This blog is about the entrants in the year 1960, to the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ceylon, Colombo. The email address for communications is, 1960batch@gmail.com. Please BOOKMARK this page for easier access later.Photo is the entrance porch of the old General Hospital, Colombo, still in existence. Please use the search box below to look for your requirement.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
'To Sir, with love'
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Words used in English
Interesting History
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & Sold to the tannery.......if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor"
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot......they "didn't have a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the low
The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell . ..... .
Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.
Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof...Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed.
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & Sold to the tannery.......if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor"
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot......they "didn't have a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the low
The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell . ..... .
Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.
Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof...Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed.
Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until,
when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way.
Hence: a thresh hold.
(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old. Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would Sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days.
Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive... So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.
And that's the truth....Now, whoever said History was boring!!!
So...get out there and educate someone! ~~~ Share these facts with a friend.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until,
when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way.
Hence: a thresh hold.
(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old. Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would Sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days.
Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive... So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.
And that's the truth....Now, whoever said History was boring!!!
So...get out there and educate someone! ~~~ Share these facts with a friend.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
New blog - images of Sri Lanka. blogspot.com
I have started a second blog to display scenic sights of Sri Lanka. You could view it by clicking on the web address below. Hope you enjoy watching it. I hope to add more pictures frequently.
http://imagessrilanka.blogspot.com/
Please pass it on to friends, especially Sri Lankans.
PGV
imagessrilanka.blogspot.com
This blog will display some of the scenic spots in present day Sri Lanka. The photographs were all taken by the owner of this blog and are his property.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
Ragupathy's 40th wedding anniversary celebration photos - Still smiling.
A happy man with his children and grandchildren.
All the best wishes of the Batch of 1960 goes to him.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
email from Bernie
Dear Veera/JB
most of our school/college contacts are past late 60's and their 70's.
we should all be grateful for the more recent confirmation that neuronal replication, was not a myth,but a fact,as many noticed,
but were unable to explain how an old dog ,learns new tricks.
retiring from professions or vocations, forced at age 50-55 was a well known harbinger of death or brain death. Learning to use the less dominant hemisphere, not only taps a vast unused resource,
but also prepares one ,in the event of some neuronal damage,post embolic or other stroke related events. We forget the impact of old injuries,including mild cerebral trauma, manifesting decades later.
The impact of depression, anxiety,panic states mood changes
and other common disorders, including hostility,anger,jealousy,that occur ,but not fully recognized ,diagnosed or treated. They do lead to mental status dysfunction, and most are likely to respond to treatment, early recognition,and when less subject to denial.like I am fine,but I know you are worse, or related attitudes. Early recognition of MCI[minimum cognitive impairment] impacted the care of millions, but is only freely available to a very small minority. Ignorance and resistance,to consider the possibility of impairment,is a great obstacle. Also like in Sri Lanka, the availability of treatment,is a major factor, for the vast majority. Training the brain,will make it better,as JB has explained, but is ignore, we are functionally better ,much better, in most areas of cerebral and intellectual performance. In some areas we are less efficient, like in running,cannot swim 100 fast laps, or lift heavy weights. But we can read ,retain recollect,much more and would surprise some of our old teachers. I used to discuss this with Dr Anthonis,DJ,Daphne[latter 2 my uncle and aunt, and were embarrassed,when addressed them as such,especially after my wife Sheila started the conversation] we recalled so many incidents,
even some variations with Appendectomy procedures[even though I branched out to Psychiatry/neuro psych/forensic psych,many decades ago] most of the conversations were in non medical areas.
remembering old names numbers was one item. We have vast resources now, that we couldn't imagine before the pre Arthur Clark era. We can speak to a computer and or I phone and get the dumb contraption,to talk back and give us the information. We can write or type with errors,and receive auto correction, and the list is endless
future potential ,not even contained by our imagination.We recognized that our genes are immortal after all, and only the physical body is the transient,limiting factor.
Then who cares? Other latent clinical features,emerge,as we grow older, and we do not know how to include these,in our discussions or diagnosis. If we diagnose ,for instance ,with 6 symptoms and signs, what happens if we have only 5 or 5.99 confirmed.Are we allowed to diagnose with conviction? We may have 95% of the symptoms of MCI but remain undiagnosed,untreated,neglected?/
That is the question.
