This Moment

Be happy for this moment.
This moment is your life.
Omar Khayyam

See You Later

Absent
Hey all. I’ve just crawled out of my week-long semi-comatose state. I was down with a particularly bad cold. Had fever 4 days straight. I was convinced I had the flu but no, just the common cold, insisted the doc. In my drug-induced stupor, I kept trying to console myself that some good will come out of this and whaddaya know! Having spent my days mostly in deep slumber and awake in the wee hours of the night, my body has somewhat adjusted to Central European time! Yup, I will be leaving for my European adventure in a few days’ time. I’m not sure if I’ll be blogging on the road so if there are no updates here next month, do pardon me!

Present
While lying sick in bed the other day, it dawned on me how we tend to really be in the present during extremes in our lives — in mirth or gloom, when we’re experience great pain or pleasure or during moments when we were this close to death. The other parts — those that make the bulk of our lives — we merely go through the motions, only to be referred to when current times are bad: “those were the days”, “I wish things were back to normal”, etc. Over the past few years, I’ve been trying to live my life positively in the present and I have to say that it has helped tremendously in the way I see and live my life. I genuinely believe that living with a positive mindset coupled with affirmative action has helped me achieved a lot of my goals — one of which is this very trip I’m taking. :)

Tomorrow is May Day for many of you folks, so enjoy the long weekend!

One for the Superstitious

In a phone conversation I had with a friend last week, I had announced, prematurely, that I may have outgrown my asthma. That very night, I dreamt of someone choking me and then I woke up coughing profusely. A few hours later the coughs became more severe and were accompanied by deep wheezing and by noon, I was getting more and more breathless.

This is the fourth time in as many years that I’ve fallen ill after telling someone that I’ve never felt better. For someone who is superstitious, this is probably a good enough rate to warrant a jinx status, but fortunately I’m not.

I noticed that I tend to fall ill around this time of the year. According to my doctor, he sees more people in the last few months of the year — November-December are the wettest months here and when people tend to be cooped up in their homes and offices, it makes it easier for viruses to spread.

The end of the year is also the time I catch up with old friends so this pattern of calling people up telling them how good I’ve been only to fall sick a few days later is not a just case of bad luck . :)

The Heat is On, It’s On the Street
Good Things in a Hot Situation

It’s been scorching hot the past few weeks on this sunny island. Three weeks ago, I was waiting for a bus in the middle of the afternoon sun. By the time the bus arrived (some 30 minutes later!), my skin had been burnt to a golden brown crisp. I suffered a terrible headache which didn’t go away until the next day (I suffered two daylong headaches this week alone just by walking 10 minutes in the sun). [Read more....]