Small Worlds Collide.

In life, we are almost never fully aware of the power we each have to send out ripples into the world, ripples which change perspectives, impact lives, small cause small worlds to collide.

I've had a number of people ask about Grandpa Zhou lately. His health has been much better, and he's been doing well. Today, on my way home from a day's lesson of learning how to suture surgical stiches, a friend, B randomly said, "Oh yes! And I just wanted to tell you- did you know, after I read about Grandpa Zhou, haha, I was so inspired. Haha, my girlfriend and I, we stopped for a lady selling tissue paper across a bridge, we've decided to stop for her more often- Grandma Chen! "


We keep thinking we need to fund-raise mindblowing figures, accomplish impressive projects and perform great and mighty wonders before we can make a difference to our world around us. I used to think so too. I really did- I thought dreams had to fill entire galaxies to be considered the least bit worthy.


But now I see, it is in the smallest things, too, by which we can send out ripples. We keep thinking our small actions don't count, that one life touched is just too insignificant a figure. But it's not true. I realise now- that it's not true.

Our random Encounters matter. For every life we meet, we send out ripples into new worlds. And sometimes, these worlds even collide... beautifully.

Some of you may remember this- that I met Hideo, a homeless old man roaming about in Singapore many months ago. I liked him because he had a passion for what he did, writing- and was not afraid to go hungry for it. He would exclaim, in a clear voice of power and exuberance, "Man does not live by bread alone!"

I loved to listen to his profound ideals about life. He was a homeless man sleeping at the airport, but I loved that he was true to himself, and never despised himself in spite of the way the world saw him. Like Grandpa Zhou, he takes his art very seriously. They both hold on to dreams which carries them into a wispy old age with that fierce glint in their eyes, never fading for a moment. And they both hold onto an almost child-like form of idealism which cause them not to quite fit into this world, cause them to be somewhat misunderstood yet passionate, burning with hope and drive for their ideals and values, even if they might seem somewhat unacceptable by practical standards.

Two days ago, I find an email from a Stranger in Tokyo:

Hi Wai Jia,

I found your blog because you mentioned Hideo Asano in your article here: http://kitesong.blogspot.com/2007/05/hideo-asano.html

I met Hideo a few weeks ago in Tokyo - we spent a lot of time together and I decided to help him - so I did his website :) If you could add a link to his website in your article, it would be a great help to promote his work.

He is quite struggling at the moment - it is raining in Tokyo for nearly two weeks - he is sleeping in the park - so a lot of trubble for him. I try to help him with his website - perhaps I am able to attract a publisher by this website - that's why I want as many backlinks to hideoasano.com as possible to get a better ranking in Google.

So thanks :)

Carl





A life is not merely one person, not merely a figure on a checklist on ways to save the world. For random Encounters are like ripples, too. They touch not only lives, but worlds, and when they do, it's just amazing to see how small our world is, how close and near our worlds really are.


A homeless Japanese man who sleeps in airports. Singapore. Tokyo.


Grandpa Zhou. A reader of a tiny blog. Grandma Chen, on another side of the country.


We send ripples, make impacts on people's lives all the time, every moment.

" I just wanted to tell you how reading about Grandpa Zhou inspired me to speak with Grandma Chen! Just wanted to tell you, that's all. Hahahaha... "

I am learning, it's the small things which count, too.

Small worlds collide.

180 degrees.

I remember feeling very foolish when I used to make 180-degree sharp turnarounds, walking right back to the spot where something gripped me. Why it gripped me the way it did, I still do not know. All I know is, the turnaround was worth it because every time I chose to do so, a part of me changed forever, in a way I least imagined. It seemed really stupid to me, at first, to go out of the way in the opposite direction to do what had to be done, but looking back, I don't regret it. It was those tiny decisions which released a certain power which till today, I am unable to explain.


Everybody has some reason of their own for loving, in spite of the certainty of it sometimes being unrequited. When you smile at a Stranger, at a random sick patient in a hospital ward, or a busker by a busy roadside, isn't that in some way, a form of giving out unrequited love, too? We do it, hardly out of the motivation of wanting it returned to us.

If human beings are truly creatures motivated by reward, then what is the reason behind this strange phenomenon?

For surely, to give out unrequited love is not a factor for survival. We all need love to live, but surely, wouldn't you think we could live without this foolishness of giving away something which will hardly be reciprocated? After all, cynics survive and get by, don't they?

God's word says that even the worst person in the world would love those who loved them- but what is striking, rather, is the person who loves those who do not love them, who hate them, even.


