A Decade Without My Dad

Yesterday marked the ten year anniversary when we said goodbye to my Pa.

We laid him to rest a decade to the day yesterday, and my biggest fear is that I will forget. A fear that I will forget what growing up with him being in a wheelchair for 15 years meant to us, a fear that I will forget how much he loved us, a fear that I will even forget what he looked like.

That is why I write. I write to remember, to allow my words to bring forwards the outlines of his face again, to remember what it meant to be raised by this remarkable man, in his fullness and frailty, remembering him both with fondness, and with tears. These are some notes I wrote a few years ago, and I share them with you today.

'Oh Dear.'

The brain is an amazing organ. It controls our emotions, thoughts, sensations and actions. It reminds us of things, helps us learn, smile, laugh and cry. Strangely enough, the brain has no pain receptors, which means that you could actually stick pins and needles into the brain itself and you will not perceive pain. This is how open brain surgery can be performed while the patient is still alert and awake on the table.

It is, however, sitting in a very confined space - it floats in cerebrospinal fluid and the skull enveloping it is rigid, which makes it a great protector, but unrelenting in its permission of space.

The skull, being obdurate, will cause whatever build-up of fluid to be transmitted to the brain, and it has very little choice but to be squashed, and to be pushed out through the only exit there is - the little hole at the bottom of the skull where the spinal cord exits.

My Dad's brain must have been herniating through that single orifice that August evening when he was in bed doing his routine push-up exercises when he collapsed onto the bed and into a coma.

My brother, who was watching TV in the adjoining living room at the time had rushed to his side, hearing Pa crash into the bed. According to him, the last two words that Pa said before collapsing into the coma from which he would never wake was -

'Oh dear.'

I wonder if Pa's life flashed before him in those last moments. All his childhood memories, his ambitions, dreams, hopes and fears coursing through his minds in those last few seconds before oblivion. His triumphs, his tragedies, his laughter, his tears, all of life's experiences encapsulated into two words - the two words that describes the deer-in-headlights feeling of how life throws you a curveball just when you think that you've got it all figured out.

'Oh, dear.'

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

I See You

The double doors of the ICU opened before us, and the hum and beeps of machines working to salvage the dying greeted us. We turned left, and seeing my Dad for the first time since the collapse took me aback, and I had to choke back my tears.

It is a surreal experience seeing your loved ones with multiple tubes and wires sticking out of them, immobilised to the hospital bed. There are machines that help with the breathing, others that monitor the heart rate and blood pressure and oxygen saturations. The intravenous lines hydrate them and give them life-saving medications while other tubes drain their bladders.

All things seek to reassure you that the patient - be it your father, your mother, your brother, your wife, your friend, your son, your daughter - is still alive. All the mystery of life reduced to the mathematics of numbers.

We stood silently by his side.

The first thing that I noticed were the headphones attached to his ears. There was nothing in my medical training which identified the headphones to fit in with the rest of the picture, so my eyes traced them all the way to an MP3 player.

"We're playing some of his favourite songs," my brother read my mind. "They say that it could be helpful as they can sometimes still hear things when they are comatose." I afforded a weak smile, and prayed that he was right.

The next thing I noticed was Pa's half shaven head, where the neurosurgeon had to drill a hole in his head for the emergency decompression. The scars were still fresh, and the hair on the other side of his head was unkempt, giving Pa a semi-Frankensteinian appearance.

We stayed with him that night, and read to him from Psalms 23 while we held his unresponsive hands and prayed.

That was when his eyelids started to flicker.

At first we thought we were imagining things, but they were definitely flickering. Mum's face lit up with excitement as she called for the nurses to come and take a look at this. They walked up to Pa absently and then ambled away dismissively.

We were filled with joy, on the other hand, and began excitedly to talk to Pa again. His eyelids seemed to flicker appropriately in response, and I know that he heard us when we told him how much we loved him and thanked him for the love that he had shown to us throughout the years.

I told him about how I was getting on in medical school in Australia, and we talked about many different things that night, although Pa could only engage in the conversation through the voice of his eyelids.

Before we left that night, I had a moment alone with Pa. I leaned over to kiss him, and thanked him again for his love and sacrifice for us throughout the years. It was then when my common sense kicked in, and I knew that even if Pa did recover from this massive cerebral incident,  he would probably be in a vegetative state all his life.

So I leaned forward and whispered into his ear that he was free to leave us as he had fully accomplished his role as our father and Mum's husband. I said goodbye to my father then, and invited him to the light, promising that we would meet him there again someday.

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

My Father's Chair

It was soon time to leave, and I was packing to go back to Melbourne. We were all spent physically and emotionally, and there was no room to enjoy Malaysia like I normally would.

I stood with my suitcase in the living room and started tossing my clothes into the vacuous Hush Puppies luggage. Out of the corner of my eye I caught the curtain that separated the little enclave where Pa had slept every night.

The purple plastic rack that held all his clothes was still brimming with shirts my father wore not three weeks ago. Work pants that were several sizes too big and hung loosely around his ample belly sat quietly on the top shelf of the makeshift rack. Next to them were the large woolly socks that used to keep his lifeless feet warm at night, which upon reflection, he must have put on out of habit more than necessity. I'm sure that his feet would have rejoiced at the touch of cold, if only to remember what cold felt like.

