Disconnected

My late pastor used to warn us against becoming ‘so heavenly minded, we are of no earthly use’.

I think the church which I belong to may have become what my late pastor had warned against. Take last Sunday for instance, while we were sitting in church listening in rapt fascination to an invited speaker telling us there will be Spaniards, Mexicans and Indians in heaven through a very animated sermon using a power point laden with every animation options available, we were totally oblivious to the fact, beyond the cosy little church we were all cloistered in was a nation gripped by two major events:

1. Whether a Bible-burning event called by people who were hell-bent on creating religious chaos in the country was actually going to take place – precisely at the time when the sermon in my little cosy church began! Mercifully the event was a non-event, thanks to the intervention of the authorities and level-headed people, and no doubt, the prayers of hundreds or maybe thousands of concerned Christians in not-so-disconnected churches who must have prayed for divine intervention.

2. Whether a 6-year-old boy who was left in a car with two other siblings by his parents who went to look at electrical appliances in a shop, who subsequently left the car to look for his parents and was never seen again, would be found and how his parents must have grieved and wracked with guilt and anxiety. The boy’s highly decomposed body was eventually found at a jetty 64 km away from where he first went missing. The social media was a buzzed with concerned netizens doing their civic duty in drawing attention to the news of the missing boy, all hoping against dwindling hope that by some miracles, the boy would be found safe and sound.

It was not to be and how we, the still-connected people, must have grieved along with the parents, trying to make sense of the tragedy.

The two incidents affected me deeply. They tell me that all is not well with my country. They tell me that the country needs much grace and healing.

I hope I wasn’t the only one who felt this way on that Sunday morning in church. It was all the more ironic because the theme of my church for the next four years centered around reaching out to the community around us.

I think we need to pluck our heads out of heaven and be relevant earthly people again.

Forgiving God

I’m currently reading another book by Adrian Plass (title: The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass Christian Speaker Aged 45 3/4) which was lent to me by a church mate who obviously thought I needed some humour in life. God bless her soul. I chanced upon these passages in the book which I will duplicate here. It was part of the text by Adrian Plass when he was invited to an evangelistic event to give a talk. On that occasion, he didn’t feel particularly equipped for the task.

‘Look, I could be wrong, but I think God is saying to me that there are some people here tonight who need to forgive God. Of course, he can’t actually do anything wrong to be forgiven for, but that’s what’s so difficult sometimes, isn’t it? I mean – well, it’s not very easy to have a real row with someone who never ever gets anything wrong, is it? I mean, there must be some of us who want to climb up onto God’s lap like small children and bash at his chest with our little fists, and say, “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I asked you to help me and you didn’t help me. You knew what I was feeling – you knew what needed to happen and you didn’t do it. You say you love me, but you don’t! If you did you would have done something, but you didn’t! I hate you!”‘

‘When my son was very small, he did exactly that once or twice. First he’d be really angry, and then he’d worn himself out with crossness, he’d cry, all curled up on my lap. Then, when he’d cried the last droop of energy away, he’d just fall asleep and I’d hold him for ages. And the important thing is – I think the important thing is that he had to go through all that fighting and fretting to get the nasty spiky feelings out of himself, and he did it all in the safest place in he knew, which was in my arms’

‘He’s used to taking the blame. In fact he’d rather you took it out on him than on someone else.’

I have some ‘spiky feelings’ I need to get out of my system too.

Religion without power

We decided to visit another church for Sunday service today – mainly for a change from what is fast becoming a stifling routine in my church (a lot of people will take offense at what I write but at the moment, I’m too tired to bother).

