learning

Getting drunk gives you nothing interesting to say

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Recently I found myself working in a bar in Thailand where we were given a lot of free alcohol every night, and that’s probably the reason I haven’t posted anything on here for a long time now.

Don’t get me wrong I love going out and getting drunk as much as the next person. I had a great time working in the bar but it also robbed me of all interesting thought, whilst drunk and after.

Before working there whenever I’ve been travelling around I’ll have random thoughts about things/see or hear something interesting and mentally write posts about it (even if they don’t end up actually making it on here). And I think it’s a good habit, it means I explore and expand on thoughts about the interesting things happening around me.

Well when getting drunk every night, there’s nothing that interesting happening in all honesty. Yeah I could tell you load of stories which start with the horrible “We were so wasted and…” but who cares. There’s reason why when you meet someone and all their stories start that way it doesn’t generally make you want to hang out with them.

We’ve all (well most) been drunk and done silly things. And sometimes they’re pretty funny. But mostly only to those who were involved.

Some I glad I left as I’ve had so many more interesting thoughts since I did. Now I just need to get round to writing about them!

I like girls to be willing participants when they get with me

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Disturbing how rare it is to hear those words from a guy.

Before people think I’m suggesting all guys are rapists, I’m not. I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about the bit before that when someone first comes onto you.

The other week I had been hanging out with guy for about 4 days and on the 4th evening he kissed me. Later I said to him I was surprised he’d waited 4 days to try anything if he liked me but he said he hadn’t felt anything back from me until that day and likes girls to be willing participants when they get with him, you know as in actually want to kiss him too. And it was so oddly surprising to hear him say that.

And he was right. There had been some times in the days before that where I’d thought he might try something and it made me uncomfortable as I hadn’t worked out whether I liked him that way yet (he had a beard, I don’t like beards, it confused me so I needed time!).

And had he tried anything on those other occasions it would probably have been dreadful as I wasn’t fully in yet but people don’t generally seem to stop to consider if the other person actually wants the same.

Especially if you’re in bars a lot of the time there seems to be no consideration from those hitting on people as to whether the other person actually wants to kiss them too.

Even if you have given no indication of being interested in the other person they still go for it. They just think about what they want.

But wouldn’t it be so much nicer if the other person actually really wanted that kiss too?

Why does it only take one negative comment to take us down?

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Literally just one, and it can ruin your entire day. Even if everything else has been good in your day and other positive things have been said to you that day, just one bad one and it takes it all down.

I’ve suffered from this for years, in both work and my personal life. I pride myself on being good at my job but even when I know I’m doing a good job at most things, just one bad thing and it makes me think I’m bad at my job and failing in some way

When it comes to work maybe it can be put down to imposter syndrome (where you never really believe you’re good or competent enough to be doing the job you are) so you accept the negativity more easily as you’re subconscious goes “see I was right”. But in our personal lives too? Do we really have that little self belief?

I was having a good day the other day, not the best, I’d spent most of it travelling so it wasn’t exactly a very exciting day, but nevertheless I was happy enough and good things had happened in the day. And then I got one message from a friend, which wasn’t even really negative, they just didn’t react in the way I expected them to and seemed a bit dismissive.

I may well even have just misunderstood the tone but it instantly affected my mood and self belief in such a surprisingly strong way. I dwelled on it, I focused on it and forgot everything good that had happened that day.

I was even conscious of it happening and so tried to focus on the positive things of the day instead but even whilst actively trying to change my mind set it was so difficult to pull myself out of the negative affect of just that one comment.

I watched a TED talk a little while ago on why negative things have so much more of a detrimental affect on us than the positive which is the only reason I was conscious of it. But still even with the knowledge that we have to work harder to get over negatives I didn’t do very well at it. I guess I need to practice more.

It may not have worked for me yet but it’s a great talk. You can see it here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7XFLTDQ4JMk

How can you object to riding on elephants but not prostitution?

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Seems like two very odd things to put together I know but I just don’t understand how, if you have enough moral sentiment to care for elephants that you wouldn’t apply that care to your own species.


