He came in when I was working in the aboriginal GP clinic in the Northern Territory, wanting to have a check up for sexually-transmitted diseases.

He had good intentions, if I dare say. I could sense his frustration at knowing what is right and not living it out — and don’t we all know the feeling well. Yet as I talked to him I came to know that he had already made some other changes in his life that was worth commending. Decided to stand up to peer pressure and cut down on alcohol consumption. Starting to pick up the discipline to exercise. “But I still don’t know how to control this sexual urge,” he said as-a-matter-of-factly, “I just can’t control it, y’know.”

He saw the tray of free condoms in the room and grabbed to store more than a few in his pocket, with some embarrassment. I never paid much attention to that tray — now I know how important it is to refill it!

“How would you feel if your partner did the same?” I asked.

“Oh I’ve heard that one before. … But I won’t do it when I get married, it’ll be different,” he answered.

“How do you know you can control yourself after you get married, when you can’t do it now?”

“Yeah,” he shook his shoulders. I was sure the question had crossed his mind before too.

I opened my mouth but I stumbled to take it much further. If I said anything more, I felt, I would have been a true hypocrite. It doesn’t have to be sexual dishonesty. My words would come back to bite me.

Many other natural disasters continued to occur throughout the world, of course, and I later crossed the Tasman Sea to move to Australia just after the earthquake in Haiti hit in early 2010. It was then the anniversary of the Black Saturday bushfires that licked up a huge part of Victoria the year before. People were recounting the horror stories over radio.

Then the major floods in Queensland happened only a thousand kilometres from where I was staying, followed by Cyclone Yasi sweeping the northern parts of the same state. This time I had actual friends and people whom I knew who were in the area. Cyclone Carlos followed shortly after to hit Darwin in the Northern Territory — and I have only just been to the place earlier in 2010! The photos in the news were scarily familiar — yet now barely recognisable with the flooding, fallen trees and flattened houses on places that I have just stood in not too long ago.

And then the earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand, just yesterday, this time levelling the city area, catching all of us completely off-guard. My two brothers are there, and it was amazing to hear their first-hand experiences of the hospital blacking-out, being evacuated, and the general destruction of the city. It is unthinkable to imagine Christchurch without the century-old landmark buildings now — the day surely is history-changing.

I was flicking through my phone’s text messages when the earthquake happened, and the happy text messages only from a week ago of a friend finally finding a job in Christchurch, and of my brothers inviting me to play a game online together with them, suddenly seemed so distant and irrelevant now. Oh how things can change in a blink of an eye.

It is amazing too how these happenings seem to be getting scarily close both on Earth and in heart — in neighbouring states and in places I have grown up in. It is even more frightening, however, to think of how I can turn my eyes away from the news, walk along streets of Melbourne suburbs and immediately so easily get hypnotised by the calmness here.

I can’t help but to think it is not evitable that a disaster will strike my location one of these days. It almost feels like a guilty conscience! When and how would that be? Would I have a family of my own at that time? Who knows it will come when I least expect it.

It crossed my mind that if someone said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” again, would it make more sense now? It is a crazy time we live in these days, how far is this going to go?

I only found out then that in New Zealand (and in some other countries too), doctors are among a group of professions legally allowed to witness statutory declarations.

She has had enough of the years of his abuse, she said, flatly. I would hate to be the person completing the last part of the legal paperwork allowing the breaking up of what was supposed to be a cherished and sacred matrimony (and how those words ring hollow in today’s society), but I signed my name almost too trustingly.

At that time, I just felt doing anything else would be like preaching cold ideals to a hurting world in need of something much warmer. Perhaps I can start somewhere else if I wanted to make a difference.

I was reminded of Matthew 19 too. But I still wonder if what I did was right.
I don’t know, what do you think?

It took more than a long fortnight of wait in the hospital before he was finally scheduled to undergo the operation the following week. The consultant cardiologist and I went to see him that Monday to tell him the good news of the confirmed operation date, but Mr. G surprised us completely.

He started off painting a rather awkward atmosphere talking about scars and the cross, then later declined the operation, politely but adamantly. He told us a friend from church had visited him over the weekend, and over prayer he now felt different – he was convinced that he has been spiritually healed.

“I have faith. Give me the chance to prove to you that I am right,” he said with a smile.

And I stood there – on my left was the consultant who didn’t immediately know how to respond from a cardiologist role, and on my right the patient whose claim couldn’t be explained easily with human wisdom.

At that moment, I suddenly wasn’t sure who to root for…
I have been thinking about it.

Blockbuster movies, parties with friends, breakaway shopping sprees, travel trips, hunting for music, chasing good books, enjoying food, and all the colorful product advertisements everywhere – do they not all target at our search for satisfaction? And the world is just full of such promises of satisfaction – that it is blinding.

