First Time Event

I'm trying hard to get back on my creative juices in writing. It loses my creativity due to my "time-consuming" emotional crisis which I blogged about it in my previous post. This is one of the things that I don't like to happen again because it's difficult to get back on track.

So, my remedy is that I went to the Nuffnang Blogopolis PH 2012 event on November 18, 2012 at Makati Shangri-la Hotel. It's my first time to attend the blog event after having the Exsilent hearing aids. I was surprised to see that I can hear everything with no extra effort. I didn't need a recorder anymore.  I learnt a lot from the event and was able to grasp important lessons from different speakers. I also engaged with other fellow guests. I hope that these event can help me to establish this blog. :)

So, these Exsilent hearing aids are helping me to cope with my listening skills. The only downside of these hearing aids is that sound programs automatically switch programming mode due to the loud pounding rocky music background coming from that event.  But that's okay for me since I never go to the noisy environment.

 But for those who love listening to the pub music or any noisy music, I suggest to have your hearing aids fine tuning for that noisy environment.

My Long Absence

I'm back in the world. Sorry for letting you wait for so long. I'll share with you for some latest news which I found interesting in my next succeeding blog posts. But for now, I'm sharing my story.

I suffered a long severe emotional depression along with hidden anger. It's a shame for me to tell you this because I'd been studying and learning in a broad range of topics about mind-body-spirit (MBS) development for many years but it didn't heal my own emotional crisis. I held it for more than four months after continuous series of harassing and accusing me of something I didn't commit as well as using other deception methods to bring me down.  What shocked me more is that those people are my mentors and close friends for many years and now they are revealing their true colors. I thought they were my true friends for life but I realized I was wrong. They are not... I'm so blinded...

It's a coincidence that it all happened at the same time.  

I understood that it was all because of underestimating me due to my hearing disability. But what's wrong with having a hearing disability?  Why are they so hardworking in fooling, scaring, and deceiving hearing impaired people?  

One by one, everyone is going to leave me until I'm back to being alone.   

Then one by one, I'm going to clean all the messes that brought to me. 

Even though the problems are solved but my hidden anger and emotional depression are still stuck inside myself.  And I couldn't get out of the bad memories that lingered inside my mind either. 

I realized one day that there is no point of holding grudges for so long as it never brings me joy and happiness. So, what's the solution?

On the spur of the moment, I am able to find the LIFE LESSON after these happenings through silent meditation and self-reflection . Then my emotional crisis disappears instantly. Wow! I never thought I can heal my own crisis! :) So, I'm pretty sure it will not happen again ever... Life must go on, you know...

Here is my work and my own design! Hope it helps you too as well. :)

Enjoy!:)

First Time Pub Story

I have a fear in social life as I don't know how to mingle with people. I don't have much confident in my life especially having hearing aids. It didn't give me the full benefits I need to hear better in a difficult noisy situation until one day...


One day, I went to the (non-smoking) gastropub birthday party for the first time. My long-time friend succeeded in persuading me to go after several times of my refusal. You never know that before I went there, I had butterflies in my gut and almost wanted to vomit. These were due to my extreme fears of people and social life.


Inside the gastropub, I was very surprised that I didn't feel any disturbing noisy environment. I almost forgot that I was wearing a new brand of hearing aids- Exsilent QleafPro. There is one thing I didn't aware of it. I almost laughed out loud.


When my two lady friends wanted to share an order with me and asked me the choice of food. I told them that you girls could choose the food you wanted as long as there was no beef. I told them many times regarding that. I was astonished to see the order coming in front of us- BEEF BURGER. Oops, I told them; " I thought there is no beef?!?!?" They thought that I want any beef. And they apologized me for not hearing correctly because of too noisy in the pub. They hardly heard me.  Ohhh, but I hear them loud and clear. lolx! I never stop giggling. (They didn't know I am wearing new hearing aids XD) I didn't know too that they were tired in the pub because of the noise.



I never thought that Exsilent QleafPro really works very well in an extremely noisy environment. It is my first time to enjoy this kind of event although my social communication is not pretty good but at least it solves the basic foundation of my hearing. The only disadvantage of QleafPro in this gastropub is that it keeps switching the listening programs on its own without my tapping. I am not sure if this is the result of the sound of high-tone low frequency in drumming music coming from a rock band.

Rejection By Vocal Teacher

I never knew how hard to live in a hearing-impaired life.  I thought that my speaking-listening-writing dilemma is over, apparently it is not.  There are many many things need to improve; however, there is one thing I never notice. Here is what I found out.

