Tag: Mundane

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Destination – Poem about life

In the bustle of city Singapore,
I sit in my corner, feeling forlorn,
History leaves a rustle long gone,
in place are places and people mourned.

Now the hustle never seems to cease,
A constant hum that never gives peace,
I hold still, on to beauty that passed,
on to joyful quiet it once brought last.

The world, the hustle, the life goes on,
still my heart remains in days long gone,
As I sit here in this busy city,
I hold on tight to my fading memories.

– Destination, by Why Keen

This poem was inspired by something I read on Facebook by Michael Han.

He was referencing an article he read, and this was what he wrote :-

What is the foundation of a good life, money? Enough of it to live a good life? In abundance of it to live an even better life? Or, maybe it’s just an insurance for a rainy day? Because perpetual poverty can crush souls and break up families.

Surely, you can be poor and be happy, but no harm being wealthy and happy, right? Better still, be rich, happy and surrounded by life-affirming relationship. Maybe you can’t have it all, but I trust if you have life-affirming relationships, you are always rich and happy. Definitions may vary, but contentment is its defining mark. It’s the common thread that runs thru it all.

Today’s article is however about loneliness. Yet, they are all connected. It’s titled “Old and lovely after a successful career, and even when living with family.” Curious?

Well, Mr Liu’s life is featured. He retired at 76. He “took great pride in providing a comfortable life for his wife and two sons. But he said life did not turn out the way he wanted.”

“His son was failing at work and his one relationship with his wife was strained. Unable to connect with his family members, Mr Liu became extremely lonely. He blames his younger self for prioritising work and not building a good relationship with his wife and children.”

I think it’s more complicated than what is described. The journey of a life allows for many u-turns and detours and ventures into our own dark woods. We are often lost for a purpose, even if we have not figure it all out yet.

I can’t comment much on Mr Liu’s life because he lived it in a way he knows best at the time where threats and opportunities avail themselves. He made his bed with those choices and he has to sleep on it. But having said that, one can still get a new bed, regardless of age; maybe not one so large and grand that it is often colder and quieter than it’s hoped to be.

Nevertheless, he has got a point for self-introspection when he blamed his younger self for prioritising work and not building a good relationship. I guess when we are young, we chase the wind and rush towards the shimmering mirage. It’s the thrill of the chase, ambition uncaged.

We thought we have it all covered. It’s all neatly planned out. We were so sure we were on track. We were also so busy in the sinking ditches, fighting for survival – before battling with our ego and pride – that we didn’t have the time to look up to the light of a better life when we retire.

Yet time waits for no man or woman. When we are old, we look back and mourn for lost time, for seasons that could have been spent less on chasing the wind and more on farming the land.

Alas, Aristotle once said: “The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.”

And the issue is, when you are in it, especially when you just started out, you can’t see clearly. It’s like being masked with narrow slits for eyes and you can only see but a slice of reality. We are very much like horses with blinders at both sides, only hearing the chanting of the crowd to finish first, to beat the rest.

The thrill of the chase, the rush and the climb is not always what we imagine it to be. When we arrive at the top, it may just be a place far lonelier than we can imagine. A place all the money in the world cannot console or reassure.

Going back to the article, the authors concluded with this: “Tackling loneliness is fundamentally a question about what makes our life worth living to ourselves and others, and whether we can create opportunities to build our own interests throughout our lives.”

But I believe these interests we build for ourselves have to be one that we readily share with others, keeping them in mind, and always deepening the connection as we journey along. That is what Aristotle means when he said that “wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.”

This also include the acquisition of power and fame. For if they are not instrumental to something else, but an end in itself, we will always struggle to reconcile what has been with what is. It’s lonely at the top.

Let me end with the words of the late Professor David Foster Wallace. He described the Western modern culture as such: –

“Extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdom, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it.”

“But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying.”

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

Read that again. Let it sink in. You may just find your point of infection in your currently planned trajectory of life, whichever season you are in. Cheers.

