The God Of Parking Lots

"I have come to the conclusion that I am God's favourite son."

Everyone gathered around the table looked curiously at him as he declared those brave words with his trademark toothy smile.

What do you mean? someone ventured.

"Well, when I was doing the shopping for the Halloween party for the kids, right, I was going with A to the city. And you know how hard it is to park in the city, right?"

"A was telling me that there was no way in the world that I would get a car park in the city at 5 pm. I told A not to worry; that I was God's favourite son!"

"Guess what? As soon as I reached the city and started looking for a car park, suddenly a car indicates right and pulls out of its parking lot."

"Yes!" I looked at A, who lifted a corner of his mouth in a smile to congratulate and curse me at the same time for just being lucky.

"We were walking away from the car when A suddenly remembered that we had to pay for parking, and so we hurried back to the parking space. And guess what? The parking meter was spoiled! Hahaha!"

"I turned around to A and shouted 'Yes! Woo Hoo! See? I told you I was God's favourite son!'"


Everyone at the table laughed, although some were a little bemused.


The God Of Small Things


I was with K the other day looking for a park in Victoria Market, when a car space suddenly opened up. As we drove into the car park, I joked, "No, I am God's favourite son."

K laughed a bit, remembering the above thanksgiving meeting, but then raised this point - "I think that we don't truly understand who God is, I think we trivialise Him if we think He is at all interested in finding us parking lots."

"I mean, God was never a God of covenience, what. Think about it - if anything He is a God of Inconvenience."

I think about Abraham, who was told to sacrifice his son Isaac at the altar. Or Noah, who had to endure the ridicule of everyone when he was told to build the Ark for the flood that no one thought would come. Or Daniel getting thrown into the den of lions, or Joseph being sold to the Egyptians.

I thought about my friend from the Overseas Christian Fellowship last time who was convinced that God loved her because she was desperately looking for her favourite brand of instant coffee in the Asian grocers, and there was one last packet remaining.

I truly don't know what to think - is God truly interested in the small everyday things of our lives? The Omniscient Micromanager? Or is God interested only in the Big Issues at hand - world poverty, wars, the environment, our sin and salvation?

I love that after being a Christian for some 23 years, I'm still trying to make up my mind about who God is, and to know His heart. He remains enticingly mysterious, as that day some two thousand years ago, when he came down as man, and spread his hands on that cross for our sins.

Other People's Love Stories: All Dressed in White

She stands in the darkness, arms and legs poised, her rapid, shallow breathing betraying her anxiety.

Anxiety was better than tears, she decided. One hand reaches to smooth the ruffles of the wedding dress.

Come on, God, she says under her breath. I don't know why You're putting me through this, but You'd better see me through this.

Please?

The lights come on.

***************************************************

They were together for three years before he finally popped the question. She remembers it well - they were at the park where they had first met. He had walked ahead of her, which she thought a little rude, but her head suddenly lifts up as she hears him turn abruptly. She is shocked to see him on his knees.

He is stuttering his proposal youknowwe'vebeengoingoutforalongtimenowandIthinkwhat ImeantosayisthatIwantyoutoWillYouMarryMe? She brings her hands to her face, and nods vigorously, surprised by her tears.

***************************************************


"I'm saying sorry in advance, 'cos this won't always go to plan..."

The music starts, and she is trying to keep time with her partner for their hip hop performance. Her body moves in memorised rhythm but her mind is a million miles away.

Her partner does not seem the least bit bothered. He is in his bridegroom vest, and dancing like he was the only one on stage.

They are dancing to Guy Sebastian's Art of Love (ft. Jordin Sparks), and it talks about the bliss and pain of relationships. The words of the song are knives which cut away at her heart, and her legs.


"... and we're all about giving up..."

**************************************************

It was two weeks before the wedding when she gets the phone call.

He is stone cold as he speaks over the phone. I'm sorry, I'm calling off the wedding. I can't go through with this.

She is stunned. Sure, there were arguments about the venue, and who they were going to invite, but they could talk it through, surely...

Something snaps.

Why? What do you mean? she protests. What do you mean you can't go through with this? We've had everything planned - the invitations have been sent out and the venue booked, for fuck's sake!

I'm sorry, he fumbles. I'ma... I... uh...

I'm sorry.

Sorry?!! Sorry??! Sorry is not what you say to someone to call off a marriage! Sorry is what you say when you accidentally bump into someone or when you're going to be late to something. YOU DON'T FUCKING SAY SORRY WHEN YOU'RE CALLING YOUR FIANCEE TO CALL OFF THE WEDDING!

She drives over to his place, her mind racing faster than the car, and she almost kills two cyclists who scream profanities into her unhearing ears.

She races up the stairs to his place, and it is only after a few minutes of angry knocks that he lets her in.

Her arms are folded, and she storms in. He is silent while she unloads on him. Her heart's content is emptied of its discontent.

Her tears are hot, and her mascara trickles down as she seeks to understand his change of heart. He is a wall, and she does not understand where she had misplaced the key to the heart of someone she thought she knew.

His silence frustrates her increasingly, and she throws himself at him, her arms flailing. She didn't know what she was hoping to achieve. Maybe she could beat a reason out of him.

He is caught off guard by her sudden charge at him, and he reacts by pushing out, and she lands hard on the floor.

***************************************************

He picks her off the floor.

"Sometimes I'm going to miss, I'm still learning how to give..."

Her body launches into the chorus with sharp, angled turns, and her choreographed body quivers a little in the wedding dress, but betrays nothing.

***************************************************

Why? She asked a friend. Why is God doing this to me? 


Maybe, says her friend quietly, Maybe it's a chance for you to finally let go.


***************************************************


She stands before the thunderous applause of the crowd, and nods a tiny nod of acknowledgement. Her partner is lapping up the ovation of what he was convinced were new members of his self-established fan club, and gives a peace sign as they run off stage.

Her heart is beating in her ears. Her heart. Which scabbed over clumsily when he stabbed it in all the different places. She had pulled off a big scab today, and prayed that it would now begin to heal properly.  

... I'm gonna get it sometime, 'cause I'm still trying to learn 

Still learning (art of love)

Still learning (art of love)

Still learning (art of love)

The art of love. 

Not Florence Nightingale

"You've got to be tough as nails to be an Emergency Nurse," he says, recounting his time in Liverpool. "They're a special breed."

********************************************************

"There was this one time there was this girl lying on the waiting room floor, right? Screaming hysterically. Everyone had come out with the trolley and were standing over her."

"Get up!" the Emergency Triage Nurse screamed at her, exasperated by how melodramatic this teenage girl was behaving.

"GET UP!" she yelled again. "I've just had my hernia operation and if you think I'm going to lift you up, you're fuckin' mistaken, so GET UP!"

The others around her lifted the girl up and threw her onto the trolley before they wheeled her into the department.

