Wah, since my last 2 post. My sister tells me she kena pull hair from my mother the other day - in proper English for my English friends, that means my sister had experienced a 'hair pulling session'. I am so jealous as I've been thinking about it and had wanted it too!!!

So, to continue with the story....Apart from the bitter, black foul smelling chinese medicine, my mother also used to scraped our (apart from my elder sister, of course as she is very fierce and i think my mother sometimes left her alone as my mother was afraid or my sister's acidic tongue, wrath and temper :)... I kid you not... my elder sister is FIERCE! ) back with spoon, fork, coin and whatever she can get her hands on with a flat back. It wasn't child abuse... it was only done when we had high fever, to release the 'heat' from the body, bringing the temperature down. Bloody hell, that one is a killer!!!! Ii still have it done occasionally when i have aches and pains. i can guarantee that it works although the Man hates it with a passion as it leaves awful marks after it is done. That is the chinese for you... our mantra is no pain, no gain.....The ying and yang needs to be balanced, the 'khi' must be balanced.....

Let me tell you about my Ah Kong - to me (when i was younger) he was a great big muscly and strong man, mind you he still is up to now, Just ask Ian- he got the Chong treatment when he visited my Ah Kong this year.My Ah Kong has healing hands, so does my mum in different ways. My Ah Kong was a traditional Chinese masseur. People would travel miles and for hours to visit him for his administrations. My fondest memory is of all my visits to his house, him taking me out in the hot humid afternoons and we would be cruising around various housing estates, fields and plantations all the while trying to spot some sort of elusive special plant and roots to make his oils and medicine. I was totally rubbished at it and used to pick lots of weeds out for him! He took it nevertheless and he used to tell me when I was older that  I could never picked the right one and he had to throw all my weeds out into the back garden when i wasn't looking. I wonder if my other cousins ever got the right ones as they saw him and my Por Por (grandma) more than we did. Anyhow, he would always reward me with a trip to the coffee shop for a nice cold drink- which was a big treat then as one have to understand, Chinese people in them days only let you drink either room temperature or steaming hot water or tea whatever the weather as it is not good for the 'khi' or Qi in the long run. In the later years, it dawned to me that the ice cold drink was a bribe as he had to sneak out of the house, to enjoy a cold bottle of Guinness all the while showing me off to his friends telling them I was his grand daughter who was visiting him. I bet he treated all my cousins to cold drinks and ice-kacang so he could enjoy his sneaky pints of Guinness that he said will help strengthen him up for his customers who comes to see him for a massage.

My Ah Kong told me that my mum has healing hands in another kind of way and some of his children are 'psychic' and healers in other ways. My grandfather performed and to my understanding, he still does it now - massages out of his front room. He had never turned anyone who needed help away. He used to call out to me when i was visiting, tell me what to look out for and how he would treat his customers. He wasn't a greedy man, never named a price for his treatment- instead only accepting 'red packets' filled with money on what his customers could afford. He would however named his price to the rich as he knew they could afford it. All his children and grandchildren would receive some sort of 'treatment' from him at some time or another. As we lived quite a distance away, if he or my phor phor ever heard we had a sprain or was poorly, they would try their best to travel to see us and bring his own potions and medicine down. We would get massages as well that would help our 'khi' to strengthen and get us on the way to recovery. One must remember the the body's 'Khi' must be balance and nurtured- this was and still is very important to my Ah Kong and mum. The 'khi' is the centre of the body also known as the chakra.
My mum however would still treat us with her boiled roots and herbs with my phor phor watching over her when she is boiling them to make sure my mum did it right.
Now, my mum also has healing hands, she has strong fingers and does give a rather good massage- her own unique style. She also 'pulls hair' to treat headaches, migraines, etc. It really hurts and i used to curse her for it. All these I grew to appreciate as I grew older and I will still ask my mum if she would pull my hair when i see her. She takes all the cursing i give her when she is administering to me- the only difference now is that she understands we need it and she laughs at us when we curse.

Introduction

I thought I'll start a blog to share what I do, why I am doing what I am doing with my new venture.
I have always like complementary therapies and would occasionally indulge myself nowadays when I can afford it or when my friend and I would swap therapy.
Coming from the family I have, one had to understand that my mother's side of family are more to the 'psychic' and  gravitated to the chinese traditional medicines. My father side of family gravitates towards the Western Medicine so my siblings and I grew up with the benefit of both.

I remember when I was young and when we got poorly, my father would cart us off this his GP friend where we got out Western Medicine in way of panadol, piriton, antibiotics, etc whereas my mother would then trudge to the chinese medicine shop and comes home with so-called 'herbs'- the ones that stuck to my brain was the 'phau leong uan', various oils and various types of roots. These roots, she would then boil up in a big pot over the stove. We used to cower in 'fear' of them and my elder sister and younger brother ( the first 3 siblings in the family) would then plot on how we would take the, and how we were going to get out of taking the bitter, foul smelling medicines.

Ooohhhh... my mother was not as dumb as we thought and we were not as clever as we thought we would be. She would have a cane beside her and used to watch us very closely and shouted ' thun, thun' in hokkien which means 'swallow, swallow' in English, all the while hitting her cane on the nearest object, be it the floor, or table or chair (the list is endless). Looking back, I can't ever recall if I was more afraid of the cane or the actual swallowing of the medicine! Needless to say we do end up swallowing them till we got a bit older, and she would chase us round the house all the while waving her cane up and down, thereatening what she would do to us if we don't get to the piping hot medicine and swallow them before it got cold. As there was 3 of us, we would plot whose turn it would be that my mum would chase whilst the other 2 would run upstairs to 'get ready' in our share bedroom where they would be standing behind the bedroom door that was opened slightly ajar- enough for the chased one to get through.
When the chased one deemed that the other 2 has had enough time to 'get into position' the chased one would charge upstairs with a warrior sort of cry to warn the others that he'she was coming through. once the chased one got into the bedroom, the 3 of us would then push against the door so my mum couldn't get in. she would then cane the door instead in anger and we would be huffing and puffing- i now wonder because of the adrenaline rush? or was it because we were poorly and had depleted our energy running about? or was it due to fear?!

Now, you would think that we have got away, haven't you? I can assure you we hadn't! We still had to take them in the end when we were burning with fever, had general body aches and pain and she would 'lovingly' feed it into us all the whilst tricking us, sometimes with bribes of  the ever elusive sweets and chocolates that we never received. Sometimes when we put up with a small struggle, she would then threaten us with a few more spoonsful or a larger dose the next time. When my dad was  at home, the chinese medicines either hardly made appearance or we would only have it in reduced doses and we would happily take the panadol and antibiotics with not a struggle as it was flavourful and sweet.

No... please don't get the wrong impression, my mother is my true mother and is not the 'wicked' stepmother! She had done this out of her love for us. We realised this as we got older....

I also would like to tell you of the alternative methods of treatment when we were unwell of suffer with aches and pains. she would rub is in nice chinese smelling ointment or oils- be it store bought or the ones that grand-dad had made himself. That would be the rather stronger smelling medicine but one gets used to it and I used to chose the one my Ah Kong (grand dad) made.