Tiga, Dua, Satu… Happy New Year! – Saturday 13th Feb 2010

Chinese New Year’s Eve is upon us! We began our day in the usual fashion – sleeping in, but this time it was ridiculously late due to the amazingly comfortable beds in our hostel. After a few episodes of The Nanny (yes, they play re-runs of the The Nanny in Malaysia too) it was off to Oh May Ling’s mother’s house for lunch (1.5 hours later than we were initially told… hence the not doing anything this morning waiting to be picked up!). I must say, the food was possibly some of the nicest we have eaten here, but again there is just WAY TOO MUCH of it. It was great to be involved in a traditional Chinese New Year family lunch, so thanks to May Ling for inviting us! However, after forcing myself to try every kind of biscuit put in front of me (after having eaten the main course) it was time to be on our way.

Our attempts at taking in some Melakan heritage failed as the Baby Nyonya Museum was closed for Chinese New Year, but we managed to go inside a beautiful Chinese Temple, which is the oldest in South East Asia. Pretty cool.

Next up was a delightful (yet often painful) 60min full  body massage for 60RM. We were hoping for a relaxing massage after being sick and on the go for quite some time… we should have known this was not what we would get from an Asian massage. OOOOOWWWWWWWWW!! I am so bruised. But on the upside… I no longer have a pain in my back I’ve had for the last 2 weeks (I now have several pains – but hopefully they will be gone tomorrow). I was very well behaved when she massaged my legs – I only laughed once or twice, but  it tickled like crazy!

Nap time in the afternoon (or mini-sleeps really, 3ish hours is not really a nap) and then off at 9pm to celebrate Chinese New Year’s Eve. We had dinner at Geographer Cafe and decided our bellies could not handle any more strange food, so we decided to be very boring and order Western food. This turned out okay for me, Jess on the other hand (after ordering Pasta Napolitano) received what seemed like pasta with tomato sauce. Yummo… My pesto pasta was quite alright, a bit different but definitely edible. Ice cream and mocktails were very much enjoyed however.

Back to the hostel briefly to use the bathroom… we are avoiding the holes in the ground at all costs, and so far, doing a marvellous job at it :)

Midnight was proceeded by some terrible karaoke singers on the stage, some quite interesting traditional dancing and of course, Lion Dancing - what we had been waiting to see…It was not so much dancing as waking up to the stage and standing there, but there were Lion dancing costumes all the same. Midnight was rung in with a gong and some streamers, followed by fireworks, a fairly usual way to celebrate. Melaka is beautiful at night, and tonight was certainly no exception. On the way back to the hostel the Chinese Temple had what we assume were meant to be giant incense sticks burning out the front – they were cool.

I must sleep now as May Ling dashed our hopes of sleeping in again tomorrow morning. Our fault really for saying we had a lazy day planned (which we had been planning all week). She insisted on taking us to some students’ houses in the morning so we can taste some (more) Malaysian cookies.

Happy New Year!

Pineapple Tarts - Friday 12th Feb 2010

Today we bid farewell to the school, and the good friends we made there – Awi, Nani and Lin!! We have not seen the last of Oh May Ling yet, we are having lunch with her tomorrow which will be nice :) and Zaidee we will see again on Monday. The children were very keen to have their photo taken with us… we felt very popular! We received gifts from the Department of Special Education, and presented the Head Master and Zaidee with a boomerang each to say thank you for everything they had done (especially Zaidee – we hardly saw the Head Master at all and his English was not overly confident, thus communication was short and simple). We would also like to thank Awi, Nani, Lin and Oh May Ling for everything they have done for us, and making us feel so welcome!

For now we are snap-happy tourists. Yay! Our hostel in Melaka is very nice, right on the riverfront and in central Chinatown. Very convenient! The beds are ENORMOUS… sleep tonight will be amazing. Go Jess for copious amounts of internet research on hostels!

