Summer Foods

Summer is full of heat. The environment is hot, and the body is hot. Signs of excessive heat can include a red face, red tongue with maybe a yellow coat, heat exhaustion, fever, skin eruptions, nose bleeds, constipation, excessive dreaming, and restlessness.

    Red meat and chicken can increase internal heat so avoid over consumption in Summer. Zucchini, citrus fruits, soy products, kelp, white or green vegetables are good for clearing heat. If you are prone to heat rash then avoid warm or hot foods that thrust outwards: chicken, prawns, lobster, mussels, spicy or fried foods, peanuts or alcohol.

    Late Summer we may see problems of damp in the body. Damp is generally to do with spleen. Spleen is in charge of transforming and transporting our foods. if it is not working then it can leave foods undigested properly and creating a buildup of damp and/or phlegm in the body. Signs and symptoms may include: oedema, weight problems, nausea, sluggishness, mucous etc.

    To aid in removal of damp try eating bitter foods such as celery, rye, asparagus and lettuce. Beware though if you are not strong, and only eat these foods in small amounts.

    The organs of summer are the heart and small intestine in early summer and spleen and stomach in later summer. Keep the heart and small intestine cool by eating cooling foods such as watermelon, tofu or cucumber. Take care of the spleen and stomach by not eating too much cold and damp foods such as ice cream, dairy or copious amounts of salad.

    Most of all, learn to listen to your body for it will tell you what it needs.

Quitting Smoking...

ok so on the 30th of July me and a friend gave up smoking. We had decided on that date, for i had my last exam on the 27th (she the week before), it was the end of the month and australia brought in the new anti-smoking laws on the 1st of July (at 12 midnight). On the night of the 30th (and oh - it was a saturday night as well) we went out with other freinds. we were to go out and enjoy the last night as smokers, and our friends would enjoy their last night being able to smoke indoors. (My goodness - that last phrase brought about images of a fascist dictatorship, and a grey downtrodden peoples in an apocolypticly massacred city .. hmmm). Anyway - as i was saying, everyone was enjoying a last night of smoking in some context or another.

When 12:00 hit we were in a restaurant eating lots of food. We did not realise that the new laws had come into effect. that was until we stepped out onto the street. everywhere were smokers puffing away. the street had come alive. keep in mind that this was a freezing cold melbourne winter night. the icy wind would cut you in half if you stepped into it the wrong way. the half frozen rain was making its best attempt to pierce our skulls with its cold severity. and yet the streets were full. people were laughing and walking .. and smoking. nearly everyone we looked at was carrying a cigarette. naturally of course we had to join in...

that was over a week ago. i am now on day nine. i cannot say it feels good yet. but resisting the cravings is growing easier. my boyfriend is still smoking although he isn't smoking inside the flat or the car now. and of course i still have friends who smoke. i have a night out this coming saturday, and i'm not sure how i will handle it. but my non-smoking compradre will be there, so we can encourage (or distract as the case will be) each other from the spectacle that will lure and tempt us. see - now i have sensual images of delicious maidens languishing on couches - ringlets of smoke rising up and embracing them.... bah!!

one thing i have noticed .. with the cigarettes no longer claiming the precious oxygen so needed by my brain, it is beginning to work again. this has its downfall. although my imagination is being allowed to awaken from its slumber, my body's sleep is suffering as a result. i cannot fall asleep. i lie down at night and my mind goes round and round - and round... it may be stresses and banalities, it may be imagined encounters with work collegues, or it may be maidens, peircing rain spears, rocks that walk and prowl, animals that change shape with my mood .. it may be anything. and i want that sleep back. this is the hardest thing about giving up i think. not being able to sleep. i wonder if this is a common thing... i should look it up.

its over .. for now

Thank god - it is finally over. Another lot of exams is done with. This marks the half way mark. Two and a half years down, another two and a half to go. I must admit - i cannot wait. I am tired of this whole full time work, full time study thing. Its making me ill, its making me grumpy. This set of exams was harder than the last ones. I could Not motivate myself to study. I could not focus on anything for more than 10 minutes. Study when it did happen, happened in 15 minute bursts. I would then find myself staring at the page, or realising that there was a dirty cup in the sink.

I cannot wait for the day when i just have one "job". When i can come home at night and watch television. When i can spend time with my friends and not feel guilty. When i can fly out to see parents without thinking - no, i took that time off from work for exams, i can't see them this year. When i can spend an evening with my boyfriend reading books and playing games. Simple things.

I think I'm tired. I have four weeks of just work (ie, no school). after that four weeks I will probably be itching to repeat the whole cycle again.

Lets hope so...

Clients, patients, whatnot

i am on a formula. it is a modification of liu jun zi tang. for a long time now i have been battling various ailments, and what feels like chronic fatigue. i study full time, i work full time, i train when i can, and i train all day saturdays. i have just started taking massage clients, so now my sundays will begin to disappear. this of course is all very taxing on the body. although i feel run down all the time, i dont really feel much else. i have the most wonderful boyfriend in the world. i have a Fantastic sister here with me in melbourne. i have a wonderful mother in QLD and a wonderful dad back in Fiji. my friends are great...

but i never heal. i injured myself giving a performance at the beginning of 2006. thats nearly a year and a half ago. it still hasn't healed. my boss also thought i never looked well and sent me to a gp. poffeltoff! but the tests came back - i had hyperthyroidism. the only treatment for this type was to go on drugs for the rest of my life or surgery. fortunately i feel that it isn't severe enough to receive western treatment. but it may get worce .. so now i'm on a formula.