Through an opening sat the now empty wheelchair, motionless; the wheeled prison now without its captive, who had finally broken free. The wheelchair was symbolic of Pa, our very reminder that he was there with us.

No longer.

I walked up to the wheelchair, and gently lowered myself into it. I felt the armrests that had been duct-taped countless times, tracing the spokes of the wheels and the cold steel rims, and feeling the rubber wheel on my hands as I pushed it forwards. The wheelchair squeaked against the marble floor with purpose, and my heart broke at the familiar sound.

I did a single lap of honour around the living room in memory of Pa, and finally closed my eyes and rested in the spirit of my father one last time.

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

If I could tell Pa one thing today, is that we are all doing okay. Our worlds have been very different without him in it - we still miss his humour, his wisdom and his quiet strength.

I hope he can still look upon us today - his sons still feeling their way through this world and trying their hardest to be good honest men; his daughter, the apple of his eye, standing bravely up to whatever the world throws at her; his wife, my Mum, showing immense strength and grace as she continues to valiantly live a life without him - and be proud.

May you rest in peace, Pa, knowing that your time on earth was a meaningful one. We live on as your legacy, and carry with us the understanding of what it really means to live life to the full no matter what it may bring. 

Exas-parent-ion.

Picture from brandoneu.blogspot.com

I remember sitting down to dinner one night in Malaysia next to this Chinese family. There were two kids there - a self-assured fifteen-year-old boy, his nine-or-ten-year-old sister, their parents and their Auntie.

I was trying to mind my own business and focus on my kangkung belacan but I couldn't help overhearing the feisty conversation going on at the next table.

"Eh, got any girl you like in class ah?" the (I'm certain she's unmarried) Auntie probed.

"No lah, I'm still fifteen only, Auntie. No girl yet," proclaimed the boy.

"What about this girl V-?" asked the Auntie.

"Aiyah, I don't like her. She's not my type - stuck up."

"Her family very rich one, you know," the Auntie started, after a considered silence. "Her father, ah -"

This seemed to incense the boy.

"I don't care if she's rich or not. If I don't like her, I don't like her lah."

"No, listen, you have to think about these things early," she persisted. "Her father's got a good business, big house, nice car - you should give her a chance. Go after her."

"I'm too young to be thinking about these things," his voice started to raise. "And anyway, if I chase a girl, it should be because I love her, not because she is rich."

"Aiyah, young man, what do you know? What is love - love won't put food on the table one, you know?" she sneers in disgust. "Love, hmph."

 "You want so much, you go and marry her lah!" he says in exasperation, shocking her into a sullen silence.

At this point, I wanted to stand up and give this fifteen year old a standing ovation, pat him on his back and high-five him in front of his Auntie's face.

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

Let's face it - your parents will always be your parents. The road of parenting is strewn with good, and sometimes, mistaken intentions. In their eyes, you will always be their child, and they will always know, and want, what's best for their children.

One extreme of this is arranged marriages - in Sri Lanka, a friend tells me that 30% of marriages are still arranged marriages - people are matched according to careers, highest education qualifications, caste, family background with looks and interests coming a paltry second place.

He barely met his wife before the dowry was paid (a higher one because he was a doctor) and before he knew it, he was married to this almost complete stranger. Two people who have never met before, now needed to chart out a new road ahead together based on what the parents thought was best for them.

The first year of marriage was spent just finding out about his wife - understanding and accommodating her quirks and habits, her likes and dislikes, what she values. He has found it a little bemusing (in his traditional mindset) to discover that this modern, independent girl was not going to be told by her husband what to do, and he has had to do a lot of the compromising.  

Don't get me wrong, a lot of these marriages seem to work out, or at least they are still together after many years. Obligation, perhaps, or maybe there was some wisdom in the parent's choices, after all who knows us better than they do?

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

What Do You Want From Me?!

When we were fourteen or fifteen and foraying into this new hormone-hazed area of relationships - suddenly we find ourselves attracted to guys or girls, spending numerous hours sprawled out over phone conversations, believing in every love song we've ever sung, conjuring up our Prince Charmings and Princess Jasmines. (I blame Walt Disney solely for my delusions of perfect romantic relationships).

We try and tell our parents excitedly about this new guy or girl we have a crush on, and expect a similar excitement from them - to share in this newfound secret joy in our lives, our new reasons to be living. Instead, we are greeted with dead-eyed "Fat haw ah? Took shi!" (What's all this love nonsense? Go back to your books!)

And so we deaden our hearts, study hard and make it to university - and then suddenly our parents do a 180 degree turn and ask "Eh, why you so long still got no girlfriend yet?" which, with year after year of persistent singleness, leads to the inevitable worried question - "Eh, you gay is it?"

No, Mum and Dad, I have been scarred by your pragmatic suggestions that I should not entertain any romantic notions in my head growing up, and now, finally, I am rewarded by you questioning my sexuality.

What do you want from me?!!!

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

In all fairness, we were dependent on our parents for a lot of our choices growing up - we had no say of which milk formula we drank, what brand of diapers we wore, which kindergarten and school we went to, which tuition classes and extracurricular activity we were signed up for - all these things were decided in our best interests.

It is during our formative years, however - our teenage and young adult years - when we come to develop and test opinions of our own, that we take exception to them trying to interfere in a very personal part of our lives - our love lives. Often it is a clash of their mature pragmatism and our youthful romanticism that grates us the most.

