Am I depressed?

How was your Chinese New Year? Something weird happen for mine. Yesterday my colleagues came to my place for lunch. It's quite fun & festive to have a large group of people around, eating chatting & playing some cards.

They brought some new year festive goodies for me. Some pineapple tarts & love letters- everyone's favorite, bak kwa (my favorite) & one of them brought me a box of Camomile tea !

 Ok, for those of you who are not familiar with chamomile, some explanation is needed. Camomile has amazing health benefits. But lately we found an article that reported that it can also help people manage depression. We were just talking about that a couple of weeks back. Hmmm..... so what does that mean? They thought I'm depressed, or I'm reading too much into it? I just couldn't help thinking about that the whole time, that I couldn't concentrate on the gin rummy. I ended up losing about  $20!!! 

Scientific Approach for keeping New year Resolution.

You always hear people complaining about not being able to keep new year's resolution right?
 
Well, According to science  'play' is the strongest motivator for sustained behavioral changes. It makes sense that we stick with enjoyable activities.
In other words, turning your resolution into a fun and enjoyable task may help you to keep it up!
Now the task is to find how to do it!

Animal Male Pregnancies???

Ok this may not be your everyday lunch topic but this happens to be ours today....lol..... Hmmm..... we all know the male sea horse  does that right? Or do we not... well we do... it's in the books somewhere I'm sure, might not be in your school text.... hmmm.... I cant remember...lol.... Anyway the thing was to name male animals that reproduce!

Dragon face Pipe Fish

Male pregnancy is a rare but real phenomenon in the animal kingdom. In some instances, male pregnancy is the result of man-made chemicals having strange effects on male frogs and bass, prompting weird intersex developments. In other situations, male pregnancy is a natural part of how seahorses, pipe-fish and leafy sea dragons reproduce. Whatever the case, males taking the reproductive roles of females provide bizarre and surprisingly fascinating studies.

Did you know that one of the most common weed killers can cause drastic changes in male frogs, transforming them into females that lay eggs? In a recent study, 40 male African clawed frogs  were raised from infancy to adulthood in a solution containing the chemical Atrazine, which is found in many weed killers. According to the study’s findings, 10 percent of the 40 frogs apparently developed into females. Upon dissection, 2 of the 4 transformed frogs maintained their male DNA despite also displaying ovaries. As for the other two transformed frogs, they mated with male frogs and laid eggs that produced male offspring. Previously, Atrazine had been shown to decrease sperm and testosterone and cause some male frogs to mate with other males rather than female frogs. Now it appears that the chemical can apparently cause some males to become near female frogs, a strange development to say the least.

After running 1,000km, runners lose little weight !

I read this last month, which certainly interest me. These 2 ultramarathoner age 61 & 43 both run this distance over a period of 20days, & in the end the 61 yr old Lim Nghee Huat lost only 2 kg & 43 yr old Yong Yuen Cheng has not lose any weight at all. We were all surprised !

So from this we can see that diet contribute much more to weight loss than exercises. It paints a clearer picture & that's great.

Pets & older folks

There has been much talk & studies about how pets can improve senior citizen's life. Usually these claims are coupled with very sweet & success stories of how some pets makes the best company for the old fragile during their last days.

In the past I would have agree without a second thought, but not now..... hmmm.. See I've just taken a new pet. A young puppy of 4 months & toilet training Snowy is driving me pretty nuts. She pees & poos everywhere , so I've no choice but to lock her up in the cage. She looks so cute & sad in the cage:( Poor thing. So far she has pee on the sofa, the floor, the balcony, well practically everywhere! I hope this phase will end soon.

What we are today, is a result of his vision: GoodBye LKY

Singapore's first Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew, passed away at 3.18am this morning.

I wonder how the nation will react, he's all we ever know ,he formed the backbone of the growth of our nation. What we are today, is a result of his vision.

Though this is inevitable, he's still mortal, it's somehow difficult to accept. Everyone in the office suddenly became sober. It's strange, a sadness just crept over to us. Sms went non-stop from every handphone. We relate how each of us think of our LKY. Every version is different yet somehow similar. We all admire & respected the MAN. We appreciate what he has done....& somehow that's enough for the time being.

Do you record your disputes with your love ones?

I just found out one of my colleagues has a definitive record of all her disputes with her husband , dated & filed in chronological order. At some point she must be planning to cross-reference them by subject index as well...lol.... This strange behaviour must be a result from our job!!!

She confess to us over lunch -Sometimes a fight might looks like it was building & she activate the voice 'record' in her hp only to feel a slight sense of disappointment when the hubby said something conciliatory & the she had to delete the file.