求医不如求己

Here is collection of videos from the author of the book 求医不如求己, literally translated into English means it is better to help yourself (with your disease) rather than asking your doctor for help.  This collection of videos shows you some effective tips on how to improve your health so that you don't need to see the doctors anymore.

I have tried out many of the techniques mentioned in the videos, and they really help to relieve my pains, those almost every modern city dwellers suffer.  I hope you can benefit from these videos too, however, if you are sick, it is still necessary to consult a doctor!

Golden Shower Orchid

It has been a long time that I wanted to get myself a pot of orchid, but not until today, finally I got one.  It is the easy to handle, and long flowering time orchid - Golden Shower.

Ok, 'golden shower' has a pretty bad meaning in a certain form of English, but no, this one is NOT that kind of 'Golden Shower'.   It is a beautiful orchid plant.

It is already flowering beautifully when I bought it.  Hopefully it will last for a long period of time.  It brightens my home up :)

If you want to know how to care for orchids, here is a short video showing you the simple steps.



And you can find more information about care for Golden Shower Orchid here.

Equus

After two long months of waiting, finally the show is up, but I was late.  I was late for the show for 5 minutes, and was refused entry, temporarily, for about 10 minutes.  Lucky.

If you want to know more about Equus, you can check it out at this wiki link.  What I will write here is my personal experience about the show.  Once I got seated, I was bombarded by smell of hair shampoo from the lady on my left, and the smell of deodorant from the hunky guy on my right.  Throughout the show, I was intoxicated by all that chemical smell.

That aside, let's get back to the play itself.  The plot is simple and predictable.  In conclusion, the message the play wants to pass to its audiences is that: religion teaching to young people harms their normal sexual desire, may cause sexual anxiety and malfunction.  The message is simple, isn't it?  You don't need 2 hours of play to just get that message through.

As it is a play, so there is a lot of talking, lots lots of it.  Talk until I almost fell asleep.  There is no catchy word for you to remember, or to wake you up.  The stage setting is simple and you can tell it is a shoestring type of production.

The main actor, Ethan Chia Han Sen, has quite a number of minutes of full frontal nudity scenes towards the end of the play.  He has a perfect body that every man will envy, while every woman would crave for.  Kudos to his courage to do it for the sake of art.  You can find an article about him here.  And also an interview from omy.sg with Ethan.




Other than the full frontal nudity, there is little to praise about this play.

2011 Singapore Presidential Election

Tomorrow, Singaporeans are going to vote for their next president.  For the very first time in Singapore's history, there are four candidates for Singaporeans to choose from.  They are Mr Tan Kim Liang, Dr. Tony Tan, Mr Tan Jee Say, and Dr Tan Cheng Bock.  They are all Tan's, although they might not be closely related.

Mr Tan Kim Liang was the CEO of NTUC income.  He had pretty good reputation when he held that position and he indeed did something positive for the ordinary people.

Dr Tony Tan, former deputy prime minister.  He has plenty of experiences in the government and government-linked companies.  He has a track record in leading Singapore toward prosperity.  However, rumors about one of his sons' NS record somehow dented his reputation.

Mr Tan Jee Say was the secretary to one of the prominent political figures in Singapore.  He has experiences in the government and international banks.  He is also the youngest candidate amongst the 4 presidential candidates.  He contested in the General Election just this year as an opposition, but lost.

Mr Tan Cheng Bock, a fatherly figure.  I don't know him well, I don't get his political view point well either, so I can't say much about him.

Four candidates, which one to choose, it is a tough choice.  The campaign period is so short, only 9 days.  People hardly know those candidates.  Anyway, tomorrow is the voting day.  I will give my vote to the person I think is the best for the country.

Yoga - For People Who Have Neck & Back Pain

My sedentary life has made me suffer from constant neck and back pain.  The condition gets worse recently due to heavy work load, and constant staring at my computer monitor.  By chance, I saw this video in YouTube about a Yoga exercise for people who suffer the same kind of pain as I do.

