disturbing search

i just went into the blog monitor and found someone being referred to this blog after doing a search on yahoo search. and what disturbed me was the fact that the keywords that person used to search was "girls being chloroformed to sleep"... now, if my assumptions are right about the intent of this person, i think the authorities ought to focus their attentions on such perverts out there rather than go about charging glbts who have consensual sex...

hmmm... my left hand column speaking again...

:-)

2nd cousin's wedding

will be attending my 2nd cousin's wedding tomorrow. my dad's cousin's son. will be representing my family again. and i am sure the questions gonna come fast and furious again - "how much you earning har?", "wah... i heard you very capable leh, must be very very high up hor?", "must be earning tens of thousands of dollars right?", "right?" "right?", "wah piang eh... now so-and-so married liao, when is your turn ha? i wait very long to drink your tea liao leh!" la la la...

used to be stressed by all these questions. but now, i find them boring... reflects on them more than anything else. mind sets. money minded. older generation thinking. and usually, my standard answer would be equally auntie. i'll go something like "aiyah, don't worry la, when it happens, sure invite you one la" and sometimes, i wish i could just complete my sentence and go "only worry that by that time, you would be dead..."

evil me...

anyway... i think i'll just enjoy the food...

whew...

been a tiring week. and i am so glad it is friday!

my left lower eyelid have been twitching like crazy past 2 days. accordingly, twitching left eyelids is a sign of bad things coming. but shall not be superstitious about it. think i am just simply too tired from the disturbed sleep and work stress.

anyway, i am glad the weekend is here...

of dog poo... again...

darn! spent some time writing this post and lost everything when i did the formating... here i go again...

it's about sapphie. altho i have blogged about it before, i am pretty sure now that she's entering a new phase in life. a phase call old age. and i am saying this cos of what i observed recently and what happened yesterday. it's about her poo again... ya, have written about her poo before, but that was more about poo test for her when she was a puppy... hmm, that seemed not too long ago. or was it?...

anyway...

you see, all these years, whenever i brought sapphie out to the fields for her walks, she would clear her bowels at most twice. but in recent weeks, this frequency has increased to some 5-6 times. and even then, the nett volume was much more. and this was surprising cos i have not increased her food intake significantly. i had not placed too much worry on these observations nonethless. until yesterday...

last evening, i was quietly clearing my emails in the room when bee bee, who was in the living room watching dvd, shouted out and asked if i had farted or was shitting. i answered no. and sensing something really wrong, i walked out. i suspected sapphie. and when i walked into the living room, and lo and behold, there was a pile of dog poo on the floor. still fresh and warm. and at one corner of the room, stood sapphie. ears drooped, eyes looking guilty and fearful and tail wagging cautiously. she knew she had done something wrong.

but i know sapphie well enough. if she had pooed at home, it could only be that she could not control anymore. i told bee bee to quickly bring her downstairs to complete her business. and true enough, bee bee told me she sped off to the spot to poo once the lift door opened. she came upstairs and quickly settled into her favourite spot under the table to rest. half hour later, sensing her need to poo again, i brought her down again. and whoh! again, she sped off to her favourite spot and started pooing.

and this morning, while i took her downstairs to poo again, i noted that the lift landing had a few pieces of dog poo too. they were dried poo and i could only conclude that they were sapphie's. that she could poo while running could only mean that she is full of shit...

and yes, i think i can finally say - she is an old dog now.

ps: oh, i have not asked bee bee how come he thinks i could emit such powerful farts or that my shit could possibly smell like dogshit (!!!). perhaps, i could only say that he has not come into contact with dog shit to fully understand how it smell like! heh heh...

2nd nite

managed to sleep thru the nite with the splint on. but it was a badly disturbed sleep. nonetheless, i made it thru the night! just need to get use to it i guess!

i am so tired now... and my arms feel rather sore and stiff too. the weekend is still 48 hrs away!

argh!

:-)

my first night

last night was the first nite i slept with my splint (arm plastic cast) on. both arms. it was meant to help manage my nerve impingement at my elbow. to put them on, i had to seek bee bee's help cos it was rather impossible to strap on the other arm once i had one arm strapped on. and so, with some difficulty and a lot of laughter, i had both strapped onto my arms. and as i laid down on my bed, i began to understand the problems i will face. it came one after another.

firstly, with both arms immobilized, i could not cover myself with my blanket well. you see, i am a fussy sleeper. i sleep with my blanket neatly tugged over my shoulder and under my chin. and to do so, bee bee had to help me pulled the blanket up. then when i got sufficiently comfortable, i started yawning. needless to say, with the yawn came the tears... alamak! i couldn't wipe my tears as it flowed down my nose. it was so uncomfortable. it was so ticklish. and bee bee came to my rescue. he wiped my tears away. and then, i yawned again. and i teared again... haiz... i am a left-hand side sleeper - that is - i sleep best on my left side. but after a while, ever so frequently, i needed to turn to my right. and i found myself having to lift up my seemingly long and unbendable arms and swung them over me! that would have been no issue if i had the bed to myself. but as bee bee was beside me, my arm swinging act resulted in them resting onto his chest. and i ended up lying in an awkward position. a position that was neither left, neither right, neither supine and neither prone. it was a 270 degree position if you can visualize the physical position i was in. and i was then forced to turn back to my left side... these movements ended with my blanket getting undone and my shoulder exposed. hmmmm... seemingly simple things in life but taken for granted.

tsk tsk tsk... and so with lotsa difficulties (but lotsa laughters too), i eventually fell asleep. but less than 2hrs later, i woke up again. now, i found my hands numbed... such troubles! in the end, i took off the splint and decided to sleep without them.

well, 2hrs for the first night. that should be a good enough duration. will see how i can slowly adapt to it...

