Journaling @ True Urban Park, Bangkok: Of Engaging Ghost Protocol, Getting Poisoned & Practising Living.

Good Afternoon guys,

I’ve been in Thailand over the last week. Spent the first few days in Kaeng Kracang and explored the Natural Parks there and enjoyed the sweet sound of nature and lack of the first world. I was in complete Ghost Protocol, completely disconnected from the world and it felt nice. It was a timely retreat from connectivity, unfortunately I only managed to get one night of good sleep thanks to having to wake up really early after a day of travelling, one night on a thin mattress, another night of food poisoning. But all in all the scenes I saw were incredible. I took loads of pics, as you can see on my Instagram, but unfortunately I could not take a pic of the night sky which was amazing. It says scattered with thousands of little diamonds, some so very bright. It was breathtaking. I was sitting at the back of a pick-up truck heading back to my chalet and spent the whole time looking up, surrounded by pitch blackness of the night. That was probably the best part of the trip, so far, that 30-45 minutes, and although there were others with me, it felt like it was just me, the stars and the cool night wind blowing thorough whatever little hair I have on my head, and it felt great. I left Baan Maka, the chalet I stayed at in Kaeng Kracang, yesterday (but not before enjoying the sunrise there) and journeyed on to Bangkok, which is now where I am. To be honest, I’m not a big fan of big, busy, crowded cities so I’m really missing Baan Maka and it’s solitude.

Right now it’s ok, I’ve found myself a nice, urban, teched-out, “little”shelter inside the Siam Paragon Mall, True Cafe/ True Urban Park – ( @trueurbanpark). I’m away from the noise and bustle, that’s not to say I can’t handle the noise, dirt and mess of the city, I just don’t like lingering in it for too long. I actually took a 40/45 minute walk to this mall from my hotel and it was nice to explore the streets of Bangkok and I think I’ll walk back as well. But for this moment, I’m going to enjoy one of my favourite things to do, chill at a cafe with a nice cup of coffee and write.

So the question is, what should I write? I’ve already given you an intro via a look at what I’ve been up to over the week. I guess it should be something related to my trip.

Well before I took my walk here, I was actually quite reluctant to so anything. I was happy chilling at Baan Maka and The food poisoning took quite a lot out of me, including my sense of exploration, so before I walked over here I just wanted to spend the day in my hotel room, resting, napping, playing angry birds, probably some reading and at the most go downstairs to the little cafe. Getting sick had really cast a bad feeling over the trip and Bangkok’s mess didn’t make my mood any better. I was looking for any excuse to stay at the hotel, and ironically, while I was sitting I realised that I was giving into fear, I didn’t realise it before but when I did I realise that I couldn’t let things be, I had to do something. I knew I had people in this mall, so instead of taking a cab or ‘tuk tuk’ to get here, I walked and I’m glad I did, of course with the help of my iPhone and google maps to prevent me from getting lost. I really got a look at the city, not all of it but at least some of it and I’m going to walk back to see more. Today I almost let the fear instilled by getting sick prevent me from ‘Living the Day’. Of course there’s a time to be resting in bed, that’s when the fear functions to our benefit, to ensure that we can recover, but by yesterday evening I was fine, the fear was overstaying its welcome this morning and was just making me last and preventing me from ‘Putting More Living in my Day’.

Always try to make the most of a your day, Live Life, don’t watch it slip by. It’ll take practice to get to a point where it becomes a part of you, so start practicing.

Now if you’ll excuse me, not that you have a choice haha, I’m going to check out what is supposed to be the largest aquarium in South East Asia or Asia.

Straight From The Heart

Work In Progress, I Am.

