Story of my post retirement life since 2006!!!!!!! 'Stay interested in the world, take on a challenge or die early':,,,,,,,,be a pirate ?.
This is Capt Shariff Abbas, the "Pirate Chief at Kapas Island", 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 singing 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 a
tremendous 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 and beg with my friends, not to smoke in the room. You want to smoke, please, please,,,,,, please go out side, because I am allergic to smoke !.
Then one day I was at the home of my colleague, meeting many old friends including some from the my old school mates and they took a picture of me and I had a big pot belly like that a beer belly. I felt no, no, this will not do. What's happening here?
So I started playing more golf, hit thousand of balls on the practice tee but this didn't go down well. 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 and moody 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 on
running. 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 15
minutes. 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't
there. 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 myself
and 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.
