The Fear Of Being (Seen) Alone.

I am going to duck off soon to watch my twentieth movie in a cinema this year. Alone.

It wasn't always like this.

I used to have friends.

No, what I mean is, I used to never be able to do anything in public by myself. I would never be comfortable going to watch a movie alone and I would never be caught dead eating in a restaurant by myself.

If friends wouldn't join me, I would rather wait for another time to watch a movie. If I have no one to eat with, I take away to eat in the quiet of my home, even if it means having to wash up later.

I think upon reflection I was probably quite insecure when I was younger. I didn't want to be seen alone because I was afraid of what strangers would think of me. 'Oh look, what a loser. Eating by himself in a restaurant. No friends, eh?' or 'Gee, lone guy by himself in a cinema. Freak alert.' Why their opinions should even ever matter, I see the errors of my youthful thinking now.

The older I grow the more I realise this truth - strangers really don't give a damn. They may see you, maybe make a five second opinion which does not matter about you, and ultimately forget about you. Everyone is ultimately caught up in themselves.

I think the older we get, the less we care about other people's opinions of us. We stand to be our own judges, secure in our own identities and choose whose opinions we listen to. I think being in a safe and secure relationship has served to underline my confidence as well.

It was not always easy, though. This ability to be alone in public requires a brave first step. Mine was taken when I had free tickets to Something's Gotta Give about five or six years ago, which were about to expire, and my Asian practicalities overwhelmed my self-imposed embarrassment of going to the movies alone. It was a Sunday evening, the cinema was almost empty apart from a few couples, and so I watched a chick flick. All on my own. It was a little awkward but I survived.

The boldness slowly grew, and now I comfortably watch movies alone. I join the ranks of the retirees who fill the Nova cinema whenever I have Mondays off, and I have laughed out loud alone at The Diary of a Wimpy Kid while the groups of schoolkids around me try and remember my face in case they need to give a descriptive sketch to the police later.

I am unafraid to be seen alone enjoying my brunch in a Melbourne cafe on a Saturday morning. I must admit that like most people who are at restaurants by themselves, I still feel the need to reach for my phone and look busy, and I hope to overcome that one day.

Learning to love and accept your own company are part of the beautiful perks of growing older.

Hug Your Emergency Doctor.

We had a really interesting day at clinical teaching on Thursday - we had a MOCA session, or a Management of Clinical Aggression session which I thought was invaluable. We were taught how to deal with patients who were aggressive and to recognise and defuse potentially dangerous situations that we may come across in our day-to-day work.

The Emergency Department can sometimes be a very dangerous place. We are not your typical desk job, surrounded by sterile cubicles, flickering computers and personalised mugs, exchanging pleasantries with work mates to find out how their weekend was (okay, we do have that too).

We are, instead, an organised chaos of needles, cannulas, drain tubes, blood, scalpels, stitches, sputum, faeces and urine, medications coming out of glass bottles and enough paperwork to give you potentially fatal paper-cuts.

Add to that mix the agitated drug and alcohol affected patient, the psychotic patient who is terrified and screaming, the scared demented elderly patients who dig their nails into you, some downright abrasive and almost criminal personalities, families or patients who have waited for hours to be seen - their patience wearing thin from the rate things are happening - and you have a rough sketch of what it looks like in our office space.

We somehow manage to work in this environment and keep it civilised most days, but you can see how things can quickly escalate in this pressure-cooker environment, and how important communication and risk management becomes. We do everything we can to ensure the patient's well-being and make sure that the workplace is safe once more.

Unfortunately medical school does not prepare you for this.  It does not tell you how to deal with a patient who is yelling at you or to stand two arms' length away from an aggressive patient who might just grab your neck and hold you up against the wall. It does not teach you to talk in an even tone, or to assert yourself by repeating your requests calmly.

Medical school does not tell you that a simple act like offering a patient food and drink and apologising for the wait can quickly defuse a lot of the pent-up frustration in the emergency department. It does not teach you how to manage five patients at the same time, ensuring that patient and family members are updated on their progress. There are no training sessions on how not to take racial slurs personally, or how to keep calm in the face of ongoing verbal abuse.

Maybe medical school doesn't want to talk about it, in case you changed your mind.

All we have at the start of our careers is our instinct, and our personalities in handling these tricky situations. Which is why I think we needed sessions like Thursday's to be taught in our medical schools, or at least to our fledgling interns and residents, who like myself, quickly lose any illusions that we deal with perfect people who will always be grateful for all the help and good that we thought we were doing as doctors (and nurses, and paramedics).

****************************** (not shuriken stars)

One of the interesting things we did during the session was a practical class on how to break away from arm grabs, choke-holds, hair pulls and bites. We laughed and had a bit of fun as we practised with each other on some basic self-defense moves and how to safely restrain a patient who is aggressive and a threat to themselves and others.

Don't get me wrong - we do not enjoy these situations. No one goes to work and hopes for a day of being yelled at or physically handled or threatened. I am not saying it happens all the time. It does happen, and we need to be trained to deal with it in a safe manner.

****************************** (not shuriken stars)

Although the MOCA session was really useful, I know that sometimes simulation is just that - simulation. Who knows whether you will have the clarity to remember what you were taught in training when faced with a real-life dangerous situation. Some knowledge and a little training, however, is better than having no idea at all about what to do in scenarios like this.

I remember a story from a friend of mine who was a classmate during my university years in Malaysia. She recounted how the night before, as she was getting into the lift, a guy nervously followed her in.

As she pressed her floor, he anxiously pressed the number to the second floor, his fingers trembling. That was when he turned around and flashed her. All her years of training of taekwondo up to the level of a black belt, and all she could do was scream, and scream, and scream. He ran out when the doors opened, leaving her alone in the lift, pressing the close button repeatedly. She had to shower several times that night as she recalled how she felt 'dirty' from that harrowing encounter.

I remember that story, and all I can think about is how simulation is different from reality, and we can only hope for the good grace of God to protect us and to give us clarity of what to do if we are ever caught up in these terrible situations.

So do spare a thought for us Emergency doctors next time. Yes, we chose our professions because we do enjoy (dare I say, love) it, but man, it can be pretty hard sometimes.

So give us a hug the next time you see us, but not too hard, alright, just in case our training kicks into action and you find yourself on the floor, wondering how you ended up there.

********************* (actually shuriken stars, haha!)

Of Weddings and Wondering.

I have just returned from a short trip back to Malaysia last weekend, and it was wonderful to be back in the mother land, if only for a few days. Just a quick thank you and I-love-yous to my sister and all my friends who took time off work just to catch up and hang out with this prodigal son.

