Not many people would believe that I have a rather weak body. Taking too much “heaty” food would take me down, other than being very upset. I usually feel thirsty even though my water bottle is always near me.
I was down with sore throat, cough, flu, diarrhea, and probably some fever almost a month ago. I went to the TCM before all the pests arrived and the four days of good behaviour did not save me. Then, I had to force myself to visit the polyclinic because I was told that green phlegm meant that it was a virus infection. Green poo threatened me more.
I knew I could have recovered much earlier like usual but it was a different scenario this time. Within the first few days when the symptoms arrived, I was deeply upset over certain news that I had lost my determination to resist anything. It made me feel stuffy on my chest and I knew my conditions would be worsened.
It took me a few weeks to pull myself together after trying to accept reality. I was, however, very loaded with work that I could not have sufficient rest. Keeping myself occupied with work was quite a good way to numb myself anyway. Nevertheless, being in a bad shape had slowed down my work by a lot.
The dry cough after the phlegm was gone kept me companied throughout for at least a week more. I still went to the toilet twice or more times daily as a new routine, and there would be bad tummy-ache at least once.
It was until Thursday night, I felt healthy and managed to have a good volleyball game, followed by supper at McDonald’s with my elder brother and mum.
Battling against illness depends a lot on the mind and I know I should try to avoid recalling depressing stuffs.
Eileen messaged me in MSN to solve her Microsoft Word issue and thus I did not go to bed early as planned. My giddiness worsened and I went to bed at 3.30am eventually.
Mike woke me up a few times with his SMSes and I finally got up after 1pm. It was low productive day for me at home in my illness. I spent the most efficient time on photo editing. I heated up the “tang yuan” from the fridge as my late lunch.
I started working in the late afternoon and rewarded myself with a meal from Burger King near 8pm. A few minutes after I started eating, Lucky had finished his dinner and emptied his waste in the kitchen for me to clear.
After the movie on channel 5, Transporter 3, ended, I brought Lucky down for a walk before I started blogging.
I began the day engrossed in my Chinese show, which I caught at Tudou. I went to sleep at 6am with Lucky. He shared my mattress for the first time. I woke up eventually after 2pm.
My younger brother gave a last minute notice for a swim and luckily my stomach was in a better condition that despite having my meal a couple of hours before the swim, I did not feel as bad as in the past. After the swim, flu caught me again.
My brothers and I went down to walk the dog again. We spent most of the time at storey two, right opposite my mum’s workplace, where my younger brother played with his waveboard. I was busy sneezing.
I tried to sleep as early as before 5am and I woke up before 9am. I did not go back to sleep for I remembered my younger brother told me that he could go for a swim before his school. My mum bought breakfast for us from the coffee shop at the second level on its last day of business.
I went to the toilet twice before setting off. The noodle seemed to be a curse. Then, we took bus 145 to Mount Faber Safra and the ticket selling machine failed on us again. I hesitated for a while before visiting the toilet again. I joined my brother in the swim soon but my left shoulder caused me enough pain to slow down but I eventually got used to it. After taking down ten laps using my zip-zap swimming style to avoid the crowd, I stopped for my stomach to digest properly for a while before my chest was choked. It certainly described how bad the problem with my stomach had become. Anyway, I swam another ten laps before the problem relapsed and that summed up my day.
We went up to the second storey to look around after taking our bath, into the E-Mart and then bowling alley. Then, my brother set off to school while I went home alone with my wet nose. I regretted badly not bringing along tissue paper.
The running nose worsened soon and I started sneezing as well. I tried to rest but could not doze off. I posted question in Facebook to discuss about how to solve the problem to smoking in public housing and a smoker posted an idiotic comment to piss me off.
I planned to set off early to for photography before meeting up my ex-colleagues but my weak body refused me. In the end, the bus 75 played trick on me and the bad traffic jam worsened the situation. I alighted a bus-stop earlier and finally reached Rail Mall half an hour late. My gang, consisting of Hirman, Christine, Joei and Eunice had finished their dinner and left a potato for me. I was surprisingly bloated after taking it. Since I was sick, they ordered a bowl of pumpkin soup for me. It was never a boring outing with Hirman around.