Good Evening dear readers,

I can hear the heavy rain outside as i sit here at Artisan, enjoying my Flat White. I haven’t got back into the full swing of things, having really got back to business, not for the lack of trying, I just need to try harder. The examination month really messed up my system and the holidays haven’t helped me get back to business either. One month has already passed, it’s December and I still haven’t got to blogging regularly. It’s been harder than I thought it would be, waking up early has been more difficult than I remember it and it doesn’t help they memories of last December come back to haunt me (last December, after my finals, was the time my fibromyalgia got really bad and got the best of me) so when I wake up really tired and/or foggy, it scares me and I go back to sleep to hide away from it. The fibro fog has indeed been making cameo appearance recently, now infact. Then there are other nights when I sleep late because of social reasons, which I have indeed cut down on this week and will continue to try to make social events happen earlier. Every time I think about how I haven’t been able to get back to waking up early and blogging regularly it upsets me, and then I start to think that maybe it’s the Fibromyalgia that’s coming back but that maybe jumping to old conclusions,I’ve had the Fibromyalgia at bay for a while now, so I really hope it isn’t that. I think, maybe, I’ve figured it out. I went through a major shift in my daily routine during my examination period and I can’t just expect to get back to what was before. I’ve been doing it wrong, aiming for big steps daily so that I can quickly recover, and that’s what’s been messing me up. I forgot all about small daily improvements to build up the momentum, now, i have very little momentum and I can’t just conjure it out of thin air, I need to rebuild it, I need to reset my foundation. Thankfully because it’s already in me somewhere, it won’t take as long to build it back up. This is quite a human thing I feel, we are all works in progress.

We are All Works in Progress. Don’t expect to get to your goal easily or without friction. There will be good times and bad. Times when you will fall a sleep at the wheel and times when you feel like an MVP, remember that it’s all part of the journey. We aren’t robots and we will make mistakes. I look back to all the times that I went of course over the year, and every time I persisted and got back on track. As Tobias Wolff out it

We are made to persist. That’s how we find out who we are.

That is why we keep trying. That’s why I Keep Moving Forward. Always trying to make today better than yesterday.

There are always going to be curve balls and hurdles in the journey we are each on, it’s not going to be a perfect journey, there will be times we might take our eyes of the road and run face-first into a hurdle or lose focus and get hit by a curve ball, we aren’t perfect, as I have mentioned before many a time, we’ve just got to get back up, learn, recalibrate and get back on the road. Sometimes, we may spend some time on the sidelines, such as what I recently went through. Distracting myself with other things, not thinking about where I wanted to go, afraid of getting back on the road, convinced that I would slip up again, a story that sounds all too familiar, especially over this year. What I’ve got to always remember is that I will slip up and make mistakes and get distracted, I’m never going to be able to erased that completely but I will be able to minimise it, and the last year has been a testament to that. Every time you feel that you can Keep Moving Forward, think about how far you’ve come and how a while back you thought that maybe you couldn’t make it to where you are now. Maybe all you need, is a little breather, we all need them regularly. The problem with these little breathers, as I also know too well, is that we sometimes don’t define how long they should be and we prolong them. On the other hand there is the mistake where we don’t take breathers and keep pushing ourselves till we burn out and then face being out-of-it for a longer term.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t beat yourself up too hard when you mess up, yes beat yourself up a little, remember that we are works in progress and that every time you or I mess up, it’s an opportunity to study and learn why it happened so that we can adjust for it and Keep Moving Forward.

Straight From The Heart

Coffee for One @Artisan Coffee Bar

Good Evening guys,

It’s a nice cool rainy evening here in Bangsar, actually I’m not sure whether it is still raining, cause the weather has been rather bipolar, cause I’m actually indoors right now. Having a nice Flat White, courtesy of Artisan Coffee Bar, enjoying the music from my headphones and thinking. It’s nice, I don’t feel alone yet I’m alone with my thoughts, if that makes any sense. That’s the thing about coffee places, a place you can be alone but not really feel alone. It’s a sort of mid point, away from people that you are always with which explains how one feels alone but surrounded by strangers that cause a little background buzz, a sort of background connection to humanity that brings about the feeling that you’re not alone. Essentially the difference being that you’re alone on a conscious level, a level where you’re alone with your thought and the other being you’re not alone on a subconscious level, where you are aware that there are people around you but you don’t think about it, it’s all just background processes that don’t matter at the moment, just background music if you will. Just comforting background music because, I think, even when we want to be alone, we don’t really want to be completely alone in silence. Why? Because we feel disconnected from humanity, and most would rather not have that. Especially now, in an age of extreme connectivity. I feel that one of the major factors for the success of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc is because people want to always feel connected, to never lose the connection to humanity. To never feel “alone”.

Or then again, maybe it’s just me 🙂

Now that’s not to say that people never want to be truly alone. Most of the time just turning off the phone and heading to a cafe alone will be enough, but there will be times when the connectivity gets really overwhelming we are going to want to completely “detox” and really be alone, in silence. Too much of anything is never good.

I totally intended today’s post to be ‘A Work in Progress’, but I guess this will be it for today.

Hope you enjoyed my thoughts

Straight From The Heart

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