"We found out later that the young girl had this massive frontal lobe brain tumour when we scanned her head, and that was probably why she behaved the way she did. I went up and told the Emergency Triage Nurse about the result, and you know what she said?"

"Well," she just shrugged unapologetically, "the rest of them are fuckin' dickheads anyway."

He laughs while recounting the story.

"Tough as nails," he shakes his head. "You've just got to be tough as nails."

A Dog Named Pebbles

The maid is walking out with the urn in her hands. She is wailing inconsolably, indifferent to the annoyed stares of curious onlookers.

There are some things just worth crying for. Especially if they've been a part of your life for the past 17 years.

Not every one lives to be 119 years old. 

******************************************

Pebbles, when she was just a tiny stone

She remembers the time when Pebbles saved the house from fire. It was in their old house, where an altar sat facing the door.

One of the candles had slipped and caught fire.

Pebbles' keen sense of smell brought her to the fire, and she immediately yelped in panic, and the family rushed out to see what the commotion was about. They put out the fire just in time, and Pebbles was treated like a hero.

******************************************

Too cool for doggy school

There was a time when they had let Pebbles' fur get a little out of control...  Pebbles looked like it had a big white afro on its head and its body - a walking, yelping doggy cloud.

Her friends who came to visit often exclaimed "Wah, this dog lie down that time ah, like Persian rug ah!" or "Man, it's like a fluffy tissue box holder!"

Pebbles the tissue box and Lucky

******************************************

Pebbles loved her durians. They had just finished eating some one evening, and had thrown away the seeds into a basket. Pebbles duly rummaged into the bin for the seeds with bits of flesh remaining on them, but she didn't have them herself first.

She nudged the first piece to Lucky, their other dog, first. Because Pebbles is all about sharing.

*******************************************

Doggy style

Pebbles had taken part in various competitions with Karen. Sure, she was not a pedigree to enter into the proper competitions, but little Karen didn't care.

She walked past the judges for the Most Cuddly Dog, and a collective "Awww..."  arose from the judges as little Karen doddered by, with a fluffy Pebbles clinging around her neck like a little baby.  They won that one, hands down.

*******************************************

"Come here, Pebbles!" the maid said, holding the bowl with the mid-sized folded papers in her hand. They were numbered from zero to nine, and Pebbles would pick a number, which the maid would quickly snatch before Pebbles could chew it, and then replaced it into the bowl.

Pebbles was right on four occasions, and Karen's grandmother and maid won up to a hundred and fifty dollars each time. Pebbles was good luck, it was.

*******************************************

To the Batkennel!

There was this other competition where they had dressed little Pebbles up in a Batman costume. It was cute beyond belief. But Pebbles was a shy dog. Instead of strutting proudly like a superhero dog should, it whimpered fearfully instead, its supertail between its superlegs.

Lucky was also in the competition, decked out in sunglasses, a beach shirt and a scarf around its neck, like a doggie Sophia Loren on a day at the beach. Lucky walked past the judges like it owned the place, and won first place while Pebbles came in second.

They went home and told everyone that Pebbles had won instead.

********************************************

This was a dinner routine - the maid would finish cooking dinner, and then lean down and say to Pebbles - "Pebbles, go get mama and nana."

Pebbles' four little feet would scurry to the bedrooms of Karen's mother and grandmother, and it would leap on their beds, its eyes looking intently with its mouth half open, its tongue half sticking out as it breathed heavily in anticipation. Karen's mother and grandmother would stop whatever they were doing and make their way to the dinner table.

*********************************************

Karen had a pair of yellow and orange Garfield slippers which fascinated Pebbles no end.

Whenever little Karen wore those slippers around the house, Pebbles would snap at her ankles - trying to catch the cat that was pretending to be a pair of slippers.

Dog-napping

One night while little Karen was studying at the table in her bedroom, she felt something tugging at her feet. A telltale little puffy tail was visible from the edge of the table.

"Pebbles!" Karen scolded.

Pebbles caught Karen with its guilty puppy eyes, before running away into the living room. It stopped once it was at a safe distance, its doggy mind planning its next attack on the feline slippers.

*********************************************

"Ohh... My poor gou gou is dying," Karen tells me, looking twenty-eight but feeling all of five.

Pebbles was a grand seventeen years old, and age was catching up with her. She had lost her eyesight, and was going around being guided by her weakening sense of smell. She had lost her furry coat - her proud puffy coat - due to skin problems, and her worn out knees had lost their spring.

She had only enough energy to eat, and pace around the house a little before falling asleep again.

One day, Pebbles fell into a sleep she never woke up from.

They came home with her remains, the family weeping as if they had lost a child.

Now there is a vacuum in the little corner of the house - and of their hearts - which Pebbles made all her own, and only echoes of the familiar pitter-patter of feet which would come to call them to dinner.

Rest in peace, Pebbles. I'd like to believe all doggies do go to heaven.

Nights Like These

It is a madhouse in the Emergency Department. The corridors were filling up with ambulance trolleys carrying the Saturday night specials of drunken assaults and suicide attempts. Somewhere in all that chaos were nursing home residents waiting to be seen, and the thousandth chest pain, abdominal pain or sick child.

There was a gentleman they had to intubate and move out of their Emergency Department to a tertiary hospital. He had been assaulted that night and had blood in his brain, with a fluctuating conscious state. That meant one less senior doctor in the department, as the other registrar had to accompany this man on the ambulance.

And then there was the lady, who was on blood thinning medications, who had come in a little confused with blood in her urine, and so the doctor had quickly seen her and ordered a brain scan, just to rule out a bleed into the brain. Which was exactly what she had, and he sighs as he picks up the phone to make the necessary calls to move her out of the department.

Even Though I Walk Through The Valley of The Shadow

In the midst of all this comes a man, in his fifties, on a trolley. From all the way across the department, you could see that this man was dying. He was all skin and bones, his eyes were rolled heavenwards, and his gasping breaths suggested that he had not very long left to live. There is a woman standing next to him, her tears and eye bags suggesting that she is probably the wife.

He was given a Category 1, which meant he needed to be seen immediately. There was a bit of a delay finding him a cubicle, but the nurse-in-charge expedites the process, trying to save this man the indignity of dying on an ambulance trolley.

"The wife wants everything done for him," whispers the nurse-in-charge once they place him in a cubicle, as the doctor reels back at the suggestion.

"Go have a quiet chat with the wife," says his consultant, who had kindly stayed back to help manage the extraordinarily busy Emergency Department that night.

He hesitates a little, and tries to distract himself with other less urgent tasks at hand, as he envisioned a lengthy discussion with the wife about why they shouldn't be taking blood tests or performing scans.

The nurse in charge of admissions sees his hesitation, and calls him to task - "You'd better see him, now, doctor, or he might not be breathing when you do get to him."

He stands up and taps the table twice in frustration, as there had been nothing easy about tonight. Sick patients all over the department, and he was about to lose another senior staff for a few hours.

