DONATING BLOOD AT THE TIME OF THE OUTBREAK OF THE CORONAVIRUS @ COVID-19 IN MALAYSIA, AND THINKING OF NEW YORK CITY AND MY SOLO PHOTO EXHIBITION AT THE NATIONAL ART GALLERY POSTPONED. – PART II.

By Mansor bin Puteh



I am told in this temperature Coronavirus will die off since it cannot survive in temperature of 27.5 Celsius. So I decided not to switch on the air-conditioning in the car when I am driving so that with the temperature outside which around 40 Celsius, this should be good to ensure that the virus does not fine any space inside of the car to infect me.



I am burning 6,500 calories and jogging for 5,450 kilometers total today, for charity. It is a feat I had not considered to look at in this way, but it was thrilling and was taking a bit of my attention while my blood flowed into the machine to have the plasma in it filtered to flow into the plastic bag beside it which I could see clearly.

And it was also relieving how the color of the plasma was clear with no trace of cholesterol, especially when the doctor who processed me earlier had disclosed from the bi-annual full blood test I had taken two weeks earlier who said my cholesterol count was very good at four points.

But I could have donated more than nine hundred times (900 times), if it had not been for the three major surgeries I had to take at the St. Luke’s Hospital and the third one, at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center both in Manhattan with the first one near the Columbia University campus where I was a graduate student majoring in film directing. It forced me to take a break from donating blood for fifteen years.

If this had happened I could very easily be able to break the world record for donating blood held by an Australian James Harrison who had donated 1,173 times on 15 May, 2018 to receive the Guinness Book of Records award for being the top blood donor of the world, at the age of 81 years.

I was diagnosed for having a ‘Giant Cell Tumor of the Upper Left Tibia’ in my second semester at Columbia, after a biopsy was conducted by Dr George Unis, and had the tumor removed in the second surgery at the first hospital, also operated by the same doctor, when some plastic cement was inserted in the space or hole that was created after the surgeon had removed or scrapped off the tumor from my left tibia, for which I had to continue to use two crutches for ambulation right after the first surgery in March of 1979.

I had to wait one and a half years to have the third and final surgery which is for the reconstruction of the left knee, which finally did not happen because my knee experienced a bad infection that caused the tendons in the knee to melt and made the tibia to hang from the femur, so the surgeon, Dr. Ralph C Marcove to insert a Cuepar knee prosthesis instead, for which I still now have that is still good for me to use and walk on without any need for the crutches.

While waiting for the third and final surgery, I was given a one-year medical leave by a co-chairman of the Film Division, two-time Oscar-winner for Best Director, Milos Forman whose film ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ I had seen before leaving Malaysia and ‘Amadeus’ I saw after I returned to Malaysia. He made ‘Ragtime’ when I was at Columbia and visited the set in Lower Manhattan once. (Milos Forman died on 15 May, 2018)

I then decided to leave for Boston for six months to live with some Malaysian friends who were studying at some universities there, to recuperate, after which I decided to take a three-month trip back to Malaysia, before returning to New York City to resume my studies.

Despite being on two crutches, it still did not stop me from being able to travel to the forty countries I have so far managed to go to, to attend film festivals, seminars, conferences and forums and also for leisure.

I was on two crutches and just a backpack with minimal clothes and some negative films with me when I flew back to Malaysia from Logan Airport outside of Boston and also for my flight back to New York City because I had left my things with some friends in the city that I could use later.

And today when I am donating blood for the 545th time the scene at the blood center in Kuala Lumpur is different; it is Saturday when so few people would walk in to donate. Today most of the beds are taken with more nurses tending them because they are not allowed to go on mobile blood donation drive in the supermarkets and shopping malls and universities because of the partial or semi-lockdown that is imposed throughout the country, with social distancing being enforced on the members of the public.

So instead of the crews from the blood center going to the potential donors, it is the donors who now come to the centers to donate.

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And while driving out of the National Blood Center I turned to look at the left, across the street to see the National Art Gallery where my solo photo and collage exhibition entitled: ‘Around America: From Melaka to Manhattan‘ that was supposed to open on 1 May is now brought forward to 22 June to 17 August, 2020. I am also showing some photos of Columbia and New York City I took when I first got there in August, 1978 and they are printed in old newsprint paper from the newspaper in Malaysia where I was reporting for prior to going to the university that I had kept since that year till now.
It has given me more time to reflect on what I can and want to do with the exhibition and be able to make some meaningful changes to it by showing artworks, collages and other pieces including installations to make the whole exhibition to be more relevant to the time we are in.