many, many sheep...

it's now 3.20am and i am WIDE awake.

got up suddenly at 1 am and realised, to my dismay, that this might be the onset of another insomnia phase.

these phases come and go, averaging once a month. it lasts for a few nights and then things will revert to normal, just like that.

trying to count sheep doesn't really help because head chatter overtakes whatever attempts i make to lull my mind back to la-la land.

in these last two hours, my mind has done a mental clean-out of the shoe cabinet, my bedside mess and a re-design of my kitchen layout. you can't say it's all wasted cos some of my  best ideas have been borne out of these sleepless in singapore nights.

however, i pay the price the following day. getting up can be a struggle but i will plod on till after lunch when the mind just shuts down and i desperately need a shut-eye. if i don't get the chance to catch 40 winks, it doesn't mean it will be easier that night. a phase is a phase. pretty annoying. the effects accumulate and there will come an afternoon when i fall into this drunken stupor. 

am pretty sure if i were to bring this up to my doctor, she will blame it on hormones or my lack of them. again.

she had suggested melatonin before and i have tried them. trouble is, you don't know when these attacks come. i hate taking them on normal days cos i don't feel so normal the following day. kinda woozy and out of sorts. and it's too late to take when you suddenly find yourself awake at 1 am.

so it's something i live with. 

and when you, whose life was in mortal danger four years ago,  look at the bigger picture, you count your blessings ...... and sheep  :-)

chirpy critters

as you can see, there's this figure in the foreground trying to take a snapshot of these primary schoolkids as they took a walk at the east coast park this morning.

there's nothing like a sea of yellow to brighten up an already sunny, humid morning.

from a primary school nearby,  these kids walk in the park regularly, supervised by teachers and parent volunteers. i have seen them a few times.  i dunno if they are heading somewhere but i did hear a boy whine to his teacher if they were going back to class and she patiently said, yes, we are.

very well-behaved, they walk in twos, holding hands, giggling, talking, without a care in the world.

the corners of my lips were tugged and i whipped out my camera phone.

when i was trying to focus, a chirpy, bright voice rang out: morning auntie!

before i knew it, a dozen voices chimed in unison : morning auntie!

i looked up and saw wide-eyed innocence with toothy smiles on trusting faces.

i gave a broad grin and returned an equally bright : good morning!

as i watched their backs, i see sunshine, resilience and hope.

and felt better than i have felt for the last one week. 

to a sick little girl who is so so dear to all of us, i send you courage and strength.

and lots of love and hugs.

what a month!

march isn't over yet but what a month it has been!

the kind folks from san francisco were here for a short visit. auntie lydia and uncle joe are still as funny and warm as i remember them from my stay at their place last march.

they did the touristy stuff, like riding on the Hippo bus twice(!). these two trips took them round the CBD and areas like chinatown, little india and geylang and equipped them with more general knowledge of singapore than we, the residents, ever have ;-)  

they also did the Hippo cruise and the night safari. ok, so i was the tour guide for the latter. no, actually, i was more like the driver cos the night safari was pretty new to me too, my last visit being some eight, nine years ago.

they also got to do the local stuff like stuff their faces silly with food. 

like durian, kindly bought by gal pals C and L who have met them before.

the mangosteens were for uncle joe, a typical kwai loh who can't stand durians.

then there was an evening when we had a homemade popiah party. the rain kept the party indoor but didn't dampen our spirit. drinks flowed, tummies swelled, glasses tipped and broken! am not making this up - auntie lydia was a little inebriated, i guess.

they fitted in two morning walks and were most impressed with the east coast park.

and this:-

uncle joe was so amused he took a few pictures :-)

they were here for only four days but we managed to pack a lot in. dinners, walks, hippo tours and cruise, MRT rides (from city hall amidst the IT show crowd!!), and even a karaoke night. what great fun!!

then we took off to KL for a few days. i call it my yearly pilgrimage - for retail therapy and to meet up with close friends.

