Battling the Nose, Ear and Throat Problem After Sinus Lift Surgery

It's been more than two weeks since my last surgery. Although my energy level is almost up to my usual self, I am still irritated by ear fullness, nose and throat discomfort.

All the doctors I have been seeing gave me antibiotic, steroid, nasal spray and decongestant. I yet to see another ENT doctor to see if there is something different in the treatment because it makes me very sick and more uncomfortable of taking the nasal spray and the medicine.

In desperate, I remember that I have learned Chinese Medicine in a local college for one year before and why not I try Chinese Medicine myself. I search Internet to see if there is any available information out there. Finally I analyzed my situation and gave myself the following Chinese medicine.

桔根 （Platycodon root) 10g, 

元参 (Yuan ginseng) 10g,  

杏仁 (Semen Armeniacae Amarum) 10g, 

 橘皮 (Dried Tangerine peel) 10g,  

半夏 (Pinellia Tuber) 10g,  

茯苓 (Indian Bread) 10g, 

两面针 （Zanthoxylum nitidum) 10g，

山慈菇（Iphigenia indica A. Gray） 10g, 

甘草(Radix Glycyrrhizae) 8g

Most of the ingredients are very mild that are in some of the tonic soups many Chinese family cook in Singapore, except the 两面针 （Zanthoxylum nitidum) and 山慈菇（Iphigenia indica A. Gray). I use these two medicine because I found that my throat in the surgical side are very inflamed and a bit enlarged. These medicines are good to clear inflammation and swollen in the throat site, but they are a bit dangerous that causes diarrhea and poison if not taken properly. What I do is that I drink the medicine after meal and drink it bit by bit till I feel that my stomach is going to be uncomfortable.

(Warning!!!!  Do not take any of the medicine that I listed here without first consulting your doctor or physician. Taking some of the medicine without your doctor's supervision may cause diarrhea, kidney problem or even death.)

If you delete the 两面针 （Zanthoxylum nitidum) and 山慈菇（Iphigenia indica A. Gray), the rest of medicine is very good for allergic sinusitis with main symptom of clear mucus. The medicine circulates the Qi around your stomach to clear sputum in your head.

I feel much better after taking several days of the medicine. My head is lighter, and ear is much relieved. But the symptoms still persist more obvious in the morning.

As Chinese, we usually think that Chinese medicine has less side effect and safer. But I am not very sure about it. There is no strict scientific proof as what have done to the west medicine to believe that with long term us of certain Chinese medicine is safe.  We only have our long history of 5 thousand years of using Chinese medicine to back that it is generally safe to use certain Chinese medicine under good control.

But what I am sure is that steroid definitely has side effect even with small dosage. Chinese medicine on the other hand has many ingredients that may help each other to minimize the side effects and enhance the treating capability. It tries to cushion your whole body well to fight the disease. While sometime, not always, west medicine is analogy to fire fighter that when fire coming out, you kill the fire but you never try to understand the cause of the fire and how to eliminate the cause.

Of course most important ingredients that you need on top of your medicine are:

1. Optimism
2. Exercise
3. Balanced nutrition 

I know it is very difficult sometime to keep optimistic. I am so scared to think that I will live forever with the problem. But most of the time, I tell myself that things will gradually to be manageable if you try hard. As old Chinese saying "病来如山倒， 病去如抽丝”， meaning when disease comes, it comes so quick as the speed of falling mountain, but when it goes way, it is as slow as pulling the thread from silk worm cocoon. Be patient!

Exercise enhances your Qi and blood circulation which is very important in Chinese medicine. With fluent flow of Qi and blood, you body can fight many diseases well. 

As for nutrition, I have stop eating chicken, orange, diary products, and my favorite fruit mango and some more. My ENT doctor told me that they pron to cause allergic reaction. I eat much less meat and more green leaf vegetables now.

Hummingbird Gallery Wrapped Canvas Print

Order the Canvas Print

I have been very busy recently with my parents visiting Singapore for few weeks. I accompany them to visit many attractions in Singapore such as Universal Studio, Garden of the Bay, Night Safari and Singapore Zoo.

They have been here two years back.  But they are still very impressed by Singapore and the new attractions emerged within these years such as the Garden of the Bay and Sentosa Sea Aquarium. We had a really wonderful time.

 This is a 50 x 60cm/16 x 20" gallery wrapped canvas print of Humming bird I made today for a customer. I love the canvas print. the colors are fantastic. It is also better to touch because it is made of fabric.

