Truths of Old

Well, it seems MrBrown's put me on a pedestal yet again. Remind me to beat the old guy about the head with my sabre the next time I'm back in sunny Singapore. Affectionately, of course. Or maybe I'll use a rusty spoon - vaguely remember tetanus being a fairly unpleasant affliction...

While I can appreciate Kin Mun's writeup - as always, slightly dissociated and impersonal, slightly bemused and very much in (? slightly desperate) quest of humour - I take objection to Phil's take on the situation.

Background :
Some of you will remember the flyingchair award thingie which was dreamt up and administered by Phil. It was well intentioned, and clearly difficult to oversee. The sweat and blood put in by Phil - just another ordinary bloke like you and I - deserves to be recognised. But like it or not, it could have been better. There's always room for improvement, and I for one am hoping that if the flyingchair awards make a reappearance, they're better laid out, with clearer stipulations as to what constitutes the "best" in any one category.

Present Day
I rather resent that Phil writes in the one breath that "She has a right to be ill-informed and a right to be as illiterate or literate as she wants. People have a right to comment on this and she can agree or disagree as she likes. Or get pouty for that matter." yet in the other "What gets me is how far people go to complain. Some people put real effort into slagging her off. Why? Primarily because she is one of Singapore's most read bloggers with about 4000 visits a day. Let's be honest, that is a lot when for example the Gweilo Diaries is hovering at a little more than 2000. Since Flying Chair has come back on the airwaves, I am barely pushing 600.

...Only one word comes to mind and it starts with a J."

Oh. I see, so people have every right to comment on her, as long as they do it in a manner that doesn't "go too far" (and offend Phil's sensibilities). Doh, how thoughtless of me! Master, may I wash your feet in contrition...

Well no. I didn't put real effort into slagging her off, thank you very much. (there's a not-so-subtle html markup to my site from the words "write about it" pointing a pleasantly judgemental and accusatory finger my way.)

Since nobody bothered to ask before casting me in the role of Re-minisce the Impaler, I think I'll try to set some things straight.

Yet More Personal Opinions about SheWhoShallNotBeNamed (Semi-good this time)

I don't think I actually cast aspersions as to her looks, or her brains. I didn't write that she's ugly did I?

(personally, I think she looks okay. Sure, it's that fatal word people always say to their folks to state flatly that they're Not Interested in this bird. But it's not quite the same thing as saying she's quasimodo in a can, only uglier and without the can.)

and I didn't begrudge her her brains did I?.

I personally feel that she's canny enough not to fall afoul of Big Brother and somewhere beneath that shoot-before-you-seek veneer lurks a brain. slightly pink and mushy, but present nonetheless. like an oyster built around a pearl. :p

Shrug. I'll leave that to the folks at sammyboy and other forums whom even I feel are going too far in slagging off poor beleagured princess Voldemort.

Getting Personal.

I wrote why I dislike her. Personal opinions, on my own little webspace. I don't remember calling for her to be removed from the face of the earth, or the internet. I don't recall asking any of you to hate her, or even dislike her as I do - I just wrote what I think, and feel, which to me constitute my Truths.

Let's see now. "People have a right to comment on this and she can agree or disagree as she likes"

Cough.

and

"What gets me is how far people go to complain"

Gee whiz. Just how far did I go to merit this worthy mention on Honoured Master Phil's blog? Re-reads.

Tongue in cheek, check.
Focus on slagging off the sheep rather than the princess, check.
Subtle attempt at putting up entire country's back - check. (life insurance policy, check)
small but substantial dose of slagging of princess for self-gratification on my own blog, check. (shrug. nobody's perfect - Sue her...)
Unimaginative use of someone else's quote - clearly stated not my own (William Hung of blogging. as opposed to William Tell) check.

Wow. There's even a weak attempt to convince the public that I really don't hate her. check. (Yay me.)

Oh Dear Lord, forgive me, for I have sinned.
I have gone Too Far. (damn, knew i shoulda used protection)

Not.

Funny that : "There are a lot of people in Singapore who hate her and the idea that she was the most read blogger in Singapore really insulted them. Most of them of course do not know her."

Hmm. Effort to get to know SheWhoShallNotBeNamed - check. Several less than charming encounters on public forums, check. Several rather unpleasant email exchanges, check. Hate her? pause. No check.

Lessee. Interactions with Phil. Hmm. One? Two comments on his blog. attempts by phil to interact with re-minisce. pause. nil.

