On The First Day Of Christmas

We woke up at about 10.00 am the next morning, because we got home about 3.00 am the night before, and went to bed at probably about 4.00 am. We had done the silly thing of driving to Heidelberg to see the Christmas decorations people put up outside their house.

Note to self for next year:
1. Don't do it again.
2. No one can afford Christmas decorations. Everyone's saving their money for the Boxing Day sales.
3. It's 2 a.m. They've switched off their decorations, silly. Haven't you heard of global warming?

So it was 10.00 am on Christmas day, and we decided to drive somewhere on the spur of the moment. We flipped open the Melway, took out a pin, closed our eyes, and randomly stabbed a hole on the appointed page. The hole said Lorne.

(Okay, so we decided on Lorne after some discussion. But a hole in the Melway sounds cooler.)

We started grabbing at leftover snacks in the house, and made our way to my brother's car. We decided that we were going to do the Great Ocean Road in style.

Malaysian style, that is. Fill that empty plastic Coke bottle with boil(ing)ed water, causing the plastic to cave in. Pack that four day old bread with the meat floss. Grab the biscuits from the pantry - but only the opened packets! What's that left over in the fridge? It's coming with us!

We stopped by a Shell station on our way out, and I ran down to the IgA nearby which was, surprisingly, open, and bought proper snacks - Doritos, Tim Tams and meat pies. Mum looked at me like I was turning Aussie (which I was, mate. Gotta love the meat pies, crikey!).

It was a beautiful drive all the way through to Geelong. The mournful rain of the days leading up to Christmas and Christmas Eve was quickly forgotten in the bright sunshine and clouds borrowed straight out from the opening sequence of the Simpsons.

The Great Ocean Road has never failed to capture my imagination every time that I have had the pleasure of driving on it - endless roads snaking into forever, revealing around each corner a sight more breathtaking than the last - green hillsides with quaint little houses strewn among the grassfields giving way to the awe-inspiring sight of the majestic sea, a silent, eternal witness to all the changes throughout the years around these coastlines.

We spent most of the time driving in the car, but we stopped at all the scenic sights to take pictures, and my brother and I had this silent competition between us to see who could take the best shots.

Ladies and gentlemen, for your judging pleasure tonight:

My brother's


Mine's (yeah, I know.)


and Mum decided to join in:



Okay, ladies and gentlemen, those among you with a photogenic eye will come to the conclusion


that my Mum's the rightful winner.

The pictures only capture a snapshot of the fun we had that day! I did not manage to photograph my shoe which got wet by the seawater when my brother insisted 'Touch the water, HK! Touch the water!' or how smooth the sand felt to touch, or how my brother overturned the sticky date pudding into his precious car! Haha!

It was a really fun day in the sun, but unfortunately we had to rush home as I had to attend a Christmas party organised at my church pastor's house. It was quite a rush to get there, I was an hour late, and I was in charge of the drinks along with this other guy.(Thankfully there were others there to cover my multitude of sins.)

The party turned really fun when we got to the Kriss Kringle bit - it was a Kriss Kringle with a twist: You got your presents in sequence, and opened it up there and then. The person who gets a gift later has the option of swapping his unopened gift for any of the other opened gifts.

I was one present away from getting a cool gift for the first time in my life - a Kathmandu wallet - when the person who picked the last unopened gift was the guy who was in charge of the drinks with me. He looked at me with an evil smile, and said 'My, HK has kept pretty quiet the whole night, ah, and I would looove a Kathmandu wallet!'

Anyway, I ended up with this instead:
Brokeback HK.

What would I want with a fluorescent pink cowboy hat, I ask you?

Sigh, well, there's always next Christmas.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

This has been the busiest Christmas ever!

Santa's Dating Services: 29 year old Chinese male, organises parties, wears funny hats and uses his powers for organising evil games.

It all started on Christmas Eve with the party that was organised by my brother. Understandably, there were a lot of new people there at the party, so it was a little awkward at first, but then the party soon warmed right up when we started playing the games that he had so painstakingly prepared. Remember musical parcels? You know, the one you played with your kindergarten friends (Hi, Lai Yee.) or at little kiddy birthday parties?

Yup, imagine sixteen full grown adults being made to do things like sing "Old McDonald had a farm, ee ai ee ai oh, and on his farm he had a giraffe...."or meow to the tune of Three Blind Mice, and you would have a rough idea of the fun silliness that went on that night!

We also had fun with a carolling game (I still carry the blister from playing the guitar ever so violently) and also with charades/pictionary. It's nice to bring out the inner child once in a while (mine is an outer child).

We discovered the most fun thing ever - the Nintendo Wii! (It's as fun as it sounds!) It was a great virtual workout as we battled each other in bowling, shooting, boxing and also cow racing!

(Yes, you heard it right - it was quite a mooving experience!)

...

(The lame brigade called, and would like their joke back please).

Wii are family: My mother attempting the Wii after much coaxing. Tim has his game face on, and thrashed Mummy comprehensively.

All in all it was a really fun Christmas Eve night, topped off with wonderful food and robust Christmas carolling and celebratory drinks... fun!! Huge kudos to my brother for organising it with the help of Shaun, Doreen and Tim!

One Big Happy: Smiles all around after the games. You should've seen us during the games. If you look closely you might spot scratch marks/trails of blood on most of us.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas Now...

My hands are sore from attempting all these Christmas carols for the party tomorrow! Whoever wrote "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" was not a guitarist, otherwise he would have given up halfway through the song!

(/scene)

Hark! The herald (change chord) angels sing,
(change chord) Glory to the (change chord) new (change chord) born (change chord) king!
Peace on (change chord) earth and mer (change chord) cy (change chord) mild,
(change chord!?!) God and sinners re (change chord!!) con(change chord!!!)ciled
Joyful all ye na (CHANGE CHORD!!!)

(CHANGE SONG!!!)

Hark these hands are now aching,
I'm going to give up songwriting.

(Gives up songwriting profession and becomes a potato farmer instead.)

(/end scene)

Thankfully he didn't give up, and we have the wonderful carols we have with us today.

Christmas always sends a warm feeling in my heart. Sure, I have spent most of my Christmases at home along the Equator where the only white Christmases we had was if the haze was bad enough! But here's the KL equivalent of a Christmas:

Driving in the dark of your car through KL at night, the city somehow more vibrant than usual - Bintang Walk decorated with bright yellow lit starshaped lamps, with ribbons of red and green lights adorning the streetlamps. Revellers thronging the streets, and you never really felt unsafe despite the swelling crowds. The soft croon of Frank Sinatra in the background wishing all kids from one to ninety two a Merry Little Christmas now.

This year I believe that I am way more Christmassed than I have been in previous years because:

1) I have now lost use of my left hand because I have been attempting to play Christmas Carols. I can now only pick my nose with my right hand. On the plus side, I have learnt how to play "Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire" and "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas Now" apart from all the Christian goldies.

2) I have bought a Christmas compilation CD! Tacky, I know, but it has Boyz II Men's Silent Night and Mariah Carey's reverent earpiercing "O Holy Night!". PS. Mariah Carey's Merry Christmas album - best Christmas album of all time. True.

3) I have seen one Christmas related movie! It's Surviving Christmas, with Ben Affleck and James Gandolfini - pretty cheesy but a fun watch, and there's one great truth learnt - some people would pay huge amounts of money to have family around them at Christmas but others take it for granted.

Ben Affleck (smiling wanly) to James Gandolfini: 'Nothing. It's just ironic. I paid all that money to be part of your family. You're giving it away for nothing.'

4) I am attending not one, not four, but two Christmas parties.

5) I have wrapped not one, not three, but two Christmas Kriss Kringle presents. I have decided that I love wrapping things.

Yo, Christmas' cool, it's the greatest season,
I'm no fool, I know He's the reason.
They say it's Santa and his ho, ho, ho,
I look at them, and say I don't think so,
I love the season and it ain't no lie,
My saviour's born, I will testify.
Word.

(Wrapping, you fool. Not rapping.)

(Oh.)

Anyways, to all of you who follow me on my journey- both far and near- have a blessed little Christmas now.

P.S. Grace, wishing you were here with us. Soon, yeah, dear?

12 Days of Christmas

One of my favourite Christmas songs reworked wickedly! This is so wrong, yet so hahahaha...!

Seven... eleven workers! Brilliant!

An early Christmas wish to everyone... I'm certainly dreaming of a wet Christmas here in Melbourne!

Think the lotus, feel the lotus, drive the Lotus!

"Let's Get It On...."

Mum's here! There's going to be lots of places to see and visit with her, and lots of restaurants to be tried and shops to be shopped at! It must be that time of the year in Melbourne, I think, because I have bumped into so many friends and their families just yesterday alone.

I have just got off two tiring fourteen hour night shifts at the hospital, but I seem to be getting by with little random snatches of sleep instead of needing straight runs of it now. I must be growing (old) up.

This has been my little companion for the last week:


and I must say that it is one of the better reads I have had. It's a look at a 35 year old record store owner in a this-doesn't-look-like-the-movies relationship, which makes me cringe sometimes at how realistically flawed he is, but how we all figure things out for ourselves in the end. A good book for this stage in my life!

I have to watch the movie now! (Jack Black makes the perfect Barry!)

One of the signature lines in the book is all about lists, so here goes:

Top 5 reads of all times (so far):

1. Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper. I have A to thank for this book, a really well written thinking piece on the issues surrounding having one child just to keep another alive. I promise to return it to you one day!

2. Any of the books of Alexander McCall Smith in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series. I am a really big fan of this series, and the characters are vividly depicted in my mind already. All I need is to pull them out of my mind whenever I pick up one of these books, and I am lost once again amongst the open spaces of Botswana with the limitless sky above. I love how it injects hope and pride in Botswana, in an Africa which is oftentimes torn and hope-less.

3. Heavenly Man by Brother Yun and Paul Hattaway. I remember sitting in a room, tears inexplicably streaming from my face as I read this book. A life changing read.

4. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie. Finished reading it in one sitting, and watched the movie as well. Both are excellent!

5. Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. As above. Love in all its neurosis and imperfections. But love anyway, in the end.

Some of you have read this list and stopped reading after No.1. ('What? Jodi Picoult? You sell-out!') and I don't blame you! And I know that this list is probably far from perfect (ie. I would highly recommend 'I Love You, Beth Cooper' by Larry Doyle which reads like a teenage movie) but that's my list for now, and I would openly welcome any further recommendations.

' I've been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have sh*t for brains.'
- Rob Fleming, High Fidelity -

Haha!

In My Life 1: The Love Of CHK

'Her name is Lai Yee. Chan Lai Yee.

I like her. She doesn't wear earrings, her hair is curly and tied up in two little bunches, em... she's pretty.

Do you want to come on a date? To a romantic dinner?

No, I keep it a secret.

I don't want the whole world to know!

Because everybody will laugh at me.

She doesn't like me.'

Unfortunately I don't get to do the surprised little smile at the end and then walk her by her tiny hands into the sunset.

Ah, what a beautiful little ad! Once more, thumbs up to Yasmin Ahmad for playing Cupid to the innocent love between two little kids! I can just see little Hong Ming during recess on his 'romantic dinner' with Umi!