One day, when I record my voice to test out my microphone on my laptop.  I realized I don't like my voice. The sound is pretty cracking, distorted, airy, childish, and not feminine! No wonder why some are irritated my voice. In addition, I suffer swollen vocal chords.  My vocal chords easily worn out.  I think I need help.

Unfortunately, when I search for a vocal teacher to solve my vocal issues.  I never thought that all vocal teachers turn down their services to me because of my hearing-impaired. I find it very unreasonable.  Oh well.. Shall I cry? hehe...

Anyway, it's not a big deal if I have vocal issues. What's important for me is to keep learning to expand my English vocabulary for better communication. Of course, I never give up on my voice problem by studying the voice development.  I am a pretty greenhorn in this area.

Hearing Aids Centers in the Philippines

I know some of you are asking me about the lists of hearing aids center available in the Philippines.  I cannot advise you which one is the right for you since I only try few centers and I may have different preferences with yours.  Don't worry, I'll share my tips on buying hearing aids on my future posts.

Always remember this: each brand are exclusively (only owned) to that hearing aids center.  Not all brands have the same sound quality and performance.  Happy Hunting! :)

Hearing Aids Centers Philippines Directory Lists: (in alphabetical order)

1) American Hearing Center (AMEARCO)

    Hearing Aids Brand: Resound

American Hearing Center (AMEARCO)
http://www.amearco.com

      Website: http://www.amearco.com/main.htm

Branches: http://www.amearco.com/locations.htm

      Hearing Aids Brand Information Website: 

Resound - http://www.resound.com

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2) Ear Diagnostics Inc. (EDI)

    Hearing Aids Brand: Bernafon

                                       Exsilent

                                       Rexton

    

Ear Diagnostics Inc. (EDI)
http://www.eardiagnostics.com

     Website: http://www.eardiagnostics.com

Branches: http://www.eardiagnostics.com/aboutus/our-branches.html

     Hearing Aids Brand Information Website: 

         Bernafon - http://www.bernafon.com

        Exsilent -   http://www.exsilent.com

     Rexton-     http://www.rexton.com

* You may check out my review about Exsilent QLeaf Pro Hearing aids here. *

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3) Hi-Tech Hearing Centre, Inc.

    Hearing Aids Brand: Starkey

Hi-Tech Hearing Centre
http://www.hitechhearing.com

Website: http://www.hitechhearing.com

Branches: http://www.hitechhearing.com/contact.html

Hearing Aids Brand Information Website:

Starkey - http://www.starkey.com

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4) Ledesma Audiological Center

    Hearing Aids Brand: Widex

Ledesma Audiological Center
http://www.ledesma.com.ph

Website: http://www.ledesma.com.ph

Branches: http://www.ledesma.com.ph (Go to the Contact Us)

Hearing Aids Brand Information Website:

Widex - http://www.widex.com

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5) Manila Hearing Aid

Hearing Aids Brand:    Phonak    

                                    Oticon

Manila Hearing Aid
http://www.manilahearingaid.com.ph

Website: http://www.manilahearingaid.com.ph 

Branches: http://www.manilahearingaid.com.ph/contact-us

Hearing Aids Brand Information Website:

        Phonak - http://www.phonak.com

         Oticon - http://oticon.com

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6) Sountex Hearing Care Professionals

Hearing Aids Brand: Siemens

Sountex Hearing Care Professionals

http://bizshowcase.eyp.ph/sountex/
 
Website: http://bizshowcase.eyp.ph/sountex/

Branches: http://bizshowcase.eyp.ph/sountex/#contact

Hearing Aids Brand Information Website:

Siemens - http://w1.hearing.siemens.com/sg/03-home/index-sg.jsp

  Hope this helps! :)

The Most Common Hearing Aids Glossary

I never thought that investing good digital hearing aids is very important because it helps to improve your hearing and assists your speaking by transmitting the right messages into our brain. There is a saying that "What you hear is what you say."

Hearing aids are very EXPENSIVE so investing the right one for your specific hearing loss and for better sound quality performance is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.  It will save you for years to spend another hearing aids just to satisfy your needs.There is a gradual sound enhancement for latest hearing aids model since the hearing aids are already built in digital sound technologies.   But it is NOT ALWAYS TRUE that having advanced or latest hearing aids model can give you the full benefits because of its high-tech and sound improvement.  Again, hearing aids are always depended on your specific hearing loss since different hearing aids built for their own distinct purposes aside from aesthetics (purposes) and brand choices.  

There are many brands of hearing aids and each brand (such as Exsilent, Rexton, Phonak, etc.) have different sound quality and performance as well.(example- natural sound, sound and frequency clarity, stereo type,listening programs in different difficult situations, bluetooth wireless features, and many more) Each brand usually promises to deliver their sound quality performance but in reality, there are many factors to consider this. 

