15 November 2015. Emergency Department. Kuala Lumpur Hospital

Around 8pm on the 15th of November, my daughter probably have noticed that I am so listless and apparently in pain, virtually dragged me to KL Hospital. I have been postponing it quite a few times and in fact was planning to go the next day. The trouble is, my so called ailment seemed to come only in late afternoon until midnight. By late afternoon you an feel the tummy started to bulge as if it was pumped with helium and you hear it rumbling and groaning. It was a very uncomfortable situation. I was so bloated the girth started to measure to 38″ compared to the normal 36″. There was this nagging pain on the right side of the abdomen. The pain was more excruciating every time I bend over and took a deep breath. My earlier stones episode still fresh in my mind. Strangely, By morning I am as good as ever. I have been suffering from this for quite a few weeks now. Just the intensity was not so high.

As usual after going through all the rigmarole of registration and waiting, I was finally called to meet one Dr Fatimah. After some visual observation and the usual battery of questions she sent me for x-ray. The result was quite shocking. She said there is water in my tummy and my lungs. My colon is congested. Another strange observation as I never had any problem with bowel movement. Furthermore I hardly ate that much these days as the bloated tummy virtually killed my appetite. She insisted that I have to be warded. Before that I had to go for angiograph to check my heat condition. Alhamdullillah, the angio curves looked ok.

My experience living in hospital looking after my daughter was not a pleasant one. I plead for time. Please allow me to come the next morning so that I can make a proper preparation. Granted. Be at the hospital before 7am next morning. By then it was almost 11pm.

The new experience in my life really started the next morning.

We might as well send our footballers to Bhutan.

Bhutan is well known for being one of the happiest nation in the world but not for its footballing prowess. But now Bhutan plays better football than Malaysia. According to the latest FIFA ranking, Bhutan is placed above Malaysia’s 164th! The latest ranking not only placed Malaysia among the lowest in the Asian countries but also lowest among the senior ASEAN nations. I cannot imagine Malaysia which regularly beat the Philipines with double figures scores in the 80s and 70s is now ranked below them. The same goes for Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam. Apart from Thailand, these countries were constantly beaten by us in the past. I wonder how low can we go. I shudder to compare us with the African nations where the countries torn by wars and draughts with hardly any so called football fields fared a lot better than us. Look at Burkina Faso, Mali, Congo, Ethiopia, Chad, etc.

In the meantime, the New Straits Times reported that many of our footballers are being paid more than RM50,000.00 a month! Nor Sharul Idlan had his contract with the ATM cut short because the Gladiators cannot pay him the RM80K a month as per the contract and he was quickly snapped up by Terengganu which is more than willing to pay that amount. The so called Malaysian Man City, The JDT, really up the ante in terms of paying footballers in this country. They pay Shafiq Rahim RM75K, Figeroa RM175K, Safee Sali RM40K and a host of other household names in Malaysian football, all in the excess of RM40K a month. It was also reported that the FA of Perlis last year had trouble to pay their footballers. They had to go without pay for more than three months. I don’t suppose Perlis players got paid with the amount their JDT counterparts are getting. I heard it was only RM3-5K a month. I wonder how much Bhutan pays their footballers.

Azman Ujang, the former Bernama Chief also wrote in the Sun that if you look at the team sheet of any of the Malaysian Super League or Premier League teams, you hardly see any chinese names anymore. Whatever happen to the likes of Soh Chin Aun, Wong Kam Fook, Wong Choon Wah, Tang Siew Seng, Lim Teong Kim, James Wong? If I remember correctly Perak had Chan Wing Hoong a few years ago and that was the last of the few. Even Penang, Sarawak, Malacca, and KL, the states that normally have a number of chinese players do not have them anymore. Where have all they gone ? Azman blamed the school system. In the old days, talents came from the schools and the national schools football fields were the fertile grooming ground for multi ethnic talents. According to Azman, these days, chinese parents preferred to send their charges to chinese schools where basketball courts easily outnumbered football fields. Hence, the boys had little chance to play football and less and less chinese boys get selected to play at a higher level. While we still have the likes of Chanturu, Gunalan, and Kunanlan we do not see any more Chan Wing Hoong, Yap Wai Loon, Chin Hong Aik, and Chow Chee Keong. I wonder whether the point put forward by Azman is valid, as Singapore, which has no issue with the schooling system, is facing the same problem. They had trouble finding players to fill the boots of Lee Man Hon, Steven Tan and the great Quah Kim Song. Maybe we all should go to Bhutan, not only they are happy, their football standards are better.

