Determination

I've got back from my second climb to Mt. Kinabalu two days ago. Got a news that my friend has been transferred from Intensive Care Unit to High Dependency Unit, which means her condition has improved. Though she has not fully awake, she opened her eyes and blinks a few times when I was talking to her dad by her bedside, when I visited her yesterday evening. While I was there, the nurse took her temperature and notice a slight fever, nothing to be alarmed though. Overall her condition is stable.

I was trying to imagine how would it feels to be in her condition, trying to feel how she feels like. I was having some fever myself too, yesterday. If it wasn't because of some urgent matter which I thought can be finnished by 3-4pm, I would have been lying in bed at home and would not have visited her.

The fever started the night I was sleeping at Raban Rata, the rain on the way up the mountain and the heater at it full blast at the foot of the bed most probably contribute to my fever. The heavy rain on the way down from Raban Rata all the way to the Timpohon Gate doesn't help and added salt to the wound. The fever persisted for three days, until last night.

I was having fever, and aching all over my body and four limbs was thinking to myself I am suffering enough, yet I think what I have endured wasn't even a quater of what she has been fighting against. Not even if I add up all that I had endure through out the climb to the summit (with fever, and panting for air).

In one hand human live, or any other animated live forms are very fragile. Our physical body is very fragile. Yet the other hand, there is nothing more sturdy and hardy than human determination and spirit, on the surface of this planet. My friend, I believe you determination and spirit are strong. It will just be a matter of time before you wake up. I'll pray for you smooth and gradual recovery. Never to give up!

* * *

The night (or rather morning) that my friend collapsed and was admitted to hospital, I have to leave for a business trip oversea. I left the hospital at about 4-5am, I have to catch the 9am flight and had to check in by 7am. I went back to take a bath and picked up my luggage. Then pickup a colleague and parked my car at my office. Four days later, when I came back and tried to start my car, my car battery was flat.

I have to take cab back and jump started my car the next day. Then I notice, the door indicator light dimly lighted even though I have closed all the doors. I guessed there might be some wiring problem with the car, but I don't have time to send the car for inspection because it already friday and on the Sunday I have to make another business trip oversea again, this time for three days. With the battery problem, I leave the car at home. But for the KK trip, just came back from the oversea trip, the time was too rush, so I have to drive my car to my office again to meet up with the rest of gang the next morning. Sure enough, I had to jump started my car again when I was back from KK.

Yet, yesterday when I was driving to hospital I notice the indicator light has fixed itself, back to normal. I don't know how. There is a miracle, I guess. Not everything has logical explaination. But if there is to be an explaination, I would like to believe there is a mysterious force which for unknown reason extract the energy from my car battery to channel a healing energy to my friend. Now that, she is much more stable, and can heal on her own, my car battery is no longer require. Yes, I know this sounds stupid. So sue me!

My Friend, Wake Up!

There are so many things happened in my my life, and still do, this month. One of them I wish was just a nightmare that will vanish once I wake up.

By the end of this month, the amount of travelling that I have done in this one month alone probably more than the amount of my travelling for past three years combined together, or at least that's how I feel.

At the beginning of each trip, I pray and wish my friend has woken up by the time I return from the trip. The last time I visited her was before went off for my last trip few days ago. During that visit, she did open her eyes and "look" at me. Though the doctor can't tell if that is just a reflex, I like to believe it was otherwise. When her dad asked her if she can hear and see us, I can sense that she was trying to response by trying to blink her eyes. Though not completely, I think I saw her eyes lids were moving a little bit.

Though her progress was not as fast as I wish, it is still much better than the first time I when I had to leave for my first trip, heavy heartedly, after having gone through the dreadful event until I have to leave for home to head for airport.

I don't have a chance to visit her today before I am off again to another destination. Again, I wish and pray that when I got back from this trip, she has woken up when I pay her a visit. My friend, wake up!

