Triste

i have decided to let my travel plans to Hong Kong lapse. it's all over. i just feel so overwhelmed by my emotions right now. i find it so hard to smile. my injury has taught me a number of lessons. it has broken and still breaks my heart to think about the things i can no longer do and to see others do them. it has brought me down from my tall pedestal and has exposed the extent of my pride, my arrogant self-reliance and my jealousy. it has showed me the real faces of some people that i had originally thought i knew. it has helped me to empathise, to whatever small degree, how my two children with muscular dystrophy are living each day with their limbs wasting away. i have learnt not to take things for granted. pero, aun tengo rios de variosos dolores en la triste corazon...

hello, come in, take a seat, how are you doing, let's take a look at your right arm, oh, the muscle wastage is quite significant, hmm, tell me again when you dislocated your shoulder, you mean it happened just last month, oh, really, and it's your first time too, hmm, the muscle wastage is really quite significant, and you say there's pain in the bicep and forearm, and reduced sensation over where the triceps used to be, hmm, and numbness in your hand, ok, let's try moving your arm, come, raise it up in front of you, ok, so your range of motion there is still quite limited, i see that your right arm is still trembling too, that means your arm is still quite weak, ok, now raise your arm up sideways, oh, so you can't bring your arm completely to your side, urm, how about backwards, oh, you can't do that either, oh, and you can't put your right hand to your hip too, hmm, this is not typical at all, this stiffness you are displaying, we usually see this only in much older patients, i'm surprised you're showing this condition, this stiffness, and the pain that you have described, it's atypical in a patient your age, i'm not sure what's wrong, but i think you may have a nerve problem somewhere, you may have damaged some nerves when you dislocated your shoulder, some nerve blockage, but we can't see these from your MRI, so i'll need to put you on a nerve conduction test to see exactly what's wrong, and where, and then maybe we can see whether we can try to remove the nerve blockage, but if we can't remove it, then that means the damage is probably irreversible, you know, some nerve injuries are like that, oh, you have a question, urm, well, i'm not saying it's definitely irreversible, urm, well, but really, your symptoms are not typical of a patient of your age, patients your age seldom display such complications, but your symptoms, we usually see these in older patients, they get stiff and their stiffness remains, i mean, in your case, well, the stiffness is quite atypical, the damage could be irreparable, but i'm not saying that it is, but you really need to go for further tests.

Schopenhauer's Telescope

Schopenhauer's Telescope by Gerard Donovan, my 8th novel of the year. It's almost 300 pages of text on about 6 hours' worth of conversation between two unnamed men, a village teacher and a village baker, as they both stand in the middle of a snow-covered field in their enemy-occupied hometown in the midst of civil war in winter.

The baker is busy digging. He has been hand-picked by the enemy forces to dig a mass grave. Like a traitor who has betrayed his own townsfolk and is now facilitating the entry of the enemy, the teacher smokes and watches by the side as the baker sweats it out in the hole. And as the baker shovels away at sand, stone and snow, he engages the teacher in topics of war and history, violence and bloodshed, philosophy and science, morality and immorality. They discuss Genghis Khan whose troops killed almost a fifth of the world's known population in the early 1200s and King Leopold of Belgium who killed some ten million Africans in the 1890s. And as they speak, trucks roll by and stop alongside the field, unloading their human cargo - nervous villagers rounded up by enemy troops. By sundown, the mass grave is ready. Time for execution. There is the sound of rapid gunfire, and one of the two men collapses in a bloody, riddled heap inside the freshly dug grave. The other villagers follow him in. The traitor walks off with the enemy soldiers.

My favourite line from the book: "[A person] learns that future is behind and the past in front, rather than the other way around, because he can't see the future with his eyes. But the past is visible because it has happened, so it's in front."

Morbid as it is, the book is nonetheless written in a very engaging style. And very philosophical. But at some points of the story, it appears to depart from the realm of reality, with both men behaving in ways that are not quite believable given the frigid, wartime scenario. I rate the book 3.5/5.

