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302 - 19.8.26 - 3: The road to recovery

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You never know how long it is going to take you and when you are in the middle of it, that middle seems like it is forever. But with unconditional love and warmth, and the passing of time, shoots regrow and new life begins. Once more the sun rises - it also rises - and we live to enter a new day. For the longest time it is just the one foot before the other. Just the sheet determination and will of doing that. Then, one day, you wake up and the world has rearranged itself into a different shape. A different place. One day, you see you are still alive and the person who you thought was gone, will always be there with you. Just in another way. In a way whereby they will always be there when you need to ask for help. They are now your own personal angel. And then you realise that they have always been your own personal angel and you know, with hindsight, how lucky you were. How lucky you have been.  I cannot think of my life as any other thing than ...
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301 - 18.8.26 - 2: Swim

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Photos from first day of the seventh month when we went to visit Lianne in Chinatown I did my run and swim today - I also went to get Ma's pillow from AMK Hub. After the swim, while resting against the pool, I thought to myself, this brings us to the end of this phase. It seems like we had made it out of such a difficult time. I also thought, everyone played their part. We all came together as a family and we held each other. Ma of course is trying her very best, but she was the one who needed most support. Being here I gave her that space to heal, and the boys being here supported me. Jac was right alongside me - juggling work and family, and this truly difficult time. But we made it together. Crying and laughing and holding hands to bring ourselves through to the other side. A side which must live without Pa now and trying to create a new chapter in our lives.  That is the new side. The new us.  Broken and put together again. P...
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301 - 18.8.26 - 2: 2 more days

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At this of the year, when the Persiads fall, we head back to Ireland. I am heading back to Ireland, but this time I am also coming back again after 3 weeks. It will be very sad these three weeks. Already not having Pa there yesterday made me so sad - we all know Pa so well that we would have known every reaction he would have had. Pa was mostly deaf and he was becoming demented. He was also getting very weak. How long he had that cancer we do not know, but for certain, he succumbed to its effects so quickly. Ten days - that's how long it took. Ma was in good form yesterday, she was laughing and recounting stories. Jac and I brought her to Orchard Road and then wheeled her around Orchard Road. We met fellow wheelchairs goers. That familiar feeling of walking past buildings which exuded the cool air from their open sliding glass doors took me back to childhood. Many buildings of my childhood were gone. The only ones left standing in a recognisable form are Tangs and Lucky Plaza - two...
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300 - 17.8.26 - 1: Ma turns 80 today!

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Ma turns 80 today. It was Pa's fifth month anniversary yesterday, but in all honestly, I did not even remember it for two reasons. One, because him not being here is something which we have accepted and two, that he always here now. Pa is always with us, all the time. I can really feel it. He is still here looking after us and protecting us.  I truly do feel it. Pa.  I was thinking about the idea of what is beautiful and Ruskin's idea of "Do not have anything in your home which you do not believe to be beautiful or useful". Which is very good advice. And it is also great advice for anyone deciding what you should do about something, should you get rid of it or should you keep it? Of course beauty and use are subjective, but sufficient is not. If you have something which is surplus to requirements, it is always going to be problematic. So being able to have enough, to have a good bit of fat, to make sure that you have developed a sense of balance - those are all things...
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228 - 16.8.26 - -1: Today's the Day

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Well, today I reached 16 weeks of running. I didn't run the last two days - and I might not run today, but no matter. It is 16 weeks and I have lost loads of weight. Not everything I hoped I would, but still, it has been great. I'll probably go laters. So Jason Arday is dead. Looks like he killed himself. But who killed him, really? The people who enabled him and then the people who went on a pile on. He was squished between two boulders. Weirdly, the people who enabled him did not appear to have his back when the enabling eventually meant that he was now overexposed to the well known racism of the British media. It was obscene. Also sad - he gave these people what they wanted. The hounded him and he leapt. He didn't have to leap, but he clearly didn't have enough people behind him. People who would say to him, hey this will blow over. No one from Cambridge sat him down with the PR team and said, you know what you have to do now... you had to admit that you told some ta...
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226 - 14.8.26 - -4: Ghin gets his results

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Well, Ghin got his A level results and he got straight As. After all that. He did well enough for his political paper to pull up the C he had to an A. We were expected AAB or ABB, but in the end he sat down and grinded and he got the A. He wasn't here but we did celebrate over the phone. And now my duty has been discharged and he is now on his way to university. That's him. All done. I did my run and swim yesterday and the swim was weird because it looked like I had done the lap in just over a minute which can't be right. But that's what the clock said. I did go for my run and it was easy as well. I'm just gonna keep doing this and I no longer look at myself in the mirror. I know that I have lost all this weight and that I'm recovering my fitness and that's the most important thing. I now will work in series of months. I will see out the rest of August and then start counting the days then - I think. I don't know. But everything has improved. My joints, ...
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226 - 13.8.26 - -4: Hard Fought, Hard Won

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The boys left for Malaysia yesterday. The house is so quiet. Never mind. I was thinking of going to Woodleigh Mall today with Ma - get some fruit. A simple outing. It's been weeks since we last went. When we first went, things were so different. Pa had just passed. Ma wasn't at all use about going out. We had to start very very slowly. There are times when I think my heart will go on breaking, but we do what we must. Every step we take is another victory for our ancestors, for the people who bore us. A victory for the love that saw us here and saw us on. I dreamt of Ahab last night. He looked exactly the same. I'm sure he does not look the same now. I don't want to see him again. I just want to keep what I remember. We went to the Jewel yesterday and had pork noodles. A festival of pork it was. How many pigs are taken every day in Singapore? For an airport the Jewel is pretty amazing. For a shopping centre its alright. It is essentially a shopping centre tacked onto on ...
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