Many of them are short-lived. Some of them are lies. We all know. Yet it is easy to get lost, and in the process, all we end up thinking and speaking of is about ourselves. All of this is like “a chasing after the wind”, as the book of Ecclesiastes aptly puts it.

There is much more to say, but I’ll stop. It actually takes some effort to think about this in the context of our personal lives (yours and mine)! But tell me what you think.

Chemotherapy is necessary, but it is also very rough and teratogenic – it will not go well with the expecting mum and the unborn baby. The problem was big and demanded a decision.

Here are two real stories about this – about real people in their real struggles:

1. Mum and dad decided to bite their teeth and carry through with the pregnancy without chemotherapy. The cancer spread in mom and she deteriorated quite badly over the course of pregnancy. Still she managed to barely reach 32 weeks when she was rushed to the delivery suite. She gave birth to a premature little baby boy via Caesarean section, and then received urgent chemotherapy in the delivery suite, then and there. The baby boy made it into the world alive and healthy, but mom passed away shortly a year after. Dad was left alone to take care of the newborn boy.

2. Mum and dad decided for an abortion. The lead-up to the abortion was fraught with many uncertainties, but the actual procedure was over way too quickly and easily. Mom and dad turned up together to the Cancer Centre a week later and began the chemotherapy cycles. The disease was as well-controlled as you could expect in modern oncology – but not without some sense of guilt that may never leave, no doubt.

But which is the right decision? Many circumstances in our lives are often just too hard for human wisdom. That is why there are so many regrets.

I almost entered a cold war with a nurse (How embarrassingly childish, I know, sigh…).
My hands shook like a wimp when I threaded the ET tube down the bougie into the
lady’s trachea.
I felt like a complete idiot after speaking in circling thoughts to the medical registrar.
I found I had nothing to offer at all, having just certified an old woman dead with her husband
sobbing harder and harder beside. I’ve never even known what to say in these situations.

This is totally not about the grandeur of doctors realizing how little humans can actually do,
But rather how little I know – how unable and how incompetent I am,
And how frighteningly unloving, unjoyful, unpeaceful, impatient, and unkind I can be,
When dealing with all sorts of people, in all sorts of situations, four o’clock in the morning.

In between the days and nights when things are going smoothly and happily,
I really thank God for this realization.

It makes me go back to Him.

But it was too ironic.

She was definitely not alone. In fact, too many are just like her – smokers for all their lives, who suddenly (and finally), out of their own intentions, quit smoking, only to be hit by a diagnosis of lung cancer shortly after. We see this again and again. Why do so many smokers stop smoking just before they get lung cancer?

Not all admit when asked, but often it is because they could feel that something was going amiss, and so they stopped in alarm. It might be some blood specks coughed up, or some strange weight loss that had worsened – not enough to make them see a doctor immediately, but enough to scare them to think, “Gosh, all my cigarettes may actually kill me one day!!”

But it is already too late; and what is done is done.

It is easy to point at others, but there are some things too – small and big – that we – all of us – keep doing, despite knowing they are wrong. Of course we pay, in the end.

Weakly could he still nudge his head when he saw me standing beside his bed that morning, but it was a swift deterioration, and he passed away – so quickly – about nine hours later.

In retrospect, should I have spent more time with him earlier the day? Should I have insisted more strongly for him to be admitted to hospital earlier? I don’t know; in retrospect there will always be many what-if’s and if-only’s. But I’m thankful I arrived home in time when he still had enough consciousness left to recognize me. I know he had always wanted to see me for the years I was away.

In the week that followed with the funeral service and relatives visiting, I realized, too, that there are many things so close, yet not usually talked about.

What other times in our lives do we talk about finding a good and suitable cemetery to buy a spot, in preparation for the future? What other times in our lives are we so open, even in the extended family about life, death and the next generations?

So I suppose I have grown up, my friends are getting married, my parents are soon retiring, and my young cousins now able to walk and talk. The people I have around me – many so very dear – are changing, and will not be around forever. Sometimes this is closer than we think.

Indeed we are all but a mist, that appear for a little while and then vanishes. Yet God has set eternity in the human heart. It amazes me, but I know many avoid the topic.

“Yes, but I don’t think she was swearing particularly to anyone though,” her colleague beside her tried to reason.

“It doesn’t matter. This kind of behaviour is simply not acceptable, especially in a hospital ward.”

Some patients or their relatives can be inexplicably rude and difficult to deal with, I can testify! Dealing with them have been terribly unpleasant and stressful experiences, needless to say. The conversation between the nurses about zero tolerance for abuse happened more than a year ago now, but somehow, now and then I still remember it and it makes me think…

What are our real conditions for helping someone?

Can you imagine someone helping you unconditionally? It’s a very strange feeling to be at the receiving end, is what I think.