Joan is recovering - a prayer for her, PLEASE

I received the email below from 56er Joan (née Rees) Austin's son, Richard, who has taken the trouble to inform about his mother's condition.

To reach the wider audience who know Joan, I am putting his touching email about his mother on the blog for all her friends to see.

Richard probably does not know that, as much as Joan loves us, we also love her very much. We wait for her emails.

We all will pray for her to come through this difficult time and hope she follows doctor's orders.

We also pray for her wonderful family (described by herself as "My very own United Nations gifts from heaven") that she is so proud of, husband Ron, Chhem, Richard and Tara.


GET WELL JOAN, FOR US!

And at this moment, even as she fights for her life, we remember Joan's Motto - "LIFE IS GOOD!"

Hi Everyone,

This is a first for me!

I am Richard, writing this on behalf of Mum (Joan Austin), to inform you that last Thursday, first thing in the morning after an extremely difficult night, Mum's Doctor rushed her off to A & E by ambulance with heart problems.

They kept her in A & E all day and because of her medical history, they conducted every manner of tests imaginable! The end result proved irregular heart beats. She does have an enlarged heart and a leaky valve, and has been rushed to hospital before a couple of times with heart failure, but thankfully, after a rest in hospital she is back home, with instructions to rest.

They have made her promise should the above occur again, she will not hesitate to 'phone for an ambulance and get to the hospital immediately.

Knowing Mum, I doubt if any of you really know or realize, what she has been through the past eight or so years.

She has a habit of making light of everything. She turns everything into a joke, despite how ill she may be feeling. She really has tremendous strength of character and an iron will. Everyone at the hospital love and admire her strength and courage.

(I don't know if you have any idea how she keeps one and all in stitches there - she doesn't care what she says or to whom!!) Even this time when she was taken to the X-ray department, we bumped into a Doctor that knew Mum from her Oncology days. He came up to have a chat and when she was being taken in for X-rays, he said, 'look after Joan, she is very special to us.'

Both Dad and I couldn't help getting a lump in our throats.

I know I am biased, but that about sums my Mum up. She truly is a very SPECIAL person. I only wish you knew her and all she is, like we and all she comes into contact with, know her.

A shame all the above took place so soon after Mum and Dad's holiday in Wales. They had a very enjoyable time and covered miles sightseeing, which they both love doing. All Mum came back with was fluid retention, which she suffers badly with anyway, but made worse because the naughty girl refrained from taking her fluid tablets!

Understandable really, as she would not have been able to get out and about until much later in the day - and she was not having any of that!!

Upon her return from holiday, Mum did get on the computer and was working her way through all the e-mails, and she did say all of you were next in line, but look what happened!

I sincerely hope I have remembered all her school friends in this email. It was extremely difficult sorting out between Mum's school friends from her other friends all over the world. She has a mountainous contact list! In the end, I had to make a list and Mum deleted or added accordingly - thank goodness!!

Tara usually does the necessary, but she is in Singapore to watch the Grand Prix and then on to Malaysia for a holiday. Mum would not let us inform Tara about her 'hiccup,' as she calls it! No doubt it would worry her no end and ruin her holiday, but Mum will catch it upon her return!!

Dad and I, also Chhem, Sue and little Nathan, join Mum in sending our love and best wishes to you.

Mum also says she will soon be back on-line.

My kind regards to all,

Richard

Thank you, Richard, for being in touch with us.

Back again to our teeny weeny world

Posted on my Jacob's Blog, on the Mumbai Cathedralites Seventh Heaven Blog, on the Stephanian Kooler Talk Blog, and the Oulu CHAFF Blog.

Glad to get back to regular blogging.

The last two weeks were a delight in that we were were not snowed under by snow, but with love and affection and greetings from all over the world.

(Sadly, as an aside, this is the first time in the last I winters we have been in Finland (and Annikki's some 40 winters she has been in Finland out of her 63 winters) that we did not have snow in this near Arctic location. Remember we are just 200 km from the Arctic Circle! A sad reflection of the effect of global warming!)

Into our 10 email addresses, 5 Blog Accounts, 3 Google Groups, our mobile phone number, our landline phone and our snail mail postbox, a total of just around 70000 (YES 70000!) season's greetings poured in.

