from. Be a person who your partner wants to learn from and try to learn from him or her. Improving each other will attain you an enjoyable and respectable relationship.

3.       Be a supporter; Keep away from discouraging and criticizing your partners dreams or hobbies. If he/she wants to learn new things or try to change current circumstances, listen to them carefully and try to understand the reason behind their need of changes instead of disagreeing /discouraging them immediately. You both need to be a supporter to each other. Respect each other’s needs and hobbies, and share them. Sometimes they would not meet your interest (as sometimes I cannot understand WHY he wants to do the things for WHAT) but the new things can create a new excitement to your partner which he might need desperately, then it is worth to pack away your disagreement. When you feel supported by your partner, your relationship will be far more satisfactory. Share and talk about your partner’s hobbies and interests even though they are not your cup of tea. Your partner will be very excited to talk about it in front of you and will feel so happy about having a partner who is interested in them/their life. It will also allow you to understand your partner more profoundly.

4.       Avoid forcing your partner to adapt to you; We all are different but sometimes the difference can be a pain in our relationship. We intend to change the other party's behaviour to the one which you would like to see from them. But ironically your partner will want you to change that suits for him/her as well. This will cause endless conflicts and there will be no solution unless one of you is totally given up their rights. We need to accept and understand the differences between men and women, older and younger between individuals etc... Remember that no two people are the same and no one can share the exact same ideas or opinions so we all think and behave differently and independently but frequently we get the wrong idea about this and expect the other party will think and behave same way as us. Unfortunately, it is wrong. However, it does not mean you can do whatever you used to think or do other. You need to be responsible for your commitment and try to compromise both parties needs based on acceptance and understand. It will be the wise way to deal with the differences instead of trying to change the others. No one can be a winner when one of party is not happy in a relationship so do not force to change your partner. Try to compromise what you really want by compromising your needs based on your partner’s understanding.

5.       Keep improving yourself; I believe that getting into a relationship and keeping it is a process not a product. The final outcome can be a successful and fulfilling relationship, and it can be achieved by endless efforts from both parties. It will not work well if only one party tries or both parties stop or ignore putting their efforts. Being together for years means you grow together so you need to grow yourself by improving yourself. Do not stop looking for things to improve yourself. Do not stop trying to learn new things and apply it into your life. Try to make yourself fitter and healthier. Try to educate yourself so you can be knowledgeable and wiser as you getting old. Your partner will respect and appreciate your changes and efforts and he/she will try the same as you do as you can be his or her mirror. When you are satisfied with yourself and love yourself, your love towards to others will be deepener.

6.       Do small things for each other and appreciate each other; Do/share the odd jobs round house together. There are no jobs to be done by only one party. As you might experienced sometimes in your relationship, big arguments can start from a little job which one of you refused to do or help. Take small thing seriously because the small things you do for your partner means a lot more than you would expect. Quite often my husband does washing dishes and cleaning the house without being told as he thinks they are part of his duties. I really do appreciate his attitude towards this and feel thankful that he does not leave all the work to me. I have to admit that I do more inside house work than he does but I truly appreciate how he takes my time and energy for the house work and thankful of it and willing to help and share. I try to do the same and appreciate a lot what he does for us. It does not matter if he does it well or not. His intention can be highly recognised. How often do you express your appreciation to your partner when he does small things for you? Be generous to say thanks to each other. It can embarrass you to say it but expressing your appreciation to your partner will give priceless satisfaction to him or her.

7.       Travel together; Travelling together is one of my favourite methods to keeping our relationship strong. Being together while you are experiencing different/interesting events in the new places can offer a very special time and unique experiences for both of you. You will have more time to talk about different topics beside of normal daily issues and this will refresh your relationship with your partner which you could have thought too ordinary or nothing special, or getting too boring. You need to remember no one will create for you special time/occasions. Only you can be owner of your life and relationship so you need to diligently try and make special opportunities to get out of the ordinary day routines and get new/fresh feeling from each other. You do not need to organise a big or luxurious trip. Go for a sleep out one night, even a day trip to a park can help you to revive yourself. Travel together can be definitely one of the best ways to bring fresh feelings into your relationship.

8.       Be independent; Keep independency. Do not rely on your partner. Can you imagine that someone is relaying on you emotionally and physically, and financially all your life? Honestly, it would be too much for me to handle the feeling of pressure, to keep a good relationship with my partner. I have seen many cases around me, one party started relaying on the other party and pass on all the decisions and responsibilities for the family's future to the other party. This type of arrangement was working for our parent generations but current competitive and challenging society highly unlikely allows us to live this way any longer. Couples need to be independent and standing on their own feet, and need to support and help each other to build their healthy life. Competitive society pushes us to work harder to survive and scarify more of our life to manage our living standard. This means only one party to work for family to live is getting harder and harder nowadays. You need to share the responsibilities with your partner. To do that you need to be independent. I believe successful relationship can be achieved when two are living their own life and work together for their common life. Giving away responsibilities to the other can be the most hazardous way to put your relationship into a hardship.

