Happy 2012!

So I'll keep with tradition and write a post about my goals for 2012.

2011 was a year of growth for me - a year of getting to know myself, pushing boundaries, listening to gut instincts, throwing myself at new challenges, striving to follow through, and completing some life goals.

I realized this year that I'm a serial entrepreneur and finally achieved small successes, mastering the art of pivoting and really liking all the challenges and uncertainty that it comes with. And I finally realized this year that I'm not alone, there's crazy people just like me...in Vietnam and in Toronto. Thank god.

In the process of my adventures there's two things that I let slip through the cracks that I need to work on in 2012:

1) HEALTH. I let it slip this year as I had food, alcohol and cigarettes to comfort me through the crazy year. So I will start from scratch with a cleanse and follow the Hormone Diet to get myself all sorted out again. Hopefully I keep this blog alive as I tell you all about my diet. The smoking has got to go. The alcohol only for a few rare occasions. The food has to be homecooked, healthy and delicious. The triathlon training has got to start.

2) STABILITY. I definitely pushed the envelope of random this year as a serial couch surfer. In my head I can count at least 100 different beds/floor/couch/bus/plane that I've woken up from. This means every 3 days for the year I woke up somewhere else. The advantage of that was that I didn't pay rent this year I guess...but I'm too old for this backpacking couch surfing hippie lifestyle. I couldn't see much further into the future than a day or week or month and I learned to really live in the moment....but...it also caused a lot of stress and conflict. I just want to be able to wake up in the same bed in the same city perhaps 200 days this year. I also want the bank account to go up instead of in a downwards spiral.

And I want to be able to be able to do the triathlon in August and know that 1) I'll be in the right city 2) I can afford it.

That is all. Two things to work on and 365 to do it. No problem.

So I have a feeling that 2012 will be a great year - not without its challenges but hopefully yours will be filled with laughs, love and good stories too!

30.

Somehow I've stumbled onto the age of 30, wrapping up a rather eventful second decade of life and decided to do a little bit of reflection. When I started this blog exactly 3 years ago on my birthday it was because I didn't think I'd live to see me in my thirties. Thus, started a series of gut instincts, irrational decision making, emotions, and adventures in the past 3 years which have pushed me into and over every limit possible.

I know it's pretty cliche, but when your life does flash before your eyes, your priorities change - mine definitely did. What it has done for my life, was allowed me to live it and learn more about myself in the process. Completing my lifelong goals were a lot more important than everyday life.

Physically - I wanted to lose weight, adopt a healthy lifestyle and be as healthy as I possibly can. (I've fallen off the wagon here but trying to get back at it :) I climbed up Half Dome, trekked up to Machu Picchu, saw sunrise in Crater Lake, hiked in Sapa and did a sprint triathlon. Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat have been on my things-to-see-before-i-die list and I did it.

Food - I learned how to cook fresh local ingredients of all countries and could replicate michelin star food, street food, and met the best chefs in the world during the Olympics and in my travels to Vietnam. Earlier, I simply didn't know how to cook and found that I enjoyed it immensely. Food is definitely an interest that everyone has in common and almost a common universal language on how people interact, get to know each other and keep in touch. One item on my checklist of life was to spend time in Vietnam learning how to cook and...I did it and wrote a book about it. I also got to cook on a sailboat all the way down the beautiful west coast to San Francisco - who does that :)

Love - I never knew what love was three years ago - love for a boyfriend, love for friends and love for family...as well as love for myself. It has definitely been a wild ride as I let the engineering/logic side take a back seat and rolled with the punches. Coming from a divorced family and being Vietnamese, I used to block out love and attachment as a survival mechanism. Now I realize that to be whole and live, you need both the love and career side of things. Family is important and so are my closest friends. Finally admitting that I love someone was a giant feat for me and accept all the scary fears of rejection that comes along with that.