Attempted slur cast by Phil re-minisce's way (Only one word comes to mind and it starts with a J.) - check. (ooh me. I'm quaking in my little green booties as I write. Would that I could be half the man Xiaxue is and half the woman Phil...)

Strewth, in my books "going too far" and "putting real effort" into slagging someone off involves getting too personal, and playing too rough.

So, fine. I'll regret this later, I know. Somewhere in here lurks a nice guy. But certainly not after a twelve hour shift post Notting Hill Carnival with nothing but chocolate Penguins and beautiful blonde nurses for company. Poor me.

You know what Phil?
I may dislike an attention whore (and we're, for once not talking xiaxue here. pointed look at Mr 600 hits a day) - but I positively loathe hypocrites.

Now THIS is crossing a line. And casting personal aspersions to character. This is my gauntlet in the grass. Tag, you're it.

I'm sure you're a nice guy in real life, but right now I think you're just a bit of a twat.

*****
Oh yeah.

Quote, flyingchair :

"The veracity of this complaint was demonstrated most clearly when it came to the winner in Singapore. XiaXue, got the most votes and so she won. Not that she won anything apart from a fairly meaningless crown which she quite rightly did not take all that too seriously."

ahahahaha. what planet do YOU live on. giggle.

*****
Wanted - professional carpenter to rend piece of furniture limb from limb. Preferably with previous experience and unhealthy delight in dentistry.

I showed up for shift at 0800 hrs today only to find out I start at 2000. No biggie, since for once (yay!) the hospital was near my house. The reprieve meant that my 4.5 hour sleep after last night's shift gets to mature into something a little more sensible (hello, bed) so I was pretty happy to be sent away.

Most sensible people would have made a beeline for home and flopped gratefully into bed. Unfortunately, the sadomasochist in me (who was amused to find a food shop today called the "S&M cafe! Eat yourself happy!") decided to catch the Notting Hill Festival, since he's never seen it before.

First impressions - big.

Big, big big big. I got lost trying to find my way out after ten minutes of aimless wandering. It hadn't quite taken off but I could see what it was going to turn into (massive crush of sweaty people eating pure cholesterol carefully disguised as food getting rapidly pissed on all assortment of alcohols, with sparsely clad bikini babes wandering the crowd sporting garish tail feathers in their bums. cool!) and I guess I was just too knackered to really want to get into it. That and the grey skies and intermittent light drizzle which really one would have expected me to be used to by now, after spending a third of my life in this godforsaken lovely city.

Interestingly, the sequinned girls stalking past with everything hanging out didn't actually do anything for me today, and the only visceral sentiment triggered was a "don't they feel cold" reflex-arc, clearly evidencing that staying on feet is a higher cerebral function than masculinity.

So now at last I'm happily back in bed on the brink of blissful oblivion. Naturally, I decided to check my email instead (argh. can anyone spell j u n k i e) and aimlessly wander the internet for a while.

******
Food for Thought?

I don't hate her. Really, I don't. Even if some people (glare) think that we're so disparate fate is bound to conspire to bring us together. Ailithwossname person, if I ever meet you I swear I'm going to spank you for that. frown.

There are many reasons the "handfull of us" dislike SheWhoMustNotBeNamed. I don't quite subscribe to the Queen's English hardliners, since I believe that language is a skill rather than a gift, and although, God Knows she does make a lot of gaffes, what of it? We can't help where we come from - but we can help where we're going.

I dislike her, for the following reasons :

Top Ten Reasons why I dislike SheWhoShallNotBeNamed

1) While being opinionated, she is quite often uninformed. Unfortunately, the hordes of the Underdark who comprise the loyal XX legion are less than discerning as evidenced occasionally in the thousand or so positive comments she gets singing her praises at every last post she makes ranging from the size of her breasts to her opinions on socioeconomic developments (which have little in common, ah, except perhaps in their size) Honestly, anyone who makes comments like "doctors are paid too much" without backing said claims with any figures whatsoever, other than nebulous nasty snipes at their "not making donations to charity" (hmm. whatever happened to investigative journalism, one wonders... or do media interns no longer need to know what they're doing?) is begging to be crucified. Funny how she steers clear of that more popular public opinion that ministers are paid too much?

Thing is, it bugs me that the lynchmob that she's so adept at raising instantly baas in approval without stopping to ask the right questions. Doctors paid too much? How much? Who are we comparing them to? What is the yardstick for comparing payscale to workload? How many hours to doctors work, and what is the nature of their job? What stresses are involved that make work unique to any other career (which is a no-brainer, since every career is singularly unique. Except maybe politics and law. hee.)

