Last year on this day I wrote “first day out of work”. To a certain extent, I was plunging into an unknown after a 32 years employment full of daily routines. I have witnessed friends who enjoyed their first 6 months of retirement and ended up being bored to death after that and either sought for employment or forced themselves to accept a more or less meaningless life of waiting for death to come. I knew their problem was unable to occupy their free time and I was confident I won’t have that problem as I have hobbies that would take up all my free time. I also knew that I needed a routine and that being so, I have prepared a 6 month daily routine in my Outlook Calendar to guide me. After the first 6 months, I modified the routine for another 6 months. It worked quite well. I was following it up to about 90% of the time. I intend to keep modifying it and using it until a new unwritten routine is established for this new phase of life.
In this one year, the most notable difference in my retired life is the absence of mental stress that used to briefly ruin my mind as I got out of bed in the morning thinking I have to face this or that problem that I still have no solution. This absence makes my day more enjoyable and I found myself more looking forward to live the day.
The second obvious difference is I spent more time on physical exercise. I nearly brisk walk 45 minutes in the morning in Tun Fuad Park 5 days a week and walked up and down my staircase for 20 over minutes or do other exercise in the remaining 2 days, including Hatha Yoga. Besides, I conducted 90 minute Hatha Yoga class and 30 minutes group meditation 3 times a week in the HII Centre. With the more regular physical exercises, Hatha Yoga and meditation, which I also do almost daily, my health, despite the fact that age is catching up, has improved. I must have improved my muscles and postures that my back problem has tremendously reduced.
This morning I woke up early as usual, moved my bowel, read the 2 daily papers, have fruits as breakfast, walked up and down the stair for 30 minutes, changed 2 light bulbs, checked one garden tap, took my morning bath, made a few phone calls, including a lunch and afternoon tea appointments with old friends who remember today is my official birth day, wrote some emails, including one to the Mayor, translated one of my Master’s article from English to Chinese, sent a letter I wrote last week to an old friend in Taiwan, attended to the Telekom technicians who came to install my modem for Broad Band internet access which can be considered my birthday present. That took up the whole morning. After the Telekom technicians have left, I left my house to have lunch and afternoon tea with my long time friends who remembered my birthday and bought me birthday cake and Durian Swiss roll. We talked about the good old happy times together, the poor world economic performance and other friends till 4 PM.
In the evening, my wife and I went to the Vegas club to have salmon dinner. We met a former DBKK colleague there who updated me on the latest human resources reshuffle in DBKK.
After dinner I came back to my computer trying to find out what Streamyx (name of the Broad Band service) can offer and what it could not do. Roughly, I found out it could not access NNTP newsgroup, worked intermittently for my Jaring email, and the download transfer rate varied from 40 to 60 Kbps. I tried to modify my email account to make it work, tried to set up a new account for Streamyx service and tried without success to change my password until after mid night.
Looking back, I followed my set routine fairly well, was somewhat behind schedule in my reading of Philosophy, read a few extra books not in my plan, wrote over 15 articles with one published in the Asia Times, visited China once, made several local trips including one to Sukau by boat from Sandakan, visited my children in West Malaysia twice, attended one retreat in Kundazang, gave 2 talks in stress management and a talk on self managed team, spoke on the Gaya Street pedestrian friendly street as a panel member in a Sabah Society public forum, gave a talk to a Rotary Club on the Silk Road tour, have morning or afternoon tea with a few old friends and talked like many other people in the coffee shops. The books I read included such topics as logic, Buddhism, world crisis and novels. Before I started reading history of Philosophy, I have to read logic and philosophy of language as tools. Besides, I did more gardening, composting, bathing the poor dog that we have neglected all the time, upgraded my PC to Pentium 4(2.4GHz) with Windows XP and LCD monitor, have lunch or dinners with former colleagues from JKR and DBKK, gave some advice here and there, attended the Board of Engineer Presidential Consultative Council meeting, accepted the appointment to the Institut Sinaran Board of Governors and chairman of its Building subcommittee responsible for planning the campus while continued to head the school building subcommittee of KK High School which just embarked on a RM 2.7 million IT Centre project. Accepted an interview by a reporter to talk about my life as a civil servant and how KK should be developed. Life is still meaningful, busy but the difference from working life is it is no longer hectic.
By Hiew, 5/6/2003
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