First of May. I remembered my second sister told me at the funeral, “Next time, it is not hard for you to remember the date because it is Labour Day.” And truly, it is so easy to remember First of May. Everyone has a holiday the day you died.

Maybe if it is not first of May, I will have an easier time to forget. But then, it will be unfair to you if I forget. So, here it is, the first of May. Seven years after. I have moved on, done a lot, changed a lot, older a lot, religious a lot.

I could spend it by going for the 7 am mass and have a good cry. Or I could just treat it as another day. I think I will do just that. Another day. I guess God is tired of my questioning so I will give God a break. It is Labour Day and I think God ought to have a day of rest too, huh?

So, yeah, it is another day. But I will just squeeze in one photo taken on the 2nd of May, 2002. Your brothers have grown so much. Your father hasn’t really grown older. Men! I hate that. What have I fed him that makes him age slower than me? Me, I have grown older a lot but not too bad.

Now looking at the photo, I am not sure why I chose that yellow t-shirt? It matches with the bag they put your ashes in. Hmmm…once a person is burnt, there isn’t much left huh? But I also notice something else. I think I still wore lipstick the day I went to pick your ashes to be strewn into the sea off Gurney Drive. I wonder why? Maybe it is a human reaction to grief by bouncing back and pretending everything is normal.

Whatever it is, things are a lot different now. Now, I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe in resurrection. I believe in being united in God’s Heavenly Kingdom. I have thought long and hard if I should post this but what the heck. It is my life, my blog, my son and my choice. Comment is closed, as usual.

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No more tears is synonymous with Johnson’s® baby range of products.  All my babies are accustomed to the soothing words of ‘No more tears’ when they have their hair washed.  It is like our family ritual to get the babies to have their hair wash without getting sting in the eyes.

Babies have their temperament and many hate hair washing.  Sometimes, it is due to the nervous hands that handle the babies.  Sometimes, it is due to bad experience of having their eyes sting by shampoo.  So, to ensure that our babies are relaxed when taking their baths, we usually use Johnson’s Baby No More Tears®   formula baby shampoo. 

New parents may find handling a squirmy baby in a tub of water a very frightening experience.  It is certainly nothing like those plastic doll you handle at pre-natal classes which doesn’t slip from your hand or is as fragile as a baby.   So, if you are bathing a baby, never, ever squirt any body shampoo on your baby’s body.  To save the work, I usually use one of the Johnson’s® No More Tears® range of products which is the Johnson’s® baby Top-to-Toe wash   .  What I did is to mix a tiny amount in the bath water and I merely bath the baby from the head to toe, which is a wonderful mommy and baby bonding moment.  There is really no need to work up a lather for the baby’s hair because it is unnecessary until they are much older.  However, when they are older, they love their bubbles and bath toys.  Talking about this makes me reminiscence about the wonderful bath time I gave my babies, the nice fragrance of the Johnson’s® baby shampoo and the joy of cuddling a squeaky clean baby.

After bathing five babies on my own, I am quite the expert already.  One other thing that I absolutely love to do is to massage the baby with Johnson’s® baby oil.  You can find Johnson’s® Baby Infant Massage technique from the internet or ask your baby’s doctor for the booklet.  Some hospital also provide baby massage classes for new parents.  I found that giving a baby a gentle massage will help with making the baby more relaxed and hence, less fussy.  It also helps with getting the baby to eliminate the wind in the stomach.

It is amazing that Johnson’s® baby products are older than me!  Do you know that Johnson® baby is celebrating its 50th anniversary of their Johnson’s® Baby No More Tears® formula?  I still remember some of their older advertisements.   They had some of the most profound, family oriented advertisements through the decades and I think that’s how Johnson’s® baby has become so much part of my children upbringing.  Until today, my older children are still hooked to their fruity shampoo.  I think most family have at least one experience of using Johnson’s® Baby No More Tears® through these fifty years.

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I was having my lunch and I don’t know why the images of Tian Chua and Teresa Kok offering wine and joss-sticks to the Altantuya’s Ching Ming bugged me. Maybe it is because I had just made a Ching Ming video so I sort of remembered the buy-election in Bukit Selambau and Bukit Gantang.

I suppose most of you didn’t see the video where they have this Ching Ming offerings for Altantuya. Two were carried out at separate places. They burn some stuffs for her and etc and Tian Chua and Teresa Kok were there. I know politicians have their dramas to stage to gain votes and attention. But then, I find it rather distasteful. Firstly, if I am not wrong, both of them are Christians. Of course, I am not trying to be a douche bag saying that Christians shouldn’t touch joss-sticks and etc. But what kind of message are they displaying, pouring wine, participating in a pray to Altantuya’s soul and things like that?

