I'm slowly adapting to life without my mother.
The word "adapting" is so short, but the process is so much more complex than that. Everything she used to handle, I have to handle now.
It's true that the load will be lightened after a year when my bro graduates, but right now, I find myself having to make decisions that involve thousands of dollars. With a single mistake I can easily find myself significantly poorer within months.
I'm fully aware that I will definitely be losing some money within the first several years, but I don't really want to cut myself some slack just because of that.
I can't be too cautious either. Running a business costs money. For a small one like ours, it still costs several thousands per month. In other words, my profits from selling goods must also cover rent, salary and etc, not just the cost price and transport costs of each shipment.
Right now I'm like an unborn chicken living off the yolk of the egg. All the old goods and those already ordered by her will allow me to survive a few more months.
After that, it's going to be all me.
It may appear sad for some people, but standing on one's own two feet only in the mid-twenties isn't actually that rare for people around the world.
And I feel exactly like that. My main support in life is gone. I'm on my own now.
Obviously I worry.
There's absolutely nobody I can count on to help me whenever I need it in my work. There's no single person whose answer I can trust if I have questions regarding my work.
My buyer, though a personal friend of my mum's, barely knows anything about the clothings themselves. She's good at her job, which is selling and picking things to sell, but I can't ask her if nylon zips are better than plastic zips.
My workers, though very experienced, are workers and not business owners for very good (and obvious) reasons. As much as they'd like to think their years of experience (one of them's got about 10 years of it) will let them become my advisors of sorts, my few months of apprenticeship under my mum has taught me they really know jack shit about what we sell.
They're good at noticing what sells and what doesn't because they process the goods, but they do not know that just because certain characteristics help certain goods sell better doesn't mean they work for everything else.
These are the only people I can now ask if I have any problems, but their answers are not reliable. Each of them specialise in a specific part of the whole, but even if I put them together, I'm still not going to get the entire big picture that I need.
In short, my own judgement is the only thing that really counts.
The problem now is that I don't always trust it. I'm too rash and sometimes, I don't even make sense to myself.
The only person who has all the answers now lies on a hospital bed, barely able to eat and almost cannot speak. We now have to switch to porridge from rice because she's to weak to chew even that, despite the fact that she's been eating more than before she was hospitalized.
Today at lunch she could barely handle her first and only bite of watermelon.
I wonder what they can feed her in the hospice when she's transferred there.
As for myself, I've just discovered some really cheap food in my neighbourhood that's only available at night.
I'm sure everybody is familiar with the practice of giving discounts when a shop is about to close.
Apparently the two confectionaries/bakeries do that in my neighbourhood too. The last few times when I went to feed her dinner, I got back at about 8pm. I walked past them and saw those signs.
The one I frequent was offering $2.50 for 3 buns/sandwiches and $1.50 for 3 of those tiny buns that are half the size of the standard stuff and taste much blander.
For $5.50 I could buy enough stuff to cover 2 meals. Next time, I'll just spend $6 for 12 small buns. 6 buns per meal should fill me up.
There's also the risk of them turning bad soon after I buy them. Learnt that when I bit into the tuna bun this afternoon. It tasted slightly off even though I stored it in the fridge overnight. Edible, didn't give me diarrhoea but it was definitely close to the definition of "spoilt". Ate it anyway. I trust my body's defense mechanisms to do their jobs. Even if something happens, I wasn't working after that anyway.
Not going to buy tuna buns at night from now on.
Anyway for $5 I could have also gotten 6 normal buns. That would cover slightly over one meal. Probably 1.5 meals. I'd need to get something extra to cover the rest of the second meal.
Doing all these calculations because I'm worried about my finances. I still have to pay for my bro's tuition fees for one more semester. That's about S$4000.
I'm stopping my own for now. Probably take a year off, or at least one semester, to adapt to this new chapter of my life.
It's not easy. Right now I have to decide between lying to the factories that my mum has retired or just tell them straight up that she's dying.
It's not as simple as deciding whether I should be honest or not.
If I tell them she has retired, they will definitely tell me to ask her if any problems arise. If I ask them anything, it will sound strange because I could just ask her. For all I know it may worsen our business relations if I insist on troubling them instead of her.
Moreover, I can't hide her death forever. I know one of them comes over to Singapore once in a blue moon for vacation. I'm not aware of how my mum managed to convince her to not come over to our place but I don't think I'm as persuasive.
Keeping the lie indefinitely is going to be tiring anyway.
If I tell them she's dying, they're going to try to rip me off very quickly for sure, then feed me a lot of bullshit until I learn all the necessary lessons.
The best alternative, if I only look at this issue, is to stop doing business with them altogether. Start over, like a tabula rasa. Finding new ones isn't as hard for me as it was for my mother back then. I no longer need to fly over to China and walk the streets to find new wholesalers and factories.
But that's got its own issues.
The main problem is trust. I know how much I can trust them, and I can trust them more than I can trust new strange suppliers.
So much so that I can pay them too much and trust they will keep the change as advance credit for my next order. This is to my advantage because I can pay them when the exchange rate is favourable, and when things turn sour, I won't be affected immediately. I have yet to know how I can buy and store RMB at the moment.
At home, I suddenly find myself in possession of so many ingredients that I don't really know how to use, mainly herbs for soups. Then there are the unknown things in the freezer that I can't identify.
Other than food, there's the TV and her computer. I think I'll just give either that PC or my old incomplete PC away for Christmas. I can think of at least one person who might like a good PC like these, even if they're second hand. First, I've got to see which one my bro wants.
We'll still need a computer outside to configure the printer and router when the need arises, so maybe he'll want to switch that desktop with his current laptop.
Not going to touch everything else yet. It's too early.
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Monday, 31 October 2011
Rant 884 / Inb4 No More Qantas
I don't understand a lot of the lyrics but somehow I find myself playing this video so many times.
WHO WANTS CHOWDER?
I just noticed someone who arrived at my blog by googling the term "female bodybuilder having sex".
The strange thing is, that's something I just encountered in a JAV online.
Don't ask me how that happened; I don't remember mentioning such a thing ever.
Anyway the video was pretty disgusting. Even the cover was not enticing for us normal guys. I swear I saw a bit of it purely out of curiosity.
I really don't envy the actors in it. Not only did they have to have sex with her, they had to come to her. It takes... quite a bit of horniness, probably. If they could fuck her, they could fuck anything.
As for the top keyword, yea, "Witcher 2 nudity" and similar terms still top the list on a regular basis due to the misleading title I made for one rant.
I'm really not proud of it.
Stopped playing HoMM VI for some time now even though I haven't actually lost interest in it.
It's just that to fully appreciate the game, you need to have nothing much on your mind and plenty of time to play.
I do have quite a bit of free time but they're all split up into small sections.
For example, today is Sunday. I woke up at 10am, washed up, made coffee and compiled a list of things I need to buy soon. Waited till 11am but the cleaner didn't show up. We're not really communicating very well.
Or rather, she doesn't communicate very well. I don't always know when she wants to come over. There are several possible times and I can either ask her every single week or just wait around during those times.
