WHY?

I just got back from visiting a friend's son in hospital. The 20-something suffers from a muscle disorder that affects his walking , breathing and every motor skill that requires the use of muscles. The disease is hereditary and his father died of it at the age of 50 five years ago. The last time I saw Charles was when he and his mum visited my mum in hospital in August last year. He was fine then but was diagnosed with the disease a month later. From that point on it was down hill all the way. So one year later, he's lying in hospital hooked up to a machine which basically breathes for him. His mother Jo is half her already skinny self, from worry. She worries about her other son. I wonder how someone can go thru life with so many burdens. How resilient is the human spirit? How much can one take before breaking down? I'm not sure if I can go thru the emotional and physical roller coaster Jo is on. So I ask myself why does someone like Jo who seems the most Christian and good person have to go thru such difficult hardships in life ? Why do bad things happen to good people? Where is God in all this? If he has a purpose for making good people suffer , what is it? He gave Charles intelligence ( he was an A star scholarship holder ) who went into teaching after he completed his studies in England. So what was that for? Harold Kushner writes in his book " Why do bad things happen to good people" that God doesn;t make bad things happen to people . Bad things just happen. God's presence is felt in the way one copes with the "bad" situation. Even then I question why some people seem to be given more than their fair share of bad situations in their life and others seem to sail thru life without a care in the world. I know life was not meant to be fair. Were these people really so bad in a previous life that they now have to "deal" with all this hardship in this life? So religion expects blind faith. Even with so much bad happening in your life , one is supposed to trust that it will all come out good. How does that work? How many times have I heard this at wakes...." he's gone to a better place"......really? how do you know? Because the bible tells you so ?........the bible is a collection of short stories passed down by word of mouth from one person to another until some people decided to write it down. It was also the decision of one person / organization who decided which stories were to be included and which were to be excluded. OK I digress.....getting back to the hardships some people face. So there must be some purpose to all this. There must be a reason why some people seem to attact more sorrow than others. I really wish I knew the answer to this. My only prayer is that I don;t find myself in a position to start asking the question " why me?"

It Happened Again - Its whom you know in Singapore , that counts

My mum fell in the shower on Sunday morning and because she had a cut on her forehead I decided to call the ambulance. She arrived at the National University Hospital at 8.30am. Because of the H1N1 virus scare we were not allowed to be with her as they wheeled her into the A&E; so we had to wait outside as they tended to her inside. I tried to recall whom I knew who still worked at the hospital with me 25 years ago when a team of less than 20 people worked their butts off trying to meet a seemingly impossible deadline of opening the first privatized hospital in Singapore in 6 months under the able leadership of Mr. Khaw Boon Wan ( the Health Minister) who was then the CEO of NUH. I was not going to all anyone up for "help" because again I had faith that the systems and processes would be in place to make things move and work efficiently afterall they have been in business for over 20 years now. I could not have been more wrong......... After 2 hours of waiting and not knowing what was happening to my mum inside I decided to ask a very nicely dressed gentleman standing at the entrance of the A&E , clipboard in hand and looking very officious, what was happening. I asked him if he was the A&E Supervisor and in a very unsure voice he said " sort of "..............ok ; I told myself this was going to be a long day........ anyway, I told him my mother was inside and we had arrived by ambulance 2 hours ago and I was worried about not knowing what was happening to her; he said he would check and returned immediately to say that she was lying comfortably waiting to see the doctor. So 2 hours had lapsed and she still had not seen the doctor. Another hour went by and nothing happened so I asked the nice man what was happening and he went in the check again. This time he said my mother would be the next patient to see the doctor. The next person we spoke to was the doctor who came out to explain to us that he would be running some tests and that it would be a couple of hours before he got the results. He also said that there was a high liklihood that my mother would be hospitalized for observation. So my question at this point was, if my mother was to be hospitalized anyway whydid they need to wait for the results before she was even assigned a room? At 12-something a clerk came out to infom us that they had assigned a room for my mother and I went to do the necessary for the admission . I was told that the room was however not ready as the person occupying it had not left yet and the room needed to be cleaned; that would take a couple of hours. The clerk advised that we should go for lunch first. I told her to make sure my mother had something to eat as her last meal was breakfast at 7am. We came back from lunch at 1.30pm and waited till 4pm. I asked if the room was ready and the clerk said we could go to the ward to wait for my mother. She arrived at the room at 4.30pm, 8 hours since arriving by ambulance at 8.30am!!! I called a friend, who is a Head of one of the Departments at NUH the next day and told him that my mother was warded in the hospital. He met me later that day and I told him everything that had transpired. My mother happened to be having a brain scan when he arrived. My friend was the Head of the X-ray Department when we were colleagues in 1985 so we took a walk to the Department as my mother had been gone for over an hour. We found my mother lying on a trolly, in a corridor, in the X-ray department. Her pyjamas were soaked with saline solution and some sticky fluid they had spilled on her when they were doing the scan. She had been lying there for the last half hour waiting for someone to push her back to the ward. It as not a pretty sight. Within 3 minutes of my friend speaking to the department supervisor, my mother was being wheeled back to the ward. He then brought me to see the chief Radiologist , an ex-colleague too who personally read my mother's scan and explained the results to me. I am hoping my mother will be discharged today. If not, I have my friend's cellphone number...........
SO the moral of the story is.........if you have any strings in Singapore; pull it or you will be at the mercy of the system !!

