WILL SENIORS HERE TAKE TO THE TRIKE?

I kid you not - the view was spectacular! A bird's eye-view of the F1 race.

Was in Singapore over the weekend. Caught the F1 race again this year from the same hotel room as last year - from the 32nd floor of the Swissotel The Stamford. The view was simply breathtaking, and the roar of the cars simply deafening!

Hey, even F1 drivers have to start small. Me on the trike.

Last week I had an opportunity to try out a contraption called a trike. Of course, it's nothing like an F1 racer, but I was told the trike could boast speeds up to a maximum of 50mph. Not sure if I got that right, but Wow!

I found the trike extremely easy to maneuvre, even around tight corners. It is environmentally friendly as it uses pedal power. It is also great for exercising the lower body. And as you are in a recumbent position, you can relax and enjoy the view. No worries about backache from hunching over or, for the guys, no more "numb nuts"! Click here for a vicarious experience of triking.

Triking or recumbent biking has the potential to develop into a popular sport with the 50+. With its low centre of gravity, it's definitely much safer than riding a bicycle. There is no way you can fall and break a bone. But with a hefty price tag of USD2000+, not everyone can afford to pedal around the neighbourhood on a trike.

If you are interested in checking out the range of models for trikes, visit VelocityRacers in Hongkong. I'm going to put the recumbent trike next to the Kindle on my wish list!

SINGAPORE SNIPPETS

ST PHOTO: ASHLEIGH SIM

A group of 250 seniors were treated to a free shopping trip at the NTUC Fairprice supermarket in Jurong on Sunday. Volunteers from the Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC) and Moral Neighbourhood Link, a voluntary welfare organisation that focuses on elder care were on hand to help the seniors and share tips on how to check for expiry dates and nutritional content on food items.

On the same day, the CDAC concluded a month-long rice donation drive with about 87,000kg of grain collected. The rice will be distributed to 4,000 needy families and senior citizens.

With nearly half of the pedestrian fatalities coming from the over-60 age group, the Singapore government will be introducing longer time at selected pedestrian crossings, mostly in the homelands or areas with a large concentration of elderly people. These 'Green Man Plus' crossings allow for an extra 17 seconds at a 4-lane crossing, and 21 seconds for a six-lane crossing.

All a senior citizen has to do is to tap his ez-link concession card on the special card-reader to activate the Green Man Plus. This will give him more time to cross the road safely.

The Green Man Plus idea would be great for the pedestrian crossing in front of Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) along Jalan Ampang. You have only 22 seconds to cross this busy 8-lane road. And you had better pray that motorists give you right of way as some don't bother to stop.

EAT WELL, BE WELL - 10 foods for longevity

It's been a frustrating week not being able to upload pictures on Seniorsaloud, no thanks to some technical glitch on Blogger. Apparently, it's a common problem. Guess I'll have to be patient and wait it out.

Fortunately, I can still upload from YouTube. Here's a video that I would like to share with you. I hope you will find it informative and useful.

When life is great, who doesn't want to extend it?

I've been meeting more and more 50+ folks who certainly know to enjoy life in their golden years. Just yesterday I met a fiesty 84-year old lady at a birthday bash for senior citizens. She was on the dance floor for almost every dance and game. Believe me, she looked fabulous!

There is no reason why we can't look good, feel great and enjoy life to the fullest, whatever our age. We just have to watch what we put into our body and mind. The right food, the right thoughts, and the right actions take us a long way on the road to longevity.

That's my mantra.

READING MADE EASY FOR SENIORS

Just watched Oprah on telly going gaga over the Kindle. When I first heard about the Kindle late 2007, I dismissed it as yet another pricey gadget for the young and trendy. Now after seeing Oprah waxing lyrical over her Kindle 2, I thought maybe I should check out the latest model - the Kindle DX. I did and came away impressed.

No, Amazon is not paying me to promote their e-reader. But, hey, good stuff should be shared, right? I know a lot of seniors love to read.

Consider these features. At only 19 oz, it's a lightweight. It can store up to 3500 books. Think of all the storage space you can save. You can select from over 275,000 titles. You don't need to carry wires and batteries along with the Kindle. There's a built-in dictionary. You can adjust the font size for easy readability. Also, no trees will be sacrificed for your reading pleasure.

Sure, there are other models like the Sony e-reader and the iLiad, but I have a feeling that, like Google, the Kindle will become a verb.

The only major downer is the price tag - USD490. Well, I'm putting the Kindle on my wish-list and visualizing reading my favourite books on a kindle. Maybe that will work.

If you want more info on how to use the Kindle in Malaysia, visit http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1053076.

WOULD YOU SUE YOUR CHILDREN FOR PARENTAL NEGLECT?

It is appalling to read about adult children abandoning their elderly parents in hospitals. Some of these stories are heart-breaking. The old folks wait for their children to come and take them home after their hospital stay, but no one turns up. Some children even go to the extent of changing their address so they cannot be traced. When the parents are discharged, they have nowhere to go.

