Dugong-Size Headache..

How do you cope with a gloomy and wet Monday morning, coupled with a nagging headache? You can't, although you really have no choice but to take it head-on. Didn’t even bother to grab a copy of TODAY or the STRAITS TIMES this morning....just felt like staring at the head of this guy standing next to me on the train. Strangely, it makes my head feel better; do I have the inate ability to transfer 'headaches' to other peopl??

We had 2 buffets and 1 'major' dinner this weekend....it was my birthday weekend...give me a break :) My 'diet', by now, is spiralling out of control into the abyss. Li-Anne's right, I love food too much.....well not 100% true, but it's a way of rewarding yourself after a long day, or a long week. You can’t just take that away from a man. And no, you can’t replace it with a big plate of carrots and lettuce, topped with fat-free mayonaise.

Bumped into my army buddy, Bryan, at IKEA on Saturday (again). You don't see someone over a year, then you bump into him twice over two months. He's a good guy, must reeaaaalllly remember to give him a call when I get back from Sydney. We had hell-lots-of-fun back in Service Medic School...sigh...the care-free days of the military. Ok, my headache's back, think this fellow's head has max-ed out, have to change to another head. Wow, I can feel Hiroshima starting too.....this is not good.......not good at all.......

Down Under Dugong...

Ok, it's official. My little 'Boobee' is going with us to Sydney next week! Don’t ask me why she's called 'Boobee', its just a term of endearment, and probably a mutation of the common term 'Baby'. Anyway, we're starting to fear Terelle thinks her real name is Boobee Leong.

Its absolutely incredible how much they charge you for a 'infant' seat on the plane. Let's just say it is 500% over my initial estimate. Well, regardless, she's coming with us on my business trip and we've actually arranged for a bassinet on the plane too. In case youVre wondering, I just found out the meaning of that word too. It stands for 'Bed on Plane in Sky' - size S only. It comes 'free' with her grossly over-inflated airfare. And since she ain't even going to occupy a seat on the plane, we might as well take the bassinet; father and daughter can take turns to get some snooze in it. :)

Li-Anne and I were saying that it'll be great to go back there, this time with Boobee, after what.....8 years? More so that the last time, we had some really bad shots of the Opera House. I would really want to blame my lousy underwater camera, it really was....but this time, I'll be well-equipped. Hehehe. So looking forward to it, especially when I'm staring down the barrell of the gun called 'WORK OVERTIME OVER CHRISTMAS SEASON'!! Li-Anne has been extremely supportive over this busy and stressful period; I hope we can have smashing good-old fun as a family next week. It'll be nice to meet up with Jason again after 3 years. He was the funky Chinese-Australian-Malaysian-whatever dude we met on the Grand Canyon tour back in Arizona. He has kindly offered to show my big and small 'Boobees' around while I work my a*** off DOWN UNDER!!!! Thanks bro.

Watch this A***Dugong....

It's just amazing what some people would do to get some press-time and publicity. Its like in their normal mundane lifes, they are just one-in-a-gazillion, insignificant speck of dirt which no one really takes notice of. That can only be the reason.

If you think about it, it's ain't all that difficult.

(1) Choose a sufficiently controversial topic, do be careful that it won’t get you sued in court or thrown in jail. Remember, racism in a multi-cultural based country is a definitely no-no. It obviously isn't that obvious to some people.

(2) Once you've found the topic, decide which side you want to be on. Usually, it'll be the side which 95% of the population is against. It really doesn’t matter which side YOU 'really' support deep down in your heart, you just want people to think you're a non-conformist. You can spend the next 3 months convincing your loved ones you're really not an a***hole and that you only wanted people to take notice of you. What your non-loved ones think about you is however inconsequential, so no worries there.

(3) Post some really ridiculous view on the topic in your blog, in the name of free-speech, and say you've always felt that way about it, to give the impression that you've had 'real' long-term values and views and that you're not just faking it.

(4) As in the wonderful and creative Heineken ad (I really love that one), ".......NOW WE WAIT....".

