Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Well, I think, I believe, in likelihood, I will have lost most of the belly fat - and possibly be toned at the end of these 18 days. I THINK. It is now the last few pounds - possibly 6 or 7, and I am just doing what I've been doing over the past 3 and something months. I will also start reducing my calorie intake and stop eating at 7 pm at night. I think that 10 hour fast is a good one.  Ma cooked yesterday - making white radish soup with pork bone. A simple, hearty meal which has a light broth with a musky taste. I love it when she cooks. I am always astonished how good it tastes. I am in awe of it. It makes me happy to no end that I am almost at the end of the line. When this last bit all goes, just continuing up keep with be easy and I would have done something with the past 4 months - as well as up ended my entire life. The pool was closed yesterday for maintenance. How was I to know?  We got Ma's Singpass sorted and then we will get the...

Perhaps the only thing that I have done with any consistency, apart from look after Ma, has been the exercising. The running, sit ups, stretching and swimming. In 19 days, I will have hit the 4 month or 16 week target. Why is the 4 month target important? Because that is when the body has taken the weeks of effort you have put in and it has bedded in. I am now aware that it will not be the revelation which I hoped it would be. I won't have the physical appearance which I had hoped 16 weeks would bring, but I am also aware that, as I have said a million times in the past 14 weeks, that it is correcting decades of neglect. I did not understand how much I had neglected my body - especially during the Covid lockdown.  I was thinking, as I plunged into the pool yesterday, and as I took in the silence and the peace and the luxury and the wonder of the place... that - well, first this is my usual holiday - well, not entirely usual - but that for decades too, I struggled with my own story....

Over the last few outings we have been braver and going further afield. The Rollator has really opened up possibilities and we have now gone to two great places in the last two days. Today it was Geneo. Amazing vaulted ceilings reminiscent of gothic cathedrals. It was genuinely impressive. And we had a really nice meal at the Great Nanyang outlet. I don't know what you can call it. It isn't a restaurant. Cafe I guess? After that, I had a nap and then went for a swim. Then we went to Sheng Siong. Ma made dinner. It rained loads.  Ma is doing well. After a tough week last week, she seems to have come round a bit. It rained loads today. I have just decided I will start cutting down on the amount I eat to help with the last bits of the weight loss. But its going really well. Just very content with everything.  I watched The Royal Tennanbaums  and I have no memory of it at all. I fo...

Well, I just listened to an hour long talk about the most current up to date science of aging and I did learn new things. Like how the epigenetic markers work. That as we get older, these get more confused and the more confused these get the more dysfunction takes place in cell, until it gets very garbled and the cell stops functioning like a cell. But I also learned that aging cannot be stopped as such. We haven't been able to reverse the age of cells in a living organism, especially one which is as complex as a human being. But what we can do is we can compress the disease part and we can get it to take place as close as possible to death itself.  It was interesting. And the old standards which have been observed and repeated through the millennia - diet, exercise, meaning, stress and sleep. All of these are contributors to a better, healthier form of aging. I was watching this for Ma, but then I realised this is also useful for myself. Some time along the way, I also did think a...

I'm listening to the recent US-Iran mess in the Persian Gulf. Danny Haiphong is giving a run down on the latest madness. I don't know what the US thinks it is doing. They are all mad of course. Trump has senile dementia. He cannot string two words together, never mind hold a strategy in his mind. His cabinet is delusional and fanatical. Raised on American exceptionalism, they don't seem to understand what their own limitations are. The Arabs hate the Persians. It doesn't make a difference if they are supposed to be part of the ummah. The rest of the world is looking on helplessly. Europe is going up in flames. To be honest, the state Barcelona and Madrid were in I was surprised it didn't happen sooner. It's a mess. The forests in Ireland are also burning. I do not know how much more serious it needs to get before people say this model of development is on a hiding to nothing.  It is literally unsustainable.  Oh yesterday I ate at what must be the singularly WORS...