:-)

further tests

following the mri scan couple of weeks ago, i finally got to see the specialist today. what the specialist told me was very much similar to what kl told me last week, and more. the mri scan was ordered given my increasing complains about my stiff neck as well as the tingling sensation and numbness at my last fingers on both hands. the specialist made me do some simple moves (such as pressing my last fingers against one another, using my thumbs to hold a piece of paper, etc)... and i was told that the multiple spurs do not seemed to be sufficiently serious to warrant surgery yet. however, what caught me by surprise was her explanation to me that although the spurs on my cervical bones are not that serious yet, there are also signs that my elbows are also impinging my nerves on both arms.

this had aggravated the spur problem and worsened the numbness on my fingers. so, for the meantime, to manage my cervical bones, it's more intensive physio, traction, medication (to lower the inflammation and muscle relaxants. and as for my elbow, i was referred to the rehabilitation center to get 2 casts made. the casts are meant to prevent my elbows from bending when i sleep and i will have to wear these casts before retiring to bed nightly. and thru the day, i had also been advised to minimise bending my elbows and that means minimise using keyboards, minimise putting my hands on the table... la la la... in addition, further tests have been ordered two months time to determine the extend to which my nerves have been affected and whether the neck or the elbow were the main cause of the pain/ numbness.

hmmm, my coming nights will be interesting. sleeping with straightened arms, much similar to robots...

heh heh...

ps: jokes aside, the specialist also said something quite worrying - that i should do my utmost to avoid sudden jerk to my neck cos she noted that i have a case of thick tissues in my spinal canal and this had made my spinal canal rather small. together with the spurs and the tightness, it is rather easy for my neck to snap when i experience a sudden jerk... and when such a thing happen, i will become paralyze neck down...

dearly departed...

over the weekend, i was again reminded of the fragility of life and the closeness of death. you see, yesterday, i visited my mum (after the visit to the columbarium) and as i was making my way home, the traffic advance warning board on kje reads "pie... massive jam..." or something to that effect. with the early warning, i took the tpe route home instead.

in the afternoon, i received an sms from an friend of mine telling me that his coursemate had died in a motorbike mishap. and from the facebook status update of another one of their coursemate, i realised that the jam that i had earlier avoided was the one that killed him. accordingly, he had only recently lamented that owning a car was too expensive these days and had just bought the bike as a birthday present for himself last week. he had only celebrated his birthday couple of days ago. and now... it was sad. this is the second student of mine to die in recent few months. one of cancer and now another one in a traffic mishap.

so, once again, i was reminded of how fragile life is. and how fine the line between life and death is. how one can literally be talking to you one day and the next, lying down for good. the family collected him from the mortuary this morning and buried him this afternoon. i did not visit as it is still less than a year since my dad's passing and thought it would not be very appropriate to attend such events. nonetheless, he was in my mind at the hour the burial took place.

may he rest in peace.

qing cao you

the picture speaks a lot to us. and i supposed only two of us would be able to fully understand, appreciate and laugh when we see this picture.

certain things are better left unsaid...

:-)

visiting my dad

not too sure what motivated me, but i decided to pay a visit to the columbarium to pay respect to my dad this morning. this was something that i had thought of doing since a few days ago.

and so, this morning after breakfast, bee bee and i bought the stuff (joss paper, joss stick, etc) and drove down to the columbarium. it was bee bee's first time visiting the columbarium. i believed it was kinda symbolic to him. cos all these while, altho he knew my dad, they did not talk much. nonetheless, they acknowledged each other's presence and got along rather ok. and i am sure my dad knew but chose not to ask. and as for bee bee, he was always there and yet not there. hmmm, not sure how to describe this. i guess these are things that are better left unasked. it's like this for my dad. and it's the same for my mum. even until his death. and during the wake, bee bee was always at the funeral parlour, in the background, quietly looking, quietly observing. and in his own quiet way, i believed he was mourning too. yet somehow, while everyone acknowledged his presence, no one really spoke to him. he was, after all, a part yet never a part of the family. legally, customarily, watever...

anyway, we paid a visit to dad this morning. paid our respects. burned the joss papers. and after that, we walked around the place. i brought him to see my aunt's niche. and we walked pass the many nameless niche. each and every one with it's own urn of bones. nameless. as we quietly walked, he reflected that despite all the fights, bickering, politiking - for power, for wealth - through one's life, one ultimately end up in one small space, one small niche. good reflection.

and as i now blog this, it struck me (quite cheekily too) - that this is perhaps the ultimate meaning of our pledge - regardless of race, language or religion... one small space, one small niche, one singapore...

indeed, it was a meaningful morning for us.

:-)

living life

heh heh... feels a little shy when i read gs's blog... was just trying to share my point of view - something that i had learned the hard way. i supposed if you have not reach the ultimate point/ border between life and death, you will not fully understand the meaning of it... anyway, my sharing with gs was

“sometimes, we only need to give ourselves another chance. for it would be better to live and be hurt rather than to die and not know what is life”

but i do admit, sometimes it is indeed easier to say than to do. the difficult part is to let go of a past. altho letting go of the past does not mean forgetting it.

flying time

it's amazing how time passes so quickly 2009. it's already coming to the end of feb! and i don't think i've achieved anything significant in my performance for this year yet!

wtff!

mri results - tentative

went to see kl for my medical review and to get the latest round of medication top-up. this is perhaps the last time i'll be seeing him. he'll be changing job in apr. my next appt in jun will be this colleague of his whom he said is also a plu. it'll probably be easier to see a plu doctor cos the doctor-patient confidentiality connection is easier to establish... you know what i mean. anyway, managed to get my cholesterol readings - it's gone down, although it is still a bit on the high side. asthma - no more attacks over the last 2 weeks; blood pressure - in good healthy range; heart rate - good count... and he clicked on my mri results...

am not supposed to get the result until i go back to the specialist next week. but cos the medical records are all linked, kl was able to see the mri results. no good. spur growth. more than one. for that matter, over 3-4 of my cervical bones. found spurs growing on c4, c5, c6 at least. understand that possibly one is pressing onto my spinal cord and further 2-3 pressing on nerves... admittedly, this news was a little unsettling. but it gave me closure as to why i constantly feel tightness at my neck, pain at my fingers, sprain my neck very often and so on...

kl also shared that the specialist will probably sent me for more test, perhaps more intensive physio and possibly recommend op for my neck. these are the possibilities, i'll have to see the specialist next week before any plan could be worked out. well, as i said, it was a little unsettling, but i was not afraid. the effect on me was not as drama as when i found i had high cholesterol, or for that matter, when my office outed me. perhaps i am numbed, but i think perhaps, i have come to accept this as a fact of life. birth, old age, sickness, death...

what bee bee said...