They have seen that love is not enough reason to be married, that financial stresses can sometimes overwhelm even the most dewy-eyed romantics, that family background shapes a person, and a university education means a certain level of discipline, diligence and intelligence.

We see it, on the other hand that a person should not be judged by any other measure than who they are, what their hearts are like and whether or not we like them. We know that money can buy a sense of entitlement and arrogance in some people, and that a university qualification alone does not make you wise or interesting.

Take an even deeper issue, like age, race, religion and sexuality and throw it into the mix, and add even more to the confusion. These are often very emotional subjects, with threats of being disowned by our parents if we ever dared to bring home a so-and-so or a such-and such.

And so we get confused by the messages:-

Marry a white guy. Your kids will come out looking so cute, you know!

Don't you dare bring home anyone other than a Chinese guy.

Don't marry a Hakka girl. They are very loud and will hen-peck you.

Don't be unequally yoked. 

I can't date an older guy. I can't stand the thought that he might die before me. 

Younger men are so terribly immature.

If you marry a Muslim guy, I will lose you forever. I won't be able to eat pork, and I love it too much.

I'm okay with people being in same-sex relationships. Except for my own children. There are no gays, and there will never be gays, in our family. 

Like it or not, we do seek our family's approval when it comes to choosing a partner, and we often carry these messages around with us, either consciously or subconsciously.

Fortunately, at the end of the day, when we finally make our decisions about our life partners (after some disastrous early relationships, which are normal), we will find that there are the things that really matter, and things that don't, to us.

Do we feel cared for, respected, loved, protected, understood? Do we share the same values and beliefs, or if we don't, are our lives enriched by the differences? Are they someone we can talk to, share our problems and multiply our joy with? Can we put up with their habits and weaknesses? Do we believe and love the person enough to have the grace and strength to give and take?

And then the other things - the opinions of people, including our well-meaning parents, will start to quieten into the background as we gain more and more clarity about who we love, and what we want from our partners.

Farewell, Po Po.

I managed to catch Departures - this wonderful 2008 Japanese film that I can safely say probably deserved the Academy Award win for the Best Foreign Language Film of that year.

The movie follows Daigo Kobayashi, a professional cellist in Tokyo, who loses his job when his orchestra disbands, and is forced to return to his hometown where, out of desperation, he takes up the job of being a mortician.

The movie offers a poignant look at how we handle the dead among us, and is told with a lot of tenderness and good humour - a beautifully human story.

It reminded me a lot about the recent trip back to Malaysia to visit my grandmother for the last time.

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

'It's sad that it takes an occasion like this to reunite the family members, you know,' says my yi cheong (Mum's brother-in-law), as he lists out my cousins and uncles and aunties travelling from all around the region to pay their last respects to my grandmother.

My grandmother had lived to the grand old age of 91, her last years marked by her deteriorating mental state and her weakening control over all her bodily functions.

"It's curious you know, we all come full circle," said my yi cheong philosophically - "We start off as babies, wetting and soiling ourselves, needing someone to look after us, we grow up, and then towards the end of our lives, we end up like babies again."

There was not much time to rest, my brother and I landed in Kuala Lumpur on a Friday morning and took the two and a half hour drive up to Ipoh that evening with my sister to meet my Mum who was already up there.

It was three days of mourning - we had already missed Thursday night's set of rituals, and arrived in time to freshen up and don the mourning clothes for tonight's set of rituals - just a simple pure white T-shirt and a dark pair of jeans, with a thin strip of white and red crepe paper wrapped around our waist to bring us luck and ward away the evil spirits.

We made it to our kow foo's (Mum's brother) house where grandma's casket was kept, and we walked over to the head of the casket, which was opened for the viewing. Po po looked peacefully asleep, her wrinkled features attired in what looked like a princesses' headgear, all dressed for the afterlife. We whispered our thank yous and good-byes and joined our relatives for the ceremonies that night.

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

The funeral was a Taoist one, I believe, and it was the first of its kind I have ever attended. The other funerals I have been to, including my father's one a decade ago now, have been Christian affairs -
the wake, the eulogies, the hymn singing, the burial.

Where the Christian funerals were a remembrance of the person's life and the anticipation of seeing the person in the life-after-death, the Taoist one was a fascinating ritual performed to ensure a smooth transition of the deceased person's soul from this earthly realm to the nether realms.

The whole ceremony is led by a couple of monks, dressed to the nines in their yellow robes and black headgear. They are the leaders of the ceremony, and indeed, the old guards of the tradition, who led us every step of the way during the funeral proceedings.

The street was blocked off with a fluorescent-lit canopy the span of two houses, which covered tables and chairs that had distant relatives sitting around watching the ceremony. Only the immediate family members, the direct descendants of po po's line were involved in the proceedings.

As always, there is eating at every Chinese event - be it a birthday, a wedding, or a funeral, and the noisy chatter of the distant relatives talking over food was in stark contrast to the mournful library silence observed by all of us in the white shirts.

Living in multicultural Malaysia meant that the neighbours had to be understanding through the three days of noisy ceremonies. The immediate neighbours had strips of red cloth tied to their gates to ward off the bad luck and spirits associated with the dead.

To Joss Or Not To Joss?