Is filial piety dead?

In Singapore, the Maintenance of Parents Act 1996 has not deterred adult children from dumping their aged parents in hospitals. The government is considering amending the Act to allow a third party, such as hospitals, to take court action against children guilty of abandoning their parents in hospitals, in order to recover their losses in unpaid medical bills.

India has a similar act to protect the rights of parents to seek maintenance from their children for food, shelter, clothes, medical facilities and recreation.

In Malaysia, such an Act has yet to see the light of day. So cases of parental neglect continue to rise. From January to May this year, 134 such cases were reported at the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital – an increase of 12% for the same period last year. There is a similar pattern in other hospitals around the country.

Times have changed. Parents cannot take for granted that their children will look after them in their old age. Children today have a thousand and one reasons why they can’t or won't care for their aged parents.

“My father abandoned us when we were little.”

“My mother never cared much for us. Our maid was more of a mother to us.”

“My parents were poor role models. One was a gambler, the other was an alcoholic.”

"I can't afford to pay my father's medical expenses. I have my own family to support."

"My parents are so useless. They just sit in the house the whole day long and do nothing to help out."

"I resent being the one to have to care for my parents. My other siblings have refused to do so."

"Old people are so difficult to live with, and that includes my parents."

This is the reality. It all boils down to the parent-child relationship. Let's be honest with ourselves. Did we play our part as loving, responsible parents when our children were growing up? Did we spend enough quality time with them? Did we listen to them when they came to us for some advice and understanding? Were we too busy putting our career or business first?

If the bond is strong, our adult children will WANT to take care of us in our old age. They will do it out of love, and not grudgingly out of a sense of duty. A strong family bond is the best insurance against being abandoned by our children.

Taking our children to court and suing them for maintenance is a public admission of a complete breakdown in the parent-child relationship. In our Asian culture, this amounts to a total loss of face.

As a safeguard against this, young parents should brush up on their parenting skills. They should create and nurture a loving bond with their children from the very start. At the same time, they should start saving for their retirement and taking care of their health, the earlier the better so that they are able to live independently in their old age.

THE SPOILED UNDER-50 CROWD

Young people today really have things cut out for them. Yet many still constantly complain about this and that. They also tend to take a lot of things for granted. If you are 50 or older you will think this piece below is hilarious -because that's exactly how we felt when our parents used to nag us when WE were young. Sounds familiar, right?

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning uphill... barefoot... BOTH ways!

Yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of fifty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today - you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, We had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!!

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter, with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! No where was safe!

There were no MP3' s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and screw it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and eject it when finished and the tape would come undone.....because that's how we rolled it!

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school,your mom, your boss, your Bookie, a collections agent, your parole officer, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation videogames with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had Monopoly, the board game. If you didn’t like that, too bad. It was either play that, or get off your lazy ass & go outside and play sports with the kids that lived nearby.

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get offyour ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel! There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little mutant brats.

And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove ... Imagine that!

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1970 or before!

Regards,

The Over-50 Crowd

HALF FARES FOR SENIORS 60 AND ABOVE

The bus company is obviously aware of what commuters have to put up with! I tried calling the numbers but no one picked up the phone. So much for the sign.

Ever since I sold my car in 1998, I have been relying mostly on public transport to get me from A to B. If you are a regular commuter like I am, you will have plenty to gripe about. Take today, for instance. It was my umpteenth 'public confrontation' with the Metro bus conductors since the bus fares went up on 1 September.

Clearly stated in black and white, but the bus conductors claimed they didn't know about the new concession for senior citizens!

It states clearly on the announcements pasted all over the inside of the Metro buses that orang tua (senior citizens) 60 and above pay only half fare. Regardless of which Metro bus I take, the conductor invariably insists I pay the full fare. Even when I point out the company's signed directive, I get any one of the following responses:

~ the boss never informed us of this half fare
~ you don't look like you are 60+
~ the new ruling is 65+
~ none of the elderly passengers have asked for half fare
~ we don't have time to check all the identity cards
~ as you wish, but I'll report to my boss about this

GEE!


So far, the conductors have caved in. That's because I stood up for my rights, and had the evidence to back me up. However, on all the buses I've taken, I have yet to see older passengers asking for this fare concession. Ignorance can be expensive if you take the bus daily! One elderly man was sitting right beside the directive, but for reasons best known to himself, he did not take the trouble to read it.

Buses waiting for more passengers, never mind if they are hogging half the road and blocking the taxis from exiting.

Now wouldn't it be lovely to board a bus and when you take your money out to pay the full fare, the conductor smilingly tells you, "Auntie, you only need to pay half fare." That would certainly make my day!

Dirty bus-stops are the norm. There are no bus schedules or information on bus routes. This is in the up-market neighbourhood of Sri Hartamas.

You can bet this is NOT a bus stop in Kuala Lumpur. There's ample information on schedules, time of bus arrivals, and wheelchair facilities on board. Below that is the map showing bus and MRT routes.