2005 – Page 2 – Peter Tan – The Digital Awakening

I Am Going To Tokyo

JICA Office at Menara Citibank.

The wheels are in motion. I attended a briefing at the JICA Office at Menara Citibank on Wednesday for Counterpart Training for Independent Living Programme for People with Disabilities together with Siew Chin and Harry of the Beautiful Gate foundation for the Disabled, and two Personal Assistants (PAs).

The application form for visa to Japan.

The three of us trainees are using wheelchairs. We filled in the form for visa application and the applied to be members of the JICA Alumni Society of Malaysia. We were then briefed on the visa application, arrival procedure, allowances provisions, etc. After the briefing, we collected our plane tickets from the JAL office in the same building. I had requested for a low-protein low-salt/no salt added meal.

JICA Trainee Guide Book and plane ticket from JAL

(Clockwise from bottom left) Audio tape and phrase book for simple
conversations in Japanese, Copy of the the letter to the
Jabatan Kebajikan Masyarakat Malaysia from JICA
confirming my nomination for the Counterpart Training for
Independent Living Programme for people with Disabilities,
plane ticket from JAL and the JICA Trainee Guide Book.

Now I need to get the appropriate clothes, especially when January is the coldest month in Japan with the average temperature hovering around freezing point. The extreme cold will be a problem. I tend to get spasms in low temperatures. I wonder how many layers of clothes I need to wear.

Suanie In Room 1019

Suanie – December 5, 2005.

Finding time to blog is indeed a luxury now. Like everyone else, I have twenty four hours per day but I do not know where it has all gone to. I cannot seem to find time to complete all the daily tasks that I have set out to do. There are several events that I would like to blog about. Later perhaps. For now, this is the evidence that Suanie was in my room at the Boulevard Hotel a few weeks ago. She did more than jump on the bed. If only I have photos to show of the other things that happened in the room that evening…

Good Bye For Now

This spectacular sight was spread across the evening sky after Sunset Mass one weekend in August this year. The double rainbow arches amazed me. As I sat there watching the colours fade into the dusk sky, I felt like a small kid again, excited at this unusual vista. I wondered what lay waiting at the ends of the rainbows. What would I discover there? Hope? I had hoped. Hope is all I have now, too. When faith falters, hope is all I have. Or should it be the other way around?

I am going to miss Penang. I am going to miss Ee Yean and Bryan, the two buddies that I have been hanging out a lot with lately, either in real life or in MSN. Most of all, I am going to miss this place that Mum and I had called home for nearly half a decade. Leaving those memories behind is painful indeed. She may have been gone for more than two years but her presence here is simply overwhelming. Without a doubt, there are still many things that I am reluctant to leave behind but the journey has to continue. I have to move on in order not to be sucked back into the dark vacuum that I once lived in.