One of the very real issues we had to deal with as Chinese Christians is this - do we hold the joss sticks or not? Here we were caught between our culture and our religious beliefs - the joss sticks are sweet-smelling incense sticks lit during these religious ceremonies to pay homage to the ancestors or idols. We have always been taught in our traditional Christian circles that holding the joss stick was not acceptable, perhaps because it equated to worshipping our ancestors, and only God was to be worshipped.

I had my own opinion about it already, and I am glad that my brother took the lead and agreed with what I believed - we would all hold the joss sticks.

We had travelled thousands of miles home to pay our last respects to po po, and if holding the joss sticks was a symbolic sign of respect to her, we were going to do it.

One of our great habits as traditional Christians is to label things - this is right, this is wrong. This is clean, this is unclean. We do things or do not do things because we have been told that something is acceptable or unacceptable, and I believe that our actions should only be attributed to the meaning we give to it. That day we held the joss sticks not because we worship our ancestors, but to pay respects to our grandmother. And as for spirits, well, we believe that the One who is in us is greater than the one that is in the world, do we not?

The Rituals

And so we held a lit solitary stick each, as one of the two monks (they would take turns) chanted their way rhythmically through pages and pages of well wishes for po po's soul in her traditional dialect. He would occasionally pause to clang two different sets of hand cymbals or open up a hand fan (strangely enough, it was a green fan and it carried the Carlsberg logo on it) while never breaking his sing-song cadence.

He would lead us in the occasional bows of respect to po po interspersed throughout the forty five minute uninterrupted chanting, and every once in awhile lead the procession around her coffin. We would take a ten to fifteen minute break after each session, and we had to do it four times, well approaching midnight.

In all honesty, I am all for tradition, but nearing midnight, I was starting to get a little tired and impatient. Not only were we physically tired (my brother had sneaked off to sleep in the car after the first two sessions) but not being able to understand the proceedings was what was starting to get to me in the end. It was like watching a five hour long foreign movie without subtitles. For po po's sake, we persevered.

The Fascinating Finish
There was an exciting end to the night, though. There is a great Taoist tradition of making sure that the departed is well provided for in the underworld - they do this by burning yum si zhi (money used as currency in the afterlife) and other things - houses, man and maidservants, cars (almost always a Mercedes Benz) and even modern day things like Plasma TVs, iPhones and Playstations (considering that you do have an eternity's worth of spare time to kill).

There is such an industry surrounding the dead, as much as the living.

And so we brought all these paper effigies to a nearby grassy plot, and proceeded to light them on fire, wishing po po all the comforts in the afterlife. What was symbolic for me was the ashes of the burnt paper money and material goods rising into the pitch black night from the healthy bonfire we had built. There is a finality about that act, as if her soul rose with the ashes to another world.

We ended up going home at a little past midnight, and showered and rested up as we had an early start the next morning.

Burying Po Po

We got up at about 7 a.m. the next morning, bleary-eyed and got into our mourning costumes again. We grabbed some breakfast at a nearby local hawker centre before returning to my kow foo's house for the rest of the proceedings.

The monks were back, and led us in another session of chanting and bowing to pay our respects. Mercifully, we only had to do it once, this time, before another set of events took place. We took turns to pay our ultimate final respects to po po - first her direct descendants (her sons and their families), and then her indirect descendants (her daughters and their families), and then everyone else (her cousins, family friends) took turns to take our last three bows before po po.

Everyone had to turn our backs while the funeral house were loading the hearse. I am not sure about the actual reasoning behind this, but I would like to believe that it is symbolic of our final release of po po, that we left the past in the past, and looked in a different direction.

We then began the funeral march - a slow, mournful ten minute walk behind the hearse, before we got onto a rented bus which would bring us to po po's final resting place - the cemetery where my kung kung (maternal grandfather) was buried.

Come Home To Roost

And so in the serenity of the rolling green hills of Ipoh surrounding us, we laid our po po in the ground. The monks stood over the head of her grave and performed a few more rituals, the most memorable one of which he took a live rooster (bound by its feet), held it over the coffin, and proceeded to chant and pluck a few feathers from its neck and spread it over the coffin. Apparently they used to make a small nick in the neck and drop a few drops of blood of the rooster on the coffin. Thankfully, we have moved away from that tradition.

 

The monk then tossed the bewildered rooster over the distance of the coffin for my kow foo to catch, which he did successfully. I was told later that they used to do it without binding the rooster's feet together, which not only made the catch more complex, but relatives would run around trying to catch the scampering fowl if the catch was unsuccessful.

We all said our goodbyes to po po as the workers begun to toss the soil over her coffin. There was a bucket filled with water and flower petals for us to wash away the bad luck associated with all these proceedings. We were given lucky pink packets to keep in our pockets as well, and food in clear plastic bags to take away.

We then went back to Chemor, the small town in Ipoh where my Mum and her siblings were raised, and had a nice lunch to bring an end to the whole proceedings. It was good to be able to share the meal with the family, and transition from a sombre occasion remembering the departed, to one celebrating her legacy - her children, grandchildren, relatives and friends gathering afresh over a nice meal.

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It was a brief trip home, but an important one. Po po was our last remaining grandparent, and she had watched us grow up through the years, and graced my wedding in Malaysia last year. We all carry a bit of po po in all our selves - her quietness, her gentle nature, her love for food, her kindness, her generosity.

We were glad we made the journey home, to be able to spend time with relatives, and thank the our kow foo and his family, and my yi cheong and his family for having looked after grandma all these years, especially affording her dignity in the difficult final few years of her life.