Bernard de Silva
Cincinnati/MT lavinia
email from Dawood
Lee Kuan Yew on aging ......
'Stay Interested in the World, Take on a Challenge'
by Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew
(This story was first published on Jan 12, 2008)
MY CONCERN today is, what is it I can tell you which can add to your knowledge about ageing and what ageing societies can do. You know more about this subject than I do. A lot of it is out in the media, Internet and books. So I thought the best way would be to take a personal standpoint and tell you how I approach this question of ageing.
If I cast my mind back, I can see turning points in my physical and
mental health. You know, when you're young, I didn't bother, I assumed
good health was God-given and would always be there. When it was about
1957 - I was about 34, we were competing in elections, and I was really fond of drinking beer and smoking. And after the election campaign, in Victoria Memorial Hall - we had just won the election, the City Council election - I couldn't thank the voters because I had lost my voice. I'd been smoking furiously.
I'd take a packet of 10 to deceive myself, but I'd run through the
packet just sitting on the stage, watching the crowd, getting the feeling, the mood before I speak. In other words, there were three speeches a night. Three speeches a night, 30 cigarettes, a lot of beer after that, and the voice was gone.
I remember I had a case in Kuching, Sarawak. So I took the flight and
I felt awful. I had to make up my mind whether I was going to be an
effective campaigner and a lawyer, in which case I cannot destroy my
voice, and I can't go on. So I stopped smoking.
It was a tremendous deprivation because I was addicted to it. And I
used to wake up dreaming...the nightmare was I resumed smoking.. But I
made a choice and said, if I continue this, I will not be able to do my job. I didn't know anything about cancer of the throat or oesophagus or the lungs, etc. But it turned out it had many other deleterious effects.
Strangely enough after that, I became very allergic, hyper-allergic to smoking, so much so that I would plead with my Cabinet ministers not to smoke in the Cabinet room. If you want to smoke, please go out, because I am allergic.
Then one day I was at the home of my colleague, Mr Rajaratnam, meeting foreign correspondents including some from the London Times and they took a picture of me and I had a big belly like that (puts his hands in front of his belly), a beer belly. I felt no, no, this will not do.
So I started playing more golf, hit hundreds of balls on the practice
tee. But this didn't bring down my waist size. There was only one way it could go down: consume less, burn up more.
Another turning point came when - this was 1976, after the general
election - I was feeling tired. I was breathing deeply at the Istana,
on the lawns. My daughter, who at that time just graduating as a doctor, said: 'What are you trying to do?' I said: 'I feel an effort to breathe in more oxygen..' She said: 'Don't play golf.. Run. Aerobics.'
So she gave me a book, quite a famous book and, then, very current in
America on how you score aerobic points swimming, running, whatever
including cycling. I looked at it sceptically. I wasn't very keen on running. I was keen on golf. So I said, 'Let's try'. So in-between golf shots while playing on my own, sometimes nine holes at the Istana, I would try and walk fast between shots.. Then I began to run between shots. And I felt better. After a while, I said: 'Okay, after my golf, I run.' And after a few years, I said: 'Golf takes so long. The running takes 15 minutes. Let's cut out the golf and let's run.'
I think the most important thing in ageing is you got to understand
yourself. And the knowledge now is all there. When I was growing up,
the knowledge wasn't there.. I had to get the knowledge from friends,
from doctors.
But perhaps the most important bit of knowledge that the doctor gave
me was one day, when I said: 'Look, I'm feeling slower and sluggish.'So he gave me a medical encyclopaedia and he turned the pages to ageing. I read it up and it was illuminating. A lot of it was difficult jargon but I just skimmed through to get the gist of it. As you grow, you reach 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and then, thereafter, you are on a gradual slope down physically.. Mentally, you carry on and on and on until I don't know what age, but mathematicians will tell you that they know their best output is when they're in their 20s and 30s when your mental energy is powerful and you haven't lost many neurons.