In that short period of time that I returned, I managed to attend two weddings on two consecutive nights, one a boisterous Indian wedding on a Saturday night and the other a classy Chinese affair on a Sunday night.

Having prepared for my own wedding myself last year, I know how stressful organising wedding dinners can be. Amidst all the worries about the catering, and the decorations, and the venue hire - and the other million things that you wished you hired a wedding planner for - there are subtler, even more sinister things to consider - the wedding seating arrangement.

This auntie doesn't get along with that uncle, so they shouldn't be seated together. This friend slept with the other guy's girlfriend a long time ago - separate tables. This church member has asked not to be seated next to this other church member due to an incident a long time ago which neither has forgiven the other for yet.

All this rubbish and long standing ill-feeling start to surface during the seating planning for weddings. We tread carefully because we want everyone to have a good time and fond memories of what is meant to be the happiest day of our life.

Which I think is a load of bullshit, excuse the language. Why can't we all be adults and lay down our stupid guns, and for one day make peace and rise above our petty selves, and celebrate the day for what it is - the joyful union of two loving individuals who are our friends, and family.

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

Weddings are also interesting milestones in our lives. I say this not only because weddings are important events in themselves, but also because they are a chance to take stock of our lives. Drawing up the wedding invitation list can be quite a confronting and anxiety-inducing experience as you soon come to the realisation that you are no longer the popular person that you once thought yourself to be.

As we accelerate through this life, our circle of friends grow tighter. We no longer have the community of a school to draw a hundred friends from, we have moved on beyond the cliques of college years, and we no longer belong to a large Scout troop or a soccer team.

We keep a professional distance at work and a personal distance at church as we become more and more selective of which friends we truly keep through the years as our time becomes scarcer with the realities of work, and distance, especially for those who have moved overseas.  

We sometimes struggle to think how many friends we truly have in the end as invitation after invitation seemingly gets rejected as we prepare for the wedding. Where were all these bravado promises of the youth that we would be friends forever, we would take a bullet for the other person, when now we can't even take time off work to be there during the most important day of their lives?

The more idealistic among us will begin to question friendships that were supposedly lifelong when a friend tells us that they are not able to make it to our wedding. The more realistic and easygoing among us will know that our friendship has evolved over distance and time, and that, in the end, it is okay, c'est la vie, our friendship will survive the blips of forgotten birthdays and broken childhood promises and unattended weddings.

Honeymoon Fight.

One of the things that we picked up, regrettably only halfway through our honeymoon here, is snorkeling. We had an hour lesson with a big Italian man who calls himself Victor, one of the few diving instructors who had given up his life a world away to come and live and work in paradise.

Victor showed us how to breathe through the snorkel with our mouths only, he showed us what to do when the snorkel fills up with water, and he tried to show us how to descend to about two metres with the snorkel to see what was going on in the sea floor beneath. By the end of it, Karen was maneuvering the waters like a mermaid ('You, excellent,' the Italian instructor beams) while I had all the grace of a dugong, a manatee, a sea-cow. ('You, good,' he condescends.)

An actual picture of me snorkeling

Since then, we have traded our 6 am early morning dips with 6 am early morning snorkeling. We took all of the first morning to locate all the coral reefs near our villa. We picked out one or two 'one-stop-shops' - coral reef teeming with all kinds of aquatic life, which gave you bang for your snorkeling buck.

It was an amazing experience, swimming with the fishes - we spotted schools of the colourless majorra, saw a few angel and butterfly fish, and swum past a few bored-looking aptly-named surgeonfish.  The zebra-striped bannerfish was a mainstay of the coral reefs, and the eerily luminescent adorned wrasse was an unforgettable sight, while we watched unicornfish (yup, horn on their heads) cautiously from a distance.

There were shoals of teardrop-like tiny ikan bilis (anchovy) sized fishes, and we marveled at a goatfish grazing furiously along the ocean floor. It was almost like having your own personal aquarium.

The adorned wrasse - or
the rainbow parrotfish

What we were deadly afraid of, however, were damaging the fragile corals that were the habitat of these creatures beneath. We could see the evidence of the clumsiness of previous tourists before us - there were large areas of coral reef graveyards surrounding the remaining reefs. One of the most frightening experiences was swimming - for what seemed like a lifetime - dangerously close above these coral forests as we tried to get to the other side, our bodies only about an elbow's length away from a very painful death (by a thousand scratches), both for us and the corals.

My other unspoken fear, however, was being touched by one of these scaly, slimy fishes, rubbing against my soft underbelly or flipping its fins softly against my cheek. *shudder*

To which my very sensible wife said - 'Hey, they don't even hit each other, lah! What makes you think they're going to hit you!' Which was a true fact - these fishes were at home in the ocean, and instinctively would leave this clumsy sea-cow very much alone.

What started getting to me, however, was the fact that Karen was getting to see more cool stuff than I was.

Lionfish

'Guess what I saw? A lionfish!'

or

'Eew, I saw a really big unicornfish! It was scary!' while her hands held out the size of the massive fish,

or

'Oh, man, I saw an eel just now! It was darting through the corals like a snake!'

Now, I must admit this. People might view me as an easygoing, good-natured, laidback kind of guy, but this, this, I couldn't let go of. How come she got to see all the cool stuff and I didn't? I was determined to see something extraordinary to report to her, and then I, Heng Khuen Cheok, would have won this silly little snorkeling game (that only existed in my head).

And so I stood up on my flippers, my snorkeled face looking for a distant coral reef, and there it was - a whole forest about ten metres to my right. I descended on the waters and swum towards the reef, kicking vigorously to chance upon something marvelous to report back to her.

The reef didn't offer up very much new, the ubiquitous bannerfish, the redtailed butterflyfish, the odd floor-dwelling grouper. But wait a minute, what do I see here? A few sixstripe soapfish which we have yet to see before!

Aha! Victory! I stood up, my flippers on the soft ocean sand, as I looked around for Karen to tell her about my discovery.

What? She was just swimming near me - when did she even get here?

She stands up, and I spit out the mouthpiece of my snorkel - 'Hey hon, guess what I just sa-'

'Honey, I saw a shark! It was swimming nearby! It was this big!'

Ah, damn it! She wins again, as I sit to the ocean floor in defeat, a very sulky snorkeler indeed.

Ah well, maybe I can win at eating fishes!

Farewell, Maldives.

It is our last night here in Maldives, and a squall is developing outside our villa hut. The rain lashes against our glass door and the wind whistles as she whips away everything in our sight. One of Karen's singlets that was drying on our balcony has already fallen victim to the winds.

It is a stark reminder that out here on our idyllic holiday, we are still subject to the wildness of God and nature - it is monsoon season here after all. The tempest came very suddenly, with little warning this evening, and it lasted for a good hour before completely venting its fury. We have been blessed with really good weather otherwise on this honeymoon.