Nope, instead we just get "yeah! all they do is write prescriptions!" Shrug.

2) Gets into a huff with anyone who doesn't mindlessly agree with her, and

3) Gets into a rage with anyone who dares criticise her in any way, yet

4) Feels that she is "open to criticism". Eh? run that by me again.

5) Apparently feels that ahbengs are less qualified to criticise her than doctors. Uh. right... I see. Yes, quite. Meritocracy and all. Only uni grads are allowed opinions in this cruel world we live in, apparently, and the more your coursefees cost, the more your stake in public discussion.

Man, I'm so glad I'm a doctor. not.

6) Occasionally publically slimes select individuals - who aren't playing the publicity game. I dunno, but someone who did something as harmless as snitch the guy a bird liked, who didn't actually from all accounts like the bird back doesn't really deserve to have a critical commentary on how (supposedly) hideously ugly and horrible she is posted on the internet, surely?

Sure, we invariably get the public apology afterwards, which is in an odd way almost gracious. But... well. Cynical world we live in.

Someone out there coined the phrase "The William Hung of Blogging" to describe her. It's surprisingly apt.

Fame - what price? At least William Hung knows that he's famous because people are laughing at him, rather than with him though.

And at least people are laughing at him.

I suppose it all boils down to the Speak Good English Campaign.

In the Singaporean dictionary, talent clearly equates with popularity (popular use), and opinion equates with astuteness. Attitude, as evidenced by being "outspoken" - nevermind how misinformed - is a surefire crowd-pleaser, as is augmentation with liberal Brixtonesque turns of phrase.

*****
I've been reading a fair number of public blogs and articles (including this post) by authors nodding their approval at Lee Hsien Loong's recent "candid, sincere, caring, and empathetic" dealing with social issues surrounding the country in his recent inaugral speech.

Clearly we have a problem with helping the elderly (nod nod), a population decline (nod nod) and we have to improve ethnic relations - and it is our duties as singaporeans (nod nod) to help solve these conundrums (nod nod nod. looks around for girl to bonk.)

Uh. pause.

The question that's been bugging me is - why?

I know it's turned into a tradition of sorts, for the bosses to tell the sheep where the country's problems lie and what their duties are as loyal citizens - it's a very corporate mentality, really... but why do they have to tell us. And tell us what to do?

Maybe I'm just averse to micromanaging something as large as a country by manipulating the Joe Bloggs on the street, but well... do many other countries involve their citizens in maintaining population size? Or have to remind them to be nice to old people, or even to not be racist bastards?

Don't get me wrong. The messages are right, and I too nod my approval at them all - them be good words. But how comes it we have to be reminded by our Premiere on national television no less that we've got to be nice people, and to go forth and multiply in the name of nationalism?

Maybe we're just so thick the thoughts don't come to our minds automatically. Or maybe it's not the country that's in its prepubscence - but all its citizenry.

I guess the subtler, more mature methods other countries employ like porn, specifically of the interracial flavour, and trusting in lay-decency (as opposed to a decent lay, get your minds out of the gutter) don't work in our uniquely confucian society. laughs. And Good Parenting is probably too many syllables for the prototype neo-Singalander to get his / her mind around nowadays.

Maybe we're just thick as a nation. Yeah, that has to be it.

I reckon we ought to have a handbook to carry on our persons at all times. How to be a Singaporean, for dummies.

*****
The Other Side

I really should be studying or napping in the park before I work my last ever A&E shift (thank you, immigration department) but I found this, which isn't so much a riot as an armed revolution complete with RPGs and wayward boeing 747s.

Thank you, Cass for your wonderful account of what it's like to be on the other side of the line.

He's right about CT scanners and doughnuts. And about venflons. I've had all those, and believe me, they're not pleasant. I've often wondered myself why they can't build little LCD TVs into MRI and CT machines. Imagine watching sky or surfing the net during your scan. :D

One thing I found puzzling though was his reference to the Hippocratic Oath. I was disappointed not to have to swear it at all during my graduation - or was that because I graduated from the Godless university?

Currently feeling : miserable

I'm doing 3 12-hour shifts in a row at a major london hospital.

Last night was a strange experience. The surgical SHO was an ex-secondary-school classmate of mine, which was pleasantly but not completely surprising, since I discovered during my last locum that he was working there.

The medical SHO turned out to be one of my long-lost debating juniors from secondary school, and while we were doing the brief catch-up thingie, he asked me if I knew LT's sister, who's also working at the hospital as a medical house officer. (which was news to me.)

