I wasn’t able to get a good night’s sleep last Saturday night due to a very uncomfortable pain radiating from my upper right abdomen. It was past midnight and yet I still felt quite full and bloated. After lying down in bed, the feeling changed to mild discomfort in my upper abdomen while I began to feel stiffness in my back.

At first, I thought I could just ignore the growing pain. After a few more minutes, I was beginning to get the chills on top of the pain. I suspected that I was having a bad case of indigestion, heartburn or food poisoning. Either way, I believed it was all just going to pass. That belief wasn’t any comfort at the time though.

I tried various ways of alleviating the pain. Since it seemed like burping helped reduce the pain, I tried sipping a fizzy drink but that only made worse. I even tried forcing myself to vomit to get rid of possible excess food in my stomach that may be causing the problem. But I just couldn’t get myself to vomit. Finally, Raquel rubbed Tiger Balm on my tummy and I took a tablet of De-Gas and one or the other seemed to have helped. The pain subsided enough so that I was able to get some sleep.

The next day, I felt much better. However, I could still feel a bit of tightness in my upper right abdomen. This sensation lasted the whole day but it wasn’t too bad to keep me at home. I hoped that the problem would pass by the end of the day but it lingered. Last night, I tried to press on the area of my abdomen where I was feeling the tightness and discovered that the pain, though still mild, increased. That couldn’t be good.

Today, I could still feel the mild pain on my upper right abdomen if I press on it or if I inhale deeply enough. It’s the third day and I’m a little worried now. After doing some research on the Internet, I discovered that I could possibly have gall bladder stones! Yep. First, kidney stones, now gall bladder stones! Lucky me.

Hopefully, that’s not the case at all. Just to be safe, I quickly made an appointment with my GP to have my problem checked. After answering a few of the doctor’s questions and some quick tests, he believed that I may, in fact, have gall bladder stones. If that be the case, I would have to have my gall bladder removed! I have a friend here who had recently had her gall bladder removed and she said it wasn’t such a big deal. Also, it’s supposedly a non-essential organ but still!

However, there were some symptoms that didn’t quite fit. According to him, a very 10/10 (a ten out of ten) pain and nausea are usually associated with a gall bladder stone attack. My pain is about 3/10 at worst and I actually don’t feel nauseous at all. He said that it could still just be some weird inflammation that could go away. To be sure, I’ll be having an ultrasound performed on my upper abdomen tomorrow morning.

If the test is positive for gall bladder stones, I may lose my gall bladder. If it is negative, then something else is causing the mild pain in the upper abdomen. But what could it be? How do I get it cured? Well, if it isn’t gall bladder stones, I hope the ultrasound would still be able to help in getting a proper diagnosis of my problem. In the end, I’m just hoping for the results to turn out negative and for the pain to go away by itself. One can always hope.

From the emails and comments I got on this blog, I know that there are many Pinoys reading this who have just recently migrated to Melbourne or will be moving here real soon. And the most common thing I’ve noticed on the emails I got was that they don’t have any friends or family here in Melbourne and that they are looking to make new friends.

If you happen to be in this situation, I can at least recommend that you join us every weekend in a friendly game of badminton at the MSAC in Albert Park. You don’t have to be great at it to join. It’s okay even if you are a complete beginner. There are a lot of us who aren’t that good at badminton, too. Although, I have to warn you that there are a few (me not included) who are quite skilled already. Anyway, the important thing is to have fun and to make new friends with other Filipinos there who are just as eager to meet you.

So, are you the least bit interested? Just let me know by leaving a comment here and let’s play some badminton!

My family had a basketball half-court in our backyard when I was growing up. Having one helped kept me slim during my high school years. It also helped me make some new friends at school as a lot of them would come home with me on Fridays so that we could shoot some hoops in our court. When the old house got extended, the court had to go to make room. I stopped playing basketball regularly after that.

These days, I only get to enjoy shooting hoops when Raquel and I are at the local gaming arcade where we can play those timed basketball hoop games. The higher the score you get, the more tickets you win that you can exchange for gift items.