I don’t know where I stand on the elephant riding thing (part of me is against it, part thinks why is it any different to riding a horse) but someone I met last night expressed they wouldn’t ever ride one as it hurts the elephants. They would, and do, however frequently have sex with prostitutes though.


So much so they spent a good 5 minutes telling me about how great they think Phuket is as you can go out with your mates but then pick any prostitute at the end of the night. 


Now my views on riding elephants may be undecided but they’re not on people using prostitutes in the way this guy clearly does. I think it’s pretty abhorrent. So much so (and I’ve considered this in the past) that I think if anyone I was going out with told me they’d used a prostitute before that would be a deal breaker for me. 


It would be a deal breaker as I think it shows pretty disgusting lack of respect for you fellow humans to pay someone to have sex with you when they don’t want to (I make the assumption the prostitute doesn’t want to have sex with the person in question as otherwise surely they wouldn’t have to pay). That to me shows you don’t care about humanity as you’re willing to enforce yourself on someone.


But the elephants they care about?


It makes so little sense to me that someone could care enough not to hurt an elephant’s neck but yet have no regard for any emotional harm they cause another human by using them in such a way. 


I have to assume this guy doesn’t really actually care about the elephants, he just thinks it’s cool or in to say he does as I don’t know how else to understand these two conflicting views. Like I really just don’t even know where to begin.

We’re the only ones who don’t listen

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Animals knew there would be a Tsunami in 2004. Well maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, they might not have known it would be a Tsunami but they knew something was coming and that they needed to get to higher ground.

We’re the only ones who didn’t.

I discovered recently that at the national parks in Sri lanka they didn’t find lots of dead animals after the Tsunami as you would have been thought. All the animals (even the elephants, and think about how slowly they walk) made it out the way. They had all gone and found higher ground and waited it out.

It’s so incredible that they all could have known to do that and with enough time for even the elephants to make it, but they did.

We think of ourselves as the smartest animals on earth but it seems we may be a little mistaken. We didn’t know and we never usually do when it comes to natural disasters.

If all other animals know we must have at some point have been able to tell that sort of thing too.

Clearly though we stopped listening. And we’ve probably now evolved so far from that we couldn’t listen properly again if we tried.

It’s such shame.

Think what else we may have been able to know if only we’d carried on caring enough to listen.

Making lasting friends in 10 min

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One of the favourite people I’ve met so far on my travels is someone I met for 10 minutes. In a bar. Whilst wasted. And I mean properly wasted.

But she is one of my favourite people from my travels so far and we still talk at least a couple of times each week.

It’s so unlike how we usually form friendships in normal life but I love it.

I’ve spent days travelling with some people who I know I’ll never speak to again, but someone who I randomly met in a bar for 10 minutes, sure!

Another couple of my favourite people from travelling are two people who I literally just went out and partied with one night. We were in places where it was too loud to talk almost the entire time so we barely spoke. But you just get a feeling from some people so quickly, almost like “yes you’re my type of person” and you know you would chose to hang out with them rather than just doing it through circumstance.

It has nothing to do with how long you talk to them or how well you know them, you just get it.

When was the last time you lay down and just listened to music?

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I’m not talking about listening to music while reading a book, tidying up around you, eating or dancing around your room like a maniac (my personal favourite), I mean literally just lying there and listening.

I’m pretty certain everyone does it as a teenager as some point, I certainly did. But I stopped.

I stopped so long ago that until last week I hadn’t just lay down and listened to music in, well, probably over a decade.

But I did last week, and it is such an incredibly enjoyable activity that I can’t believe I haven’t done it in over 10 years.

It was one of the most relaxing things I’ve done in ages (bear in mind I did 2 hours of meditation everyday for 4 weeks at yoga school and am still saying this). I think the reason it was so relaxing was in exactly the way it was the opposite to meditation. Far from getting me to clear my mind of thoughts, it actually just gave me time to think and let any thought come into my head and go with it. It was also so enjoyable as for the first time in ages I properly listened to the music that was playing. I actually focused on it rather than it being a background activity which it so frequently usually is for me.

