Thursday 23 June 2016

Student Health Service Appointment - P1 kids - Remember, Hearing is our Precious Gift

We got our appointment for the health check provided by the government. Bizarrely, they schedule the international school students' health checks in the middle of July, when I imagine 90% of them are overseas. Perhaps that's exactly why they are scheduled then. Anyway, I rescheduled it to the end of June. This probably worked in our favour, as it was very quiet, hardly anyone there.

The centre is in Chai Wan, about 5-10 minutes' walk from the MTR. In classic HK fashion, the appointment is a multi-step process. First of all, you register at the counter (1st floor) which takes about 7 or 8 minutes, as the lady prints off loads of slips of paper and sticks laminated things into your health record book. Next you (well, your child) goes to get weighed and measured in Room 1. Then you wait for a bit. Then you go to Room 3 and the nurse (super lovely nurse called Mei Yi) tests their vision and hearing. Then you wait for a bit. Then you go to Room 10, swap your laminated number for a totally different laminated number, and eventually see the dr. He checks that the kids have two arms and two legs, asks you about medical history, that's it. The whole thing took about 50 minutes.

The only things in the Health Centre that are less than 30 years old are the automatic doors. They're new and swish. But I'm willing to bet that the posters have been there a number of decades. Weirdly the chairs struck me as very Hong Kong - more specifically, the fact that none of them matched and they had little handwritten signs sellotaped to them.

The boys both "passed" as the nurses kept telling us. However, Felix is tall, so we got this helpful advice.







 








Wednesday 15 June 2016

Favourite picture books, at age 6

Not now, Bernard by David McKee



A Fish for Supper by Alan MacDonald




Steam Train, Dream Train by Sherri Duskey Rinker