Granny has been hospitalized for four weeks now. The doctor says she had Salmonella food poisoning and also has Anemia. They have since treated her but they want to continue to nurse her to health by putting her at an Integrated hospital where they could take care of her with their goal in strengthening her.
As you can guess, the medical fees will be a problem. So we asked to apply to any of those elderly schemes for Granny.
They gave us a form to fill out information on our household income and expenditure, so we did.
Then they questioned why the food expenses is so high. To which Bren couldn't answer because he is not the Financier of the family.
Why is $10 budget on food per person per day considered high?
Even if I pool together my resources when doing marketing to cook collectively in order to lower the costs, it will still be this kind of budget. Furthermore, we eat stuff like carrots & potatoes for years. There is no fanciful and costly fish or other types of quality food that the kids have been deprived of. I scrimp and save from everything else and bring the kids to some nicer eateries once in a week. By that I forgo my own main course and I eat appetizers with desserts as treats. I do not apologise for my lifestyle, I do what make sense for me. So I hope the social worker will come to note that $10 for breakfast, lunch and dinner is a reasonable amount for a person per day.
My colleague had also recommended that I seek assistance from a volunteer organization to help defray some cost of living. After much deliberation, I let them in on my home situation but I guess they do not share the ideology on why I am steadfast in giving the kids music lessons because they commented that exam fees are costly. After much review, they said that they have many homes that are just as needy and what they can come up with is a token. I have told them frankly that money is not what I am seeking. It is the old folks and Charmaine that I need help with. Anyway, I have given myself the chance to test various social worker systems and so far, I just have to wait and hope that the Integrated hospital could give us an enormous subsidy.
Many years ago, the Eurasian community gave Granny $300 a month for her living expenses (for the whole household, not just for herself). One day, Bren went to fetch Granny from one of the events. He drove our 20 year-old car (called Grace) there and the Aunties there asked if the car was ours. Granny said yes, shortly after they stopped their charity for Granny as they informed that her son could take care of her.
Granny being old and uneducated, cried when she retold this episode.
We told her that these are the kind of "charity" we do not need.
They are conditioned. They are limited by mankind and man is not endowed with wisdom beyond what they could not see.
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