Happy Holiday!

One more day to go and it will be Christmas. Here's wishing everyone a happy holiday and for those celebrating Christmas - a very Merry Christmas!

Christmas decorations at a mall

Eat right

My dinner these days

For the past one month, we have been going to the hospital frequently to visit my mother-in-law (71) who was admitted to the hospital 3 times for a 3-5 days stay each time due to various heart-related issues.

The first time it was due to her heart beating too fast. After she was admitted, her tachycardia turned into bradycardia (heart beating too slow) and the doctors advised her to put in a pace maker or else she may just pass away in her sleep. This of course frightened her and  without a second thought she agreed to having the pace maker which costs around RM6400 (which all four of her children share the cost equally) just for the pace maker alone.

Second stay is for the insertion of the pace maker. The procedure went well and she just stayed overnight after the procedure and was discharged on the very next day. Instead of taking warfarin where she has to avoid eating food with vitamin K, she has chosen to take pradaxa to reduce the risk of having a stroke due to atrial fibrillation.

Third stay, she was admitted again due to her heart beating too fast (tachycardia) again. The pace maker is just to ensure that her heart does not beat too slow but it does not control her heart from beating too fast (170 or above heartbeats per minute). This round the doctors gave her Digoxin to control her heart from beating too fast and then adjusted her diabetic and high blood pressure medications before sending her home after around 5 days.

She chooses to undergo medication therapy instead of CABG so the medications have to be adjusted until it is suitable for her condition. I am amazed at her inner strength and perseverance when it comes to all these hospital stays. Her health may be weak but her will to live is strong and for this, I salute her.

Rainy days

Red flowers, I like

It has been raining almost every day for the past one month. With the rain, the market is in red since the beginning of November.

Speaking of things being red, our plumeria (frangipani) tree is now in full bloom with red flowers. We waited one whole year to find out the colour of its flowers as it did not have any flowers when we first got the tree from the nursery and even the gardener at the nursery did not know the colour of its flower. We thought it has pink flowers so we were pleasantly surprise to see red flowers which is the colour that we wanted. Red is also my favourite colour but I don't like to see the market in red.

Unforgettable Tour?

I spent nearly my whole weekend reading up on nuclear energy, its discovery and current status. It all started after I watched "Decontamination: Losing the Sheltering Trees" - a NHK documentary about decontamination work in areas around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear event and how it has affected the communities there. 

The Fukushima event is one of only two nuclear events classified as a level 7 event (highest level - most serious) on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The other being the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. So that got me wondering about the current state of Chernobyl.

From my online search, I found out that work to build a new containment called "New Safe Confinement" to cover the old leaking sarcophagus (a huge concrete structure built in 1986 enveloping the destroyed Reactor 4) has started in 2012 and is expected to be completed in 2015. Now, I know that "clean-up workers" at the area are known as liquidators.

More interestingly, I read that since 2002, there were guided tours to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone which includes the ghost town of Pripyat but now the itinerary has been altered to exclude visits to the Rossokha village and the military machines graveyard as prohibited by the government.

Who would want to pay to visit this place, I asked so I looked for more information about the tour, read many articles written by people who went on this tour and browsed through their photos. Some descriptions about the tour:

- dreamlike
- eerie silence
- haunting
- unforgettable
- attracts people who like lonely, abandoned and deserted places

So would you consider going on this tour?

Home again

A big thank you to everyone who left me comments in my previous post. I have been back for some time, 10 days to be exact. Sorry for not writing a post earlier. I was busy sorting out things that were left undone while I was away.

No, I did not go adventuring to a mysterious remote place with no access to the internet. Just that I did not bring a personal device to go online while I was there. The place that I visited has this building:

Night view - all lit up

It was a short 9 days trip to visit my 96 years old grandmother. This trip is a treat for my mother and I from my sister who paid for all expenses. She also requested that I let it be known here that she also prepared many pieces of newspaper cuttings of sudoku and slitherlink puzzles for me to work on if ever I am bored during the trip. For the record, I completed 5 sudoku puzzles and 5 slitherlink puzzles during the 9 days.

Grandma and ma. In the foreground is the back of my head.

Basically, we walked, talked a lot and ate loads of good food. The best thing is seeing grandma and the bad thing is I gained weight. All in all, a short, sweet and sour trip.

Away

 spouse did this

This is a scheduled post as I have no access to the Internet starting yesterday for about a week. When I am back, I will resume reading and commenting on my favourite blogs - Raising Rockstars (I took the liberty to change the name a bit as there is more than one Rockstar now), Life's A Journey, My Memory Land, What I Did Today, Redbabe, Light Recollections (the name of this blog changes regularly so I won't be surprised to see another name when I am back ;p) and Small Kucing. Till then, keep blogging, ok!? :D

Update: How can I forget this - My Family's Memoir is one of my favourite blog too! ..and also Ms. Renaye's blog. :D

Ladies only

Just recently at a nearby shopping mall, I noticed that a huge area of parking spaces has been cordoned off to create a ladies only car park area. Security guards manned the single entrance and exit and they only allow cars occupied by ladies to pass through the barrier gates into the special parking area.

Now do you think this is a good move by the management team of this shopping mall?