Stolen wedding ring, death and peaceful sleep.

Just a year ago, my daughter and I were in Belgium enjoying the summer holiday.  We stayed at the vicinity of Grand Place and had a few days to scour the area for interesting and highly recommended restaurants, cafes and specialty shops.

Life seemed relaxed and I finally thought that perhaps, once my post-chemo treatments were over I could once again get back to the normalcy of life. Stress-free and cancer-free. But certainly not husband-free.

I really did think that the worse was probably over.

I have to mention the story of my wedding band which was stolen from the safe box in a hotel in Bali last year. I have since stopped talking to my so called best-friend over this incident. My husband then bought me another ring to replace the lost one. Call it bad luck or whatever, but roll on less than a year from that horrible experience, it might have been better if I didn't even bother to replace that ring. It reminds me of the bad memories related to it, and the ring is insignificant now. I don't wear it anymore.

Today, I have to pinch myself or I might think that I'm dreaming. My life has changed. I travel less, I shop less, I feel less hungry to accumulate material goods. I know if I should die, I could never take any of my beautiful Chanel handbags or Valentino heels with me. God forbid if my family decides to dress me up in my designer fashion as my last farewell and then off to be cremated in them. I must remind them to not do so.

When I was in my twenties, I was fascinated with death and used to read up all I could to know what happens to us when we die. I even had a cassette (yeah, that long ago) with a compilation of songs that I wanted played at my funeral. And ever since I was diagnosed with breast cancer in July 2014, I have been thinking about death. I used to be scared of it but I'm less scared now.

One of my friends, who was also undergoing chemotherapy at the same time that I was, had died unexpectedly in May this year. She was in her early thirties. She was a brave person and so full of life, and never once did she question why the hell she had cancer or moan about the harsh effects of the treatments. She fought it like a true champion. I was very heartbroken when I found out that she had died. Her family have been having memorial parties for her in a few cities around the world to celebrate her beautiful life. And this is an awesome way to bid farewell to a beautiful soul.

I believe that there are so many friends and family members who had been taken away too soon and they are now watching over me, and when my time comes they will guide me over to the other side. And it wouldn't be so bad after all.

I have my second year full medical check-up tomorrow. I'm hoping I'm in remission and that all the stress from the past few months had not affected my health.

I may have a somewhat different life now.

I may not be a globe-trotter but I'm happy to be finally 'home' and having the peaceful sleep I had been deprived of all these years. I actually feel safe and happy.

The things you once dislike may be the things you end up with

On more occasions than one, I have found that people who moan and groan about things/people/situations that they dislike have had circumstances in life change and they are then faced with liking even loving and embracing these things/people/situations that once annoyed them.

I once knew a guy that actually made snide remarks of how certain people dressed and prayed. Then roll on ten years or so, he is practicing this faith and is more devout than one born into this religion. He has now started preaching too. Yup.

People change. Circumstances change. What you say you will never ever do will be the exact thing you might do in the future.

Another person I know likes to tease how certain folks from a certain country speak English, not that his spoken English was any better. 

Anyways he is now in a relationship with a woman from this country.  I guess both are trying to decipher what the other is really trying to say. Or better still, less they understand what each other is really trying to say, the longer their relationship can last! 

He also used to make fun of how these women's feet and toes are spread out like a baboon's yet now he is probably licking them nasty-looking toes, lol.

Ah such is life! 

I wouldn't be surprise that one of my other friends, the one who dislikes kids, will actually have his/her own kids or marry someone who has children. This person actually gets so annoyed by younger kids and babies' crying or making any form of noise, when they are nearby that he will stare at them and scold them! You would think he was never once a kid.

I once told myself that I would never marry a Caucasian as they never did really understand the Asian culture and lifestyle. Worse still, when English is not their main language, just trying to understand one another can be tiring in the end. And married one I did. And needless to say we never did understand one another!

The fastest way to forget someone

I have been reflecting on many things these past few weeks. They say that when you go through tough times you tend to learn and grow more compared to when life is a walk in the park. If that is true I have reached PHD level by now. I have packed up a lot throughout my lifetime. Dr Phil would be very proud of me as I am still here, smiling and going with the flow of things.

Some days I wake up and feel energised and ready to face the world. Some days I just wanna lay in bed all day and go under the covers. I once remembered someone telling me that after all that I've gone through I deserved the best and to enjoy life to the fullest.

The irony of it is that, that someone is now the cause of my pain. I guess people sometimes say some things and do mean it at that point in time then the selfish side in them takes over and they think of themselves and their happiness first. So they forget about you and the promises they made to you.

I have had my fair share of broken relationships and my months of struggle trying to get over them; even though at times I'm the one who initiated the break-ups. 

I guess the longer your relationship is the harder it is to break up. So I've no idea how some people can just coolly walk out of a long term relationship and not care about anything. They just continue with another relationship with someone they just met and move on. Holding hands and smiling into the sunset!

I have through my experience found out a new way of getting over someone really fast. After the initial shock, sadness, anger, and acceptance, there is one way you can perceive things so you go cold turkey on this person. 

You imagine that this person has died. Yup. Death is final.

