Here's My Story

As usual, before the next appointment, my dad did CA 19.9 tumour marker test at a nearby public hospital (with the form issued by Penang GH oncologist). It went up from 51 to 59, marking the second consecutive increases after a series of decreases. I wasn't sure where it's serious or not and so we just waited to hear from the oncologist would say. Turns out that it was a non-issue: the doctor didn't order a CT scan or another round of chemo treatment. She said that since my dad is fine (could do normal daily activities independently and mobile) and has no new symptom (plus the pain in his leg subsided substantially compared to pre-chemo treatment), they'll just monitor instead. She said certain things that other oncologists had told us: for stage 4 cancer patient, chemo treatment is used to, hopefully, stop the growth of cancer or at best, reduce it by a little but it will never get rid of it. The objective is to provide quality of life to the patient and hence the...

So after the last result and 3 more months of fenofibrate, here's the latest results:                                  Oct 2017          Ref. range          Jan 2018          Ref. range      Total cholesterol           6.2                 < 5.2                     4.6                 < 5.2 HDL ("good")               1.57               > 1.04                   2.01                > 1.04 LDL ("bad")                  ...

A friend is clearly overweight. Sure, he skips rice during meal but piles on plenty of food (sometimes too much, even in his own admission) that is often fried or filled generous amount of gravy. Ban sometimes quipped that he needed to maintain his current shape. As for exercise, what's that? We tried to involve him in our outing to gym but there's always excuse of not going. Spent lots of his free time gaming. One day, Ban and I invited him to play Battlerite with us. Not for the first time, he said he did not wish to play more games because Fantasy War Tactics itself already took too much of his time. Him: I want to stop playing FWT and do something more productive. Me: Oh, like what? Him: Hmmm...exercise...(etc etc) Me: Oh good. So when are you stopping? Him: When FWT shuts down. Me: They are shutting down? When? Him: No, they're not. Me: ......soooo whether you stop playing or not is entirely up to the developer, huh? Okkkkkk Him: *silent and chan...

So after the bad experience at Butterworth Cafe , I decided to "ajak" my family and Ban to dine at Butterworth Western Food, operated by someone who used to be a partner of the former joint. I was hoping that it would be much better there. This time, I tried Gordon Blue Chicken. Unfortunately, the chicken was dry which meant the main meal was ruined. Similar to Butterworth Cafe, amount of salad and fries were pitiful although the salad tasted good. Such a shame. Fries were standard in taste. The honey lemon was so suitable that rainy day. No complain there. Overall, a poor experience. The western food I had in town (near Econsave) was much better but unfortunately, it has closed down. Oh well.

To put it more simply, a highly connected system is only as strong as its weakest link, so to strengthen the system it is necessary to lift standards across the board. - APRA chairman Wayne Byres, June 2017

I was sick for nearly three weeks! I so missed exercising! :( But the good news was that I was well in time to go to Butterworth with Ban and drove my mum (my dad came along, as usual) to her next appointment with Dr N. From the session, it was revealed that during the 2-week interva l, my mum  (1) interfered less (2) was less distracted (3) less bad-tempered (4) ate more proper food and almost no junkfood (5) slept ok, discounting those nights due to Fibromyalgia and social visit by relatives (6) had fewer ideas (7) was no more or less talkative than usual (Dr N asked) (8) still felt divine guidance but not audible Dr N then retained dosage for Olanzapine (7.5 mg at night) and Epilim (200 mg twice a day) but reduced Alprazolam (aka Xanax) by half i.e. 0.5 mg at night. As usual, I was the last one to leave her room and I took the opportunity to ask her whether she thought my mum was stabilising since she hadn't changed her medication for her bipolar. ...

Many players, including Youtubers, were unhappy about the planned change for Paladins ("cards unbound") and so one of the games that they diverted to was Battlerite, which is free-to-play. According to people who are familiar with League of Legends, they said that Battlerite is like LoL but focuses only on the fight (deathmatch). Similar to Paladins (if they haven't implemented cards unbound patch), each champion's ability can be modified using "battlerite". If you consider Overwatch to be a MOBA game but simply from a FPS point of view, then this is my second MOBA game but with a top-down view. Boy, I'm bad at it hahaha. I understand from some Youtubers that the players are far more toxic than Paladins and closer to that of LoL. Hence, for now I plan to practise in private custom game with AI team mate(s) vs AIs and then level up in the "vs AI mode" where potentially I will be teamed up with human player(s) vs AIs. If no human players ca...

Throughout my play in Atlas Reactor,  I learned a great deal from other players. Assuming you're already competent in the game, there are 3 things that even good players sometimes forget: (1) No such thing as overkill. You observes 2 team mates choose to hit an enemy during Decision phase, which you can also hit but you choose not to because their damage is more than enough to kill him. Prep phase: enemy's Finn, from the fog, cast a through-wall bubble on the target. Damn. Yes, the target survives. "There is no such thing as overkill in Atlas Reactor", Zafnir told me, especially if the support is still around. There are only few instances that you can safely don't hit the target. (2) Always confirm kill Let's say you're certain that the enemy's support is not around or the support's protective abilities are on cooldown but the target still has his dash catalyst. Do you hit him or try to guess where he cata to or simply shoot another targe...

I was still sick and so couldn't travel to Butterworth in time to bring my mum to her third appointment with Dr N. So, my sister kindly did that despite her busy schedule (thank you!). My dad, as usual, went along too. I advised both of them that they could freely correct my mum if her answers were incorrect or incomplete. Just don't start off by saying, "Mum, you're wrong", but instead say, "But mum, do you remember this and that?" or "How about those times when you did this and that?" I did this in previous sessions when meeting both psychiatrists at private and public hospital and she wasn't upset at all. Moreover, Dr N did tell me, in private, that we can correct her and also, during the second appointment, mum did, at the start of the session, tell Dr N that she would let her family answer for her (we did tell her that Dr N would still like to hear her thoughts and the rest of us could chip in later). So the door is open wide. I ha...

I read more books in 2017 compared to previous years, mainly because I read books when accompanying my dad to his chemotherapy sessions. I have to source out more books because I finish reading all that I have, except for two books that I lend to my sister. (1) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (2) Blind Eye - Stuart MacBride (3) The Throat - Peter Straub (4) The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown After a few chapters, I realised I read this before hahaha. But I had already forgotten how the story develops and so I just read on) (5) The Innocent Mage - Karen Miller I really want to borrow the second, and concluding, book of this series. Anyone? (6) Gone, But Not Forgotten - Philip Margolin (7) The Ultimates: Tomorrow Men - Michael Jan Friedman

We want to be happy but often we struggle to determine what makes us happy. Sometimes we're wrong in our guesses. What I can say for sure is no one single thing can give us happiness. Three important ingredients are love, health and wealth. Without love, what is life? Without good health, how to experience life to its fullest? Without good amount of wealth, how to live? Absence of one is likely to cause significant pain. That's what I learned in the past year. So here's wishing all of you, especially family and friends, much love, good health and more wealth for the coming year.