Chinatown at night is beautiful, especially due to Chinese New Year – Lanterns everywhere! It’s gorgeous!! We walked around Chinatown and basically saw the whole of Melaka in a couple of hours, including time to sit down and have a lovely strawberry cooler :) and some Nyonya Pineapple tarts – delicious!

Tomorrow we will explore the temples and mosques and see the sights in the light of day….

 

Until then… goodnight!

Off to the Ministry of Magic with Mr. Weasley – Thursday 11th Feb 2010

Change Ministry of Magic to – The Ministry (i.e. Department of Education) and Mr. Weasley to – Zaidee.

Today was pretty much all…

Speech

We set of this morning bright and early in our wonderful Moo Moos. Ready for an official day of ministerial visiting, smiling and learning.

Zaidee introduced us to his boss in the Department of Special Education, Liyana. She was extremely hospitable and welcoming – even offering for us to stay with her at her house instead of going to Kuching…

After having met the entire staff of the Special Ed. Dept. (including those people in finance and the pay office) we went on a tour of Putrajaya, which is basically their version of Canberra. The Prime Minister lives in Putrajaya, has his office there, all sorts of official buildings are there – it is a beautiful place, but I dare say just as enthralling to live there (with almost as many circles) as Canberra. It was a shame we could not take photos from the car of the amazing buildings and mosques, but we did not wish to get out of the air-conditioned car.

Liyana gave us a wonderful tour of the Service Centre. This is the MAIN centre in Malaysia, which provides therapy (Speech, OT, Physio etc) and assessments for all children with special needs – such as Autism, cerebral palsy, speech and language difficulties, audiology, low vision etc… We were continually asked if the equipment was of a good enough standard, if the rooms were set up okay, if there is anything we could suggest to make it better etc etc. Liyana seemed to be under the impression that we were fully qualified speech pathologists and ready to take on a therapy session right then. We had to do a lot of explaining that we were only just starting our second year, and that we had not seen many of the main service centres in big places like Melbourne and Sydney. From what we could tell, the equipment was all fantastic, and Jess and I especially loved the Multisensory room… so many pretty lights…

 

There was another room called the soft play room, which was also sensory. If you were to step on the different numbers – music would play – very cool!

 

Having said the centre services children with speech difficulties and hearing impairment - I should have said there were rooms and equipment for kids with these problems. Many people told us throughout the day that there is a big need for speech pathologists in the education department. Currently, they conduct one group session once a week for children with speech and learning problems, and one for the children in need of audiology. Liyana is a qualified Audiologist, and Oh May Ling, the qualified speech pathologist cannot work for the Dept. of Education and the government does not recognise the course she did in Australia – even though they suggest people study in countries like Australia!!

On the same note, Liyana also said that so many of the deaf children have difficulty speaking because there was no early detection… a universal hearing screening for infants has only been recently introduced in some hospitals. 

On a different note… parking is nuts!! It’s okay to double rank and block people in their park here, as long as you leave your hand brake off and your car in neutral, so it can be pushed out of the way when the person needs to leave!

We had an interesting conversation with Liyana before we left about Muslim dating. Apparently before marriage couples aren’t alone together. Nor are they allowed to kiss. The logic behind this =

Kissing leads to sex.

Sex leads to babies out of wedlock.

Which means the man can leave.

The mother then dumps her baby.

Therefore – no kissing!

After having much fun with one of their massage chairs we left the Ministry around 4.30pm – and stopped off at Zaidee’s old home town for food and Wipeout on TV. And then off to Zaidee’s home in Melaka… for more food! “I am FULL” and “No more food please” results in the response of “please help yourself, don’t be shy”.

ARGH.

 

Time for bed and to relax my aching cheeks from all the smiling!