He is about to walk into the cubicle when he sees the teary wife, whose weary eyes spoke volumes about the awful journey she has had to endure these past few months. He finds out that this gentleman was on the palliative care team for metastatic gastric cancer, which means that the cancer had traveled beyond the stomach into other parts of the body.

I've been sleeping on the floor just to be next to him you know he was having trouble breathing tonight and he had coughed up blood and he's just not himself you know and he was telling me yesterday how his mind was absolutely perfect but it was his body that was weak... 

He puts an arm around the wife, and a nurse sits her in a chair outside the cubicle. The doctor pushes past the curtains, to be greeted by the sight of this man. His cheeks were sallow, and his eyes looked as if they were bulging out of the sunken sockets around it. There was barely any fat or muscle, as the skin hung limply around his arms and legs - signs of cancer ravaging his body, greedily stealing nutrients from him.

A quick assessment reveals that this man was dying. He barely responded to the doctor's questions, and one of his pupils were bigger than the other, suggesting that there may have been undiagnosed cancer going to his brain, and the way he was breathing - the dying gasps - suggested this man didn't have very long left.

He walks out to the wife and he kneels beside her. I'm sorry, he says, and stops there.

Should I call the children? is all she asks. He nods quietly.

To Be Surrounded By Loved Ones

After a mad scramble around the department, the doctor returns to the cubicle on request of the nurses. The gentleman's passed on, they said quietly.

In this tiny room were now cramped this man's four children, overflowing to the outside. He walks past the red eyes, nods his condolences to the family, and gently offers them a few more minutes with him.

The doctor walks away, and tries to suppress the memory of losing his own father about that age. He wanted to tell the family that they would be all right in the end - that life would work itself out - but now was not the time.

Now was the time to grieve.

The Lucky Ones

They move the body into a quieter room, with enough space for family to surround him. The Catholic priest is called in to pray over the gentleman.

The doctor and the nurse-in-charge walks in to the family, almost intrusively into this very private space of sadness, and offer their condolences. They explain what needed to happen from this point, and handed out a brochure to the wife.

He's so young, protested the wife, lovingly brushing the head of the man she will never wake up next to again.

Well, at least he's one of the lucky ones, says the nurse-in-charge.

Everyone's head in the room looks up, including the doctor's. What an odd thing to say. What was so lucky about dying young?

At least he's surrounded by family who loves him. Most people don't even get that, says the nurse-in-charge. The doctor is not sure what scant solace this must offer the family, but they seem to nod their heads in agreement.

This is not the man we know, this is not the man we know, the wife cries, her face grimacing in tears, as she kisses him on the forehead. Her words bring fresh tears to the eyes of all those present.

The doctor steps away quietly, trying to ignore the lump forming in his throat.

*********************************

He sleeps like the dead when he returns from his night shift. He wakes up and sees the evening sun through the drawn blinds in his room. He gets up and takes a much needed walk in the park opposite his house. It is a pleasant spring evening, and there are dogs running around the park, chasing tennis balls catapulted by their owners into the air. The park is filled with joggers, and friends kicking the football around, and five year olds stopping their bicycles for a quick drink by the water coolers littered around the park. 


He breathes in the evening air, and watches the tiny new leaves springing up on the naked branches of trees stripped bare by winter's cold touch. He thinks about the cycle of life, and death, and his heart holds on to the promise of spring. 

Begging to Differ

I am a ghost.

I haunt the city in the day time, walking through the weekend crowd. Rubbing shoulders with the busy, busy living people living their busy,busy lives.

They look into their purses for money to pay for the groceries they’re buying, they’re sitting around the food court tables laughing over their sandwiches and sushi. They are looking into their bags, searching with their eyes for the train ticket that will bring them to their two o’clock appointment.

I have nowhere to go, and no one expecting me there.

You don’t see me. You don’t see me as I walk over to the half-finished food you have left on your food court tables. You don’t see me as I grab hungrily at the remains of your lunch; the thought of tasting a stranger’s saliva overpowered by the gnawing hunger in my stomach.

I wander the library halls and use their toilets. This is the only warm place that will let me in. The security guards catch me sleeping in there and tell me off. I look at them emptily, as they weren't up the whole night shivering in the cold.

I come out occasionally to scare the living. I lift my voice and ask if you have some change to spare, or five dollars for a pack of cigarettes. You do not hear me, you do not see me, but you are afraid of me, and your feet walk a little faster.

I am already dead. You just don’t know it yet.

(observations on a Saturday afternoon at the State Library)

Why Did The Fly Fly?

A: Because the spider spied her.

One of the most annoying things about winter here in Melbourne is the amount of creepy crawlies that come into your room looking for a little warmth.

Now don't get me wrong. If you're a moth (and maybe a reincarnation of my deceased father) then you can stay as long as you want. If you're a little ladybird looking for a little warm nook from the harsh winters, feel free to share my room.

On the other hand, if you are:












Then get the **** out of my house!

Oh man, I hate spiders. I don't mind the small house ones that you see in Malaysia, and I have even played with some trapdoor spiders in their natural habitat in Fraser's Hill (they are really cool - Google them!).

But when a large spider enters my bedroom, asking if he can be my roommate, that's where the friendship ends.

My previous housemate Li had the exact same spider in his bedroom last year, and I was laughing at him, telling him to man up and deal with it. He eventually reluctantly used the vacuum cleaner to suck up the spider.

This time, I was just minding my own business, surfing Youtube, (er, I mean, studying hard, Mum) when I looked up at my window blinds, and here was this big ass spider.

This spider was huge. With fangs. Seriously. If Spiderman was bitten by this spider at the start of the show, he be dead, you know what I mean?

I did what every man in my situation would have done - I screamed like a little girl. 

When I finally woke up from my faint, I first checked to make sure that the spider wasn't on me. My mind then started to try and figure out how to get this spider out of my room. 

A few options popped up in my mind: 

1) Kill the damned thing.

I looked at the gray brown spider and imagined the kind of splat he'd make against my white walls and decided against it. 

Also, if I didn't do a good job of it, who knows if it'll scuttle off into some dark corner to plot its revenge. 

2) Leave it in peace. 

I mean - it's doing me no harm, just sitting there, enjoying the warmth, and the view. 

And waiting for me to fall asleep so that it could spin me into a sticky cocoon and then eat me slowly!

3) Catch it.

I go downstairs and grab a leftover Chinese New Year cookie plastic container. I hold the plastic container against the wall and spider, willing the stupid thing to move into the plastic container.

The spider didn't climb into the plastic container. I was trying to calculate how long it would be before the oxygen (do spiders breathe oxygen?) would run out in its plastic prison, before my arms gave way from tiredness thirty seconds later.  

So I finally decided on option

4) Reach for the vacuum cleaner. 

Fact of the day: Spiders don't get sucked in easily. At least this one didn't. This mean eight-legged freak must have super glue for legs 'cause it didn't budge a single inch when the nozzle of the Vacuum Cleaner of Death approached him. Instead, it just crawled lazily away, and gave me the spider's equivalent of the middle finger.

