melanie's blog

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suffering

Human suffering is not just a series of blocks like this (rape, suicide bombing, murder), it is a continuous thing that runs all the way from people who fly planes into a building with 3000 people in them, to people like you and me who says ugly things about other human beings.

This is the price, of God giving us freedom to act as we do.

- Rikk Watts

how different?

This is way overdue but still good.

How is Malaysian hospital different from Australian Hospital?

1. You are required to bring your own toilet paper!!! What logic?? Weird.

2. Instead of asking if you had any bowel movement, the nurse will scream across and ask you: “Ada ‘pangsai’ tak?” which translates to ‘Got shit or not?’

3. Instead of bringing an interpreter to make thing easy in this multiracial society, they prefer to struggle through the difficulties in trying to understand one another. Here is a sight to behold:

A Malay nurse was trying to talk to a Cantonese speaking Chinese lady. Lady couldn’t understand Malay and got another English speaking Chinese Lady who speaks Cantonese to help out. Malay nurse couldn’t understand English so they got another Chinese patient who could understand and speak all Cantonese, English and Malay to help out. I am not sure if they got their problem solved in the end but what I saw was a group of 4 or 5 people struggling to understand each other and a few people watching them. It just amazes me to see that happening in front of my eyes.

4. Instead of getting a full breakfast and a healthy 3 course meal for lunch and dinner, these are the options of what I get:

Brekky : Nasi Goreng (Fried Noodles) / Bun Ikan Bilis (Bun with spicy anchovies)
Lunch : Ayam Masak Merah (Chicken in Red Curry) / Ikan Garing (Fried Fish)
Dinner : Kari Ikan (Fish Curry) / Ayam Masak Merah (Chicken in Red Curry)

So oily right? Imagine this is what they serve to their patients… And they taste horrible too! Oh don’t even get me started with the dessert. Some sort of dessert they call it…

In Australia, a standard meal will be:

Brekky : Cereal, Toast, Milk, Coffee or Tea, Fruit Juice and protein enriched drink
Lunch : Pea Soup, Salmon Salad, Vegetables, Sandwich, Jelly
Dinner : Minestrone, Garden Salad, Roast Beef and Potatoes, Chocolate Cake

And they come in Small, Medium and large portion.

5. Instead of serving coffee and tea and biscuits for tea breaks, they serve tasteless milo with some yucky kuih.

6. Instead of having different bed charges for bed in private room, rooms with 2 bed, rooms with 4 beds, they have one flat rate no matter which room or bed you get.

7. Instead of supplying you with all your medicine, you bring your own medication to the hospital.

8. Instead of being friends with you, the nurses are quite rude and don’t be surprised if you get scolded. But then again, I scolded a nurse!!

9. Instead of asking to me eat stuff like beef and spinach, the nurse told me to eat stuff like cockles and liver to help my low blood count. Yucks!

10. There are no visiting hours. Well there is, but it might as well not be there. Visitors can come anytime during the day and make as much noise as they want. No one cares if you bring the whole hospital down. It gets really noisy. It is more like a catch up place for relatives. Sometimes I wonder if they are here to visit the patient or to see if they can meet some long-time-no-see relatives or friends.

11. There wasn’t anyone who decorated my ward, brought me Powerbook to watch DVDs, portable tv to watch tv programs, Garfield comics to keep me laughing, almond or nuts to make me laugh, sketch book to draw my back, junk food to eat, sermon tape to listen. No one held my hand and cried with me when they changed my dressing. No one came and got me out on a Sunday morning for a day leave from the hospital to go to church. No one spent the whole day with me, brought her laptop to do her Masters thesis and got me to do the statistical analysis for her dataset. No one came and prayed with me. No one put me top in his priority, came early in the morning and gave me comfort and strength before the doctors came with the result… Every single moment in the hospital reminded me of my beautiful friends back in Melbourne, who in the midst of all these differences, are still doing one same thing as before – praying and standing with me.

indoor flood

There has been some serious water shortage problem in Kluang. We have been enduring this problem for over 5 months now. The water level at the water catchment is way below critical level resulting in irregular water supply. As I understand now, (supposedly,) there will only be water supply on alternate days, and the day starts from noon. So every household would need to be familiar with the rotation and store up water in preparation for the day without water supply. You can just imagine how inconvenient and how annoying that could be.

