Cancer Survivor #124183532342

Ok i'm not sure if there're that many cancer survivors on this planet, let alone the total world population. Whatever the figure is, I can now officially put papa on that list, based on the 110% assurance his oncologist has given us today.

Although it's the end of a major disruption in his life, papa still has to cope with the longterm post-treatment side effects such as his chronic sinusitis, dry throat and also the psychological impact, as well as the brandnew lifestyle he now has to lead.

I can't tell you how relieved he was when dr.wong announced that he's officially released from the cancer cell (stupid pun)....his face simply lit up and you can really see a rainbow over his head. Let's hope he quickly gets back on his feet and continues living his life to the fullest.

Thank you Dr.Karmen Wong, Dr.Edward Yang, Dr.Ralph Ernest Stanley, 冯家杨医师, all those extremely professional and helpful nurses and all friends and relatives who really cared for us.

Thank you, mummy. You made me realize what true unconditional love really is. It's the TLC you showered upon your husband. It's the undying spirit you upheld in this family when things seem so bleak and crestfallen.

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Cancer Survivor #124183532342 : my father.

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Papa's Judgment Day...

Sent papa to do his final Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan today to check for any trace of cancer left in his body....and then the report will be out tomorrow and his oncologist will go thru' with us on the findings.

This 7-month nightmare will finally reach a conclusion tomorrow. And sis is also back from australia to give papa moral support. I think all of us wont be able to sleep tonight....

Let's just hope we walk out of dr.wong's clinic tomorrow all smiling and seal this whole miserable episode once and for all.


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Seven Wonders of the World....

Got this from one of those chain mails...i tot it's quite meaningful...

SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD

A group of students were asked to list what they thought were the present "Seven Wonders of the World." Though there were some disagreements, the following received the most votes:

1. Egypt's Great Pyramids
2. TaJ Mahal
3. Grand Canyon
4. Panama Canal
5. Empire State Building
6. St. Peter's Basilica
7. China's Great Wall

While gathering the votes, the teacher noted that one student had not finished her paper yet. So she asked the girl if she was having trouble with her list.

The girl replied, "Yes, a little. I couldn't quite make up my mind because there were so many."

The teacher said "Well, tell us what you have, and maybe we can help".

The girl hesitated, then read: "I think the 'Seven Wonders of the World' are:

The room was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. The things we overlook as simple and ordinary and that we take for granted are truly wondrous!

A gentle reminder: That the most precious things in life cannot be built by hand or bought by man.



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those wacky dudes

Had a rare OG get-together yesterday. It somehow felt like day 1 when the guys and the girls met and sat down together in a circle for the first time. Although attendance was far from perfect, but it's still encouraging to see most of those wacky dudes still holding onto the "Tiu Tiu 八十六" spirit (TT86 is our OG name..we were group #86 at the orientation camp and we just came up with this name out of sheer randomness ).

Each and everyone of them felt like an old fren to me...was very comfortable talking and joking in the all familiar and offensive s.o.b-tone. Looking at some of the pictures we took over the past year, i'm sure these are memories that'll be etched in my mind forever...

我领悟到 。。。

我领悟到时间是自己发掘出来的。

无论再多忙, 都总可以抽出一点时间同家人吃顿饭，同好友聚 一聚。
说忙是借口, 说没兴趣是不给自己机会。懒惰是因为休息不足，而休息不足也是因为工作与休闲的时间配合不妥。

时间是自己发掘以及安排出来的。短短的人生道路仅仅几十年旅程，你难道就此荒废蹉跎黄金岁月吗?

一切在于个人的信念与时间操控之下。别再说“忙”! 想做就一定要去做。说得到也就一定要做得到, 尽量发挥个人潜能，并且充实自己。

你领悟到了吗?



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those f**king birds...

Never park your car under a tree the whole day.

