Home Thoughts From Abroad

Our trip to Calgary went incredibly smoothly and the icing on the cake was finding Dave waiting for us at the airport, something we were not expecting given that we arrived in the middle of a work day. A very relaxing afternoon at the Pig and Whistle gave us a great opportunity to get caught up on Dave’s news while we waited for Liz and Greg to get home from work.

Steve has been in his glory browsing Home Depot for tools and supplies and doing odd jobs around Greg and Liz’s house. They have a lovely home but as it has been rented out for a number of years, there are plenty of repairs to be done. The focus was mainly the kitchen with hinges to be replaced and drawers and gliders to be rebuilt. With a little steel wool and varsol cleaning and a fresh coat of varnish the cabinets are looking great. The cathedral ceilings in the great room make decorating a major challenge but they found the perfect four foot high clock for the two storey entrance wall.

Wednesday evening we took advantage of “Date Night” and enjoyed a fine steak dinner with Greg’s parents, Holly and Vern at Milestones. Friday, Steve headed for to Seattle to spend the weekend with Jon while I prepared a presentation of our project in Cambodia for the annual meetings of Medical Ambassadors Canada which is being held in Canmore.

I headed out early Saturday morning for a fabulous drive west towards the mountains on the Trans Canada highway and have to admit it was pretty tempting to just keep on driving. But I did the right thing and enjoyed the opportunity to meet with my co-workers, Bill and Sharon and the MACA team. There were a number of people there whose names I have often heard through CHE reports and it was a real joy to actually meet them. I look forward to working more closely with this group in the future

I live in Malaysia 11 1/2 months of the year. I get 17 days in Canada. And as much as I love Malaysia and its people, especially the staff and students at CPU-Taylors where I work,  there is no place on earth like Canada.

There is no other country so vast, so unspoiled, so rich in natural beauty that at every turn it can take your breath away. There is no other country so noble that it would turf a sitting prime minister and reduce his 160+ seats in Parliament to just two in the following  election on the suspicion of corruption! No other country that has never fought a war of aggression and yet has stood with its allies and friends in every just conflict. No other country that has withstood an unprovoked war on its own soil by the United States, and having driven them back across the border and re-established its sovereignity over its own land promptly re-established diplomatic and friendly relations with the States.

Canada was the first modern nation to outlaw slavery in 1798 as the first act of the first legislature ever convened in this country in Niagara-on-the-Lake, thirty years before William Wilberforce in England and 60 years before Abraham Lincoln in the States proposed similar legislation. Canada was the first to propose a peace-keeping force of the United Nations and has participatesd in each one of its initiatives since conception, often at the tragic loss of Canadian lives.

Canada has a free press and a free people. We do not carry guns and we do not advocate violence. We open our border to immigrants and students from around the world and do our best to understand their customs and their ways. We are a loving, just and generous people, and in a world of war, deprivation and corruption where people are persecuted for their race, their faith, their gender and their political opinions, this country is a testimony to the potential for decency in an often degraded world.

Canada is also the home of my friends, children and grandchildren, all of whom I hope to see shortly. I have missed you all dearly,  and although by God’s good design and purpose I must live far away from you at present, you are never far from my thoughts. See you all soon!

The annual WLA Women’s Retreat this past weekend was a wonderful tribute to the commitment and planning of the amazing Leadership Team and to Shelley’s diligent and Spirit-led study of the Word.  The theme was “Unleashed” and through the teaching, prayer guide and the worshipful music, we were led to consider that we are unleashed from the sin that binds us through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus and how that impacts the way we live our lives.

According to tradition, Saturday morning was spent alone in quiet contemplation while Jan’s study guide walked us through reflections on the fact that we are unleashed to look up, unleashed to be real, unleashed to  praise, unleashed to wait, and unleashed to be lifted up. In the reminder of the teaching sessions we saw how we are unleashed to soar above, unleashed to be tethered to Jesus and unleashed to worship the living God.

After a campfire on Saturday evening, Asian style paper sky lanterns were launched (with the approval of the local Fire Marshall) to the delight of everyone present.  The company was wonderful; the surroundings beautiful, meals appeared and were cleaned up without us having to lift a finger.  With the exception of a bit of rain on Saturday morning and a high fever as a result of some questionable packaged meat I ate the day before I left, it was a nearly perfect weekend.