Dodol and Castles - Wednesday 10th Feb 2010

Zaidee took us to his uncle’s place this afternoon to see how Dodol is made… Dodol is a traditional Malaysian food which he described as being like cookies… it’s nothing like cookies. It takes 7 hours to mix! No wonder most people just buy it these days. It’s gooey and comes in a triangle shape. It tasted alright, like coconut, but it had the consistency of snot. We also had coconut shakes, which were amazingly delicious; however, due to my lovely bout of gastro last night I only dared to have a small amount of mine. Yes, I do realise I’m not going well in the health department… a cold and then gastro, but my awesome gastro-kit seems to have put an end to it. Good purchase, thanks Dad for making sure I got one! What Asian trip is complete without some kind of stomach bug!

  

Next up was an old Malaysian ‘castle’. It was gorgeous. Made entirely from wood, and with the most intricate carvings inside, it was amazing. Not so amazing, but equally as interesting, was the Torture Museum. As you can imagine, it housed all the old torture devices including the rack, various gouging instruments and all other sorts of stomach churning equipment. I must have had a stronger stomach when I was 12, because I remember doing a project in year 8 on Medieval Torture Methods and I didn’t feel queasy… the same cannot be said about my trip today. Zaidee did his best to scare me, making things move and clunk. Bad Zaidee.

After a beautiful nap, Awi, Nani and Lin took us out (once again)for some shopping and dinner. I bought a dress :) YAY.

Speech

Today was a busy day as far as observations go…

Class # 1 = Maths

We joined Oh May Ling again this morning for maths, to play a game we had told her about using the times tables. It was a success which made us happy – we actually felt like we had contributed something! And the kids enjoyed it.

Class # 2 = Preschool

Super cute! The kids in this class were 5 and 6, a little older than our preschoolers as they start school at age 7 here. We made play-dough. This was to help with the kids fine motor skills and finger dexterity to help them use sign language, as well as write. The first few months of preschool is dedicated to fine motor skills.

Speech Path and Audiologist

A SP and an Audiologist came to visit the school today. Luckily we were able to observe their sessions… along with 5 other people! The poor kids had 7 people watching them in their sessions, taking photos of them and even videos! Nothing like that would happen in Australia! Confidentiality seems to be a different kettle of fish here.

The SP sessions seemed to be testing the child’s ability to hear certain sounds versus their reliance on lip reading. It was very interesting to watch the sessions and see how a session for a child with a severe hearing impairment is conducted. The children were required to identify when they heard a sound, match a sound to a picture and produce the sound themselves.

The Audiologist simply performed an otoscopy as the audiometer was broken, so unfortunately we did not see much in that session.

Royal (jelly) Failure – Tuesday 9th Feb 2010

This afternoon our trustee hostesses (Awi, Nani and Lin) showed us more of beautiful Melaka. We went to Mini Malaysia, which has life-size traditional houses from the different states of Malaysia. We also went to a bee museum, where we tasted some royal jelly… which tastes like yoghurt with a bit of a funny after-taste. Awi, Nani and Lin were big fans!

Beautiful houses, ridiculously hot weather, various species of bee and some very nice ice crushes provided a nice afternoon outing.

At night, after the downpour of rain and lightning storm, we went on the Melaka River Cruise. It was beautiful at night and I’m glad we did it then and not during the day!

Speech

Class # 1 = Remedial Class

The two children in this class were  aged 9 and 10, yet were still struggling with the alphabet. They were making the letters out of plasticine, from ‘a’ – ‘f’, using flashcards and learning the signs for the letters. The boy had obvious difficulties and had a repaired cleft lip. He had some hearing and could say some of the letters, but the girl was producing nothing more than moans when the teacher tried to elicit sounds from her. Both children seemed to have difficulties separating upper and lower case letters.

Class # 2 = Year 4 Maths

This lesson was dedicated to rounding off numbers to the nearest thousand. It was conducted in what I would assume to be similar to a primary school maths class in Australia (I cannot remember primary school maths classes anymore!) with the use of board work and a game. The children seemed to really enjoy the class and the teacher kept them motivated.