One thing that the charismatics can do well (we went to a charismatic church you see) is that they can really sing! And God, in His goodness, has always blessed charismatic churches with talented musicians and wonderful singers. It is this part of their Sunday worship that draws many people (especially the young and not-so-young anymore) flocking to church every Sunday. We, or at least, I did, enjoyed the praise and worship immensely. If one could look beyond the one or two people on stage who weren’t actually worshiping (yes, it IS APPARENT, in ANY church), the needlessly prolonged echolalia (others call it speaking in tongues), the repeated calls for the church members to give ‘clap offerings’ (something not entirely biblical – I still haven’t found any reference to clap offerings in the Bible) and the almost-compulsory-thingy-charismatic-churches do all the time which is the altar-call; I would say the praise and worship was perfect. Altar-calls always make me squirm in my seat – I’d almost felt leprous in comparison to those who flock to the front week in and week out in response to the call. I almost always do not feel the need to step to the front week in and week out. I’m not saying I have never done it but those few rare times that I did, they were meaningful, precious and more importantly, private.

How I wish fervently that my church is blessed with such talented musicians and singers! And sound system! And lighting!

One thing that charismatic churches don’t do so well is the sermon.

Sigh…I’m not gonna elaborate beyond saying that ‘One congregation’s manna is one man’s annoyance’.

The other is rudeness. Encountering a particularly rude Sunday school teacher didn’t help. For heaven’s sake, we are your guests!

Anyway, it was all sorta good. The speaker-of-the-day even offered his maiden book to the congregation for free during his sermon. Naturally a lot of people got hold of a copy of the book once the service ended. I didn’t, mainly because I have too many books that I have yet to read at home and I didn’t need one more to weigh in on my guilty conscience.

And so we made our way to the car park, having retrieved my son from the Sunday school (he was delighted to be in Sunday school because he had friends there whom he had not met for a long time – but he did say the Sunday school songs were “pretty lame”), we were walking behind a woman who was clutching her free book (the title, if I am not mistaken, was “The road to Kingship”) in one hand while she blew her nose into a piece of tissue held with the other hand.

And before one could exclaim “Hallelujah!”, she promptly deposited the defiled tissue onto the grass near the walk way!

I was stunned!

Actually I was livid. I whispered to my wife, “So, Christians behave like this huh?”, to which she replied, “It’s not the religion, it’s the person”.

I beg to differ. IMHO, If one’s religion fail to change one’s poor social habit, then all the praising, lifting of hands, echolalia-ing, crying and wailing would be just that – A whole lot of noise and very little substance. A lot of BS-ing if you ask me.

As we drove out of the car park, we witnessed yet another church member driving his/her (it was so heavily tinted I couldn’t see the driver of the car) white SUV into a road with a no-entry sign (it was a one way street) and proceeded to make an illegal turn onto the opposite side of the road! Two willful traffic offenses committed right after church! How do I explain to my kids why Christians drive like that?

Maybe they call this ‘Kingdom Driving’!

Enough said.

So, exactly how different are Christians from the rest of the world?

Are you unhappy with what I have written? Was it because I wrote ‘bad things’ about the church? Was it because ‘a visitor should not be so ungracious and write such terrible things? Or was it because deep down within your heart, you know what I wrote is true.

Good, think about it for a while and you can see why religion fails miserably.

And oh yes, before anyone should point an accusing finger at me, I am well aware of the ‘log in my own eyes’. Very keenly aware of it, in fact and I am immensely sorrowful about it. Tqvm.

Remembering My Grand Uncle

My grand-uncle passed away yesterday after suffering a stroke several weeks ago. I didn’t make the trip to KL to see him when he had the stroke – the family didn’t want any visitors. I only received news of his demise yesterday through my dad who was informed by my uncle in KL. My brother in KL told me that the wake and procession was held this morning.

Beyond that, I had no further news.

We visit him once a year during the Chinese New Year. Other than my grandma’s house (my granny is 101 years old!), my grand-uncle’s house was the next meeting point for the entire clan – there we would be assured of a proper lunch – usually satay and other simple (but halal) meals. You see, my grand-uncle was once an ambassador, so naturally he would have many visitors of all races on Chinese New Year. He would be standing at the front door welcoming all of us with a broad smile.