********************************************

Having failed Option 4, I ended up deciding on Option 5 - do absolutely nothing. I was going to wait this little bugger out, and we'll see who'll crack first. 

Two minutes later, I am screaming at the spider for no apparent reason. 

I opened a window and tried to flick the stupid thing out of my window. Instead of flicking right and out like the motion of my magazine-wielding hand, it flicked towards me instead, and I had to jump back, waking the neighbours once more with my delightful Girl-Scout-being-stabbed scream.

The spider almost landed onto my study table before it shot a web up to the wall behind it, and clambered quickly back to where it was before. This time it scuttered up to the corner of the ceiling and tried to force its way through the cracks, unsuccessfully. 

My heart was racing as quickly as his, and I had to sit down and regroup, to think of where to from here. 

I was deep in sketches of my ingenious Spider Removal Machine (tm) and when I next looked up, it was here:

Above my freaking bed. Waiting for me to sleep. Just to fang me very much for trying to kill him.

It soon scuttled above my bookcase, and I had decided enough was enough. 

I took the plastic container again and held it up against ceiling. I tried knocking on the ceiling to make the spider fall off, but damn its sticky super glue legs. 

I finally had a brainwave, and I reached for a piece of paper, and I slid it between a tiny gap in the plastic container, and then underneath the spider, flicking it off the paper into the container. 

Victory is mine! Almost. 

Now came the crucial part - closing the lid.

Quickly. Before Spidey here has a chance to jump out when my other hand reaches to put the lid on, and then scuttle up my arm to bite me on my nose. 

One swift move later, and I had a spider hanging off my nose. 

No - I caught him. I caught him good. 

 Aww... so cute... not. 

The spider's eight legs tapped sickeningly against its plastic chamber as it ran around, trying to break free. I held the container gingerly in my hand, wondering if its fangs could penetrate plastic. 

I was trying to decide whether or not to introduce him to the wonders of my toilet bowl, but decided instead on doing the right thing - saving it for later to show Karen. 

No.... I set it free in the lawn outside my place, where it would be free once more to roam its natural habitat, and be eaten by birds.

Which goes to show you who's boss in the animal kingdom... I mean it's not like that stupid spider is smart enough to make it all the way back from the front garden into the room, and then climb up my shoulder slowly to dig its fangs into my neck to paraluyh7[6;gwgf/

Oh, Crap.

Just doing a little studying of the anatomy of our body, and just marvelling at how amazing a body we have.

Our body deals with 9 litres of fluids in a day, of which only 2 litres are from our daily intake.

That means you have seven litres of fluid being produced from everywhere else inside you, from your saliva down to your intestines.

Which makes me surprised how quiet we actually are for fluid producing beings. Imagine if you could hear every slosh of your tummy as it secreted acid juices or your liver churning as you produced bile, or maybe a whirring noise as your small intestines digested and absorbed your food.

Instead, we only hear the growling of the tummy once in a while and let out the occasional fart or burp for all that goes on inside of us.

Isn't creation Intelligent?

P.S. Just found out that it takes food four hours to go into our big intestines, and only 70% will be passed out within three days. It takes it a week to pass out 100% of all that you've eaten.

So just think about what you had for dinner last week as you meditate on your Toilet Throne, because it might finally be coming out completely now.

This Is The Game That Never Ends

Remember these two names: John Isner and Nicolas Mahut.

This US and French player are (still) playing the longest match ever in Wimbledon history. Like longest match ever. Like, I'm sorry, you're not listening to me. Like looooooooongest match evvveeerrr.

They played four sets on the first day, tied at two sets apiece, and the game had to be suspended due to failing light.

They then played the fifth set on the second day, and are now tied at 59-59. And the game was suspended for a second day due to failing light.

59-59.

And they're still going.

These other remarkable facts that I had to borrow from here:

Among the other remarkable statistics from the match:

— It's the longest match in tennis history: 10 hours. The previous record was 6 hours, 33 minutes.

— Longest set in tennis history: 118 games.

— Most games in tennis history: 163 (previous record was 112).

— Both players broke the ATP record for most aces in a match. Isner had 98, Mahut hit 95. The previous record was 78. Combined, the two had 193 aces, more than double the old record of 96.

— Mahut had just three break points during the entire match.

— The first four sets took 2 hours, 54 minutes. The fifth set is at 7 hours, 6 minutes and counting.

— Mahut won 448 points to Isner's 428. Isner had more winners: 333 to 318.

— The final set is longer than the previous longest match in tennis history. That was 6 hours, 33 minutes.

— Isner had four match points, one at 11-10, two others at 33-32 and another at 59-58. The first and last match points came nearly six hours apart.

— At 50-50, Mahut had two break points and Isner promptly served a 134 mph ace.

— With Mahut serving at 52-53, the pair exchanged a 16-shot rally which ended with a Mahut forehand winner. It was the longest rally of the match. On the next point, Mahut dove for a backhand at the baseline following another long rally.

— The players took their first bathroom break at 58-58. While walking in the tunnel, they exchanged pleasantries, the first time they had spoken all evening.

— Mahut only qualified for Wimbledon after winning a qualifying match in a 24-22 final set.

— The match is almost two hours longer than the longest Major League Baseball game in history (an 8:06 game between the White Sox and Brewers in 1984).

— The scoreboard stopped working at 47-47.

We'll never see the likes of this again.

I remember watching the Andy Roddick and Younes el-Aynaoui match in the quarter-finals of the 2003 Australian Open with my Dad. The match was a minute short of five hours, after an epic fifth set.

We knew that we had seen something historic that night, as it was the longest tennis match of all time, at that time. At one point, Roddick gave his racquet over to the ball boys to take over and play, and el-Aynaoui followed suit, one of the classic "Awww..." moments in tennis.

That record was bested in the 2004 French Open by two Frenchmen, but it has now been obliterated by the ongoing match between Isner and Mahut.

And so if you can look away from the World Cup for just a little moment, and turn your TV station instead to one of the most momentous occasions in tennis history.

Sate, Sate, Sate Ria, Sate Sungguh Lazat

As usual, my procrastinating mind would wander during my periods of 'intense' studying into the realms of childhood, where the only thing I ever had to worry about was whether I watched He-Man sitting up, lying down, or with my head dangling upside down from the edge of the couch.

Random Memories: Seven Years Old

School kids are evil. There is no limit to their creativity in finding new ways to make you feel uneasy.

Take for example my eleven year old friends who used to think that reaching out to grab your crotch as they approached you was an acceptable way of saying hello.

But I'll save that story for another day.

I remember the one thing that we used to do as seven year olds was to creep up behind an unsuspecting friend in school, and then making a fanning motion with one hand over the open palm of the other while singing "Sate, Sate, Sate Ria, Sate sungguh lazat!" ("Satay, Satay, Satay Ria, where the satays are delicious!") as if you were barbequing your friend's ass. 

