Eyes Wide Open for some Good weather

This week is definitely better for YS, eyesight is pretty close to being perfect now I think. She doesn't need to wear the shades in the indoors any longer!!! Don't have a very scientific way of telling this, but if she appears to see as far as I can now. :) The next time we go to the eye doctor, i'll ask her to memorize the eye chart down to the copyright notice at the bottom! See if that freaks them out!
The weather was SO good last Saturday (low 70's) that it would be a crime not to get some sun!!! After coming back from Malaysia, our systems were still in shock when we felt KC weather in the 40-50s!!

So we decided to bring Benj out to the doggy park for a bit... He're a shot of him in a every important butt-smelling meet and greet! Later that day we even broke out the tennis rackets from their winter slumber and played for a while. Its good to know that our strokes aren't totally out of whack after 4 months of non-play! Spent the evening at Chiew Ping's place for her 30th birthday... Pretty soon it'll be mine too... SIGH... I guess I'm not 18-22 anymore....

"Minor to Excessive Discomfort"

That was the description of the next few days of post-PRK recovery. Unfortunately for Yeesin, the "discomfort" ranged from "Super Excessive" to "OH MY GOD!!". Yes, it was that bad. We should have known that when they prescribed her Tylenol #3, which incidentally is the same stuff they gave me for my wisdom teeth removal! Sunday was totally an opposite of Saturday's experience for her... She woke up at 2am, almost screaming in pain, with her eyes swollen up, and tearing all over the place. It was so bad, she couldn't even go to sleep until we had some numbing eye drops and Ibuprofen 800 into her system... For the rest of Sunday, she was drugged up with Tylenol #3 which not only numbs the pain, but it also puts you to sleep....
Its Tuesday now, Thankfully! She's recovered enough to go to work today. Doctor's took off the bandage contact lens in her eyes yesterday. Turns out that the pain over the weekend was the eye cells healing. I still think they understated the "discomfort" part. She's really sensitive to light, but her eyesight is still improving. She'll stick to wearing sunglasses everywhere until the light doesn't hurt. At least she'll look cool in wearing her shades indoors!!

We're back! & Bring out the LAZER!

We're back stateside & jet lagged! Landed @ 10 am CT in Kansas City on Weds, and discovered how 70 degree weather can feel cold after 3 weeks of the 90's... It's good to see family and friends in Malaysia, but MAN... its great to not sweat ALL the time! Decided to gut out the remainder of the week and go to work @ 6am until we get over jet lag...That's what caffeine is for.
2 days later...BRING OUT THE LAZER!!!!! What's the first thing that people should do once they get back from a long overseas vacation? Go get laser eye surgery of course!!! Elaine and Yeesin decided to go get LASIK surgery together for mutual support on Friday... They tried to get a group discount too, but the doctor's office staff weren't too impressed with that suggestion!!!
All in all, the preparations for sugery alone was a lot longer than the actual surgery itself. Both of them needed to be prepped via cleaning the area around the eyes prior to surgery. Elaine got regular LASIK, while Yeesin got the PRK kind... PRK's a little cheaper than LASIK but the recovery time is a little longer too (more TLC for Yeesin is due then). Here's a couple of shots of them in the prep room. Check out their matching hairnets... I can almost hear "do you want fries with that" coming out! less than 5 minutes after surgery, they were ready for recovery...













1 day later... both of them are doing fine, reminding each other to administer their eye drops once each hour and 4 times a day... Here's a shot of them putting in the eye drops...in sync !!!

Week 3: Genting & Teksi Sapu

Next location: Genting Highlands! Things have changed alot since I've visited Genting Highlands almost 10 years ago. Man! They've added so many new buildings and hotels, and rides...Got connections in Genting through my Uncle (good to be back where we have relatives in high places), so we managed to score pretty nice rooms up in First World Resort for less than 45 USD per night. Overall, its a really HUGE place, except they probably could have had a better paint job on the outside...
Went roaming around some of the indoor rides. I especially enjoyed playing bumper cars with my sis. I really really enjoyed seeing how high a little kid jumps out of his seat when I ram him with my combined weight of my car and myself!!! Yeesin & I also enjoyed the automated gondola ride around the Starbucks restaurant as well. Reminded us of how much more fun it was to get a Gondola ride in Italy (although it was freaking expensive to do so!) ...
More fun that ramming little kids with a bumper car is riding a teksi sapu down from Genting to KL! For only RM20 a person, YOU too can have the ride of your life down the mountain, where braking is only a suggestion, not a requirement! By the time we got to the cable-car station, all the buses where booked for the day! So some enterprising guys with unmarked taxi's (ie. teksi sapu) showed up and offered to get us to KL for 20 a head. 1/2 hour later, we got to KL Sentral waaay earlier than the bus that we were supposed to take!!! Man.. that Teksi-sapu guy sure could drive!

Week 3: Stranded on an island

We can safely say now that being stranded on an island resort isn't too bad. Our 3 day and 2 night trip was pretty much by the book until the day we were scheduled to take off. That morning, saw a few special characters on the resort: "Flipper" & "Ms Kitty". Flipper is a rambunctious 5 yr old British kid that likes to hang about the pool and squeal like a dolphin (hence the nickname). Ms Kitty, in contrast is an Ah-lian that loves to pose for "kitty-cat-meooow" style photos by the beach for her really-really enthusiatic shutterbug boyfriend! Just think of it as a swimsuit model pose without the model look. Although her posing is really stylo-milo, and she can hold those "meooow" poses for a really long time, its really hard to look away (in a bad car wreak kind of way).
But later that afternoon was when things changed. Our 4 propeller plane that was scheduled to show up at 3pm that day never did due to strong cross winds... While waiting at the tiny Tioman airport, we shared stories a few new friends, Adelaide an American from San Diego, 2 doctors Orooj & Emira from KL, and an elderly couple from Gombak... At about 6.30pm we were still waiting when one of the 4 airport personnel (yes, the place is THAT small!!, and it had only 1 custom agent) came in and kept all 3 flags flying outside the building! Bad sign.
Turned out that the airport didn't have runway lights, they didn't take our offer of lighting the runway with lighters seriously, so we were stranded on the island for one more night!!!
Berjaya was nice enough to put us up for the night for free + dinner buffer + breakfast! So all was not lost. We even got a nice sunset walk out of it!
Yeesin even found a wayward coconut by the beach, and after imitating a monkey by throwing it against the pavement, she managed to crack it and got 2 whole cups of coconut juice out of it!!! Nice to know if we are ever stranded on a desert island, we can count on her to provide the drinks!

Finally took off without incident the next morning at 8.30am. Next Destination Genting!!! (BTW, here's a shot of the sunset!)