This is a sure fire way of getting the whole population of gullible Singaporeans to start talking about you. All of a sudden, your name is one of the top-ten search topics on Yahoo. Now comes the finishing move. :

(5) Find a physical representation of your topic of discussion eg. Toilet Bowl, call the reporters, tell them you need to add in the finishing touch to your masterpiece, get them to meet you and take a picture of you sitting on the item/topic with your most constipated look and watch it hit the headlines. WAHLAH............!!!!! (Just remember to give me the due-credit if this works out for you)

UNLUCKY Dugong

Ok, it's been a while, and yes, I didn’t manage to get into the SUBARU Challenge again. That's 2 years running, not too long considering that there' someone who has competed in it all 4 years since the competition started. But hey, the difference is, he got to place his hand on the cars everytime.

I'm seriously beginning to hate LUCK. It's something you have absolutely no control off, something you thank when it goes your way but you curse when it does not. Essentially, it's something you hope works in your favor, when you want to reap reward without expending effort. That's what I don’t really subscribe to, but well, sigh, I wouldn’t be complaining here if I had picked the colored ball. Its not like I would have gotten the car straight off, I just wanted the chance to compete.

To be honest, I was in two-minds as I stood in the queue waiting for my turn to pick the ball. I’ve just gotten assigned to this make-or-break humongo-bongo of a project at work, and there was no way in hell I was going to miss the important meeting on Monday. BUT I wasn’t one to quit at the last moment and dash YQ's (my partner) hope of winning the car. I made up my mind that if I got the colored ball, I'd give my 110%. He was really dissapointed, I could tell, and I really wanted him to be the one to try for the color ball. I knew LUCK never really favored me in such circumstances. Well, fate had it that the caller (main registrant) had to be the one to draw for the ball, and so, once again I had to re-live the horror of digging through a box of styrofoam ball-lets and ping-pong balls, and suffering the 'humiliation' of elimination at the hands of LUCK. YQ didn’t let his dissapointment show, but I could clearly tell he was feeling just as shitty as I did last year. His exact words were : "Oh well, back to my mundane life".

On hindsight, I probably wouldn’t have lasted the whole challenge (60+ hours this year), although I would have died trying. Reason I am sayng this is because as I was on my way to work on the train on Tuesday, I could feel a "HIROSHIMA-LIKE" ATOMIC EXPLOSION building up near my rear-end. As hard as I tried to will myself to 'tahan' till I got into office, there was no way, no way, I could have made it pass Bishan station. I started at Yishun. The rest was history, I'm just thankful the eventual blast radius was small and there were minimal casualties.

Wow, its weekend again tomorrow; certainly feels like we've had 3 weekends this week, after the 2 public holidays. Not that I'm complaining, I'd sure welcome more, but trying to pick yourself up to go to work after each 'weekend' is tough work! It's like you can’t generate enough adrenaline in your body, and then its 'weekend' again.

We had a game of racquet ball yesterday afternoon, if you ask me, is a game that should be introduced in Singapore. Its what I call a semi-skilled game, doesn’t need too much skill to start you off, yet promises you hours of fun and a very good full-body workout. We see many people struggling with games like squash and tennis, which requires a certain level of commitment to get the right skills to play them properly. Unless of course, if you find ball picking fun and a good workout, then i'd suggest racquet ball. For the uninitiated, racquet ball is played in a fully-sealed, squash-like court (longer but narrower), with a shorter version of a tennis racquet and a rubber-like squash ball which is double the size and bounces 3 times higher and faster. Sounds fun already huh?? The only downside of playing this in Singapore : you have to play it in a squash court, there are no racquet ball courts here. The squash courts here are all not fully sealed, so occasionally, the ball gets hit out of the court and you have to go chase it and retrieve it. Minor setback if you ask me. I'd be glad to give initiation sessions to any interested party, afterall, it gives me another excuse to go play. All equipment will be provided by yours faithfully, moi.

One more day to the Subaru challenge, gotta go get my medical checkup done today. Hope its worth it this year and I actually get to place my meaty palm on the car. This time round, the organisers added in a $10 registration fee per team, sounds to me like a blood-sucking money-grubbing exercise. I mean, its ok to charge a $10 fee for the teams who get to place their palms on the cars. But for those who fail to proceed past the 2nd qualification round (drawing the color ball from the box), how fair is it to charge them $10? It's already bad enough to not be able to participate - $10 to get your morale-zapped from your soul on a Saturday morning. Well, I can only be optimistic....Li-Anne's got a strong gut feel i'm gonna get it this year...so "finger's crossed"!! Oh, I met up with my partner yesterday, chatty "little" fellow, I did have a problem keeping up with his ever-changing conversation topics during our 45 minutes meeting, but Li-Anne did remind me that that's how 21year-olds behave. We were once there. I've gotta say he looks really tough, and sufficiently motivated. Never underestimate the human willpower, especially a motivated one. It's gonna be a "fight" till the end.....

