...This is getting to me ....some soppy stuff !!

UPDATES.
No ! I still have not got my internet! What I did get is lots and lots of promises! Now I am thinking of writing a nice letter to all the press and send a copy to the CEO (like he cares and would take any action at all!!

I am typing this at home and hope to post it tomorrow morning in the office.

Yesterday I was told it was the fibre optics. I am a pessimist now. I no longer think about when I am going to get my internet connection, but rather what story will I hear now. Anyway with this depressing situation, I’m going to post something serious albeit soppy. (??????)

my dear late brother..

The card he sent me which I still kept..

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.
Sibling rivalry is something which happens. Growing up, my brother and I weren’t really like that close to each other. Sure we were blood brothers but we were also rivals – in just about everything. The age difference was only three years. We talked, but we don’t really ‘talk’.

I am some brothers would share all sorts of secrets, problems and everything else. But not us! We both loved hi-fi, and there was always this ‘competition’ to see who would have the better equipment producing the better sound. It was a sort of rivalry and I guess it was diplomacy most of the time.

Sure , we had our moments together, but not as much as we both wanted to. In short, we did not share, we did not confide in each other and we went on our own way throughout our lives.

After I had been in the UK for about one year, my brother joined me But he was studying in London whilst I was about 300 km. away. . On his arrival in UK, I met him at the airport, stayed with him for a week to see that he was settled in his accommodation, college and helped him familiarize himself with the transportation route and system.

To me, during that one week, a miracle happened. The nights we spent together, we started to discover each other. We started to talk about our childhood days as if it were only week ago. It was amazing that we remembered all the quarrels and we started explaining to each other the ‘hows and ‘whys’. We talked about our problems, our moments of happiness , sadness and disappointment.

All this happened after almost 30 years.

It was a time of revealation for both of us. We discovered what it was to be brothers !. – that was our feeling !. We even managed to clear a few misunderstandings between us and it was certainly an indescribable experience for us.

We walked the streets of London, window shopping, joking, laughing and slapping each other’s back. We ventured into Soho . We were buddies ---finally. Better late than never - we both agreed ! We listened to songs together; reminisce together and even as we were walking the streets. I remembered him telling me. “ Mus, I didn’t know this is ‘you’ all along !”

I couldn’t describe my feelings. Alan Parson’s Project in The Sky---that would always take me to the best times of my life with my dear brother. Songs like ‘Eye In The Sky’, ‘Old and Wise”, ‘Psychobabble’ and so on….

After one week I went back to Hull. BUT, every weekend, as soon as I finished my lectures on Friday afternoon, I would take a bus to the main road leading to the highway and hitch a ride to London with just a back-pack.

Sometimes I had to take 4 to 5 different rides to continue my journey to London, about 300 km away. The journeys were filled with different adventures. Some funny and some scary.
I was once stranded in the middle of nowhere and by nightfall, there were no cars at all as I took a wrong ride which took me to an isolated part of the route. Either I got a ride, or spent the freezing night by the side of the road. But I survived all that. This went on nearly every week that he sent me a post crd about it (see picture ).

It was worth it to be with the brother I never ‘knew’. Every weekend with him was like re-living our childhood. We laughed at the various silly fights that we had, the scolding we got from Abah because of it, . (He once chased me with a nail-clipper and managed to clip my back. The cut left a scar like this, == on my back. He didn’t believe me and I showed him. Instead of feeling sorry, he started laughing and asked me if I wanted one on the front now. Two grown-ups were then wrestling on the floor and laughing ourselves sick.

However, all this didn’t last long. The summer of the following year, he went back to Singapore and never came back to London. On entering the departure lounge, he took a few steps then he turned around and walked back to m. We hugged for the first time ever in our lives, and cried on each other’s shoulder. Little did we know that that would be the last time ever for us.

When he was back in Singapore, he had a serious asthmas attack made worse by wrong medication given by a doctor. I lost my brother again, ----this time, forever.

In retrospect, although I regretted that all this had to happen when we were so far away from home and not at the place we grew up, I was and still am grateful for being given the chance to get together and put a life-time of relationship together in 6 months. It took me a long time to recover and overcame my regret of wasting all those time.

" Is there someone you know, and loving him so,
And taking him all for granted..
You may lose him one day
someone takes him away
And he don't hear the words you want to say..."

The above lyrics was sent to me by my second sisterin one of those moments…

The effect of my loss.
I flew back home to Singapore but missed my dear brother’s funeral by a few hours. I was badly affected by the whole thing. I stayed on in Singapore with no thoughts of going back to UK..

Days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months. Three months I stayed back with not a thought of going back to UK. I knew I was missing my lectures. Somehow it didn’t matter anymore – at that time . But things happened and I gained my senses.

My second sister who was working in Brunei kept on reminding me to move on. She was sympathetic and gave me millions of advice to get me going. I was adamant. Then she slowly turned on the screw and started to be firm with me and told me to get on with my life. That reality check helped.

My Anglo-Spanish friend Mike, wrote letters telling me in his own way to come back to reality. He kept telling me how he lost his father and how everyone would have to face such tragedies.
And a dear friend, who wrote (handwritten that is) pages and pages (averaging 10 pages of a usual writing pad) giving me reasons why I should go back and continue. .

I finally went back to UK, reported to my faculty and got the sympathy of all the teaching staff. They all rallied round to help . There were lecturers who loan me their lecture notes, classmates who gave me their lecture notes and even tutored me. Lecturers who gave me an open ticket to see them whenever their office lights were lit—and this can be as late as 9.30 pm,

In particular, I was grateful to my one of my lecturers. I really owe her big time ! I had projects to complete in various schools in the district. During a week’s break, she took me in her Volkswagon Combi van to visit all the schools in the district in order to conduct and complete my project. We were on the road for a week. I managed to complete a three-month project in a week. To top it all, it was also winter. For that whole week I was pushing and being pushed to finish the project. In a way, it was an experience to be remembered. God bless her for that.

Thus , I survived my emotional misadventure and am still missing Akim, my brother !

Oh well..........................................................................................................................................