Nothing to lose anyway, and I badly need some physical exercise to relax my body, and soul.  I really don't see anything special about the Yoga movements, they are just like our normal stenching exercises, however, the result was wonderful.  After following through most (not all) the routine, I felt some good physically.  My neck pain is gone, my back pain is gone, although now my thighs are aching from the exercises.

I have linked the video here, so you can give it a try if you like.  I must admit I only follow through the first 1/3 of the routine, as the rest are too demanding for this beginner.  Oh, yeah, please just ignore the very first portion where they ask for a donation.  Donate only if you really want to.

Enjoy your Yoga exercises.  You will not regret :)

Final Destination 5 - Testing Your Bravery

Watched 'FINAL DESTINATION 5' over the weekend in JB.  The movie is shocking, bloody, violent, cruel, and offers no hope.  It serves as a test to your bravery when you are facing extreme tragedy, and the bloodest ever scene you have ever seen.  To add salt to the wound, nobody has a chance, even a slim one, to escape.  Buddhism sutra claims that if you are full of good karma, then you will not be afraid when faced with such extreme tragedy.  Obviously in this case I am not.  The show time for the movie is 1 hour 33 minutes in total, but I think I only watched for around 45 minutes, and spent the rest of the time with my eyes closed, and ears covered.  The death scenes are extremely bloody and not for the faint-hearted.

Unless you really want to test yourself, I would not recommend this movie.  This movie is not going to get you feel relaxed or happy after watching it.  

Outback SteakHouse

I bought a 'good' deal from BigDeal.sg, a Singapore company specialised in getting good deals, for a set lunch at Outback Steakhouse at Millenia Walk for S$18.80, instead of S$38.80.  It sounds really like a good deal, as the discount is more than 50%.

We arrived there at around 12 o'clock noon, and there was hardly any customer there.  That explains why they specify that the deal is only valid for lunch.

Included in our deal is a set lunch, which is not in the menu.  If we top up S$5.00, then we can get Tuna, or Black Pepper Steak, or Salmon, and so we decided we would top up to get the black pepper steak.

Ok, now comes the fun part.  I looked at the menu, the Tuna is at S$22.xx, Black Pepper Steak at S$25.xx.  Then where is my 50% savings?  Ok, I guess the soup and salad were not free if you ordered the Black Pepper Steak only.

Somehow on that day, the chef probably has a preference of salty stuff.  The Caesar salad was a bit on the salty side, probably due to the cheese they used, and the black pepper steak (in bite sizes) was also on the salty side.

Overall, it is not really a good deal.

Price wise, we saved on the service charge + GST (which were included in the S$18.80 price), and the cost of the soup and salad.

Taste wise, our Singapore version of the Outback is quite a far standard away from its American peers.  Ok, the American standard also varies from my limited two time experiences with them.

Conclusion:  Probably I will not patron Outback anymore.  

Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor and His Legacy

This is one exhibition on-going in the Asian Civilization Museum, with a normal admission fee of S$5.00.  Today is Singapore's National Day, so it is free!  Of course, I would take this opportunity to pay a visit to this exhibition.

The first impress:  The queue is really long!  There are sign boards outside the museum telling visitors the estimated wait time.  When I arrive at around 10:40am, the estimated wait time is 60 mins!  Ok, never mind, after my wait training at USA immigration and Malaysia immigration, 60 mins is now nothing.  We queue in line patiently, following the winding line in the waiting area.  There are actually three or four waiting stages, after you clear one, you proceed to the next stage to queue.  This is the longest wait I ever have in a Singapore museum.  Anyway, we are already lucky, as we arrive early.  By the time we leave, the queue is so long that many visitors have to waiting outside of the museum building, under the hot sun.

To be precise, this exhibition is not only about Qin Shihuang's terracotta, but all those funerary terracotta found in Qin & Western Han Dynasties.

I must say the terracotta are really beautiful.  They were made to such detail.  Look at this terracotta of an archer.  His facial expression is so vivid, just like a living person right in front of you.

And guess what, they even have the tracks under the shoes.  It is this kind of fine details we are talking about.

How about this soldier?

These terracotta is marvellous.  No wonder so many people flock to the museum to catch a glimpse of this magnificent piece of art.

