Happy Tamil New Year

Happy Tamil New Year! [Tamil puthantunal vazthukkal]. Yesterday was Tamil New Year and we all went to the temple to have our prayers.

At the temple, I noticed a lady wearing a cap and she had no eye brows or eye lashes. Immediately it struck my mind that she must be going through chemo. When I had the opportunity I approached her as she was sitting with her husband and asked in English whether she was going through chemo. The husband replied and said no. He just smiled. I walked away and felt so embarrassed. I just did not want them to think I was a lunatic, thus I approached them again and said hope they did not take offence to what I asked early as I too had gone through it. The husband in a friendly manner replied that they were not offended. My intention of approaching a total stranger was just to give her moral support…but it turned out I was totally embarrassed…looks like I have to be careful when I approach some one the next time..ha..ha!

Now coming back to why I have not been able to blog for some weeks as it as been very busy few weeks! Here goes what has been happening.

The whole of last week I was in East Malaysia conducting training programme for my company. We had trainings in Kuching, Sibu and Kota Kinabalu. Because I am doing this training, I will be doing a lot of traveling over the next 3 months. East Malaysia is famous for its sea food and so I really had to control myself from binging on crabs, prawns and other seafood.

I also had some bad news over the weeks. My neighbour’s sister- in- law whom I mentioned in my one of post some time ago who had a recurrence of cancer after 8 years of having breast cancer passed away. On the other hand my fellow survivor Selvi suffered another blow in her life when she lost her husband to cancer. He was just diagnosed a few months ago and suddenly he passed away. My friend has got 2 college going boys and one school going boy. I pray that god gives my friend the strength to over this great loss and may the souls of the departed rest in peace.

The National Cancer Society of Malaysia will be oganising for a second year the RELAY FOR LIFE from 31^st May to 1 June 2008 at the MSN Training Stadium, Bukit Jalil. I was asked be a volunteer but unfortunately because of the training project, I am not able to contribute this time around and sincerely hope I can attend the event.

The cough that I got in India stayed with me for a couple of weeks, In the midst of this I entered my toastmasters club International Speech Contest and Table Topic Contest and went on to win the Area Contests. At the Division C level I was declared the champion for Table Topic Contest. I will now represent Division C at the District 51 Contest which is to be held from 18-20 April 2008 at Penang Island.]. Well! I hope I do well at Penang.