Closure

It was nice being able to spend an hour speaking to her candidly and privately last Saturday about everything and anything. She seemed healthier in comparison to her state a few weeks ago; she was able to speak albeit softly and she looked pretty bright. That was nice; I never got a chance to speak with my cousin like that before she went.

It was a year on, and she's lived longer than anyone of us thought she would. Not going on the chemotherapy program was the right decision in hindsight. That obviously didn't stop the suffering though, and it was heartbreaking watching her wither away.

Anyway, back to Saturday: I tried to keep things on a lighter mood but inevitably, we veered back to the disease and how she was coping with it.

"You just have to be open-minded. I'm just really glad that everyone's doing well now and my daughter has changed for the better. Everyone is happy, your siblings are all doing well, you're about to buy a house.... With that in mind, I'll go in peace," my aunt said serenely.

I was trying to hold back the tears when she said that. We talked a little while longer but when she had to rest, I bade what would turn out to be my final farewell and told her I'd visit again when I was back from Miri.

Unexpectedly however, she passed away this afternoon. But I guess keeping in heart what she said, I suppose I'm not grieving that much.

Being able to have that closure to everything, being able to say your goodbyes to everyone and leaving relatively peacefully, that's something not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to do.

With that, rest in peace, Yi Ma, I love you.

My birthday’s this month!

“Yay.”


Well, in truth, I’m not usually that miserable about the idea of celebrating my birthday; in fact, it’s quite the polar opposite. It’s just that I have been thinking a lot about death more so than usual recently. No, I’m not thinking about dying; that’s a completely different thing altogether! Just the idea of death and my general feeling towards it.

The tone of this whole post may make it sound like I am in depression but it’s nothing like that all; I’m just trying to unload all my collected thoughts from the past couple of months somewhere.


You see, it hasn’t been a good year in terms of the loss of loved ones. I’ve talked about my cousin’s passing a few posts back and now barely a few months later and before the scars have fully healed, I found out that a close aunt has been diagnosed with almost-certainly terminal Stage IV lung cancer. It’s actually a metastasis from her previous battle with breast cancer and it came out of the blue. We thought it was just a bad cough so we brought her to the hospital for some scans and BOOM! the c-bomb dropped.


Of course, I can’t really be complaining about the grief I will be feeling when it’s my aunt who will actually have to go through the actual pain but it’s a really unpleasant situation to be in right now. Although a bit weakened, she still seems fine and is in fairly decent spirits but it’s hard because you know and she knows that the end is coming and there will come a time when we’ll have to watch her go through the suffering, watch her deteriorate before our very eyes and pass on.


My aunt has more or less accepted her fate and decided not to undergo chemotherapy. She saw what chemo has done to my cousin where two sets of chemotherapy sessions were done and yet there weren’t any positive effects. The result was my cousin being bed-ridden for the final few months of her life while having to suffer the draining side-effects of chemotherapy. So my aunt decided fuck it, I’m going to enjoy the last few months of my life.


Cancer, it really bears repeating, is a fucking bitch. It’s relentless; you beat it one time but chances are it will be back and when it does, it will do so with a vengeance. Seriously Cancer, I hope you get cancer and die.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The whole “dealing with the grief of losing a loved one” thing has really got me thinking about what my own death will be like, though. I accept that at some point, death may not seem like a bad thing especially when you’ve lived a good life and you’re ready to go.

However, I still think that no matter when I do eventually bite the dust, the following will still genuinely annoy me:

1) The possibility of dying without having a chance to say goodbye.

Like passing away in your sleep or dying on your deathbed before all of your loved ones can gather to say their final farewell. The one redeeming quality of cancer is that you get to prepare yourself and really convey all your thoughts and properly say your goodbyes before leaving.

Death from stroke or a heart attack on other hand, that’s just not cool.

 

2) Not being able to witness the technological and social progress of mankind.

This honestly pisses me off more than anything. I was thinking about how I sympathize with those who passed away around the 70’s because they never got to see how technology and the internet in particular revolutionized the world around us. Things like our smartphones that allow us to access information anywhere on a whim, the portable computers, the sending of the Hubble telescope to space that allows the capture of stunning images of galaxies light years away, the frankly amazing air, sea and land vehicles we have today, all the stunning architecture and many other amazing technological feats.

Or even significant historic events like the fall of the Berlin wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the handover of Hong Kong back to China, the election of the first black US president among many others. They would have no idea how far mankind as a whole has progressed (or fallen) from their time and that is frankly, a damn shame and I truly feel sorry for them.

Until I realize, of course, that the same would eventually happen to me too. I will never get to see man embark on the first intergalactic space travel, ride hover boards or even, this really pains me to say, come up with the elusive cure for cancer.

Honestly, the thought of not being able to see the first alien contact with man if it does happen depresses me a lot sometimes.


