Zero to Hero – Takalah (Never Lose)

Do you know, acquired, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a sudden damage to the brain caused by a blow or jolt to the head from events after birth ranging from mild concussions to severe permanent brain damage?

Common causes include car or motorcycle crashes, falls, sports injuries, and assaults.

An interesting fact isn’t it?

This was exactly what the young commando officer, who was a lightweight boxing champion, a triathlete, a scuba-diver, a bungee-jumper, and a rock climber, experienced on the 24th of May of 1994.

He met with a traffic accident which inflicted upon him severe traumatic brain injuries (TBI) with life-threatening conditions.

Tan Kok Liang, his original name, was born on September 8, 1969. Whilst writing to his pen-friend Kristi Fillmore, Tan Kok Liang adopted the name, Takalah, as his new name.

Takalah was born in a family who owns a lumbering company which cuts trees, trims them and sometimes, sells timbers. Takalah, grew up in a kampong and loved climbing trees, despite being frail, asthmatic and a “cry – baby”. During his free time, Takalah will go to a library near his house with his aunty to read books, or sometimes start building toy rifles together with his siblings. This was used from leftover and unwanted woods by his family’s lumber company or the neighboring furniture factories. Such creativity!

Primary school
By the age of 7, Takalah was admitted to Kwong Ave Primary School, which was at Sennet road then. It was exciting and nervous at the same time, like how the general students will feel when they enter the Primary school. But it was not long until Takalah had to transfer to Teck Ghee Primary School when he was in primary 4.

After relocating, the family members (including his uncles families) who were staying under one roof of the house in Lorong Pernak bought different housing units, which were only few blocks away from each other. At Teck Ghee Primary school, life seem more interesting for Takalah as he joined the scout as a cadet. In there, he learned many things especially the motto of, “be prepared”. Which became one of the important values in his life.

Secondary school
After the successful graduation from Teck Ghee Primary School, Takalah got his first choice from the selection of schools in to Presybytarian High School. Which was undergoing major renovations then. Due to that Takalah pursued his Secondary one education in Yio Chu Kang Secondary School for a temporary period. Life in secondary school was generally routined, like how most ordinary students in Singapore will undergo.

But it became one of Takalah’s high point in life when he embarked in the scout CCA, as a venture scout. It was the moment in life he learnt about the different level of discipline, and the stringent routine it presented. As the member of the scout, he participated in camping, campfires, tracking, community services and many more challenging activities. Amidst all those challenging processes, Takalah was the only person in his whole unit to receive the President’s Scout Award at Istana, from the then President, Wee Kim Wee. Woww! That’s one AWESOME achievement.

Tertiary education
Not only the award, the good GPA score got Takalah to also graduate to the National Junior College (NJC).

He was in NJC for 2 years, and took a few leadership roles, example a member of student council as a student support coordinator, a cross-country runner and a long – distance swimmer.

Takalah was also sent to a youth leadership training camp to advance his leadership skill. Amazing!

However, Takalah got an F9 (fail grade) in mandarin in his O-level examination, which required him to retake it in NJC. Thanks to the introduction of Han Yu Pin Yin (pronunciation of the standard variety of Mandarin using the Roman alphabet), Takalah  found the language easier and managed to pass it.

National service
After successfully finishing his education in NJC, he immediately got a letter to serve the nation in the Army, as a recruit in the Commando unit, in Hendon camp, 5th company, platoon 13, on 1987.

Not only in his education, but Takalah also performed well for the trainings he received in the commandos’ camp and was selected for a leadership course. After completing it in the Commandos unit, Takalah was immediately selected by his higher officials for his wonderful performance in the Officer Cadet School (OCS).

Getting selected to the school was definitely not an easy process, but Takalah pulled it off wonderfully well. Not only getting selected, despite the intense training with a sheer determination, Takalah and few other soldiers were ranked as one of the top 5% soldiers who participated in the OCS. And those 5% of soldiers, were presented with a sword from higher authority. It means they, including Takalah, became an elite soldier. RESPECT!