Reference :- Original post by Michael Han on Facebook

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7th Heaven – Another 3 Word Game Story

Here was another story we came up with, with the help of ChatGPT as my editor. The 3 words were “Heaven” for the place, “Michelin Star Chef” for the person, and “Water Bottle” for the thing.

Let’s see what my own organic generative intelligence came up with.

Chef Julien is the proud owner of seven restaurants, each with a Michelin star for their exceptional fusion cuisine. Among his culinary delights, Chef Julien is famous for his delectable char siew that features a perfect blend of texture, taste, and aroma, making it the most coveted dish in the world. Despite the accolades and envy from other chefs, Chef Julien keeps the secret recipe to himself, even from his trusted team of assistant chefs.

However, one chef, Kong Wah Zai, an ambitious and upcoming chef, is determined to learn the secrets of Chef Julien’s char siew. Disguising himself as a fresh culinary school graduate with his youthful looks, Wah Zai successfully infiltrates Chef Julien’s flagship restaurant, 7th Heaven, and works diligently for seven months before gaining access to the inner sanctum of the kitchen.

Inside the inner sanctum, Wah Zai observes Chef Julien’s nightly routine of bringing a water bottle into a small furnace kitchen at midnight, only to emerge at 7 am with freshly cooked char siew that is then distributed to the other restaurants in the chain. The chef guards the water bottle closely, never allowing it out of his sight, which makes Wah Zai suspect that the key to the recipe might lie within the bottle.

After an elaborate scheme, Wah Zai manages to steal the water bottle and takes it back to his own kitchen to experiment with the contents. The bottle contains a special sauce that Wah Zai uses to coat his own char siew, following the same process as Chef Julien, and patiently waiting seven hours for the meat to be done. Wah Zai is confident that his version of the char siew will be exceptional.

However, Chef Julien’s reaction to losing his water bottle surprises Wah Zai. During a meeting with his team, the chef suddenly cries out, “Has anyone seen my bottle? It’s my piss from last night!”

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Intermittent Fasting – Why fast?

“Siao ah!?
I love good food so much, how can I fast?” 

This was my response when I saw how effective fasting was for a master photographer friend of mine, Wesley. This was likely 3 or 4 years back when I witnessed how he went from being rounder than me to becoming fit and lean in a year. I am a ‘live to eat’ person, so it seemed impossible for me to ever get on a plan like this.

I didn’t know about the science behind it, and I think I was confused about what it all was. I thought I knew what fasting was, so I rejected it before even finding out more until I came across a series of videos by Dr. Jason Fung, a medical doctor advocating fasting on YouTube. 

After realizing what fasting was all about, I gave it a try, and I never looked back since. If you remember what I have mentioned in my previous posts, I have lost 16 kg over the course of a year, but specifically, over the past 6 months due to fasting.

Not a Diet

Firstly, intermittent fasting is not a diet, as in you do not restrict what you eat but of restricting when you are eating. You eat only during certain hours of the day, and fast for the rest.

Not a Weight Loss Program

Secondly, let me share what I found out about the benefits for our bodies and brains beyond just weight loss.

Intermittent fasting helps us burn fat faster, lower our blood pressure and cholesterol levels, enhance our cognitive function and memory, and even protect us from diseases like diabetes and cancer(but I will share more about this next time when I talk about the next level of fasting, prolonged fasting).

How?

Well, it’s all about metabolic switching.

Metabolic switching is when our body switches from using glucose (sugar which is stored in our liver) as its main source of energy to using ketones (which is stored in fat). (Reference : NIH)

Basically, this should sound familiar, we learnt this in school during science classes.

But there are some aspects that have only been discovered relatively recently. 

The theory is that metabolic switching isn’t done easily. An analogy I heard used was that our bodies can be described as massive factories. Imagine that the factories can use two sources of power, glucose and ketones. The problem is that when the factory is using one source of power, it cannot switch easily.