Eye Red

I had an eye infection, conjuvitis my loctor said. It begin yesterday morning actually, but I only notice it when I got into office. Was too busy to really care, until noon, when it get worsen. By the time I reached home, the flesh around my right eyes has swollen.

Took a nap right after dinner, and prayed that it will go away once I got up. Woke up I did, twice some more, nabeh. I fell asleep on the couch, so the first wake, I went into my room and continue to sleep, only to be woken up at 3:00am, caused by too much sleep. It was around 5:00am when I drifted back to sleep again, I think so. Everytime I woke up, I went into the bathroom to check on my eye.

It was very sensitive to light, but without light how can I see it's condition. All was not well, everytime I checked, it was as swollen as ever. At 8:00am, crawled out from bed and contemplating if I should go to work, or just take a MC. Only to be reminded by myself that I have to go to office, even if I were to take MC. I need to pass my passport and photo to my office admin to apply a visa for me, for a trip to a foreign land.

I should have brought the passport and photo yesterday, though it was not confirm, I knew it was coming. So padan muka for me for not thinking. After five minutes of procastrinating in the bathroom, with the flamming red eye, I finally decided to take the plunge. Will ride bike to office, to pass the photo and passport, and back home again.

Still no many people around when I arrived in office, before 9 am! The office admin was no where to be seem, but her PC was already running. She must be in the office somewhere, pantry maybe. True enough, just when I put my passport and photo on her desk, there she was beside me, but like a villager avoiding plague, she block her face with her hands. Trying to avoid me from passing the plague to her. Passed her the photo and passport, and I rush out of office, only to stumble upon the HR manager and couple of lady colleagues.

The other lady was asking what happen to my car, why I take bike today and recently! Oh boy, this will surely leaks out to my boss, sooner or later. Darn. Don't care! It's obvious isn't it! I am rushing for time, helloo. Knock knock knock... anybody in there? The HR Manager said the obvious, "He want to avoid the jam lar of course!"

On the way home, I decided to drop by the polyclinic near my place, which I usually visit. Uh... that loctor is super friendly today. Though I knew the red will go away if only I have a rest at home, but I wouldn't want to take a risk. The trip is just around the corner. Walk into the clinic with my jacket still on and with my full face helmet in my hand. The receptionist looked at me, and asked "You want to see doctor?". Harrowww!!!! "No I am here to see you!", I tempted to reply. Or maybe I don't look like I am sick to her. Well can't really blame her, I am not sick at all, perfectly healthy with a red eye. Registered at the front desk, and wait for my name to be called.

When it's my turn, I went into the room. The loctor was standing, instead of sitting down like he usually do in my previous visit, with torch light in his hand, handy. The cute girl at the reception must has pre-inform him about my eyes. "Look up!", he point to the ceiling and shine the torch into my right eye, and then left eye.

"Hmmm.... eye infection, conjuvitis. Very common." was the first thing he said, after shining the torch into my eyes, and still standing.

"You should wash your hand before you touch you eyes, or upper part of your face especially near your eyes. You touch everything with you hand, and you can transfer the bacteria to your eyes. That's how your eyes get infected." he continue with his fatherly advice.

"Three to four days, that's the fastest." What? Fastest for what, I didn't interject, just wait for him to continue and finnish his sentence.

"Usually it will takes about 5-7 days for it to heal completely." Oh, say early lar. Don't keep me surprise like that. I was still seated there, and he was still standing in front of me, and keep a distance as not to be too near to me.

"There are two types of medicine which I can give you. One is a normal and milder. The other one is stronger, but may has a side effect. I will give you the milder one, just to play safe. With this it will take 5-7 days to completely heal. I will give you a MC. Two days, today and tomorrow. Do you work tomorrow?" he continue.

"I am not working tomorrow." I told him.

"Oh, in that case I will give you MC for today only. You need to take rest."

"Actually I have to travel to *foreign land* this Sunday." I explained to him, and wait for his reaction.

"Oh! Then I think I better give you the stronger one. And just to be safe, I think I will also give you an antibiotic to be taken orally. I don't usually do this, but I think it's better even though I think it is not absolutely necessary. Just to be safe."

