Month: October 2006

Craziness this weekend.

Dave and Xiaoli flew in from Toronto and we all had a whirlwind of activites. Of course, this mostly revolved around eating and hanging out with married folks. Ha. Speaking of weight, I gained like 4 lbs this weekend simply cause of the food. I had been doing pretty good cutting back food before that. Sigh.

They came Thursday night, and we stayed up till midnight. Friday we stayed up until 1. Saturday was the killer as everyone stayed up till 6. I was a little beat on Saturday cause I had to bike home Friday night, got like 5 hours of sleep, biked to the shop, biked home, and then biked back the Shwe and Xin’s place. So I probably put in 80 miles roughly on Saturday alone, topping that off with low sleep. I woke up Sunday and just knew I was in a grumpy, anti social mood. Basically it lasted the whole day. I just really needed some chill out time alone, but I couldn’t quite ditch everyone, so yeah. It was bad. Everyone noticed, but whatever.

I’m working from home today. Thank god.

I’ve gained 5 pounds since I started taking antidepressants. I chalk it up to feeling better and then I eat more delicious food – so the weight gain is a good sign of my mental state, bad sign for the waistline. My pants are starting to feel a bit tight and even though I walk a lot, I don’t really bring my heartrate up very high to improve my aerobic ability, so I’ve changed my daily dog walk into my daily dog run. I hope this will enable my pants to fit again.

Ruby seems to enjoy picking up the pace a little as well. About halfway through our first run, she licked me on the knee as if to say, “Yah! We are running again – you go girl!”

Last Sunday, we were at LA airport waiting the plane to get back to Atlanta. The flight we booked was behind schedule. Daddy went to McDonald’s to buy two burgers, one for me and one for him. He ate it at the airport. I brought it on the plane and ate it when flight attendant was serving drink. Later Daddy complained about his stomach and went bathroom few times.

Aunt Margaret and Uncle Joseph left LA on Monday. It was quite surprise to me that they had McDonald’s too. Just like us, Aunt Margaret ate her burger at airport and Uncle Joseph ate his burger on plane. The funny thing was that Aunt Margaret had stomach problem also. Uncle Joseph and I did not have any problem. I guessed that McDonald’s at LA airport was not for any Lee.

Both Lees are doing all right now.

Cool, Mom uses “c”ruthes and is going “h”igh tech. So, she is a “High C” grand mom. Right? Just see the picture and you will all agree with me:

We went to Gowri’s house today to celebrate Deepavali. I got to wear the beautiful sari that I bought yesterday. Gowri spent more time wrapping the sari around me than it took me to get ready for my own wedding. I actually felt more dressed up today than at my own wedding. It was all so beautiful and I felt so fancy.

I hope I can remember how to tie the thing together. Gowri cooked wonderful dishes for us to eat – chicken sambal and mutton curry. Yum-o!

We were more dressed up than anyone else I saw walking around today.

It is my first time to use wheelchairs and crutches. It is quite an experience. First, with a hurting foot is much worse than with a hurting hand. Of course, hurting of anything is no good. Last time, with a broken wrist, I could still go around and cooked some food with one hand. This time, I can not go anywhere. But, accidents do happen. I never realized that the feet are so important to everyone. They provide strength and freedom. With pain in my foot, doing small things such as changes clothes is a big challenge. Normally, I can change my clothes with no time and at any position. Right now, I have to sit on a chair or bed to do it. On the good side, I am getting many helps and enjoying the immobility of laziness which forces me to sit down most of the time.

However, I had many perks too. When I was in Indonesia, Doris and Jeremy wheeled me around, even to get my food. With an injured foot, I still could go to pool and swam a few laps with kids and had great time. When I went to any airport, the wheelchair services were very good everywhere. My plane was delayed in Tokyo, the ticket clerk immediately helped me to re-route to SF, St Paul and to Charlotte, instead of Detroit to Columbia, SC. She also helped me to send an e-mail to Noel. My seat assignments were also very good. My seats were just behind the business class with larger leg room in most cases. When we came back to Atlanta from LA last weekend, plane was off schedule for more than 5 hrs. That meant, I will arrive home around 5:00 AM in the morning. But, I was able to get an earlier flight home because the crutches. So, it was not all that bad with an injured foot. In Hong Kong, big brother and sister treated me so well. They even booked a special licensed van to pick us up in front of their house and straight to Shenzhen, China without changing driver and not through the regular customs. We directly passed through a special window with no lines. At their home, one of their maids knows how to massage my foot. She used ginger to massage the foot for two hours everyday. After two days, my bruises were gone. She was very happy. I was happy too. I was very lucky this time, I did not break any bones. Looking back, I did made some mistakes. The major one was I did not wear any socks and shoes. I learned a hard lesson this time. Socks and shoes are good for protecting our feet. Nothing could happen if I had my socks and Reebok on.

In addition to use wheelchair and crutches first time in this trip, I also experienced my first facial massage together with Doris at Baton Resort in Indonesia. It was quite an experience and they deep cleaned you face, especially the nose. It was also a very enjoyable to have my feet massage first time in Shenzhen with Big Sister too.

I enjoyed being with Vince, Edda, Doris and Jeremy. Especially seeing Edda’s mobility is improving every day.

Now I am almost back on my own feet and understanding more about the wheelchairs and crutches.

Our aircons are officially kaput – nothing wrong with the house circuitry, the aircons are shorted, nothing to do about it now (friday night – 10 pm). Sigh, so we are heading into this 4 day weekend without aircon in our main room. I hope the ones in the bedroom can keep on truckin’.

The 4 day weekend is to celebrate Deepavali and Hari Raya.

Our babysitter Gowri and her daughter Vino took me down to Little India today to buy a sari for me! I also got outfits for the rest of the family. Tomorrow we are going to their house to eat and eat. Here they are buying some sweets. Little India was crowded and bustling with holiday cheer – the sari shop had mountains of beautiful fabrics strewn and the food markets were crammed.

Rukia, who is Muslim, gave us these traditional Malay cookies that she made herself. Yummy!

Well, Tahera, Arif’s wife, found out that her father has cancer, and it doesn’t sound very good as it is in the bone and the lungs. They are flying off to London tomorrow to visit him. He’s had colon cancer before and has gotten thru that, but dunno if he’ll be able to do it again. Tahera and Arif seem to be handling it pretty well – hopeful, yet realistic.

I know everyone in the States is luxuriating in autumn weather. Cool breezes, leaves falling off trees, apples, sweaters, light jackets – all things that I love, but here in Singapore we are still running our aircons 24/7. Especially now since the air quality is pretty poor.

Our dining room/living room/family room/main room area is cooled by 2 aircon units on one fuse. I don’t know what’s wrong with them, but it not only flipped the fuse on the circuit, but it also tripped the main circuit for the house and the circuit in the main electrical riser right outside our front door. So since I like power in our house, we left the circuit for the 2 workhorse aircons off which means I’m using the bedroom aircons to cool the main part of the house.

Also the aircons appear to be leaking behind a wall somewhere, so I’m a bit freaked this whole thing is going to be a major wall ripping/air con replacing/ electrical shorting kind of project – not that we’ll have to take care of it, there are landlords and agents helping us (thanks Lin) – it’s just going to be something messy and dusty and loud to live through.

Look at this weird pizza they sell here:

Does it look like chicken ham? More like green peppers and carrots on a cheese danish.

I was tempted by this though:

Vince is bouncing off the walls. He has extra energy to burn and I’m not very good at providing a physical outlet for it all. Grrr… soccer mom, here I come, I can see that black and white ball coming straight towards me. I already have the van.