Story of my post retirement life since 2006!!!!!!! 'Stay interested in the world, take on a challenge or die early': This is Capt Shariff’s advice on ageing the best way one can. Some of you might know more about this subject than I do. A lot of it is out in the media, Internet and books. So I thought the best way would be to take a personal standpoint and tell you how I approach this question of ageing.If I cast my mind back, I can see turning points in my physical and mental health. Guess when I was young, I didn't bother too much, I assumed good health was God-given and would always be there. When I was much younger, I was really fond of drinking beer and smoking cigar, pipe etc. Often then, I would lost my voice because I'd been smoking furiously like a chimney or old train. I'd take a packet of 10 to deceive myself, but I'd run through the packet just watching the world goes by.Lately since reaching 55 plus years of age, I stopped smoking. It was atremendous deprivation because I was addicted to it. And I used to wake up dreaming...the nightmare was I resumed smoking.But I made a choice and said, if I continue this, I will not be able to survive too long. I didn't know anything about cancer of the throat or esophagus or the lungs, etc. But it turned out it had many other deleterious effects.Strangely enough after that, I became very allergic, hyper-allergic to smoking, so much so that I would plead with my friends, not to smoke in the room. You want to smoke, please go out, because I am allergic to smoke !.Then one day I was at the home of my colleague, meeting many old friends includingsome from the my old school mates and they took a picture of me and I had a big belly like that a beer belly. I felt no, no, this will not do.So I started playing more golf, hit hundreds of balls on the practice tee but this didn't go down. There was only one way it could go down: eat less, burn up more.Another turning point came when - this was from year 2000 onwards i.e. I was feeling tired easily. I was breathing deeply at the home, on the lawns. My daughter, said: 'What are you trying to do?' I said: 'I feel an effort to breathe in more oxygen.' She said: 'Don't play golf. Run. Aerobics.' So she gave me a book, quite a famous book and then, points swimming, running, whatever it is, cycling etc. I looked at it skeptically initially. I wasn't very keen onrunning. I was keen on golf. So I said, 'Let's try'. So in-between golf shots while playing on my own, sometimes nine holes at the Miri Golf Club, I would try and walk faster between shots.
Then I began to run between shots. And I felt better. After a while, I said: 'Okay, after my golf, I run.' And after a few years, I said: 'Golf takes so long. The running takes 15minutes. Let's cut out the golf and let's run or walk faster.' I think the most important thing in ageing is you got to understand yourself. And the knowledge now is all there. When I was growing up, the knowledge wasn'tthere. I had to get the knowledge from friends, from doctors.But perhaps the most important bit of knowledge that the doctor gave me was one day, when I said: 'Look, I'm feeling slower and sluggish.' So he gave me a medical encyclopedia and he turned the pages to ageing. I read it up and it was illuminating. A lot of it was difficult jargon but I just skimmed through to get the gist of it.As you grow and mature, you reach 20, 30, 40, 50 and then, thereafter, you are on a gradual slope down physically. Mentally, you carry on and on and on until you don't know what age, but mathematicians will tell you that they know their best output is when they're in their 20s and 30s when your mental energy is powerful and you haven't lost many neurons. That's what they tell me.So, as you acquire more knowledge, you then craft a program for yourself to maximize what you have. It's just common sense. I never planned to live till 80 or 90. I just didn't think about it. I said, 'Well, my mom died when she was 74, she had a stroke. My father is still alive and kicking, he is 90.'Indeed, he is living a long life, well, maybe it is his DNA and I pray/hope that I have his more than mom. But more than that, he does gardening every day and he kept himself busy. He was working in the tin mining industry. He was in charge, he was a superintendent of a tin mining Company. When he retired, he took up gardening very seriously and sweats it out everyday. My father was then living with my mother in his kampong home. And gardening kept him busy. He had that healthy routine ,,,,,,, And he keeps going.
Unfortunately since mom died 4 years back, dad had to leave his kampong home and live with his children in the city.But last year he fell, going down the steps from his room to the dining room, cracked his bones, one months incapacitated. Thereafter, he couldn't go back to his normal exercise duties. He has gradually loss his mental powers. So my calculations, I'm somewhere,,,,,,,,, and guess I've reached the halfway point now.
