Archive for 2008
Isn’t it fast how time flies? Its Christmas Eve today. Imagine that. In another week the girl and boy will be going to school and kindy. Soon they will be going to college. 
I am getting more and more gancheong (excited) now…..
Have a number of things to do today. Gotta trim the kids nails and wash their hair for tomorrow’s Christmas party. Need to get them to finish up their homemade cards. Need to pack dad’s stuff and label his medication for brother. Tonight or first thing tomorrow we will take out the presents for the kids. That is the best part.
After a week, I think I see a pattern for dad now. Sometimes he operates at 100%. That is when he has his “awakening”. After an “awakening”, he operates at 30% because the “awakening” has drained him. He is so so tired. He can’t think anymore. He has to be guided each step of the way. He must sleep and sleep. At one point he slept for 15 hours straight. After the long sleep he now operates at 50% meaning he can go to the toilet etc unaided now but he is very quiet. He talks mostly in his sleep or to himself. He says very little to us even when we speak to him. He stills like to rest and wake for meals only but he looks a little less tired now compared to right after his “awakening”.
Well, I must be off now. Sorry I have no time to blog hop to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. So here is an e-card for those of you who just happen to be passing by.
Happy Holidays and hope you all have a good time with your loved ones.
After the awakening comes the fog. Dad’s fog is back. He didn’t make it to the toilet on time this morning. After breakfast, he went upstairs and went right back to sleep on the study room sofa. Only to pee again but fortunately this time all over the bathroom floor.
The little one wanted to play with kong kong. He sits beside his sleeping kong kong playing with his Thomas the Train. “Why is kong kong still sleeping?” he asks.
Because dad is upstairs with the little one, I had to run up and down to make sure everything is ok.
I had plans to finish up some subjects I had been teaching the kids. Its only two weeks more before school starts. But today, I feel a bit unsettled. In the end, I put them both in front of the tv. I also scolded the girl and said some not very nice things to the her because she can’t seem to stop asking questions.
I wanted to cook yam rice today so I asked the maid to fry the yams for me so I could cook it but she fried the yams then cooked the rice herself without putting in the chicken. Nevermind, I told her, we’ll steam the chicken but she went to fry the ginger before putting it on the chicken to steam. Normally we only fry the ginger for steaming fish, not chicken. Nevermind, it’ll taste nicer, I told her but we have to hurry. If kong kong goes back to sleep it’ll be very hard to wake him. We have to cook fast today. She’s not normally that forgetful but today of all days….
So now, the food is cooked and kong kong has gone back to sleep, upstairs. When he wakes up again, he will be disorientated again.
Dad wakes up and leaves a trail of urine all the way to the bathroom again. I guide him to remove the bottom half of his clothing and I am relieved that he will allow me to turn the shower on. Dad does not like to shower anymore. So I held on to dad’s shirt and asked dad to spray and wash up himself. Dad allowed me to help him towel dry but he managed to change himself. Thats good. At least he managed to have half a shower today.
He is like a totally different person today compared to yesterday. Today, he needs to be guided on what to do, otherwise he won’t know how to do it.
In the evening when dad woke up, I took dad to the toilet again. This time I followed him in instead of leaving him in there and I discovered that he really didn’t know what to do next. When we entered the bathroom, he stood in the middle of it and looked like he was going to pee right there. I had to tell him where the toilet was and I had to remind him to remove his clothing.
Then I had to remind him to wash his hands. He nodded his head, turned on the tap and then off again without washing. I had to remind him again that he hadn’t washed. Dad looks like he is operating on 30% at the moment.
Dad had one of his what we refer to as “Awakening” moments on Sunday so we took full advantage of it and took dad everywhere to enjoy old dad.
When dad has his awakening moments he would be very alert and want to do everything, like making up for lost time. I think dad started coming out of his fog on Saturday afternoon. He began talking more and on Saturday evening he sat through the whole “Fearless” show we had put on for him. He loves kungfu movies. After that he even commented on the show.
