I never expected the DTE-NH to have such a warm, cosy, and vibrant energy. I expected it to be dingy, dark, white-washed walls, with greasy food smells. My bad. Joyce, the coordinator introduced us to the small space made available for people to drop in, akin to the community centers in your neighbourhood.  Fairy lights, brightly painted mugs and teapots, healthy organic food offered with fair trade coffee, I instantly took to the place. What I found so refreshing about the DTE-NH as a community center for the less fortunate was its philosophy towards food security. While I can understand how people would rather get some food than none, regardless of the nutritional values (and I suppose if its tasty, just like most cheap disgusting fast food, all the better if its going to be their only meal of the day), I think its important for organizations who want to help the impoverished to ensure proper nutrition for them. All the more if they are well funded and can afford to.

The DTE-NH is a wonderful example of bringing people together and feeding them with delicious, healthy food. The volunteers host community kitchens using local organic foods, they hand out bananas (not candy! REAL fruit!) to people waiting outside for their welfare cheques in the cold, the center has wholegrain bread and roasted soy beans on the table – these people actually care about the nutritional status of the community as well as the environment (by using organic and local food). I am inspired and encouraged by the fact that we can still try help others while saving the environment.

I want to start up a place like the DTE-NH.

I don’t ever want to lose my passion.

I don’t ever want to sell-out, work for some company which has values I don’t stand for.

I don’t ever want to work for a company which has stakeholders and CEOs and bosses whom I don’t even know.

Well, at least this much I’m clear.

Kudos to the producers of Ugly Betty, once again.

The latest episode of Ugly Betty was another cry for a change in the unhealthy images of women portrayed by the fashion/media industry.

Fashion Week for Mode.

Fashion Gets Real – featuring the everyday women we see in our lives. The women who can live, eat, be herself in her own skin, in her own shape. The women who can laugh on the catwalk, as well as on the sidewalk, instead of pouts and faces set with determination – the look of ‘success’ and ‘beauty’ somehow always seem to be in relation to looking cold and ‘refined’.

A fashion show, fashioned by Betty and Daniel Meade to raise its publicity, and for responsible journalism. The impact of the fashion and beauty industry on young girls is profound – magazines are what they grow up reading, the cosmetic counters and mannequins and advertisements are what they are surrounded with when they hit the malls and other public spaces, the people whom they meet are too subject to the industry’s influence and help to further drive home the messages of ‘thin being in’ and ‘dieting being the norm’. Alongside with a healthy upbringing in schools and at home, the environment must be changed to remove stereotypical images of thin, white, young models donning ads, magazines and tv shows. The magazine industry, as well as the media governing boards and the government, all have parts to play to make a difference in the landscape young girls are brought up in.

Where can we start? Eliminating the Barbies and the introduction of dolls representing the diversity of the world’s women today; eliminating the use of models with only one body type; educating children to understand the term ‘diversity’ and respect peers of all shapes and colours (how many of us had friends calling us names?); regulating the advertisements and entry into industry of the slimming parlours (c’mon, how often do these things work?).

Nutbeam defined health promotion as the process of enabling of people to be more able to increase control the determinants of health and thereby improving health, with the term ‘health’ referring to social/mental/emotional/physical wellbeing. Health promotion classes ought to include helping young people to achieve a secure sense of self, to respect and accept all shapes, colors, sizes, cultures, etc, for it is in educating and nurturing the younger generation that we can foster healthy future communities and environments on Earth.

I threw down all guard and went all in.

I whined, I whinged, I foraged for sympathy, love, some srot of evident feeling to see, to find out if he still loved me…or what?

I don’t really know.

It shamed me slightly, to find this needy, crying girl, beneath this strong exoskeleton, someone who actually needs someone to talk to but perhaps, i need to relook at the ways i want to see myself. Re-define the word feminist: someone who’s willing to uncover and understand who she really is despite feeling like its against AGAINST (yes, 2 against-es)  stereotype. See, i think feminists fight hand & tooth to show that they don’t need anyone or anything, that they’re strong, brave, independent women (although i don’t doubt many of them naturally are). Some of us less so. But those of us who do, we eschew crying and all public displays of ‘weaknesses’. We’re proud and we stand proud as we fight for equality and to be on par socially and economically with men. And I suppose emulate men in certain respects as well to show we are and can be as good as them – contained emotions, as well, maybe? – but sometimes, i think in our haste and fight to do so, we forget who we individually are and how we really feel. Perhaps now its time for some of us to re-define our definition of feminism; instead of bra-burning fighters, to women who aren’t afraid to be themselves, feel & deal.

Low key my countdown, but by no means lousy. Old friends, new year, champagne, good food. I can’t imagine trudging through the hordes of people at mega countdown parties in the central and touristy spots. I read an article yesterday about an old Singaporean lady (let’s name her X) ‘choping’ her place by the Singapore river for the fireworks at 11.30am. Certainly, determination and perserverence are admirable traits. What irked me was her having her domestic helper accompanying her (probably not on her own accord), braving the intermittent rains and blazing sun, just to ‘chope’ place for X’s grandchildren and children to come by in the evening for a splendid view of the fireworks. Wow. So she spent 12 hours of her new year’s eve holding an umbrella for X, overlooking the Esplanade.

Shame on you, X. Spare a though, much?

Past ranting, moving on the resolutions.

Past resolutions were always wishes. I decided to make this year’s resolution a real resolution. Something tangible and more within my control, unlike a wish which relies mostly  on external factors to be fulfilled. My 2008 resolution? To be gentle on myself and to try and understand, respect and love myself every day.

I think we often tend to disappoint others or make put too much importance on others to NOT disappoint us that many of us end up being unhappy during this season.

‘Oh he got me a gift that I OBVIOUSLY wouldn’t like, does he even know me at all?’

