It’s a known fact that eating garlic and onions make you socially repulsive.  But garlic and onions also have known curative properties.

Garlic, for one, is known, and I have personal experience with this, to drastically lower blood cholesterol.  The downside is that you have to take it chopped and, yes, raw – for at least 2 weeks. Say goodbye to your non garlic-eating friends.

Onions, as far I’ve heard, is like the anti-flatulence vegetable. According to WikiPedia it has many medicinal properties, but it doesn’t mention purging air as being one of them.  But again, personal experience has taught me that onions make you fart, which at least leads to a less bloated stomach.

Recently though, something peculiar happened to me and I haven’t been able to verify it with evidence, anecdotal or otherwise. So here it is.

Super Onions & Super Garlic

Being of the single persuasion recently I have had the freedom to eat as much garlic and onion as I can stomach. It is important to note that my tolerance for garlic and onions (and chillies, for that matter) is quite substantial.

Also of importance is the fact that I have, in the centre of my lower jaw, two teeth that overlap, which are annoyingly prone to plaque buildup.  Perhaps because it overlaps in a way that protects it from any but the most stringent, multi-directional-approach tooth brushing.

Anyway, plaque, as you may know, is stubborn and never leaves on its own. So it was quite a surprise when mine did. A little bit at a time.

Dentist Grade Tools

It was only when I went at it with a plaque scrapper (you don’t have one?) that I realise how easily it really came off.

And it made me wonder; what brought this on?

Usually odd things in my body are due to a persistent change in diet, and the only change in my diet has been the edition of serious amounts of garlic and onion. Like 2 or 3 onion and a bulb of garlic at every meal.

So I searched Google to see whether or not the removal of plaque has ever been attributed to garlic and onions, or whether garlic and onions can in fact remove plaque.

I found nothing to answer this question, but having had this experience I  can’t help but wonder: do garlic and/or onion somehow work in on plaque to make it easier to remove?



Now there’s a name for a diarrhoea medicine if ever there was one: Spuit-poep Begone.

Yup, today is day 2 with a fairly normal stomach condition.  I’ve been suffering this spuit-poep on and off for the last two weeks.  It wears you out, it certainly does.  On the up side, my toilet has never been cleaner (have to scrub after every session – sis man! Yes, that is was what I said too).

So I thought about where I’m getting the bug from that’s upsetting my stomach like this and I had to draw the conclusion that it was in my water source.  Ironically, my water source, at home and at work, are shared by other people who have no problem, but likely also much stronger constitutions.

To test my theory I’ve been drinking only bioled water the last two days, as oposed to the reverse-osmosis water I normally drink.  It could, again, be one of those co-incidences, like when I drank the Guiness at Earth Hour, but whatever, the flood-gates, have closed.

The benefits of course, is the weight-loss.  Now if I get down to it for the next two weeks and do situps and weights like I was supposed to for the last four months, I still might just gain sufficient definition on my stomach to fake a six-pack.  But that will require substantial will-power….

March was not kind to my body, so I thought I’d end it off with a nice little detox. Turns out I hadn’t experienced the last of Maliciously Menacing March 2009.

I capitalised the month with a little back spasm, underscored it with a severely twisted ankle, italicised it with a gashed finger and now I was about to punctuate it with a little spurt, if you would, of stomach trouble.

We enjoyed a week of excess with the Jules’ Thai friends.  It involved a lot of food, a lot of beer, more beer and more food.  A liquidised diet, was just the ticket for a quick cleanse.  No alcohol, no meat, just fluidly goodness. It all seemed so harmless.

Day 1 was easy. Day 1 of any diet is always easy. Day 2 was fun, I started to enjoy throwing a bunch of stuff in the blender and producing a meal-in-a-glass 2 minutes later. I also played Ultimate on Day 2, it was Tuesday. I think that was my first mistake.

Day 3 I had withdrawal symptoms. Or so I thought. Looking back on it now I was probably just dehydrated. It was painful. Headache, stomach cramps, generally not feeling great. Correctly guessing my body needed something, I decided to make a simple veggie soup, which, of course, I liquidised. Jules (lucky her) had something on, so she missed out on this meal.

Because I incorrectly guessed exactly what my body needed, I made mistake number 2: I added garlic and chilli from my stash in the fridge, both of which were chopped up some time ago and were thus quite mature – no problem for a healthy stomach, but one which had just been flushed of all things vile obviously is susceptible to anything.

On Wednesday night the flood gates opened and wow, if I was looking for a system flush I so found it. Wednesday was novel – woohoo, I thought, toxins begone. Thursday I literally flushed the novelty down the loo – several times. Friday I developed an intense disliking for the loo and, after 6 trips there on Saturday, I became catatonic in an effort to not stir any part of my bowels whatsoever.

Fully aware that it’s quite possible to shit yourself to death, regardless of how much water you drink, I cleverly added adequate amounts of rehydration salts to the tons of water I was drinking. Good move.

On Saturday I reluctantly went to celebrate Earth Hour at the Loft.  Upon hearing my sop(ping) story, Pip suggested I try a Guinness to calm my stomach. It’s supposedly recommended for pregnant women’s health, so why not stretch the goodness of Guinness a wee bit further? One RM24 Guinness later I hoped for a miracle.

Call it a placebo, call it inevitable, call it a great urban legend, but following the Guinness my stomach quieted down and my constitution solidified once more.

All I can say is that I’m glad March is over and I’m still in once piece. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Hello April.

Exactly three weeks after the incident where I nearly broke my ankle (exagerated for effect), I returned to the Ultimate field at Tanjung Aru yesterday.  Without my ankle guard, which I mysteriously lost.