"人家想你的时后, 人家就会读你的 blog..."

so sweeeeeet...

:-)

slumdog

watched slumdog millionaire yesterday with bee. enjoyed the show very much. and i shan't attempt to review the show here. there are more than enough people out there who have reviewed it. enough of people out there who loved it, bitched it, went crazy about it... la la la... i would however like to share some of the thoughts that went through my mind when i watched the show. i walked into the theatre with no expectations nor idea about what to expect except that it would be an production shot in india amongst the slum about a slum boy who made it rich. the following were some of the thoughts that went through my mind:

1. the toilet scene where boy-kamal crapped was very similar to the toilet i used when i was a boy living in kampong in paya lebar. and at that time, my constant fear was that i would fall into the shit if i did not spread my legs wide enough... and looking at the shit of my fellow kampong dwellers, the creepie crawlies crawling in the shit and the green houseflies buzzing around would be enough to make any stomach churn today.

2. the slum scene reminded me of my kampong to a small extend. well, not the compact nature, rather, the zine sheets. it was exactly the same in my kampong and my little zinc sheet house/ zinc attap houses. the close proximity between neighbours with little or no private spaces.

3. running and playing with other children in open spaces. yes, this was what my neighbour's kids did. it was the same as per shown in the movie. but for me, i was not allowed to do so. my mum was afraid i might get run over by cars or get into bad influence given that my kampong kids had rather thuggish parents.

4. racial/ religious clashes. yes, that also reminded me of how similar clashes occurred when i was a kid. i remembered my mum keeping me at home and refusing to let me out. i remembered my dad coming home late one night and spoke of malays and chinese fighting at kampong eunos. and i remembered him telling my mum to stay at home and not go out.

5. rubbish scavenging. no, i did not need to scavenge for anything when i was a kid. life was very tough and we were poor, but we did not need to resort to scavenging for stuff from rubbish dump. rather, this scene reminded me of lorong halus. it reminded me of how i sent trucks of rubbish to the lorong halus dump and how my truckload of rubbish would be weighed before being allowed to enter the dump to drop our load. that was in 1991. this scene also reminded me of manila, philippines.

6. murky/ greenish river filled with rubbish and people wading through it. it reminded me of jakarta when i visited indonesia in 2006. lots of slums by the canals and rivers and lots of rubbish too. very contrasting when i thought of the singapore river today (not the singapore river when i was a kid for its water was black and smelly back then).

7. digging children's eyes out and exploiting them to beg. this reminded me of 2 singaporean boys who mysteriously disappeared in 1978 (i think) and was never found. there were rumours that they had been brought to either thailand bangkok or india by syndicates to beg. i remembered them cos for a short while, i followed their news. that was a long time back. they are still missing.

8. overall, it reminded me that during such times, it is about the survival of the fittest, survival of the individual. everyone for himself. altruism is probably non-existent. screw the society, screw the law, screw morality, screw values... it's sad. but to survive, that's the only way. it's a fact of life. and it's true.

valentines

i have stopped celebrating valentines since 2006. and i've stopped doing so not becos i don't think it is a good thing. celebrating love will never be bad. rather, i have stopped celebrating it in the way most would expect couples to do - by going for good nice candlelight dinner and pretending that love only exist on 14 feb yearly.

the reason why i have stopped celebrating it this way on 14 feb is becos it is now too commercialised. most of the time, the food is mass-produced (certainly not the quality you would get on a normal day) and very very very very expensive. and i certainly suspect that most restaurant hope to be able to hide their lack of/ lower quality behind the reason for the day itself. they must be thinking "come on, even if it is no good, couple would definitely either not notice cos they are so focus on each other, or, even if they find it below usual standard, they would ignore it and talk about sweet nothings...". rite?

and so, i decided to get back to the fundamental - valentines is about love. and you can and should really celebrate love with everyone around you. friends, lovers, family, and so on... and if it is about your partner, you should celebrate love everyday. you should find quality time for each everyday and not just on 14 feb. and of cos, if you really want to celebrate love on 14 feb with your partner, you can do so in many other ways and not nec spent your money on expensive dinners... especially in such lousy economic times... and of cos, the focus of this day is not in how expensive the dinner is, it is about finding the time for both to commit to one another to spent quality time.

ok, will stop here... gonna prepare myself for a nice movie with bee later...

happy valentines everyone!

:-)

memories

this week, for that matter, the recent few weeks, were very interesting.

it seemed like the pass is slowly coming back to me. first, it was khoon seng, then it was my secondary school friends, and then two days ago, bee bee and i managed to meet up and catch up with justin and his partner frank. it's amazing how things had changed yet remained the same... changed in that we have all grown older, signs of age has appeared - not nec the appearance of wrinkles, but the appearance of a certain maturity in the face, in the way we talk, in the way we communicate, in the content of our communication. yet have remained the same. same in the familiarity of the person, in the familiarity of the character, the thoughts, and the connection.

kinda interesting few weeks. and it made me search for artefacts of my past. old photos, old memorabilia, school badges, exercises books, report cards... somehow, the incidences that happened twenty thirty years ago suddenly seemed so recent. i could still remember my handwriting. the old notes that i wrote for myself, the old biology exercise book and the drawing of cells - xylem, phloem, parenchyma cells, palisade mesophyll, and so on. and the photos. i could almost see, feel, smell and touch... experience the whole era all over again!