Played till 1pm when my bro got back from NUH after feeding my mum.
Went downstairs to see if the vegetable stalls at the market were still open. Nope.
Speaking of the wet market, the stall that sells roasted meats is pretty cool.
It closes at about 10am. I'm not even exaggerating.
The other day I went down at about 10.30am to 11am to see if I could get some char siew (Chinese BBQ pork). He was already almost done cleaning up and the lights were off.
That's pretty amazing considering that it wasn't open when I went there at 6am once.
How many hours does he work for? 2-3 per day?
Damn!
All he needs to do is hang the meats properly and chop them up after that.
And people thought CEOs have really awesome jobs.
Anyway I got back up after buying some stuff and tidied my room a little in preparation for the cleaner to come. Some things must not be seen, even accidentally, by her now that I have to handle documents for my business.
She never arrived because apparently she had to stay home to babysit her employer's baby.
No big deal.
The only area that needs some attention is the part when my turtle's pool is because the drain keeps getting clogged by its foodscraps. The shedded shells aren't a problem because they're big enough for me to pick up before changing the water, but the tiny bits of fruits and vegetables are a little hard to filter.
I could clean the filter but when the water drained so slowly the last few days, well, the food scraps spread everywhere in that area and dried on the floor . Now they're also going to have to be scrubbed off soon.
Went for a nap at 3pm.
Got up just before 4pm and prepared dinner for me, my bro and his gf.
Wanted to just have a simple dinner consisting of 2 dishes initially: kangkong stir-fried with garlic, and steamed fish on beancurd.
Unfortunately I forgot about his gf until she arrived, so that plan had to be changed.
In the end I just whipped up the good old Kung Pao chicken. Simple dish but something I wanted to avoid because I'd already made it 3 times before this within the last 2 weeks.
Whatever.
The kangkong took a bit more preparation this time because my bro said it was too tough the last time. Not only did I cook it longer I also smashed the stems with the side of my cleaver a couple of times.
Ok, it wasn't really smashing. That's dangerous. All I did was lay the blade flat on the bunch of stems and hammered it with my fist.
You can do the same for garlic too instead of manually chopping it finely. Just slice it up and hammer it like that. Just be careful the blade is lying flat and you're hitting directly on the garlic or the force may propel the garlic bits out from underneath the knife.
Also used 5 cloves of garlic for 2 bunches of kangkong. How much that is exactly, I have no idea. Both the wet markets and supermarkets sell them in bunches of that size but they never state how heavy they are. "As thick as a man's wrist" is probably the best description I can come up with right now.
As for the fish, I placed the tofu on a metal plate, sprinkled some chopped spring onions on top before placing the fish on top and around it. Sprinkled some white pepper on all the fish too in case they had a strong fishy smell/taste.
Steamed for 10mins.
It was too long.
Half the fish and all the beancurd disappeared though. His gf doesn't eat fish.
Truth to be told, I'm running out of easy dishes to try.
If this goes on I'm going to have to start making soups.
Anyway, back to my day.
I was done with all the cooking only at 5.40pm. Most of the time was spent on preparing the ingredients and cleaning the bowls and pans from the previous night.
I quickly sliced up a mango, kept it in a plastic container and went to the hospital. Arrived just in time to see the nurse serving the beds around her. Her food and eating utensils were already prepared. I think the nurses were about to feed her after serving everyone else.
Brought the mango because they kept serving her oranges and apples. Both are too hard for her to eat. Oranges are soft but peeling sliced oranges will get messy. Apples are just too hard.
Had to feed her fruits. I don't know whether the vegetables were going to provide her enough vitamin C but I didn't want to take the risk. Mangoes are cheap at the moment anyway.
Speaking of fruits, I saw some yellow dragonfruits at the fruit stall the other day. From Vietnam, according to the vendor.
Yes I'm so noob I've never seen yellow dragonfruits before.
They were small and looked like underdeveloped versions of the purple ones I usually eat. The leafy growths around them looked more like buds because they were smaller and rounder.
 |
| Not my photo |
Ok, back to my day again.
Returned home only at 8pm. Washed up and had a slow dinner till 10.30pm. I can eat really slowly at times. Mainly because of the mango and chicken feet. I kept the center of the mango containing the seed for myself. That took some time.
Then the chicken feet one of the factories sent us also can't be eaten quickly. It's the white kind with some vinegar added. The owner knows we like it so she sends us some once in a while together with our samples. It's a PR thing I guess.
Not sure if it's working on me though. My impression of her didn't improve due the deliciousness of the chicken feet - her sweaters/abominations still haunt my memories today.
I think I see the sense of a social safety net and free healthcare.
It makes people save less. Less money is stored in banks, ie more money is being circulated in the economy.
In short, the government spends more and gets even more back.
After all, the economy has always been about how much money is changing hands, not in each hand.
Sunday, 30 October 2011
Rant 883 / That's Milk?
FRI
So I tried to order fast food to my office on Deepavali.
MCD doesn't deliver to my office! What kind of fuckery is this??!?!
Fortunately the hawker centre nearby was still opened, so this was the first time I visited that place. Usually I'm out of the office by lunch because... I don't want to eat with my employees. Generation gap.
Would you want to eat with your parents and their friends during lunch on weekdays?
Anyway they have Thai steamboat over there. Who the heck eats in the industrial areas of Singapore when they're free enough to eat steamboat meals with friends?
My bro probably discovered the joy of cooking for someone who appreciates his cooking.
I tell you, you get a nice feeling when someone compliments on your cooking.
Anyway the beef stew he made on Deepavali was pretty good, so he made a larger pot of it today.
On Deepavali, I left a piece of rump steak to thaw in preparation for a stew that night but found more things to do in the office than expected, so I told him to google a recipe like I did and do it himself.
Stews are easy enough that even retards can't ruin it, so I wasn't worried. After all, you just dump everything into a pot of water and cook till they're all mushy. And add a bit of salt and pepper.
Today he went to buy more beef just for this.
I was actually planning to make avocado salad with the extra celery but I was carrying too much when I got home to go and buy the avocados and carrots. This was a fortunate surprise.
So I've decided to send her to Assisi Hospice. The social worker has spoken to me and he has agreed to handle this for me.
The oncologist estimated she has several months left if she manages to avoid a serious infection. Due to the gaping wound on her chest, the risk of infection can't be low. I'm actually surprised she hasn't got a fever yet despite having that wound for months.
The tube to her brain, according to the neurologists, is not a good idea. In better circumstances, that would be okay, but again due to her wound, the tube will create the risk of bringing the infection into the brain. In short, too risky, not recommended.
Surgery is already not an option because of the spread. After scanning her abdomen yesterday, they found that it has spread everywhere.
Chemotherapy is also not recommended due to her age and her physical condition.
In fact the oncologist also recommends palliative care at this stage and spoke to me about the two hospices I can choose from: Assisi and Dover Park.
Stay-in hospices were recommended partly because we don't have a maid, all 3 of us are young and working/studying, and she is going to develop certain symptoms that will required trained specialists to handle.
Because she is not expected to live much longer, hiring a maid is also not a feasible.
