3BT: Random Days

1. Yesterday I managed to book plane tickets for my mom. WHOOOOPPPEEE!!! Very impressed with KLM customer service on FB, since they have quick response and they help me out very promptly. I hope my mom stays healthy and everything goes out well. I've ordered wheelchair assistance for her since she's had some knee problem and it's her first time travelling solo. Plus she only speaks basic English. EXCITTTINNNGGG!!! 

Thank you as well to Juliana who's advised me to get this type of wheelchair assistance for my mom to make things more easily for her.

2. We had a lovely winter holiday in Prague. The weather wasn't that hot yet, but it enabled us to walk a lot every day. One day we even covered 18 km.

3. Here are some views of Prague as well as some silly photos of me in Madame Tussaud museum he he he...

The Looooooooong Road to Recovery

I spent most of December and all of January on a sick leave. It felt surreal because from the outside, I looked just fine. The tennis elbow problem, which started off with the ganglion cyst on my right wrist, has now been felt on both arms. I've been to two different physiotherapists (PT) and I've gone back and forth to the doctor many times to get a sick leave. Not fun. The worst part of all was probably the thought of losing my job and not being able to recover fully. Yikes! What would I do, then? If I hated my job, the sick leave would probably make me feel relieved, but that is not the case at all since I still enjoy my job. So the stress of being out of work for a long time also weighed on my mind a lot. 

I've discovered kinesio taping and ultrasound massage from two different PTs. Twice the first PT put on some kinesio tape on my arms (each time I asked her to do it on a different arm since I wanted to test the difference between that arm and the arm without any kinesio taping on). I've also received lots of pointers on how to keep a good posture and a neutral position for my wrists whenever I do anything. The second PT even managed to pinpoint what I must've done wrong to make my back (shoulder blades) become so tight. I've also received a series of stretching/strengthening exercises to do. 

On the worst days, I couldn't even cook anything a bit more complicated without any throbbing pain afterwards. Since it was my first bout of tennis elbow, it took me lots of trials and errors to know what to do and what not to do. The second PT told me that what worked and what didn't work varied greatly from one person to another. No wonder! I felt at such a loss before I had my PT appointments.

Anyway, this week I started going back to work again. I'm thankful that my bosses are understanding and supportive and since I only work part-time, my work schedule is ideal for me. I still feel some pain (it varies depending on the activities I do) and I'm still using the kinesio tape (I've been learning how to put it myself through trial and errors), but I've stopped using the painkiller in the form of gel since it only masks the pain. I've learnt that it's handy to use some painkiller when the pain is too much or it makes me unable to rest well during the nights, but when the pain has subsided, it may be dangerous to keep using it as it only makes me feel that I'm much better already, whereas in actual fact it's not true. 

I don't know how long it'll take until I feel no more pain from doing work/exercise. So far I've only done one shift and I had a little pain afterwards and the next day after I did some zumba (and the strengthening exercise routine), I felt more pain. I don't dare shovel the snow yet, so I feel bad for my husband since it's been snowing a lot again. But anyway, I feel more hopeful about healing after meeting the PTs.

Anyway, here are some photos I took during my walks (okay, the first photo is the exception LOL!). These days I rarely use my bulky camera to take photos as it's easier to take photos with my mobile he he...

 

Mdina/Rabat Area

Okay, let's continue with the Malta trip photos, shall we? Before I started, though, I'd like to say that because there were four of us, we decided to use the Airport Transfer facility to get to our hotel. After we arrived, we found the Airport Transfer desk easily, so we booked the two-way transfers right away. Then we were told to wait outside (there was another Airport Transfer desk near the waiting area outside). Unfortunately, we had to wait for over 30 minutes (after 30 minutes, I came back to the desk to complain and even then we still had to wait some more) as apparently there weren't anybody else (yet) leaving to the same direction. The other four or five groups (who stayed in a different area) could leave the airport within 15 minutes already. Thankfully it was already over 8 pm, so it wasn't scorching hot to wait outside, but we were worried that MIL would've been way too tired already. 

R2 and I both agree that the airport transfer in Malta wasn't as effective as the one we used in Budapest. However, at least we didn't have to wait too long for our car back to the airport (only 10 minutes after the appointed time). Oh yeah, we paid €10 per person for the two-way airport transfer. 

Okay, now on to the photos. One day we decided to go to Mdina/Rabat area. We actually decided to go there the day before, BUT turned out the bus going there only left every hour. Although there were three different bus who go to that direction at different times (every hour for each of them), but still when we missed the first bus, we had to wait for a long time. That's why we decided to go elsewhere that day and we made sure we were in time to catch the first bus to Mdina the next day. We were a bit worried that there would be no seats left as the journey would take around 70 minutes. Luckily for us, though, there were plenty of seats. Phew!

Actually, even for shorter distances, a lot of bus drivers in Malta were a bit crazy whenever they hit the brake to stop their buses and it was tough for MIL who has bad legs. One time the bus was totally full, so we had to stand up. A woman with her son were sitting on the front seats and she immediately got up to give MIL her seat and she had to stand up for the rest of the journey (30 minutes). Very thankful for passengers like her! 

When it was time for us to leave Mdina, we were SO lucky that when we got to the bus stop, 20 seconds later a bus arrived and again we found seats. :-D After all, it was such a hot day and we were tired already. Since we didn't buy any bus card, we had to pay €2 bus fare per person for each trip.

Here are some photos taken in Mdina/Rabat area. We went to a church, a museum, and a catacomb (which was rather tricky to find) since we bought the Combo Ticket.

