Painful Piriformis

For approximately a month I have had pain in my butt. It may sound funny, but it is excruciatingly painful and frankly just in the way. No matter if I sit, walk, stand or lie down the pain will be there. In the beginning we thought it was because I sat too much and recently we have concluded that yes, that is the reason.

Recently I did what I should have done the moment I felt the pain - I googled the simple words pain in the butt and found helpful results. I found a site called SequenceWiz claiming to be a "a hub of yoga practice design". They had an article about three different types of pain located in the butt. I read the first two, thinking the sounded like my trouble but not quite right, before I read the last type in their article. It sounded just like me. It was labelled Central Butt Pain, which is the exact explanation I had been using.

From this site I learned about piriformis - a muscle deep within the hip. As all muscles it can get tensed and tighten up, causing a lot of pain. Unfortunately it sits near the sciatic nerve that passes underneath or right through the muscle. Knowing my own body I assume mine shoots right through.

Below is an extract from the article.

Location: The pain can show up in the middle of the buttock, in the lower back or anywhere along the pathway of the nerve. It can also manifest as numbness or weakness in the leg.

Offender: Herniated disks, bone spurs on the vertebrae or tight piriformis muscle

Reason: Sitting or driving a lot, degenerative changes in the spine with age

Being an author, introvert and generally an indoors kind of person I confess I sit a lot. Not in a bad way, not hunched over or in bad chairs. I tend to have a really good posture, mostly because my back demands it if I do not want it to start hurting me too. I believe this condition can appear in most modern people out there, whether you are home, at work, driving a cab or generally do a lot of things in your everyday life that requires sitting.

Note that this problem, the pain in lower back and central butt, can be due to other issues as well.

Of course this article has tips on how to help yourself with this specific problem. Piriformis is difficult to reach and there are a lot of things I did that did not help at all. Some stretching exercises only make it worse. The article gave me a few and I have tried two of them. Yesterday I met John downstairs to buy a package of shrimps for my dinner, just to walk for a bit and get some fresh air. I almost cried when I got back to the apartment. The pain was intense, shooting down my leg. I stood on my toes, biting against the pain until John told me to go lie down. I did and I did the stretching exercises this site had given me. After a few minutes of it I rose and walked around again, not entirely free of pain but it made it more bearable.

I have been walking around with this pain for a long time now and I am a bit ashamed of not googling it right away. John wanted to take me to a clinic to have a doctor look at me, but honestly I would not want to pay someone to tell me what the internet could. If the pain does not go away in a few days I will succumb and see Mr Doctor know-it-all. He will tell me to stretch after having touched my ass to feel where I am hurting. Not sure if that would actually happen, but that is what I imagine. There are many reasons why I am reluctant to go to a clinic.

New Labels

You might have noticed the labels underneath the header. I tried to sort them out, removing some of the most useless ones (such as problems, who would want to read specifically about that?) and adding titles that included more of the earlier labels. If you find it confusing, please read the list below to get a good grip on what will be posted under the different titles. Some posts will be submitted under several of these, as I have done since the blog started, and that is because there will be more than one topic in one post most of the time.

I hope you enjoy this blog. Thank you for reading!

vacations, business-trips
 
celebrations, gifts, parties

slice of life, stories, problems, nostalgia, night out, shopping

amusement parks, museum, meet-ups

what we do when someone visits, posts will have more labels

restaurants, hawker centre, food court, homemade

Christmas, Halloween, etc

Alexis, d'Leedon

movies, games, books, app recommendations

Chinatown, Holland Village, Orchard Road, HarbourFront/VivoCity

 board games, friends, night out

gym, eating healthy, workout, training, problems

the label explains itself

Horrible Horror

Ash and Steve came over last night. They arrived around half past seven, but they could not remember our unit number. My phone had decided to be silent so they wandered around the sixteenth floor for twenty minutes ringing doorbells. The unfortunate thing is that our doorbell does not work and has not since we moved in here. John and I actually do not like doorbells so it has worked for us. Mostly people knock on door when they is no answer to the bell. Our friends did not knock and it was only luck that I checked my phone to see their desperate calls for me to open the door! It was a bit fun, but I saved them from the corridor only three minutes before John got home.

We ordered pizza from Dominos. The first choice was Papa John's but apparently they did not deliver here. Dominos is good though, that is our usual choice. We decided to play a game of Love Letter before the food arrived and we would start the movie. We got as far as explaining the game and play one round before the food was at our door. We abandoned the game and cuddled up in the sofa. John had made a classic Swedish pizza garlic sauce, but with a bit too much garlic for me, and Ash and Steve had bought Everyday White wine. It was simple, just like an everyday wine should be I guess, but I found that a slice of lime boosted the flavour.

Movie spoilers ahead.

The plan was too see a horror movie, but even though the first movie, 10 Cloverfield Lane, had been classified as horror, it really was not. The movie was slow, nothing really happened and after just thirty minutes we decided to stop. John fast forwarded and in the last few minutes something finally happened. ALIENS! Nobody expected that. It turned out this was a prequel to Cloverfield which none of us had seen. If you like psychological thrillers then 10 Cloverfield is for you, but do not get your hopes up.

We switched to The Girl with All the Gifts, a movie I have wanted to see for as long as it has been out. It was clearly a zombie movie, even though they called the zombies 'hungries' for some reason. I guess because they ate people, but that is literally what zombies do so why change the name for something that can be made fun of? We started calling them hangries, because they were hungry and angry zombies. The plot had potential and the movie was see-worthy, but I had some complains. There was a moment when a story was being told by one of the main characters, the backstory of the clever children that were born from infected mothers, and a character was walking through a hospital following a scary sound. The scene was really good and it felt like it led up to something, but it did not. It was really disappointing. The woman found a man with a straitjacket chained to the wall by his ankle. She looked at him and shot him. That was it. They could have done so much more with that scene! I would have wanted to see one of those mothers with a grotesque open wound from the throat to the vagina. The story was that the children ate their mothers from the inside. That would have been the top of the movie, to see one of those mothers, still alive (well, dead alive... zomibe alive... sorry, hungry alive... geez). From that point to the end I was just sad that it did not happened and perhaps that is why I did not like the ending. It ended with one human still alive, the girl with all the gifts had brought more of the hungries clever children and they sat down to have a class. To teach things. To learn things. Nothing zombie scary at all. Why was this movie a horror movie?

Honestly, if you want to watch a really good zombie movie, you should definitely see 28 Days Later.

It was close to midnight when the second movie ended. Ash and Steve called a taxi and excused themselves a bit too much for not helping cleaning up after us. It was not much to clean. We did not mind, but we appreciated their concerns. John and I stayed up for another hour, talking, calming down after having guests and watching a movie. Then we went to bed, fell asleep and even I slept until half past eleven this morning. Yesterday was a good day!

Duolingo - app recommendation

Duolingo

Free.
Available on Google Play & App Store.
Developed by Duolingo.
Official website.

J'apprends la langue Française, mais je ne suis pas si bon.
I am learning the French language, but I am not so good.

Contraceptive Need

I was a bit stressed today. My new Nuva ring is supposed to be inserted tomorrow but I had yet to buy one this morning. I had back pains and was still a bit nauseous from the period. John was kind and called the apothecary to ask where in Singapore they had the rings in stock. He found two places near where we live. It was a good thing that he called since I had planned on going to the nearest hospital to ask. I would have gotten there, not being able to buy one, and then be lost for where to go next. Instead I knew exactly where to go.

The nearest hospital with a Guardian apothecary where they sold Nuva rings was the Paragon Medical Centre. It lies on a street just behind Orchard Road, but it closed at eight so John would not have had the time to meet me before that. I decided to go by myself. I do not usually take the bus, but it felt much smoother. If I had taken the MRT I would have had to change lines two times and it would have taken so much longer, plus with a lot more people running around. I quite enjoy the bus-rides here, apart from the motion-sickness I get from being in any vehicle on the road. It took about twenty minutes to get where I needed to and yet I got off one bus station too far away. It was a pleasant walk, late afternoon, and I found my way easily enough. The lady handing me my Nuva ring told me it was good that I only needed one since they did not have many in stock. That scared me, thinking of when I go to get another one but there are none to buy.

