Countdown

This digital counter has just been installed at the main gate into the Penang Free School. It will be launched officially this Saturday, the 25th of January, 2014, to mark the 1,000th day before the school celebrates its bicentenary on 21 October 2016. God willing, I shall be there for the launch.

Hopefully, last words on my hospitalisation

Just for the record, I was asking my wife what exactly happened on that fateful evening of 28 Dec 2013 when I was stricken at home. The time was around 11.30p.m. I had already gone to the toilet three times to pass out watery stools laden with a lot of blood. The whole toilet bowl had been bloodied each time and I was feeling very faint and giddy.

My wife had called me out to the computer to seek my input on answering an email. I just sat there next to her and slowly, my head started leaning forwards. She asked me what was wrong and I told her that I felt faint and needed to lie down. So I slowly moved to the bed. She noticed that my face and lips were very pale.

A few minutes later, she came into the room and asked me to go wash up. I told her that I couldn't move properly as I had lost a lot of blood. She tried propping me up and I slid down onto the floor. My rectal muscles started relaxing and some bloodied stools passed out again. I think that I did black out momentarily and the next moment, my wife was bending over me and calling out to me to wake up. According to her, my eyes opened and I was looking blankly into her. That much, I remember. She was looking into my face and tapping me on the cheeks, asking me to wake up.

Of course, I couldn't get up. I told her that I needed to lie on the floor to clear my head and in the meantime, she had rushed downstairs and called my neighbour, Henrizohn Cheok, for assistance. He came running over, saw me on the floor and told my wife to call for an ambulance immediately.

So that was what had happened during that critical night. Strangely enough, when I was supposed to have blacked out momentarily, I seemed to go into a dream-like state. I felt very calm and I clearly recollect that some long dream sequences were going through my head. I was moving in and moving out of several scenes. Unfortunately, I cannot remember now what I was dreaming about but there was nothing fearsome about my dream. I felt so ordinarily calm during those few seconds.

Diagnosed as diverticulosis and what happened next: click here.

I was discharged from the Lohguanlye Specialists Hospital on New Year's Day. The surgeon had given me the "all clear" sign. My wife and son came, and we even went to nearby Rangoon Road for lunch. But definitely, I still felt very weak. My haemoglobin level on being discharged from the hospital was still hovering above the 10-plus mark.

At home, I was moving about gingerly and even had time to water the plants and receive some visitors. A very uneventful evening had come and gone.

The next morning (on 2 Jan 2014) at about 5a.m., I felt the urge to pass motion again, twice. Unsurprisingly to me, there was still a lot of fresh blood among my stools. I called out to my wife and decided that I wanted to be readmitted to the hospital. Luckily, my son had stayed back for the night and he could move me immediately to the hospital at about six o'clock.

Immediately on arrival, I was wheeled into the emergency ward and the medical officer and the nurses swung into action. I remember no pain as they extracted blood from my arm or when they attached the peripheral cannulae into my veins on both arms. Soon afterwards, I was wheeled into the High Dependency Unit (HDU) of the hospital. As the HDU shares the same ward as other patients who were in Critical Care (CCU) and Intensive Care (ICU), this is an indication of how serious my condition had become.

Sodium lactate compound was dripped constantly into the right arm from a bag hanging above my head. An oxygen tube led into my nostrils and an oxymeter was attached to one of my fingers in order to measure the amount of oxygen in my blood. All sorts of suckers were attached to my chest as my heartbeat was also being monitored constantly with an ECG machine. A blood pressure cuff was placed on my upper left arm to take readings automatically every 30 minutes, even through the night. I don't know how many bags of nutrients were fed into me through the intravenous drip but I remember that there were two bags of blood as well.

By nightfall, I was considered alert enough for the oxygen tubes to be removed and I could breathe freely. In the morning, I was well enough for the nurses to allow me to walk to the sink and freshen myself. By the afternoon, I was wheeled out from the HDU and into my own private room on Level 3A of the hospital's old wing. A third bag of blood followed as my haemoglobin level was still considered low. And that was where I remained until my discharge on 13 Jan 2014.

For some of my thoughts during the first few days after my re-admission to the hospital, click here.

And here is what I wrote about being poked, probed and pricked. It was at this time too, on 7 Jan 2014, when I decided that I should perhaps seek a second opinion about my condition as amidst going to the toilet, I had noticed that there were still some blood among the little amount of stools I was passing out. 

