The ENT Infection (Part 2)

After being plagued by a terrible sore throat after a sinus infection which comes and goes for the last 3 weeks, I had finally decided to visit an ENT Specialist to find out what exactly is wrong with me or in this case my throat.

The doctor used a flexible fiber optic scope to examine my throat by passing it through my nose. Eeeekk!!! When he told me what he was about to do, my soul jumped out of my body and bolted out of the door; Doc sensed that I was about to shit my pants, he assured me that the procedure would not hurt and went on to numb my nose with a spray.


Although the scope looked menacing and I was terribly intimidated by it, the procedure was only slightly uncomfortable but still very much bearable.


Here is the picture of my larynx, with inflamed arytenoids and there were little nodules found on it. Doc thinks that I have been abusing my vocal chord and he suggested that I talk less and talk softer.

But how am I going to ever do that when I am a trainer by profession and a mother to two ever challenging young children?!?!

The Gen X

Generation X or simply Gen X, refer to the generation born between 1961 to 1979. Yes, that's my generation.

Singaporean born in this Gen X era typically have no maids when we were growing up, do not attend childcare but were cared for by our grandparents, relatives or babysitting neighbours, if our moms had to work. Those were the days, when families with dual-incomes were no looking to upgrade themselves to a condo or to switch to a more luxurious car but it was out of pure necessity.

Our parents from the Baby Boomer time never failed to imprint on us with their scarcity mindset. It was always save, save, save; toys = can see, cannot buy. If can buy, must wait until birthday or Christmas. And eating out in a restaurant got to do with some very big occasion, like a wedding or some festivities.

Most Gen X children grew up in a household which had both parents who might bickered or fought at times but divorce was out of the question because it was still very much a taboo. And often kids in custody of a divorced parent might not get to see the other parent as often as they like. For me, I only saw my dad like once or twice a year and my mom slightly more often at once every fortnight when I was growing up with my grandparent, after my parents were divorced.

Gen X children grow up as teenagers who hang out at tea dances, malls or arcade centres in clique and people would see us as "Ah Lian & Ah Beng". If one joined a street gang or we used to call it 'secret society', he/she would be known as playing a number, and the numbers would be 08, 18, 21, 24 or 369.

We hated to stay at home because home was just way too bored, except for MTV! There was no cable TV then and PC, or Personal Computer was a rare box with a little black screen and green words when you typed away on it; internet was totally unheard of. The cool gadgets to carry with you then was ... no not mobile phone, it was not affordable to most people then. A gameboy, Walkman and later a pager were the must-have in those days.

The Gen X teens, were rebellious and had the worst sense of fashion! We had boy's hair that was styled with a floppy centre parting and girl's hair that were dyed with the weirdest color at random spot. Makeup was a mess of bold and bright colors!

We liked to be in a 'relationship', we called it "going steady" and we had boyfriends/girlfriends referred to as "stead".

When our friends 'jio' us out and for some reasons we weren't able to make it, then we would be labelled as 'buay steady'.

There was a study that revealed us as a generation of teenagers who had premarital sex in secrecy, who did not believe in God as much as our parents and who don't respect our elderly.

Guess what kind of parents Gen X would turned out to be.

So are we the parents who are only capable of producing the delinquent teenagers that go around slashing other teenagers? Most probably, if the Gen X had their children in their late teens or early 20s they could well be the parents of these troublemaker *Gen Z.

*Will write about children of the Gen X parents later.

Cinderella - rated NC16

Laetitia used to hate Chinese language; she would cover her head with her blanket when I tried to read her a Chinese story book during bedtime. But with the new school and my mom coming over more often and speaking to her in Mandarin, I can see that Laetitia is slowly learning to like the language.

In an effort to encourage Laetitia to learn Chinese in a more fun way, I decided to buy some Chinese story books on a few of her favourite fairy tale titles and one of them was "Cinderella".

So one night, we got ourselves ready in bed for the usual bedtime reading. It was the first time I was to read this Chinese "Cinderella" to her.

The beginning of the story was pretty much the usual; evil stepmother and stepsisters doing the nasty and how Cinderella got to the ball. Then I reached the part of the story on the Prince, who was searching for his bride-to-be, was passing the glass slipper around hoping to marry the one whose foot fitted it.

That was when I gasped. And I was sure my pupils must have been dilated while I read out the gruesome tale. I was in for a rude shock.

It was all blood and gory! The stepmother passed her elder daughter a knife and ask her to hack off her toe when she couldn't squeeze her foot into the slipper! Yes! You hear me right! And that stupid bimbo actually did what she was told, she had her toe cut off! Anyway, her plan was thwart by this bird which told the prince about her bloody toe.

Then came the younger stepsister, whose toe was small enough to fit the front of the slipper but her heel got in the way. And as you might have guess it, she too, used the knife to shave off the back of her heel!! OUCH!!!

So much for happily ever after huh!!?? It was more like a scary graveyard tales than one I would have expected for a story meant to be read to children.