Nuva rings are very expensive in Singapore, so my long-term plan (which is why I only buy one at a time) is to go to Sweden and have a hormone spiral inserted instead. It is cheaper and I do not have to keep track of time. The trip has been moved, since I was supposed to go in March, to an unknown time. I have some unresolved back issues that I do not want to have while sitting on a plane alone for over ten hours. It is inconvenient but I can not push myself and risk my health.

On the bus ride back home I did the unfortunate thing of placing myself at a side facing seat, meaning I felt nauseous the instance the bus started to move. I sat in the seat closest to the front so I could look out, but that meant my neck was stiff by the time I got off. I came home half an hour before John did and it felt unusual. He brought home dinner and we are having a calm evening. No stress.

A Human Adventure

Months ago John heard about a NASA exhibition at the Art Science Museum here in Singapore. The website has been up on my computer for a very long time. I was super excited to go. John took Thursday and Friday off work, compensation leave from his work-trip to France, and bought tickets for the first day.

It was a hot day yesterday. We left around three o'clock, knowing it would not take long to get there and we had an estimated time of an hour and a half to go through the exhibition. The building looks like a gigantic white flower in bloom, standing next to the water from where you can see the Merlion. A large elevator took us up to the fourth floor. The view from inside the glass elevator was incredible and the size of the building was unbelievable. Then it took us to the basement, where the exhibition was held. We walked through the gift shop, already picking out things we wanted to buy, before finding the opening to NASA's exhibition A Human Adventure.

The first room instantly reminded me of the inside of the TARDIS from the very old TV-series Doctor Who. The room was a tribute to great authors and film makers that had very early ideas of space travel. Two screens showed facts about the artists. I recognised the movie where the space ship crashes into the moon's eye (but I have never actually seen it) and the only name I knew was Jules Verne. We then walked through a small corridor with facts about the first space missions - like launching Sputnik. There was a full scale replica of the satellite and it was surprisingly tiny. Just a silver ball with four metal sticks. A small TV was looping JFK's speech about going to space. It was inspiring and sad; he seems to have been such a great president and now look at USA.

The next room had the real deal. In the middle was an engine that had been used, they called it Space Flown. The backside was impressively complicated. A nose cone lied by itself, lit up from the inside to show of its fascinating cables. It, too, had been to space. Pictures of scientists was displayed on the wall with black panels explaining their work. I had difficulties standing still to read any of these things, my eyes were drawn to the modules. Along the next corridor lied a long, yet small, replica of the largest rocket ever built. The Saturn V. It was developed to send humans to the Moon. Seeing the video explaining the three stages of the rocket was educational. It takes a lot of power to go that far. The little capsule where the humans sat was very tiny in comparison to the vehicle.

The exhibition showed five types of space suites; the oldest to what John and I guessed would be the newest. In the background we could hear the speech from the first moon-landing. That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. Behind the showcases were the two moon buggies, looking as cute as they do in the photos I have seen online. I like to imagine driving one of them on the moon, going over the dunes and glide downwards into a smooth landing. It makes me sad thinking about them still there, left behind since there was no way of retrieving them.

There were only two rooms left. First we passed through a smaller room with displays showing the food and the small utilities used back in that time. I found a small bag where the explanation said a space survival kit. To me it looked like 3D glasses and portable phone charger. I guess we can switch the common question what would you bring to a deserted island to what would you bring to a deserted space station? I have to think of an answer to that one. In the same room we saw a door that had been space flown. It looked like it had taken a few beatings with several holes and scratches across its surface. Imagine the sound of small rocks hitting the only thing that keeps you away from floating freely in space. Scary thought. I admire astronauts.