Goodbye my friend.

Saturday morning brought another shock. The phone was set to silent for the Friday afternoon meeting,I went to the mosque soon after and forgot to switch back to normal mode when I went to bed that night. When I woke up for the Fajr prayer and had a peek at the phone, there were numerous missed calls and messages – all pertaining to the passing of my officer. Just last week I met him to discuss our visit to Sabah to check on school ICT maintenance.
He was a sprightly guy with a ramrod demeanor. A no nonsense officer feared by many especially non performing contractors. I really appreciated his services as we need man like this to straighten out wayward school heads, school activity centres’ officers and he understood technical specification like the back of his hands. I can still remember him explaining things in his Sarawakian accent. With his passing, I lost a technical officer steep in the knowledge of ICT in schools. We had our arguments, all professionally done, him with his Sarawakian accent and me with my fake Sarawakian twang!
The sight of his son tugging the deceased foot underneath the blanket that covered the body, with tears streaming as if trying to revive him, was really heart wrenching. I managed to peek at his face. Rigor mortis has yet to set in. He looked so peaceful as if he was asleep. Goodbye Tajuddin, it was good to know you. May Allah bless you and put you amongst the solihin.

Bab al Sahara, Moroccan journey – Part 7

Here we go again, another 700km ride to Guelmim.

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Our next destination is place called Guelmim, a little city almost to the southernmost of Morocco. Honestly I have never heard of the city.It was not even on the Google map (unless you zoom in the details). It is more than 400km away from Marakesh. As old adage said, it is not the destination but the journey that matters. The journey was well worth it despite the long hours and freezing temperature. Large part of the journey involved twisting roads through the famous Argan producing region. I must say I did not know anything about Argan oil but the ladies cannot stop talking about it as soon as they reached Rabat. Apparently argan oil is a much sought after beauty oil and Morocco is the only country in the world producing it. It is definitely expensive, in Rabat, I was told, 100ml costs 200 dirham.Trust the ladies.They know best.
I did not check the map but was made to understand that Guelmim is about 450km from Marakesh. Another long journey. We left early morning so that we can reach our destination by mid afternoon. We are supposed to have lunch with the Governor of Guelmim and visit a college. The journey was mixed pathways of motorways, state roads and winding mountainous roads. As soon as we left Marakesh, on both sides of the roads we can see a lot of greeneries especially olives orchards but as we moved further down south, the road become more twisted and the land become barren. This is the cacti, mountain goats, camels and argan land. Maybe because fresh green leaves dificult to come by, the mountain goats not only able to climb hilly and mountainous slopes, they can even climb the trees. I saw a few cases of goats happily perched on top of three to five metre trees! Amazing.

an Argan tree

Argan trees have been here for thousands of years

We reached Guelmim by mid noon and the Governor treated us to a sumptious lunch at his residence. We never expect this kind of treatment. He is a keen admirer of Tun dr M. We had to canstantly reminded him that TDM had retired many moons ago. In fact many people that i met in Morocco still talking about him every time they were told that we were from Malaysia. Such a hold that great man has on the Islamic world.
The dates that they presented as starters were really out of this world. The jewel dates are produce of Guelmim.

the magnificent jewel dates of Guelmim.

The fruit basket

Everywhere the protrait of the King is prominently displayed.

Congratulations to the Noisy Neighbours!

My daughter said “as long as it is not Man U, I am happy”. I do understand the feeling, none of us in the family supported Man U. Most of them are die hard fans of Wenger and co, with the exception of a lone Chelsea and Liverpool fan. So when at 5 to midnight today, the referee blew the final whistle, City had beaten Wet Ham 2-0 and they are crowned Premier League champion for the 2013/14 season.  The big spending “noisy neighbours” is the champion again.We were smiling. “as long as it is not Man U, I am happy”.. 
The Noisy Neighbours
Poor Liverpool, so near yet so far. Hopefully Rodgers and his merry men had learned the lesson from last Monday when they blew away a 3-goal lead against rejuvenated Palace. After leading 3-0 with 11 minutes to go, they should have parked the bus like Chelsea. I know they had a 9 goal deficit to turn but in the end you lose two precious points and the championship. What a waste. I get this sinking feeling that Liverpool won’t be able t repeat their performance next season, especially the surprise factor is gone and European distraction would be on. 