There is so much tradition in honouring the dead, and sometimes it is drawn out over several days for the express purpose of forcing us - the living - to take pause from our constant busyness, to remember those who have gone before us, to take stock of our own lives and to remember that our time here is ultimately finite, and to choose the legacy we want to leave behind.

How To Be A Gentleman.

So, you want to be a gentleman, you say? Well done, old sport! Let's get right down to it, shall we?

For this exercise, you will need:

1. A top hat.

2. A walking stick, preferably black. Not that your legs need it right, old chap. Just a little something to swing as you walk. Lends a bit of class, don't you know.

3. A monocle.

4. A handlebar moustache. Preferably bleached white, if you are not yet of the suitable age.

5. A tuxedo with coat tails.

Put it all together, and if you are doing it right you should look a little something like this:

Yippee! I'm a mother father gentleman!

 or this:

I'm gonna kill him with my
umbrella-ella-ella-ella.

Okay, so that wasn't the point of this post at all, although you could do all of the above if you wanted to (and build some houses on Regent Street and Park Lane, or, try and kill Batman). 

I am glad that we have arrived at a day and age where women have gained more equality and independence in most developing or developed societies. Although there is still much to be done, I'd like to believe we have come a long way in a few short decades, thanks to the advent of feminism, and well, common sense. 

I have seen one case of extreme feminism, however. I had offered to pay for a girl's coffee the first time I met her. She took offense at my buying her a coffee, and asked me aggressively 'Why? You think I can't pay for my own coffee, issit?'

Whoa, slow down there, Destiny's Child. I'm just paying for your coffee. I later found out that she had dated a lot of men, who were, let's just say, scrubs, to use another African-American term. Men who leeched off her, where she was chauffeuring them everywhere and paying for their meals.

In saying that, however, I'd like to believe that there is still a place in society for the gentleman, the man who would still treat ladies with valor and extend some common courtesy to them. So here's a few pointers to how to behave in a gentlemanly fashion:-

1. Open the door for her and let her walk through first. Seriously, it's not that hard. I think walking through doors without being considerate of your lady friend is poor form. Especially if you swing the door close behind you as she is walking through it. The date ends right there.

2. Pull the chair out for her at the restaurant. But not from beneath her as she tries to sit down. (I'm looking at you, Psy).

I personally don't think that this is necessary in our day and age somehow. Like really, awkward even. If I were a girl, and a guy pulled out a chair for me, I would smile to myself and think 'Oh, what a... serial killer.'  

3. Pay for her meal. Okay, I know that a lot of guys (and girls, as shown from the example before) have a lot of different opinions about this. 

Maybe you want to do it because it's the first few dates and you want to impress her. Maybe you want to go Dutch because you think that's fair. Maybe you want her to pay for you because you don't want a second date. Make your own minds up about this one. I just think some girls appreciate the gesture of a guy picking up the tab for the meal. 

4. Drink your tea with your pinky sticking out when you hold your cup. Preferably without a teabag dangling from the finger. 

5. Walk into the path of oncoming traffic for her. I learnt this one from a girl I used to like back in my university days in Malaysia. She said that one of the great examples she has seen of a guy being a gentleman was a boy who would gently hold her by the arm, always standing on the side between her and oncoming vehicles as they crossed the road. It made her feel safe and cared for.

Oh, sure I have been knocked down a few times in the process, but hey, it was worth it.

6. Make sure she gets into her house safely if you are sending her home. This one I learnt from my friend in college. I used to drop my dates back at their houses after a great night out and speed off into the night, without even a backward glance. Not a good look. Wait for her to get into the house first.

Or better still, follow her into her house. 

(Now, now, everyone knows that real gentlemen don't follow ladies into their homes.

They wait for the parents to leave first.)

All right, old chap. You should have everything you need to win her heart, or get off to a stirring start at least.  Good luck now! 

I Don't Give A Fish.

Thirteen years old, and we had just moved up into high school. I was always the good Christian boy, quick to please and eager to make friends. One of the friends I remember from those days was SH.

SH was the kind of guy who always made you laugh - portly, eyes that always spoke of mischief, and a ready motor mouth that elevated him to class clown status quickly.

I remember we wrote a hilarious play of Gulliver's Travels, which we were doing for English Literature that year, and we had the class rolling about in their seats, holding their sides, trying to contain their laughter. Ah, fun times.

We were great friends during those times. Sitting in the canteen one day, I heard him exclaim "Kah-ni-nah! Man, I can't believe that she only gave us two days to finish that homework, man!"

My ears pricked up to the phrase he was using - it was foreign to me, although I had heard him using it a lot recently.

"Eh," I asked him, "What does that phrase mean ah?"

"What phrase?"

"You know, the one that you just said... Kah-ni-what?"

"Oh, Kah-ni-nah. Erm, nothing lah. It's just a, erm, sentence enhancer, you know. It doesn't really mean anything. Just makes things sound nicer. You know, like 'Oh man, today's weather is just like, kah-ni-nah hot man.'"

I took his word for it. I heard him using it a few more times and I thought, hey, sounds good - I'm going to try and incorporate it into my everyday speech. It was a little exciting - sharing that phrase, like we were in a secret society or something.