and i thought to myself. why am i going through this? why made me do this? and for that matter, it seemed so uncanny and coincidental that those i re-connected with expressed the same thoughts and experiences of reestablishing connections with their old mates! and i could only conclude that perhaps this has something to do with age. argh! sighs of middle age? in the most recent email khoon seng wrote to me, he expressed certain regret for not focusing enough on people around him when he looked back. and this made me think that perhaps age is not the real reason. could it be the search for self-fulfillment?

i'll have to reflect on this further...

my bmt

i was enlisted on 19 mar 1985.

i reported early to cmpb. at that time cmpb was located at dempsey road. if i could recall correctly, i reported for my conscription at the central manpower base (cmpb) alone. my mum made me my usual morning coffee in the morning and i left the marine parade flat soon after. it was a glum morning for me as i was entering a new phase of my life. and through the bus journey, the thought that i would be away for the next month or so away from my family made me felt uneasy. i felt lonely. then again, i reminded myself that khoon seng had been through bmt since dec 1984. and having seen him survived through it and coming out leaner, stronger and more confident, i told myself, i would too. he was my role model and in a large sense, my inspiration.

the whole process in cmpb was a blur. once i arrived, i reported at the counter and soon enough, i was told to proceed from room to room. i vaguely remembered being made to say the pledge, sign some documents, and soon enough, a whole lot of newly enlisted conscripts including me were all asked to gather and assemble at the parade square. the three-tonners came and we all boarded it. by that time, the parents, friends and relatives had gathered at the parade square. tears flowed. people waved. thinking back, it felt like a funeral. and we were the ones being sent off. once off cmpb, we were driven to sembawang/ woodlands area to collect our uniform, mess tins, etc etc etc... at gsmb before heading to pulau tekong where the infantry training depot - itd - was located.

i was posted to lion company platoon 41. i was placed in section 3. my bunk was located on the 6th floor of itd camp 3 and i was in bed 5. i was knwn as rec w s sim.

i supposed my stay in itd was fun. it was fun not becos i was a sadist and enjoy being punished or being subjected to tough training. rather, i found it fun becos there was a certain familiarity in what i was put through given my national cadet corps background and there were new things i could learn daily. some of the most memorable things that i experienced include:

- watching my peers learn how to wear boots, wear the camouflage uniforms, etc. and with my ncc background, i had the upper hand.

- being gathered and marched to the camp barber. one by one, we waited for our turn. slowly but surely, our hair dropped. to a certain extend, it was a mixed feeling of fun and horror to see the reflections of my half near-bald head and half haired-head in the mirror. and i recalled the immediate weird cold yet numb feeling to see my botak head after the whole process.

- my buddy was this chap called ho hon yuen. he was from the same college as me. brilliant chap and a mathematics person. a typical mummy's son. first time out of the comforts of his home. very pampered. once, his button dropped off and i had to sew it on back for him.

- by the end of first week, we were all so weak from the daily chin ups, runs, push ups... we were literally aching all over and our chin up count per person dropped from anywhere between 5 - 12 to zero per person. our chin up counts started picking up again after week 4... 1, 2, 3...

- sitting at the brightly litted basketball court and eating night snacks while my platoon sergeant barked away - the company routine orders, the instructions for the next day, and so on.

- night snacks comprised anything from burnt rice and green bean soup, bread with strawberry jam, bread with thick butter, mushy maggi mee and so on. and of cos - the all so familiar green mug that is marked with our names.

- waking up at 5.45am, whole body aching like crazy, rushing to wash ourselves (altho at times, it was just rushing off to the parade square straight from bed) and for breakfast. and breakfast menu looking exactly like night snack's menu.

- area-cleaning of the bunk and areas around camp that never seemed to get cleaned enough to satisfy my corporal. so naturally, it led to push ups and "see the tree there? go touch it!"

- parent visit day where my mum visited me. she came along with her ginseng and meat double boiled. i proudly showed her around my bunk, my camp, introduced her to my corporal, my platoon commander and so on. and she commented that i had slimmed down, looked more tone and sun-burnt.

- the highly looked forward to canteen breaks where we would rush to buy soft drinks and eat canteen snacks. not too good but in the mouth of highly deprived recruits, they tasted like heaven!

- the highly dreaded bayonet fighting, and my corporal that kept barking and barking - hyahh! hyahh! hyahh! (just a couple of months before my enlistment, i heard khoon seng shared so much about it but couldn't fully appreciate what he meant!)

- and of cos the long list of physical training (pt) - log pt, combat pt, rifle pt, standard obstacle course, la la la... never did i know my rifle could feel so bloody heavy! and for log pt, i enjoyed the thought of myself being relatively shorter than most of my platoon mates! :-)

- getting to wear the 1-kg heavy metal helmet that had our initials stenciled in front. and of cos, the frequent blur kings that, for reasons spanning from rushing for time, sleepy, to whatever, wore the helmet backside front ala fireman style! ha ha!

- individual fieldcraft training was fun cos we got to learn about what is c.b. leaves (accordingly, the shape of the leaf reminds one of the vagina! and c.b. is the acronym for the hokkien term for chee bye aka vagina), and see how some of us went into the bush and come out looking like some aborigine drag queen, complete with lallang sticking straight out of our helmets!

- fire movement training and being made to shout "one thousand two thousand three thousand, four thousand down!" dashing from tree to tree, sand mount to sand mount and so on.

- drawing range card on the side of a hill and learning how we should point our rifle, define our arc of fire, identify far objects, near objects la la la.

- throwing a live grenade and hearing some of our platoon mate go "nek nek"!

- watermanship training and learning how to make improvised floatations from anything from coconuts to our fieldpacks to our camouflage uniform! and of cos, the building of the infantry assault bridge, running across it like those combatants we see in the show combat! really, the fun part about watermanship training was playing with water! and in a warped sense, the feeling of cold water seeping into the body through our uniform onto our balls! come on... other than that occasion, how often do we, as sane adults, get to walk into a river or sea fully clothed!