I must confess that I do not know my grand-uncle well.Even so, I’ve always looked up to him. To me, he was the epitome of the kind of person I want to be – kind, gentle, confident, dignified and very knowledgable. Despite his illustrious career, he led a simple life after retirement.

The one thing that I treasure most about my grand-uncle is the pride I see in his face and eyes every time I visited him. He offered me a beer when I was 16 – he told me I was old enough to drink. I didn’t of course (I didn’t think I was ready at the time) but many years later, I finally did when he again offered it. Just one can. To satisfy him.

When he knew I was going to pursue medicine as a career, he beamed with pride. He constantly asked my dad about my welfare during the years when I was overseas doing undergraduate medicine. When I graduated and next saw him, he welcomed me warmly with a good man-to-man handshake, again eyes beaming with pride. I was the first in the clan to be a medical doctor. It’s as if his very own son became a doctor!

And since then, every year, on Chinese New Year, he looked at me with that same pride – as I progressed with my life-calling, from the Masters to eventually subspecializing in infectious diseases.

Just before the last Chinese New Year, he had a fall. When we visited him on CNY, he looked frail. His wife took his place at the front door welcoming all the guests. When I stepped into his home, his face lit up when we made eye contact and he immediately beckoned me to his side on the settee so we could have a little chit-chat. He asked about me, my work, my family, my kids – I felt like a little boy all over again sitting next to him. He made me feel special.

Soon other guests came and we had to leave.

We never saw him again.

I think my grand-uncle has lived a full life. I’m going to miss him. I will miss his warm welcome and seeing the pride in his eyes. He had, in his own way, affirmed my life-calling and magnanimously approved.

And I’m going to miss having a can a beer with him.

The IKEA experience

Ryan and I doing what we do best at IKEA – fooling around.

During the long Raya break, we decided to take a trip to KL and visit IKEA – the home furnishings company famous for its flat-packed technology and DIY stuff.

Visiting IKEA always leaves me with mixed feelings. Stepping into the interior of the sprawling show room is like entering a surreal world. Everything is in its place. Everything looks picture perfect (in fact, this time round, I saw many parents actually made their kids pose and snap photos of them – whether they be reclining at that RM 699 piece of to-die-for-sofa or sitting serenely at the RM 899 if-we-have-this-at-home-our-lives-would-be-complete desk-cum-double decker bed.

In short, IKEA tells you what your home should look like. (Can some one tell me the company that provide cleaning services that IKEA uses?)

The mixed-feelings set in quite quickly when I remember my hardly-IKEA-ish home. There’s that 10-plus years old sofa with sagging seats that we bought with my first bonus. There’s the dining table with every imaginable stain – that permanent blue spot was the imprint from the Gardenia bread wrapper (I should sue Gardenia). That indentation at the table edge was made when Ryan tried to saw through the table with a butter knife (he was probably around 5 or 6 years old then). That other mark was part of the pages from Ryan’s Tintin comics that got stuck on the table.

And there’s my TV console with its unsightly wires and 4 weeks-worth of dust. Beneath the hardly-desirable display cabinet (which we got from a previous landlord) are the lizard droppings from that recalcitrant lizard that hides behind the cupboard and refuses to be caught.

The kids’ toilet is a no-go-zone unless one is desperate and have no other options (like, maybe when the toilet in my room is occupied). My kids are notoriously forgetful when it comes to flushing the loo. The walls are stained with shampoo squirts that Ryan must have used as water missiles during his longer-than-usual showers. Pieces of wet toilet paper are stuck to the floor or the wall. The light switches have dark finger print marks on them.

My study-at-home is the total opposite of what is displayed in IKEA. Everything is everywhere! The law of entropy is very evident here. Chaos reigns!

I think you get the picture.