Life in university
After serving the nation, Takalah got a place in National University of Singapore (NUS) in the course, Bachelors of Arts in Mechanical Engineering. Along with his education, Takalah started exploring other activities, scuba diving, mountain climbing, triathlon, and few others.

Going to NUS also opened up a variety of opportunities for Takalah. One such opportunity was getting the Civil Defence project for the course he did as a Mechanical Engineer.

First, he and a team of qualified individuals were given a task to access the air ventilation systems in bomb shelters located at Bishan. Thereafter, they (Takalah and the team) received another Civil Defence project where they were tasked to improve the strength testing of the concrete column for Housing Development Buildings (HDB). Which means the HDBs we are living in right now is being improved for more stability and more resiliency to external threats continuously.

Thank you to those who were and are involved, including Takalah!

Career

Opportunities for Takalah grew plenty in NUS till the time came for him to successfully graduate for his next phase of his life. Career!

Opportunities did not stop raining for Takalah even after his graduation from his education in NUS. As Takalah was selected among the 7000 applicants for a career as a sales and marketing associate in an American multinational company, Procter & Gamble. Woohooo!

But sometimes, when life seems to be going wonderfully well, it may suddenly present to us something else other than what we expect.

Tragic accident
Just one week before getting employed into Procter & Gamble, Takalah was riding his Honda, CBR, Hurricane, bike on Bukit Batok after alighting his (then) girlfriend at Ang Mo Kio. While riding he wanted to make a filter to the expressway, PIE. Once at the expressway, he slowly veered to the right lane (fastest lane) to gear up and move faster to his destination.

Takalah was not able to be aware of what was 50 meters ahead of him at that moment, when he suddenly came across a Police car, parked on the right side (fastest lane) of the road (which is not supposed to be parked there according to the traffic law in Singapore and Takalah).

As he was riding in a fast speed, according to the highways speed limit, he couldn’t slowdown in time. Before he could even react, his bike collided with the Police car, causing him along with the bike to fly over the Police car only to land on the road 70 meters away with a hard impact.

There is one more thing that was not mentioned, his helmet. It flew off from his head when his bike collided with the Police car, which made a critical blow to his head as he landed after being thrown off from his bike. And more…

As he was sent to National University Hospital (NUH), where he was immediately admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), the doctors discovered that he was almost totally defaced, with his life on the line. He was rushed to the operating theatre around 7 times for the various complication which occurred in his brain.

The doctors had to first reduce the pressure that was rising in the brain, which could have been fatal, by allowing the broken vessel in his brain to heal by itself. Despite being too thin and small for the doctors to operate on. All including the doctors could only pray as more medicines were fed to Takalah.

Overall, Takalah was found to have a fractured socket of the left eye which also became 95% blind. His left nostril was torn off . He lose his sense of smell. He suffered damaged and misaligned teeth. 3 of his right rib broke and punctured the right lung. He dislocated his shoulder. He had a broken shin which shortened his leg by 1.5 inches. And a severe traumatic injury to the brain leaving his awareness to be clean slate like a baby.

Immediately after learning about Takalah’s accident, his Dad fall over and started crying. His mum became speechless and started crying aloud. And his brother who was in Australia for his studies panicked and flew back to Singapore.

Despite all these setbacks Takalah managed to pull through these ordeals and survived “miraculously” with the effort of the doctors and the support of his family.

Not forgetting the support and advice from Mr. Yeo’s family too, whose daughter also had a traumatic brain injury 1/2 a year before Takalah’s accident. This happened in a fall while working in MINDS (Movement for the Intellectually Disabled).

When it was just 1 week away for Takalah to be discharged from the hospital, yet another blow befall Takalah and his family. It was Takalah’s Dad, who died just after 3 months of Takalah’s accident due to a heart seizure. This may be because of who calling his heart by-pass surgery due to the anguish of Takalah’s accident and the high cost of Takalah’s hospital bill.

Naive Takalah, who wasn’t aware of what was happening in the funeral sent by NUH, due to permanent amnesia, asked his Mum, “Who this is?” (pointing at his Dad’s body).

He now is overcoming the blame of his father’s death he placed on himself.

