Perfect Moments

There are moments in your life, that you will forever remember clearly. Every detail. It burns in your mind forever, because of the people and feelings involved. And those moments, albeit rare, will remain the perfect moments in our lives.

Holding my daughter's hand now as she is trying desperately to get a good night's sleep, the sounds of her cough and congested nose strikes at my heart like a sharp knife. And it is in this sad moment, that again my mind brings me back to that evening. One of those perfect moments in my life.

I was lying on the couch of our own first home with my one year old daughter sitting beside me reading a picture book. I was falling in and out of sleep because I was tired from work and also because I was pregnant with my son. We were all waiting for my husband to come home from work. And as I heard his footsteps at the corridor, and then him using his keys to open the door, my heart was filled with joy. When he stepped in, smiled at us, I felt my life was perfect. I have never had so much love in my life. It was a simple moment. Nothing extraordinary. But yet, it was perfect. It was everything I ever dream of.

And then I went on to chase my empty dreams again. Forever trying to find those perfect moments. As if I have come a full circle, no matter how far I went to find those moments, whenever I think about having a perfect moment, my memory brings me back to that evening again. If only every moment of our lives where as surreal and perfect like that. But then again, we wouldn't cherish it as much if that was the case now, would we?

People Food - Not for Dogs

Quite a number of friends have asked me before about what kinds of food are dogs not allowed to have. I actually have been keeping this list, so might as well share it with you right? (I am sorry to cat owners, because I really don't know much about them or their dietary requirements).

Grapes and Raisins

Grapes and raisins can cause kidney failure in dogs. As little as a single serving of raisins can kill a dog.

Onions

Onions destroy red blood cells and can cause anemia.

Chocolate

Chocolate can cause seizures, coma and death. Baker's chocolate is the most dangerous. A dog can consume milk chocolate and appear to be fine because it is not as concentrated, but it is still dangerous.

Coffee, coffee grounds, tea and tea bags

Drinks/foods containing caffeine cause many of the same symptoms chocolate causes.

Macadamia Nuts

Macadamia nuts can cause weakness, muscle tremor and paralysis. Limit all other nuts as they are not good for dogs in general, their high phosphorous content is said to possibly lead to bladder stones. Exception to this rule is PEANUTS and PEANUT BUTTER.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes can cause tremors and heart arrhythmia. Tomato plants and the most toxic, but tomatoes themselves are also unsafe.

Avocados

The fruit, pit and plant are all toxic. They can cause difficulty breathing and fluid accumulation in the chest, abdomen and heart.

Nutmeg

Nutmeg can cause tremors, seizures and death.

Apples, Cherries, Peaches and similar fruit

The seeds of these fruits contain cyanide, which is poisonous to dogs as well as humans. Unlike humans, dogs do not know to stop eating at the core/pit and easily ingest them. It can also become lodged in the intestines and kill the dog in 24 hours with no warning.

Hope this at least helped a little. Keep your doggies safe and healthy. From my Sunshine & Snow to your pups.

The Ledge

You are standing on the ledge, and I am standing slightly behind you, holding your hands tightly. You have been here before. Only this time, this ledge is even higher, the fall even further down and the person holding your hand then was someone else. You recognize this, and you feel your life has come a full circle, and you didn't make it anywhere near where you wanted to be.

You asked me to look down, at all the things you have pushed down or fell off the ledge. I take a step nearer and look down. I see shattered dreams, broken hearts, bruised confidence, and unresolved passions at the bottom. You keep looking down but I keep looking at you. I tell you it is okay, I am still here. But you don't see me. You refuse to look at the safer grounds that we are standing on. And I break down in helplessness.

I turn your face to look at me. See me. I am here. Then as the wind blew hard, you took my hand and start crawling back to safer grounds. We crawl slowly, and I feel safer... for you and for me. But in an instant, as if the ghosts of the valley calls to you, you let go of me and start running back towards the edge. You tell me there is nothing to live for on the safer grounds. That all you built was down in the valley. Shattered. You just had to mourn them one more time. I run after you, because I promised I will not leave you alone ever again.

As we stand and mourn, I get tired from standing. I feel like letting go off your hand, but am afraid that you will jump or I will fall of the ledge. I keep looking at the safer ground, and wonder when we will ever make it back. Then as I feel my grip on you loosen, you tell me that I have pushed you here to the ledge. I keep telling you I do not have the energy to hold on, but you insist that the stand won't be for long. So I stare ahead, trying to take in all the beauty of the view from the ledge. To draw strength to stand there longer. But as I stood going weary, I had to unload certain weights in my life, in order to keep standing next to you. By choice, I start throwing things that I had built and wanted down to the valley. This depresses you more. And you feel you have no choice but to push me to safer ground, and force me to leave you at the ledge.

I stand on safer ground, calling you. "Look at me". You do not hear me. So I choose to run to the ledge and decide to jump. You grab me and ask me why I do this. I do not know. Maybe it's because I am tired on running back and forth. Maybe it's because I too have nothing else on safer ground to live for. And maybe, just maybe, I wanted you to know how it's like to see the love of your life stop fighting the fight, giving up and leaving you behind. This was the threat and you felt no greater betrayal. 

You finally sit at the ledge and ask me to sit beside you. You said that having me sit here calms you down. Helps you from wanting to jump off the ledge. But you feel me shiver. And you asked me why I feel so insecure and unsafe. "I am afraid of heights, Baby." It never came to your mind, that I would be afraid of anything. So you ask me "What now?" I plead you to look at the ground we sit on, stand on. And look further ahead, to the safer ground. There are new dreams to built, new passions to explore, new families to embrace. And I want to be there with you when you finally make it there. I will be with you every excruciating step of the way. I would scrape my knees, bear cuts on my fingers, withstand hunger and thirst, if you would step off the ledge and walk with me back to safer grounds. 