Worked OT yesterday night and when i got into dad's car ready to speed home to catch wc, it felt as though it had just rained birdshit from the sky. The whole windscreen's covered with so much birdcrap that my vision was kinda obscured...sianz....already shagged after a long day's work...still had to go wash away those birdie shit when i reached home....

arrgggghhhh..haha



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Catching a breather....

Time flies when you have something to do. I've been working at my Dad's new cold storage warehouse for a week already. Logistics work is tough, especially when you're responsible for the safekeeping of your customers' products...and to make things worse, in a minus-18 degree environment.

There is almost no hierarchy in this newly established company yet, very much due to understaffing and insufficient knowledge of the logistics business. The bosses have to do the manual work themselves, and I suddenly found myself tasked to be some sort of foreman and store checker. This is where the welfare of your ground level staff is of utmost importance. If one of the forklift drivers fall ill, it could badly impair the efficiency of the daily operations. And being a new company in the process of widening its customer base, competitive prices and quality service are imperative to keep the company going. Ok i'm speakin' as though i'm the big boss or something. The bosses are my dad, my uncles and my "Bao Ka Liao" cousin who's preparing for his wedding next week, so i'm pretty much a helper running errants and doin' all the menial jobs for him.

I must say the kind of job i'm doin' now is literally an "industrial attachment". The warehouse is located in Jurong Industrial Estate and because the company is new, there is plenty of room to exercise some planning and control of the logistics operations that require smooth and systematic work processes to enhance the company's efficiency and credibility. Who says blue-collared jobs don't need to use brains?

The peak operational hours are usually at night when customers come and select their frozen food in preparation for the next day's delivery to restaurants, supermarkets etc, and also at around 6 o'clock in the morning when the freezer trucks come and pick up their goods. I'm lucky i don't have to work during these odd hours so there's still time to catch enough sleep after those incapacitating worldcup late nights.

Catching a breather now actually cos it's lunchtime...Thanks to my cousin, the whole office is all LAN-ed up so there's always cyberspace for me to chill out. Otherwise during offpeak hours, I will be looking at the indian workers and they will be looking at me...and then the only things missing are perhaps some coconut trees for us to dance around.



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20 interesting facts/things/habits (tagged)

Got tagged by Candice...so here it goes....supposed to have 24 items...but twenty is the most i can come up with...ha.

20 interesting facts/things/habits about myself:

1) I have an english name. It's called Ernest. You can call me Ernest. Had it since 2004 when my Indian Corporate Law ACCA lecturer asked me to give myself an english name cos he couldn't pronounce yijia. I was contemplating between Tony and Ernest...Ok stop laffing will u...

2) I am a very indoor person...don't really like outdoor activities...but I don't mind beach vball...haha.

3) I think i love to pick up fights (but so far rarely been involved in any)...belligerent by nature...i used to beat up my cousin until her nose bled but that was like 20 years ago...if i'm alone in a room with my enemy, i'm ready to take him out man.

4) If i can choose to be born of any nationality, I wanna be a Japanese. I've got this huge admiration for the japanese culture, their economic supremacy and the way they made life seem so interesting and perfect. Practicalities aside though.

5) My greatest fantasy is to go back in time and make friends with my parents before they met.

6) My dream job is a fully-sponsored photo-journalist. Travel + photography...capture all the good things in the world..you only have one lifetime to do it.

7) If I have two daughters, I'll name them Clara and Claudia. No particular reason...i just think they're damn sweet and elegant names.

8) I have this thing for colorful collectibles - vintage ads, kitkat boxes, movie posters, postcards etc. I have a huge collection of used telephone cards that I started gathering when I was 5...trying to get rid of them for some cash now actually.

9) Ernest has got no fashion sense. Anything that he deems comfy gets onto his body.

10) I love all the most-commonly-hated-vegetables - bittergourd, brinjal, lady's fingers, yam...ok i don't like parsley and celery though....

11) If there's one thing i can do to be sexy, I will go learn cooking. C'mon, if you can cook some really good stuff, you can practically sweep any girl off her feet anytime anywhere.

12) Ernest's second favorite color after orange is PURPLE. There's nothing wrong, i'm telling you. Ha.

13) My most desired greatest scientific invention in this world is the Babel Fish, otherwise known as the world language converter. The babel fish is this small little fish from Douglas Adam's A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Once inserted into the human ear, one can understand every damn spoken language. Isn't that cool?

14) I'm by far the greatest pirate YOU have ever known. I'll bet with you on that. I can practically make a fortune if I set up an underground venture here.

15) My ideal girl should be someone who has a good voice and can sing cantonese duets with me at KTV. I suppose I may need to try my luck in HK or something...and then again, there's no such thing as an ideal girl. So continue to dream, Ernie...

16) I can't sleep without a bolster. They say people who can't sleep without bolsters are insecure people. Oh well...watever..harnah!~

17) I've ever dreamt of becoming a gymnast, rockstar, longjumper, sniper, dirty-dancer, kamikadze pilot, F1 driver, chef, a taekwondo grandmaster etc.

18) I can subsist on junkfood alone. But thank god I'm not that fat (yet).

19) I love telling lies for the sake of making things look better or masking up the mundane nature of things. For those who don't really know me, you shouldn't believe half the things i say.

20) Like anyone else, I wish I have supernatural powers...and I'm gonna abuse them big time. *evil laffs*...to be more specific, I'd love to be able to fly and make time standstill while I go abt arranging things MY way.



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Yet another scare.

Was attending the exchange programme talk when mom msged that papa fainted again... you wouldn't imagine how fast i was running from victoria street to swissotel to catch a cab home...
And then it was rush hour and the cars were all crawling...i wanted to tell the driver to let me take over the wheels...but i maintained my ability to reason..wasn't his fault...

things weren't that serious...but i still had the flustered couldn't-believe-it look when i reached home...and then papa was resting after mom applied some ointment to his bruised head...and when he came to, we concluded the episode took place because papa had overexerted himself while doin' those qigong stances at home...sounds incredible but i hope that really was the case, and nothing more serious than that....

we're just 2 weeks before papa's final scan that will tell him whether he's free fr the c-word. not a good sign that something like that happens at this time. In anycase, i'm confident and hopeful he will be back on his feet again, unfettered....will continue to pray for him.

...supposed to be catching dinner and WC match with the mha folks...and now i'm at home, papa already turned in...and i'm not even watching the matches on tv.

Can someone tell me what TGIF stands for again?


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窗外的天气...

As of today...

窗外的天气

你离去那天忽然倾盆大雨
忘记关的窗湿一地

今天的天气是云淡风清
彷佛不记得那一季湿湿的雨季
人总要试著学习
往好的地方走下去
别总是在原地
听到朋友谈起你的消息
这段时间你的生活有高也有低
那离开我的原因
已经变成你的伴侣
我只是你的过去
我只是你一段过去
虽然还继续想你
听起来连自己都觉得太煽情
虽然还依旧爱你
看起来又嫌多余
你离去那天忽然倾盆大雨
忘记关的窗湿一地
love! when you come with the burning
lamp of pain in your hand
i can see your face and know you as bliss

从此我让四周阳光充裕
喔~喔~喔~喔~
只是记忆里那一扇窗外
还没放晴

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post-exam blues...

have been spending the last 2 nites out drinking and watching world cup matches with frens...i guess it's so much more fun to soak up some of the rowdy atmosphere than to stay at home and watch the matches alon....but i guess i won't do that too frequently, lest i fall out wif my mom again for comin' home late...the folks just can't stand their 'little-girl' coming home late...they think she'll be raped on her way home or something...what the hell...gimme a break man....

feelin' quite blue since my last paper ended on friday...not too sure why oso...mebbe it's just cos i haven't had much plans for the rest of da holz...maybe cos all my frens bz with their own stuff...mahjong kakis turning to soccer betting, the workaholics bz makin' more money out there (speakin' of which, i need to get my ass down to some income-generating work asap), holidaying dudes still holidaying...and cut the crap abt having quality time to myself...i've had enuff for myself liao.

lazy no more....

i realli should've no more excuses for parkin' more ass at home everyday....time to hit the gym, play some squash, rid those flabs off my belly, finish up all those things on my to-do list....even if i dun wanna work hard, i should play harder....life is no longer mundane...


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The wars are NOT over yet.

Sigh, i'm completely drained of every bit of motivation to continue mugging anymore. I wasted the whole day away playing yahoo!pool and NFS (w the pC) and bearly revised anything for friday's paper. After yesterday's lacklustre performance, i'm getting apprehensive towards getting back my results again...and that's happening to me even before taking the next paper... it'll be damn dreadful when the day of release of da results come.

the day slipped by just like this..yes like this...super zuo bo and unproductive...it's just me and some silly games and some revision notes for the whole afternoon...how boring can life get?

got another 2 frens going on holiday again...keith going to US and junbing going diving off the shore of some m'sian island..........i'm also on an island...an island all to myself...it's called Pulau Bedroom...when i look up, i dun see the sky, i see lizards crawling on the dusty ceiling...

and wad's making things worse is again, that sullen look on my dad's face....even my mom came to tell me she's completely clueless why he behaves like this even though it's certain he's almost fully recovered. and it's the first time mom expressed her intolerance over the state of affairs at home. She's tired and she's aching everywhere from all the physical and emotional distress thru'out these 6 months....it's time to end this state of misery, so i relli relli hope my dad can stop whining and just take things in his stride and resume his life asap.....*just what the fark is wrong with him!? can't he be a little more positive towards himself? doesn't he realize his wife needs a break once in a while? why is he such a baby?* I hope he gets back to work soon, then he can preoccupy his mind with some more constructive stuff other than his self-inflicted mental turmoil.

I'm tired as well....tired of being mentally caged up for so long....i need to get back to work now...dreadful...blardy dreadful.....

I hope the wars end soon.


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Let me tell u wtf is audit...

Having spent 6 weeks with my audit notes, i must say i'm not exactly 100% prepared for tmr's paper...but i guess should be sufficient...(hey c'mon, having the confidence is half da battle won)

And even so, whatever's gonna come out in tmr's paper is really highly unpredictable due to the supercreativity of the examiner in setting questions and the borderless realm of the audit subject. Sometimes i really wonder how it's like to do a real audit...which, i believe is 90% similar to what I've learnt from my notes....and it's spelt B-O-R-I-N-G and D-R-E-A-D-F-U-L.

And then it sets me thinking how people have managed to work all the way up to becoming a partner...NO LIFE! but i rem having a quick conversation with the partner in charge of my dad's company audit...he said "you gotta like the job, no matter wad..."...tough thing to do really...imagine likening the job to pushing the button every 108minutes in the tv serial LOST...being coerced into a mundane n routine form of self-assurance (no pun intended)...and deriving pleasure from walking on tightrope where a single big mistake can cost u everything. In general, i tink it's for the less adventurous really....no realistic human being will dare dream of becoming a millionaire and leading a wonderous life the day they start working for an audit firm right from the bottom.

And then again, i'm just a student deriving my conclusions abt da subject from the past 6 weeks of mugging....being skeptical abt a possible career option when i know nuts abt the real stuff.

As of now, it's my favorite subject, my most adorned and respected profession...and whatever goes beyond will be determined after 6pm tomorrow.



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More commitments after 9 June

Can't wait for next friday to be over....

Suddenly just thot of more things i need to do after exams....

- Uni-Vantage contracts renewal
- Clean-up my room (a must!)
- Exercise like mad...and that includes picking up my racket again
- once-in-a-blue-moon OG outing
- plan my academic progress + exchange programme

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