Happy Birthday Zie

Today is 28th Sept. 2016. I am sixty-two today.  It has been exactly three years that I have been retired. Upon retirement, I only have one child, the orange tabby boy, Mickey. Now I have the boy and two girls. My three children never cease to amuse and amaze me with their antics and their affection for me and for each other.

My middle child, Tam Benjamin

My youngest child, Comot Benjamin

My eldest child, Mickey Benjamin

I went to see my GP in Port Klang just now to have my health check. A rather comprehensive one, not the usual blood pressure and blood glucose test. Would like to know more details, like my HDL level, LDL level,  triglycerides,  blah blah blah. By the way, my weight is 60kg and my BP is 120/80 today, yeah! So losing weight does bring blood pressure down. It was fluctuating around 160/90 for a few months before I made the effort to restrict calories and choose healthier food items. Well, it will take a few days before I get the result of that blood test. I just want to make sure that things are ok, since these four to five months, my diet has shifted towards minimising carbohydrates and sugars and moving towards more vegetables, good proteins and good fats. I am making a lot of effort towards getting to a healthier weight and making healthy eating a habit and not just a seasonal or fad diet. It has not been an easy journey but I think I am slowly getting there. After this, I will look into the other important component of being healthy, that is the exercising part.

I thought of having breakfast at McDonald's after the blood-drawing and urine-sampling session at the GP's. Imagine my surprise when I walked to the building and found it empty. Just bare walls and ceilings with electrical cables hanging down from holes everywhere. A few weeks before this I was also shocked to find the McD at AEON Bukit Raja closing down. I thought the Port Klang McD was doing alright. Is our economy getting that bad that more and more establishments are closing down. There is anxiety, fear, sadness and deep sense of uncertainty all around us at present.

Yesterday the papers were full with the story of the "ineloquent speech" of our Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) at the United Nations. The DPM was bombarded left and right for that. In my opinion, the DPM tried his best. Well,  he was there because the supposedly well-bred, English-educated Prime Minister was not in attendance. Even if our DPM had presented his speech with a perfect Queen's English and with a greater depth and content than what we heard yesterday, what is the point of all that, if our economy is in tatters? If more and more people are losing their jobs? I do not mind having a minister who is not that fluent in English but is a person who is genuinely concerned about the state of affairs of the country and who contributes in making the ordinary peoples' lives easier.
That being said, this incident of "ineloquent speech" should be a huge point for our Education ministry to realise that English should be part and parcel of our education system. Like it used to be when I was in secondary school. The other thing that should be noted also, is that, there are many politicians who are not good in English and there are also many politicians and government officials who are not good in Malay. They are quick to beat up our DPM for his English but how about those whose Malay are very questionable themselves? How do you become a politician or a government official in Malaysia while your Malay is crap?