I now can’t stop listening to music as an activity in itself. My kindle was abandoned for the whole of a 4 hour bus ride yesterday, just listening to music instead.

If you haven’t listened to music, and I do mean just listened in years give it a try, even if it’s for only 10 minutes.

You won’t regret it

It’s 5am and I’m awake, fully awake

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I don’t have to be up for hours but I can’t sleep and for one of the first times in my life, ever, I have decided to get up rather than just lay in bed getting annoyed. I’d already been doing that for an hour anyway.

So I’m now sat in the hostel common area which is pitch black and has two of the people who work here sleeping in it. The only thing I can actually see are about 10 mosquitoes circling me. And I’m in a malaria zone so that really isn’t great.

My dorm wasn’t much better on the mosquito front anyway though so I guess it doesn’t make that much difference.

I don’t really know why I’m awake, it’s certainly not stress induced insomnia. I haven’t felt that in a happily long time.

There are just so many thoughts going round my head right now.

I’ve spent the last week with two of the most interesting people I’ve met on my travels so far which I’m pretty certain has largely got something to do with it.

The longer I’ve been travelling the more I’ve found myself thinking in general about nothing and everything all at the same time. Not even necessarily about particularly profound things but definitely considering more what it is that does or doesn’t make me happy. Since I can affect that pretty easily now. If I don’t like something I can just stop doing it, if I’m not happy somewhere I can just move.

And I think that’s what I found so interesting about them, they were both in their own ways equally as interested in what makes us happy and had clearly at some point in their lives had the realisation where it, for whatever reason, properly hits you that this is actually it. This is all we get. This life. So if you’re not happy with something you’ve got to change it. And if you want to do something you’ve got to go do it.

One had even been going round the world filming a documentary on what it is that makes people happy (you’ll be able to check out their project soon on The Wonder Junkies).

Since I’ve been away I’ve actually found it’s the simplest things that make me happy and really surprisingly for me they’ve actually mostly been based in nature.

I say surprisingly as I’m not really someone who spends lots of time outdoors normally or goes on walks just for the sake of it. I’m usually far too busy for that shit (how ridiculous is that!).

But now I’m not and sitting looking at a view from the top of a mountain, watching a sunrise or just staring out and looking at the sea have been some of my most amazing moments whilst away.

Because the world is actually pretty cool if you look at it properly. Like really look, just sit there and get lost in what you’re looking at. It’s fucking amazing.

Fancy being bullied into making yourself sick, shoving a rubber tube up your nose or giving yourself diarrhoea? Then just go to yoga school – Yoga Teacher Training Week 4

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It sounds ridiculous but I was genuinely pressurised and even threatened with not completing my yoga teacher training if I wasn’t willing to partake in activities such as making myself sick or giving myself diarrhoea. Apparently it was a requirement of the course.

Bollocks to that!

What I’m talking about is a practice in yoga called Shatkarma. Shatkarma describes a group of “cleansing” techniques which are practiced in yoga as part of ensuring we uphold the Niyama called Shaucha; cleanliness both internally and external as well as mentally (Niyamas are just the personal code of conduct all should adhere to in yoga).

Now I can under understand how in order to be able to meditate for hours and have clear thoughts internal cleanliness is important. No one is at their best when they’ve been eating unhealthly, overindulging and essentially not keeping their internal bodies clean (just think of that post Christmas feeling) . Given this eating clean, healthy food would naturally seem important to yoga.

Making yourself sick however is 100% not something I can get on board with being considered as an essential part of any practice. Or being preached about to impressionable 20 year olds who are clearly there because they’re looking for something missing in their lives and haven’t quite yet learnt that it’s ok to take a step back and a minute to think in any situation to decide whether you are actually ok with something rather than just following what you’re told to do.

At the yoga school Shatkarma was scheduled in our timetable for 3 mornings in one week and then for added fun there was a full day cleanse (that’s the diarrhoea bit) at the end of the week.

