Sunday 31 January 2016

Weird Summer

Last summer being our 1st in Perth, was kind to us. It wasn't 1 of those summers with temperatures above 40°c for 14 days straight like my colleagues told me. I really really thought it will be pay back this summer. But this summer has been milder than the previous so far. We've only got the odd day or 2 where temperatures were above 40°c & we've only got 1 more month of summer to go.

It's been mostly a roller coaster ride. Up to high 30s for a few days then down to low 20s for another few days, then repeat. It feels like we're entering into autumn before we even fully encountered summer. But then, Hong Kong snowed for the 1st time & BKK dropped to 17°c. So it's true that nothing in life is impossible.

It being CNY soon, I've made use of the nice cool weather to give Jazz a wash. I'm sending Jazz in for a damage assessment on Tues & after which, I'll be in queue for repair. Me being a girl, I also decided to get ready for CNY. I've already bought a new dress & a new top from Carousel last week. I got a Gel Polish set from Priceline since it was on offer & put it to use immediately. Since I'm off on Tues, I'll vacuum & mop the floor, give the dogs a shower & we'll be all set for CNY.

Gel polish are $5 off  & the starter kit $12 off normal price.
Ang ang for CNY.

Tuesday 26 January 2016

The Failed 流沙包 Wannabe

1st attempt at 流沙包 failed, producing instead, 咸蛋黄包. I wanted to the filling to be savoury rather than sweet. So I made changes to the original recipe but rather than the flowing filling so desired, it turned out pretty viscous & failed to "flow". Oh well, I'll make a batch with the original recipe next time.

Salted egg yolk mixture.
Refrigerate till firm enough to form balls & freeze.
Make into buns.
Erm... failed molten lava salted yolk bun.

Brewing Kombucha

I 1st encountered kombucha during 1 of our few degustation meals. At 1 of the restaurants, we were served kombucha jelly & at another, kombucha as a palate cleanser. I was curious & went to read more about it online. Supposedly, the 1st recorded use was in 221 BC in China. It was in 414 AD when a Dr Kombu from Korea brought it to Japan to treat the emperor that kombucha began to spread over the world. It had multiple benefits, mostly to do with improvement to the GI system. As a healthy GI system is the forefront to health, from absorbing nutrients to eliminating wastes, it indirectly brings forth other health benefits. I then had the idea to make it at home myself so I can have an endless supply all year round.

Towards the end of the year, I ordered a kombucha starter kit online which consists of a SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria & Yeast), a starter culture (which is the kombucha itself) & instructions on how to brew kombucha. As it was the holiday period, the starter kit wasn't shipped out till the 4th. I finally received it on the 15th & I started on it that very night. While you can use normal tea, the author strongly recommends organic tea. I already had a box of organic green tea in my pantry so I used just that. Otherwise, organic black, red or white tea is fine. Herbal teas are not to be used as it can kill the beneficial bacteria.

The kombucha was quiet, with no signs of a new SCOBY formation even into day 4. I got worried as it was stated online that I should start to see some whitish growth on the surface of the kombucha on day 2. I thought maybe the bacteria & yeast in the SCOBY & kombucha starter had been killed during the 10 days it took to reach me by slow mail. Suddenly on day 5, I saw this white layer on the surface when I got home. From there on, it was rapid growth.

The kombucha is ready for bottling between 8 to 12 days, depending on the room temperature. I read online that it could take up to 21 days in winter. Since we're in summer, I started tasting it from day 9. When I got to day 12, I felt that the taste is to my liking & hence harvested it. After bottling, it'll be best to refrigerate the kombucha for a further 5 days for it to mature. I seriously don't think it'll last 5 days. As I have to keep 10% of the kombucha as starter culture for my next batch, I ended up with less than 1L for consumption. 

I now have 1 big & 1 small SCOBY. So I've peeled them apart & put the bigger SCOBY with 500 mls of kombucha for a 5L brew. The smaller SCOBY had 2 distinct layers (due to new growth) so I peeled them apart & placed them with 200 mls of kombucha for a 2L brew. That way, my next batch will yield 7L. My plan is to use the 2 large new SCOBY for the 3rd batch to be 10L. Any remaining SCOBY will be given away if anybody wants it. If not, I'll eat it. LOL. Hmm... or otherwise, the author sold hers for $30. Maybe I can sell mine for half the price but double the size.

Ingredients: SCOBY, 150 mls of kombucha, organic raw sugar, organic green tea.
Day 1: 2L of sweet green tea added to the SCOBY & kombucha starter culture.
Day 5: Beginning of a new SCOBY.
Day 7: SCOBY thickens.
Day 9: The SCOBY had formed a seal on top of the liquid, trapping air bubbles produced from the fermenting tea just underneath the surface.
Day 12: Harvesting of the kombucha. The smaller, darker disk is the original SCOBY that was sent to me. The bigger, lighter disk is the new SCOBY. I think the colour difference might be becoz she used black tea while I used green tea. 
Bottling of the kombucha. I reused the wine bottles I have so I don't have to spend money buying glass bottles. I immediately had a shot glass of kombucha. My reward for my work.
SCOBY & kombucha starter spilt into 2 jars for the next batch of brew.

Saturday 23 January 2016

Neglected Growth

I woke up in the middle of the night & couldn't get back to sleep. That was when I wrote the Feeling Tired post. After that, I spent sometime reiki-ing myself, doing meditative breathing that I learnt in yoga & chanted in my heart. It was a while later before I finally drifted back to sleep.

I won a pair of movie pass for Hoyts cinema group for buying Jazz, a lucky draw I didn't even know I had been entered into. Hubs managed to find out that Ip Man 3 is showing at Carousel & hence, we made plans to go today. We hardly ever go to the south since we live up north.

When we got there, I was shocked. Everywhere I turn, I saw people of asian descend. While we do see asians in the shopping centres we frequent in the north, it's incomparable to the numbers in Carousel. Perhaps it's becoz of the huge number of Chinese living in the Cannington region, Ip Man 3 is being shown there. It definitely isn't showing in Midland. But we also managed to find this shop that sells Taiwanese desserts. I ordered a serve of my favourite 粉圆.

Towards the end of the movie, after winning a fight, Donnie Yen acting as Ip Man said to his opponent, "Actually, what is important are the people around you." It can't be more true. Perhaps my focus now should be making improvements as a wife & mom to my furkids.

I also came to the realisation that my spiritual growth has been neglected & that was what led to me feeling lost & detached. I lost that sense of peace that is so important to me. So to recover that inner peace, I have to go on a spiritual journey. More meditation, more study, more reflection.
Lunch in the food court. Greedy me. In the end, hubs ate half of this plus his own bowl of laksa.
My favourite! Fen yuan!

Feeling Tired

I'm not tired of living. Most definitely not. Lol. This has nothing to do with the accident. But once in a while, I start to get these sort of feelings & question if there is more to life. These are the times when I take time off from social media & just go into isolation mode.

I'm not unhappy. I already have the greatest gifts money can't buy. I'm just seeking more meaning to life than just working & coming home. I said before that if able to, I'll study to be a vet & provide free services to shelter animals. But I must also be practical becoz it'll most likely remain a dream. So what else can I do with the skills I already have? Perhaps some time away to think, to meditate & to chant will give me the answer I'm seeking.

Friday 22 January 2016

都说我是 Accident Magnet 了

Sighz... Yup, I got rear ended again. This time with my brand new Jazz that's not even 2 months old. I stopped for a red light. When the light turned green, we all started moving off. The car in front stopped & so did I. But the car behind didn't. My bumper had scratches but the most damage was to my boot. It's sort of dented in a few places. The damage is not as extensive as Lancer though. Anyway, even if it is, they won't write off a brand new car that can be repaired in several thousand dollars. 3 hits in 20 months. Ain't I the accident magnet?

I've tried my best. But no amount of being careful can prevent others from hitting me, only me from hitting them. I don't speed, I don't tailgate & even when stopped, I always ensure I'm 1 car length away from the vehicle in front (just in case they roll back). I'm usually on the main road & when I approach an intersection & there's a car waiting to turn out, I never fail to take my foot off the accelerator. This is so if they do decide to turn out at the last possible second, I have a much higher chance of stopping in time. It worked coz I've prevented myself from crashing into such drivers multiple times. If the car in front has the brake lights on, my foot is off the accelerator even though I am very far away coz you just never know if they'll suddenly brake hard. I've already employed defensive driving techniques but like I said, I can only reduce the chances of me being at fault.

