Category Archives: General Musings

Adventures in a Body of Lies

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Nope, I’m not talking about the movie Body of Lies that’s full of A-list actors. I’m talking the actual body of a B-list blogger. 

Last week, I had one of those days where I managed to actually find my way to the gym. As I was stretching out after the workout, (actually, I was laying flat on my back wondering if the sweat pooling under me would leave a crime-scene style outline on the floor when I stood up), I overheard a trainer offer this advice to someone:

Just Listen To Your Body.

We’ve all heard this advice at one point or another, and unaccountably, people seem to think it’s good advice. Either everyone is in denial, or I happen to be living in a defective body model. Why? Because my body lies to me. All. The. Time.

After all, it was the mouth in this body that told me a 2nd slice of pie would be a really good idea, and that a bowl of ice cream makes a great breakfast. It was listening to this body that landed me at the gym in the first place…and that same body shouts at me when I exercise.

It’s not just about food and fitness. My other body parts lie to me too.

It was my legs, back in the ’80s that said, “I wanna run free – neon orange Hammer Pants are the pants for me!” In fact, most of my appendages have been lying to me about fashion  for decades.

What? My body told me this was a great beach look!

Sometimes, my body parts even collaborate and come up with tag-team lies. This morning, my nose and my brain got together and created an elaborate falsehood.

Two hours before my alarm went off, my nose woke me up by smelling something odd. “Wake up! Something’s burning!” it said to me. My nose then tagged out, and my brain jumped in the ring. “Yes! Wake up! Keebler Elves are burning flour in your kitchen. The cookies will be ruined!”

Wait…what???

Thanks to my body’s lies, I was fully awake before realizing that there was no Keebler cookie emergency. There were no cookies involved at all. It was just a bad pollution day here in Chiang Mai, and the only thing burning were farmer’s fields, 30km away.

Next time someone tells me to Listen to my Body, I’m pretty sure my right foot is going to tell me to kick a nearby shin. Unfortunately, the way my body communicates, it will likely tell me to kick my own shin. And I’ll listen to it.


Adventures in Frenemies

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Meet Esmeralda. She’s been in my life for 3 days now. I’d like to say that we hit it off right away, but I can’t. I can’t even say that we have a love/hate relationship. Instead, it seems as though we’ve settled into some sort of twisted Junior High rendition of “You’re nice an’ all, but I hate you anyway” relationship.

Esmeralda: She’s nice an’ all, but I hate her anyway.

You see, she is really nice. She’s lightweight, smooths out the bumps in the roads, and is very shiny. Sources (i.e. a Google search for ‘what the heck should I look for when buying a bike?’) tell me that she has good brakes, and other fine qualities. I’m sure if we had met under other circumstances, (like if she was someone else’s bike) we would have gotten along famously. In fact, I really liked her when we met – as long as she still belonged to the bike shop. However, just minutes after making the purchase, she reminded me that she was, in fact, a mountain bike.

I hate mountain bikes.

Mountain bikes and I have had our moments. I’ve explored the volcanic Korean island of Jeju on a mountain bike (making up many new curse words along the way). I’ve seen the Cambodian countryside and the splendors of Angkor Wat on a mountain bike (what a delightfully flat country!) More recently (yesterday, in fact) I discovered a  friendly northern Thai sausage vendor because I was on my mountain bike. It hasn’t been all bad. 

In fact, coming home today, with a bag of recently purchased sour-pork sausages dangling from my handlebars, I came close to reconciling my relationship with Esmeralda. As I glided smoothly along my lane, a super decked-out uber-cyclist came from the opposite direction. He looked completely at home on his mountain bike, while I was still feeling like a bit of a cycling fraud. Apparently, he didn’t realize I wasn’t really a mountain biker, because he rang his little bell and smiled at me, as though we really were fellow travelers in a mountain bike world.  A warm glow enveloped me, and I smiled broadly, thinking maybe I really did belong…then I nearly ran myself into a bush.

