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.