- trench digging (yes, in my time, recruits do dig full trenches)! and eating bread and drinking coffee in the dark, not knowing that the breaed had been dirtied by mud and clay!

- and of cos, the situational test. thought it was fun. solving some tricky questions and situational problems. one of the stations, we were supposed to think of how to move our group from one bank to another (elevated platform) over an imaginary river (made of mattresses) without falling into the river that was infested with crocodiles. i remembered that cos in the end, i fell and was eventually eaten by crocodiles. ha ha...

- my platoon commander was 2lt wang khoon huang (he called himself chris) and he was one that practised strong favouritism. one particular guy he liked - this platoonmate of mine - mak. showered him with so much attention that it was so obvious to the rest of us. anyway, i found out later that mak (and possibly wang) was gay! well, wang went on the sell ice-cream, became an air steward with sia, and so on after his fulltime national service.

- during the company nite, the song `i like chopin' by gazebo was played. this was to become one of the most memorable song for me for that era.

- before long, bmt came to an end and my company was tasked to perform the bayonet fighting during our passing out parade. this led to more bayonet fighting training. huge sighs...

- last few days before passing out parade, the platoon started to get sentimental. we would sit up beside our bed, and talk and chatted... and 3 days before passing out, yap (one of my platoon mate) shared about his nightly ghostly experience with the supernatural at his bedside (section 1). that night, none of us woke up to go to the toilet for our middle of the night pee. we all slept with empty plastic bags in our hands and blanket draped over our heads. the next day, one by one, we went to the toilet to throw away plastic bags of urine! ha ha ha!

passing out parade came. if i recalled correctly, it was held at the bedok stadium. i graduated from my basic military training. i emerged one of the top recruit of my company. and i was posted to officer cadet school.

that was jun 1985.

mri

finally, i went for my mri this evening.

arrived there promptly at 7.30pm and went straight to the mri lab. there was an elderly gentleman undergoing the scan when i arrived. and waiting for her turn was an elderly indian muslim lady (let's call her ah cheet). indian cos you can see from her skin tone. muslim cos you can tell by her children all around her and their dressing.

anyway, the radiographer came out to brief me on what to expect, made me change into the hospital robe and i waited with bee at the corridor waiting area. in no time, the ah cheet was asked to go in. and in less than a min, an alarm went off. the next thing i saw was ah cheet being pushed out in a wheelchair... she was near tears and kept saying she felt like dying. she spoke in malay. she was limp and even in the wheel chair she couldn't sit up straight. it was an unsettling sight. the radiographer on the other hand looked a little flustered. she must have thought ah cheet's reaction was a little over the top for she told her male partner that even before she could start any procedure, ah cheet already pressed the button. i think it was fear. they eventually did not go through the procedure with ah cheet.

i was next. frankly, i was not in the best of psychological state after seeing ah cheet come out half-gone.

sighs, seemed like i always get into this awkward situation when people before me always had some issue. remembered once when i went for my leg operation couple of years back. i was under heavy anaesthesia and was waiting for my turn to be operated on. it was already at the point of no turning back. the operating theatre door opened. there was an old man. he had just had his operations. apparently, his anaesthetic effect petered off and he woke up before he could be wheeled out of the operating theatre. so, when the operating theatre door opened for me, i could hear him wailing away in hokkien that he was in terrible pain... imagine the psychological effect on me!

ok, back to my mri... so, with me still struggling to put ah cheet's experience behind me, i went in. i told myself i will be brave. or at least pretend to look brave. i forced a smile. after being asked a few standard questions, i was asked to lie on the mri machine. felt cold. i was asked to put on ear plugs. then they placed something over my chest and told me not to move, not to swallow my saliva and to press the button if i needed help. next thing i know, i was pushed into the mri scanner. it was a huge tunnel like machine. admittedly, it felt a little squeezed. luckily, i was not claustrophobic. i closed my eyes. there was a lot of noise. telling myself i had to stay still for about half an hour, i psyche myself to think that i was in a spaceship and was about to go into deep space (kinda like start trek or star wars)... the noise continued. and after sometime, the radiographer told me i could swallow my saliva but i should keep still... this process repeated again. this time round, i imagined i was jodie foster in contact. i imagine myself dropping and appearing on a planet in a galaxy far away. and the radiographer came on again telling me i can swallow. and then the process repeated itself 3-4 times. and by the time it ended, i felt a little headache and giddy. otherwise, i was ok.

the whole procedure lasted about half hour.

and as quickly as i was asked to proceed with the procedure, i was also asked to change up and that i could leave. it was indeed an interesting experience.

i shall now wait for the result in two week's time!

it started with 25 points

it started with me penning down 25 points about myself in fb. it then led me to pen down my life anecdotes. one thing led to another and something told me to do a search on my now defunct secondary school in fb. and hey presto! i found a group! tun seri lanang secondary school alumni... and thru this link, i found some other secondary school friends. i then went on to do a search for telok kurau east school... and wow omg! i actually found it too! and there are even photos in it! such sweet and fond memories!

schutz... it looks like i'll be spending quite a lot of time checking out old friends in the coming days!

:-)

my junior college days

my college days...

1. i was in temasek junior college (tjc) from 1983 - 1984. as mentioned, i was influenced by my second sis. i went to tjc in part cos my second sis had her jc education in tjc.

2. i was in orientation group 14. i got to know khoon seng in the orientation group. he was my best friend in college.

3. i raised the school flag on wednesdays. that was the day when we all had to wear our college tie and sing the college song - it went "it matters not where we are from, to temasek we now belong. sharing experiences, yours and mine..." and so on.

4. becos of my science background, i got myself enrolled into a triple science class. i took bio, chem and physics at `a' levels. in my second year, i dropped my physics to 'ao' levels.