I, and the other 75 or so other women who attended, are so thankful to Deb, Shelley, Jan, Barb and Catherine who so faithfully put this together each year and pray that they are as blessed by the weekend as we all were.

Today I want to hand our blog over to our good friend Peter who reports on his experience in paying bills in Malaysia. Here is his story:

Today I went down to the management office in our condo building to pay the water bill that rolls in every couple of months, it is usually about 20 Rm per month (about $7). I had not paid for a while and had a bill for 44 Rm, I thought it might be 60-80 depending on the dates and how long I had let it slide. I arrive, and the very nice lady takes my bill:

Welcome to Malaysia!!

Having struggled with back pain throughout most of my adult life I finally decided to confront the issue. Most of what I had read on the subject was either nonsense or solely designed to fleece the suckers: and there are no bigger suckers than those who are in pain. I was fifty at the time, weighed 165 pounds (75 kilos) on a 5’7” (170 cm) frame, and I had just put my back out for the umpteenth time and was in serious trouble. Serious enough for me to actually go and see a qualified physiotherapist instead of dinking around with the stupid chiropractor anymore. I was fortunate to find someone doing a placement in a local facility while she got her hours in on her master’s from the University of Western Ontario in London. She got me started on the road to recovery.

First? Understand the nature of the problem. For this you will need information. There is a lot of junk out there – some of it thousands of years old – that will do you irreparable damage. Here is the best information I have ever read on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Treat-Your-Own-Back-802-9/dp/0987650408/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1338618965&sr=8-2 by someone who is well qualified to write about it: http://www.mckenziemdt.org/robin.cfm. It was this book that the physiotherapist gave me to read, and it quite simply changed my life. Buy it! It is the very best advice you will ever get on the care of your own back and the non-invasive, non-medicated treatment of back pain. I have followed the exercises faithfully for more than a dozen years. I take fifteen to thirty minutes in the morning before I get out of bed, and I haven’t put my back out once since I started.

Secondly? Change your posture! Yes, your mother was right, your posture is terrible. Now that you are no longer a teenager it might be a good idea to get over your resentment at her concern for your long term health and actually change your posture. You slouch; your chair is all wrong and your hips are misaligned, you shuffle and don’t walk by rolling from your heel to the ball of your foot and in fact your footwear won’t even ALLOW you to do this because you are still a silly slave to fashion! Get some decent shoes and wear them. Sit up straight and walk by allowing your hips to move naturally instead of locking them in place with that limping little shuffle thing you do. God gave you a body: enjoy it! Your body will thank you.

Thirdly? Supplement the back stretches with other movements that will increase blood flow to the affected areas. Inflammation causes your back to spasm. Sure you can reduce the inflammation with medication, particularly ibuprofen (ditch the Tylenol; it is an analgesic, but it is NOT an anti-inflammatory). But you don’t want to be on that stuff forever. You must find ways to reduce the inflammation and carry away the fluid buildup that your body provides to shield itself from further injury. For that you need blood flow. And for the blood to flow and remove the fluid you need gentle physical movement.

Therefore don’t do yoga or martial arts; do tai chi instead. The basic premise of yoga is that you get into some impossibly painful position and hold it. What? How does that help your muscles or your musculature? It doesn’t. It is so counterproductive that if yoga didn’t come with 3,000 years of arcane gobbledygook attached to it no one would ever follow it. But call it a quasi-religion and the gullible will line up for blocks. Almost everyone I know who has followed yoga has ended up doing themselves physical damage, some of it quite serious. And martial arts, while it may appeal to the young, is not something you want to be doing to your bones as they become more brittle with age.

The basic premise of tai chi is that one motion becomes the next. You never over-reach and no movement is ever held, for holding a position is to halt the flow of your body’s energy and blood. Think of the difference between yoga and tai chi as the difference between a cut flower (lovely to look at, but stationary and dead) and a potted plant (living, moving) and you get the essential idea. When I was in university I learned the entire routine, but I am satisfied with a few modified movements that get my stiff muscles moving. Learn a few simple moves from youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBvF6r6DOvc but don’t stretch it out as far as this young lady does at first (the pink pajamas are optional). Keep your movements small until your back loosens up at little.

