.Heartbreaks.Heartaches.

Picture @cameleyelashes

To those I know who are going through one of these.

And a few who are contemplating...

WHY IS BREAKING UP SO BLOODY DIFFICULT? 

This is a bit of a depressing post but I feel I want to share something I came across while looking up some woman problems of mine (lol... no, I wont tell you what it is :P). I know some people who are going through it/contemplating it. I hope you will find some comfort in the article below.
As Damien Rice sang in Old Chests

"Like time... there's always time.  

So pass me by, I'll be fine. 

Just give me time"

Just keep believing in yourself that you will get through all heartaches & heartbreaks. And watch "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"!!!



An article from somewhere... I found it on a website for women called http://www.empowher.com. You can look up almost any problems there and share your own with millions others out there who won't judge you!
Please don't feel that we have to be strong all the time. Vulnerability is what makes us most human.

FALLING OUT OF LOVE ...
How can something that made me so happy now cause so much pain? One of the greatest fears about ending a relationship is that our feelings of loss, rejection, hurt, loneliness, and pain will be overwhelming and unbearable and we will never get over it. Another fear people commonly express is that they will never love or be loved again, that they will never be known as deeply by another person.

Remember the Stages of Grief?When a relationship is lost, you may go through emotional processes similar to those we experience with the death of a loved one. The difference with a romantic relationship, however, is that the resolution is messier—often during the process we are plagued with thoughts of doubt—thoughts about trying again or getting him/her back. These stages might include:

Shock/Denial: “This can’t be happening”.

Anger: “You can’t leave me. How could you do this to me?”

Guilt: “I feel so bad to have caused this hurt.” or “It’s all my fault.”

Bargaining: “I’ll do anything—just come back to me.”

Depression/Loneliness: “I can’t stop crying. I feel like a total wreck.”

Acceptance and Hope: “It’s really over.”

How to survive the pain: Acknowledge that the day will come when you will feel better. Rely on habits and old friends—try to maintain a regular routine. —sleep, exercise, healthy food, don’t numb out with alcohol or marijuana. Let others support you and find ways to spend time with others. Surround yourself with the things you enjoy. Start something new—a class, a hobby, a club. Put away the reminders and the pictures. Avoid the places (for the time being) that were “special”. Write a “poison pen letter”, letting out everything you’ve been feeling, no holds barred...or a a letter of forgiveness. Keep these private—they are a private communication just for you. Discover parts of yourself that you set aside during the relationship and nourish them.

Some questions you might ask yourself: • What did I like about myself in this relationship? • What did I learn about giving to someone else? about receiving from someone else? What were the conflicts in this relationship—what needs of mine were not being met? What needs of my partner were not met? (Avoid assuming that all needs should be met by your partner). • What was your first clue to the problem that would eventually end the relationship?

Are you done processing? Are you ready to move on and stop thinking about it?

Love,
Cameleyelashes

Another.April

"What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.”

Leisure, William Henry Davies

Buy yourself a flower day!

To all my lady friends, on a spur of a moment whilst reading "eat, pray, love"

As much as we love your boyfriend/partner/husband, most of them are quite useless at romance. Especially when you get to that comfortable stage...

My mom loves flowers, but my dad is clueless. But he would always buy her a bouquet on their anniversary/women's day/ her birthday, and the something-obligatory about it always makes her a bit unsatisfied (or maybe that is just my impression).

I find myself in similar situations. I love flowers. Their beauty just makes me happy, like looking at a beautiful painting/creation... However I am always told "but they die so quickly!" as an excuse not to receive flowers. And I am always tempted to say "So will I".

Flowers can be a messenger: of love, of beauty and (most of the time) of caring ... If any of you get a random bouquet or even just a single flower from your men, I congratulate you! Otherwise (if from men) isn't it usually on an anniversary when they buy those ready-made bouquets which I think none of their creativity goes into (because they feel they have to get flowers), or when they've done something wrong, or from potential suitors (but you don't get them anymore when you're in a relationship, do you?). These days, many of my girlfriends, sometimes I, moan about the fact that these simple romantic gestures have died.

It is a feminine thing and most men don't get it. So maybe we should stop expecting so much from them --- I thought why don't we just have a "buy yourself a flower day" (or "days" in my case). Why wait? It doesn't have to be a sophisticated bouquet, sometimes just one chrysanthemum or a bunch of daffodils... so cheap but it will brighten your day. I promise.