“The problem is that when the factory is using one source of power, it cannot switch easily.”

It needs a few hours to switch fuel sources. Picture having the entire factory’s workers having to move heavy machinery around whenever a switch is required.

So you can picture how reluctant the factory’s supervisors are to order a switch, and would delay as much as possible.

So, in this analogy, your body is in the glucose processing mode whenever you are eating. And if you are eating every few hours or so, no matter how much, your body would prefer to keep in this mode.

One major problem is that the body also would keep 20% of whatever you eat as fats by default. So even if you only ate ONE cookie when you are hungry in between lunch and dinner, your body would turn 20% of that to storage, AND keep the system at the glucose processing mode.

Research shows that ketone processing mode is never reached if you do not fast for at least 12 hours. What this means is, that additional 20% you stored earlier in fat storage? It will never get used up.

One of the top experts on intermittent fasting is a guy named Mark Mattson, a brain scientist at Johns Hopkins, and he’s been studying this stuff for 25 years. He says that our bodies are actually designed to go without food for a long time. Even for days.

Think about it. Back in the old days, before humans had farms and supermarkets, we had to hunt and gather our food. And that was not easy. It took hours and hours of walking, running, climbing, digging, and fighting. Sometimes we found a lot of food, sometimes we found nothing. So we had to adapt to survive on whatever we could get. Our bodies are designed to keep running lean, hence going for days in the ketones processing mode until we get food.

And you know what? We were healthier back then. We were leaner, stronger, and smarter.

But things have changed a lot since then.

Nowadays, we have food everywhere. And not just any food. Processed food. Junk food. Fast food. Food that makes us fat and sick.

And we don’t stop eating. Ever.

We eat when we wake up, when we work, when we watch TV, when we go online, when we go to bed. We eat all day and all night.

And you know what? We’re not healthier now. We’re now fatter, weaker, and dumber.

The reason for this is that our modern lifestyles make it such that our bodies would NEVER touch fats as a source of fuel unless we stop eating, i.e. fast from 3-18 hours depending on what we ate.

(Reference : https://www.physiciansplan.com/blog/the-science-behind-intermittent-fasting)

“… before humans had farms and supermarkets…
sometimes we found a lot of food, sometimes we found nothing.

So how do we do this?

I would share more about what I did next time, but for now, research has shown that even doing a 12 hour fast is better than nothing. Simply put, you can just start by not snacking after dinner, and have your breakfast only after 12 hours.

As usual, even though 12 hours is super safe, I have to state again that I am not your doctor, so before you start, make sure you check with your doctor first.

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Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri

Dear Muslim friends, as the month of Ramadan comes to a close, I would like to wish you and your loved ones a joyous and blessed Hari Raya Aidilfitri!

Every year, I witness my friends fasting, and always appreciated their will power and spirituality. This year, the difference is that I am doing prolonged fasts that lasted up to 88 hours, and have a deeper appreciation of the meaning behind fasting during Ramadan now. Noting that a water fast is very different from fasting during Ramadan, I went to find out more about what goes on behind fasting, about Ramadan fasting being about promoting self-discipline, self-control, and empathy towards those who are less fortunate. It encourages Muslims to practice patience, humility, and compassion, as well as to strengthen their faith and spiritual connection with God.

I have similar insights. Even though my beliefs are different, I have found a deeper connection to my spiritual self through prolonged fasting, a greater sense of gratitude for everything around me, and more empathy to the fellow human being. With this, a deeper respect and appreciation of the different traditions and experiences that people have, even if they may be different from my own.

I would like to wish all my Muslim friends be filled with love, happiness, and togetherness as you this special occasion with family and friends. Selamat Hari Raya!

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Fasting for health

I want to share about an amazing secret I found.

Why Keen before and after, 16kg different

Let us take a look at exhibit A. On the left was Why Keen a year ago, and this is the same guy now, 16kg lighter than before.

I am telling you this not because of pride about my appearance. If you know me, you would know I don’t care much about how I look. I am sharing this with you because I found an amazing secret to our health that I hope to share with the entire world.

