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?

There is one confirmed case of H1N1 at my child’s school and a class has been closed for a week. Don’t ask me which school. Its in Kuala Lumpur. Last week my nephew’s school was closed for a week. Its in Subang Jaya. A tuition centre in Kuala Lumpur is closed for a week because one of the students has H1N1. Sigh.

Its everywhere now. Here are excerpts of what some parents had to say. Source: Lim Kit Siang blog.

“…….Question now… should i go to GH to let him be tested? What if his flu isn’t H1N1 but he get infected by queueing for hours in the hospital? I wanted to get our usual pediatrician to give him Tamilflu but was informed that the government has all the stock and none others has it…… there aren’t enough to go around. Suppliers of Tamilflu are having a big meeting to discuss this headache…..
Tell me, dear HM (Health Minister) what should i do.

Also, i heard that in Subang, schools like Lick Hung, Chee Wen has H1N1 cases, some up to 15 cases but were not reported….. we are like chasing rumours in the wind.

Please, sir, we should adopt the most conservative measures ie close the all schools for at least a week….. we are taking about many deaths in a day…….. !!!!! Malaccan schools are wise in closing the schools to curb the spread….. students spend so many hours under such hot and hazy condition in schools, naturally their immune system will be weak…. and this will increase the chances of getting H1N1. Already many in Kota Kemuning are coughing but no case has been heard yet…..”

“My children are studying in SM Puchong B where there is already at least 1 confirmed case of H1N1. And as days passes by, I seem to hear of more cases surfacing although unconfirmed. But there are more confirmed cases from other schools in Puchong.

Even some teachers at the school were not going into the class to teach for fear of contracting the flu.

I made numerous calls to the Min of Education to enquire if they should close the school for a couple of days as a precaution. I purposely highlighted that my enquiry was H1N1 related. I was passed from one person to the next and from one dept to the next until I was finally passed to the correct dept only to be told that all the pegawai were in a meeting. No one bothered to take down my contact no.

Feeling frustrated, I called the MOH hotline listed on the front page of one of the Chinese newspaper. Alas, the phone rang and rang and no one picked it up.

As a parent, I am very concerned on the health of my children. All I am seeking is some guidance from the relevant authorities on how I should act. What is the status of the flu pandemic in the Puchong area? Should I continue sending my children to school? What precautions or preventive steps are the teachers taking at schools to check the flu? Or is there any preventive measures at all? ”

I am confused now. I wish I had more information. Which schools? Which areas? How many students? All I get is how many deaths each day and the total number infected. No more details than that. I wish I had more details.

The school term tests are over now. So why not let the children have an earlier time off just to be on the safe side. Why not err on the cautious side?

At my child’s school, every morning the kids temperatures are taken before they enter the class. They will be sent home if they have fever. The teachers are wearing masks now. Its all very worrying.

The school advisory informing us that a class is closed was in Mandarin. The concerned “banana” parents call each other up to check what is in the advisory. “Do I have to keep my child home?” That is on everyone’s mind. And judging from the lesser traffic today, I think some of them did just that.

Sigh. The H1N1 is here to stay and spreading fast. I still send my child to school because the advisory says the rest of the school is to go on as normal including activities. I don’t want to panic but I am still worried. All I can do is teach her and everyone in the house to be ultra concious about hygiene. Like health freaks, we carry a bottle of dettol hand sanitizer around with us. We try to limit going out to crowded places and eating out although we can’t avoid it altogether. Don’t tell me we will stay home like a nomad for a year or more? It is not possible. So we will limit what we can. And when we do go out, we wash our hands like crazy after touching common surfaces like escalator hand rails, supermarket trolleys, the bank’s atm machine, glass doors, etc.

About a month ago, when I was at a private hospital, we had our temperatures checked before going in. Inside the hospital, while I was in the elevator, I heard a person whom I thought is a doctor laughing it off. She grumbled about the inconveniece of having her temperature checked at entrypoint and complained about why there is so much attention being given to this virus when the death rate is so low. I don’t think we can afford to think in this complacent manner. Read this news and you will see why you have to take this seriously now.

Eugene from Bold-Talk asked his readers to share their blogging experience. Well, I love to blog and I can talk on and on about blogging but I shall limit myself to his questions.

1)How did you start blogging, what was your one driving factor? Breastfeeding. I started a website in 2004 because I wanted to talk about my breastfeeding difficulties and help others who faced the same difficulties. Later I found that a website is too difficult to maintain. A blog is easier, so I switched to blogging. Looking back, that seems like so long ago now. Oh my goodness its coming to 5 years now! I stopped counting after a while of saying Happy Blog Birthday to myself every year.

2)What was your happiest blogging experience? When others write to me about their problems and thank me for listening or being there for them in their time of need. It feels really nice being to help other people just by sitting in my study room chair.

3)What was your most frustrasting blogging experience? When people copy my blog post which happens all the time. My entire blog has also been copied before and is still being copied now as I write. Bleargh!