The social worker spoke to me this afternoon on some of the same issues, and explained further about the hospices.
Assisi is near Novena MRT while Dover Park, despite its name, is at Tan Tock Seng hospital. One main difference he highlighted was that unlike Assisi, Dover Park offers the option of staying with the patient on her final nights in a private room.
Assisi does not allow visitors to stay overnight.
I'm choosing Assisi. She is going to be unconscious by then. Staying near her won't make her feel any better.
Even now, her psychomotor control is very bad. This morning a friend of hers told me she wasn't eating yesterday and had to be fed. I only visited her in the morning so I didn't watch her eat. She was still ok the day before.
So today I went over during lunch and saw that she was barely able to handle the fork and spoon.
I've discussed this with my bro and his gf, so we'll try to visit her during lunchtime and dinnertime. I can't do much about breakfast. I really don't want to get myself more depressed by depriving myself of my entertainment at night. They can handle dinner much more easily since they have classes till 6pm at NUS nearby.
She'll be transferred to Assisi next week, probably Tuesday. I have no idea what's going to happen then.
Staying in hospices won't be cheap. Without subsidies of any form, it will hit about S$6000 per month.
If my family income is about $2000, I may get 50% subsidy. This is quite possible actually.
However the government subsidy will only last 3 months. Appealing for more will not be possible unless our savings get wiped out by these bills. In other words, I won't get anything beyond 3 months of subsidies, if I get any at all.
The hospice will get someone to assess our finances so that they can decide how much subsidy we need.
The social worker was kinda strange. Maybe it was part of his job but he sounded as if I'm carrying a huge burden by handling everything at home, work and etc. This seemed to be worsened by the fact that I only knew about her condition a few months ago.
What.
This isn't bad. I've been provided with everything I need to survive after her departure. There's nothing terrible about what's happening now other than her imminent death itself.
Emotionally, she's been telling us that she was dying since years ago. We've all long accepted the fact that she's hit the average of 10 years that cancer takes to return. That it took this long was already a fortunate thing for her.
Perhaps if the same had happened to other people, it might have been terrible for them. For me, I have a job with very flexible working hours limited only by how much I'm willing to fork out for transport, so I don't get additional pressure from it. That probably helps a lot.
What's happening to me now is nothing. In a way, I am one of the luckiest people in the world.
In a way.
SAT
For some reason she seemed stronger tonight. My bro visited her in the afternoon and found the nurse feeding her. Just now I merely had to push food onto her spoon with the fork.
Skipped the slice of wholemeal bread as usual. Too chewy. Asked the nurse if I could replace it with something softer but she was too busy to answer me properly. It was medication time, so I wasn't even supposed to disturb her. I only did it because I thought it was a very simple matter.
Apparently it was not. She handed me the menu and told me to choose from it.
The problem is that the bread wasn't mentioned in any of the options, probably because it came with ALL the options. I just thought it was a waste to throw it away every time.
I'm sure some of you would consider eating it. I did, but now I'm old enough to realize that if I ever start eating her food, she might develop this notion that she could eat less so that I could eat more. Who knows? She could very well be imagining that I'm not eating well right now.
That's obviously not true. I just made some awesome chicken breast stir-fried with ginger and spring onion this afternoon.
Then I failed at dinner when my Beijing cabbage stir-fried with chicken breast got way too watery and the starch I tried to throw in... lumped together.
Epic fail.
I learnt then that the starch reacts much faster when thrown into hot water. The temperature is pretty important I guess.
Ah well. At least I feel better now that I know that the nurses feed her whenever we're not around, which means they feed her during breakfast and tea time (at 3pm).
I think the most interesting part of tonight's visit was the old lady who had just arrived today. According to her two visitors, she had "severe dementia". To make it worse, she was pretty deaf.
When I walked into the room, she was already talking loudly to nobody in particular. Or maybe she was talking to someone but whoever that was was ignoring her completely.
According to another patient, she was like that the moment they brought her in.
Even if one could comprehend her mix of Malay, Hokkien and Cantonese (and perhaps some other dialects), it probably couldn't have made any sense.
Near the end of my visit, she kept calling out to me in Hokkien and said some things that sounded like Cantonese. I think she was telling me to bring her home or maybe to the bathroom because she was either urinating or passing motion.
Called out to me lots of times but in Rome, we should all do as Romans do. In this case I just ignored her. At first she kept telling me it was very urgent and at the end, it was out.
Good thing they made her wear diapers... I think. Overheard the female visitor tell the male that she tried to tear off her diaper earlier. Hopefully they had put it back on again.
She wasn't even aware that she had a fractured leg, according to her male visitor. Probably her son, or maybe son-in-law and husband of her female visitor.
I just didn't like how he seemed so irritated.
Then again, I don't have a mother like that.
So I tried to order fast food to my office on Deepavali.
MCD doesn't deliver to my office! What kind of fuckery is this??!?!
Fortunately the hawker centre nearby was still opened, so this was the first time I visited that place. Usually I'm out of the office by lunch because... I don't want to eat with my employees. Generation gap.
Would you want to eat with your parents and their friends during lunch on weekdays?
Anyway they have Thai steamboat over there. Who the heck eats in the industrial areas of Singapore when they're free enough to eat steamboat meals with friends?
My bro probably discovered the joy of cooking for someone who appreciates his cooking.
I tell you, you get a nice feeling when someone compliments on your cooking.
Anyway the beef stew he made on Deepavali was pretty good, so he made a larger pot of it today.
On Deepavali, I left a piece of rump steak to thaw in preparation for a stew that night but found more things to do in the office than expected, so I told him to google a recipe like I did and do it himself.
Stews are easy enough that even retards can't ruin it, so I wasn't worried. After all, you just dump everything into a pot of water and cook till they're all mushy. And add a bit of salt and pepper.
Today he went to buy more beef just for this.
I was actually planning to make avocado salad with the extra celery but I was carrying too much when I got home to go and buy the avocados and carrots. This was a fortunate surprise.
So I've decided to send her to Assisi Hospice. The social worker has spoken to me and he has agreed to handle this for me.
The oncologist estimated she has several months left if she manages to avoid a serious infection. Due to the gaping wound on her chest, the risk of infection can't be low. I'm actually surprised she hasn't got a fever yet despite having that wound for months.
The tube to her brain, according to the neurologists, is not a good idea. In better circumstances, that would be okay, but again due to her wound, the tube will create the risk of bringing the infection into the brain. In short, too risky, not recommended.
Surgery is already not an option because of the spread. After scanning her abdomen yesterday, they found that it has spread everywhere.
Chemotherapy is also not recommended due to her age and her physical condition.
In fact the oncologist also recommends palliative care at this stage and spoke to me about the two hospices I can choose from: Assisi and Dover Park.
Stay-in hospices were recommended partly because we don't have a maid, all 3 of us are young and working/studying, and she is going to develop certain symptoms that will required trained specialists to handle.
Because she is not expected to live much longer, hiring a maid is also not a feasible.
The social worker spoke to me this afternoon on some of the same issues, and explained further about the hospices.