The normal reaction from your friend would be:
1) Thrusting his pelvis forward to get his butt away from your stupid fanning hands.
2) Making a disapproving noise, somewhere between irritation for dropping his guard and being crept up on, and being annoyed by your childish stupidity (Wooi! Tcht...heeesh!)
3) Turning around to chase you as you scampered away to safety, laughing like a maniac.

Sate Ria was a franchise where they sold satays in proper air-conditioned restaurants. The concept didn't go down very well with local Malaysians, who thought it ridiculous to pay twenty or thirty sen more per stick of satay just to eat it in a fast-food like joint.

Satays were always meant to be enjoyed in the open air, on plastic hawker stall seats, with the smoke billowing over your head as you bit into the juicy grilled chicken or beef bits dripping with peanut sauce.

The business quickly tanked, and now it remains nothing but a nebulous childhood memory.

At least we got some stupid juvenile fun out of abusing their jingle for awhile!

Mamak Terminology

So here I am trying to study, and Karen is being really supportive and helping me make a drink to keep me awake. It is a combination of Milo and Nescafe.

Here's the question: for the life of me, I can't remember what I would say to the mamak in Malaysia if I wanted this drink?

I know that:
1) Teh + Kopi = Cham
2) Teh + Milo = A scolding from the mamak - Lu gila ka? (Are you mad?)
but what do you call Milo+Kopi?

Thanks for helping me put this annoying question out of my head, once and for all!

Mamak, teh tarik tak mau tarik satu! (Mamak, one pulled tea, but hold the pull, thanks!)

Not Myself

Would you want me when I'm not myself?
Wait it out while I am someone else? 

- John Mayer, Not Myself

To all my friends who click on this blog ever so often to check if anything new is up, let me apologise that these next few months will be fairly scarce in terms of blogposts as I am (desperately) trying to study for exams in September. 

All my years of last minute studying are now coming back to haunt me, so I would appreciate all your prayers as I push through to these exams. 

Just to give you an indication of how little I actually love studying, let's just say I preferred a visit to the dentist yesterday than to actually picking up my books. 

That's right folks - I would actually prefer a lifetime of having my tooth drilled rather than study.  

Just when I had thought that I would never ever have to touch another textbook again, here I go again, unfortunately! 

Time to listen to my popo (grandma), and kan lik tit took shi ah (study hard ah)! 

P.S. Karen has suggested that I snap blog - no pictures, just a few words to update. I'm not sure - is it worth it?

Exams - Kill. Me. Now.  

Farewell, Rafa.

There is a man in many boys' (and girls') lives who yields a certain undeniable power over their emotions and wellbeing. That man dictates the mood of the said boy (or girl) for the rest of the week, based on his words and actions and leadership.

That man is not their father.

That man is the manager of their football club.

Greater than any star player in a team, a football manager is the man who is judged at the end of the day with regards to how a team performs. He is the conductor of the Soccer Club Symphony, the man who lifts and drops games with a wave of his hand, the ever-changing hero and villain from week to week depending on how the game eventuated.

Rafa Benitez exploded onto the English soccer scene with a breath-taking, seemingly impossible Champions League final win for Liverpool in 2005, making them the only English team to win the Cup five times. His tenure as manager has vacillated between the brilliant and the bizarre, buying outstanding performers while squandering money on a fair few duds.

No one can deny that he has orchestrated the emotions of millions of Liverpool fans worldwide, and I can remember at least three times where my heart had literally stopped when we managed to grab victory out of the wretched jaws of defeat:

1) The 3-1 win versus Olmpiakos which brought us into the group stages, leading to:
2) The 3-3 draw in Istanbul in the Champions' League 2005 final, where Liverpool had come from 3-0 down during half time to win the Cup on penalties.
3) The 3-3 draw in the 2006 FA Cup final, where Liverpool had to come back from 2-0 down and then 3-2 down to win the Cup, again on penalties.

There are many more moments like that which I can recall, watching soccer live at home by myself at 3 in the morning, my leg shaking uncontrollably from excitement, yelling at the TV screen for no good reason, and then jumping around the room like a delirious puppy whenever we scored.

Lately, though, it has been a more resigned slump as I reach for the TV remote to switch off the TV in disgust way before the game is over, knowing that defeat was inevitable. And then switching on the TV again right at the end to confirm my worst suspicions, secretly hoping against all hope that Liverpool had pulled a miracle out of nowhere to win.

Too many subsequent losses, and fingers start to point, and they always fall on the manager in the English game. Apart from Arsenal and Manchester United, managers are only as good as their last season in the English Premier League, and so, after six years, we have finally had to say goodbye to Rafa Benitez after a disappointing season last year.

Like a soccer orphan now, we are searching for a new father figure to lead the club to greater heights, and to the Holy Grail that is the elusive Premier League title.

Farewell, Rafa - Mr. Benitez sir - who has meant so much more to me and millions of other Liverpool fans than he will ever know.

Anda Bersyair, Aku Berpantun

When we were in high school, the official language used in our textbooks were in Malay. The government has been trying to push the use of English in Mathematics and Science subjects in order to make Malaysians more competitive in the global market. Which I think is fair enough, when potassium for example, is still kalium in our language and the salt sodium is natrium to us, which can be a little confusing.

I love the Malay language, however, and I was lucky enough to be in a school where they encouraged the holistic development of our students, and the Science students all had to do a literature subject, be it English Lit or Sastera Melayu (Malay Literature) since we were thirteen.

Some of the things that I remember doing was listening to my Malay friends sing out the syairs - their lilting voices singing out the words to the poem that contained a story or words for living wisely. I mean, how cool is that - it's combining my two favoritest things in the world - music and poetry!

(I doubt that they would make a crossover movie, though. Like all those crossover dance movies you see nowadays.

*begin announcer voice sequence* This Summer. Two dance forms will collide on your screen. Like Never Before. Hip-hop, and Ballet. We call it BallHopping.*end announcer voice sequence*

*begin announcer voice sequence* This Summer. Two art forms will collide on your screens to Blow. Your. Minds. Music and Poetry. Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts are - the Pusicians. *end announcer voice sequence* )

What brought about all this nostalgia, though, was the fact that I somehow dug up an old Malay four-line stanza, or the standard pantun, which I concluded a friend's e-mail with recently, and I just realised how much beauty there was in the language.

The standard pantun consists of four lines, the first two being introductory, almost nonsensical lines, just to introduce the heart of the poem, which is in the last two lines - which can either be a word of advice, or a request, or even a riddle.


Berakit-rakit ke hulu,
      Berenang-renang ke tepian,
Bersakit-sakit dahulu,
      Bersenang-senang kemudian.


(Row, row to the start,
       Then swim, swim to the banks,
Suffer, suffer at the start,
       Then later you can relax.)