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There are many things about death that are out of my control like having to eventually see my parents and other loved ones die and the time of my own passing. What is definitely in my hands, however, is how I choose to live my life and amidst all the thinking about death recently, I have also been spending a lot of time thinking about life.

I won’t go into too much detail here about the inner deliberations but after reflecting on how things have turned out so far, I realize there really is a lot to be thankful for. Watching my cousin and now my aunt come to terms with their own mortality has reminded me to not take the life that I have now for granted and really think about what I should do with the limited time that I have here.

I just hope that I’ll be able to lead a life such that when I go, I can truly say that I am content and that I am leaving with no regrets. That takes some thinking about what is it that truly brings happiness and it’s a work in progress but it’s all good; no point forcing myself to be rigid about these things.

Life though, fucking amazing, eh?

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.

Delicious Ambiguity.”

-Gilda Radner-

OHHHHHHHHHHH….

An excerpt from “Macrowikinomics”, one of the books I am currently reading:

” Imagine that you’ve landed on a planet a lot like Earth a century ago and you’ve been given an assignment to design the dominant mode of transportation to move people around. Your design criteria are as follows: The system must maximize the consumption of fuels and the surface area of the planet – using as much farmland and other space as possible.

Your system should produce the most toxins and use more physical materials (steel, glass, rubber, leather, synthetics) than available alternatives. It must be the system that will result in the largest possible number of deaths and injuries (hint: have free movement vehicles and make every pilot an amateur). It should also be the least predictable system, giving passengers little idea how long a trip home might take, and it should slow down to a crawl, not speed up, the more people use it. Plus you get bonus points for pitting inhabitants against one another and, in extreme cases, causing travellers to fly into an uncontrollable rage.

It’s hard to imagine a better solution to these design criteria than an automobile powered by an internal combustion engine.”

… followed by some suggestions about how we can make it better yadda yadda. However, if I may, I’d like to pick up where my title left off….

“.. HHHHHHH!!!!!!”

Over to you

I finally submitted the thesis yesterday after some delays with the hardcover binding. You would think this would call for a celebration of epic proportions. After all, I have worked 3 years to build up to this day, right?


And you would be right.

“Fuck yeah!!!!”



Alas, no. There is still the small matter of a viva voce to deal with. It’s just a formality apparently but I am not taking my chances. That means doing some proper prep work with the slides and the questioning and most importantly, not prematurely celebrating!


So for now, I’m just allowing myself some cautious optimism and a quiet fist pump. Really, a combination of this

and this

Of course, this also means I have a lot of free time on my hands now. Which means being able to do some proper job research, go for morning jogs, clear the massive backlog of books I have to read, enjoy some quality TV shows and hang out with family and friends….



… or wake up past noon every day, laze around browsing the internet and piss away the days. Either one’s fine, I suppose.

The Dark Knight Rises

I was still staring at the screen about two minutes after the credits rolled, trying to soak in what I watched. Quite simply, it was one of the best films, superhero or not, I have ever watched and it ended the trilogy perfectly. It definitely warrants a second viewing just so I can pick up on the finer details.

It’s the kind of movie where you leave the cinema thinking it was good but when you dwell on it a bit more and replay the scenes in your head again, you realize you have just witnessed something special. That has to do with the pacing though; the pacing of the last hour was really intense and Hans Zimmer score really helped up the tension. There were some plot holes if you want to get nitpicky but that would be missing the forest for the trees.

(Spoiler alert)

Can’t say I was that surprised but the returning cast really brought their A game. I’m glad they gave Alfred a bigger role beyond the wise-cracker and the plot-narrator (eg “some men just wanna watch the world burn”, “you crossed the line first” etc). The scene where he leaves Bruce and the grave scene, in particular, was heart-wrenching. I thought it was great that Caine showed some restraint and not overact, the subtlety in his facial expressions made the emotion feel a lot more genuine.

Other than that, Bale was fantastic too although the “WHERE IS HE?!” line raised a chuckle from me, no thanks to the countless parody videos since The Dark Knight. Personally, I was pleasantly surprised by Hathaway’s performance as Catwoman/Selina Kyle. Some female heroine characters are often played badly because the fight scenes just don’t come across as convincing especially when they try too hard to look manly/gritty. I didn’t get that feel here; thought it was great. She was very smooth as well during the conversations, almost Clooney-esque.

The story though, bloody hell. It was great that they took their time with the build up to Batman returning and not rush it. There were some elements of The Dark Knight Returns in there which I loved. And the scene where Bane breaks the Batman was actually painful to watch. It was probably the first time in the trilogy that anybody could match the Batman physically and more. Bane was all brute force but also seemed to have a level of intelligence about him. If the Joker was an anarchist, Bane is an all-out schemer.

