A Dog Named Pebbles

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

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

Not every one lives to be 119 years old. 

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

Pebbles, when she was just a tiny stone

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

One of the candles had slipped and caught fire.

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

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

Too cool for doggy school

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

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

Pebbles the tissue box and Lucky

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

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

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

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

Doggy style

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

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

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

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

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

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

To the Batkennel!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dog-napping

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

"Pebbles!" Karen scolded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nights Like These

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

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

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

Even Though I Walk Through The Valley of The Shadow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Be Surrounded By Loved Ones

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

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

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

Now was the time to grieve.

The Lucky Ones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Begging to Differ

I am a ghost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(observations on a Saturday afternoon at the State Library)

Why Did The Fly Fly?

A: Because the spider spied her.

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

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

On the other hand, if you are:












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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few options popped up in my mind: 

1) Kill the damned thing.

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

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

2) Leave it in peace. 

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

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

3) Catch it.

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

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

So I finally decided on option

4) Reach for the vacuum cleaner. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Victory is mine! Almost. 

Now came the crucial part - closing the lid.

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

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

No - I caught him. I caught him good. 

 Aww... so cute... not. 

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

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

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

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

Oh, Crap.

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

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

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

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

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

Isn't creation Intelligent?

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

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

This Is The Game That Never Ends

Remember these two names: John Isner and Nicolas Mahut.

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

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

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

59-59.

And they're still going.

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

Among the other remarkable statistics from the match:

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

— Longest set in tennis history: 118 games.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— The scoreboard stopped working at 47-47.

We'll never see the likes of this again.

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

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

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

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

Sate, Sate, Sate Ria, Sate Sungguh Lazat

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

Random Memories: Seven Years Old

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

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

But I'll save that story for another day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mamak Terminology

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

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

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

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

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