5. we were all required to join at least one extra curricula activity. i tried joining the college choir (in part cos my second sis was in the choir too). went for the audition and was asked to sing a song. it caught me by surprise (stupid me!). on the spot, i sang the national anthem... i was nervous, i went out of tune... needless to say, i failed :-)

6. failing to join the choir, i challenged myself to do something out of the world. so i joined the chinese orchestra instead! this despite my screwed up chinese. nonetheless, the chinese orchestra became one of the best memories of my junior college years.

7. while in the chinese orchestra, i played the er hu and zhong hu. in fact, i found myself to be rather adept at string instruments that i ended up learning almost all the string instruments including the luan, liu qin, yang qin and the pipa! i was no good when it comes to wind instruments. never good at blowing things... :-)

8. i never pass my chinese as a 2nd language in my whole life! i sat twice for it in my `o' levels and thrice for my `a' levels. for all my attempts, i obtained d7s! i even failed my oral exams! guess my dislike for chinese (that started in pri 4 after my chinese teacher wrongly accused me of deliberately shooting her) was too acute to be overcome.

9. i belonged to civics group (cg) 19/83 and my cg tutor was mrs so. she was also our chemistry teacher. my class comprised 14 girls and 4 guys (including me). my classroom was located at the third floor of the central block in the college.

10. i didn't like general paper lessons, or rather, i dislike my gp teacher - ms hsu (she later became mrs tay). one day, while discussing the topic abt the importance of music, i shared that tones have all along been impt to human beings and for that matter, tones are very important for us to be effective in our communications. a few days later (obviously ms hsu forgot which class she conducted), ms hsu came back to my class and shared that in one of her class, one student (me of cos!) said that music was so impt that one could even equate speech to music... and she laughed out loud. i felt so misquoted and embarrassed by her!

11. mrs bok taught us bio. she's malaysian and she was rather blur, but we all loved her.

12. once we had to dissect live rabbits for bio lab classes. my classmates and i managed to get the rabbits from chinatown maxwell road (i think we bought 12). brought them to college and i volunteered to chloroform them all. i placed all in a huge trash bag, poured chloroform onto some cotton butts and before throwing it into the trash bags. and to ensure maximum effect, i pour the rest of the chloroform into it. pure. the rabbits went crazy... they struggled and fought for their lives. the trash bag broke. out came all the rabbit jumping (they went as high up as my eye level!) and literally screaming. it was weird. that was my first time hearing a rabbit screach! a few seconds later, they dropped onto the ground, dazed, dying, and totally knocked out. many had blood flowing out of their eyes... i picked them up - one by one, placed them in a pail, brought them to the lab and we dissected them... as we did it, my class girls cried.

13. another time, we had to dissect earthworms. it was rather coincidental that it poured that morning and the school corridors were filled with earthworms. they had crawled out of their holes as it was all flooded by the rainwater. my class guys and i had fun picking them up... in the lab, we poured boiling water onto them. that was the first time i saw earthworm `jump'. very drama.

14. reflecting on the above 2 incidents, i think i was very cruel. i will never do such things now!

15. miss kee taught us physic in our first year. new teacher. enthusiastic but we didn't connect with her. mr pakri taught us physics in second year. he was a pervert who enjoyed touching my class girls' hands. we gave him the nickname pakricus garfieldicus as we didn't like garfield - a very popular comic at that time.

16. my junior college education revolved around 3 things - class, chinese orchestra and khoon seng. class - for obvious reasons. chinese orchestra - my eca, again for obvious reasons. khoon seng - my orientation group buddy. we continued keeping in contact after orientation. we would spent hours together after class, after chinese orchestra practice (lion dance practise for khoon seng). we would go to east coast and chat through the nights...

17. i had my first experience in politics in chinese orchestra. the form teacher in charge was miss kee (my first year physics teacher). she came in and tried to meddle in our chinese orchestra committee affairs. she came in between us and the orchestra alumni... we hated her! well... reflecting back now, i think we were just simply childish.

18. after my college education and while waiting for enlistment, i worked part time as a traffic `counter'... i literally sat at different traffic junctions to count number of cars passing through the junction. when i went for the interview for the job, i was so boh-chee ("no balls" in hokkien, or "lack the guts") i asked my mum to accompany me... :-)

my secondary school days

in secondary school...

1. i had my secondary school education at tun seri lanang secondary school from 1979 - 1982. the school was previously a malay-stream school. in line with the government's policy to phase out malay schools and have english stream schools, my cohort of students became the first english stream cohort of the school. that was the reason why most of us who did not even choose the school landed there instead.

2. given the malay-stream origin, and the education policy at that time (1979), those who did not take malay as a second language had to take it as the national language or bahasa kebangsaan. i had it easy as i had some malay grounding given my part peranakan background. but not my classmates who struggled through the year. and during exams, my classmates would copy from me... and of course, the teacher would conveniently excuse herself to allow us to copy (i think she knew that if she did not do that, she would have to answer the principal...)

3. my second sis influenced my choice of extra curricula activities and choice of subjects to a great extend. she was in the national cadet corps. so, i did the same. i became a member of the national cadet corps and after 4 years, i was promoted to a cadet staff sergeant (ssg).

4. again, due to my malay background, i enjoyed excellent working ties with my malay classmates and ncc mates. they quickly embraced me as one them.

5. i was the flag raiser when i was in secondary school.

6. in secondary 1, i failed my chinese so badly, my form teacher asked me to consider switching to malay as a second language. i did not.

7. my sec 1 form teacher was a malay lady who enjoys wearing tight kebayas to school. she was also our science teacher. once, during the laboratory sessions, we inadvertently lost control of our live cockcroach and it ran into my teacher's kebaya. it entered between her breast... you can imagine the commotion that day!

8. i was a class monitor in sec 1.

9. one of my favourite lessons in sec 1 was literature - greek stories, jason and the golden fleece, the rabbit's foot, etc.

