Awkward Alzheimer

I've been meaning to get back to blogging for a while now but life has gotten real busy. In the last few months since my last post, I have:
- graduated
- got a "big girl, grown up" job
- stepped down from leadership
- figured out my faith a bit more
- been a bridesmaid at my brother's wedding
- found my calling
- grown up
- bought things because I need it for work.


I've also had the privilege of having my "Ah Ma" (paternal grandmother who lived in Perth) move in with us for awhile. My Ah Ma has Alzhemiers, she's had it for awhile now. My earliest memories of this saga are of a family meeting where she was beginning to realise that her memory wasn't quite up to scratch and I remember my biggest concern then at age 10 was that my Ah Ma would forget my name and who I was...12 years later, she doesn't know my name and that is okay. She recognises my face and she tells me she loves me and I think she means it. Sometimes she forgets I don't speak Hokkien but we have a giggle about it. Now that I'm 22 and have worked in the healthcare system, my biggest concern is her safety... and yet there's that niggling thought about her not knowing my name. Does she think she is sitting next to a stranger every time I sit next to her on the couch? Maybe the fact that I'm calling her Ah Ma alerts her to the fact that I am one of her granddaughters. One night I came home from work and walk past her room. She sees me and is genuinely excited and welcomes me thinking I've flown in from Melbourne to Perth. I'm grateful for these moments. 


For the longest time, I'd look at her sitting on the couch and wonder if I should just come out and say " Hi Ah Ma, I'm I-Shen", and yet I didn't. I find it so terribly awkward to have to reintroduce myself by my name to my grandma and it was such a struggle between wanting her to know that I wasn't a stranger so I didn't freak her out when I hugged her (not that I think she would, she'd willingly hug anyone) and getting over the awkwardness of it all. Then... it hit me. 


My Ah Ma was a Chinese School Teacher.. actually both my grannies are, but you'd never know cause I can barely write my own name in Chinese. I speak enough to continue a little conversation but not much else. But my Ah Ma doesn't remember this, so I've asked her to "teach" me Mandarin even though I know  the basics already. We begin by the general:


me:Ni hou ma?
     (How are you)


ah ma:Wo hen hou, ni ne?
           (I'm very good, how about you?)


me:Wo ye hen hou. Wo de ming she Lin Yi Sien. Ni jiao she mo ming je?
      (I'm also very good. My name is Lim I-Shen, what is your name)


ah ma: oh very good!  Wo de ming she Huang Pao Ying.
           My name is Ng Pao Ying


we've been having this same conversation regularly now. I'm glad I've found a way of getting past the awkwardness of having to outrightly tell her my name. Now I'll just have to think more laterally about getting her to stop washing the dishes repeatedly seeing as we are in a drought prone state.

the digital age and the real person.

twitter, facebook, myspace(obsolete), google+

where does one draw the line? where do you say, this is the private side of me, this is the public side of me. Where do we stop "crafting" who we are to the outside world and just be real? When do we stop writing for the sake of gaining attention and write for the sake of expressing thought, logic and reason? When does the person we are online become the person we are in our daily lives?

I've been known to come off as scary. I keep my distance often, I'm pleasant and cordial enough but I'm not exactly one to hug you when we first meet. When you do get to know me and you are in "the circle of trust" I'm blunt and I say things that may seem a touch un-PC, funny, but very much unfiltered. There are however, no qualms about my stand on things. I DO apologize when I'm wrong but I don't um and ah about things that matter to me. 

So last night, the message was on compassion and justice and there was a call at church to stand if you wanted to "stand for compassion and justice". I would've, I didn't want to be the odd one out. But something within me stirred and said "no, don't stand up, despite what others may think, you have compassion and justice in you". I sat in silence, in prayer, squeezing my eyes shut until i looked around as one by one everyone stood up and I sat... and knowing by my own convictions that I did not need to stand up to prove to anyone that I was compassionate and for justice. 

I didn't need to physically stand up to show that I stood for something I always stood for.

I sat because I know without a doubt that I do seek compassion and justice... 