It has been an amazing honeymoon. A time for restfulness, playfulness, silliness and exploration. Our holidays over the years often mean trips back to Malaysia and Singapore to gorge on food and catch up with friends, which we love to do, but being alone together on a holiday this time, away from the world has made for a rejuvenating trip, both individually and as a couple.

We have swum, kayaked, snorkeled with the fishes to our hearts content. We've had time to read, to reflect, to listen and to grow as a couple. We've also had time to develop a tan that teeters on the edge of a sunburn.

It's coming to an end, this honeymoon part of our trip. Soon we will trade the beach for the bustle, as we travel from the turquoise oceans of the Maldives to the sea of people and activity that is Hong Kong.

We are grateful, and we are ready.

The Maldivian Night Sky.

Spot the clouds!

I remember when I was a boy of about twelve and my brother was about fourteen, we took a family trip up to Penang, my father's hometown. We stayed in The Palm Beach Hotel, a 3-star hotel on Penang Island, a short drive away from the tourist traps and the beach.

I remember we were playing billiards till we got bored one night in the hotel, and my brother and I decided that we would walk on the beach. 

It was an amazing walk on the beach that night - the night was cloudless and the moon was in its full glory. The beach was bathed in this eerie pale blue light, and we spoke in hushed whispers as if we were on hallowed ground. The vast swallowing darkness of the ocean lay just ten metres to our left as the shells crunched beneath our slippered feet. It was a moment of mystery, and magic - and looking to my brother, I thought to myself - 'Dammit, why did I have to share this moment with you?!'

I was twelve, and already I wanted a girl to share these moments with. 

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

I write this because I know that my mind is feeble, and I will surely forget. I will return to Melbourne and to work, and my mind will imagine it differently as it gets cluttered with other noises. 

I was walking back to my room to pick up something one night here in the Maldives, and above me the hazy half moon cast its eerie glow on the world beneath it. You could make out the outlines of the low-lying clouds beneath, slow-moving gentle giants moving halfway between the waters and the stars. 

My slippers slap the wooden walkway leading to our villa, and the ocean echoes underneath. There is a gentle warm breeze caressing my skin, and it causes the coconut trees in the distance to slow sway and the crystal clear waters beneath me to dance in the moonlight. 

I have heard the term 'haunted by its beauty' before. I now understand it. 

Made in Maldives.

Contrary to popular belief, we did not come here on a BMM (baby-making mission). The realities of our three weddings in Melbourne, Malaysia and Singapore back in Dec/Jan earlier this year meant that we returned to Melbourne exhausted and a little 'peopled-out'. We loved our weddings and being able to catch up meaningfully with great friends and families, but we also craved to be alone by the end of it.

Back to work, and back to reality, there have been times in the relationship where it's always been go-go-go and there hasn't been time to sit quietly and be a couple.

Nine months on, we rise and we fall like ordinary couples amongst the waves of life. We talk,we laugh, we expect, we cry, we unconsciously bring work home, we argue, we apologise, we make up, we promise it will be better tomorrow. If we are not careful, we sometimes forget what it meant to be husband and wife.

We finally understood the need for a honeymoon.

And so here we are, amongst the calming turquoise blue of the Indian Ocean, the gentle sound of lapping waves at our doorstep beating out the rhythm of a line of idle days, the white powdery sand giving way to the weight of our footprints. The sun is turned to just the right temperature, its rays dance in the clear waters beneath us.

We are children once more - 6 am dips in the ocean, pointing excitedly at the varieties of fishes swimming underneath our villa, reading aloud interesting paragraphs of the book we've brought, secretly making fun of all the other lovey-dovey couples here with their matching clothes.

We are here learning to be best friends again.


(And then we can talk about making babies. Tee hee!)

The Uncle.

It is a Tuesday night in a famous parmagiana joint in Melbourne. Two Masterchef contestants who are trying their best to remain unobtrusive are sitting over the bar counter eating their parmas, and they add a touch of celebrity to an otherwise sparse and subdued dinnertime crowd at the pub-restaurant.

There are three Indian men sitting near us.

There is a quiet white-haired gentleman, a young man in his early twenties to his right who is his son, and then there is the uncle. The uncle is travelling from interstate on a business trip. The dinner location was his nephew's idea.

The uncle sits there in his business suit, his shirt collar still crisp, peeking out from underneath his grey suit. His back is ramrod straight, he leans forward as he speaks, and his index finger is always making a point.

"You know," he says to his nephew "I know that your amma has asked to see if I can get you a job, just to start somewhere, you know? I am looking, but you know, I want to get you a good job, not just some kind of a shit job."

The nephew smiles a little, upset that he is in a position of need. "That's okay, uncle, I am applying to a few other jobs..."

The uncle dismisses his comments with a wave of his hand. "Have you thought about Dubai? You know, you can make lots of money in Dubai, even if you just start out."

The nephew smiles again, and gives a little shake of his head. His life is here in Melbourne - his family, his footy team, this new girl he's seeing.

The conversation carries on, the uncle continuing to dictate their conversations like a business meeting. They talk about the footy, he looks at the picture of their dogs, they talk about how his brother will be travelling to Europe. His voice is firm and cold - he does not smile even once.

"Wow!" the nephew shakes his head, trying to relieve the high tension of a relaxing family dinner, "I can't believe I finished all that meat!"

"Yeah, it's good. You know, young man, Dubaiii.... if you work there, you can own your own house in four years."

There is more awkward silence. They finish their meal.

"Eh, dessert." says the uncle, staring unblinking at the nephew. It is not an offer. It is a challenge.

The nephew shrinks. He raises his hand with a smile, not meeting his gaze. "No thanks, uncle. I just... can't. This is too much."

The uncle raises one eyebrow and looks down, he lets out a disappointed sigh at this sign of weakness.

He brings out his wallet. It is as thick as a small book, filled with credit cards and receipts from his travel and business cards. His personal assistant must not be able to organise this part of him.

The bill comes and he is quick to snatch it away from the half-hearted attempts by his brother to pay for the meal. It is a dance they are all too familiar with.

"Hey, it's nothing," - he lifts his hand just enough to reveal the cost of their dinner for three to his brother.

He walks to the bar to pay and his brother and nephew are left at the table. They are both quiet, the brother's fingers drum along to the music in the pub. The nephew is deep is thought, wondering what success and happiness looks like, and whether they are the same thing.

"Coffee?."

Surrendered, they stand up, thank uncle for dinner and walk out into the cold Melbourne night.

The Need To Be Alone.