Weekend Dugong

U know time really flies when Christmas is just around the corner and you remember vividly that during the last Christmas, you weren't a daddy yet. You only have time in the week to ponder about such things when you're sitting in a coffee house on a Sunday afternoon, with a sleeping baby by your side, sipping a nice cup of hot latte and waiting for your wife to meet you after her tuition assignment. Yupz, life doesn’t get any better than this. I'm serious, this is a definite good way to unwind after a hectic work week.

Right now, i'm so looking forward to the Subaru challenge. I'm starting to really think I'm going to win it this year. Just please, please let me put my hand on the car this time round. Winning a car for a Christmas present would be really nice, but that is one present I won’t be putting under my Christmas tree. I really should be putting up my Halloween decorations tonight. These are the ones we bought during our 6 month stint in US. I wish we had more of a holiday spirit here. We were reminiscing the other day over dinner about how much fun we had then. We really miss the place, and I would certainly not hesitate if given the chance to go back there for 3-4 years. I know little Terelle would definitely like to grow up there; there's just so much to do there vs here where we all throng the malls over weekends. What else is there to do here? I wish I can dress Terelle up as a little pumpkin and watch her skip off with her other little friends to go trick-or-treating during Halloween. Thanksgiving is round the corner as well. I feel every family should celebrate 'Thanksgiving', though not for the same reasons the Americans do, but just to sit around, have dinner together, and be thankful for all the little blessings that have come our way this year. Yes, I am planning a Thanksgiving dinner soon; I have lots to be thankful for, in addition to my cup of latte, my sleeping baby and my weekend-still-have-to-slog 100% dedicated wife.

Baby Dugong :)

Here's looking at you world...Have a smashing week ahead! Remember, looking at the world through a baby's eyes : with wide-eyed innocence :)

Vvvvvrrrooooommmm Dugong!

Well waht-do-u-know, I'm officially in the "Subaru game" again this year, all thanks to my wonderful wife. First she suggested to me one of her ex-students as a partner for the contest, and then she successfully got me registered as the 10th caller yesterday on GOLD90.5. Isn't that head-banging awesome or what?? It's fate, i tell u....maybe i'm suppose to win the cars this year. Well anyhow, I just wanna have a feel of how it is to compete, to stand in the hot scorching sun and bone-chilling rain for 3+ days. That has gotta resemble reservist field training, at least there aren't mozzies around. Even if I don't win it this year, it'll prepare me for next year, and the next, and the next and the next.....:)

Taking a step back from the euphoria, I'm not really there yet since we still have to pick the color ball on the 5th November to qualify, but at least I'm a step closer again. Maybe i'll let my partner pick the ball this year. You know, the funny thing is, just a couple of days back, I was racking my brains to find a partner. Now that I've gotten one and have registered successfully, the names of possible partners keep popping up in my head. For starters, I'm sure my brother-in-law Terrence would make an awesome partner...he's the bang-head-on-wall-won't-give-up kind...now why didn't I think of him earlier? Oh well, I'm sure my current partner will do just as well....more about him later :) Brother Axl, you're a day too late man....if I don't win this year, we'll do it together next year!!

A Dugong Prayer

As I flip through the papers this morning, I can't help but feel like the luckiest person in the world. I've kinda lost count of the number of natural disasters the world has endured this year. One after the other, even before we have fully recovered from the shock of the previous one. I don't know about you, but I think by far the worst "natural" disaster we've ever gotten was the mini-tremors we felt from our neighbouring country, Indonesia.

So how lucky are we? Anyone ever took time off to sit and ponder on the "How Lucky Am I" scale? I turn the page to the "Home" section and I see articles of Singaporeans rushing down to car-showrooms over the weekend to take advantage of the drop in COE prices. We are indeed very lucky....and as I've always believed, the word is "sheltered". You can see it as a good thing, but I guess, there's always the other side of the coin. Sometimes I wonder if we as Singaporeans will survive a natural calamity of this magnitude.

