Life is fragile

Another not very happy news I received. One of my friend, only 22 and she was suffering from Hemangioblastoma. Well, before this she was healthy like everyone around and just out of a sudden she was hearing high pitch noise and a week later, she woke up to find herself not being able to move her arm. Imagine one day you wake up only to find out that you are not able to move your arm out of a sudden. How scary and horrible that must be?

When she had that high pitch noise following here, she had been to the NHS several times but none of them can tell what was wrong with her. So she flew back to Malaysia immediately to consult specialists. She went for MRI only to find that she's been diagnosed with Hemangioblastoma, a tumor in the brain and that is why she was not able to move her arm and been hearing noise. So she had to have an operation to remove it.

Thank god however that she got back in time to find out about the tumor and had the operation to remove it. Otherwise, she told me she could have been "vegetable". Operation was successful and now she's back to normal. Although hearing on one of her hear could be permanently lost but I sincerely hope she'll recover fully.

Apart from this I also got to know a really bad and sorrow news from one of the plant manager I worked with. A horrific fatal accident happened at the site where I occasionally work on. It is however happened in a plant that I have never been to before. There was this 26 years old electrician got trapped while standing on a small platform and got ran over by a crane.

These sort of incidents that been happening around makes me wonder how fragile can our life be? You will never know what is going to happen next. Appreciate the people around you. Appreciate the time you spend with your family and your friends.

Life is short

Sunday 21.02.10, I was spending most of time to take some rest and watching video on my laptop as usual. Hiding in my warm room to make myself comfortable in this insanely cold weather. Just half way watching a movie, I received a news. A very sad one.

A friend of mine (also my ex-colleague of a part-time job) has passed away today in a car accident. He finished his medical degree last year and just started as a doctor in Doncaster. He flew back to Sri Lanka weeks ago for a short holiday and was due to return to Sheffield soon but it was so unfortunate that what supposed to be a happy and joyful time for him turned out to be a tragedy. Deep condolence to his family and friends.

It was so sudden and can barely react to this sorrow news. It quickly reminds me of how fragile our life can be. An advice that I received that day, if you need something you work for it, if you love to do something, you go do it and if there is something you want to achieve, just go ahead and try it. Life can be too short. Do not waste time given to you and the most important is to cherish your life and live it without regret. RIP buddy.

Sunday 28.02.10. Today probably is one of the most exhausting day in my life. Woke up at 6.10am. Start driving at 6.45am. Reached site at 7.50am. Started at 8am and got off at 8pm. Well, actually started to drive home at 8.35pm.

A good or horrible 12 hours on Sunday, you judge it. Sitting in an high voltage room and in sub zero temperature waiting for something to go wrong. That's how it's like, commisioning a plant for a control engineer. Now that I talked about this, the longest record I have ever done waiting for something to go wrong was 15 hours + 2 hours of driving. I guess engineering is always hardcore. Shouldn't complain much should I? Since there are lots of people who lost their job and here am I still surviving on my little pay check every month.

Living my life in Sheffield - 2010

The world is hoping for the best to come in the year of Tiger- 2010 especially the western side of the world. UK which is one of the worst country hitted by the economic downturn is recovering from this crisis which triggered by the collapse of the subprime mortgage sector in the late 2007. A few big disasters that I remember since the beginning of the crisis includes the collapse of lehman brothers, Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, Iceland declares bankruptcy and also the collapse of the banking sector and car industry in the UK . So, unemployment rise drastically and recession. This then forced the British government to ease the crisis by printing more money, namely quantitative easing and thus the fall in the value of the British pound.

Well, I tend to think that the effect of this crisis is not so severe in the South East Asia mainly becuase the local property market and car industry still looks okay to me. Anyway, who am I to judge. I am just being thankful for that I have found a job before the crisis began and manage to keep it untill now. Also, I am really glad that the footsie now reached the same level in Aug 2008 which was when I started my job. Meaning, economy is picking up its pace!

January 2010, the coldest month so far since I came to the UK many years ago. More frequent heavy snowfall than previous years. This resulted a chaos in the transport and travel business. Many flight and train journeys has been cancelled. I myself who only walk to work everyday find it really hard to walk on the snow and in this blardy freezing cold bizzare weather. I do not like snow. I do not like winter. Like everyone else here, I miss all the sunny weather during summer!