On Saturday morning, he followed us to the mall to do some grocery shopping. I think he was impressed with the Christmas decorations at the mall too. Dad was tired so we found places for dad to sit and rest while we took turns to run around doing our errands.
We eventually decided to buy a belt for dad because I noticed that the one he was wearing was so old and long. Dad has lost a lot of weight so much so that his clothing no longer fits him. Brother in law has given him some hand me down trousers and we had all bought him lots of shirts but I think we forgot about the belt.
On Sunday morning we took him to the park with the kids. He even sat on the swing for a while.
After that dad and I walked to the nearby coffee shop for breakfast while hubby stayed on at the park with the kids for a while. Dad had fish slices congee. We bought Yau Char Kuay to go with the Congee because the porridge stall did not have any. Dad really enjoyed it. Then we packed some breakfast home and bought the newspapers for dad to read.
We painted the gate today, something we had wanted to do for a while. Meanwhile, dad sat on the bench and read the papers from cover to cover. He was alert and talked about everything that he read from politics to crime. He even spoke about his 4 digit numbers which he used to buy often.
I had forgotten that it was Donzhi or Tang Yuen Festival or Winter Solstice Festival. Sister had made some and Dad called her to ask her to bring some over. He was really mad because she was late and asked her not to come over anymore. Sis was stalled because she had workers at her house doing renovations.
So we brought dad there to have some tang yuen. It was the kids first time trying. Last year I made some store bought ones but they didn’t like it. Anyway, we thought its a better idea to wait till they are older before getting them to make and consume them since it is a choking risk. In short, the kids didn’t like it, so I ate their portions. 1 bowl plus 2 more bowls makes 3 bowls in all!
We skipped lunch because we were full from the breakfast and the tang yuen so we ended up having tea at a Mamak shop. Dad loves lembu susu and tosai so he enjoyed those.
In the evening after dinner, dad was still very alert, so we took him out to get some last minute Christmas gifts as well as to buy some new shoes for the maid. The kids had accidentally stepped on her shoes and tore it!
This morning the fog returned. Dad left a trail of urine all the way from his bed to the bathroom. After that he didn’t know what to do, because he couldn’t sit down. I finally managed to persuade dad to change his clothes, have breakfast and take his medication but he is sleeping now, like a baby. He will usually sleep all day after his awakening moments.
Sometimes with the awakening moments comes imsomnia where he will not be able to sleep for more than 24 hours and after that he will sleep for 24 hours. Its strange how the brain works.
On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, dad kept on talking about his diapers. Should he wear it? If he wears it he become lazy and won’t make an effort to go to the toilet to pee, he said so himself. He’s worried about not wearing it because he is too full etc but he managed to go through the entire days without it even though he was worried. He even managed to ask for the toilet at the mamak shop and go there on his own accord. And on Sunday he was delighted when he managed to poo first thing in the morning.
Someone said that alzeimers is almost a blessing in disguise, that losing all one’s memory is perhaps better than awareness but what about this half awareness, this awareness that you are beggining to lose your memory. It must be very frightening indeed. Sigh.
Despite wanting to remain positive and the numerous articles about growing old gracefully, I do not think that growing old is a graceful process, not when you have dementia and a bit of alzheimer’s.
Not when you begin to lose your dignity and confidence because you cannot handle simple daily tasks any longer. Not when bathing becomes scary to you and you no longer know how to button up your shirts and unzip your trousers. Not when you start having urinary and fecal incontinence and you have to start wearing diapers like a baby. Not when you have to allow your daughters to help you wear your diapers because you are embarrased you keep on wetting the bed.
Dad’s condition has deteriorated to this now. Sister will be away on holiday again for two weeks so dad will be coming to stay with us for a week till Christmas before going to stay with brother for another week till the New Year.
We’ve got ourselves some Christmas presents, books and toys and CDs and a wallet to replace my broken one. We wrapped them all up even though we already know what they are. Silly, but fun anyway for the kids. Even the maid has got two story books all wrapped up but what shall we get dad?