9.       Watch out what you say when you are upset; “NEVER”, “ALWAYS”, These words can hurt each other easily. To be honestly with you, if I said I told you I did this well, I would be hypocrite. Quite often ,I use those words without consideration about my husband's feeling and it gets worse when I get mad when I’m saying things in the heat of the moment. "you NEVER do this....", " you ALWAYS do this....!" Ironically, I forget to stop using them even though I get hurt the most by them. Those words dismiss what your partner has done for you and restrain and push down your partner's efforts. As many times as you use, those negative and aggressive words can hurt more and leave a deep mark in your partner's mind/heart. Therefore you need to control what you say to your partner. Be comfortable with someone does not mean, you can be rude to them or they will totally understand/accept your behaviour. You would not easily say those aggressive words to your co-workers or someone who you do not know well, but why to the most important person in your life. Words can be the most powerful weapon so we need to use them wisely.

10.   Express your feeling; I didn't have many experiences to see my parents interact or used affectionate words to each other. Even they went out together (with 5 kids), father always walked far front away than mother and they did not sit next each other or touch each other in any way shape or form while they were with us. I never questioned about it as it was considered a quite normal behaviour between husband and wife at that time, especially in Korea.  I accepted it as a standard/expected behaviour of the society, and I met my European husband who shows all his affections anytime he feels and wants. At the beginning of our relationship, it was quite uncomfortable to be shown in front of others and still try not to show in front of mother as she feels embarrassed, but I do believe his attitudes helps our relationship get satisfied far more. Expressing how you feel about your partner is not embarrassing thing or thing to avoid. Tell them how important person they are to you and how much you love and appreciate their being any time you feel. Hold and hug, and touch them as many times as you want. Do not put aside your feeling and bury them because of someone else's perspective. If you do not express your love now when can you do it and how your partner would know it? Be open and generous to your feeling and express them. Imagine that you can feel love and appreciation from your partner all the time. How wonderful relationship it will be? So, do say it and let your partner to feel it.

While writing down my thoughts and tips, I could have a valuable chance to think about my relationship with my husband. As you would guess, no one can do all those good things or have perfect behaviour all the time including myself. All I wanted to share was sometimes we need to rethink and assess our relationships genuinely and try to maintain or improve them without stop. I do believe that the relationship between you and your partner is a root of your life. When it is strong and healthy, your life can grow well and will promise you happiness.

Thailand 2012

New Zealand 2011

                                                                   Thailand 2012

How to avoid getting fatter at work

How many hours of a day do you spend at work? Majority of our life is being used at work whether we want/like or not. Therefore being at work became major part of our life. Current society provides us comfortable and safe work places but focusing on efficiency and productivity jailed us in a small space with limited movement. Working all day with computer in a cubical tiny space discourages us to move and create an unhealthy life style. Lack of movement can be a serious cause of obesity and it can progress onto more serious life threatening diseases. So I would like to share my thoughts on how to avoid these unfortunate outcomes.

1. Stand as many times as you can; Stand up or walk around as many times as possible while you are working. A study from America shows standing needs 3 times more energy than sitting so at least every 1 hour, try to stand up and stretch your body and relax your mind. Try to walk around office and talk with co-workers. It will help you to move and also get closer relationship with your co-workers. Use the furthest printer so you can stand up and walk, and print each item separately in order to stand up more often. Be aware of your lack of movement, and try to maximise it. It would not sound like an exercise but it will create a healthy habit at work.

2. Prepare your own lunch to avoid take away food; when you prepare your lunch, you can know/manage quality and quantity of the food. Most of fast food contains too much calories as they are focused on taste and speed, not health. I found that I most likely eat more than I eat normally when I eat out. So prepare your lunch box from home. It will make you eat less and healthy food, and also save your pocket.

3. Lunch time exercises such as gym classes, walking; I can see most of my co-workers have lunch on the desk and surfing internet most of their lunch time. You can utilise the time for getting fitter and healthier. There are many lunch classes are offered by gyms for workers. You can do 45 minutes exercise at lunch time which is widely recommended to keep healthy. If it is not convenient to you, walking with co-workers will also help you to get fit. Use your lunch break for a short exercise. I promise you that will make your working day much shorter and energetic.

