the lows:

1. in sapa trip, the tooth ache conitinued, already for a few  weeks. the right lower molar had a big swell on the gum. he always thot it was the one next to the missing tooth, since he thot this is one tha's most prone to tooth decay. during one  dinner, while he was biting some meat, he felt an acute pain on the molar, then he felt it with his tongue, and there seemed to be some strand of food stuck to the inner side. not until much later he realised he had cracked his molar, not the one next to the missing tooth, rather the inner-most one.

when he came back, the next day 12/11/12 he saw a dentist in balestier road, a lady dentist. she did a cleaning, and examined the teeth and confirmed the crack, and sounded somber and serious. saying "the tooth is infected, take antibiotic first, then come back, to take out the cracked part, and do root cannel. he went back 19/12/12, took out 1/3 of the tooth, the dentist sounded quite blique, "the tooth is now supported by one of teh two roots only, i will try to save it anyway. so you could spread the load to both sides of your molars, instead of the left ones, which already showing signs of severe ground-off of the enamel."

she did the root cannel as well, which was not that painful under local jab.

all this while the dentist did not talk much, did not quite explain to him what she was doing, or going to do, like nike's slogan, just do it. he did ask her a few times, but refrain from asking at other times, since he didn't want to appear ignorant and long-winded.

any way, the tooth was ground down, to a farction of it size, appear like a little square chizzle head, before it was crowned with metal cap, which according to the dentist was better for crack-proof.

for the a few weeks after the crowning, the crowned tooth felt pain whener he took a bite on slightly harder food. only after about a month this feeling subsided, to almost like the feeling for a natural tooth.

teeth maintenance is imperative but people avoid seeing a dentist because they are in a denial mode, and also have the wrong thinking of dentist means excriating pains.

2. a month ago, dbs told him to hold on to olam bond which he bot, after muddy water, the famous short-seller reported they were shorting the company due to it dubious accounting practice and highly geared debt structure. the share and bond prices slided quite abit. olam retorted with its rationale alomst immediately. one weeks after, muddy water came out with a long reported stating the points they viewed as negative to olam. olam came out with it's almost point-point rebutal. but this did not quite help the slidng trend, not until temasek came it to buy more shares from the market and also expressed its attitude to support the rights issue.