As they were calculating the bill of nearly $140, they excluded me for I took very little stuffs and that I was jobless. I felt like taking free lodging. Hirman dropped me at Keppel Road before he sent Joei for her next appointment at East Coast. I felt the urge to get my civilian driving license and car so that I could do friends favours as well.
After reaching home, my younger brother made a cup of tea for me upon knowing that I was having a bad flu.
I continued my work on web design in my cough and backache. I did not sleep early as usual.
It was a very boring Saturday afternoon and everyone seemed to be too busy for me. I wanted to catch a swim but I hated to go to the pool by myself because of the travelling. Gilbert gave me a negative reply on my new design and I decided to get rid of the old concept in order to solve the limitation of revamping. However, I started dozing off in my terrible back pain.
I had a chat with Wanling in MSN and I realised she had graduated. I could have hanged out with her all these while to kill my boredom of mugging in front of the laptop daily. However, she told me she would be flying off to Japan together with her family.
It started raining for a while and the weather was a bit cooler than usual. However, the temperature did not wish to maintain at its best. I made a breakthrough in my web design for the sCreative site but putting the design into webpage was time-consuming and problematic, especially when I had to debug the code for the sake of the Internet Explorer – it was a nuisance for not following the standard HTML format.
My mum was waiting for me to go down for my jog so that she could tag along but to do some walking instead. I was too enthusiastic on the web development that I decided to give it a miss since jogging might instigate a sharp pain in my lower back in my condition.
Into the first hour of the day, my chest was still stuffed with disappointment. I felt weak like as though I was falling sick. Therefore, I dropped my boss an email to tell him that I had banged into a ghost and needed to take a day off to recuperate.
My sleeping hour was never as long as intended for somehow my body alarm clock would wake me up before noon no matter how late I slept at. Into the afternoon, I took a few short naps.
The main thing I did for the day was internet marketing, which I tested out a way of not being too dependence on my current list of friends in Facebook.
I was supposed to meet Liyi for dinner but she was held back badly in school and thus, I resumed with my work instead.
I spent the full day of my Saturday trying to upload the photos taken during the camp into Facebook but as usual, it was problematic. After waiting for very long, it displayed error alert and I had to redo again. I tried uploading smaller numbers of photos at one go but the errors appeared most of the time. One very irritating issue was that some of the photos were uploaded but a few were missing, such that I had to compare to find out the missing ones.
I went for a jog in the evening before completing the work. I took a small muffin and my medicine before leaving my house at around 5.30pm. On the way, I realised the medicine I took was for my flu, cough and sore throat, and not simply for my stomach problem. It was too late and I had to endure running in my blocked nose.
It was not my plan to challenge my limit again for I had heard numerous cases of people collapsing while exercising in their illness. This time, I did it again. Somehow, my timing was more than satisfactory even though I slowed down a lot at the big T-junction separating Marina Barrage and Marina South Pier.
Marina Barrage was crowded on this Saturday evening. The sky was clear even though it was gray before I took off. The gradient colour painted delights in me. The strong wind dried my sweat fast as usual. I found myself a space and lay down immediately to rest, and also, trying hard to prevent liquid dripping out of my nose. The cough hurt my throat a little and I had this feeling that I could not make it back.
There were two groups of people creating loud noises on the field. The first group forfeited a guy by coming over to lie besides me. When I was standing by the side, a cute girl from the second group was forced to come over to greet me but she only waved. I was disturbed by a SMS regarding work that I was most fearful of, but I decided to fully indulge myself in the beautiful and lively place.
I stayed at the Barrage longer than usual. When it was 8.30pm, I decided I should rush home to continue with my work. Half of the crowds were still around and new visitors continued to arrive. I left reluctantly in my semi blocked nose, feeling more feverish than the earlier journey. I was delighted upon reaching my destination at Shenton Way for my timing was much faster than expected in my illness.
It was the first ever known overnight camp for the students to my knowledge. I had not witnessed an event as exciting and enriching as this. Two days one night were too short for the fun, though ample for the bodies and minds to endure. Hirman, the great one, together with his team of lecturers and student leaders, made it all happen.
