What matters deafness of the ears, when the mind hears?

After a long hard winter of struggle and exaggeration of the reasons for my absence, I’m back.

And the links resume.

Enjoy! 

I will be overseas on a backpacking trip from 13th Dec to 23th Dec.

There will be no updates during this time.

Thank you all, and Blessed Christmas in advance!

At last, I have a chance to use this word - hiatus! Ha!

Sorry for the long silence (and no pun intended), have been bogged down in quicksand.

Highlights of the past week included hosting CT - an terp from Malaysia on her first visit to my fair isle. Of course, the bulk of the work of hosting, tour guiding and all went to DO. :)

In other news, Giraffe has gone through his CI operation successfully and is now slacking recovering at home. Congrats, man!

More (coherency) when I am more slack and less tired.

Cheers!

 

Gerard, a friend of mine, is undergoing a CI operation tomorrow.

Here’s wishing him success and Godspeed!

I await his (lab rat) progress reports as well. :)

For Singaporeans only - to be more precise, Singaporean students and employed folks.

Anyway, something to cheer about!

As follows:

The Assistive Technology Fund (ATF) provides persons with disabilities with financial assistance in purchasing assistive technology (AT) devices, to pursue mainstream education or gain open employment.

AT can help to maintain or improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities. Examples of AT include hearing aids, computer-related devices, and synthesizer software.

Read on for more information.

Inspired by Joseph’s quirkiness, and in the artsy spirit of Singapore Biennale, I have also decided to name my hearing aids. (Those sitting at the back, stop shouting ‘copycat!’ and ‘lame!’ Darn. Where are the bouncers when I need them?)

The left aid is "Jesse" and the right one is "Celine".

I. Am. So. Cool. 

Jesse & Celine

P/S: I hope you, gentle reader, see the resemblance too.

Jesse & Celine

Thoughts and comments welcome! Me, I am happy!!!

Finally, I can watch the news for more than just the moving pictures and puzzling over their meaning. I thought this day would never come.

Am awaiting the official press release and media coverage.

Below is the one sent to SADeaf, I believe.

MEDIACORP IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT FROM 25 SEPTEMBER 2006, TV VIEWERS WILL BE ABLE TO READ WHAT THE NEWS PRESENTER IS SAYING.

The captions which are the scripts for prepared news stories, will appear at the same time as the presenter reads the news. We have introduced the captioning service, provided with the support of the Media Development Authority (MDA), in response to requests from the general public and the deaf community. English news will kick off the captioning service on 25 September with the 9:30pm news bulletin on Channel 5. Chinese news at 10pm on Channel 8 and Malay news at 8pm on Suria will introduce captions later in December 2006. We are still exploring options for captions on Tamil news.

I am one of the organisers of Deafinitely Boleh! - a 2-day deaf awareness festival to be held in December this year.

For this event, we’ve set up a website to generate publicity and provide useful and practical information for all Deaf/deaf/HI/HOH folks in coping with their disability/deafness/communication woes.

Do check it out!

P/S: "Deafinitely" is, of course, a pun on those two words. (Don’t groan!) "Boleh" is Malay for "can". Yes, the deaf boleh!

Pathetically few they may be.

But what keeps me going is knowing that people use this site, as a source of information, to know more about deafness, and even for more prosaic reasons like, hey!, learning that baby signs really work. (What’s more, I myself am learning too.)

Which is all that matters to me - that I am helping in some way, however small, to do something potentially big.

:)
 

Welcome! Here, you’ll find links to hearing-impaired, hard-of-hearing, late-deafened, deaf-related news, as well as short write-ups on each linked article.

In short, whether you call yourself HI, HOH, Deaf, deaf (with a small C), partially deaf, "I just can’t hear well! Don’t call me deaf!" - who cares? We all just want information! 

Enjoy!

***

The title of the site is taken from a quote by the author of Les Misérables.
 

"What matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears. The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind." - Victor Hugo