Serene life in Pulau Tuba, Langkawi

I was at Pulau Tuba since 16 April for a Prevention of Blindness programme. Pulau Tuba is quite a remote island which is right beside Pulau Dayang Bunting. Three hospitals were involved, Hosp Sultanah Bahiyah, Hosp Sultan Abdul Halim and Hosp Langkawi. We provided free eye health screening to the locals and we also visited all three schools on the island to screen the kids.

From one of the school I visited, only 8 child from 160 students have significant refractive error that needs to be corrected with glasses. That's really a small number when compared with the schools in the big city. It was expected I guess, as the children here are not that much exposed to tv or gadgets. After finishing homework, they spend their free time roaming and playing around the village, swimming in the sea, running along the beach or helping their parents who mostly are fisherman. Studies have shown that aside from anatomy factor, constant nearwork contribute to increasing error especially myopia.

Oh, how I envy the careless and laidback life they lead here. Nothing to rush to and not to mention living right in the lush of nature. The island is really beautiful especially the seaview. The last day there, we woke up really early and spend the morning watching the calm sea with the small islands beyond while the sun rise. However probably the increasing number of visitors plus lack of necessary action by the locals and authorities have caused the problem of garbage and littering especially around chalets area. That is something that should not happen in the first place considering not many human are living here and it's a small island where cleanliness should be easily maintained. If we were to sustain the beauty and nature of this island, it's crucial that someone take some action soon. Come on now, building mountains of plastic bottles and plastic bags right on the beach. Where is the common sense of the persons who did this.

Overall, Pulau Tuba is a very nice place to visit. A must for avid angler as you can easily caught fish even at the old jetty. The locals are friendly and the peaceful enviroment is so worth the effort of lugging heavy lugggage there. In our case, carrying bags and boxes of heavy screening stuff and sets.
















::Posted using BlogPress from maiefa's iPhone::

My oh my, this train of mine is surely very rusty. But seriously it's unexplainable how having just one child can deprive you from almost everything you used to do before. I tried, believe me I tried. However I could never put past turning on the laptop and even more logging in to my account. There's just always something that I have to do while Amina is sleeping and before me myself zoned out. It also doesn't help that I have zero reception in the clinic. Hence I am such a good employee for the past 1 year since I'm here in Sungai Petani. No FB, no blogwalking, no online shopping, not even during lunchtime (which is the only time I'm free anyway). We work hard examining patients and we find extra work after there's no more patients in the evening just because we couldn't stand not doing anything in the cruel coldness of the clinic. I've been trying to work on some clinical research but that's out of the topic here.

 

So, where do I go from now? Should I delve into motherhood? Or talk about arts, crafts, crocheting or sewing which I really miss spending time on. You know, there are times when I thought I should just delete this space and go back to old times diary. But I still love that I could rant here while automatically uploading photos and no smears of liquid paper or eraser visible (oh admit it, we all like to edit, rewrite and make things look beautiful).

 

I guess I'll try to visit from time to time. Even as I'm writing this, Amina is already awake and excitedly pointing at the screen. Till then, ciao.