4)Have you made any good friends out of your blogging friends who were previously not your friends? Of course, even though I have never met many of them. I know that I am not alone.

5)What was the rudest comment you ever received? Cannot remember but I was unhappy enough to write a blog post about it to say that people who don’t have good comments to make should not comment!

6)Have you thought of giving up blogging? No, not yet.

7)Do you consider yourself a blog junkie? I have 4 personal blogs. What do you think?

8)What is just one thing pleasant you wish could happen to your blog? I wish it could update itself whenever I run out of things to say. Hahaha.

9)If i say blogging is more about passion rather than commission($$$$),do you agree? Of course. If not for the passion, I would not still be blogging.

10)Please reconmmend to us 2 bloggers’ blog which you feel that we should not miss.. Well, most of the bloggers I know are mommy bloggers, so I shall try to recommend something else instead:

As Zewt As He Gets - Because I like his style of writing.

Lily’s Wai Sek Hong - If you love food and cooking.

Anybody else feel like sharing? Go ahead and leave your link at Eugene’s so we can all hop over to kaypoh.

I think some of you may remember how I agonised over which school to send my kids to ie whether to send them to a Chinese school or National School. Eventually I decided on Chinese school but I was ever ready to take my kid out of the school at any prolonged sign of unhappiness. I even had an alternate school ready in mind. I was even more worried because when when we were entering the school I met an old college mate who was thinking of pulling his going to be Std 2 kid out of the same Chinese School because he was not getting along well in Chinese school after one whole year in Std 1.

However, so far we are quite ok with the school. We are coming to the end of the middle of the second term now. The homework is quite a lot but still manageable to us. The teachers are hardworking and quite dedicated (accept for the English teacher). On discipline; some of the teachers do carry rotans with them but they don’t really use it. They only use it to threaten. Most of the time, they use rewards as a motivator instead. My girl is always telling me about how she wants to get a prize for being good, doing well etc.

Sometimes she gets asked to stand up for talking too much with her partner who sits next to her or she may get her hand hit by a ruler for forgetting to bring a book but that is all. However sometimes, the teacher merely asks them to share the book with another classmate instead. No extreme punishment like standing up on the chair for the whole period or lesson. She tries to complete her homework but if she forgets or if she misses school and misses out on some homework, she is usually given a chance or time to complete it, instead of receiving punishment. My main worry was excessive homework and excessive discipline but so far so good. Not excessive.

She is doing well academically. Last term she was 5th out of 40 in her class and 12th out of 267 in Standard One, (it is not a very big Chinese school. I hear that most Chinese schools have 400 plus students) with an average mark of 97.43 for all the 12 papers she had to sit for. (yah 12 in all!) Not bad for a banana girl. She has no problems with her written Chinese papers. However, she still struggles with spoken Chinese a little bit. At first she could not understand the spoken instructions given in Chinese but she is getting better now.

Academics aside, in other areas, she has been labelled as dependant and not confident by her teacher. She is not a very bold girl but she was doing ok in kindy. She had a good rapport with her teachers then. However, I noticed that she no longer has a rapport with teachers at her current school. She has become more timid compared to before. A contributory factor could be her lack in confidence in speaking in Chinese. However, the teacher does speak to her in English most of the time at the beginning of the year and some of the time now. In kindy, she was very talkative and friendly with her teachers and was labelled as one of the “top students” in class by her teachers, and was picked to be emcee at her kindy concert.

In kindy she used to ask a lot of questions in class and was very talkative but now she is more withdrawn. I think language is the main barrier and not so much the size of the class. There were 20 students in her class in kindy and now there are 40 in her Std One class.

I noticed that in her current school, she has gone into an inner shell, not participating very much. She often comes home and talks about her group leaders, her monitors, the little “busy bees” (kids given the task to look after the cleanliness of the class), the children who got medals for sports, and those who got prizes for participating in story telling and singing on stage but she does not participate in any of them. She says she is scared. I can see that she would like to participate too but she is afraid. I do not know how to help her. I would like her to grow at her own pace and not push her to do anything she is not comfortable in doing. This is one area where I struggle with most of the time. How to help build her self confidence and self reliance. Even at home, she requires a lot of attention and is very needy.

Her classmates are mostly like her, banana kids with parents who do not understand Chinese. They speak English at home and in school with each other. Some of them are bilingual (speaks well in English and Chinese) but most of them speak English with each other. Another worry I had was that the kids in  Chinese School would turn out to be “square”, introverts who are not able to think out of the box. (Sorry, no offence here but this is what I am constantly told about Chinese School students.) However, so far from my observation, none of her classmates look that way. Quite a number of them look like intelligent extroverts accept my girl who is more timid. She is very intelligent but she is a bit timid.