Hubby said that a digital photo frame would be a good idea. We could store pictures of the kids in there for him. I wonder if those digital photo frames comes with batteries. Will have to check it out. Its very sweet of dear hubby to have thought of this. I am touched. He is the caring “sai sum” (thoughtful) one between us two. I am the airy head one who doesn’t give much thought about things, well, not as much as him anyway.
I have discussed with big sis and I think I will get my maid to sew velcro straps onto his trousers to help make things easier for him. I feel sad because we can’t take him out to jalan-jalan and makan-makan as much as we would like to now because of the fecal incontinence.
I hope that when he is with us, he will have at least one good day when he reverts back to his old self and we have old dad back for a few hours instead of the quiet dad we now have. Dad used to be so chatty and clean but now he is quiet and he won’t bathe and change anymore and now he has incontinence. Poor poor dad.
I found a good online dictionary to help me learn Chinese yesterday and now I’m torn.
I wanted to get a handheld Electronic Dictionary because it is convenient but is it all that good? Some people say you can’t find many words. Now if I invest in one, I will surely feel frustrated if I can’t find the word that I want!
At RM1,500 it is not a cheap investment. Hubby kept on asking me whether it will be worth it. Won’t a printed dictionary be just as good? I don’t have an answer for him.
At RM1,500 I can buy a lot of things. I can even replace this cranky PC with an original Dell by adding another one or two hundred. This PC won’t start up in the morning properly. I have to press restart before Windows will start up. Geeezzz!
Aiyooo how ar? Nevermind, while I go and think about it, I want to share the online dictionary that I found.
All banana parents who only know English but are sending their child to Chinese school should find this online dictionary useful. I don’t want to repeat what I have written on my other blog, so if you don’t mind, please hop over there to read……
My internet connection went from bad to nothing. So I made….
Telephone calls to call centre. (Several days). Went to shop to have modem checked. (1 day) They checked inside the house. (1 day) They went back to change the port. (1 day) They came back to check the cables outside the house. (1 day) And then they came back to check the cables inside the house (1 day) and said “Its your modem, ma’am.” You can imagine how long this process took. They cannot simply check everything in one day right?
And in between all that checking by the technicians, I had to make several calls to the call centre. One call lasted more than 45 minutes with the girl saying the same thing over and over again and asking me to hold the line over and over again for long periods of time as if I have nothing else to do. In the end, I got so fed up, I hung up while holding the line again with no resolution in sight and answering the same questions over and over again.
My internet connection started having problems on 5th December. It finally got resolved on Saturday, the 13th December. Earlier on they had suspected the modem so I had taken it to the shop to have a check. The man at the shop said it was working fine. Then the technician came over and he didn’t think it was the modem as well. So we went one full circle changing everything before coming back to the modem again. Everyone said that if the modem goes it goes right away. It will mati (die) right away and not act half dead the way mine acted, they all insisted.
So on a wet Saturday morning we went to Digital Mall in PJ to search for another modem. We wanted the same one since we were used to it. The first shop we went to had run out of stock. The second one had one at RM99 so we took that. We wanted to check it out but the busy salesman said “No worries, bring it back in 3 days if you have problems.”
We took the modem home, plugged it on and the power light did not come on. So we changed the power adapter but still no light. I called up the shop and asked if they had another one in stock and they said “Yes, bring it here and we will change it for you.”
When I got there in the heavy rain, they had run out of stock so they refunded me the money instead. The guy accidentally gave me a RM100 so I returned RM1 to him. When I got back, I saw that one of the RM5 bill was burnt in one corner where the serial number was. Bleargh. Should have kept that extra RM1. *Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.*
I then went to the first shop and asked for another more expensive modem model which I had saw earlier but the guy said they had sold that and was out of stock. Oh bother! I held it in my hands just that very morning.