One of the other A&E locums was a medical schoolmate of mine, who's waiting to fly over to the US of A to complete his surgical training and earn a masters at the same time - he'll do it too, he was always the most brilliant of us all, crippled somewhat in the land of the English by his less than perfect grasp of the language. I'm sure he'll shrug off those fetters and shine in america through sheer intelligence and diligence. He calls it "the last leg". I'm sure the truth is it's his first step on the path to glory.

Bugger it. Everyone else is on a rotation except moi, and not for want of trying either.

So far everyone has said "you interview really well... you were the next in line for the job, but there were only so many places."

At least at my last interview (100% business, 0% faff, point-blank direct questions with none of that "how are you today?" baloney) they were honest : "you interviewed brilliantly, very sensible, very mature beyond your level as a very junior doctor, but without your part Is you were at a distinct disadvantage to the other candidates. We'd have given you the job if you had your exam." (WHAAAT. THEN WHY SHORTLIST ME?!?)

That and the other candidates always seem to be fourth year SHOs (hence my "juniority" in a field that's meant to be for "new" surgical trainees) who have done plastics, ENT, gen surg, ortho, cardiothoracic, neurosurg... which makes you wonder why the heck they're even applying for BSTs. My heart always sinks when I speak to the other guys pre-interview because it's obvious who's going to get the job... the guys with the list of ten thousand previous SHO jobs who sound like they can disassemble and reassemble a human being in thirty seconds or under invariably win top billing with the interviewers.

Why even call it a Basic Surgical Traineeship anyhow? Shouldn't it be an Intermediate Surgical Traineeship if candidates are expected to have completed their exams and have at least two years operating experience?

Sigh. And then here I am working a shift in a london hospital and finding all my ex-peers clustered in it. (doing what one of the neurosurgical SHOS called "glorified, lowly-paid GP work. She has a point, too, even if she was just kidding around with me. sigh.)

Which is why I'm flying home in "defeat" come november, I guess. Nobody wuvs me... sniff.

It didn't help that LT's sister just happens to be Her cousin either.

Strange little world we live in. Sometimes it feels like I'm being battered about the head by "coincidence".

*rant mode off... back to work*

Hmm. Reading back... "eureka, by jove, I have it"??

Good lord. who writes stuff like that anyhow. I must be studying too hard.

*****
So the axe of fate has swung and left, and nothing's changed for me. I'm a little disappointed, but yet surprisingly not. Perhaps there's something comforting about losing a fair contest, something in knowing that justice does, sometimes prevail.

*****
The English are P(l)ants

I have come to the conclusion that English people must be plants. I can't for the life of me imagine what other species of wildlife would deign to stay on a landmass that's quite conceivably wetter than the ocean bed after a full night's incontinence.

It also explains why they drink beer like water - it's because they absorb water from their roots feet. Yesh, that's it. They only look and sound human...

This has to have been the rubbishiest summer ever. Typically, I'm not working through it. Damn!

*****
Note to self : do not drink American Bull before bedtime ever again.

Note to world : bloody English weather - perfect at last, on the day I start a chain of locums. Frown.

It's finally hit me.

I've always enjoyed watching "ER" and "scrubs" and been slightly overawed at the amounts of realism injected into every episode. (I was rather much less than impressed at Singapore's attempts at a "home grown" medishow. bah.)

ER's so medi-savvy the actors could probably do the real thing if they wanted to, 'cept they'd get paid less - and scrubs captures the human element of healthcare in a much more down-to-earth manner, sans fancy soundtrack. and the characters' heads aren't quite as firmly stuck in their arses or up in the clouds as the ER bunch :p (I'm talking reel life here, not real life.) I mean, come on - which ER has an Abbey lookalike anyhow, and how many of us genuinely live lives quite as extraordinarily mundane?

Scrubs is easier for me to identify with on a personal level, and ER on a professional level. (one of my friends once compared me to zach bruff and said I reminded her of him. Well... harumpph, I think I'm much better looking than him, thankyouverymuch. laughs. not. Although I do have more... cough, preen... manly features. I do, don't I. Right? No? sniff.)

BUT, but, and BUT.

something's always bugged me about the shows.

And now, eureka by jove - I have it!

The characters all walk with a bounce in their steps, their shoulders sway imperceptibly as they do that cool-manwalk, they... glow.

Real life casualty doctors and nurses, in contrast shuffle. Sometimes they stretch and grab their backs and make noises like "owww." and "ooof". And they say things like "I can't wait to get home to bed."

