Mouth Ulcer

It was a conscious fight between the mouth ulcers bacteria and my body resistance during the last hot and hazy week. I was in the farm, the air was unbearable too even under the shadow. I sweated profusely despite taking lot of water. By noon, I could feel my mouth cracking and I have to use the water cleansing method on my mouth hourly. Indeed, the water prevented the cracks to develop into ulcers. By evening, the cracks seemed to disappear.

As I travelled back to Kuching from Sarikei (370km), again my mouth started to crack. I used the water cleansing method again during travelling and at home, happy to see that the cheap treatment method is effective.

Accumulated period without painful mouth and tongue ulcers for me is already two and half months!

White Hibiscus

In fact white hibiscus is more suitable for my mood today. It means sorrow and depression.

Destiny

Do the cows know that they are trapped and to be slaughtered? 

We have humans also like that, trapped, manipulated, exploited and even murdered by some beastly humans too.

Yellow Bell Flowers (Tecoma Stans)

Despite hot weather, the plant produces thousands of beautiful yellow flowers in my garden. 

Nice Yellow Flowers

This land is full of dirts/fouls, and needs the nice yellow flowers to change the landscape and cleanse out the smells and sounds.

Light Brown Pansy Butterfly

Haven't seen the Pansy butterfly for quite a while, don't know what happens to the these butterflies in my farm, especially the outstanding blue pansy. 

Perhaps, dry and hazy weather does not favour the presence of butterflies.

Dwarf Lily Flower

The buds and flowers are all quite spectacular. 
The stamens and carpel of the flowers are more distinguished than the petals.

Pink Plumeria rubra

This plant is flowering well at the Miri Senadin housing site, not far from Curtin University.
The colour is nice compared to the white or yellow. But I did not smell the nice scent produced by these flowers during the last visit.

Pink Morning Glory (Ipomoea)

The shape of the flower is quite typical of Morning glory, but the leaves are different, a bit rectangular compared to normally heart shape.  It is found on the Bintulu beach. 
Why did the leaves evolved into this unique shape?

Banana Flower

It is one of biggest and solid flowers around.

I remembered when we were young, my elders told us not to go near the flowering banana trees during moon-lit night because spirits and fairies would dance near the  plants.

I did not see the spirits or fairies, but I saw sun-birds busily and noisily digging on the flower during the day time.

New Pinkish Flowers in my Farm

Three months ago, I bought one plant from the Sarikei Market, it is now flowering. I have not found its name yet. 
These few months, I was planting more flowers than the fruit trees. Flowers are still my favourites. 
But I am doubtful it would survive, it is still a wild wild place.

Colourful and Energetic Caterpillar

I did not expect this caterpillar to move fast on the debris-littered forest ground. It just wriggled  itself from one place to another place. When it needed to cross a gap, it just stretched its body to the other side, it appeared that both ends have suckers, and there it went, to another leaf or branch.

Some of the Borneo Landscapes during August

Photographs are often the best presentations of the issues, haze, burning and sunset.

Hazy Week

It was a tiring and dry week in the farm, the air was unhealthy. The polluted air index reached 100 in Sarikei on 24th August, and I perspired profusely, draining away my body energy as I walked on the hilly terrain. Certainly, it was not enjoyable to walk and work outdoor in the open haze.
What to do, farmers have to survive, this is the planting season for wet rice, they had to burn the grass field or open up new areas for the growing population. 

Pretty Periwinkle Flowers (Catharanthus Roseus)

The petals are pink but the central region is red with yellow centre tube.This colouring has resulted attractive appearance compared to just pure pink throughout. How does it know that in order to evolve to this colouring design?

Hippeastrum (Red Lily)

It has been more than a year that this plant has not flowered in my garden. Yesterday, this bulbous plants suddenly brighteneded up with two nice large red trumpet flowers.

My Ugly Dog

Despite the ear antennae are up, he is getting less and less alert. 
He did not even detect my present despite I was within 1m! 
Look like, the nose is also not working well too, can detect my scent.
Poor fellow, age is catching up, outpacing his usefulness, just like me!