At first, I had to test the waters - I would use the phrase in front of my friends "Kah-ni-nah! I almost missed the bus today man!" or "Crap! Forgot to bring my textbook again! Kah-ni-nah!" Soon, it was part of my everyday vocabulary, and it was rolling off my tongue like a magician's phrase - Abracadabra! - on the school bus, in front of the teachers, at home...

And so I was sitting on the exercise bike in front of the television at home one evening when I exclaimed, "Oh man, this cycling really hurts my thighs, man! Kah-ni-nah!"

My father, who grew up in the Hokkien-dominant Penang, was within earshot. He had heard me use the phrase a few times at home, and had shown remarkable restraint until this point.

"Eh, stop saying that phrase lah! It means 'Fuck your mother' in Hokkien lah, stupid."

The wave of fear and realisation descended upon my thirteen year old brain like a tsunami, I tell you. You mean, all this while... And, in front of my teachers...

He tricked me!

"Kah-ni-n...." I exclaimed under my breath, almost automatically.

"Oi!" came the reprimand from my already displeased father.

"Erm, I mean, oh dear!"

SH was going to have a lot of explaining to do tomorrow! He was going to get a quick kick up his sentence-enhancing butt!

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

Those very close to me will know that one of the only vices that I have is that I swear sometimes. (Although, I do indulge in... okay, maybe make that two vices. Ah, and then there's also the... and the... oh dear.)

Oh, I have friends who could curse to make a sailor blush. I had a friend who use to classify himself in secretarial terms - he proudly boasted that he spoke at a rate of 15 'bwps' or 15 bad words per sentence.

I know of another friend who cusses like a fishmonger, and it is so ingrained into his everyday speak yet he does it so amicably that you never take offence at him if you knew him well. This friend is ironically, a vegetarian. Go figure. No amount of not eating meat is going to save your soul, my friend.

Of course, we were taught at home and at school and at Sunday School that swearing was a bad thing. Your friends would out you with glee - "Cikgu, dia mencarut!" or "Teacher, he said bad words!" This would result in you getting a tongue lashing or a good ol'-fashioned beating or demerit points.

Bleeding little snitches.

In Sunday School you weren't allowed to use God's name in vain, so "Oh my God!" became "Oh my gosh!" or "Oh my goodness!" Even then, a teacher once pointed out - You're not even allowed to say "Oh my goodness!" because there is no goodness in you. Only God is good. (Here you go, kids! Enjoy your guilt-ridden childhood!)

I just think sometimes that swearing is a natural reaction, an exclamation at a situation or an exasperation that cannot be encapsulated in any other way save for that one economical word or phrase that expresses it all.

There's all this fear of judgement and being outed by our friends, however, and till this day, we try to suppress it as much as we can, as is evident in our kid-friendly variation of our swear words, such as:

Shit - Sheesh, Shoot, Shucks, Crap, Crud, Poop

What the hell! - What the heck!, What the heaven!, What on earth!

Fuck - Fudge, Fish, Eff, Fer*toot!*, Freak/Frig, Four-letter word (Although it was a little cumbersome, like "Go four-letter word yourself lah, idiot!)

Bastard - Basket (pronounced "Baaaassket!")

Bloody - Blooming, Bleeding

Damn - Dang, Darn

Ass - Donkey, Butt, Bum

Son of a bitch! - Son of a gun!, Sun on the beach!

The intentions were always the same, but somehow softened by these euphemisms, ie. "Sheesh! He is so dang annoying! I just wish I could throw a bleeding shoe through that fishing wall at that baaaassket!" sounds a lot friendlier than its actual counterpart.

So yeah, I have it from good sources that my father used to employ sentence enhancers quite liberally in his younger days. That was until us kids came along. Then the swearing got even worse!

Hahaha! No, he decided to cut it out completely, although it would escape once in a while when he wasn't careful.

Until that wonderful fateful day when I have to finally put on the mantle of a responsible father, please don't be surprised if you hear me using the occasional choice sentence enhancer (ie. swearing my fishing head off like a foul-mouthed sun on the beach), okay?

It just means I've grown really comfortable with you.

The Reluctant Narcoleptic

I am running on fumes.

I think I am still shift-lagged from my 7 night shifts. Last night I went to bed at about eleven pm, and then woke up at 12.30 am, and I couldn't get back to bed. Tossed and turned until about 4.15 am when I decided that this was ridiculous - if I couldn't sleep then I might as well start the drive to Ballarat and hopefully find some rest here.

It is by the sufficient grace of God that I made it here with so little sleep. Anecdotally, I hear that people who work in healthcare are 12 times more likely to be involved in car accidents compared to other road users. That figure is not so hard to believe now.

The house was freezing and I had to wait for it to warm up before I could crawl into my cold, cold bed for another hour and a half of sleep. The alarm was an unwelcome disruption to my REM dream-stage sleep.

I pulled myself out of bed to shower, and then went for three hours' lecture followed by seven and a half hours of work. I think I ran on the twin combo of energy bars and adrenaline today.

I come home and I indulge in a little bit of emotional eating - making up for my lack of energy from a well-rested body. Ironically now I have both a brain and a gut to work now, but only enough blood for one organ at a time.

How tired am I now? I am writing this and I am micro-sleeping. I nod off and I dream vivid five second dreams and then I wake up again to type on. It is as if I am having my head dunked into the Ocean of Dreams and then pulled up for a breath of Reality every so often again and again. The reluctant narcoleptic.