I just didn't need to let everyone else know.

just like how I think sometimes people post things on facebook so other people can validate their "goodness"

when words fail..

seriously?

the new breast cancer awareness campaign on facebook? why do intelligent women keep giving in to this nonsense. its pretty infuriating when there is no clear link between tricking people into thinking you are pregnant and actual breast cancer awareness... in fact if a breast cancer patient has had to have a mastectomy it can often leave them feeling less feminine.. so what does society do? rub pregnancy (which is pretty darn feminine into their face.. gee what a good idea) 

this is almost as tasteless as the last round of using 

sexual innuendo to raise awareness...


instead, choose to educate the masses, do some research, 
like:
 last year 1.5 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer
in australia, 1 in 11 women are diagnosed with breast cancer
remember to do a checkup once a month 
OR


http://www.cheekycheckup.com.au/

theres something in the water

sometimes i sit on the beanbag outside on the deck at night. Its quiet and ruby falls asleep with her chin on top of my feet. I think she instinctively knows that i like having warm feet.I like how dogs are like that, just knowing. Today felt empty. I think i like being around people more than i know. I woke up at 11. fluffed around... went back to sleep at 4. woke up at 6. had dinner. and then nothing. i think i need to move somewhere.. even the city would be fine. oh i also trolled the internet for glasses.. found the PERFECT ones. picture coming soon i think

i don't like it..

recently i was sent this:

Remember the game last year about what color bra you were wearing at the moment? The purpose was to increase awareness of October Breast Cancer Awareness month. It was a tremendous success and we had men wondering for days what was with the

colors and it made it to the news.

This year's game has to do with your handbag/purse, where we put our handbag the moment we get home for example "I like it on the couch", "I like it on the kitchen counter", "I like it on the dresser" well you get the idea.

last year, i participated. my facebook status simply stated a colour. thats cool, bras, boobs, yeah i see the relation. this year women were encouraged to write about where they left their handbags.. handbags? boobs? unrelated. secondly. why not follow last years theme and once again use a color coding system? call me a prude, but in a world where everything is already oversexualised, why should something good (eg. breast cancer awareness) be marred by sexual innuendo. Men have no idea that these statuses (stati?) are about handbags, what else are they going to assume? Anyone can clearly see this is blatant sexual innuendo. Which makes me wonder

a) women don't want to be treated like a piece of meat but apparently it is okay suggest that you may like to have sex in random places on a public forum. what msg are we sending the fellas?

b) is a 13 year old boy somewhere having a massive laugh over this?(after figuring out how to get hundreds of women to post about where the like "it")

c) would you be okay with you 12 year old sister/cousin posting this.. if you had no idea about the context of the status.

maybe i'm getting old, maybe i'm traditional...

maybe i'm just a bit sick of an oversexualised culture where other people feel the need to apologize for being virgins.

the crowd is stupid.

p.s: try telling someone who's going through chemo or had a mastectomy that you're helping raise awareness by telling all your friends that you "like it on the floor".

highly disrespectful

in a bid to bring about awareness, see what you can do at:

http://www.nbcf.org.au/

also:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ibreastcheck/id391746205?mt=8

the good steward

firstly, i strongly dislike the westboro baptist church, i had a little look at their website and its just full of utter nonsense. No christian should so full of hate. But hey, who am i to judge, i'll let the big guy look after that. maybe in a smite-y sort of way.

secondly, i strongly dislike old men who drive lousy ford laser with the rego PIO 983. if you ever see him, stay away, he is likely to crash into you on purpose and try and blame it on you so he can claim insurance on his already stuffed up car. also, bonus points if you spot his wife/daughter with a beard.

x x x x x

but the title of this post is the good steward so i must then deliver a post about the title. i stumbled across a book in the family toilet (yes, toilet reading) called "Daughters of Eve" by Virginia Stem, turning to the last page i found a table regarding the amount of emission and resources that were reduced in the production of the book. a paragraph above explained that as stewards we also need to take care of creation. now having been brought up in church for the past 20 so years almost every single sermon i've heard about stewardship has been about time or money. this book however has brought up the point that as good stewards the environment is also important. the sad thing is that we never hear about being eco friendly christians when it is an important issue. mr.b comes from a pretty eco friendly family so he has instilled a fair bit of eco friendliness in me. what a change it would make, if every christian decided to do their bit of the environment. we talk constantly about making a change in the world but some of us don't do much for the earth and are therefore not being good stewards. so, if you are a christian, be a good steward, plant a tree... or maybe just switch of the lights that aren't needed.

sometimes we wait and nothing happens.

