miyako

Germ-free kids may risk more adult illnesses: study

miyako — 2009-12-10T08:58:59+08:00

Germ-free kids may risk more adult illnesses: study

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – Parents who let their kids romp in the mud and eat food that has fallen on the floor could be helping to protect them against maladies like heart disease later in life, a US study showed Wednesday.

"Our research suggests that ultra-clean, ultra-hygienic environments early in life may contribute to higher levels of inflammation as an adult, which in turn increases risks for a wide range of diseases," including cardiovascular disease, Thomas McDade, lead author of the study, said.

Researchers at Illinios' Northwestern University looked at data from a study in the Philippines, which followed participants from birth to 22 years of age, to better understand how childhood environments affect production of a protein that increases when there is inflammation -- a sign the body forced to fight infection or injury.

The data were compiled by tracking children born in the 1980s to 3,327 Filipino mothers.

Researchers visited the children every two months for the first two years of their lives and then spaced out the visits to every four or five years until the kids reached their 20s.

Among items that the researchers assessed were the hygiene of the children's household environment -- "whether domestic animals such as pigs and dogs roamed freely" -- and their families' socioeconomic resources.

Blood tests taken when the study participants reached adulthood showed that although Filipinos suffer far more infectious diseases as infants and toddlers than their American counterparts, their level of C-reactive protein (CRP) when they reached adulthood was at least 80 percent lower than in Americans.

Filipinos in their early 20s had average CRP concentrations of 0.2 milligrams per liter, while Americans in the same age group had blood concentrations of the protein of 1-1.5 milligrams per liter.

"CRP concentrations are incredibly low in Filipinos compared to people in the United States and that was counter to what a lot of people would have anticipated because we know that Filipinos have higher exposure to infectious diseases," McDade told AFP.

One finding of the study published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the Royal Society was that adults with high CRP levels -- indicating more inflammation -- were exposed to less animal feces in the home as kids.

But that should not serve as an impetus to rush out and buy a pig to have running around the home, said McDade -- adding that Americans' obsession with hygiene would probably rule that out anyway.

Rather, he said, the message to take home from the study is the importance of being exposed early in life to common microbes and bacteria.

"These bacteria and microbes may never result in outright clinical disease but they do play an important role in promoting the development of regulatory networks," said McDade, who is an associate professor of anthropology at Northwestern and a fellow at the university's institute for policy research.

To explain the importance of exposure to such microbes, McDade, who has a two-and-a-half-year-old son, likened immune system development to the way Americans promote brain development in infants and toddlers by exposing them to "all sorts of cognitive and social stimuli."

"There's rapid brain growth early in life and there are lots of neurological connections being formed, and you need to engage with your environment in order to promote those connections," he said.

"The immune system also needs engagement with its environment to drive its development, and without that environmental input, we're depriving it of a necessary source of information that it needs to promote its development," said McDade.

And with his own child, McDade said he ignores the two-second rule when food drops on the floor.

"I don't hesitate - I tell him to pick it up and eat it," he said.

Source: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20091210/tts-health-us-children-heart-972e412.html

My mom's old way to bringing up kids is correct after all. Hokkein saying eat dirty , dirty grow XD

Boiling ah fen now wants to humtum starhub

miyako — 2009-09-12T14:25:13+08:00

Dear Customer Service Manager

I request to clarify on the following

1) I had a bill (Invoice no 7512113419072009) amt $111.28 date 19/07/09 which was paid on 02 Sep 09. The deadline was missed hence the cable service was disrupted in my house. However, mistaking that I had cleared the payment, the service would resumed within 1 working day or so. Which was not the case.
2) THe service was not resumed and your customer had to make a call to make enquiry for the status of and was then informed that there is 1 more invoice unpaid. Which I did not received the invoice nor reminder.
But was given a deadline to clear this invoice by your customer service officer before service may be resume. Another letter was issued to us on the 07 Sep 09, 5 days after the last payment was made and was charged $15 for the reactivate of service.

I am extremely displeased with the way that the issue was handled.

