My Email Address
Find my email address here, in obscured form for security from SPAM bots crawling the Internet. Find the link right at the bottom of the page.
A bit like what I feel was done to me earlier in life, to help 'cure' my depression.
About My alias : PGTips91
I had started this page and written a whole-life history, nearly, when I had to re-start Firefox and, unfortunately, did not recover anything that I had so carefully written. So here's my second go ...
What is the meaning behind my alias?
Well, my initials are PGT and I earned the nick-name PGTips after a well-known brand of tea. The number 91 comes from my boyhood - I was to have gone to school at the age of five at the Cheefoo school in China [See China Diary 2007 below.] It is of interest that Eric Liddell, of 'Chariots of Fire' fame, ended his life at a Japanese prisoner of war camp in China, where he was held along with the then teachers and students of Cheefoo school. He and the teachers did so well to keep things running normally, that some of the boys graduated in England, after their release, along with their age cohort.
If our family had not been detained in New Zealand, because of the war situation affecting travel, I might have been a prisoner of war along with the rest of the school!
More about this can be read in 'A Boy's War', by by David Michell (Author)
Here's a bit about the school that I found while researching on the Net : --
My friendship with Bei fei started in 1992. It was her very first day as a tour guide, and I was her first customer: A tour of one person. I had gone to see the cities of Yentai and Penglai in Shandong Province. One reason for going was to try to find the old site of the Cheefoo school where the Children of Missionaries had boarded just prior to WWII. This was where eight year old Rev David Michell and his Sister had lived and schooled prior to the Japanese invasion. Their parents were living a long distance away in the west in Henan Province. David wrote a book of his unique experiences, entitled; ‘A Boy’s War’. When we found the site that day, it had been converted into a Chinese Naval Base , and entry was forbidden. But somehow, Bei fei persuaded the guard to let us in and to walk around freely and to take photos. We found several of the original buildings, not far from the Bohai Sea, and we also discovered where someone had made attempts to chisel off the Crosses that decorated the walls. I was able to take photos and provide numerous sets later to David and others who had been prisoners of the Japanese in the Weifeng Internment Camp. (Incidentally, that was the same camp where Eric Liddell was detained (The Olympic athlete depicted in the Oscar Winning Movie, ‘Chariots of Fire’.)
The Second World War and other events prevented my parents from returning to China, but they had prepared well for that event, expecting to be there for a term of ten years. Hence, for all my growing up years I had name-tags sewn onto my clothing with my name and school number '91'. So 'Paul Taylor 91' is etched into my memory forever.
Speaking of memory, when I was in my late twenties, I think, I had a long period of depression. At the end of that period I was given some ECT treatment from which I have never fully recovered. Initially I felt like a zombie, walking around and living a somewhat normal life, but feeling totally cut off from who I am. I did not realise it at the time, but the ECT had completely robbed me of all the professional training that I had received, and I had to start over again, from the beginning, just as would someone recovering from brain damage - which is what ECT really does and why it 'works'. I went from being a senior accounting clerk in a professional accountant's office to being a payroll clerk for a medium sized manufacturing company - a task that normally would be done by a first-year accounting student. I had much difficulty in fulfilling even this basic task.
It was at this stage that my interest in computers and computing really started. The ad. that attracted my attention when looking through the Situations Vacant, had the line "Leader in the field of computerised accounting", which proved to be a great overstatement, but became the draw that led me to the company that I went on to serve for fourteen years in various capacities.
I often relate my experience of ECT to my knowledge of computers and wonder how any intelligent person could consider that putting an electric current through the electronics of a computer could possibly help 'cure' a software problem!
My difficulties with memory are not so much with my long-term memory, which still functions at the top end of the scale, but it is the short-term memory function that is largely missing. I often forget what I am actually doing, after I have been on-task for a while, and have to stop and find out again before I can carry on. I also have to go over and over something until it reaches my long-term memory before I have any recollection of it. Having completed a task once, I cannot remember what I have done. That is why I have documented so much here on this Wiki - so that I can go back to something to remind myself of what I have done, be it later the same day, the next day or further down the track.
In terms of personal relationships, I find it most difficult as I cannot easily get to know anybody. Even people that I have 'known' all my life feel strangers to me after even a relatively short time. Contacts I make on the Internet, if they change their avatar, I cannot be sure if I know them at all without much difficulty. After a period without contact they fade from my memory almost entirely. This does not make for making and keeping friends an easy matter and cannot readily be explained to people, either, which makes it entirely difficult.
Some relevant links : --
I put ECT on a par with Frontal Lobotomy, an invasive procedure that was popularised in America and is still practised in a few countries today. If you can bear to read these accounts of what some have done in the name of treating people with mental problems. It hurts me too much to read these accounts and to consider what it must have meant to these poor people. Bear in mind, though, that the same results are achieved through chemical means today!
Three times now, mercury from fillings has been accused of initiating diseases. The first time was in the 1830s, again in the 1920s and the third time a movement started in 1973 in which more substantial information has been available to determine the toxicity of mercury. Up until recently, it was felt that the mercury stayed within the filling. Now it is known that mercury leaches out every minute of the day.
Cases
- Rosemary Kennedy, the sister of President John F. Kennedy, was given a lobotomy when her father complained to doctors about the 23-year-old's moodiness. Dr. Walter Freeman personally performed the procedure. Rather than any improvement, however, the lobotomy reduced Rosemary to an infantile mentality including incontinence. Her verbal skills were reduced to unintelligible babble. Her father hid the nature of Rosemary's affliction for years and described it as the result of mental retardation. Rosemary's sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded the Special Olympics in her honor in 1968.[12]
- Howard Dully had a lobotomy at 12, after his stepmother was simply tired of his "youthful defiance". At the age of 56 he said, "I've always felt different -- wondered if something's missing from my soul. I have no memory of the operation". Late in his life, Dully uncovered the story of his lobotomy. Crown Publishers published Dully's memoir (co-written by Charles Fleming), My Lobotomy[13], in September 2007.[14][15]
- New Zealand author and poet Janet Frame was due to have a lobotomy because of a diagnosis of mental illness. She was saved from this procedure by receiving a literary award the day before her operation was to take place.
- French Canadian singer Alys Robi was renowned worldwide during the 1940s. In the 1950s, following many cases of violence and disturbance, she was admitted to a Quebec mental hospital where she underwent a lobotomy. She was later released and pursued her career.
- Swedish modernist painter Sigrid Hjertén died following a botched lobotomy in 1948.
- The older sister of playwright Tennessee Williams, Rose, received a lobotomy, which left her incapacitated for life.
Some of my other web sites : --
My Public Albums at Picasa Web
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