Imagine this :

1) No cars because all the roads are damaged.

2) No water to wash your now-useless cars.

3) We now have to wait for food-drops from planes...Imagine the kiasu-ism in full flight

4) After you get your food-drops, you complain about bad service cause it wasn't dropped at your doorstep.

5) There will be many wakes to attend, more opportunities to spot 4D numbers. But then, SPools will not be open. Have to keep the numbers for later use.

6) Natural Calamity - so no one's fault, so no one's being sued in court, so no court-cases to attend. Damn....kaypoh uncle and aunties have nothing to do but wait for food-drops.

The list goes on...but this is exactly how I feel right now when I think about the huge divide in "luckiness" between us and the various countries affected this year by the "disasters".

My prayers go out to all the families who have lost their loved-ones and children in the latest earthquake. I pray for God's protection and comfort to be upon each and every one of them. And for goodness sake, if you're reading this you morons-aka-rebels and militants, stop adding to the body-count. Please stop the fighting. Enough people have died already. If you must kill, go kill yourself.

Desperate Dugong!

I need a partner for this year's SUBARU CHALLENGE on the 4th November. Yes, to all who know me, this is my 3rd year trying to get selected for this competition. The first year I wasn't successful in calling in, the second year I actually got past that stage, made it to the draw at Civic Plaza but didn't manage to draw the number ball to qualify as a contestant. Somehow, I've got a good feeling I'll make it alittle further this year. Maybe not win the car yet, but at least get to compete. But as fate decrees, I have a new obstacle in my way this year...I now need a partner. Although there's 2 cars up for grabs this year, but seriously, it really just increases the complexity of this whole thing. Why oh why did they do this to me?

I did a thought analysis yesterday; 2 things came to mind, actually 1 was a revelation.(1) I have been out asking some of my good buddies if they wanted to be my partner on this quest, no luck so far....the reason being no one wants to let me down.....I wasn't at all aware that so many of my buddies think I'm an extremist. I mean, do you really think i'll last the whole 3 days?? :) (2) I sat down to reassess my options, I'm looking for someone whom I'm close enuff to and confident in his ability to brave the winds and fire with me, yet won't cause me to weaken in my resolve and give up when I see him grovel and convulse on the ground, while foaming at the mouth. :) So, any takers for this role? A special shout-out to my good buddy TZ - Thanks for considering! HAHAHA!

BLUE BLUE DUGONG

Monday, a bane to many, a joy for none, maybe some, a few. It's a BLUE BLUE morning, as far as I can remember, I seriously cannot remember a blu-er morning than this one. Thrashed 1-4 at home to Chelsea, in my opinion, is total humiliation. How Liverpool managed to achieve that last night, I'm not sure but it sure drove a HUGE dagger deep into my heart, plus a vicious twist at the end.

Earlier in the evening, I was standing outside the ladies washroom at Centerpoint when a nice old gentleman tried to strike up a conversation with me. Apparently, he saw the Liverpool jersey I was wearing and he commented "So, do you think they will win tonight?" With the most fakely-realistic and optimistic voice I could find, I said "Sure, I mean, Chelsea's gotta lose soon and Liverpool's playing a style of football which Chelsea does not seem to be able to counter" Gosh, on hindsight, who am I trying to kid. Anyway, that nice gentleman turned out to be an insurance agent looking for an opportunity to give me his namecard. He's been a Liverpool fan since 1970, and I thought my "since-1987" was old. But gosh, how he must have endured all the heartaches our team has subjected us to since the mid-90s....bless his heart, I mean he must have leaped for joy and hit the roof like I did early this year when Liverpool hoisted the Champions League Trophy, but boy, how we'd love to see our team trade that for more overall consistency in the League. No point in winning a trophy and then being labelled as one-offs. The worst part, and I'm sure all the other Man Utd and Arsenal and XXX club fans out there will agree, is to witness another Chelsea victory. Its excruciating, totally gut-wrenching but I guess theres really nothing we can, or our teams can do about it. RUN RUN RUN AWAY WITH THE TITLE, YOU BLUE FACED BABOONS, while the rest of us sit around and weep......

