It was really really short. Ok, I knew that already. But for some reason, I couldn’t get myself to wear it.

But the weight has stayed off, one week after the meal plan. I have not re-introduced sugar into my diet and I still try and avoid carbs when I can. Now that I’ve realised that I can live off the energy of two portions a week!

Meanwhile, I have discovered that walking in the morning is awesome! I get to have ‘me’ time and boost of energy for the day while singing out loud to music from my Ipod and smiling at strangers. Glorious! I totalled 12kms last week -3 kms four times. Partying a little much made me miss a couple of sessions.

And now it’s not about the blue dress anymore. I’ve adopted a new healthier way of life. And I’m loving it.

But I’ll be sure to let you know when I get to wear the little blue dress.

Location:Tsavo

Drive:Lovely drive all the way (save for the Athi River section) with lovely scenic landscapes. One gets tempted often to stop and just take it all in.  The speed limit is 100Kph. The Man Eaters camp is about 70kms from Mtito Andei opposite the Tsavo West gate and next to Patterson’s Camp. 

Hospitality:The staff here isn’t as friendly as the team at Manyatta Camp and they are also lacking in training. They are also quite slow especially noting that my boyfriend and I were the only guests at the camp.  

Food:Very very disappointing…I can’t say enough how I didn’t enjoy my food throughout my stay there. The highlight of this trip was our game drive to Tsavo West and a lunch stop at Kilaguni Serena where we ate like people who hadn’t seen food in ages. We barely said a word to each other. Lol.

Rooms:Amazing, amazing, amazing…comfortable bed…the owners maintain the excellent rustic/African theme at Manyatta Camp. All 34 rooms overlook the Tsavo River and set the scene for a relaxing time away. Lights go off at 10.30pm and you are left with a lamp and there is nothing better than the silence while you listen to the sound of the river.  

Game Drives: Both Tsavo East and Tsavo West gates are very close by and you can go on a guided tour drive or a self drive. The parks are clearly marked and are easy to get around. You will need a 4WD vehicle though.  

Rating: Three and a half stars (the food and hospitality at the camp need to be looked into but otherwise a lovely getaway)

Rate-o-meter:  

1 star – Eeewwww!
2 stars – consider another business, basket weaving maybe…
3 stars – alright, I probably tipped the change in my wallet
4 stars – you delivered and I tipped willingly and generously
5 stars – are you kidding me, you rock, will be back!
6 stars – it’ll be hard to keep me away.

Thank you very much.

Yes, I made it through seven days! The power of fashion? Maybe. But I’d like to think of myself as an individual of more depth than that. So I’ll hand it to the power of commitment. Especially commitment to self.

I had absolutely no alcohol
I drank ten to twelve glasses of water daily
I had absolutely no sugar
Black tea/coffee – I usually don’t take milk so I didn’t miss a thing. However, I included herbal tea – twice I cheated with honey and three times I cheated by having black ‘Milo’ rather than coffee or tea

Day 1.
Fruits only except bananas with special emphasis on melons

(This was a very simple day cause I was just starting and I had a lot of resolve at the time. The sugar also helped)

Day 2.
Vegetables only (raw or cooked)

(This was an alright day as well. But I cheated again, this time with four slices of avocado in my salad. I really couldn’t ask the waitress at Divino to take them out now could I. I had already been fussy enough about the salad and single potato)

Day 3.
Fruits and vegetables

(OMG, I think I’ll die. On this day, I got really hungry and felt faint occasionally. I think my body had never been off carbs for sooo long. For a minute I thought I’d pass out and I had a spoonful of honey to keep me standing….Oh, and for a little TMI, on this day my body flushed out anything it had lurking in its digestive system.)

Day 4.
Bananas (up to eight) and milk (up to three glasses)

(Easiest day ever! I can’t believe bananas can give you such ‘speedy gonzales’ energy and I was so full. I managed only six bananas and two glasses of milk. My system continued to clean up while my can of air freshener begun to empty. I know. I know. TMI but just in case you want to do this, you ought to be prepared.)