The last room was high in ceiling to be able to display the life size replica of Atlantis. Going up a small staircase led us to the backside of the display and we could see how it looked like inside the cockpit. Is it called cockpit in a rocket? There were four uncomfortable-looking chairs and a lot of small lights. Beneath, going back down and around the ship, we could see the small compartment where the rest of the crew sat. More uncomfortable chairs with the wonderful view of storage boxes. I will wait until it looks more of a comfortable journey before I will go to space. In the corner was the G-Force Astronaut Trainer - two black boxes spinning around. There was a surprisingly long queue for it, especially since one trip costed six dollars and only lasted less than a minute. I could not ride because of my sore back but I would not have gone even if I could. It looked like a nauseating machine - nothing I could have handled!

Before leaving the Art Science Museum we bought a white extra large NASA t-shirt and a white NASA cap. Outside the sun was still blasting. We walked over to Gardens by the Bay, having set our minds on a satay dinner early on. We both became sweaty after just a few steps among the trees. It is fascinating how well they block the sound of the eight lane highway nearby. We walked all the way through and had a tasty dinner at Satay by the Bay. When we had finished we were done for the day, walked to the MRT and were just outside our condo when the rain started falling.

Expat Interview

I was contacted some time ago over Twitter by a site called ExpatArrivals. They asked me plainly if I wanted to do an interview for their website. I made my research and even though the site seemed small it did not look like a scam or a site I would not want my name to show up on. I e-mailed them and said I would gladly participate.

Runaway Weekend

It feels like this weekend ran away. I did not have all the time that I needed to do everything I wanted to with John. Still, we did some really cosy and good stuff.

Yesterday we went to the gym. John woke up at twelve, since I woke him at not a minute before or after, and I wondered what I could say to make him want to head to the gym with me. To my surprise I only had to ask the question and we were off. It was a short visit since my breakfast had been four hours earlier and I was getting really hungry, but it was a good start of the day and it felt good sitting at the hawker stall in gym-clothes. In the evening we saw Passengers and really liked it. We both had some issues with the story, since nothing really happened, but it was great in a visual sense and of course the hot actor/actresses were a big part of it. It is a recommended movie, but not one we would like to see again any time soon. Feels like it would be getting worse for every time you see it, so it is a one hit wonder.

Today we ate homemade pancakes for lunch and headed down to the pool. The sun was still in the sky so we spent a few hours there. When we got out of the pool to dry we stuck around just because it was nice and John said something that stuck in my head. Looking out over the area it looked like a live animation of a concept art. Kids were running around the pool, women lay sunbathing, mothers played with the younger children, fathers taught their sons how to swim, young couples (like ourselves) were cosy in their selected corners. It was idyllic. This is where we live now, it is surreal and yet... very real.

For dinner we took the short walk over to Holland Village. I have been talking about Cha Cha Cha many times in my posts, and if you are a new reader and interested you can search for the name in the search bar to the right. We sat down inside our favourite Mexican restaurant, keeping near the AC and far away from the humid evening air. We decided to order something new from the menu this time: I had the meat taco which was just three corn-flour tortillas and a plate of ingredients to make my own tacos. It was a bit messy and not as good as I had hoped. John had the combo which contained an enchilada and a taco mixed together, but it looked like miniatures. We do not talk much while we eat so we managed to walk there, order, eat and leave in under an hour.

Before we went home we stopped by Pet Lovers Centre. Ymir has been growing into a large cat and the medium sized house + scratching post we bought a year ago looks tiny under his big body. The small scratching posts are not the best option for him and so he has started climbing one of the kitchen chairs covered in fabric. At PLC we bought the largest scratching post we could find and brought it home. At first we carried it together, but then John tossed it over his shoulder. We placed it in the middle of the room and started taking of the plastic. The strange thing is that PLC assemble the houses and scratch posts after they have been plasticised. We had to unscrew the only screw to remove it. The cat sat a bit away from us while we did this, looking rather sceptic at what we had brought home, but then I scratched with my fingernails on the rope and he came running. He loved it! It was such a great joy to watch. He ran around using it as a platform to jump onto, climbing around it like a tree and there was no doubt that it was the best buy for our cat ever.