must be age but with each trip, oz and i find ourselves appreciating more, the warm ties with these KL folks. it's always good food, good wine, good company and we drink to that all the time, from the bottom of our heart (and glasses, hahaha..)

the first night was spent with K and wife, and D, who brought us to this new restaurant in damansara kim which served the most unbelievably delicious steamed river fish. its name is hard to remember so the owner taught us to call it the 'wang bu liao' (unforgettable) fish. it's not on the menu so you have to know how to order. K brought a bottle of my fave Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc and another from Cape Mentelle. i must have had at least 2 glasses of each and i must have been the happiest person in that room that night :-)

it was a present surprise when, on the second night, after a yummylicious dinner at kepong with mike and family, we adjourned to their new house and found it was actually mike's birthday!

that's their son running away from the camera. you can see our reflections in the back.

mike popped open a bottle of champagne and we had a lovely evening, basking in the glow of friendship and love.

on the last night, i caught up with my old classmates. as usual, M took the effort to round up a few others and i really appreciate that. 

we went to the curve and chose to eat at this place called the apartment. the setting was informal, as if one were in an apartment and tables set up around the place.

wanted to sit at this table which was the bathroom setting (no, you don't sit on toilet seats) but it was already reserved.

the concept was novel but the food truly forgetable.  

but it didn't matter. as with our yearly get-togethers, we try to catch up with one another's lives, gossiped a little about others' and in so doing, strengthened our bond which goes back all the way to primary school.  

also found time to catch up with our monash U niece, X. met for lunch at sunway pyramid. not knowing where to eat, we ended up, unfortunately, at a crappy japanese joint where the tempura tasted of stale oil. cardinal sin!! 

but it was great to do girly stuff with X, like shopping for clothes  :-)

on sunday, we met up with auntie lydia and uncle joe again with other relatives, this time in seremban as we visited father-in-law's grave. we did a quick wash and scrub and laid flowers. 

later, we had lunch with more relatives at a restaurant. these are folks we see on an irregular basis, more on birthdays, weddings and deaths. but heartening to know the ties are not cordial but strong. saying goodbye was a protracted affair, as always, right outside the restaurant, on the road, by the car. with over ten relatives to hug and say bye-bye to. 

not a chore at all.

i also hope that these trips are as meaningful to the girls as they are to me. as they grow, i wish for them to see these trips not as chores but as affirmation of kinship, love and friendship.

sixth floor

i am seldom sent up to the sixth floor to help out when i volunteer at the cancer soc every tues. the office there is half the size of that on the fourth floor. one third of the area houses the medical staff, another one third is a conference room while the last third is more like a store cum recreation room. the few times i was there, i helped with packing goodie bags and sorting out stock.

this morning, i was assigned to label all the tubes in the FOBT (faecal occult blood test)kits on the sixth floor.

i had to remove the form from every kit, fill in the serial number of the two tubes provided and seal the kit back again. apparently, sometimes the tubes and the form get separated when the public dropped them back to the cancer soc for testing. so this labelling is to facilitate easy tracing. 

this month is colorectal cancer awareness month. these kits are given out free at most guardian pharmacies, polyclinics and at the cancer soc which are then returned for testing. if blood is detected in any one of the two samples, the person will be asked to take further tests. the response has been very good so far so that means tens of thousands of tubes have to be labelled.

anyway, when i started at 10am, it was kinda lonely in the rec cum store room. my ipod had run out of juice so i just listened to my own head chatter as i worked along.

then 2 elderly men came in. they sat down at a table at the far end and started playing chinese chess. 

after a while, it struck me that they were eerily silent as the only sounds came from the slight scrapping sounds of wooden pieces on paper as they made their moves.

