Celebrated my friend's birthday last night, and I found it a sobering experience. Everytime I meet her is a sobering experience. It is difficult to call the experience sobering because it kinds of wakes you up, but confuses you at the same time. It is almost as if I will be stunned and shocked everytime I see her. I knew her about 2 years ago, when my friend introduced me to her. She is 22 this year and she suffers from some kind of muscular atrophy. She cannot walk or get off her bed, never attended school or classes and now requires breathing aids. She can only move her arms and manage slight movements of her head, which allows her to SMS my friends, go online, and do some sewing. But beyond that, her body has pretty much wasted away. She is small, very small. Thus, despite her age, whenever she is warded, she will be in the paediatrics. It is no wonder that during her birthday celebrations or her christmas celebrations, a lot of doctors turn up.

One told me that she was a joy to work with. Her optimism was infectious and it gave them a lot of encouragement. Her will to live has sustained her this far and it has sustained them.

Her mother and her friends taught her everything, I do not know where her father went. My friend was from SRJC Interact Club which "adopted" her years back. And I guessed that they brought her a lot of joy and knowledge of the external world. My friends and I were introduced to her during one of her "parties". We were to cheer her up. We were told that we need not be awkward when we speak of her condition, she knows herself and she knows that she is going to die. But yesterday I was alone without my other guys, I felt lost as to what to talk to her about. She is smart, she learns a lot from her mum and television. But we were from two different worlds, I do not watch the programs she does, I do not know the names of Korean hunks, and the only F4 I know is the key on my keyboard.

And I was severely warned by my friends not to talk philosophy to her.

I managed a short conversation punctuated with periods of awkward silence, after which my female friends kindly took over. They can relate better to her, despite her condition, she is still very much a normal girl at heart. They talked to her about Korean and Taiwanese actors, about cute doctors and she would ask her mum to show us her photos, and I would sit by the side as they wrapped her presents for her, showing her the beautiful trinkets that are her presents. My job is to be a back-up voice actor whose task is to provide occasional "nice", "beautiful" or help in hanging up the wind chimes. I just cannot take part in what they are doing, it is not that I do not want to, I do not know how to.

She learnt so much from television. It is amazing that a person with so little life experiences can know so much, can feel so much, can know what is beautiful, ugly, good, bad, right or wrong. Her life has been a constant shuttling to and fro hospitals. While I am determined to unlearn all I have learnt, she is voraciously taking in all of it. While I am denying life its meaning, she is giving so many to hers. Perhaps here is a justification for the net and the television. Much as what she took in was all constructed and sensationalized by the media, it gave her a view of what the world is like, gave her an idea what to live for, and I believe that lifted her pain.

She showed us the ringtones which she downloaded, some really old photos, and played us a tape of songs which her friends sang for her. And it was rather nice of her actually to show us only the happy moments of her life, of the snapshots of the smiles in her life, sparing us the pain which we so often see when we visit her in hospital.

I do not know what to say. For the past week, I have been tempted to ask my friends what actually keeps them going, what actually gets them going, what would actually get them looking forward to a new day and just what are they living for.

I was tempted to ask her the same question. I was.