Day 5.
Beef  (two portions) and six tomatoes

(Houston we have a problem. I normally don’t eat beef – for health reasons. But I thought WTH, I need to stick with the diet. I had four tomatoes and mince beef. I walked around with the lunchbox biting all day and I still couldn’t finish it. I was stuffed. My energy levels dipped though. I think it was a banana crush. )

Day 6.
Vegetables and beef are consumed in unlimited quantities

(This was Saturday and I was scared I wouldn’t go through the weekend sticking to the diet so I kept busy at meetings and meeting a friend for some tea. I went home late afternoon and I enjoyed a lovely take away  burger – without the buns – and salad from Java. I was so stuffed, I could barely move. I dozed on the chair and I didn’t dare eat dinner. My stomach had shrunk already. Yay

Day 7.
Fruit juices, vegetables and brown rice

(Yay. Yay. Yay. Final day and I’m still alive. And I get to eat starch! Went to visit mum after church and she made me brown rice with some of those bitter vegetables that are heavenly delicious. And she had this proud look on her face so I didn’t even complain when she said that my ‘behind’ didn’t look like it was shrinking)

Early day 8 morning I couldn’t shower fast enough to stand naked on the weighing scale (I’m sure my navel ring affected the final reading) but I had lost 3 Kilos. In one week! Yay. And now for the reckoning, could I fit into my little blue dress? Only one thing held the key to that answer – another dress that was one size smaller. I tried it on and it fit. Yay once again.

I still haven’t worn the little blue dress. You see, from Monday I’ve been on another 7 day programme. But this time, it’s a 7 day work out programme. I take a brisk walk for thirty minutes every morning. And that’s been going great. Besides being full of energy all day, I have been extra productive at work. And I’ve listened to the music that I haven’t had in ages on my IPod.

The wedding is this coming Sunday. Keep it here to hear first hand whether I did indeed slip effortlessly into my little blue dress.

Three cheers to commitment!

I bought this amazing little blue dress in Johannesburg in February.  Blue is not my favourite colour. I only appreciate it on denim. But my friend Angie convinced me to try it on. I looked stunning in it in the dressing room (modestly said of course) but since then, I have put on weight due to my lack of going to the gym and my digging into bucketfuls of Maltesers.

So I have never worn the dress. But I intend to wear it on Sunday 31st May 2009 at a friend’s wedding.  What was I to do?

My colleague convinced me to go on a seven day diet. I have never been on a diet before. The most I’ve done is a five day detox programme (doctor’s orders). In fact my friends know only too well my love for good food, and my hatred for anything restricting. I love my freedom and the opportunities to choose.

But I am determined to prove that I can go through seven days of a meal plan (I’d only do it if I could call it that and not a diet) . I’m actually on day 6 as I write this and should be able to report on how it worked out. But for now, below is the road that I decided to take on my journey to the little blue dress.

The meal plan is one that was developed for General Motors employees in order to enhance healthy living. An abridged version of my seven day meal plan:

No alcohol
Ten glasses of water a day
No sugar
Black tea/coffee

Day 1.
Fruits only except bananas with special emphasis on melons

Day 2.
Vegetables only (raw or cooked)

Day 3.
Fruits and vegetables

Day 4.
Bananas (up to eight) and milk (up to three glasses)

Day 5.
Beef  (two portions) and six tomatoes

Day 6.
Vegetables and beef are consumed in unlimited quantities

Day 7.
Fruit juices, vegetables and brown rice

I’ll be back to let you all know how I did. Need to take out the little blue dress and have it washed and ironed in readiness.

The joy of fashion.

So when my friend Maureen gave me the book ‘Keeping Faith’ (I doubt I’d have picked it off a shelf let alone purchased it), I kept it on my bookshelf for a while before embarking on this remarkable novel. But when I finally found the heart, or is it the soul, to read it, I couldn’t put it down.

Jodi Picoult is talented. That’s the only word I can use to describe what she was able to achieve with this book. Many novels don’t have the power to ask basic life questions including the one that most people tread stealthily around; who is God?

So when a little child Faith, plagued by the pain of watching her unfaithful father leave starts getting visions and conversations with a female god, questions regarding how Mariah, her mother is raising her are imminent. Especially since Mariah is clinically depressed and completely withdraws leaving faith to look for an imaginary friend…but is it an imaginary friend or is it really God?

The drama (such an understatement) unfolds when Faith begins to develop stigmata and perform miracles. Their home becomes a media circus as the world becomes curious, led by an aethist journalist who has his best story yet. The suspense in this novel could cause you hyper-acidity and you will not do anything else until you’re done with it.

