Pronouncing "Autism" for the first time

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When my 2nd twin daughter was 1 year and 6 months, she was very quiet and always laying on the floor doing nothing. At first, I thought she is such a good girl and an angel sent from heaven. Then I got worried and started calling her but no response from her. I told my husband about it, so we took her to see a paediatrician (child doctor). After her check up, the doctor said that she's a healthy girl and we told her about our worries, so she told us that some children take a longer period of time to talk and response and ask us to wait until she's 2 years old. At first we thought of waiting but we decided to get second opinion from the hospital. The doctor said to wait again but we insist a thorough check up on her hearing and etc. So we sent her to do a hearing test and the result turned out, no problem.

My husband heard of autism before but to me it was the first time that I've heard this word and how serious it is. We check through the Internet for the word "autism" and its' symptoms and found it's similarity to our daughter's behaviour. I started to search for books that I could purchase to use it as a guide for me to do homeschooling with her and I found the Amazon site and purchased some books from them through Internet. The books I found to be helpful and highly recommend it are as follows:

a) Behavioral Intervention for Young Children with Autism by Catherine Maurice (ISBN: 0890796831);
    Comment - this book helps me to guide my daughter to talk and have good living and self-help skills..
b) A Work In Progress by Ron Leaf & John McEachin (ISBN: 0-9665266-0-0); and
    Comment - this book gives me ideas and strategies to deal with challenging behaviours.
c) Let me hear your voice by Catherine Maurice (ISBN:0-449-90664-7).
    Comment - this book is the first book that I've read with eagerness to find out the outcome on the efforts and methods used by Catherine on her son and I've found it to be a good reading material and learning through her experience. I've used all the methods that she went through using my own improvised versions.

After knowing about this 'Autism', we sent her to see a child psychologist, spent an hour there, all she did was taking notes on our observation of our daughter's behaviour and she let her played with some puzzles which she have never played before and finds it difficult. There and then she conclude that she's autistic and ask us to sent her to a kindergarten as soon as possible. And all that consultation cost us RM 600 for an hour. We decided also there and then that we will not be sending her there again for follow-up, we also decided not to label her and start teaching her. With those books as my guide and purchased alot of educational toys, drawing materials and flash cards to help me in my process of teaching.

GOING FULL-TIME

On my 3rd year of doing my insurance sales, I continued with the survey and found the problems faced by most of the policyholders, they are as follows:

a) No agent servicing them, reasons being insurance taken out of obligation from their relatives or business relations;

b) Don't understand the purpose of taking up insurance, most treat insurance as a burden rather than a peace of mind;

c) Not responsible to their family;

d) No money, cause they think insurance is very expensive; and lastly

e) Ignorant.

After understanding those problems faced by those policyholders, I decided to come up with a programme to help people understand what type of plan they have taken up by creating a Summary Programme of the policyholder's insurance that they have taken up, regardless of the Company they have taken up from. I started going around to help people with the Insurance summary programme and explain to them what type of plans they have taken up and the expiration and complication should they omit certain procedures. After doing the Programme, I would advice them about it and if any info have been missed out unintentionally, I would advice them to get their servicing agents to do the correction. But if the agent is no longer servicing them, then I would do them a favor by helping them solve the problem(s), if it is material information that needs to be rectified.

My Insurance Summary Programme was effective, there's no pressure, and I managed to help most of them understand better their existing policies and strengthen their understanding in the policy(ies) that they have taken up. After that I would inform them about the other benefits that are available in the Company that I represent without obligations. My sales boost up after that and I went on my first Company's paid trip to Bangkok for a mini convention.

Finally, in the year 1994, I met my soul mate. He was introduced by a friend whom I approached to do some fact finding. He told me he have a lot of policies and that he'll introduce me to his good buddy and I agreed to meet up with him at his house.

How I ended up in Insurance line

One fine day, this friend of my boss, who is an insurance manager, came over to our office and chit chatted with me. He told me that his line of business is the most honorable line because it helps him earned a decent income as well as helping people in need. That's when it strikes me, that this is the business that i want to be in. I took up an insurance policy from him because I felt that should I become disable one day, I will not want to burden my mother or any of my loved ones. Immediately I told him I was interested in joining him to be an insurance agent.

I started attending classes and sat for all the required exams and managed to start my business part-time. I started with cold calling, meaning we have to go door to door sales. Cold calling is a good way to test your people skills and to build up courage. I remembered once, equip with our company's survey forms, I went up the HSBC head office building and went floor to floor to approach office staffs. Some of them were very kind to entertain me with our so-called survey, some have nothing to do and just one to talk to somebody but most complained that they don't get good service or they already bought a lot.

I went back continuing with my full-time job as an audit clerk and tried to approach some of the clients' staff. I managed to sold some small cases but I was getting desperate to get more sales in order to stablized my income and be self sufficient. I tried my best to be as professional as possible in my approached but my desperations shown on my face makes me failed to get in sales the first year in this business. Without my own transport, going around from town to town is quite a hassle. So, I decided to buy myself a second hand car. I managed to get an old junk (I forgotten the name) for RM1,000 only, without aircond. Everywhere i go, with this weather, I will reach my destination, all sweaty and smelly. After a few months of using and decided it is more of a burden than useful, I decided to upgrade to a better car. The second car was a colt lancer, it's a little bit better than the first car, it cost RM 2000. I use it to drive to nearby town only and every where I stop the car would not start again and I have to called my brother for help to jump start it again. I tolerated with it for some time and manage to do some sales. Then I decided that it's time for me to go full time on my insurance business, I quit my job in 1992.