I can only imagine what it must have been like for every other doctor around the world who have had to brave through 36 hours shifts every three days. I mean, seriously, how is that even safe, both for the doctor and the patient?

Anyways, I just wanted to capture this moment before I give into one of these five second dreams and pursue it to its end instead of coming up for air again. I hope I catch a good one.

The Attitude of Gratitude

If there is one theme that is running through these past few weeks, it is one of gratefulness.

If there is one sure sign of ungratefulness, it is the tendency to worry. Worrying offends God, because He wants to remind us that you know, hey, I've got this.

Really, if I think hard about it, I don't know what it is that I really have to worry about. We have our house, our health, our jobs, and yet - we feel that if we did not continue to fret constantly and plan and work hard, all these things would fall to pieces.

The one habit I have when I worry is to check my bank account often. I will firstly look at my bank balance, and then groan. And then I will look at my credit card debt, and then groan again. And then I look at my personal loan, and then I will pull the blanket covers over my head, roll into a foetal position and then rock to-and-fro.

Yes, it sounds really petty, and yes, these are #firstworldproblems, but can I convince you that if we are not careful, sometimes we are so naturally inward looking and self-centered, that the default posture would be one of self-pity and ungratefulness. We forget to be thankful for what we have, and instead focus on what we don't have. This then spills over into our daily lives - we start comparing, and being less generous and giving to ourselves, our families, our friends.

And yet, Life is kind. She carries a a wonderful Baseball Bat of Amnesia Cure+3. Sometimes, in order to cure us of our forgetfulness, she comes in running at full speed, swinging wildly. This time, I just had a gentle reminder tap on the head.

It all started from the incident of the mini-flooding in the house when I was reminded about how lucky I was to have a roof over our heads.

This was followed by a conversation that I had with an anaesthetic consultant who surprised me when he told me about his experience in his early years lining up in a Centrelink welfare queue.

He was 19, in med school, first child in hand, and lining up for a government handout because the bills were mounting and both he and the partner couldn't make ends meet. Now, still married to the same woman and with four beautiful kids on board, he looks back at the tough times with much fondness, because despite how bad things may seem currently, he knows they've pulled through worse.

The last and most interesting thing happened at work during one of our registrar teaching sessions. We were having a talk on leadership, and the bosses of both the doctors and nursing staff had agreed to start an initiative of gratefulness within the department. It was something they affectionately named ABCD - or Above and Beyond the Call of Duty.

All of us were given a notepad each, and told to note down each day while we were at work, someone who had gone out of their way to make our work easier that day, or who had been good to us.

These notes are to be placed in a box in the department, and more than just acknowledging and appreciating each other for the work that we do daily, I think more importantly it is meant to help us shift our perspectives at work from focusing on what went wrong that day, to something that went well.

It might seem like a fluffy and let's-hold-hands-and-sing-Kum-Ba-Yah-around-the-campfire thing to do, and yet I believe that it is this inculcated habit of gratefulness and positivity which will help the department function better and make people look forward to work rather than dreading it. Yes, it may seem a little artificial at the start, and yet I believe that if we continue at it, it will become more natural, and drive the culture of the department.

Already I have been feeling more positive about being at work these past two weeks than I have in awhile, having bosses compliment me for a job well done, and doing the same to my peers and juniors and nursing staff as well.

We who care for the lives of so many people, should feel cared for ourselves, and be reminded that we do valuable work.

Anyway, I will leave you with a story from one of our doctors from India who shared this great story about gratefulness during the leadership training session:

The Indian Doctor's Story

I come from a family which is one of the largest medical families in India. My grandfather was a doctor, both my parents and my uncles and aunties are doctors, and even my siblings and cousins are doctors. 

I was in a shop one day when the shopowner found out that I was a doctor and he asked me for my surname, and so I told him.

He recognised the name, and he said that his great grandfather had to have an X-ray many years ago, and had to travel 2 days in order to get one. My grandfather was the radiologist at the time, and when he found out that he had traveled two days just to get an X-ray, he invited him to his house to have coffee, and rest, before making the trip home.

Oh, the shopowner could not remember what the X-ray was for, or even what sickness his grandfather had at the time. All he remembered was how my grandfather cared and showed kindness to his great grandfather that day, and the story remains in his family until today.

All of us in the room were silenced by this great example of what we are really called to do in this job of ours.

Yeah, so. Life. Baseball bat. Gratefulness.

I have stopped checking my bank account for the past two weeks now.

There's a subliminal message hidden in here somewhere.

Making Sense Of It All

So I get a call from Karen at 11 am while I am at work in Ballarat. "Er, honey, are you free to talk?" she asked, although I sensed a keener desperation in her voice. "What's up?" I say, and she tells me that she woke up today to find the house flooded. Water was leaking from the lights in the ensuite and had made its way into the master bedroom and what was even more worrying was that it had somehow made its way downstairs into the dining area.

I tried to suppress the initial instinct to panic, and the images of Titanic-level water gushing into the house that was playing in my head. Instead I switched into problem solving mode and tried to think of who she should call first. I then changed out of my theatre scrubs and told who I needed to that I needed to attend an emergency back home, and thankfully they were very understanding at my workplace.

I get another call from Karen while driving and she tells me that she was worried because water heater at the back of the house was letting out hot air, and I tell her to get away from the backyard to somewhere safe. The house was secondary to her safety and I try my hardest to keep within the speed limits. The Titanic was now exploding in my head, and I could not be there to save my wife.