It's gonna be troublesome coz all these workshops operate weekdays only & I'm working everyday. It'll mean having to take a day off from work to send my car in for assessment & another day to pick it up. Oh well, maybe good fortune is awaiting me. Haha. The 1st time I was rear ended was when we were 4 weeks old in Perth. I stopped to give way to cars on the main road (I was wanting to turn left from a slip road) & the lady said her foot slipped off the brakes. That was the Lancer that got written off as the entire boot was smashed in. 1 week later, I was contacted for an interview & I started work the following week. 2nd time was in Sept 2014, when we've arrived in Perth for 4 months. I was driving on the main road, this car didn't check for oncoming traffic (which was me) & just turned out, hitting me on the left rear of Eba. She was a P plater without insurance. My manager told me that she was increasing my part time hours to 30 hours per week from 20 becoz she felt I was very good in my work. Of course, she passed my probation. 3rd time now, with Jazz. Hmm... looks like every single car I've driven since I got here has been hit.

When I sat down for dinner with hubs while watching DVD & the dogs both had their heads on my lap, I'm thankful that I get to live another day. That I get to enjoy the company I have. Even though I haven't done anything great in my life, I've been well loved. Just for this fact, my life has not been in vain. We don't know when we'll die, only that we're alive right now & there's much to be grateful for.

Tuesday 19 January 2016

Back To Jogging

It's been 4 weeks since I've done any rowing or jogging. When the back injury 1st struck, I couldn't even bend over the slightest bit. The yoga moves that require bending over have to be modified so I squatted instead. Yesterday, while I was doing yoga, I found that I could bend over during sun salutation once again. Following that, I had a shower & I could put on my undies normally. I had been sitting at the edge of the bed, undies on the floor, putting both feet through the leg holes & using a stick to hook my undies up. It's a huge breakthrough coz I still couldn't bend over the weekend. My back still hurts but it's at least an 80% improvement.

Having stopped cardio for so long, I didn't have much drive to go to the gym. But I'm glad I did. I could row once again. Not wanting to push it too hard, I opted to jog 2 km instead of my usual 3 km. Since I've shortened the distance, I upped the speed. I started with 8 km/hr for the 1st km, followed by 8.5 km/hr for the 2nd km. I was expecting that I would find it very tedious. But surprisingly, it was alright. The exhilaration following the attainment of my 1st jogging goal in 4 weeks reminded me once again why I'm doing this. I wonder if my muscles will ache tomorrow.

The downside is that I've lost a lot of flexibility. I was able to bend over & put both palms flat on the floor. Now my hamstrings are so tight I couldn't even touch the tips of my fingers to the floor. I'll have to slowly stretch it out again. Most importantly, I must take good care of my back to prevent this from happening again.

Sunday 17 January 2016

Weekend = Cooking Storm

Weekends are for me to catch up on cooking. I enjoy doing it in leisure & I know I'll hate it if I have to do it for a living. So guess I'll stick to being a scrub nurse & if I ever have the extreme good fortune of winning big in lotto, I'll go to veterinary school, set up my own practice & use the profits to provide free services to animal shelters. Until then, I'll just continue dreaming. Lol.

Sourdough baguettes baked just before we left for New Norcia.
I wake up very early even during weekends, many a times before 6 am. That's when I do all my baking. So the night before I'm to bake a bread, I'll prep the sourdough for use the next morning. That way, we can have freshly baked bread in the morning. My 1st sourdough trial went to the baguette I baked before we left for New Norcia last Sunday. It turned out really well.

The failed half bread, half cake that turned out tasting like huat kueh.
Becoz I had success, sometime during the week, I decided to "invent" a half bread, half cake hybrid. I used the sourdough again but this time combining self raising flour, currants & sugar. This didn't turn out too well. It's not that it's bad. It's definitely edible. Just not fantastic. It tasted very much like huat kueh.

Another fail from yesterday morning. Over proofed wholemeal seeds & nut load.
Yesterday, I tried yet another invention. I took a pain de mie recipe, swapped out 40% of bread flour for wholemeal flour, added sesame seeds, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds & walnut to it. I suspected that it would have been perfect if I hadn't went out to sell Eba & the dough over proofed. Another failing factor was that the loaf pan was too big for the recipe. So I can either double the recipe or get a smaller pan. The taste is great. Just that it is not perfect.