Most of the staffs of the Singapore Discovery Centre were over-accommodative, responding well to all needs and they even prepared coffee at night at their own good wills.
The schedule was packed and every moment was fruitfully spent. The orientation group leaders (OGL) were quick to react to fill the time in the middle of switching the game stations. They did their jobs well and responded to the lecturers.
The management made their ways down after work on both days to show their supports. I was much luckier than them since I could stay for the entire camp to interact with everyone, including their seeds – the students.
There was nothing much I could really do other than photo-taking, but I believed my fruits of labour would sharpen the fading memories in future; I hoped the sights of them would bring back true smiles on everyone’s face. Most importantly, I hoped I could help Hirman to sum up the entire event through the photos.
So much for my great photography experience and fun in disturbing the kids, everything came with a price. The greatest exchange I made was my two days of time to do my own work and probably longer time to sum up the event together with the aids of the photos. I went down in my sore throat, cough and flu. The sleepless night before that almost made me float and I managed to challenge my limit again by sleeping less than three hours throughout. I had gastric pain twice on the first day and once on the last evening. My feet were sore and my knees were stiff after two days’ walk.
Hirman had brought back confidence and enthusiasm to this five hundred-plus-strength future of our country. It was the first step, a magnificent thrust, to implant hopes into them by making them understand that there was a big pool of people who really cared for them. It was a great effort to bring out all the goodness within them.
There was no absolute measure for the success of any event. However, it was made obvious with the sight of sick and injured students refusing to leave the camp to rest at home. The reluctance of students to leave the place at the end of the camp proved it.
No event could be perfect; although with the strong support from managements, staffs and students, there were still a number of areas to be improved since it was the first attempt of such grand event. There were some ground rules, which were not lay, and thus, creating some political issues. Some students created big issues for the leaders at night.
If the camp goes on for future intakes of students, many great souls would be torn to bones; but a much awesome and impactful one would commence after all the reflections.
Tuesday evening, I stayed in the office until quite late to attend volleyball, not very confirm whether it was on or not since Jingkun and Weitat were not going down and I was too lazy to ask Mingfa. It turned out that only Mingfa, Kok Chiang and Wilson from my side went down. I was more than happy to play with uncle Jiaming and we basically imported a player for each game. I was too sick to do much. We left quite early.
Wednesday morning, I went to visit the Chinese physician again for my cough, flu and sore throat. I had lunch together with Jingkun and Daniel and I was quite stunned when they mentioned going to Mr Prata shop but I did not want to foil their plan. It was quite a tiring afternoon staying inside the administration office. I was very impressed by Mr Baey’s enthusiasm and performance, volunteering himself extra hours to contribute his talent. I stayed a little bit later to check out what Hirman might need but there was too little I could help.
Last week, I felt very hungry in the office and thus I almost emptied my drawer’s food. I was already not feeling very well; in fact, my health was never in perfect condition since the end of last year.
My lower rib started aching over nothing since last Saturday and it could never be due to the relaxing volleyball game.
The heat increased and eventually I could feel the sore in my throat by Sunday night. The cough was bad and flu started conquering me. I was restless.
I could not allow myself to take medical leave due to work commitments. I had to force myself to recover even at the expense of not taking my medicine for the stomach problem.
On the second morning of my MC, I went to the MacDonald’s with my brother and his girlfriend. The new restaurant was renovated again to accommodate more people, at the cost of the coziness. We shared a nugget meal with a chicken roll, and another cup of drinks and fries at the cost of $10 exactly using coupons.
I woke up in the noon and my brother had bought nasi lemak. However, he did not know I preferred chicken wing to drumstick.
The afternoon was spent resting, playing and working on my FYP’s website, which killed much of my brain cells.
In the evening, I was expecting the most unexpected for the couple started cooking. The food was edible and the best thing was that they did not use onion, garlic or ginger at all.
Wednesday morning, my mum and younger brother left the house before I woke up to go to Bali.
I had a little difficulty in breathing at first. I hesitated again but decided I should take more rest at home instead of destroying myself at work. I went to see the doctor at the Outram polyclinic finally.
