A grand old lady...

My second day, I awoke with great hope and happiness. Sally's sumptuous cooking and the warmth from everyone here still lingered. 

My first breakfast * Yummy egg pancake with JuJu, a green vegetable good for eyesight. She took 15 mins for each pancake and only got to sit down and ate with us after about 45mins, preparing 5 pancakes. 

Li Juan and I finished with the last row of weeding in the earlier part of the day. Vincent asked us to help remove the weeds in his mother's backyard garden.

At 90 years old, this lady oozes positivism and robustness of one more than half her age. LiJuan and I had some difficulty at first weeding as amongst the tall weeds, some are still tiny. Grandma came over and kept thanking us for helping her. As a vegetarian for the past 30 years, she attributes her good health to her diet. In Taiwan, there is a growing number of families with the elderly engaging maids from the Phillipines or Indonesia. She however, lives an independent lifestyle, cycling to the town at least once a week to vist the hair salon, plant her own vegetables and cook her own meals. To be, it's her positivity that left a deep impression in me.

She was thankful for our help though I felt I was still slow in weeding and could have done better. Dinner on this night was at her house, whom she lives with her other son. Vincent's brother's house is probably about less than 100metre beside his without any fence or gate dividing the space. Another sumptious dinner and true enough, I finished all my rice and we cleared all the dishes!

Grandma is a role model for someone like me, whose perspective of growing old is bleak as I drag being less independent and less healthy, most of all to have to cause worries and burden to my siblings. 

Maybe my outlook is changing... I have the responsibility to look after my own body and mind and keep it healthy and strong, defying all common ailments and sterotyping. I think fear is the main obstacle. And so this is one small step to shift away from that fear of growing old and lonely in me...

Chi Kuang Kuang ! Eat up all the food and left with empty dishes.

The grand lady, Grandma, at 90 years old.