I found out about this programme from Fidel, a friend who is the PAPA Programme Coordinator. I’ve known her for a while now and she and her husband are very supportive of heritage arts and events of Penang. Her two children are active in Anak-anak Kota, a brilliant programme for Penang school children. In fact I know quite a few outgoing youth who used to work with Janet Pillai on her highly commendable Anak-anak Kota Programme (which also netted Janet the DIGI Award).
Anyway, I had been meaning to write about this PAPA or Penang Apprenticeship Programme for Artisans for some time now. It’s a great initiative under Penang Heritage Trust to ensure that dying trades have some form on continuity. History and culture are after all intertwined. Especially in Penang.
To take part in this PAPA Programme, you have to dedicate a good deal of time (4 hours a day I believe) as you will be taught by the the masters themselves. Their target group is essentially people who will learn the crafts and use these newfound skills to help themselves earn a good living. It is certainly not for people like me who want to learn it as a hobby! That’s a no-no because it defeats the original purpose of the apprenticeship.
As some of these teachers are aging, it is a sad fact that when they pass on, their skills pass on with them too. Their skills are another kind of assets which matter a lot to our history and heritage. While I am wistful about this fact, it is heartening that PHT is taking the first step to ensure these amazing arts are not lost.
For instance, Fidel tells me that a professional took a sabbatical from her stressful career to focus on learning how to weave baskets from rattan.
You can also be an apprentice to a master carver for Chinese signboards. I am interested but I am not eligible for this programme for various reasons. As it is, I don’t read Chinese. It will be hard on me even if I am qualified to take this programme.
Nyonya beading, a patient and intricate art, is also available. I’m hopeless at such delicate art and craft so this is definitely not my kind of apprenticeship.
If you are interested or know of friend who would be keen on this PAPA PHT Programme, get details, get the form and get cracking. 😉
Or call Fidel at 012 456 5867 for details.
UPDATE (15 Oct 2009): PAPA is now housed in the quaint row of pre-war shophouses along Lebuh Acheh (look for No. 66) where the mosque is. It’s open on week days so you can pop in to buy their products or learn more about the dying arts and crafts of Penang. We bought a rattan lamp for RM40 recently as decor for our new apartment. They can also make bespoke rattan items if you wish. I’m ordering a cat basket for Margaret soon and a laundry basket for myself.
Musings
Raya Came Early
I have many friends online and offline. I think that’s one of life’s pleasures – having friends across geographical regions (it’s easier to stay in touch now with technology) and connecting with them.
Dotty’s one of my friends who met me on my blog. Yes, this very blog. I’ve had this blog running for the past 7 years. In the online world, 7 years is one heck of a long time. (I know. I’ve been online for a long time. Shoot me.)
We’ve taken the friendship a step further than most friends – we love doing stuff the classic way.
Remember those days when you were a kid and wrote to penpals overseas using thin blue aerogrammes? (If you don’t know what thin blue aerogrammes are, you must be young. Go ask your elder siblings or your parents.) I had penpals from Ivory Coast. I loved receiving letters from them. They wrote well in English and we’d exchange news of what happened to us in our school lives.
Nothing beats the excitement of seeing the postman whiz around to our white and yellow gate, honk his motorbike and pass me the bunch of letters, one of which was inevitably the blue overseas letter. I’d disappear into my room to rip it open and read (and re-read) each line.
Yesterday, the same sliver of thrill coursed through me when I got back to the office to find a sizable parcel waiting for me!
Oooh….in a world of email, virtual cards and virtual hugs, nothing absofreakinglutely nothing beats the feeling of a gift that you can hold in your hands!
Dotty has always put details first and that is why receiving a letter (a real one, OK, in true penmanship style) from her is always a pleasure. The stationery she writes on is as precious as the words on the paper. Have you ever wondered what special is? Special is when someone takes the time and effort to write a letter on beautiful, thick writing paper. Special is when words are written gorgeously (for people who learnt cursive writing in school).
Then the gifts of food and tea.
Homemade chocolate chip cookies rich with butter and nuts.
Premium Rabea tea from Jeddah (dear Dotty had just returned from there). She’s sent me Rabea tea before and it is a tea that’s low on tannic taste (which is great for plenty of longtime brewing and dunkings).
I felt that Raya came early for me! 😉 Drinking tea while munching on choc chip cookies over the 4-day weekend.
Gorgeous!
Thanks Dotty! Terima kasih my friend!