Since I have been back at home, there were times when our water storage tank ran out of water. This is really turning our lives up side down. In times like this, you perpetually live in anxiety and fear that you will run out of water. It is pretty tiring trying to keep track on when there will be water supply and when not. You need to adjust your washing routine, cooking routine, showering routine and on desperate times, your bowel movement routine. No joke!! I am very cautious with my water usage on ‘no water’ day for the fear of emptying the tank and look forward to the ‘got water’ day, when everything returns to normal, plus all the washing, water storing etc. Actually it is NOT normal at all!! They mess us up big time.

Yesterday noon was the start of the day where it is supposed to be a ‘got water’ day, but they stuffed it up again. There was no water supply even until this afternoon. Naturally, I would hope for the water supply to resume as soon as possible so I would not have to fear that the water tank will run out of water. Finally at about 2.30pm when I was about to get out of my room for some coffee, I heard the noise of water flowing. “Great!” I thought to myself. “Finally the water is here.” But hang on… something is not right. Why is there water leaking from the ceiling and why is the floor flooded with water??

OH NOOO!!!! The water tank is overflowing… and it has drenched the ceiling below it and water is leaking into the house. Great! In order to stop the water from overflowing, I hobbled to both bathrooms upstairs and turned all the taps on. Finally, the dripping came under control but it felt wrong to leave all the taps running especially when there is major water shortage in town!! I knew the right thing to do was to turn the main tap off, but being immobiled by my recent surgery; I can’t possible get downstairs, go outside to the courtyard, and out of the gate to turn the main tap off. I rang mum who were out in the country for business and told her what happened. She tried to get a plumber but the plumber is out of town as well. So she rang my cousin and asked her to drop by to turn off the tap.

It hurts and makes me feel terrible to see the tap running like that. So to make myself feel better, I jumped in for another shower. I shampooed my hair again and had a good shower while waiting for my cousin to arrive. I think this shower probably made up for all the water I tried to conserve for the past 2 months. Finally after about 40 minutes, my cousin arrived in front of my house. She turned off the tap and that was it. I could finally ease my mind, turn off the other running taps and try to dry the floor. Yes, all this on my crutches. =)

Do you feel my agony? Not having water is a problem; having water is also a problem.

BAT news

The most bizarre thing happened yesterday… I was watching tv in my mum’s room when suddenly I saw a black thing flying around at the corner of my eyes. I turned and I saw a black creature flying around in circles trying to find an exit to escape. I was like ‘What the…!!’ Then the thought that came to mind was, where did it come from, the windows are shut. And then I saw the bathroom’s door open. This bathroom has got a very high ceiling connecting all the way up to the rooftop where it has a little window. And this is where all the bats come from.

As someone with a phobia for all feathered animals, I was so scared and didn’t know what to do. I sat still on my chair not daring to move one bit, and being immobile myself, I can’t really move and plus I was so frightened. I tried calling out to my mum who was downstairs but she couldn’t hear me. This black creature was circling non-stop just a few feet above my head and it might just hit you anytime. It was so scary!! Thank God I had my mobile phone with me. I rang my mum downstairs and said “There’s a bird in your room!!! Bird!! Bird!! Come.. quick”

So mum came up, opened the door and saw this so called ‘bird’. She was shocked too, and she told me it is not a bird, it is a BAT. It doesn’t really matter, to me, they were equally scary. Mum passed me a stool to use as a protective shield. I held it high on top of my head to prevent the bat from hitting me. It was so hilarious. While holding it, I was scared that the bat will hit the stool and hang there, in front of my eyes… AHHHHHH!!!!. The bat continued to circle and circle and circle. Mum tried to catch it but it was so physically tiring and funny at the same time, I couldn’t stop laughing even though I was scared. It was so hard as the bat kept flying.