The Shatkarma was carried out first thing in the morning and consisted of:

A nose cleanse -pouring salt water into one nostril and letting it come out the other)
Rubber netti – pushing a rubber tube up your nose and down and out through your mouth *retching from just thinking about it*
Making yourself sick – this was done by drinking as many glasses of warm salt water as possible in quick succession then sticking your fingers down your throat

When these were discussed in class it was repeatedly mentioned that we had to try all of them and at one point even stated it was a requirement of the course to do so.

We’ll I refused. If it was genuinely a requirement of the course to do it then I just wouldn’t be qualifying as a yoga teacher.

It amazed me how pretty much everyone else just went along with it though. Unless they had a health issue that meant they couldn’t (I.e. One girl had Chrones) they just all did it.

I even got into an argument with one of the girls about it who was saying I had to and it was just part of the course. To which I was trying to argue that if there was a yoga posture that I thought would be detrimental to my health for whatever reason I wouldn’t do it but I wouldn’t expect not to pass for that reason. Especially if I still learnt how to teach it (which I did for the Shatkarma too, although really what’s to teach in that one and it’s not like I’m ever going to teach anyone else it). But still it turned into quite a heated debate.

I then also had one other girl tell me that I was just objecting to it because I was thinking of it as throwing up but that’s just what it’s called it in the West. In the East it’s called cleansing which makes it ok.

Bhahahahahahhaha. No my objection is not a semantic one. It’s to the physical process that takes place when you throw up (sorry “cleanse”) that will take place whatever you call it.

Oh well that was the first bit of fun.

Then there was diarrhoea day. That was supposed to start with vomiting *natch* and then drinking more warm salt water, doing some twisting postures, more salt water, more twisting etc. until you started going to the toilet but even once that started you were supposed to continue the salt water and twisting until all you would expel would be clear water from a part of your body that is never supposed to expel water. Anyway that was the day cleanse which according to the school required a gross combo of rice, lentil and butter to be the only food you eat for 2 days after. According to the text book they gave us, that was true but also you were supposed to eat simple, not fired, rich or spicy food for 30 days after (probably because the cleanse will have stripped your stomach of all it’s good bacteria to fight infection).

Ummmmmm, rich, spicy and fried is pretty much every meal in India so given we were leaving just 7 days after the “cleanse” and I would then be fully back in the throngs of India and at its mercy for what I could eat, again it didn’t seem like the greatest of plans.

This time though we were told that unless we had a medical condition preventing us from joining in it was compulsory.

I debated making up a medical condition but in the end decided to go with honesty (it is one of the codes of social conduct in yoga after all), say I didn’t agree that the cleanse was healthy but that I would compromise and take part until the first inkling I needed the bathroom and then stop.

So I did and that was fine. All of the other girls weren’t though. One got so sick she couldn’t eat or sleep for about a week after due to stomach cramps.

Needless to say if I do ever become a yoga teacher I will not be teaching Shatkarma (unless it’s to give people my unfettered options of it).

Who knew “Your energy is just so bad” can be used as an insult in an argument – Yoga Teacher Training Week 4

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And of all places I heard it used it was at yoga teacher training school. I.e. at a place where most people there are really into yoga and so you would have thought are also really into the teachings of yoga, such as being calm and having non-violent thoughts towards each other.

Not the case at all. There were full on arguments across the middle of class on more than one occasion.

I have not been in as bitchy an environment since I went to all girls boarding school. It was actually quite incredible (and really entertaining to watch if you didn’t get involved in the drama).

There were 20 of us and we all lived in one place for 4 weeks, all going to the same classes everyday day so it is only natural there would be some fall outs, I just never expected them to be so public.

Maybe it’s because I’m English, and so have that whole reserved British thing, but in any location I would find it shocking for people to shout at each other across a classroom, let alone at yoga school.

But they did.

And then they used insults such as “you’re energy is just so bad” as an insult in the argument. AN ACTUAL INSULT IN AN ARGUMENT.

I mean really.

If you’re going to yell insults at someone across a yoga studio mid class, you should probably be reassessing how much yoga has “really changed your life” rather than yelling at someone else.

And also maybe start working on your insults.