Image from http://www.dl-design.se
For once, there is no confusion on how to interpret the date. Any way you look at it, 08.08.08 is 8th of August, 2008. Unlike, say, 07.08.08, which can mean 7th of August, 2008 in Malaysia, or 8th of July, 2008 in the Philippines and the USA, or 8th of August, 2007 for countries that follow the YY-MM-DD format.
The number ‘8′ has always been considered auspicious by the Chinese because, as Wikipedia explains:
The word for “eight” (八，捌) in Chinese (Pinyin: bā) sounds similar to the word which means “prosper” or “wealth” (发 – short for “发财”, Pinyin: fā). In regional dialects the words for “eight” and “fortune” are also similar, eg Cantonese “baat” and “faat”.
I bet tomorrow’s newspaper will show people tying the knot in droves. Perhaps, there may even be an article or two about babies born on this very special day.
Then there’s the Beijing Olympics that officially starts today. I wonder how long it took China to realise that they must have the Olympics in China this year, by hook or by crook. Although, from the look of things since the beginning of 2008, it doesn’t seem to bring China any luck — just typhoons, earthquakes and all sorts of controversies so far.
This brings to mind the 2020 Olympics — I wonder if Malaysia will bid for it? It will be the crowning glory for Malaysia when it achieves its vision to be a fully developed nation by the year 2020. Notice how I used the word ‘when’ instead of ‘if’. I have faith in you, Malaysia! ;)
But for now, forget about weeding the garden or shopping for outdoor furniture covers because it’s time to spend long hours in front of the boob tube to watch our favourite events and cheer for our national teams. Let the Games begin!
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Addendum:
The lighting of the Olympic Cauldron in Beijing 2008 was nothing short of spectacular, finally surpassing the dramatic way in which an archer fired a flaming arrow to ‘light’ the Olympic Cauldron in Barcelona 1992.
For Beijing 2008, celebrated Chinese gymnast Li Ning was hoisted 75 feet in the air, held up by an ingenius system of cables, who then ‘ran’ on the inside perimeter of the “Bird’s Nest” stadium. This was a stroke of genius, if you ask me. After all, this is how heroes and heroines of Chinese kung fu movies ‘jump up’ to impossible heights, ‘climb walls’ and even ‘fly’.
And while Li Ning ‘ran’, an electronic carpet kept ‘unrolling’ under his feet, which revealed a collage of images of the Olympic torch’s journey around the world before it reached Beijing.
Finally, he reached a gigantic unlit torch in the shape of a spiral cone. He held out the small torch that he had in his hand and lit the fuse connected to its gigantic equivalent. In a flash, the fuse lit up just like a trail of gunpowder, albeit much faster, and suddenly the Olympic Cauldron was enveloped by a huge roar of flames.
Fireworks then lit up the sky.
A most fantastic finish indeed!
If you are looking for a safe, clean, cheap place to stay in Amsterdam, try the Shelter City Hostel. It’s a Christian hostel that’s drug-free, smoke-free and alcohol-free. If you’re a party animal, stop reading right now because this place is not for you. But if you like the idea of a hostel where men and women are segregated, where a curfew is strictly followed, is drug-free, smoke-free and alcohol-free, then please read on.
The location is very convenient — it’s about 2 minutes’ walk from the Nieuwmarkt tram stop, 15 minutes’ walk from Central Station, about 15 minutes’ walk from Anne Frank huis and Nieuw Kerk (New Church). Within walking distance are restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, quaint retail outlets selling everything from kites to shoes to costumes to souvenirs. Oh, and it’s right smack at the doorstep of the Red Light District. Lola and I accidentally found this out on our first night in Amsterdam, but I’ll write about this in a separate post.
The rates start from €16.50 per person per night for a 12-20 bedded room. The price includes hot showers (shared facilities per floor, which also have a common-use hair dryer) and a free breakfast. They offer 5 different combinations for breakfast involving eggs, ham, bread, jam, butter, and/or boiled egg. You can also opt for a hot breakfast, whose menu varies everyday, e.g. French toast for Sundays.
There are no lifts in this place and you need to go up two flights of stairs to get to the girls’ floor, with the second flight being impossibly steep and small. You either leave your heavy stuff with the reception or be prepared to lug your bag by yourself.
The rooms are small and spartan, but the sheets are crisp and clean. We had a sink and mirror in our room, in addition to the small lockers that are provided for free. It’s highly encouraged to lock the lockers but you must bring your own padlock or rent one from the reception.