After running around with the bat for like a good 5 minutes (with laughing and amusement), mum finally managed to capture the bat with a plastic bag. She told me that after this, she don’t need her weekly exercise anymore… hahaha. Oh man… it was so scary and funny. What a good experience with bat. How bizarre… =)

kena Tagged

This is for you Winn

my 5 weird and unsual habits:

1. Everytime I need to give a verbal indication of left or right, I look at my hands for the answer. That is because I would not be able to tell left from right without looking at my hands. The hand with the scar is left.

2. When I am bored or have nothing better to do, I tend to fiddle around with my hair and pick out all the unhealthy and frizzy hair, one by one. Sometimes I scare myself with the amount of unhealthy hair I have – I might be bald one day.

3. Sometimes when I don’t like anyone to know what I am or have been doing (especially when I don’t want to answer their questions). I will stop doing it, put everything back to its original position and pretend that I am doing something else when I see them coming my way.

4. I like to play with melted wax, especially when it is hot. I will dip my finger into the melting wax, quickly remove it and press it onto someone else’s skin.

5. After I put my lollies into my mouth, I fold the wrapper into half, and keep folding it half in one direction until it cannot be halved anymore. The wrapper will turn from a rectangular to a thin stripe in less than 10 second.

random

I have the most innocent cousin nephew making the funniest remark. It was when we were talking about my cousin (Jon’s dad) and wife’s wedding that Jon suddenly went “Mum, I am never gonna friend you anymore. You never bring me to your wedding!!!”

My hometown = Kluang = Bat = City of Bats
This happened again yesterday. Another bat dropped into my mum’s bath tub. I wished I had a digital camera with me!!! I have always wondered how they got into the bathroom. Could it be from the rooftop? I often hear noises coming from the ceiling, even in my room. Bats… it is indeed Kluang living up to its name!!!

“Certainly nothing offends us more rudely than this doctrine [of original sin], and yet without this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to ourselves.” – Blaise Pascal

Another plane crash happened in Medan yesterday. This is like the 5th or 6th plane crash in the last 4 weeks. Not only that, nature disasters keep happening, from the bush fire in Indonesia, extreme weathers, the Katrina in the States, recent Typhoon in Japan, the flood, the storms, the earthquakes… they are just everywhere and never ending. All these reminded me of a message I heard recently on how we often forget that God is not only the God of Love who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness and truth. He is also the Omnipotent God of all creation, the God of nature, the God of judgment, the Holy One who is to be feared. Now that is something to really think about.

Had a new experience this week, I had my first telephone interview ever! That was quite fun and will see where it will lead me.

I would really like to learn some html…

I have been tagged by Winnie, my 5 weird habits will be up next I hope!!

M.E.L.A.N.I.E

Just for fun, thanks to the other Mechanical Electronic Lifeform

personality

Watched a documentary called 'Child of our times' recently and here are two interesting facts about human personality that i learnt from the experiment done by BBC.

1. Babies as born with a personality. Their personality may be inherited from genes and is also largely affected by their mother's psychological and emotioncal health during pregnancy. If a mother-to-be experiences anxiety and high level of stress during pregnancy, chances are her baby will develop similar personality. This is because the stress hormone from the mother are transfered to the baby through the umbilical cord and affects the baby's brain cell development, thus forming a certain kind of personality.

2. Despite the personality formed while the baby was conceived, the baby's first year of life plays a crucial part in forming the baby's personality as well. The growing up environment and surroundings of the baby shape the personality of the baby. If a mother experiences post-natal depression, it is likely that her baby will be less cheerful and moody.

Of course, these facts also apply to cheerful and happy mother for a cheerful and happy baby. So take heed ladies. Be a happy and cheerful mother!!