two years into my course,i still feel the same, nothings changed, not much. Maybe i'm forcing myself in trying to like the course. Still, it's only 2 more years and besides, i still have no idea as to what i want to do. A million things come to mind when asked what i want to do. there is that one thing... rewind, late 08 early 09, back to a little village surrounded by rice fields in rural cambodia. a weathered face comes to mind,a face carved by hardship that magically breaks into a smile despite everything that has happened. a little old lady, whose only surviving relative is a daughter stricken with AIDS who is struggling to make ends meet. rewind to the old man sleeping beneath a blanket of cardboard in the dust and dirt of Phnom Phen. no one does a thing to help because of their belief in karma. according to them, they deserve to suffer for a sin committed in a supposed previous life. at 2:14am in the morning, all i can think of is my want to do something, anything to give the elderly a better life. long have they been forgotten as children are still "young" and are better "investments" whilst the elderly have experienced life and hence have lived. what happened to dignity? what happened to social justice? maybe, this course, this stupid 4 year course i'm forcing myself through will eventually fund this desire of mine.. who knows. i might surprise myself if i dream big.

tomorrow, 1 month. ohlove

oh love..

now, i know i haven't been blogging much or at all really but i've been a busy little bee trying to get my life in order. the past few months have been a rollercoaster ride of emotions. in chronological order

- i met my niece for the very first time. she is, for those of you that don't know, singlehandedly one of the most beautiful beings on earth. so much so that i won't be posting any photos because the web is filled with scary people.

- i fell in love with my family in perth all over again. i spent an incredible 5 days with my uncles, aunts, cousins and my granny. yeah, she couldn't remember me sometimes, but i know she still loves me regardless.. i spent more time then i ever have with my cousin em and her hubby mike, and it was just so good to reconnect. unfortunately i didn't get to spend as much time with leish as i would have liked to.. and i didn't get to see james.. at all :(

or dan for that matter.

the beautiful yanchep lagoon. roadtrip with my uncle richard

- a certain boy and i are "official", it has been an incredible 5 years in the making and he still amazes me, which is no simple task because i get distracted and i'm so easily bored.. *i know, typical of my generation, constantly needing to be entertained* more to come on this later. maybe.

master.b & miss.i

-i've been through a extreme rough patch with my walk with God. being hurt by certain people at church really made me question a lot of things and i began to take several steps back from everything to do with christianity bringing me to an all new spiritual low. Of late, things have begun to change and God has reached out to me and revealed his amazing amazing heart to me despite my circumstances and my doubting and everything that went on. ah the mercies and grace of a wonderful saviour is astounding.

*capital letters are over-rated.. seriously.

its all so exciting and terrifying

exams signify the coming of a holiday season and the end of my mental stability.. i kid, sort of.

maladresse

as promised the first sketch. oh woe, tis the exam season soon. it's really not the nicest time of the year. cash is running verrry low. things aren't quite working out at the moment. but thats okay. : ) i have liddle bits of life that make everything okay. like when it's been hailing and raining and you get a good spot of sun. i'm very much looking forward to the next 5 years. i think it'll be rather splendid. Oh Mao's last dance is MUST see. 500 days of summer? not impressed... it was okay. but thats all it was.

the whirlwind

i'm back from a wonderful weekend getaway with the most wonderful bunch of people ever. i've been so busy with everything  else that i've sort of drifted away from so many people that i forget how much i miss my friends and why i became friends with them in the first place. ALSO, i'm starting to realise that i'm doing alot of things to make other people happy but it just absolutely kills me [perhaps this explains the over exhaustion where sleep doesn't come easy and when i do i'm dead to the world ]. for now, despite everything good that has happened it feels like my world is crumbling a bit, but worry not, the good bits are kinda duct taping my whole world together for now. sometimes i really just wish God didn't give us free choice and he didn't give us the emotions to care wether or not we had free choice. it would make things so much easier, sometimes i think that people aren't thinking when they say that God gave us free choice because he loved us. If God just made it so that we did everything right we wouldn't have been kicked out of heaven. even if we were, we'd always do the right thing, thus making it impossible for anyone to go to hell.. this whole faith thing. WHY does it have to be so confusing? i have so many unanswered questions, i don't want textbook answers, they don't make sense. {rant off}

this old man was at the top of the wat in siem reap

he was just waiting and waiting for the sunset but his spot got stolen when he got up hence he missed seeing the sun vanish after which it was so very dark

sometimes it feels like  i'm waiting for something spectacular to happen but in doing what someone else wants me to, i'll miss the best bits of my life.