The new surgeon decided that there was no necessity for me to undergo any surgery. Instead, he ordered that I be given some fresh frozen plasma and cryoprecipitate on the next day in order to help stem the blood leaks. These were administered to me through the intravenous drip in the afternoon. Let me say that there was some tense moments during the process. First of all, during the hour or so, my body temperature and blood pressure were being monitored every 10 minutes. While my blood pressure remained quite normal, my body temperature rose slightly above 37 Celcius. All in, two small bags of cryoprecipitates and another two small bags of fresh plasma were given to me.

And the day finally came, on 9 Jan 2014, when I was taken off the drip. I was allowed a soft diet but more importantly, I valued the freedom to move about without thinking about the drip again. Nevertheless, I was still feeling rather guarded about my stools every time I had to go to the toilet. It didn't improve my pride much when the surgeon came every morning to poke his finger into my you-know-where. But finally on 11 Jan 2014, he gave the welcomed prognostication that there was no more blood in my rectum. I could have been discharged on the next day itself but instead, I asked to remain until Monday just to ensure that my condition was really well enough.

All in, except for that brief time on 1 Jan 2014 that I was at home, I had spent 14 days at the hospital, and I sincerely hope that this will be the first and last time I do so.  My two in-patient bills added up to slightly more than RM17,000 and this amount still does not include the post-hospitalisation reviews as an out-patient. There will still be a few hundred ringgit to pay. I went for a first review on the 16th of this month and will have a second and final review on the 27th.

Simon & Garfunkel's 10 greatest hits

Rolling Stone magazine recently polled its facebook fans - and I took part - in order to determine which would be the 10 greatest hits by Simon and Garfunkel. The results are out and can be read here but I'd like to reproduce them too as a summary. Would I agree with the rankings?

10. For Emily, whenever I may find her
9. I am a rock
8. Scarborough fair/Cantivle
7. The only living boy in New York
6. Mrs Robinson
5. Cecilia
4. America
3. Bridge over troubled water
2. The boxer
1. The sound of silence

Actually, no. I wouldn't have ranked "The Sound of Silence" as the Number One but I accede to the choice of the rest of Rolling Stone's readers. Anyway, most of these songs had appeared on the duo's greatest hits album in 1972 and so, I should be very familiar with all of them.

Side One: Mrs Robinson, For Emily whenever I may find her, The boxer, The 59th street bridge song (feeling groovy), The sound of silence, I am a rock, Scarborough fair/Canticle
Side Two: Homeward bound, Bridge over troubled water, America, Kathy's song, El condor pasa (if I could), Bookends, Cecilia

Oh yes, I found this 15-minute video on YouTube, and it was quite a coincidence that they sang the three top Simon & Garfunkel songs on the Rolling Stone list:

A deep appreciation

(This is a computer-generated collage)

An appreciation to my friends and family who had visited me during my 12-day sojourn at the Lohguanlye Specialists Centre in Logan Road, Penang following my re-admittance on 2 Jan 2014 for diverticulosis:

My family - parents-in-law Lee Soon Chye and Seh Chew Hong, brothers-in-law Lee Lai Seng and Lee Lai Kuan, sisters-in-law Lee Saw Bee and Lee Saw Choo, nephew Lee Chean;
My relatives - Lee Seang Aun and family, Choong Teik Hong and Alice Lee, Roland Choong and his brother-in-law Boon Sun;
My chess friends - Jimmy Ng from Singapore, Lee Ewe Ghee, Ung Tay Aik and Eric Cheah;
My former colleague from Ban Hin Lee Bank - Tang Long Kin;
My former colleagues from JobStreet.com - Ted Targosz and Jeffrey Chew;
My friends from The Old Frees' Association - Tan Heng Swee and Alice;
My neighbour - Dato' Dr Ooi Eng Hock;
My old school buddies - Kee Thuan Chye, Lim Eng Siang, Lim Teik Wah, Ooi Ling Heong, Dr Tan Kok Hin, Yeoh Oon Hup;
My Kongsi brethren - Quah Chin Sun, Quah Chin Chuan, Quah Teng Hin;
My Rockwills friend - Ricky Khoo.