So in the afternoon, I called up Low Yat and found that one of the shops there had the stock at RM70. We drove there in the evening and I went to the shop to get it while hubby drove around with the kids since it was so crowded and jammed up with cars on the roads.
The shops at Low Yat was equally crowded and jammed up with people. I went to the shop that we called but the salesperson ignored me because he was so busy. Finally, I found it myself and told him “I want that box”. I requested him to test it out for me because I didn’t want to have a faulty one again. He told me that I had to pay first then go to the service centre to have it tested.
The “service centre” was further in. A long narrow path filled with people and supplies led to it. I found it at last after asking around. The technicians were in a room with a door made of bars like a jail. Anyway, I squeezed my way through several big sized men and manage to get my box to one of the technicians and told him to “Test this, please.”
Then I had to wait outside the door made of bars together with the several big sized men. I tried to peer my head inside to have a look at what the technician was doing. He requested for my username and password and I gave it to him reluctantly, not trusting them. I couldn’t see what he was doing but at least I saw the power light of the modem light up from where I was peering.
Finally he came out and said, its ok. I couldn’t see him testing him and I was just to take his word that it was ok. Sigh. So I checked the box to make sure that he hadn’t left anything behind. I saw that the a cable and a stand was missing so I asked him for it. He said “I’m sorry, its not included.” The stand was listed as optional and a piece of white paper was stuck over the place where the word “cable” used to be on the place where they listed the items included with the package. “If you want the cable you have to buy separately.” said the technician. When I asked for the stand and the instruction booklets, he got tired of me and asked me to ask the salesman, the busy salesman who ignored me earlier.
Hubby called to ask me to hurry up as the kids were restless and he had been waiting a long time at the side of the road. So I packed the rest of the things back into the box and left. In the car, I told hubby, “No, wonder its so cheap lah. They took out a few things!”
We drove off and hubby then asked me whether the installation CD was there. It wasn’t! Fortunately I have one at home so I didn’t have to turn around and drive back there in the Saturday night jam. Later at home when we tried to install it, I found that there was no guarantee card, nothing. Geez. I won’t go to Low Yat to get my supplies again unless I can’t find it anywhere else like in this case. Sigh!
So I finally installed the new modem and here I am online again after more than a week of bad and no internet connection. Hopefully the modem that I got from Low Yat was not an imitation and won’t die again soon. Sigh.
Right, finished ranting. If you finished reading up to here, thank you for listening to my rant. lol. I had wanted to blog about Christmas shopping and post up pictures of the malls but here I am ranting instead. One week of no connection sure gets to me but hubby said “You know hon, when you are not online, I noticed you can get many things around the house done, the way it should be.”
Peek-A-Boo! Just testing my online connection. My internet connection has been giving me problems since the 5th of December. Its driving me crazy!
Have called up the call centre so many times. Have you checked your cables? It must be your modem. Maybe its the splitter. Aarrrgh! I even brought the modem to the shop to have it checked but they said it was fine so will you just get your technician down here prompto instead of asking me the same questions each time I call?
Have you checked your cables Miss? Did you try to connect direct? Can you press Start, Accessories then go to Command Prompt. Blah blah blah. Well, it can’t be my modem or cables or splitter right or not, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get online now. The man at the shop told me that if my modem is about to go it will die right away and won’t act half dead so its not the modem.
My phone line was out before but its working fine now. But that darned internet connection…. So better quickly reply to all my comments, answer my email etc etc before it goes off again. So now you see me but next you won’t.
Oh, btw, this contest closes on 20th December. So hurry up, support and join lah. There is only one contestant at the moment, so the chances of winning is very high. Less man, more chances. Thats the way with contests. 
Right, better publish this before I lose my internet connection again. The internet light is blinking weakly again.
I’m thinking of getting a trilingual Electronic Dictionary to help me help my girl. I want to use it mainly for learning Chinese words but of course the Malay and English parts would be useful too.