I have just returned from a friend's birthday party after a long day at work. Some good friends have come over to our place to revel in the Saturday night.

I sneak away upstairs and click onto Facebook and just scroll through status update after status update and carry out a conversation with another friend via Facebook chat.

It might seem almost anti-social for me to leave my friends like that on a Saturday night, but they are understanding and do not ask after me.

Later, while in the shower and washing off what was today I think to myself, 'What is wrong with me? Am I really anti-social?' - or is there just something innate that makes us want to be alone sometimes.

I look at my work and obviously it is a very people intensive one. I work with wonderful staff and nurses and the care of our patients is achieved through phone calls and beeping pagers and written notes. The humanity of our work means we will negotiate our way daily past unreasonable expectations and sometimes difficult people - staff, patients and their family members alike.

After work, I visit Karen at her workplace and spend more time with our friends, which usually spills over into dinner time. Home finally, and we try and protect the time that we have together, and yet, as much as I love my wife, I sometimes keep her at arms' length and tell her that I need to be alone. She doesn't always comprehend this need, and I can't explain it away either.

And so I escape. Facebook seems like an odd choice, given that it is social media, but sometimes it is a nice quiet one-way window to all your friend's world, to see what is going on in everybody else's life, and to wish that you too were on that vacation on that sunset-kissed beach or in Paris.

We all 'veg out' in different ways - we curl up in bed with a good book, we let our mouths hang open as we watch a mind-numbing reality series on television, we scan through hours and hours of what can only be described as glorious rubbish on Youtube. 

My friends who understand this phenomenon call it the 'retreating into the man-cave' which I found quite amusing. The term itself suggests that it is a primitive instinct - that our ancestors once too, needed to be alone, away from the mammoths and other cave-dwelling neighbours. The gender attached to the cave begs the question - what do women do?

I believe that it is in this down time, when our brains are in screensaver mode, that we do our best thinking. Our subconscious is given a chance to relax and reorganise our thoughts and secretly solve our problems in the background while we perform seemingly unproductive tasks.

Actual photograph of me on Facebook. 

According to a good friend, the best definition of whether you are an introvert or extrovert is how you recharge - introverts recharge in the solitude of their own company while extroverts recharge around other people. I have always scored down the middle in all the personality tests - both the jester and the philosopher.

So if you are with me one day and I have quietly sneaked away from you, I hope you don't find me rude. I am just recharging, and perhaps just like my forefathers before me - reclaiming a little of who I am.

Sher Genius.

I was walking home after a jog along the M river, when suddenly I hear the bright clang of metallic plates behind me, letting me know that a cyclist was crossing the bridge and fast approaching from behind.

He whizzed past me and shortly after, my ears pricked to the clang of metal again. This time the sound was a lot more dull.

Using my Sherlock(tm)-ian powers of deduction, I surmised that the approaching cyclist was in his sixties, heavyset and a little out of shape, has a wife who doesn't love him anymore, is left-handed, and has two pet dog....

..... and that's when I jumped out of the way of the approaching park-maintenance car.

Genius, Sherlock. Seriously, if I were any stupider, I would be a butternut pumpkin (which are well documented to be the least intelligent of the pumpkin species). 

Let's not talk about my amazing powers of deduction, even my survival instincts are made of fail. 

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

We have been making movie nights out of watching Sherlock, the BBC movie-length miniseries  reinterpretation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic detective.

The casting is perfect, with Benedict Cumberbatch making a masterful Sherlock, with the unassuming Martin Freeman playing the competent and endearing yet relatively duller John Watson. The cinematography is as good as anything to have come out of Britain in recent years, jumping between MTV-paced pursuits and claustrophobic suspense scenes. 

The script has been clever to the point of being breathtaking at times, and all Sherlock Holmes fans will delight in the homage paid to the original stories. 221B Baker Street has now been repackaged and reintroduced to a whole new generation of fans.

I remember reading any Sherlock stories I could come across as a child, and now I am re-reading them again on my iPhone. The words are still fresh and the images they conjure in the imagination are as eerie and  entertaining as it must have been to his readers almost 150 years ago.

Apparently the inspiration for Sherlock came from two doctors - Dr Joseph Bell, who could infer the greatest conclusions about his patients from the slightest detail, and Sir Henry Littlejohn who was a Forensic Medicine lecturer and Police Surgeon.

Which goes to show how variable the powers of observation in doctors are - I stand as evidence to the other end of the spectrum. :)

Travelling Home.

Taking the plane home and the captain reminds us firmly to remain belted to our seats.

The stewards patrol the aisles militantly, politely barking at us to prop up our trays, straighten our seats and pull up our window shades, failure of which will cause the plane to spiral madly out of control, leaving all of us screaming and ruing the twenty degrees of economic chair tilt that we indulged in, almost the certain cause of our plummeting death.

It is as I release the window shades that the sun streams in to the plane cabin and squeezes my eyes close.

I open it again, and we are hovering just slightly above the clouds. Five years ago, I would have marveled at this incredible sight, but now experience has dulled the child-like fascination with flying.

How did I get here? How did my eyes and brain get used to such a sight as flying as not to be amazed by it any more?

When I was younger, air travel used to be a novelty for the family. Yes, we would drive interstate on our family vacations and there were times I sat in the carriage of the train in my travels to Singapore, but I was almost twenty-one when I took my first ever flight. We traveled as a family to Melbourne to watch my brother graduate.

Here I am, thousands of miles above the earth, having a view once only belonging to birds, a view that Icarus would have given his left wing to witness, defying gravity and all I can think of is 'meh'.

It is in this moment that I choose once more to let the little boy out again, a small smile etched on my face as we pierced through the cotton fields in the sky, almost feeling the brush of vanilla fairy floss on my face as we plunged through the puffy blankets, our vision momentarily blinded before the earth burst before us below, all different shades of green and brown and orange.

The natural chaos of the forests had been manicured by human industry into palm oil plantations and residential houses. Far-running rivers and roads dissect the land into artificial territories, and below us a million Malaysian stories are unfolding, a million rituals are kept and all these rush at me at once and tell me that I am home.


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


'Rows and flows, of angel hair,
And ice cream castles in the air, 
And feathered canyons everywhere. 
I've looked at clouds that way.
But now, they only block the sun, 
They rain and they snow on everyone,
So many things I could have done,
But clouds got in my way.'

Joni Mitchell, 'Both Sides Now'. 

The One That Got Away.

It was my first year in Melbourne and the university. It was like being back in your first day of primary school. Except that we came into the start of Semester 5, which meant that everybody knew everybody else, and we were intruding into a very large clique. The new kids on campus.