It’s not like we do not buy anything from IKEA. In fact, over the years, we have bought quite a bit of stuff from there. There was a time when we won a RM 500 voucher to shop in IKEA and with it, we bought quite a bit of stuff. There in my bedroom is a little cosy corner (which I’d like to call my man-cave) where I have an IKEA-bought reclining chair complete with leg-rest. By the side of the chair is an IKEA-bought reading lamp. At the foot of the chair is a large piece of sheep skin wool (bought from Victoria Market, Melbourne) and on the adjacent wall, hangs 4 neatly framed pictures of the Great Ocean Road in Australia, arranged in a cascading pattern. Stacked nearby are a few free weights that I use when I have the urge to pump iron and hope for the elusive 6-pack-abdomen. That corner is the only corner in my home that looks a little bit like IKEA.

But I can count on my fingers the number of times I actually went into my man-cave and hibernate. Life’s chores and demands take up much of my time and I have little luxury to indulge and even if I do have time to indulge, I often find myself feeling guilty because I know my lovely wife is busy preparing dinner in the kitchen next door.

Yup, IKEA always makes me feel bad. But we still go every once in a while – because looking at the stuff there tells me that there is an ideal out there. In a way it’s a little spiritual experience for me. I’m not perfect at the moment but some day I will be. Some day I will reach the ideal.

Oh, and there is another thing….IKEA is a show room.

What I have at home is a HOME.

And HOME trumps IKEA every time.

Remembering Prof. Rokiah Pendek

Yesterday I received the sad news that Prof. Rokiah, a senior consultant endocrinologist and beloved professor has passed away after a short battle against the big ‘C’.

Prof. Rokiah was one of my personal favourites when I was a Masters student in Internal Medicine. She was like a breath of fresh air in the dog-eat-dog world of postgraduate medicine. I remember her as a very humble consultant and surely her trademark was her caring attitude towards us, struggling Masters students. She took a personal interest in all of us as individual people and took the trouble to enquire about our welfare.

When we all failed the Part 1 exam, she was there consoling us while we licked our wounds and promised ourselves we would rise from the ashes of defeat to be better people (and indeed we have!).

She came to my defense when I was being penalized for not knowing all the endocrine cases in the ward – simply because the specialists then started their morning rounds at 5.30 am and completed the rounds way before 7.15 am which was the time I usually arrive to work, driving through the nightmarish Serdang traffic jam to Petaling Jaya. By then, the specialists would have left the ward without passing over what their plans of managements were and I found it tough to do the rounds and scan through what they had planned for each patient.

Prof. Rokiah chided them when they took me to task for not ‘knowing the cases’ in front of her – she told them there was no reason for them to start their rounds at such an unearthly hour (imagine waking sleeping patients at 5.30 am!) and in a firm and decisive tone told the two specialists to  “GO GET A LIFE!”

That day, I knew I had an ally and the endocrine rotation became so much more bearable.

Prof. Rokiah called me ‘Jack’ – from year two (I joined in-campus training at year 2) till the day I graduated and despite my repeated attempts at correcting her, she never truly learned that my name wasn’t ‘Jack’.

“You look like a ‘Jack’”, she quipped one day when I corrected her again. I never corrected her anymore and told her that she can call me Jack for the rest of my life because I’ve grown accustomed to it. She gave me a mischievious smile.

She gave us the ‘thumbs up’ when we cleared the Part 1 exam, again when we cleared the Part 2 exam. In my final year, whenever we met at the hospital corridors, she would often ask about the progress of my thesis, my work, my personal life and my family.

Prof. Rokiah was special and will always hold a special place in my heart. I’d like to think her influence has made a difference in my character.

Farewell Prof. I will miss you.

Telegraphic Love

I was reading the newspaper the other day when I chanced upon this announcement by TM. It looks like another iconic symbol of my youth is finally being laid to rest for good. The advent of the internet more or less spelt the death-knell for telegram service.

