Archive for August, 2009

Its the last day of school today before a short 10 day break. To me 10 days is really short because of our large number of todo list. 10 days includes 4 days of weekend and 1 public holiday. So, in actual fact, its only 5 days off from regular school days.

However, we have lots and lots to do. We don’t usually go anywhere because its expensive to travel. Hopefully they won’t feel any peer pressure about not going anywhere for a holiday in later years.

The kids want to do all sorts of crafts. They want to play treasure hunt. They want to learn to sew cross stitch. They want to play with their playdoh etc etc. Its a long list. At the same time, they have some holiday homework from school. Holiday is also the best time for me to catch up on teaching them. We have little time during school days as they are usually busy with homework.

They don’t complain about doing work during the school holidays because I always tell them that “We work hard but we play hard too.” 5 school days is really too short a time for us to do all those things on our itenary. Usually we’ll have our own “School Holiday Program” which they look forward to very much. We alternate work and play all day each day. We have to actually draw up a timetable which includes work and play or we’ll never get anything done accept laze around watching cartoons all day while mummy blogs.

I would pin up our timetable on our board at home and if I don’t follow the timetable the kids will make sure I do. So cannot curi curi blog.

In order to spend more time with the kids, I’ll take a little blogging break myself. 10 days of blogging break. Hopefully I’ll find my momentum back after that and won’t get too lazy to blog. I find that whenever I stop writing for a while, I lose my momentum. I think my longest break was 2 months. I got really really lazy after that. Anyway, I’ll still be blog hopping this time round so its not a complete break from blogging. :)

Right, better get to work on that school holiday program timetable now. Be back in 10 days.

One lazy Sunday morning, I was buying kuih by the roadside stall when “BANG!” Everyone turned towards the source of the loud noise to look.

A lady of about 30-40 years old had banged her car into another car while parking her car. The owner of the car, a man of about 50 plus years old came running and said something to her. I could not hear what he said. However, I heard her loud and clear. She said……

“I DIDN’T SEE YOUR CAR LAH! WHO LIKES TO BANG INTO OTHER PEOPLE’S CAR???!!!! HAIYAH! I AM GOING TO PAY YOU ALREADY WHAT!”

And she went to get some money to pay the man. I couldn’t hear what the man replied to her. Obviously he was much more soft spoken than her. Or maybe he was dumbfounded……. as I was.

Instead of being apologetic as she should have been since she was in the wrong, she shouted at the man. Probably the man should have replied “Who likes their car to be banged into on a Sunday morning and then be shouted at?”

I wonder what makes people like that tick? Recently the same thing happened in school too. A mother was trying to park her car and while she drove past a school van, the driver drove straight into her car without looking and instead of being apologetic, they (the driver and his passenger, both men) scolded her. They had been chatting and did not see her, hence they crashed into her car which was passing by and instead of being apologetic, they spoke to her rudely and loudly.

What has become of people these days? Whatever has happened to plain curtesy? Why can’t they be humble and admit it when they are wrong? Why can’t they say the word “Sorry”? Is that so very hard?

Do you go to the toilet everyday for a bowel movement? Well, Mr MG does. And he wanted me to train the kids to do so too. I know its a good thing to get rid of all those toxins but to me, “training” them to go to the toilet in the morning for a bowel movement means adding an extra itenary to my morning rush. “You don’t know how to invest in the future.” he said. “If they can go to the toilet in the morning, you will find it a lot easier when they don’t have to rush to the toilet during the day when we’re out for example.”

I couldn’t agree with him so we decided to ask the paeditrician. The paeditrician said it is not necessary to have a daily bowel movement. Every 2-3 days is fine. Just go when you feel like it. However, Mr MG was not satisfied. He insisted that its a good thing and showed me articles on the internet. So, no choice, I had to train the kids.

What do you know? Eventually, the girl became so good, she can have a bowel movement every morning. And now the boy is learning too. It helps that they don’t have to rush to the toilet when we’re out or use the school’s not so clean toilet. Home is always still the best.

So now, the whole family is trained to have daily bowel movements each morning. All accept me. Mr MG calls me the pangsai tangki because whenever I sit on the “throne”, there is nothing. And I call him the pangsai machine because whenever he sits on the “throne” there is something. And we have a good laugh over it. But when we are out and I suddenly have to rush to the toilet in the mall after a meal, he has the last laugh. Seriously, my stomach needs more training. I remember days when I was driving to work and suddenly in the traffic jam, I’d have the most bad stomach ache!

What about you? Do you go to the toilet everyday?

My Aunt is the most selfless person I know. When my mother died years ago, she left her life in Penang for a year to go to Kuantan to look after us. At that time, Kuantan and Penang seems very far away. It was 12 hours by car on trunk roads. It probably is further to someone simple like her who never left her hometown before but she did it anyway for us.

She also looked after my uncle who has Schizophrenia for around 20 years till he died. My grandparents had sent my uncle to an institution but they took him home after seeing the diplorable situation there. At the time there were no drugs or treatment given and my grandmother was shocked to see him being beaten up and bruised. I think it probably broke her heart as a mother. So she took him home to care for him herself.

After she died, my aunt took over caring after my uncle. She did so without complain for years till he died. It must not have been easy but she did it anyway. She bathed him, washed up his poo etc and later on when he became semi paralysed by a stroke she continued to look after him till his death.

After the time when I was 10 and she came to look after us in Kuantan, I  had the chance to live with her again for another year when I was 17 and studying in Penang. It as an unhappy time for me then. My family was split, not emotionally but physically. We were all living apart at different places. Dad had just been transferred to KL. My eldest sister was working in Kuantan. Big Brother had just moved to work in KL. Second Sis was away in campus in Penang and Second Bro was away in Singapore studying. I had nowhere to go so dad put me with his brother’s family. My uncle and his wife had a large family. He had 2 sons and 3 daughters and he rented out a room to two young men and all of us stayed together in a 3 room single storey house. It was very crowded and my uncle’s wife was not happy so I decided to go to Penang to live with my aunt instead.

I remember once I had a very bad tummy ache and she came and rub ointment for me at night and gave me medicine. A few other times, she made special traditional chinese medicated brews to help me with my menstrual pains. Those were the closest I felt to how it was like to receive a mother’s love.

And so, I am glad, really glad that hubby made it possible for me to go and see her recently while she was down in KL recently for her only daughter’s graduation convocation ceremony. Aunty was so proud and happy. I am glad we managed to take a few photographs for her together with my dad. At first I was worried that dad would not be up to it. He had been sleeping all day, waking up only for meals. Eventually, we managed to wake him and take him to Kajang to see my aunt and he was alert and responsive enough during dinner.

It was a long drive to Kajang and later to Subang Jaya before driving back to KL but its worth it. It was worth it even though my girl said she had the unreal feeling again which worried me a lot because it may be a partial seizure but I won’t go into details about that here. This is a post about my aunt.

I am very grateful for such a wonderful aunt and I hoped that she will be blessed with more happy moments with her family. No one deserves it more than her.

Yesterday I was at a hawker style food court in Kajang. The kids wanted to go to the toilet so I had no choice but to take them.

My oh my, the toilet was filthy! The floors were dirty and in one toilet, there was blood on the floor, probably left behind by someone who couldn’t put on her sanitary pad on time or whatever. It was disgusting. And naturally, as expected, there was no soap. Fortunately, there was water. Phew!

With such toilets, how do you expect people to have proper hygiene?