Blog Archives

ah deng as garden gnome

We’ve only got a blurry picture of Ah Deng as garden gnome…

Ah well.

Sure looks like he’s hurrying off to hide another pot of gold.


Art Therapy…and target practice

What have chickens to do with mental health, you ask?

Answer: They do terrible things to my sanity since they mar my gardening pleasure to the nth degree.

Last month Amanda thought our neighbours’ conscience finally pricked them, for letting their chickens roam in our garden, eating all our carrots, pak choy, etc because she’d seen them cooped in (finally! we thought). Alas and Alack, the chickens were just cooped up until their own corn had grown tall enough that the chickens couldn’t get at them. Now they’ve been let out again, and they’re bad as ever.

So I have been ‘exorcising’ these foul fowl demons by painting them. Noah and Naomi, my 7 and 5 year old friends respectively, who will be visiting me in December (yae!) have been using them as target practice with their nerf guns. Noah says he will not kill them but just “hurt them a little bit”.

My good friend Kim suggests I write stories about the roosters. I am thinking maybe one about palace intrigue, the roosters with their harem of hens, and the dogs, and cats and of course the vegetables as other characters? But I am not a writer. Not a prolific one anyway.

Perhaps you have a story for me?


After many months of not seeing Ah Chia, we were happily reunited by the road leading up to her house.
Dramatically she ran up to us calling our names and embraced us.

 

After that it was all fun and games and dancing. More pictures coming up…


The Queen and I

We had a very special visitor last month. And very special moments. Like playing scrabble! And painting the town red on a Sunday!!

 

We miss you already, Mrs S!!!


the many faces of a deng

What on earth do these pictures have to do with our project (???), you ask.

Answer: it does wonders for our own mental health to look at them.

Please enjoy.


Boxed in. Literally

Our latest patient. Two weeks ago, wearied and at a lost as for how to keep their son from hurting others on a psychotic break, Ah Ci’s parents put him in a box and nailed him in.

Please remember him in your prs.


The Tale of Ah Ki, Some Benadryl, and Fluphenazine

It’s been one whole year and three months since Ah Ki went into the corn crib. He’s chosen for the most part, while he’s relapsed, not lucid nor coherent, to stay unclothed and un-medicated.

Today we thought we might first sedate Ah Ki with some benadryl before giving him a depot shot of fluphenazine. Perhaps, with comprehension and some clarity, he could then make a more informed decision of whether to further medicate with anti-psychotics or not.

Our gung-ho visiting doctor offered to climb in and give him his depot shot if Ah Ki would could somehow be sedated (he’s violent and has sucker-punched several of his relatives before, including his mother). Ah Ki first asked for some pepsi (the choice of the new generation), so we put the benadryl in it. But he threw it out. The he asked for some rice. So we put it into the rice. But he threw that out also.

It was not to be.

In the end, the only persons who drank the pepsi and ate rice at Ak Ki’s house were us three visitors.

 


(中文) I don’t like using the ‘C’ word…but Ah Deng is so cute!

Here he is, decked out in his mother’s scarf because he had peed in both pants that his mother had brought along with him for this outing. He can walk all on his own now. And for the past few visits to our patients, he’s come along and behaved so very well.
p.s we think Ah Deng looks like a garden gnome when he’s dressed in a particular hat and striped tights…


Peter Patter

Here’s Peter at the top of Le Meh Za Ka, the village where Li Si Cai lives. Peter impressed us all with his effortless walk up the mountains, and later on, with his speedy run down some very steep slopes! Below are pics of Peter entertaining some Nu kids…


Crystal Clear

Took us a while to find these photos. But here they are! Crystal did some pretty amazing things while she was here. She climbed on a particularly wet and muddy day up to play with some friends in our village. She also stayed the night in an old ghost town. Best of all some of us got to spend a day with her learning how to make angel eyes.

We miss you Crystal. When can you come again?