It felt so nostalgic sleeping on the upper bunk bed, as it reminded me of my freshman year in Eliazo Residence Hall at the Ateneo de Manila University :)
| Stairs | Bunk Beds | Sink |
|---|---|---|
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 |
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| Steep & narrow stairs | Bunk beds inside room | Sink & mirror on the right |
Most of the people who were there during our stay were young people (obviously!), but there were a few elderly guests, and even 2 Muslim ladies from Algeria who were wearing headscarves. The hostel welcomes everyone, irregardless of religion or belief… or even lack thereof. But true to their Christian nature, they have small Bibles stashed discreetly inside the lockers and also displayed conspicuously on the dining hall counter. They hold Bible studies, as well, but no one’s forced to join them.
Considering that the staff are all volunteers, I was pleasantly surprised to find everyone very friendly and helpful. I remember Michael, who patiently explained to us the house rules when we checked in and gave us directions to the new library near Central Station if we wanted free wi-fi. (We lost our way, by the way, and found the Red Light District instead.) There was also another guy whose name I never managed to find out who taught me how to pronounce ‘Zuiderzeeweg’ [zhao-der-zhey-wakh]. The people who served breakfast at the breakfast hall were also very cheerful.
| Reception | Breakfast | Hallway |
|---|---|---|
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|
| Reception counter |
Breakfast hall |
The girls’ floor |
Check-out time is quite early — 10 am — but you can leave your bags for free at the reception until 6 pm on the same day of your check-out. Again, you have to provide your own padlock or rent one from the reception.
They have a strict 2 am curfew (definitely not an issue for me and Lola!), and they only re-open the doors at 7 am. Most of the guests abide by this curfew but others don’t seem to mind getting locked out. Apparently, they just spend the whole night partying, then hanging out later on at ‘coffee shops’ before finally going back to the hostel at 7 am to sleep. [A quick note on 'coffee shops' in Amsterdam. They don't exactly sell coffee. People hang out there to smoke marijuana, which is perfectly legal over there.]
The Shelter City Hostel has another branch in the picturesque Jordaan area, the Shelter Jordan Christian Hostel.
To MyEldest,
It seemed just like yesterday when we welcomed you into this world — all 3.85 kg (8.47 lbs) of you. Your long, thick eyelashes were the first thing that everyone noticed as they peered into your scrunched up chubby little face.
You were the most adorable baby ever, often mistaken for a Eurasian. And, as most first-born babies go, you were one of the most photographed, as well. Even if it meant buying rolls and rolls of film every time. If only I had a DSLR camera already at that time!
Unfortunately, ‘adorable’ didn’t necessarily mean ‘easy to take care of’. Getting you to go to sleep was a major hurdle, especially for the first 8 weeks of your life. On those days (and nights) when I couldn’t get you to go to sleep, Uncle B would take you into his arms and sing to you Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing” until you’d fall sleep. It was either that or taking you for a drive, which always worked for as long the car kept on moving. But the difficulties never made me love you any less.
You started standing when you were just six months old. And walking at 11 months. Your first word was ‘babu’ (ball) and you loved to play with wheels. Not cars, but wheels! When your grandparents bought you a toy car that you could ride on, you rode it a lot but you played with its wheels a lot more by turning the car upside-down and spinning the wheels with your chubby little hands.
Fast forward to 2008. Suddenly, I see in front of me a boy who’s almost no longer a little boy, even though you’re still as cheeky as ever and you still make funny faces when in front of a camera. You’ve grown so big and tall. You now ask questions that I don’t always have the answers to. Very soon, you’ll be at the cusp of adolescence. Has it really been 10 years already?
I love you very much, MyEldest. I don’t care what people say or what you say, but you will always be my baby boy.
Today is the first day of yet another diet.
I’d have to confess that I’ve let myself go lately. I’ve had far too many buffet dinners, high teas that involved lots of cakes and chocolate, midnight snacks, and lots of chocolate in between. The treadmill at home is now covered with a fine layer of dust — a testimony to the (in)frequency of my usage of the ginormous object.
My wake-up call? A 3-day special sale for members at Isetan Department Store in Suria KLCC. As I mentioned in a previous post, the whole of Malaysia is on sale right now until the 1st of September. But what the 3-day special does is give Isetan members an additional 10% discount to the existing discounts, plus a few other ‘best buy’ items that’s available for members only. So what did the sale have to do with my weight? The clothes, of course. Without going into too much detail, suffice to say that I got depressed after trying on an armload of clothes that were 50-70% off…and decided to take action.
