LWE Chapter 2: Death's lessons

Death comes in groups it seems.

Tessie, who took care of my kids for 17 years was the first to experience it this time. Her father passed away a few days ago followed very shortly by her mother. The old couple must have wanted to be together I think. Both had their chalenges in the last few years and Tessie often messaged me about them - the old man had some form of dementia it seemed while the old lady was increasingly frail and needed oxygen and then hospitalisation.

A few days later, my KL friend Julie rushed up to Butterworth to attend a cousin’s funeral.

Then just this morning my best friend Gan’s brother passed away. I still don’t have all the details, but I know Chong Wan fought Leukaemia some years ago so I’m assuming it came back.

All this has caused me to revisit the idea of death and what it is and what it means. I am not afraid of death and never have been. I may have my nervousness about the way I die - please, no fire and no drowning - but I think the main thing is that I would miss life terribly. Life, despite, or even sometimes because of, the challenges I face every now and then, is such a beautiful and rich experience. There’s so much still to do and I think on my death bed I would be thinking of that one more thing I still want to build, or that place I want to visit or the old friend I want to have one last chat with.

In a way this is the idea I’ve often espoused - that we should just forget about this whole Life After Death thing and instead focus on our Life Before Death. I don’t measure my worth in dollars and cents (or Ringgit and Sen as teh case may be) but instead on the positive impact on the people around me and the world in general. There will be haters of course and people whose life journeys and mine just simply do not match up. That’s fine. I don’t live for them. I live for people who were put in my life for a reason. And I feel incredibly proud that some of those people have benefitted from my being in their lives, and I feel chuffed too that others have helped me be better or more enlightened for them having been put in mine.

We’re all here for a reason and a big part of that reason is always to learn. I reckon that when we’ve learnt enough, our reason to exist ceases and we go. Or, when we’ve shown we just are completely incapable of learning, then the Universe probably thinks ‘Alright, enough is enough, let’s yank you outta there…’.

This may sound like growth is a limited or limiting thing. Well, I think in some cases it’s got a short plan and in others the projection is much greater and the timeline correspondingly so too. We are, after all, all individuals. And though this sounds just so Monty Pythonesque, the reality is that we are indeed unique, with unique traits, offerings, desires and needs. And plans.

Our lives are really a constant process of renewal - of learning and in some ways, unlearning too. We grow yet we revert to a childlike state.

Death too, is part of the process of renewal but here’ the interesting insight I had today: Death is not just a part of renewal for the departed. It is for those who are left behind too.

Interesting that death, by its very nature, gives birth - in this case to an important idea. Well it is to me, at any rate.

Life, The We-niverse and Everything. Chapter 1

Since I’ve begun compiling the threads here according to topics, I think it’s only fair to do the same with the random thoughts I have regarding the little things that make life what it is. And as I believe that we are all connected, I have decided to adulterate Douglas Adams’ fine title ‘Life, The Universe and Everything’ a little to make it inclusive, hence the ‘We’ substituting what I read as the ‘You’ in Universe.

Let me get straight into today’s thoughts which began life in the fires of a verbal spat between me and the ex-wife. I was chastised by a number of people and in my usual manner, began to rebut… then stopped. The realisation came that it isn’t necessary to explain my words or my actions for they were sincerely mine. And so I became unattached to the situation - not detached for that implies a disconnect. This isn’t normally easy for me, one who is guided almost exclusively by my emotional self.

Becoming fully unattached needed help. And help came in the form of a decent Roti Chanai, a hot cup of Teh O and some quiet time this morning. And a few messages form Mei and some friends too. Then the seeds of a thought that had been planted the night before germinated.

The thought I had last night is simply this:

“If I truly believe in who I am, I don’t need the approval or validation of other people.”

Some people are naturally confident and self-assured. Some, like me, are less so. We may be confident in our ideas, our values or the thinking which we reflect, but we are less assured when it comes to the decisions we make, the interactions we build, or sometimes even the person we perceive we are. Ideas, by themselves are ethereal, flimsy, essentially fascinating but ultimately useless. Unless we act on them. And though we may be confident in our ideas, being less so in our actions means we ultimately fall some way short of being effective.

