Living Life at 70

We work long hours. We meet at meetings. We focus on things to be done. And then we are tired. We come home and sleep. Our social life, if it exists at all, is sporadic at best. I have found that breakfast is an excellent time  to get friends around, except those who sleep in and are night birds; I have quite a few of those friends who wake up only around lunch, having gone to bed around 3.00am or so!.

For me breakfast is easy; there is no need for involved preparations. A good cup of coffee ( and I make  excellent coffee!) is a sure winner and then there are the special breakfast that I make.  Ask my friends who have come to my home, chatted around my kitchen table and enjoyed, appam, puttu or pancake for breakfast.

I hadn’t done it for a while but this morning I was again reminded of the joy of getting friends together around a breakfast table. There is another thing about breakfast on a weekend - there is no rush to go off and do something. We linger and have yet another cup of coffee. There is delight in that lingering…

Living Life at 70 and I am faced with a whole lot of new vulnerabilities. I can pretend and behave like I have the energy of somebody much younger than me -My body reminds me that I don’t. Is the pain in my arm signaling an imminent heart attack or could the pain result from moving furniture around? ( remember I have been de-cluttering? I think I have no serious health issues. Then I read about people who  in their 60s and 70s dying. These deaths remind me that I am not invincible. I think I should get a medical check-up. Then I hear of healthy, happy people discovering  health problems on  just such a medical check-up. Then they suddenly ‘wither’ away.

Yesterday I missed a great dinner party and today i am going to miss another one. I am wondering which of the above is the cause. Suddenly I feel the need to slow down.

The ‘gift’ of the hot season.

Along the CTE ( The Central Expressway), during the hot season, there is a delightful distraction (from stress and idiot drivers) – the ‘cratoxylum formusum’. Known commonly as the ‘Pink Mempat’ or even as Singapore’s own Cherry- Blossom (Singapore Sakura), the ‘Pink Mempat” is a very attractive and stunningly beautiful tree when it flowers. The book “Trees of our Garden city” a publication of the National Parks Board, informs that ‘the wood is durable and is used to build houses in Java. A decoction of the bark can be used to cure colic. The resin from the bark is used for itch. The leaves, when pounded with coconut oil, can be applied for skin complaints’. So the “Pink Mempat” is not just a pretty face!

The vision of this row of beautiful pink blossoms is a pretty wonderful sight to behold. They unfailingly lift my spirits as I struggle the predictable traffic jams along the CTE.

Imagine my shock, no distress, that all these beautiful trees, have been chopped down.I am sure instant trees will re-appear once the roadworks are complete.

But the story our lives is that very little in Singapore is allowed to take root.

The past few nights I have been sleeping on a new pillow that I bought for $37/- and let me tell you that for me is a really expensive buy for a pillow. But my head just sinks softly and blissfully into this particuarly luxury item.

I didn’t think that pillows can cost that much since I am still caught in a time/price warp. 30 -40 years ago we made our own pillows. I still have a pillow my mother made for me 30 years ago. Ten years ago I did buy two new pillows - made with down ( organic pillows are better I was told) till a couple of months ago when the feathers started escaping their cover and eventually began pecking me and disturbing my sleep.

I spotted a pillow at NTUC for $9/ and bought it. It seemed like a decent price for a pillow! But my head kept bouncing off. I comforted myself that it was a new pillow and it would settle down. A few days ago I spotted pillows on sale and these have been reduced from $75/ - $55/ and the penny dropped - there are pillows which costs way above $9/- well, way above and you can pay up to a few hundreds for a pillow.

I decided that my $9/- pillow was not going to settle down at all to ensure me a comfortable night’s sleep hence my purchase of a $37/- pillow from Robinsons’.

This reminds me of a story that my nephew told me. He talked of a classmate who received a $5,000/- gift  from her father for doing well in her O’ level. What did she do with the money? She bought two handbags - two handbags for $5,000/- and she spend it in 20 minutes!

One of the resolutions that I made, ten years ago, when I moved into my current home - a small flat - from a bigger home was  not to accumulate, not to crowd the space, to have more open spaces for easy of movement  and so on. Especially, when I had to make hard, even brutal, decisions to  discard stuff I had accumulated over the many years. But I am a collector of papers - newspaper articles, magazine articles, essays photocopied. I love reading and making copies for future reading and soon I was running out of space to store these papers.

The last time I tried to sort them out, two years ago, I ended re-reading them and I didn’t have the heart to throw them out. So I move them to under my bed!! And there they stayed for the last two years, collecting dust.

This year’s resultion is to de-clutter and I was determined and I wa equally determined not to push them over to another corner. This became an obssesion and as a result I have thrown away 5 trash bags of papers that I had collected over the last 40 years and some furniture and other bric-a-brac.

I feel good.This is one new year resolution that I have actually accomplished in many years!

But there is gnawing a fear that tomorrow I am going to need an article that I had just thrown away!!!