And what's Schopenhauer's telescope? Well, Schopenhauer is a philosopher from the 19th century. He proposed that in order to gain perspective of our problems, we should travel some 50 years into the future and then look down a telescope in the opposite way, back at ourselves as we are now, and then make decisions based on the benefit of hindsight. An interesting proposition. Towards the end of the book, both men used Schopenhauer's telescope to see how the history books will record the part each of them played in the grim events on that sombre winter's day.

Library Fine

Just realised that my library loans expire today, and it's too late now to go return the books. That means I will have a fine awaiting me at my next visit. *sigh* Have spent all day at home, drifting around and not accomplishing much. I did pack up my room, sort out my mail (including discovering a previously overlooked warning letter on the closure of one of my zero-balance bank accounts!) and cleared the trash.

CheeryRunner was online earlier, and we chatted about the visit to Hong Kong next weekend for the marathon. I assume I'll be going - not running, but just to support the MF Safra runners and enjoy myself. But I haven't applied for leave from work yet, and I haven't told my parents about my plans to do so, and I don't know whether the doctor will advise me against travelling overseas with an injured shoulder when I meet him this coming Wednesday.

My right shoulder and arm are slowly but surely regaining some of their range of motion back. Still, the way they move reminds me of a stiff and rusty puppet. Ha :)

Ruminations on pain

Had many sleepless nights this week, over which I had the opportunity to ruminate upon the common human affliction of physical pain. It is a remarkably and intensely personal experience. The rest of the mortal world cannot in any real sense share that pain, no matter what they say or do, though their words and actions can no doubt add or subtract from pyschological and emotional pain. Physical pain may originate from deep within the bones, where it slowly but steadily grinds away a person's sense of well-being. It may erupt with electrifying speed and force when the weakest breath of wind brushes against ultrasensitive skin. It may relentlessly throb away at the brain, blurring vision and fouling moods. It may churn the stomach as it ferments a noxious brew within the body. It may render a person demoralised, incapacitated, unconscious or even worse. When painkillers cannot do the job, there is no point pleading for help to eliminate physical pain. The day rapidly darkens into night and night rapidly darkens into despair, because pain is so remarkably and intensely personal.

年初三

It is peculiar that my right arm is going through such cycles of stiffening and relaxation. I wonder what's wrong, and if that's a natural part of the healing process. In fact, I am so preoccupied with my arm that I'm almost forgetting that it is my shoulder - and not my arm - that has been dislocated. Looking at my reflection in the mirror, it's obvious that my right shoulder is just weakly slumped. It still has no strength to do a right latissimus dorsi spread, unlike on the left side. I am keeping my fingers crossed that all is well. I'm nervous about my MRI results, but there's still two weeks to go before I am scheduled to see my specialist for a diagnosis. Irreparable tissue damage or not? Surgery or not? Questions, questions, questions.

At around noon, I went over to Ah Khen and Nan Yan's place for some New Year celebrations. Ah Khen's and Nan Yan's three children have grown taller and plumper :) I also caught up with many of my old DSTA friends there, including Richard & Audrey, Chee Keong, Kenny, Melvin, Valerie & Andy & their year-old baby Tiffany, Li Lian, Wilson and Uncle Low. Everyone was in good spirits, eating popiah, drinking home-brewed red date tea and munching on other new year pastries. =D Thanks to Richard and Audrey for sending me back home after the get-together.

年初二

Once again, I couldn't sleep well last night. I felt as if someone had put really rough sandpaper between the skin and muscles of my right arm. I crawled out of bed at around 3 am, went to the kitchen, and realised that the Panadol tablets were not kept in their usual location. Dad must have put them somewhere else, after giving Mum a tablet earlier in the evening.

The kitchen lamp had blown, so I had to rely on the fluorescent light of the adjacent utility room to obliquely illuminate the dark shelves in that dark kitchen, the dark bottles on those dark shelves, the dark contents of those dark bottles... In the end, I did dig out some Panadol tablets, though I couldn't tell if they had expired, not that I cared at that point. I popped one into my mouth, prayed for the best, and crept back to bed.