In addition, my appreciation too to relative Lily Lee, old school buddy Lim Siang Jin, former BHLB colleague Loh Soo Chin and chess friends K Nanis, Chong Kee Kian and Hamid Majid who couldn't come but had telephoned me, and text messages from Ooi Chen Khoon in Chicago. All the well wishes that I received from the scores of real (not virtual) friends through facebook.

And needless to say, a final appreciation goes to the doctors - Noel Yeoh Theam Lip and Lim Teik Mau - and staff of the Lohguanlye Specialists Centre at the High Dependency Unit (HDU), the third floor ward staff and those from the 3A floor for their constant care and monitor during my stay. I must mention too dietician Mah Lee Ping and customer relations staff Juenndze (June) Lim.

I love you all...

Why Lohguanlye?

One of my old secondary school classmates -- he visited me in hospital last week when I was just beginning to recuperate from an excessive loss of blood owing to a condition known as diverticulosis -- was very curious.

Being a doctor, he asked why I had chosen to come to the Lohguanlye Specialist Hospital in Penang when there were so many other private hospitals on the island. "Why Lohguanlye?" he was so curious to know.

I'll tell him why here. You see, the name has long been ingrained into my memory. This has been the one private hospital that I have been familiar with since 1976. It was in that year that my dear mother was sent here for an operation. For a long time, she had been seeking treatment from the Penang General Hospital for a pain in her abdomen but nothing much were being done by the doctors there. And in the meantime, her abdomen was getting more and more distended.

It reached a point where her condition grew so critical that my father and my maternal grandmother decided that the only option left was to admit her to a private hospital and have her operated on. There weren't many private hospitals in Penang then, and the Specialist Centre (as Lohguanlye was known then) was the closest to our home in Seang Tek Road.

So he admitted my mother and she was operated on almost immediately by the hospital's gynaecologist, Mr Loh Hun Yu, who was Dr Loh Guan Lye's son. It was really a matter of life and death, and there was little choice. If he had not opened her up, she could have died. There was really nothing to lose by operating and he removed a huge growth from my mother. When it was shown to us, I was visibly shocked to see that a Milo tin was just big enough to hold it. That was how big it had grown. Since then, my confidence in the public health system took a big dip.

My mother survived another nine years. During this time, we had moved from Seang Tek Road to Lorong Zoo Tiga in Ayer Itam and finally, to the Siakap area of Seberang Jaya on the mainland in 1980.

By 1983, my mother's health began failing again and she grew thinner. No amount of modern medication or faith healing could help. We knew that we were losing her slowly. In April 1985, her condition had worsened. One day we saw that she was barely conscious. Alarmed and very worried, I tried to carry her to the car by myself, and I failed this very basic test. Then a very helpful neighbour came over and with almost complete ease, alone carried her into the car. I drove all the way to the ferry terminal -- at that time, there was still no Penang Bridge -- and thence to the Specialist Centre.

My mother was warded immediately in very critical condition. Her blood pressure had fallen dangerously low and she was put on drip, half-conscious. I stayed overnight at the hospital but I cannot remember how long I was there in the room before my father arrived to relieve me in the morning. Not long after I arrived home, we received a telephone call from him to say that my mother had breathed her last in the hospital. I was numb but I remember my aunt bawling away.

That was how my mother had passed away at the Specialist Centre. We appreciated the great job by the hospital and their staff to care for her on both occasions. So do you see why Lohguanlye's hospital was so firmly ingrained in my mind until it was the automatic choice when I had to go for treatment myself? You just can't think of any other when you are in a crisis mode.

Insincere

Beware of the Dumbo terrorists in our midst. My wife was at the Kampong Baharu market in Bukit Mertajam this morning and she walked right smack into a little orchestrated demonstration.

Led by a very vocal UMNO member in his red shirt, a few Chinese instigators (in particular, I recognise an MCA-supported trouble-maker among the crowd) had led some petty traders to protest against the Province Wellesley Municipal Council (Seberang Perai Municipal Council, MPSP) for preventing them from carrying out their small-time trade at the market.

All the noise were coming from the UMNO person and the instigators, while the illegal petty traders stood behind the banners more as lacklustre participants, obviously pulled in as reluctant pawns to further the UMNO agenda. These traders probably knew that they were wrong: they didn't have the licences and they were always at risk of being chased out from the market square by the MPSP enforcement officers at any time.