The comeback
Life was back to zero, or rather worst for Takalah. After he got discharged, he was sent back to his home at Ang Mo Kio. He had two choices based on his perspective at that time. Give up?! Or Rise up?!

He even planned to commit suicide a few times. But he chose the latter (to rise up) instead. Takalah started reading children’s English encyclopedia, doing secondary level 10-year series of science & maths and read children books to improve the few aspects of the constraints in his brain.

Not only that, to improve his physical constraints, he did Tai Chi and other water therapies in the water. He went on to learn swimming officially. There he learned to do butterfly stroke (a swimming technique) and to dive into the water while swimming and holding on to his breath for a long period of time.

He also joined the Toast Master Club in Thomson to improve his English. Within 2 years after the accident, he when on to run a marathon of 42.195km after a few training sessions and, also the motivation and companionship of a stranger to complete it.

Along the journey of doing these activities, there were many naysayers and people who made fun of him. But he did not bother and focused on improving himself.

While doing all these Takalah saw the need to sustain himself financially. Hence, he started doing odd jobs like a hawker, a cashier, for only a short period of time.

After which he joined a company called Reuters to do basic jobs like, data entry for about a year. Then his brother who wanted Takalah to do a less strenuous job, appointed him as a clerk at a company named as “Alpha Couriers”, which was bought from a friend.

He stayed there for only about 1 year, before deciding to become a MOE teacher. He was specialising in Physics and Maths and got attached to a school, Woodlands Secondary School to do his practicum. He was in that school for half a year, got a chance to be transferred to Evergreen Secondary school where he did, full-time employment as a physics and math teacher for 3 years and 3 months. Impressive.

But Takalah thought he wanted to learn more about his condition, brain injury, help other brain-injured individuals and upgrade himself. Therefore, Takalah flew to Melbourne at Los Angelos, and took up health science on acquired brain injury from Trobe university for 3 years. After studying there for half a year, Taklah was then attached to Headway Advocacy Unit for his practicum to learn further and apply the knowledge learned with different Brain Injured individuals.

He was also given the opportunity to attend the 6th world congress of Brain Injury in Melbourne, where he met and interacted with different individuals with brain injury and doctors.

It was a great experience for him as he got to learn the experience of fellow Brain Injured individuals and in-depth information about Brain Injury from doctors from different countries and cultures.

With all those knowledge and experience, Takalah got to work with people with brain injuries back in Singapore. One such person was Yeo Yin Yen.

Remember the Yeo’s family who also had a daughter with Brain Injury I spoke about in the previous paragraph of this blog?
The family who supported and advised Takalah and his family when he was still admitted in the hospital?
Yes, Takalah is now working with her and aiding her in physiotherapy and assisting her to reconnect with her past memory.

Not only that, Takalah is currently working in Tzu Chi organisation as a therapy assistant to rehabilitate the elderly. What a meaningful way to earn your money!

Despite suffering a traumatic brain injury, overcoming all those odds he faced after being in a comfortable place he is right now. Takalah is now aiding individuals who are suffering from brain injuries. He is an inspiration of course. Kudos!

Future Desire
Everyone had desires, having desires, and have desires. When asked about his future desires, Takalah gave a few points:

1. He wants to be useful for the betterment of the community and reach out to them about “mind over matter”.
2. He wants to be part of a team (no matter at work, family, or his interest groups) that accepts his abilities and utilises them to execute tasks.
3. He wants to get fitter and trimmer (than his already fit body structure).
4. He wants to remain grateful to everyone and everything.
5. He also wants to get love (especially romantic love) that will understand and accepts his weakness and is glad of his forte/strength.

Message to the world
When the question of any “message to the world” was raised, Takalah immediately pounded upon his thoughts and started organising his thoughts to answer the question readily.

Slowly and calmly he uttered, “Humble yourself, elevate your perspective and your vision will be clearer. Set your goals thereafter, and then partake measures towards realising them.”

Wise words. So, let’s all humble ourselves, elevate our perspectives to make our vision clearer, to realise our goals.

“True Courage”, a series of inspiring stories telecasted in channel 5, where Takalah’s story was showcased in episode 2 at toggle <— Click me now