Week 10

Week 10 is marked with individual design ending (at last!!!!) and a dose of shopaholic confession. Not me, I'm no shopaholic. I'm talking about the movie.

Red in the face = cancer?

Source from Reuters:

Red-faced Asian drinkers at esophageal cancer risk

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Asians who get red in the face when they drink too much alcohol have a higher risk of getting cancer of the esophagus, U.S. and Japanese researchers said on Monday.

They said about a third of East Asians -- Chinese, Japanese and Koreans -- have an enzyme deficiency that causes their skin to flush when they drink alcohol, and this trait puts them at higher risk of developing esophageal cancer, an especially deadly type with five-year survival rates of 12 to 31 percent.

"People are fairly well aware of this physical characteristic, which is sometimes called the Asian alcohol response or the Asian flush," said Philip Brooks of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, whose study appears in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

"I don't think people are aware that it is a warning sign for being at risk of esophageal cancer when they drink alcohol. That is what we wanted to point out," said Brooks, who worked on the study with Dr. Akira Yokoyama from the Kurihama Alcohol Center in Japan.

Brooks estimates that at least 540 million people have this alcohol-related increased risk for esophageal cancer.

He said the flushing response occurs in people who have a variation in the ALDH gene, which makes an enzyme called aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 that helps the body metabolize alcohol.

People with two copies of this gene variant have such extreme symptoms of flushing, nausea, and racing heart beat that they avoid drinking alcohol.

"They are basically at somewhat reduced risk of developing esophageal cancer because drinking alcohol for anybody is a risk factor for esophageal cancer," Brooks said in a telephone interview
"The concern is for people who have one copy," he said, because they can tolerate drinking.

"In general, people with one copy have about a six to tenfold increase in the incidence of esophageal cancer."

Brooks said doctors should ask patients of East Asian descent of they have a history of facial flushing when they drink.

And he said university health professionals need to be aware of the link between facial flushing and cancer risk since many young people experiment with heavy drinking in college.

There's even a medical journal on it here. Wow...I always thought that turning red when drinking alcohol means good blood circulation. Didn't know it had a name to it and is a possible cause of cancer?!? (Decides to cut down on alcohol......)

The call of IPPT........

How the heck is it even possible to actually step into 2 different shops and hear that same radio commercial playing in the background and telling you to take IPPT?! "This message has been brought to you by the SAF...." A timely reminder in my midst of RT...

RT!!!!!!!

Dreaded RT sessions have begun. Something which I have bitched about since failing my IPPT last yr, it's time to take a bit of punishment. And punishment it is on that Sunday afternoon, it's certainly back to army "politics". "Wait to rush and rush to wait."

Basically, we spent 1 hour for inpro, the next 40 min for briefing, another 25 min to queue up and keying in of NRIC number, height and weight, and a 5 min 400 m orientation run around my former camp which I think I can present even better than the PTI.

So there....first lesson for RT. Oh, and it's a long long time since somebody called me "third sergeant" le. Omg...welcome back to the army.....

TCHS 90th Anniversary

How time flies...I still remember a decade ago, we held our sch's 80th anniversary celebrations and it was grand at that time cos no school could match our publicity and scale in organising such an event. It was termed the 万人宴, so it had a strong showing of students, both old boys and current ones. Never mind the fact that a large number of us Sec.3 students were dragged to perform some chinese dance where we danced with red drums strapped to our breasts and wielded drumsticks with silk cloth on it, or that I had guard duty in the evening for NCC so I kinda missed most of dinner, but it was a big event and most importantly, we got to hang out with our friends plus have a free day off.

Fast forward 10 years to now, we attended the sch's 90th anniversary dinner as old boys over the weekend. It's something we have talked about ever since leaving school. And it was every bit as grand as it was 10 years ago.

Some interesting things happened though. Firstly, as we were seated close to the students section, the waitresses refused to serve us beer! Actually only XM and I managed to get a glass of beer, but the waitress who served us later got reprimanded by another senior waitress. She even threaten to tell the principal....super LOL!! Hello....like we left the sch since 10 years ago le.....do we look like kids?!!?!? Almost wanted to flash our ICs le....

Then there was this song composed specially for this 90th anniversay by Job Tan, oh man......he was our one and only music teacher since sec. 1 and he looks kinda the same....and the song was performed by the choir group and leading the group was.....drum rolls....miss siew, our sec. 4 form teacher!!! When te interview video of her flashed through, my whole table exclaimed with "OMG!!" and the funny part was that it wasn't just us, other students from other tables also had that same expression! Sarcastic clapping....so you could really sense how erm...popular she was...hahaha

Oh and halfway throughout the dinner, we were close to running out of drinks......again....like 10 years ago...don't the caterers ever learn? 10,000 hungry and thirsty boys to cater for....Maybe they ran out of beer too?

And presenting a video when the school song came along....it's kinda amazing how after so many years, I could actually sing the song, just needed a bit of music to get going and all the words suddenly came to mind...Dash and XD were the only guys to seem to remember too....but HH and XM had the super blur expressions on their faces...:p, CW was the one who whipped out his camera handphone first to take the vid, so wang and i followed suit...

Heck, even our table seats were kinda close to where we were during the 80th anniversary right out in the middle of the field. And throughout, we behaved just like boys. Being rowdy, talking cock, talks of 翻桌子 cos the food was bad (it's always bad anw :p), phone porn surfing (cw again la...) etc etc... For a moment there, it felt as if we still 长不大, as if we have never left our days in TCHS. Haha good times good times....

And that is why I really want to thank this group of friends that I have been hanging out with. This really marks a decade since I first met them and I am really glad that all these years, we've stuck together and spent lotsa good and rollin' fun times together. We were the only class from our batch to turn up in force.

Having said that, Dash mentioned to me about the next anniversary. The 100th anniversary would be much grander in scale, and it would be another decade away. But already, we're talking abt it now.

Me: "How will things change? We don't seem to have changed too much!!"
Dash: "Well, for one, maybe next time we would need a much larger table to accomodate everyone? (think abt wife and kids.........)"
Me: "Wows....thinking that far le? (but very true though....10 years down the road)"

Just then we looked at the table beside us. It was actually a table of guys in their early thirties, 9 old boys and 1 lady, definitely one of the guy's wife. The guys all stood up and left to find their former teachers, leaving behind the wife as sentry duty.....Hmmmm.....den after some time, the poor husband has to come back to 陪the wife while the other guys were missing. Oh well.....

Me and Dash: "Nah...think we should just set this event only for the 4D-ians...let's leave the wife and kids out of this...well if we do have one in a decade..."

How time flies....but one thing's for sure....boys will always be boys. You can't change that. :p