Assisi is near Novena MRT while Dover Park, despite its name, is at Tan Tock Seng hospital. One main difference he highlighted was that unlike Assisi, Dover Park offers the option of staying with the patient on her final nights in a private room.
Assisi does not allow visitors to stay overnight.
I'm choosing Assisi. She is going to be unconscious by then. Staying near her won't make her feel any better.
Even now, her psychomotor control is very bad. This morning a friend of hers told me she wasn't eating yesterday and had to be fed. I only visited her in the morning so I didn't watch her eat. She was still ok the day before.
So today I went over during lunch and saw that she was barely able to handle the fork and spoon.
I've discussed this with my bro and his gf, so we'll try to visit her during lunchtime and dinnertime. I can't do much about breakfast. I really don't want to get myself more depressed by depriving myself of my entertainment at night. They can handle dinner much more easily since they have classes till 6pm at NUS nearby.
She'll be transferred to Assisi next week, probably Tuesday. I have no idea what's going to happen then.
Staying in hospices won't be cheap. Without subsidies of any form, it will hit about S$6000 per month.
If my family income is about $2000, I may get 50% subsidy. This is quite possible actually.
However the government subsidy will only last 3 months. Appealing for more will not be possible unless our savings get wiped out by these bills. In other words, I won't get anything beyond 3 months of subsidies, if I get any at all.
The hospice will get someone to assess our finances so that they can decide how much subsidy we need.
The social worker was kinda strange. Maybe it was part of his job but he sounded as if I'm carrying a huge burden by handling everything at home, work and etc. This seemed to be worsened by the fact that I only knew about her condition a few months ago.
What.
This isn't bad. I've been provided with everything I need to survive after her departure. There's nothing terrible about what's happening now other than her imminent death itself.
Emotionally, she's been telling us that she was dying since years ago. We've all long accepted the fact that she's hit the average of 10 years that cancer takes to return. That it took this long was already a fortunate thing for her.
Perhaps if the same had happened to other people, it might have been terrible for them. For me, I have a job with very flexible working hours limited only by how much I'm willing to fork out for transport, so I don't get additional pressure from it. That probably helps a lot.
What's happening to me now is nothing. In a way, I am one of the luckiest people in the world.
In a way.
SAT
For some reason she seemed stronger tonight. My bro visited her in the afternoon and found the nurse feeding her. Just now I merely had to push food onto her spoon with the fork.
Skipped the slice of wholemeal bread as usual. Too chewy. Asked the nurse if I could replace it with something softer but she was too busy to answer me properly. It was medication time, so I wasn't even supposed to disturb her. I only did it because I thought it was a very simple matter.
Apparently it was not. She handed me the menu and told me to choose from it.
The problem is that the bread wasn't mentioned in any of the options, probably because it came with ALL the options. I just thought it was a waste to throw it away every time.
I'm sure some of you would consider eating it. I did, but now I'm old enough to realize that if I ever start eating her food, she might develop this notion that she could eat less so that I could eat more. Who knows? She could very well be imagining that I'm not eating well right now.
That's obviously not true. I just made some awesome chicken breast stir-fried with ginger and spring onion this afternoon.
Then I failed at dinner when my Beijing cabbage stir-fried with chicken breast got way too watery and the starch I tried to throw in... lumped together.
Epic fail.
I learnt then that the starch reacts much faster when thrown into hot water. The temperature is pretty important I guess.
Ah well. At least I feel better now that I know that the nurses feed her whenever we're not around, which means they feed her during breakfast and tea time (at 3pm).
I think the most interesting part of tonight's visit was the old lady who had just arrived today. According to her two visitors, she had "severe dementia". To make it worse, she was pretty deaf.
When I walked into the room, she was already talking loudly to nobody in particular. Or maybe she was talking to someone but whoever that was was ignoring her completely.
According to another patient, she was like that the moment they brought her in.
Even if one could comprehend her mix of Malay, Hokkien and Cantonese (and perhaps some other dialects), it probably couldn't have made any sense.
Near the end of my visit, she kept calling out to me in Hokkien and said some things that sounded like Cantonese. I think she was telling me to bring her home or maybe to the bathroom because she was either urinating or passing motion.
Called out to me lots of times but in Rome, we should all do as Romans do. In this case I just ignored her. At first she kept telling me it was very urgent and at the end, it was out.
Good thing they made her wear diapers... I think. Overheard the female visitor tell the male that she tried to tear off her diaper earlier. Hopefully they had put it back on again.
She wasn't even aware that she had a fractured leg, according to her male visitor. Probably her son, or maybe son-in-law and husband of her female visitor.
I just didn't like how he seemed so irritated.
Then again, I don't have a mother like that.
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Rant 882 / I Think This Blog Is Going To Get Pretty Depressing For Some Time
WED
So the price guide at the NUH website is not completely accurate.
Class C Ward, the cheapest 8-bed ward that's fan-ventilated, costs $33 per night. The 6-bed fan-ventilated Class B2 costs over $60 per night.
Class B1, the cheapest air-conditioned ward and has only 4-beds per ward, costs $260 per night instead of the $180 shown on the website.
This also excludes all the medicine, treatment and consultation fees.
Furthermore, government subsidies only apply for patients staying in the 2 fan-ventilated wards. Apparently I can upgrade from a subsidised ward to a non-subsidised one and still might retain some subsidies, but I cannot get anything if I downgrade the other way.
The upside is that non-subsidised patients get their choice of doctors, although that's useless for me when:
1) I have no idea who's good or bad at NUH
2) We aren't trying to save her life; the point is only to make her end as comfortable as possible
It's not cheap being sick although I'd say Class C wards are still pretty affordable. $33 per night is only $1000 per month. That's the least of one's worries when we take into account the treatment and stuff.
I'll list those when I get the bill in the future, if I'm ever in the mood to dwell on it then.
For my case, I'm prepared to spend half my inheritance on this. I don't expect this to happen but I also understand it is possible that it could exceed that amount.
Not a problem because I also expect my brother to split the bill. I'm not trying to be an ass but I believe in buffers, both in time and money. I need a financial buffer in life constantly, and if I do spend half my inheritance on this, I don't want to think about my buffer for the family business.
So I've been summoned to talk to her neurologists tomorrow morning. 9am. Ugh. I wake up at 9am for when I have to get to the office early.
The doctor told me they had a psychologist assess her and she was found to be unfit to make her own decisions due to her depression and some other problems.
I've already asked her directly last night to confirm this and also judging from her (in)actions for the last 10 years, the answer is simple.
All I'm planning to do is ask them how likely it is to save her, if it is possible to prevent her from suffering if we do not drain her brain and how long it will take before it's over if we don't drain.
At this point I'm very sure it's a waste of their time to save her and they should focus on other patients who are keener on staying alive. Moreover, my mum has already given up on life. Saving her will only make her go through all these crap again in the very near future (her diabetes has to be extremely serious by now since she stopped taking her meds a few months ago, and even a year or two ago, her doctor had already advised her to begin using injections instead of pills).
The expected outcome for tomorrow is that I will ask them to start palliative care for her if possible, and sedation when necessary. I believe right now it's better for her to be unconscious than let her lie on the bed waiting to die, but the next best thing is just to prevent pain.