That's what they tell me. So, as you acquire more knowledge, you then
craft a programme for yourself to maximise what you have. It's just common sense. I never planned to live till 85 or 84. I just didn't think about it. I said: 'Well, my mother died when she was 74, she had a stroke. My father died when he was 94.' But I saw him, and he lived a long life, well,
maybe it was his DNA. But more than that, he swam every day and he kept
himself busy. He was working forthe Shell company. He was in charge, he
was a superintendent of an oil depot.
When he retired, he started becoming a salesman. So people used to tell me: 'Your father is selling watches at BP de Silva.' My father was then living with me. But it kept him busy. He had that routine: He meets people, he sells watches, he buys and sells all kinds of semi-precious stones, he circulates coins. And he keeps going. But at 87, 88, he fell, going down the steps from his room to the dining room, broke his arm, three months incapacitated. Thereafter, he couldn't go back to swimming.
Then he became wheelchair-bound. Then it became a problem because my
house was not constructed that way. So my brother - who's a doctor and had a flat (one-level) house - took him in. And he lived on till 94. But towards the end, he had gradual loss of mental powers.
So by my calculations, I'm somewhere between 74 and 94. And I've reached
the halfway point now. But have I? Well, in 1996 when I was 73, I was
cycling and I felt tightening on the neck. Oh, I must retire today. So
I stopped. Next day, I returned to the bicycle. After five minutes it
became worse. So I said, no, no, this is something serious, it's got
to do with the blood vessels. Rung up my doctor, who said, 'Come
tomorrow'. Went the day after, he checked me, and said: 'Come back
tomorrow for an angiogram.' I said: 'What's that?' He said: 'We'll pump
something in and we'll see whether the coronary arteries are clear
or blocked.'
I was going to go home. But an MP who was a cardiologist happened to
be around, so he came in and said: 'What are you doing here?' I said:
'I've got this.' He said:'Don't go home. You stay here tonight. I've
sent patients home and they never came back. Just stay here. They'll
put you on the monitor. They'll watch your heart. And if anything, an
emergency arises, they will take you straight to the theatre. You go
home. You've got no such monitor. You may never come back.'
So I stayed there. They pumped in the dye, yes it was blocked, the left circumflex, not the critical, lead one. So that's lucky for me. Two weeks later, I was walking around, I felt it's coming back. Yes it has come back, it had occluded. So this time they said: 'We'll put in a stent.' I'm one of the first few in Singapore to have the stent, so it was a brand new operation. Fortunately, the man who invented the stent was out here selling his stent. He was from San Jose, La Jolla something or the other. So my doctor got hold of him and he supervised the operation. He said put the stent in. My doctor did the operation, he just watched it all and then that's that. That was before all this problem about lining the stent to make sure that it doesn't occlude and create a disturbance. So at each stage, I learnt something more about myself and I stored that. I said: 'Oh,
this is now a danger point.'
So all right, cut out fats, change diet, went to see a specialist in Boston, Massachusetts General Hospital. He said: 'Take statins..' I said: 'What's that?' He said: '(They) help to reduce your cholesterol. ' >
My doctors were concerned. They said: 'You don't need it. Your cholesterol levels are okay.' Two years later, more medical evidence came out. So the doctors said: 'Take statins.' Had there been no angioplasty, had I not known that something was up and I cycled on, I might have been gone at 74 like my mother. So I missed that deadline.
So next deadline: my father's fall at 87. I'm very careful now because sometimes when I turn around too fast, I feel as if I'm going to get off balance. So my daughter, a neurologist, she took me to the NNI,
there's this nerve conduction test, put electrodes here and there. The
transmission of the messages between the feet and the brain has
slowed down.
So all even with all the exercise, everything, effort put in, I'm fit, I swim, I cycle. But I can't prevent this losing of conductivity of the nerves and this transmission.
So just go slow. So when I climb up the steps, I have no problem. When I go down the steps, I need to be sure that I've got something I can hang on to, just in case. So it's a constant process of adjustment.
But I think the most important single lesson I learnt in life was that if you isolate yourself, you're done for. The human being is a social animal - he needs stimuli, he needs to meet people, to catch up with the world.