Back in those days when I was an undergraduate medical student in India, my girlfriend (now Mrs Jimbo) was almost 8000 km away in Australia studying in Melbourne. The means of communication between us back then were limited to either aerogrammes (I bet many of you don’t know what an aerogramme is!), the occasional (and very costly) phone calls and of course, the good old telegram.

I remember those days I had to first construct my message (usually some lovey dovey words – incorporating words like ‘miss’, ‘love’, ‘moon’ ‘sun’, ‘can’t wait’ etc) because every alphabet in the message, including the spaces in between words) would cost me 1 Rupee! I usually spend around 25 Rupees for a message which meant I had to cramp my words into short forms and yet ensure it could still be understood by Pre-Mrs-Jimbo.

After constructing the message on paper, I would then walk to the telegraphic office and hand over my precious message to the lady at the counter who would then read my embarrassing message and proceed to count how many alphabets and spaces were there before presenting me with the final tally on how much the message would cost me.

Yeah, it’s kinda sad to see the demise of another icon in my life – going the way music cassettes and videotapes did.

 

One little heart beat at a time

I’m sharing with you a beautiful song sung by one of my favourite gospel singers.

The song got me all teary-eyed.

Mum, I hope that what I am today have made all the your sacrifices all worth while. And I hope my kids would grow up to be people who will make a difference, and make their mum proud.

Excuse me while I go wash my face.

Under the coconut

During a lull in my clinic last Friday (my patients tend to take their own sweet time coming to the clinic), I had a little chat with a few medical students who was in the room with me. The topic of conversation eventually drifted to politics – specifically Malaysian politics (read: DIRTY).

I was dismayed to discover that almost all of them had not registered themselves as voters! When asked why they have not registered, my dismay turned into disbelief!

One said, “I don’t need to vote because the guy who is in my hometown will sure win the election!”

Another said, “I do not have transport to go and register myself”.

Yet another said, “I don’t know where to register”.

One of them lamented, “Actually, we IMU students are not in touch with politics”.

That’s really sad.

I think my political awakening started when my ‘kertas am’ teacher back in secondary school said this to me:

“Be careful….for the day will come when the land you stand on will be taken away from you and you have no place to call home”!

As a student, I have always been very attuned to the local politics as well as international politics. When I was a medical student in India, I could name you the chief ministers of almost every Indian state, their political ideologies and their hanky-panky stuff.

While I was in Melbourne last year, I was keenly following the politics in Victoria – I could even engage in politic-talk with any Aussies there. I knew who was who and what they do or did.

Why? Because, politics, whether you like it or not, will impact our lives, sometimes and eventually in ways beyond our control. If bad politics are not nipped at the bud, it can grow into a 56-year-old uncontrolled corrupt beast!

Over the weekend, in Malaysia, we had the largest act of ‘Ahimsa‘ similar to the non-violent resistance practiced by Mahatma Gandhi. Malaysians from all walks of life gathered in large numbers in many major cities in Malaysia and around the world, demanding for electoral reforms and a clean election. Unfortunately, the Bersih 3.0 sit-in-and-protest took a violent turn in the end. (At this point, politicians are doing everything from blaming everyone else to scrambling at damage-control). Ironically, the mainstream media hardly breathed a word about the event!

The crux of the issue is this: why would decent folks (about 250,000 of them, according to some sources), spend a Saturday weekend, all dressed in gaudy yellow, go for a sit-in-protest (and get gassed and shot at with tear gas canisters and chemical-laced dirty water)?

It’s because these people care about what is happening around them. They want a better future, if not for themselves, then, for the next generation to come. They want to see a better Malaysia.

One vote may be insignificant.

But many one-votes can become a formidable force.

Therefore, I urge you, my students, exercise your right as a citizen of this country. Do not allow apathy to rob you of a better future. You cannot stay under the coconut forever!

Confronting Mortality

Today was supposed to be just like any other day.