Up Close with Maksim

Last night we attended the much anticipated Maksim concert in Esplanade Concert Hall. I kept thinking is it Maksim playing piano alone or with a big orchestra. I search the Internet about the last one he did in Singapore on 2010 and got the feeling that he will play piano alone. I was wondering how he is going to play those pieces with orchestra, drums and even singings.

Last night, I got the answer. I didn't expect it. He was playing alone with orchestra from the sound system.

I love his music and wish that it would be a very grand event with real orchestra in his back.

Nevertheless we enjoyed his playing last night. My daughter is very concentrated in the one and half hour concert and she really enjoyed it. She knows very well of his music through youtube.

Just hope that the music can be more real without those digital sound at the back. I actually do enjoy his solo without the background orchestra sound much better.

The Hilarious Gangnam Style

Today is Deepavali Holiday in Singapore. I slept a bit late and was woken up by noises in the living room.

My daughter and my maid were watching the hilarious Gangnam Style video in Youtube and my daughter was learning the horse riding dance. Me and my husband joined them to watch it. It was a extremely funny and happy video.

Later in the evening, we also watched other Gangnam Style related videos for a while. We really had good laugh.

We had a good day and the Gangnam Style made us a very happy Deepavali Holiday.

If you want to have a happy moment, just watch Gangnam Style by PSY!

Can Money buy Good Quality Products?

Philips Customer Car Center with the Problem Vacuum Cleaner on the Bench

Finally I have settled down after staying in north America for a long time and be able to concentrate on some art work, but yesterday, my routine suddenly got disrupted.

I bought a SGD$500 Philips vacuum cleaner at the end of May. It was only used for about 15 days considering the long absent in between May and now.  Yesterday, while I was enjoying playing piano with my daughter and planning to do some painting after that, my maid came to told me: "Mame, the vacuum cleaner is not working". I checked the machine and hope to find that there was no problem, only that she forgot to turn on something. But after tweaking here and there, I realized that it was spoil and my whole day was ruined.

Because it is a fairly expensive machine and it was used only for such a short time, I cannot just through it away and buy a new one. I need to send it over as instructed by the customer service officer from Philips and get it repaired. It took me 3 hours to carry the heavy machine to the service center.

There are so many types of vacuum cleaners in the market from about SGD$100 to SGD$600. I thought if I buy expensive one, it will perform better. But actually I found the logic doesn't hold any more now days. Here is another example.

Silver Titus Watch With Crystal Dropped Off

I like Silver Titus watch very much. If I need a new watch for gift or for my own use,  I usually just went to City Chain and got a Silver Titus watch. But last year, I bought a about SGD$250 Silver Titus watch from City Chain and a crystal dropped off and crown became loose only after one month. I couldn't adjust time back to Singapore time after coming back from Germany. The ridiculous thing was that when I went to City Chain store the store men told me that the crystal and crown were all outside parts and they were not included in the warranty. Only after I argued with them for a long time, they agreed to send it to be repaired for free.

Now the watch has 2 more crystals came off and 3 crystals turned to black. I feel so sick to look at it and I just through it away somewhere so that I will never see it again.

It is very confusing now days as which brand is good or bad and who can be trusted. You cannot buy good products just by paying more money.

Luckily Singapore has introduced so called "Lemon Law" and will be effective by September 1. I hope by then, things will get better.

Mother's Day Celebration

I have a wonderful mother's day today. I had a surprise cup cake gift from my daughter who is studying abroad. My little one is so thrilled to see the colorful cakes.

Home Maintenance and Lessons

I was sick with sore throat for a few days and spent most of the time resting. Meanwhile I tried to build up my balcony garden and fix some of the house problems.

I used to put a lot of green plants or trees such as palms in my garden. But this time, I feel that it is much more interesting to have trees with flowers. I bought a wrightia last time that has small white flower and sweet scent. It gives us a lot of pleasure to look at the flowers and feel the fragrance.

 

Today, I bought a tall murraya tree with fragrant small flowers. Murraya tree is type of jasmine and medicine plant in India. It can be used to treat many problems according to Ayurvedic practice. I hope that I will have success with these type of plants.

Just share some stories about my home repairing jobs. I have some problem again with pluming and lighting. I found that the bathroom washing basin cabinet bottom is wet after every use of the basin. I asked some plumbers and they all told me that there must be pipe broken. They need to break the wall to repair it. The price they quote to me is about SGD$1900 to fix it.

It is really expensive and I think I better do some research myself. After try and error, I found and fixed the problem without costing one cent. The problem is due to the leaking of edge of the basin top and also the connection point of drain pipe from the basin outlet to the wall inside the basin cabinet. I use some teflon tape and silicon gel and the problem is fixed.

