Saturday, July 17, 2004
Fade to dark, to light
Have you ever had one of those days (or maybe a few of them) when it feels like you're trapped in limbo... and nothing, absolutely nothing is happening? My life's like that sometimes. It's like it passes in fits and starts, with a disproportionate ratio of fits to starts. Living alone in the middle of cosmopolitan London, it's easy to feel isolated, and rather lonely when your life grinds to a gradual halt. That's when having discovered the pleasure of one's own company comes in useful. Still, like everyone else, I prefer when the unseen driver puts his foot down on the pedal, and the great bus of life cranks itself back into gear.
The nondescript brown envelope at the foot of my door today came as quite a surprise.
So it seems I might have a stab at getting a job after all. I've been offered an interview for a surgical rotation, as it were, at the eleventh hour - days before our jobs wind up.
This weekend isn't going to spent lazing in the sun after all. It's going to spent lazing in the sun, trying to ready my mind for the enormity of a one-shot chance at securing short-term career stability.
I guess my choice has been made for me. Truly, He doth work in mysterious ways. And He hath a warped sense of humour. Guess I just gotta live up to my end of the bargain now and come through.
Somedays, one has to wonder why anyone with an iota of common sense would sign up for this job. Especially in the UK, rather than little old Singaland, it's an endless cycle of seeking re-employment every six months, somewhere in the great, massive lump of opportunity and uncertainty. It's a nomadic lifestyle of move, after move, unless one leads a charmed life and lady luck deals you a straight. I've never really believed in lady luck, all the more's I suspect she's been dealing me jokers of late. And if you're lucky, you get a wild card - the rotation, and for three blissful years, your future is temporarily assured. And then you maybe become a registrar, complete your higher training (back to that six-monthly minstrel's life) and finally become a consultant when, hopefully, the hairs at one's temples are graying tastefully.
I suppose it's different back home. The country, and community are minute. No secrets, no chances of freak occurrences. No such thing as luck - everything's tightly regulated, and there is a form of security - tomorrow, you'll still be in the same place, living under the same roof. You might be taking the train slightly further, or driving to a slightly new location - but it's more of the same, over, and over again.
It does grate on one's nerves sometimes.
And yet, today :
being surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the arrest team working on an old man brought in with a cardiac arrest, and hearing the occasional crisp crack as another of his aged ribs broke... it just feels right. It's not necessarily pleasurable - but I wouldn't give this up for the world. Even if I were to suddenly and miraculously become irresistably sexy to the press, or the literary world, or even the cine-circles (which isn't going to happen) - this is where I belong. Understated, credit-less, soldiering on through the extraordinary, that constitutes our mundanity.
*****
Fear leads to Anger...
He snapped twice today, tending to a young kid who came in cussing and blinding with an open tib-fib fracture.
After the initial barrage of "get off me's" and "f*ck you, f*cking get f*cking off me" he stopped being Mr Nice guy and leaned over into the frightened kid's hard-collar-immobilised field of view, narrowed his eyes, and growled :
I know you're frightened, and you're in pain. But we're trying to help you, and if you keep swearing at my team and scaring them they'll mess up. So you just calm yourself.
In retrospect, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was. Heh.
Then, later as the kid got set off again at the prospect of being catheterised, he snaps again.
It's a bit nastier this time :
We're going to have to put this in either way, so you might as well have it now while you're full of morphine, rather than later when it's really going to hurt.
World-weary bluster turns into wide eyed agreement.
He looks around and the nurses are staring at him wide-eyed too.
What? What did I say??
"We want the nice re-minisce back..."
laughs. Oops. Sorry, I've been storing this up for years, being Mr (Ok, Dr) Nice Guy. It has to come to the surface, sometimes.
*****
Train-staring
Over the years, I've learnt that there are many different ways of pensively staring out train windows. It's probably something to do with the refractive index of the glass they use, which means that from a certain angle you look out on the world through a ghost image of yourself. Looking in, and out, all at once.
