13) the hearse outside our place.

(that's pooi yee near the car).

my mum was advised not to see dad off (i don't know
why but apparently it's customary) so she saw him off
at our balcony.

12) in this ceremony, seng chye & peng soon were
required to wipe dad's face & the side of the coffin
with a piece of cloth.

after that all of us had our chance to say goodbye to him.

then they made us turn around before they seal the coffin.

11) some of the guests on the day of the "departure".

uncle quah & his friends were there.
my dad's sister, brother & relatives from ipoh also made
the trip down.

10) my dad's coffin. covered with a buddhist cloth that
the funeral guy says will carry him on a smooth journey
to heaven.

it's also used to drape his urn at his final resting place.

the umbrella protects him. it's closed & hanging over the
door of our house now.

9) prayers times.
pik yue was having her trial exams but i told her to come
for a while (from p.j.) to see her koong koong off.

she took the l.r.t. with her auntie & came later that night.

8) pik kay, wai teng, wai yeong, wai hon & giri burning
incense for my dad.

7) giri, ket chye's son, saying prayers for my dad at the altar.

we set up the tent at the car park next to our flats.

it rained the whole afternoon.
the air was cool that night & the full moon was bright.

6) the nurses cleaned my dad, dressed him up in clothes
that my mum & peng soon brought from home & covered him.

my mum & brother said their goodbyes.

after that things just happened very quickly.

we talked to the funeral guys, planned & arranged for things
to be done etc.

there was hardly time to grieve at that point in time.

5) dad's last night at the hospital :(

i slept next to him on a reclining chair, watching the
blood pressure/heart rate monitor. i kept telling him i'm
taking him home. it's his birthday the next day.

i kept looking at it blink the whole night. his readings were
way below the "safe" bracket. i kept praying it would stabilise.

when i woke up at 5.30am, 3 nurses were standing around him.
my heart dropped. he had stopped breathing. they told me his heart was still beating but very slow.
i quickly called peng soon & went back to talk to dad. i watched the heart beat monitor graph flatten.
he was gone.

4) mum cooked a special dinner for moon festival.
after dinner, i went to stay at the hospital to be with
my dad.

we were quite excited to bring him home on his
chinese birthday the next morning.

3) the bed & oxygen tank given by hospice on the
day of moon festival. we placed it in the living room
where there's more fresh air.

i also organised the home nurse to come the next
morning.
we were all ready to bring dad home.

2) feeding my dad through the tube.
he is fed 5 times a day at 4 hour intervals.

i learned to do it so that when we brought him home
we could feed him ourselves.
it was quite daunting at first but i actually got more
confident after doing it 5 times.

my dad's final journey

1) kumah,wai teng,wai yeong & peng soon with my dad
in assunta hospital.
he was already fitted with a feeding tube by then.

at the senado square.
behind me is the st.dominic church, i think ;p

as you walk along up the street
you'll reach the st. paul's ruins.

visited the famous casinos. it's like a mini las vegas-
not that i've been there before but i've seen it in
the movies & tv programmes enough to know it ;p

i actually won hk$240 on the jackpot machine (i choosed
one with pigs in it!) & the "big/small" betting!

that's the people doing the "skywalking" outside.

i was only pretending to be them :)

the view from the 58th floor of the macau tower.

we visited the 61st floor first. that's where people do their bungee jumping & "skywalking" ie walking along the outside platform but having a safety harness attached.

this floor is cooler & more peaceful as there is less activities going on.

we didn't realise it but we walked, what seemed like,
a whole year's worth of walking
to the macau tower (behind me).
but once there
we found out it was worth the while.

Lai Yin in Macau 2.8.07

FINALLY, I'M STANDING on the steps of the
most famous landmark in macau!

the weather was really hot. we managed
to buy some portuguese tarts & somehow,
even though we can get them in malaysia,
the ones we ate were much nicer...
maybe the backdrop has something to do
with the taste.

Sangametra's Drawing

I had just finished sketching out some ideas for the set design of ABHAYA, geetha's next odissi programme scheduled for singapore in august, when sangametra took a look, and decided to draw what she saw. it is the shivalingam flanked by two trees.