Their eyes might glint once in a while, usually at the start of shift, and yeah, some of them do flounce a weeny bit. But by the end of that ten / twelve hours I'd like to see any of them looking as bright-eyed and bushy tailed as the ER bunch. I've even harboured dangerous fantasies of flopping onto one of the trollies and going to sleep ALL BY MYSELF (ha. I preempted you dirty lot) cept for the horrific possibility of waking up on a geriatric ward, which is the #1 reason patients with heart attacks always take their own discharges. Ostensibly to die somewhere civilised, where the other people in the house can actually speak.

Real-life cardiac arrests usually run more like this :

"okay, what's the story?"

paramed : "yaddayaddayadda. yadda. oh, and yadda. can we go now?"

"okay. adrenaline please."

"adrenaline."

(yawn) "who's scribing?"

"I am."

"have you started timing?"

"oh."

pause.

"isn't anyone going to do the CPR or do I have to do it myself?"

"oh."

(yawn)

"three minutes. time."

"okay, everyone stop for a rhythm check"

"still in asystole... no, no wait. VF now." (note the conspicuous absence of an exclamation mark. In ER, they say "VF!!!!!!!!!!!" and some woman's breasts will start heaving dramatically. err. scratch that.)

"oh. bugger. okay put on the pads, and prepare to shock."

Okay, now imagine all that in your heads, but make the characters look and sound slightly bored. yeah, now you've got the picture.

Hmm although *someone* I know has once attended a singularly strange arrest during which one of the sisters suddenly reached across during the pause for rhythm check, and deliberately undid the top two blouse buttons of the other sister who was doing the cardiac compressions.
It was a very strange moment. cough. Slightly sexy. Very disturbing.

shakes head to clear the image. That's probably the most tense moment in a casualty department I've ever experienced.

all that oestrogen in the air. and testosterone. (the parameds decided to... linger after that.) as that *someone* expressed at the time, somedays he feels far too young for the job.

uh. goodnight out there.

*****
More femininty

Lysithea's thoughts :

"gentle, alluring, attractive, beautiful, pretty, attractive, sexy, radiant, alluring, seductive, loveable, kirei"

... No, no, no! no no. I was trying to write precisely that...

I don't agree. niet. nein. That sounds disgustingly like the Stepford Wife (as opposed to The Bradford Wife). That sounds like what SheWhoShallNotBeNamed calls being a "shu nu" (and I for once agree with her).

That is not feminity, that's a brand name - a stereotype.

That is femininty, as defined by A man, or a group of men.

Femininity is not about being a woman. It is about being Womanly. Even a fiesty wench can be feminine. Even Jennifer Garner is feminine. And look at her muscles. heh.

Femininity includes the terms above - and excludes them. It encompasses, but doesn't have to be all, or even any of the above.

It's too nebulous for me to define. And I'm male so I don't understand it. But I think, or at least I'd like to believe that it's not a stereotype.

gentle... alluring?? spit.

*****
Hmm.

Should I be surprised?


! You are most Like A Sapphire !
Dark, mysterious - but unforgettable. You have a deep beauty. Delicate, and shy you try to stay away from the limelight but often your intelligence puts you in at the deep end. You're like a Sapphire, because, your beauty is priceless. You're intelligent, full of opinions, and not big-headed about it all. Sometimes you need to put yourself out there, as you can be a bit shy. Congratulations ... You're the mysterious gem everybody wants to have and learn more about.
?? Which Precious Gem Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

This one had me famboozled. Bamfoozled even.

I mean. Singapore women... feminine? Oxymor...

Pause. scritchscritchscritch.

I mean, of course Singaporean women are the epitomy of femininininess, i mean femefatality, i mean, i mean.

scritchscritchscritch.

What I mean, of course, is to say like, you know. right? Yes. Quite.

What the hell is femininity anyhow? I guess mebbe I've lived here in England too long now (coming up on a third my life) but femininity isn't about the things you DO. It's about HOW you do them.

I've seen plenty feminine men around to know by now. They all go to the gym and get ogled by the other gym bunnies, the He Men. Watching one of them twitch his pecs at the other, some weeks back I had this intense desire to puke / say something snide / otherwise put my diminutive five-eight frame in dire danger - so naturally of course i just averted my eyes and went on lifting my puny little weights. Well puny compared to the 160kg single arm bicep curls these guys can do.

