Zit Seng's Superwall » illness

Offline…

Zit Seng — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 00:49:54 +0000

I just realized that I’ve been “offline” for a while. “Offline” in the sense that this blog hasn’t had any updates for almost 2 weeks now. There are a couple of reasons for it. Probably the chief reason is that I’ve been very under-the-weather lately. Then, there are also critical project milestones to meet at work. The two combined together have left me no time and no “mood” to blog anything.

It’s the first time that I’m getting such an acute sinusitis. It was so bad that the pain I had felt, wasn’t headache, but literally pain the sinuses. It was as bad as, or perhaps worse, than the intensity of my typically headaches.

The illness caused my productivity to go down. I haven’t been actively doing any programming for a while, but it just so happened that I needed to do some intense programming this last few weeks. What made it even worse is that it was someone else’s code that I was trying to fix/enhance. If you are a programmer, you’ll understand it isn’t so difficult to fix your own code as it is to fix someone else’s.

Then, I decided that I needed to do major “code surgery”. This required plenty of brain juices to formulate the surgery plan, to visualize the process and the end-result. But my illness meant that I couldn’t think very productively. I sat at my computer, wondering how come the thinking process wasn’t happening. Usually, I can visualize how code flows, how various components would interact with each other, etc. It wasn’t happening quite the same way this time.

Eventually, what had to be done, was done. Painfully slowly. I couldn’t recall a time when programming was so unproductive.

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Some H1N1 Humour

Zit Seng — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:35:11 +0000

After an extended period of harassment from H1N1, people at the office started to turn to some dry H1N1 humour. Even as the Singapore Government turns to mitigation, some other places still implement quarantine and work segregation plans. Colleagues are now discouraged from interacting with each other through direct contact. As a result, we are depending a lot on the telephone.

But hey, did you know viruses can also be transmitted through the phone? Yeah, right.

In fact, viruses can also be transmitted through the email you send to each other! Yeah, right of course!

Have you updated your PC’s anti-virus software? Does it have a signature for the H1N1 virus?

Can you imagine a phone call to an IT helpdesk, with PC user asking about how to prevent his/her computer from being infected by H1N1?

Ha ha. Yeah, not very funny.

What happens with our regular Friday tea? The tea where all of us gather together to “network”? Okay, Team A comes at 3pm, then change shift, Team B comes at 4pm. Yah, by 4pm, there will be no food left.

I’m sure we’ll all be relieved when the mitigation phase is in full implementation. Then, H1N1 is just another boring flu.

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Down With HFMD For Her Birthday

Zit Seng — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:06:32 +0000

Vanessa will be two years old tomorrow. She should be in school celebrating her birthday. But it’s so unfortunate that she’s possibly down with HFMD. I hope it’s a false alarm though. Although she started having a little diarrhoea yesterday, followed by a mild fever today, she otherwise does seem quite well. But we were quite startled this morning to discover what looked like an ulcer on a tongue.

So we promptly brought Vanessa to her usual paediatrician this morning. He says it is still early to tell for sure, and that we’ll know by Saturday. But for now, it will mean that we have to assume the worst case and keep Vanessa in isolation.

She performed her tongue twisting trick for the PD today. She was refusing to open her mouth for the PD to inspect. I eventually coaxed her to “show how you twist your tongue”… and she proudly performed her trick and smiled. I think the PD must have been impressed with her stunt.

It’s a pity that she’ll miss her birthday in school. She has gotten used to going to childcare. She was happy at the start (didn’t know what childcare was about), then started crying (realized what childcare is about), and then graduated into a happy childcare-going kid. We’re still sending her birthday cake and presents to the childcare centre. I need to remember to take a picture of the cake.

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Vanessa’s Back to Hospital

Zit Seng — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 01:53:41 +0000

The day before, Vanessa started getting a high fever and didn’t seem to respond well to medication. That was good enough reason to get me the afternoon off from my ICT yesterday. Vanessa actually seemed to be doing ok at mid day, but unfortunately, her high fever returned and she started to vomit.

So we took her to hospital where she was admitted for tests and observation. It is just as well that being warded she’ll have professional nursing care and medical attention. Beats trying to talk to doctors over the phone who would not have the first-hand sense of what might be wrong.

Baby Vanessa had to have a drip line set up! I think she was furiously mad with the nurse. Later, she had to get antibiotics administered slowly through the drip line over 20 mins. Adults take the whole shot immediately, but because it may be painful, babies get theirs over 20 minutes. But somehow it must have still been painful for Vanessa, because she was very upset, cried a lot, and kept staring at the drip line.

So far no test results yet. Hopefully we get something soon and don’t have to stay too long.

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