1) No one contacted us dispite the disruption of service for 5 days
2) We do not received the last billing which your customer service officer had mentioned and only received a reminder letter after a call had been made to starhub. Letter received on 07 Sep 09.
3) With the above, you are charging us $15 for reactivation of your services?

I would appreciate your reply on the above, if not I would not hesitate to terminate any household services related to starhub to avoid future disappointment and unnecessary troubles.

The Perfect World

miyako — 2009-07-11T00:20:28+08:00

Are we living in a perfect world? You might be laughing or saying I am dumb ass when you see this question. However, recent events had got me thinking of this question.

I had did a couple of online test recently and share the result on facebook. There was a personality test that says that I am a fact person a thinker (how true, think so much). Shortly after which a friend of mine took that. She discuss this personality test thing via MSN, then she commented, oh you are category X! I say, "Yeah, basically i am a fact person, I make a lot of decision in life based on fact, and somehow at times is lacked of emotion", She goes, "OHH that is so bad, you should blah blah blah, be more sensitive".
I was going what the ..... a simple test became a lecture
It seems like being a fact person is a weakness, so is being emotional person a strength? What irks me most was the feel of trying to "help" me modify myself to be a perfect person. Both fact and emotion completed person. How irony...

A few of my colleagues had left the co., one of whom I had good working relationship with. Its only then that I know that her boss, have very high demand on her work. Its good to have a high standard boss, so u follow up with the standard, but if the standard is ridiculous. How to do work? The boss wants a perfect subordinate, details I shall not elaborate. The poor colleague cannot meet up being the perfect subordinate standard and was eventually too pressurized and left the co. From my working experience with the lady, she has good strengths in some specialised area in her work, in fact, I would reckon she is a guru level of person. But sadly the boss only sees perfection in other areas she wants and missed out her strength as a result she cannot shine or perform.

These perfect requests had fallen unto me so many times, that I got very sick of meeting the perfect standard. Not that I am not willing to learn new areas, but it got so into me that at a point of time, i lost my self identity in order to be a perfect person.

Creating unnessary pressure onto my health and also strained on relationships.

Well I am learning to loosen this grip in my life, now I set my own standard. i do not wish to conform to others perfect guideline, what is perfect to others may not be so to me .

宿命 (Fate)

miyako — 2008-12-07T12:00:58+08:00

I had wanted to watch this korean movie for a long time, but have no chance to. Seeing the eye ball catching movie poster plaster (above) around the train station really trigger my curiousity. So i rent the VCD to watch

Short summary of the story line:

"In the dark criminal world of Seoul, U-min (Song Seung Hun), Cheol-jung (Kwon Sang Woo), Do-wan (Kim In-kwon) and Yeong-hwan (Ji Sung) are close friends in a gang. One day, with the help of an older member Gang-seop (Ahn Nae-seong), U-min, Cheol-jung and Do-wan attack the gang's casino so they can start new lives. But their plan goes awry when Cheol-jung betrays them, and U-min goes to prison. He becomes the scapegoat to save his friends' lives.

After serving his time, U-min wants to stay out of trouble but is drawn back into the underworld when he sees what has become of his friends: money and power-hungry Cheol-jung continues to betray others as he climbs up the gang ladder; Do-wan is a drug user; Gang-seop is missing; and his girlfriend Eun-yeong (Park Han-byul) has left him to run a bar as the boss' mistress.

As U-min tries to solve the situation, however, unfortunate twists of fate set off one misunderstanding after another. To make matters worse, the mob boss and right-hand man Yoeng-hwan get them involved in a huge drug deal. Once again thrown into a game with high stakes and big cash, the once best friends must fight one another for their lives." - http://www.koreanmovie.com/The_Fate_km605/

Well after watching it, this is my views:

The Bad ( I prefer to talk negative first and end positive)
The movie seems to be always in darkness, i do not know why, but majority of the scenese are super dark (dark room, back alleys, bar, pubs) with the character puffing their cigarettes and looks so depressive talking very depressive lines.... Maybe its part of the way to express the gangsters life etc or the negativeness they are experiencing, but its an super eye sore for me, as the TV screen is always dark and i can only hear voices.