Photo credit @cameleyelashes using Nikon D90, 35mm lens

"Dear" banks

What do you think of bank charges?

I had a horrible money-losing experience with bank charges since the beginning of this year. Due to a cheque that bounced end of last year.
You see, I have two accounts with this bank but I don't exactly use them as they are too basic. One of them was the first account that I opened in the UK so I wanted to keep it due to the long personal history (Lesson: it is business I shouldn't be personal). I put odds and ends in there and have some direct debits from ages ago ... Mostly magazine subscriptions to be honest. Let's call this, account number 1.

Now, account number 2 was opened a year and half ago. This was an attempt to upgrade account 1. I was hoping to bank with this institution again as the other one that I use on a regular basis is becoming off putting with their services. But again, I was given the most basic account of them all so I didn't really see the point of using account number 2 either.

One happy day last year I wrote a cheque for a magazine. Instead of writing from account 1, I mistakenly wrote from the cheque book of account 2. I use cheques like... twice a year. Bam! Cheque bounced but magazine still came regularly so I didn't really realized that a cheque had bounced. It turns out I have a direct debit w/the magazine but they had sent me the cheque notification as well... by mistake?! Why do people keep making these silly mistakes? You see, if the cheque didn't bounce, I would be getting two copies of this magazine monthly.  I wish that had happened.

Anyway 2 months+ on from that bounced cheque, I still hadn't noticed it 'til one sunny morning they called me to say I had charges. I went online to check... And went bonkers! For some reason it had gone from bounced £35 cheque to almost 200£ overdraft (worth of charges!).

So apparently this bank charges you a £20 maintenance fee a month if you went overdraft. For any amount. On top of that there was a 30£ charge for ... (don't remember what to be honest). Probably for them having to call me? And of course there were interests accumulated on that "overdraft", which to be honest is interest on the charges they imposed. You see, interest on interest is what bankers, retail or investment, love! Are you still following me?

That interest as I found out yesterday was around 20%.

I understand my personal mistakes in monitoring of my accounts. And I deserve to be charged for bad management but it surely doesn't cost £20 to maintain an account per month? Neither do I deserve an interest on top of  that monthly charge?!

So I talked to them and explained the situation I was in... They replied that they could only wave the £30 "penalty fee". I had to put in the remaining (almost £200) to bring my account up to date! Imagining losing £200 for a stupid mistake?! So I paid up. Blaming no one but myself. After I bought the account back to order, I contemplated closing the accounts... A few days later I moved all remaining amount from account 2 to account 1 (I had put in over £200 just in case). And then life happens, sometimes you forget to do non-life-threatening things.

A month later on a random check, account 2 has gone in arrears by £20.59. I went "huh"? I cleared everything?" So I called them up and was explained that there was still interest charge of -59p on my account from the month of February?! I asked "Didn't I pay off everything already?". The adviser kindly said "No. But if you pay in the £21 then I will waive the charge as goodwill. 59p is a small amount".

Two days later and the £25 I put in only has £4 something left. I thought "wait a minute, shouldn't I be given back the £20 charge that as been waived on that 59p?". So I called again, and guess what I was told "No. You have been waived the £20 charge for the month of April!" Wtf!!! It isn't even April yet! I was seriously confused.

So I went on a rant. Believe me I gave them a piece of my mind. Not swearing. But just tell them that none of these charges was making sense if it was nothing I had done. I have relatively good financial knowledge and I had worked at a retail bank when I was at uni. So I understand it is a business and there is cost involved. But this was just utterly unfair. They claimed that I had overdrawn 59p. No I did not!!! They had charge me interest for I don't know what, then charge me another fee for "being overdrawned" and could have kept charging me (even in advance for April) even though I had bought the account up to date in March!

Frankly the lady on the land must have thought "shit. This really doesn't make sense". But she was a good employee and stuck to her ground. Kept explaining but made little sense. I kinda understand how it works for them as my accounting professor used to say "always consolidate your account". But I was in no mood to be have money taken away from me again. And so unfairly. I demanded to get my money March charge back. Even if it was just £20. After an hour, I won.