Secondly, if I am Altantuya, I would have preferred people to leave me alone instead of praying all over the states in a country far away for my soul. I am sure Altantuya’s parents would have done whatever prayers that their faith needed and we do not need any more soul-appeasing ceremony. Goodness, the soul doesn’t linger here in Malaysia.

Thirdly, it is cheapshot to take a dead person and make it their political tool.

Anyway, I have these feelings during the buy-elections in the two Bukits but I prefer not to comment on it, hoping they would let her soul rests after that buy-elections.

However, I just logged on to Malaysiakini and I go…. “tu dia…..depa buat dahhh….macam-macam perangai monyet yang depa boleh pikiaq. Ni nak bagi Altantuya mock-funeral pulak.”

If Najib failed to meet the dateline, Badrul, commonly known as “Chegu Bard”, warned that he will lead a mammoth convoy of cars and trucks carrying a coffin of Altantuya’s effigy from Rembau to Penanti during the by-election campaign.

Seriously…..all those of you who are so passionate about praying Altantuya, burning paper money for Altantuya, give funeral etc, are you having the same kind of passion to remember your own ancestors? I wonder if those DAP guys who made the prayers for Altantuya even go back for their own family Ching Ming prayers or what…..

I have attended many ceramahs by PKR politicians and seriously, DSAI should know that all those fitnah, tembak, kutuk and etc mode of ceramahs are getting stale. I cringe when I hear one Malay man attacking another Malay man, both Muslims. I cringe when one Indian man, laughing at another Malay man, saying Malay man skin is darker than his own. It is funny, but they are sickening kind of funny. And I only start to listen when one or two rare politicians who can really give thought provoking reasons why people should vote for a change. Unfortunately, this is rare. Fairus was rather good, in my opinion. And they had to kick him out…….and give us another buy-election.

One last sentence - Please leave Altantuya alone, let her rest in peace.

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While at the Guardian Pharmacy….

At the cashier counter…

Son : Eh, ma, this so cheap (point to some hair gel)

Ma : Must buy above RM40 baru can buy lah. PWP. The total amount of the things here only RM27

Son : Only RM13 what, buy something lah

Ma : Don’t know what to buy already. Nothing that I need.

Son : Buy some economy pack tampons or something lah

Ma : Ish, what for buy so many?

Son : You got use mah. Why? You menopause already? No bocor anymore?

Me : You jaga, I take this bag and swing swing swing and whack your head, your brains also fly out. Celaka, say I menopause. I still young, ok? Niamah….

Son : See? Ha…you are scolding yourself.

Me : Ya hor…

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Submitted on 2009/04/29 at 8:34pm
Lilian, can you PLEASE STOP spamming PPS with this post over and over again? We got your point so just stop pinging the same post over and over again at PPS, okay?

I didn’t ping my old posts, ok?

I not so lame, ok?

I not so despo, ok?

But anyway, let’s see if this new post kicks the old post into PPS again or not.

I hope it does….

And while I am at it, folks, go join Blogged.my.

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I love this video, for the value it imparts. That is, filial piety of the elderly children visiting the grave of their parents. And the future generation, i.e. the young grandchildren participating. Family values like these are very important and something we parents have to inculcate in our children. Never mind that I dread meeting up with four SILs (urggghh) all at one go or getting bitten by mosquitoes or waking my four sons early in the morning. Doesn’t matter that I don’t participate in their ways of praying. But what matter is I at least make an effort every year to bring my children to the grave of their grandparents.

My parents-in-law have eight children and seven of them are there. I think they also have over 30-40 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

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So, there was this other CM who proudly sell off his state to turn it into a foreign country because according to reason, having a foreign culture like that will save our local Malaysians a lot of money from traveling there, to quote ” to give locals a chance to experience Arabic culture”

Therefore, can you imagine our CM Lim Guan Eng one day come up with similar thing but let’s say he get RM1B from China? Can you imagine?

You cannot right?

That’s why lah. It is ridiculous. And I bet our CM is 1B times smarter than that ketam.

Reference here :

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/4/29/nation/3795736&sec=nation

You may ask, “Why do you use the CM of Penang name in your post?”

Because I not so bodoh to quote the other CM. I hide behind the Penang CM’s coat’s tail, safer what.

