Spread the Love – June 2013

Thanks to Ahpa Saeyeoh for introducing me to her friends Dickson and William. Dickson has studied Chinese medication for more than three years while William is currently understudying him. Both of them have improved on my back’s condition.
My back problem had lasted for nearly 15 years. It was worsened during my NS days due to the excessive loads I had to carry regularly. I had gone for X-ray and MRI screening but the results were not as “bad” as what doctors expected for me to downgrade permanently. Despite getting temporary “excuse heavy load” medical certificate from the medical officers (MOs), I had to continue to carry heavy stuffs. Well, I was simply unlucky because I had a bastard superior called Captain James during that time who would threaten (indirectly) all the injured co-slaves to work. His moonlighting business – some aquarium shops – should be failed by now after being cursed by so many nice people.
I was in fact one of the fittest guys in my camp other than having the injuries, which nobody could see nor understand. I had to go for regular physiotherapy sessions and campmates would jokily call me “chao geng”, thinking it was just an excuse to skip “work”. Friends who know me well should know that I was a very determined and responsible person who would do everything well and not push work around. An example would be during the BMT’s SIT test, I actually fireman-carried a platoon-mate much bigger size than me over a distance all by myself. Therefore, during my NS days, I was being hurt both physically and mentally.
Anyway, the aching on my back was more terrible than anyone could imagine. For a few times, there were sharp pains when I was jogging – obviously the spine was connected to lower body. The aching happened very often that I had lie down every now and then. More than half of my days, the pains accompanied me faithfully. I simply had to sit down for five minutes without my back supported to trigger the aching for years.
After some examination, Dickson told me I had slipped disc, which was not easily to be detected by both X-ray and MRI. He used a big stick with around five or six split ends to whack my back hard for probably longer than 20 minutes that my face turned red. He was experienced enough to tell that the pain was bearable compared to the 15 years of my torment. However, my back was numbed from the whacking that I was unable to tell him the exact condition so that he could do more.
The sore on my back improved immediately, which stunned me totally. All these years, I always thought the western doctors were right that I could only train my muscle hard to support the injured spine. Most of the time, I thought my back muscle was injured as well. If only I had more faith that my back problem could be cured or improved, so that I could seek better Chinese physician for help earlier, my life would be so much better. The pain had slowed me down badly in my work.

Back to My Workplace in the Living Room

[Friday, 29 October, 2010]

I went for supper with my younger brother and mum at the prata shop. After that, I had a fruitful morning working on my tuition agency website with a new page. I took the contents from my portfolio property site and made amendments to list Singapore’s District with Postal Code. I did some work for my Facebook marketing before I continued with the tuition agency website to include random educational quotes at the bottom of every page. I was too worn off and eased my work at 8am.

I woke up at 1pm to continue with the boring job of gathering quotes. I moved back to the living room by afternoon to speed up on my work for lying down on the mattress restricted me from typing properly; moreover, the more than a week of improper working posture had worsened my back condition.

By evening, I moved the “Edit Profile” feature to live but there were feedbacks from the server’s PHP server, which issued warnings for some not very well coded lines. It was a tough fight to solve the problem.

I started working on a Singapore Calendar Planner 2011 for the users of my tuition agency website. My younger brother shared his seaweed with me while we caught the channel 8 show at 11pm together.

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One of the Best Days – Suntan, Dinner and Movie

[Friday, 3 September, 2010]

I was taken aback to realise that my source code for the Quit Smoking Calculator being stolen by someone who was foolish enough to be discovered by me. I was probably too naïve to believe that the world was still quite decent and nobody would have done that; at least the person would have credited it to me. This was not the case this time and the girl did not even care to modify much of the coding. I dropped her an email to check if she was a human or wildlife before I would do anything. I could see details of her in her Facebook profile.

I spent too much time doing the website instead of looking for a job, and I really cherished my baby a lot.

This nasty incident forced me to include a simple copyright statement on top of the pages in a form of comment. Scripting in JavaScript for simple application was easier than doing it in PHP, which involved other pages, but due to security purpose, I would have to make new adjustments in future.

I went to bed after 5am but the backache caused me my sleep. It was really bad this time that I could only doze off after 6am despite I was really tired. I woke up before 8am, before my alarm clock on my phone sounded. Even though I lazed on the mattress, I did not dare to doze off for I knew I would oversleep. Wanling dropped me a SMS to delay our meeting time from 9.30am to 10.30am. After stepping out of my house before 10am, I asked her and she told me she would make it at 11am instead. I returned home after seeing her reply.

The top buttons of my Sony Ericsson G705 failed on me whenever I pulled the slide phone down and I had to push it back before I could press the button to send SMS. Since I had got the time, I did a restore factory setting action to be surprised that the phone went back to normal. However, it soon regained the stupidity. I was glad that the phone did not die on me totally before I met up with Wanling at Harbourfront MRT station.

We went to Breeks Café at Harbourfront Centre. Since I had taken my breakfast while waiting for her earlier on, I did not have room for food. Consuming a bowl of soup was filling enough. We started our usual chatting and I was quite astonished over her comment on me that I had too many things in mind to get working, which made her a good observer. We went over to the hawker centre to purchase our lunch from my favourite chicken rice stall before we boarded the Sentosa bus.

We went to Siloso beach on account that there would be more bikinis than the Palawan Beach’s side. We lay the picnic mats and started to enjoy the peaceful day, watching foreigners passing by and a couple showing off hot kisses. It was one of the best afternoons I had ever had, suntanning with a sweet girl who could easily tolerate all my craps and indecisiveness for more than eleven years.