Some of her classmates get private tuition from their class teacher. I think there is a bit of conflict of interest there. I prefer not to have tuition at this point. However, we do have her kindy teacher come in twice a week to chit chat with her in Mandarin just to give her some practise in speaking since we can’t speak to her in Mandarin at home. That is her “tuition”. It is more conversational but she can ask teacher about some term or words that she is unsure off. I may rope in the teacher to help go through some test papers with her before tests but most of the time, I am her tuition teacher for Chinese (I learn together with her) as well as the rest of the subjects accept Maths. Her father teaches her Maths. Then I help her to learn the Maths terms in Chinese.

As for lessons or subjects in the school, the level of English is really pathetic. So I have to teach English myself or watch it deteriorate. Most of her classmates complain about struggling in Malay as well. I find the level of Malay quite difficult so I try to teach her a bit of that too. When it comes to the 3 languages, I find that her English comes first, followed by Chinese and Malay is last. She still manages to do quite well in Malay but I think her understanding of it is poorer than English and Chinese.

At the moment, Maths and Science is still being taught in both languages ie English and Chinese in school. The level is not that difficult. I find the Maths terms in Chinese is a bit harder than the Science terms in Chinese at this stage. Surprisingly, I find that the level of Chinese in their Moral class is the hardest of all. It has terms and Chinese words that are even harder than those she learns in Chinese class. She enjoys Art and enjoys it even more when her artwork is picked to be displayed in class.

BM and Chinese papers are usually divided into two separate papers ie “Understanding” (Kefahaman) and “Writing” (Penulisan), In Penulisan, they have to learn simple sentence making or construction leading towards essay writing in later years. This part is harder but important. In addition, she has Computer, Physical Education and Music classes which she enjoys. These days they even have a written paper in Physical Education. I don’t remember doing that in my time.

I think that most of the time, parents concentrate on the Chinese leaving little time for Malay. So most of the children find the Malay hard to follow. So its really important not to neglect Malay. Its not easy teaching the kids to be trilingual.

I had heard that Chinese school requires a lot of donations from parents to survive and will constantly request for donations. However, so far, we’ve only been asked twice so thats ok with us. However, what I don’t like is the fact that the students are quite often pressured by the teacher to donate their pocket money and is labelled stingy by the teacher if they don’t. I don’t give my girl any pocket money so she is often labelled stingy.

Have I left out anything? Well, thats all I can think of for now.  What has your experience been like? Chinese School or otherwise?

I’ve never given my children any supplementation from birth till now (they are now 5 & 7) because I’ve always believed in everything natural preferring to give them nutrition in the form of natural foods instead. However, recently, my husband and I were thinking of giving them some fish oil or cod liver oil supplements because we keep on hearing about its goodness and we remember that we used to take it when we were young.

However, I do not know much about fish oil or cod liver oil supplements. All I know from what I’ve read (rightly or wrongly) are …

• Oil from fish contains EPA & DHA. Both are Omega-3 fatty acids.
• The most beneficial form of Omega 3 can only be found in fish.
• The difference between fish oil and cod liver oil is that you can consider cod liver oil as fish oil plus added Vitamin D & A
• It is important to get Omega Fatty 3 acids that is purified or free from toxins like mercury

Criteria to evaluate Fish Oil Supplements:

• Is the type of fish used naturally high in DHA & EPA Omega 3 especially DHA?
• Is it purified?
• Is the fish used fresh/not rancid?
• Does the product tell you the breakdown between DHA & EPA per serving?
• Look for one that is higher in DHA compared to EPA. This is because 60% of the brain in made up of fats and DHA comprise half of that. In addition, the body can convert EPA into DHA when the body is deficient in DHA but it is not very efficient in converting DHA into EPA

So, armed with this little knowledge, I went to visit the pharmacies for a research. I saw that most supplements come in the form of little capsules or hard chewable candy type for children and most are multivitamins. Eventually I could only find two brands which I remember from my childhood days. They are in liquid form. They are cod liver oils. They are Seven Seas and Scott’s Emulsion.

Scott’s Emulsion does not state the EPA or DHA content. It merely states that it has DHA. So I skipped that even though it had orange flavour. I remember the ones that we used to take was a white coloured liquid which tasted horrible. Apparently, it is more palatable now. The Seven Seas one lists down the EPA and DHA content. EPA was more than DHA and it only comes in original and cherry flavour. I think cherry is yucky. However, left with not many choices, we decided to try the Seven Seas one. The pharmacist did recommend a brand (I can’t remember its name now) which looks like much more serious supplementation so I dare not try it.

When I was shopping for the supplements, I asked one salesperson about fish oil supplements and I was amused when she pointed out to me a few supplements on how to increase children’s brainpower, help them study etc and say “All these are for kiasu parents.” Now, if I was a kiasu parent, I would probably have felt offended and left the shop. lol. Not a very good sales strategy, I am afraid.

Jokes aside, what I would like to know is whether anyone gives their children fish oil supplements? I would like to know what brand etc. Can you tell me more about it?