I don't much like travel but I travel very frequently despite the jet
lag, because I get to meet people of great interest to me, who will
help me in my work as chairman of our GIC. So I know, I'm on several boards of banks, international advisory boards of banks, of oil companies and so on. And I meet them and I get to understand what's happening in the world, what has changed since I was here one month ago, one year ago. I go to India, I go to China.
And that stimuli brings me to the world of today. I'm not living in the world, when I was active, more active 20, 30 years ago, so that's what I tell my wife. She woke up late today. I said: 'Never mind, you come along by 12 o'clock. I go first.'
If you sit back - part of the ending part of the encyclopaedia which I read was very depressing - as you get old, you withdraw from everything and then all you will have is your bedroom and the photographs and the
furniture that you know, and that's your world. So if you've got to go to hospital, the doctor advises you to bring some photographs so that you'll know you're not lost in a different world, that this is like your bedroom.
I'm determined that I will not, as long as I can, to be reduced to that,
to have my horizons closed on me like that. It is the stimuli, it is the constant interaction with people across the world that keeps me aware and alive to what's going on and what we can do to adjust to this different world.
In other words, you must have an interest in life. If you believe that at 55, you're retiring, you're going to read books, play golf and drink wine, then I think you're done for. So statistically they will show you that of all the people who retire and lead sedentary lives, the pensioners, die off very quickly.
So we now have a social problem with medical sciences, new procedures, new drugs, many more people are going to live long lives. If the mindset is that when I reach retirement age 62, I'm old, I can't work anymore, I don't have to work, I just sit back, now is the time I'll enjoy life, I think you're making the biggest mistake of your life. After one month, or after two months, even if you go traveling with nothing to do, with no purpose in life, you will just degrade, you'll go to seed.
The human being needs a challenge, and my advice to every person in
Singapore and elsewhere: Keep yourself interested, have a challenge.
If you're not interested in the world and the world is not interested in you, the biggest punishment a man can receive is total isolation in a dungeon, black and complete withdrawal of all stimuli, that's real torture.
So when I read that people believe, Singaporeans say: 'Oh, 62 I'm
retiring.' I say to them: 'You really want to die quickly?' If you
want to see sunrise tomorrow or sunset, you must have a reason, you
must have the stimuli to keep going.'
'Stay Interested in the World, Take on a Challenge'
by Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew
(This story was first published on Jan 12, 2008)
MY CONCERN today is, what is it I can tell you which can add to your knowledge about ageing and what ageing societies can do. You know more about this subject than I do. A lot of it is out in the media, Internet and books. So I thought the best way would be to take a personal standpoint and tell you how I approach this question of ageing.
If I cast my mind back, I can see turning points in my physical and
mental health. You know, when you're young, I didn't bother, I assumed
good health was God-given and would always be there. When it was about
1957 - I was about 34, we were competing in elections, and I was really fond of drinking beer and smoking. And after the election campaign, in Victoria Memorial Hall - we had just won the election, the City Council election - I couldn't thank the voters because I had lost my voice. I'd been smoking furiously.
I'd take a packet of 10 to deceive myself, but I'd run through the
packet just sitting on the stage, watching the crowd, getting the feeling, the mood before I speak. In other words, there were three speeches a night. Three speeches a night, 30 cigarettes, a lot of beer after that, and the voice was gone.
I remember I had a case in Kuching, Sarawak. So I took the flight and
I felt awful. I had to make up my mind whether I was going to be an
effective campaigner and a lawyer, in which case I cannot destroy my
voice, and I can't go on. So I stopped smoking.
It was a tremendous deprivation because I was addicted to it. And I
used to wake up dreaming...the nightmare was I resumed smoking.. But I
made a choice and said, if I continue this, I will not be able to do my job. I didn't know anything about cancer of the throat or oesophagus or the lungs, etc. But it turned out it had many other deleterious effects.
Strangely enough after that, I became very allergic, hyper-allergic to smoking, so much so that I would plead with my Cabinet ministers not to smoke in the Cabinet room. If you want to smoke, please go out, because I am allergic.
Then one day I was at the home of my colleague, Mr Rajaratnam, meeting foreign correspondents including some from the London Times and they took a picture of me and I had a big belly like that (puts his hands in front of his belly), a beer belly. I felt no, no, this will not do.