Oh boy.... Okie I give up, at first I though of writting all the he said this morning to me here. I have never meet a doctor that is such talkative as him. Actually normally he is quite friendly, but not as friendly as today. I think if I were to collect all the talking done by all the doctors for all my previous visit and sum it up, it's still less that what I hear to him this morning alone.

Before I leave the room, he repeat the instruction on how to apply the droplet like three times, and repeat the part that I must clean my hand with soup before touching my face and eye again. I was just curious as to what side effect he mentioned earlier, so I ask him.

"From my 30 years plus experience as doctor, and perscribe this stronger droplet, I have about 2-3 patient who had the complication." So what is the complication?

"Your eye sight will deteriorate you quickly, and your sight with become blur. But this symptom will goes aways once you stop taking the medication."

The he repeat about how to take the medicine again. Right eye one drop every 4 hours, and left eye one drop everytime, and three times per day. See, I can remember so well, thanks to his repeated reminder.

Then I was in the reception waiting for my medicine to be dispensed. The he was, at the reception. "Mr. Mana." Call out for me. I get up from my seat and walk toward the reception. "We are open tomorrow morning, if you want me to check your eye for you, you can come tomorrow morning and I can take a look at it." Oh... okie.

"This droplet, is basically an antibiotic and it contains steriod. The steriod is strong, and sometime too strong for certain people. If you eye can't take it, it will develop ulcer." He continue to explain, standing behind the counter which separate me from him.

"Ulcer in the eye?" This is the first time I hear this.

"It's like this." He pulled out a pen, and start to draw an eye on the today's newpaper left there by the cute reception who is right now, dispensing the med for me. Then he draw small dots around the iris that he drew.

"Small ulcer like this will develop around this area of your black eyes."
"You mean I will be able to see the small dots?"
"No, you come here, and doctor like me will be able to see it. Please take note, if your visible distance start to drop significantly, this will surely mean the ulcer is developing. But don't be alarmed, it will go away once you stop taking the droplet. You can come to let me check tomorrow morning if you want."
"Oh, okie" I prayed that I don't have to go back. Anyway I have a feeling my eye is already getting better even before I went to the clinic.
"Thank you doctor!", just before he turn and walk into the consultation room, another patient is already being asked into the room just now.

Oh boy, he is surely extra friendly today, this is not a complaint. The damage? RM45. One eye drop, one antibiotic, one flu medecine, and one for the swell. I didn't even mentioned about the flu. But probable he noticed my running nose when I was talking to him earlier. Strangely only the right nose is running, it's related to the red eye on the right eye, must be.

The last I checked one hour ago, the red color on my right eye has almost completely gone. I take the droplet as perscribed. I only took one flu pill, right after I came back from the clinic. I didn't take both the antibiotic and swollen reduction medecine. If I were to take the antibiotic, I have to finnish all, otherwise it's not good. So I rather not take at all.

I was suppose to be on MC today right? No. Despite staying at home, if I were to rank busy-ness for everyday this year, today easily among the top in the chart. So many urgent and important emails to be responded too. A document needed to be reviewed before send out to a partner. A couple of problems needed to be follow up with my team. The travel plan and itenerary for week after next week workshop with a couple of partners, in another city of the same foreign land needed to be finalised and communicate to our office admin to book for ticket and accomodation.

In between, a couple of new issues on unrelated projects crops up! *sigh*. Why it has to be today. It's time to delegate more to my subordinate. It's a good time to start, since I won't be around next week, the last issue which brough upon my attention at around six pm, I have delegated to another trusted senior team member. I work even more, much more, than a normal day. I felt like I was running a marathon, today. Reminded me of the lyric for Alanis's song - Ironic.

Given a MC, and
Have to work twice as hard as normal day.
Isn't it ironic?

*** *** ***
Ironic - Alanis Morissette
====================

An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It's a black fly in your Chardonnay
It's a death row pardon two minutes too late
Isn't it ironic ... don't you think

It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought ... it figures

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
'Well isn't this nice...'
And isn't it ironic ... don't you think
Repeat Chorus


Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face

It's a traffic jam when you're already late
It's a no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn't it ironic... don't you think
A little too ironic... and yeah I really do think...

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out
Helping you out

Graveyard shift

If you are coming from Siao Cha Bor blog's and looking for the nasi lemak post, it's here. Thanks you Cha Bor!

***

Guess where I am right now? It's blardy 1:34 am, and I am in Doraemon vendor's room. All thanks for DongKie for not informing us earlier that, they need us to help to disable a certain feature on the system, while some maintenance work is being carried out by Doraemon.

Got a call from my colleague at 12:00 mid night! Asking me a favour to remotely login to the system to carry out the task. He received a call from DongKie's PM just few minutes earlier, requesting us to help them to handle the task. Unfortunately I failed to login from my home pc into Doraemon network, so I offered to come over to this Doraemon vendor's room to connect directly into the system and carry out the task. Nope, I am not so kind to offer it to DongKie PM, I am offering it to our Service and Support Manager to do that, since he is quite far away. As for me, my place is about 15 mins. drive away.
And here I am still sitting and waiting for them to give go ahead to turn off the feature, and then wait for another instruction for it to be turn back on and go home. bleh!

***

Earlier I went to OneU, to shop for pant, power gel and other stuff for my Mt. Kinabalu trip, to happen in two weeks time. Taking the opportunity to use the MPH voucher that I've got for the puchases I made with MPH Card for the second half of last year. I ended up with five books. Two for my department, and three for myself. Yeah!

It was about 9:15pm when I came out from MPH. I notice my hand was trembling, while I was signing the credit card purchase for the books. A telltale sign of low blood sugar level. Through out the day, I didn't have any proper meal. Let's see. I had a corn flakes with milk for brunch, and some pulut pagi (glutonious rice) after I came back from the driving range at 4pm. The pulut pagi was made by my auntie, and brough back by brother. Blardy good food! Alas too little to really be filling enough.

Talking about driving range, I manage to hit the 200 meters mark today. Yeah! Still very far if to compare with the regular distance of hit by Tiger Woods. I don't care if Tiger Woods can hit till the moon, I am competing against myself, so I am still glad. Yeah!

Back to the OneU story, I headed to KFC for my dinner and ordered the only decent meal for the day. That's the good thing about being single and alone. Eat what I want, and don't have to think so hard for not wanting to disappoint the other half about my choice for food which may not be thing that she like. Even if I was to eat with both hands and drop the food on my shirt and pant while eating, there won't be someone to remind me that I am such a disgrace to her, for eating like a children.

I picked a seat that facing the main pathway, so that I can wash my eyes observe the peeps walking along and shop at the opposites Guardian store. Nothing interesting. Untill a minute before I left. There was this couple, with a small kid, maybe not older than three years old, and with a maid too. They came in, and pick a table in front of me. The mom and dad went to the counter to buy some food, and left the maid to take care of the small kid.

When the mom and dad, came back with food for them and the kid they pick the seats which is a further away from the kid and the maid. I am not sure if it's just me or what, but it make me think they don't love their kid so much, and their body langague speaks of how the kid is such a burden to them. Of the five minutes or so that I was there, they are like just turned to look at their kid not more than three times. All they did was to passed some food over to the maid, and the maid was feeding their kid.

I believe both of them are working mother and father. Very busy throughout the weekdays, and surely the son is left with the maid too during the weekdays. Maybe the working presure and stress got better of them, and all they want to do during weekend is to have some time for themselves to chill out and do some shopping, and with the maid help, keeps the son out of the way too. I might be wrong, or over analyse the situation. It may not be fair for me to jump to this conclusion, which is based just on the the short duration when a brief moment of my being and observation intersected with their presence. I seriously hope I that had jump to the wrong conclusion.

