Rubber Tipped Chopsticks

After hours of witnessing guard huts, roof tiles, and cats cartwheeling past your window. The aural battering, by the sort of noises only God can make, suddenly stops and the sun starts to shines though. The eye of the storm has arrived, I was mentally prepared for the debris strewn impact site, but what threw me was the deathly silence, it was on such a biblical scale no birds, no cars, no background rumble, it was like the sound of the earth before anything that breathed arrived. After a few minutes the sun gets blotted out again, and the tumbling, howling wall of the storm returns to finish off what it left behind.

Christmas was the eye of my own storm but the calm was also short lived, the storm front on the horizon is fast approaching. The sensation of time passing is quite fluid, I only just arrived back in Singapore, and now my travel teddy is back out again. For death row customers waiting years for the big day on the hot seat, the time locked up must have felt nothing more than a long weekend.

I am battening down the hatches, flights booked, latex clad physio therapist booked, new undies purchased, and the zimmer frame dug out. The exercise regime, needs to be cranked up. During Xmas, looking at the photos of hotel facilities was the closest I came to the seeing the gym. Yesterday I adjusted the cross training machine to a level known as, Wearing a Sandwich Board in Pool Full of Honey. After 30 minutes the mechanical tormentor started to follow my own death throes noises. Today a note greeted me "Out of Order, " there is something deeply satisfying breaking a machine design to test and push human endurance.

The 2 weeks before T-day, restrictions starts to apply no Chinese herbal remedies or Aspirin type medication. While buying some headache medication in the glamorous sounding Beverly Hills Pharmacy the paperwork generated would make a forest morn, I had to sign pages and pages of grey small print accepting that I was aware of the list of potential side effects which read like the yellow pages. Having brain surgery in a litigious society is a good thing, though you are reminded of all this daftness, "cars are closer than they appear" is etched in the side mirror. Coffee cups have "warning this liquid is hot" soon pavements will have "warning this surface is hard".

The hospital cannot deal directly with an non US based insurance firm. The surgery will be billed as having no insurance coverage, the invoice will be reduced from US$ 150k to 40k, which means the hospitals have been taking the piss with insurance based fees all these years, and I will now get the windowless operating theatre next to the dust bins, the night watch man and janitor will double up as operating staff, and the microscopes are on loan from ToysRus.

Our helper is not allowed into the US, she has the wrong coloured passport and and lets be honest wrong coloured skin. For certain passport holders the world is still not your oyster. She is considered a "flight risk" they assume the moment we land in the US she will be whisked away by her covert 3rd world connections, to then fulfill her life long dream of being a cleaner in some midwest motel. Whats sort of arrogance is that? the higher you go the bigger the fall, mind you I would have to say, you really have reached the wobbly top rung, when you and your pith helmet wearing chums, thinks it is a perfectly reasonable idea to stick the word "Great" before a country's name. What ever happened to humility.

There is talk on the grape vine of another form of treatment, all the works is carried out via a fibre optic video camera known as an endoscope inserted through a coin sized opening. Recovery time is very much reduced, but like everything in life there is a down side, should banana fingers nick a major artery then they have to rush in with chainsaws to cut a bigger hole so bits of wood, and newspapers can go in to stem the flow. So no change in plan and no going back, full steam ahead with the quarry like hole in my head option.

In a warped way I am looking forward to my big day, it is a huge experiment with controlled drugs. We all been through it at University, with stuff that been couriered around the world up someone bum. I have the, By Invitation Only, access to the cream of the cream Opium Dens from the grainy old sepia prints. The only thing missing is the red lanterns, a Fu Man Chu mustached Chinaman filling my bamboo pipe, and a silk smoking jacket. There is talk of out of body experiences during long operations, these tumour removal have been known to take 18 hours. The only way I can relate to this time travel is when I just jumped off the bungee platform, time momentarily froze, there was an unnerving feeling of utter loneliness and detachment. The silence is quickly replaced by the rapidly increasing and deafening wind roar on the way down.

Quite literally, if push came to shove, its the catheter that gives me the willys, I can deal with pain in a Abu Ghraib prison kind of way, I have not one but two cigarette burns on my arm, a result of a bet, after the burnt bacon smell wafted away and a raw blister appeared, I doubled the bet so a second cigarette was slowly stubbed out on the blister. Typing about it, brings on no reaction apart from eye rolling acceptance of the stupidity of youth.

When I ripped my whole thumb nail off in a freak accident, I remember seeing where my nail used to be, slowly turn from marshmallow textured pink mushy flesh to pulpy bloody red. The body must have a trip switch somewhere designed to shuts off the major trauma signal to my head, it took 5 seconds, before the crippling pain just tsunami through me, I gagged trying to hold back the adrenalin induced vomit. There is a reason nail ripping is used as a form of torture, I still get a bit of a involuntary fist clench just recalling it. But mention catheters my eyes, teeth and sphincter are already clamped shut.