My first crush would have been in kindergarten, I think. (yes, I started young!) (eee... hamsap!) She was the cutest girl in the class and really bright for her age. She had naturally curly hair which was tied up in two bunches and she had sweet brown skin from her mixed parentage.

We were never officially together (ha ha!) but we used to do things together all the time - playing together, talking about nothing in particular in a way that six year olds do, and also exchanging those Padini Smurf stickers (does anyone remember them at all?).

The problem with kindergarten is that when it ends, you pretty much go on your own separate ways - everyone heads on to a different primary school, and we were a bunch of underprivileged six year olds back then - no handphones, no MSN messenger and we couldn't exchange Facebook details at all.

We met again six years later - I was going for the first time in my life to a local tuition class to brush up on my BM (Saya masih tidak petah bercakap dalam Bahasa Melayu, dan walaupun saya pergi ke kelas tuisyen selama enam bulan, saya hanya berjaya mendapat gred B sahaja dalam karangan untuk UPSR). It was a class of about twenty students, and I entered midway through the year.

I was the awkward outsider, polite to my classmates without making friends, and I usually sat by myself at the back of the class. She was also in the class, although she had grown up in the interim of the six years that I hadn't seen her. It wasn't until the teacher called her name out in class one day that I recognised her.

You would have thought at this point that I would have walked up to her and said 'Hi, remember me?' but I was not quite the charmer I am now. (And not nearly as modest.)

I think she recognised me too - I might be going out on a limb here - but I think she started dressing up to come to tuition class after I started coming. Being the twelve year olds with awkward social graces that we were, unfortunately, we never said 'Hi' to each other in those six months.

I never returned to the tuition class after my UPSR year and once again we parted ways - this time for good.

There has been an interim of fifteen years now, but Lai Yee, if there's any chance that you've googled yourself and stumbled upon this blog - I'm sorry, and well, hi.

The love of Tan Hong Ming

Kudos to Yasmin Ahmad again, not only for teaching us lessons about ourselves, but also for making Tan Hong Ming the luckiest seven year old in Malaysia!

Deconstructing Me

I guess it has been quite a difficult few weeks for me. It almost seems like I've lost my identity in the past few weeks. I have been wrapped in a coccoon of denial this past year, but one by one the silk wrappings are being picked at, unravelled, and I realise now that there's still so much more to learn about myself.

'Who am I?'

'How did I get here?'

'Where am I going?'

The first two questions are already really tough questions to answer. What's more disconcerting, however, is that I have no answer for the third one.

It is times like these that I sometimes marvel at my parents. I mean, surely they didn't struggle with all these pretentious questions. Their priorities and mindsets were different - fall in love, get married, have children, work hard for yourself and the kids, retire and enjoy it.

I don't know if Pa ever struggled with the future at my age. I'm sure he did, but he put his head down, and kept pushing to the finish line. I wish I could be the man he was at my age, rather than, as my brother aptly puts it, a high school kid with a job.

' I love him for the man he wants to be. And I love him for the man he almost is! I love him Laurel, I... love him! '

-Dorothy Boyd, as played by Renee Zellweger, Jerry Maguire 1996-

At what point does a person become an adult?

Ruddslide - Labor Day

Seen on a chalked signboard outside a pub called the Victorian:

Elections have got you in a Rudd? Howard you like a drink instead?

Oh how I love witty wordplay!

The Great Indoors

'Scared of a world outside you should go explore,
Pull all the shades and wander the great indoors...'

John Mayer, Great Indoors

One would think that with all the hard work put in at the Emergency Department that I would make use of the days off better. I mean, Melbourne is beautiful this time of the year, and the weather is picture perfect every day.

Which doesn't explain why it is that I spend most of it wandering the great indoors. I snuggle up in bed, draw the shades, and settle in with a good book instead.

I need someone to drag me out into the sun!

Thing No. 6: The Boy Goes to Skool (Darjah Dua)

People always think about school in terms of school time - your teachers, every period, recess, your friends, physical education sessions - but they often forget about the hours that matter, the hours spent milling about after school ended, especially on a Friday afternoon.

As a child, when school ended, only two things matter - what game will you be playing with your friends, and what you are going to be eating while you're playing those games.

I will save the games that we used to play for another entry, but today I want to remember the things we used to eat, or more importantly, the interesting people who sold them.

When school ended for the day, there was this huge compound outside our primary school where kids would invariably end up, and either start up a game of marbles, or play police and thief, or just mill about waiting for for their parents or schoolbus to pick them up.

And what better place than that grassy compound for the itinerant hawkers to come and sell their things to us:

1) There was Uncle Johnny, the perennially tanned, chubby, foul-mouthed, fortysomething ice cream and drinks seller who stayed with us into our high school years. I can remember his old motorcycle with the accompanying single wheeled sidecart where all the goodies were kept.

He would sell everything from the branded icecreams [Walls' Cornetto, Paddle Pop (Paddle Pop! Wow! Paddle Pop! Yeah! Superduperyummy!)] to the simple generic scoops which you could either have on a cone, or in between two wafers - an icecream sandwich, the best invention ever!

Somehow, Johnny had enough space in his metallic sidecart for bottles of soft drinks as well. Read that properly, we're talking Coke and Sprite and Fanta Orange and Sarsi in glass bottles. None of that recyclable aluminium cans, thank you very much. I loved those glass bottles - the bottle caps could be used for games, and there's just something authentic about drinking soft drinks from dirty glass bottles with the fading Coca-Cola or F&N trademark, you know.

2) His closest competitor was this old uncle, who was fat and was always in a singlet and gray shorts. He had none of Johnny's youth or enterprise, and he only had a bicycle.