10. in secondary 2, my pe teacher was this guy called mr gabriel tan. we enjoyed teasing him. once, during our swimming lesson at katong pool, one of my classmates went underwater and pulled his trunks off! :-)

11. i was in the afternoon class in sec 2. one of my habit was to read while walking to the bus stop. once, i walked into a lamp post. there was loud "bong!!!!" and everyone at the bus stop looked up and stared at me. i acted super blur and continued walking.

12. i had a gay english teacher in sec 2 - mr gwee. some of the things he did that we did not like - he changed our school song from malay to english. he changed the design of the school tie from something that was rather nice to one with horrible turquoise blue colour.

13. mr gwee once told my class boys to stay back in class after formal lessons so that he can share with us how to tell if a guy is a virgin... cannot recall what he said, but i think it had something to do with the colour of the head... lame.

14. i first wore long pants in sec 3. remembered buying it from a shop in tanjong katong. it made a super proud to be wearing it on the first day of school. i felt like an adult. well... it's an ego thing!

15. i faced in my first major dilemma as i went into sec 3. i love science. i love technical. i love arts. due to streaming, i have to choose one. in the end, i chose technical. as i said, my sis had a huge influence on me. as science stream was consider to be the best of the three, my sis got me transferred to science even before school term started. so, i ended up in science stream... i went along. after all, i enjoyed science too...

16. i was a prefect in sec 3 and sec 4.

17. i joined the gardening club, the english oratorical club, ncc, athlethics... once during my gardening club planting and clearing of weeds sessions, i found a set of rodent's skeleton! initially, it scared the shit out of me. once i recovered from my fright, i actually took the skull and played with it!

18. i was a member of the english oratorical club (in fact my whole class were!) by default because my sec 3 form teacher - mr rahim - was the teacher in charge of the club. we all loved my rahim! he was a funny but, in a way, very serious teacher.

19. sec 3/4, it's all about sex... puberty and hormones aplenty. my class (both boys and girls) would bring porn to school and exchange them amongst one another! one of my class girls actually brought a whole set of magazines for me... cos her sis was an air stewardess!

20. i had my own study group. 6 of us including me - doris, eng chuan, hh, lb, vanessa & i. naturally, everyone would pair us up... but nothing happened... ha ha... i was actually closer to another girl. as for study group, apart from studying together, we would go sight seeing almost every weekend. chinese garden. clearest memory.

21. i experienced my first `break-up' in sec 3. i got to know this girl called lay nah during one of the ncc leadership camp. i decided to call off the `relationship' even before we started... reason - she lived in jurong, i lived in marine parade. it would be so difficult for me to take a bus all the way there to see her. long distance relationship was difficult and worst of all - it was exam period. thinking back, it was rather funny. excuse was super lame...

22. i was a happy, cheerful and highly energetic kid. my bio teacher mrs chan once commented that i bounced from point to point rather than walk.

23. i took my o levels chinese twice. and for both times, i got  "d7" grade.

24. i can add more, but shall end here.

25. i went to temasek junior college in 1983.

my primary school days

picture courtesy of facebook profile Playfairschool Singapore

have posted something in facebook about myself and i thought i shall reorganize some parts of it, expand them and post them here. it is also perhaps a way of capturing some fond memories about myself. so, for a start, this is about my primary school days - most of which i did not capture in my earlier postings:

1. i started my primary education in playfair school in tai seng in 1973 and continued my education in telok kurau east school from pri 2 onwards. playfair school was located at playfair road in lor tai seng area - a gangster hub in those days. i recalled walking to school once a while with my second sister (who was in pri 6 when i was in pri 1). i studied in the morning stream and would go to school very early in the morning.

2. to prepare me for class, i remembered being made to wear uniform that was starched real hard and shoes that was coated with such thick white blanko that it felt like wearing leather shoes. and to top it off, my mum would apply thick scoops of brycreem on my hair and combed a `kalipop' hairdo for me - the in-fashion in those days (`kalipop' was the hokkien people's version of `curry puff' cos to many, the way the fringe of the hair was combed - curved upwards and swept down towards the back - made it look like a curry puff).

3. i enjoyed my pri 1 classes, especially arts and craft. i was a naughty and mischievous boy and was frequently punished by my teacher/s. there was once when i was made to stand facing the wall outside my classroom. i remembered feeling superbly embarrassed by that punishment. after my class, i would play in the sand-pit while waiting for my 2nd sis's lessons to end.

4. my pri 1 form teacher was this lady called mrs kang. she has a huge frame (well, at least to a 6 year-old me) and was a very nice lady. she had also taught my second sis when she was in pri 4. i remembered i had a best friend called quek chong and we would often play catching together. that was about all i remember of my pri 1 days.

5. i was subsequently transferred to telok kurau east school in 1974 (pri 2) when my family moved to marine parade. playfair school closed down in the early-80s (i think). when i last visited the place, the building was occupied by a malay-muslim community self-help group.

6. in telok kurau east school, i was a playful kid and had been publicly punished by teachers and school principal... in pri 4, i was caned publicly by my school principal during school assembly for shooting a seed at my chinese teacher (although i swear it was an accident!)

7. i took the school bus to school daily. my usual daily routine would be to wake up at 5.45am and wash up. by that time, my mum would have made her coffee for me (kopi-o). that would be my breakfast. she would then give me 30cents before `shooing' me out of the house. i always remembered to put 10cents into the milo tin can before i leave with 20cents in my pocket :-)

8. as a primary school kid, my daily allowance was 30cents. standard affair for me - 10cents for my piggy bank, 10cents for a bowl of mee/noodles, 5cents for drinks and 5cents of calipop. this was increased to 40cents in secondary school and 60cents in junior college.

9. i was a fat kid and would always feel so jealous when my skinny classmates all got to drink free milk during recess time. i secretly wished i could have some of the milk too...

