Turning 50, singing The Young Once

We had a nice party at our house to celebrate my turning 50 on Sept 25. Getting old. Mainly members of the care group, family and close friends, came. We ate, reflected, and sang two songs, "It Only Takes A Spark" and "The Young Ones" (more appropriately titled The Young Once. Thank God for His many blessings in our life.

Old friends...

The Internet is truly a powerful tool to reconnect with old friends. Last week, a teacher from my primary school days, now in Perth, Australia, sent me an email. He taught me in 1970 and had a powerful impression on me. We stayed in touch through the years and would exchange Chinese New Year cards. It was after I moved to the capital in the 1980s that I lost touch with him. So it wa such a pleasant surprise to hear from him and pleased that he had been following my career and life stories all this while. I immediately put him in touch with the bunch of us from that school who are still in touch with one another.

And then, another mail came. This time from a classmate whom we had been trying to locate all these years. As far as we know, he was the only one from our batch to become a policeman, although all of us, at one point or another, yearned to be a cop. He had been transferred to various stations throughout the country and recently got posted back to PJ.

We will have a lot of catching up to do. :)

A little book with an amazing journey

In this latest edition of Face to Face with Cancer, my wife and I share our thoughts on my two journeys with cancer. The book speaks of God's faithfulness and many blessings in our lives even as we go through these tough times.

Our stories should make you reflect, laugh and maybe shed a tear or two. The print edition is now available. Like our earlier editions, these books are primarily distributed for free to various cancer support groups, oncology wards, and individual patients and caregivers.

If you desire print copies please email Ewe Jin at ewejin@gmail.com. To read the pdf version, look at the links on the right.

For a bit of history, the first edition of Face to Face with Cancer was published in 2000. A second edition came out in 2004 and a third edition in 2006. That was also the year a Chinese edition was published. All in, 12,000 copies were freely distributed to cancer wards, churches, and anyone who asked for it. Thanks to generous sponsors, we have been able to print another 3,000 copies of this latest edition.

A different kind of blogging

For some years now, I have shown my presence on the Internet through the free webpage service at geocities.com. Through that site, I have posted some personal reflections, as well as selected articles from the newspaper where I work.

Primarily, it was about life beyond work. About my journeys with the Big C. And many heart-and-soul pieces written by me and my wife.

Through that simple site, I have connected with many people, especially people on similar journeys from near and far.

This blog will be more or less the same. I will navigate some of the articles from my website at geocities to this blog and hopefully have more interaction with surfers. The other reason being that geocities will be closing down its free website service at the end of the year.