I started my birthday-month with a bang on the first of March.  Actually, it was more of a crack, because that’s the noise my ankle made as I twisted it after successfully skying Joel.  Never has victory been this painful.

Julia rushed to pile ice on it, Bryan recommended sleeping with it elevated (which I did), and I cleverly bandaged it up tight for two weeks afterwards.  These action, according to the experts on the Internet, minimised the impact of the ankle injury and cut down my recovery time considerably.

Ever since the pain subsided and I regained painless movement of the ankle, I’ve been doing light rolls and other exercises to keep the ankle nimble and strengthen it again.  I couldn’t walk on it for about 10 days after the accident.  After two weeks I felt confident enough to not wrap it up any more and I tested it as I took it easy going up the steps to see how tough it was.  It held up just fine.

On Friday I had an easy-going Ultimate game on the beach, but played only a short while before I called it quits, not wanting to tire out the ankle.  I was wearing the ankle guard that Julia got me, so my foot felt well supported, but I was playing it safe.  After the game I swear I put the guard in the bag, but looking for it on Sunday it was nowhere to be found. Disappointment all around.

Before the Sunday game I did a few hops, skips and jumps and had no feelings of pain in or around my ankle and decided to brave a full on game of Ultimate with cleats.  Taking it easy still, letting my right foot do all the breaking and accelerating, I managed a whole game injury free.  My ankle also hasn’t felt pain or discomfort since and I think I’m well on the way to a full recovery.

My throwing arm and legs, however, wasn’t so fortunate, because they certainly feel like I haven’t used them in the 3 weeks since my last Ultimate game.

Thank goodness for healed ankles, because now I can get my exercise regime back on track.  My previously dissolved love handles have been clawing their way back again and we can’t have that, now can we?

There are tons of self-help and self-improvement and self-you-name-it books out there about being positive.

And not for nothing either, because being positive has a major impact on one’s life.  It goes beyond a happy mindset, being friendly, cheerful and all those other attractive qualities.  Being positive impacts on health, it boosts the immune system, lowers stress and, with it, cholesterol levels; to name but a few that I have personal experience of.

There’s plenty of positive reasons to be positive about being positive. But I haven’t been all that positive recently.

The Slippery Slope Of Mental Depression

I caught myself recently, over the last few days especially, being rather negative.  Something I usually don’t dabble in, because I know it’s a pointless, de-constructive waste of energy.  But I’ve been criticising much, finding fault and wallowing in a generally depressed mood.

I swear depression is in the colon, because it’s a really shit place to be.  I associate depression with the colour and smell of dark, red-wine induced faeces; something I certainly want to get away from as soon as possible.

My emotional elevator doesn’t go down to the depression level all that often and when it does, it usually sinks to the basement only briefly, opens the door for a rapid glimpse at exactly why it doesn’t go down there, and then quickly closes rising back up to the happy, bright place of optimism and positive outlooks.

However, the emotional spiral staircase that leads down to the stinky, dank level of depression, is long and slippery.  Once you start down this staircase of despair it’s not so quick and easy to get out.  On the way down you will slip, slide down quick and once you’re knee-deep in that gooey, cold emotional excrement, it’s alarming how soon you can lose your way, get used to it, and worse, start feeling comfortable in it.

There’s two ways out.  Good friends who come down, pinch their noses and extract you from the stickiness of your emotional sewerage, or an image from your memory banks as a profound reminder why you should get out.

Image Initiated Depression Ejection

A miscarriage.

Hating so much you become depressed.  Emotional stress. Impact on your system so great, you eject new life.  Or the new life aborts by itself, not willing to face a world that invoke such emotions.

I’m male. Obviously I can’t ever experience a miscarriage.  Or hate, and not that much, for that matter.

But this is the imagine that forces me to eject from the septic tank that is my depression level.  The image hangs on the wall down there.  It’s the reminder of why I don’t want to be depressed, or why I don’t want to spend any energy on hating, loathing, plotting revenge or dabble in negativity or pessimism.

Nothing good can come from it.

Depression, along with all these other soot-covered emotional states and thoughts, is the inefficient combustion engine of the the mind.  You have to burn so much energy to use it, and all you really can show for it is emotional pollution.

Why bother? It’s not the way I want to live my life. It’s hardly living at all.

Positive Energy

Optimism, on the other hand, is the mind’s perpetual motion machine.

Optimism and a positive outlook seemingly draws energy from the ether. From other people. From your surroundings.  As if by being positive, seeing the good in life, being optimistic, you are somehow connected to the universal power-grid

Positive people have more energy. Positive people live longer.  Positive people are more popular, have less stress, get better service, slice through traffic, stand in the fastest queue, see turtles in the TAR marine park, are healthier, happier and find luck often.

People who claim to be on top of the world, are.  They are on the top of their world.  I know that the top few floors of my mind are the optimism floors.  When I’m there, I’m standing tall, looking out ceiling-to-floor windows with a wide balcony, looking over the landscape and seeing everything that is good.

It smells like freshly brewed coffee, warm bread hot out of the oven.  It’s cool in summer and warm in winter and there’s always fresh air coming through the window.

I like being positive.

I’m a glass half full kind of guy, the one who makes lemon meringue pie when life gives me lemons, I see the silver lining, the light at the end of the tunnel, the bright side, through permanent rose-coloured inlays, with the wind at my back in the sun in my face, already standing on the greener grass.

I may have been on one knee in the shit you created.

But you won’t get me down.