Easy Recipe for a Butter Cake with creamcheese frosting

2 cups self raising flour
3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
2/3 block of butter
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1 tablespoon of grated orange rind

Mix all ingredients by hand. Pour into cake tin ( 8" diameter )
Bake in 180 degree C (pre-heated) oven for 45-50 mins

Cream cheese frosting
2 cups icing sugar
1 block of cream cheese
1/2 block of butter
2 teaspoons of orange essence
Cream all together together
Ice cake when it's cooled down

Young AHs grow up to be old AHs!

I've often wondered what ever happened to my classmates , especially the ones who were the trouble makers and "a***h***s" who made the teachers and some students lives a living hell. Whatever happened to the class joker and clown or the students who came to class stoned out of their minds and just slept behind the class whilst the teacher tried her best to conduct the class and ignore these "hopeless" cases. Thanks to technology and facebook I've had the opportunity or rather displeasure of reconnecting with some of these people whom I'd lost contact with over the years. Some of these "hopeless" cases grew up and became successful in their own way. Some never grew up and others passed away from various causes. I "met" a couple of these guys on facebook and after several written exchanges I realized that they never changed. The same idiotic and mindless remarks couched in tasteless and racist jokes pepper their facebook pages. When you try to point out the offensiveness of their remarks , they'll tell you to lighten up. Worse then that they won;t even admit their remarks were offensive or racist and become defensive about it. You couldn;t carry on a serious conversation with them without them making a big joke out of everything. Now I remember why I avoided these guys in school like the plague. I have since blocked and "unfriended" them on Facebook.


So I guess the moral of the story is.... young "A***H***"s do grow up to old "A***H***"s !!

Why I Don't Speak Mandarin Today

I was one of those who had to "suffer" in school when Mandarin was introduced as a compulsory second language. I think in the 2 years I took it in school, you could count the number of marks I got on the fingers of your hands!! Thank God at that time we were allowed to opt for another language and being Peranakan the obvious choice was Malay. Why children of Peranakan families were subsequently never given that choice was something I never understood but that’s another point of contention. I think my Chinese teacher breathed a sigh of relief when he was told the news because I was no longer going to pull the class average down anymore. Hearing the MM speak about how Mandarin was taught the wrong way brings back all kinds of bad memories about the classes and teachers who taught them. The Chinese language teachers were the most sadistic lot and would freely use corporal punishment in their classes. Yes, that was allowed in those days. If you came back and told your parents you were caned or slapped by the teacher, your parents would probably tell you you deserved it and you would get another round of punishment from them! Yes, corporal punishment for not being able to recite a passage or getting your spelling wrong. I remember being hit on the hand with the sharp side of the ruler numerous times and being made to stoop next to the teacher. He would make us put our hands in the drawer and hold the drawer shut with his foot while he carried on teaching seated at his desk. I was all of 8 years old. Tell me that that was the way you'd motivate someone to learn a language. So, 40 years later we're told that was a mistake......thank you for the revelation because today I don;t and can't speak the language even if my life depended on it. I guess my Chinese teacher really killed my motivation to learn the language because even though my father insisted that my brother and I continue to learn conversational Mandarin at home with a private tutor we never picked it up. I remember we used to write a romanized form of the word next to the chinese character ( our version of Hanyu Pinyin ) and would read that instead of the actual word so our intonation was always wrong. We had no idea what we were reading so for all that time we just uttered sounds that meant nothing. After 10 years of home tuition , my brother and I could hardly write our names BUT our teacher spoke excellent English. My father always said, the tutor should have paid him instead!
There are times when I wish I had been more motivated to learn Mandarin but after 40 years........I don’t think so.

Want to know when you'll die?

Would you rather know or not know the exact day you'll die? Its a tough question to answer. Many think that if they know exactly when they'll die, then they could plan and do everything before that day arrives. I'm not sure if knowing when I'm going to die would make any difference to the way I live my life. I could plan for the inevitable; put everything in order so to speak. Just imagine if say you found out you were terminally ill and the doctor gave you 3 months to live. Isn;t that like knowing exactly how long you have left on this earth? What would you do then ? Would life be any different for you? What would you do which you would not have otherwise done? Go on that trip of a lifetime? Spend more time with family and friends ? Say "I love you" a lot more? So if God had given us that knowledge of our death or rather when that will be , how much of a better person would that have made all of us? I just got the news that my mother's cancer had spread from her breast to her bones and possibly her liver. She's 90 and treatment options are few given her age and health history ( a stroke and 2 heart attacks in the last 2 years). The doctors give her 6-12 months. We decided she should not know about this new"development". She knows about her breast cancer. So from now they will give her a monthly injection which is no more than a placebo. She is not in any pain at the moment and lives life one day at a time. Ignorance is bliss. So in her case , not knowing the time she has left will probably mean she will be able to live out that timeline to the maximum. I am almost certain that if we told her that the cancer had spread and that the doctors give her 6-12 months , she will "deteriorate' even quicker than that.


So if I were given the choice to know or not ; I'd choose not to know. I would like the Big Man up there to surprise me.......its a whole lot easier.

NUH - Hospital of Choice?