Tony Pullis deserved to be awarded the manager of the season with his great Houdini’s act. I wonder whether he could work his magic with Notts Forest. I am still baffled why Almasawi employed the Psycho as Forest manager next season. He may be a terrific defender in his Forest days, but as a manager he failed miserably in Man City and England U-21. I can only hope the ghost of Brian Clough and Peter Taylor can guide him and Forest back to the Premier League next season. Another sad thing, all Malaysian related teams are now in the Championship. Vincent Tan’s Cardiff was relegated, Lotus’s Norwich was also relegated. The only hope is Tony Fernandez’s QPR which is still battling with Wigan in the play off. They still need to beat Wigan in the semis 2nd round and then face the winner of Brighton/Derby which I think is a bit too much for Redknap’s  charges. Thankfully, Swansea managed to maintain their mid table position. 

Fort Supai Steamed fish

I rarely write about food or makan place but there is this little place called Fort Supai in Kuala Linggi, the border between NS and Melaka. It is situated next to the Melaka’s Rural Transformation Centre (RTC) and the old historical Fort Supai site. There are signs that the old place have been recently refurbished but as usual maintenance is always an issue in this country. I was told by my history teacher friend, Kuala Linggi was an important landing place in its heydays.
The jetty at Fort Supai is specially built for the restaurant. Funny I cannot even remember the name of the restaurant! It is jutting out about 100m into the sea. A great place to watch the sun sets. Good thing is the place is not crowded, unlike the Ikan Bakar place in Umbai or Jeram. That means you can get your food fairly quickly and parking is not an issue. The place serves the usual fares. Its lemon steamed fish is outstanding, so much so that the wife will order the same fare every time we are here. The price is not as expensive as the atrocious Sekinchan’s. But then of course it is not as cheap as those in Alor Star or Perlis.

A night at the hospital

The last time I spent nights in a hospital must be quite a while back, in early nineties when my my daughter was undergoing treatment for ascending chulangitis a repercussion of her biliary atresia condition. That was back in the old paediatric unit in KL hospital.  I wrote about the experience in my department’s monthly newsletter. It was really a harrowing experience that you wouldn’t want to go through again. It was like a battle zone.

So when the cyst on my neck swelled like a full bloom plum I went to the Tanglin Clinic and I was quickly referred to a hospital. I chosed Ampang hospital because that is the latest hospital in KL area and I do not have to fight a war to get a parking space. The emergency department is really modern with ample seatings and freezing air condition – they provide blankets for the waiting patients. It must have been a busy day, I had to wait for three hours until I got to see the medical officer. But the emergency department has a clever system to sift and filter the incoming patients. Two doctors (well they looked like doctors to me with stethoscopes dangling from their necks) will assess incoming patients to determine whether their case merit a red, yellow or green action. For obvious reasons, mine was quickly assessed to be green and  then only I was registered. To make sure a patient is quickly attended to, a medical assistant was on hand as a first line of help. This what I called clever,  your queue number would be quickly called up, in fact mine was called only after 45 seconds. In the hospital queue system, a customer was attended to within 45 seconds, a definite plus points for the customer care star rating systems done by the Public Service department. Never mind that I had to wait for another three hours to see the medical officer,it was not recorded into the systems anymore.  Within the three hours, I heard a few announcements calling for doctors to the emergency room  and a few announcements calling next of kin to enter the emergency room. Sad.

As I was saying, three hours later, a lady medical officer gave a quick assessment of the now blooming cyst, or sebaceous cyst rather as she called it and decided to ward me for quick operation to remove the cyst. Since I had to be at the palace the next day I had to plead with her to give me a one a half day reprieve. OK but I had to sign a note of consent absolving the hospital of any misdemeanor should anything happen to me after that. All very professional. But she reminded me that I had to go through the registration rigmarole all over again on thursday. No short cuts? Nothing doing. Very professional indeed.

So, immediately after my palace experience (with painful neck), I rushed to Ampang hospital again, went through the same process and after one hour my number called to room 5. A gentleman doctor this time went through the same routine and he managed to retrieve the report made two days earlier by the lady doctor. At last they are using the telehealth system. Wait, He had to consult  the surgeon on duty, a Punjabi lady doctor. While waiting for her I make a quick exit for a quick dinner only to hear my name being called over the loud speaker. That is something new, normally the doctor or the attending nurse would simply shout  the name of the patient. She make a quick assessment with same set of standard questions and told me to wait. Wait. It was not until 7pm before I was admitted into ward 5D. I was told to wait for the medical officer in charge of the ward to check, depending on the availability of the operating theatre. So I had to spent the night at the hospital. A far better place than the paediatric hospital in the 90s. The room was spacious with four patients to a room. This is the normal ward mind you, the second class ward was closed as the aircond is not working. Despite the anxiousness over the pending operation, I had a peaceful night.  After messaging the boss of my condition, I went into a real untroubled sleep.

