Around Us

Snapped outside my rented house in Seremban.

A friend of my sister's called me recently to ask regarding nutrition for his terminally ill father. The conversation goes...

Him: Doc said my dad is in late stage of liver cancer. His tummy is bloated. Testicles swollen. He is yellow! But we are still hopeful that he can get better!
Me: I'm so sorry to hear that... well...
Him: Actually I called to ask if he can eat prawns, beef, chicken, fish (etc. etc.). I'm concerned that these food might nourish the cancerous cells, making his condition worse!
Me: If he has the appetite, shouldn't be any problem. No food restriction unless specified by the doctor.
Him: Yeah, that's what I thought too! The normal cells also need to eat right?!
Me: (know still ask!) Yep, that's right!
Him: What bout soup or beverages? Anything that is poisonous to his body, considering he has liver cancer now?
Me: Err... anything should be okay... (provided you don't feed him alcohol).
Him: Anything we can do?
Me: Make him feel comfortable, ease his pain and let him eat whatever he wishes. You can actually check out the hospice in Cheras that deal with palliative care.
Him: Palliative?
Me: Oh, it's a place that make patients like your dad cope better with his illness.
Him: Oh...

And I later found out from my sis that his dad passed away a few weeks after our conversation. I hope I'd given him the correct advice.

Actually, all I wanted to say was that I didn't know the tree outside my porch could look that nice. Till I turned the porch light on last nite. It's always been there, for the past 2 years, and none of us had noticed it!

Superbikers Killed

Two members from the Kedah-based StarBikers club, Mohd Mumtaz (the club's president) and Mohd Shahrirman, were killed at Kilometre 119 of the North-South Expressway (near Bertam) last Saturday.

The news had it that Mumtaz, who was on a Yamaha R1, rear-butted a container lorry and lost control of his 1,000cc machine. That sent him screeching against traffic and to the shoulder of the other side of the highway, and man and machine burst into flames.
The remains of the barbequed Yamaha R1.

Shahrirman who was on a Honda CBR400 on the other hand, was either travelling too fast or too close to Mumtaz, collided with the latter. The Honda travelled a further 100 metres from the spot where Shahrirman fell. Both died on the spot, while the lorry driver continued to drive happily towards Butterworth.

The Honda CBR400 with it's broken arse.

Moral of the story:
Speeding kills, but it's always safe to speed on a container lorry!
Ride safe guys, and no doing 110km/h on a 100cc scooter ever again, no matter how your inconsiderate mate challenge you! And my deepest condolences go to the families of the deceased bikers. R.I.P.

Source: SpitFireBikers.com and msportbike.com.

Prodigy Died

Chiang Ti Ming, the boy genius who was the youngest student ever from Malaysia to be admitted into the prestigious California Institute of Technology (CalTech) almost two decades ago, has passed away on Saturday morning here in Hospital Tuanku Jaafar, Seremban.

This guy used the be the national hero of sorts, getting a place in CalTech at a tender age of 15 and score results which were at the top 5% of his class. He achieved the Undergraduate Students Merit Award two years in a row, and later pursued and graduated with a doctorate in particle physics at Cornell University in New York. He achieved so much at his teenage years many of us took years to achieve. And he's now dead at age 31.

Press reports in 2002 said that he had been admitted into a hospital in Kuala Lumpur, for depression and withdrawal symptoms - and his death a direct complication to that.

I remembered I used to envy this guy when I was a small kid, being able to skip so many boring years in school just because you're a born-genius, getting big bucks paid for you to study overseas. And of course, start a career early and earn millions of wealth and drive supersportscars and mean superbikes and be a chick-magnet and stay in bungalows and penthouses and travel the world... oh I got carried away.

But what's the point of that expresslane if you can't enjoy life? God knows how much pain this guy had to endure, how much life events he had sacrificed to achieved what he had achieved, to live up to the expectations from his sponsors, the tonnes of pressure built up inside his cranial vault... and finally all that crushed him into a frail mental cock-up... and bring upon his early retirement from this world of sex and lust... (oops I did it again!)

Wise men once said, "it's not the destination that digs, it's the journey that counts". So slack on I shall... enjoying life and view any obstacles, like my upcoming final exams, as cocktail parties with loads of chicks and booze. Ugghh... bliss!