Cooking, cleaning, babysitting feminine? Yech. Gimme a woman with two feet and a brain anyday. (uh, rest of body mandatory of course) I like women who return as good as they get, who don't just deflect witticisms but raise their rapiers and stab back. Real women don't bludgeon like typical men... they have something magical about them, something quick and fast and insiduous (and bitchy, and nasty, and evil) Real women are... feminine.

I think the cardboard cutout women of the 1800s - perfect mothers, perfect housekeepers - are precisely that. Good mothers. But feminine? Tchah. Would any of you lads call your mommmies feminine? Wait. Stop. Don't answer that. I have a horrible feeling the mummys boys that seem to comprise the majority of Singaporean zeta-males would. How disturbing. Ougha ougha, sniff, bawl. A strange people, we're crafting.

Femininity is a state of mind that us men will never understand (or for that matter, want to understand) - it's something that keeps us entranced, something that sparkles in a way that complements our own sparkle (see, my club is so big and shiny) and completes us.

It can be as simple as how she looks at her nails (apparently the feminine way involves curling your fingers, the masculine, extending them out straight. ha! I bet I've got a whole lot of you worried now, females included) to the way she looks in the mirror before she drives off. for about half an hour. only? make than an hour. heh heh heh. heh. he... oh dear. there's a little red spot on my forehead, i think i'd better stop here.

Save to say that femininity is about how she thinks - and how you don't.

*****
Today I also learnt

Like I've said before, I've spent almost a third of my life here now.

I grew up a city-boy. Singapore is a city, plain and straight.
The England I always imagined, from the story books I read was a pretty hamlet with beautifully paved streets and flowers and rolling hills and hills and vales, only on a big scale (city-bred preconceptions die hard). With green bits and rabbits. And shite weather.

So when I touched down in London, well I wasn't disappointed. After all, it's London. It's not all of England. And everyone knows london's huge, sprawling, grey, grey, and grey.

The broken flagstone sidewalks disappointed me a little - back home they're cast in smooth concrete, not in large ugly concrete squares with bits sticking out for increased traction - and the gritty, uneven London streets are positively ugly - back home they're so flat I bet you could roll a coin from one side of the country to the other if it wasn't illegal.

I also in my naivete believed that the perpetual greyness and constant abominable weather wouldn't get to me. But that is another story.

So when I hit my clinical years and started wandering the rest of England, I was thrilled. Here at last was my chance to find the England of MY childhood, the England that lived in my head.

I saw green fields roll by on my trainrides up to birmingham, and newcastle, and manchester (wait. no green fields there. lots of grey.) and salsbury, and... heaps of other places. But they were just fields - they looked just like the fields in australia, only not quite as tidy. And My England didn't look like that at all - it had people, and villages (big villages) in it.

I saw other Cities. They all pretty much looked like London, which dashed my hopes somewhat. The canals of Birmingham were sort-of pretty I suppose. But no green, no brick pavements, no rolling hills.

I saw villages, and even had the chance to live in one. They were so small they went beyond tiny. Nice and friendly places where people went to The Pub (singular) after work for a piss up with the rest of the town. Disappointingly small.

Edinburgh was almost My England, but far, far too big, and honestly, I spent too much time freezing my bollocks off to really notice it.

Cheltenham came close, it had flowers lining the streets. Same old broken flagstones and chewing gum on sidewalks and horrid smashed roads though.

Today I found "my England", quite by accident. I did a locum somewhere in Kent, and stepped off the train into just the right mix of modern and quaint, with brick sidewalks and pretty buildings, and a town center on the top of a hill. There were flowers hanging from some of the streetlamps, and the even the hospital was pretty. I mean, hello? NHS district general hospital? where were the buildings made out of temporary container trucks and the walkways made out of worm-eaten wood and plexiglass - or the soulless concrete prisons painted in all manner of inappropriate, unconvincingly cheery colours?

And I thought to myself. Wow. I wouldn't mind working here at all. Possibly the first time I've really ever thought that of a hospital, and of an entire town.

*****
Announcement

I've discovered several new links to my blog listing me as the lovelorn guy other people are so glad they're not.

While I'm happy that something makes you guys feel happy about yourself, and I'm glad you're all happily fallen out of love... this blog ISN'T about me still being in love with Her. It's not! It's so not... Grr. maybe I should go back to grammar school. I don't seem to be expressing myself right. Why is it there're so few of you out there who really understand me. I suppose maybe it's simply because I'm strange.

Plain english time. This blog is about Truth.

My Truths may include Her, from my past.

