Day 3 – Think young.

Have you ever wonder why kids are always happy? It’s not because they don’t have to think about money or job or responsibility. I don’t know how about children of other family but when I was a kid, my parents always teach me to aware of the family financial situation, about the responsibility to take care of the family, for example, with small things like house works, etc… But I was a happy kid, indeed, my world was always filled with the brightest colours.

The difference between children and us is certainly not the responsibility of being an adult. It is the way we see things that make things so different. When we grow up, the pinky road somehow turn into a foggy cloudy one, and you suddenly wonder where did all the pink roses gone? Why did they all wither? Why are there only thorny branches left? It is not easy to explain how we turn from an innocent and carefree kid into the adult we are now. It might be because we can no longer reply on our parents when things go wrong. It might be because we have learnt too much that we can no longer see the good side of everything. But this entry is not about why we are so different to who we are when we were kids, it is about how to live as happy as a kid. Of course, we can no longer walk back to the road of a child, it is what it means to be an adult; but for one day of your life, set yourself free from all the weight and allow yourself to remember the kid you used to be might be the solution to all the problems that you have been coping with.

So here is how your do it:

• Looks for a place where you can play with children (ideally 1 to 5 years old) for a whole day. It can be a kindergarten, a park, an orphanage, or ask friends or family members if you can come over and play with the kids.
• Now that you have to children, take one day off your daily life.
• Spend the whole days play with the kids. Try to act like them, speak like them and for sometimes you will find yourself to think like them.

Note:

• Do not use adult’s reason and logic when you talk to children, if they do something you think wrong, just ask them why they do that, figure out their own logic.
• If you think something is brilliant, ask them what make they do or say that.
• Remember the experience with the kids and try it without being with the kids, it might make you feel better.

If you spend time around a child or at least look at some magazine where people tell the stories of their childrens, you sometimes find yourself giggle or laugh so hard and think “oh that’s freaking brilliant”. Children are sometimes the source of the most brilliant ideas that you have ever heard of. For that reason, when we can’t solve a problem with an adult’s logic, ask a kid for help. Because children don’t know much, they think of a problem much simplier than us and that make it much faster to solve a problem. The solution might be absolutely wrong but it give you some ideas about how to do it with adult’s logic.

Anyway, always remember, when a problem is not deadly serious, if children can’t solve it, they just quickly forget and move on with their game. If you can do the same, your life will be much easier as it is now. Have you ever read the astrology about a Sagittarius? Then you should, because it show you how an adult can live as happy as a child. Even if you can’t be like them, you should be able to do the same thing for just one day in your busy life.

Day 2 – Good food make you happy.

Do you know that good food make you happy? That is, of course, the reason why a lot of people are having problem with their own weight. We feel depressed, we eat, we feel good, back to 1. But what we concern here is not about obesity, it is about the stress, so unless your problem is that you’re overweight, go make something good. And here is the rule:

• Chose something that you have had in the past in a nice restaurant and you want to eat that lovely food again.
• Google the recipe, if you don’t know the name of the food then try remember what are in that food, it will give you some idea to google.
• When you get the recipe, write down the ingredient on a paper.
• Go to the market and buy what you wrote on the paper
• Go home and start to cook.
• Invite your family to try your food

Note:

• Instant food is a NO NO.
• Fresh ingredients are always the best choice. If they really don’t have the fresh one then go for the dried/frozen one or look somewhere else.
• Never think that it is a waste of time to cook by yourself because you waste more time drowning yourself in your depression.
• Do not use lame excuse such as “I CAN’T EVEN COOK”. Everyone can cook, even a child know how to make omelette, come on. Also if one do not know, one can always learn; it’s not too late for you to learn how to cook.

You know what is the saddest thing in the world? Eating fastfood, instant food, ready-to-make food everyday. Why? Because cooking is a pleasure. It give you sometimes off your stressful work, it give your brain some rest from all the heavy thought; and also, when you make something real good, it makes you feel proud of yourself. What happens when you feel proud of yourself is that you know that you worth living, you are something good in this world. And of course, you are, you just don’t see it because you let all the stress cloud your eyes.

If you know how to cook now, then let’s try something else, let create an art out of your food, try some new spices, throw away the recipe and make something that suit your personality. By doing this, cooking might become the most enjoyable time, have fun with it and free yourself from troubles for just an hour or two.

