Attempt to revive this bloggy thing....

For the first time I'm looking at the Stats on my blog. It's a recent feature, I think? Only has data from May 2010 onwards. 4 page views from Sg (probably just me) and 1 from the US (goo, is that you?)

Seriously, if you're reading this, leave me a comment. What brings you here?

Anyway, since I never really wrote for an audience that wasn't my mom, well, perhaps I should try to make this blog a little more informative or interesting.

Today I changed the title of this blog from "Maniac on a diet" to "Maniac on a health kick". I don't know why, I suppose the word diet has a lot of negative connotations, and I'm not one to really diet. I monitor my diet, I don't exactly restrict it or anything. I want to change the URL from maniacskipsdinner as well, but I think it's too late for that. I don't really skip dinner - I substitute carbs with slightly more healthy fare - at least, I used to. Lately, I haven't been keeping it up strictly, but I'm trying to get more healthy again since a week ago. Why? Read on...

In the past months, I've been borrowing a lot of books from my neighborhood library. First it was mostly graphic novels, then it was novels recommended by friends, then I started to introduce at least one non-fiction book into the maelstrom. I guess you can say that last year wasn't an easy year for me, having just graduated and trying to find my place in a working environment. My grandmother's passing in January 2010 wasn't exactly easy on me. I didn't get to say goodbye, was not there for the scattering of her ashes. I hadn't seen her for a year and a half, and she wasn't in the best state physically or mentally. Before her passing, she was in a few of my dreams. Since then, I still dream of her sometimes. In the dreams, she's normal and talking to me. It kind of freaks me out, and I wake up feeling pretty sad. I can't even think about the good times we had together without missing her. And like I have been doing for the past few years, I just have to stop thinking about her, which is also kind of disrespectful to her memory because I loved her so much and learned so much from her. It was small things she taught me when I was really young, like when you think you can't reach something, you only have to slowly and surely stretch a little further, and you'll probably reach it (this was when I was too short to reach the hook on which to hang the mosquito net). She taught me how to draw, stitch and embroider and use her old "Rupa" sewing machine where my little toes would sometimes get stuck in between the bars of the foot pedal...she was a pretty great seamstress and painter herself and she did yoga and loved going for walks to the lake when I was young. I remember she would have a bath every morning and then pray a little while in the God's room which smelled of incense and rice grains. But she never forced me to follow her - I was happy to watch and learn to chant the shlokas, and she taught me what to chant every night before I slept so I wouldn't have bad dreams.

Ramum skandum hanumantham vainatheyum vrukodaram shayane smarey nrityam dusvapnam tasya dasyadi.
Ramaya ramabhadraya ramachandraya vedase. Raghunathaya nathaya sithaya pathaye namaha.

When I was a teenager and she moved in to live with us, I used to join her in her evening reciting of the Gayathri manthra 10 times, with 3 "om karas" at the beginning and 3 at the end. It was a great way to still my mind, to picture the hindi letters of the words spelled out in my mind as I was chanting.

Anyway, I could go on about her and everything I learned from her. Back to the present, and I've been turning to books (as a long-time bookworm) to try to find some way to balance all these new emotions that life tends to throw at everyone. Suddenly I find myself worrying more and more about 2 things - having children and growing old. These were things that never bothered me, nor should they considering I'm in my twenties. My older cousins having kids, and the passing on of my grandparents' generation is definitely signalling a paradigm shift in my universe.

A book called Buddha's Brain was the first thing I picked up in a search for inner peace. It talks about how the brain works, and what we can do to elimate suffering (a very Buddhist outlook). It was the hardest one to finish, given the various references to amygdala, hippocampus, pre-frontal cortex, etc. that had me reeling for a while. But it was worth struggling through the technical stuff to really understand how the brain and mind influence each other, how we are all basically ignorant of the "truth" and just make up things in our heads which sometimes stick around and sometimes morph into something else. I think I may have to read it again to fully understand all of it - I did borrow and renew it 2 times over (6 weeks!) just to finish one read-through!

The second book was a recipe book on low-carb vegetarian meals. I snapped a whole lot of pictures of the recipes. Will try them out and post the ones I like the most. The problem about low-carb veggie is a lot of the recipes involve baking versus frying, and I only have a microwave and no proper oven. Not too confident about trial and error since the overhead is too much for me to just end up throwing away the food if its bad - I end up broke and hungry, no good. Also, most recipes involve eggs and cheese, two things I'm trying to go easy on since I find myself eating either egg sandwiches or cheese sandwiches a LOT.

The third and most recent book which I just finished reading today is something I've been interested to read since a colleague mentioned it last year, and also because I visited France this year - "French women don't get fat" by Mirelle Guiliano. The basic point of this book is that French women remain conscious of what they eat and choose quality over quantity and always balance a heavy meal in a day with a lighter one. They also apparently walk a lot. Given my experiences with French weather, they must like being cold and wet a lot. They also eat for the purpose of experiencing many fresh flavors rather than just filling their stomachs. I can attest to this as my French colleague pretty much displayed this trait today at lunch. However, I did not like her choice of eating place since I think the food there is so-so. She chose it because it is air conditioned and not too far from the office. She tried to convince me she thought the veggies were good, but I didn't really buy that =) But she did literally say, "I'm French, therefore I live to eat rather than eat to live". The book also highlights the tricks to eating slowly, chewing well, putting down your cutlery to take your time and thus feel fuller at the end of the meal. Well I observed all those French tricks in action today! She also takes the stairs, but she needs to climb only to the 4th storey while I have to climb to the 6th. I like climbing stairs, but the ones to my office are unforgiving post-fire drill. Walking up to the 6th floor in my apartment building is fairly doable though. I should walk up more often, whenever I'm not carrying too much.

Interestingly, a lot of things which worked for me in the past (and are recorded in this blog) are the main points of her strategy. Things like incrementally reducing portions and increasing exercise, as well as writing down everything that you eat (literally). This week I've been doing that in my weekly planner. Previously I used to write it in the blog, but I don't want to bore you, Reader, with what cereal I eat these days.

Alright, that's enough for today. I'm going on vacation for 2 weeks, so after I'm back, I will try Mirelle's miracle leek soup thing one weekend. I bought a blender today - yay!!! Will report on how my first smoothie and first soup turn out. Need to get to sleep!