But why instigate the protest against the MPSP only now? Why not seven years ago, eight years ago, nine years ago or 10 years ago? Why not protest against their own Barisan Nasional government when they were still in power then? That is what I do not understand.

When Barisan Nasional was in power prior to 2008, the MPSP authorities were already acting against illegal petty traders at the market. Where were you then, UMNO and MCA? Why are you here now? Nothing much has changed vis-a-vis the policy of MPSP regarding these petty traders, right? Bugger off, you UMNO and MCA trouble makers; we don't need you suddenly become our torch-bearers!

Still guarded

My elation was guarded yesterday and I had every reason to feel that way. Just because the surgeon had ordered the intravenous drips removed from my arm and my return to eating did not mean that I was already out of the woods. It is too soon to tell. The observation period following my transfusions of fresh frozen plasma and cryoprecipitate would determine my health status. Frankly, I dread this period....

UPDATE 1: The surgeon came in and told me that until I clear up everything, I cannot be discharged. And the reality was, there was still some blood among my stools. But the bright spark was that the surgeon said it wasn't fresh. (Confirmed when he stuck his finger up my you-know-where again.)

I asked him whether being on the drip  for so many days could have affected my internal organs. In particular, I was concerned about my kidneys. He said no, but added that he would order an abdominal ultrasound to check on my liver, kidneys, bladder and prostate. Personally, this was good for me; I looked forward to this check.

UPDATE 2: Ahh, just came back from the ultrasound check. Had to wait so long as I had to fill my bladder till the point of bursting. Then after I achieved it, I had to wait for the radiologist to do the procedure. And at long last, my turn came. Maybe I spent 20 minutes with the good doctor? And at the end, he told me that there was nothing serious to worry about. All the organs are in good order for a man of my age.

Off the drip

Guarded elation today, the eighth day of my stay at the Lohguanlye Specialist Centre in Penang, where I had been re-admitted for diverticulosis.

My condition has improved after a transfusion of cryoprecipitate and fresh frozen plasma yesterday. Admittedly, there was a slight tension during the transfusion process. I had to be monitored throughout the one hour, with my temperature, pulse and blood pressure monitored at 10-minute intervals for reaction. Luckily, there was none although my temperature rose slightly above 37 Celcius.

I did not feel any visible change the whole of last night but this morning when I went for my morning ablutions, there was no visible sign of further bleeding. The doctor confirmed it when he stuck a finger up my you-know-where.

He then ordered me to be put on a soft diet while still putting me under observation. He has also said that the intravenous drip line would be removed and all my medication would be changed to oral. More significantly, he said that I should stop taking the aspirin which had been prescribed by the doctors from the government clinic.

The aspirin, he said, was a possible cause of my condition as it is a known anti-coagulant. But since my blood pressure was not that much of a concern, he was wondering why I should be taking aspirin on such a long term in the first place. Why, indeed? I guess that goes for commercially available medical products like Cardiprin too, and various health products already in the market marketing gingko extracts.

But separately, I've also been cautioned by an old schoolmate friend that I should also seek advice from a cardiologist on how I should strike a balance between taking and not taking aspirin further. And I must thank him for catalysing the change of surgeons. He made me demand the right answers from the first surgeon, and I wasn't satisfied with what I heard.

[As a digression, perhaps I should also add that from our conversation this morning, this surgeon treating me turned out to be a member of The Old Frees' Association in Penang, just like me, but anyway, he is five years my senior in school.]

Poked, probed and pricked

Both my arms are sore and aching all over from being poked with all types of needles. When I was re-admitted into the Lohguanlye Specialist Hospital last week, two peripheral cannulae were inserted into my lower arms for the intravenous drips.

Two days ago, one of them was removed from my arm when the flesh around it became swollen and tender. This morning, I had the other removed because it had become tender as well. But because I still needed to be on the drip, a replacement cannula was inserted into my arm. Ouch!

Apart from this, I've had been subjected to countless attempts to draw blood from my body. My haemoglobin level has to be monitored daily and I really dread having to face the lab technician every morning. Ouch, ouch!

And as if all this poking were not enough, there's the time that I had to subject myself to the nurses pricking the ends of my fingers in order to test for blood sugar. Three or four times a day, I've lost count. Ouch, ouch, ouch!