To finish off this weekend we watched Alien vs Predator. John had seen it before but this was my first time. I really like the first two Alien movies and recently started reading the comics about them. This movie was superb! The movie is intelligent, funny, exciting and terrifying all at once - and it ended with girlpower. I absolutely loved the ending. I could not sit still and be quiet, I had to sit up straight and raise my fist into the air like a cheesy cheese. I screamed at the screen when characters were being stupid and I cheered for the predators and the only good human in the crew. Such a blast. Now I want to have the second book in the comic series.

Long Lived Lunch Legend

We finally went to a very special restaurant on Sunday. It is not very special in general, but special to me. When we moved here and John had just started working at Ubisoft, he went to Holland Village with some of his new colleagues to eat at this thai restaurant called Nakhon Kitchen. When he came home the evening he told me about his lunch and the very good garlic chicken he had been eating. I was immediately intrigued since I am a huge chicken-fan.

Since then we have been to Holland Village on numerous occasions over the course of a full year. Every time we check if the queue is short enough for us to want to endure it. It is a popular place and people in Singapore like to queue, so much so that every time we have seen the line it has gone past the restaurant and out onto the street. We may be used to queuing by now but no way would be stand in line for more than ten minutes to get some food.

To our big surprise and my joy, at one o'clock on a Sunday, the line was almost non-existent. We hurried over and placed ourselves behind three groups of people. A worker handed us a menu, an order-chart and a sun-umbrella. We do not own sunbrellas but we have seen a lot of people using them in Singapore. This was the first time we used one and both of us liked it. We were already sweating from the normal heat but at least we did not have to wait in line while being burned by the sun. We decided on four dishes and a simple white rice each.

When it was our turn to be placed at a table we were given the worst, or the best, two seated table available. It was right behind the counter and next to the queue. At least it was in the shadow and at least we got a table. The music in this place was an odd choice; some kind of loud dance music. I was pleased to not sit right underneath a speaker. The table was stable but the plastic stool felt like it would break at anytime. Our drinks arrived and our rice arrived. Then came, not all at once but spread out as is custom in Singapore (and possibly other Asian countries as well), our garlic chicken, kai-lan with garlic and chili (it was too spicy for me), mango salad, which was literally a shredded mango with nuts and spices, and finally a tofu soup with small pieces of pork. This meal cost us twenty seven Sing-dollars and the restaurant did not even take tax. It was a great meal, we left full but not stuffed and everything was delicious (and spicy). I am so glad that I finally got to eat there!

I recommend keeping an eye out for this place. If you do not mind standing in a long line then head over right away. Personally I do not think it is quite worth a long wait in the blistering heat, but when a table is ready for you in less than fifteen minutes, it is absolutely worth it!

Double Dumplings

I had a really efficient day yesterday. The second edit of my book was done on the last day of February and I have started with the first chapter (all over again). I have a lot to fix; characters to be written out, items to be picked up earlier, removing classic Fantasy races and replacing them with something more original. I am also fixing my chapter-distribution. First chapter should catch the reader so I worked on that and shortened it a lot! It is so much fun!

So when John asked around half past five what I wanted to eat, I said buy home. I was not ready to go outside, having been in comfortable clothes all day while working. I sat down in the sofa, taking a break from the computer, when suddenly the phone rang. Nobody but John has called me in over a year and I knew it was not him since he was still working. Surprised I picked up the phone, saw it was Ash and answered. Through a noise that none of us could determine where it came from, I understood she asked if we wanted to double date over dinner. I said yes and that I would ask John, but I knew he would want to. We decided to meet at Orchard Road.

John and I met at the subway and travelled to our destination. It only took us about twenty minutes, which surprised Ash since they live so far away from Orchard. There were a few minutes of trouble when we tried to find each other. John and I stood outside and Ash and Steve were somewhere inside. I called Ash and we decided to meet outside the restaurant, but when we walked inside the building and stood looking at the dictionary to find where it was, they came up the escalator right beside us.

