I liken one's life to a journey, as we travel through time with many encounters at each stop on the way. This is where one discovers many things, meets people from all walks of life, visits many places of interest, and tastes the many foods such destinations have to offer. Our interactions with all these would in one way or another offer us important lessons that will set the stage for our outlook on life. One can harvest rich experiences from these encounters that would offer valuable lessons on good practices, habits, styles, and behaviour that we can choose to adopt and adapt, while others we can choose to ignore or avoid.

Without exception, everyone will have many junctions to cross throughout the course of one's lifetime. Some are Godsend; others are manmade. While the former are quite beyond our control, the latter require some decisions to be made, and hopefully this book will offer some tips to help readers make the correct decisions.

Every stop, junction, or crossroads will shape and change us. It is important to ponder at these junctions and never walk back. By all means look back for the lessons, but never walk back, as life is progressive, not regressive. Learn from the past, and move on. What the future holds for us is for us to make. Life is what you make of it.

What follows is a narration of the encounters many of my friends have contributed on their journeys. Hopefully these will, in one way or another, help us better manage our own. My role here is really to aggregate the sharing in writing for the benefit of all. For ease of reference, the common and central characters are Dean and his wife, Bridget, who will assume the many roles for the many junctions as they travelled through the journeys that all these friends have contributed.

The First Junction

It was a hot weekend afternoon. Dean's mother was busy baking cakes for the coming Chinese New Year. Dad was busy helping spring clean their humble compound atap hut (an olden-style house with a roof thatched with dried leaves from the atap trees, which are commonly found among mangrove trees along the coast of Singapore), which was located in Choa Chu Kang. Everyone was busy with one thing or another, as usual during that time of year, preparing to usher in the Chinese New Year.

Dean was seven years old and had a sticky tendency to ape his older siblings. Cousin Kenny, having been in the school's scout movement, was eager to show off his newly acquired skills in building a tree house. In the huge village compound was a star fruit tree. Kenny and Dean's older brother, Danny, built a tree house, made up of only several discarded planks of wood, affixed with ropes. They had with them small penknives, water and salt, and some receptacles for their use. The lower-hanging fruits were theirs for the picking. There they were, totally immersed in their activities and oblivious to the fact that poor Dean was just below them, straining his neck and pleading with them to allow him to climb up to the tree house to join them. They did not bother, let alone acknowledge his presence. After a few pleadings and what seemed like an eternity to Dean, he was very upset that his pleas fell on deaf ears. Compounding his anguish was the fact that he was dealing with none other than his own brother and first cousin. He began back-stepping, his eyes still affixed on the two, hoping for some eye contact and that they would eventually relent and change their minds, to let him join them in their tree house. He muttered at them, hoping they would feel threatened, threatening to go home to complain to his mother. That was his recourse, as he was desperate in wanting to join them. Unfortunately, the two were not moved.

Back then in the village, piped water was a luxury and only for the better-heeled. Wells were dug to ensure the constant supply of water to all the households within the vicinity. That village had two wells; one had a circular retaining wall, while the other was squarish in shape. The water from the circular one was not potable, as it was clearly dirty and muddy and was only good for washing. It was heavily tinged orange, especially after a downpour. The square well had crystal-clear water and was used for cooking and drinking. The latter was situated about twenty feet from the star fruit tree and had only about a two-foot-high retaining wall.

Dean was about three-and-a-half feet tall. Back-stepping without eyes at the back of your head is one dangerous adventure. Dean was asking for trouble, as he found out later. Splash! His tiny legs hit the wall, his knee buckled, and he fell backwards into the water. He was drowning!

The strange thing was, he thought he was dreaming. The little he could remember involved kicking the sides of the muddy walls of the well and surfacing once or twice.

His time was obviously not up yet. Providence was smiling at him, as help was at hand. Another cousin, a burly, tall guy by the name of Joe, who had just returned home and was about to preen his pet parrot, heard the splash. He asked the two ignorant fools, "Where is your brother?" They were none the wiser, as their preoccupation had the better of their time—plucking the star fruits, washing them, and then gorging on them nonchalantly.

Joe approached the well with the parrot, first intending to wash his pet parrot and second to check out the source of the splash. True to his suspicion Joe was shocked when he gazed inside the well and saw Dean's tiny hands raising as if asking for help. Joe then shouted at the top of his voice that Dean had fallen into the well and yelled for help, just in case. Being huge and tall, Joe was able to reach down without much effort and plucked Dean from the jaws of death.

The few things Dean could remember after being revived were that everybody was scurrying around like headless chickens, and his mother, who was preparing for the Chinese New Year, burned her cakes. His dad applied whatever little knowledge he had of CPR and was pumping the water out of his tiny body, so Dean survived.

The water from the drinking well was then deemed undrinkable, as it had been contaminated. Far from crystal clear, the water quality was murky, and it was suspected that this was the result of Dean kicking the sides of the mud wall, causing the degeneration. Everyone helped empty the well for new water streams to flow. It took a couple of days before the well was flowing up to the usual level.

That was the first momentous...