Discovery- A Cheap way to treat Mouth Ulcers in the Hot Tropics 

by Wong King Ming  18-08-2015

I often have mouth ulcers, almost once a month recently especially during the hot days or after I just came back from long distance travelling. The ulcers in the mouth and tongue not only caused severe pain but also pain that spread to the teeth, besides losing the taste of food.  I remember during my younger days and my children's, the pain would cause great discomfort and torture. My children would fret whole day and fever sometimes ensued or vice versa. Coughs could happen and then the ulcers would start to develop in the mouth and on the sides of the tongue. The children would not want to eat and could not sleep, leading to weaker resistance and longer time to recover. My parents and I would just watch over with heartache and helplessness. We often brought the children to the clinics, be it contemporary or traditional medicine. The Chinese physicians always diagnosed excessive body heat as the cause of such ulcers. They would advise taking cooling drinks, barley or tea plus applying watermelon powder  on the ulcers and liquid herbal medicines to be consumed. The western doctors would diagnose that the body was attacked by virus/bacteria which caused the body temperature to rise when resisted by our anti-bodies. It also caused ulcers to the mouth. They would prescribe vitamin tablets, pain killer, coughing mixtures, anti-biotic and other tablet forms of medicine. Whatever were the recommended treatments, we all have to suffer for at least five days and at least RM20-60 (US5-15) has to be incurred. Nowadays, the medical cost is spiraling. Typically our parents and my wife would often boil barley, herbal tea or green beans during the hot days for consumption. Perhaps the cooling effect has also reduced the ulcers incidents. 

But as I grew older, ulcers began to occur more often until one time when I was seeking treatment of tooth pain, the dentist advised me to see the mouth specialist to have extensive tests whether I have mouth cancer. I was indeed alarmed!  I used salt water to rinse my mouth and it did help to speed up the recovery. It was a painful treatment. I do not think the kids can take the pain of putting salt on the wound! Furthermore, salt is no good for the teeth which are basically calcium carbonate. Too frequent application of sodium chloride may deteriorate the teeth.

Then three months ago, I realised that whenever I went to my farm, located 360km away from Kuching to do manual work under the sun, I did not get ulcers. Only when I came back and stayed in the air-conditioned room, I started to have ulcers. Then I recalled that I consumed 3-4 bottles of 1.5 litres of water per day while I was working in the farm. At home I took less than 1 bottle of water and perhaps another 1 bottle of barley water. In the farm, I sweated profusely and therefore automatically wanted to drink more water to re-hydrate. But at home, I did not sweat much, especially in air-conditioned room because I was not thirsty for water. I suddenly realised WATER could be the solution to my problem. If the body generates too much heat, it is logical to use water to cool my body system by draining away the heat. But taking too much water will increase my toilet visits and this is inconvenient. Excessive water consumption may also overload my kidney and put pressure on other organs, especially my heart. Since my main problem is the mouth, why not just rinse the mouth more often with the clean cool water or just soak the mouth with drinking water whenever convenient. Or even drink it if necessary! Both ways can bring down the temperature.

So I used this method for the last two months and no more ulcers appeared! Yesterday was a hot day, I did not take or rinse as much water as I was out the whole day. By evening I felt some discomfort at the tip of my tongue, I started rinsing again with water before going to sleep, about five times, each time five minute or more. In the morning, the discomfort was gone! No Ulcer!

So, water treatment seems to be effective for me and has no side effects. I did not have mouth/tongue ulcer/tooth pain for the last two months.