I've been through a surgery for my shoulder before, so I have an idea what constant pain is like.
So a girl I know who was studying law in Hong Kong the last time we met is now a flight attendant. She was a teacher before that.
Law school must be pretty different from what I thought it was supposed to be.
THU
So it was a very simple conversation with the neurologists. They just told me what to expect and I told them what I expected.
They recommended to the "main team" to refer her to a palliative care team and I got a call from a representative of that group in the afternoon.
The neurologists put my mind to rest when they told me that she will eventually become unconscious sometime in the future due to the tumour in her brain even though it will also give her pain at some point. If it gets painful before she goes completely unconscious, I believe the palliative care people will sedate her appropriately.
Contrary to what some might think, it is nothing like what they show on TV. Family members don't cry all the time, we don't look gloomy constantly and we don't contemplate suicide.
I've lost both parents, so I know.
Crying is of course necessary. IMO it's therapeutic. Holding it in will only cause mental issues in the future.
I still crack jokes, I still laugh and I can still smile when I go to see her despite the fact that she is no longer the person I used to know.
Her memory is messed up, her speech is incoherent and she has been proven to be depressed. Yesterday her employees brought some chicken essence when they visited her. Today when I asked who brought those, she told me it was my bro's gf.
She did buy her chicken essence, but that was weeks ago and that box is still untouched in the living room.
The best thing I can do is to make sure I can handle the business. It's the busiest time of the year, so none of us working here can afford to be too disturbed by this. There are orders to make, goods to check and money to be remitted.
My very first shipment of goods has just been ordered. I'll be finding out for myself what the process is like. Fortunately the factory has agreed to handle the shipping on their end so all I need to do is handle the freight forwarding. I could have handled the shipping too but at the moment, I don't mind the risk of them ripping me off in exchange for a simplification of the process for me.
I think I know what to do. Whatever questions I have, it is now too late to ask my predecessor. I have been given the contact details of everyone I need to call for everything, so I will just call the company I think is the freight forwarder on my end.
All her instructions were given to me in Chinese, so when I made the deal with the new factory online in English, everything's a little less clear for me.
Money is a little problematic at the moment due to some old habits of hers, but I can handle those. I'm a much more honest person, so I dislike owing them money.
Still in the process of getting used to looking at such huge numbers in RMB and recalling that they become very small numbers when converted to SGD.
On the other hand, this new factory demands payment in USD. Hopefully this doesn't complicate things too much.
Hmm... probably not. In fact this could simplify my life a little since unlike the RMB, there is no annual limit on the remittance of USD to China.
For example, I just kinda wasted two trips' worth of cab fare today because of a problem related to this limit. Damn that pointless restriction. Everybody knows it's so easy to bypass it. All it does is inconvenience the very people are who throwing money into their country.
Tomorrow I'll have to go back to the bank and remit again.
So the price guide at the NUH website is not completely accurate.
Class C Ward, the cheapest 8-bed ward that's fan-ventilated, costs $33 per night. The 6-bed fan-ventilated Class B2 costs over $60 per night.
Class B1, the cheapest air-conditioned ward and has only 4-beds per ward, costs $260 per night instead of the $180 shown on the website.
This also excludes all the medicine, treatment and consultation fees.
Furthermore, government subsidies only apply for patients staying in the 2 fan-ventilated wards. Apparently I can upgrade from a subsidised ward to a non-subsidised one and still might retain some subsidies, but I cannot get anything if I downgrade the other way.
The upside is that non-subsidised patients get their choice of doctors, although that's useless for me when:
1) I have no idea who's good or bad at NUH
2) We aren't trying to save her life; the point is only to make her end as comfortable as possible
It's not cheap being sick although I'd say Class C wards are still pretty affordable. $33 per night is only $1000 per month. That's the least of one's worries when we take into account the treatment and stuff.
I'll list those when I get the bill in the future, if I'm ever in the mood to dwell on it then.
For my case, I'm prepared to spend half my inheritance on this. I don't expect this to happen but I also understand it is possible that it could exceed that amount.
Not a problem because I also expect my brother to split the bill. I'm not trying to be an ass but I believe in buffers, both in time and money. I need a financial buffer in life constantly, and if I do spend half my inheritance on this, I don't want to think about my buffer for the family business.
So I've been summoned to talk to her neurologists tomorrow morning. 9am. Ugh. I wake up at 9am for when I have to get to the office early.
The doctor told me they had a psychologist assess her and she was found to be unfit to make her own decisions due to her depression and some other problems.
I've already asked her directly last night to confirm this and also judging from her (in)actions for the last 10 years, the answer is simple.
All I'm planning to do is ask them how likely it is to save her, if it is possible to prevent her from suffering if we do not drain her brain and how long it will take before it's over if we don't drain.
At this point I'm very sure it's a waste of their time to save her and they should focus on other patients who are keener on staying alive. Moreover, my mum has already given up on life. Saving her will only make her go through all these crap again in the very near future (her diabetes has to be extremely serious by now since she stopped taking her meds a few months ago, and even a year or two ago, her doctor had already advised her to begin using injections instead of pills).
The expected outcome for tomorrow is that I will ask them to start palliative care for her if possible, and sedation when necessary. I believe right now it's better for her to be unconscious than let her lie on the bed waiting to die, but the next best thing is just to prevent pain.
I've been through a surgery for my shoulder before, so I have an idea what constant pain is like.
So a girl I know who was studying law in Hong Kong the last time we met is now a flight attendant. She was a teacher before that.
Law school must be pretty different from what I thought it was supposed to be.
THU
So it was a very simple conversation with the neurologists. They just told me what to expect and I told them what I expected.
They recommended to the "main team" to refer her to a palliative care team and I got a call from a representative of that group in the afternoon.
The neurologists put my mind to rest when they told me that she will eventually become unconscious sometime in the future due to the tumour in her brain even though it will also give her pain at some point. If it gets painful before she goes completely unconscious, I believe the palliative care people will sedate her appropriately.
Contrary to what some might think, it is nothing like what they show on TV. Family members don't cry all the time, we don't look gloomy constantly and we don't contemplate suicide.
I've lost both parents, so I know.
Crying is of course necessary. IMO it's therapeutic. Holding it in will only cause mental issues in the future.
I still crack jokes, I still laugh and I can still smile when I go to see her despite the fact that she is no longer the person I used to know.
Her memory is messed up, her speech is incoherent and she has been proven to be depressed. Yesterday her employees brought some chicken essence when they visited her. Today when I asked who brought those, she told me it was my bro's gf.
She did buy her chicken essence, but that was weeks ago and that box is still untouched in the living room.
The best thing I can do is to make sure I can handle the business. It's the busiest time of the year, so none of us working here can afford to be too disturbed by this. There are orders to make, goods to check and money to be remitted.
My very first shipment of goods has just been ordered. I'll be finding out for myself what the process is like. Fortunately the factory has agreed to handle the shipping on their end so all I need to do is handle the freight forwarding. I could have handled the shipping too but at the moment, I don't mind the risk of them ripping me off in exchange for a simplification of the process for me.