I am currently back at looking at neurodivergence and positive conduct. I have been giving this a lot of thought over the past few weeks, if not years, possibly even months. I have also been thinking how anthroposophy can shed some light on the behaviourial aspects of neurodivergence. But first, I need to clarify the different kinds of neurodivergence. Autism : Where children have sensory processing leading to understanding behavioural cues. This then creates anxiety when they are misunderstood and this, when exacerbated results in issues around self regulation - explosive reactions, stimming, mutism, withdrawal.  Testing for autism is possible, although it is important to note that no two autisms are alike and there is no one or two or three sizes fits all solutions. Each strategy must be unique as is the child. Complete honesty and co-operation is required by the parents/ guardians.  Challenges here include how does one set boundaries without further inducing anxiety which i...

Here's something I wrote on FB today about what I did yesterday. I went to four active aging centres in Ang Mo Kio yesterday. All run by different organisations. There are active aging centres all over AMK and they are all very well used. I was told AMK especially is full of seniors. The upshot of the visits told me the following:- 1. My mum is getting the best possible care there is for an elderly person. 2. I am staying with her. She has my sister near by. My uncle's maid drops by a few times a day to check in on her and to talk about things. So she is not isolated. 3. I take her out at least once a day - to a park, mall, food centre, supermarket. We have a car and I can driver her anywhere. Most recently my sister took her to Botanic Gardens and after that we went to AMK Hub and made a passport for her. 4. She has a super balanced diet. And she cooks for me and herself at least 5 times a week. Sometimes more. She eats what she wants. I buy anything she needs if she doesn...

Boys at the AMK West Park after our meal. Many memories... What a week this has been. First. Yesterday inadvertently became my rest day. Jac came over and we went to Botanic Gardens which was beautiful. Those people know how to look after themselves.  After Botanic we went to AMK Hub to discover they had set up a Services SG centre where people who were struggling with tech were now able to do things like make a passport and do other things where people could assist them. It is one thing if the tech is great. The tech is not great. It is full of stupid loopholes. Like why should pple have to subsidise the government's tech roll out? People who don't need a smart phone having to buy and maintain a smart phone. So this centre was a good thing. I was impressed. They had taken out the entire fourth floor and turned it into a service centre. It was great. They had all kinds of things there.  Then we went to get Oisin after we came back. He was exhausted...

Well Oisin has had his own Odyssey. A very long trip, I think three layovers and 5 hours per layover. Plus landing and take off, so that's god knows what. Another five hours added to that. So yes, another whole 24 hours added to the trip. I guess this trip would have taken weeks - three to be exact. Calling in from port to port. It would have been dangerous - certainly more dangerous than it was now and there would be no contact for months so we wouldn't know how it went. When I read the Ibn Battuta travels, I thought to myself, travelling then was not for the faint hearted. Now it is for the total idiot. Unless you have to travel as part of your work, why are you travelling all the time? It is not the flex you think it is.  I learnt many years ago that I did not like tourism type travel. I decided a long time ago, I would travel for a purpose. Chiefly to meet friends. Or to visit someone. Travelling 'for fun' I did not understand. I found it pointless and frivolous. Mo...

I did run and swim yesterday. Both are now laughably easy. I can't believe how long it has taken me to get here. 12 weeks. A MERE 12 weeks, but also 12 weeks! Neither too long, nor a short time. 12 weeks. 3 months. It is so easy now. I am now near the summit. I just have to keep going for another 4 weeks. And then I will have totally locked it in. Yesterday we went to Seletar to ask the club to sell the golf membership. For the first time I had this irrational sentimental feeling of, if i could I would continue to keep the club, even though we never go there, we don't play golf, we don't need another club because we already have one here, Serangoon which is the club which we use all the time. But it was the club which Pa went too all the time and I could see him at the place, walking and golfing and... Pa... So that's what we did. I didn't think very much about Seletar. I found it very large, like overly large. Too large really. And the pool,...