On the back of this dilapidated bicycle was a metal box where he all he sold was aiskrim potong - red bean, corn, pandan - all for a measly five sen each. I had no idea how this man was making a living. Surely you cannot make an ice cream stick for less than five sen, right, uncle? Or are you a millionaire in disguise just bringing happiness to little kids?

What was interesting about this uncle was that on the metal box itself, was a rudimentary 'Wheel Of Fortune' like wheel made out of a circular wood and some rusty nails. You could spin the wheel for as many times as the ice cream that you bought. One time for one ice cream, two times for two ice creams, and so forth.

All along the wheel were slots reading 'Kosong' 'Satu' 'Dua' ('Zero' 'One' 'Two') which were the amount of sticks that you could potentially win. So, five sen for one stick, and a potential of winning two more ice cream sticks. Seriously uncle, this is your front for selling drugs right?

3) There was this Malay auntie who used to sell curry puffs, prawn fritters and popsicles who we absolutely adored. She was really mild mannered and had a very cute young daughter to boot

( I know what you're thinking, and the answer is no, she was too young, and which primary school kid thinks about those things... although, there would have been an endless supply of curry puffs and prawn fritters if I did marry her. Another one that got away.)

The lady would sit outside under the sprawling acacia tree, with her basket full of warm goodies, and we would rush to buy it from her. She would put your curry puffs and prawn fritters into these clear plastic bags, and you could always request for her to squirt in some homemade cili sos.

And the popsicles - oh the popsicles - all kinds of colours and flavours, from orange to lime and grape, but my favourite would have to be the one with the assam - it even had the assam seed at the bottom! She would cut off the top of the sausage like plastic bag which held the cold treat and we would greedily chew away at the plastic, sucking hard to eviscerate the icy innards.

Her husband was actually a gardener at our school, and they lived in a shed at the back of the school. During recess, we would venture to the back of the school, desperate for a curry puff or prawn fritter fix. Not even the fact that the shed lived right next to the dirtiest place in school - the primary school boy's toilet of unspeakable horrors - could deter us from eating there.

4) Finally, there was this ancient uncle, and by ancient, I mean that he was a mummy who somehow lost his tissue paper covering - this man was a skeleton with skin, and had none of his teeth left, so his mouth always looked like it caved in, and he probably had a cataract in one eye. He had the old man walk going on as well - shuffling slowly along, hunched in his grey trousers and dirty white collared short sleeve T-shirt so that he was always looking at the floor.

He would always carry around his white gunny sack of goodies with him (like a Tim Burton idea of a Santa), and, finding the spot under the tree away from the curry puff auntie, he would open the sack and lay down a mat where he would parade his wares.

He had everything a kid would want -

• those tiny playing cards with the random cartoons in front (I will explain the game later)
  
• the tiny boxes with the four small bubble gum balls in them (you remember them - bursts of strawberry or grape or blueberry, flavorful but useless for making bubbles)
  
• the sticks of fish satay - all glazed and sesame seeded for your eating pleasure!
  
• the bubble gums which I swear were made using the byproducts of heroin manufacturing - you know, the ones with the red or yellow wrappers with a bear blowing bubbles in the front, and the temporary tattoos on the inside? - the bubble gum itself had this eerie white powder around it, not that it stopped us from popping it into our mouths!
  
• marbles - from the milk ones to the cobras and the multicoloured glass ones
  
• the card games like Donkey, Old Maid, Happy Family (one happy family at home!) and Snap.

This uncle was like our own personal Willy Wonka, only deader.

Other hawkers came and went but these four were the perennials who I remember distinctly, unobtrusive witnesses to us, the children as we grew up in the sun of that grass courtyard in front of our school.

The Long Weekend

It was a very difficult yet fulfilling weekend for me - four straight days of work in the Emergency Department in the mornings from Friday to Monday. It is fun work in the ED, no doubt, but it can be physically draining as well, and that's why they've kept it to four days of work a week for all doctors.

Working the mornings always leave the evening open for potentially wonderful dinners, and it started on Friday when I managed to catch up with my K and PL at Kake di Hatti, which was the equivalent of the Indian Rose Garden, given the speed at which the food was served to us! It was fast Indian food which was pretty good, and we adjourned to their apartments which I have yet to see. It was a really nice little place, and against the Melbourne city night skyline as our backdrop, we chatted late into the night the way we used to.

I was really excited about Saturday night because I was going to see P who was coming down from Sydney for a dance conference. P is a good friend and my Christian mentor back in my IMU days, and seeing her was a rare annual treat.

It was pretty late in the evening when we finally went out that Saturday. We walked the streets of Toorak just catching up, and when it was time, we went to squire'sloft for some pretty darn good steaks. Having said that, however, whenever I meet up with P, the food becomes an aside, and it is always the conversations that takes centre stage. She becomes my sounding board, and well, let's just say that I continue to discover things about myself through her eyes which continue to surprise me.

We had such a good time and the few hours flew by too quickly, and so we met up again on Sunday night for dessert. This time she got to tell me her stories and I marveled at the journey that shaped her life and her marriage - I thought I knew all there was to know about her, but I was so wrong!

She shared this verse with me this visit, and unbeknownst to her, she actually shared this verse with me 4 years ago after Dad passed away.

Psalms 84:5-7

5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.

6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools.

7 They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.

I feel that there she herself must have clung on to these words during her hardest times, and now she continues to reinforce it in my life, as I set my heart on the pilgrimage, into the journey of understanding who I am, and how I got to where I am today.

That's partially why I write this blog.

The Beginning of Wisdom

I spent last night catching up with an old friend, and we sat over salmon and steak - I listened intently as she regaled her stories over the past six months of where she's been and what she's done. She's just returned from a missions trip to Africa, in Worcester (how English sounding is this colonial name in an African country!) and Lesotho.