Business - I've always envisioned myself to be a CXO - where X is a variable like Executive, Information, Technology, etc - the jack of all trades. I had always wanted to work for myself and I figured there was no time like the present. It has definitely been a wild ride with plenty of learnings, experiences, ups and downs and it's still going...but what I've always learned is Kaizen - the pursuit of continuous improvement. Although most times I'm scared shitless about how uncertain entrepreneurship can be - I can't see myself do it any other way. What I've learned is priceless - I've learned that I'm great at pivoting and adapting to new situations. I've learned that I'm terrible at decision making, fear failure more than I want to.

Failure - I lived my whole life not trying that hard at school or work or in any situation so that I could make excuses about when it does fail that it wasn't my fault. I feared failing - I was a very cocky individual and definitely got put in my place as I was not successful in anything I did time and time again. I've seen the bottom, many times and it's not all that bad. You gather up your strength, figure out what resources you need and you get back up again and try again. I'm luckily surrounded by loved ones who are there for me to soften that fall. But at the end of the day, that word is completely out of my vocabulary. I'm finally not afraid to fail and that if you put in your best efforts and things don't work out, it wasn't meant to be...so just learn from it and move on.

Anyway, I'm not sure what my 30s hold, but I definitely feel blessed about all the experiences I've been through. I also feel blessed about the unconditional love and support from my friends and family over the years as I pick myself up.

I'm finally 30 - with a bank account approaching zero, no salary, no fixed address, and single. But somehow I'm the happiest 30 year old I've ever met.

Paleo Diet

I've been intrigued and reading more and more about a Paleolithic diet in the last few weeks. A friend of mine mentioned it since she does cross fit and everyone there is all about eating Paleo. At its fundamental - eat natural foods rather than processed foods should be common sense but it is not and it is pretty hard to do living in an urban city. So she is doing a month challenge of a paleo diet and I decided to tag along.

These youtube videos are so amusing and hilarious and a good introduction to a Paleo lifestyle:

My first slow cooking experience

It has been one week since I purchased my first slow cooker ($30, President's Choice) and what a joy that week has been. In the week prior to my spontaneous purchase, my friend had bought one for her boyfriend and proceeded to spend $100+ on all sorts of meats at Costco and a cook book! I've always shied away from leaving my stove on low for hours on end so I stay away from making soups and braising meats. The closest I've come to slow cooking is Vietnamese-style claypot cooking, but since I only have a small 1-serving-sized claypot, the choices are limited in what I could make.

I really hate buying broths (especially Vegetable broth) or soups at supermarkets because of how inexpensive making it really is and how packaged stuff almost always contains enough salt for your day or weekly intake.

Anyway, after hearing the good things that were coming out of my friend's kitchen, I decided thatthis was the next step in my culinary journey, I took the leap and bought my first slow cooker!

Along with the slow cooker, I ran around Superstore purchasing a large ham butt (with bone), split peas, celery, carrots, onions, parsley, garlic, butternut squash, and a load of fresh and dry herbs/spices. Boy was I excited to see what this magical device could do.

Before I went to sleep, I soaked the split peas and went to sleep. The next morning, I eagerly wake up, look up slow cooked split pea and ham soup recipes and started chopping! Onion, carrots, celery, garlic. I had to split up the ham because it wouldn't all fit in my slow cooker. Chop chop chop (thinking about how awesome my knife was and thankful to Ming for the great gift)...I added the bay leaf and spices I got from various recipes and a few cups of water. And that was all ! I closed the lid, turned the slowcooker to high for 5 hours.

About 3 hours in, I could smell a lovely scent in my house and I did something that all the websites told me not to do, open the slow cooker! Since it works on moisture/steam, I probably did mess up the cooking process but I couldn't help it! Yup, the split peas were still hard...and the ham was not done...but a sip of the broth was delicious! So I took a few spoonfuls of the broth and ate it like a soup with rice. It was so flavourful and delicious! I closed the lid again and set it for another 4 hours.