Its hard to understand the plot, to me, its a little soapy as with any other Korean dramas. But without the women factor (this show is a purely MAN show), it helps to decrease the soapy factor. But korean men are very good in being "depressive". It just makes the show super depressive. Hard to describe how depressive they are, unless u see and show and hear those lines. Few points, rugged look for those who lost the power, on drugs, talk negative (either want to die , want to revenge or purely ranting on the hardship they have etc etc), puffing sticks.

The Good
The acting skills of kwang and Song had changed. No more stuck in love men. FINALLY.
Kwang plays the bad guy, he is pretty good. With the classic gangster image in Korea, he really does looks like one.
Song acting is not bad but somehow, i still see images of his old characters.
The only only good scene is at the very end. Ladies do not give up, watch till the end, there is a scene of the hunks playing rugby, and topless :P handsome neh... so man.
okie Out of topic..

Over all: *** (5 stars award)

Shopping Trip

miyako — 2008-11-04T23:07:41+08:00

I am about a week away from leaving for my holiday to Seoul. But I haven't packed yet.... My little luggage had been deemed retired (all thanks to mom). So I ended up getting a new luggage.
Using the vouchers given to me for my birthday, I headed to Isetan Scotts.

Hey, I got a great buy. I got a decent luggage from this brand Delsey, it looks pretty good and meet most expectation of my definition of a good luggage

1. Must be good size (depends on where u travel most often and how much stuff you usually brings)
2. Must be light weight (you do not want to pay for excess luggage pricing coz its really stupid! its the luggage that's overweight not the contents)
3. Durable (My mom got a cheapo polo luggage that cost her near 50 bucks, but the handle broke away on her trip to china (first usage), the repeat usage cost is considerably high)
4. Affordable (I saw a Samsonite which I like for its design, but its price is not so friendly. Cost nearly 1K!!! Gosh, If I lost that in any airport... I think its really heart pain)

The good thing is Isetan do provide delivery service, so I do not need to drag this thing along when I went jalan jalan at Far east afterwards. I have not been to FEP for longest time. I think the last time I went was to get the pink motorola mobile from WhyMobile. (thats if I can remember)

The shops had changed a lot. There are still lots of ah lians store in the basement area, but there is considerably lesser than before, more shops selling bags and accessories and shoes. Maybe its a weekday, its quite empty. I got myself a pair of jeans which fit me well and is cheap! Less than 50. I had hard time finding jeans, coz of my not so long legs and not so slim waist. (depressive)

Fetish for shoes kick in, also got a silver colored heels for function, and a pair of low cut boots.

Well I think I maxed my clothings budget for the next 2 months....

I am back

miyako — 2008-10-17T11:04:26+08:00

I shifted my blog to multiply blog earlier this year, but I had decided to shift back to QQblogs.

This is still my favourite place to blog. The people who read and writes here are real people. Why do I say so, as I saw that people on the M blog (my other friends) tend to give me goodie good shoes reply. Which to me, is hyprocritical, if bad things were to happened to you, I am sure you would react in the same manner.

Ah fen is no goodie good shoe, I tend to be myself and wants to be myself.
I do not want to have a panel of censorship officers behind my back everytime i write a blog. I am no Dawn wayang or Xia xue. I no need your support.

My production in the M blog is miserable. Everytime I want to pen something, I feel so scrutinized, if i put this what will happened. I was more afraid that the naggy that will come along with whatever that I had placed. Which in the first place was a platform to pen down my thoughts and is a personal blog. You do not go to someone blog and scrutinzed whatever that had been penned and start preaching on moral values and watever you have in your own mind. Stop putting your own points and opinions onto me. So to avoid these, I might as well don;t write a shit. No blog = no trouble.

And if you cannot agree with what I had placed or wrote, just leave a comment. I don't love to hear preaches.
And to me, it purely and invasion of my personal space. I am sharing a piece of my life with you, but I do not want to hear a piece of your preach out of you.

I started blogging since I was in the poly days, since i knew QQblogs.
I always nag at tz for the lack of ability to plaster photos like the M blog can, BUT

QQBLOGS IS STILL THE BEST. COZ THERE ARE NO FREEDOM INVADERS.