P/S : The irony of things. Melaka is the hometown of the Penang CM and yet, the Malaccans have chosen to get ridiculed by a ketam as their CM. Maybe the Malaccans deserved it, having their own state trampled on by kiasu Singkahpolians and that other tourists.

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It is Wednesday, 29th April 2009. A rainy day. With a mug of hot coffee and nothing much to do, I think I will allow myself to recollect back to 29th April, 2002.

My son, Vincent was transported from Lam Wah Ee to University Malaya Medical Centre, Paediatric Intensive Care Unit a few days earlier. Dr. Cheang told me the night before, “Lilian, tomorrow I MAY be able to bring this naughty guy to UMMC. Prof. Lucy has a bed now. But no promises yet ‘cos sometimes, they have emergency cases.” In Malaysia, at that time, only two hospitals have PICU facilities, i.e. HKL and UMMC. The children there came from all over the country.

On the morning itself Dr. Cheang came to the ICU in LWE and he told me, “Lilian, we are going to UMMC this afternoon. I will close my clinic half day. I have arranged for the ambulance.”

I said, “OK, I will go back now and arrange for my kids to be sent to my sister’s place.” The nurses were like, “WTH….this woman thinks she is going for a shopping trip with Dr. C or what? So cool, one?” (transferring to UMMC is the last resort and they know it is either bad news or I am going to be stuck in UMMC for months and even years) I rushed home, took my #3 out of kindie, went home to pack my own clothes and Vincent’s. Called my sister to come to pick all 3 kids to her place and phoned hubby that we are leaving for KL.

Then, I went back to the hospital and I even have the clear mind to tip the ambulance driver for his and his assistant’s lunch when they came up to the ICU for briefing by Dr. C. I slipped the money into the pocket so that the matron doesn’t see it! Crazy woman with organised mind like me only do all these nitty-gritty things but I know they have a tough job ahead, driving for 3 + hrs, non-stop, not even toilet stops.

I couldn’t follow the ambulance because Dr. C needed extra oxygen supplies and the ambulance only fit one other nurses. In our country, we also do not have ambulance with a kid’s ventilator so the nurse and Dr. C has to bagged Vincent all the way. (Bagged means using hand to manually pump the oxygen into his lungs, ventilator is the machine. Adult ventilator cannot be used for kid because the pressure is too strong.)

So, Vincent reached UMMC safely, despite of a few bronchospasm. He had BPD and sometimes, his airways have spasm and he turned blue then black when oxygen doesn’t get to him.

Maybe, on the 29th April, 2002 I was back to Penang for a while because I have to deal with the school going kids here. But at that time, I already had plans of what to do if I have to stay in UMMC. Like, asking my sister-in-law to watch over my kids here and I shuttle between UMMC and Penang. For someone who can even get lost in Penang itself, it is a very ambitious plan to shuttle.

UMMC PICU have Prof. Lucy Lum and her team of very specialised, trained nurses. Though it is a Government hospital, it is nothing like what I expected. Of course, some of the things they use in UMMC are not as modern or canggih but the treatment is definitely much more advanced as they have better medical equipment.

Children were dying in the unit but none died while I was there. One kid, aged 6 yrs, very chubby, very handsome got a flu and eventually turned septic. Another boy, a son of an Ustaz had a liver condition. And on May 1st morning, both of them died. I was there on May 1st and I had meant to return to Penang. But upon seeing those two kids died, I decided to stay back because I think Vincent is ‘going to be awfully lonely’, now that the two boys died. I was dreading how to spend my night there because I didnt’ bring enough clothings and *ashamedly* I had been spoilt with first class hospital room facilities all the time. But a mom gotta do what a mom gotta do, so I told myself I can live in hospital corridor. (you cannot sleep in PICU, only outside at the corridor)

Later in the evening, when my hubby had driven up to Tapah, he got a call from me to ask him to return back to UMMC. He didn’t know how serious it was because I only told him half the story as Tapah to UMMC is still 2 hrs drive away. I only told him Vincent had one nasty bronchospasm and needed Code Blue (resuscitation). One thing that I won’t forget is, hubby still didn’t know what had happened when he arrived. When he got there, Vincent was technically gone but we maintained his heart beating with oxygen supply. Yet, Vincent was seen sucking his pacifier and hubby still thought he was still within help. It is one of those things….you can say the body is having spasm or you can say it is that one last look.

After about 10 days in UMMC, Prof. Lucy has endeared herself to my son. She cried along with me while we were chatting and waiting for my hubby. She was holding on to Vincent’s little hand and told me about work in the PICU. Her husband is the head of consultant in the adult ICU, Prof. Tan.