Last afternoon, I decided to seek a second opinion from the other surgeon at this hospital. I just felt that I was going nowhere with the first one. Already, this is my seventh day at the hospital and being monitored like what I've gone through so far, there must be something else that can be done. He had recommended surgery - and it would be major enough - but it was not what I wanted.

Luckily, I remembered that I do have an old schoolmate working at another private hospital here and I sought his advice. I told my friend that changing hospitals now may not be an option and he replied the next best thing to do was to consider a different consultant to look into my case. Luckily, he recognised that there was a seasoned second surgeon at Lohguanlye who was quite an old hand at this sort of thing. And this is why I made this decision. After all, it is my health at stake.

I was quite surprised that the first surgeon so brusquely removed himself from my case. A patient, he said, cannot be under the care of two surgeons and if my decision was to have a second opinion, he would no longer be caring after me immediately. And as far as I could make out, he was driving as he said that. A rather abrupt response from him, devoid of any warmth, I should say! Anyway, I asked the nursing station to make the necessary changes and so, I am now under the second surgeon's care.

The second surgeon came last night to see me and ordered some blood tests before he could decide the next course of action. I hope it is all smooth sailing from here. I really do want to be out of this hospital as soon as possible.

Moving house, literally!

Never thought that this can happen, right? Well, it does, although admittedly rather occasionally, when the whole village community chips in voluntarily to help in relocating a house from one area to another. This particular relocation at Kampong Bukit Rangin in Kuantan was the result of floods hitting the village recently. (Photo from Bernama)

Leong tan fish bee hoon soup, anyone?

Large grouper (or leong tan fish) caught in the deep sea waters off Kedah a few days ago, weighing around a whopping 200 kilograms and measuring 2.4 metres long. Sold for RM11,000 to a coffee shop owner in Weld Quay, George Town, for his popular food business selling fresh fish head bee hoon soup (RM20 per bowl) and fresh fish meat bee hoon soup (RM15 per bowl). See you at the Chew Jetty Ka Bee Cafe soon?
  

Kindergarten at the end of the road

One of my childhood memories was the year that I went to the kindergarten at the other end of Seang Tek Road in George Town, Penang. The kindergarten, whose name has totally eluded me now, was just a stone's throw away from the Anson Road Market. It was housed in a double-storey bungalow with a reasonably huge compound where we kids could run about. The master of the kindergarten was someone that we knew simply as Mr Poh.

Unlike nowadays when kids get to attend three or four years at nurseries or kindergartens, I attended this kindergarten for only one year in 1960. Yes, that was the norm then. A one-year pre-school to get us ready for Standard One in a primary school.

In my first few days at kindergarten, I remember getting to learn my ABCs and coming home proudly with my first workbooks where I had traced out the names Janet and John in huge letters before progressing to other simple words.

There were lots of music and singing sessions. I always loved the occasions where we were allowed upstairs to an open air balcony or verandah where the teacher would bring out vinyl records of popular nursery rhymes and we were asked to sing along. What fascinated me most were the coloured 45rpm records. It was the first time that I had seen coloured records; so different from the ones my father had at home.

The rest of the activities at the kindergarten is a huge blur to me, except the memory of a morning-long concert show at the end of the year. I would think it was the last day of the school year. The kids dressed up in various outfits to put on a show for the parents. Chairs were laid out in a big circle in the compound for the children to sit while their proud parents stood behind. Me? I didn't have to wear any outfit except a headgear of paper.

It was quite possible that this kindergarten operated until the late 1960s or early 1970s before it closed. I remember being quite shocked one day to see that some corrugated zinc sheets had been erected at the front of the compound. No way that anyone could have looked in and see what had happened to the building or compound.

And then just a few months ago, I saw that the corrugated metal sheets had been removed and some construction work had commenced. I would assume that the old bungalow had been torn down and some new building would be erected here. Well, that would be the last remaining evidence of the kindergarten I had attended in my childhood days.

Visits from relatives and friends

I'm not getting any better physically fast enough to be taken to the next step of recovery but visits from several friends and relatives have certainly perked up my spirits.

Although I was unable to take more photos than I wanted, I would like to thank Lee Ewe Ghee (president of the Penang Chess Association) for bringing along Jimmy Ng from Singapore to visit me at the hospital on Friday night. Tan Heng Swee and his sweet wife, Alice, and Tang Long Kin have visited me several times since my hospitalisation, as well as Lim Eng Siang who came to my house on Wednesday.