But have I?So at each stage, I learnt something more about myselfand I stored that. I said: 'Oh, this is now a danger point.'So all right, cut out fats, change diet, went to see a specialist in Columbia Hospital some time ago. He said: 'Take statins.' I said: 'What's that?' He said: 'it will help to reduce your cholesterol.'My doctors were concerned. So the doctors said: 'Take statins and don’t stop taking! so am on it for the past 2 years.'
So next deadline: my father's fall at 89.I'm very careful now because sometimes when I turn round too fast, I feel as if I'm going to get off balance. So my wife, an retired nursing sister, she took me to the Miri GH, there's this nerve conduction test, put electrodes here and there.The transmission of the messages between the feet and the brain has slowed down.So all the exercise, everything, effort put in, I'm fit, I swim at Kapas island, I walk at Miri Bulatan. But I can't prevent this losing of conductivity of the nerves and this transmission.So when I climb up the steps, I have no problem. When I go down the steps, I need to be sure that I've got something extra I can hang on to, just in case. So it's a constant process of adjustment. My right knee is giving me problems.But I think the most important single lesson I learnt in life was that if you isolate yourself, you're done for. The human being is a social animal - he needs stimuli, he needs to meet people, to catch up with the World.Because I still get to meet people of interest to me, while working with Shell again after my retirement in 2006. And I meet people and I get to understand what's happening in the world, what has changed etc. And that stimuli brings me to the world of today. I'm not living in the world, when I was active, more active i.e. 20, 30 years ago. So I tell my wife. She woke up late last Sunday. I said: 'Never mind, you come along by 12 o'clock. I go first. 'I'm determined that I will not, as long as I can, to be reduced, to have my horizons closed on me like that. It is the stimuli, it is the constant interaction with people that keeps me aware and alive to what's going on and what we can do to adjust to this different world.
Note; as such getting GLMS operational is my immediate tasking nowadays and it keeps me active mentally too.
In other words, you must have an interest in life. If you believe that at 55, you're retiring, you're going to read books, play golf and drink wine, then I thinkyou're done for. So statistically they will show you that all the people who retire and lead sedentary lives, the pensioners die off very quickly.So we now have a social problem with medical sciences, new procedures, new drugs, many more people are going to live long lives. If the mindset is that when Ireach retirement age 55, I'm old, I can't work anymore, I don't have to work, I just sit back, now is the time I'll enjoy life, I think you're making the biggest mistake of your life.After one month, or after two months, even if you go traveling with nothing to do, with no purpose in life, you will just degrade.The human being needs a challenge, and my advice to every person: Keep yourself interested, have a challenge.If you're not interested in the world and the world is not interested in you, the biggest punishment a man can receive is total isolation in a dungeon, black andcomplete withdrawal of all stimuli, that's real torture.If you want to see sunrise tomorrow or sunset, you must have a reason, you must have the stimuli to keep going.'
Am going back to my island and be a Pirate again very shortly ,,,,,,where I will meet many young and not so young people from all over the World.
Cheers mate,,,,,,,, be jolly be happy ho ho hoo!.
Capt.
Then I began to run between shots. And I felt better. After a while, I said: 'Okay, after my golf, I run.' And after a few years, I said: 'Golf takes so long. The running takes 15minutes. Let's cut out the golf and let's run or walk faster.' I think the most important thing in ageing is you got to understand yourself. And the knowledge now is all there. When I was growing up, the knowledge wasn'tthere. I had to get the knowledge from friends, from doctors.But perhaps the most important bit of knowledge that the doctor gave me was one day, when I said: 'Look, I'm feeling slower and sluggish.' So he gave me a medical encyclopedia and he turned the pages to ageing. I read it up and it was illuminating. A lot of it was difficult jargon but I just skimmed through to get the gist of it.As you grow and mature, you reach 20, 30, 40, 50 and then, thereafter, you are on a gradual slope down physically. Mentally, you carry on and on and on until you don't know what age, but mathematicians will tell you that they know their best output is when they're in their 20s and 30s when your mental energy is powerful and you haven't lost many neurons. That's what they tell me.So, as you acquire more knowledge, you then craft a program for yourself to maximize what you have. It's just common sense. I never planned to live till 80 or 90. I just didn't think about it. I said, 'Well, my mom died when she was 74, she had a stroke. My father is still alive and kicking, he is 90.'Indeed, he is living a long life, well, maybe it is his DNA and I pray/hope that I have his more than mom. But more than that, he does gardening every day and he kept himself busy. He was working in the tin mining industry. He was in charge, he was a superintendent of a tin mining Company. When he retired, he took up gardening very seriously and sweats it out everyday. My father was then living with my mother in his kampong home. And gardening kept him busy. He had that healthy routine ,,,,,,, And he keeps going.