OK I know I was a pioneer of the hospital ( Employee #2; I even kept the badge after I quit) but having admitted my mum there three times over the last 4 months I think the hospital has somehow "matured" into something very different from what we planned it to be 25 years ago. The systems really need to be looked at. I'm talking about both the nursing and non-nursing aspects of running the hospital. The waiting outside the A&E is something that has to be addressed. Family members wait outside the A&E while the patient is attended to inside. The Hospital does not allow anyone to accompany the patient unless the patient is a child then one person can accompany the patient into the A&E. So the family waits outside sometimes for hours, not knowing what's happening to the patient inside. The waiting area is a sham. A row of uncomfortable plastic chairs line the walls outside the A&E. After the doctor decides that the patient needs to be warded it takes hours for the patient to be wheeled up to the ward.
Nowadays the patient's medical record is accessible no matter which hospital he is warded in. Thats all very nice however its based on the last hospital visit so if the person was last warded 2 years ago he wil be treated as of the last record. Let me explain. Based on my mother's medical record she was warded last year for a stroke so she was put on a low salt blended diet so thats what she was given wen she was first admitted. We had to tell them to take her off that diet because that was one year ago and she has since gone back to a normal diet.
My aunt was warded 2 weeks ago. She had neurosurgery done and was in the high dependency ward. After 5 days the doctor said she could be transferred to the general ward however there were no single rooms aailable in the general wards so she had to remain in Ward 25. I called a few days later to find out if she had been moved. The person who took my call asked me for her identity card number which I obviously did not have so I gave her my aunt's full name both married and maiden name. After a few minutes , she came back on the line and asked me for my aunt's address because there were several patients with the same name. I doubt this very much because my aunt does not have a very common chinese name ( Irene Wee Hee Niong - well , you decideif that's a common name ) . Anyway after giving her my aunt's address she was still not able to trace my aunt and said that there was no such patient; this was inspite of me giving her my aunt's ward and room number ( Ward 25, Room 4 ). As it turned out my aunt was still in that ward and room!!
I am lucky that I still have friends who work at NUH so I have the luxury of calling them whenever I hit a brickwall with the system or if I want to go around the system. What about all the rest of the majority of patients who don;t have any strings to pull at NUH? They are at the mercy of a system that is full of faults. These are only a couple of examples of "breakdowns" in the system which I encountered; there are so many more which would take many more pages if I was to write them all down......the horrific parking situation, the terrible location for the foodcourt at the Kent Ridge Wing, the rude nurses etc
BUT we did encounter some exceptional nurses like Anne in Ward 76 and Zoo in Ward 78; Assistant Directors ( Nursing ) Mabel and Mona and Doctors Koh and Sun and some wonderful cleaners like Joyce ( Ward 76) . SO will I go back to NUH ? probably; only because I know people there and its the closest hospital to us . Would I recommend it to someone else ? Probably not.

Crock Pot Beef Stew / Soup

Ingredients
2 lbs of beef brisket ( stewing beef ) cut into cubes
( This can be replaced with ox tail – about 6-8 large pieces )
1 carrot diced
2-3 potatoes diced ( not too small or they will disintegrate in the crock pot )
1 stick of celery diced ( optional – I don’t like celery in this because it has too strong a flavour )
1 onion diced
1 can of button mushrooms cut into halves
2 cloves
Handful of black peppercorns
2 beef buillon cubes
Dash of soy sauce
Salt to taste

Method
Place all ingredients in the crock pot and add enough water to cover it all. Add half a cup of corn starch mixed with cold water if you like it more of a stew consistency rather than a soup. Cook for 10 – 12 hours ; the meat gets more tender the longer you cook it.
* If you an get your hands on a couple of beef bones , throw it into the crock pot; it adds flavour to the stock.

Complaining

I was really upset when I was recently told that I was a complainer. Wow! that home truth really hurt. I never saw myself as a complainer. I only do it when things do not go the way they're supposed to. Take my mother's recent hospital stay as an example. My mum had to be fed her supplement by Ryle's tube. On the second day, she vomited right aftr her feed so I ran out to call the staff nurse who immediately screamed at me " What have you all been feeding her?" Excuse me! I asked her to look around the room to see if there was an food there. anyway after a couple more instances of rudeness I wrote an e-mail to the Director of Communications & Patient Relations. The next day , the nurse noticed that my mum's feet were swollen due to water retention so she said she would tell the doctor about it. One hour later there was a knock on the door and this intern who looked all of 15 years old, pops in and says, " So whats the problem? What are you all complaining about now? " Excuse me!! I was starting to see a trend here...........
I was too stunned by her remark to have a quick retort but my cousin who was in the room asked the houseman in her most sacarstic voice " Are you having a bad day , doctor?"So complaint e-mail #2 was sent that aftenoon.
A couple of days after that I got some feedback from a friend working in the hospital that I had gotten a "reputation" for being a complainer.............wow! I was so hurt since that remark came from an ex-colleague working in the hospital and she said she heard it from another ex-colleague who did not want to come see me because of that!!
Was it wrong of me to have complained about those incidences of rudeness and bad service? I really don;t think so. I think they felt that since I was an ex-staff f the hospital I should have been more forgiving and let things slide. I think as an ex-staff ( a member of the pioneer team that set up the hospital) I have an even bigger responsibility of pointing out things that are not working. Singaporeans have always been accused as being a population of complainers and I really don;t want to be one and then again if we don't say anything we're accused of being an apathetic lot........you just can;t win!