My house was smelling unbearably delicious as I tried to work thru the afternoon. FINALLY dinner time was around the corner and I was going to share my soup with a friend (who was also slow cooking some pulled pork that night). So I opened up the lid and after enjoying the rush of yummy ham/split pea soup smells, I tasted some, scooped out enough for 2 and off I went. That night we had a nectarine/spinach salad with the split pea and ham soup then some delicious bbq pulled pork then digested while bouldering at the climbing gym.

When I got home that night, I split up the rest of my split pea and ham soup into 5 zip lock bags. Each were a good one portion size, and laid them flat in the freezer to freeze. I had plenty of ham left over too. This doesn't take up too much room in the freezer and makes for a quick instant hearty snack (without the sodium and fake tastes of instant-soup)



Ever since that lovely day last week, I have made butternut squash soup, borscht, and today cream of cauliflower soup! Each offers a hearty and healthy cure to the rainy Vancouver weather. I hope to write up some of these recipes as I am still experimenting and perfecting them as I go :) So many possibilities that will come out of my kitchen this winter: kalua pork, whole chicken, chiles, beef stews, pho are all on my to-do list.

Oh and the good news to all of this, at least this month is that I'm trying to follow a Paleo diet of eating organically grown vegetables, fruits and free range/grass-fed meats. And the slow cooking does wonders for all the options you can eat on this diet.

Triathlon Training

Alright, so I've just signed up to do the Vancouver Triathlon on Labour day long weekend here in Stanley Park.

Activities this week:
Sunday: 20km bike ride thru Stanley park. 45min.
Monday: 1km swim in Kits pool.
Tuesday: 5km run thru Stanley Park.
Beach Volleyball.
Wednesday: 1km swim.
Thursday: Brick workout: 20km bike ride, 5km run.
Windsurfing.
Friday: REST.
Saturday: 5km run.

The motivation is baaack :)

Oh, and Hello World.

The Media on the Food Revolution

I'm rather impressed with the mission the media has been undertaking recently - which is to expose how we are stuffing ourselves silly with "Food" and how we should be aware and concerned about what the food in our grocery stores are actually made from and how were they made.

I watched Food Inc on the weekend and it made me wonder how we're going to solve these problems. How do we bring back the family farms and allow new seeds to be planted that a company doesn't have patents for? How do we get people to eat basic foods and not processed, fake, fast food?

Then today I watched Jamie Oliver's TED talk. It was sad to see kids thinking that a potatoe was a tomatoe. I'm so inspired by him and his revolution to educate American kids about food. It sucks to know so many people that are being diagnosed with Diabetes today and more and more kids.



The first step is awareness. I'm so glad the word is spreading about this massive problem of what we eat now and where it comes from.

I personally am the product of this trap but mostly my own fault and not having the understanding I have now. As immigrants to Canada, we were a poor family. You're taught never to waste food, to eat everything, and that free was good. I had no complaints about the food at home, my mom, uncles, grandparents would take turns cooking and it was all good. When they started working and could afford a bit more than the basics, they would get bags of chips or ice cream for us. Then, on good behavior or good marks - I'd be rewarded a Coke or McDonald's Happy Meal. We never ate out ever. And I would be jealous...jealous of friends and their stories of eating out. Jealous of watching friends eat McDonalds or Harvey's when I had no money. Jealous of not having money to go to the corner store and buy all the sweets.

Even in the school cafeteria, other students got lunch money every day to line up for fries and gravy or pizza or hot dogs. I couldn't. Then in highschool, I started working. Along with work came free pizza days, money to afford KFC Toonie Tuesdays, splurging for fries in the cafeteria and eating McDonalds at Fairview Mall. I opted for fat, sugar, salty fast food because it tasted good and we never had it at home.