It got me thinking, if my inference is right (god forbid), is this the price we need to pay for a modern break-neck-pace sort of career and life? Or we are just too happy and conveniently use this excuse when it seems fitting and relieves ourselves from the guilt?

Alcohol - In Perspective to Natural Selection

This is my first attempt in this blog to write something that hopefully will make you all think I am a blardy smartass bloke.

In instant society where everyone is seeking for instant gratification, instant orgasm, instant noodle and everyone wanna be an instant millionaire, instant Pop artist and whatever instant what you can think of, I would like to introduce another Instant. Yup Instant Natural Selection. What the f*ck is that? Read on...

If you have never read or come across Natural Selection, please read about it here. I guess not many will even attempt to click on that link, you lazy arses! Anyway being the kind person that I am (another layer of skin just grow on my face), for your benefit let me surmise what this Natural Selection if is all about.

This principle was first used by Charles Robert Darwin, a British naturalist, as an explanation for the origin of species which some argue helps show that God is unnecessary. Don't imagine him to be in nude in public, please! He is not one of those naturist who advocates public/social nudity, his is a naturalist, and more importantly if you have seen his picture I don't think you will regret having that thought.

Darwin defined Natural selection as the "principle, by which each slight variation [of a trait], if useful, is preserved." Individuals best adapted to their environments are more likely to survive and reproduce. Over a long period of time, individuals resulting from this natural selection process inherit the best genetic traits.

Take a herds of buffalos as an example. The weakest buffaloes will be easy target and meal of predator like lion and tiger. Don't ask me why they are easy target! Even a three years old kid (yes, kids nowadays are very smart - not like me). The weak buffalo normally has lesser genetic traits, and their elimination from the heard will ensure weak gene will not be inherited by the offspring of the herds. Thus, over the time ensure the herd has the a pool of best genetic and grow stronger.

What is this got anything to do with alcohol you may ask. Be patient my son, I am coming to that now.

Now, we all know alcohol will inflict some damage to cells in our body, especially the brain cells. Do you see the analogy? Yes, very clever! Our brain cell is comparable to the buffalo, and the alcohol is like lion or tiger which kill our brain cell.

Yes! Without the alcohol the process of elimination of weak brain cell does take place naturally. Unfortunately, natural process take a long period of time to take place and complete. Why wait till you are old to be smart?

Now, do you see how alcohol can help make you an instant smart ass like me?

The Sin of Gluttony

What? : I have sinned Father!
When? : Two days ago.
Why? : Many excuses father. Here's the list,

• Have to head to office at unheavenly hour to clean shit that was left by my team. blardy hell! *sorry father, I just sinned again*
  
• Having to hear all the blardy complaints and pestering from a long winded dirty old man.
• Blardy short circuit which cost me two hours of work! Yes, I didn't manage to save my work. The stupid circuit breaker goes all the way to proof that it work. (Yes!!! I know, this is much better than having my PC fried. But I need to bitch!!! Sue me! )

How? : I saw scb came online when I was rewriting whatever shit that I have lost during the stupic power problem. Having not had my dinner and all alone in office, I only have her to bitch to and asked if she feel like having something once I was done with my work. She react positively, and one hour after that, I reconfirm with her and she was still game for it.

Went to pick her up, and head for her usual mamak joint. Ordered satay, and having the thought of having my stomach empty for three overdue week hours, I ordered 20 - 5 Kambing, and 15 ayam. After having waited for like 15 damned hours minutes, and some bitching to her and saw they delivered a couple plates satay to the next table and having heard all the food story and description from SCB, I decided I can't wait no more.

Served myself a plate full of nasi lemak, and regretably tempted SCB with it by pretending to offered some to her. Who know she still really accepted my offer, even though she already had her dinner like less than 2 hours ago. Nabeh! So, shared some with her. Together, we whacked these two plates full of food.



Had a hard time trying to prevent the food coming out from my mouth and at the same time have to concentrate on the road on my way home. Not forgetting the burping all the way home.