Finally, a hit. Champagne sorbet with orange rosemary shortbread.
The hit came from dessert. I had so many bottles of champagne & hubs doesn't drink wine or champagne. If I open a bottle, it'll lose its carbonation if I don't finish it. So I had a glass & turned the rest into sorbet. It was icy & refreshing, just what I needed for the heat yesterday. I took a basic shortbread recipe & added orange zest to it, hoping the citrus flavour will complement the champagne sorbet. I still felt it was a bit too simple & I decided that by adding a herb, I can amp up the flavours & fragrance. I only have 3 herbs in my pot. Thyme, rosemary & chives. Chives is definitely out. Rosemary won only becoz I've never harvested it before since I started growing it.

Cooking is not difficult. I suppose as with anything in life, nothing is too difficult if your heart is in it. I especially enjoy creating from basic recipes based on what I have in my pantry. It's like a science experiment. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail. But the process & experience is invaluable.

Rampant Delinquency

Another of my colleague has resigned. Her daughter had fallen into the wrong crowd & she had decided to move down south to Waikiki. It isn't that far to drive, just slightly over 50 km but she managed to find a job locally. Although she didn't share what exactly went wrong, it must be pretty bad to warrant such a drastic move. Uprooting herself from her established community, finding a new job, new school for the daughter, finding a new place to stay. Just thinking about the logistics part of it gives me a headache.

A lot of people say they want to migrate for their kids. I think this is 1 trade off to consider. We hear so many accounts of people turning violent in the ED under the influence of meth. Then, there're always stories in the newspaper about young people attacking or even killing their parents becoz they refused to give them money for drugs. A lot of break ins are also due to addicts trying to get money to feed their addiction.

In fact, my next door neighbour is 1. I didn't know initially. I only know there're always screaming, shouting & slamming of doors coming from next door. Turned out that J's colleague's daughter is the 1 living next door. She's only in her early 20s, with a 4 year old daughter. Apparently, this problem with drugs started a long time ago. She'll turn verbally abusive when her younger brother (who's still a student) who lives with her in this rental house has no money to give her. Then, she'll turn on her mother who visits the granddaughter regularly. When she goes into a rampage, she'll even call her 4 year old daughter names like f*cking bitch.

To me, this is the biggest con on raising a kid here. Of course, there are many who turn out good. But the chances of them turning out bad is undeniably higher than that in Sg. The biggest pro is the flexibility & options in education. I believe that we're able to succeed is becoz of the way we were conditioned when we were in Sg. Children brought up here will not have the same mindset. Whether or not studying here is less stressful depends in large on the parents I guess. Will you push your kid to score as close to 100% as possible? Make them learn the subjects in advance in preparation for the following year? We can't force fate to turn in our favour. Good or bad, the only thing we can do is simply to try our best.

Day Trip To New Norcia

Last Sunday, we took the 1.5 hour drive to this little monastic town called New Norcia. It wasn't exactly a planned trip. Neither was it exactly impromptu. It was on my itinerary for our upcoming farm stay & camping trip. The idea of visiting it as a day trip came to me on Friday while at work. The forecast for Sat was possible storm with a max of 34°c so I chose Sunday which was supposed to be clear & a max of 26°c. I woke up as I usually do on my day off, at 6 am. So I baked 2 sourdough baguette before we set off.

The church.
I laid out the pet hammock to protect my car seats & off we went. The dogs were excited & I had to tie their leash to the head rest on opposing ends. Basil tends to step all over Ton Ton who's half his size & we didn't want them attempting to climb over the hammock onto the front seats. The cruise control was the best thing on such long country roads. There were hardly any cars. I took my foot off the pedal & let cruise control take over.
I don't know why but this type of scenery appeals to me so.
1st thing I did when we got there was to go into their visitor centre to get a copy of their walking track map. We didn't take their guided tour as we had dogs with us. The round trip took about an hour & we headed to the hotel to get lunch. I ordered their famous Abbey Ale for hubs & took a sip for taste.