The checkpoint outside the main door was cleared. There was only a poor guy standing inside near the queue ticket machine, asking everyone if there was any symptom of flu, fever or cough. Then, a couple of old people bothering him over the queue machine in quite a rude tone, which I thought was so silly and ridiculous.
After putting on the mask, I realized my breathing had improved somehow. My queue number was F009 and it was not very long before I went into the consultation room. When the doctor was checking my throat, she said it was very red inside and that made me very curious. I remembered when I was in the army, I went to see the doctor for diarrhoea, and I was told the same thing. I was not having a sore throat that time and thus I took it lightly until the next day, it started to hurt.
I was given two days medical leave by the doctor without asking for it. If I were to tell her about my occupation, she would probably make me stay at home until the next Monday.
After reaching home, I dropped a couple of emails. I was planning to go downstairs to buy lunch before my elder brother’s girlfriend offered to do it. She went alone to help me get my wantan mee.
It was a lazy afternoon for me and I spent lots of time lying on the bed.
In the evening, the food delivery man interrupted my sleep. I checked my phone and realized my brother had informed me to wait for the food because his girlfriend could be asleep. My brother got home soon and we shared the two packets of food.
I started off Monday early in my sore throat, cough and flu. Having to keep repeating stuffs was more tiring than ever. It lasted for nearly four hours. The spoiler of the day was a phone call.
I was supposed to have a good lunch with my shi fu, Josephine, but she forgot about it and went out with her students instead.
I had lunch with Xiao Mei instead, and was lucky enough to bang into Kevin in the canteen.
I had a short meeting in the afternoon to confirm some work, which left me in a better piece of mind.
Because the horror was going to begin again, my emotion was all tensed up, mixed and lost.
Last Friday morning, I woke up a couple of times and in the midst of one of the sleeps, I had a dream, or rather, a nightmare.
I was on my way to work and I felt weak out of a sudden. My discomfort halted me at around Queenstown. I seemed to collapse and lost my conscious until more than four hours later and I was extremely late for work. I was not feeling well still and since Mei Hoe stayed nearby, I tried to contact her but to no avail. I was panic because it was ridiculous for me to be late for work for almost half the day. Somehow, I managed to meet up with some friends later and I was brought to a weird building or sheltered bridge. Everyone was dashing through it and I wanted to make it back to the office fast, hence joined in the run. It was not an uncommon scenario where my legs could not catch up with my mind; no matter how much energy I used, I could barely cover a few centimeters.
It was one of the worst feelings I had and had been encountering in my dreams where I was too helpless to do anything.
As I had expected, after the intensive curry-eating period, sore throat regained control over me. It was since Saturday morning, the pain started and I had a terrible weekend certainly. I had already tried to take less of it but it coordinated too well with all the heaty food that I had taken throughout the entire week.
My health had been depleting for the past few days ever since Sunday morning. The bloated stomach invited flu along on Tuesday night and I almost could not make it for work the next morning.
Taking panadol caused me bad cough and I could not doze off with the irritant on my throat. I was not sure if I was allergy to panadol because it was not the first time it happened. The giddiness in the morning almost tripped me over on the way to Bukit Batok.
I was surprised that I could still conduct the workshop in my condition. It was a terrible morning to struggle on for my weak body wanted to collapse so many times while I put on a strong front.
Lunch was at Clementi’s coffee near the NTUC. The chicken cutlet was a letdown. I was not sure if I was too giddy or Weitat heard wrongly, otherwise, I would have enjoyed the chicken chop instead. A gay bee ruined my entire cup of lime juice by kissing the tip of the cup and also sucking off the juice.
I was always sleepy but the flu worsened my condition that my eyes could hardly stay open in the afternoon.
Magdalene gave me a lift to school and thus I reached SIM very early. I took a seat at one of the study tables and two quite good looking girls shared the table with me, and even sitting on the same side, right besides me. There were many babes passing by as well.
Another Sunday was spent meeting up for project discussion. Life of working and studying at the same time was dreadful.
After having a bowl of green bean soup in the morning, my stomach was bloated throughout that I had to packet my packet rice out of the house. My lunch was taken after 4pm during the meeting.
At night, I started feeling more like pregnant. The discomfort on my stomach was indescribable and I felt a bit giddy. I lost my appetite.