Then I moved on to University - with the freedom to eat whatever was served in the cafeterias there. Then...Co-op terms afforded me the liberty to eat out...everyday. I was eating things I'd never eaten before, loved trying new foods, loved traveling and eating. I knew nothing about cooking, health, exercise except whatever my friends were doing. I loved microwavable frozen foods and instant noodles. I loved how cheap and quick it was. Then as more money came in and free business lunches and dinners...I ate more calories at classier places and loved it too.

Well I loved it until my body practically shut down and told me to stop or die. I was on a path to disaster and given one last chance. That's when I started reading about food, where it came from, what's in it, how to make it, how to eat it. When I enrolled with Yap in the Community Supported Agriculture and started getting vegetables, I had no idea what many of them were. I'd never seen Beets or Kale before. The closest thing to me handling a Squash was carving Pumpkin.

I realized that it was fun to see how vegetables and fruits are grown, and it was fun to talk to farmers and the people at the farmers markets for advice on how to cook and what to cook. I realized how fun it was to go to Farmers Markets and how food just tastes a lot better when you buy fresh ingredients and cook it the same day.

I also realized that when you start cooking - basic things, different ethnic cuisines (Vietnamese, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian) you have a new appreciation for the ingredients, processes, seasonings. So when you do eat out or other people cook, you appreciate it so much more. You finally have an appreciation of WHY French Laundry costs so much. You finally realize that you want to pay and eat for QUALITY not QUANTITY and that McDonalds is NOT the bait and reward at the end of the day and actually is not food.

My disaster was years in the making and my lack of awareness of what was the right thing to eat or do was scary. I'm very impressed that when I finally tuned in on what the right way to eat is, that there are movies, books and famous chefs educating me.

I'd like to help. If I could help divert someone from following the same path to disaster as me, that would make me happy.

2010 Journey

Alright, I spent the last four months essentially undoing all the steps I took last year to get healthy. Yes I know - I feel so guilty.

You can make mistakes once but once you see history exactly repeating itself its just no good. And I'm very disappointed in myself.

Now that the olympics are over and I'm over the heartbreak AND my startup has taken off, there's really no more excuses of mine on why I was doing every unhealthy thing in the book.

• I'm now training for a mini Triathlon in August.


• No smoking, no alcohol, nothing of any kind except water


• No meats of any kind except fish


• Eating out is reserved to once a week


• Following a triathlon training plan and joining Running Room's free run

Oh and I'm going to have a weight loss competition with Lobster. We did this last March and I kicked his butt. I know I can do the same again.

Sorry to not update this blog and now telling you that I'm not in good shape right now. ThuFat is baack.

Happy Holidays!

Wow the year is almost over. What a year. Let's see what I accomplished this year and what I want to accomplish next year.

Accomplishments in 2009
- Lost 35 lbs.
- Did the Tour De Cure Bike ride in Napa Valley.
- Hiked to Inka Trail to Machu Picchu.
- Started my own business.
- Moved to Vancouver.
- Fell in love.
- Survived getting dumped.
- Built upon priceless friendships in Toronto, California and Vancouver.
- Got to know myself.

Goals for 2010
- Lose 15 lbs.
- Do a Sprint Triathlon in May.
- Travel to Africa or Eastern Europe.
- 20,000 happy users of YouCook.
- Continue to keep in touch and build on my priceless friendships.
- Continue the rebuilding and discovering who I actually am, what protective layers I've built up over the years.
- Critically assessing who I am and who I want to be and how to get there.
- Be comfortable on my own two feet and in my own skin before falling in love again.

Thanks for following my journey in 2009. I'm really touched by all the support I've had in the last year. When we all build and design technology, we never consider the side effects - at least I never thought apps such as Blogger and Facebook and Google Talk were the key tools which saved me from going down a deep dark wrong path this year. The way I was able to reconnect with a lot of you guys this year, the kindness and friendship and compassion you've shown me has been more than I ever thought possible. Thank you technology :) Thank you to you that's reading this!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2..

Kindness

I've reached out to my support network in the past 2 weeks. And I'm really really grateful at the kindness of my friends.

