Author: Doris

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.

Vince insisted on getting this Superman backpack. It is huge. Such a pain to get it in and out of the car – but Vince loooovvveess it.

Nothing much is happening around here, so I’m just writing a knitting update.

Apparently, Mr. Bean has a teddy bear with a floppy head. He’s my next knitting project although he’s not going to be brown and he’d not going to be very big.

Crazy Aunt Purl is a semi-famous knitblogger. I got this from her.

Four jobs I’ve had:

* Package stuffer for SWAK
* Front Desk worker for a dorm.
* Implanter of time-released drug discs in cute little lab rabbits (never again!)
* As a process engineer, made photomasks, disk drives, and the orange strip of plastic that you see on inkjet printer cartridges.

Four movies I can watch over and over:

* Big
* The Sound of Music
* Clue
* Cinema Paradiso

Four places I have lived:

* Rockville, Maryland
* Hsinchu, Taiwan
* Wappingers Falls, New York
* Austin, Texas

Four television shows I love to watch:

* Law and Order
* CSI
* House
* Oprah

Four places I have been on vacation:

* Bisbee, Arizona
* Kenting, Taiwan
* Evian, France
* Puerto Rico

Four of my favorite dishes:

* Spaghetti
* My mom’s cooking
* Fish tacos
* I do love a good meal at McDonald’s.

Four websites I visit daily:

* Pink is the New Blog
* NY Times
* Salon.com
* Gmail.com

Four places I would rather be right now:

* I’m pretty happy here in my house with the kids asleep and Jeremy and I are simulsurfing.
* 1993 (just to go back and say hi for a few days.)
* Would love to be hiking somewhere beautiful.
* With good friends eating a good meal and laughing!

Four bloggers I am tagging:

* You.
* And you.
* And you, too!
* Oh yeah, and you – the one staring at the computer screen!

Well, I’m back in SF now.

The funeral was as well as one could go I suppose. I can’t say I was very teary-eyed, as I wasn’t as close to him as some of the family and cousins. Some people came up to speak about Grandpa – Joseph, Margaret, Caroline, Liz, Arlinda, and Jopesh, Margaret’s husband.

Since I never spent a lot of time with Grandpa, I found out a couple stories about him, that I never knew before.

During WWII, he was offered a job to spy on his own people by the Japanese. He thought a long time before rejecting the offer, since it was a pretty hard time and money was scarce. But in the end, he thought it was wrong to spy on your own people, and that was the main reason for turning it down. So apparently, a family friend took the job, and was found out, and executed. Apparently the guy that was hiring them was a double agent and ratted the friend out. It was pretty sad since Grandpa knew him and he had a family.

Another story, was from Taiwan, when one night, the family was robbed in the house, and the thief took a lot of money. Later they were caught, and the thief turned out to be a neighbor’s son. Grandpa thought about pressing charges, but if he did, it would mean that the son would be executed. He thought for a long time, and decided not to press charges. The son’s family was poor, and he thought that he was in hard times, and thought that the execution was wrong. Uncle Joseph recalls the son stopping by the house some time later, screaming thru the door (Grandpa didn’t let him in the house) thanking Grandpa for sparing his life.

I also didn’t know that Grandpa was a Jehovah’s Witness. Apparently, he, Grandma and Caroline would go door to door trying to convert people I suppose. Apparently nobody could denied them, since they were super friendly.

He really missed Grandma when she passed. He either wrote, or sang a poem about Grandma, but nobody seemed to be able to remember it, or know if it was written down at all.

Arlinda remembers the abundance of Sunkist, Coke and Juicy Fruit at Grandpa’s house.

Joseph, Margaret’s husband, made a funny remark about how he has to live with the genetic legacy of Grandpa all the time – aka the lengendary Lee stubborness. While at dinner, I asked all the cousins if they thought that they were stubborn, and pretty much all of them were like, “Yeah.” Cassandra added that she thought she was always right all the time too, which I found to be pretty funny, cause I’m exactly the same way. Laff.

Oh yeah, Uncle Robert smokes, is diabetic, is overweight, and doesn’t exercise. I didn’t know that either. Cassandra pretty much chewed him out about that.

That’s about all I can remember at this point.

Also, Mom is too hip, as now she has a lanyard for her iPod Nano.

It’s been over a year since my secret pal 6, Sneaksleep gave me a beautiful skein of sock yarn. I can’t believe it has taken me a whole year to knit a pair of socks. I started knitting pretty much a day after I got the yarn in the mail.

I started with the standard cuff-down style sock and then after I was halfway done with the 2nd sock, I realized that I did the gusset wrong on the first sock. Should I rip the first sock back or do the 2nd sock in the same incorrect way?

I wanted perfectly knit socks, so I ripped back both the first and second sock. (Why the 2nd sock? I have no idea, I can’t remember.) Anyways, I finally knit a pair for the V-man using the toe-up method. And no, they aren’t perfect either, but this time I just said SCREW PERFECTION and kept knitting.

Vince loves them but, of course, has no need for them as none of us wear any socks in Singapore (except for Jeremy when he goes to work). So much for practical gifts.

Yes, I know he has his shoes on the wrong foot.

This pair of socks also counts for my Socktoberfest entry! Woo hoo!

Finally, Granpa is with Grandmom, side by side. That day, the sky was very clear. We even could see downtown of LA from the hilltop where Grandpa and Grandmom rest.

After the funeral, the family’s discussions about how to … involving 8 siblings went extremely well. That was very good. I was very pleased to say the least.

We are heading back to Aiken, SC this afternoon.