She's Left This World

The day after Popo passed away.

I hope she left with no regrets, and I am sure she is sitting in heaven right now watching over us.

Memories of time spent with her will always stay with me.

1) As a small boy, I remember her driving me around Sabah in her small red Honda, either to visit shopping malls or to buy groceries. It was just cool to have a Grandmother who drives.

2) I will always remember her as a formidable chef. Whenever we were in Sabah she would cook up delicious meals of boiled chicken (plus the oyster sauce), chicken herb soup and lots and lots of beef and chicken balls. For tea-break, her boiled corn with butter was just delicious. Her home-made prawn crackers needs to be mentioned as well.

3) Conversations were always spiced up by her. When I was younger and unable to understand much, I would sit in the car with my family on road trips in Sabah. Conversations would be peppered with her comments, which I didn’t understand, but since they were almost always followed by unanimous laughter from the rest of the adults in the car (which would be my dad, mum, Gong Gong and uncle), I knew she had an original sense of humor.

4) She always liked and appreciated new and interesting foods. And she would not hesitate to show her liking for nice dishes. Whenever we tried our new restaurants she would be the most curious to sample the dishes.

5) She would be the most caring person, sometimes to a point of excessive worry. But that made her a very personal and the warmth she showed will perhaps be the most lasting memory of her. (Even the vegetable seller she buys her groceries from came for her wake)

At this point I don’t have the full story of how she left this world, but I know that it was as sudden as it was unexpected. I must admit I had expected her to live to see my wedding.

I know that some things in life are inevitable, and I will embrace this with the knowledge that I managed to hug her before she left for Sabah a month ago. Gong Gong and Popo were going back to Sabah via Johor, so they were taking a hired private transport. It was just before my A’Levels and I was busy studying, but I’m glad I chose to take that short 10 mins to send them down. Hugging her and staying on to wave her car off, little did I know that would be the last time I see her. I wish I had taken even more time out to take them for lunch at Din Tai Fung or Crystal Jade (she loves the fried pig intestines there. But if we live our life regretting the many 'little did we know's, we would be seriously overwhelmed.

For now, I’ll just give all the support I can to Gong Gong who must be devastated to lose his life companion. I pray he will, with God’s guidance, manage to move on.

To my dearest Popo, I hope you are now in the most peaceful and comfortable place, surrounded by nothing but pure happiness. You will always be in my heart and I’m fortunate to have spent 18 years of my life with you around.

It's time to officially close this blog. Not that I have been updating it a lot.

I started this blog 3 years ago, and 40 posts later (that averages out to be only one post a month), I finally admit it is time-consuming to maintain a blog. Will I still continue to post? Well, maybe, if something I really want to post comes to mind. But for now, lets assume this is the final post.


Hopes, aspirations and dreams.

Mistakes, regrets and disillusionment.

Achievements and failures.


All part of Life's Journey.

I sometimes wonder if there were happier moments in my life. And I ask myself why. Is it because I was more carefree? Less busy? Or simply just ignorant? I look at my baby photos, and I realise, happiness has nothing to do with what's going on in your life.

Rather, it is more about being aware of everything there is to be happy with. And if we genuinely seek that awareness, then it is impossible to say you cannot find anything to be happy about.

Smile:)

Haven't posted in a very, very long time.

As I read my previous post, I realise I haven't posted about Cambodia, and everything after that. Life has been quite fast-paced since then. I suppose I'll just keep my Cambodia reflections offline. I'll definitely want to go again this year if its possible!

Orientation was the best start to the year.
Ivanhoe rocks :P
Especially all you Ivanhoe OGLs.

But now orientation's long over. Its time to shift focus to studying.

A'levels' not too far away.

Watched Dead Poets Society during GP class a few weeks back, and the cliched phrase 'Carpe Diem' still sticks in my head.

Carpe Diem.
Seize the day.

Unpredictable

Unpredictable

I'm back from Cambodia! After a 3 hour flight delay we finally touched down at 2.35am and waited at the McDonald's Terminal 2 while waiting for public transport systems to start. I reached home at around 7.30am and have been sleeping ever since even though I still feel exhausted.

Cambodia has been an enriching and touching experience. I will never forget the delightful and carefree faces of the children in HVPV which shimmer with innocence. They are inspirational.

I'll elaborate more when I have the time and after we compile the photos tomorrow so I can refer to them while blogging about Cambodia.

I could sense something was wrong this morning when my mum came down to pay for the taxi for me. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn't at work. I found out that I won't be having another brother or sister after all. Heartbeat stopped. And my mum went for surgery on Wed.

Many things in life are often unpredictable. But this is an outcome I would never have expected.

Surprise!

Surprise!

The news came to me last Sunday in the car. My mum is pregnant! According to her, she was waiting for my sister to come back from India before breaking the news, and so that was the first opportunity she got.

Well, my first reaction was of course shock, but I was happy. It was pleasant shock, if that phrase can be used. I had been joking about her giving birth to another since the day my brother was born, which like, 11 years ago. And 11 years later, my joke came true. It then dawned on me that my mum giving birth when she's older might increase the risks involved in pregnancy. And I became worried. My parents then told us they, too, had been worried earlier, but the doctor had told them it was still okay. So I am going to have another brother or sister!

Every time we move house, there's a new member of the family. When I was born, my parents had moved house. When my sister was born, yet again. And my brother came, again. In between we moved house once without any new member though(freak reading). And now. I'm moving house next year (Hopefully as soon as possible so I don't have to travel so far to school anymore), and here comes a new sibling! The coincidence is unplanned for, actually, according to my parents.

Maybe it is God's way of saying, "Hey, moving to a bigger home is too much space for the family, you need it to be more cosy by having more people". There's logic in that. Imagine a home where everyone has loads of private space. That home will simply become a place to sleep, eat and bath, because of the fewer opportunities to interact and talk. We need to share the space, share stuff, eat at the common table, watch TV together, play random board games together then can we call it a real home.

So. I look forward to receiving my new brother or sister.

Next year will be an exciting year!

Thoughts

Been doing research at IME the past few days. Gives me a lot of time to think. My experiments are conducted as such: Soak the substrate for 1 hour. Stone. Transfer the substrate to another dish to soak in another solution another hour. Stone. And it goes on. Of course, in between the steps I have to prepare the solutions and stuff. But it still gives me a lot of time to reflect and think. Usually there's no one in the lab I am in, except myself. Quite wierd considering this lab is supposed to be shared by a few others.

From my lab I can see other researchers in other labs concentrating on their work. I think I know why I've decided research will not be my career path. The topic I am researching on is interesting, but.. its the enviroment which is not exactly appealing, not when you don't get to speak to anyone for hours except yourself unless you use the phone next to you.

S47 chalet last week was fun! Although almost everyone who came was from our clique since half the class was going back home overseas. The chalet started with 3 people. Jt, py and me. We carried the snacks from Giant (lucky we didn't take MRT or bus) and the BBQ stuff from the carpark opposite downtown east. And we decided to visit the supposedly-haunted redhouse which didn't seem eerie in bright daylight.

Then steffi came, then wayne, who told us it was already late, so we'd better start the fire for bbq quickly. The BBQ was one of the few I actually felt full, and with so much extra food even though wayne dropped-goodness-knows-how-much food onto the floor accidentally. It was quite cool when we started talking about more mature topics like politics, the enviroment, the degeneration of the younger generation and stuff.

Playing 'I never', as always, revealed much. Except that I found it difficult to think of questions after the 2nd or 3rd round and well, asked the wrong question. Wild wild wet was wet. That whole sentence starts with W. Lame. The most memorable part of WWW was the wave pool. It took a lot of effort to stay together once the waves came. But in the end, we managed to:)

On the last night of chalet, we started talking about our first impressions of the class. And I have to say, back then on the 1st day of school when we all met each other during our 1st CT session, I would never have guessed we would have a chalet, and the many class outings. When I first stepped into V43, and saw that everyone was so stone, I was thinking, as I am sure everyone else was thinking, 'Oh no, why everybody look so sian' and 'Oh no, I'm going to be in this class for the next 2 years' and 'so many scholars!'. But when you're with s47 now, its hard to imagine that situation on the first day. S47 rocks man.

Its funny how the things you expect don't turn out the way you think it will, when the things you don't expect pops out and catches you by surprise.

Fundraising for the Cambodia trip - newspaper and old clothes collection - was a success, thanks to everyone who helped out: jt, py, py's anderson friends, huimin, jason, agung, jiahao, steffi, steffi's friend, xianglin, yingwah. We raised 705.45 in all. Apparently with we surpassed another group who had more manpower than us. And Cambodia is 7 days away!

Over lunch with nat, jo and cheryl on Sun, cheryl, nat and I were sharing our thoughts on research attachment, while jo laughed at us, and apparently, the 3 of us share similiar views on it. Also, I realise I got exactly the same promo results as Nat (Except for physics cause she takes Bio. But we both got E). It runs in the genes I guess.

I met chris chok today by chance, at the coffee shop, after visiting the doctor. He was eating breakfast before going to study before his history A's today. Great chat and company for breakfast! All the best for your last paper man.

I received good but surprising news on Sunday, which I unfortunately cannot post about until the 'official' release date, next mon.

Hope.

I read

Tuesdays with Morrie. The book was given to me in Sec 3, and I only touched it now. What procrastination. Then again, maybe I would not have appreciated it two years ago. 'When you learn how to face death, you learn how to live'. How true that is. Many of us know that we'll eventually die. But few of us believe it, me included. It's like, isn't that for older people to think about? But life, and death, is unpredictable. If only we believed that, we will live life very differently. Don't you think so?