So, be sure to do your own research aside from the suggestion of hearing aids specialist (preferable)/audiologist in order to find the right hearing aids for you. 

Here are the three fitting types of hearing aids.

 You may click the picture below for some subcategories of each type.

a) Behind the Ears (short for BTE)  

b) In the Canal or (ITC)

c) Invisible In the Canal (IIC) - newest hearing aids market (very invisible -never seen)

Photo Taken at Alphaonenow.org

IIC Hearing Aids Photo Taken at Audibel.com

All hearing aids are required to have an ear impression (ear canal measurement) and it takes about 3- 4 weeks to receive it.  Some brands do require you to have cleaning and finetuning maintenance in the clinic.(Average time is 3-6 months) The disadvantage is that no hearing aids testing on the spot.  Meaning you are required to buy the hearing aids first before trying it out.

Examples of Ear Impression (Ear Canal Measurement)
Photo Taken at Proguard Audiologist

Only one hearing aids company has an INSTANT FITTING type hearing aids that require less constant finetuning (if you are satisfied with the sound adjustments)  and easy self-cleaning maintenance.  The beauty of this instant-fitting is that you can try out the hearing aids on the spot before purchase. No more worry about the risk of dissatisfaction of hearing aids.

Instant Fitting Modernized CIC Type
Photo Taken at Exsilent.com

 Now, you have the idea about hearing aids.  The next thing you need to know is the hearing aids batteries.  All brands for hearing aids batteries are not created equal- some are best and some are not.  The trick is that you need to find a better sound quality and technology performance of the hearing aids so that the batteries will last for a week or so even if the battery brand is not so great enough (at least it helps). Although finding a good quality of batteries is also highly important in order not to leak fast when it drains or not use; otherwise, it will affect the technical performance of your hearing aids.

Hearing Aids Batteries

Here are the list of the hearing aids company that I gather. Hope it helps.
http://hearingjoy.blogspot.com/2012/06/hearing-aids-centers-in-philippines.html

:)

Bad Hearing Aids Experience

Photo Taken at Imagineomit.Blogspot.com

After more than 15 years of wearing hearing aids, I made a lot of mistakes of getting the right hearing aids.  Since I am born with a hearing problem, I didn't know how the sounds produce like. My former belief is that all hearing aids are created for producing artificial sounds in the purpose of hearing the speech accurately and better sound loud amplification. And I was terribly wrong!  There are more than that! You know what I did?  In my own stupidity, I keep on purchasing new hearing aids after few years because of my speech dissatisfaction and technical sound problems. So stupid to the point that I never knew there is something wrong in the process of getting the right one. This caused me deafening my ears especially after removing hearing aids.  I heard the long disturbing high-pitch sounds (sort of like tinnitus) and expelling too much air noise out from my ears.  These problems disappear in a couple of days if not wearing hearing aids. Oh well... My anger and frustration grew intensified over the years because of these hearing problems. 

In my conclusion, I decided to go for another hearing aids company this year (2012) for the first time and try another brand.  From there, I found the right hearing aids for me.  I learnt my pain lessons very well. I was not only wasting my money but also wasting my time and effort of finding my own techniques for listening and speech improvement through trials and errors.   

Communication Barriers

In the Philippines, majority of all hearing-impaired, hard of hearing, and deaf community have a major problem- communication barrier. It has a very huge communication gap between normal hearing people and deaf community. (I do not understand why hearing-impaired and hard of hearing are part of deaf community.  Are there existed some words that are related to them? Perhaps, half deaf?)

Photo Taken at danishkadah.brinkster.net

I remembered when I was in college, I took sign language class to understand the deaf culture. I found hard to do the signing as their English sign language (FSL) is very different from American Sign Language (ASL) due to diminish the use of grammars when signing. That is the main reason why people who study deaf school are very poor in English. Their simple sentences are always in reverse context pattern and lose the use of right words;thus, lacking the emphasis of meaning of the words. (Example - "Not working flash my charger" The real meaning is "The light of the charger is not blinking anymore.") Do you think that normal hearing people understand them? Absolutely not. Even I myself had a difficult time to grasp the meaning of their words at that time as I had a limited English language due to the comprehension problem. (sort of dyslexia)

Fast forward today, I begin to appreciate them better and I hope that the deaf schools will invent some visual learning modalities for improving their English as this will help to diminish the communication gap. I believe it can.  It takes time. :)  There is still hope for them.

Sad to say that I didn't practice my sign language right after this course because my English was not very good too and I found it more confusing when using sign language but I will refresh this sign language next time but with an adopted ASL especially grammars so the deaf people will improve their English.