I realised that whenever we play a dozen rounds of that game, I get a workout. I thought it was great because shooting hoops never felt like working out to me. The only downside was that each game costs $2. A dozen games between Raquel and me set us back $24 each time. I figured, there must be a cheaper way to shoot some hoops.

Yeah, maybe I can just go to the nearby local basketball courts and pay for an hourly fee meanwhile sharing it with others. That’s okay, I guess. Except, being all rusty for not having played for many years now, I don’t want to make a complete fool of myself. Besides, I couldn’t do that on a daily basis. It would be great if I could play a bit of ball everyday to help me lose some pounds.

In the end, we just bought a basketball ring with stand at Rebel Sport yesterday. We weren’t after a professional standard basketball ring. All we wanted was a hoop we can shoot at. So, we picked one of the cheapest rings around. It isn’t that big but it’s just as well because we want it to fit under our pergola’s roof. The only problem I noticed was that the pergola roof wasn’t high enough and I kept hitting the roof beams whenever I tried to shoot high.

Anyway, today, we were able to spend half an hour shooting some hoops and running around after the ball afterwards. It was a cool workout and I didn’t even notice the time pass. At last, a form of exercise I can enjoy.

I’ve just accepted a challenge my dear wife Raquel has thrown at me. The challenge was that, starting tomorrow, I’m not to eat any chocolates for two weeks. At the end of two weeks, we’ll finid out if I’ll lose any weight because of my abstinence from chocolates.

We got the idea from watching a recent episode of What’s Good For You on Channel 9. They had a little experiment where four blokes who were asked to stop drinking beer for a period of time. At the end of the experiment, they’ll find out if they’ve lost weight and a few inches from their belly.

In our experiment, instead of beer, I’m abstaining from chocolates (since I don’t really drink). I wouldn’t do anything different in terms of exercise or diet except for not eating chocolate. At the end of two weeks, hopefully, I’d be a little slimmer than today.

It’s been a while since I’ve gone out with our Pinoy circle of friends here in Melbourne and I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I missed their company. Although I very much enjoy my personal time drawing, reading, writing and watching TV/movies, I’m also a bit of an extrovert. I become depressed over time if I don’t get to socialise with a bunch of other people.

Well, I can’t say it’s not my fault. After all, they’ve been inviting us over to join them in various activities and I kept passing up the invitations. So, when they organised this bowling night at AMF Sunshine Bowling Alley, I was determined to go and join in the fun.

It would have been better if Raquel could have come. But as luck would have it, she’s still afflicted by the dreaded hay fever I wrote about previously. She joked that she caught the bug from me — which is impossible since hay fever shouldn’t be contagious. Anyway, she knew how much I craved to socialise with others so she told me to go anyway while she stay in the house to rest.

So, I drove to the AMF Sunshine Bowling Alley all by myself. I’m so used to Raquel being with me in the car when I’m off to somewhere far that it feels different, like something is missing, when she isn’t there with me. I should’ve been at the alley earlier but due to my lack of planning, I failed to get the street address for the alley and I got lost driving in circles around the shops near the Sunshine train station. Fortunately, Raquel was at home and she was able to get the address for me from the Internet. She texted me the address and I finally got to the bloody alley — late!

It was good to see the familiar faces and receive their cheerful welcomes when I arrived. I immediately engaged the people I already knew in conversation and later, I introduced myself to the other people there whom I haven’t met before. Since I haven’t been joining in their activities lately, it would seem like I was the new comer to the group, actually. It doesn’t matter though. All that matters was that the more people there are, the merrier it is, as the old adage says.

Soon, those of us who were there to actually play some bowling, played. I’m glad that the others who weren’t there to play still went there anyway. I don’t think I would’ve been able to chat with them again so soon otherwise. Speaking of playing, I totally sucked that night. I simply don’t have the consistency of getting the ball to go where I want it to.

I should just give up this game, really. Maybe I should just join Arnold and his group of badminton players every Saturday afternoon and stick with that. But I’m sure I’ll just equally suck at that as well. I guess in the end, it doesn’t matter that I’m no good at either sport. I should just have fun and be glad to be out with a group of fun loving people.