I just sat transfixed as she told me her stories, and this was an honest evaluation of the whole thing - it wasn't all easy and smooth sailing at all. Anyone who is going on a missions trip and not expecting to be broken needs to wake up from their ideals.

And I watched the heartbreak as she told the problems she had with the leaders of the centre, supposed Christian leaders who showed none of the grace of God to them. The six months of emotional stress began pouring out, because my friend in all her nobility had shouldered the burdens silently.

'Has there been nothing good from these six months?' I ask.

'I have changed,' she said, simply.

I burst out laughing. No you haven't.

'And I don't care if nobody sees it.'

'I now understand how much God really loves me. I understand the meaning of grace now, of how little I deserve, and of how much he truly loves me.'

Amidst all this turmoil, I watch as a silent hope stirs in my friend, afflicted by the fallings of human nature, and - having nothing else to cling on to but her God - she clung on to Him for dear life.

In that moment, under the soft yellow glow of the restaurant and the lingering chatter of the other patrons that night, I smile from her across the table.

I can't see it, you're right, but you have changed.

I think one of the greatest joys in my life is seeing someone come to realise the full extent of God's love and grace for them. Many Christians are still trying to earn their salvation, or earn the love of their heavenly Father, unfortunately, in the same way sometimes that we try to earn our flawed earthly father's love or approval.

I haven't been to church enough. I haven't converted enough souls to God. I didn't take the opportunity to speak up for Christ when I had the chance. I can't speak to God because He has disappointed me. Or I have disappointed Him. If only. I am going to be standing before His throne and have nothing to show for this life.

On and on we self flagellate. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm condoning sin and impassivity. But I wish for all of us the freedom from guilt and anger towards ourselves and towards a God who loved us so much He came down in the form of us, to identify with us, and ultimately to die for us.

God loves you. Unconditionally. Let that truth set you free.

My Younger Older Brother Part 2

It wasn't until his college years when my brother finally started to blossom. He was amongst young women now, and he was making fast friends in his class. He also started to do well in his class because he wanted to outdo the smartest girl in class, to impress her. (Why is there always a girl involved? If only you girls knew the way you have us wrapped around your fingers).

In fact, he excelled in college and his university days academically - in retrospect, maybe we should have started him in a coed school from when he was seven! Socially, he was much better as well, still being himself amongst the 'normal' crowd, but adapting better to their etiquettes.

Over the past few years, I have grown in my admiration and love for my older brother. We are similar in many ways but still retain the opposites of our childhood.

I care too much about what people think and that dictates the way I act, while he doesn't care at all about people's opinions. This can be detrimental, but it has also allowed him the freedom to do things his way. I remember when Dad was in a wheelchair, and we would often go out as a family on Sunday evenings. Some of the family members, myself included, would 'umm' and 'ahh' because going out in public always attracted unwanted attention because of Dad's condition.

My brother, on the other hand, would hurry us up, and shoo us into the car, and then we'd go out, and have a great time, which we otherwise wouldn't have done had he not been there.

Living with him here, I continue to see the other traits that make him wonderful - he is able to love unconditionally, and it is evident in the way he serves the members of his cell group at church. He continues to invest faith and love in people the 'normal' world would have turned their noses up at, 'outcasts' like himself once.

He also carries a level head on his shoulders. Yes, he can get emotional about things that he is passionate about, but he is often slow to anger, and I can attest to that, since I'm not the easiest person to live with sometimes.

Today, we decided to go for a drive to Williamstown, because he wanted to go somewhere outside - to study his CA stuff. Initially, we were supposed to go to the Great Ocean Road for a day trip to 'study' - try to work out his mind, 'cos I can't! - but I had to run some errands in the morning.

So, come lunchtime, he dragged me out of the house and into the car. I was quite tired and a little irritable, but he was patient, and we made the drive down there, and it was beautiful. Williamstown is a bayside town, and it was a gorgeous sight - with the silver waters in the foreground, and the boats and yachts rocking gently in the distance, and against this was the backdrop of the Melbourne city skyline.

It wasn't the warmest of days, to be fair. Fifteen minutes out in the bone-chilling wind on the benches surrounded by evil-looking seagulls was about as much as we could take, and we spent most of the time in my car. I was reading Alexander McCall Smith's latest 'The Good Husband of Zebra Drive' up the front while my brother was in the back, studiously going through his notes.

I fell asleep in the car, not once but twice! This is definitely a day off well spent! We stayed until it was sundown, and I was about to drive off to dinner because my brother had just finished his reading his notes. 'Wait!' he cried. 'I want to go for a run!'

'In your jeans and walking shoes?' my mind yelled out. 'You'll come back soon, it's freezing!' I said. He dashed out of the car and onto the nearby green grass with a small playground on it. I went back to my book, and it was only when I looked up, to my right five minutes later did I see him on the swings by himself, swinging up and down, enjoying himself uninhibitedly.

I couldn't have loved him anymore than I did at that very moment. Yes, my brother's in the real world, working, earning a living, going through life like the rest of us. But there was still a child in him that he would not suppress, who he would let run out once in awhile, laughing freely into the skies, without a care about the world.

It's because my brother is, shall we say, special.

My Younger Older Brother Part 1

'So which one is the older one?'

Because we are only two years apart, my brother and I got to share many experiences together, like primary school and high school, the school bus, Sunday school, church, and right now, living in Melbourne together.

We used to get that question a bit - when I was in high school, especially, people would mistake me for the older brother. It was because my brother was, shall we say, special.

I've always thought that being the eldest in a family is always the most difficult of all. No one is there to pave the way for you, no one is there for you to look up to, you need to be responsible and set the example. Being a kid, that's always a tough ask.

