Everybody was happy, kids swimming with their fathers while mothers chatting under  a  gazebo by the swimming pool enjoying lunch from the pool’s cafe. It was a perfect family outing, until suddenly the weather changed. Rain started to fall. Some visitors ran into the pool’s building/cafe while some others, including your family, chose to stay under the gazebo instead. You thought everybody was already wet from the pool anyway so it did not make a difference if you got wet from the rain.

Then the rain got heavier accompanied by strong wind and thunders. Yet, you did not move from there hoping it would be over soon. Suddenly lightning struck  the top of the gazebo causing the whole heavy roof to fall on you and your family. You felt pain and started screaming for help then everything became black.

Next you woke up at the hospital. Like most of the family members, you were lightly injured. But your father lost a lot of blood because of a heavy wood that fell on his head, he passed away on the way to the hospital. Your mother had a broken leg and so did one of your sisters.

You could not help but blaming yourself. You felt like you were responsible of this incident as you were the initiator of the outing. If only you had known this would happen you would not have started an outing in the first place. You would not have invited them, etc.

I failed to imagine your feelings. Must be hard for you. You were happy when you left the house, but came home in grief…

***

People at my office have been talking about this since the beginning of the week. It happened last Sunday and the woman in the story worked at the same building as me. I don’t really know her because she works at different company. Just occasionally saw her at the lobby or cafeteria.

Yesterday I saw her in the building for the first time since the tragedy, she walked in slowly with bandaged feet. Me along with others in the lobby came to her to express our condolences. She still looked sad.

***

I remember when I was a little kid my mom used to usher us from the pool if there was rain. She said we could get cold. Our teachers also taught us to stay away from any open area, including swimming pool, when we started to hear thunder. Because after thunders there will be lightnings so we have to come inside a building. Staying under gazebo is not safe enough.

As we live in a lightning-prone area, this knowledge is actually being taught at schools. Well, at least when I grew up.

We never know when tragedy will happen on us, but if only we have listened to our teachers…

Hmm… maybe I do need to downgrade the plan later

Last week the IT department issued a report to the management about internet stats per user in our office. The result, of course, the most accessed page was facebook! Almost all users opened and updated their facebook status everyday (if not every minutes, including those who all this time complained about their neighbors, lol). The management then decided to block access to facebook starting Monday (yesterday) in order to keep employees focus on their job.

Anyway, I’m not a really fan of facebook, I don’t open my facebook everyday, so I wasn’t included in “facebook addicts” category in the report. They put me in “active browsers” category. I guess that’s how they interpreted my dropping ec habit. Yes, sometimes I drop ec in my office if I couldn’t finish it at home the night before.

Statistics said Indonesia was ranked 5th among countries with highest number of Facebook users, almost 15 million users! I wonder how many percent of those users using their office computer .

Year of Golden Tiger

It’s been raining all day long since the last couple of days now. My late grandfather used to say rain before the Lunar New Year (or Imlek, that’s how it formally called here) meant a good sign, because rain brought blessing!

I don’t know for sure if that’s a common belief among Chinese or just his optimistic way to welcome the new year, never had a chance to ask him. As far as I can remember, we always have rain on Imlek, so I guess we always have a blessed new year .

GONG XI FA CAI!

I went to Avast forum and found (at least) two threads about this here and here. Apparently this malware has attacked some websites that still running old version of WP. So if you haven’t upgraded your WP to 2.9.1 better do it now (duh) before it’s too late.

Also make sure you have the latest version of anti-virus or anti-malware software running on your computer to make sure you’re protected from these malicious activities. Dropping hundred of blogs everyday is a risky business, don’t you think so?

Anyway, for me advertising on Adgitize is part of my experiment to determine a reasonable hosting plan for my blog. So far I’m quite satisfied with my web hosting company, with $10 hosting plan per year (recommended by them) I got 100 Mb disk space and 4 Gb monthly bandwidth. It’s cheap, but the fact is I never fully utilize my bandwidth, I only use nearly a quarter of it. See the picture here, it shows my bandwidth usage up to the first week of February which only 6% of the quota. So I thought maybe this current plan is too high for a blog (at least mine) so I can downgrade my plan later?