At the moment I am helping my girl read her preschool Chinese Books. I read them BEFORE she does. I learn the words and check up the meanings and then I teach her. Its a little bit like the blind leading the blind. Its a laborious task. It takes me ages to search and understand the characters using a traditional Printed Dictionary.
I am told that an Electronic Dictionary might help. However it costs around RM1,500. Thats a heavy investment. So I’m not going to jump in and purchase an Electronic Dictionary without first doing some research on how useful it is.
What I would like to know is just how useful is an Electronic Dictionary? Is it much easier to use than the traditional printed Dictionary? Can I find the Chinese characters easily and learn them without taking so much time searching for the words?
Can anyone out there help me? If you have an Electronic Dictionary, can you explain to me how it differs from a Printed Dictionary? (apart from the price difference of course)
I love contests. I think the best part about a contest is the anticipation of winning. This usually happens immediately after I submit my contest entry. I guess that allowing myself to dream about winning is a nice feeling because it makes me hope for something, silly though this may sound. Dreaming about my “winnings” is fun but of course winning is even better.
To maximise my chance of winning, I don’t enter sms contests (which is usually expensive and can be a scam). I don’t enter contests which require a lot of work (eg a different entry each week or as many entries as you can types) and those which require a lucky chance among millions because I don’t ever seem to win any lucky draws.
I usually enter contests which require some writing because I think some people would be lazy to write in so it increases my chance and I enter those which I think has less contestants so that increases my chance. Using these “strategies” I have won quite a few items.
Jewellery, Expensive face creams (which I wouldn’t buy myself if I didn’t win them ;)), a watch worth RM1,000 which I eventually sold to Cash Converters for RM100 a few years later after the batteries ran out. And each time I won I was on cloud nine. I remembered the first time I won a string of pearls, I was so excited when I called hubby he was wondering what it was all about.
Hubby used to shake his head when I entered yet another contest but he stopped shaking it after I won something rather useful. Now, he helps me look out for contests and helps me to send out my entry forms.
Well, if you’re like me and you like contests, here’s a chance for you to win something. Now, we have contests on blogs. Thats a new and good medium for contests because it increases your chance of winning, IMO. The prize for this contest is a cash voucher worth RM88 for a clothing line which is exclusively for boys only, boys aged 1 to 14. So, if you have a son, a newphew, a brother or a friend’s son who is this age, go check out this Blogger’s Contest on my Parenting Times Blog.
Psst: Hope that all the blogger kakis out there can help to spread the word about the contest around. Thanks.
I am married to a man who loves to DIY around the house. If you put this man in a hardware store for example, he could spend hours browsing in it. I try to smile and listen to him when he is at the hardware store in the same manner that he smiles and nods his head at me when I go into the dressing room to try yet another outfit in the ladies department.
It is probably practical to have a DIY man around. These days its hard to get any electrician, plumber or whatever to come to your house. They will take a long time to come over then charge you a bomb for waiting. Sometimes they don’t even do a satisfactory job but they charge you a bomb anyway.
I will digress a bit here. I read in the book on the Five Love Languages that you must speak to your spouse in their love language. My man’s love language is “Acts of Service” and “Quality Time”. This simply means that he will be thrilled to bits and will feel lots of warmth and love whenever I do things for and together with him. This includes DIY things naturally.
I have to learn to become Mrs DIY otherwise my DIY man becomes very unhappy. He likes me to fix things together with him. Recently, I have added “electrician” as part of my Mrs DIY’s portfolio. I have fixed the plumbing: sinks and WCs, climbed up roofs to fix water tanks, repaired holes in the ceiling with putty, painted walls, fixed the flooring, and recently I learned how to change an electrical plug from two point to three point.
I sometimes sulk when interrupted halfway through reading my trashy women’s magazine to fix the toilet but I will do it anyway because it is his love language. I just hope he doesn’t get me a tool box like the one above for my birthday gift.
Anyone needs to fix anything in their house? My fees are very cheap. lol.