I’ll keep my target realistic and achievable: 1 kg (2.2 lbs) per week. I’ve been through the whole regimen before so I know what to do: reduce calorie intake and increase calorie usage through exercise. I also know what to expect: a maximum of 2 kg a week so as not to lose muscle.
About a year or two before the twins were conceived, I have actually enrolled in one of those programmes in a nearby slimming centre that involved consultation with a dietician, keeping a food diary (which was meticulously checked by the dietician), doing regular weigh-ins, and being subjected to all sorts of contraptions in the slimming centre: a massage that’s supposed to break down the fat cells, an infra-red machine, mud wraps, saunas. That was also the time I coaxed DH into buying the treadmill, which I used on a regular basis.
In retrospect, I believe it was the food diary, consultations with the dietician and the exercise that did the trick. That’s why I’m confident that I can achieve similar results as last time without spending big bucks in a slimming programme. The food diary played a huge part, as it made me acutely aware of what I ate and how much I ate. In fact, Time Magazine recently published an article about it, quoting results from a study by Kaiser Permanente in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that, “among dieters who were trying to lose weight, those who wrote down everything they ate lost twice as much as those who did not”.
In my past weight loss mission, I lost about 8 kg (17.6 lbs) within 6 weeks before hitting a plateau. With a bit of walking and a lot of care when it comes to my food intake, I successfully managed to maintain that weight.
Then I got pregnant with the twins. But it wasn’t really an issue because most of the weight that I gained went into the twins. I only gained about 15 kg, out of which Twin1 took up 3.15 kg (6.93 lbs), Twin2 2.85 kg (6.27 lbs) and the placenta 1 kg (2.2 lbs). If you take into account the extra water, blood, and breast tissue that accumulates in any pregnant woman’s body, there was very little fat in the total weight gain. In fact, after I gave birth, I looked the same as I did before I got pregnant with the twins.
Then came breastfeeding. Yup, I breastfed the twins exclusively for close to a year. That meant a year off from work (and what a wonderful year that was!!!) and that also meant feeling endlessly ravenous! Perhaps I wasn’t really hungry but actually just needed more fluids, but I ate and ate and ate a lot and didn’t do any exercise. The result? Excess weight that only got worse over time with poor food choices (cream sauces, cakes, sweets, fried foods, oily foods) and little or no exercise.
So here I am again, embarking on another weight loss regimen. And I’m announcing this latest endeavour to the world to put pressure on myself. Something like what the Fat Cyclist did. He used to be fat, then decided to take up cycling to lose some weight, posting his struggles in his blog in the process. He’s very fit now but continues his blog and is still known as ‘Fatty’ to his blog followers. If it worked for him, maybe it will work for me. Except that I won’t divulge my initial weight in this post :D
For starters, I was on the treadmill for 30 minutes today in the hotel gym (baby steps lah!) and limited my breakfast to a cup of coffee with artificial sweetener and some low-fat milk, a cup of muesli with fresh fruit, and mushroom-and-cheese omelette. For this morning’s snack, I nibbled on 1/4 cup toasted almond flakes with raisins. I also drink a lot of water in between, which I don’t bother writing down. Don’t worry — I won’t be boring you with the details of my daily food intake in the future. I only wanted to give you an idea of how I take note of my food intake.
Wish me luck!
Tags: diet, exercise, weight loss
I’m off to Jakarta again today. The bigger kids are used to the routine by now and don’t seem to mind one bit. In fact, they even look forward to having their Lola sleep over for two nights.
As for the twins, I also told them Mama will be in Jakarta and that Lola will be sleeping with them. Naturally, they said ‘okay’ like they always do when I tell them that Mama has to go to work. But what was I expecting? They’re just two-year olds who have no understanding of distance. Two-year olds who will still call for their mama for comfort when they wake up in the wee hours of the night…
So it came as no surprise when I found myself, once again, torn deep inside when I dropped off the twins at their playschool this morning. I had to restrain myself from running after Twin1 as he rushed to join his friends in the see-saw. I was smiling and waving as I watched Twin2 go up the stairs all by himself so confidently (holding on to the banister, as I’ve always taught him) but, deep down, I was crying.
How I wish I never have to leave my children while they’re still small and so dependent on me… How I wish I can just keep on holding them…
Why doesn’t parting ever get any easier?
Tags: parting