Let’s see what happens after I become an advertiser, I expect my traffic will jump as well as the bandwidth usage! If after advertising the usage is still less than half of the quota, I will downgrade it. My hosting plan is due on May so there’s time to decide

1. Jan 18 ~ Brought my baby to pediatrician due to coughing
2. Jan 22 ~ Accompanied my mom to her ophthalmologist in the morning, she was diagnosed having macular edema and need IVT injection
3. Jan 22 ~ Brought my eldest to pediatrician in the evening due to coughing
4. Jan 23 ~ Brought my mom to the lab for hematology test and thorax x-ray as requested by her ophthalmologist
5. Jan 25 ~ Brought my mom to her doctor due to stomach pain
6. Jan 29 ~ Brought my mom to her ophthalmologist for IVT injection
7. Jan 30 ~ Went back to my mom’s ophthalmologist for checkup. I took time to check my eyes as well turned out I need to change my glasses
8. Feb 01 ~ Brought my baby to pediatrician for scheduled immunization
9. Feb 03 ~ Brought my mom to her dentist to see if she had tooth cavity that causes her eye’s inflammation, the result: she has tooth infection and need follow up treatment
10. Feb 04 ~ Brought my mom to her ophthalmologist for checkup
11. Feb 05 ~ Brought my mom back to the lab for another hematology test this time is requested by her dentist

Some scheduled appointments for following weeks:

• Feb 09 ~ My mom’s dentist for follow up treatment
• Feb 18 ~ My mom’s ophthalmologist for checkup

Though my family’s health is one of my priorities, there were times when I felt sick and tired seeing those physicians. And today is one of them. I’m screaming for better weekend. Can we go somewhere far away from hospital?

First, a five-year study run by Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction proves what many in the scientific community have always suspected: having children significantly lowers the IQ of both male and female parents.

Dr. Hosung Lee, director of the study, was not surprised with the findings. “The research proved that our hypothesis was correct. Having children does retard one’s brain activity, and since both parents lost intelligence, we must assume that this loss has a psychological rather than biological cause.”

The IQ tests show that when a child is born, the part of the brain that makes one think objectively takes the biggest hit when it comes to losing brainpower. “This explains why every parent thinks their child is the smartest kid in class or the best athlete, even if that child is as dumb as a box of rocks or needs a calendar to time their forty-yard dash. People who before were intelligent and open-minded turn into raving lunatics who want to blame a teacher or coach every time their mediocre child fails,” said Lee.

Lee says the Kinsey Institute will continue to test the couples participating in the study to determine if the loss of intelligence is reversible once children grow up and leave the nest and if parents who continue having children lose even more intelligence.

Second, a recent study performed at the University of Richmond and Randolph-Macon College in Virginia illustrates that pregnancy brainpower actually doesn’t decline at all during pregnancy.

Neuroscientists examined the activities of pregnant mice, rats, and humans and found that all three showed significant increases in mental acuity and memory throughout pregnancy and after giving birth. Human subjects in the study showed increased brainpower. Specifically, the pregnant women showed:

* increased visual acuity
* improved sense of smell

Is this Improved Memory Permanent?
One of the most significant findings of this and other pregnancy and memory studies is that the added brainpower caused by pregnancy appears to be permanent. Increased memory retention and improved cognition appear to continue throughout motherhood; in fact, parenting only seems to contribute to a woman’s brain power, allowing her to become:

* increasingly motivated
* less fearful
* more empathetic
* better able to multitask and prioritize

What About Men?
Women aren’t the only ones who appear to benefit mentally from pregnancy and parenthood. Men also appear to show increased mental performance, however, this occurs on a much lower scale than it does in women. In particular, men seem to show an increased ability to empathize with others. This is believed to be the result of an increase in estrogen and prolactin that occurs in men just prior to labor and delivery.

While the first finding already been discussed at my office since years ago, nobody ever mention about the second one. This issue was brought to the surface again lately as the company tried to change the company’s policy regarding female employees. The proposed policy will limit the number of employees allowed to be pregnant each year!

I was so upset when I heard this. I was even more upset when I heard that the policy was proposed by our HR manager whom is a woman, a 45 years old divorcee with no kids. I feel like wanting to slap her face whenever I meet her.

Anyway, which study do you want to believe?

My mom was at a good condition so there was no pre-treatment before the injection. Unlike when she had lucentis injection, her blood pressure was high at the time and took almost 4 hours for the anesthetic just to lower it. This time her blood pressure reading was 130/80 which was considered “normal” in my mom’s case. At 10:30 AM she was already released from OR.

On Saturday morning, the next day, we came back to the hospital for checkup. Her ophthalmologist said so far the IVT worked fine. The increase of intraocular pressure (IOP) as the side effect of IVT didn’t occur on my mom’s eye. Her tonometry test result showed 11 mmHg which still in the normal range of IOP.

She was scheduled to have another checkup on Thursday morning to see the progress. Hope everything would turn out fine.

I don’t understand why all of a sudden she got stomach ache that night. She didn’t eat anything unusual during the day. My brother said she probably just nervous for getting the injection the next day. He could be right. Hopefully, she can make it tomorrow.