Apart from the enjoyment, I had headaches regarding the dinner date I had with Guoxin and Mingli without my phone. I had to use Wanling’s phone to communicate with them and I was hoping too much to finalise it as soon as possible that it cracked my head. The problem was I wanted to include Wanling in since she had no curfew, and that Mingli had told me that she did not want to go out till late hour. Guoxin and I were considering over catching a movie after dinner over either at Vivocity or Jurong Point. If we were to catch it at Vivocity, it was more convenient to go home for Wanling but Mingli might find it a hassle to meet us; whereas, Jurong Point was too far for Wanling to go home. Guoxin suggested going to his house after the movie at Jurong Point to wait for his dad’s car so that he could send Wanling and I home, but it would be after midnight. After hesitating for some time, Wanling finally gave in and agreed to Guoxin’s suggestion.

After washing up in the late afternoon, we went to Harbourfront’s MacDonald’s because Wanling was too thirsty for the coke, which she claimed that the restaurant served the best. I tried hard to fix my phone but it insisted to depart.

We met up with Guoxin first and went to the movie ticket booth immediately to purchase the tickets. Mingli met up with us at New York New York. I had a plate of teriyaki chicken instead of fish and chips for I wanted to fill my stomach with something harder. After dinner, we shopped for a while until near 9pm when the movie started. I forgot to get a group photo before Mingli left.

We went into the cinema right in time when the movie – Grown-ups – started. The seat was low and I had a bad time with my back, trying not to block the person behind me by sitting low. The comedy was fantastic and I almost died laughing many times. I supposed the companion made it better.

After that, we took bus to Guoxin’s house and started playing with his dog, Golden. Then, we played daidee and I got my ear and forehead hit by Guoxin.

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Designing Corporate Website

[Saturday, 8 May, 2010]

I continued my work on web design in my cough and backache. I did not sleep early as usual.

It was a very boring Saturday afternoon and everyone seemed to be too busy for me. I wanted to catch a swim but I hated to go to the pool by myself because of the travelling. Gilbert gave me a negative reply on my new design and I decided to get rid of the old concept in order to solve the limitation of revamping. However, I started dozing off in my terrible back pain.

I had a chat with Wanling in MSN and I realised she had graduated. I could have hanged out with her all these while to kill my boredom of mugging in front of the laptop daily. However, she told me she would be flying off to Japan together with her family.

It started raining for a while and the weather was a bit cooler than usual. However, the temperature did not wish to maintain at its best. I made a breakthrough in my web design for the sCreative site but putting the design into webpage was time-consuming and problematic, especially when I had to debug the code for the sake of the Internet Explorer – it was a nuisance for not following the standard HTML format.

My mum was waiting for me to go down for my jog so that she could tag along but to do some walking instead. I was too enthusiastic on the web development that I decided to give it a miss since jogging might instigate a sharp pain in my lower back in my condition.

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A New Jogging Record from Marina Barrage

Last Tuesday, I finally made my trip down to Marina Barrage again after missing it for nearly two weeks. My target to jog for forty times this year was not on a safe margin yet.

Having been tortured by the awkward sleeping position on the chair during my reservist days, I was uncertain of my decision to make the trip down. Perseverance was perhaps one of my virtues. I started off with my lower back giving me the pains but I pushed on with my weak knees. I could feel myself slowing down at the beginning of the journey and I was basically dragging my feet after the finally T-junction separating Marina Barrage from Marina South Pier. Nevertheless, my timing was better than most of the trips.

It was a quiet evening. The usually long green snake kite was up there and it seemed to have conquered the other kites. I lay down by the side of the grass and tried to fix my phone as it could not save photos.

I took a long rest over there but my stomach ruled my mind and I could not wait any longer to race against the bus when the night hit 8pm. My return trip was tougher than usual but I managed to keep my speed consistent. I met the bus at the T-junction and it did not catch up with me given that it had to make a U-turn at the Barrage.

I was quite amazed of myself when I checked my timing at my finishing point – I made a new record again; moreover, it was a return trip after weakening my legs.

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Reservist had Ended

My reservist was finally over on Thursday after they out-processed everyone, giving us a day off on Friday due to Chinese New Year.

The culture of the air base was way different from normal army’s camps, and everyone, regardless of ranks, basically showed respect to any small fry. I met many great and weird people. Conversations were most of the time pointless and nonsensical.

It was supposed to be two weeks of rest for me and also for me to ponder over the future; but somehow I did not make good use of the time.

There were some days that I was able to play table tennis, pool and table soccer. I was glad to be able to exercise so that I would not grow fatter like the rest of them.

I ate more than ever, taking my morning breakfast prepared by my mum, followed by my own breakfast in the camp. I was able to finish my lunch after that. It happened almost every day.

I spent the time at home editing my websites into late hours, and thus, I tried to spend my time sleeping in the day and afternoon, which I failed because of the noises. Sitting on the chair, trying to doze off, caused me bad aches after the long struggle. I had numbness caused by the prolonged position and my knees were badly affected.

The toughest thing to do was the travelling. I hated having to transit from train to bus and followed by the internal bus, which I could not afford to miss. Lunch was quite terrible except on the last second day, which was like of like western food.

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Air-Conditioner Phobia

Since last week, my stomach was not feeling well. Followed by the sore throat was my bad backache and flu.

The weather was warm but the cold air-conditioner at night that was causing shivers in me upon waking up was more terrible. What was worst was the big air-conditioner spitting freezing air right on top of me in the office.

For the past few weeks I had been hugging my little pillow inside the office. I was not trying to act cute nor making the office cosy like my house obviously.

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