It was a long hour and twenty minute drive home, and I called frequently to make sure she was okay, while trying to figure out what I could do from all this distance away. Find the main water supply and turn it off. She manages to call the plumber and he tells her to find the main electricity switch and turn that off too.

I felt a little more settled after that, and soon my thoughts naturally drifted to the question we all ask ourselves in times of trouble - "Why me?" and, if you are so inclined, "What is God trying to tell me? Have I displeased Him in some way?"

There were fleeting moments of anger, bargaining and denial all in the short space of my trip home. We are all meaning-making creatures and I was trying to make sense of this 'tragedy' that had blindsided us on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday morning.

Now I use the word 'tragedy' here carefully because, really, compared to everything else that is happening in the world right now (whether reported or unreported), how dare I classify this as a tragedy. But it was a mini-tragedy nonetheless - I was faced with the prospect of homelessness, and potentially months of work on the house. The thought of that still sends shivers down my spine.

By the grace of God, things were worse in my head than I had imagined, which is usually the case. Karen was safe when I got home, and she had dried up most of the house. The water was no longer dripping from the ceilings, and apart from some short-circuited wires and some skirting damage, I would like to believe the house has escaped relatively unscathed.

The insurance company was really understanding and helpful in our times of need, and the tradesmen were friendly and even brought some humour into a serious situation. We found out what the problem was - the original builders of the house must have accidentally driven a nail through a pipe above our bathroom, but instead of taking responsibility and fixing it, they left it alone - it'll be right - and the nail had held out until now.

We are now waiting for the building assessors to come by and see what needs to be fixed, which we are praying won't be major. We still have a roof over our heads, and Karen is safe, and that is the main thing for now.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

So why did it have to happen?

Here is how I have been processing it. This has happened:

1) For absolutely no reason. I think that sometimes we try too hard to justify everything that goes on in the world. We try and make sense of bombs going off and of buildings collapsing and of natural disasters that rob people of their lives and their homes. We are meaning-making creatures, after all, and meaninglessness does not sit well with us - every tragedy should result in goodness, and everything  should happen for a reason.

Try to apply that reasoning to the perpetrators that have never been brought to justice, or to the victims who carry their tragedies unresolved with them for the rest of their lives. Try to apply that to the people who have tried to live healthy but succumb to their cancers anyway, or the occasional smoker who lives well into their eighties.

We do not live in a fixed moral universe. The sun will shine and the rain will fall equally on both the good and the evil people of this world. Yes, we often reap what we sow, but not always, and yes, there is the law, and a judicial system in place, but justice is rarely swift nor adequate in our fallen world.

We live in a broken world, and all we can do is try to bring light into the darkness and life into areas where there is only death, and it heartens me to see some of us trying to do exactly that.

2) God must be punishing me for some sin. Once again, this thinking does not sit well with me for a couple of reasons - firstly, this really depends on your frame of belief - if you were an atheist, then No one is punishing you for anything, if you were a Buddhist, perhaps this is payback for some sin in a past life and so forth.

In my Christian frame of belief - really, God has forgiven all my sins on that cross where Jesus died. Not some of my sins. Not only the sins I committed before I became a Christian. Not only the small sins. All of my sins. Past, present, future, and really, is Christ's death on the cross not big enough to cover any sin? All of my sins.

3) God wants me to learn something from this. Now this perhaps, I can subscribe to. I am not being punished, but I am being refined because God is still interested in who I become and how I interact with the world around me.

I think if there is one thing that God desires from me is my full dependence on Him. That means to humble ourselves completely and depend on Him alone.

What does that even mean? 

I must say that I don't fully comprehend that yet - we are created to work and look after this earth that He has made, and we naturally take pride in what we have accumulated and built with our own hands.

For me it was this house - I remember that a lot of my confidence came from this home we had acquired, the furniture we had painstakingly assembled, this land we owned. It was a source of great pride.

If there is one thing God despises, it is the proud, because it is with this same pride that we pass judgement on other people's lives, it is this pride that shields us from the real problems affecting our communities and the world we live in, this pride that leads to self-centeredness - when we were made to love our God and our neighbours as ourselves. Strangely enough, this pride does not bring satisfaction but discontentment - a need to acquire more to validate our very existence.

And so here I am, humbled once more before God, as He pries my hands a little more from the things that I am desperately trying to hold on to dearly, reminding me to let go a bit more of the things that invest all my confidence in.

I have to let go of my sureness in this house, all my belongings, my beloved wife, my dear family members, my job, my status, my health - all these things that I thought I have control over, or think that I am in control of - it is days like this that remind me that I am in control of absolutely nothing.

And so I come before my Creator once more with fear and trembling, and truthfully, I am still learning what it means to trust Him more, especially in my comfortable middle class existence. I have not known hunger for the longest time, I have been spared from homelessness, my health has had one or two scares in the past but I have my health now.

I am still trying to process this, and writing about it has allowed me to put my thoughts into some cohesive form, although in truth, I am still shaken by the thought of what could have been, especially if neither of us were home to notice it in time.

Letting go of the tangible things that I can put my trust in to put my faith in the unseen is so hard even for a 'veteran' Christian like me. Days like these show up what my foundations are truly made of.

²⁴ “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶ But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7:24-27