3…Going Strong
Last week was a bit of rush for me as we held our first free talk. Anyway, that’s done till the next monthly talk comes up in September. (Just in case you want to attend, do sign up! I promise it’s fun and educational.)
The next day, I rushed off to my WomenBizSense lunch to celebrate our 3rd anniversary. This time, it was held at Strada Restaurant on Pulau Tikus. I don’t mind the venue though parking is a hassle especially if we’re talking about Pulau Tikus traffic on a Friday afternoon, lunch hour no less!
WomenBizSense is now 3 years old.
Last Friday, I was truly grateful that so many friends turned up to help us celebrate this third birthday of ours. Most of them were regular attendees of our networking events; all of them businesswomen in their own right.
All busy but all took time to come share this achievement with us. Us as in me and Jo. Jo had the idea to start this group many years ago and when she told me, I said, why not?
The ‘why not’ was also painted with rebellion. Sometimes that’s me. If I don’t like something that I see out there, I’d rather start my own or do something on my own. I’d seen many business groups but none resonated with me. Some rules were plain silly anyway. Instead of griping, I thought, let’s see what we can do about it. And yup, WomenBizSense was born.
But running a women’s only networking group does have its setback sometimes. As we’re a group that meets once a month, relationships may not be as strong as what we envision. And we don’t have membership dues so some women do take us for granted – they attend once or twice and disappear for a year or so. They drop in whenever they like at events. And women always put family first so we work around nitty-gritties like school, kids, holidays and festivities.
And Jo and I cannot be running this group forever. At some point, we need others to pitch in. And of course, grow the group so we can do better things and bring more benefits to the group of women entrepreneurs in Penang.
Right now we’re not publicising ourselves enough. It’s just within the group of 40 or so ladies but that’s certainly not enough. And yes, it’s a voluntary role because we started it out of pure need. We needed a group for women entrepreneurs who are just starting out, who want to get genuine referrals, who want to become friends and at the same time do business with each other.
But realizing these teething problems is one good way of moving forward.
I realize that Jo and I cannot do this on our limited resources if we want to reach out to more women who run small businesses in Penang.
Starting next month, we’re electing a group of committee members to help us out – to plan activities which are more social and recreational in nature. The funny thing with women is, if we’re not comfortable with each other, we cannot refer or send business to each other. Or does this also happen with men? (Men, if you run businesses, I’d love to hear your point of view.)
One day, our dream for WomenBizSense is that there’s a chapter in every city across Malaysia. That’s what one member said to us during our sharing session after lunch was over and done with.
Again, I think, why not? All things are possible.
I’m glad we’ve turned 3. We’re just beginning at WomenBizSense!
Exploring Penang On Foot
This post is a bit overdue. But it is an example of what Nic and I love about Penang. There’s much to see, explore, appreciate and love.
Visiting art galleries is something we do when we’re free. It’s great to check in on the latest artists, especially up and coming ones. I still nag Nic about going back to his art. He really ought to. He does very well when he paints. And I am most certainly NOT saying this because he is my spouse. I say this because I’m going to be a very Rich Woman in my twilight years because I get to pick and keep the best art pieces in his collection ;-). LOL.
When we visited Galeri Seni Mutiara a few weeks back, it was an exhibition of watercolour pieces by Ong Choon Hoe. From the art, you can glimpse the soul of the artist. This one certainly loved boats and the sea. Every piece seemed to be about fishing boats of Malaysian fishing communities.
Another stopover once we were done with gazing at watercolour art was to this quaint tea house along King Street. I’d found this place when I was involved in a charity treasure hunt a few months ago. (It has now moved to a more happening address; now it’s the same row with the Pitt Street Goddess of Mercy Temple. Look out for a bright green shophouse near the flower/garland stalls).
Mr Oh’s little tea house was quirky! Laminate tables and plastic chairs. Cobwebs on the ceiling. Totally old world feel. He brews his medicinal pu-erh tea in his slow cooker. You can have pu-erh tea by the glass jug at RM1.20. He also sells pu-erh tea cakes and pu-erh tea in loose leaf form.
Pu-erh is a warming tea with a signature dark colour unlike most chinese teas. Mr Oh’s master (or sifu) is the original tea master who uses specially concocted pu-erh tea to help people who suffer from illnesses and ailments. He was not shy in telling us that his master helped cure a man who had prostate cancer by getting the man to drink pu-erh tea daily!
