Christmas this year started well, starting with the afternoon before Christmas having a late lunch, just the kids and myself and their daddy at Sushi King. We enjoyed ourselves so much that I never got the chance to take some shots of the food or of Eric ravenously gobbling up all the sushi. The eve was spent at my cousin’s new house for a housewarming party. Christmas day was spent with relatives on my husband’s side. All in all, spending time with family is always a good thing.

In the evening, while trying to confirm the registration date for Eric’s first day of school, I was greeted with an unfortunate sight of the Stella Maris Primary School website being hacked. The worse thing about it was not the hack itself, but the fact that the hack was done earlier in the month, yet no one in the school’s supposed “web team” did anything about it. It goes to show that not even the Principal or the teachers of the school itself ever bother looking at their own web site, let alone use it.

(For more stories on gallstone symptoms, visit My Gallstones Symptoms)

I got a scare during the checkup with my OBGYN a few days ago when I found out that I had gallbladder stones. My ultrasound scan the next day confirmed its existence; it filled a quarter of my gallbladder. My OBGYN doc told me that it’s most probably cholesterol stones due to unhealthy eating. Big surprise there. He also told me that a surgery is required if the condition is serious.

What he didn’t tell me is that with every surgery, they will remove the gallbladder altogether, instead of just blasting the stones away like I’d imagined. There is almost literally no other choice than removal. No way am I going to have a missing organ in me. Whatever organs I have, will stay with me till my soul is gone from this world. (more…)

This is why I hate living in apartments and reading the news. My heart breaks every time I see injustice done to our children. These couple of weeks I’ve been reading nothing but bad things like:

• A body of a newborn found in a construction site near Menggatal,
• Babies died or are ill due to contaminated milk by irresponsible factory in China,
• A father and uncle r@ping their mentally-challenged daughter/niece since she was 11,
• A 16-year old girl murdered, quite possibly by his drop-out boyfriend and friends.

And here’s what’s happening around my apartment, and in the same stairwell

• A father beating his children (sounded like they’re as young as 9 years old up to their teenage daughter) almost every day and their mother screaming — couldn’t understand what they were talking about because it was all in Chinese but I swear one time a girl even shouted “Tolong” [help]), up until that one day when I couldn’t take it anymore and reported it to the guards; the guards told me afterwards that the father was “just reprimanding them”, and so far till today no screaming… yet,
• A little baby screaming his or her heart out late at night, every night, for more than 10 minutes, almost sounding as if he or she was tortured or something (but I admit, some babies do cry like that for no apparent reason, speaking from experience).

I’m getting very paranoid about the state of things, that sometimes I couldn’t help myself but cry late at night and prayed to God so hard that these children be spared from their suffering.

I hate the fact that I don’t have the guts to do more about it. It’s fear that I may be seen as meddling about in other people’s affairs, which may put my family in jeopardy. My husband even tried to stop me from reporting to the guards when the father/daughter scream-and-slash fest was going on somewhere above our floor.

The school bus may look harmless to you just by looking at the photo, but you didn’t see how packed it is. School children were stuffed in like they were in a can of sardines.

How desperate is a school bus operator for money that he or she (in this case, unfortunately, it’s a she) is willing to let the kids get cramped like that? A bus which is suppose to seat 15 at the most seemed to seat almost 25 kids.

Give me the number of the school bus association, and the next time I see one like this, not only will I report it to the association, I won’t hesitate to report this predicament to the papers.

For the record.

• Ezra’s first fever: 22 July 2008
• Ezra’s first cold: 28 July 2008

Blame it on the movies. Before Ezra’s medical check-up, I was always under the impression that a child would definitely follow either his father’s or his mother’s blood type ONLY. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Ezra’s blood type was B, whereas mine was O and my husband’s was AB! It wasn’t right — it MUST be only either AB or O! I mean, that’s what the movies say right?! That the child must follow exactly the blood type of either one parent?!

After a little explanation by the pediatrician, I now understand that:

• If one parent is O and the other is either A or B, your child can be O or A, or O or B.
• If one parent is AB and the other is either A or B, your child can be either A, B or AB.
• If both parents are A or B, your child can be O or A, or O or B.
• If both parents are O, then your child can only be O.

There you go, a biology lesson learned. Damn those scary child-switch horror movies!