to eat or not to eat.

yesterday in class we were in half tortoise and i forgot to get out of the posture when everybody else did. well i didn't really forget, i just didn't hear sy when he told us to come out of it. why i didn't hear him? well, i was thinking about my arrival in bangkok and if there were still restaurants open late at night close to the hotel, oh but surely i can get a bowl of pad thai anytime in bangkok, right? so now i apparently not only think about cupcakes but also about pad thai in my yoga classes. next time you worry that you are not focussed enough or that your mind wonders, don’t worry about it, because there might just be a teacher practising next to you who is thinking about noodles.

for this mental slip i blame the fact that i haven’t eaten pasta in 4 (!!!) days for pre-holiday toning reasons and that my mind currently revolves around little else but the planning of my upcoming trip. as you know i am a planner. i plan for a living and i plan for fun and yes, sometimes to a fault. it leaves little room for living in the moment and being spontaneous and all the crap wise things wise people tell you to do if you really want to be happy. but my happiness levels are okay most days and so i continue planning.

at times like these i enjoy the planning immensely because it is like having a mental holiday before the actual holiday and also because planning calms my nerves and i am slightly freaking out here. freaking out because i am going to asia and i have never been and i have always wanted to and what if i hate it and get homesick and cold and and and… so i am planning and since most of my trip has a set itinerary, i am focussing all my attention on the few days that i have added before and after. the amount of research i have spent on junks in halong bay and pondered on the question of how much titanic pre-sinking luxury i can afford is extensive. tripadvisor and i have gotten well acquainted and also my good, old friend google came to the helping when i simply asked: how to pick the best junk in halong bay?

google is like the reincarnated oracle of delphi. it actually found me a blog post comparing three different cruises that the author had all done himself. i like that kind of enthusiasm and effort put into the story and after i went on reading. eventually i found a post of how he went to eat dog in vietnam. let’s leave the question of whether one should eat any animals aside for just a moment and dear vegetarians would you just indulge me for a story of pure adventurous foodie spirit? i need a little food challenge in asia. what should i eat? it’s a given that there will be an entire pastaholic story about the art of eating noodles for breakfast, don’t worry. but here are some of the more … exotic options on the menu which are to be considered:

pets. i don’t want to eat a dog or a cat or a hamster. i completely understand that in other cultures they are considered food and that is fine, but for me they are pets. also hamsters have tiny, little bones and unless it’s a quail tasting likewaffle i am not fan of tiny, little bones.

snake. i think i have ophidiophobia and that extends to eating the things. i sometimes gag just seeing a snake on tv, so i don’t think the attempt to eat one would go down well.

critters and insects. anything that looks like a maggot, and a worm is just a big maggot, is a no. sorry, but i don’t care about their protein content, if you ever had maggots in your house, you wouldn’t pay money to eat some either. but maybe something crunchy, cricket-y as long as it is fried. i like fried and crispy things.

feet and stuff. i have once vetoed a mexican thanksgiving stuffing with chicken feet, but have eaten pigs’ feet and ears, so i am not sure where that leaves me on the issue of feet and other body parts like that.

blood and gore intestines. i would not necessarily say no, unless hanoi in august smells the same as nyc meatpacking district in august.

and that leaves me with the crème de la crème of exotic asian food:

the fertilized egg. a vietnamese speciality. it gives an elegant twist to the conundrum of which came first – the chicken or the egg? and no, as much as i like chicken and eggs, i don’t want chicken in egg. i would however very much like to see some fertilized eggs when they hatch. apparently it happens on the markets in summer sometimes and i think that would be awesome to see. the chicken totally wings it and gets away. sorry sir, but your lunch just hatched and ran off! now i would pay money to see that.

to summarize one could say that though i eat quite a few things, the asian, exotics might not be completely up my alley. but i like a challenge. you tell me what and i take a bite and have a picture taken to prove it too!

camel burger in fez. delicious though i felt slightly bad as we were riding camels 

the next day.