My wife's side of the family has been very supportive and I have received visits from my parents-in-law, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, as well as cousin Roland Choong and his parents, Choong Teik Hong and Alice Lee. Chess pals like Ung Tay Aik and Eric Cheah had turned up, as well as friends Ricky Khoo and Dato' Dr Ooi Eng Hock. Another old friend, Jeffrey Chew, turned up with a bouquet of flowers.

But the biggest fillip must be when four old school buddies - Yeoh Oon Hup, Ooi Ling Heong, Lim Teik Wah and Kee Thuan Chye - came to give me some cheer.

Unfortunately, I do not have pictures of everybody but here's one with my school buddies (Thuan Chye, Ling Heong and Teik Wah) together with cousin Roland.

Parking at Lohguanlye

I've a helpful hint for people parking at the Lohguanlye Specialist Centre in George Town, Penang. Just some surprising revelations, after speaking to one of the hospital's customer service staff, that could save everyone a few ringgit here and there.

First of all, parking at the hospital is available at either the car park at Logan Road opposite the old wing or the multi-level car park at the new wing. A ticket is issued automatically at the entrance into the car parks, and the parking fees are calculated based on the length of time a car is parked there. However, if the motorist leaves within 30 minutes of entry, then the parking is free.

Next, outpatients at the hospital can always get their parking tickets stamped at either the pharmacy or the respective floors where they see their doctors. The stamped ticket will ensure that a standard rate of RM2 is charged upon exit. And if outpatients then decide to leave the hospital and come back later to see the doctors, by producing the old and new stamped tickets together, only RM1 will be charged on the new ticket. So effectively, the parking fee will be RM3.

And finally, family members (and, shhh, friends) who visit inpatients at the hospital can get their tickets stamped at the respective nurse counters - if they can identify the patient and the room number - and only RM1 is payable upon leaving.

Helpful hints that are generally not known to people but which came to my knowledge only because we asked the customer relations staff this morning. But if you can save one or two ringgit, why not?

Hospitalised

Today marks the fourth continuous day that I am warded at the Lohguanlye Specialist Hospital in Penang. I am bored.

With me still on the drip and limited to drinking small sips of water, there is nothing else much that I can do except to be in the ward bed, watch television and surf the Internet. Even then, the hospital's Internet connection was down on Friday evening and for most of Saturday, and I had to rely on whatever limited access through my mobile. And the television channels ... limited channels too with the box fixed on the sports channel or AXN.

I've been diagnosed with diverticulosis, a condition arising from an inflammation of my colon. A colonoscopy procedure earlier last week had revealed this inflammation and thus, the source of my internal bleeding.

I was first discharged from the hospital on New Year's Day but had to be re-admitted when I bled again on Thursday. And this time, the surgeon has said that I should give my alimentary canal some time to rest and recover. It is because of this that I've been put on the drip with nothing by mouth.

The drip means that my mobility in the ward is rather curtailed. If I need to go to the washroom, I shall need the hospital staff to disconnect me from the drip stand temporarily. But thankfully for these short episodes of freedom, I've been able to wash myself, tidy myself and take short walks outside the ward.

The drip also means that I haven't gone hungry despite not eating. I'm surprised that a simple sodium lactate solution can do this to me. There is no hunger but if I were to have the drip disconnected for about a half hour, I can certainly feel some hunger pangs returning.

How long will I remain on the drip? Frankly, I do not know. I would think that even when fluids are given to me eventually, possibly from today or tomorrow, my condition will still be monitored closely. I can only hope that recovery is fast, the bleeding does not resume and I can then proceed to some solid food.

And finally, I'd like to say that being hospitalised means that I have been cut off from the real world outside. However, I am sure that when I do get discharged eventually, I shall face a world of inflated food prices. I've been hearing from friends and relatives that food prices in Penang have increased by some 50 cents for each plate of hawker fare. For a retiree like me, this is surely unwelcomed news.

My early ambitions

When I was staying in Seang Tek Road in George Town, Penang, during the late 1950s, two of my most precious possessions were a tricycle and a huge stack of empty cigarette boxes, practically two or three hundreds of them.

As a small kid in a rather protective family - my parents and grandparents did not allow me to mix much with the neighbours' children - I had to keep myself preoccupied on my own. My tricycle and the cigarette boxes kept me busy inside the house.