So I started playing more golf, hit hundreds of balls on the practice
tee. But this didn't bring down my waist size. There was only one way it could go down: consume less, burn up more.
Another turning point came when - this was 1976, after the general
election - I was feeling tired. I was breathing deeply at the Istana,
on the lawns. My daughter, who at that time just graduating as a doctor, said: 'What are you trying to do?' I said: 'I feel an effort to breathe in more oxygen..' She said: 'Don't play golf.. Run. Aerobics.'
So she gave me a book, quite a famous book and, then, very current in
America on how you score aerobic points swimming, running, whatever
including cycling. I looked at it sceptically. I wasn't very keen on running. I was keen on golf. So I said, 'Let's try'. So in-between golf shots while playing on my own, sometimes nine holes at the Istana, I would try and walk fast between shots.. Then I began to run between shots. And I felt better. After a while, I said: 'Okay, after my golf, I run.' And after a few years, I said: 'Golf takes so long. The running takes 15 minutes. Let's cut out the golf and let's run.'
I think the most important thing in ageing is you got to understand
yourself. And the knowledge now is all there. When I was growing up,
the knowledge wasn't there.. I had to get the knowledge from friends,
from doctors.
But perhaps the most important bit of knowledge that the doctor gave
me was one day, when I said: 'Look, I'm feeling slower and sluggish.'So he gave me a medical encyclopaedia and he turned the pages to ageing. I read it up and it was illuminating. A lot of it was difficult jargon but I just skimmed through to get the gist of it. As you grow, you reach 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and then, thereafter, you are on a gradual slope down physically.. Mentally, you carry on and on and on until I don't know what age, but mathematicians will tell you that they know their best output is when they're in their 20s and 30s when your mental energy is powerful and you haven't lost many neurons.
That's what they tell me. So, as you acquire more knowledge, you then
craft a programme for yourself to maximise what you have. It's just common sense. I never planned to live till 85 or 84. I just didn't think about it. I said: 'Well, my mother died when she was 74, she had a stroke. My father died when he was 94.' But I saw him, and he lived a long life, well,
maybe it was his DNA. But more than that, he swam every day and he kept
himself busy. He was working forthe Shell company. He was in charge, he
was a superintendent of an oil depot.
When he retired, he started becoming a salesman. So people used to tell me: 'Your father is selling watches at BP de Silva.' My father was then living with me. But it kept him busy. He had that routine: He meets people, he sells watches, he buys and sells all kinds of semi-precious stones, he circulates coins. And he keeps going. But at 87, 88, he fell, going down the steps from his room to the dining room, broke his arm, three months incapacitated. Thereafter, he couldn't go back to swimming.
Then he became wheelchair-bound. Then it became a problem because my
house was not constructed that way. So my brother - who's a doctor and had a flat (one-level) house - took him in. And he lived on till 94. But towards the end, he had gradual loss of mental powers.
So by my calculations, I'm somewhere between 74 and 94. And I've reached
the halfway point now. But have I? Well, in 1996 when I was 73, I was
cycling and I felt tightening on the neck. Oh, I must retire today. So
I stopped. Next day, I returned to the bicycle. After five minutes it
became worse. So I said, no, no, this is something serious, it's got
to do with the blood vessels. Rung up my doctor, who said, 'Come
tomorrow'. Went the day after, he checked me, and said: 'Come back
tomorrow for an angiogram.' I said: 'What's that?' He said: 'We'll pump
something in and we'll see whether the coronary arteries are clear
or blocked.'
I was going to go home. But an MP who was a cardiologist happened to
be around, so he came in and said: 'What are you doing here?' I said:
'I've got this.' He said:'Don't go home. You stay here tonight. I've
sent patients home and they never came back. Just stay here. They'll
put you on the monitor. They'll watch your heart. And if anything, an
emergency arises, they will take you straight to the theatre. You go
home. You've got no such monitor. You may never come back.'