I know that pu-erh tea is good for slimming (not that I want to grow slimmer!). It’s also a good tea to drink as it is not cooling unlike jasmine tea. Pu-erh tea is great after a meal of oily food. In Chinese dim sum eateries, you can get a type of tea called “Kuk Po” which is a combination of pu-erh tea leaves and chrysanthemum flowers. As pu-erh warms and chrysanthemum cools, marrying both is essentially a Chinese method of ensuring proper yin and yang! Too yin creates health problems like chilly hands and feet while too yang creates an overheated body system. That is why balance is important especially in food!
Mr Oh chats in English and Hokkien so you can drop by anytime for an affordable cup of tea. He probably has some 60s music playing too.
What a strange combination huh!
The Question of Filial Piety
I had debated with myself whether or not to write this. By writing this, I am opening up and divulging secrets -which probably is only important to me. Still they are secrets.
Reading about children abandoning parents in hospitals and old folks’ homes recently kept me thinking. The newspaper story kept reiterating stories and interviews with old men and women in their 70s and 80s who were uncared for, dumped without a care at hospitals, never to be fetched home again.
I do feel sorry for the old people. Of course, it is terrible to be left alone when one is aging and unwell. And yes there’s bitterness underlying their words. After all, they were the parents who had brought up their children and now this is what they do in return.
And this stirs up the reader’s anger too towards these ‘children’ who are all grown up, married with families of their own. There’s a Chinese saying that goes like this: a parent may be able to take care and bring up 9 children but it is not for sure that the 9 children will be able to care for their parent!
In so many ways, this is becoming true.
And MCA is now asking itself – whatever happened to filial piety? Didn’t schools drum this into kids? Aren’t we Chinese/Asians/Malaysians the filial sort? What happened to THAT?
Let me go out on a limb here.
In the course of interviewing these abandoned old people, did the journalist once ask if these old people did or say anything to their children that made them difficult or horrible to live with? Did these old people honour and respect their own parents? Did they love their children and shower them with affection instead of break into unreasonable threats like ‘respect me because I’m your father’ or ‘because I said so’?
How can a child grow up to be filial when his own parents aren’t filial to his grandparents? How can a child grow up to love and cherish his parents if his parents have never loved or cherished him?
And have you ever wondered how tough it is living with aging people? Their needs are different, yes, but their moods, their sarcasm, their grumpiness – these can suck the life out of any family!
My late maternal grandparents lived with us – that’s my parents and us three sisters. They were suspicious of everything and everyone. My grandfather was not an easy person to live with. He had a long list of what other people must not do in front of him. This included whistling!
And once in his many fits of anger, my very own grandfather had threatened us with a chopper – he wanted to kill us all! I was about 11 then, and my dad herded us all into the master bedroom and locked the door. We were afraid.
Due to that incident, my parents decided that since my grandparents couldn’t live with us, it was best we rented them a room near us and let them live there. My mom cooked and brought meals to them twice a day. They were happy initially but after a while, they decided they wanted to come back to our home again. And so my parents relented and let them come home.
We tried not to enrage our grandparents – my grandma was like a faucet. If we said something that she felt was an insult to her (even though we weren’t even talking about her), she’d start weeping! She would do strange things that made mom livid – like washing her hair with FAB, the clothes detergent although we had shampoo! Hygiene was also not my grandma’s strong points. She would not bathe at all for a few days until we detected it.
But in the end, they were with us till both of them passed on a few years ago.
So I know what it means when we talk about crazy old folks. I lived with them when I was young. I know it’s really difficult. Sometimes I suspected my grandfather suffered from schizophrenia although he was never diagnosed as such. I always admired my dad’s tenacity through it all because it would have been so easy for him to send them to an old folks’ home. They were, after all, his parents-in-law. And my mom was an adopted daughter so really, there weren’t any blood ties. But he stuck through it all, even footing their funeral expenses when they passed away.
So when we talk about filial piety, someone has to get facts right. Ask those kids who’ve ‘abandoned’ their parents and ask them for their side of the story. What made them move away from their parents? What made them make that decision of sending their parents away? It couldn’t have been an easy decision to make. Of course there are those callous sons and daughters who wouldn’t care at all. I’m not siding those people.
If you’ve loved your children and treated them well when they were growing up, there’s no doubt that they will care for you when you grow old.
It is when you were a tyrant to your children when they were growing up, is there any way they wouldn’t be tyrannical to you?
