Mission: Life Saving; Status: Completed!

This is Lee An Qi and I. 60% or about 500grams of my liver is in her body now. Dying of cancer, this 13-year old girl must get her whole liver removed and replaced with a new one. So after tests and more tests, it was found that my liver matches hers. So surgery was done on the 14th January 2009.


Next to me is An Qi's mother and father. We are now like family and I am grateful to have a new family in life. It was so touching when her mom repeatedly say thank you to me and how my mom said that An Qi's mother always say 'We are lucky we have your daughter willing to donate her liver'.


After surgery, I had tubes all over me. Note something colourful hanging over my neck - tubes for the drips, medicines, pain-killers and others. In ICU for the first 2 days I also had my left wrist with wires for measurement of blood pressure. I also had a tube through my nose going all the way to the stomach for removal of gas and acids from stomach. Oxygen for breathing also introduced tubes to my nose. On my left hand was provided a Nurse Call button and on the right, the pain-killer release button - to release pain-killers when I am in pain.

I also had another tube to remove fluids from my body - note the picture above - the tube was then removed and replaced with a small bag at the right of the lower abdomen. Hmmm.... another tube for removal of urine! Tubes everywhere!

I also thought that having a surgery = reduction in weight. Seems like I was wrong because the tummy stays and the fats content stays. No lipsuction involved, I sleep and sleep and sleep... and eat and sleep and eat and sleep... so expect my weight to grow steadily!


Nurses removed bandages to change the dressings and I took the opportunity to take this picture quickly. I never expected the scar to be this big and long.

The menu - hey this is like a hotel - I get to choose what I want to eat - breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea and supper.

This is the tube removed from my neck. I asked the nurse to hold it up for my camera pleasure.

When the tube to remove fluid from my body was slowly being pulled out from my body, I still remember the excrutiating pain! About 10 cm of tube was in my body and by the time nurses removed it, I think the intestines or tissues have grown around it. It was so painful but not at this hole, but inside the body! Phew... it took about 15 minutes for the nurse to remove the tube - lots of deep breath, 3 releases of the pain-killers and almost tears rolling off my cheeks. No stitches needed, and the wound will heal by itself.

My PDA, My Life

I just realised how life has been so dependent on gadgets. I depend on tools a lot for my work but most of them are gadgets and softwares.

My good ol' O2 XDA II - large screen, fast processor, big RAM

Two or three years ago my hands landed on a O2 XDA II phone which I only forked out RM400. My Dad gave RM200, Mom gave RM400 and my boss (at that time was Mr. Mok) gave RM200. Total: RM1,200 for a second hand PDA phone. Now, if you can sell it off for RM300, make a real big laugh! I bought it from Lelong.com.my - a place where bargains begin...

It was one of the best PDA - big screen, fast processor and by far the best RAM ever had. Too bad is only Pocket PC 2003 and not Windows Mobile. I had good experience with it - the only drawback is that all data will be gone if it is out of battery for some time. However, with frequent synchronization, my data are all safe. The only frustration was when you least expected it to wipe out everything and you have to reinstall all third party softwares..... again. This process could be as painful, if not more painful than formatting the PC.

That day when I came back from Singapore I realised I forgot the charger. Oh NO! However, not to panic - I got the cradle which could charge and sync the device perfectly. The happiness only lasted for 3 days and alas, the cradle went crazy and couldn't sync anymore - means no charging, too!

Panic! Now, looking around Cheras I could not even get the charger nor the cradle - this is too old a phone to look for its accessories.

Asus P750 - tempted to buy at second hand price of RM1,111 from Lelong - 3G, GPS, Business card recognition - all I wanted

My DREAM phone - but spending RM2,000 for a PDA phone with same platform wouldn't be much of a good investment particularly current phones can already fulfil what I need (eg the Asus P750 at half the price)

Would love to land my hand on this G1 Android - Google phone - something on a new platform. Available in Malaysia. Again from Lelong, it states a price of RM1,900 - RM2,300. Anyone thinks you want to throw away this phone, maybe you can throw it to my house at 25, Jalan Perdana 1/8, Pandan Perdana, 55300 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia!

So..... I got myself a PHONE! I bought the O2 XDA Stealth - second hand one (RM500 only!) as something I could use as spare for the mean time. I have been eyeing on the HTC Touch Diamond for some time and the new Google G-phone was also very tempting.