But it’s a story of love, motherhood, and hope in the midst of the most uncertain times. A story of faith…

Thereafter my room mate’s potential boyfriend borrowed the book and didn’t return it when the potential relationship refused to take off. I remember how I sent him text demanding that he return her stuff including the book and that she wasn’t a charity house for books. What was with the drama lakini?! And why was I acting as her agent?! Good ol’ days ; )

All the above isn’t the point really. I have been hoping to read all of Mitch Albom’s titles since and just recently bought his book ‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven’. A sory about Eddie, a lonely war veteran who dies in a tragic accident trying to save a girl. Eddie goes to heaven and meets five people who attempt to explain his life to him and make him understand why things happened the way they did, allowing him to finally realise that he really did serve a bigger purpose than he realised. This is Albom’s wish of what heaven holds for people who always feel insignificant here on earth; that one day they will have a chance to understand what role they played in other people’s lives.

Eddie learns that:

1. ‘no life is wasted and the only time we waste is  the time we spend thinking that we are alone’

2. ‘sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else’

3. ‘no one is born with anger and when you die, your soul is freed from it. But right now, right here, you need to forgive

4. ‘lost love is still love. It takes a different form. Memory becomes your partner. Life ends but love doesn’t.

5. ‘there is a significant reason for every person’s existence. Life is entertwined’

The book is simply written with the lessons outlined at the end of each chapter. I did feel like I wanted more out of it by the time I was done (and I was done fast) but I’m glad that it made me take a moment to pause and think of those things that I probably wouldn’t have thought about.

Whatever your concept of heaven, whether religious or not, you’ll find at least one lesson that’s relevant from the five people Eddie met in heaven.

Good story, good plot. ‘Anybody Out There’ takes you in and you think that you may be able to predict what will happen then halfway through it you get  surprised by a twist in the plot that’s highly unlikely.

The book reminds me of a warm, slice of life, independent film production that keeps it real while at the same time telling a story with a lesson to learn. Life does go on. No matter how down you get, our souls have the ability to restore, to heal and smile once again. And the best thing about a relationship is the memories that you create together – that can never be taken away from you.

A lovely book with moments of laughter as expected of Marian Keyes and some moments of pure sadness. If I were the crying type, I probably would have drenched my pillow.

I love to read, and at some point it was easy to do about four to five books a month, newspapers daily save for the weekend, and approximately four to five magazines monthly but in 2008 that number dropped dramatically so I pledged to do something about it.

And so far so good – I’m on book number 8 right now. But oh boy, have they been a bunch of silly books or what. I need to step up my game. This is what I’ve read this year – as you will clearly tell, I haven’t added a lot of literary genius to my life but I’ve had some good laughs and some moments when I wondered ‘who published this?’

1. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Excellent! And what a way to begin the year. I actually didn’t think that after Kite Runner, he would have the heart to deliver once again, and with such remarkable story telling ease, but he did. Khaled Hosseini is a master weaver of tales, telling them with such depth of emotion while using carefully chosen simple words. There are parts of the story I wanted to read with a highlighter pen so I could go back and read the phrases over and over again.

The story of two completely different women, women who in normal circumstances would have had nothing in common, women who if all remained constant would have frowned upon one another, women who if fate weren’t so cruel at times would have missed life’s most important lessons. The story of Laila and Mariam grips you from the very start and you can’t help but clutch the book and turn the pages while holding your breath hoping that the worst wouldn’t happen, and then it did, over and over again.

One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls

That was a reference to Kabul, where the novel is set. In war torn Afghanistan. Where the far off boom of artillery and the long string of gunfire plagued their lives.

A Thousand Splendid Suns was for me a book about finding love and friendship in the most unlikely of places, the simplicity of love and friendship as depicted through pure sacrifice, the sustenance of love and friendship even in the midst of hopelessness and despair. And more importantly this book changed my definition of family and my understanding of the power of motherhood.

A must read. Look out for The Kite Runner as well, his first novel. And the next post.

Every month, I go through these processes of hair removal for the sake of beauty, hygiene, a general feeling of well being and in keeping with the times. It is 2009 and I dare not walk around with shapeless eyebrows or weavable armpits!

So when I gather up enough resolve, which is usually after days of promising self to actually book an appointment, I lie on the bench and ask to be tortured. We start with the eyebrows, which are shaped using the art of Threading.