Attack of the Cheek Swipers : Dugong Fumes

To all my faithful readers and my most critical reader, my dearest wifey, sincere apologies for the long absence. We all understand how work sometimes zaps up most of our time, and I do want to maintain the quality of the content I put up here for my dear readers :)

We have just returned from a 3-day cruise to nowhere on board the Superstar Virgo over the weekend. Excellent ship, facilities, my kudos to the excellent service attitude of every single international staff on-board. They make you feel right at home, hmmm...that doesn't really sound too accurate, since we seldom do experience such good service attitudes here at home. I'll rephrase that to : "They make you feel so glad to be away from home". If you're wondering how I can justify that statement, just look at the number of Singaporean staff they have on their on-board crew, also noting that Star Cruise has an office in every major city including Singapore where they do their recruitment. Yup...a big fat zero. Special mention goes out to the male crew working in the Galaxy of the Stars club; he was dressed as an angel during the Chariot Race and the Bingo game. We really enjoyed your rendition of a fairy, when you were trying to entertain Terelle after the game.

The three of us had an excellent time on board, the unlimited-food wasn't great, it was ok, but at least it was unlimited. There was breakfast, mid-morning tea (to flush down breakfast in time for..), lunch, dinner and finally supper (for the gambling ghosts to re-energise themselves to continue contributing to the economy of the ship owners). Amidst these frequent mealtimes; during which its pretty evident the Singaporeans get pretty well-fed, we were indeed appalled to see certain "mou-mou" Singaporeans doing "take-aways" with their empty Gardenia Bread wrappers and even their wet swimming towels!!! I have never felt such a strong urge to stand up and sing the national anthem. Yup, even in international waters far far away from home, our people keep our flag flying high....

I'll dedicate the next paragraph solely to the Cheek Swipers...what are they? Talking about them certainly makes my blood boil. You know the kind of people who come up to a cute-baby, with super cute and chubby cheeks like my little Terelle (ok..i'm bias...sue me...), well at a blink-of-an-eye, they launch their two thick potato-wedges-like fingers, clasp them around the baby's cheeks, and swipe with one swift motion, leaving the cheeks vibrating violently in the wind.....They then let off their evil victory cry "MUA HA HA...SO CUTE THIS BABY!!!"....and then march off into the sun, without batting an eyelid and a look of acknowledgement at the parent. Yes.....I'm sure we are all guilty at some point of our lives, but I swear I've seen the worst on board the ship. The least they can do is acknowledge the parents, compliment the baby and ask for permission to play with the baby. Biggest lesson learnt for me on this trip : Parents, you are the gate-keepers to your baby's well-being....you should always keep a look-out and be aware of the things and people around you. If you see something which you feel your baby might not like being done to him/her, you have the right to speak up and say no. Either that or you teach your baby to bite hard at fingers or better still, you bite. :)

Dugong Sports Update

Here's a semi-regular score update of the sports and teams I like and support; for the times when you don't see any updates here, please go look for the scores somewhere else. This column aims to develop "breadth" among sports junkies like me. In my opinion, local sports junkies watch too much soccer and nothing else. Sport ON!!

Baseball

Barry Bonds return for the San Francisco Giants for only his second game against the San Diego Padres. The Padres are leading the National League West and the Giants are now only 5 games behind after today's 5-4 home win in SBC Park. The only way the Giants will qualify for the post-season will be if they run out league winners. They are way behind in the wild-card race.

American Football

The Philadelphia Eagles kicked off their season with a 10-14 away loss to the Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons gained sweet revenge against the team whom they lost to in the NFC Finals last year. Terell Owens registered 100+ yards for the game but the Eagles was not able to reverse the two-touchdowns which they gave away in the first quarter.

Soccer

Liverpool charged through the gates in their first round group match of the Champions League away to Real Betis. Two quick goals scored within the first 20 minutes by Florent Sinama-Pongolle and Luis Garcia, followed by sheer defensive defiance, were enough to earn them the 3 points with a 1-2 win over Betis. This was an all-important start to the group phase and Liverpool continues to prove their detractors wrong by churning out hard-fought victories, especially on the European stage. Looks like they are all out to prove that last season's Champions League victory was no fluke.