Small, but a 2 km walk.
After lunch, we took the drive home. Dogs & human slept the entire journey home, save for the driver (me). But even I was out for 3 hours when we got home. We need more road trips!
The dogs concussed in the lobby of the hotel as we had lunch.

Sunday 10 January 2016

The Food Lover's Soul

It took us an hour to get to Langford. The heat was scorching even with the car air conditioning blasting away. It had already hit the maximum temperature prediction of 36°c by the time we left at 1 pm. As we had lost time searching for the missing ring, we went straight to Ah Beng's Kopithiam for lunch. I greedily gulped down 2 large mouthfuls of my drink when it arrived. It was the 1st time I've seen such a combination: rose syrup with chinchao. 

The cold rose syrup chinchao & ice coffee gave us some relief from the heat.
The food is actually not bad. The flavours are not Singaporean. So perhaps Malaysian? I tried some of hub's Ah Beng Special Fried Rice. It's basically seafood fried rice with prawn paste pork & prawn crackers. We helped ourselves to the condiments & their chicken rice chilli (they call it sambal chilli though) is good (as in spicy enough). I was contemplating between the Black Bean Noodles & Ah Beng Special Noodles. Black bean won. The bowl it came in was gigantic. Perhaps twice the size of my head. I can't comment on the serving size coz I'm pretty sure I would have been able to finish it if I hadn't been watching my weight (& hence shrunken stomach). I opted to add beef brisket for $4 more. Otherwise, it would have just came with a thin slice of tau gua & half a hard boiled egg. Unique flavours but would be really good with a kick of sambal chilli. (They only have chicken rice chilli, normal chilli sauce (Maggi type) & chilli oil. The chilli oil is more fragrant than spicy.)

Hub's Ah Beng Special Fried Rice.
King Black Bean Noodles with Beef Brisket
With a full tummy, we took the short drive to Spencer Village. We went into the oriental homeware store & immediately, I found what I was looking for. I wanted to try my hands at making kombucha & it is best left fermenting in a glass container. The acids formed will interact with metal & only certain kinds of plastics are allowed. When I told my yoga teacher of my plans for the day, she laughed & said my house is like a science lab. (This is becoz I was given a batch of sourdough by my colleague on Friday which I have to stir daily & feed once weekly to keep it alive.) So yay! Now I'm just awaiting for my kombucha culture to arrive.

Finally found the glass jar I was looking for.
Hubs decided that he wanted to make claypot rice & so we got 1. I practically had to force him to get the 1 that is of better quality. Now, you don't want to spend $10 less & have it cause you grieve later. D&J recently caused quite a stir at 1 of the gatherings by bringing in home made tau huay. A lot of people asked for the magic ingredient (lactone) & I took it a step further by getting the container & scoop. Well, we were already there at the shop anyway. Might as well.
Joining in the tau huay craze.
I eventually got to shower following the discovery of the lost ring. Then, it was over to D&J's place where we couldn't wait to land our hands on the Buah Keluak dish. We were given some to take home too. A great way to end a great day.
We got to eat & da bao.

1 Ring To Rule Them All

Like TL said, this is a blog worthy, 不可思议的 incident. Even though it transpired yesterday, I still find it really unbelievable & amazing. 

Due to the nature of our work, we only wear our wedding ring over the weekend. For me, I fear I'll lose it if I have to put it on & take it off on a daily basis. Bacteria is a big fan of jewellery which is a big no no for nurses. Besides, who wants to bring home the bugs that are hidden in the crevices? Yes, we wash our hands with antimicrobial soap & perform hand rubs. But there is no such thing as sterile hands. For hubs, he has to deal with heavy metal parts & the scratches the ring will sustain will be terrible.

Late morning yesterday, when we were about to leave for Langford, he realised that he couldn't find his ring. He turned the house upside down but he just couldn't find it. He began to retrace his steps for the previous weekend. He remembered still wearing it when he was changing engine oil for his Integra. He remembered coming in to wash his hands & the ring which he promptly put back on. But he remembered that he was no longer wearing it when he washed my car next. He even went to the garage to search since he washed the car in the back lane. Nope, nothing.