HURRAY FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH (*Sorry BLOG)

A new year is coming

miyako — 2007-12-28T18:32:59+08:00

The time just zoom past me again, and year 2007 is ending and year 2008 is coming.
GOSH

I am aging faster than I tot. Haiz

My mom was askign me to go to the jewellry shop with her this weekend as she want to buy two gold bangles, one for me and one for my future sister in law.

I asked " Mom so why are you getting this thing so early"

She "for you and your sister in law to wear when you marry lor, wear during the tea ceremony"

Me "but mom, if very suay i cannot get myself off the shelf how? Why don't you buy a gold bar for me instead? More practical right"

haha

My mom gave me a you are hopeless look.

I still prefer having a gold bar than a gold bangle.
LOL

I am working on the budget for year 2008. Yes, seeing that I have not been managing my money well, I need to implement this. Stick to the budget ash, else eat grass.

New Year Resolution 2007 Review

miyako — 2007-12-10T12:55:19+08:00

New Year Resolution
(retrieve from qqblogs.com)

Sunday, December 31, 2006

i dunnoe abt this, but seems like this is a practise around

New Year Resolution

1) Health

Try to get my health back on track. Watch my diet, exercise more, less late nights

Aim to shed off 5KG for 2007

-- Jiat lat I put on at least 5KG in 2007 ---

2) Studies

Due to a lot of personal problems/reasons, I had been off schedule.

I need to graduate this year.

Aim to clear off my 7 modules, die die must clear

-- SEEING LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL --

3) Career

Been thru a lot of ups and downs. Had joined a new co. this year,

Aim for ultimate performance. Despite the negativeness of the environment, I shall strive with God Grace.

-- CHANGED 3 times of job this year, not settling in this company which i intend to polish myself up ---

4) Financial

Been a poor handler of money thru out. Need to curb spending and save more

Aim for a trip to Taipei in Jul 07.

-- No time for trip to Taipei, but God blessed me with 2 trips, one to Japan and the other to Bangkok in Nov 07 -- :D

OMG

miyako — 2007-10-18T13:20:48+08:00

I saw my ex boss at Funan earlier, dun even know if I should go up and say HI. Seriously I dun have anything to say to him nor do I expect him to tok to me. Most prob is asking what i am doing now etc. Very superficial and yin chou type of questions. So dun waste time, just walk away.

I had gotten my results for my last 2 exams paper, and OMG, I got a distinction and a pass. The distinction is totally unexpected, i estimated at CR at most. WOW!

Now I have 2 more papers to go, another 2 more killer subjects :( Network management + Strategic marketing. The Strategic marketing is somewhat more tedious than I tot, and when my team is seriously under man power, 2 in a group, other have 4 in a group. But anyway, I am very used to working on my own.
Bad thing, no team work spirit.

Raining Day

miyako — 2007-09-27T09:30:38+08:00

Its a rainy day this morning and as usual the BKE PIE whatever Es are all jammed packed. The bus moved on at snail speed and I only reached office at 9am. (suppose to start work at 830) Gosh...

I went to have an hair cut at chapter 2 last evening, I always ask for Nana a senior stylist, she is good at hair cuts and design. Finally I decided to straighten out my hair, coz i dunnoe how to take care of curly hair. :(
My camera's with my mom in dunnoe where in Taiwan, so no pics can be uploaded. Yes, my mom ditched me and my dad and happily went on a week vacation to Taiwan, I think she said she is heading to Tainan before going to Taipei and back to Sin. She loves travelling and now she is pestering me when wld my convocation be, bring her to perth. Coz she never been to an ang moh country before. She's pretty adaptable in travelling, if you ask her to go back pack she is okie. So far she been to neighbouring countries a few times and if you see her luggage you would be surprise she can survive with such few items.

Argh I am looking so so forward to my holiday in November! Call me blessed~ I am heading to Bangkok (super hot) with friends i met at work (earlier work place), and then with my colleagues on an company incentive trip to tokyo! So excited! I never really had an vacation for say 3 years at least.

This is my last semester at school, All i hope is to quickly finish what I started and enjoy life!~