There's the prospective watcher-mode. Eyes alert, drinking in the scenary, darting from interesting sight to sight, tracking the bare naked beauty of the English countryside, and the myriad horses and cows as they whiz by, and discovering that horses sometimes sleep on their side (looking remarkably dead) and once in a blue moon, one gets a joker of a cow that sleeps upside down with its legs sticking up into the air. (but bent. like a dog.) Mind racing to keep up with the precious moments of the now, hurling by in an instant, into the past, trying desperately to distill some humourous meaning from it all.
There's the happy-wanderer mode. Eyes alert-ish, flitting distractedly from the odd interesting thing to the other, lips twitching slightly, thinking about something, or someone else. Standing, or rather sitting somewhere between two worlds. Contentment, somewhere between now, and remembering a short while before, which one expects to revisit, in a short while more. Here and now is just a space filler, but that's just fine.
And there's the retrospective mode, eyes dull and fixed, forehead resting lifelessly against the glass, staring somewhere into the past as the world flies you by. Straining to see, and ears straining to hear echoes from the past. Echoes that you've come to miss dearly because those were the days one was happy, and carefree, echoes that time never quite succeeded at erasing. Echoes from another world, and another time. The retrospective mode occasionally makes you lose track of time, and miss your stop when the crucial moment arrives.
I guess it's very much akin to the way we live our lives, isn't it?
*****
Retrospective
Whatever happened to you, Anna (intint)? And the hundreds of other people I used to know, once upon a lifetime ago? I suppose it doesn't help that I haven't told many people from my past about this blog, eh?
*****
Faking it
One of the things I've always known about myself, is that I'm capable of being many different people. It's a bit like the old debating days, when I could debate on every chair.
It has something to do with faking it, and a larger part to do with faking it so well even you begin to believe it. Or maybe just a tenuous grasp on reality. laughs.
The thing is, as solitary and unfulfilling a life as I lead; as many people I have lost, as I have shut out - I have chosen this life, and it is mine. And there's a reason, somewhere in here, inside this rather thick head.
I just wish I could pry it out of me.
*****
I, Poncy Git
Going back to my Littman Classic II from my cardiology master today was like switching from asti to house white. Or mercedes to proton saga. I had this constant nagging feeling that I'd gone suddenly deaf. And heart sounds aren't meant to sound like that surely? Surely there's meant to be more reverb... and a bit of a physiological diastolic murmer?? err. i've gotten spoilt.
The nondescript brown envelope at the foot of my door today came as quite a surprise.
So it seems I might have a stab at getting a job after all. I've been offered an interview for a surgical rotation, as it were, at the eleventh hour - days before our jobs wind up.
This weekend isn't going to spent lazing in the sun after all. It's going to spent lazing in the sun, trying to ready my mind for the enormity of a one-shot chance at securing short-term career stability.
I guess my choice has been made for me. Truly, He doth work in mysterious ways. And He hath a warped sense of humour. Guess I just gotta live up to my end of the bargain now and come through.
Somedays, one has to wonder why anyone with an iota of common sense would sign up for this job. Especially in the UK, rather than little old Singaland, it's an endless cycle of seeking re-employment every six months, somewhere in the great, massive lump of opportunity and uncertainty. It's a nomadic lifestyle of move, after move, unless one leads a charmed life and lady luck deals you a straight. I've never really believed in lady luck, all the more's I suspect she's been dealing me jokers of late. And if you're lucky, you get a wild card - the rotation, and for three blissful years, your future is temporarily assured. And then you maybe become a registrar, complete your higher training (back to that six-monthly minstrel's life) and finally become a consultant when, hopefully, the hairs at one's temples are graying tastefully.
I suppose it's different back home. The country, and community are minute. No secrets, no chances of freak occurrences. No such thing as luck - everything's tightly regulated, and there is a form of security - tomorrow, you'll still be in the same place, living under the same roof. You might be taking the train slightly further, or driving to a slightly new location - but it's more of the same, over, and over again.
It does grate on one's nerves sometimes.
