Puteri’s Musings 2

Some years ago, I read a story by a journalist recounting why some of his Indian relatives wanted to emigrate to the US. One of the reasons they gave was they wanted to move to a country where the poor are fat.

The following story by NPR illustrates that point rather well. I do not want to sound heartless but I think going without meat could be one of the best things that the Nunez family can do for themselves!

If NPR is trying to make us feel sorry for folks like the Nunez in Ohio, I think they fail miserably once people see how well fed they look!

Full NPR story here.

America, Why I Love Her
narrated by John Wayne

You ask me why I love her? Well, give me time, and I’ll explain…
Have you seen a Kansas sunset or an Arizona rain?
Have you drifted on a bayou down Louisiana way?
Have you watched the cold fog drifting over San Francisco Bay?

Have you heard a Bobwhite calling in the Carolina pines?
Or heard the bellow of a diesel in the Appalachia mines?
Does the call of Niagara thrill you when you hear her waters roar?
Do you look with awe and wonder at a Massachusetts shore…
Where men who braved a hard new world, first stepped on Plymouth Rock?
And do you think of them when you stroll along a New York City dock ?

Have you seen a snowflake drifting in the Rockies…way up high?
Have you seen the sun come blazing down from a bright Nevada sky?
Do you hail to the Columbia as she rushes to the sea…
Or bow your head at Gettysburg…in our struggle to be free?

Have you seen the mighty Tetons? …Have you watched an eagle soar?
Have you seen the Mississippi roll along Missouri’s shore?
Have you felt a chill at Michigan, when on a winters day,
Her waters rage along the shore in a thunderous display?
Does the word “Aloha”… make you warm?
Do you stare in disbelief When you see the surf come roaring in at Waimea reef?

From Alaska’s gold to the Everglades…from the Rio Grande to Maine…
My heart cries out… my pulse runs fast at the might of her domain.
You ask me why I love her?… I’ve a million reasons why.
My beautiful America… beneath Gods’ wide, wide sky.

Happy Birthday, America, and may God continue to bless you.

These are just a few of the quilts that my cousin’s wife made. She stitched everything by hand except for the borders and the lining.

I was quite impressed because the different kinds of fabrics (cotton, polyester etc) all came together beautifully. Most of the fabric was bought from tailors in town who have left over fabric from their clients.

I would not have the patience to cut the templates necessary for the patterns, then loosely stitch the small pieces of fabric to the template and then hand stitch all the pieces together to form the pattern and the finished quilt!

Kudos to her and a job well done on each of the quilts!

I have a friend who used to have this strange habit of blinking her eyes and scrounging her face. It was distracting to say the least! I thought she had picked up the bad habit from her mother, as suggested by her aunt. This friend seemed to have outgrown the blinking and the face scrounging after she left home and lived away from her mother.

I also know a pastor who frequently clears his throat as he delivers his sermon. I attribute that frequent throat-clearing to nervousness because it does not appear that he has phlegm in his throat that needed clearing!

And then there was this English pastor’s teenaged son that I met many years ago. He had this strange neck movements. I had to try very hard not to stare because I had never met anyone with such strange neck movements! I do not know if he has outgrown these strange neck movements or had these twitches treated as it has been years since I last met him.

I did not realize, back then, that the blinking, the throat clearing and the strange neck movements were facial tics! I had thought that facial tics were limited to uncontrollable facial twitches!

The medical term for facial tics is Tourette Syndrome which is a neurological disorder and the symptoms include, and not limited to, eye blinking, mouth twitches, eye squinting, throat clearing, facial contortion, nose wrinkling and compulsive grunting.

These facial tics can be treated with medication but like most medication there are some side effects that could even be dangerous. There are some parents, however, who claim that the facial tics that their children were suffering from were treated successfully without medication.

I guess the only way to find out is to give the alternative treatment a try. We can’t know unless we are willing to give it a try, now can we?

We have never been to Hong Kong except for the stop-overs at the airport on our previous trip to and from Malaysia.  This time when the cheapest tickets we could find on Cathay Pacific required a long lay-over, we took the opportunity to spend the night at a hotel in Lantau Island which is where the new Hong Kong Airport is located.

I left the hotel reservation job to Doug after I had stated my preference.  Doug would not be Doug if failed to look for cheaper accomodations!  It turned out the hotel he had chosen was a 30-minute long and winding drive up and down the hill from the airport!  Boy, was I frustrated at having to waste 30 precious minutes in a taxi!

What was worse, the hotel did not have a room with two full-sized beds!  Duncan and I occupied the bed, and Doug and Denice slept on the floor.  Even though I complained about the standard of the room and the long drive to and from the airport, the location of the hotel was really quiet and beautiful.

The beach which was practically at the door-step of the hotel. It was only 5.30 a.m. but already there were people walking about and riding their bicycles on the bricked path along the beach.

Dragon boats?

Doug and the kids were already up and about at 5.00 a.m.! After a few hours sleep everyone was awake due to jet lag. We were already sitting at a dim sum shop at 5.50 a.m. and enjoying our breakfast. None of us could speak cantonese but we got along fine just by pointing at what we wanted after I looked under the steaming baskets.

Apartments built on the hillside near the hotel. Lantau Island used to be very rural and a large part of it still is, but with the airport and the Convention Center built on it, it has grown quite a bit .. as told to us by the English speaking and friendly taxi driver who drove us from the airport to the hotel.

Next time, we vowed to stay a couple of days in Hong Kong and visit Hong Kong proper.

Duncan couldn’t wait to pick up this old coconut that had fallen from the tree. “Totonut”, is how he pronouces the word.

He kept telling me he wanted to drink some coconut juice so my mother got busy and got a few young coconuts for us to enjoy. After a sip of the coconut water, he did not want to drink it. The coconut water was sweet enough but it did not quite taste like the coconut water he was used to drinking .. the kind that had some syrup added to it when we order it from a restaurant!

Oh well, more coconut water and tasty young coconut flesh for me to enjoy!

Being away from home for an extended period and staying at a place with such a lousy internet connection is not fun at all!   :sad:   Look at the date of the previous post! 

The dial-up internet connection at my parents’ place is so slow that I have given up on it.  Not only did I tie up the phone line, I also wasted so much time waiting for pages to load.  I managed to find a weak wi-fi signal which seemed to appear in spurts and I have been relying on that signal for the last several days.

Today I had to borrow my oldest brother’s laptop  because it seems to receive the wi-fi signal a lot better than my lap top.  But still the connection is not that great from my old room in my parents’ house.  A weak signal is better than nothing, right?  Especially if it doesn’t tie up the phone line?

A reader, who is also back in Malaysia on vacation, describes not having a decent internet connection as having a “crippled life” :lol:   That is quite an apt description!