I apologized for raising my voice at her. It wasn't her fault. It was the retail banking system that has been put in place. Made no sense whatsoever with their charges. Charging people for being irresponsible is ok. But that charge should level with the amount. It does not cost you £20 if people overdraw say £1. And in this case, it hadn't even been overdrawning. They overdrawn on me!

I started thinking about other people who may not have much money monthly and are only making ends meet. Had they not been qualified for an overdraft and somehow they are overdrawn even just £1 or £2 every month, they will keep having to pay interest on that. And they probably don't know it because they use it so regularly. I prob wouldn't notice anything had I it been my normal account. It's scary that we actually don't really know what goes in and out of our account. Even if we think we do.

Now I'm off to investigate on my more regularly-used accounts!
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Earth Hour 2010

Will anyone be taking part in Earth Hour 2010? At 8.30pm local time on Saturday, March 27th, cities, businesses and homes across the world turn off their light electricity for an hour to show solidarity and call for action on climate change. Many iconic landmarks like Sydney Harbour Bridge, Big Ben in London , Tour Effel a Paris, CN Tower in Toronto, The Golden Gate Bridge in SanFran will have lights switched off for one hour as a symbol of hope for a cause that is urgent.

I am all for raising awareness and the movement has raised considerable momentum across the globe since it started. It is truly quite magnificent. From East to West within 24 hours, we probably do save a considerable amount of energy  for this occasion.

However, I do have a funny story from last year...

This day last year, Will and I were in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and March 27th 2009 happened to be a Friday. We were walking down the main street from Town Hall when traffic all of a sudden picked up like crazy. You have to understand our amazement because ... 1. Being Vietnamese I am already used to the crazy traffic and 2. my travel partner was also used to it after one week in Vietnam. But that night, it was unbelievable!!! The streets were so thick of traffic, literally one motorbike after another in a constant stream, like a never ending snake making its way through the quite large boulevards of HCMC. And they didn't seem to be moving either. Motorbikes actually spilled on to pavements to try and get ahead of each other... Where they were trying to go, we had no idea. We were just so stunned with the sight that was in front of us. Will kept asking me what was happening and I seriously was clueless. I knew it was some sort of celebrations as the Viet like to show their enthusiasm and solidarity on the streets.

In no time I realized it was Earth Hour as there was music and speeches from somewhere near the City Theatre. So everyone had gathered in the centre to celebrate the occasion, which was nice. But it just happened that they were all on their motorbikes, all of which were on power but none was moving anywhere. I hope the electricity they saved on this occasion compensated for the amount of fuel that was used and released into the city air. If that made sense?

So my point is, raising awareness is important... but we hope that that awareness will go further and turn into actions; that it won't stop at being just "noise". We have enough of that in the world.

As for our part, we were strolling the streets of Saigon that night on foot so we did our Earth Hour duty by saving the electricity of our hotel room. That probably benefited the hotel more than anyone else. This year, we will light candles in central London and smoke up on the balcony before hitting London night life. Hell yeah!

No photograph taken that night. This is a video of us crossing traffic on a typical normal day in HCMC. Gotta love Asia.

'Ello 2010

So far, 2010 has blessed me with great kindness. Personally I still have a lot of S*** in my life to sort and figure out but surrounded by wonderful friends have helped me, all of whom are so beautiful, so caring and fun. Most of whom have their own version of "carpe diem" which inspires me every single day. I can't thank life enough for the people who have come into mine and have become "like hand prints in my heart". It makes my life away from my family a bit easier.

I have also gotten to know some wonderful new friends, who are also great sources of inspiration for me. Ladies you know who you are :) I hope our friendships will flourish.

My mind is clearer and more focus, thanks to my new commitment and passion for yoga. This is an exciting journey for me. I don't really know where it will lead me but I have a feeling it is the right one. I will share my stories with you along the way.

So yes, I hope the first quarter has been a great one for everyone!

What is really important? - Saying goodbye to 2009

I may care about big important topics like poverty,  fair trade, saving the environment ... etc. but all I really want at this moment is to be with my family for New Year. However this year due to circumstances my mom, my dad and I are celebrating in different countries. Hopefully 2010 will then bring us all together again.

I love my family more than anything in the whole wide world.

Happy 2010 everyone! Wishing you a year of love and fulfilment :)