The earliest pantun that stays in my mind as a favourite till today was one we read as seven-year-olds:

Buah cempedak di luar pagar,
       Ambil galah tolong jolokkan,
Saya budak baru belajar,
       Kalau salah tolong tunjukkan.

(A jackfruit sits outside the gate,
       Grab a long stick and let's go get it!
I am a new student at this subject,
       If I'm wrong, help correct it!)

Okay, please forgive how badly I translate the pantun into English. I am, after all, not a Pusician.


(P.S. Can anyone else remember anymore pantuns?)

Mellowdramatic Turns 30

Remember how I said that Karen's special gift for my thirtieth birthday was my very own book?

Well, we've finally sent it to be printed, and you can view the preview here!

If you're crazy enough, you can buy a copy too ! It makes for gripping toilet reading, and is also the right size for making origami cranes!

Thank you, Karen, again for this wonderful, thoughtful gift. I love you!

In the Mooood For A Birthday

I had just come over to Australia, and was living the life of a squalid student. There was no television at home, so we often just watched the oven, we had a dinosaur of an iMac with no internet connection, and we didn't even have a telephone.

We would brave the dark winter nights in the dangerous suburb of NM where we were at the time just to call home from a payphone booth.

It was in that payphone booth that I spoke to my family, the brief fifteen or so minutes spent trying to summarise what had been going on in our lives throughout the week.

"So, Grace took her driving exam today," Mum says.

[open folder_Grace]


[open folder_ Driving Lessons]

"You know, ah," my sister said, complaining, "My driving instructor was damn bad ah, today!"

"Why?" I asked, remembering my painful driving lessons and how my brother had to take the test five times, and I had to take it twice, and just luckily passed. Driving instructors could be a nasty lot.

You would be too, I suppose, if your whole life was spent letting novice drivers gamble with your life daily so that they could finally drive the car that Daddy bought them.

"Yeah, he said my clutch work was damn bad!" she frowned, recalling the day.

"We were driving around the taman, you know," she said, a smile creeping over her face, "and then when we stopped at the traffic lights, I was having trouble with the clutch lah, you know, so the car was shaking like mad the whole time."

"You know what that bah-gger say to me ah? He said, 'Chan, chan chan, chan to see te chut lei ah!' (Shake, shake, shake, shake until my sh!t also come out ah!)"

At this point she bursts out into her trademark laughter, and brushes the day off her shoulders. I can't help but laugh, too, imagining the driver in incontinence pads as a result of one too many clutch-related vibrations.

[Close folder_Driving Lessons]


[Close folder_Grace]

"So, how did she do?" I braced myself for the worst.

"She passed!" came my mother's excited voice.

"Sure or not?" I say. "Got pay kopi money (bribe) is it?"

"No lah," Mum said. "She's very goood...."

My little sister has trumped us on so many occasions I've lost count. She had done really well in her SPM (O Level equivalent) as well that year, and although the road of medicine has been tough, she battled it with the passion of someone on a mission.

She remains one of my favourite storytellers as well, giving stories the life they deserve.

So here's to you, my little sister, who is bigger than us in so many ways. Happy birthday!

Happy Mother's Day!

I think that parenting is one of the hardest skills in the world. It's not like parents figured out how to be parents right from the word go - in a way, it's almost a process of trial and error. Yes, we can read guide books and yes, we can attend seminars or even watch Super Nanny to try and figure out how best to raise a child, but in the end, both the parent and child are unique individuals trying to live out life the best way they know how.

I think about my Mum, and how she is a great mother right now - a good friend who sees us for the adults that we are, and allows us to choose for ourselves our own paths in life, as long as we are happy. She does not make demands of us, or guilt us into anything, and we can speak like friends rather than parent-to-child now.

*****************************************

In the midst of trying to love us by providing for us (and we were fairly well provided for), Mum had to take on the many roles of mother, career woman, teacher and wife. I cannot begin to imagine how she managed to balance the four roles.

I remember how when we were younger, she would call home from work to check that we were okay, and she also handwrote mathematics assignments fo us, which she later marked. I think that was quite instrumental in us doing well at school.

I'm not saying that she was perfect in all her roles. Yes, we argued a lot when we were younger, and we got Asian kid-appropriate doses of "Somebody's-Going-To-Get Hurt-Real-Bad" when we were out of line at home. Let's just say that when things weren't going well at work, things weren't going well at home as well.

Every Asian kid wants to believe that they had it tough. In some ways, so do I.

I want to regale stories about the various caning instruments that we had at home, the times when promises were broken, or the explosive arguments we had that used to carry across into the neighbour's houses.

But then I met a good friend not too long ago, and her mother used to literally almost drown her in the water cistern in the backyard used for collecting water, whenever she was naughty.

My friend would call out in between the times her head went underwater - "Mrs W___! Help! Helpblurbblurbblurbblurb!!... *GASP* MRS W___!MRS W___blurbblurbblurb!" and then her neighbour would come out, and try to gently talk her mother -

"Eh, Mrs C___ ah, enough already lah... She learnt her lesson already... Hah... Stop punishing your daughter already lah!" while Mrs C___ continued the dunking treatments.

My mouth went agape as my friend recounted stories of her Mum throwing things at her in her anger, including erm... kitchen knives - and here was I, thinking that I had had it rough!

My friend has turned out really well, though, and has a good relationship with her mother today. Looking at her today, you wouldn't have guessed that she spent her childhood dodging knives or fighting water cisterns.

So who knows what the secret is to parenting? Who knows why some children turn out well despite a difficult growing-up while some don't?

I look back at my life, and I thank God for the many good things that my Mum has taught me - to forgive quickly and to never bear grudges, to value family, to have sympathy for the disadvantaged, to look after our health, not to take life too seriously, and to laugh easily at things.

And then I think about all of Enid Blyton's books, whose children never got caned, whose mothers stayed at home and baked cookies for them and was only occasionally 'cross' with them.

I think Mrs. Blyton can take her plastic ideal mothers and choke on them, because, as far as I am concerned, I would rather have my Mum, in all her humanity, any time of the day.

Mother's Day is a wonderful celebration of mothers everywhere, in all their imperfections, because we recognise above all, that although not everything was perfect, they loved us in a way that only mothers can. Pure and simple.

I remember how Mum would say after scolding us, "You think that I would scold any random children on the street, ah, hah? I scold you because you are my children and I want you to grow up well, okay?"

I would like to believe that the three of us have grown up well.

Happy Mother's Day, Mum. We love you!

Smell The Cheese!

Karen and I have been spending some wonderful evenings with H and V, a married couple from Karen's church who have been good friends and great mentors to us, guiding us in this period of our relationship. These nights are precious to Karen and myself - we are invited over for cozy home-cooked dinners, and then spend the whole evening talking and chatting like old friends until the wee hours of the morning.

It has been eerie how well H and V and Karen and myself have hit it off - I have known them for under a year now, and Karen maybe double that, but it feels like we have been lifelong friends. Karen always says that H is like an older version of myself, and I tend to agree, while I can see in V what Karen will be like later in life. It's like God giving you a glimpse of your future, and how wonderful married life can be!

