It’s easy to get discouraged and feel defeated by life’s
challenges. 

Life isn’t always fair.

You wish time would slow down so you could get more done but
it won’t. 

You want your life to have meaning,

You want to be loved and you want to love.

The path in front of you seem to be filled with traps, pitfalls and despair.

You look back at all your wishes and dreams, while some may
have come to fruition, others remain covered with the dust and grime of
time. 

There will be times when you will feel defeated, hopeless
and beaten.  The dark clouds of pessimism
spawn the twin demons of depression and self pity.

I’ve learned and will continue to re-learn that how you
react and respond to life’s challenges is crucial.  Don't ever give up on yourself. 

Will I simply roll over and do nothing?  Or will I gradually pick up myself up, dust
myself off and push forward?  You have to learn not to let life defeat
you.   What’s important is your ability to learn from
it, grow, be stronger, adapt and move on. 

When you do that, you’ll have learned one of life’s most
important skills.   

I was doing a bit of some cleaning at my dad’s place the
other week.  This time it was their old
bedroom.  In today’s big houses, people would dismiss their bedroom as a small guest room or perhaps a home office.  There’s
just room for two small beds, some book cases, a dresser, a couple of chairs
and 1 closet.  With all that, there was just enough space to walk in and get to where you want.  My dad doesn’t sleep in
this bedroom anymore.  He actually moved
out at my mom’s insistence when the medical equipment in their started to keep
him awake.  That seems like such a long
time now.  Although my sister has done
some cleaning, it’s still fairly intact with the exception of a lot of books,
magazines and stuff on top of the beds.  Most
of the old furniture is still there. 
It’s nothing fancy and most of them are quite old. 

The 2 piggy banks on top of the dresser caught my eye.  It’s an old man and an old woman sitting on
their rocking chairs.  There’s an
inscription there “Our Retirement Fund”.  I think she got these when she started to
work.  She was probably in her 50’s at
that time.  She would deposit loonies
($1) and twonies ($2).  There are layers
of tape covering the hole at the bottom of the 2 piggy banks.  Over time, there have been many withdrawals –
mostly to pay for bills.      

A lot of my mom’s Chinese books are still there.  Some are still by her bedside table.  The chairs are still positioned the same
way.   I still remember how she would stretch out
there after a long day and read.  It was
one of her simple pleasures.  Just
outside the bedroom window was our neighbor’s birdfeeder.  She loved watching the jays, sparrows, robins
and squirrels feeding on it.  The plants
by the window are at my place now.  My
dad didn’t really know how to take care of them.

I try to focus on the task but there are so many things that
trigger my memories.  I try to be careful
with my dad’s papers.  I notice a large
envelope from his lawyer.  It’s his
will.  I hold the envelope for a while
and placed it back down.  He’s told me
what he wants already so there isn’t really anything in there that I don’t know
about.   But I still didn’t want to open
it.  After a while, I call it quits.  There’s a saying that cleaning can be
cathartic.  I think there’s some truth in
that.    

As odd as it sounds, the time off recovering from the cold
was actually refreshing.  I didn’t really
take any time off – just worked at a lot slower pace.  I wonder what my body is trying to tell
me.  I keep hearing and seeing
signals and signs almost every where.  At lunch the other day, my colleague
told me his weekend was quite an experience. 
He got to spend all day with his grand children.  He adores his grandchildren and I can see
they bring a lot of joy into his life. 
The next day, he visited a friend who was recently diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer.  The cancer has
already spread into the lungs and liver.  

I keep telling myself life is precious so cherish it.  I am trying to find a better work life
balance.  A lot of the things I’ve done
to get me this far at work such as working long hours and outworking
everyone else aren’t working for me anymore. 
Sometimes you just have to stop hitting your head on the wall if you don’t
want anymore headaches.   

Here are some food experiments.  I don't eat a lot of beef so this is the most beef I've had in a few months. 

I had some flank steak which is a lean cut of beef.  I marinated it and did a stir fry.  I like those sizzling hot plate restaurants
so I kept that in the back of my mind as I was preparing this dish.  I had lots of green onions, regular onoins and ginger so I
was very liberal in using them.  I also
added some spicy sauce from my bf’s mom and a bit of chili oil just to give
it a bit more zest.  The carrot was there for mostly for color but it did add a bit of sweetness.  Overall – it was
ok.  I still can't figure out how restaurants can get their beef to be so soft and tender.
 