I think I know what to do. Whatever questions I have, it is now too late to ask my predecessor. I have been given the contact details of everyone I need to call for everything, so I will just call the company I think is the freight forwarder on my end.
All her instructions were given to me in Chinese, so when I made the deal with the new factory online in English, everything's a little less clear for me.
Money is a little problematic at the moment due to some old habits of hers, but I can handle those. I'm a much more honest person, so I dislike owing them money.
Still in the process of getting used to looking at such huge numbers in RMB and recalling that they become very small numbers when converted to SGD.
On the other hand, this new factory demands payment in USD. Hopefully this doesn't complicate things too much.
Hmm... probably not. In fact this could simplify my life a little since unlike the RMB, there is no annual limit on the remittance of USD to China.
For example, I just kinda wasted two trips' worth of cab fare today because of a problem related to this limit. Damn that pointless restriction. Everybody knows it's so easy to bypass it. All it does is inconvenience the very people are who throwing money into their country.
Tomorrow I'll have to go back to the bank and remit again.
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Rant 881 / Such Is Life.
My turtle seems to hate overripe plantains. The flesh of those I threw inside haven't turned black yet, just the skin.
I gave it three and all it did was take 2-5 bites out of each plantain.
Picky little fella.
I know nobody likes to read this sort of unhappy stuff but as you can see, I don't care.
Part of my motivation for typing this comes from my curiosity in whether any of my relatives visits this blog.
So far, no one else except my brother and his girlfriend knows about this and I've been instructed to keep this quiet unless I'm asked as far as my relatives are concerned.
I'm not breaking this rule because I don't believe my relatives visit this blog at all.
As for the friends who come here, I'd very much appreciate it if you guys just act like you didn't see this. I find it hard to enjoy good food in a depressing atmosphere, plus getting away from this is part of the reason why I've been so active in organizing outings.
My mum has finally been hospitalized. I had called 1777 for a non-emergency private ambulance to get her there.
I only did so because she was at the point where she couldn't even stand up anymore. We needed someone to take care of her since she does not want any males to bathe her and stuff, not even her own sons, and palliative care requires a doctor's recommendation.
Paid $80 to bring her to NUH.
I spent practically the entire afternoon and evening waiting due to the bed shortage. Meanwhile they took 3 hours to finish their assessment and another 3-4 to get her warded. After that, they informed me that since it was after office hours (10pm), there were only a few doctors on duty and we would have to wait because we weren't the only people who needed their attention.
While waiting at the A&E for her to be assessed and warded, I saw this giant banner on an opposite building saying "for the future". The rest were covered by trees and I didn't bother to move to read the rest.
Ironic. The future has no place for people admitted through here, the emergency entrance.
Diagnosis is as bad as expected. It is breast cancer, already stage 4. The constant bleeding, which I thought was an old wound that was prevented from healing by her diabetes, was really caused by the sheer mass of the tumour she had been hiding.
Part of it has also spread to her brain and currently blocking brain fluid. Though not urgent, she will soon require a tube to drain that. The problem is that this temporary solution can only last 10 days.
She had already guessed how bad the cancer was and told me as much weeks ago, mainly because things were the same for my father.
Fortunately she is rational, though slightly incoherent. This started on Sunday, when she said I was "金龟独立". She seemed to know what she was saying. To confirm this, I repeated the words back to her and saw her nod.
She is rational as far as I can tell, so I'm inclined to let her make her own decisions until she is no longer so.
Which brings to mind my personal debate about the responsibility of decision-making. I fear making decisions because I fear the consequences of mistakes. However, one of the consequences of pushing this responsibility to others is that I may not get the outcome I desire, and I must accept that.
To avoid the burden of mistakes, I must also lose control of the things around me.
To simplify it further, it's a choice between potentially making things better or just not actively worsen them. And the responsibility.
I had hoped the incoherence was due to dehydration, but after an entire afternoon and evening on the drip, she still said a few things that made no sense to me and the doctors.
I'm fully prepared to respect her decision to not receive treatment. When she is no longer able to make her own decisions, this is the path I will take.
It is over.
At some point in the future, I will request that she is kept unconscious till the end, just like my father was. It would be the best way to go in the absence of euthanasia.
Almost everything after her death has been prepared. She has told me to get her a short Buddhist funeral, just a simple matter of a few monks chanting for 3 days or so. It does not matter if her siblings come.
She has bought her own slot near my father's in the columbarium. It was depressing but she did it.
Her will has been prepared, so everything will be ok for a while. The ownership of the business has been transferred to me and I have been given access to all related bank accounts except the one in Hong Kong.
I have yet to consider that issue. I will be asking whoever handles her will about that matter. If not, I'll just fly there.
As for the business itself, I estimate that I have enough savings to last more than a year as long as I don't do too badly. My mum could do it when my father passed away without showing her how to handle the business at all, and my buyers and employees would find it in their interests to help me keep this business profitable even if all they care about is money.
Everything ends, good and bad. C'est la vie.
I'm not extremely depressed or anything. My bro and I have been thoroughly prepared emotionally for this. She's been telling us that she was dying for years though I'd always thought she was just depressed.
Denial, anger and acceptance. We've been at the third for months. Her hospitalization merely marks the beginning of the end.
I only wonder if I will be able to prepare my children for life after my death as well as my parents did for us, if I ever have any.
I gave it three and all it did was take 2-5 bites out of each plantain.
Picky little fella.
I know nobody likes to read this sort of unhappy stuff but as you can see, I don't care.
Part of my motivation for typing this comes from my curiosity in whether any of my relatives visits this blog.
So far, no one else except my brother and his girlfriend knows about this and I've been instructed to keep this quiet unless I'm asked as far as my relatives are concerned.
I'm not breaking this rule because I don't believe my relatives visit this blog at all.
As for the friends who come here, I'd very much appreciate it if you guys just act like you didn't see this. I find it hard to enjoy good food in a depressing atmosphere, plus getting away from this is part of the reason why I've been so active in organizing outings.
My mum has finally been hospitalized. I had called 1777 for a non-emergency private ambulance to get her there.
I only did so because she was at the point where she couldn't even stand up anymore. We needed someone to take care of her since she does not want any males to bathe her and stuff, not even her own sons, and palliative care requires a doctor's recommendation.
Paid $80 to bring her to NUH.
I spent practically the entire afternoon and evening waiting due to the bed shortage. Meanwhile they took 3 hours to finish their assessment and another 3-4 to get her warded. After that, they informed me that since it was after office hours (10pm), there were only a few doctors on duty and we would have to wait because we weren't the only people who needed their attention.
While waiting at the A&E for her to be assessed and warded, I saw this giant banner on an opposite building saying "for the future". The rest were covered by trees and I didn't bother to move to read the rest.
Ironic. The future has no place for people admitted through here, the emergency entrance.
Diagnosis is as bad as expected. It is breast cancer, already stage 4. The constant bleeding, which I thought was an old wound that was prevented from healing by her diabetes, was really caused by the sheer mass of the tumour she had been hiding.
