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I finally met my dad. I last saw him when I was 18. It’s been 25 years. I stopped talking to him when I was 11; and my knowing of him stopped there, when I was a child. Now as an adult, he re-connected with to me on Facebook. My sister had dinner with him, and he and I finally met again, sat down and...
Laura Day in her book, Welcome to your Crisis, says “When a loss occurs we continue the unfinished business of mourning all the losses that we have experienced in our lifetime. We are never capable of digesting an experience completely, and every reminder or even reinjury gives us the opportunity to...
My friend has cancer. This is not just any friend, mind you. She’s one of those friends who is like family, the sort who understands me more than a family member would. The kind of friend who knows my deepest fears, my dreams, someone to whom I freely admit my failings, my faults, my guilt and...
Friendship is a strange thing. It can be smooth-sailing, rocky, soothing, draining – all with the same person. It is not that the friendship changes actually, it could be that you may know only one facet of a person. Then as you spend more time hanging out, other aspects of their personality begin to...
So Dec 21st, 2012, the dreaded doomsday, has come and gone. We all woke up on the morning of Dec 22nd, 2012 and I can look back and laugh at the absurdity of my post in Oct 2010. And where does this leave us? Apart from the realization that we should all take doomsday predictions with a pinch of salt, I am...
Networking - I used to shudder at this word. You could say “paedophile”, and I’d have the same reaction. Ask any introvert, and they’ll know exactly what I mean. We introverts feel energized from being alone with our thoughts, having long daily conversations with ourselves in our minds. We analyse,...
"The present is a rope stretched over the past. The secret to walking it is, you never look down." -- Sean StewartUntil you have faced your greatest personal challenges, you will never fully understand the truth of this quote. For we are all mostly living in the past. How many of us are so fully present in...
I dare say that ever since we became more liberal in our beliefs, and turned more atheistic, or believed in so many different permutations of religion and philosophical ways of living, I find it hard not to believe in many things I read about. Such as higher planes of consciousness, spirits and holy...
This is it. The search for the meaning of life, it’s over. You can stop looking. I’ll tell you why you’re here, why I’m here, why your parents and your horrible boss is here. To evolve. Two words, it’s as simple as that. This is what we were all put here to do. This is our grand blue-print of...
Having peace of mind is the greatest thing you can do for yourself and others, because this is the state when you are most open to others and to the world at large, both in heart and mind. It is when you are most ready to give, to share, to listen and empathise, when you hold nothing back because you are...
It was sometime in the first quarter of 2009. A friend sat in front of me, in the Starbucks outlet of the Sunway Pyramid shopping mall and told me, with total conviction, that she believed 2012 would mark the end of humanity. She didn’t say the end of the world, because the universe is going to go on, as...
We talk of embracing diversity, but we articulate it better than we do it. I work in a multi-national company, reporting to a US manager who leads an international team of multi-racial talents. In the course of my job I have dealt with team members in Shanghai, Costa Rica, India and the US. Our internal...
What color is happiness? What is its texture? Does it have a scent? Where do you feel happiness, on your body, in your heart, in your mind? How do you make it happen and how can you make it stay? There is no single answer to all of the above. Happiness just means different things to different people. All...
Two months (almost three considering my last post was on June 6th) is a long time to be away. There has been a lot going on, many changes on many levels, both professionally and personally. Now I am back a changed person. I have been challenged, heart-wise, work-wise, health-wise. At one point I was...
I had never wanted to turn this into a politics-dissecting blog, but as they say, it's easier on the ego to criticize others than to clean your own backyard. And then they also say to cut one's nose to spite one's face. I have been really impatient about the way UMNO is running the country. I personally...
I’ve been reading about maturity these days and thought I'd share some interesting findings. (For the purposes of this post, I am referring to emotional or mental maturity whenever I mention “maturity”.) Physical maturity is a given, you start ageing the moment you are born. But emotional maturity can...
We are all looking for love, are we not? Love is the way to ultimate happiness, so claim the chart-topping songs. When you find your soul-mate, your life is complete, book authors write. Loneliness is a big no-no, medical reports show. It leads to depression, increased suicide rates, shorter life spans due...
Picture this. You are born into a different world, an alternate reality. Everyone in this world still looks the same, but there is a new universal law at play. In this world, sex with the opposite gender is forbidden, taboo and in some parts of the world punishable with the death sentence, no trial and no...
Naked yoga, it seems, is fast catching on in the West. Although mostly popular with gay men, co-ed classes are also being offered in some studios, where women join the class alongside the guys (both parties not necessarily gay). Nude yoga is all about shedding inhibitions, they say, being comfortable in...
Having someone to love anchors you. It’s like a tree, with its branches swaying this way and that in the storm and wind, but always knowing where its roots are, and it knows that these roots will hold it firm no matter what the weather is like above ground. Being in a relationship is like that, especially...