Anyway, don’t forget the deadline of your work, still.

Easy sea food chowder for a fancier day.

1_Ingredient (for 4 people):

_10 Mussel  (Vietnamese can replace this with “ngao”)
_50 gram Ham
_1 Potato
_1/2 Onion
_1 tea spoon sweetener (or 1/2 tea spoon sugar)
_2 table spoon blended dried shrimp (or fish stock)
_Dill
_1/2 cup of milk
_1 table spoon corn flour

Optional:

_100gr unskinned shrimp (for people who doesn’t have money problem)
_1 Celery (for people who doesn’t mind the smell and like some green vege)
_1 cup of cream  for those who doesn’t mind about the fat, it add the flavour ❤

2_Cook them:

Step 1: Wash the mussels, put them into a pot and put it on the stove. You don’t need water to boil mussel.

Step 2: While waiting for the mussel to be cooked:

_Cut the  ham into ~0,5cm x 0,5cm pieces
_Peel the potato and cut into ~1cm x 1cm x 1cm pieces
_Peel the onion and cut into ~1cm x 1cm pieces
_Slice the dill into very small pieces
_Put milk and corn flour in a cup and mix well.

If have shrimp and celery:

_Wash the shrimp
_Cut celery into ~1cm pieces

Step 3: When the mussels’ shells are opened, take the mussels’ meat out and cut into smaller pieces. If you don’t mind about the water that you used to boil mussel, keep it for the soup, if you mind then just throw it away.

Step 4: Put the soup pot onto the stove (prefer non-stick pot). Wait for it to heat up then put in some oil. Wait for 30 second for the oil to heat then put in the onion and ham. When you think it smell good, throw in the mussel, potato (shrimp and celery) to fry with them. Put sweetener (sugar), blended dried shrimp (fish stock) and dill in and mix everything well. (remember NO SALT ADDED)

Step 5: Pour in some water (until it cover the mixture). If you keep the mussel juice then use it. If you want cream, this is time to put in. Remember to adjust the water just enough to cover the mixture, don’t put in too much. Turn down the heat and leave the mixture to shimmer.

Step 6: When the potato is soft enough (poke it), pour the mixture of milk and corn flour in, turn the heat on a bit and stir the soup constantly, make sure that it doesn’t stick to the pot. Try the soup and put some salt or fish stock in if needed. When the soup start to boil, turn off the stove and put the soup into bowls.

Have by itself or with garlic bread.

Have a happy meal~~~

Day 1: Sort it up!

When problems come, they often come in group, a large group, large enough to cloud your mind. And when your mind is cloudy, even smallest mistake become a problem and is added into the group and make it larger and larger. Drown yourself in distress and blame everything on people around you won’t help you out of the mess, instead, it drags you deeper and deeper to the madness that will sooner or later destroy you, and worst, it also destroy your beloved relationship with other people (which, of course, add more bad thing into your mess).

Eliminate problems before it get to you, and if there are too many of them, the best thing would be: SORT THEM UP!

• Get a blank paper and a pen.
• Take 30 minutes or more off any work that you are doing.
• Write down all the thing that make you depress, even the smallest problem should be written down.
• Number them (remember to consider which one is more urgent, something due in the next couple of day should be put to prior)
• Start to solve from problem number 1.
• Once you finish solving a problem, cross it off the paper.

Note:

• Don’t skip any problem.
• Don’t move to another problem before you finish solving the previous one.
• Don’t rush, a big problem might take time to solve. Don’t forget to rest and try another way of relax in the middle of solving the problem. (Refer to the 2nd note)
• If more problem come, add it into the list.
• Note number 2 can be ignored if some ermegency comes up.

This list is not only to keep the mess in an order that you can comprehense, it also give time for you to think whether the problem is deadly serious or just a small ant that you somehow thought it was as big as an elephant. The reason why you have to solve one problem at a time is because the idea of this list is to get you out of the mess, not to put you in another mess. Concentrating on one thing make it faster and easier to solve the problem. If you happen to be a procastinator, which most of us are, then choose 3 biggest problem and switch between them when you’re tired of the other one. However, 30 minutes is the minimum time you spend on each problem before you switch to another.

This will help sort your life up, if you really determine to sort it up.