You were either crying secretly (young adults are not allowed to cry openly), wishing that you were back in the comforts of your home some 6,300 kilometres away, or you were wide-eyed and overly friendly, trying to win the trust of the suspicious natives. Most of them were so cemented in their respective circle of friends that we built our own clique, at least among five or six of us who had come over.

We started making friends cautiously among the more welcoming ones in our batch, and inevitably it was the Asian group who started to open up their circles to welcome us in. (Like attracts like, I guess. I can't explain why I only have a handful of non-Asian friends here in Australia).

The boys who had come over with me were soon becoming fast friends and we spent a lot of time together over meals and holidays. We talked about everything under the sun, and as always, the topic would always fall back to the one subject that freshly post-adolescent boys talk about - girls.

I had barely noticed any of the girls in our batch (no, not because I was looking at the boys, idiot. *flashes wedding ring*) because I suspect I was being overwhelmed by everything else in Australia - living away from home, trying to find accommodation, figuring out how to best budget my money, trying to keep my head above the water with my studies and learning to make new friends. Romantic love is always a luxury, something to be pondered upon and nursed only when you have kicked out of survival mode.

My friend, on the other hand, whose eyes were always roving around everywhere except the blackboard during lectures, started pointing out some of the more attractive girls in our batch. He mentioned the name of a girl who I knew about and shared a class with, but had not thought very much of, until, well, he said she was quite pretty.

Here's the first lesson - sometimes something, be it an object or a person, can pass unnoticed and does not carry any special value until someone else you trust has said Hey, look here - this is valuable. That's the premise of Facebook, I guess (hopefully that's how you got here).

I started paying attention to her a bit more in class, and, against my better judgement, struck up conversation with her. She seemed friendly enough, and quite readily chatted back. Our conversations grew longer and easier, and her eyes seemed to light up whenever she laughed.

Or that's how I saw it through my rose-tinted glasses. (Rose-tinted glasses - distorting reality one delusion at a time. Get yours now!)

I waited until right after my exams before I made my move. We were migrating as a student herd away from the examination hall, all of us chatty and elated that the exams were finally over with the mid-year holidays to look forward to, when I popped the question - 'Urm, hey, do you want to go out for coffee some time?'

Her girlfriends around her did the 'Oooh...' thing that adolescent girls do when a guy asks that question, and she was caught off-guard, but managed to regain her composure and stammered out a cheery 'Urm, yeah, sure! Here's my number!'

I smiled to myself, secretly fist-pumping within (self-five!), and we parted ways, with me walking with a particular spring in my step.

But...

There's always a but. I played it cool (looking calm on the outside with all the eagerness of an puppy with ADHD on the inside), letting a few days slip by during the first day of holidays before I finally made that call to her.

It was an awkward first conversation over the phone, filled with enough small talk to drown a Smurf before I ended the conversation with the primary intention of the call - So, when's a good time for us to catch up over coffee?

Silence.

Here's some excuses I've prepared earlier:

'... shopping with my sister on Chapel street for her wedding dress...'
'... then lunch with friends tomorrow...'
'... catching up with some other friends on Thursday...'
'... rearranging my wardrobe on Saturday. Been putting that off for awhile...'

I know when I am getting blown off. We ended the conversation pretty quickly after that, and so I put down the phone with a sigh.

Something moved in me that day, though. Maybe it was the fact that I was now in a new country. It's time to turn over a new leaf, to be brave, nothing to fear but fear itself and all that, and I decided to try something that I had never tried before in pursuit of a girl - persistence.

The very next day I call her again and say, Hey look, I would really love to meet up. Why don't you tell me when's a good time.

She panicked this time, pulled out her Book of Excuses again, and flipped right to the page marked 'In Case of Emergency, say this...'

'Yeah, I'm not sure but I definitely won't be able to do this afternoon, because I'm going out to lunch with my boyfriend, right, and then we are going to...'

She kept talking nervously after that but it was all just in one ear and out the next.

Boyfriend. Right.

All my brittle newfound determination and dogged Salesmen-of-the-year-like persistence suddenly just gave way beneath me.

What happened to me for the next six months I can't explain to you. The pain that I felt from that girl's rejection, a girl who I knew barely anything about and who, if I really thought about it, meant nothing to me, was almost physical in nature. Her unattainability had suddenly made her even more desirable and me more miserable.

It is never in my nature to ever come between a couple, and so I gave her up there and then, standing on the sidelines instead, eating tubs of ice-cream and singing myself to sleep with self-pitying renditions of All By Myself on my pillow wet with tears.

Okay, so it wasn't that dramatic but it hurt. A lot. Significantly out of proportion to the situation. The old Self-Esteem took a downright beating. But Time is kind, and a great physician of all hurts, and in about six months I was finally able to let go and move on.

Sounds like a long time for someone I barely knew. Here's the second lesson - love is a crazy, inexplicable thing. The matters of the heart are beyond the laws of arithmetics and reasoning. But if you're really, really lucky, and you wish really, really hard, one day you will meet someone who will give you the ability to look back at life - and love - and laugh.

With relief.    

Other People's Stories: (Nearly) Taken in Thailand

My friends, a wonderful married couple now, recount a time when she was almost kidnapped in Thailand, a country they still visit almost yearly.

There were six of us, right, and we were trying to get a cab to take us to our next destination. There were two cabs there, and so the three guys stood there negotiating with one of the taxi drivers while the girls were sitting in the other cab. 

There were two girls at the back while I sat in front, with the door open, one leg out of the car. That's when our cab suddenly took off, right, and I had to reach for the car door to close it! I yelled at the taxi driver to Stop!! Stop!! but he just kept speeding away. 

Yeah, we were like 'What the _?' when we saw the other cab suddenly take off, right? 'Cause we never told that guy where we were going.

Man, I tell you, that look on B_'s face was one I will never forget. She turned towards me, her eyes wide open and dilated with fear and she was banging both arms against the window, yelling out to me.

We hopped into our cab, and told him to follow the other cab. We tried to catch up with the other cab, but he was driving too quickly, and he sped through the maze of back-alleys and small lanes until we lost him.

We were yelling at our taxi driver to call his friend in the other cab. He rang the friend's mobile but the friend would not answer. 

All that ran through my head was like, Oh man, what am I going to tell her parents, man. 

All three of us girls were shocked, silent with fear and stunned to the point of being unable to react. 
Yeah, you know what saved us? 

Thailand traffic.

We were caught up in a jam on a main road, and saw our chance to escape. We bolted out of the cab, and threw some baht onto the seats and just ran and ran, through like, eight lanes of traffic. 

We finally found a landmark and called the boys to come and get us. 

Thank God, man. I shudder to think what the guy's intentions were for us. 