The lovely church floor tile.

The next few photos were taken from the museum. 

The giant squid and my hand. OK, OK, to be fair, my hand is more like a kiddo's hand in size (probably a 10-year-old kid LOL), but the squid is close to 1 metre long.

The photo below was taken in St. Paul's Catacomb. In some places it was so dark that R2 had to use his mobile's light to guide the way. The steps in some parts were rather tricky/slippery as well, so we had to be careful. It was a fascinating place, though.

 One of the many colourful windows/doors in Malta.

Last photo: a funny toilet notice we found somewhere. Mind you, the toilets were quite low, especially for men he he he...

Back From Malta

This lazy blogger has just noticed that this year she's written so few posts compared to previous years. Work has been busier this year and I've also taken a lot of time off from using the computer to rest my mouse hand. Anyway, we went to Malta for our summer holiday this year and my throat is sore now. Hopefully it's only a sore throat and nothing much. 

Malta is such a beautiful place to visit. The temperature was around 24-32'C. We were lucky enough not to have caught any rain. When we stopped by at a bar to have some drinks (we stopped a lot of times as it was hot and we got thirsty easily), the UK owner told us that the previous week had seen some rain as well as tornado. It actually got hotter and hotter the longer we stayed there as the first two days there was some cooler/stronger wind blowing. What I love about Malta is the local buses with air-con that come on schedule and there are plenty of signs everywhere. The people speak English very well and there are lots of public toilets, too. Lots of places to see, eat, drink, shop that are still cheaper than those in Finland. Oh, and let's not forget the many Japanese/Asian restaurants and massage places here and there too! LOL!!!

As we were travelling with MIL who has problems with her knees and a cousin, we took it easy and didn't visit too many places, though we did take plenty of photos. Here are the first batch of photos from Malta. Some of them were taken by mobile phone and some were taken by R2. R2 and his cousin went on a free boat ride along the coast. I didn't go because I have really bad sea sickness. They got the boat ride for free as we had taken a hop on and hop off bus tour the previous day.

The first photo was taken in a posh marina area. Lots of shiny yachts and boats there. The building on the far left side of the background is Hilton Hotel. 

The second photo is St. Julian's Bay.

Below is a photo of St. George's Bay, the beach we went to twice. Malta has plenty more rocky beaches compared to sandy ones. We paid €20 for a full-day use of the sun loungers with parasols, the toilet, the shower and the price included a towel, too. Very handy! Plus there's a bar and restaurant on the left side. The right side (that has no sun loungers) is free to use, but there's no parasol there so you have to bring your own if you want to. 
 

Below is a photo of a 5-star hotel somewhere. 

Beautiful views from around the coast. Lots of historical and old buildings still in many places.

The dusk. :-)

I don't know what this is for, but this HUGE banner was seen as we were roaming around in Sliema area he he...

The vertical white figures on the mast were people graduating from some kind of marine school or something. 

OK, I shall end this here and I'll share some more photos in another post. Let's just hope I don't get sick. Otherwise when you lose a momentum to write, sometimes it's hard to go back to the swing of things.  

3BT: Random Days

1. Hearing someone else I just met praise hubby (he got to know R2 through work). :-) He said, "You've got a great guy." Thank you for your genuine compliment! :-D

2. Spending quality time with family over Midsummer and having BBQ twice outside despite the cool weather. We had some chicken fajitas with tortilla wraps and then some sausages. Grilled sausages are the best! :-D

3. Seeing two sides of the rainbow.

4. Taking these photos after lots of rain.

5. Having time to recharge and think (and rest).

Lost Photos

ARRRRRRGGHHHHH!!!! I just did something stupid! I've just added a new memory card to my mobile to make sure I have enough room for my photos. After the memory card was added, I transferred the photos I took with my mobile straight to that memory card. The problem is that it automatically started numbering my photos from zero again. I was transferring the photos to My Pictures and for some reason I must've clicked the wrong option, so the photos that had the same numbers as the older photos I had transferred to my HD were gone. And the stupid thing was that I didn't even check first, so right after the photos were transferred, I deleted the files from my mobile. Dohhhh!!!

They're not really such important photos (thankfully), but still it's a shame to lose those photos. Next time I will never delete before checking first. Here are some of the photos that didn't get lost. I made some more kaleidoscope photos the other week. 

Here are two original photos:

And the kaleidoscope versions of those photos:

I actually had other versions of the kaleidoscope photos (in one of them, it showed that R2 with two heads), but unfortunately they got lost. Ugh! Oh well...

Anyhow, the beginning of summer here has been CCCCCOOOOOOLLLLDDDD. Yesterday was not such a bad day because the sun was partly shining and when the clouds weren't covering it, it was warm enough to sunbathe outside (with a jacket still 'coz the wind was cold). Back in May we had a day that was as warm as 20'C, but after that it just went downhill. The weather prediction for this week is so bad that we're still using our winter blanket (usually by this time we're already using our summer blanket). That said, I've planted some flowers in our flower bed outside.

Midnight Film Sun Festival has come and gone. I've seen lots of tourists wearing woolen hats and winter jackets as the nights were brrrrr he he he he he...The best thing about this year's Midnight Sun Film Festival was the sushi being sold in one of the stands (well, actually a car)! In a place where there's no Chinese or Asian restaurant, it's a treat! :-D

This is the delicious sushi portion that I had when I went out with my friends to check out the crowd. €11 per portion. I really hope they'll come back next year he he he he...

OK, I'll do some blog-hopping now, but before I leave, enjoy this music: