Tuesday, August 30, 2011

watery wednesday: Earthquake Ravaged Christchurch

For watery Wednesday here, you can't really see the water. The water mains had been broken by the eartquake, and Kim and Lynn were washing the car after driving through the broken sewage pipes,







http://waterywednesday.blogspot.com/

I was down in Christchurch for the weekend. There are two stories here that are so incredulous that you just have to trust me.

During the two days I was there, there were 4 aftershocks of low magnitude and I was unaware of them.

On Saturday, my host friends took me to the fringes of the inner city and I saw mainly the old churches which were affected. On the way home, Jenny Ah Peng saw about 6 inches of bubbling water, and as she drove through them she joked that she got a free car wash. The next moment, she was @@##$ about driving through the sewage water. I was concentrating on the water at the kerb and didn't smell anything despite having the window wound down. Their mum and Kim and Lynn smelt the awful smell. All except me.

Now I tell you why, I think I have posted it before. When I was about 3 years old, my Dad went to London to study. We moved back to my grand Dad's house. At that time in the 50s, there was no power or TV or radio. To entertain us, my uncles performed magic tricks. One of these tricks was to put a peanut up their nostril and have it reappear in their arm pit. Impressionable me, I tried to imitate. My peanut got stuck in my nostril. All efforts to dig the peanut out failed and it remained in my nostril because my grand Dad was worried it would be pushed further if they tried to dig it. So my peanut remained in my nose nostril for many months. One day, we took a boat to my maternal grandma's house. I jumped from the jetty to the boat. As I jumped, my peanut came out. It had swollen and grown whitish. I had grown quite fondly of it. I was exclaiming, " My peanut! my peanut!" and showing it to everyone.

Is it by coincidence that I am the only child in the family of 9 kids who is allergic to peanuts? Mum never told Dad. I mentioned this to Dad not so long ago. He was shocked that nobody took me to the hospital. He said the peanut could have traveled to my lungs and I would have died.

To date, one of my nieces had duplicated Aunty Ann's peanut story. The stunt that went wrong.

4 comments:

The JR said...

that looks like my water hose!

Ginny Hartzler said...

What a scary story!!!! So you are allergic to peanuts, too?? Didn't it affect your breathing the time it was in there?

Penelope Notes said...

It appears your sense of smell was hindered by your childhood experience. Funny what we get attached to as kids … even a very odd peanut it seems. :))

Ann, Chen Jie Xue 陈洁雪 said...

My peanut story is one of the few funniest story in the family. My sis paid $150 to a specialist to get a small object from her nose. My story is told to all the young nieces and nephews, never ever put any thing small into your nose.

However, it didn't quite sink in, that same nurse did it twice.