Yeah, so, travel tip for Thailand. Make sure the guy is always the first to get into the cab, and the last to leave. I heard about a guy who was loading their shopping into the taxi's trunk when the cab took off with his wife in the backseat and she was never seen again.

These things are rare lah you know, but...

His voice trails off, and his eyes peer into an alternate universe for a moment where the girls did not escape, and he shudders a little and shakes his head back into a reality where she is across the table from him, smiling.

Rainbows, Unicorns and Light Sabres.

So a friend was sitting down with some girls at dinner the other day, and one of them asks, 'So, what's a good pickup line for a guy?'

That immediately put my friend deep into thought, and after much consideration he said,

'Tell him you love Star Wars.'

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

We were having a discussion yesterday, this friend and I, when the topic came onto girls we used to like. We chanced upon an attribute that these girls used to share - guyishness.

Now don't get me wrong. I am a man who loves it when girls celebrate their femininity - the touches of make-up, agonising over their clothes, accessorising, melting over animals or pretty things.

What exactly is guyishness?

When I look back at my previous relationships and women I have been infatuated with, one theme seems to come out - they thought like boys. They wouldn't agonise if they didn't hear from you for a day, they weren't afraid to get themselves dirty and sweaty chasing the soccer ball around the field or rock-climbing, they weren't afraid to laugh out loud at irreverent jokes. A girl who insults me back in good humour when I throw one jokingly at her has won my heart.


Hell Hath No Fury 

It breaks my heart sometimes when I hear stories from my girl friends about how life was like back in their schools, especially if it was an all-girls' school. In a boys' school, when guys disagree, they tend to confront, whether in shouting matches or coming to blows, and then it is over. In a girls' school, vengeance and jealousy is a slow burning process, spanning days to years, filled with scheming, passive-aggressive bullying, mind games and alliances designed to alienate, embarrass and destroy.

I see some wonderful women who carry these scars into adulthood and it makes me want to go back into their past and throw their tormentors into shark-infested waters.

I don't understand what it is that makes this mean-spiritedness and cattiness acceptable behaviour. When Taylor Swift deals with this issue in her song 'Mean', my strongest impression is that she probably wasn't singing about boys.

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


Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so decent, such regular chaps;
Ready to help you through any mishaps;
Ready to buck you up whenever you're glum.
Why can't a woman be a chum?
                                                       -Professor Henry Higgins, My Fair Lady (1964)

This rant from the old musical My Fair Lady suggests that this observation, although misdirected with sexist overtones, is not a new one. Perhaps the cry does come from somewhere deeper.

So what makes them so attractive? Perhaps it is the observation that women who think like guys are easier to get along with and are quick to forgive. In a selfish way, they will probably share a few similar interests as well, which means a better chance of time spent together. Ask any guy whether they would like a girlfriend who is a gamer and see how many of them will tell you no.

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

At the risk of losing her as just another 'one of the guys', we have to remember that at the core of every woman is tenderness. She still wants to be won over, loved and treated right, but she doesn't need you to be her knight in shining armour cantering in valiantly to save her from All of Life's Problems.

Because she's got this, thank you very much. And it may be you that needs the saving.

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


I read somewhere once that women feel more in love with their partners when they see them help out with the housework or with the kids. (From the annals of the scientifically-researched and clinically-tested Woman's Day magazine) I must admit I felt a similar surge of love the other day when Karen single-handedly assembled some furniture for the home (while I worked hard on the Playstation 3...

...no, of course not! What kind of a husband do you take me for?!)

(I was actually sleeping.)

I wonder if there are more men like me out there in this day and age who feel the same way about wanting women who are not girly girls. Perhaps in a deeper subconscious level, it may be a matter of natural selection.

I know the issue of sexuality and gender roles is such a gray one, but take it from me how you will. I am, after all, not exactly the manliest man - cars fail to excite me, I love my computer games, sports are to be watched and talked about, but not played in real life. I sing love songs, cry at movies and write blogs. How I ever got married is beyond me.

Which brings us to the next question. What kind of guys do girls fall for? 

Thoughts On Turning Thirty-Two.

Today I turn thirty-two.

I look at my life and I see how richly blessed I am - a loving wife and best friend, surrounded by family and friends who I love and who love me, and I am happy at work.

It is strange then, that today, I think about dying.

Don't get me wrong. I am not contemplating suicide, or have received bad news and I'm certainly not depressed.

I have seen three deaths in the past three weeks in my ED. Two of them were young and unexpectedly sudden, and no amount of miracle of modern medicine could bring them back.

A lot of us fear death. We try and fight it off with health supplements and exercising regularly. Others build monuments unto themselves - we get a wing of a hospital building named after us, we build statues or get our names written in history books, we write blogs that will last forever in cyberspace. (erhem)

We try and grasp at immortality, hoping that one day someone will remember us, whisper our name, and knew that we somehow mattered. But buildings are torn down, statues will crumble, and blogs can easily be deleted.

All my life, there have been moments when I have simply thought that I would rather be dead. Most of the time, it is right before something stressful is about to happen, with all the anxious anticipation leading up to it. I cannot count the number of times that I have prayed for God to take me right before some major exam (He never obliged) or when I had to address a huge crowd, or (when I was a little more junior) some night shifts at work where I had to be in charge of the Emergency Department.

The other times I have thought about dying is when I look back at a life well lived, and then having that passing thought of 'You know what, I could die right now, and it would be fine.'

I do not fear death. Suffering, perhaps, but not death.

The main reason for that, I think, is a quiet confidence in my God. I do not claim to be a model Christian, I am not sure if I have even won one soul to His Kingdom and I lead a life that some would raise their eyebrows at.

But I have a quiet assurance in who my God is. I have heard Him roaring in the hurricanes during the storms of my life, I have heard His whispers when I am surrounded by nature. I catch up with Him from time to time, praying in my car on the long drives to Bendigo and the Northern, understanding His heart in church on Sundays, wrestling with Him when I see injustices in a broken world. I see His fingerprints all over the story of my life and I rejoice when I recognise it in the stories my friends tell me.

I find His penmanship in my Bible but also in movies like The Dark Knight and Matrix and Avatar and the myriad of other stories that deal with sin and salvation. 

And I know this - that I can trust Him. That I have journeyed with Him through my father's disability, through my own surgery and through times of great rejoicing as well, and I know that His heart is good. And hopefully one day, when I do cross over into the other side, He will look up at me and say 'Hey, I know you.'

The Bucks Stops Here (Final Part)

Activity Three: Dinner and That's Super, Man!

We drove for an hour and a half back to the city after our adventures in Torquay, and headed to our next destination - Squire's Loft in the city for our Man Meal.

Smile for the camera,
unsuspecting victim!