O2 Stealth - yea the sliding looks nice heh... and the keypad for easy texting - no more poking with stylus for sms! (the keypad was a blunder though)

However, my objective at that time was to have a phone up and running and transferred all data to so when my XDA II wiped out data, I will still be OK. So, the O2 Stealth. WHY this model - too short a research.

The first few weeks trying the new phone was a bit out of my patience boundary (the boundary was never large anyway!) The phone hangs, the battery life s**ks and it wasn't really such a great phone. But getting the Windows Mobile 5 phone for me to test on newer softwares than my XDA II can take, this was real worth trying.

After a few more days, my patience with the phone has gone to another level - I MUST upgrade my PDA phone! So I sms-ed that guy in PDA Concept where I bought the phone. I said - may I have Asus P525 (after some research - this is almost a similar phone but much better), and trade in this Stealth. I researched on Lelong.com.my that the phone can go around RM400 to RM550. He came back to me and said - I can take back the Stealth at RM350 and I am selling the Asus P525 at RM688.

What? RM688 - RM350 --> I will need to top up more than RM300, lose a phone and get another. If I only spend RM450 - I have 2 phones (means I buy a P525 from Lelong members).

So....

RM300+ for only ONE phone

RM450 for BOTH phones <---- and I still can sell the Stealth over Lelong at RM400 at least! I am also a Lelong-er, dude!

Anyway, thank him or whatever - I forced myself to learn upgrading the ROM and I did it all by myself. I was first attracted to PDA Concept because it was near my house and he provides LIFETIME SOFTWARE SUPPORT. I sms-ed him for help to upgrade the ROM but he never got back to me and he still calls himself Software Expert. Ahem....

Good or bad - I learnt a new thing so is GOOD! I enlarged my patience boundary so is also GOOD!

Let me try for a few more days to see how the new ROM works.... And I will use The Secret and Law of Attraction to attract my Dream phones which will drop from the sky right at my house!

Phew.... got some time to figure out WHY all the buttons of my Stealth are not working upon soft reset. I need to plug it to the laptop, do a soft reset and then voila, it works! Then if I unplugged it from the laptop, reset and all the buttons not functioning again. It was also the main reason I did a ROM update but alas, the same happened. I have tried uninstalling all software one by one to catch the culprit. But guess what, the Remove Program function does not have the CE-Star (Chinese software) in the list. You can only go to its folder, click on Uninstall. That was why I missed this software in my culprit-finding process earlier on.

Thanks to this forum, I finally realized what happened and I will try new Chinese softwares.

Mama Mia! Here I Come Again!

Wooo hoo..... It was a fine day when Dato' Sri Ong Tee Keat asked if his staffs wanted to watch the great musical hit, Mama Mia! I straight away said YES! That was what I have been waiting for so long and here it comes a free treat.

Today I went to the show at 8.30pm. I was getting excited because the last minute confirmation only came at about 4.30pm when I was on the way back to KL from Johor Bahru. I put on my best dress and then headed to Istana Budaya, reached there at about 8.00pm.

My colleague from Dato' Sri's office said he got 3 tickets - one VVIP tic and 2 VIP tics, further saying he will take the 2 VIP tics as he brought his wife along. All these years, watching musical shows and theatre, I have never got the VVIP seat before. Well, for the price of that VVIP seat, I'd buy something else although no doubt, it was all the worth! This time I have the whole seat for myself, right at the middle of the hall at the second level, right at the front row!

Guess what, Tun Dr. Mahathir came with his wife and it must be 2 grandchildren with them. They took the centre seat at the Level One.

The show was really enjoyable and the songs made me remember the time when I was young. It wasn't my time when ABBA was popular but my cousins love the songs so I got to listened to ABBA songs, too. I still remember an album, ABBA Gold, in my house. It was missing one day and my cousin got so furious so I knew it was special.

My best New Year SMS

I have my phone ringing and buzzing non-stop for the New Year 2009. I thank ALL my friends who have sent those messages to me and I will ensure I have time to reply each and every sms.

The best sms I have ever received came from Allen Lee Loong Hwee - my colleague in the sales team - whom we named ourselves as EAGLES.

The sms goes like this

Go to RM500,000... yahoo!!

That's the end of the sms. Reminding me of my goals for the new year is one of the best sms and moreover, this will be my main focus for 2009. RM500,000 - here we come!!!