I’ve been trying to get this dish right.  My mom used to make minced meat using beef
over rice and drizzle it with oyster sauce. 
This is from the same flank steak as the other dish.  I just split them into 2 meals.  I haven’t gotten the right texture yet but I’m getting closer with the
taste.  I think I put it into the rice
cooker a bit too early.  I added those
preserved / salted turnips, some ginger and green onions.  I had some zucchini as a side dish.

I had a very bizarre dream the other night.  I don’t remember a lot of the details.  The only thing I remember was the feeling of being sentenced
to death.   I wasn’t even in a prison but I knew my time
would be up in a couple of days.  That’s
pretty well all I could remember.  I woke
up with this intense feeling of how unfair this was, I was angry but most of
all, I remember the sense of regret.  I
didn’t want my life to end this way.  It was so
sudden.  I wanted to do more.  I wanted to live my life differently.

The feeling lingered on for some time.  A few days later, there was the Xanga featured
question about the fear of death.  Well,
I thought my answer was the pain and suffering that I might have to suffer
towards the end.  But I wasn’t really
able to articulate that nagging feeling until I thought about it a lot
more. 

Sometimes I just have to write to get things out of my
system.  Maybe it’s because I internalize
things a bit too much.  My biggest fear
about death is really regretting that I didn’t live my life to my
potential.  Now I don’t mean that I
should just quit my job and enjoy myself. 
But I want to make sure I didn’t squander this precious gift of
life. 

I’ve been working late almost every night these past few
weeks.  The irony isn't lost on me. 

The small waiting room at my doctor’s office was packed.  I sat down in the only remaining chair and
settled in for the long wait.  I stifled
my cough and took my book out to read.  A
small black cloud slowly formed over my head as I tried vainly to ignore
everyone else. 

There was a family with a small girl slowly getting
ready to leave.  The mom and dad were still
chatting with another woman.  The girl
was probably just under 2 years old with an easy smile and bright, cheery eyes.  She  walked around the waiting room and
gradually laid down on the carpet.  The
dad picked her up, brushed off her sweater and chuckled.  But every time he put her back down on her
feet, she would simply lie down on the floor and didn’t want to get up.  The mom mentioned in a somewhat embarrassed
voice that the girl was tired because she missed her afternoon nap.

The dad tried to pick her up again but she reacted like a crab
turned upside down.  Her arms and legs
were frantically swatting away any attempts to pick her up.  Finally in a mock exasperated voice, the dad
told the girl that they were leaving. 
But she wasn’t having any of this. 
One of the women laughingly remarked, “She’s got daddy around her little
fingers.”  Her dad took out his camera
and took a couple of pictures.  He turned to
the lady and said, “When she’s grown up, we’ll show her how naughty she
was.”  After a few minutes, everyone was
ready to leave and the girl reluctantly agreed to go home.  She also knew she was the centre of attention
and waved goodbye to everyone including the receptionist. 

There was also another young boy perhaps a bit older.  He stayed closed to his mom while the girl
took center stage.  Her mom had
everything for him in his stroller from snacks, water, books, toys and extra
clothing.   After the girl left, he
wandered from his mom’s lap and went for the toys in the waiting room.  He wasn’t shy at all.  He took out some toys and handed it to a
lady.  She chuckled, put her book down
and said thank you to the little boy.  She
looked at the boy’s mom and said “It’s been awhile since I’ve played with toys.  I don’t have any grandchildren yet.”   I was hoping he would come over but I also
didn’t want to infect him with whatever I had. 
Soon, it was the boy’s turn to go in. 
The father decided to wait outside. 

After a minute or two, everyone could hear the boy loudly crying.  When he finally came out, he had a grim,
serious look on his face and a lollipop in each hand. 
The mom told the father that the boy tried to make a run for the door
when the doctor was looking for the syringes. 
This got a chuckle out of everyone in the waiting room.  They soon left with the boy still clutching
on to his lollipops and waving goodbye to the receptionist. 

While the kids made the wait a bit more bearable, it was an
older lady who left a stronger impression.  She was probably in her early 60’s.  She came out of the doctor’s office with a
younger lady who looked like her daughter. 
The older lady hobbled slowly to a chair with the help of a cane and sat
down near me.  Her fingers were beginning
to be gnarled with arthritis.  Her left
arm appeared to be paralyzed.  She looked
tired and exhausted by the whole ordeal. 
Her clothes were simple and I wondered if it was enough to ward off the
cold winds of winter.  Her daughter came
back from the receptionist after booking her next appointment.  The mom quietly repeated the date and
nodded.  She painfully pulled herself up
with her daughter’s assistance.  She
shuffled to the door and they quietly left. 

My own ailments don't seem that bad anymore.