I also have problem with a chandelier that its dimmer is broken again. This is not the first time that the dimmer is not working. It was repaired two times and every time it costs about SGD$50. This time, I was wondering if I should keeping using dimmer because I thought that probably dimmers are not good to be used with chandeliers. I asked my neighbor who is very good at electrical job to take a look. He immediately told me that the dimmer has not enough power. My chandelier electricity load is exceeding the maximum  dimmer load. I need to use a more powerful dimmer. I never knew that there is such thing as dimmer load and the electrician neither mentioned this to me nor use a dimmer with correct load.

The lesson is that for every small job in your house, we better do some google search to equip ourselves with basic knowledge about the job. Otherwise you end up wasting money and also not get the thing done correctly.

Little Yellow Bird on Chandelier

Last night, a little bird was resting in one of my living room chandeliers. A very small cute bird with yellow belly. It must be a bird from a bird palace that takes the chandelier as his home.

Plumbing Fiasco Causing by Water Heater T & P Discharge Overflow

In Chinese, we have saying "Disaster doesn't come alone". It means that when disasters come, they usually come together. I just had problem to deal with later payment tenants. Now my bathroom had plumbing problem that the walls between the bedroom and the bathroom have water leakage.

If comparing a house as a person and plumbers as doctors, I would leave my house problem to the plumbers and entrust that they will do the best for it. But plumbers are not doctors, houses are not a human beings.

I had only small plumbing problems with choked pipes before. After changing to new better sinks, I had no plumbing problem for a very long time. I am totally a dummy about plumbing.

I called a team of plumbers to take a look. They came and quickly took a look and told me that they need to cut all the pipes connecting to my basin, show point, bath tab and build new sets of cold and hot pipes outside my bathroom wall. They asked, can you accept it? Wow, I said, how much. They told me $2500.

Not only $2500, my beautiful marble wall bathroom will have ugly pipes exposed. I immediately refused. Although I am a dummpy in terms of plumbing, I know it is ridiculous. Imaging your blood vessel is wrong somewhere, doctor wants to cut all your vessels and build new sets of them out of your body.

Someone introduced a plumber for me. He came and he said he needs to knock the wall where most probably the buried pipes are leaking. I agreed. After knocking the wall with a round hole, there exposed three pipes, the brown cold, hot copper pipes and one white PVC pipe. The plumber was very sure that the copper pipes are leaking.

But I touch the copper pipes, not wet at all. He told me that he needs to knock a bigger hole so that the copper pipes will have no wall attached. The water will be dripping down from the copper pipes. To do this, it means that the other side of my bathroom marble wall will be spoil a bit. Since the marble wall is hidden inside the basin cabinet, I agreed.

But after knocking the marble wall, the pipes still had no water dripping down. The plumber told me that, there must be a very small hole leaking on top of the pipe, we need to wait to tomorrow to feel the dripping.

But I already sensed something is not right. The bottom of the wall is very wet. There were three times, water gushing out from the bottom of the wall after taking shower. If there is small hole and dripping of water, how can water gushing out? The plumber refused to listen to all these evidences and told me that water can travel and hide somewhere.

I notice the white pipe near the copper pipe, I asked him, what the white pipe is.  He told me it is linked to the water heater. My water heater is installed in the bathroom ceiling. The PVC pipe is buried in the wall. I asked if it is possible that this pipe is leaking. From the position, if this pipe is leaking, it explains very well why both sides of the corner of the wall are wet and the knocked part of the wall is highest point that is wet.

But he said that the pipe is only for steam to come out when water heater is hot. It goes to the main drain hole and will not leak.

We called off a day. The next day, we checked the copper pipes and they were still dry without any trace of water. But the most ridiculous thing is that the plumber wants to anyhow cut the copper pipes from where they are exposed and build a new set to connect to the ceiling part of the pipes as if there is leakage in the pipes along the way. I immediately stopped him and asked him to wait. He somehow accused me of not trusting him and didn't want to continue the job.

The next day, I asked another plumber to take a look. I especially asked him if there is problem with the white PVC pipe. He said, nothing is wrong with the water heater and the PVC pipe will never leak. He also said that the pipe is terminated ad the floor drain hole. He said the water will travel, the place you see water may not be the place the pipe is leaking. He needs to use some equipment to check where the leakage is. It costs $200 for him to do the check only.

I told him to wait for a while because I have strong feeling that the PVC pipe connecting to the water heater may be the problem.