‘We HAVE to spend time with his friends again, and they’re sooo snobbish!’

‘I have to shop with her when I rather shop on ebay and get it over and done with.’

Blah blah blah.

And then the festive season becomes tainted with underlying anger (because many of us try to avoid anger during this season) and disappointment, all simmering, just waiting to be released by end of the holidays. Perfect recipe for breakups and meltdowns.

Perhaps we need a christmas therapy course. Meditate, practise yoga, and taking deep breaths as the turkey roasts.

What makes it so hard is to try maintain a front of joy and celebration when inside sometimes all you want to do is throw the towel and vent your anger. i think we do need to vent it but in a more constructive way than just shouting at the person and not listening to reason.

Merry xmas, one and all, the festive season doesn’t have to be gloomy like the weather! Just find some self time and reflect/vent/draw…i think I’ll have to do that.

It’s so hard to tell others how I feel sometimes, I still at times struggle with identifying and voicing out my feelings. I think I’m looking forward to Vancouver and some time out.

Wasted by Marya Hornbacher

A memoir of her journey through an eating disorder from aged 9, Wasted is peppered with vivid and intricate details of her ordeal, and its relevance to those with the disorder is almost painful because it causes you to think about your own disorder/life. Its descriptive paragraphs are rawfully honest, probably too hard for many to take, I can imagine.

As painful as it is to read the book, it serves as a reminder for me to not walk down that road again, and why I’m losing a ‘friend’ I had with me for 3 years of my life.

I pull out several excerpts from her book:

On denial:

“I knew it the way alcoholics know in the back of their brain that they have a problem. They know, but they don’t believe it’s out of control. The convenience in having an eating disorder is that you believe, by definition, that your eating disorder cannot get out of control, because it is control. It is, you believe, your only means of control, so how could it possibly control you?”

On it’s development:

“You are making an ineffective statement about this and that, a grotesque, self-defeating mockery of cultural standards of beauty, societal misogyny. It is a blow to your parents, at whom you are pissed.”

And it is so seductive. It is so reassuring, so all-consuming, so entertaining.

At first.

On the female cultural ideal:

My generation was raised on popular media, televion, teen magazines, billboards that bellowed “if you could choose your body, which would you choose?” with pictures of hard bodies getting yet harder at a very chic gym. Well what the hell do you think I’d choose? … We read the endlessly boring series of Sweet Valley High pulp novels like Bibles, with their  terribly chipper stories of twin sisters who were, of course, the most popular girls in their Southern California high school. They were smart and nice and always getting the guy. As every single book in the series reminded us, they were also blond, blue-eyed, tan, and a ‘perfect size six’. A pair of literary Barbie dolls. We read the books in class, hidden behind our math books. We stood in the school bathroom discussing the plots as we compared our thighs. Look at this, we’d say, slapping our bodies so hard we left white welts. Look how my fat jiggles. But you – we’d say, turning to another girl – you’ve got like the perfect body.

*It is crucial to notice the language we use when we talk about bodies. We speak as if there was one collective perfect body, a singular entity that we’re all after. The trouble is, I think we are after that one body. We grew up with the impression that underneath all this normal flesh, buried deep in the excessive recesses of out healthy bodies, there was a Perfect Body just waiting to break out. It would look exactly like everyone else’s perfect body. A clone of shapeless, androgynous models, the hairless, silicone-implanted porn stars. Somehow we, in defiance of nature, would have toothpick thighs and burgeoning bosoms, buns of steel, and dainty firm delts. As Andy Warhol wrote, “The more you look at the same exact thing…the better and emptier you feel.”

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

-Marianne Williamson-

I suppose many would think it’s too optimistic, too deluded, too naive a statement. But I’d like to think that it’s the truth. That we’re not greedy and selfish by nature. That there’s no such thing as evil by nature – think Hitler and other dictators we call evil. Certainly, I don’t condone what they’ve done, but I think there’s a difference between evil deeds that express interests that were cultivated due to a whole host of factors – society, family, environment, and describing people as being inately evil.

I believe in a God.

I believe that He did not make us to create hate and prejudice.

I believe there’s no religion that’s right or wrong, I believe in Unity, One God.

I believe in the good of all, some only to have been led astray by a society has degenerated and which has started to give material wealth too much value in a human life.

I believe by believing all these, we can make a difference because they provide room for hope. Now, how many of us have that?

“How will I fill those spaces which weren’t used for the eating disorder? Will they, too, become eating disorder time?” 

When I was leaving Singapore for Brisbane, the second time round for the last term of exchange, I was fucking scared.

Fucking scared because I had relapsed back home in Singapore.

I had taken the eating disorder to new heights as I tried to cope with the weight gain that came with recovering. It was back with a vengeance. It knew I was trying to leave it, and like a persistent ex-lover who can’t let go, it haunted me during the lonely hours. I couldn’t stand being alone, but yet I couldn’t stand being around other people because I felt disgusted with myself. 

How do I fill the space.

What is life without an eating disorder. 

For 3 years, the spaces were filled with food, obsession, excessive amounts of exercise – to avoid feeling, to avoid emotional pain through inflicting physical punishment. 

I return to Vancouver in 4 weeks to finish my degree.

I’m still fucking scared, as I was before.  

But as easy as it is to remember how the eating disorder took over my life and helped to ease the loneliness by whiling away the time, I don’t think I’ll ever go find him once more. As much as I fear loneliness and alienation from friends whom I’ve left behind 2 years ago, I can’t let in an eating disorder once more. To treat my body the way I did, I am ashamed and sorry for.

I mourn for the eating disorder because he had been my best friend at my worst moments but I move on, for he wanted much more than I am willing to give. He wanted my life, my soul and my spirit and he can’t have it back anymore.