And so we sat over ribs, and steaks and mounds of chips, each of us tired and hungry from the day's exertions. By this time Alex had joined us for dinner, and we recounted the day's events to him as we wolfed down our meals.

Then came the session of questioning by my brother and everyone else present. They had asked Karen a few personal questions about our relationship and I had to get every one correct, otherwise I was punished.

It was at this moment, when I thought that this was as bad as it got, when my brother suddenly pulled out this costume he had kept hidden in a plastic bag. It was a Superman costume.

My heart sank immediately. I was going to say my stomach was filled with butterflies but by this time,  the butterflies were competing with steak, fries, ribs and drinks. My brother led me up to the bathroom upstairs and I changed into the outfit. I was terrified about what they were going to ask me to do next.

I walked down the stairs and was greeted by cheers, both from the bucks and the other patrons gathered there.

Oh, dear Lord.

I look like I'm in boxers.
And nothing else.

My brother pulled out my tasksheet for the night - I had to ask random women in Melbourne for their names, phone numbers, to rate my hotness, and to see if they would give me a kiss and a hug.

Each women held a promise of a maximum of 18 points, which meant that I had to ask a minimum of 6 women that night for their details. The questions were marked accordingly - 2 points for a real phone number, 1 point for a fake one. 4 points if they kissed me on the lips, 3 points if they kissed me on the cheek, and 2 points if they kissed the paper I was holding.

Reluctantly, the Man of Steel-A-Little-Nervous-About-This went out into the Melbourne night with its hordes of drunken revellers. I was sure I would die or at the very least, get beaten up tonight.

I was trying to remember if we left a Super tip that night.

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

The first women we approached were thankfully a little drunk and very obliging. I got two women outside a pub on a quiet street to answer my questions in quick succession, and soon I was flying (hurhur) - 24 points! This was going to be a breeze!

Some wonderfully sporting patrons.

My bucks saw that thought creep into my head, and then laid down the law. Oi, you're only allowed to ask one girl per street, they said.

One girl per... Luckily I wore my underpants on the outside, otherwise I would have soiled it.

And so, began my journey into the heart of town, and the Saturday night crowd.



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

The first major street we walked down was Bourke Street. The harmless, faceless shopping strip in the daytime suddenly was filled with every eye upon me, and it didn't help that my friends kept singing the Superman theme song (Da da da dum, da da dum, Da da da dum, DA DA DUM!) every time I crossed the street.

I approached women who seemed nice, enough - Asian if I could (usually more obliging) although I had some really nice Caucasian women join in on the fun. And so it was a cycle of  'Excuse me miss, I'm sorry to trouble you, but it's my bucks, and my friends are b@stards, and I would like to ask if I could take five minutes of your time to answer some questions for me?'

That's me - The Apologetic Man Of Steel. I felt like I was trying to convince them to join World Vision or Save The Children. (work done by actual superheroes)

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

Some highlights of the night:

1) A few adventurous women who kindly played along and answered my questions, rating me a 10 on a hotness scale, who said that yes, they would date me, and kissed me on the cheek (no one dared kiss me on my lips. Thankfully.) (I am a carrier of 2 communicable diseases. Haha!)

Melbourne city welcomes superheroes.

2) The random drunk guys who yelled out Superman! at me or the girls flapped my cape behind me as I stood at the traffic lights waiting for it to turn green (law-abiding superhero, that's me.)

3) The best comment for the night was from a young kid who found out I was getting married who asked, 'You're getting married? That's like, committing yourself to one pussy for the rest of your life, man!' to which I shot back, 'Better make it a good one then!'

4) People singing the Superman theme upon seeing me, or some variation of it. (I'm sorry, why is everyone telling me to Superman that ho?)

5) Having my Super-nipple tweaked by a guy as I walked past him (okay, so it wasn't a highlight, it was more like a WTF can't you see this uniform and know what I am capable of doing to you moment?)



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

And so after an hour of walking through the heart of the city and getting sequentially loved/rejected by Melbourne's women that night, we ended up in Fed Square close to midnight. I had 85 points and was almost on the home stretch.

Her invisible plane is parked atop that cop car behind us.

That was when we saw Wonder Woman.

It was a rub your eyes, are you kidding me, this is too good to be true moment. There she was, standing in all her Wonder Glory waiting for her partner The Riddler to get his fries.

My bucks pushed me up to her and I started my awkward questions. Luckily, she was a great sport and answered all my questions in her Scottish Wonder-accent.

I got a 14 out of 18 possible points, which brought my total up to 99 marks. Some of my bucks wanted me to go up to one more girl but the others said that this was a perfect way of ending the night.

Relieved, I swung my cape around and we headed back towards the city. We were all smiling after an enjoyable buck's day, and night, and ending it on a high.

But the night was not yet over.

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

We were walking along Swanston Street, approaching Flinder's Lane when suddenly there was the sickening sound of crunching glass, followed by a collective gasp from the Saturday night crowd which suddenly came to a standstill.

It was eerily quiet for two seconds before you could hear a couple of the girls saying 'Oh my God, look away! Don't look, Becky!'

Instinct told me an accident had happened and years of emergency training had conditioned me to run towards the danger rather than away from it.

A man lay crumpled on the floor, the offending car stopped a few metres away from him, the windshield spidered from where his head had hit it.

His friend was squatting over him, and a group of men had gathered around him, seeing if they could help.

'Someone call an ambulance,' I said.

'I can help, I am an emergency doctor.'

His friend, a big guy with thick rimmed spectacles looked up at me, visibly tense, and shouted at me, 'Mate, I'm a paramedic. Piss off!'

I looked up at him, before realising that I was still in my Superman costume and told him, 'No, you don't understand, I am an emergency doctor.'

'No, you're drunk and dressed in a Superman costume, and this is a real emergency, so piss off!'

We would have wasted a good few minutes reasoning this way but luckily Alex, a senior emergency registrar friend of mine who was dressed in a more respectable clothes crouched beside me and said 'We're emergency doctors at the Northern. We can help.'

It was only then when the friend relaxed and we discussed about how best to manage the victim. There was a trickle of blood under his head and I was a little worried when I had trouble finding a pulse, but soon the victim groaned and began to rouse.

'Mate, you're in the city. You've just been involved in an accident, and the ambulance is on the way. Now stay still, all right?' He couldn't remember that it was Saturday, or that he was in the city, and was quite obviously concussed, but looked otherwise all right.

The police had begun to arrive and started forming a parameter around the victim. Not two minutes had passed when the sirens of an ambulance pierced through the night, the flashing red and blue lights bringing salvation.