The trouble is, no matter how much I’d like to think I’m all mountain bike-y and awesome, my dorky little heart belongs to bikes like these:

I wonder what’s become of this sweet ride. Seriously, look at the chain guard. It says ‘sweet’.

So, if anyone wants to take Esmeralda off my hands, and save her from a litany of imaginary curse words in the coming weeks, give me a call. She’s for sale.

Adventures in Learning

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I like learning new things. When I learn something new, it’s like a little drop of water sprinkles itself on a formerly dry part of my brain. In the spirit of learning something new today, (and having something to write about tonight), I googled “famous quotes about learning new things.”

Unfortunately, I had to stop reading when I got to the following Persian proverb, and realized I was in trouble: One pound of learning requires ten pounds of common sense to apply it. I can assure you that my extra 10 pounds have not been applied to my common sense.

The problem is, I don’t usually keep track of things I learn from day to day. Never mind applying the things I’ve learned, I’m hard pressed to even remember them by the time I’m finished lunch. To give myself a helping hand, I decided to write down the things I learned this week…

1. Spiders are not reliable body guards.

I have a rather large daddy longlegs spider on my bedroom ceiling.  In Canada, I would have vanquished him ages ago. In my little Thai cottage, I don’t mind him. I know where he lives, so I can keep an eye on him. He chills out up on the ceiling, and eats all kinds of weird and wonderful things that I’d rather land in his web than on my head. So, we’re cool. I kind of see him as my buggy little bodyguard superhero. However, this past week, he fought 3 consecutive battles with a large, villainous Winged Thing, and lost every time. The Winged Thing would escape, plummet, recover, and head right back into the web. My 8-legged superhero would pounce, and start wrapping up the delectable treat, only to have the thing escape, plummet, recover… On the 3rd escape of the Winged Thing, it flew straight at my head. I ran and hid in the living room, my bodyguard went to bed without supper, and the Winged Thing lived to fly another day.

2. There are some really bad reasons to consider matrimony.

Many of my friends have gotten married, and I’m sure they must have had good reasons for doing so. (Perhaps to have someone more reliable than a spider around to vanquish Winged Things?) As I was driving along this week, even I thought to myself, “Hmmm, maybe I should get married… … …so someone else can drive, while I sit on the back of the bike and take pictures of weird things on trucks.” I saw so many crazy things on trucks this week, that if I could have taken pictures of them, I would have started a new blog called Stuff on Trucks that I could neglect as conscientiously as I neglect this one! Wouldn’t you be excited to see pictures of a regular pick-up truck with 21 fridges and 3 washing machines stacked and strapped on the back? Or a truck bed full of pineapples, piled 3x as high as the truck itself? Or a motorcycle tied down in the flatbed, with a person sitting on the bike wearing a helmet? Wouldn’t that be awesome!!?? Well, it’s not going to happen, because it’s a lousy reason to get married.

3. Aliens smell bad.

I didn’t actually learn this for real and for certain, but I did make an educated guess. You see, one of the nice things about being illiterate in your country of residence, is that you rely 100% on packaging to sway your decisions. “These cookies have a picture of a squid and some pickles on the package? Put ’em back.” or “I think this picture means you need to give it lots of water, and only feed it after midnight…” So, when picking out laundry detergent from a row of brightly coloured mystery packages, I naturally opted for the one with a large UFO hovering in a pink sky, with a sparkling white shirt in it’s tractor beam. How could I go wrong? Just like misreading Gremlin instructions, things can go very wrong indeed. The detergent smells awful. Rest assured, dear friends, if I small bad for the next month, it’s because I’m wearing clean clothes, washed in detergent recommended by aliens.

Veteran journalist Bill Moyers says, “When I learn something new – and it happens every day – I feel a little more at home in this universe, a little more comfortable in the nest.” After re-reading my list, I think Bill Moyers and I must be learning very different things.