Pakdokter was alone at home for a week or so as Raena had gone back to work in Edinburgh soon after we came home from Tokyo, and pakdokter's partner had stayed back with Rastam in Tokyo. The house felt so lonely and only the daily afternoon clinic sessions and the sorting out of the many bills and accounts of the past year kept pakdokter busy and distracted from the pangs of isolation.
Of all the many outings last year, the family reunion in Tokyo was the most meaningful. It has been almost two years when all the four of us were together - the last one being the New Year of 2008 when both Rastam and Raena came home to KL. How they both have not just grown up but matured and become more responsible.
the family was in Tokyo for the first time way back 20 years ago or so when pakdokter's partner
did her sabbatical at the Tokyo Metropolitan Hospital....
above was a picture with the family of the Japanese Professor
who was pakdokter's partner's host in Tokyo
above are pictures of the family together againin Tokyo over the New Year...
Pakdokter could not help but feel amazed and proud of and at how hard Rastam works. He goes out to work at 930am and does not come home until past midnight. And he sleeps through the weekend to make up for the week's long hours at work. Due to this we could hardly keep contact with him through the Skype or the MSN Messenger. As a father, pakdokter could not help but to worry for him at times. What pakdokter worries most is what would happen if he were to fall sick. Who is going to help him and such. And yet at other times pakdokter feels that pakdokter's worries are unwarranted. Looking back, pakdokter used to also work equally hard in those early years at work. Pakdokter used to go on call every other day at the hospital and on call days, it would almost always be sleepless nights as there were endless cases at the ER to be sorted out. And pakdokter would also be on-call on every other weekend. And pakdokter survived!
Whenever pakdokter worries for the children - pakdokter wished that they would have just left a message on the MSN to say that they are OK instead of only responding when pakdokter made the effort of contacting them. In times like this, pakdokter would be reminded of Bib, pakdokter's late father-in-law, who lived alone for almost 5 years after the demise of Mum. Bib would always remind us to visit him once a week or else he would pop in at our place to see us. Pakdokter can now empathise with him and how pakdokter wished that we had made more time to be with them then. Our excuses then were that we were both very busy - pakdokter's children must be in the same situation and probably also thinking that pakdokter worries too much.
Well pakdokter has to let go and have more faith in the young. As pakdokter has intimated earlier, pakdokter, once upon a time, was there too......
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