Tag Archives: Life

Massages and reflexology: Painful, but oh, so worth it!

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Wearing heels almost the whole day means that at the end of the day, you have aching feet!

I started doing foot reflexology on a whim some time last year when I used to take GG to ballet. I used to have an hour to kill and in the mall next to her class, I chanced upon this chain which did foot reflexology and massages. I did foot reflexology a couple of times and was hooked – I paid up for a package and since then have been enjoying it on and off!

After GG stopped ballet, I also stopped going to the shop, till one day a couple of months back, my foot was paining so badly, I decided to see if there was a store nearby which does this – I lucked out and found the same chain close to my workplace and since then almost once a week (sometimes twice a week), either after work or during my lunch hour, I go and get either a foot massage or a shoulder massage.

So what is foot reflexology? I am not sure if this form of alternative medicine is popular out of Southeast Asia, but here, you see them everywhere! Foot Reflexology involves application of pressure to the feet with specific thumb, finger and hand techniques with the oil of a lotion. This technique claim that various areas of the feet correspond to the different organs in the body and by pressing and kneading these points in the feet, remove blockages in the different parts of the body.

The massages for the back and neck do not involve lotions, but only kneading, pressing and massaging on your neck/back using a towel as a shield. These also tend to be quite painful, but given that pretty much everyone is on a computer at work, muscles become rather stiff. I try to do a neck massage once a week to remove the kincks in my shoulder

The masseuse, even the old aunty-type masseuses have such strong hands, that at times it’s even painful, but oh, so good once it’s done…

While having my massages, I have the most random thoughts. Here are some of them….

Yesterday while having a shoulder massage, I was wondering if I should write a book set in Southeast Asia, where the murderer is this old auntyish lady who is a masseuse and who murders people who have wronged her by giving them massages so strong that it triggers some parts of their body to malfunctions and so some hours later they die and the police and detectives are baffled at these murders and no one comes close to finding it out until this old sinseh (a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner) figures it all out! Now that the plot is here, if anyone writes the book, you know where to find me to send me the share of the royalty 🙂

Another time, I felt I was having an out-of-body experience, something akin to floating around till I came crashing down when the massage ended 😦

TGIF

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This whole week, I’ve been in a funk. It’s 80% work related and another 20% stress over GG & BB’s exams.

Please feel free to not read today’s post as its mostly a rant and also I want to get it off my chest. I’ve found that writing it down helps me do this the best otherwise I tend to brood about it all day long and screw up my days and nights.

OK, here’s my 80% rant. If you remember I applied for the internal job and within a few days the recruiter’s assistant got in touch for a phone interview with my current boss. Then two days later she called me to cancel saying since he is traveling they will reschedule it this week when N, my boss is in town. I waited and even started work on something to show him during the interview. This week i waited for the assistant, lets call her J to confirm the interview date and time since i knew N will be in office this week.

When nothing came by till Wednesday, I reached out to J to check. I was told N is busy and she will get back to me. I know N is busy – interviewing people for the role, both physical and phone interviews!. In fact he also spoke to me in passing about that saying we need to talk. But this was after i told him that J had cancelled the phone interview. From what I understood, N was interviewing people via phone the week my interview was supposed to have been done.

Now i really don’t know what to do – am I not in the consideration at all? Or i am in the race, but since N has seen what I am capable of, he would prefer to screen the others for a first round? This is so confusing and I hate to feel like this!

I am OK if I am out of the consideration totally, but would have appreciated if someone told me that so i don’t build any expectations. This is not like other interviews where you don’t hear from companies (although how long does it take someone to drop the applicant a one liner about the status of their application is beyond me) but since this is the place I work with, I will ultimately know who the successful candidate is and will be working with him/her in the near future!

I’m trying to be positive, but somehow this week has been difficult. Thank Goodness today is Friday. I can’t wait for the week to end. Monday is a new week and hopefully a more positive week for me.

Thank You

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I just got notified by WordPress that I have hit a century where followers are concerned!

A huge “Thank You” to each one of you for thinking that I am a good enough writer that you spend time daily reading what I write (I hope :-))

I promise to write more, write regularly and interesting content! However, if there is anything you wish me to write specifically about, do let me know in the comments section….

Superstition: An Emotional Crutch or something more?

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Do you avoid ladders when you are out? Does a thought of a black cat crossing your path make you retrace your steps? Welcome to the world of superstitions!

Superstition is the belief in supernatural causality—that one event causes another without any natural process linking the two events—such as astrology, religion, omens, witchcraft, prophecies, etc., that contradicts natural science.

As many countries are there in the world, there are as many different types of superstitions. The most common ones are the ones relating to black cats, crossing your fingers, walking under ladders and the good ol’ Friday the 13th! Here’s a list of the common by silly superstitions that all of us are probably guilty of at some point in time or the other.

I guess, like most people I am too superstitious. I don’t start any new activity or wear new clothes or use anything new on a Saturday. This belief is shared by many in India as Saturday in itself is considered inauspicious – which is why you will almost never see weddings happening on a Saturday!

Other than this, I wear a favourite colour when I am doing something important like an exam, an interview etc. This is completely random and started when I was in college I guess. I can’t remember why, but my best guess would be I did spectacularly well that day when I wore clothes of that colour and so my mind started associating success with the colour. Since then, if I have something important, that colour will feature in my clothes that day. I understand it’s an emotional crutch and this probably makes me more confident, but I am going to take what I can to succeed!

Here’s a complete alphabetical list of superstitions and some superstitions around the world. Do you recognize any that you follow?

Are you superstitious? Why? I’d love to hear from you….

The Power of Prayers

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I usually start the morning with prayers to the Lord and am trying to inculcate the same with BB & GG too!

As you probably know from my posts, I am a Hindu and am also bringing up BB & GG in the same way. I am weird in the sense, though I have rock solid belief in God, I am not a very big beliver in going to temples. I firmly believe that if you believe in God and don’t go out of your way to harm someone, then even a heartfelt two minute prayer in your heart to God will give you the same results as going to the temple. You do not need the outward manifestation of your belief to God. I posted about religion some time back, but this post is more about the power of prayers.

GaneshaLike I’ve said before, I have a very personal relationship with God and my personal God is the Lord Ganesh.

My daily routine is do a string of prayers in front of my altar at home. Hindus usually light the lamp in front of God twice a day and I do this in the morning after bath and in the evening after I am home. Once I light the lamp, I say my prayers. After this, I try to meditate for a couple of minutes and then have my conversation with him. The evening prayer is a much shorter one with a quick prayer after lighting the lamp. But I do have my conversation in the evening too, especially if the day has gone well for me, or I see his hand in something that happened during the say!

So does praying to God worth your while? My answer is an equivocal YES! Prayer is the vehicle with which you reach out to God or the higher divinity. It allows you to focus on the divine and helps a human being to become one with that one Universal Divine Being who can be called by various religions as their Gods!

Prayers also allow you to push your stress and desires on to your preferred God. This releases a lot of tensions in your lives when you move your stress to God! I remember there are days when my mind is full of things and I can’t sleep. Those days when I say a short prayer to Ganpati Bappa (Lord Ganesh) and tell him now it’s his responsibility to ensure that my problems are solved; I am able to sleep quite fast!

Do you believe in the divine and pray?