The flaming angry sebaceous cyst

The tag an IV needle

Two deaths and a festive week.

For the past couple of years, I have not been able to savour the real celebration of eidul Fitr in Sarawak from its first day. Due to some reasons or the other, we had to go back on the first day itself and by the time we reached my mother in law’s place in Kuching it was already night time. This year our leave started early. I went back three days before eid. The office even managed to squeeze in a meeting with the Sarawak state secretary two days before hari raya. I had to borrow a coat and a tie from my brother in law to attend the  meeting as I did not bring any formal office attire. But I brought four pairs of baju Mealyu – well prepared for the Edul fitri celebrations.

I managed to capture a few scenes with the extended family in Kuching.

The two heroes checking their outfit in the mirror

 

The pink brigade for Syawal 1434

 

and gold as well

 

Hari Raya  in McD?

Pay your respect to the elder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately this year’s merriment were flanked by two deaths on both sides of the holidays. While I was on the flight to Kuching last Sunday, My uncle on my father’s side passed away in Ipoh. A jovial man loved by all. You can’t tell that he was sick as he was always full of live and a very witty man. I’ll definitely missed him during “kenduri” in the village, as he was always the story teller and a hell of a cook as well. And today, as I was landing in KLIA’s LCCT, I heard the news that my uncle on my in law’s side passed away in Kuching. I visited his house on the second day of eid.  Unfortunately he was out visiting. So the last time I met him was about the same time last year. May Allah put them both with the group of solihin.

Pb and BW theories

I chanced upon a very interesting read in The Star a few weeks ago. The writer was quoting a theory explaining why our society is getting very violent and he proposed another theory on how to fix it.

According to the theory, the so called plumbum (Pb) theory, children who were exposed to to leaded petrol would have the tendency to be violent when they reach their youthhood. If you see the clips on YouTube, you can see how brazen and violent criminals can be these days, and some of them barely out of school going age.  Researches in America showed there is a significant link between leaded petrol and human behaviour, so said this writer. Use of Unleaded petrol has been enforced in the States in late eighties and twenty years later, the rate of violent crime in America has reduced. I am too sure about this, anyway, since in this country, unleaded petrol was only introduced in the nineties, the violent youth of today is still reeling from the effect of the leaded era. We have to wait probably until 2020 before the unleaded generation will grow up.  That is another seven years to go. We cannot wait that long. So, the writer is proposing the Broken Window (BW) theory. You may have seen this, especially in abandoned buildings. If one glass window is broken and left unattended, soon other windows would be broken by whoever takes a fancy in breaking windows. And before long, all the windows would be broken. So the theory postulates further, if the one broken window is quickly fixed, there is a very high chance that all the windows would remain intact. Former mayor of New York, used this theory when dealing with the high crime rate in the city. He made sure that all the small crimes were attended to. Small time crooks were arrested, booked, charged and punished. He did not give them the chance to grow into bigger crimes. Even small time traffic offenders were not spared. Apparently, most criminals starts small with petty thefts, little extortion, bullying etc and if they got away with the crimes, they would be emboldened to do more serious crimes involving more people, creating gangs of hoodlums and before you know it, they were already established as big time criminals. On the other hand, if they know that somebody is out there watching them all the time, their criminal growth would be stifled. True enough, within a few years, New York has become one of the safest city in the world as compared to the frightening image it has a few years back. Then again it takes a lot of guts, bravery, time and dedication to achieve it.  So the writer proposed that our police force starts cracking down on this small time offenders before they grow into monsters. Sound too simplistic isn’t it, then again it has been proven to be working in New York>

Obviousilitis?

The other day I chanced upon a very amusing article in The Sun. The writer was complaining about the increasing malady of people stating the obvious, something what he called “obviousilitis” – stating the obvious. There is a notice on the package of biscuits “Please consume after opening”.  Then there is a question asked to a  wet motoryclist, “is it raining outside?”. Of course you have to open the packet before you can consume anything and you do not think the motorcyclist was taking a shower in his clothes!. Sometimes people are so ignorant you have to state the obvious repeatedly. “Please flush after use”, “Please use the overhead bridge”, Please switch off your mobile phones”, These are signs that you often see that really stating what is really obvious, but then Malaysians are a weird lot. You have to be afflicted with obviousilitis to remind them of things that they should naturally do.