Gosh, just read a story about a girl who died after working non-stop on her laptop for 8 hours.

Dead after 8 hours on laptop (http://digital.asiaone.com.sg/news/20070501_001.html)

Her story is a painful but apt lesson for us as we take a break this May Day: Work hard, but take care of your health.

That lesson came too late for Ms May Leong, who died on 23 Apr. Just two days before her death, she had written in her blog: “I don’t wanna end up dead for the sake of dough”.
Her mum and some friends believe she was stressed out from work. Going by her blog entry dated 21 Apr – her only entry this year – her job seemed demanding.
And she was clearly struggling to cope with the workload. Just before she died, Ms Leong, who would have been 29 this month, had been working on her laptop for eight straight hours, said her mother.

Although the cause of death can’t be confirmed for now, family members believe she died from pulmonary embolism caused by deep vein thrombosis. This is a condition that can strike when someone has been inactive for a long period of time, like sitting in one position.
“I really thought I was able to do everything, that I can be supergirl as well, but my health is worsening at a fast rate,” she wrote in her blog two days before she died.
“Vitamin M(oney) isn’t gonna cure my health.”

The Singaporean is an only child. Her father left the family when she was young, said a relative, leaving the mother and daughter to fend for themselves.
That early trauma bonded the pair, who became close. Ms Leong, who worked in a multi-national company (MNC) and apparently drew a salary of $2,600 a month, said in her blog that she wanted to “earn lots of $”.
She had a dream: To take her mother abroad for a holiday. Friends and family said she was bent on earning enough to realise that dream for Madam Lim Mui Mui, 54, who works as a packer for a supermarket chain here.

That is why Ms Leong continued to hold on to her job, despite being stressed by it.
Said her friend, Mr Li Kaiyan, 25, a civil engineering student at the National University of Singapore: “She told us before she blogged her last entry that she was overworked and stressed out. “We hardly had time to chat on the Internet since she started this job about two months ago.” Ms Leong had been working at different jobs until she joined her last company in September last year, said Mr Li who has been a close friend for three years.

In March, she switched departments in the same company and work became more demanding. Ms Leong, a support manager, was thrilled to “finally have the chance to ‘fly high’ in a Fortune 500 MNC”, she wrote in her blog. So much so that it was “ok for me to wake at 3.30am to start work @ 4.30am everyday in the morning” as she was dealing with New Zealand partners. “But never did I realise what kind of stuff (would be) coming towards me...” she wrote. “What I face everyday as a partner support manager is having more than 100 e-mails per day. “Partners from New Zealand practically ‘screaming’ to be served first, getting their orders delivered ASAP, wanting everything, complaining of everything.

FYI, if you are interested, i found her blog : http://pinkmayflower.multiply.com/journal/

Very sad..