I've been feeling lately that there aren't enough minutes in the day. All 31 days of January have just whizzed by and my 2007 routine is still not fully in place. I've not been blogging because I haven't been sitting down to reflect on what's going on. Reading today's Mind Your Body interview with coach Robin Sharma has reminded me the value and joy I get from journalling. But now I have to get back to attending to my "I should have done that yesterday" list of things and strive for better balancing. I've been studying about the Law of Attraction (which is simply the idea that what you think about, you bring about - whether good or bad). So I resolve to focus forward positively to bring about good things I want.

The Strategic Value of Naps
You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner and no halfway measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That's what I always do. Don't think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That's a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will accomplish more. You get two days in one - well, at least one and a half, I'm sure. When the war started, I had to sleep during the day because that was the only way I could cope with my responsibilities - Winston Churchill.

Thought for the Day
This is taken from John C. Maxwell's book titled "Today Matters".

Today is the only time you have
It's too late for yesterday
And you can't depend on tomorrow.

Another quote I came across has also set me thinking.

If a person will spend one hour a day on the same subject for five years, that person will be an expert in that subject. - Earl Nightengale

Now what shall I focus on for the next 5 years?
That's something to think about. All I need to do next is to settle on a regular time and place to do some good thinking. At the moment, I do my best thinking when I'm stranded in the car in between appointments and have nothing to do and no distractions. It's pathetic and awfully sweaty.

Farewell Spacewagon

We got this when No.3 came almost a decade ago. It was great for carting around my 3 monkeys all under aged 5 because those mandatory car seats were so bulky. It served us well. It made countless trips up the Malaysian North South highway fully loaded with seven people, seven golf bags and all our hand luggage. Looking like people moving house, we bought the roof rack and the Thule box on top to stuff even more rubbish. There were a few memorable trips to Cameron Highlands where we came back with a dozen head of cabbage, strawberries and all variety of green leafy vegetables. It also witnessed a few spells of vomitting and was home to whole families of cockroaches. It also absorbed all manner of smells....never quite recovered from Elliott's biweekly post rugby sweat. Then there was the time a mysterious putrid smell that baffled and poisoned us for weeks. Finally the workshop people took the engine and aircon apart to find that a lizard had gone exploring in there and died. There was also a lizard that was squashed by my door as it tried to get into the car. I was driving along quite happily until Matt pointed it out to me. I spotted the be-bodied critter out of the corner of my right eye and detoured to the Botanics (nearest safe spot to stop) for help. Think I shall miss being the road bully it allowed me to be as I bulldozed cars to give way to me. Alas...those were good times.

Hyundai Getz

This is the zippy little rental I'm driving around nowadays. It is so cute. So far I have squeezed into gaps between cars and yellow boxes, teeny tiny parking spaces, spaces between gridlocked cars. I just "make like a sardine" and inch forward. Filled up 3/4 of the tank when I got it and that was only $40! It's a little lacking in va-va-voom as it's only a 1.3 litre but city driving is what I do most anyway.

Getting a new car!

Scrapped the old big MPV clunker and eagarly awaiting this spiffy new piece of metal. But there's a 2-3 month waiting list. So many great minds thinking alike! In the meantime, am zipping around in a rental. It's so liberating driving a small hatchback. Feel like Rapunzel who cut off those heavy locks of hair in favour of a crewcut.

Reflections
These numbers were taken from the Straits Times Special Report on 23 Dec 2006. I saved it and would like to take some time to process it now.

Strife: 3.6 million people killed in war since 1980
Poverty: 1.1 billion people living on less than $1.50 a day
Disaster: 91 million people affected by 267 natural disasters in first eight months of 2006
Child Victims: 8.4 million children working as forced labourers or sex workers
Disease: 39.5 million people infected with HIV in the world
Battered women: 1 billion women who have been beaten, coerced into sex or abused

How do I make sense of this world I live in?
The truth is....I've had a very blessed life and I can't relate to all those numbers. I gloss over them and there's not much empathy. I'm just a tiny little carbon unit living on a small red dot of an island in the backwaters of a blue planet - one of a multitude in the vast universe.
Most of the time, I'm pretty obsessed about my life and the lives of people close to me. It takes intentional effort to think beyond that.

ST interviewed several religious leaders and I like Father Simon Pereira's quote the best. He said:
I'm a great believer in the One Person theory. Change begins with the individual. It just takes one person to reach out, bring it forward.

In a nutshell, I believe the one person that makes all the difference in this mess of a world we live in is God the Son, aka Jesus Christ. The human race was rescued some 2000 years ago, and there is reason to hope in better things to come.

I'M BACK!!!
Apologies for the silence. Blogging took a back seat as new interests consumed me. Also, I wasn't taking the time to think about each day and what I liked or not liked about it. I was catching up with fun, friends, family and food. I had a super duper farewell to 2006 and pretty eagar to start going into 2007. Wow. We're now 12 days into 2007 and I'm proud to say I didn't tear the wrong year for my carpark coupons nor any cheques. YES! I AM THE WOMAN!