10. i was my pri 3, 4, 5 form teacher's `pet' student and would always be asked by them to buy them calipop (curry puff) during recess time. and of cos, they would always reward me with a bottle of pok-chwee. this was a hokkien colloquail term for gassy drink - the term `pok' was used literally cos of the sound produced when the cap pops out. and `chwee' means water in hokkien. for me, pok-chwee usually would be either green spot or rc cola. the `in' drinks of those days!

11. my principal in telok kurau east school was mr bernard fernandez, a short stout indian man. and my school teachers include mrs kang (pri 1, playfair school), mr teh (chinese teacher, Pr 2, form teacher pri 3[?]), ms teo (later mrs fernandez after she married my principal, form teach pr 4), ms ang lay sian (form teacher, pri 5), mrs elaine tan (form teacher, pri 6), mrs rocky (maths teacher?), mdm toh (we nicknamed her madam toad, pri 4). cannot recall others much.

12. my best friend in primary school was this boy called sim beng. we had a common enemy called vincent cheo who always brag about his dad... sim beng and i enjoyed mimicking movie and tv characters. some of the characters we mimicked include r2d2, c3po, wonder woman.

13. sim beng used to live in jalan eunos. his grandma would fetch him to school and occasionally we would visit each other's family for lunch. whenever i go to his house, we would spent our time playing in his second floor attic room. we would chat for long hours and he would tell me about his family, his brothers, etc. we would also bitch about our classmates - some of those i could remember clearly include cheong kok yew (i remember him as a fat boy who used to live in marine terrace near me), phoon seng fatt (very nice boy who lived near sim beng but i thought he was some time a bit blur - in a very nice way), stanley chua (who lives in marine crescent near me and very bengish), vincent cheo (who's the son of my vice principal) etc etc etc... those were very good memories. and thinking back, we were so childish! haha! sim beng and i lost contact after we graduated from officer cadet school. think he calls himself kelvin now.

14. sim beng and i really enjoy arts and craft and we were both very good at it. we both joined the art club. some of the things i had done before include macrame, embroidery, knitting, sewing, making pillows, cross stitch, poster colour painting, charcoal painting, decopage (is this how it's spelt?), copper tooling, la la la la la.

15. as a primary school kid, i participated in many many art competitions! i remembered when i was in primary 6, i participated in a bookmark design contest at the national library. while on the bus, i realised i had forgotten to bring my poster colours. luckily, i always had 2-3 poster colour tubes in my pencil case. io, on that day, with only yellow, black and red, i designed a bookmark, and came out champion in the competition! i also won a series of awards during the youth day arts competition!

16. i was so good in my arts that even after i went to secondary school, my art teacher called me back to design and make the stage props and backdrop for the school's production of sleeping beauty. i remembered converting the classroom table into a bed by lining it with loads and loads of yellow and red paper roses and placing a yellow skirting for the table!

17. i chose tanjong katong (technical) and siglap secondary as my choices for secondary school. (in those days, we only had 2 choices). but in the end, almost half of my whole cohort in my primary school went to tun seri lanang secondary school, or what we would call - sekolah menengah tun seri lanang.

tensions abt colleagues

now at work and had just received an email that made me rather unhappy. then again, i told myself to just cool it and ignore the issue.

you see, early last week, someone from another department asked my colleague to get him the course's students name, team names and a whole series of other data such as nric number, email address, etc etc to allow them to create a database for the course. he wanted this list organised by class. this colleague of mine conveniently sent the mail out to all the class form teachers. being a form teacher myself, i took the initiative to sent out a consolidated class list with almost all the details indicating that the college already had all the data and we only needed form teachers to nominate a class lead. the only detail that the form teachers would need to fill was the class student representative. and to ease administration, i indicated that we should continue to call the class by the class number as per what had already been given since the start of the course.

today, one of the form teacher forwarded a list using my template and this list indicated a new name for his class. apparently, he had forwarded my email to his class and asked them to fill in the details but deleted away my comments. out of courtesy, i replied him and inform him that we shall continue to call his class by the class number. and in reply, he wrote a long email telling me how we should not stifle student's creativity, how we should allow the new name to be registered... and even went on to tell me that by stopping them, we now appear unco-ordinated, unprofessional, etc etc etc. and to top it off, he copied his reply to all the form teachers.

i replied him telling him that i had emailed him on the class number issue earlier. and he meekly replied me (addressed to me only), "oops, i missed that mail"... no apology, no cc to all other form teachers etc.

sad. but could this be a case of all form teachers being too caught up with work? so much so that even simple admin like this can become a point of tension?

of insomnia & dreams

i have been having insomia and weird dreams of late. been sleeping at past-1, past-2 daily for the pass few nights. and waking up early for work. and even during my sleep, i would be woken up either by my neck pain or by dreams.

last night, i dreamt that i was at a restaurant for a meal and ordered something that i could not recall. and then, when the dish was served, i noted that it was dog meat. and to top it off, it was sapphie's (my dog) head on the plate. i proceeded eating it and even remembered how i pried the jaws and pulled off the lower jaw. i went on chewing it. soon enough, the people around me started passing comments about me eating dog meat. i had finished eating the head by then and felt like puking... that was when i woke up. and when i dozed off again, i was haunted by things that i could not recall. it felt like ghost, or something supernatural. after sometime (that seemed like forever), i felt cold suddenly and seemed like everthing just cleared off. there was a blank screen of light blue. this lightening up of the tension allowed me to psyche myself that i should now try to sleep. next thing i knew, my alarm clock went off...

not too settling with such insomia and dreams. hope it clears off soon. and i must try to maintain regular sleeping hours...

wonderful weekend

had a most wonderful weekend! started on friday when su how and i attended the cny gathering organised by dan. never had i felt so at home for a long time. no pretense, no need to hide, just being myself. and the people were so spontaneous even a quiet introverted person like me started to mingle around. and last night, it was a reunion dinner for my nsf days fellow officers! again it was good dinner, and good catching up! and it's amazing how our common experiences some 23 yrs ago all came back in the little few hours!

:-)