Din Tai Fung is a very popular Chinese restaurant. So much so that there is almost always a queue. We got in line, got our number, the menu and the order-chart. For the customers to be as fast as possible inside the restaurant - they can not afford to waste time on people sitting by their table going through what they want to order - we filled the order-chart outside with a bunch of others going through the very tasty menu. We picked out two different kinds of steamed dumplings with soup inside, which is a signature for the restaurant, one set of three chili crab steamed buns (since I would share one with John in case it was too spicy for me), some very nice spinach with garlic, a deep-fried specially marinated pork chop, two bowls of different kinds of noodles (special sauce and peanuts) and fried rice with shrimp. Before the last set of dumplings had arrived at the table Ash and I considered ordering more food. We still had room in our stomachs and it was so good! After we finished the last ten dumplings we realised we were actually kind of full and went to pay the bill instead.

We started talking about waffles and decided to find waffles for dessert. We could not find any on Google Maps, but the smallest places do not show up there anyway. We went underground and scanned the hallways. Waffles where nowhere to be found. Instead we sat down at a small, empty café where Ash and Steve ordered root beer floats and onion rings. John and I were too full to order but almost ate all of Ash's ice cream. John challenged them to a riddle that took a while to solve. After that we headed home, John was having a headache. It is always nice to have a last minute dinner date with two friends whom we really like to hang out with. I always laugh when I am with them! And I really love dumplings.

John Wick chapter 2

Spoilers.

We went to see John Wick chapter 2 last night. First movie was really good and I remember screaming out during the action scenes. Naming the second movie chapter 2 made it seem like a continuation of the story. The start of the movie was just that - the string had been tied. John Wick made peace with the lesser Russian mafia group. It could have been the end of the movie right there, but obviously it was not. I was sad to see that gorgeous car getting wrecked, but they gave us a hint it would be restored (in 2030). The car never made it to the screen again.

Moving up from the lesser criminals we step into the business of the big bad twelve. This was a bit unclear to me since I had no English subtitles (in Singapore, all movies have Chinese subtitles) and I could not pick up every word spoken (due to a small hearing problem). The second fight scene felt like an homage to the first movie's most memorable scene. I recognised the moves, where the bad guys would pop out and the scene was almost exactly the same. At first I was pissed! Was this really all they could give us? Nothing new, just the same scene in another setting? It was okay, the upcoming fight scenes were exciting enough, although afterwards only one move stood out and could be remembered, namely John Wick killing two assassins with a single pen.

One thing I have to point out is that the expendable henchmen wore ski-masks. They removed their person so it would feel justified to kill them. The first movie did not do this, it is what made the scene so gruesome and terrifying. Putting masks over their faces made it look like a video game. The cool John Wick, ruthlessly killing the men working for the big bad guy, looked like a teenager going through a first-person-shooter. It was sad, it was unworthy.

With so many people getting killed I was glad to see at least one good death scene. The murder John Wick was supposed to commit turned out to be a strong and strange feminine power-move. The lady knew she would die and chose how she would go. It was a beautiful scene and I fully approved of her choice. She looked like an angel with wings of blood.

The dialogues were few and far apart, and frankly they did not lift the story. The amount of fighting felt too much with so little to go on. I was confused for parts of the movie, not understanding why some people tried to kill him. They made it easy to understand in the end though, setting a price on his head which anyone could claim - even I would want to kill him for that kind of cash. It was a set up for the next movie, but it felt like an excuse. He was just trying to retire! At least he had company from his nameless dog, looking like Will Smith in I Am Legend.

I must say that I did enjoy the movie, despite all the things I have just said about it. People who enjoy action will do too. Unfortunately I felt like the story was not coherent and I can barely remember the characters. It was not what I had looked forward to see, but I did enjoy it never the less. Watch the first movie and then go see the second with no expectations. That way, you can not be disappointed.

Thirty Procent Off

I am losing my hair! It is driving me nuts. My confidence is almost completely gone. I fear taking a shower since I know my hair will clog the drain and flood the bathroom. I have not used the hairbrush in a long time, I do not want to see how much is stuck on it. The whole apartment has hair everywhere. I do not know what to do!