Our lives are filled with millions of opportunities for these acts of kindness, and it is in our tiniest acts of giving out unrequited acts of kindness, the tiniest ones, which really define who we are.

Did you walk past a blind busker today? A blind man on a busy roadside, trapped in his own visionless world of darkness- or did you pass him by and by your apathy, turn him invisible?

Did you look at a middle-aged woman standing on the train today, her feet aching from her heels and her body, tired from the demands of a day-job and housework at night, slumped against a metal pole? Did you rationalise that you deserved the seat you were on far more than she did?

Or worse, did it not cross your mind at all.

Do these million tiny things which present themselves as opportunities for random acts of loving, without reciprocation, cross our minds every day, or have we hardened our hearts to them?


For every opportunity, whether taken a hold of or not, changes our hearts, whether we want them to or not. Our every decision to every opportunity presented to us defines who we are, who we become- even those we choose to shrug our shoulders at.



Our hearts either harden, or soften- there is no in between.



Very often, we only remember the big things in life- the big Goods that we do, and the big Bads we commit. But if life is made of big moments we remember, then what happens to the tiny ones we forget?


This is what happens- they define us, change our hearts- forever. It is in our tiniest acts of loving, loving without return, which cause our hearts to stay aglow, alive and pulsing each day, or if neglected, become crystallized, ossified, and hardened beyond redemption.


In our busy lives walking along the business district and the busy malls, how many needy people have we passed by, with nary a glance at them? We give ourselves the excuse of being too busy, but in actual fact... so tell me- what will you do with that extra minute of time saved from not stopping for someone who needed it. We drive on the roads like drunk, angry bastards, cutting a lane sharply here, honking at a hogger in front, cursing at the driver in front of us who drives just as well as ourselves- all in the grand name of saving time. We saved ten seconds from that first lane cut, another ten from the second, saved half a minute from waking up that sleepy road-hogger, and another ten seconds from overtaking the other lousy driver. One grand, whole minute saved (or rather, fifty-nine seconds, when you took a sec to glare at the irresponsible pedestrian you zoomed past.)


A WHOLE MINUTE SAVED! ONE WHOLE MINUTE! SIXTY SECONDS OF EXTRA TIME! Did you know the maginificent exploits, groundbreaking frontiers and important tasks one could do with AN EXTRA SIXTY SECONDS saved?


Wow. Mindblowing.


It's true. In that one second we chose to walk by, to walk by for the sake of that precious sixty seconds saved, something big does happen. Our hearts harden. And it only becomes a matter a of time before an entire fortress is built around it, and the poor, the needy, the unloveable become completely invisible to our eyes.


It might seem really stupid at first to turn around. Come on, you've walked past the fellow, you've a place to go, people to meet, you don't have time for this nonsense- besides, you'll remember next time.


Sure, you'll remember next time. But remember that your heart changes every time, whether you wish for it or not. So if you feel that tug on your heart, don't go forward any longer, turn back. Turn around and walk a hundred metres to that old man with good eyesight sitting by the road with a fake white cane, offer the lady with dyed red hair in front of you a seat even though she's been standing there for 15 minutes (perhaps you took that long to struggle within yourself- I know I have!), and maybe, say from the bottom of your heart, that you're really sorry anyway for a harsh word you said.


It may seem really foolish to turn around. It's not like you have anything tangible to gain. Why can't I mind my own business, everybody should take care of their own world, shouldn't they? This giving-your-heart-to-people business entangles life too much, makes things so complicated. You know why you get heartbroken so easily? It's because you give your heart away. Learn from your lesson, keep it close by you and it'll remain intact, good as new. What's this nonsense about turning around.


But when you do turn around, things are turned inside-out, and upside-down. Turn 180-degrees often enough, and something in your spirit takes a hundred-and-eighty-degree turnaround too. You find, that surprisingly, it's better to have it broken, than hardened.


Something in your heart changes, forever- even if you do have one less minute to conquer the world today.

"... It is more blessed to give than to receive."

-Acts 20:35b

Its Saturday Night

Its Saturday night and i'm staying home.wtf..

Gosh why nobody told me that blogs were so easy to write all this while!!!wtf wtf wtf!!

The Heart of the matter.

How I let it become what it became is unfathomable to me. Had it happened to someone else, I know I would have scoffed disdainfully. I had always heard about what it could do to you, did all I knew within my means to avoid it, was sure that I had given it enough clearance. Yet, when I saw it for what it was, everything finally became clear to me.

How I let it become what it became is unfathomable to me, still. One could blame oneself too easily. Yet, reality is such that we all have allowed it to become something we wish it had not become.



The heart is a fascinating organ. Two days ago, for the first time in my life, I was brought to a patient by my tutor and asked to listen for any abnormalities. One by one, we listened to his heart. "Anything abnormal?" he asked. The students before me shook their head.

Medical students are always told to look, listen and feel to what Normality is, so we can better pick up anything which deviates from the norm. I find the heartbeat such a fascinating phenomena that I find myself listening to my own ever so often.


When it came to my turn, I said, "The second heart sound is too loud. It ought to be much softer, I think."

"You got it," he said. "He has a diastolic heart murmur."



The heart is a fascinating organ. Blood in, blood out. Blood in, blood out. From the moment you are born, it never stops pumping until your last breath of life. The only time it ever rests is when it decides to rest, forever. Blood in, blood out- all of our lives.

For us to live, blood has to flow through our entire beings to supply us with sufficient oxygen. For the heart to survive, blood has to flow through the network of vessels which give it sufficient nutrients. Blood in, blood out- fluent, fluid, smooth like clockwork.

Hospitals in developed countries like Singapore are filled with patients recovering from heart attacks. Our sedentary lifestyles, high-stress environments and rich eating habits all contribute to the accumulation of lipids in our blood vessels. The lipids harden to form a calcified plaque which eventually erupts, blocking off crucial heart vessels. Blood in, blood... no longer out. This results in what we call a myocardial infarct or very simply, a heart attack. Blood in, but blood not out.

But here's what's scary- the lipids which contribute to the eventual heart attack which takes place in the second part of your life starts to accumulate from the day you were born. For decades, you could be eating, laughing, drinking, smoking, living ever so blissfully before that final critical moment where the plaque erupts, and stops the smooth flow of blood.

Pain seizes your chest like a thunderous judgement upon you. Some people feel the crushing pain in their left chest, but more often than not, it spreads like a fire gone wild to your jaw and left arm, paralysing you in agony. You fall to your feet, as if an iron man had given you a startling blow behind your neck. The ambulance comes. They tell you you need an operation and don't ask for your consent because you're in critical condition.


Your system stops working. Every living cell in your body is starving for oxygen. All your cells are dying... you are dying.

We all have evil gunk accumulating in the riverbeds of our bloodstreams. One could easily scoff at another for allowing himself so much indulgence, thinking he was free of it, when in fact, nobody knows how much gunk they really have, when it will erupt, when he himself may find himself on his knees, perspiring furiously, gripping his chest in unbearable pain.


And it occurred to me, all at once one day, why my heart has always been so weak. Some people said it was my sensitivity, or over-compassionate nature. Some said it simply had a genetic component. But it finally came to me one day, that the answer could be all of those, but none as convincing as what I felt God had whispered to me-

- that it was a clog in the system, that made the heart weak, causing a heart attack which nearly killed me. Just as cells are starved of oxygen, Anorexia was a physical manifestation of my emotional starvation, too.



For a normal person to live, Love, oh glorious glorious Love, must pulse through his veins every second. Love in, love out. Love in, love out. In my case, the clog, that hardened plaque, had stoppered the system such that Love kept leaking out like an emotional haemorrhage, without ever receiving an adequate inflow of the life-giving fluid. Love out... out... and out.


I talked to the family therapist, Miss A*, this week. We learnt that the reason why conflicts happen in Big Brick Houses, is because different people have different love languages. There are five love languages- namely Quality time, Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Physical Touch and Acts of Service. Our Love systems flow best when the same love language we give out is poured right back into us. We all speak different love languages- men, more often in the language of physical touch and providing acts of service, and women more often in gifts, which explains why we feel different levels of fuzziness when we receive love in different forms, and also explains why so often, conflicts arise when one does not interpret another's actions as Love, simply because of the different love languages they speak.


It came to me the other day, that the reason why I keep having to go for heart surgery is because of... the clog in my heart system. The clog that stops life-giving blood from flowing through my heart, that stops my heart from pumping oxygen through my body, the clog that stops my love tank from being filled... which makes me afraid to love, even. And it's name is... Unforgiveness.

Love out... out... and out. And the reason why none is flowing in is hardly because of a lack of love around me, but an inability to process the different love language being poured in. I speak the rarest, and possibly the most demanding love language in the world, that is, Quality Time. Very few people speak it and express their love that way. We live in a city which has too much cash and too little time. And so, when they in the Big Brick House express their Love in a different language, in terms of money, provision, expensive gifts and freebies, I find the black black plaque called Unforgiveness, growing in size, insidiously damming up the lovepipes in the heart.

We all have love languages we interpret less well than others. And I don't understand the language from the Big Brick House. I speak in the language of intimate conversation, meaningful time spent together, hugs, genuine words from the heart, sometimes gifts... and a city of bright lights, compressed time and artificial diamonds, most people just don't have time to sit by the beach.


The bloodjet of love leaks out... out... and out. For years. Pain, hurt, incapacitation.



Heart attack.



A bypass surgery is when the doctors put a pipe inside your heart so they can open up the vessel which got dammed by the plaque, allowing life-giving blood to flow through again. So that's where they've got me now, on the operating table, with four, five, six of them cutting me up to fix a heart gone wrong. They don't have anaesthesia in this hospital so the pain can be sometimes excruciating. Believe them when they tell you to take healthy-heart advice, because Unforgiveness is the fastest way to starve your body to death, be it of oxygen or of love.

Do you have a clog in your system too? The heart of the matter is- we all do. Humanitarians, pastors, missionaries, saints even, all have tiny plaques clogging up their hearts. Yet, how we let them become what they do remains unfathomable to us. One cannot forgive once and for all. It takes forgiving, re-forgiving, and re-forgiving each and every single day.

Just like the way God forgives us every single time, over and over, in spite of all our inadequacies, shameful shortcomings and blatant blunders, our sickening sins. Over and over, forgiving and re-forgiving.

Forgiveness- it's the daily bypass which cleanses our system. It's the only way to keep our hearts pumping, to keep the bloodjet streaming, to keep the spirit of Love flowing fluidly inside of us. Indeed, it's the only way we can live.

Forgiveness, that's what the story behind the Cross is about. It was the ultimate act of Love that God showed us. Is that why they say Mister God has a Big, Strong heart? Because there's so much capacity to forgive that absolutely nothing can clog His system?

So perhaps, that's what the Heart of the matter really is- Forgiveness.

Somewhere deep down inside, where you're most afraid to admit or even blissfully ignorant of, do you have a clog, too? And will you make the choice to go for a bypass before it's too late, before it hurts too bad?

Don't wait till it's too late, because remember, no matter how bad they've wronged you, you're the one who'll suffer from the myocardial infarct. But take heart, because God's in the operating theatre. He wears a surgical gown, a White one, too.

Question is, will you let Him?

" I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

- Ezekiel 36:26

*All posts under the link Therapy chronicle her journey to recovery from Anorexia and depression with professional help from the team at the Singapore General Hospital.

Just too good to be true Girl of the month (April)

Okay its about time i continued with something that actually got me writing a blog at the first place.

Something that we could just glance through together and comment on my taste in women which some people is rather interested to know since i've been boiled down with bad luck of not having a girlfriend for so many years leaving lots of people suspecting that I could be rather picky setting the level too high for myself that I should actually look myself at the mirror more often.



Picky in the sense that that i'm forever looking for that one good glass of wine


than simply drinking whiskey coke over and over again for that fast thrill in a night club



So for the past few years, i've always had foreign western women as just too good to be true girls of the month.

Don't get me wrong, I know they're definitely way off my league.
If there was anything that says nothing is impossible, i know this is impossible.

But Seriously!!I'm quite ashamed of myself. I'm chinese and why look further when foreign men are going after all our chinese girls like

Michelle Yeoh


Shu Qi


Zhang Zi-yi



and many others..I mean hell!Most of the girls that i know who went overseas to study have english boyfriends.

What has happened to us chinese guys!!

Is it because of such attitude of looking at other foreign women that we forgot that the real beautiful women on earth is our own race!!

Being said, I am going all out pro-chinese. I'm china man now!! I present to you Just too good to be true girl of the month for this April.

Hyori Lee!!

ummm...What do you mean she's not chinese!! She's a Lee which means she's chinese right!!

She's Korean????

Ashamed i am.....Lee Hyori is Just too good to be true girl of the month.

Clouds, white.

Every time I miss someone, I don't quite know what to do.

Some times, I write a letter in a bottle and throw it out to sea. Some times, I recite a prayer into a white dove's ear. And some times, I even blow a tune into a dandelion head, and hope the dandelion snowflakes float to a land nearer to you, and burst into new fields of white blooms.

But most times, I do what I know best- send out a rainbow cloud and fly it in the sky, way up high. So no matter how far the other is, one will always be able to see it. We're under the same sky God made, aren't we?

So many people walk in and out of our lives, staying only for a brief season. So many things keep happening to bring some apart, and others closer together. We dance along the coastline, never knowing when the next wave will crash in, forever dancing on our tippy-toes and screaming, sometimes in delight but other times in exasperation, at the regular irregularity of the shoreline ebbs and flows.

So every time I miss someone, I just send out a rainbow cloud, high up into the sky, so you, whoever you are, can see it too, on the other side.

Is that why clouds are White? Because White is the colour you get when all the colours of the rainbow are mixed together? After all, a beam of white light shone through a prism does split into the seven colours of the rainbow, which when combined again through another prism, gives you the same White light again.

Clouds, White.

Was that also why, it was such a cloudy day today, when I looked out of the window?

From where you are, do you see them, too?

Raid at Upper Penang Road

For days I was wondering, why can't the police catch those culprits who stole my air-cond compressors. Yes Guys..i'm still thinking...


I mean..Are they inefficient to catch thieves because of their slow proton cars and require something better?



Are they committed to their job of catching the real bad guys at the first place?



Are they too busy?

Is there a lack of personnel in their workforce?

Are the girls in our police workforce not pretty enough to motivate them to do their job properly?



Do they have a 9 to 5 work schedule which means that the thief can come out and steal people's things at night?

I really have no idea. But things became much clearer to me last weekend.

You see..Last weekend, instead of catching thieves, they were all here at Upper Penang Road.

"I decided to go to MOIS after my feeling of "outcastm" from QE2."

They were raiding night clubs like raining men Alleluyeah its raining men!!



They raided three night clubs in a row!! ALL IN ONE NIGHT!!




Okla not this type of raid....They normally come in plainclothes because Malaysian people are nice so guns and bullet-vests are not required.



What a show of efficiency!! I mean they were working while we were partying. That's definitely commitment there as well.

Anyhow, this is how SS(Slipperty Senorita) looks like when it is being raided at 1am. The doors are closed to lock you inside from escaping.



If there was anything, the police are not dumb. The raid was made for a reason just like how they left my air-cond compressor to be stolen over and over again to safe the world from green house gases.



They created a halal rave party outside to ensure that the younger generation were healthy people in the long run.





Thank you Police!I understand now how busy you are, committed you are, and motivated to catching the thief that stole my air-cond compressors! They're not here, they're in Kedah!!Stop checking for under-age girls.

Henessy Artistry in QE2

Last night, a few friends and I discussed on how our Saturday night would turn out which eventually happens to be the same thing every weekend.

We all agreed that we would pay QE2(a pub/restaurant by the jetty) a visit because we have not been there for awhile ever since MOIS Penang opened and the VIP ROOM which always seem too tempting.

We wanted to know how QE2 was getting along.



As we reached there, things became uncertain.



If you're wondering sometimes why a group of people gather outside before going into nightclubs, this was going to be one of the reason.

Entry to QE2 was at RM60 for that night.

The kind of money that could have been better spent on dates and improve on my relationship status.

Everyone was at doubt because blardy hell!!Everyone had the same kind of thoughts behind their back. Well if they did not have the same reason as me, at least they thought the money could be well used to help the needy.


After giving in some thought and checking our wallets and our future, we decided to go somewhere else cheaper that offers drink at an attractive one ringgit.



But as soon as we could do that, the gods decided to pour heavy rain.


A test to see how strong will we are in controlling our fate in the future.

Well, being this far, we decided to just walk further in before dooms day at the entry counter.

Along the path, things became much clearer to us on why the night costs RM60. An event was held there called the "Henessy Artistry"

There were sexy skinny tall skimpy dressed girls all outside to usher us into the club.



The kind of girls that would make us feel that RM60 was a small price to pay. I mean what is RM60 anyway. "WAHH damn cheap ler this club right!!"

Not only that, they even had a guy(the kind of a guy that parents would be ashamed off for his future) in a cubicle to play music the whole night that comes out of miserable small speakers.



I can imagine his parents shouting at him every night "WHY CAN'T YOU BE A DOCTOR OR A LAWYER?"

Soon, we were all RM60 poorer. Sorry mum and dad.



QE2 has changed.

They now have a nice big white retractable roof upon our heads to shelter us from heavy rain. This I must say helped alot in keeping such events alive in any weather conditions.



So, what was RM60 all about for such an event compared to a normal day.

There was a DJ on a stage with funny colored hair.



She was playing what i'd like to call it "NOISE". People who came for the event simply enjoyed this "Noise". Its a kind of music that only aliens from outer space would enjoy I feel.



The kind of music that has no meaning. The kind of music that simply lets people shake their head and ass for no apparent reason.


Not staying around there to see how the DJ was producing such noise, we decided to go upstairs.



Apparently, upstairs was filled with people from the higher class of society.

The kind of people who does not have to work for a living and still be able to drive an Aston Martin.



The kind of people that even if they do work with my kind of average pay, they could spend lavishly on girlfriends.



The kind of people who could tell the difference between an expensive leather shoe to a cheapo one. One glance at my shoe and they knew i was an outcast.



Now, this is where the real party is at. They were giving out free drinks which is of course promoting their Henessy brand.



There were also alot of beautiful girls in the room. Girls that fulfills my requirement of a Malaysian Dreamgirl.



If only, if only..

Sipping down my RM60 dollar worth of brandy, soon it was all over. Feeling as an outcast and with the unbearable noise being played over there, I decided to end the night early and get ready for next week to earn my money back by working extra hard.

Conclusion of the night: RM60 poorer and still a single man.

A Beautiful Day.

A beautiful day is:

- Feeling awfully exhausted in the morning from the week's events but feeling great that it's Sunday. Sunday is church day.

- Finding another email in my inbox from my sister far away.

- Attending church in the morning, realising that the guest speaker is the 78-year old missionary lady who used to pastor my previous church, going up to say hi to her, and realising she not only remembers me, but also wearing the brooch I gave her just before she left. She smiles at me, tells me her husband remembers me, still, and gives me a book her daughter wrote about her mother's time as a missionary in China. "They're selling these books outside, but I want to give this to you."

- Walking through a mall in the afternoon, brushing my bag against the shoulder of a lady my mother's age, going back to apologise and realising she looks familiar- "Mrs C! You taught me in Primary 4! You look just the same!"

- Stopping to chat with her, watching her struggle to remember me... "I was in Miss K's Primary 6 class, Head Prefect... remember?" before she finally erupts midway in our conversation, "Ah yes! I remember you! You were very chubby right? And not quite half as tall, no?"

- Exchanging contacts and receiving a text message from her hours later, "Hi Wai Jia, have you found what you wanted at Isetan (the department store)? I've reached home. Do you know I still keep the Chinese paper cut-out you gave me and this stone ornament you painted for me- your name was written at the back of it :) "

- Realising that it's been 11 years, and yet, we still remember each other. "Teachers made the biggest impact on my life," I said.

- Finding a most gorgeous, branded silver dress going for $25 at an original price of $89, seeing that it fits perfectly well, feeling sexy in it, but feeling uncomfortable about it. Changing out, putting it back on the rack and realising why- that I've grown up, realise that one can have too many clothes, and no longer need a short, half-translucent, pretty thing to feel beautiful. Walking out, and feeling good, more whole, healthy.

- Having daddy pick me up in his car, and being dropped off at the beach.

- Lying on the sand, curled up, lying flat and then sprawling out lazily, watching the sky fade into twilight, and listening to the heartbeat of the waves.

- Watching couples, hand in hand, eating a Mac Donalds ice-cream cone, and knowing I'll have one myself, someday, soon.

- Reaching home, and then finding an email:

Hi Wai Jia,

Not too sure if you still remember me but we did talked briefly via email a couple of months back. Do take good care of yourself all right? And I will be here praying that you will recover successfully =) Hang in there, especially during the treatment sessions. I may not know how it feels like or how tedious the process is, but as long as you keep that faith in you, better days will come.

I really admired your courage to seek help and to share your experiences. As a physiotherapist, I feel that it really takes a patient to know a patient. I guess it's the same for doctors. So don't be afraid or even daunted to share your experiences with everyone else.

Like I've mentioned previously, although I am not a Christian, but something that happened last year made me realised that God never forsakes anyone. And I am sure he will always be there for you.

So hang in there and Jiayou!

Regards,

J

- Coming to terms with missing people, and learning that it's all right to.

- Crackers and cold milk.


A beautiful day.

Fools for Causes.

It’s been an exhilarating week.

After two years of struggling to germinate under fluorescent tubing amidst piles of notes filled with esoteric names of microbacteria, drug names and biochemical reactions confined within the four walls of a lecture theatre, we’ve finally taken the leap to enter our clinical years.

The difference between a third-year medical student in his clinical years and a second-year one is as huge as the ocean. At once, you’re transplanted from the dull, sterile classroom into the chaotic, heart-thumping pace of the hospital ward, from meeting merely tutors and lecturers to interacting with your greatest teachers- real patients themselves. What you once knew as only theoretical information and pictures in the textbook becomes fleshed out into reality- you see that an illness has a face, family, friends, feelings and a future, real consequences for someone’s life. From the pen-tapping mundane routine of the classroom, you’re thrown into a dynamic, ever-changing storm of the ward, where you scrub and gown and watch surgeries, where there’s so little time, so much to see, hear, feel, learn.

You feel a sense of liberation, like you’ve finally become what a medical student ought to be- part of the drama. At once, you feel like finally, you've been given the right conditions to bloom. Everything amazes you, and you can't wait for the next study period when you can engorge yourself on all that knowledge that fertilises your brain, half-withered from the dry routine of the previous two years. There is adrenalin pulsing through your veins, you’re in a white coat, you’ve got your pen and paper by you all the time, your stethoscope hangs sexily around your neck. In your heady excitement, the fact that you don't quite know how to detect a simple heart murmur doesn't quite sink in, just yet.

There are Strangers from all walks of life, all willing to tell you their Stories because of your white coat, people giving you pats on the back congratulating you for coming this far, patients holding your hands thanking you for spending time with them… and then you suddenly realize… you don’t know anything at all.

Your utter helplessness overwhelms you when reality sinks in- that in a sea of vast, vast knowledge, you’re struggling to breathe, you’ve Stories to listen to but little advice to offer, you’ve a stethoscope around your neck, but instead of feeling like a glamorous young know-it-all ripped from a medical drama serial, you feel it's real weight around you, realise what this all really means- life and death, persistence and stamina, long hours and a upstream struggle for a balanced life.

You’ve reached the first milestone, the first second of momentary euphoria wanes off, and you realise-you've still a long, long way to go.


Of late, I’ve had to ask myself the serious question of the implication of This on a vocation such as mine. Two people challenged me about it, and it left me, to say the least, quite unnerved.

I realize, that many people suffer from This illness. Yet, the reason for this extra scrutiny, the reason I was questioned, challenged even, put down for my honesty on this space was simply because of my choice of a vocation that many demand far, far higher requirements of.

It’s been a struggle all this while. And all the time I am receiving mixed signals from two opposing camps- one thanking me for my brave honesty and inspiration, and saying how much they believe my experience will make me a better doctor, the other mocking my stupidity, fearing for my future and suggesting me to take the easy way out- get out now so you don't regret it later.

It’s not that I particularly fancy the occasional time-bomb thrown at me. But how do I explain my conviction of being honest and unafraid to share about my journey, how do I begin to explain to you that This illness is no respecter of man, that just as how anybody can have it, anybody can triumph it, too- and that one has a choice not to allow it to take you away.

How can I tell my own patients to be brave to acknowledge their conditions and seek help- if I myself fear what others think of me? How can I tell them to take courage to face the world with their heads high in dignity, when I can hardly practice what I preach?

And how do I explain the reality of too many inexorable, slippery slides to suicidal despair, that could have been stopped, avoided, if not for the pathological and unfounded, irrational fear of failure, disclosure, shame, guilt and of being exposed, found out, caught vulnerable in the limelight. How do I explain the sheer un-necessity of lives lost, wasted, flushed down every single day- all this completely preventable if not for our immaturity as a so-called developed nation to be unable to accept these grippingly stark and genuine realities. How do I begin to share with you the emails I receive from people being impacted from this honesty, whose lives have been touched, changed, revived?

Oh how our deceitful, cowardly and unthinkably selfish natures have distorted our perspectives- building and puffing up our own esteems, at the expense of others, lives lost which we’ve heard about, tragedies which we’ve read about, and bright futures bursting with potential which we’ve never even met, known, loved- all completely wasted, thrown away, flushed down and lost, forever, because of our one moment’s folly to accept the greatest lie there ever was- that to win, you must hide.

When in fact, everyone who plays hide-and-seek gets found out in the end. If you don’t, and you find yourself hiding for hours and hours in a dank, musty cupboard full of cobwebs and spiders, with the rest of the gang given up looking for you and moving on to play a different game, you lose anyway.

You lose anyway.

It reminded me of Ed. When we let him go, tell him we don’t need make-up, or a façade, or anything else in the world for that matter, we shock ourselves to find that… people really do like us, far more for who we are for real, than the person we tried so hard to be, and never had feet large enough to fill those over-sized, mouldy shoes.

The medical profession sees more depressed, overworked and burnt out healthcare workers than any other single profession in the world besides pastors and missionaries. These are the people who work their lives to the core, for the single altruistic cause of helping others.

There has been paper after paper after paper published on the high percentages of doctors and medical students diagnosed with depression and other psychological illnesses. You put a group of exceptionally high-achieving individuals with perfectionistic tendencies through a rigorous course with ever-increasing demands, long work hours and scarce sleep, on the frontline with blood, illness and bereavement every single day, and tell me if you do not see the formula for disorders, distress and woe.

Contrary to popular belief, doctors and medical students aren’t infallible, all-knowing superheroes who heal and transform and perform miracles. We aren't God. At the end of a long day after a 36-hour shift seeing patient after patient after patient, and listening to Story after Story after Story, we have our own homes to return to, family to entertain, and perhaps, spouses who may not be half as understanding, wondering who it was they married years ago.

And all I am trying to do, what I am trying to say is this- that I've nothing to hide, and I'm not afraid.

Some have told me I don't need to do this- that I can go about my own life, avoid these cruel arrows strange people send me once in a while, wrap up and forget about all this talk of being open, of sharing, of helping people through a public space. You put yourself on the line unecessarily, of course you'll get hurt.


How do I explain this foolish thing called a calling-

-the thing that makes you terrified of giving up what you believe in, and to be unable to bless other people in the way God has blessed you, to be unable to share and to live out the things God has taught you through experience.

We swim upstream, not for nothing, but for a Purpose. The same purpose I started out with- to raise awareness about This, to give it a face, and to testify how there's nothing to be afraid of, that one ought to get help and help others to do so, that it's perfectly fine, beautiful even, to be Real, because it's worth it. A Purpose makes things all worth it, even if you get hurt, even if it faces resistance.

I dedicated Kitesong to the one teacher who impacted and changed my life in the most phenomenal way. He's the kind of teacher who makes you want to salute him not merely because of his knowledge, but for who he is, and for who you are when you're around him. He is the reason of a large part of me today. A few days ago, I went to visit him at my previous college, and asked him, "Sir, so you think I'm foolish, too? And maybe, I ought to choose a different vocation?"

He looked at me and said, " In the Holocaust, Wai Jia, there was this huge oil lamp in the middle of the concentration camp. It was what gave the prisoners heat during winter. It was said that one ought not to go too near it, because even though it was so cold, the heat from the barrel would cause your body to warm up, and paradoxically, you would catch pneumonia more easily."

" Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl realised that in order to live, he had to find a purpose greater than his life then, greater than his circumstance. When he found it, he found that he could withstand the chilling temperatures far away from the oil lamp in spite of the suffering. What he observed was that those who lost their calling in life, their sense of purpose, inched nearer to the oil lamp day by day, and eventually died because of pneumonia. When they lost their purpose, they only cared for immediate comforts like warmth but cared not for the long-term. There's always a price to pay, suffering to bear when you do what you believe in, but the Purpose makes it bearable, worthwhile. After all, Socrates was sentenced to drink the poison hemlock on account of "polluting minds" and Christ was known as the King of Fools and crucified... This story speak to you?"

So I'm afraid, I will not stop wearing my heart on my sleeve on my white coat, not stop telling the truth, not stop doing what I believe I was made to do, a missionary doctor, and not stop living. I will listen and take good advice, constructive criticism, and feedback on my doctor-patient communication skills, study techniques, clinical procedures, but I will stand up to anyone who tries to tell me their opinion that I ought to be doing something else.

I love talking to patients, love listening to their stories, and I can't take my eyes off a medical book, now. A calling, a Purpose can be so strong that its fire sets you ablaze.

It gets mighty cold sometimes, especially when all you have is a white coat in a cruel blizzard, and it's not easy, but I suppose- for one's Purpose, it's all worthwhile at the end.

Take care of yourself first

Not being able to wait for the policeman to do something about our theft matter, we decided to handle the theft situation and not wait for another incident to happen again. We cannot keep on replacing our air-cond compressors forever.

So, for the past one week, my job destination changed to security manager.



One of the things I had to do was to get quotations for installation of CCTV (closed-circuit televition) to beef up our security defense.



That's right guys! We have gone one step forward towards the future for this half a century old company.

We are going to record those thieves and hopefully the police is able to do something about it.

Now, there are alot of companies supplying such security cameras due to the rising crime rate in Malaysia but after going through 5 to 6 quotations, they all had one thing in common.

THEY ARE BLARDY EXPENSIVE!!

Not only are they expensive, we also risk our cameras from getting stolen!

So being a half century old company, we only decided to go back to basics. Something our ancestors would do back in the old days against predators.

Something cheap and affective.

Welcome to our new defence.



This is not any normal two-line spiky fencing mind you. It will puncture the gloves normally affordable by these thieves that can bypass the normal spiky defense like below.


As a result, We look like a prison now. We are no longer friendly people anymore. You understand now why in Malaysia we have fencing and gates?