4. No snacks while working/bring your own fruits; Avoid nibbling high calorie snacks while you are working. Such as pieces of chocolate, buttery cookies, lollies, etc. Quite often you do not realise how much you had and how much calories you consumed as you eat them without awareness. It can become a poor eating habit. If you need to eat between meals, have fruits instead. I always pack a couple of fruits with my lunch box and it helps me to control craving on sweets.

5. Watch out food at meetings; How many times you have regretted that you had too much and unhealthy food because it was served in the meetings. When you see variety types of delicious looking food served, you would find hard to control your desire to eat more. Do not forget that you do not move at all during the meeting and you consume more food. You can easily imagine the outcome. So be conscious what you can eat during the meetings. If it is possible you to suggest/prepare the meeting food, get lighter and healthy food.

6. Don’t use the lift use stairs; try to use stairs instead of lift. Main point is we need to MOVE more. How often do you use lift for walkable distance? We all tend to prefer the more efficient, but it seems to make our body getting lazier. Make a habit on using stairs it will help you to burn out quite a lot of calories.

7. Discuss health and wellbeing issues with colleagues and encourage each other; share your knowledge’s and news in health and well-being issues with co-workers. A couple of weeks ago, a colleague sent us an email about body fat measurement and diseases from the overweight shocked us and we had a chat about it seriously quite a while. It was very good eye opening news between us. So, talk more about how to get healthier and not to get fatter. Share good exercises type and encourage each other to start/concern being healthy life. Share information about healthy food and what to avoid. When you talk and think more about health, you will put more efforts into healthy life style.

8. Make a team to work out together; at the beginning of this year, my husband and his co-workers started making teams at work and trying to work out together to lose to their target weights. I believe that this is a very good idea and all the workplaces should encourage doing the similar things. Doing together can lead higher achievement. Promise to each other as a team member gives you responsibility to achieve the team goal. Promise with your co-worker to exercise together and keep the promise. You will get healthier and also a healthy relationship with them.

9. Scale at work; nowadays many work places provide a scale for their employees. Unhealthy employees can be also a problem to employers. I believe this is a good start for both. If you don't have one in your office, request one. You need to know how heavy you are and how heavy you are supposed to be. You need to measure yourself regularly so work place can be the best place. Putting on 1kg per month does not sound too bad but you will be 12kgs heavier next year. It is scary to even think about. Measure yourself regularly is very basic but most powerful start.

10. Healthy food as refreshment for all work events; how many morning teas, afternoon drinks, birthdays, farewells, welcoming’s do you have at work every month? Request or suggest healthy refreshment. More fruits than greasy chips and heavy dips, healthy cookies than chocolate mud cakes, water or fruit juice than soft drinks.... these will create healthy eating habits at your work place. Countless occasions I regretted a lot what I ate without thinking and I believe that you would have done, too. Lets try to eat simple and healthy snacks so we can enjoy the events more.

I believe that there are many more options to keep healthier and avoid being overweight. Your ideas will be very welcomed so share them with us. Long story short, we need to move more and eat less at work. I hope my thoughts can help you to keep healthy at workplace.

                                      These were all day on our table in the meeting, 05/03/2013 (True)

                                                               What do you think?

Can elephants draw?

"Belief gets in the way of learning."

-Robert A. Heinlein

To be truthful with you, sometimes I think I might be writing about too many serious and boring topics in my blog, so today, I would like to share with you these amazing/funny pictures I have taken from my recent trip to Chiang Mai in Thailand which I have just returned from 2 days ago. 


Chiang Mai is located about 700km northwest of Bangkok and one of the most popular places to visit in Thailand. My husband and I took a half day trip to an Elephant camp/school nearby Chiang Mai City (40 minutes by Taxi) as elephant rides in a forest and elephant shows at camps/schools are well recommended to tourists like us.

 I was very impressed by only looking at the big elephants but could not believe my eyes when I saw them expertly playing basketball, accurately throwing darts to the target board, playing football, and, especially drawing impressive pictures. Initially I thought they would be able to draw only lines or dots. I mean how can elephants draw? No, it is simply IMPOSSIBLE... But I was wrong. It was true and possible as you can see below.

 

 

The pictures drawn by the elephants were sold out immediately by the amazed audiences (2000THB each, Approximately $70AUD).

I was fascinated by how powerful learning and practicing are. Learning transfer impossible to possible and practicing adds unbelievable extra value on the top of learning. Anyone can argue that how many times those poor elephants had to try again and again, and again and I do feel sorry about them, too. But the performance offered me a chance to realize the importance of learning and practicing. My husband was also amazed and said ' They can do work on Excel spread sheets soon as I do. hahaha..."

But what I am actually trying to say is "Learning can transform IMPOSSIBLE to POSSIBLE!" so, do not stop learning every single moment of your life, it will open your future and it will be lead you to the right direction.