Which was why I think they kind of copped out with Bane at the end with the Talia turn. It cheapened his character and reduced him to a mere henchman. Also, this is the same guy who broke the Bat early on with ease and now, a few punches to his mask and he’s out? If the mask was so important, shouldn’t he be defending it better? Another thing that peeved me a little was how there was a character shift once Talia was revealed and he turned into henchmen mode. What happened to the “you have my permission to die” bit? Suddenly, he wants to kill the Batman before he got to watch his city burn?


It would be nice if we didn’t have yet another ticking time-bomb plot (I was thinking ,“really? another disarm the bomb with 1 second to go story?”) but hey, trust Nolan to make a ticking time-bomb plot seem fresh and not resort to cliche. I was ready to go ape-shit at what would have been a pretty annoying plot hole (ie. why didn’t they guard the reactor so nobody can reconnect it?) but it was addressed later on and actually used to pretty dramatic effect, thus proving that you should always trust Nolan.

All of the faith was more than sufficiently repaid with the ending. I actually kind of bought into Cracked's theory that Blake would be the next Batman and some early scenes helped reinforce that theory, so it wasn’t THAT big a surprise (it still was though, thank fuck I managed to avoid the spoilers) when it was revealed but I would argue that another less-worthy director would have botched the execution.


As it was, it was beautifully done with all of the characters finding redemption and peace in their own way and coming full circle. Fox the poor guy beating himself up over what he could have done better before realizing Wayne’s master plan. Gordon, well, I’m actually not sure if Gordon actually found peace. He still seemed pretty damn beat up about the whole thing.

The scene with Alfred at the end in Florence (?) nearly brought a tear to my eye (again, Caine’s performance was great) and really, some directors might have taken the condescending route and shown Blake putting on the mask and flying off into Gotham but nope, the ending was subtle and nicely pulled off, thus drawing a very satisfying conclusion to one of the best trilogies I have ever had the privilege of watching.


I shall thus end this with the first words I uttered after the lights came on in the theatre.

 

Fucking hell. What a film!

Every passing day,

 

.. every paragraph, every keystroke brings me closer towards the submission of my thesis. After that, it will be out of my hands. The identity of the external examiner has been decided. I managed to scope her out and I am undecided if her frankly impressive academic history and list of achievements should scare or encourage me.

She’s a professor of pharmacology as well, so I am pretty sure that one of my chapters that deals with the conjugation of insulin to nanotubes will receive heavy scrutiny. Since I’m not a pharmacist by trade, I reckon I’ll have to get my colleagues from the School of Pharmacy to give that chapter a once-over. Yikes!

Almost there, almost there. Two more weeks until submission. It’s all bloody exciting, if I’m being honest.

A death in the family

My cousin, Sin Yee, passed away this morning. She finally succumbed to cancer after months of hard battle.

I loved her. She was very close to my family and played a pretty big role in my life growing up. In a lot of ways, she was the older sister I never had.

Growing up, she would sometimes be the babysitter when my parents are away. I remember how she’d pick me up from school and we’d talk and laugh about everything. Gosh, the laugh, it never changed over the years. She was the happiest and most positive person I’ve ever known and I am not saying that as some sort of obituary courtesy. If there was ever a time anyone in the family was feeling down or facing hardship, she would be the one providing encouragement and support.

A pleasant memory of her during my childhood was writing letters to her when she was studying in Melbourne. I was in Standard 3 then and we would exchange letters about how our lives were going. It was beautiful looking back; that was probably the only time I’ve ever had an ongoing conversation with someone using snail mail.

Even though, in recent years, we haven’t really been in touch constantly, whenever we do see each other, the conversation would remain as warm and lively as always. That’s just her, though. Very pleasant and always full of jokes. It would probably be no exaggeration to say that she was everybody’s friend. Everyone in the extended family loved her.

Which was why it’s just such a damn shame that cancer had to take her away from us. It frustrates me; it genuinely pisses me off. It just sucks that it has to be this unfair. I saw her in so much pain and suffering and I thought that she was probably the least deserving person of this fate.

I’m gonna miss her company. It depresses me to think that I’ll never hear her laughter again.

When I got news that she wasn’t going to make it past this week, I went over to see her twice. But I never got to speak to her. Never got to tell her one last time that I love her. She was resting then and I didn’t want to disturb her. She was in a lot of pain, so sleep was precious whenever it came by. I couldn’t bring myself to be selfish and wake her just so I can have some form of self-fulfilment.

So if you can somehow read this, Sin Yee jie jie, I love you. I’m going to miss you so so much. I’m going to remember all the good times we had together and I’m going to try to live life the way you did: full of happiness and positivity.

If there is an afterlife, we’ll talk again and hopefully, I’ll be able to share my life story with you again, just like how we did in those letters all those years ago.

Goodnight, sis, and travel well.