After my retirement, I had intended to spend more time at Hive writing articles and also creating content. However, things do not always go as planned. For the past few months, I had been missing in action and had not posted any articles in Hive. I guess a lot of you must be wondering what happened to Hive account@positivestyle

A lot of you know that I have an autistic son, Jonathan and I had written many articles about my experience with him. Caring for and looking after him is not an easy task and requires a lot of effort, time, and especially patience. In the past, we used to have a maid from Indonesia who does the housework and also assist us to look after Jonathan. My last maid after working for 4 years with us had returned to Indonesia. We had a hard time getting a replacement. Since my wife Roselind and my daughter Victoria are working, the house chores and primary care of Jonathan fall on my shoulders. I must admit that our family had been rather pampered as we always had a live-in maid to assist us.

Without a maid, I am busy the whole day doing all the house chores and taking care of Jonathan, leaving me no time to write for Hive. But it is also an interesting time as well. Now at the age of 61 years, I am learning how to cook for the first time. Thank God, there are so many YouTube videos that can guide me to prepare simple meals for my family. For the past few months, my cooking skills (dare I say culinary skills) improve tremendously and now I can cook a range of simple dishes. As Jonathan still goes to the Kuching Autistic Association center in the morning, I had to also to make two trips to send him to the center and bring him home. All my afternoons are spent with Jonathan.

In our daily routine, we try to be as inclusive as possible and where possible include Jonathan in all our activities. In September this year, our family went to Kuala Lumpur to attend a wedding and for a short holiday. During that trip, we also brought along Jonathan. Although it is not possible to bring Jonathan to the wedding dinner, he was included in all the other activities. We also brought Jonathan for a 3 days tour of the Cameroon Highlands after the wedding.

Jonathan is part and parcel of our lives. We bring Jonathan with us when we go shopping for groceries, eat out at restaurants, exercise at the park, or go swimming. In what we do, we try to include Jonathan. The only exception is when we go for long holidays, we need to leave Jonathan at home. The main reason for this is that Jonathan is unable to sit in the plane for long periods of time.

I now have a maid and at the moment we are applying for her work permit. I do pray that all will work out.