One of the universal tenets is this: treat others like how you would like to be treated. This applies to family relationships too. Treat your children well, teach them well and you won’t be all alone at the end of your life.
A Funny Little Thing Called Home
We were at our new home yesterday evening, taking measurements as we had forgotten to measure certain parts of the kitchen.
I am slowly getting used to the idea that soon I will be living in this ground floor apartment unit as opposed to my first floor apartment.
I’m thinking of reasons to love being in this new house.
Actually I don’t have to think of many – it has a lot of potential to be diamond. Right now it is a diamond in the rough. An unpolished gemstone.
I love the location. It is 5 minutes away from my favourite mall and when I say favourite, it does not mean I am a shopaholic, it’s just that Jusco and Borders are both in the same mall. I can imagine popping into Jusco or Borders just for fun.
It’s also a brief walk away from cafes and restaurants. Penang is not a pedestrian-friendly place, I admit it. So to be able to walk to get my food – now that is a new approach to being the eco-urbanite that I am.
In front of my new place is a huge park suitable for jogging. With basketball court, stationary exercise machines, children’s playground and even monkey bars. In our current residence, we have a gorgeous swimming pool. So we had to think really hard about this when we decided to buy our current place. Could we change our exercise habits from swimming to walking or jogging? Was that a sacrifice?
But what made me love our new place is the idea that it feels like a terrace house, with a car park lot right in front of the house and a wisp of a garden at the side and back. The kitchen has a back door! I cannot tell you how strangely fulfilling it is to know that I can unlatch the metal door and walk out to the back of the house! (I could never do that in my present apartment).
Some things become so precious suddenly! Years ago I would’ve laughed out loud if anyone told me I’d be better off with a back door and a garden.
I’m also terribly excited that I can now fulfill my role as a good citizen of the earth by having space for composting. I can have my compost bin out in the garden. I can keep recyclables easily without messing up the kitchen (as I do now as I stash almost everything under the sink).
The best part? I can plant all the herbs and flowers I want because it’s a garden. With SPACE. With lots of earth under my feet.
I am thinking – let’s have basil, lemongrass, pandan, maybe even some chives and spring onions. And I can plant bamboo!
And there’s even space for a little deck out at the back. With a deck, we can put up our feet, count the sparkles in the sky while sipping pu-erh tea. A brilliant plan for utter hedonism!
Of course, all these are in my mind. The contractor has not even given us a proper quote for the kind of remodeling we want. He considers it minimal remodeling as we won’t be tearing down walls or putting up awkward structures. A thought crossed my mind – I really wouldn’t mind painting the house myself (with Nic of course). It’s not alien to the both of us. We did paint the current residence we are living in right now. I consider that a little elbow grease never did hurt. It would be backbreaking though.
And decisions to make on all sorts of things – things I had never bothered about. What colour for tiles? What kind of lighting? What colour for the walls? What type of kitchen? Galley? L-shaped? What type of furniture to match what we currently have? What style do we want? And where do we put Margaret’s bed? Her cat litterbox?
It’s funny how a new home gets people dreamy!
Do you have any tips to share for new home owners like us? What to do? What not to do? I’ll really appreciate it!
Does Your Home Have Mojo?
If I have not been all together blogging much, do forgive me. I’ve been tied up with website projects and recently with all manner of stuff related to our new apartment.
Well, it’s not exactly new as in brand new but it’s finally some place we can call Home. Which is very surprising to most friends who’ve visited our present place – they think we own it because we spent a lot of time decorating this apartment as if it weren’t rented. Even the postman had to get a closer look the first time he delivered our registered mail to us!
I must say that no matter where we are, rented apartment or not, Nic and I strive to make each place as cosy and comfortable as we can even when we were on a limited budget in the early years of our marriage (let’s see, that was about 10 years ago!).
Especially when I know I married an Artist-Geek-Designer-DIY-Hobbyist.
It’s easy to take things for granted when I have had so much decor fun with the art we have at home, the knick-knacks we’ve collected from our trips abroad, our diverse hobbies and our sense of what we like, rather than what convention or styles dictate.
Nic’s art hangs on most of the walls of our current place. His Sarawak bric-a-brac and native craft (dayak parang, dayak war shield, sarawak pottery, sarawak lamps) inhabit nooks and crannies. It’s very Sarawakian, and the very ethnic look is a testament to how much he loves his home state!
