Eventful July (Part one)

I'm very glad that July is over. I've had enough excitement in a month - too many things that happened to me and my household - and I hope it doesn't spill over into August. It started on 07 July, the 35th anniversary of our wedding. There were the usual congratulatory messages that came in through facebook and then in the evening, someone delivered three tubs of ice cream to the house, courtesy of See Ming. First got to know her in 2001, from my JobStreet days and we have kept in touch ever since.

That was a big and very pleasant surprise, the ice cream, that is, from a friend in Kuala Lumpur. But just a few hours earlier there was a big shock. Lightning. And Thunder. An overhead lightning strike at an electrical pole directly outside my neighbour's house. Immediately, BOOM and the electrical supply to my house, and several other houses to my left and right, shut down.

The neighbour to my right had her ceiling fans damaged. The neighbour to my left suffered damage to several of his electrical items. As for me, my Internet connection went down. My mobiles and laptop could still connect to the router by WiFi but there was no connection to the outside. My desktop, linked to the router by cable, was unaffected although I also could not link to the outside world. Luckily for the laptop and mobiles, my neighbour was kind enough to share her WiFi password with us. So my wife could at least continue working on her laptop. As for my desktop, I couldn't run a cable to her house and thus, I was totally cut off. Not that it affected me a hundred percent. At least, it gave me time to do my writings with little distraction from the Internet world.

Nevertheless, I had to report the problem to Maxis, my home broadband service provider, to get it resolved. Report was made on the seventh evening but through a miscommunication, basically on my part, their technician could come only on the 10th, a Friday. He did some checks and said the problem was with the modem which belonged to TMNet's unifi service. So he had to inform TMNet too for their technician to come to my house too. That would to be the following week, unfortunately. Come the 14th, another Maxis technician turned up to relook at my problem. He quickly determined that it was the Maxis router that had conked out and not the TMNet modem. So after a quick replacement of a new router, poof! My Internet came back alive.

On the 24th morning, I went to the Kampong Baru market like I usually do every few days to buy our provisions. As I was walking around, I felt a sudden pain on my right thigh. Searing pain. I quickly rubbed the outside of my shorts trying to relieve myself of the itch. I knew it was an insect bite and the insect must have somehow flew up the end of my shorts. But the sensation was like nothing I had felt before. A longer sustained pain and itch. As I didn't see any insect parts fall off, I couldn't ascertain what type of insect it was. The pain lasted almost forever. I kept rubbing the itch. When I got home, I was horrified to see the damage on my thigh. A stretch of eight insect bite marks. All red rashes, the biggest about the size of the newer 20 cents coin. Quickly applied some ointment on them. I thought the rashes would subside by the next day but no, they did not.

Curious about the bites, I tried to find out more about the unknown insect. I've heard about the Charlie or rove insect that would leave quite a considerable damage on their victims but the rash on my thigh did not look anything like a rove insect bite. In that sense, I heaved a sigh of relief. I was lucky in an unlucky way, or unlucky in a lucky way. It took eight days for the rashes to almost subside. Today, the rashes have turned into a very light brown colour.

Last January, two or three days before Chinese New Year, the live-in caretaker of our Quah Kongsi collapsed and fell unconscious at our Kongsi premises. He was discovered by our vice-president and quickly, an ambulance brought the caretaker to the General Hospital's emergency ward. But somehow, this caretaker who I will call Ah Beng, mysteriously disappeared from the hospital. We couldn't locate him anywhere. We feared for his safety. I asked some friends what could be the likely reason. In the worst case scenario, could our caretaker have ended up in the mortuary? Not a pleasant thought but it was one of the possibilities. But nope, we made a few discreet telephone calls to check out the mortuary. No such name there. So we knew he was still alive. But where could he be?

We held an emergency meeting. One of our trustees said a police report must be made to safeguard ourselves. So I had to go make a missing person report at the Patani Road police station on the island. A police sergeant even came to the Kongsi to nose around. Looked through the caretaker's barebone of a bedroom upstairs. Found nothing out of the ordinary. It was a mystery to him and to us.

Several weeks later, the Secretary told me that he saw a message of appeal on social media asking for any information about the relatives of one person. That person was, of course, our old caretaker Ah Beng. Somehow the day after his admission to (or escape from) the hospital's emergency ward, a good Samaritan had brought him over to an Old Folks Home. There, he had been well looked after, cleaned up properly, given proper daily square meals and most importantly, a decent place to stay. Not to say that the Kongsi wasn't decent enough, it is, except that it is very quiet alone in an old house. We didn't want to disturb him since he looked so contented in his new environment. We would decide on the next course of action at a committee meeting.

So at the next meeting on the 19th of last month, as I was bringing everyone up-to-date with the developments of our wayward former caretaker, the Secretary, who was checking the Old Folks' Home's facebook page, suddenly surprised all of us to say that hey, Ah Beng passed away six days earlier and his funeral had already been held. He had been cremated and his ashes strewn into the sea. What a big shock to all of us. There we were, in the midst of deciding what to do with his belongings at the Kongsi when fate took a hand to decide for us. But in the end, everyone felt a big relief. Ah Beng had quite a miserable life. He was alone in this world, no-one to call as his relatives. It was only in the last few years of his life that he found shelter at the Kongsi. We installed him as the live-in caretaker so that there would be someone in the premises should a Kongsi member want to come in to worship at the ancestral tablets. Of course, there is nobody to do this duty now and I greatly doubt we will be able to find another person to replace him. Oh well....

Then the car broke down.

(To be continued....)