I started frantically searching of information about water heater. I had never know there is a Temperature and Pressure (T & P) safety valve in the water heater. A safety device called a temperature and pressure relief (T&P or TPR) valve, is normally fitted on the top of the water heater to dump water if the temperature or pressure becomes too high. The T & P safety valve is connected to a PVC pipe which is called overflow discharge pipe. The T & P valve will open under such circumstances to let go of water to the PVC pipe to easy the pressure of the tank. Without the T & P valve, the water heater tank could possible be a steam bomb that may explode sometime.

I also understand, that the PVC overflow discharge pipe must terminated 6" above the floor level and cannot be at a drain hole. The reason is that when hot water comes out, it need to be flush out quickly and cannot be too close to the floor level. Also if siphoning occurs, the liquid (be it dirty water, household chemicals, oil, etc.) will be drawn back into the water heater tank, thereby contaminating the household drinking water supply.  If PVC discharge pipe terminate at the drain hole, if your drain hole is choked and full with dirty water, your water heater tank will be contaminated.

I can image how the PVC pipe terminate in the wall now. It is not at the bottom of the wall, but 6" high above floor. This explains well the highest point where the wall is wet is near the PVC termination point.

This also explains why sometime there is gushing of water because overflow discharge from water heater can be very strong sometime.

I believe the water heater has problem. The water heater is Ariston brand and people advise that the new Ariston water heater normally has shelf life of 5 years. I made a decision to replace the water heater to a new one.

But I still need to make 100% sure the problem is due to water heater. I turned off the water heater for a few days. The walls were no longer wet.

I immediately called one water heater store recommended in a forum and they changed the water heater for $375. $245 for a Joven 30L water heater and $130 installation.

The problem is solved with total cost of $575. I paid the plumber who knocked the wall $200,

The whole fiasco is now finally over. The lesson I learned is that you need to find a good plumber. If you cannot find one, you need to be one yourself.

Problems as a Landlord and How to Deal with Non Payment Tenants

I encountered the worst thing as a landlord these days that my tenant didn't pay the rent after it was due.

I have been a landlord for quite a long time. It has been breezy to me all the time that all my tenants are polite, nice and never fail to pay their rental. This is the first time such thing happened. I guess later or soon I need to face this kind of unpleasant situation if you choose to be a landlord.

I think it is time to equip myself with strategies to deal with such things and also the legal knowledge of Singapore Land Laws regarding remedies for landlord of non payment tenants. I spend most of my time to find related information these days.

Same as many people claim, I do feel that Singapore Law is rather landlord friendly comparing the laws in other countries. The following is what I found these days. If you are landlord, hope you will find them useful and will not be panic when you are unlucky to have similar situation.

1. Late Payment. The following articles NON-PAYMENT OF RENT explains how to be alert to the non-payment tenants and how to deal with it when you notice the late payment. Although it is written by people from UK, but it is applicable to everyone in the world. I believe that in any case, it is important to understand the tenants situation, maintain an amicable relationship and try to seek win-win solutions. In most cases, the problem will be solved in the first stage. The tenant may voluntarily move out or make a payment plan with you and show sincerity to carry it out.
2. Legal Action. If nothing can be achieved in the first stage, you may pursue legal action to solve the problem. According to your objective you may take the corresponding action.
1. Re-Possession of Land. This is the action you may take if the tenants are still in your property and you need to recover your rental arrears and take back your property.
2. Sue the Tenants. This action applies to the situation that tenants no longer stay in your property, but they own you rentals or damage your property. It can also be applied if you do not plan to take your property back and just want to recover the rental arrears.
3. Distress Act. This is the action  you may take at the same time with [1] or [2] (provided the tenants have assets in your property) to the demised premises to impound goods up to the value of the rents owed, so as to compel the tenant to pay up and recover your rental.
4. For how these actions can be carried out, the detailed procedures and general civil law and procedures, please refer to the following documents   
• Civial Procedure
• How can landlord reclaim house when tenant fails to pay rent?
• Remedies for A Landlord, 
• Landlord-Tenant : Remedies for Non-Payment of Rent,
5. If you like to read original legal documents and get more prices informaiton, you can read, Conveyancing and Law of Property Act (Chapter 61).

I do believe that in most of the cases, tenants have really encountered some genuine difficulties. There will be a better way to solve the problem instead of legal actions. The landlord may suffer a bit loss, but it is worthwhile if it can avoid the legal procedures which may bring even bigger damage to the tenants during their difficult time.

But to those who have ability to pay and just want to get free lunch, the Singapore Law is not something they can get away with.