Part of it has also spread to her brain and currently blocking brain fluid. Though not urgent, she will soon require a tube to drain that. The problem is that this temporary solution can only last 10 days.
She had already guessed how bad the cancer was and told me as much weeks ago, mainly because things were the same for my father.
Fortunately she is rational, though slightly incoherent. This started on Sunday, when she said I was "金龟独立". She seemed to know what she was saying. To confirm this, I repeated the words back to her and saw her nod.
She is rational as far as I can tell, so I'm inclined to let her make her own decisions until she is no longer so.
Which brings to mind my personal debate about the responsibility of decision-making. I fear making decisions because I fear the consequences of mistakes. However, one of the consequences of pushing this responsibility to others is that I may not get the outcome I desire, and I must accept that.
To avoid the burden of mistakes, I must also lose control of the things around me.
To simplify it further, it's a choice between potentially making things better or just not actively worsen them. And the responsibility.
I had hoped the incoherence was due to dehydration, but after an entire afternoon and evening on the drip, she still said a few things that made no sense to me and the doctors.
I'm fully prepared to respect her decision to not receive treatment. When she is no longer able to make her own decisions, this is the path I will take.
It is over.
At some point in the future, I will request that she is kept unconscious till the end, just like my father was. It would be the best way to go in the absence of euthanasia.
Almost everything after her death has been prepared. She has told me to get her a short Buddhist funeral, just a simple matter of a few monks chanting for 3 days or so. It does not matter if her siblings come.
She has bought her own slot near my father's in the columbarium. It was depressing but she did it.
Her will has been prepared, so everything will be ok for a while. The ownership of the business has been transferred to me and I have been given access to all related bank accounts except the one in Hong Kong.
I have yet to consider that issue. I will be asking whoever handles her will about that matter. If not, I'll just fly there.
As for the business itself, I estimate that I have enough savings to last more than a year as long as I don't do too badly. My mum could do it when my father passed away without showing her how to handle the business at all, and my buyers and employees would find it in their interests to help me keep this business profitable even if all they care about is money.
Everything ends, good and bad. C'est la vie.
I'm not extremely depressed or anything. My bro and I have been thoroughly prepared emotionally for this. She's been telling us that she was dying for years though I'd always thought she was just depressed.
Denial, anger and acceptance. We've been at the third for months. Her hospitalization merely marks the beginning of the end.
I only wonder if I will be able to prepare my children for life after my death as well as my parents did for us, if I ever have any.
Monday, 24 October 2011
Rant 880 / Sexual Harassment Laws Are Surprisingly New.
"Smells like fresh vagina in here =D"
Shin Tokyo / Ramen Ten at Clementi Cityvibe has terrible sushi and mediocre ramen. Seen a lot of Ramen Ten offers on the deal websites but never really looked at them.
Then we found this seemingly good discount for Shin Tokyo.
It was only when I got there that I noticed both signboards are above the same entrance.
The sushi was fine at first.
But when it started to get busy, the sushi rice became horrible.
It was way too mushy. Too much water or something.
We practically stopped eating after that. Took a few to occupy our itchy hands and mouths as we waited for the few non-sushi items to appear on white plates on the conveyor belt.
For the rest of 2 hours we just... discovered how bad sushi can possibly get.
Luckily they also served a few plates of potato wedges, onion rings and some other stuff, or we'd just be drinking green tea.
To truly accept life, we must accept death.
Why don't people do that?
Because when we accept death, we become more detached from the world. If we are to accept death, we must understand that everything ends.
We don't want to think about that.
Because thinking about it makes us lose part of our motivation to achieve anything.
It's not going to be there forever anyway.
I'm going to lose it in 50 years anyway.
I have a time limit for how long I can enjoy this.
Titles, awards and everything else don't matter to a dead body.
I believe that's why people in general find it so hard to accept that everything ends in death.
That's why the concept of an afterlife is so well-received in so many civilizations since antiquity.
Those who believe in the afterlife believe that what they have now can still retain their meaning to themselves after death.
Hence, they get more drive to get out and do things.
Who has more influence on society? The achiever or the guy who never really did anything because he understood nothing matters in the end?
It's not a definite thing. I'm not saying everyone who doesn't believe in an afterlife suck in life, but like evolution, it's all about the little differences in probabilities.
When a person dies, it's all over.
There is absolutely no chance that you will ever hear or see that person again.
Even when a person moves to a faraway place and loses contact with you, there is still a small chance that you might get to find him/her again. However improbable that is, the thought would still linger in the back of your mind and comfort you.
Not death.
The absoluteness is disturbing even for those who have felt it at least once.
Probably because nothing else in life is as ultimate as death.
"When there's a will, there's a way."
This is the only situation where this rule does not apply.
There is no way.
There is no reload.
There is no restart.
Even if you watch a video of that person, it can never be the same.
It is over.
Saturday, 22 October 2011
Rant 879 / Clearly The Libyans Are Better Hunters Than The Amurikans
In the news this week...
http://youtu.be/NDS81Ibazdk
But seriously, where were his female bodyguards????
Just got a free copy of Renegade Ops from a friend who bought a 4-pack on Steam.
I didn't even know that game existed until he gave it to me because I don't really go out of my way to keep myself updated on the latest games.
My knowledge of new games these days are really limited to the Steam Store page, my personal experience and random chatter on the Internet. No game review shows or magazines or whatever.
Looks interesting.
It seems to be an action game kinda like Alien Swarm except the players here control vehicles instead of people and the enemies are not aliens.
The Necropolis in HoMM VI is not really my style. This race truly excels in attrition warfare but I prefer something faster.
Necropolis cities can build a structure that stores the dead Undeads the player lost in battles within the last 3 days (or more when more than one of that structure is built). The player can then buy them back at a higher cost than usual before they expire.
Expensive, but in the long term, nothing can beat an evergrowing army that has had zero casualty in the entire game.
The problem with Necropolis is that the top tier unit, the Fate Weaver is rather unimpressive. Sure it's powerful and it's got 2 forms that it can switch to and fro, but the abilities of both forms have melee range.
Maybe it's because I've been using it the wrong way. Perhaps I should see it as a melee unit with a secondary ranged attack instead of a ranged unit with melee defense.
So I've made a rough estimate on my family total expenditure based on the box of cash we take from plus the bank statements I've been looking at.
I've been noticing these numbers only because I've been handling almost everything at home, excluding only laundry and part of the grocery shopping.
Laundry sucks because I don't really have a choice as to when I can do it. When my bro needs clean clothes, we have to start the washing machine. Once the machine's done, we must hang them or else they get very wrinkly after a few hours.
So my bro does it. He's the one who needs clean clothes most often. I go around topless all the time at home.
As for grocery shopping, he and his girlfriend goes to a nearby mall a lot for dinner whenever I'm eating leftover dinner from previous nights (I'm the sort of guy who prefers to cook too much and not risk having too little for dinner) because there usually isn't enough leftovers for more than one.
Since they visit the mall, they can buy things that I can't get in my neighbourhood, mainly because most stalls in the wet market are closed in the afternoon, the only time I go there.