Unfortunately since mom died 4 years back, dad had to leave his kampong home and live with his children in the city.But last year he fell, going down the steps from his room to the dining room, cracked his bones, one months incapacitated. Thereafter, he couldn't go back to his normal exercise duties. He has gradually loss his mental powers. So my calculations, I'm somewhere,,,,,,,,, and guess I've reached the halfway point now.
But have I?So at each stage, I learnt something more about myselfand I stored that. I said: 'Oh, this is now a danger point.'So all right, cut out fats, change diet, went to see a specialist in Columbia Hospital some time ago. He said: 'Take statins.' I said: 'What's that?' He said: 'it will help to reduce your cholesterol.'My doctors were concerned. So the doctors said: 'Take statins and don’t stop taking! so am on it for the past 2 years.'
So next deadline: my father's fall at 89.I'm very careful now because sometimes when I turn round too fast, I feel as if I'm going to get off balance. So my wife, an retired nursing sister, she took me to the Miri GH, there's this nerve conduction test, put electrodes here and there.The transmission of the messages between the feet and the brain has slowed down.So all the exercise, everything, effort put in, I'm fit, I swim at Kapas island, I walk at Miri Bulatan. But I can't prevent this losing of conductivity of the nerves and this transmission.So when I climb up the steps, I have no problem. When I go down the steps, I need to be sure that I've got something extra I can hang on to, just in case. So it's a constant process of adjustment. My right knee is giving me problems.But I think the most important single lesson I learnt in life was that if you isolate yourself, you're done for. The human being is a social animal - he needs stimuli, he needs to meet people, to catch up with the World.Because I still get to meet people of interest to me, while working with Shell again after my retirement in 2006. And I meet people and I get to understand what's happening in the world, what has changed etc. And that stimuli brings me to the world of today. I'm not living in the world, when I was active, more active i.e. 20, 30 years ago. So I tell my wife. She woke up late last Sunday. I said: 'Never mind, you come along by 12 o'clock. I go first. 'I'm determined that I will not, as long as I can, to be reduced, to have my horizons closed on me like that. It is the stimuli, it is the constant interaction with people that keeps me aware and alive to what's going on and what we can do to adjust to this different world.
Note; as such getting GLMS operational is my immediate tasking nowadays and it keeps me active mentally too.
In other words, you must have an interest in life. If you believe that at 55, you're retiring, you're going to read books, play golf and drink wine, then I thinkyou're done for. So statistically they will show you that all the people who retire and lead sedentary lives, the pensioners die off very quickly.So we now have a social problem with medical sciences, new procedures, new drugs, many more people are going to live long lives. If the mindset is that when Ireach retirement age 55, I'm old, I can't work anymore, I don't have to work, I just sit back, now is the time I'll enjoy life, I think you're making the biggest mistake of your life.After one month, or after two months, even if you go traveling with nothing to do, with no purpose in life, you will just degrade.The human being needs a challenge, and my advice to every person: Keep yourself interested, have a challenge.If you're not interested in the world and the world is not interested in you, the biggest punishment a man can receive is total isolation in a dungeon, black andcomplete withdrawal of all stimuli, that's real torture.If you want to see sunrise tomorrow or sunset, you must have a reason, you must have the stimuli to keep going.'
Am going back to my island and be a Pirate again very shortly ,,,,,,where I will meet many young and not so young people from all over the World.
Cheers mate,,,,,,,, be jolly be happy ho ho hoo!.
Capt.
