1. Participating on an Elluminate Live Chat with Sarah and Casey
2.Conducting a Meeting with Cancer Survivors and those who support them
3.Attending the wild and wonderful play, Nanta Cookin in the convention centre in KL
4.Eating fresh fish in a Chinese Malay restaurant in Clang and being the only 1 of 2 blonde grandmas in town
5. Having fun in a Chinese Night Market in Sedia Alum Clang
1) Participating on an Elluminate Live Chat with Sarah and Casey
At 1am Malaysian time on Saturday, Sarah, my oldest daughter, hosted a live chat on Elluminate for a workshop of teenagers in the Sacramento area as a conclusion to a week long workshop on using technology for school projects and enjoyment. The kids, including Dylan and Justin, my grandsons, had been working all week on projects and listening to presentations about things like PhotoShop, etc. She concluded with a live chat with my son,Casey, who was at his job and told about his work as an editor of music, movies, games, wallpaper, ring tones, etc. that is sold to telephone companies around the world. Chances are when your cell phone rings, Casey made that ring. I misunderstood the time and got on late but there was Casey up on a screen telling the kids how he edited a piece that a band had recorded; I have to admit I couldn't really understand any of the technical stuff, but it was fun to sit and watch him present and Sarah conduct the whole thing. Proud Momma!
2)Conducting a Meeting with Cancer Survivors and those who support them
I was picked up at Sharan's apartment and driven to the UPM campus and the Cancer Education Research office for a 4 hour workshop that originally had been planned for the volunteers who talk to other women about breast cancer and help newly diagnosed women with questions. This is the project that Rosemary Caffarella, professor of adult education at Cornell and Maznah Mohamed, professor of adult education at UPM started in 2003 with a small grant. The original project is described in earlier blogs. Rosemary had been here in May and June and done a wonderful job with the volunteers so it was thought that I probably didn't need to do any more talking to them. Instead Maznah asked me to provide a workshop for cancer survivors and their supporters on how I have survived cancer for 12 years. I had never thought about that topic before. Luckily, I had a proposal with me that I had written several years ago with the intent of taking the volunteers through 8 steps of the breast cancer process from finding a lump to living happily or successfully with cancer for the rest of your life. So I pulled it out and made adjustments and presented the workshop. But I was not expecting this outcome.
We started with 12 and it swelled to about 20 by the time all the staff came into listen. We had nurses, cancer survivors, a husband and wife, several who didn't have cancer but wanted to know how to help someone else and various survivors of 1-3 years. They seemed amazed to know anyone who survived 12 years. So we started. Normally Malaysians are very private but for some reasons everyone in the group had a story to tell and it came out at various points throughout the 8 steps of the cancer process. The couple that came, the husband wanted to find ways to help her; was very anxious to get information and spent a lot of time taling to me later about starting an advocate group to help women keep their jobs when they get sick. She didn't say too much but he said when they got the diagnosis, they both cried and cried and since they don't have children, they really are each other's best friend. He said he was so distraught, he went out and had an affair.
Now I am standing up in front and my mind just went blank. I couldn't think of what to say to him other than I wanted to go over and punch him and say, "That was how you could help her?" He talked about his fear of losing her, his anguish about the life ahead and his ever present fear. Then 3 other women spoke up to say their husbands left them as soon as they had the diagnosis. The group said they all knew people who left them because they were afraid they would catch cancer from the one who was diagnosed. One woman had no one else when her husband ran off and she is soon approaching her first year anniversary and spoke about her thoughts of suicide. Others talked about that too. One woman said her best friend since childhood said she couldn't stand the thought of maybe losing her to cancer so left her and has never come back. I kept thinking how incredibly lucky I have been because no one left me and everyone rallied around to help me through.
I never did join a support group and I suppose these kind of conversations were what we would have in a support group. As we talked about how to handle the diagnosis, talking to the doctor, what questions to ask, getting a second opinion, how to handle chemo, radiation, infections, handling the job when you feel so sick you wonder how you will ever survive. I would throw in snippets of my own experience form time to time and try to ad some humor too. But it was their session and they wanted to know, so I tried my best to help them through the workshop and most of all to have hope in the end.
