Flowers through Time written by Daryl Lee

I just reached Raffles Hall with my haversack and roller bag. My second Hostel stay. My first was in NTI before it became NTU. This place was more centralised, only 5 minutes walk to the Engineering schools compared to a 60 minutes bus ride from NTI Hostel to NJC with all the morning traffic jams.

Also, I had a stint at the Old Raffles Hall and I am impressed with the character of the Hall.

The new one was smelt new paint. No more washing my own toilet, yippee! And amazing washing machines! And lovely kitchenettes! It's heaven! Well as compared with NTI Hostel at least. And they also had a Yunnan Gardens Restaurant too. And the swimming pool is a stone's throw! Amazing!

So I got me a new roommate. Gerard was a 1st year Science undergraduate. Had hall orientation. Strange culture but I enjoyed every moment of it but of course, I also said no to some of the things I was uncomfortable with. But I made up being enthusiastic and pro-active for the others so maybe the seniors would cut some slack on me.

Some of the freshmen in Block 5 were not taking kindly to the change from mama's love and home cooking I guess. But I was thrown into Singapore to Study for 2 years in NJC after a short stint in Bangsar studying for Matriculation at Taylor's college.

Made lots of cool friends with the freshmen at block 5. Especially the corridor walkway rooftop midnight talks. Everything was airy and fun but out of the blue, there was a reported death of a freshman. she was an Art student and apparently, she committed suicide and it had nothing to do with studies as it hasn't yet begun. I just had a few words with her, that's all. Sigh, there was a heavy heart.

We attended her wake and the rest of the year it was blurry of activities. Lots of serving the Engineering class of photocopying and handling the entire lecture theatre. Also, I signed up as the hall photographer. Needed the points to qualify for following year's Raffles Hall admission.

End of the university year, I planned a trip for our Singaporean Hostel friends to visit Malaysia, Taiping, Maxwell Hill, Pangkor Island, Ipoh and Cameron Highlands on Budget. My bad was although I fully explained what Budget meant to Singaporeans, I didn't realise there were different expectations of Budget for different Singaporeans. LOL. Good eye-opener.

I made great friends with a marvellous guy, Ng Eng Sai on a road trip on a music George Michael's Careless Whisper on the Walkman.

We laughed a lot, had a difficult time attending to some of the more demanding Singaporean freshmen ladies on the budget outing who have never taken Malaysian public buses before nor smelled the fertilisers permeating the Cameron Highlands fresh produce. Eyes roll!

But my heart was wrenched when I heard Eng Sai passed away in the swimming pool in Singapore. Another promising lovely soul was just taken before his prime. Sorely miss you, Eng Sai.

We are just like flowers in the wind. In the passing of time, nothing stays forever, only memories by even that, it would fade away.

But I was grounded as I was in a relationship with my wonderful girlfriend of 3 years, an Ipoh girl, living about 1 km from my house and yet I found her in KL studying in Taylor's, on an afternoon session, mine was the morning session. I didn't know what it meant to have your heart torn out from you until my year 2. Long distance relationship was difficult with letter writing and the occasional midnight coin fishing public phone stunt at Forum side, can't do that in the Raffles Hall as too many freshmen were walking around in the middle of the night.

Well to cut the story short, it really was heart wrenching. Shocked. I was in the automatic mode of denial. Aced my 2nd year exams, not sure how. Maybe my equally mad photographer Sister Chua Ai Ling spent equally mad time playing billiards with me in the middle of the night. Thank you, Raffles Hall, for that Billiard table! Also, I buried myself with so much hall activities there was no time to grieve. Got into Student Exchange with Hong Kong University and worked in Gammon Hong Kong construction.

My Third year went through like a blur. Qualified for a single room in Block 6. Enjoyed the regular Cheese Pie that Resident Fellow made. Studied hard and helped my fellow classmates to understand lessons. But the heart was slowly dying. No one could take the pain away. Not any of the brothers. But somehow there was one Senior Lady who managed to soothe a bit. (As a big Sister, no such thing as a Mrs Robinson kind of thing). But to my amazement, my final 3rd Year resulted in total failure in 4 subjects. Total blackout! Fastest turn in of the exam papers. Bloody embarrassing but I couldn't turn back the clock. Lesson to learn, get up and move on. That was the wakeup call. Acknowledge the loss, lock those emotions and focus the immediate urgent matter. Studied hard for the resit in Jun.