So my brother grew up the best way he knew how, and was always non-conformist in his behaviour. When all the teenage girls were drooling over boybands, my brother was extolling the beautiful music of James Galway, flautist. Kids around school would laugh at him because he would wear his pants a little higher up, and he basically never cared about what people thought of him.

I continued, on the other hand, to live for the approval of my fellow man (ie. friends and teachers), and so I did my best to fit in at school, making friends with everyone. I was (only slightly) mature beyond my prepubescent years, and I guess, people saw me as normal.

(Okay, you can stop laughing now.)

(Okay, now.)

It also didn't help that I was doing better in school than he was, gaining the approval of my teachers and friends.

And so, understandably, in high school, seniors would come up to me and ask 'Hey, that one your brother ah? He's the older one ah?' barely masking their surprise. I would always smile shyly, almost apologetically whenever people ask that question. He wasn't exactly cool/'in', and I was trying my best to be.

This subtle embarrassment started from an early age, as in this illustration:

We used to play in this playground near our house, and the times we spent there is another story in itself.

It was a playground that had all your usual trappings - imagine a playground like today - see-saws, swings, monkey bars, chin up bars - but instead of the colourful safe plastic material that all kids enjoy today, everything was made out of metal and wood.

We used to like this girl on the playground (why is there always a girl involved?) and we were both, among the other boys who played with us, vying for her attention. I can't remember the game that we were playing that evening - I think it was police and thief - and my brother was trying to impress with his speed.

Somehow he ended up cutting open his chin on the side of one of the wooden platforms. All the kids were standing over him, aghast. 'He slipped because he run too fast,' whispered one. Everyone watched this pitiful bleeding mass, groaning in pain.

Seeing her, he got up, slowly. He was groaning a bit in pain, but he did his best to be brave about it. I don't know why, I can't explain the way little kids think, but I was embarrassed to be there at that moment. I started walking home first, and he followed behind. The other kids dispersed, the evening abruptly ending.

He trailed behind me, calling out to me in pain, to please slow down, but all I did was walk away a little faster.

I don't understand what happened that evening, but all I know was that the same attitude defined our high school years. Of course, it wasn't a physical walking away, but emotionally, and in my mind, I have, regrettably, left him standing on his own countless times.

Bustin' Ours... To Save Yours...

The above theme sits on top of our Emergency Department webpage, and everyone knows the missing word is 'ass'. (not the donkey)

The child in me bursts out laughing whenever I see that statement. There is some truth in that, though. Working in the Emergency Department has always been, to me, medicine defined. I mean, that's why people become doctors, right? To save lives.

The Emergency Department is the first port-of-call to any patients in a hospital. Patients are brought in to the hospital via ED, at all levels of dying, from the very much alive with minimal complaints to the very much dead, who come in DOA (dead on arrival).

ED is fun for three reasons:

1) You get to think. Sometimes when you get stuck with a hospital ward job, you feel more like a glorified secretary, just mindlessly writing down whatever someone else has to say. Not much thinking on your part, usually, because the thinking's done for you.

In the Emergency department, however, every patient you pick up is a new case to be considered in the context of their past history and also the events leading them to your hospital doors. They say that the world renowned Sherlock Holmes was actually based on a friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's, who was a very observant doctor.

2) You get to do. I have done sutures, plasters, cannulas, lumbar punctures, ring blocks, reductions, arterial stabs and I'm getting to see so many more things as well. I'm still not doing anything near as much as the doctors on House M.D., though. (because they're not real doctors, you see. They're actors. Who are earning more in an episode than I will in a lifetime.)

3) You get to interact. Sometimes you are assigned to the fast track area, which is like a GP's office, almost, and it really is fun talking to the patients and sorting out the simple problems. No patient is more appreciative than the healthy ones who just need to be told that there is nothing wrong with them, it's a virus, just go home and get some rest.

Of course, it's can get quite busy and crazy in the ED, but there are times when I've been smiling at work and thinking 'You know, it's almost unfair that I'm enjoying work so much!'

That's us - bustin' ours, to save yours.


Thing No. 6: The Boy Goes To School (Darjah Dua)

Do you remember those yellow manila cards they gave out to you once a year? You had to paste your photo in the right hand corner, fill in your personal details, and then some random other things. One column I remember best comes with the heading:

Cita-cita (Ambition): 1. 2. 3.

For me it always read like this:

Cita-cita (Ambition): 1. Doktor (doctor) 2. Peguam (lawyer) 3.Jurutera (engineer) /Akauntan (accountant) depending on the career du jour.

[My friend LWK, upon realising that writing down your ambition in those columns weren't going to automatically transform you into having that career, once wrote down, for fun:

Cita-cita (Ambition): 1. Badut (clown)

Just for that moment, he got his wish. ]

If you are an Asian kid in a typical Asian family, your columns read the same too. Don't bluff, I know. All Asian parents have a degree in Brainwashing Your Child, B. Sc.

Now, truth be told, I didn't want to be any of those professions. I had very little idea about doctors, much less about lawyers and almost nothing at all about what an engineer did. (They dealt with engines, right?)

We had an English oral test once in Standard Two. The topic I had to discuss with the teacher was on 'My ambition'. Once again, I said I wanted to be a doctor. She said, 'Oh that's good. It's hard work being a doctor, though.'

At some point during the discussion, she asked 'And what about those poor people who cannot afford to see doctors?'

'I'll see them for free,' came my reply.

Let's Dance In Style, Let's Dance For Awhile

As young adults, especially far removed from home, we sometimes live a sub-sistence. We exist on a lesser level, we do not really live as such. Work is a drudgery that we all are eager to get out of, a necessary evil to get us the things we need and the things we want.