Thirdly?(Yes, I noticed) Exercise. Sorry, none of the above actually qualifies; they are just essentially stretches to reduce the stiffness, inflammation and the resultant pain. Now that you are moving again you have to strengthen those weakened back muscles with exercise. I do four: swimming and climbing stairs – but that is only because they are readily available to me and they cost me nothing (we have a pool at our condo and we live on the thirteenth floor; sorry about your luck!) – walking and riding a bike. All of them address the back issue to some extent. You’ll have to find what works for you. But don’t stay wedded to something that actually damages you for ideological reasons. Sometimes the body is smarter than the head. Listen to your body and learn to help it heal.

Finally? Lose the paunch. Extra weight anywhere can be a problem, but extra weight around the waist will take years off your life and put added strain on your back. I went from 165 down to 150 over about three years and then took another ten to get to 132 (60 kilos). Don’t do anything radical and don’t diet. Just be more intelligent about what you eat and drink. Beer is 150 dead calories, wine is 75. You could start there. Coke is 150 calories, Diet Coke is zero. Fried chicken is 400 calories per 100 grams. Baked or nuked chicken is 120. You have to look at your weight in the long term. It took you years to get to your present state; it will take years to change it. So change it; what have got to lose? Only the pain!

Somehow in all the madness of the last three weeks I managed to find time to attend the first International Jazz Festival to be held in Kuala Lumpur. It may well be the last, for it was not well attended, and those of us who had paid for seats ‘in the gods,’ as they call the back rows, found themselves ‘upgraded’ from the gallery to the ground floor. Even with the balcony closed, those few who found their way to the hall for the beginning of the festival found themselves pretty widely scattered around the auditorium.

Perhaps the venue was not well chosen, for the Plenary Hall in the KL Convention Centre was built to hold 3,000. It is a gorgeous facility with steep risers and wide comfortable seats so that every view is a good one. Although no one much cared where you sat, I found myself most often at the back of the hall where I could put my feet up and sip my Starbucks soy latte and groove to the music in peace.

There is a small core of dedicated musicians in Malaysia trying hard to educate the ears of the public to sounds that go beyond their love of Asian boy bands. Many of the performers were Asian themselves, but most are living in the West where they can make a living from jazz. The best of these might have been Meg Okura who led a troupe called the Pan Asian Jazz Ensemble, who despite their name work and live in New York. Ms. Okura plays the violin, among other things, and to be honest it is probably my least favourite ‘jazz’ instrument. However, her band was very tight, and her music, much of it written by Okura, was bright, fast and edgy.

Another Asian worth watching was Trevor Jalla who hails from Sarawak, of all places, although he now lives and works in Perth, Australia. He was about as connected to jazz as B.B. King; that is to say, he played the blues, straight up and without apology. I have to admit when I first saw this dorky little character come on stage I thought he was the roadie just tuning the guitar. He looked like Buddy Holly with a bad case of bed head. But then he picked up that flame maple Les Paul and let it rip into an old B.B. King tune, and man could he play that thing! Then this nerdy little scarecrow lets out with a voice like a gravel truck gearing down and I knew I was in for a treat. Tasty, as we used to say!

Ernie Watts is a saxophonist who is getting up around 65-70 years old, but you would never know if you closed your eyes and just listened to him wail. He earned his stripes as a studio musician in Detroit laying down tracks for the Motown sound and touring with Marvin Gaye, Buddy Rich and the Rolling Stones. He moved to jazz in the 80’s and has developed a solid reputation in the field for his fast fingering and lyrical flights of improvisation. His band had a hard time keeping pace with the old geezer!

There were plenty of other acts, but I won’t bore you with the entire list; you get the idea. As with all things KL, I ended up paying the price for staying out late as the public transportation system in the city closes at 11:30 and I got hosed for the exorbitant rates the taxis charge at that hour to get home. I swear I will never go downtown without a car again no matter how long I have to sit in traffic to get there. But despite the frustration, and the miserable turnout, it was an excellent evening of music and a real treat to discover such a gorgeous venue in the heart of the city. Apparently they do Broadway shows here. Who knew!