My boss then offered me a joint venture into another business and I accepted his offer. We started a data processing services, which is actually a company that helps businesses set their accounting system as well as selling them software system, such as MYOB and other custom made system that we engage a programmer to do. One year later, I decided that it's time for me to own a company car. Since I do go out to meet clients and finding new prospects, I finally got a brand new car (at that time the best and cheapest company car would be a Proton, of course). I managed to do both business at the same time when I spoke to the client(s).

My insurance business was going on pretty well, and I started to see my income growing at a steady pace. I saved up most of my insurance income and I started to find ways to improve the returns through shares investment. I was introduced to a broker and I started buying shares. I remember the luckiest time was when I bought AHP (property trust), the minute I bought it at RM1, two days later it went up to RM5, then another day RM6, then the next day RM 7. At that time there is no such thing as CDS accounts, therefore, we have to sent the share certificate for registering under our name and if you are a speculator then normally, most of them will not sent it for registration because it takes nearly a month for that procedure to complete and by then you would have miss the boat of selling it at a high price. But luckily, after a month later when I got my certificates, I managed to sold it for RM5, good enough for me. I've learnt never to be greedy and make sure you have the money to pay up, should your investment goes down, if you are not willing to cut losses.

Years in Insurance Sales

I started my insurance business at the end of year 1989. It's been 21 years already, how time flies. Ever since I was 14 years old I've been thinking about starting my own business. Every night I would thought out the type of business that would need the least capital and convenient and the thought of selling hot dogs came to mind. Unfortunately I never manage to start it, so now we have the 1901 hotdog stand.

A LITTLE HISTORY

My father own a business selling electrical items and also he is an electrician, where he would service electrical items such as T.V., radio, electrical installation and lightings. Those were the good old days when the business was good cause he was the only one opening an electrical shop together with servicing. When business was good, we can see that we have streams of relatives wanting to share in our good fortune.

It was in the year 1978, all of a sudden, my father suffer from stroke, that's when all the dreams fell apart. Creditors came to collect their debts and business became slow. Now we have streams of creditors and no more relative to share our misfortune. Things became tougher when my mom would be worrying about our financial status and the cost of my father's medical bill. Every night she would cry and I would be crying too in my room. Things pick up a bit when my two brothers join up and carry on the business.

Everyday after school, I would have to help my mom feed my dad and help him do some exercise. When he got better, he stated to go out to do exercise on his own. When he got even better and started driving, he started drinking again.

Then in year 1984, that's when my father suffer the second stroke and this time it was serious. He was totally paralyzed and stayed in the General Hospital for few months until the doctors said that they could not help him any more and have to be send back home. My dear old mom is the only one who suffer the most, day in day out, she have to care for him, from cleaning him to injecting liquid through his nose. After a month or so due to his inability to move, he started to suffer from bed sore. That was the hardest part, to do cleaning on his bed sore,for the caretaker that is my mom. I feel for her, but was unable to help much. So far I can't remember helping at all, I felt so useless most of the time and disturb by my mom wanting to die most of the time to end her suffering. So the idea of ending ones life came to mind, that's when I started to try to commit suicide. Most of the time, as you can see, I failed. That make me start to think that even to commit suicide, you need courage, that I don't have. I was a coward!!!!

Cowardly suicide methods/don't intend to die but don't know what to do:

a) Use a blunt pen knife and press it on your wrist, rub it until you feel the pain then stop;

b) Hanging - use a towel to try to strangle yourself and when you run out of air, stop;

c) Drugs - consume lots of vitamins (folic acid and vit B), hoping for overdose of vitamins will kill you but if you don't die, you'll become even more healthier and smarter;

d) Pretend dying and see whether anybody cares; and lastly

e) Knock you head against the wall but make sure it is made of chipboards.

So after trying all of the above and failed to disappear from the face of the earth, I decided to live a more meaningful life.

I decided to pick myself up and started to think of the best way to earn more money and to give my mom a better life. Not long after that, my dad passed away. No tears fell from my eyes and everyone felt that it was best for him to go than to suffer.

I started working in a audit firm in K.L. (with a bogus accountant) and work very hard to learn as much as I can cause I was in a hurry to start my own business therefore I wasted no time. I started taking up courses to upgrade myself and read a lot to better my knowledge. I volunteered for any outstation jobs to exposed myself into the business field. Get to know more clients and help them in anyway I can to build better rapport.

After 2 years of learning from the bogus accountant, I decided that it's time to come back to my home town to work (with lower pay) with a qualified accountant. I thought, a qualified chartered accountant would be able to guide me better in this line. To learn to read reports and advise client on tax planning. It was all very exciting for me, cause I was too willing to learnt and the accountant was willing to teach me.