The thought from last night, watered by fish curry and Teh O, grew this morning into a particular sanguine feeling that replaced the turmoil from the night before. Other ideas and thoughts that had floated before me seemingly at random in the last few days suddenly reappeared and connected with last night’s thought.

"There's no disaster that can't become a blessing and no blessing that can't become a disaster."
"We are all creators. We create things, or we create ideas, or we create excuses.”
“How sad to be a man (or woman) who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.” 

and so on…

It’s a beautiful morning out there. I’m going out to create some worthwhile things. And I am grateful for th opportunity that descended on me last night to learn more and to be a little more enlightened in this we-niverse of ours.

By the way, this isn’t a self-help blog. I merely jot down my thoughts and sometimes explain why they seem significant to me. If they have meaning for you too, then I am grateful for that and thankful you have navigated here. Do leave a kind word...

If, on the other hand, this is all utter rubbish to you, I am grateful too that you have either found a different reality that makes sense to you, or that at least you’ve added 1 to the visitor numbers here.

The Tank Chronicles Chapter 3

Blinded by the light. Not

It was a couple of days after I brought the Tank to Penang. I took her out to get my dinner late one evening. The roads around the apartment are a little chaotic with roadside stalls, bus stops, mechanic workshops and little side lanes all on or meeting the main road. The resulting pedestrian and motorised traffic movement is complex and though a little shy of Hanoi’s or Mumbai’s standards, still requires some degree of concentration at the wheel.

Remember I said I’d checked the lights? Well, I certainly checked that they came on and in the dim carpark at the apartment, I could verify this every time I moved The Tank in or out. So imagine my surprise that night when I drove out into the dark and found I couldn’t see too well. At one point on the main road, I couldn’t even pick out a pedestrian darting across and only saw him/her as a silhouette in the glare of oncoming cars.

Hmmm… a closer inspection back home revealed the beams were not too bad at the top, but virtually non-existent on the bottom. The reflectors were obviously perished and to prevent someone - maybe me! - joining them, I figured I’d better get them fixed.

Replacement reflectors seemed to be the brightest idea...

I trawled some of the spare parts dealers on the Volvo groups I’d joined on Facebook and picked out some headlamp replacements, then also sought Ah Guan’s advice. As usual, he provided some wise words of caution - essentially that replacements headlamp units may also have dodgy reflectors. He proposed a better solution which was that they had a source for some Taiwanese-made replacement reflectors and could change my tarnished ones. That seemed to be the brightest idea (ahem) and I gave the go ahead. While waiting for the parts to arrive, The Tank ventured out only during the day and on one night when I had a late meeting in town, the guys were kind enough to pick me up and send me back.

You can see the dullness in the headlamps in the picture at the top. Here's The Tank having her eyes taken out. The wheels were off because I also did a brake pad replacement at the same time.

A few days later, Ah Guan said he had the parts so The Tank had her free parking spot in their workshop while they sorted her eyes out. Just to explain - Lorong Macalister is a coupon-parking area and the residents/tenants who don’t have season parking tickets play a dodging game with the parking wardens who come infrequently and irregularly. When they do appear, someone usually gives a call out and doors come flying open and men and women scurry out with their car keys in hand to scratch out a new and valid couple before they got slapped with a RM50 fine. The Tank was safe in Ah Guan’s workshop for the day.

The headlamp unit on the floor, waiting for surgery.

You can see how dull the reflector is.

All cleaned up and waiting for the replacement reflector.

And don't her eyes look all sparkly again?

In the evening, I picked her up and she was all sparkly and shiny in the eyes and the trip home was drama-free. Cost? RM195 each without labour.

Ah Guan says the manufacturer has stopped producing these reflectors so I guess other owners will have tools for alternative sources or try their luck with old units.