Her from my past, is in my past.

There is no Her today.

My Truths need to be spoken. Some of them should have been spoken to Her while I still knew her. Those regrets will never die, because they were never spoken.

Ce'st la vie.

Shrug.

Geddit?

Re-minisce would actually be more than happy for some beguiling female to swoop down and steal his fancy (strong hint. interested applicants, please fill in application form section A to J and appendices K through Z.) and he's all for being bested in a verbal joust by a scintillating woman with a rapier wit. He's so accomodating (must be the age factor) he might even condescend (I, condescending twit) to consider shocking lacks of subtlety (eg mack truck, bullet train, bulldozer etc.)

Point being that he's still looking.

Hung up? He's hung up his hangups.

Honest.

*****
EHehehEHEhehehhehhehe.

This guy is funny. I especially like the bit about women's beach volleyball. They didn't make it an olympic sport did they?

Anyhow, the blog author is the chap who plays the lead in Scrubs, my all time favourite med serial. Take it from me, it's Real. And I'm a doctor. Trust me.
Oh dear, I think I hear the GMC knocking at my door.

I stood alone in a nondescript little park, feeling the sudden shocks of the occasional leaf-flung dewdrop striking the top of my head, and watched the blood-red rawness of the wounded-flesh of God's creation crawl quietly - but magnificently - across the drab greys and speckled pastel-blues of a dying English sky, and wondered at who, and what I've become.

*****
I never thought...

...I'd make it past twenty. Maybe it had something with reading that my once-best friend spent his last moments under the wheels of a bus, at the age of ten. Or maybe I just never thought I'd get so... old. It's strange, being born old.

...I'd learn to appreciate music. I grew up in a household where music was Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninov, Paganini. Brahms. And Debussy was just a little racey. My mum is an accomplished pianist, violinist, and now in her later years, cellist as well. Her brother is a concert pianist. I'm probably just the retard of the family who can, with great effort, force his fingers into obedience on the slippery ivories.
My first radio was a walkman, smuggled into the cloisters by my brother The Rebel when I was sixteen. Somehow, in learning to appreciate "contemporary" music the beauty of classical music has grown on me as well. And playing the piano became less of a chore than a pleasure. Sometimes while I'm letting my fingers wander over the keyboard making up some random sad tune with the half-life of a highly unstable mental isotope (too much English Beef) my mum wanders in and sits down to listen, much to my surprise. Far-out.
I suppose this doesn't have as much impact seeing as I'm not an accomplished pop singer or classical musician... but still. I never thought I'd learn to appreciate music.

...I'd find someone who made me laugh. I was always the weird kid who cracked the strange jokes and came up with the sitcom one-liners that made other people laugh. Thankfully I decided to become a doctor rather than a comedian, else I'd probably be broke and suicidal by now. I lost Her, but kept with me the ability to laugh. Once in a while, anyhow. Sometimes even softly to myself - earning me funny looks on the street. I reckon I should carry a pill bottle around with me and fill it with pebbles or something, then I can shake it meaningfully when I get those stares. Hell, I'd fit right in. giggle.

...I'd learn to love, and hate. No, not just like and dislike. Was it my upbringing - or was it the country - or maybe the education system I passed through? I don't quite know, but apathy seemed to be a national illness at the time. I remember one of my classmates, when asked for his opinion in a JC GP class by the teacher ponderously replying that he had "no opinion on the issue" and that it wasn't his place to have an opinion. (I looked around surreptitiously to check if the other students were writing it down.) I've picked up the knack along the way - I've become positively opinionated - laughs. I, grouchy bastard. I hate the way some people (back home, and elsewere) take anything less than flattery as a patronising attack on themselves, how criticism - positive, negative or even neutral - is always perceived as condescending insult. I hate injustice, racism and bigotry; I hate hypocrisy and that variant of it - reigning the truth in out of "tact" or "fear of stirring the waters - and I hate myself for doing it so often in my daily life.
I love chai. I love summer, I love lying in the grass feeling the sun on my skin. I love looking up at the clear blue sky, preferably framed by green leaves high above me moving slowly in the wind. I love sunsets, preferably reflected in a large body of water. I love some of my memories of Coogee bay - standing on a concrete pier overlooking the sea, under the setting sun, with my arms outstretched and my hair blowing in the wind in the middle of a cloud of gulls hanging motionless in the sky.
I even loved someone, once.