i ate some of henry's brains. the picture does them justice - they were unexciting and mushy.

bikini karma.

the other day while i was driving to get lunch i was thinking about my recently re-found resolution of being a nicer person when the driver in front of me was behaving like a complete ass and i started yelling “you fucking asshole”. the irony of this timing wasn’t lost on me and i thought thanks for irony to give us inspiration for blog posts.

so i started writing and then i stopped. it wasn’t a post i wanted to write and definitely not one i wanted to share. it felt way too personal. i don’t mind personal, you know that, and i guess i share things that other people would never share in a million years so each has a personal comfort zone of sharing. last year i challenged myself to be a nice person for one week and i wrote about it here. after searching my own blog (as i do these days since i seem to repeat my stories) i realized i did the exact same thing again a mere two month later. this time the challenge was to be a nice person for two weeks, do yoga, write a story, and learn french every day. so i can officially say my memory sucks in addition to my ability to be nice or to speak french.

whether i failed or not, sharing it back then was fine. it felt like sharing an unsuccessful diet attempt. you are just mildly embarrassed while you write, munch on kfc, and tell yourself that you actually don’t need a diet, you are okay just the way you are. 

sharing now that i am trying again feels different. it feels like sharing a picture of me in a bikini under fluorescent light after said kfc lunch – really, really uncomfortable.

but uncomfortable or not i have decided to do it anyhow and share the bikini picture: 

Challenge accepted!

Today feels like a cloud has lifted over my head. I won’t bore you with the details of why and how and what. I think I have been wining enough already lately and don’t feel like doing it anymore. I have been unhappy with myself and thus have been a complete monster to everybody around me (though I partially blame the full moon for it too this week!) and then yesterday I found this on Facebook:

I thought the only nice thought I had was the thought of eating a bag of wine gums with tropical flavour. Which I did later and it was great, but I was still a bit concerned about my facial expression if a bag of sweets was the only good thing to keep me going. So I decided after I came home from teaching that things needed to change… once again. For the next fourteen days the motto is:

Be kind.

Do yoga.

Learn French.

Write a story.
Every day.
It’s even up on my blackboard, because that’s how much I like checking things/days off lists. As it goes with good resolutions, you get instant gratification once you have made resolution the so I went to bed yesterday feeling quite peachy. During the night I got promptly smacked on my wrist, probably because I didn’t deserve to already feel so good for a resolution just made, but not lived through yet. Thus I had a dream about my ex, the new girlfriend, lots of potatoes, and a braai with them. Again, I blame the full moon, but I behaved like such a bitch in my dream, I even refused to come out of my room and stomped my feet all while making snotty comments about the girl. My mother was there too and had to tell me off… grrr. But I also loved the dream in a way. Who can blame me for enjoying a dream where I could just behave like a child? Rolling my eyes and just being really immature about the fact that the ex has a new girlfriend, something we can’t (or shouldn’t as I recently learned the hard way…) do in real life, but secretly kind of want to. Then again, you know, things really have to change when your mother is coming to tell you off in your dreams…therefore…let the challenge begin!

Challenge accepted! *

Just a quick Monday morning hello with the proof that I have finished part of my DIY project from last weekend. My own little homemade blackboard in newly spray painted frame:

Ta-Dah! I must say though that blackboard paint is a tricky one and not as easy to write on as a regular blackboard (and we all remember even that wasn’t as easy as the teacher made it look like). Therefore I have moved away from using it as my ‘To Buy’ blackboard, though I’m in desperate need of a better system than writing lists, which I will eventually leave at home anyhow.
No, for the time being I’m using it to keep score for my self-prescribed 30-day yoga challenge, which I’m starting today. Unlike everyone else around me, I can’t use winter weather as an excuse to slack since I will be travelling into the sun soon. (No, silly remarks here – there is lots of sunshine even in Germany in summer.) I also thought it might be good for my knee and general state of mind.

So here I go...30 days and yoga once a day every day. Wish me luck!

*If you know where that quote is from, I will buy you a beer.