On the other hand, we both love our Chinese and Buddhist roots which account for most of the Oriental leanings in the apartment – from our Kwan Kung figurine (love his fierceness!) to our very special Buddhas (one was handcarried back from Bangkok a decade ago and the other was from Burma, also handcarried by a good friend!).
We used to have a skull of a cow (a real one!) hanging above our aquarium! Yes, it scared half our friends to death. We have realistic looking plastic geckos on the wall which again scares half my gecko-fearing friends. I don’t mean to scare people but they’re crazy fun additions to an otherwise regular apartment, though rented!
But what I am getting at is this – a lot of house redesigning is about accommodating personal tastes. And since Nic and I have been poring over decor magazines, I see that half or most of the homes featured are too contemporary for our eclectic tastes! One exception though – pick up DWELL – it’s fantastic! Chockfull of practical, simple, easy home design ideas.
Like fashion togs, a home must reflect the owners and their likes. Mixing and matching is a must, something new, something old, something inherited maybe.
I don’t want my home to look like a showroom apartment! They’re too cold and clinical, too lifeless. A home must have some oomph, some pizzazz, some mojo. It has to have a soul of its own. It has to be an extension of the owners.
More to come in the next few weeks on our new home! Even Margaret’s excited!
Win Professor Gerard Bodeker's Book
If you want to win a beautiful and informative book written by an expert on Malaysian herbs, then this is the contest for you!
Professor Bodeker, the author of “Health and Beauty from the Rainforest: Malaysian Traditions of Ramuan” is a senior faculty member in public health at Oxford University, an Associate of Oxford’s Institute of International Development, and Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University, New York. He holds a doctorate from Harvard and is editor of the WHO’s Global Atlas of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
His book, “Health and Beauty from the Rainforest: Malaysian Traditions of Ramuan” is a celebration of Malaysia’s traditional healthcare and beautycare, collecting the best of Malay, Chinese and Indian healing systems and putting them into one book.
This book was launched about 2 months ago so it’s still new and it’s still hot!
(Pssttt….Actually Paul saw this book when he was browsing in Kinokuniya KL and was so impressed that he bought copies of the book direct from its Singaporean publisher to give out to his friends and distributors! That’s why he thought, why not give it out to his blog readers too? That’s how the idea bloomed. That’s how YOU too can win this book for free.)
To win this book worth US$30 (approx RM100), you don’t need to write any slogans or buy any product to qualify.
All it needs is some quick words on your behalf – just tell Paul Penders Company what you feel about its blog , if you have any suggestions, if you want the Paul Penders team of bloggers (Shirley and Steen) to write about something which you feel has not been covered before in the blog, or if you just have something you want to say about the Paul Penders blog.
Yup, Paul Penders Co. is giving away this glossy book to those who write in with their ideas, suggestions or even give their two bits about what they think about the official Paul Penders blog.
I can’t win the book because I’m going to help Paul and Steen pick the winners when the contest ends on 16 August.
But you can! That’s why I’m hollering to the world on this blog of mine.
Spread the word around and get family and friends to join this contest.
Better still, if you can, tweet about this or put this on your blog. You’ll be giving your readers a chance to own a gorgeous piece of Malaysiana!
How To Prepare For Ivy League
We’ve worked together with Chen Chow before, and have organised 2 highly successful talks (under the auspices of Mensa Malaysa, Penang branch) when he came to Penang in the past 2 years to talk about getting a scholarship to study in the USA.
He is formerly from Cornell University (2005), and a former JPA scholarship recipient so he definitely knows what he is talking about. Oh and he is also the head interviewer for Cornell scholarship applications in Malaysia.
What I most like about Chen Chow is his helpful and humble nature. You don’t see much of this any more.
Yet despite his busy life (and yes, he does hold a full-time job in KL), he is still willing to travel to Penang with his own money so he could speak to parents and youths about what it takes to get a scholarship to study abroad.
He can hold a room captivated with his 3-hour long talk and still, parents and youths cannot get enough of him. Chen Chow is so engaging and so full of ideas and tips that people still want to linger on after the talk to pick his brains!
But what makes it all worthwhile is that Chen Chow sms-ed me a few months ago and told me that 2 of the youths who attended his Penang talk managed to secure JPA scholarships for study abroad! It was a fantastic feeling!
I felt really happy for these 2 students – one will be studying engineering and the other, law. And it all happened because Chen Chow shared what he knew about aceing scholarship interviews, what to write in a scholarship essay, how to stand out in a roomful of potential scholarship candidates, what candidates ought to write in their application forms and lots more.