It was getting late. He finally decided to call off the search & we left for Langford at 1 pm. There is this oriental homeware store in Spencer Village that I wanted to go. I've been searching for a glass jar that's at least 5L. I tell you, it was close to impossible. All the "ang moh" chains (Big W, Reject Shop, supermarket) only carry plastic jars. The Reject Shop has a glass dispensing jar but the tap is metal. That homeware store was my last chance before I seriously contemplate using glass vase from Bunnings. Hubs wanted to try the food at Ah Beng's Kopithiam which is just nearby. So that was exactly what we did.

On the drive home, D&J invited us over for dinner which we promptly agreed. Becoz, we're the super gluttons as they had posted on FB that they were making Buah Keluak for dinner. The search continued when we got home. I was about to take a shower, in fact I had already stripped when hubs called out to me. So I wrapped myself in my towel & went out to the garage. The garage door was open & he was outside. That's when the amazing discovery was made. The ring was sitting on the manhole on the other side of the garage door. 

Hubs got desperate & decided to open the garage door to search the ground. When he saw it on the manhole, it came back to him that he had removed the ring & set it down on the manhole before washing my car with the intention to retrieve it once he was done. Obviously, he forgot all about it. That means, the ring had been sitting there since last Sunday where I had driven over it many times throughout the week. It had been there for 6 days. It is a miracle that we even managed to get it back. 

Miraculous, isn't it? 

Saturday 9 January 2016

Out Of The Obese Range

2 weeks break, back injury, eating as I wish saw me put on 1 kg post holiday period. I was actually surprised that I didn't put on more considering the amount I ate. What really surprised me more is that I've already lost the 1 kg I put on plus 1, at the end of the 1st week back to work. That puts my BMI at exactly 25.0. But as we all know, from an Asian descend, anything 23.0 & above is considered overweight. I need to lose another 5 kg before I hit a BMI of 22.9. But like I mentioned before, the weight is not as important to me as the body fat percentage.

I took both charts off the S Health app from my phone. I'm not sure if Asians have a different range. But I'm working towards fitness level in terms of fat percentage, which means between 21.0 to 24.9%. As of today, I finally dropped to 31.6% which means I'm out of the obese range. At my heaviest many years ago, I had a body fat percentage of 39.9%. It is shocking that almost 40% of my body is made up of fats. Now that I'm older, I must really begin to take care of my health. 

I've been to the gym twice this week. But I haven't been able to do much as I fear injuring my back further. Instead of jogging, I used the eliptical machine. My stamina definitely have gone down tremendously. So I got to work my way up again. My plan is to continue to work on my arms & put more time into yoga. Progress at 3 months, muscle gain of 2.4%, fat loss of 5.3% & weight loss of 6.9 kg.

Friday 8 January 2016

The Grass Is NOT Greener Over Here

Recently, I keep coming across posts from people wanting to migrate to Australia saying how the grass is greener here compared to Sg. Now, I feel that I must debuff this misconception. Contrary to popular belief, the reserve holds true. Since we're in summer, let me start with summer. With the temperatures consistently in the high 30s to low 40s, coupled with low or even no rainfall (it didn't rain for a few months last summer) the grass here turns brown. Autumn rains & weather brings some life back to the grass but before it can prosper, winter comes around. With water restriction in winter, you're not allowed to use your reticulation. Not too much of an issue since it's a rainy season. But, the low temperatures put the grass into hibernation mode. Turns yellow again. By late spring, when the grass is finally grass once more, you guess it. It's summer already. So no. Myth debunked. Grass is green all year round in Sg compared to perhaps half a year in Oz. Lame jokes aside, I understand where they're coming from. I was once in their position, looking at Oz through rose tinted glasses. More to convince myself that Sg is an absolutely horrible place to live in & to justify the move to Oz. In the end, I've come to realise that it all fell away, severely lacking in substantiality.

I complained about how cars are unaffordable in Sg. It is true. The latest $9k drop in COE see the Suzuki Swift drop to $85k. It is selling for $17k here. But the other thing that is true is that the public transport in Sg is really superior. If I were to take the public transport to work here, it'll take me 2.5 hours 1 way, excluding waiting time.