 

no groans of despair, no triumphant yelps, no clearing of throats.

then 2 more appeared and this time, they cleared some boxes to set up the table for table tennis. it was apparent they have done this many times before as they were fast. and again silent.

when they started playing, only the rhythmic tock-tock of the ping pong ball filled the air.

i sat with my back to the door which was opened some minutes later.

and a loud booming robotic, expressionless voice jolted me out of my autopilot mode.

it was another elderly man who was 'talking', just that i couldn't make out what he was saying to me, waving an envelope in his hand.

his companion whom i assumed to be his wife, repeated what he said and asked if the box next to me was meant to deposit FOBT kits for testing. 

oh. i directed them to the fourth floor.

then it suddenly became clear to me.

every Tues. New Voice Club for throat cancer survivors. on the sixth floor.

i remembered now cos some weeks when i signed out to leave, cindy would ask me if i play table tennis. i laughed and said something about having poor circuitry between my head and limbs. she said the new voice club members meet every tues on the sixth floor and that the staff would go up and have a game or two with the old folks.

more elderly men appeared. they all seemed at home. some stood around to watch, some made coffee, a couple walked into the medical staff area, probably to 'say' hi. 

and all of them were neatly dressed, with their shirts buttoned all the way up.

someone had gone into the conference room by then, and put a hokkien CD on the DVD player. he left the door open so that we could all be entertained by the melancholic warbling.

meanwhile i worked along, my head chatter all gone as a new world was unveiling before me.

annie, the officer in charge, appeared with two trays and soon, the smell of fried beehoon and something else filled the air. 

the whole room had come alive. 

later, i found out that throat cancer survivors have no more voice box and they have to breathe thru an opening in their lower neck called a stoma.

every tues, after the games, socialising and food, a speech therapist trains them to speak again. it is difficult because they have to learn to breathe properly first before they can trap the air in their mouth and then project their voice.

so, many of them rely on an electronic larynx which is attached to their lower neck. to speak, they have to press a button and make audible sounds. so you need a free hand to do that....

after a while, they became more animated. it takes some getting used to. their voices i mean.

they sounded raspy and hoarse. and quite soft. so some used an electronic amplifier as well. that explains the booming voice.

my table was a few feet away from the table tennis game. once, the ball landed almost on my head and another time, right in front of me.

i laughed, they laughed too.

with opened mouths and laughter in their hearts.

 

bye ibook, hello macbook

it doesn't take much to make me happy these days.

a lovely sight at the beach where the trumpet trees are in full bloom.

or the sight of a double rainbow after a day of rain

or a new laptop :-)

have a birthday present six months early. my first Apple laptop, ibook, has made way for a macbook.

my ibook is only four years old but the battery was so weak, i needed to charge it all the time. which means it stopped being a laptop, more like a desktop cos i needed to be close to a socket. which i could live with cos i was so attached to my ibook. it never gave me any virus nor spam problems. it was easy to use and i learnt to do without a mouse.

when i happened to pop into the Apple shop at wheelock some weeks ago, i asked if i could just change the battery and buy a new charger cos its wires were frayed.

the young punk gave me this incredulous  "ibook???? where have you been" look.

he said ibook is obsolete now. no, i cannot buy the battery there but i could try "some old shops" in sim lim square.

if i can find it, how much would the battery cost? 

over $200.

and a new charger?

over $100.

he then said, you might as well buy a new laptop.

undaunted, i tried.   so can trade in my ibook?

he raised his brows so high i could see more white than black in his eyes. deflated, i told him i'd think abt it and walked out.

i pressed on with the ibook despite being stuck in one spot all the time. i scotchtaped the fray wires and had to give it a slight tap every now and then when the contact was not good.

until last week when the charger decided to expire in style. in a poof of smoke, that is. one minute i was typing, the next, i smelled something burning, then saw smoke spiraling up and then a nasty zzzt.

i gave out a yelp of helplessness and quickly switched off the ibook.   

and realised i could not use it anymore cos the charger was dead.  

so that was how oz decided to buy me a macbook. 

i am sooo happy with it. it's longer and faster but it still feels the same. it's still white (decided agst the macbook aluminium which cost a few hundred $ more for that sleek matt look).

the first evening i brought it home, i tinkered with it for so long with a beam on my face. that was when oz said, it doesn't take much to make me happy.

^o^