In exhibition there are other interesting objects too.  Here is the tiger-shaped military tally.  We only see this in movies or TV dramas, but now it is there, right in front of your eyes.  Such a tiny object in the ancient days was the token to command thousands of troops, representing the command from the heavenly Emperor.

And this is the mold of the coins after Shi Huangdi united the whole China.

Another treasure on display is the bronze chariot from the Shi Huangdi's tomb.

The exhibition also includes archaeological discoveries from some Western Han Dynasty imperial tombs.  Some of the objects are just equally interesting and wonderful.

And Han Dynasty used pottery for the human body only, but cover them with real clothes.  Fabrics of the clothes rotted away over time, but the terracotta body was preserved.  That makes it also a bit amusing to look at.

These two are supposed to be two Han warriors.  The supposed wooden hands and their clothes are gone, only left with their clay bodies.  Notice their genitals?

Here are the horse-warriors.  The wooden horses are obviously long gone.  Their facial expressions are just, I must say, a bit exaggerating.

The most impressive one is the so-called Eunuch terracotta in the right of the picture below.  The male organ has been removed.  It is said to be a Eunuch terracotta by the experts, but I like to ask: How do you know whether he just lost his 'precious' over time?

Do you notice they use different color for male and female terracotta?  Brown for man, white for woman.

The exhibition is quite small, in the special exhibition gallery.  However, if you are interested in Chinese history and their achievements, it is a very worthwhile exhibition for you to pay a visit.  The benefit of a small exhibition is that you will not be overloaded by too much information being crammed into too short a time space.  You can take the time to read each single caption, spend some time standing right in front of the exhibit, walk around it, examining every single details of it, have a meaningful conversation with our ancestors thousands of years ago.  If you are looking for quantity, then it is not for you.  The total number of objects on display is not big.  You might get pretty disappointed.

Stop Loss

When I opened the financial page this morning, the first thing is Dow Jones Industry Average has gone down more than 600 points.  Before I went to bed last night, it was only down around 300 points, at some time, there was even some sign of recovering.

In such times, it shows how important it is to have a plan, know your stop-loss price and execute your trade according to the plan.  The purpose of a stop-loss price is there to protect you.  The stop-loss tells you that your original judgement had been a mistake under the current market condition.  It tells you maybe you are on the wrong side of the table, so better jump out quickly and join the right side.

There should be no hesitation whether to execute your sell order or not once your stop-loss is hit.  Use Nike's slogan, JUST DO IT!  Nobody will know for sure after you sell your shares, whether it will quickly rebound or fall further, but it is to prevent the worst case scenario.

Happy investing.

Season of Red

It has been a couple of days we saw a bloodshed in the stock markets across the world.  The world is so burdened with all the problems, from the US debt deal crisis, to European debt crisis, to the downgrading of US treasury debt.  So many problems, yet no solution in sight.  It seems really bad, but is it?  The US debt deal crisis between the two parties seemed urgent and critical, but did it really matter?  As expected, a deal was made just before the so-called 2 Aug deadline.  Then came the downgrading of US debt by S&P.  So what?  Did we already know that US debt is not sustainable, and the downgrading is long overdue.  There is really no surprise.  Then why the bloodshed in the markets?  Well, the crocodiles are ready to attack, that's all.

If you can't fight them, join them.  Somebody told me about this.  Comparing with the way I handled the financial crisis back in 2008/9, this time round I must say I handle it better.  In the last financial crisis, and the one before, I was afraid, I was scared, and I followed the media, I didn't have a plan, I didn't know what to do, and I was restless, I was impatient.  This time, I am getting more patient and calm, as finally, I have a plan.  I stopped putting any money in the stock market since March.  I deemed the prices are too high, valuations are unattractive, coupled with high inflation, high housing prices, high oil prices, it is a perfect environment for an impending financial crisis.  Together with falling BDI, low VIX, all the conditions are right.

Now the storm has come.  I cut my losing counters short.  Money lost is money lost, just go out to get it back somewhere.  There is no point mourning about money lost, just like no point mourning about spilled milk.  Learnt the lesson, admit mistakes were made, then move on.

This is a season of red, a season of hope and fear.  Have a plan, and follow your plan.  Happy investing.