As for the hearing aids people like me, we still have hope to hear and speak better.  It takes time to get hang of all of the rules on how to hear and speak better.  Just don't give up.

I remembered one time that many hearing aids students went to deaf schools instead of mainstream schools because they couldn't understand the normal hearing people and vice versa so they find comfort and support in the deaf community. Most of them suggested me that I joined with them as I might have a difficult time to mingle with normal hearing people since I'm hearing-impaired. Partly, they were right because I knew that normal hearing people would not comprehend me as they were never been into my shoes. Most of the time, they took advantage of me for their own benefits. 

One day, I had a long walk at the hallway of college, pondering deeply about the choice between deaf and normal hearing people. It was a very hard to choose it as I didn't know the consequences if I chose that path. Think, Think, Think.

After a long silence, I finally decided that I go for normal hearing society no matter how hard it seems. Because I believe that hearing-impaired like me can do anything just like normal hearing people. I just didn't have any user manual on how to deal with it. I just go for it, anyway.  I did say goodbye to my sign language friends and go for the hearing world.

"Communication is the lifeblood of all relationship". I heard this message all the time. That's why, I focus on learning that. Until now, I'm still improving in the art of communication. I thought that studying English course is enough to deal with day-to-day life and I was wrong. There is more to learn that is to know deeper meaning beyond the words. Oh well...

Communication is like a sport, it gives me a lot of sweat whenever I communicate with people because I don't know if I speak the right words or not as I have no intention to hurt people as I am frank and straightforward. Hehe

Tada.

My Writing Excuse

Photo Taken at Worddreams.wordpress.com

My love of writing started when I attended the writing short course. It can help me to heal my emotional wounds. Writing can be very therapeutic. It can release all my negativities and find strength throughout my ordeals. It took me 4 years to understand this course by self-reviewing.

During the last session of my writing course, my writing teacher advised me to retake English course because my English was very bad in all areas. I'm sad to hear the news and more embarrassed to myself because I am hearing-impaired and yet I didn't accomplish anything and failed one of the most important learning which is the language and communication.

From then on, after leaving my previous job, I decided to study English from scratch. English school was very boring to me as I didn't like their method of teaching. It didn't work for me. It made me sleeping and not motivated to learn. So, I hired different English teachers in a fast track mode because I felt that they came to me once in my lifetime and they could handle me within a short period of time. As a result, I had to learn fast through the use of visual images memorization in my own memory for future relearning because my hearing skills are not very good in grasping words accurately and my comprehension skills are extremely complicated.

After few years, all my efforts had paid off and I need to keep doing it until I master my English by writing in journal, scrap paper, and everywhere I can take notes.

But most of the time, I keep excusing for not writing for fear that nobody interested on my writeups and someone might criticize me for my bad writing. Or maybe someone plagiarizing my work. I guess I'm thinking too much.

I also had a dream for writing a fiction book and made it in a movie but my descriptive English is not at par and I have no experience in novel writing.

So, what now? Do I have another excuse for not writing this blog? I'm not sure. Hehe

Let's see.

Welcome!

Welcome to my site!

Photo Taken at NatureSoundMp3.Net

HearingJoy is my personal blog that speaks about my hearing-impaired experiences and adventures from Philippines. This blog started after purchasing new hearing aids (Exsilent) and I find joy to my hearing for the first time.  It starts to rock my life!

I was born to have a hearing problem from my mom's German Measles or Rubella where I was inside my mom's tummy . I am wearing hearing aids in both ears since 10 years old. I started to speak at the age of 11 with a late 10 years behind of brain/mind development (call me a slow learner). My family, relatives, and other outsiders don't understand my predicament and nobody is going to help me, so I spend my whole life to study the nature of the sound and noises along with the technologies behind the hearing aids, audio-related such as speakers, speech and voice development. The rest is history.

Since I have no friends to go with, this blog will help me to develop my personal growth, and to communicate my ideas for sharing information with my readers especially hard-of-hearing, hearing-impaired, and deaf community.

I love self-studying for enhancements, experimenting for new learning, reading nonfiction books, designing abstract conceptual making, thinking problem-solving for business and IT, self-reflecting for my lessons, doing quality checker, giving reviews from product testing, loves writing instruction manuals, meditating for  calming my mind, and so on.

Dreams of becoming an educator, lecturer, researcher, consultant, trainor, specialist, sound listener, and writer someday at work from home. Can I accomplish these before I am turning to 32 years old? I still have 4 years to decide for that. Unless there is a very good and rare opportunity awaits for me that imprints my greatest true life purpose, I'll definitely grab it!;)

I hope you enjoy my blog.

Happy reading.:)