When I got up this morning, my right arm was still feeling stiff, but not as stiff as it was yesterday. 感谢主. Dad had taken Mum to the GP while I was earlier still in slumber. During the consultation, Mum had been given an injection, and she was in much better spirits today. Thank God. The GP said that her rashes and vomitting could be an allergic reaction (as if we didn't already suspect that), but he wasn't sure what caused it (which was what we really wanted to know). Mum thought the culprit was probably the pot of red flowers that we had bought for the Lunar New Year, so Dad moved the offending pot outside the house first-thing the two of them returned from the doctor's.

Joe had invited me over to his place today for a steamboat lunch and to meet new friends, but I decided to decline, given the state of my right limb. Balasing and Tiwazz too are asking me out for coffee, but I don't know if I should go out at all. Yet, staying home can get rather depressing, especially when I am not faring well in my online quests for worldwide domination...

That's when books are such a God-send. I was chatting with Enn on MSN last night about the joys of reading, and she really echoed my thoughts when she said that books helped us to gain experience and insights of life that we might not be able to have or live in this lifetime. How true, and how delightful! And I remember saying almost exactly the same thing to Ripley a few days ago! :D

Coincidentally, the tale of Schopenhauer's Telescope (which I have now read up to Pg 145) centres around an unnamed baker who understands the power of knowledge and thrives on a lot of reading. And I mean, a lot.

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Update as of 1150 hrs

Roonz, SV and Tiwazz dropped by for a visit this afternoon at around 4.30 pm. It was very nice of them to come by. Later in the evening, I took up Dad's invitation to head out of the house and see the Mystery Men exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum. We got back home at around 10 pm, and then we gathered for dinner. Soon after, Mum's rashes started to act up again. After a quick process of elimination, our fingers pointed to the new brand of coconut milk that was used in the curry. As so, suffering a fate worse than that of the pot of red flowers, the coconut milk was unceremoniously disposed of into the rubbish chute.

除夕夜

Stayed up most of the night yesterday (and the early hours of this morning as well). Not because it was Chinese tradition to do so (守岁) on the eve of Chinese New Year (除夕夜), but because my right arm had somehow gradually stiffened over the course of the day and it became virtually impossible to move painlessly from its bent-at-the-elbow L-shaped configuration. And this was so, even when I was lying in bed, and that served to keep sweet lunar new year dreams at bay for a while. I should mention that Mum developed huge patches of rashes on her arms, back and legs after the reunion dinner (团圆饭) last evening, and that got us all worried too. But after Mum applied rice wine onto the affected areas and sat immobile in a sofa for two hours, resisting the temptation to scratch where it itched, the rashes eventually subsided. We're all very thankful for that.

Happy Lunar New Year to one and all. May this year bring forth much joy, health, peace and fulfilment.

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Update as of 2210 hrs

Mum threw up this evening, took some panadol afterwards and went to bed early. We are not too sure what's wrong with her, but she insists there's no need to see a doctor. I'm a bit worried. As for myself, I managed to straighten my right arm by eveningtime, but now I can no longer bend it without bolts of pain burning their way along my nerves. I must be suffering from some bizarre rigor mortis of the arm, I think. But Dad says to keep moving my arm - pronate, supinate, twist, shake, massage, whatever - lest the muscles stiffen further from further immobilisation. I'm trying my best to follow his advice. But I can't block out the pain. My breathing is heavy and my lips are dry from trying. I'm thin enough to have my veins pop out in my arms, but now, every movement in my right arm appears to squeeze the blood vessels shut or out of my skin, painfully. There are people out there in this world who are undergoing worse pain than I am; I cannot even begin to imagine how they cope. What a splendid start to the Lunar New Year.

A skull on flames

Began Book 7, Schopenhauer's Telescope. Nothing quite of the sort that I had ever read before. 60 plus pages down, 240 more to go.

I watched "Ghost Rider" with TLR, Fd and Ripley last night but I was not exactly bowled over by the movie, nor by Nicholas Cage's acting. It was rather anticlimatic to see each evil demon being pulverised without putting up so much of a fight. The special effects were also bland on-screen, although I can imagine a much more captivating presentation of the storyline in the comic book version.

