Last Week

Last week was WY's week-long stay-at-home revision retreat aka intensive-revision-for examinations-week. The school had planned for a week's break from lessons because all their teachers had to be mobilised to mark PSLE scripts.

On the 1st day of our retreat, WY and I went through some CL revision. In the afternoon, CP took over for some Maths/Science revision. While she did that, I managed to sneak out for a couple of hours to get my long overdue haircut.

After my visit to the hairdresser's, I had felt so hungry that I decided to go for some fishball noodles at the hawker centre nearby. Then, I grabbed some grocery from the supermarket before hopping onto a taxi to go home again.

Dinner was prepared by Mother as usual. Since CP was home, too, Mother had cooked more dishes than usual, including a dish of mixed vegetables stir-fried with straw and shitake mushrooms.

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At about 6am the following morning, I awoke to find my stomach churning. Thinking that I must have over-eaten for dinner (which, frankly, has been quite often because Mother cooks so much for us all the time - yes, this is very bad, we all know), I went to the toilet, lor.

Little did I suspect that that visit to the toilet at 6am was to be only the 1st of a series of 12-15 dashes to the toilet that morning....

By 8am or so, I was so limp that all that I could do was slump on the sofa, wrenching in pain..... So, after sending WF to school, R returned to send me to the doctor's.

On our way home, I turned 'merlion' at the void deck - all those mixed vegs and mushrooms were spewed all over that little corner behind the pillars next to the bin chute.... Oh, man!

For the rest of the day, I was fleeting between states of semi-consciousness and quasi-consciousness. Poor WY had to do his revision all by himself the whole day, and in between completing the assessment books which I pointed out to him in a half-dead manner, he had to wake me up every 4-hourly to take my medicine which he fetched for me.

He's really such a sweet darling, as he kept asking after me in a soothing, concerned voice, "How are you feeling, Mama? Don't worry, you are getting better already," as he helped me to sit up and watched me downed those 4 awful tablets at each 'serving'.

I don't remember much of the day except that when the evening came, there was such a heavy downpour that the rain came splashing in and WY had to hurriedly close all the windows.

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My zombie-ness lasted till the following afternoon. Then, I suddenly felt a gush of energy. So, I started to go through with WY the outstanding chapters of the CL textbook, taking care not to sit too close to him at the table (in case whatever I was having was contagious).

The 'speedy recovery' seemed incredible, hor. And having been on an empty stomach for the past 48 hours, I felt my appetite returning. So when Mother brought dinner as usual, I ate it heartily.

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It became clear the next morning that that was a BIG mistake.

The churning of the tummy as well as the dashes to the toilet started all over again. Fortunately, there was no merlion. So, I fleeted into a drowsy state yet again for the rest of the day.

It was tough, because with the passing of each day of the week-long revision retreat, I felt the pressure to quickly complete the planned revision with WY. It was almost like, one part of me was struggling to keep alive and awake, but another part of me was determined that I should just rest and do nothing.

Eventually, I grit my teeth and somehow managed to 'catch up' with the revision plan. By the evening, WY and I had covered whatever 'main topics' which we had planned to revise.

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On Friday, WY and I completed our week-long revision.



Having been on a diet of plain bread plus 100-Plus only, I felt better and 'lighter'. All for the better, I think.

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CL classes for both WY and WF and music lesson for WF proceeded as usual on Saturday. It was fortunate that my diarrhoea had cleared up by then, so it was ok for me to shuttle WF from Yamaha to CL class all by myself (without fearing that I would need the toilet on the walk between these schools).

CP joined us for lunch at the small basement cafeteria at Katong Mall when the boys' CL classes ended. Then we went home by taxi after that.

Fortunately, CP took over the revision with WY on Saturday afternoon. So I just did some chores before we all went to Mother's place for dinner - dinner for me that day was a glass of plain water plus 2 tablespoons of plain white rice.

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On Sunday, 文化艺术团 lessons went on as usual. For lunch, we brought WY and WF to Subway at SingPost Centre. WY was thrilled but WF wasn't impressed. WF only enjoyed the choc chip and peanut butter cookies which came with the foot-long sandwich meal shared between R, WY and WF.

After a quick trip to the bookshop and supermarket, we proceeded home. The rest of Sunday was spent on revision (again?!) with WY. For dinner, I cooked some soupy noodles which turned out to be surprisingly tasty (I used ikan bilis soup for this one).

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Ha? Last week just slipped past like that, ah?!......