So I stayed there. They pumped in the dye, yes it was blocked, the left circumflex, not the critical, lead one. So that's lucky for me. Two weeks later, I was walking around, I felt it's coming back. Yes it has come back, it had occluded. So this time they said: 'We'll put in a stent.' I'm one of the first few in Singapore to have the stent, so it was a brand new operation. Fortunately, the man who invented the stent was out here selling his stent. He was from San Jose, La Jolla something or the other. So my doctor got hold of him and he supervised the operation. He said put the stent in. My doctor did the operation, he just watched it all and then that's that. That was before all this problem about lining the stent to make sure that it doesn't occlude and create a disturbance. So at each stage, I learnt something more about myself and I stored that. I said: 'Oh,
this is now a danger point.'
So all right, cut out fats, change diet, went to see a specialist in Boston, Massachusetts General Hospital. He said: 'Take statins..' I said: 'What's that?' He said: '(They) help to reduce your cholesterol. ' >
My doctors were concerned. They said: 'You don't need it. Your cholesterol levels are okay.' Two years later, more medical evidence came out. So the doctors said: 'Take statins.' Had there been no angioplasty, had I not known that something was up and I cycled on, I might have been gone at 74 like my mother. So I missed that deadline.
So next deadline: my father's fall at 87. I'm very careful now because sometimes when I turn around too fast, I feel as if I'm going to get off balance. So my daughter, a neurologist, she took me to the NNI,
there's this nerve conduction test, put electrodes here and there. The
transmission of the messages between the feet and the brain has
slowed down.
So all even with all the exercise, everything, effort put in, I'm fit, I swim, I cycle. But I can't prevent this losing of conductivity of the nerves and this transmission.
So just go slow. So when I climb up the steps, I have no problem. When I go down the steps, I need to be sure that I've got something I can hang on to, just in case. So it's a constant process of adjustment.
But I think the most important single lesson I learnt in life was that if you isolate yourself, you're done for. The human being is a social animal - he needs stimuli, he needs to meet people, to catch up with the world.
I don't much like travel but I travel very frequently despite the jet
lag, because I get to meet people of great interest to me, who will
help me in my work as chairman of our GIC. So I know, I'm on several boards of banks, international advisory boards of banks, of oil companies and so on. And I meet them and I get to understand what's happening in the world, what has changed since I was here one month ago, one year ago. I go to India, I go to China.
And that stimuli brings me to the world of today. I'm not living in the world, when I was active, more active 20, 30 years ago, so that's what I tell my wife. She woke up late today. I said: 'Never mind, you come along by 12 o'clock. I go first.'
If you sit back - part of the ending part of the encyclopaedia which I read was very depressing - as you get old, you withdraw from everything and then all you will have is your bedroom and the photographs and the
furniture that you know, and that's your world. So if you've got to go to hospital, the doctor advises you to bring some photographs so that you'll know you're not lost in a different world, that this is like your bedroom.
I'm determined that I will not, as long as I can, to be reduced to that,
to have my horizons closed on me like that. It is the stimuli, it is the constant interaction with people across the world that keeps me aware and alive to what's going on and what we can do to adjust to this different world.
In other words, you must have an interest in life. If you believe that at 55, you're retiring, you're going to read books, play golf and drink wine, then I think you're done for. So statistically they will show you that of all the people who retire and lead sedentary lives, the pensioners, die off very quickly.
So we now have a social problem with medical sciences, new procedures, new drugs, many more people are going to live long lives. If the mindset is that when I reach retirement age 62, I'm old, I can't work anymore, I don't have to work, I just sit back, now is the time I'll enjoy life, I think you're making the biggest mistake of your life. After one month, or after two months, even if you go traveling with nothing to do, with no purpose in life, you will just degrade, you'll go to seed.
The human being needs a challenge, and my advice to every person in
Singapore and elsewhere: Keep yourself interested, have a challenge.
If you're not interested in the world and the world is not interested in you, the biggest punishment a man can receive is total isolation in a dungeon, black and complete withdrawal of all stimuli, that's real torture.
So when I read that people believe, Singaporeans say: 'Oh, 62 I'm
retiring.' I say to them: 'You really want to die quickly?' If you
want to see sunrise tomorrow or sunset, you must have a reason, you
must have the stimuli to keep going.'
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