I've learned a lot of things:
1) When you think you have it bad, there are others who have it 100x worse.
2) Be true to yourself. Only you know what makes you happy, sad, what you want, what you don't want. Only you can change how you feel about something or how you deal with a situation.
3) Accept reality. Stress, anger, tension only arises when you're not in grips or accept reality. When you make assumptions about reality, when you don't choose to deal with current problems or disagreements and deluding yourself, you only ask for problems you arise. Not talking or facing something now just means you want to fight later. Or if it's too late to even fight, well you'll live with regret later.
4) Your #1 Goal should be your own happiness (being true to yourself as to what that is). Nobody can make you truly happy except yourself.
5) Friends and people that care just want to you to be happy. It's simply a happier place when you're happy.
6) Sometimes, you gotta realize, he's just not into you. And it's not the end of the world.

Life experiences

When I started this journey last November - it was about realizing that life was short. That I should not let life and opportunities pass me by. I realized that you should live life by the minute, live in the present, worry about things under your control.

I was unhappy before because I was living within other people's definitions.

I couldn't make a decision until a gun was pointed at me - be it time constraints, health constraints, career constraints, financial constraints. I let life dictate to me. I was happy with other people telling me what to do. The difference between being a kid and growing up is the acceptance and taking responsibility over your decisions.

I've always been good at not trying and when I fail, I'd blame other people. It was a good fall back and it protected me from getting hurt operating in that model.

Anyway, I said I changed last year when it came to decisions about making my own food or working out or smoking. Then I decided to take my career into my own hands and struggled with the same concept - that now I make my own decisions and the result of it is directly my responsibility. I still struggle with that everyday and I know in the big picture, it is rewarding and amazing to say, hey, I was responsible for that. Even through the failures, if you persevere you'll be successful.

The one thing I never talked about in my blog was falling in love. I had lived my whole life not knowing what makes me happy and being miserable about it and blaming other factors. When I found out that I could take control of my life, I felt that a lot of people were proud of me and were attracted to the new Thu. Inside though, I still felt fat and insecure about not knowing a lot of things. See there's all these things I didn't know how to do as a result of me losing weight. Like buy new clothes. I used to HATE shopping because I had to go to the plus size section where everything is ugly. But now suddenly I'm fitting into size 6 jeans and tank tops and really liking it. Now, I didn't know what to wear and how to put on makeup. I felt insecure that I'm a grown woman who didn't know the basics of being a girl, much less a woman.

I can't believe how things fall into place, when you just let go and be true to yourself and do what makes you happy. Gawd, every movie, everything your parents tell you, every book you read, it says the same. But I didn't know until I experienced it. It's like, when you let go and just be true to yourself, thats when all these opportunities come by.

Falling in love was the last thing missing in my life while I got the other parts of my life. It was exhilarating, it gave me a new source of energy and meaning in life. It was the missing equation of balance and living a fulfilling life.

Well, it is if I let the experiences play out. My downfall and the doom of my relationship is when I was super scared and stopped being true to myself. I lost focus of my original goals of being healthy, of taking my career into my own hands, of living everyday - and it slowly in time got replaced by the same insecurities and the same need for someone else to define what I should do or what is the prescribed method of doing something. As soon I started being selfish and want to protect myself from taking responsibility and finding other things to blame, thats when things started breaking down.

What I learned from the past year was that I was on the right track of coming to a realization of being true to what makes me happy and just doing it and accepting the consequences. Once you start hedging your bets and not being true to yourself, you set yourself up for failure.

Hey, whats important is that I'm alive and I'm healthy and I live to talk about my past year and my life. I've learned, the hard way, what happens when you don't. Even if it means carving your own path and not being able to reach for old experiences. I remember loving this poem in Highschool and graduating University. I do hope I keep at it, remind myself and stay true to myself and take responsibility and control of my life.

Thank you for all the support and for believing in me when I didn't believe in myself.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost