H1N1 Battle Part 1

The boy is almost completing Day 4 in PICU. Poor boy, fighting H1N1 + some fearsome bacteria that has gotten into his lungs. It is no joke seeing your kid sedated and intubated.

And here I am stuck at home because I am also down with the flu. Must say that Tamiflu is pretty effective. On me anyway. But I think it's a very strong drug and not something to be taken lightly.

This ordeal is hammering home for me a number of life truths.

For example, there are more important things in life than what he's going to get for the PSLE (a lesson that had already come a-knocking when some other stuff happened earlier this year), or whether we are going to be able to watch Wimbledon on Starhub (I still don't know the answer), one thing being LIFE itself.

Some other things that come to mind now include 'being a good person'. I was very happy to hear recently from his teacher that he thinks the boy is a really good kid and then from my friend who told me that our priest had said a similar thing about him. Then, before I knew it, Father was standing in front of me, having come over to the hospital after finishing some duties in church after having just landed in Singapore! When Father prayed over him, the boy teared. Which brings me to a very important life truth: God is with us.

We have also been overwhelmed by the feeling that everybody is with us, Catholic, Christian or not. And that is just proof of another life truth: people are good by nature.

I realise that I may not be fully coherent in the post, with all that is happening now and under the influence of drugs (Tamiflu and others) but who cares.

Next instalment soon...

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True train school

‘Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster.’ How would you like to have such a headmaster? I finally re-read (read it first as a teenager) Totto-chan, The Little Girl at the Window , a ‘school story’ by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, translated by Dorothy Britton. Totto-chan is the name Tesuko Kuroyanagi called herself, and the book is about her life during her school days at Tomoe Gakuen. Totto-chan was expelled from her first elementary school because of her ‘disruptive’ behaviour, which included constantly opening and closing her desk top (because she was so thrilled by it), ‘vandalising’ her desk (because there wasn’t enough space on the piece of paper to draw) and standing by the classroom window waiting for street musicians to pass by or talking to swallows. Her mother, although probably alarmed about the ...

No wonder

According to a poll of about 300 people, reported in yesterday's Sunday Times, (how come nobody ever asks me these things?) , the Seven Wonders of Singapore are (in order of merit): 1. The Esplanade (a whopping 82 votes) 2. Changi Airport (53 votes) 3. Sentosa 4. The Merlion 5. The Singapore River 6. Food 7. Mount Faber and LKY (tie - 10 votes each) Some 'offbeat choices' which didn't make it to the top 7: aunties selling tissue paper at coffee shops, Singlish, kiasuism, 4D-Toto outlets and Newater (said someone of Newater: 'We are probably the only country with branded recycled sewage.' Well said, ha ha.). Maybe it's a personal bias but I feel that a 'Wonder' must also have strong historical and cultural/social value (so I'm rather miffed that Angkor Wat didn't make it to the 7 Wonders of the World; in fact it was never in the running for the top 7). Therefore, these choices are a little too modern for me. The Esplanade, for example, is a...

He like dat say one meh?

Apparently, that 'English as it is broken' book has been topping the charts at our local bookstores. Actually, I'm not too interested in that book but this other one may be worth getting my hands on. The article about it, as published in Saturday's (1 Sept) ST: In the world of international diplomacy, the best-chosen words or phrases can leave an audience laughing, bewildered or simply lost in translation, an insider has revealed. Undiplomatic Activities, a yet-to-be-launched book by Mr Richard Woolcott, who ran Australia's foreign service for four years, points to the pitfalls of translating thoughts into different languages. Take the Australian diplomat in France who tried to tell his audience that as he looked back on his career, it was divided in two parts, with dull postings before life in Paris. 'When I look at my backside, I find it is divided into two parts,' Mr Woolcott quoted the diplomat as telling his highly amused audience. Ex-Australian prime m...

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