So when you imagine someone has died, and doesn't exist, you know you have to continue moving forward and not backwards. You can no longer be in contact with a dead person. 

Cherish the good times, accept the bad times and let everything rest in peace. 

R.I.P X

Hmmm ...

You can sometimes be with someone and feel lonely

And you can sometimes be alone and feel complete 

So your man is having mid-life crisis?

Yesterday while I was having dinner with my daughter, I looked across the room  to the other table and saw two elderly women. Both looked like they were in their 60's, and both looked well-groomed and obviously came from affluent backgrounds. 

With their coiffured hair, and classy dressing, it crossed my mind if they were still married and if yes, to their first husbands. 

Older men, especially those who go through bad mid-life crisis tend to look for younger women to make them feel good! I've had a few male friends of mine go through similar experiences, many ending up in divorces and mostly going on to the second phases of their lives with younger women in tow.

If a guy suddenly wakes up one morning and notices that he is overweight, has receding hairline and is no longer appealing to the opposite sex,  and by that I mean younger women in their twenties, they kinda freak out. 

These group of men probably have reached a certain level of accomplishment in their careers hence they are looking outward for superficial things that can make them feel better about themselves.

 I''ve spoken to a few guys, and they have confided in me that they feel that they need a fresh start in life and to actually enjoy live life to the fullest and more often than not the more pathetic the guys are the more they have a distorted sense of self-worth. They need a younger woman to make them feel young again. A new super bike just doesn't cut it anymore. 

So that leaves me wondering to all the older women out there who are abandoned by their husbands for younger women;  how do they feel about it and what do they do with themselves?

Do they start dating again and this time with younger men so they feel better about themselves? 

Or are they comfortable in their own skin and get busy doing things they had once sacrificed because they were busy doing all the things their husbands wanted when they were still married.

I'm gonna try and speak to women in similar situations and get the answers .

Till then, here's wishing you much love:)

From lovers to strangers ...

The last time I cried through my pain, my lawyer scolded me for doing so. She said it was a sign of weakness. 

But I beg to differ.

To get over grief we must experience grief and all the different stages of emotions that we go through to get out of the black hole of despair. 

Looking across the room at my Chanel handbags, which on normal days would make me grin like a kid receiving gifts on Christmas, I feel detached from them. The beauty fades in comparison to the cold I feel in my heart and the numbness permeating throughout my body. 

My thoughts drifted to the day my husband told me that he had wanted to leave me for over a year since I  had cancer. He stayed on not because he cared for or loved me. He stayed on because the doctors he consulted told him that my rate of recovery and getting through the chemotherapy treatments would be affected if he left me then. 

Somehow his actions and his reason don't quite make sense. It is usually the case when one party wants to desperately end a relationship, they hurt the other person so badly so that the relationship ends badly and the person never wants to see or talk to them again. 

But what difference does it make now?

My treatments may be over but with cancer you are always on standby. You never know if they will be recurrence even with good prognosis. 

A trauma after a trauma isn't going to help me for sure. He might as well as left me when I was first diagnosed. 

To tell you the truth, I always felt I was fighting cancer alone. Unlike some husbands who stay with you throughout the treatments, he was never quite around. His job took him around the globe so he escaped many phases of my sickness, and side effects of the chemo.

I felt alone yet welcomed the fact that he didn't see me suffering as he wouldn't understand or emphasized with it. 

And now I feel more abandoned than ever. 

It's one thing to leave someone but it's another thing to leave one so brutally. What cold and mean heart did he have? We were so close yet I never saw that or was I blinded for over seven years? 

We never really argued much; and he always reconfirmed that I was the best travel partner he had and how he would just not be able to get over things if I had passed on.

And now, just like that, he had flipped and wants a new life. He has gone to the extend of deleting all photos of us on every social media site. As if I'm dead already. 

And he seems to be on one holiday after another basking in his newfound sense of happiness. Always in fantasy land and never really thriving in reality.

Sometimes you can be close to someone yet never quite know them at all. There is madness in all of us but more so in some. 

One day they tell you that you are the love of their  life then the next day you cease to exist for them. 

Yesterday would have been our second year wedding anniversary, after being together for over seven years.

Today, we are strangers once again. 

Ouch ...

I've experienced pain in all forms from physical to mental. My threshold of pain has since moved from low to high. I've actually found that if I give in to the pain and accept it, the pain can be tolerated and conquered. Or, so I thought. Until I suffered from a toothache that required me to visit the same dentist twice and in tears because I couldn't heck the excruciating pain.

So here is my list of pain from the worst kind to the least.


1. Toothache that requires root canal

2. Biopsy of the breast

3. Post-surgery from caesarean

4.  Post-surgery from lumpectomy

5. Tattoo on the bony part of my body, e.g. my foot

6. Waking up with leg cramps 

7.Mammogram

8.Migraine

9. When the needle is inserted into my chemo port without any numbing cream

10.Gastritis

The other kind of pain, the one that stabs at your heart:

1) Death of a family member

2) When harm is done to my daughter and other family members

3) Betrayal from my lover

4) Betrayal from a close friend 

This is me suffering from a nasty toothache that requires a root canal