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.