Yesterday was a busy but sad day. Ma was down again. Really missing Pa. I sat with her and told her that there would be days like these... that some days it would feel heart wrenchingly difficult. For me, I know that I felt like I had been split into half. And speaking of being split into half, I can see now that it was not worth it. No man is ever worth it. Except maybe for Pa - and then he too would have not wanted Ma to feel like this.  Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead. All of my misspent youth. Today, is another difficult day - we are heading to Seletar to sign the papers for the sale of the club. The sale of the club was one of the first things Ma wanted us to do. I actually do not know how she felt about the golf. It is clear, and I was reminded about how much golf, Pa played. Did she find it irritating that he played so much golf? She was a golf widow at one stage. There's no point asking her and the time he played golf I was out of the house a lot as well. Perhaps that's...

It will be exactly a month before I leave for Ireland again. I do the final trip. It really does feel like no time at all. Amazing. Yesterday I deleted TikTok and FB off my phone. As a result I ended up watching Netflix and Youtube, yes, very funny. But I also slept more. And when I got up today at 5 am, wrote in my journal. I have been on TilTok since the 2023 genocide. I miss TikTok for the football updates. Like what the actual fuck. But it became interesting this year because of the blatant Argentinian favouritism and, of course, zionism.  I am not doing nothing, I fully understood this morning. I am fulfilling my promise to Pa to look after Ma. I am recovering my fitness and health. I am resting. I am being with my sons. I am taking a beat. I am recuperating after years and years of doing my best. And that it more than enough. So I am going to enjoy all of this. All of it. Being on FB is now so exhausting. People trying to sell you crap all the time. I have also noticed this n...

Yesterday I dud a longer run. It went to the top of Lorong Chuan - this added another km on to the run I think. Or maybe 800 m. But I still clocked under 45 mins, with the sit ups. It feels strong. Good. It feels as if I have finally come back to my old self. I am another 4 weeks off. This week is my 13th week. I am fascinated that, ok, I am not as fast as I used to be by a long shot, but I am certainly now able to run what I used to run when I was in my 20s distance wise. Alright, maybe I would have been twice a s fast getting here, maybe I would have been here by week 4, but I am here. And I am going to hold on to those hard earned gains. I went running late. Around 8.15 am. I had gotten up late. I can't even remember why. But 8.15 am is normal for most people. By the time I had completed my run and sit ups, it was just after 9 am. So maybe I think this new route should be my usual route. I got Ghin to clear the bedroom. I changed all the clocks in the house. I had meant to go sw...

Yesterday, Jac and I took Ma out for porridge and then after that we went to Woodlands Waterfront Park. It is a narrow strip of land which borders Johor and looks directly into the Straits. Just over a kilometer across is the Malaysian shore. When I stand in places like these, the frontiers, I always imagine myself 100 years ago and 100 years from now. Despite the fringes of mangroves on the Singaporean side - they have all been destroyed on the Malaysian side, there is precious little nature left. My only comfort is that nature is more resilient than we are and when we have utterly fucked everything up, nature will return and reclaim the place. It will be like that scene in Ponyo , after the flood. The pre cambrian era will return. To think, 100 years ago was 1926. Most of Singapore was still a village. It was just over 100 years since the British had arrived. World War I was just over. It was the interregnum. Singapore, like most colonies was organised chaos, or just chaos, chaos. Th...

Having spent the best part of my life addicted to drama, in 2013, I decided that my dearest wish would be to live my life without any drama. I figured that I had had enough drama in my life and I didn't need anymore. So, what I did, was I just decided to do my work and not get involved with anyone. If someone should come knocking on a door, I would consider. And I would not rush into anything.  Anyway, that was that.  I soon discovered that while I, myself, did not generate drama, people's drama did often cross my path. I also made sure that I drama proofed myself against people who were addicted to drama and would likely pull me into their sphere of drama, taking advantage of my desire to assist where I could. I soon discovered that my life was replete with drama, and people were natural catastrophists. So I weathered out storms and I did my best, once again. And while the drama wa...