a month of resolutions

I've never been one for New Year Resolutions. However, I have been needing and wanting to establish some new/good/overdue habits. Nudged by Karl who's doing a Year of Resolutions, here are things that I am striving to do on a daily basis, during the month of February:

• write
• meditate
• fiber
• exercise

Write:
This doesn't mean churning out blog posts daily, although that might be a natural side-effect. My focus here is on the two novels knocking around in my head, one half-written, the other perhaps only 10% done, both inter-related enough that I need to map them both out properly, both to prevent inconsistencies as well as to see more nodes for connections between the two. I am 0/3 so far for this, ugh.

Meditate:
I have yet to establish regular daily meditations, even though I know I would benefit greatly from this. Shooting for doing this first thing in the morning, before I wake up the computer, because once the 'puter is on and I start checking email and twitter feeds, my attention is shot and inertia is high. I think I'm at 1/3 for this, ugh.

Fiber:
Again something to shoot for in the mornings: a glass of fiber, followed by a water chaser. This gets my digestive system on track and ensures I get at least 800 mL water in me. So far I'm 3/3 for this, yay!

Exercise:
Daily! To chase away the funk, to meet new people, to just plain move, to lose weight, to feel good, and so many more reasons. There are a variety of "free" (read: already paid for in the monthly membership fee) exercise classes at the YMCA, in addition to racquetball facilities and the normal stuff like running track, weights, machines, etc. In addition, Nia classes have started! I'd be 3/3 except that today found me in a funk of sorts. Nvm, I'll allow myself a break since I'm still sore from the racquetball or weights (or both) I did on Monday.

They say that doing something for 21 days makes it a habit, so I'm working on getting the above incorporated into my routine establishing a morning routine that incorporates the above. I'll report back at the end of the month and we'll see how successful this month of resolutions has been.

In the meantime, a malaysian abroad is kicking off a Food in February theme, do drop by and check it out, k? I'd love to know how you did on the quiz :)

Image credit: MS Office clip art

Chronic EarWorm solved!

What's an EarWorm? In a nutshell, it's a song that you just can't get out of your head. I've had a case of chronic earworm for many years now, where a song I used to love almost a decade ago but haven't heard for many years -- therefore have forgotten lyrics and singer, but not the tune! -- would keep popping up in my head at odd times over the past few years: I would get a snatch of the tune here, or a tantalizing snippet of almost-lyrics there.

Last week the earworm struck again, and this time I decided to enlist the power of Big Brother Google. It started with keywords 'Indonesian song, cinta [Eng: love] (because every song has that word, LoL!), 1999 or 2000' which brought forth Anggun, whom I had also forgotten but wasn't who I was looking for, but it helped loosen my memory somewhat because 'pergi saja [Eng: just go (away)]' sidled itself into my brain -- finally, a small part of the earworm's lyrics! Adding that to the mix, one or two searches later Big Brother Google pointed me in the right direction.

Here's what's been haunting me for so long... (you don't have to watch the video, it's ~so~ dated-looking, and kinda distracting from the haunting song itself)

Here are the lyrics for you to sing along to :)

Kris Dayanti's Menghitung Hari song lyrics from LyricsBay.com
If you follow me on Facebook you might have seen the cry for help regarding one particular word from the above lyrics, and the many (sometimes contradicting) replies from my Malaysian pals. I explore putik vs putih a little more at a malaysian abroad, do drop by, k?

So now I have the identity of my chronic earworm solved! Doesn't mean I've gotten the song out of head: if nothing else, I've only made it worse, because guess what was playing non-stop while I initially typed this post last week? :p

Hey, at least the earworm will no longer be a memory of a haunting melody but instead can manifest loudly with voice and lyrics!

Wait, is that really a good thing?

Aaaarrgh?!!

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