According to Wikipedia, Threading, also known as Epilation is an ancient method of hair removal which originated in Persia and spread to the Middle and Far East and is now gaining popularity in Western countries. Practitioners use a pure, thin, twisted cotton thread which is rolled over untidy hairlines plucking the hair at the follicle level. Unlike tweezing where a single hair is pulled out each time, threading can remove and entire row of hair, resulting in a straighter line. Threading tends to be as or more painful than waxing and hair removal lasts for about four to six weeks.

So it’s the darn Persians! Of course the Iranians had something to do with it. Now, just need to narrow down to which one in particular and kill him with a thread!

By the time I’m done, my eyes have welled up with enough tears and I’m handed tissue to dry them after the first blink. As if this is not enough, I have to get Methylated Spirit dabbed on the area where the hairs have been removed so as not to get bumps and pimples. This causes in me another sharp pain as the pores are completely open and the Methylated Spirit is happily absorbed.

You would think that at this point, I’d leave the salon and sprint on home but instead I raise my arms so that the next phase of pain will begin. It involves  hot wax, a cloth and some screaming and cursing.

According to the same Wikipedia, Waxing is a method of semi-permanent hair removal which removes the hair from the root. New hairs will only grow after around eight weeks. Waxing is accomplished by spreading a wax combination thinly over the skin. A cloth or paper strip is then pressed on top and ripped off with a quick movement against the direction of hair growth. This removes the wax along with the hair.

Again, I’m not really sure why I do this but for me its tonnes better than shaving which not only leaves bumps and some tiny hairs but also discolours the area. By this point I have exhibited all the ramifications of pain as expressed at the start of this post, but I’m not done yet. Yeah, there is hair elsewhere!

A Hollywood/Brazilian wax involves removing all the hair front to back in the pubic area (what first started as a Bikini wax of which the benefit was no hair being seen on the side of the bikini) was later discovered a some seven Brazilian sisters in 1987 and aptly named after them. I shall not attempt to explain the extent of this particular pain (my friend ran out before they were done and didn’t care that it was not entirely a Brazilian probably a Mexican), but the benefits are worth twice that pain. And honestly, I still don’t think it’s as bad as the threading…and the more you do it, the softer your hairs become and the less pain it is.

However,  there is the little aspect of another person, besides your gynaecologist having full access to your privates. And I mean from every angle owing to the little trouble hairs that have to be waxed off while you pose in more ways than one. At some point you literally act out as an acrobat. Then there’s the battle of whether you should make conversation with the waxer as they do the job or pretend there isn’t any awkward moment and talk about politics or just come right out and talk about how awkward the moment is. Sigh.

But as a little anecdote from a San Fransisco expert in the matter Marilyn Jaeger in reference to Brazilian bikini waxing said ‘If you want to sell the house you’ve got to mow the lawn’. Ahem…  So, I encourage all the boys and girls out there to try it. It’s liberating!

So I’m done with the hair removal and my skin is pulsating in more places than one but I feel clean and magnificent. I even have a spring in my step…well at least for another four weeks before I do this all over again.

Location – Lenana Road, Nairobi

Type – Japanese Restaurant

Decor – There isn’t really much to say about the decor at Misono. I suppose you could say its very authentically Japanese…there isn’t any doubt it’s Japanese. However, I feel that it’s time for an upgrade as the ‘charm’ is beginning to wear off. The sitting area outside is lovely though and there isn’t nothing better than enjoying some warm sunshine under their pretty trees. Strange is that I’ve never been there for dinner but would hate to think how seedy it looks especially with the lit electric tree thingie they have outside.

Food – Excellent! The best Terriyaki ever! And not to mention the best Prawn Tempura ever ever ever! I have never once been disappointed by the food at Misono. Even the Sushi is hands down the best I’ve had in Nairobi.

Service/Hospitality – The slowest service this side of the Sahara (ok, I’m exaggerating) but seriously, twice I’ve had to make it look like I was leaving and they handed me the bill while I was getting into my car to drive back to the office. That is the only trick that will get you the bill in under five hours!

More soon…

3 stars it is – service is a major and integral part of the experience.

Rate-o-meter:

1 star – Eeewwww!
2 stars – consider another business, basket weaving maybe…
3 stars – alright, I probably tipped the change in my wallet
4 stars – you delivered and I tipped willingly and generously
5 stars – are you kidding me, you rock, will be back!
6 stars – it’ll be hard to keep me away