From the scientific point of view, the water cools the rising temperature in my mouth and tongue during environmental change or sickness, preventing the skin from cracking and bacteria from breeding. Our body temperature is about 37degC when healthy, rises to more than 40degC when having sick/fever. Water at room temperature at tropics is about 26-30degC, allowing mouth heat to be transferred to the water and cools the mouth. Perhaps, mouth cracking will occur beyond 40degC. Without septic wound, fever will not develop and will not spread to roots of the teeth. There won’t be tooth pain. The mouth is indeed quite a dirty place because it is exposed to breathing air and food. There are thousands of bacteria in the air and food which are often stuck in the teeth. If we rinse often (besides brushing teeth), the bacteria will be at a minimum. Even if the skin cracks, they will be less aggressive and the body will repair the cracks faster than attacks by the bacteria. Thus recovery will be faster too. If we rinse our mouth after just getting up from sleep, it is best to spit out this water. If we have rinsed many times already, then there will be little harm in ingesting.

In summary, this WATER RINSING/ HOLDING method has hardly any SIDE EFFECT (only visit the toilet more often if you drink it). This method also hardly COSTs much, US$0.30 per 1.5litre bottle of drinking water here! It may cost more in desert countries. It is also not painful or bitter as water will not react with wound. No matter what, prevention is better than cure. Advise your children to rinse/hold water in the mouth more often during the hot day or when they are starting to feel sick.

Hopefully, this method will work for anybody, not myself only. Imagine the cost implication, we have 7 billion population. If half of the population has this problem once a year, about US$30 billion medical expenses can be saved per year! Let's review the efficiency of this method after experimenting for some time.

Zephyr Flowers

Zephyr plants produced nice upright flowers when there were sufficiient sunlight and rainfall.

But they turned chaotic after two weeks of drought!

Burning Red Sun

You can get this kind of angry sunset when you have extensive burning on the surface of the Earth. 

Mudskipper fish

I used to chase this type of fish at the river bank when I was a kid. 
This mudskipper is resting at the Bintulu sea beach rock outcrop.  It is cleaner compared to those living on the river bank, but its protruding eyes look scary!

Dirty Cat

I thought cat is very conscious of cleanliness, it always cleans its body with its tongue. But this cat looks dirty, what are those white stuffs all over her body? Do they look like lice?
She seems to be more concern of hunting, something inside the grass bush! It must be the mouse, her traditional enemy.

Watching the Sea

This time, watching the sea at Bintulu, not at Miri. 
Once a while looking at sea waves, let the wind blows my face and watch far away blue sky is like throwing all the garbage from the head into the sea, refreshing!

Nightfall at Miri

Finally the tall grass in the villa compound was clear and the nightfall dazzling. It was not a moonlit night, neither starry night, in fact cloudy night. It had been raining often for the last few days. But Miri has bad pollution problem, you could smell the the burning air during day and night, especially towards the Baram area, underground peat burning or open burning? I am not sure, just have to close the windows tight!  

Green Green Grass

After almost four months, the villa compound at Miri was covered with the tall green grass, so tall that (about 1.5m) they could not stand up by themselves. 
Tropical climate, with abundant sun and rain, induces flourshing growth and requires regular maintenance.

Food Mines of the Red Ants

I was wondering why this tree has so many ants, busily moving up and down the tree daily.  There must be sufficient food to feed them. Finally, after the tree fell, I discovered the tree produced thousands of light green buds on the sides of the upper branches, which were likely the food mines of the ant colonies. Some ants were still loitering around the green buds after the tree fell.

Chaos on the Fallen Tree

The tree must have fallen just one or two nights earlier. The red ants living on the tree are in chaotic state, trying to move to another place for survival, but seems to come to the dead ends!

It reminds me if one day the Earth is going to snap too, where are we going to escape? Humans are so busy fighting each other, making money or enjoy life, how many of them really give a thought about we are living in the hostile world subjected to many potential natural disasters, from within and outside the planet!

Second Fallen Tree near the Sarikei Farm Camp

It had been so dry for the last two months, I was a bit worry that the drought might wipe off many of the fruit trees. Instead, I found my Camp torn apart, and a tall tree just next to the Camp snapped due to heavy storm. This is the second tree falling down since I put a camp there, but luckily it fell towards the front without crushing the camp. The first tree fell backwards without causing too much damage. 

It is actually dangerous to put camp near to the tall trees!