The result from the Google search is quite literally an eye opener. There are groups of people who feel Friday night is not complete, unless the boys pop over to the YMCA, for a late night session of musical catheter. You can even buy a nice little boxed set of what at first looks like knitting needles, ranging in size from a very tight tweed knit to the ones used for super size chunky sweater, but trust me you don't want to be giving these stainless steel implements to Granny for Xmas.

I hope no one can figure out where I live, as the gym will know where to send the cross trainer repair bill, and if a couple of gang bangers kidnapped me and need to know where my millions are buried, they just have twirl a catheter tube around their fingers, and I would be on my knees offering to help them dig it up.

I will be floating past the MIR space station so not to bothered about the surgery. I have heard of Stephen King like horror stories being half awake during surgery, but partial paralysis prevents me telling the laughing gas bloke, who is too busy reading the papers. Its not the flying that people fear its the impact into ground where the problem starts. I feel nauseous in a revolving restaurant, if you get a pestle and mortar and chuck in a dose of motion sickness, add some altitude sickness, and sprinkle a good hand full of delirium causing head flu, grind it all up and add a touch of Dengue fever for flavour, that is what will hit me post op.

Fairground rides last for 3 minutes, imagine a roller coaster with tracks that twists, loops and snakes off into the horizon, no end in sight, you don't know if it will stop in a few days or months. Post op people are found hanging for dear life to the rails of the bed, fearing they will slide off, your head does not know half your balance mechanism is on the way to the incinerator in a green bio-hazard garbage bag. The damaged and conflicting signals makes you see and feel the room is tilted at 45 degrees.

There is little point in predicting the outcome of the surgery, there are so many variable and details that I cant even comprehend. The Titanic passengers would never have predicted they will end up as a watch 100 years later. There something very wrong with using parts of the salvaged hull to make the watch case, the face is created from ground down organic matter collected off the seabed around the wreck. Why stop there, how about hardwood chopstick from dug up coffins, or better yet, a new set of soup bowls hand crafted from skulls found in the killing fields of Cambodia. What ever happened to respect?

Many gave Gawd credit for the safe landing of the recent Qantas flight with the suicidal fire extinguisher. I would give all the credit to the pilot and the structural designers of the aircraft, if you think about it then, was Gawd a tad bored that day and wanted a bit of a laugh with his chums, so put a gash in the fuselage in the first place? To say a ship is unsinkable is really tempting fate, Qantas has never advertised the fact their jet fleet is fatality free, we all know exactly what would happen the moment they do plaster up some catchy slogan, its all fate.

Some people need a tangible explanation, a way of being able to control destiny and most are quite happy to accept that lighting a candle or joss stick might make a difference. Reminds me of a time when I had hair and working as a lacky in an architectural firm, the big cheese always wore black suits, with two annoying bollox hanging on his left shoulders pad. His philosopher chum comes up with the glossy coffee book explanation of the intangible. According to his book, Mr. Shoulder Pad architecture represents the urban virginity being pierced by a sword of modernity. He knew we knew it was total crap, when pushed why he thought the urban environment was a virgin, he curtly pointed out in an appropriate German accent, we were not being paid to question, and left in a flurry of blackness the door nearly decapitated his two little shoulder tassels.

For those that need one, here is a good explanation on what will determine the out come of my surgery. Its known as the Butterfly Theory developed by some bloke in the late 19th Century with either way too much time on his hands, or he is the one wearing the silk smoking jacket in the sepia prints. It will all boil down to a small blue butterfly in a forest, who two years ago took off to the left side because of a bad landing the night before sprained her right ankle, on the way up she clipped a dead leaf which fell onto a log that spanned a river. Moss grew under the shade of the leaf, and the moisture it held eventually rotted the trunk, causing it to collapse into the water. Downstream it blocked the hydroelectric dams intake, creating a disruption to the electrical supply. In a blacked out city far from the forest a man went for a walk as his apartment had no power. On the way out he bumped into a Neurosurgeon neighbour who had to transfer his shopping, to the other hand in order to hold the stair well door open, in doing so he pulled a small muscle in his elbow. That neurosurgeon in two weeks time will be working in the head of a 45 year old male from a small country in Asia.

I know you know its all a load of crap, its all down to chance. There is no higher power, no bearded old man on a gilded seat in the clouds. Its a roll of the dice, the result of the throw is determined by the bloke who painted that dice in some Turkish sweatshop, did he applied too much paint on one, side when a blue butterfly flew past and distracted him ?

This will be my last post before the big day, so better start practicing typing with my mouth and a rubber tipped chopstick. Igor at the back of the boat needs to tighten his loin cloth. The target is in sight, I have assumed my Spirit of Ecstasy pose on the bow, from now on Igor drum beat will be at full ramming speed.

That's it then, bugger this for a game of soldiers, I will see everyone on the other side, butterfly willing.