Decided to leave Raffles Hall on my 4th year and start a new to refocus on my studies. Shared an apartment with 3 Senior RH and 2 Junior 2nd year RH. Got my Engineering degree thanks to my Raffles Hall's friends be it in RH building or outside.

So my advice to my new RH freshmen, remember, life will throw many curve balls at you. Your job is to realise that you are to get up and walk again just like a child learning to walk.

Epilogue.

I have been climbing up mountains as I love to see mountains which seem immovable but in actual sense, it does but only in a different timescale. I was in Melbourne at Donna Buang Mountain up at the snowline when I discovered I had shortness of breath everytime I took 2 steps. I was 52 yo. I had run the marathon, did a short triathlon, climb mountains, ate clean, lots of vegetables, limited meat, no white rice, white flour, and yet a curveball was in the way.

That's the good news. What caused the collapsed lung.... they discovered I had elevated CA125 marker. 617. Normal is 35 max. Usually a sign of ovarian cancer. Yeah right!

Realised I was operating on one lung, my right one was flooded. 

Turned out to a pleural effusion of Kyle fluids

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I was immediately wheeled into death watch section. I made friends with my neighbour in that section of the ward. We chatted. And the next morning when I woke up, he was neatly wrapped up and sent to the mortuary. Oh boy. Am I the grim reaper? I felt okay, climbed up the stairs and doing the star jumps and walking around the ward, making nurses and doctors worried because my medical blood readings did not correspond with my outward alive robust exterior making jokes and laughing and what not. Not the typical CA125 dying patient. Made a new friend with a new patient. Short friendship. He too left this world the next day. I was a "distraction and a disappointment to the medical team to be in the death watch section" so I was shifted to the okay section and then to the not immediate danger section. I was then transferred to Singapore hospital (I discovered my condition when I had my regular RM1 check up in Ipoh)

After a PET/CT scan

I was covered entirely with Lymphoma stage 4, Follicular Transformed. All the black spots (except the brain) are active cancer.




Whoa!!! Doctors say wow! Totally advanced stage. And to imagine for the past one year, my regular Singapore GP checkup told me it was just gastric and gave me Omeprazole to relieve the discomfort.

So my family and friends were surprised by my composition. I was cheery and happy. Maybe close proximity to Hospital Bahagia at Tanjung Rambutan, I stay in Ipoh, has finally rubbed off on me. Or perhaps Alzheimer's or dementia. But I reasoned this, at least with cancer, I had TIME! to set things in order, unlike a road accident that would instantly remove me from this plane of existence. So the grass over here is always greener. Yeh!!

I made a bucket list to live the next 100 days, and then the next 3 years, and 5 years, and 10 years. I had planned to live to 120 years old (God willing) but looks like I have to prioritise the more important things to do. Much like preparing for exams all over again.

But then I have many curve balls thrown at me over the years in my career life that I could take what is thrown at me, I guess.

A good training I received was Tony Robbins "Change your State." I learned how to walk on hot burning coals, and to make my money's worth I walked 8 times until I was stopped.

So I had made plans.

After my cancer treatment, I'd go Sapa Vietnam and climb Mount Fansipan
The cancer treatment didn't work. Some were under control but some grew bigger once the others were inactive. So more expensive trial drugs and nauseating after effects until it wasn't working at all. By then I was well versed with my continued education on my kind of Refractory Follicular Transformed Diffused Large B Cell Lymphoma through Google search. The lifespan is 1 and max 2 years. But I could always be outside the normal bell curve, yeah? Well, I have always been operating outside the bell curve anyway.

So I decided to change my treatment plan and suggested to my oncologist to change to Radiotherapy to kill that infuriating stubborn mass of Lymphoma near my stomach. It worked! Yeah. For that part. But then it spread to other places. Bummer. Another round of even more expensive Chemotherapy.

More supplements. More happy thoughts. More prayers. More chemotherapy. More bucket list. And after 1 year and 3 months of cancer therapy in SGH, there is a glimmer of hope. My cancer is now under control via chemotherapy. Next step, to control it via 1 year of oral chemotherapy and it that works, to test and monitor 1 year without any oral chemotherapy before being declared Remission.

Thanks to God for answering Family, Friends, Raffles Hall friends, Civil Engineering School friends, ASEAN scholars mates, NJC friends and St Michael's Institution schoolmates for all your prayers.

I will make more news in the future! Yeah!