Fortunately, Laetitia's Chinese sucks so much, she doesn't understand anything from this chink version of Cinderella, which in my opinion should be rated NC16.

The ENT Infection

This was how I look a couple of weeks back. Healthy, pretty and feeling fantastic.

Last Friday, I developed a fucking nasty sore throat. Pardon my vulgarity, but there is no other better adjective I would rather use to describe how much pain I am in right now, all thanks to my damn throat!

My throat hurts so freaking bad that I cringe every time I swallow, to the extent that I would gather all my saliva in my mouth until I absolutely have to swallow or risk drooling, then I take it all in with one big gulp.

To make matter worst, my ears are blocked and a pain in my head, between my brows soon followed. This morning I woke up to a strange feeling of my eye sockets and a look in the mirror, I really hope I was dreaming it. My nose bridge, between my eyes had swell up and became very tender.

For the picture below, I drew a white line on the middle of my nose bridge so as to illustrate the puffiness around my right eye socket and my nose.

The area swell so badly that my nose seems rather crooked now and there is even a presence of what feels like a worrisome bump on the bridge of my nose.

A colleague of mine had thought I re-do my nose filler; if this is the result of my $500 worth of hyaluronic acid jab, I would have slaughtered my doctor already!

Now I look like a Neytiri of Avatar wannabe.... NOT!

I am, but a fucking frustrated person who had seen 2 doctors, spent more than $150 on medical bills and sucked more than a dozen lozenges in 3 days and still couldn't get rid of the pain in my throat nor the swell on my nose!!

Please make the pain and swell go away when I wake up tomorrow.

PLEASE!!!

.

The Family Trip - Down Under

I went on a 8D/6N self-drive trip to Melbourne with Laetitia and Mr Hubby, while Leonitus who is too young to travel with us, stayed with home with our helper and my mom.

We flew at night and reached Melbourne's airport on the morning of the second day. After checking into Swanston Grand Mercure, we collapsed and slept for 3 hours straight before going out for a bite and a walk around the city.

We drove to Philip Island on the third day and visited the Koala Conservation Centre. We spotted some koalas but they were all sleeping; they sleep like 20 hours a day. What lazy bones!

There was a koala on the tree behind us. Try spotting it.

Then we went to The Nobbies, which offer a spectacular sea view from the boardwalk. But unfortunately, all the seals seem MIA, we didn't manage to catch any sight of them.

It was so windy and cold, Laetitia kept shouting, "Wind, stop blowing! STOP!"

Later that evening, we went to the Penguin Parade, where we watched cute lots of cute little penguins emerged from the water and made their way back to their homes. But we weren't allow to take pictures for the fear of scaring the timid creatures.

We then spent the night at The Waves Apartment which I absolutely love because it was one of the most spacious accommodation throughout our stay. Next day, we visited this mini science centre place called Amaze N' Thing and Churchill Island Heritage Farm, which I feel was way over-rated.

The only thing I found attractive on Churchill Island was the sea of lavenders.

We bid Philip Island goodbye and drove to Mornington Peninsula and stayed a night at a motel.

The morning of our fourth day in Australia, we had our breakfast at The Rocks, a restaurant facing a beautiful pier.

I love my bacon and eggs on toast. It was unbelievably yummy!

After our lovely breakfast, we drove to Moonlit Sanctuary where we saw many Australian animals and we also got to feed and pat the wallabies.

After leaving the wild life conservation park, we drove to Ashcombe Maze and Lavender Garden which is like a botanic garden with some very large hedge mazes for us to get ourselves lost.

After our lunch at the garden, we made a stop at Cape Shanck Lighthouse before catching the Sorrento-Queenscliff ferry to make our way to Geelong. Oh, btw, we spotted some dolphins which swarm close to our ferry.

After 45-min of ferry and another hour drive, we reached our hotel at Geelong. We headed out to Geelong Waterfront and had the most sumptuous dinner at LeParisien Restaurant. I think it was the most expensive meal throughout this trip, costing around AUD$250!

On our fifth day, we drove along the Great Ocean Road. The view was truly breath-taking. We drove from Torquay to somewhere close to Lorne and we decided to do a U-turn because we had to proceed to our next destination - Ballarat, our farm-stay.

The farm-stay was an enjoyable experience for all of us. We got to have a taste of living in the suburban and being a 'farmer' for a day. And our host, Peter and Glenn were the most wonderful people, they made us felt really at home.

After spending a night at the farmstead, we had to leave and drive ourselves to the city again. We stay at a hotel near Yarra River for our last night in Melbourne and we visited the Melbourne Zoo before catching our flight back to Singapore in the late afternoon.

Overall, the trip was tiring because we practically were on the move, staying at different hotel in different city every night but seeing the smiles on Laetitia's face was just too priceless. I hope to bring Leonitus along in the next couple of years and then we would be travelling together as ONE family.