Mum's 1st email

My mum sent out her first email yesterday....to the wrong party!
Anyway, it is a milestone and showed that she is on the right path to computer literacy.

If only it was as easy as changing cars

Being an owner of two previous cars, the time to decide whether to sell and scrap the vehicle into a lump of metal is when the car starts giving you problems. I remember my first car, a eight-year old manual transmission Suzuki Swift. After driving it for a year plus, I realised the radiator was leaking, this was followed by a tear along the exhaust pipe making the sound very very loud, like it was going very fast but actually not. The last straw came when the car brakes locked during rain, and the car skidded and knocked onto the road curb. So, I changed the car and spent almost all of my savings to pay for the down payment for my Lancer.

But what happens when the 'car' is your body. Now at 33 years old, my 'vehicle' is starting to have creaks and groans. Besides tearing my left knee ligament, I am feeling a continual pain on my right foot (its a medical condition that I have to rest my foot more), needing more time to recover after sports and so on. But still I am considered young.

These two days after visiting the hospital, the insight I get is that you really got to make use of your 'vehicle' whilst it is still working but on the other hand, treat the 'engine' well enough, not stress it too much, bring it for regular maintenance, use good oil so that you can renew the COE many times over.

But of course, the toughest part is letting go of it when it is finally time to.

Retirement Announcement

I am proud to announce on behalf of my dear mother that she is now officially retired. And she is living life up. Instead of slipping into zombie mode, she has signed up for a host of courses, to name a few, computer classes, magic classes, hanyu pinyin classes and others. As her son, I am happy that she is not taking the path that MM Lee has cautioned senior citizens from taking, away from friends and society. Instead, she is healthily engaging society. But all this comes at a cost. We got her a new HP PC yesterday with a large 19 inch monitor, 4 gig of ram (thrown in by the vendor), licensed Microsoft Office and BitDefender anti virus. I also got her two pairs of Clarks shoes (she said she was going to walk a lot to take MRT and buses), and my dad bought her a Nike cotton windbreaker (just to shield her arms when taking computer classes). BTW, the PC was paid for by dad!

Will post photos of her workstation at home next.