And yet, today :
being surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the arrest team working on an old man brought in with a cardiac arrest, and hearing the occasional crisp crack as another of his aged ribs broke... it just feels right. It's not necessarily pleasurable - but I wouldn't give this up for the world. Even if I were to suddenly and miraculously become irresistably sexy to the press, or the literary world, or even the cine-circles (which isn't going to happen) - this is where I belong. Understated, credit-less, soldiering on through the extraordinary, that constitutes our mundanity.
*****
Fear leads to Anger...
He snapped twice today, tending to a young kid who came in cussing and blinding with an open tib-fib fracture.
After the initial barrage of "get off me's" and "f*ck you, f*cking get f*cking off me" he stopped being Mr Nice guy and leaned over into the frightened kid's hard-collar-immobilised field of view, narrowed his eyes, and growled :
I know you're frightened, and you're in pain. But we're trying to help you, and if you keep swearing at my team and scaring them they'll mess up. So you just calm yourself.
In retrospect, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was. Heh.
Then, later as the kid got set off again at the prospect of being catheterised, he snaps again.
It's a bit nastier this time :
We're going to have to put this in either way, so you might as well have it now while you're full of morphine, rather than later when it's really going to hurt.
World-weary bluster turns into wide eyed agreement.
He looks around and the nurses are staring at him wide-eyed too.
What? What did I say??
"We want the nice re-minisce back..."
laughs. Oops. Sorry, I've been storing this up for years, being Mr (Ok, Dr) Nice Guy. It has to come to the surface, sometimes.
*****
Train-staring
Over the years, I've learnt that there are many different ways of pensively staring out train windows. It's probably something to do with the refractive index of the glass they use, which means that from a certain angle you look out on the world through a ghost image of yourself. Looking in, and out, all at once.
There's the prospective watcher-mode. Eyes alert, drinking in the scenary, darting from interesting sight to sight, tracking the bare naked beauty of the English countryside, and the myriad horses and cows as they whiz by, and discovering that horses sometimes sleep on their side (looking remarkably dead) and once in a blue moon, one gets a joker of a cow that sleeps upside down with its legs sticking up into the air. (but bent. like a dog.) Mind racing to keep up with the precious moments of the now, hurling by in an instant, into the past, trying desperately to distill some humourous meaning from it all.
There's the happy-wanderer mode. Eyes alert-ish, flitting distractedly from the odd interesting thing to the other, lips twitching slightly, thinking about something, or someone else. Standing, or rather sitting somewhere between two worlds. Contentment, somewhere between now, and remembering a short while before, which one expects to revisit, in a short while more. Here and now is just a space filler, but that's just fine.
And there's the retrospective mode, eyes dull and fixed, forehead resting lifelessly against the glass, staring somewhere into the past as the world flies you by. Straining to see, and ears straining to hear echoes from the past. Echoes that you've come to miss dearly because those were the days one was happy, and carefree, echoes that time never quite succeeded at erasing. Echoes from another world, and another time. The retrospective mode occasionally makes you lose track of time, and miss your stop when the crucial moment arrives.
I guess it's very much akin to the way we live our lives, isn't it?
*****
Retrospective
Whatever happened to you, Anna (intint)? And the hundreds of other people I used to know, once upon a lifetime ago? I suppose it doesn't help that I haven't told many people from my past about this blog, eh?
*****
Faking it
One of the things I've always known about myself, is that I'm capable of being many different people. It's a bit like the old debating days, when I could debate on every chair.
It has something to do with faking it, and a larger part to do with faking it so well even you begin to believe it. Or maybe just a tenuous grasp on reality. laughs.
The thing is, as solitary and unfulfilling a life as I lead; as many people I have lost, as I have shut out - I have chosen this life, and it is mine. And there's a reason, somewhere in here, inside this rather thick head.
I just wish I could pry it out of me.
*****
I, Poncy Git
Going back to my Littman Classic II from my cardiology master today was like switching from asti to house white. Or mercedes to proton saga. I had this constant nagging feeling that I'd gone suddenly deaf. And heart sounds aren't meant to sound like that surely? Surely there's meant to be more reverb... and a bit of a physiological diastolic murmer?? err. i've gotten spoilt.