Natural cleaners

Rice
Use it to: Clean the inside of a vase or a thin-necked bottle. Fill three quarters of the vessel with warm water and add a tablespoon of uncooked rice. Cup your hand over the opening, shake vigorously, and rinse.
White Bread and Ketchup
Use white bread to: Dust an oil painting. Gently dab a slice of white bread over the surface to pick up dirt and grime.
Use ketchup to: Remove tarnish from copper and brass cookware. Squeeze ketchup onto a cloth and rub it on pots and pans. They should go back to their coppery color in minutes. Rinse with warm water and dry with a towel.

Kenny Chan from Malacca & Babi Pongteh Recipe

It was only recently that I discovered that I was related ( by marriage ) to the cross-dressing Peranakan stage actor and Master chef Kenny Chan. He has just opened a Peranakan restaurant in Malacca called Kapitan House. The address is 71 / 73 Jalan Melaka Tel 606 2826 525. Kenny also produces and sells ready-to-use rempahs like Babi Pongteh; Garam Assam and Nonya Sambal. They are all excellent and so easy to use. Unfortunately it is only available at limited outlets in Singapore; one of which is the kueh chang shop in Katong called Kim Choo. His Babi Pongteh Sauce is excellent and so easy to use in a crock pot. Use one kg of pork ribs and one pig's trotter chopped up. Add one bottle of Kenny's Babi Pongteh sauce. Using the sauce bottle add 2 equivalent portions of water. Add some bamboo shoot cut into bite-sized pieces and some black mushrooms cut into half. Cook this for 8-10 hours in the crock pot.....YUM!

ELECTRIC EYES!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ydZHy_KRXE

Nonya Fried Seafood Noodles

Nonya Fried Seafood Noodles
( Serves 4 )

Ingredients
1 lb ( 500 gms )Yellow Egg Noodles; blanched with hot water and drained
( cook one box of spaghetti if yellow noodles are not available)
½ lb ( 250gms) Shrimp with shells and heads on
1 fish cake; can be replaced with calamari chopped shredded
5-6 stalks of any leafy vegetable chopped into bite sized pieces
¼ lb ( 100gms ) bean sprouts
4-5 cloves of garlic chopped fine
1 tablespoon tau cheo
2 Eggs fried omelette style and shredded
Cilantro and shredded green onions and red chilli for garnish


Shrimp stock
Remove heads and shells from shrimp. Place heads and shells into a small pot add one cup of water and a chicken cube and bring to a boil. Keep aside for use later.

Method
Fry garlic till fragrant; add chopped up shrimp and vegetables. Fry till shrimps turn red ; add sliced fish cake or calamari. Add one tablespoon of tau cheo. Fry for a minute and add blanched noodles. Stir all the ingredients with the noodles till well mixed. Add shrimp stock and stir well. If not salty enough add light soy sauce. Add bean sprouts and fry for a further 30 seconds.
Pour out onto a large serving plate ; garnish with cilantro , green onions, red chilli and shredded omellete

Butter Cake Recipe

BUTTER CAKE

Prep Time: 20 min
Cook Time: 23 min
Oven Temp: 350 F
Ingredients
· 2 cup(s) all-purpose flour
· 2 teaspoon(s) baking powder
· 1/4 teaspoon(s) salt
· 3/4 cup(s) whole milk
· 1 1/2 teaspoon(s) vanilla extract
· 1 1/4 cup(s) sugar
· 3/4 cup(s) butter or margarine, softened
· 3 large eggs
Directions
· 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 13" by 9" metal baking pan, or three 8-inch round or two 9-inch round cake pans. Dust pan(s) with flour.
· 2. On waxed paper, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. In cup, mix milk and vanilla; set aside.
· 3. In large bowl, with mixer at low speed, beat sugar and butter just until blended. Increase speed to high; beat 3 minutes or until creamy, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Reduce speed to low; add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.
· 4. Beat in flour mixture alternately with milk mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture just until blended, scraping bowl occasionally. 5. Pour batter into prepared pan(s). Bake 40 to 45 minutes for 13" by 9" cake, 23 to 25 minutes for 8- and 9-inch layers, or until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Cool in the pan(s) on wire rack 10 minutes. With knife, loosen side of cake(s) from pan(s); invert onto wire rack to cool completely