the type of hyperthyroidism i have is yin deficiency. yin is sorta like fluids. think in order of viscosity: fluids - yin - phlegm. my stomach is yin deficient, my spleen is yin deficient, my kidneys are yin deficient, and because i'm a smoker, my lungs are a bit yin deficient. but - my middle jiao (abdomen area - stomach, spleen etc) is also quite week, and the herbs needed to treat me are very rich and cloying .. i would have alot of trouble digesting them. oh, and i also have alot of damp .. one of the bi-products of having such a deficient spleen. so - liu jun zi tang modified for me.. drain the damp and tonify my middle. i have 10 days worth of formula where then i will be looked at again. if needed, i will repeat the treatment and go on the yin herbs later.

this is going to be a long treatment. maybe months. but Anything is better than the alternative! and in the end .. i will have all my energy and all my healing powers back!

the begining..

Me and a friend had a tattoo done last Saturday night. It had been planned for months, but the wheels were not set in motion until the week before. Now it is done.

After a week of panicing about the pain we strode into the studio blustering with false confidence. My friend was first. As she sat there staring fixedly at the floor I was convinced that she was in agony. But my occasional enquiries were met with a negative. She proclaimed that we had been both sooks for creating such a panic in ourselves.

I was next. My heart banged in my chest causing my upper abdominal muscles to twitch. I stared at my friend trying to relax and not rebuff the needle as it touched my skin. The needle fired up. The sound wasn't so bad when you knew that it was directed at you. And then the needle began to cut. It was nothing. The pain was like the tip of a pin being scraped across my skin. This wasn't constant as I soon realised. The sensation fluctuated between a scraping pin to a cutting needle. It stung - it felt like nothing.

And then it was over.

My friend and I walked out of the shop and around the corner. We jumped on eachother delightedly simultaneously condemning and praising one another. How could we have been so fearful! How good are our tats!

We both decided that another one should begin to be planned...

my island home

(i originally wrote this on my myspace site, but thought i would transfer it here.)

there is a song by australian singer Christine Anu called "my island home". Every time i hear it i am overcome with homesickness. i think it terribly cruel of her to write such a beautiful song..... ;-) any islander who is trapped away from their family, their village, their home can not help but feel sorrow..

Fiji is my island home .. okay, not all 300 + islands, but my land is fiji, and my island is moala. my village naroi is on that island of moala. i went back there after an absence of over 10 years. i hadn't been there since i was a kid. i didn't grow up on moala, i grew up on viti levu in the urban capital suva. but my roots, my ancestors are all on moala. my favourite auntie (whom i also happen to be named after) is on moala. my favourite house in the world is on a little bit of cleared land away from the village nestled in amongst the ancient coconut trees and the creeping groves that line the shore. my favourite desert vaka lolo, is not made better anywhere than on moala.

I think about my island home when ever trouble strikes me here in australia. when my penchance for chaos and high living has run its course through my system i will return there to be with my ancestors. to be with my family and to eat tonnes of vaka lolo.

I have another island .. it is a little one up to the north west. it is in stark contrast to my tropical island. it is cold and the buildings are made of stone. i have never been there but would very much like to go. its pull on one of my parents is as strong as moala is on me. but it is a different pull - its a different world. its name is england.

then there is another pull - the great land mass that for me is shrouded in mystery. instinctively i feel its gravity that draws me toward it, but superficially i feel there is but little connection. there is a family there that i may never know, cousins that i may never swap stories with, deserts made by loving aunties that i may never savour. it is the middle kingdom.

but it is that little island in the south pacific where my old bones will lay down to rest. where i will take my memories and my belongings and share them with the young ones who plan to leave. i will infuse these young ones with the excitement that the big world has to offer but i will remind them - that while they are away there is "yaca" who waits. there are cousins who will recite their name. there are uncles and aunties who will always be excited to hear their voice. there is a land that will remain pure for them. this is what my parents did for me, and i want to pass it on..

1st for 2006

okay, its been a looong while. I have no internet at home, and I have struck peak time at work. No time for writing blogs. Damn.

So welcome 2006. And what a welcome I give you. 2005 was to put it mildly - a shit of a year! It ended well though, which is good. I hold high hopes for 2006. Well actually, I dont - not for me anyway. My boy - yes. I think this year is going to be great for him - thats of course if he will let the year be good to him. Why is it that some people Must battle every good oppurtunity to the death before they will allow it to happen.

My baby girl had her surgery, and it was successful. So now she has no ears. Well, she does - little short ones. She looks very cute! Or am I just displaying a prime example of a mother's love? I was going to try and hook up my compoota to my sis's internet and upload images, but unfortunately I didn't grab her network details before she left. Bumma!

I am moving back into the city soon!!! ThankGOD!! I can NOT wait!! I so can not wait!! staying here at my sis's house for the weekend (we are baby sitting the dog while she is away) just re-affirms my incredible desire to be back amongst the land of the living. Not that mornington is full of dead people, but I am dead living there. I have no social life to speak of, and I wonder around like one of the many retirees, getting bored, and annoying the monkey. He will be staying in Mornington for a while. His drum kit is there...

We are hopeing to move into my "brother in law"s brothers flat!!! Fingers x'd!! It is the end of the lease for the woman living there, and we are hoping to Christ she decides to leave! That place would be PURRfect! The monkey and I may even give living with eachother another shot - cos that flat is bigger, and we may not kill each other with quite such frequency. oh Boy am I hoping for the best!