Dugong Thinks...

I've always had this knack for putting thought into how I would and should react if I were in certain situations in life, even though there's like a remote chance of 1in a million. (Strangely, most of them are food-related) Don't know what I'm talking about? For eg. what would you do if you won a million dollars in next week's TOTO? Hmm, not that good an example since I'm sure many of you do harbor that desire every week and have thought about this before. How about what would you do if you had to choose between eating a bowl of elephant dung or licking someone's sweaty armpits (thoroughly)? The failure to do either one would result in a bullet through your cranium. It's food for thought - my rationale is that it kinda prepares you for the situation when it really happens. Of course, this also makes good conversation starters, or it can get you ridiculed but I swear I've seen people's eyes glaze over in deep thought when posed these questions.

Which kinda brings me nicely into my topic for the day. I've just watched thelatest episode of FEAR FACTOR - TWIN CHALLENGE. Replace that bullet with a measly 50 Grand, and you'd be amazed at what people will do to win that money. And I must emphasize, it's not even guaranteed. There's another 2-3 more deranged pairs of contestants waiting to snatch that away from you. It's not so much the physical challenges, but the things they make you eat : the latest was cow "slop" (what the hell is that??). Is there even such a word? Let me add : the "slop" was also maggot infested, and served on cow bones, which means you had to yank the "slop" off the bones with your teeth. At this point, I"m thinking "slop" = decomposed raw beef? Then you have to crawl through a pool of cow innards, dump the "slop" in a meat grinder which happily churns the "slop" into even sloppier "slop" which then falls into a tall glass. And yes, you guessed it, the last part is to drink + eat + SWALLOW the semi-solid sloppy "slop". I wonder what the after-taste of that is like....There were 2 male teams and 2 female teams. Both the male teams got through it with minor irritation and grimacing. One of the female team was half-way through it, then decided to swear off beef for the rest of their lives. Interestingly, the only team who had the guts and brains and self-pride to walk away from the challenge were the blonde twins!! (People who write blonde jokes - are you reading this?) Two things must have crossed their minds : (1) We can make the 50 grand in a smarter way, (2) There was no point in going into something knowing that we will not be able to complete it. Either way, my personal opinion, it was smart of them. Anyway, they've had their 15minutes of fame on national television, how many of us can boast that we've been on FEAR FACTOR? I personally feel some of us should really try to get on the FEAR FACTOR game some time in our lives. Write to Jerry Bruckheimer or something.... I guarantee you that after that, no matter how disgusting and lame your acting or multi-linguistic capabilities are, theres a high chance our Singapore television corporation will still hire you for roles in their drama serials......read a certain Mr Wu...:)

Food Fight Dugong-Style!!

Ever tried feeding semi-solid food to a 5-month old baby sitting in a BUMBO chair? Here's evidence of how messy and fun it gets. :)


An update on Baby Terelle for all our friends : She's growing up nice and strong, extremely interactive baby. We have started her on semi-solid food, probably a cause of her more-frequent 'mudslides' but we're only guessing. She's almost able to sit up fully on her own and she's got one-hell of a grip. Her favorite toy, for the moment, is a neck-extendable, lullaby-crooning, nice and soft yellow giraffe. It's my favorite too. :)

I think she's already trying to speak, and according to books, we should imitate the many sounds and gurggles she makes : they say it gives her confidence to speak. She spends a lot of time now playing and looking at her fingers, must be really fascinating to have ten stubby stick-like things moving independently of each other and yet obeying your every command. Hmm, that reminds me of a good fren of mine with similar stubby-like fingers even at age 29. Hehehe. We get a really good laugh seeing her do that, especially when she reminds us of the signature move of this one Wrestler : BOOKER-T. We say she's in the BOOKER-Terelle phase. I'm wondering if she picked this 'skill' up during the numerous night feeds, when I would cradle and bottle feed her in my arms while sitting in front of the TV watching WWE Wrestling. Come on, that's the only program worth watching in the wee-hours of the morning!!

Dugong Going Back to Work...

FREAKONOMICS.