I used the cigarette boxes as domino snakes. I would set them up to snake from one end of the house to another and take a thrill from toppling one end of the snake and watch the motion travel through the house till the other end. It took a lot of time to set up the cigarette boxes and this couldn't be done on windy days. There was also the frustration of making mistakes or accidentally toppling them while setting up the snake. So of course, this was a game that could not be played or repeated often.

As for my other mode of self entertainment, I would cycle up and down the house, negotiating the narrow passageways, going round and round the table in the centre of the front hall and ending up in the kitchen. As long as the floor was level, I could go cycling indoors on the tricycle. This gave me countless hours of pleasure.

It was no surprise then that when I was that age, my early ambition in life was to become a bus driver. Bus driver has routes to follow, right? Well, as a tricyclist cycling around the house, there were routes that I could imagine too. Later on in my young life, I thought that being a town planner, planning the roads around the city, would be a pretty interesting profession.

All these early ambitions ended when I started kindergarten at the other end of Seang Tek Road and thus, outgrew the tricycle and it had to be given away to one of my younger cousins.  I never got to know who benefited from my mother's giveaway or whether the new owner had countless hours of joy from it. As for the empty cigarette boxes, she simply threw them all away.

A guarded Happy New Year for 2014

I had no time to prepare a personal graphic for the New Year since I was laid up in a hospital, but this is an appropriate replacement. My New Year wish? Very simple: here's a hope that the increase in the cost of living in 2014 will not overwhelm average Malaysians like you and I.

New Year's eve drama

What a way to end the year: laid out on a hospital bed. My first time staying in a hospital as a patient, something which I had managed to avoid for 59 years of my life.

The problem started on Sunday night. At about 9.30 p.m., I was stricken by a bad bout of diarrhea. But I was startled by the amount of fresh blood in the toilet bowl. Three times I had to run to the toilet and three times I had to endure the sight of fresh blood. By 11p.m., I was completed wasted.

My panicking wife wanted to send me to the KPJ Specialist Hospital on the mainland, not the most ideal choice but it was the nearer of two private hospitals to our home. However, the KPJ hospital said they were full and could not send any ambulance around to our house.

The alternative was to send me to the nearest government hospital which would be the Bukit Mertajam Hospital. The ambulance picked me up and delivered me to the emergency ward. I vaguely remembered blood was taken from my arm and an ECG machine hooked up to me to discount the possibility of a heart problem. That turned out normal.

After about two hours, the attendant doctor said that I was well enough to be discharged but initially, my wife wanted me to stay back in the hospital for observation. The doctor, however, cautioned us that the condition in the third class ward may not be acceptable. "You can go see the place for yourself before making up your mind," he suggested. We took his word for it and opted for discharge.

On reaching home, I felt very lightheaded again. No, home was definitely not the place for me to stay but with KPJ and the BM hospitals definitely out of the question, the alternatives left was a private hospital on the island. There were a few for consideration but I chose the Lohguanlye Specialist Centre. It was either that or the Gleneagles or the Adventist hospitals for me. (Going to the Bagan, Pantai, Lam Wah Ee and Island hospitals never ended my mind.)

So my brother-in-law lent his assistance by driving me to Lohguanlye. As an aside, we were stopped at four police check points. I don't know how many he encountered on his way home to Bandar Tasek Mutiara in Simpang Ampat but I'm sure that there must have been one or two too.

Check-in at Lohguanlye was relatively quick and easy, and pretty soon I was warded. The next morning, the surgeon arranged for both gastroscopy and colonoscopy procedures for me on Tuesday. So for the whole of Monday and much of Tuesday, I was put on drip in order to prep me up for the two procedures.

Luckily, my hospitalisation expenses were covered by my wife's medical card from her place of work. That provided my peace of mind. But still, there were some uncertain moments from the insurance company. They wanted to know my medical history, which even annoyed my surgeon because he said diabetes and hypertension had nothing to do with my present condition. However, the questions still had to be answered before the insurance company would give the go-ahead to pay for my procedures.

The approval for payment was received finally after 12 o'clock and the nurses then began preparing me for the appointment with the surgeon. Bearing in mind that this was my first stay in any hospital and the procedures could potentially uncover some serious conditions with my alimentary tract, I was remarkably calm. The sedation worked quickly and before I knew anything, the attending nurse was already trying to wake me up. By my reckoning, the procedures had taken about 45 minutes to complete. By 3p.m., I had been wheeled back to my room, and by 5.30p.m., I was already tucking into my first meal since arrival at the hospital some 36 hours ago.

