A Walk In The Park

It has been months since I last had my regular walk in the park which is a mile away from where I live. This morning when I woke up, I failed the motivation test as when I could not find my pedometer; I quit making the move to walk. I ended up internet browsing and reading instead.

By mid-day my daughter and I went to watch the latest Disney movie, Ratatouille. It was about a rat having a strong passion to become a chef. There’s lots of learning in the movie, about living your passion, about no giving up and about standing up to what you believe in. As we walked out of the cinema, my 15-year old daughter, Adilah said that she would want to be a chef.

She has always expressed her desire to be a chef. Ever since she was seven, she started watching all the cooking shows, experiments some recipes and at one point even sold some of her culinary delights to her classmates. Watching Ratatouille reinforced her passion and by now she is very sure of becoming a chef one day.

When evening comes, I started to feel restless and decided to take a walk in the nearby park. I put on my sports attire, my walking shoes and drove to the park. My target was to hit 2 rounds which cover approximately 2 miles. As I hit the ground, I started to savor the scenes at the park. First I encountered people feeding monkeys. There must be more than fifty monkeys, some adults and some looked like they’re mere babies a few weeks old. They looked so cute running around and eating bits of bread from the kind visitors.

The shooting fountain at the lake was also a great view and there’s a group of people scooping small fishes from the pond with their little nets. I wondered what they would do with the little fish they caught. Taking the fish from their natural habitat would surely shorten their life span.

As I continued walking, I met Marilyn, a colleague at work. I was inspired when I saw her as I knew that she just had a knee surgery and she is already walking. I used to see her when I walked during weekends.

At one point, I started to talk to the trees from my heart, that I missed them and thanked them for still being there for the rest of the joggers. I used to walk before sunrise and the air was fresher in the morning. The smell of the trees is fresher and the fragrance of the flowers is truly remarkable at 5.30 a.m. When I passed the waterfall, I stopped for a moment to savor the therapeutic sound and vision of the water flowing into the lake with the fish swimming underneath it. The scenery was worth savoring for.

I walked for 45 minutes and today reached 6,946 steps on my pedometer. My ultimate goal is to reach 10,000 steps on a daily basis. I have led a very sedentary life and most days I would clocked in around 1,200 steps. Can you believe that? I have always been very tired and use the excuse as coming home late from work for not walking or exercising.

Today, I am grateful that I made a choice to begin my exercise by taking a walk in the park.

Meeting With A Millionaire

On Thursday morning, my part-time young driver sent me to a specialist. I was there a week ago. This time it was for me to take my blood test results. When the doctor related the results to me, it was like "The Day That Changed My Life".

I am not sure how to describe it but it was so real. My liver is swollen. That shocked me as I have no clue how it can happen. I have never consumed alcohol in my entire life, never had jaundice fever and never was on any liver medication. My blood sugar was high, my cholesterol was high and my white blood cells count was high which was termed as mild leucocytosis. Next, the doctor told me what I should eat i.e. fish and vegetables only and told me of the medication I need to take etc. When I was in the doctor's room lying down listening to him, it all happened so fast and I cannot recall how I felt. The doctor was good, he gave me assurance not to worry, he would give some medication and would see me again in three weeks.

A call was made to my part-time driver and as I waited for the nurse to dispense the medication, all that the doctor had just said began to sink in. I felt like crying as it dawned on me how serious my health condition was and I may not live very long. I knew and had been struggling to lose weight but I guess nothing ever hit me until I read those reports. Since last week, after my first visit, I had stricter control on my diet and I had lost 9.68 pounds. For a week, I had been cutting down on my food, limiting to mainly fish, chicken and vegetables. Each day, I got excited losing the pounds as I plotted my graph.

As I begin to worry about my condition, suddenly images of Hamu crossed my mind. She was our Call Center Staff who had liver cancer almost at the final stage where all the doctors told her she had a few more months to live. Whatever the doctors had said, seeing her was a different matter altogether. She appeared normal and excited and no one would guess how terminally ill she was. It's been two years since she beat it, got married last year and delivered a healthy baby last month. Images of her bubbly personality came into my mind. Her condition was far worse than mine and I then resolve that I can beat this too.