One of the many joys that we have spending time at H and V's is the chance to play with their three kids - the very well adjusted twins Jus and Josh, and little Nikki, who is about the cheekiest four year old I have ever seen.

Her eyes twinkle with mischief, and her chubby cheeks flank an impish grin as she thinks about the next best way to grab your attention, as kids her age do.

She is the apple of her father's eye, and I must say that I am really proud of her brothers, who have become more protective of her over the years, allowing her to join in and even helping her win at our favourite card game - Snorta! - which involves us making animal noises while turning over cards.

I know, I know, I should know better at my age than to be making animal noises. In my defense, I will say this - "Oink, oink!" "Rrrbiit!Rrrbitt!" "Tweet!Tweet!" "Cock-A-Doodle-Do!"

The defence rests its case, your Honour.

In many ways, the three siblings, Jus and Josh, and little Nikki remind me a little of my own family - the two brothers who feign annoyance at the antics of their little sister, but who secretly love her to bits.

********************************

Anyway, last night, while the four of us were chatting away, little Nikki comes up to us and grabs on to the dining table chair, swinging her right leg vacantly, her mind ticking over at how to grab our grown-up attention.

She recalls, with a sudden light of inspiration, something that had tickled her father pink over the week.

"Hey Dad!" her little Australian-accented voice calls out. "SMELL THE CHEESE!" she says, beaming a smile.

H bursts out laughing and V is all smiles as we look on, bemused.

H turns to us, and then explains that little Nikki had learnt this new trick at school. He was about to explain it to us, but then turns to her, instead, and asks Little Nikki to kindly show Uncle (sobsob) hK how to

Smell The Cheese!

1. First, open up the palm of your left hand.
2. Place your closed fist of your right hand onto the left hand, forming what looks like a cheese on a plate.
3. Invite the clueless Uncle hK to "Smell... The... Cheese!".
4. As he brings his silly nose near to smell your 'Cheese!' punch his nose with your all your cheesy right hand might and then run away, laughing.

I stare in disbelief initially, but then burst out laughing at the cheeky little Nikki, and tried to pull off a trick of my own on her.

"Hey Nikki," I say. " Do you know," I begin earnestly, "they say that if your right hand is bigger than your face, then you are really smart, you know?"

hK's evil plan:

< /formulating ingenius plan >

1. Little Nikki  puts her right hand over her face, seeing if indeed she is Really Smart.
2. I smack her hand quickly, effectively causing her to slap herself on her own face.
3. Cruel laughter ensues.
4. Victory is mine.

< /end ingenius plan >

But instead this is how it turned out:

Little Nikki looks at me for a moment, her bright eyes piercing mine, and her little lower lip curled up in deep thought as she considers my proposition.

"SMELL THE CHEESE!" she says, her right hand missing my nose by inches, and the whole house erupts into laughter as they watched me being given the four-year-old equivalent of the middle finger.

And so it stands - Little Nikki 1 Uncle hK 0.

The Opposite of A Birthday

When You Least Suspect It

The doctor is sitting at his desk, in the area designated to quickly review the less urgent patients.

It has been a relatively quiet day, being a public holiday. He glances at the computer screen and marvels at how decent the patient numbers actually look. Nothing like a public holiday to put into perspective which pains and aches truly could wait.

*BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!*

An alarm shatters the relative silence of the department. He looks towards the alarm and rises from his seat.

Someone had triggered the Emergency Alarm button, calling for help. It was either a doctor, or a patient, and usually a host of doctors and nurses would rush with the resuscitation trolley to wherever the emergency was.

Often times it was a false alarm - a patient would have accidentally triggered it in the toilet or in their cubicles. Often, a nurse would step in and cancel the false alarm.

This one kept alarming.

The doctor keeps walking and looks up at the alarm monitor display. The number 1 flashed in red.

1 spelt trouble. 1 was the resuscitation cubicle.

How To (Desperately Try To) Save A Life

He rushes to the cubicle, and the first thing he sees is A, a fellow colleague who was pumping away on the chest of a patient. Another doctor, J, is feverishly trying to put in a needle in order to give the patient fluids and medications.

There were just the two doctors there as the other doctors were all in handover.

The doctor joins the other two doctors, and the two nurses - one is trying to get a second needle into the other arm, the other one is assisting the patient's breathing with a bag and mask.

The doctor walks up to the head of the bed. His pupils dilate and his pulse quickens. The patient looked young, and fit.

The defibrillation pads are on, and it showed that the patient's heart was beating in an erratic and ineffective manner. A is doing CPR like a man possessed, massaging the patient's heart artificially so that his vital organs remain perfused.

There are shouts in the flurry of chaos for adrenaline, and for fluids to be put up, The nurse are scuttling to and from the drug cupboards, getting the medications. Another nurse is standing in the corner, whose sole purpose is to document everything that is going on.

The doctor takes over from the nurse and helps to ventilate the patient with the bag and mask.

Someone rushes to alert the other doctors who are in handover, and soon, more senior doctors pour in, and take over. Within minutes, the patient is relaxed, and has a tube put down his throat to help us ventilate him easier.

In between the shots of adrenaline and other emergency medications that are called out, we defibrillate the patient, delivering an electric jolt into his body to try and force the heart back into its correct rhythm.

"Charging!" shouts the nurse manning the defibrillator. "Stand clear!" comes the shout once the charging is done. There is a surreal moment of inactivity and silence as we all drop what we are doing and stand away from the patient.  

His body jumps of the bed as 150 Joules of electricity course through him.

We looks at the monitors. His heart is still displaying a poor rhythm.

Doctor after doctor, and nurses have taken turns to pump away at the young man's chest. We have used up a whole array of life-saving medications in our arsenal to try and will this young man back to life.

The senior consultant walks in, and she takes the ultrasound machine to the patient's heart to quickly see if there is a collection of fluid around his heart to explain a lack of response to all our efforts.

There isn't any.

The History

A walks out to the family quickly to try and get a story, and comes back to report that this man was actually here visiting his sister and cousins from F, and he had been here for a month.

He was playing soccer this evening when he had collapsed on the field, and had what looked like a seizure on the field. He was then brought to our department where he was initially conscious and talking before he suddenly lost consciousness.

We give our best efforts in trying to save this man, especially because he was so young. We continued CPR, but a host of medications and multiple shocks to his heart did nothing to bring him back.

The Most Difficult Thing In The World

It was about the hour mark when we called in the family, three male cousins who had just been playing soccer with him that evening.

Loud exclamations of prayers leave their lips as they walked into the cubicle. They struggled to understand the sight before them - their cousin, who was laughing and kicking goals all evening was now lying limp in the bed, dying - lines and tubes coming out from him everywhere.

We continue CPR for another fifteen minutes in their presence, and the senior consultant reaches for the ultrasound and checks his heart again.