We live our lives spending the weekdays dreaming of the weekends, and when the weekends do come, they pass too quickly and soon we are faced with the dreaded rinse repeat cycle of the week ahead.

We try to numb ourselves during the weekdays when we get home from work - with You-tubes sticking out of us, keeping us artificially alive; we watch TV, we read each other's blogs and Facebooks, we escape to another world (of Warcraft). Anything to pull us through the weekdays in order to get to the weekends.

These were some of my thoughts back in Malaysia, as I was on the bus headed out to Singapore. Now, six weeks later, although there still is some truth to those thoughts, I realise that it is greatly exaggerated as well.

I've found the time during the week to have cherished catch-up dinner with my friends, and my brother. I've managed to squeeze in some good movies, and good books as well into the week. And working has made time off all the more meaningful and appreciated, with last weekend being an excellent example.

We had a barbeque lunch on Saturday to celebrate the birthday of a dear friend of mine, R, and it was a glorious day to do it in. We had our fill of sausages, lamb, chicken, salads and such in the sunshine. After that we adjourned to her house, where we spent the day just hanging out, playing music, Singstar-ing badly, watching missed series and cartoons, playing Mafia, catching up, laughing out loud.

In a time where everybody's in such a rush to grow up, we were lucky enough to have the chance to be young again, if only for a day.

Something Borrowed, Something Blue

I was at one of the longest awaited weddings at my church today, at the Melbourne jail no less! (Love is a word and marriage is a sentence. A life sentence.)

In the midst of the revelry, I got to talking with one of the old stalwarts of our church, a Caucasian gentleman in his seventies:

'You know, I never got married myself. No girl would have wanted a bloke like me. Not with a job like mine! I was working for Ford, you see. I was driving 200 kilometres for work every week,' his face scrunches up ' and when I got back, she would want to go out for a drive.'

'Where's the sense in that? And I was too busy playing music on the weekends. Nope, no girl would have wanted a bloke like me.'

'And I tell you one more thing, there wasn't a girl I felt that I could have lived without. I mean, I've seen many women come and go, and there hasn't been one which I've seen and thought that I couldn't do without her.'

'And so here I am, you know. By myself, at seventy. I mean, even a married man would be in the position I'm in if his wife had passed away first. At least I've got good friends still...'

His voice trails off, as the both of us watch the purple ribbons streaming from the white poppy trees, dancing in the wind. The howling wind carries the laughter of children from a distance. I bite my lower lip and think about what he has just said, both of us alone in a crowd of people.

Signal Fire

Four days off before the onslaught of nights on Wednesday, and the weekend has been quite a blur. I know my friend in Singapore who's a doctor there once said, 'Man, I just don't understand it... if I had two days off every weekend, like my housemate, I would do something useful with it. You know, like learn a language.'

No he tomado el tiempo para aprender el español. (I have not taken the time to learn Spanish)

Je n'ai pas pris le temps pour apprendre le français. (I have not taken the time to learn French)

Ich habe die Zeit nicht genommen, um Deutsch zu lernen. (These German sausages are delicious. Er, I mean, I have not taken the time to learn German)

Well, there are days which have been completely squandered, I must admit. Like Saturday. And Sunday.

Fortunately, today was a day well spent. It was a beautiful day, perfect for catchup breakfasts with a goodfriendmaturingrightbeforemyeyes. The breakfast was worth the drive, but the conversation was even better! We left the shop with the icing of pink cupcakes and suspicious green-and-yellow sourstrips stuck to our teeth.

The least expensive way to spend a beautiful Monday morning: two dollars parking and a lot of walking. Spring has sprung indeed, and it was wonderful taking in the sunlight watching grown men play morning soccer in the park instead of working. I took a mental picture of the flawless blue sky, the barren trees still coaxing their leaves into the sunshine, the pretty yellow orange flowers carrying the promise of spring, the slow fans of the conservatory brimming with classical music and our laughter as we lost our way back to the car.

Thanks, K, for taking the time to ensure that a beautiful morning like today's did not go unnoticed. Once every six months would be worth a morning like today's!

Back home, and I managed to catch a movie which caught me unsusupecting, and was by far, the most disturbing of films in a long while. I'm not going to tell you what it's called. I just want to say that it made Quentin Tarantino look like he spent his lifetime directing Sesame Street compared to this Korean movie.

Mercifully, my very kind neighbours decided to call me along for an evening movie of Ratatouille, restoring the inner child in me. Definitely heartwarming, please leave your brain at home and bring your appetite to the movie. The whole movie was breathtaking in its detail, and beautiful in its execution. Any show that tempts you to take a rat home and make it your pet gets five stars in my book!

Onto a quick dinner with my brother who has worked really hard today, and then we went to Coles and bought (I can't believe I'm admitting this) a Spongebob Squarepants DVD on impulse. And watched it.

The inner child is definitely becoming an outer child today.

¿Quién vive en una piña bajo el mar? ¡Spongebob Squarepants!

Thing No. 6: The Boy Goes To Skool (Darjah Dua)

The thing that fascinated me most at the tender age of eight was an unassuming kid by the name of KY. He was a bespectacled little kid, and one day he whipped out this piece of paper, which seemed innocuous enough - it was a rectangular piece of paper with two ends sticking out like a little singlet, like so:

He would say, 'Look, okay? I'm going to use the power of my mind and bend these two ends.' And then he would pause for dramatic effect, and using all the concentration an eight year old can muster, he stared at the two ends of the paper, and suddenly the ends started to bend by themselves.