So here I am, standing with you on the ledge, holding your hands. What do you want to do? What do you decide? 

Run - Snow Patrol

Scuba-do-bee-D'oh!

I love the getaway...beaches has always been my thing. Tioman was a lovely place. And of course, I love the person that was sharing my first experience in diving. But I hated to learn how to dive! I will try not to bore you with too much details, but I might have to narrate it dive-by-dive (if I can recall clearly, 'cause my brains could have been fried by the amount of nitrogen that went in).

Dive 1
Find a buddy. Effortless.Get into the wet suit. Easy.
Learn about the equipments. No problem.
Carry equipment from deck to shore. Nearly fell.
Going into the deep ocean water for the first time. Panic.Must breathe through mouth instead of nose. Almost impossible.
Clear mask underwater (letting stinging sea water into the mask and blowing it all out). Mind blowing.Bobbing up and down in shallow waters (about 3m) for a long time. Motion sickness. Need to throw up, but might choke and die underwater. Decided to call it a day.

Dive 2
After spending the whole night freaking out to Red, I thought I managed to convince myself to be better at this. It took me no more than 5min in the water...I started panicking. All I wanted to do was come out of the water. Surface. Surface. Let me go dammit! The dive instructor held me down, signaled for me to breathe. Cleared my mask. After gaining back some level of sanity, we joined the rest of the group and started repeating all the skills we have learnt. But we had 2 new skills to learn in this dive. I managed to survive without further incidents and with my confidence in tact.

Dive 3

After lunch we suited up and went back in the 

water. Additional skills to learn:

- Removal of weight belt underwater (this required us to take out the weight belt, hold it in one hand, do a body roll to put the belt on again). Not that difficult, just tricky as I got disorientated when I was TRYING to roll in water.

- In an out-of-air situation. This one nearly damn killed me. I so wanted to die in this session. Literally. Took me a long time before I was calm enough to purposely remove my air supply underwater, take Red's alternate regulator (they call it the octopus) only to realize it could not work! I had no air! I threw out the octopus, panicking, grabbed my own regulator, gulped what seemed like tons of sea water, choking for air, and then tried hard to breathe once I got air in my lungs. After the instructor checked the equipment, he seemed to think it's safe now for me to repeat that unnatural act of choking underwater. This time it worked better, but nonetheless, I still gulped plenty of sea water as struggled to get the octopus into my mouth. (I wonder if any small plankton or fish went into my body). As if that was not bad enough, the next was to share my regulator with Red. If this is not an act of "I will die for you", then I don't know what is. At every interval where the regulator was with Red and I was gasping for air, I swallowed sea water, choked more, panicked even more. Lucky for me, it's his face that I am looking at. Although I really felt like crying, I eventually calmed down because I knew this man would not let anything happen to me. 

- We apparently learnt how to fin like a dolphin. I think I looked more like a half dead salmon.

Ended with a cramp on my right foot only to realize later that I sprained my ankles. It begin to swell and I had to call it a day. The girls went back in for another dive, Red stayed with me (ON DRY LAND).

Dive  4 - 7

Woke up and found my bikini missing. Spoilt my mood. Borrowed swimsuit from Bec. Limping around with swollen ankle. Suited up, got onto speedboat, posed for a group shot and mentally prepared for FOUR boat dives in a day.

It was unnerving to imagine holding on to mask and regulator, sitting at the edge of the boat and flipping backwards into the sea. But once you get a hang of it, this is actually the best part!Can't explain the sense of calm as you crash into the water, breathe with ease, look up at the clear water from beneath and slowly floating to surface.

The four dives were all quite similar but yet held very different experiences for me. The deepest we went to was 23metres. This was Dive 6 and because my ankles were busted, I was being towed around by the instructor. These boat dives were indeed more relaxing and fun compared to the earlier learning shore dives. However, I still found myself from time to time panicking and wanting to surface. 

Things I experienced/saw in these 4 boat dives:

1. REALLY cold waters when we reached below 20metres. 

2. You could not only feel the current underwater, you can actually SEE it.

3. Swam through narrow tunnels of corals. I think they are corals. It can't be real caves can it?? LOL

4. Was left alone in the deep blue sea for a few terrifying minutes while instructor tried to locate the rest of the group.

5. Saw amazing sea life - turtles, clown fish, shark, school of barracudas, really tiny red fish, stingray, FISH, FISH, FISH an FISH. They were all beautiful. Thank God we didn't come ascross jelly fish. I would have freaked.

FINAL EXAM

To add to the difficulty, after ALL that we endured, we had to sit for a written test. Thankfully, we all managed to pass (with the help of an open book and unethically asking each other). Celebrations were in order and we drank to our 'success'. I still cannot believe till today, that miraculously, I am now a certified scuba diver! :D

10 Things I Love about You

Needed something to write about to revive my blog. So will write about what's on my mind now.

10 Things I Love about You

1.  I love the way you smile...especially at me.
   
2.  I love your laugh, it's contagious.
   
3.  I love the way you hold me, I feel safe.
   
4.  I love your kisses. They are perfect.
   
5.  I love our conversations. Whether it makes us laugh or cry or think, we never run out of things to say.
   
6.  I love your patience. Especially when I am short of it.
   
7.  I love the way you look at me longingly, makes me feel confident.
   
8.  I love your face, and the kindness in your eyes.
   
9.  I love our meals together. A sign of sharing and caring.
   
10.  I love the music in you. My passion.