I wake up at 6.00 am, and complete my ritual of brush teeth-wash face-shave-wash face again-sit on the ‘throne’- shower-get dressed-greet the dog and give it a good rub down-eat my 2 slices of bread coated with generous amount of low-fat butter and kaya and drink a cup of malt enriched with oats-fuss about the kids-wash any leftover dishes in the sink-say bye-bye to the kids and wife- and drive to work while listening to the DJs on FlyFM poke fun at each other.

That’s what I do from Monday to Friday every work day, every week of the month, every month of the year for the last 10 years or more.

Today was supposed to be just another day of the week.

But it wasn’t.

A friend messaged me on Facebook, right after I completed another ritual of mine in the office (reading the Bible and pray), and informed me that a friend of ours suffered a massive stroke 2 days ago and is hospitalized in one of the specialist centres in KL.

I remember this chap – we weren’t really in touch all these years because we weren’t all that chummy – but I remember he was one of those ‘active’ ones in school – a school (or state?) swimmer, tall, tanned, good-looking, in short, he was everything that I wasn’t back in school (believe it or not, I wasn’t that tall back in secondary school before testosterone finally kicked in when I was 16 and I always came in last in swimming, if at all).

And now, an unexpected ill fortune has hit him, and hard.

It also reminded me of another guy I know, my best chum back in Uni days who became a surgeon only to be hit by a stroke a couple of years back which derailed his career. Ironically, he, like the other guy was a real energetic and active chap, excelling in all things physical. The news hit me hard back then and today’s news hit me equally hard as well.

I spent a little time praying for my friend. I consider my prayers down-to-earth. I didn’t pray anything earth shaterring. I didn’t pray that the stroke in his brain would spontaneously resolve and that all the damaged or dead neurons would suddenly be repaired and my friend would suddenly yank himself off the ventilator and jump out of bed screaming “Hallelujah!” at the top of his now-free-from-secretions lungs. Perhaps in my line of work, I have seen far too many deaths and not enough miracles. So I prayed that if it’s God’s will for him to recover, then let him recover as much of his functionality as possible; and if not, I pray that he would be quickly and painlessly transported to the bosom of his loving Father and that those left behind would be comforted.

Some people would be offended with my prayers.

Oh well, you pray it your way and I pray it mine.

In the ward this morning, my team and I had to handle a man in his 5th decade who is literally fighting for his life because he is slowly being suffocated by the accumulation of fluid in his lungs due to what is most likely a lung cancer. His wife said he never smoked in his life. She said it isn’t fair. They have 3 kids and the youngest is only 12.

I agree with her.

It isn’t fair.

Life isn’t fair. Karma fails us sometimes – bad people do well and good people suffer and die.

I build a wall around me so that I can give myself a false sense of security. I try to tell myself that the mortality that confronts those around me isn’t going to touch me. I know the wall has no foundation and every once in a while a crack appears on the wall. Like today.

Sometimes when I am alone and it’s all quiet, I open up the wall a little and think of my own mortality. I think I’ve lived a pretty awesome life but I want more! I want to see, feel, touch and experience more! I want to see my kids grow up, settle down, maybe pamper my grandchildren. I want to see iPad 10 released! I want to see the day they declare they have a cure for AIDS (and effectively put me out of a job!). I want to see Malaysia become a level playing field. The list is unending.

The expiry date is out there, I just don’t know the exact date. My Christian faith tells me that the expiry date is actually the ‘manufactured date’ for another altogether more awesome experience. I’d like to think it’s true.

Until then, I think I can safely say I’m immortal, at least on this side of heaven!

I didn’t stay morose for long today. I received a beautiful picture from Dorothy, my 85-year-old (that makes her my oldest Aussie pal! Way to go gal!!) camera-toting grandma has gone shooting again and see what she stumbled upon by the side of the road at Erskine Fall in Lorne, Victoria, Australia!

How can anyone look at that and not love life?