But I am not discharged yet. That will only come tomorrow morning. So one more night to endure at the hospital. I shall be looking forward to the discharge. Home will look so welcoming after an experience like this. Here's wishing everybody a very Happy New Year.

Year-end joke

Okay okay, I have heard this joke before but I've also forgotten about it. However, my memory has just been jolted by someone posting this same very joke on facebook. So before I forget about it again, here is the joke which I'm dedicating to all my chess friends around the globe. Merry Christmas, if you are celebrating. Happy holidays, if you are not.

The big chess tournament was taking place at the Plaza in New York. After the first day's competition, many of the winners were sitting around in the foyer of the hotel talking about their matches and bragging about their wonderful play. After a few drinks they started getting louder and louder until finally, the desk clerk couldn't take any more and kicked them out. The next morning the Manager called the clerk into his office and told him there had been many complaints about his being so rude to the hotel guests....instead of kicking them out, he should have just asked them to be less noisy. The clerk responded, "I'm sorry, but if there's one thing I can't stand, it's chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."

Jose Rizal: arguably a most famous Quah (Ke) (柯) descendant

I was looking through some of my old stamp albums today. I've got quite a few of them, all dating back to the time when I was just about to enter my teens. The earliest first day cover in my possession for instance, one that was issued by the Malaysian postal authorities, was dated 10 Oct 1964. I wasn't even 10 years old when those stamps came out...

Life in the old days was very simple. No such thing as computers or computer games. No such thing as Internet access. No such thing as mobile telephones, tablets or mobile apps. In fact, if we wanted to have a hobby, the very popular past-times among them were coin collecting, stamp collecting and having pen-pals. I had a pen-pal, but I also plumped for stamp collecting because my father encouraged me to. One of my relatives, an uncle who used to live in a government quarters overlooking the now Penang international airport in Bayan Lepas, was into it too and he used to give me loose stamps. I've no idea where he got them from, but he had a lot of duplicate stamps which he gave away.

That is why I've got to credit Ralph de Vosse for being key in improving my general knowledge of the world around me. The countries of the world, why, I learnt of their very existence through my stamp collection. Nyasaland, Tanganyika, Rhodesia....such exotic names of a few countries in Africa. Ask any teenager today where Malawi, Tanzania and Zanzibar are, and I dare say that they'd be scratching their heads.

Therefore, it was with some nostalgia that I flipped through the pages of my stamp albums this morning. Stamp designs that I had forgotten about quickly came back into my reckon. Then my eyes fell onto several Filipino stamps when I reached that section. A face stared out at me: that of Dr Jose Rizal, acknowledged as the greatest among the national heroes of the Philippines.

I've heard of Jose Rizal before. In 1992 when I visited Manila during the Chess Olympiad, I made it a point to visit the Rizal monument in the city.

The Filipino people are terribly proud of Rizal. His profession was an ophthalmologist but he was also a prolific writer. Through his many works - novels, essays, poems and plays - he galvanised his fellow Filipinos to resist the colonial Spanish authorities and was instrumental in starting a reform movement that grew into a rebellion and subsequently, a revolution. For his role, Rizal was executed by the Spanish Army in Manila on 30 Dec 1896. He was 35 years old.

But there was also one other aspect of Jose Rizal that caught my eye. In the last decade or two, his ancestry had been traced back to China.

Rizal was a fifth-generation patrilineal descendant of a Chinese immigrant entrepreneur who had sailed to the Philippines from Siongque (Zhangcuocun) (张厝村) which was his ancestral village in Chin Kang (modern-day Jinjiang) (晉江), Chuan Chew Hoo (Quanchou) (泉州), Hock Kien Seng (Fukien) in the mid-17th century. The name of his great-great-grandfather was Cue Yi Lam (柯儀南) who then changed his name to Domingo Lamco upon settling down in his new adopted home. The name may have changed but the bloodline remained unchanged.

I'm only mentioning all this because it has now turned out that Jose Rizal and the descendants from his siblings can be considered as part of the wider Quah (柯) diaspora that had left the Hock Kien Seng in China to find a new life in South-East Asia. Interesting, right?