If you have not heard of this book before, I'd like to urge you to go get it. Number 1 on the non-fiction charts for God-knows how many weeks, it's gotta be good. I got a copy as a present for my out-going manager a couple of weeks back. Looking back, I should have gotten the book earlier, read it first, then give it away. I hope this lady does not notice me reading over her shoulders in the train now. Lesson 1 for the week : Do not take for granted you will get a copy of TODAY newspaper at the train station. Keep a book with you all the time. If not, you'll be relegated to a 'reading material' amoeba, reading over people's shoulders. And I know that's freaking irritating.

An advice to all smokers, don't smoke. If you like to know why, go speak to my dad. To be brutally honest, he's lucky to be alive today and you, the other smoker, is lucky to have a living testimonial to speak to. Call me to make appointments. FYI : His exact words were : "It's like dying and then coming back to life."

To all the well-wishers out there; my fellow 'brothers' and 'sisters', thanks so much for being around. My dad's recovering well, they've moved him to the general ward yesterday. If he continues his speed of recovery, he could be out of hospital end this week. Yippee!!

*A BIG WET DUGONG SLOPPERY KISS FOR ALL*

Worried Dugong Part III

(written on 8th September)

The times you pray the hardest, are the times when you're at your wits end. When you witness the degree of fear in your dad’s eyes for the very first time and you can’t do anything to make things better, it qualifies as one of those times. My dad has always been a fighter, meticulously plotted battle plans, zero-risk taker. U'll get better odds betting singapore to win the world cup than convincing him to go try a new restaurant downtown on saturday. But that’s exactly why he's been able to provide us with such a comfortable family life. He's the 'safest' as 'safest' gets. Going into the operating theatre for a triple bypass, that’s gotta be the biggest involuntary gamble he has ever made. I reminded him he was a fighter, a no-nonsense tough guy before he was wheeled in, and that I was going to see him in the morning. He must have remembered, because he came through after 4 hours, 1 arterial and 3 ventral bypasses. That's just one too many vessels you'd want replaced in your body.

Worried Dugong Part II

(written on 7th September)

Invasion of the pretty nurses from China. Lots of them, scurrying around the hospital, going about their jobs. Most of them have really good service attitudes too, although some could really get on your nerves. One was trying to explain to me that I will be the single point of contact between the hospital and our family. She took 3 minutes to explain tat to me, then asked me; "You understand what I just said?" I should have given her a moronic look, do a dugong flip in the air and made her do the explanation again.

NUH has a kinda neat but whacky way of welcoming their open surgery cardiac patients. They've got this photo album of all the equipment, procedures, which they use to 'walk' the patient through the itinerary for the next few days. Thoughtful, but kinda scary I feel, although some patients might want to dream about these things the night before their big surgery. Acquired taste I have to say.

Worried Dugong Part I

(written on 7th September)

Ever wondered about the fragility of life, tat despite feeling and looking healthy, something 'bad' is just hiding deep beneath your system waiting for the right time to pounce on you? I'm not saying I’m justifying my strictly carnivorous diet, but in any case, I’ve given my word to start eating 'grass' when Terelle starts having to eat hers. Triple by-pass operation, tat's wats been lined-up for my dad tomorrow. It's open heart surgery, but the surgeon sure makes it sound routine. I'm praying for a speedy recovery for my dad, i'll bring my omnivorous days forward to the day of his discharge. It's for my own good anyway.

Dugong Awaken....

(written on 7th September)

It's natural to feel totally incensed when your baby daughter starts to cry at 2am in the morning. Especially when she hasn't done that for months and this particular night, milk didn’t seem to have that magical effect. The lack of sleep does make you say 'nasty' things to your wife like, "I'm going to think twice 'bout having a 2nd kid". Then morning comes and I get a call from my brother-in-law tellimg me my dad has been hospitalised for a minor heart attack early morning. I then look at my baby girl kicking around in her crib, is she psychic?? Tat's probably something I may never find out but it sure as hell felt tat way. I gave her a bigger kiss than usual before I left for the hospital.

Greetings from Dugong Land....

...ark..ark...ark...ark....ark...I'm assuming that's how a Dugong sounds like....

This blog is inspired by my beautiful wife Li-Anne and my ever cute daughter Terelle. I better also mention my ONLY two "good-looking" friends Alvin and Labia Tan. And of course, there's Angela too.

That's all for my first entry, i'm glad this blog site is easier to use than my previous one...Dugong Leong signing off....