Even though at times images of defeat slide in, I kept thinking about the show I was going to perform on Friday in front of 100 audience. I planned to have an outstanding opening with dry ice for an Agency Executive Seminar in a hotel. Well that kept me going.

When my driver fetched me, he spoke about a millionaire he met the previous night and he was surprised the millionaire knew me well. Then I made a call to this young millionaire, Azman Bidin. I told him I wanted to see him. He agreed and we met at 8.30 p.m. Two young man and another friend joined us. It was inspiring to see him and how he has grown. He spoke a great deal on the mindset, what it takes to be successful and shared with us his experience and even his dreams. It was uplifting to see him speak. Anyone who sees this frail looking man who is exceptionally thin wouldn't guess that he is so powerful, so influential, so passionate yet so humble in his ways. We were with him for 3 hours and at the end of the session, the two young man who came with me shared their excitement to jump in the business with the millionaire. I, too am so impressed with him as I once knew him as a staff in an Audit Department from the same company where I once worked. Both of us had left that company.

After my meeting with him that night, I forgot about my condition, reached for my computer as soon as I got home, worked on my presentation materials and went for slumber at 2.00 a.m. Yesterday I woke up at 7.00 a.m., switched on my computer and did my finishing touches on my slides.

I had a great session where I managed to mesmerize my audience with my story about the boy who shocked Harry Houdini with a magic trick. I did the magic trick in front of the audience where I held a scarf, then picked a watch from a lady, put it under the scarf, got a person from each table to touch the watch and then went up to the front to show the full visibility of my next move. I then swing the scarf around and showed them that the watch had disappeared! Half of the audience stood up wondering what had happened and how I did it. I turned the pockets of my jackets out so that they could see that I did not hid it anywhere in my jacket. Then I told them that I couldn't share with them how it was done and I said,"It's called 'Job Security'!". The audience laughed. The experience was truly fulfilling. Of course, I learned all that from my own learning investment attending the American Society for Training & Development Conference in Orlando, Florida in June, the year of September 11 incident. I created myself to be exclusive just as what Azman, the Millionaire said that being exclusive is key in becoming a successful person.

Hence, my night with the millionaire was a night to remember as it happened on The Day That Changed My Life!

Silver Anniversary

Today, I am grateful to be alive to celebrate my 25^th wedding anniversary. Yesterday, my daughter arrived from Arizona, enduring 19 hours of a long haul flight. She read Harry Potter cover to cover three times, did some calculus, and chatted with a passenger from California whom she did not even bother to ask his name. It felt good to see her again after leaving her in Arizona early this year.

Last night she wanted to see her cousins (the children of the late Rusina). It felt so sad that she did not make it to see her. One of the main reasons to bring her home at that time was to see the late Rusina. We brought chocolate brownies as a memento of my silver anniversary last night to see them. We had dinner together with the rest of the extended family. As we finished dinner, we cut the brownies and distributed to them. Then the late Rusina’s husband slowly mentioned to us that he thought he would be able to reach his 25 years of marriage next year.

Hearing him made me realize how precious life is and how blessed my life is.

Looking at the other side of it, in fact he is much, much better off as he has eight wonderful children and they are very well-mannered. The eight children are well bonded. They love each other very much. I was happy that I spent my time with them last night.

Today, my husband bought me a Nokia E90 communicator! I am grateful for this gift of abundance. Being someone who is so into gadgets, I bet my colleagues in the office will definitely ask me the same question of how many cell phones I own. In fact I have a few. After a series of Nokia and then Nokia 9300 communicator, I use the Motorola 3G and at times Huawei 3G. Since I am into 3G connection, I thought that my next move is the E90 that is a communicator, with 3G capabilities, wifi, radio, camera, video, wireless presenter and so many other extra features that I am yet to explore.

Today I thank God for the abundance that flow into my life and tonight ends well with dinner at my sister’s place with my brother-in-law who showed me his red Nokia E90.