Class # 3 = Sains (Science)

What a lovely topic the children learnt about in science today: “Humans Excrete and Defecate”. I now know the sign for urine in Malaysian sign language… Awesome. The lesson was taught in English, and the teacher spoke quite loudly to allow the children with some hearing to pick up the sounds – I wonder if she has had vocal training…

Interesting to note… two of the children in this class were the same two children in the remedial class… They have gone from one class, where they are learning to alphabet, to this class where they are asked to spell ‘defecation’. Good luck to them…

Class # 4 = English

Oh May Ling was teaching the children articles today. It was a good class and once again, Oh May Ling’s personality came out and one boy ended up signing to us that she was a little crazy! Good fun :)

Zaidee the pretend Audiologist…

A girl came crying to Zaidee today saying that her ear was really itchy… thus it was his job to check it out!

It was a little difficult for him to explain what the problem was to us -  but we figured out she has grommets and there was a problem with one of them. She is going to see the real Audiologist tomorrow.

Now I know my ABC… – Monday 8th Feb 2010

The weekly big assembly was held this morning, with an interesting observation that the Head Master did not seem to speak sign language, having someone else translate for the children. This seems unusual; however, being the Head Master here seems to be a different role than the principal in Australian schools. While I’m sure all the official and organisational roles are the same – Australian principals seem to be more involved with the students and more present in daily school life.

The weather was a little nicer today due to the thunderstorms last night. Bring them on again tonight I say…

Speech

Zaidee let us listen to a working hearing aid today – there was  a HUGE difference between this one and the one we heard before. Much clearer and I can see how a hearing aid would definitely help a hearing impaired person. While there was still a lot of background noise, it was a marked improvement.

Class # 1 = Mathematics (Oh May Ling)

We observed Oh May Ling’s maths class today with year 6 children. It was run in much the same way as Australian maths classes, with the students learning their times tables. They should know all of their times tables by this age in school; however, there were a couple of children who were quite behind. Oh May Ling involved in the class, getting us to help the children by telling them in they were right or wrong. We therefore, learnt how to count in sign language… and I may have helped the children a little too much by giving them the answers sometimes… but I was just so glad to be able to communicate with them and have them respond.

 

Class # 2 = Communication Class (Sign Language)

This class was ADORABLE! They were year 2 students… and learning the alphabet in sign language. They were very noisy and extremely excitable. Flash cards were used to learn the alphabet, then the children had to match words, pictures and symbols representing the sign for the words. It was great to be able to help the kids with this task, as they were very happy for us to be involved. Jess and I now know (some of) the alphabet in Malaysian sign language – go us!

Nanna napped again this afternoon (for about 4 hours) and we are now waiting for dinner, which our lovely friends are bringing back for us :)

Tomorrow shall be another interesting day I’m sure.

Sweet dreams

A Sleepy Sunday – Sunday 7th Feb 2010

We got lost. Again. Trying to navigate our way to the bus station to catch a bus back to Melaka proved more difficult than imagined. Two train trips and a 25min walk (with all our luggage in tow) later, we arrived at the bus station to find we had missed the 9am bus by 5mins. So the 10am bus it was.

Zaidee picked us up from the bus station and off to a Malaysian wedding we went. We arrived for the eating part of the wedding, but the ceremony was earlier in the morning. This is the second part of the wedding – First there is a ceremony at the bride’s parents’ house, and then one week later, the same thing occurs at the groom’s parents’ house. Malaysian weddings can have up to 5,000 guests! This one was a smaller, simpler wedding…

After the wedding, Jess and I both slept for quite a few hours in the afternoon, as we are both quite sick with a wretched cold. Sorry Jess for passing it on! We were woken by Awi to a ready cooked, delicious dinner and ice cold watermelon juice! Yum!

It is raining quite heavily at the moment, which is a refreshing change… it’s still horrendously humid though.

And that pretty much sums today up…

Selamat Jalan