A good pal shared with me the excitement and achievement of her husband’s 20th anniversary with the Co that he’s been with since graduation – his first and only job. On his anniversary, his boss also announced his retirement, paving the road for him as a successor within the regional business unit they belong too.
The pal asked her husband ‘what made him stayed on in one Co for the past 20 years’ (ironically, the wife is a kick-ass headhunter who deals with top tier recruitment) and his retort?
” Having a good group of colleague- friends to lunch with; because no matter how shitty the day is, how crappy your boss maybe or nonsensical external stakeholders/clients are with their demands, all you need is to make sure you get your ass out for that 1 hr lunch with a group that you can spurt your verbal work diarrhea – and the day will simply passed by quicker and eventually, better since you got it out of your system”
Rather true – I must say, especially for someone like me that simply can’t withhold any sorts of emotions and must have it blast from within (or risk internal bleeding hur hur). On the other hand, it’s never easy finding colleague-friends that can bare your work soul to, especially if your scope of work is confidential and serves as a certain conflict of interest if you’re from different departments.
So speaking of lunch at work – yes, I have gotten much better since the office move, I do make it a point to head out for lunch as and when time permits, and not just work through lunch in front of the computer. Last week though was the first in 2012, where I had to bring packed lunch – not by choice 😦 – excuse the silly gesture but I just have to imprint ” my first packed lunch of 2012″ here.
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| My healthy fare of lettuce, tomatoes, onions and 2 slice of wholemeal bread |
And, on the topic of packed lunch -it got me googling some healthy packed lunch ideas for those days which meetings are back to back and simply impossible to head out for lunch. Here’s some tip/ideas that I gathered (and revamped with my own version, if I was to prepare it for lunch) :
– Fresh Pasta Salad: I would opt for wholemeal based pasta (preferably fusilli), chopped parsley, chives, sun dried tomatoes and olives.Give it a good toss with lemon juice and small teaspoon of olive oil
– Brown Rice or ‘Five Grain Rice’ with steamed Broccoli : I would cook the rice at night and steamed the broccoli in the morning before I head to work – with dash of olive oil and ground pepper. * I’ll rotate the mains with other kinds of veg – another fav would be mashed pumpkin.
– Beans and Potato/Purple Cabbage Salad (good source of vit C): I would opt for a variety of beans such as – green beans, enadame, and soya beans; add in bite-sized potatoes/or cabbage (make sure you steam it first) and toss it with a salad mixture of – Japanese soya sauce and vinegar (def more vinegar for me in this case).
– Wraps : can’t go wrong with this – I’ll either opt for seaweed skin or wholemeal wrap and lather it with all sorts of veggies and throw in a hard-boiled egg for protein
What’s your idea of a healthy, filling packed lunch?
J-emine's reflexionando 
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