We soon collectively log-rolled the man onto his back, where the bleeding gash above his left eyebrow became evident, which we put a pressure dressing on before helping him onto the stretcher.

My good friend Anthony took this awesome shot.

The police and paramedics saw that the man was awake, at least, and relaxed a little. Soon the inevitable wisecracks came - 'Thanks, Superman! Couldn't have done it without you!' or 'Saving the day again huh?' or 'They pay you overtime for this?'.

I gave my statement to the police officer, who asked quietly whether I thought this would go pear-shaped, and I said to him, he'll probably be okay. You could see the young blonde driver in the distance, being comforted as she was still shaken by the accident.

There was a veil of seriousness amongst my friends as we departed from what was a near-tragic situation but that soon lifted as we told them that he was going to be okay. Soon they were joking and laughing again, everyone going on about how truly epic this night had turned out to be, and how they had it all on their cameras.

One friend joked that no matter how amazing his buck's turns out to be one day when he finally gets married, he will say 'Ah, but it isn't Heng Khuen's buck's.'

We said our goodbyes, and I finally got home and crawled out of my spandex suit (Quick joke: Why is Superman's suit always tight? Because he wears a size S), plonking down on my couch and nestling to sleep, tired after an extraordinary day.

The rest of what happens to the story you know about.

Special thanks to my brother for planning the buck's (including the accident, some joked) and to all my friends who celebrated my last week of singlehood with me.

Who knows why these things happen, but let's just say that today was proof that my God has a wonderful sense of timing and humour.

Super friends.

The Bucks Stops Here (Part 2)

Activity Two: Shouting Until You're Horse

After a quick lunch at Anglesea, we said goodbye to Ciaran who had to leave for a friend's 30th. We drove to Aireys Inlet for the next part of our buck's - horse-riding. 

Horse-riding conjures up all these wonderful images - of the elegant Rohirrim riders of Rohan in Lord Of the Rings or of the majestic William Wallace atop his horse in Braveheart convincing his Scottish countrymen to remind the English that 'they may take our lives, but they will never take OUR ...FREEDOM!'

You know, these guys.

(P.S. How about your mullet, Braveheart?
Can we take that instead?)

All the armoured-knight and kilt-laden fantasies disappeared the moment we opened our car door and took a huge whiff of reality - the scent of horse manure. It was a smell we needed to get used to, yet it took all our strength not to close our car doors again. 

"Horse Poo 4 Sale - $2" somehow didn't have the same poetry as Mel Gibson's stirring speech. 

Although the horse might beg to differ.

Most of us there - with the exception of my brother, Jonathan and Wai Hong - were first-timers.We were keen, however, to develop our masculine instincts for taming these graceful yet wild beasts which men have travelled on for thousands of years.

As beginners, however, we were given the sedate horses. Horses with names like Chucky, and Bayley, and Lorrie (and Sleepy, and Doc and Grumpy).

I think my horse was named Chucky because that's what you
felt like doing after riding him for awhile.
Chucky, hurhurhur.

We were given a quick ten minute lesson on where to put our feet into the stirrups, how to hold the reins, and how to get the horses to move forward, stop and turn. 

Having immediately forgotten everything we were taught, we were then helped up onto the horses, and headed off into the direction of the well-worn trail path with our somewhat sedate horses. (They were really so sedate I'm tempted to call them horsies).

About ten minutes into the trail walk, our instructor turns around and tells us that we were going to learn how to trot now. She taught us how to kick our horses in the side and how to time our rhythm with that of the trotting horse. We were supposed to rise with each trot and fall as the horse lands.

Apply generously to bottom.

Supposed to, being the operative word here. Having all the coordination of a drunken sailor with a middle ear infection, I somehow managed to sit as the horse's body rose and stand as the horse's body fell. Which is the same effect as having your ass/groin paddled consistently for a 60-second period. Which is bad news for all intentions of having children in the future. (Sorry, Mum).

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

That was not the only drama of the day. En route to the beach, where my brother was insistent we would canter with the wind whipping into our hairs while lasso-ing unsuspecting sunbathers, the lead horse suddenly got spooked by strong winds and took off.

The other horses, never having ever had to think for themselves before, bolted as well and soon we were cantering through the small paths in the forest for a good thirty seconds. I was grabbing hard onto my saddle and pulled on the reins with all my might, telling Chucky to slow the hell down. All my horse whispering worked, and soon Chucky slowed down from his blistering pace.

There was an eerie silence as I looked up and saw our instructors' shocked face looking back towards me, her eyes surveying the damage. Her open mouth betrayed the fact that all was not well behind me.

I turned around and saw that two of the riders were on the ground, having been thrown off their horses.

One of them was Hawch, who had taken to jumping off his bolting horse, and attempted to cushion the floor by rolling on his shoulder. The other was my brother, and he wasn't moving at first.

I turned Chucky around and approached them slowly. Both my brother and Hawch soon started groaning and painfully got themselves up, dusting themselves off before checking for damage. Both of them were a little bruised, but thankfully nothing seemed broken.

The mood of the party had dampened then. This close shave served as a reminder about how potentially dangerous today's activities could have been. Hawch and my brother walked a distance before being convinced by the instructor to get back on to their horses, which they did gingerly and a little reluctantly.

It was all a cautious walk with the horses from this point, as both our instructors talked between themselves to figure out what went wrong back there. The trodden dirt paths soon turned into gravel roads as we approached civilisation - we were now in a residential area, giving way to cars, and waiting patiently while the horses pooped or peed at will.

Today's interesting lesson about horses - when male horses pee, their generous penises come out, and then they bucket out their pee, as if they were putting out a small forest fire, and then, just like magic, their penis retracts completely out of sight. That is a party trick I would lov... erm, never mind.

Haha! You thought I was going to put a picture of a horse's 
you-know-what here, weren't you?
I think this one's best left to your imagination!

We all stopped our horses at a car park near the beach. The wind whipped strongly against our faces. Our two instructors, already wary from today's accident, had a discussion between themselves and then decided that it was probably unwise to continue on to canter on the beach.

We all agreed, being a little shaken by the incident, although my brother was still keen to go ahead as he wanted to complete our experience.

Majority won in the end, and we turned around and walked our horses back the way we came. The trip home was less eventful, thankfully. We even managed to trot for a bit of it, our collective confidence returning.

One of the unforgettable moments we had to capture with the cameras of our minds was the breathtaking view of the lagoon shimmering in the evening sun beneath us as we made our way down the hills.

We all made it back in one piece, and were relieved to get off our horses, our gait a little unsteady from being on the rocking horses for a good part of two hours. We each let out a laugh of relief that we weren't too severely injured, and removed our protective helmets and boots, taking photos before heading for our next destination.

No one died! High fives all around!