On a more philosophical note, I found it rather odd that Johnny Blaze only singled out prisoners and criminals caught red-handed as guilty and wicked, while everyone else was considered innocent. It wouldn't have been so odd if Blaze was merely an arm of the prevailing legal system, but he was an agent of the devil! Therefore I would have presumed that his assessment of true wickedness should not have been based on the legislation of the day but on some higher, timeless scale of morality.

On the whole, I can only say that there are better Marvel character films than this. Rate it a 2/5.

Quite a number of folks are embarking on ninja running training recently. I'm burning with a curious envy. I'm hoping to get back into exercise sometime next week. Been out of action and out of shape too long, it's driving me insane! But my shoulder has not shown as much progress as I would have liked.

MRI Scan

Went for my MRI scan this morning. Was made to put on green-brown robes before being led into a room where I was briefed about Stage 1 of the procedure. I was to have my shoulder cleaned, and then have my shoulder joint injected first with a local anaesthetic and then with a certain fluid which may cause my shoulder to feel heavy and possibly painful. Obediently, I received both sets of injections. As the fluid went steadily throb-a-throbbing from the tube into my shoulder, various images flashed through my mind, not least of all the fight scene from X-Men 2, where Wolverine plunges a syringe of adamantine into Lady Deathstrike, killing her.

After that was done, I was moved to the imaging room for Stage 2 of the procedure...to be actually scanned. There, I was offered earplugs by the nurses and then helped onto the flatbed. I was advised to lie really still, and keep my eyes shut. And then slowly, the flatbed slid into the hollow of the MRI machine, with me on it, like a space-traveller docking into his pod.

And then the fun began. The noises generated by the machine were peculiar! They sounded like a fantastical but rhythmic orchestra where laser beams, cicadas, sleigh bells and mechanical drills comprised the instruments.

I spent a full forty minutes inside the gently vibrating machine. With my eyes shut, I was enveloped in darkness and surrounded by the odd symphony, and I was intensely aware that I was confined within a very small volume of space. The thought that I could be claustrophobic ran through my mind, but it was a silly thought, however imaginative.

The results of my scan won't be out so soon. Meanwhile, my shoulder is aching from the entire experience.

When I got home from work in the evening, I discovered that my virtual Army Commander country had been wiped out by an enemy alliance, and my virtual Travian village had been ransacked and razed by enemy invaders. Sigh.

Feeling like a balloon at the end of a long party

I still can't move my right arm as much as I would like, and I'm still not able to do things as quickly and as independently as I used to. It's a rather deflating feeling.

Took the public bus home from work this evening. Had my right arm in a sling, and a heavy haversack slung across the edge of my left shoulder. I was holding onto a large plastic bag in my left hand and my TransitLink card in my right. It was difficult to balance myself as I stood in the bus while it moved along. Meanwhile, it seemed as if every seated passenger on board had become preoccupied with either observing the dark, dark night scenery outside or watching the travel programme on TVMobile.

Parks

Thanks to the wake-up calls of Sotong and Tiwazz this morning, I managed to get out of bed and prepare myself for a trip down to the old SMU for the February BG Run. Still recovering from my dislocated shoulder, I didn't run but only met up with the gang there as they returned from their 10-km jog.

I got to know a few more SgRunners there, such as Sebastian, Albert_Toh and Aerosolcan. Brokie and Vincent brought along their famed barley drink, which satisfied the running group greatly :) Sebastian showed us all how to do a proper race-walk. I heard he comes in among the top few for competitive walking...his walking time for 20 km is, I think, an impressive 1 hr 56 min, which is about the same time as it takes for me to run...or even faster! Had a quick brunch with them at the Prata Cafe afterwards. I had a teh halia and a sardine murtabak, which was rather delicious.

In the afternoon, my family celebrated Dad's birthday. Since we were in the festive mood, my brother drove us all to Mt Faber Park and Labrador Park for a quick jalan-jalan - with my arm in sling and armed with my camera! The weather was great, and the pictures of the scenery and of Mum and Dad turned out well. But my right arm/shoulder is rather sore now...I think I over-used the limb trying to get all those photographs!