PICU and some of the other children’s ward in UMMC are filled with many sad cases but sometimes, there are miracles too. Prof Lucy told me about some of the cases, of how doctors had given up but the kid fought through. She told me she was hopeful for Vincent as he had been improving and she never expect it to happen. She said something like this, “Vincent…..why don’t you let me take care of you more? I was so sure you will get better.”

Overall, I never spent any nights in the PICU because my brother was staying not too far. We spent a few nights at my brother’s place. But there are many mothers whom had lived in the hospital because their children never get to go home. For eg. like Taufik (whom had died a few months after Vincent), another boy with a condition like elephantitis, with a huge growth on his face also had stayed there for years. The mothers of these children sometime faced divorces due to the pressures.

So, why am I telling you this? Wait I elaborate in another post.

*comment is closed*

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I almost went back to my self-help books addiction this morning. Pheww….lucky I scrammed before I reached for the RM58.90 book. I actually don’t remember the title but I know it is yet another Stephen Covey book for parents.

You see, I have plenty of time on some mornings like this beautiful Tuesday morning. After I dropped my son, I went to Tesco for some much needed groceries shopping. Before that, I stopped by McDonald’s to have an Eggstraordinary muffin or something and a free refill coffee. I like McD’s coffee but unfortunately, I cannot finish more than one styrofoam cup in one sitting and yet, too hou-lian aka not so pariah to ask for refill and bring it home. So, I sat there slowly waiting for my coffee to cool down in the blardy styrofoam cup which takes forever. I finished replying my fans’ mails, my enemies poison pen letters, read Malaysiakini, check my blogs (all on my mobile phone) and the coffee was still hot. KNN.

BTW, the breakfast costed me RM7.90. For RM7.90, I could have taken some nice dim sum with a nice iced Nescafe.

By the time I finished drinking, it was 10 am! Shit, I wasted one hour waiting for my coffee to cool down. I went up to the next level of Tesco and Popular Bookshop was opened already. I walked in because it is open. Usually, I go to Popular with my sons and I don’t always have the luxury to browse through the kind of books I like but only stick to the kids’ corner (or risk having my son coloured the pages or two of them fighting or people ’steal’ my little boy).

With so much time on hand and no annoying crowds, I slowly go through all the self-help books. *sigh* It has been a long time since I bought a self-help book. There comes a time when you suddenly realise you are your own best self-help guru. I can tell all the self-help gurus to fark off. I know how to live my life without someone pumping ideas into me. I can pretty much be a normal person without some cracked up psycho who earned millions of dollars cheating idiots to tell me how to behave. So, yeah, I didn’t get Stephen Covey’s book on how to teach children.

Yet, I cannot deny that Stephen Covey’s books have helped me somewhat in being a fairer parent. Ching Ning Chu Thickface, Blackheart also planted a lot of Chinese cunning ideas into me. (I am not Mandarin literate so I missed out a lot of Chinese cunning ways, you see.) Zig Ziglar’s Christian ways of bringing up children probably helped in the sense that all my sons turned out pretty decent. Max Lucado and Philip Yancey too have helped me understand Christianity. Plus a lot more other books which I bought at flea markets.

Maybe, I have the best self-help book now. The Bible. That’s why the urge to keep up with Monk who drives a Ferrari or one of those dubious stuffs no longer attract me. I am now into biography. But I have yet to find a person I want to know deeper and closer. Maybe, when I am in the mood, I like to read about Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Lim Guan Eng….Oops, you mean he doesn’t have a book about him yet, issit? *makes mental note to send book proposal and be ghost writer LOL*

So, are you still in the cycle of reading self-help books like a hamster running around the wheels? Read, read, read but lead to nowhere.

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I uploaded this video to Engagemedia, which is like Youtube but only for social causes and issues. It was a hastily put video using previous video clips I have. The filming was done by Maran and another part by Catherine from my church. The music is from Cat too. I tried to make it ’special’ by adding narration. At the workshop, when the class was looking through all the videos from the participants, I quietly sneaked out to the toilet so no one notices my video wasn’t mentioned and flashed for all to see.

Such is the quirkiness of me. I have no problem narrating, writing down what I wanted to say, plug in the earphone and mike and read away what I have on my computer screen. However, playing it back, listening to it is a pain. And when there are others listening together, my skin crawls. Ewwwss….my voice, my terrible voice, why did I ever add narration?

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