I will touch a little bit about what I have found, but I think this topic has a lot of details and I would probably revisit over the next few months.

Not an Image Problem

That’s not to say I was fully happy with how I looked, it was more of me coming to terms that I would not look any better than how I was so might as well embrace reality as it was?

This was important because of the next point

Liver Let Die

I had a health check done 4 years ago which found that I had a fatty liver. Doctor advised me to check my diet, and abstain from alcohol. Alcohol was easy, as I was always just a casual drinker, but I am a lover of tasty food, and tasty food is almost always unhealthy.

Sad asian guy eating vegetables

Diets Did Not Work

Over the years, I tried everything to change my diet. I tried totally abstaining from sweet things (still important to cut, but totally stopping was almost impossible), replacing all carbs with beans and vegetables only, eating meat only (a form of ketogenic diet, even though I didn’t know what that was initially). Everything failed. What was the reason?

Because each time I got on a diet, I hated myself for it.

Start with Compassion

On the fitness front, I started doing what I could, tried running, swimming, and going to the gym regularly. I found out very early on that I needed to make sure I enjoyed myself in the process of doing that activity. It was about starting with compassion for myself.

The trick is finding something I enjoy the process of. In my case, it was jogging and walking long distances. At the start, I made sure there was a little reward (usually tasty food!), then over time, I could ramp up the difficulty, by either increasing the distance, or the speed.

It worked because I ‘tricked’ myself to enjoy the jog. Related to my recent framing of a “Shadow Self” or my roommate as I called him, I must get myself aligned with my programme of a better health.

If “trick” doesn’t sound positive enough, to put it in a different way, I was able to convince my body and my mind that this was something fun. I have been regularly jogging and walking for at least half an hour at an elevated heart rate of about 120 bpm every morning for more than a year now because of that.

So why the diets failed was because diets were troublesome, and expensive. Most of the time, it was also difficult to find diets which tasted good. Hence, there were many layers of pain, and I hated it.

Was there thus a different way to ‘trick’ myself into eating healthy without causing so much pain?

Fasting was the answer!

Part 1 – Intermittent Fasting

I began fasting in December 2022. It was an intermittent fasting, so I had 16 hours of not eating, then a window of 8 hours where I would get my meals. First of all, fasting 16 hours was not too difficult for me at all, it just meant skipping breakfast in the morning.

On top of that, how I got myself on the program willingly was to allow myself to eat anything I craved in the 8 hours of eating. That included ice cream, and char kway teow.

Also, I was not super strict on myself. Even during the 16 hours of fasting, if I ever felt pain or discomfort, I allowed myself to eat. The idea was to do this over the long run, and breaking the pattern was acceptable.

Over time, my weight dropped by 6 kg within a little more than a month.

Limitless, a series by National Geographic

Part 2 – Prolonged Fasting for Long Term health

Some time in February, I found an interesting documentary on Disney Plus. Chris Hemsworth, famous for playing one of the Avengers on the MCU, Thor, was on a journey to discovering secrets for long term health. In one of the episodes, he did a 4 day fast.

In that episode, they featured doctors and scientists who talked about the benefits of fasting, which are amazing (I would share more about what I learnt later). The TLDR version of it was, prolonged fasting had the potential to put the body into ketosis (which burnt fat as a main source of fuel), and autophagy (which gets our cells to go through renewal) if a person fasts up to 3 days and more.

Since I was already getting used to Intermittent Fasting, I just tried fasting for 3 days, and I have not looked back since.

Essentially, this kind of long term fasting was almost painless (I will share more later), I had more energy during the day, I ran faster, and I felt lighter. Thor essentially taught me how to unlock a superhuman power within my own body.

Some caveats I need to state here is that I am not a doctor, so do talk to your doctor to check if fasting is safe for you, especially if you have some underlying health problems! But if you like, we can talk about it too, and I will share more with you about this.