Gilgamesh

Went for my second physiotherapy session yesterday. Had electrodes connected to my shoulder to give it some electrostimulation as I attempted some simple movements with my right arm. Then, I was taught a few exercises using a Thera-Band. It's an elastic fabric, polymer-based, and I'm supposed to use it in a variety of configurations to move my arm and shoulder. The bands come in many colours, each one representing a different level of resistance. Mine was red which stood for the least resistance.

Read my 7th novel, "Gilgamesh", by Joan London, an Australian author. It is a fascinating story, and reads like a movie with its clever interplay of scenes and points-of-view.

The protagonist is a woman named Edith Clark, and the story begins with how her parents, Frank and Ada, in a post-World War I clime, marry and leave the UK for Southwest Australia after signing up for a government scheme to be pioneers in the opening up of the harsh wilderness there. Edith and her sister Frances soon become fatherless when Frank dies from the hardship and illness. In the wake of his demise, the Clark family briefly receives two unexpected visitors - Leopold Stubbs, the son of Ada's former neighbour in London and an archaeologist keenly interested in the Middle East, and his driver, an Armenian named Aram Sinanien. The teenage Edith is drawn to both men and becomes pregnant with Aram's seed, but the two men leave Australia as the threat of another global war draws near. Soon after she delivers her baby Jim, Edith makes a perilous journey to Armenia in search of her lost love, while deeply struggling inside if it is Aram or Leopold that she really loved. However, once she reaches soviet Armenia, war descends and she finds herself on enemy territority, without a home, without a man, with a child and herself to keep alive, with her search unfinished...

I rate the book 4/5.

A Clockwork Orange

An excerpt below from my next novel, "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess, published in 1962 and brought to the screen by Stanley Kubrick in 1971. It took me quite a while to get my head around the language of the book...

...This Sunday morning the charlie read out from the book about chellovecks who slooshied the slovo and didn't take a blind bit being like a domy built upon sand, and then the rain came splash and the old boomaboom cracked the sky and that was the end of the domy. But I thought that only a very dim veck would build his domy upon sand, and a right lot of real sneering droogs and nasty neighbours a veck like that would have, them not telling him how dim he was doing that sort of building...Then there was a crash and plop and a whish whish whish while the plennies picked up and dropped and lickturned the pages of their grazzy malenky hymnbooks and the bully fierce warders creeched...

Why the title? Burgess says it stands for the application of a mechanistic morality to a living organism oozing with juice and sweetness. The novel itself is a very thought-provoking read. Divided into three main sections, the first goes in graphic detail about the life of teenage hooligan Alex who routinely gets into gang fights, attacks unarmed passers-by, breaks into homes and rapes women, many women. The second section deals with his life in prison and how he undergoes a special two-week experimental rehabilitation programme, at the end of which he is essentially robbed of his freedom to choose between good and evil, but is instead psychologically and distressingly conditioned to refrain from wickedness. The third and final section is about the "reformed" Alex being released back into the world, and how life is like for someone who is no longer capable of moral choice. I rate this book 4/5.

The Hottest State

Chris Ang came by to visit this afternoon. He brought along some cakes and cream-puffs and stuff for me as well. It's great to catch up with him. He's a seasoned runner, experienced in the ways of the world, and never fails to challenge and inspire me with his never-say-die attitude and competitive streak. He's got his shin-splits under control, and should be en route to a good timing at the KL International Marathon in March this year. I miss the days of training with the rest of the guys - swimming during lunch, running around the Telok Blangah area and even practising our vertical marathons together. Those were the good old days :)

Read my 5th novel, "The Hottest State", by Ethan Hawke, yes, the American actor. It's his first book, and it's about a 20-year old handsome young actor William Harding falling ridiculously and obsessively in love with a singer-songwriter Sarah Wingfield who denies his every attempt at sex; and how they grow more intimate with each other; and how their short-lived relationship suddenly comes to an abrupt end, the common fate of all immature teenage things. It's a short book, plainly written, but succinctly captures the bliss and blindness, ups and downs of youthful romance. There's a film on this same book too, directed by Hawke himself. I rate the book 3/5.