I mean, I’m way past applying for scholarships (hey, I’m 35 and I left school a LONG time ago) but even I got excited. I bet the parents and youths were more delirious after hearing the inspiring stories of Malaysian students who have made it to Yale, Harvard and other Ivy League unis. This is really Malaysia Boleh spirit!
He does not come to Penang often although he is a Bukit Mertajam local. So if you want to study overseas, get into the top US universities without burdening your parents, the best way is to find out where Chen Chow is speaking next and listen well.
His upcoming activity is a 3-day workshop for students only at Taylors University College, from 1 to 3 August. The maximum number he is taking is 250 students so don’t miss out if you want to learn how you can get a US scholarship.
With a stellar list of facilitators (current scholars and previous alumni of Ivy League universities), it’s worth every bit of your RM25 for the 3 days! (YES, can you believe it? Only RM25! That’s not a typo.) You’d get to mingle with these scholarship recipients, get firsthand knowledge and learn what it’s like to study abroad.
But hurry as Chen Chow told me seats are really filling up fast!
(The college application resources are worth a look too!)
Seeing Through Holes
Eyes.
Can’t see without them. 90% of what we get from the world we get through our eyesight.
When I was at St Nicholas Home for the Blind recently, I was truly grateful for my vision though I wear contact lenses. It’s like, sure, I don’t have perfect vision but these children are blind. Some of them don’t even know what a rainbow looks like.
Actually right about this time, we’re also involved with a new website development project for a new client from The Adventist Hospital. Coincidentally, this division deals with laser eye correction surgery or what we all know as LASIK.
As we’re also involved in producing copy for the website, I’ve been researching about laser eye surgeries from PRK to LASEK and then to the newest technology called iLASIK. I’ve read so much about the pros and cons of these vision correction surgeries that it’s eye-popping (pardon the pun).
I’ve had friends who have had this corrective eye surgery done and they’ve been raving over the results. Finally they say, they can see without glasses and what a change in lifestyle it has been!
I’ve been so tempted to try this laser surgery myself but I’ve still got so many pairs of disposable contact lenses. I would need to wait till my stock is finished.
But then Nic, who is all about natural healing, tells me to try the Bates Method. Apparently, your eyes can heal themselves. The issue is, they can’t heal if all we ever wear are glasses and contact lenses (which are like crutches for your eyes). Bates is the name of the man who popularised this method of training the eyes to heal by wearing pinhole glasses.
So Nic decided last week that he wanted to try the natural way of bringing back his 20/20 vision. He got out and bought the Bates pinhole glasses. They’re not cheap. A pair of this costs RM78. It’s just a pair of dark glasses, much like your plastic sunglasses, but with pinholes scattered on the area where the lens are.
I was a bit of a skeptic but I tried them on anyway (had to remove my contact lenses first). I could actually read the words on some books about 3 feet away!
I have shortsightedness and since 11, have been wearing glasses till I found contact lenses when I was 19. Although my prescription has stabilized at 4.5 diopter and I can use contact lenses now (and I don’t have dry eye problems unlike most lens users), I still want good vision. Vision without spectacles. I’ve done a lot of stuff wearing contacts lenses such as swimming and other outdoor activities but I still wished I didn’t have shortsightedness.
Back to the Bates glasses.
The idea is to train your eyes to heal themselves naturally. I’m supposed to wear the glasses while watching TV or reading.
The first time I wore them, it was a bit annoying. My eyes have to get accustomed to the pinholes. I have to focus correctly otherwise I will see overlapping images. Once I get the correct focus, I can actually see well! I can watch TV clearly and read the subtitles without squinting. I can see most objects clearly without problems.
The only thing I didn’t like was reading with the Bates spectacles. As I am shortsighted, I usually don’t read with my normal glasses on. I usually take the glasses off when I look at near objects like books. If I read with the Bates spectacles, it is also irritating. Maybe it works for people who have longsightedness.
I can’t bear to wear them when I work on the PC because it’s just too weird for close objects. For me it works best on objects about 3 feet or more away. Anything nearer and it makes me giddy looking at double images!
Accordingly, it is best to wear and ‘train’ one’s eyes for a few hours a day. This way, our eyes can adjust and correct themselves. I should be seeing an improvement in my eyesight after 2-3 weeks of using them.
Let’s see what happens over the next few weeks or whether I need LASIK surgery after all!