It was magic. Like the magic my friend LWK had. (see entry in mellowdramatic.blogdrive.com dated Dec 10/06) All this magic buzzing around my school, it was like freaking Hogwarts. And I wasn't Harry Potter. I wasn't even Ron Weasley. IQ wise, I would have been the equivalent of Harry's Nimbus 2000, his faithful broomstick.

How'd he do it? Well, it's quite simple actually... You see... yeah, like I'm going tell you! I spent the whole of Darjah Dua figuring it out so you can waste some of your precious life figuring it out!

As Refreshing As A Humble Collingwood Supporter

Once in a very aquamarine moon, the Emergency Department will be really quiet. So quiet it is almost surreal, and there is a low murmuring among the staff about how "Q word" it is tonight (we're a superstitious lot, we are!). Everyone's walking around on eggshells, afraid that if we coughed or laughed a little too loud, the avalanche of patients would come tumbling in.

It was one of those nights last night, and there was a simple explanation for the condition in the hospital - Collingwood was playing the West Coast Eagles. Now for those who are reading this from outside Australia, these are two teams involved in Australian football, or 'footy' as it is affectionately known here. Footy is to the Australians what soccer is to the English.

And Collingwood would be to Victorians what Liverpool would be to the Liverpudlians - a fiercely supported team, especially by the grassroots and laymen. (One senior who is a Carlton Football club supporter once commented, when he heard that I might be potentially a Collingwood supporter, said 'He can't be a Collingwood supporter! He's got too many teeth!')

They are a proud lot, the Collingwood supporters. Whether they win or lose, the fans will never turn their backs on the clubs, kind of like the Liverpool die-hards whose very club's motto 'You'll Never Walk Alone' suggests that come rain or shine, we're behind you all the way.

Collingwood has not had much to be proud of in recent times, but they did yesterday night.

Personally, there was clear evidence of the spirit of the supporters when I was travelling on the train back home the other day.

It was a Friday night, and at every stop on my way back to the city, the train started filling up with a sea of people in white and black stripes. There were groups of young louts, there were parents trying to pass on the flame to their young children, there were older folks who looked to have supported the club forever.

One or two of them have had a couple of beers prior to the game, and there was an electric buzz around the coach I was in. Random shouts of 'Go Pies!' and good natured ribbing like 'Hey, you're wearing the wrong colours, mate!' (to anyone who wasn't in a black/white outfit) reverberated through the coach. But the cutest scene was when one parent was leaning over to her child and saying, 'Hey, sing the Collingwood song!'

'Good ol' Collingwood forever...' came the hesitating little voice. '... we know how to play the game...' it trickled. This was enough to send a smile through the people in the crowd, and like a ripple it spread, and soon all the older folk around him started responding in chorus, and soon there were people dancing and singing along ending in the crescendo of 'for good old Collingwood!'

There were smiles all around after that, and I couldn't help smiling as well.

In all the hooliganism there is in modern sport, it has its roots in a heart bursting with passion. I hope to share that passion one day with you, dear children.

Hong Kong: the Last Day

We woke up on the last day at about nine and packed up our belongings. We took one last longing look at the view outside our window:

Ah, sweet pollution and cramped living quarters.

By ten we were out on the streets, and I was (ironically) feeling almost a 100% again. We walked Temple Street for the final time, stopping for one final breakfast of noodles with 'wow, what part of the cow/pig is this?'.

We also walked Lui Yan Kai again, and saw this:

Wow, they rent by the hour, huh! I mean, that's almost three rounds of mahjong.

But our culinary experience was not complete. There was one thing I needed to try while I was here. If I didn't do this, my idea of Hong Kong which I have gleaned from all the years of watching TVB series would have come to nothing. So with a whispered prayer and some persistence, we finally found the goose that laid the golden egg:

And it was quite tasty, too, let me tell you. Siew Ngo phan (roast goose rice) with plum sauce. Tastes like duck but softer and fatter.

We took a cab from the hotel to the train station, and rode the train from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, and a bus from Shenzhen to the airport just in time to catch the plane back to Malaysia.

Planes, trains and goodbyes. The train from Hong Kong to Shenzhen; the view of Hong Kong by night.

All in all, quite a good experience, and I'm sure we've missed a few other sights, but I wouldn't mind coming again, but next time I will remember to check the if a typhoon has decided to holiday here as well first.

And maybe bring a girl.

Hong Kong: the Third Day/Night 2

We were about to call it a night, and I was more than ready to head back to the comforts of my hotel bed, but I suddenly caught a second wind, and, inspired by the fact that it was going to be our last night there in Hong Kong, we walked for a final time to Tsim Sha Tsui, to the bayside.

And this is what we were rewarded with:


These pictures barely do it justice. It was like a 'Wow.' moment. It was also like a, 'Why am I here with a guy?' moment. Sigh.

You literally had your breath taken away when you first see the sights of Hong Kong Island at night. And all your doubts about whether this was the right vacation spot to have gone to just fades away. All the head colds, all the brisk people, all the painful feet from endless walking was suddenly overawed by this spectacle before you.

We spent a good hour just basking in the neon lights streaming from across the island before walking around a little more, with the holiday final night blues kicking in.

Among other things seen that night:

Quick, guess what they sell!


Time ticking down on our last night


A rudimentary Google Earth: I live here! The tunnel leading to the Science Museum.


A neck ripe for vampires. Although they would probably go for my nose, if you could only see how red it was! Now, can anybody please tell me where the heck Tsim Sha Tsui is?

We bought just a few more things that night before finally making our way back to the hotel room. We were exhausted from all the walking, yet, satisfied.

A Welcome Request!

Hi, could you guys check in so that I know that you know I'm here? Just a quick hi with the initials of your first name and surname will do, and I'll try to figure out who you are! :) HK