Outside's not raining, but inside is wet

Andy dropped by with packed lunch for me today. Thanks, bro :) We had a good short chat, and then he was off, back to work.

This weekend is Animiles Run and Surf and Sweat. I look out of my window, and stare at the sky. Great weather, I should be out there, soaking in the sunshine and glowing with healthy perspiration. And then, as if on cue, my Windows Media Player begins to play my "rainfall" soundtrack. I guess sometimes, some people just don't get the chance to go outdoors, even if it's sunny.

My knees are getting sore from sitting in the house all day.

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Update as of 3 pm

Took my first full-body shower since my accident with Mum's help. Changed into a new running vest. Felt clean. Took a picture of my right shoulder; it looks thin like a stick. Had hoped to train up and thicken the delts and arm, but that's all put on hold now. It's kind of ironic that one of my goals at the gym was to become ripped, and now, I have really ripped something. :) Oh, that dreadful sound of something in my shoulder tearing...Ga! Get it out of my head...

I wonder how the inside of my shoulder looks right now. Maybe like the scene of a railway disaster, with paramedics rushing in to find survivors. Or a sunken vessel, with nascent barnacles taking root all across the deck. Or a weaver ant colony, where hordes of insects are stitching things together.

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Update as of 4.30 pm

I got a call from Tiwazz, asking me to open the door. When I did, Roonz and Tiwazz were standing outside with a cake for me. Sotong had driven them over and he was downstairs in the carpark besides his car :) Thanks for the excellent surprise :D I later found out from them that they had just gone to visit Balasing, and were now going to visit Dreamergal. What a sweet bunch of buddies :)

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Update as of 6.30 pm

Found an online game to play...(psst...if you click on the image, I get extra turns in the game...lol...)

The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque

Finished my 4th novel for the year, "The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque". An interesting story about how an artist in New York named Piambo lands himself into a dark and mysterious contract to paint the portrait of a lady, Mrs Charbuque, whom he is not allowed to see but with whom he is permitted only to speak. Add in the twist that Mrs Charbuque earns a living by foretelling the future as guided by the two identical snowflakes encapsulated in resin inside a locket hanging by her neck. Throw in a side plot of a series of deaths of women from an obscure disease that causes them to cry blood from their eyes. Mix all of that with a rather murderous and supposedly deceased Mr Charbuque whose jealousy and hatred for his wife drives him to hunt Piambo down. Quite a story, I must say, and easily digestible in an afternoon. :) 3/5 for me.

Sometime after 8 pm this evening, I started to feel the tingling, uncontrollable twitching sensation in the area near my right shoulder blade. It's like the sensation in my right thigh the last time, a few days after surgery. The nurses then had told me that it was a natural phenomenon: the nerves were re-establishing contact, and that's a promising sign of recovery.

But right now, I am still battling the voices in my head that tell me I will never recover fully, and that I'll never be able to do the physical stuff I wanted to do...ever again...like rock-climbing, swimming, bulking up and martial arts...

Injury, to an athlete, is such a dark and despairing word.

It's funny how dreams come about

Had a freaky nightmare. Dreamt that I was inside a hotel in an earthquake zone in some foreign country. The high-rise building right next to it had just collapsed from the tremors. Everything was still shaking, and it seemed as if our hotel could go any moment too. I was trying to round up my family and girlfriend as well as few valuables from the hotel safe, stuff like our passports, when two butcher-knife-wielding robbers suddenly barged into our room and started to slash at us. I tried to shield my loved ones and tried to fight back, but my right arm was incapacitated and there was little that I could do. And then I realised that I don't have a girlfriend and when I attempted to get a glimpse of the face of the young lady that I was protecting, I woke up.

It's funny how dreams come about, and how the details of the rare few stick vividly in the mind. And it's really ironic that on the first night since my injury that I could actually fall into a deep sleep, my subconsciousness drifts into this distressing nightmare. And my right arm is aching more badly than usual this morning as well.