I had a task sorting them out and then updating mailing addresses in our numerous mailing lists, grouping them into the various groups, i.e., family (Maliyakals and Kandathils), friends (Indian, Finnish, world), Mumbai Cathedralites, Delhi Stephanians, Bishop Cottonians (Bangalore), Findians, CHAFF Participants, O-Indians, past colleagues, present colleagues and others - making sure we were not sending out duplicates or to dead addresses and then send our greetings to all on our lists. (If it was not for 3 trustworthy Macs working round the clock this task would have been impossible for just one computer idiot!)

Out of a total 37000 postings (the last ones were today), I am glad to say that this year we had hardly around 300 returns! I had taken out all those who had university addresses in the US and UK, and that had cut the mailing list from the 80000+ to this more manageable figure.

We are sorry to all whom we may have missed.

But this is proof that we have a teeny weeny world of our own. But this teeny weeny world is even smaller than we thought!

A few weeks ago I had about 6 emails, all with the same attachment - some pictures of the Old Bombay - a truly great collection of pictures. Most of the emails were forward.

One of the persons who forwards me great emails is Cathedralite from Mumbai) 56er Ubi (HS Uberoi). (Another is Cathedralite 49er from Mysore, Naval Patel.)

When I looked at the forward I noted that it was from his daughter-in-law, Anahita. Besides Ubi, she had forwarded it to one Farookh Mehta.

I sent an email to Ubi asking him whether this "Farookh" was the same "advertising" Farookh who was married to a great Maharashtrian stage actress, Vijaya. I explained to Ubi that we had sailed together from Venice to Bombay in 1969, round the Cape, and Farookh had beaten me in the Table Tennis final on board the ship. Farookh played well on a tilting and listing ship!

Ubi's reply was swift as it was amazing. Yes, this was the self-same Farookh, who was also a Cathedralite of the 47 era, married to the Maharashtrian stage legend, Vijaya, and whose daughter, Anahita, who had been a few months on that voyage was Head Girl in Cathedral School in 1985, when Ubi's son, Samir, was Head Boy, and the two were married!

A year or so ago, Farookh and Vijaya's son, Ravi Khote, had passed through Finland and I had talked to him about his parents.

Since this exchange of emails I have had emails and photographs from Farookh, which I will blog soon.

But the moral is that our teeny weeny world is much much smaller than we thought!

Some of you are Oh so...

Today, I had an email from 54er Sadhana (née Shah) Madhusadan from Pune.



Gopa (Sadhana's daughter), 54er Sadhana, me and Timo (Gopa's husband)
at the Pailin Thai Restaurant in Oulu when Sadhana visited us here in early summer.

Some friends have found it very delicate to send an email to me to find out if I was OK.

54er Gracie (née Hayeem) Bent Lerno sent an email to Sadhana asking "Do you know if all is OK?"

And that was because she had received this email from 56er Doreen (Feibusch) Heimlich which said:

Dear Gracie,

Trust you and your family have been keeping well; --

We've been forwarding each other all sorts of interesting things lately, but I've been wondering if you've had any Update(s) from Jacob?

The last entry on his cathedraliteheaven blogspot is from June 26th.

Has something changed?  Can you please let me know?

Love

Doreen

Doreen, Gracie - you are both so sweet. Love you both.

I guess that the next time I go off line for a period, I should put up a broad sign on all my blogs.

The single most important reason I did go off was that comment from the Anonymous Commenter asking me to get a life, away from my blogs, not knowing that all you wonderful friends out there ARE MY LIFE!

I had inadvertently forgotten to add Ranjit Mathrani to the list of 57ers. (I am sure it was not Budni's fault but mine.)

Not only is he very much around, he will be hosting one of the events for the 50th Year Reunion of 57ers in November.

My sincere apologies to Ranjit, whom I remember so well, for leaving his name off the list.

Emails to two 57ers are bouncing.

One is that of Pop Pharoah's elder daughter, Marguerite (née Pharoah) Sparks. The other is Shireen Desai.

I have sent an email to 61er Claire (née Pharoah) Knight to find out about her sister.

If someone could clarify the situation about Shireen, I would be grateful to help me put the Master List straight. (It is possible that in Shireen's case there are 2 "e"s in her email address user id.)

I tried to speak with 56er Ubi on Skype yesterday. Although I got through, the speech was breaking up and finally the connection got cut. This seems to happen between my computer and calls to India. Anyone give me an explanation?

Ubi seems to be enjoying his retirement in the same vein as me. Wish he would start blogging as he is a wealth of info about the school, and he is on the spot.