One woman said she had the support of her children and husband but she was so afraid. She has survived for 3 years but is still afraid and wondered how I handled fear. I said that I was afraid too, but now manage my fear to be the day before my checkups. I said that I have a very strong faith and it is sort of what will be will be or as the Arabs say, "Enshallah." I said that after I had my treatments we went to the Middle East to work and live and I survived countless situations where I could have been killed in bombings - but wasn't! When we came home, I was headed out our garage one morning with our 2 big dogs when a contractor next door who was building a house had brought his pitbull to roam around. When I came out of the garage, the pitbull ran up to me and my dogs and attacked us. He could have easily gone for my neck but John and the contractor were able to pull him off. So I told them, I could have died right in my own garage by a dog attack. Or my plane could have gone down on the way here, etc. I think that helped them realise that you have to keep on keeping on.
I could go on and on and if anyone is interested, I could send you the information or talk to you about what we said in those 4 hours. But we all shed tears, especially when I played the interview with my sister Peggy and I talked about my husband and children and sisters and brothers and my Chicago friends who all helped me in lots of different ways. In the end, I think we all gave each other hope and laughter and several said they were not eating much because they believe their diet is the cause of cancer. Lots of myths. But I told them to eat chocolate, to go to a spa, to travel the world, to go out and enjoy their lives because you never know when a dog might attack you and end your life!
3.Attending the wild and wonderful play, Nanta Cookin in the convention centre in KL
We had a lunch and photos after the session and I was exhausted from the sheer emotion of the morning. I forgot to say that the one woman said she wanted to join the support group and maybe it was ok that her husband left her after all.
One of the UPM students, Lee and his girlfriend who wants to study food science (I bragged about Warren, my brother to her), took us to the convention center which is adjoined to the Petronas Towers. Sharan had seen this play several times in So. Korea and got tickets for us. It was just the "ticket" for me to get over my emotional morning. The play has not come to the US but if it does, snap up the tickets right away. It is Nanta Cookin and sponsored by the So. Koreans. There were big displays of So. Korea to encourage tourism. The play had no dialogue but was about 5 chefs who had to produce a huge menu for a wedding and they had a mean boss who kept pushing them. Then there was the lazy nephew of the boss. They whole play was 90 minutes with knives throwing up in the air; large amounts of vegetables cut up and flying in the air, and the drums. It was so much fun and in one part they pitted parts of the audience against each other to clap and shout. The whole production was wonderful drumming, dancing, music and chopping - what fun. There were a lot of families in the audience snd it seemed to hold the attention of kids too. We laughed, clapped and shouted. When we left the play, we walked past a huge display of the most modern appliances in a show at the convention center. Malaysia is very high tech and if you are in KL, you would have no idea there are farming and jungle villages anywhere. I started thinking again about the women I have met that cannot even get a mammogram because they live in a district that has a hospital without oncologists or mammography equipment. How can a government that works so hard on technology not have enough equipment and resources to save it's young women? There must be some explanation, but I don't know what it is.
We went shopping for souvenirs to the huge craft market where they featured silk, batik, wood carving and basked weaving. I helped the Malaysian economy quite a bit yesterday.
4.Eating fresh fish in a Chinese Malay restaurant in Clang and being the only 1 of 2 blonde grandmas in town
Lee drove us 2 hours out of KL to his village. He lives in Sedia Alum Clang that is a fairly new Chinese village with some older buildings but would be considered a new suburb in the US. Sharan and I were the only blondes I saw all evening but everyone was very friendly to us and allowed me to take a ton of photos of the night market. Lee's mother had loaned him her new Nissan to take us and he called her several times on the way. We got out to go to a restaurant and she called and must have said something like, "You can't take your professor there. You need to take her to the fish restaurant." So we drove to the fish restaurant and he ordered for us. All fish is fresh there and for the first time in my life, I had Sting Ray for food. It was really good. We had a lot of rice, barbequed prawns, shrimp soup with rice noodles, bok choy, and fried crab. The food was wonderful and the restaurant was full of families who then went to the night market.
5. Having fun in a Chinese Night Market in Sedia Alum Clang
The night market had everything anyone could want to purchase. There were so many tables of food that I lost count. Lots of fried things like bananas, dough, fish, chicken, vegetables. There were long lines everywhere for food. I am guessing there could have easily been thousands of Chinese people at the night market. Then there were the boths of junk and good stuff. We tried even more food and got really hot and sweaty from all the fried grease filling the air, lack of breeze and warm temperatures. We bought a few things but the most fun was taking pictures, having people smile at us, trying the samples they offered and finally after 2 hours heading back to the car. I even took a photo for John of a knife salesman like the kind John likes to watch at the state fair. Only, this one had some kind of knives and a stone that Lee translated would bring you good luck, kill diseases, make you fertile, and make you rich. I am hoping it won't weigh down my suitcase too much!
No comments:
Post a Comment