I complained also about how we don't actually own our HDB flat (since it's on a 99 year lease) even after paying high prices for it. It's true. But I didn't see the policies needed to be taken out (home & contents insurance), the possibility that at anytime, a bush fire can wipe out your home, the fact that you can't even change a tap by yourself (you need a qualified, licensed plumber) because you'll void the insurance or warranty for your house. Or if you're renting, the grief that's dished out to you if you're unlucky, like in my previous rental place.

Yes, the education system here is less stressful (I'm gonna have to take everybody's words for it since I don't have a kid). There're more opportunities & choices. But it is also true that there are many who choose to bum around at home, waiting for Centrelink to dole out payments instead of going out to be gainfully employed. It is most definitely true that drugs are a rampant problem here. While we can teach our kids the right thing, they are ultimately their own person & will make their own decision. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, they turn bad. The culture here makes it worse. Is it a better place to raise a kid here? Only if they don't turn bad.

The job market is really bad right now. My colleague has gone back to Sg for good becoz her husband has been laid off & haven't been able to find a job for a while. My manager's husband is out of work as well & she's so stressed trying to make ends meet. Another colleague's husband has been out of job for more than half a year. I can't even count the number of people I know who has been laid off due to the economical downturn. In the hospitals, the management have frozen staff recruitment. There is no doubt there're more job opportunities in Sg. But of course, then, we hiam the hours are long & pay is low.

Just as mentioned in my older post, there's no greener grass here, there or anywhere. There is no such thing as perfect or best of both worlds. To want the good, we must be prepared to take the bad. In the end, all that truly matters is the quantity & quality of time I get to spend with my family directly becoz of the move to Oz. It is the ability to create valuable memories that otherwise won't have come to pass. We need to be thankful becoz we are raised in Sg & therefore, improved our chances for migration. We need to move for the right reasons. We need to move with the right mindset. But I suppose, either way, you'll come to this realisation just as I did.

Friday 1 January 2016

Sacroilliac Joint Inflammation

Becoz my back was rapidly getting worse by the day, I decided to inform my yoga teacher before she can work out a yoga plan for me. Yes, every week before our session, she'll draw up the yoga poses that we'll be doing. It's personalised just for me, based on my flexibility & how ready my body is for the next more advanced poses. She really is very knowledgeable & told me that it sounded like I had sacroilliac joint inflammation. I went online & read up on it. True enough, the symptoms of SIJ inflammation are exactly as I experienced it. Pain in the lower back that radiates down the glutes to the hamstring upon bending or should I say attempting to bend since I can't bend over at all.

I have a tube of Voltaren gel at home that I started using twice daily with hot pack application since Tuesday. It didn't help much which was within expectations as this isn't some simple muscle strain. On Wednesday evening, I went to the chemist to get Voltaren tablets. By Thursday afternoon, it was much better, though I still couldn't bend over. But at least, it was a 50% improvement.

Came Friday morning. I had severe indigestion which woke me up in the middle of the night. I felt nauseated & decided to have some hot tea while reading my latest loans from the library. I couldn't put the book down & after 3 cups of tea, I finally finished reading it. I went back to bed with Ton Ton tailing behind me. That was 6 am. At 7 am, I was awaken by retching sounds. Having had Tonz his entire life, I knew that he'll need several retches before vomitting. It was a reflex, I didn't even think. I just lept out of bed but he had already vomited partially digested dinner on the bed.

Immediately, I knew I had injured my SIJ even further. The pain was horrible but I had to change the bedsheet & mattress protector. Thank goodness we bought the water proof mattress protector so the vomit didn't penetrate through. He went on to vomit in the living room & we had to throw out the cheapo carpet that we used to prevent the roller desk chair from scratching the floor. Looks like I wasn't the only 1 with indigestion that night/morning.

Thanks ah Tonz. Not only was any improvements to my back negated, I went 2 steps back on top of it. I decided to up my oral Voltaren to 50 mg which I took morning & afternoon. After the noon dose, it started to feel much better. I went for my yoga class as scheduled. But I hate taking medications as they have side effects & they take a toll on your liver. I didn't take anything when I fractured my toe after a fall which I must say is excrutiating. So I decided to stop after 2 days of Voltaren which I took for the anti-inflammatory properties. Now I'm trying to crack my brain how to incorporate tumeric which is a natural anti-inflammatory into my diet.

There goes my plan to return to the gym on Tuesday, the 1st day of work for 2016. We'll see how it goes then.