This means I can't get meat and coffee. Coffee is not a problem because I grew up on instant, and fresh coffee is more of a luxury IMO. Meat, on the other hand, is a problem.
I could get from the 24/7 Shop N Save but only rarely. There are plenty of people around here who are lazy like me but not to my degree, so they get out too late to buy from the wet market but early enough to buy up all the meat from the Shop N Save.
There is a catch though - my bro is new to this, just like I was a few months ago. He's made several mistakes like buying a bottle of oyster sauce that's sweet instead of salty and it's scallop-flavoured, and another time he bought 6 packets of chicken breasts when I asked for 6 pieces of them.
The latter wasn't really his fault. I didn't know the NTUC there only sold entire breasts and I had expected them to sell those narrow strips instead.
Just like the mistakes I made before, we can afford to make these mistakes. The oyster sauce problem can be dealt with by remembering to add more salt and less of it when I cook, and the chicken breasts... were completely gone within 4 days.
I think I'll just get him to keep buying chicken breasts in those amounts. His gf apparently loves chicken breasts, so they use it whenever they cook.
They used 2 packets out of the 6. I cooked the other 4. 3 packets for 2 dinners for all of us and 1 for my own consumption. Baked a breast in basil and garlic the other day. Since I wrapped it in foil as usual, it was more like steaming.
I'd like to think that cooking dinner (plus a second meal) almost everyday is keeping my expenditure down. On the other hand, I splurge a lot on transport for my job since my office is pretty inconveniently located. Not the Tuas sort of bad, but still requires one bus transfer. Moreover I've to travel to the buyers and I cannot be late for those appointments.
Employees being late for work is not as bad as me being late for a buyer's appointment. The employees may get some form of punishment at most, but that's nowhere as bad as giving a client a bad impression of me. My livelihood pretty much depends on their impressions of me after all.
I think I'm getting the hang of this family feeding business. If that isn't true, at least I'm now confident I can survive a long time without buying cooked food from outside.
Probably because I just learnt that browning the imitation crab sticks beforehand really improves the flavour. I believe I can survive a long time on that fried crab sticks stir fried with random vegetables.
I feel that it's time we spend a bit more and call for some deliveries sometimes. Not fast food.
Just found this flyer at my gate from this Hot & Spicy Nasi Lemak Family Restaurant. It probably just opened an outlet nearby.
The prices listed are actually quite decent. It looks like we'll get much more from this than even KFC, which is the cheapest fast food with delivery service in my area.
They aren't cheap but they're still cheaper than many other delivery options.
http://youtu.be/NDS81Ibazdk
But seriously, where were his female bodyguards????
Just got a free copy of Renegade Ops from a friend who bought a 4-pack on Steam.
I didn't even know that game existed until he gave it to me because I don't really go out of my way to keep myself updated on the latest games.
My knowledge of new games these days are really limited to the Steam Store page, my personal experience and random chatter on the Internet. No game review shows or magazines or whatever.
Looks interesting.
It seems to be an action game kinda like Alien Swarm except the players here control vehicles instead of people and the enemies are not aliens.
The Necropolis in HoMM VI is not really my style. This race truly excels in attrition warfare but I prefer something faster.
Necropolis cities can build a structure that stores the dead Undeads the player lost in battles within the last 3 days (or more when more than one of that structure is built). The player can then buy them back at a higher cost than usual before they expire.
Expensive, but in the long term, nothing can beat an evergrowing army that has had zero casualty in the entire game.
The problem with Necropolis is that the top tier unit, the Fate Weaver is rather unimpressive. Sure it's powerful and it's got 2 forms that it can switch to and fro, but the abilities of both forms have melee range.
Maybe it's because I've been using it the wrong way. Perhaps I should see it as a melee unit with a secondary ranged attack instead of a ranged unit with melee defense.
So I've made a rough estimate on my family total expenditure based on the box of cash we take from plus the bank statements I've been looking at.
I've been noticing these numbers only because I've been handling almost everything at home, excluding only laundry and part of the grocery shopping.
Laundry sucks because I don't really have a choice as to when I can do it. When my bro needs clean clothes, we have to start the washing machine. Once the machine's done, we must hang them or else they get very wrinkly after a few hours.
So my bro does it. He's the one who needs clean clothes most often. I go around topless all the time at home.
As for grocery shopping, he and his girlfriend goes to a nearby mall a lot for dinner whenever I'm eating leftover dinner from previous nights (I'm the sort of guy who prefers to cook too much and not risk having too little for dinner) because there usually isn't enough leftovers for more than one.
Since they visit the mall, they can buy things that I can't get in my neighbourhood, mainly because most stalls in the wet market are closed in the afternoon, the only time I go there.
This means I can't get meat and coffee. Coffee is not a problem because I grew up on instant, and fresh coffee is more of a luxury IMO. Meat, on the other hand, is a problem.
I could get from the 24/7 Shop N Save but only rarely. There are plenty of people around here who are lazy like me but not to my degree, so they get out too late to buy from the wet market but early enough to buy up all the meat from the Shop N Save.
There is a catch though - my bro is new to this, just like I was a few months ago. He's made several mistakes like buying a bottle of oyster sauce that's sweet instead of salty and it's scallop-flavoured, and another time he bought 6 packets of chicken breasts when I asked for 6 pieces of them.
The latter wasn't really his fault. I didn't know the NTUC there only sold entire breasts and I had expected them to sell those narrow strips instead.
Just like the mistakes I made before, we can afford to make these mistakes. The oyster sauce problem can be dealt with by remembering to add more salt and less of it when I cook, and the chicken breasts... were completely gone within 4 days.
I think I'll just get him to keep buying chicken breasts in those amounts. His gf apparently loves chicken breasts, so they use it whenever they cook.
They used 2 packets out of the 6. I cooked the other 4. 3 packets for 2 dinners for all of us and 1 for my own consumption. Baked a breast in basil and garlic the other day. Since I wrapped it in foil as usual, it was more like steaming.
I'd like to think that cooking dinner (plus a second meal) almost everyday is keeping my expenditure down. On the other hand, I splurge a lot on transport for my job since my office is pretty inconveniently located. Not the Tuas sort of bad, but still requires one bus transfer. Moreover I've to travel to the buyers and I cannot be late for those appointments.
Employees being late for work is not as bad as me being late for a buyer's appointment. The employees may get some form of punishment at most, but that's nowhere as bad as giving a client a bad impression of me. My livelihood pretty much depends on their impressions of me after all.
I think I'm getting the hang of this family feeding business. If that isn't true, at least I'm now confident I can survive a long time without buying cooked food from outside.
Probably because I just learnt that browning the imitation crab sticks beforehand really improves the flavour. I believe I can survive a long time on that fried crab sticks stir fried with random vegetables.
I feel that it's time we spend a bit more and call for some deliveries sometimes. Not fast food.
Just found this flyer at my gate from this Hot & Spicy Nasi Lemak Family Restaurant. It probably just opened an outlet nearby.
The prices listed are actually quite decent. It looks like we'll get much more from this than even KFC, which is the cheapest fast food with delivery service in my area.
They aren't cheap but they're still cheaper than many other delivery options.
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