Arnold also told me that he and the other badminton players regularly watch movies, too. Now that’s a kind of activity that I wouldn’t suck in, I think. Chinita and the other guys from the east also watch movies on a regular basis. However, they usually watch at Chadstone (east) which is a bit far from where I live (west). With some good movies coming out soon, maybe it’s a good time to start joining them in their movie-watching.

So, even though I didn’t get a good score that night, I’m glad to have been out with the guys again. I’m additionally pleased to meet new people there as well. And now that I had a bit of a think about it, I’m not quite sure if two of these new people are people whom I already know from my past. I wonder. I should definitely ask them about it once I get to know them a lot better.

As expected, I’m still down with the hay fever. Not much sneezing now but a lot of coughing. My throat’s quite sore and itchy. I wish I’m cured already. Now, I mentioned that the off-the-shelf hay fever cures weren’t that effective on me. Okay, they aren’t really cures as they should only manage the symptoms of hay fever. Anyway, I gave one of them a go. One that I haven’t tried before. Who knows, right?

Anyway, I took one tablet for the night. Before I take any medication, I usually look for some directions on the box. Just to be safe. I took a photo of the back of the box for you to see. Click the thumbnail for a closer look. I’ll just quote the bit that caught my attention: “In New Zealand, please refer to the accompanying consumer information leaflet.” Er, what about us Aussies? Don’t we get this special consumer information leaflet? What are you telling the Kiwis that you don’t want to let the Aussies know about this drug?

Just kidding. Pff. Okay, that wasn’t as funny as when I first brought it up to Raquel. Give me a break. I’m sick.

I have hay fever again today. I always feel absolutely miserable for up to a full week whenever I’m down with the bloody thing. Today is no different. It started with the slow build-up of mucus in my nose. By the time I get to the office in the morning, I’m sneezing in frequent random intervals. By the afternoon, my eyes began to water and my eyelids felt heavy. Come evening, I already feel very tired. It could have been another symptom of my hay fever or maybe just all that sneezing tiring me out.

It wasn’t always like this. I remember when I never had hay fever. And that was before I migrated to Australia. I’m not sure if it is just me getting old or if there’s something in the air in Australia that my body doesn’t agree with. Dictionary.com defines Hay Fever as such:

hay fever
n.
An allergic condition affecting the mucous membranes of the upper respiratory tract and the eyes, most often characterized by nasal discharge, sneezing, and itchy, watery eyes and usually caused by an abnormal sensitivity to airborne pollen. Also called pollinosis.

So, I’m thinking that maybe my body isn’t used to the pollen in the air or there’s just that much more pollen in Australia’s air. I don’t really know. I do know that it is common enough that they have lots of advertisement on TV for hay fever medication specially during spring season. I was told by other migrants that they only started getting hay fever after they moved here. Whatever the cause, it’s a big headache (literally and figuratively).

I did a little research and here is what I found from the AllergyNet Australia website:

In Australia, seasonal hay fever usually occurs in spring and early summer. The southern one-third of Australia, especially the south-east, has the most severe problems. Melbourne and Canberra are notoriously bad areas for spring allergy.

Come to think of it, I never had hay fever in the three months I lived in Sydney. I started getting it only when I moved to Canberra. And then I began to get it more often when I moved to Melbourne. That’s just great! Well, here’s at least one reason for me to move back to Sydney.

Anyway, I think it wouldn’t be too bad if the advertised anti-hay-fever medications on TV actually worked for me. I tried the different brands but nothing seems to help me much except the Sudafed decongestant and anti-allergy tablets. The big downside of taking Sudafed is that it makes me really drowsy. And nowadays, it doesn’t help as much to fight my hay fever. A friend of mine suggested I take Claratyne but I discovered that it isn’t any more effective than the other antihistamine medication I’ve tried in the past.

Basically, I feel terrible at this very moment. And if past experience is any indication, I’ll probably feel just as terrible tomorrow. Here’s hoping I’ll be cured by tomorrow.