She looks up. "I am sorry," she says. "We have tried everything that we could - we have given him multiple shocks and a whole heap of medications and called the specialists about him. We have done everything that we can for him, and he is not responding to our efforts."

"What do you mean?!" one of them protests, a little too loudly. "You can't stop now!!"

"People whose hearts stop beating for a long period of time will suffer brain damage, and even if we do bring him back now, we will not make a meaningful recovery."

The other two cousins look on, unsure how to react.

"Oi,_____!" they call out his name, and shake his left leg. "(Wake up, ______! Can you hear me, woi?! Stop fooling around, man! It's time to wake up! Wake up _____!)" they shout in their native tongue.

It was an act of disbelief and desperation as their minds struggled with this new reality.

"He is no longer alive," the senior consultant says gently. "I am really sorry for your loss."

""You can't give up now! You CAN'T give up now!"

The younger doctors and nurses step away from the patient, their heads bowed.

There is an uneasy silence in Resus Cubicle 1. It is almost a sacred silence.

"He's still breathing, but," they say as they watch their cousin draw in deep dying breaths.

"Yes, dying people do that sometimes," says the consultant again, gently.

The doctors and nurses trickle out of the cubicle as the consultant explains to the family what needs to happen from this point on.

The three cousins then push past the curtains, and begin the eternal journey back to the interview room full of other waiting family members to tell them the bad news.

********************************************

What Happens After

The doctor walks past the interview room back to his working area, and his steps are interrupted as a primal cry of grief escapes the doors as the news is broken.

He gulps.

He sits down, shaken. This young man's parents, who were several continents away, were about to receive a life-changing call that night.

There is a different atmosphere in the Emergency Department - a mournful, respectful air - as the department quietly grieves for one who had died so young.

The family in turn visit Resus 1 to say their final reluctant farewells to him, and the grief is most palpable in the plaintive sobs of his sister.

******************************

The doctor goes out to the front desk again. A is standing behind him.

He and A goes back several years now, and A is a top-notch doctor, fully committed to his job, and had brought many patients back from the brink of death.

Not this one, however.

The doctor turns around and sees the vacant stare in A's eyes as he considers what else we could have done to save this young man's life. He can see A's eyes glisten with moisture, and he cannot be sure if it is tears of grief, anger at the helplessness of the situation or resignation.

J is nearby, and sees A, too.

You want to go for a drink after this? asks J.

Hey, A, you want to go for a drink after this? asks J again, as A does not reply.

A snaps out of his meandering ruminations, and manages an Okay. There is little time for what-ifs right now, as A has to tie up the loose ends with all his other patients before leaving work tonight. 

The patient was twenty nine.

*************************************

I think about my thirtieth birthday, a week ago to the day. And I am at a loss as to why some of us are allowed to live on, and others don't. 

I think about medicine, and I think about the doctors, nurses, and paramedics who have to deal with death at work, and then grapple with living once more when they get home.  

Who knows when our name will be called home again. May we brave and honest enough to look at our lives, and be completely happy with how we are living it today. 

Flipping Your First Digit Part 3

3) The Dinner

If there is one thing that I pride myself in, it is this - although I may not be the smartest man in the world, I am pretty good at sensing out surprises, and reading people.

After deep thought and careful consideration, with a crack team of specialists and consultants to dissect what went wrong with hK's iNtuition 2.0, here was why I didn't see it coming:

1) My brother was away in Brisbane. There was no way that he would have made it for my party, I thought.

2) I thought I knew Karen really well, and she was a fairly private person, fond of small parties, and one-on-one catch ups.

3) There was no clue or indication from any of my friends that this was going to happen. No sms went astray, no e-mail accidentally got sent my way.

This was done by professionals.

4) Karen kept telling me that we were going away to a special place for dinner, and whenever I pressed her throughout the whole day she would stonewall and say "I'm not telling" or "Stop guessing already!". She would subtly drop hints that it was a candlelit dinner for two at a fancy restaurant. Cheeky.

5) I didn't think I deserved any of this.

Which explains this:









My name is HK, and I am here today to audition for the role of The Deer in Headlights. Take 1. 


It was a glorious surprise birthday party, and one that I completely did not expect.

It was only in that split second, at the top of the stairs in Animal Orchestra as I approached the room when I saw the darkened room did my tiny brain finally compute - Wait there's something wrong here... The lights are off because...  

By which time it was too late, of course.

My brother had come all the way from Brisbane for my 30th, and friends from different times and parts of my life showed up as well.

I was really touched. In fact, thinking about it, I still am really touched, and a little unbelieving that so many friends had taken the time to come and celebrate my 30th birthday.

Five minutes later, when they had finally resuscitated me after I had collapsed from overwhelming joy, there were hugs all around, and a good deal of catching up over the great spread that Animal Orchestra had prepared for us.

I got toasted and roasted that night - some people said some very nice, sweet things about me, and reminded me of certain random acts of kindness, but a majority took turns to bag me, telling me I was a bad doctor, a sleepover parasite, a terrible guitarist, a pantry raider (it's pantry, Mum, not panty)  and an all around grown-up child.

Thanks, you guys. :)

But the pinnacle of the presentations was one that my brother had painstakingly prepared for weeks in Brisbane, which contained some very revealing childhood pictures courtesy of my Mum and sis.

Now, thanks to them, all my friends have seen the photos of baby hK's tiny kukucheau [err... the Cantonese equivalent of s*h*o*g or p*e*n*i*s (oops, I have to fire my censorship editor)].

Unfortunately, I can't show it to you here on the blog because it's a Powerpoint presentation.

In fact I don't think I want to show it to you here on the blog even if I could, in case your kids are reading this (and laughing at my small kuk... Never mind.)

But even that couldn't stop me from having a good time, to be really thankful for friends who cared, and who showered me with gifts.

Me birthday bounty... arr!(talk like a pirate fail)


Then came the cake - oh the pretty pretty cupcakes! They had thought of everything!

The cupcakes actually say "HUNK" but they didn't have enough space. Haha!


The cupcakes were an elegant masterstroke by Karen - they had the letters 'HK' and '30' on them, and were almost too pretty to eat. But eat them we did, and the sugar high led to a glut of photos being taken as the night dwindled to a close.

I was still buzzing as I left Animal Orchestra that night. Karen laughed as she recounted the amount of lying and sneaking around she had to do in order to get my friend's contacts, and to plan the party. I laughed and I chided her mockingly, but I couldn't have loved her any more than I did right then.

She breathed a sigh of relief that it was finally over, as well, because the preparations had taken its toll on everyone involved in the planning, including my brother, who wanted to make sure that the party was perfect.

Thank you all, for taking the time to share today with me; for a love so richly undeserved, and for friendships and relationships that bring me so much joy just thinking about it.

For someone who thrives on words, none will do justice to how happy you have made me feel as I turned the decade.

And if I haven't said it enough already, I love you all. Truly, I do.