...I'd feel alone. I didn't envision this life I've somehow come to possess, standing on my own two feet away from the paternalistic protection of my mother and father. I had nine-o'clock curfew till I was nineteen, and leaving the house was always a pain and it sometimes even felt like it wasn't worth the effort -

mum : who are you going out with?

me : a friend.

mum : which friend?

me : a FRIEND

mum : which girlfriend??

me : A FRIEND!!!

mum : it's a girl isn't it???!

In retrospect, she was sweet. Err mum, not the friend. Even if she vetted through all my mail. (kids don't need privacy!) grr.
I do quite often feel alone, wandering through the streets of London - and occasionally, when I'm feeling particularly adventurous, Scotland or some other country of my choosing - but I even feel alone sometimes, surrounded by friends (which doesn't happen often anymore). Alone is a place in my head. I don't fear it - oftimes during the hustle and bustle of professional life I even feel like I need it desperately. Alone is liberating, and restful. Solitude is a much-needed rest by the roadside of the rat-race.
Yet the thoughts most vividly seared into my mind... are from a time when I didn't feel alone.

...I'd turn into Aunt Aggie. But over the years, I have. It's a bit like being a comedian in a way. Always the coach, never the contestant; always the spectator, never the participant. Always the Watcher, and the Listener. Sometimes called upon to speak, more often than not, not. Once in a blue moon I've felt envious, and wondered what it must be like to lead these secret lives of intrigue... what it must be like to feel so much (both good and bad). What it must be like, to do so much. But I realise that just... wouldn't be me.
Once in a (very) blue moon, I'm even tempted to try to become personally involved... but that wouldn't be... ethical.
But most days I just pretend to listen, and feel glad that I don't have to go through the hassel of so, so much; and that my life is so quiet and simple in contrast. And most days the people who wet my shoulder don't remember me the day after, and we drift apart without a word of thanks or farewell. Shrug. That's life as an Aunt Aggie. It's in the fine print.

...I'd use commas so often. And instinctively, put, them, in, the, wrong, places. frown.

...I'd feel so lost. 48 hours to go till fate swings her axe...

*****
Anyone remember this? I wrote it with my tongue firmly in my cheek, but point sixteen really is food for thought. And it's not confined to us men, the weaker of the species, either.

The weather's changed more times today than a female out shopping changes her mind. :p The people passing my window have alternately been bundled up against the cold, shielded against the rain, and right now are enjoying the sun in their light T shirts. Ha, more fool them, I bet it hails later this evening.

I've been indoors all through the day trying to be good and reading my pastest MRCS revision notes text in fits and starts. It's just too boring for words, which probably explains why I've been writing so much drivel.

Anyhow, another thought came to this rather saturated mind, courtesy of "ahbeng" who posted this as a comment (reproduced without his permission...)

"Yes, there was a Her in my life once. I think it took me about 7 years (ain't that a nice number) to get over her. I had these fantasies of being run over while cycling and having on me a letter that said to look for her and tell her I still loved her. *puke*"

Ah, Seven. That magic number. They even made a movie about it.

I don't think I'd ever do that. Tell You that I still love You.

It *has* been just about seven years since we last saw each other. There're days, mired as I am in the cold pragmatism of shiny, cynical London when it feels like my memories - of something good and remarkable, inside my head at least - are so distant that they feel like they belong to someone else.

I do love Your memory. But You, today - I don't know You.

I don't know where You come from.

And if there's one thing I don't do - it's lie. Not if I can help it.
And that would be a self-serving lie.

If I were to die unexpectedly (God forbid) - I'd rather You knew the Truth.

ehehe... I couldn't resist buying this.

They've put him in a can!

I wonder what the Brit version would be?

Now this is a real ethical dilemma - the Utilitarian view (as championed by Peter Singer - "the Good of the Many outweigh the Good of the One" - anyone remember Star Trek?) vs the Judeo-Christian view that all life is sacred.

I've never had the pleasure of reading Professor Gaita's views on the matter, but I have read Peter Singer and compared him to John Wyatt, a strong proponent of the Judeo-Christian view of medical ethics in the UK, and I will confess that, much to my surprise I was forced to rethink my stand on medical ethics and acknowledge that ethics are painted mostly in different shades of grey, rather than black and white.

For a while.

There's something fundamentally ugly and incongruent to me about the thought of killing people, children, and life in general. Even euthanasia strikes me as seeming a little perverse, although in extreme cases of suffering quite possibly justified.

After some thought around the matter, I eventually concluded that I want to believe in life, rather than death - nevermind what the world wants us to believe, or what my peers want to believe.

Perhaps if people are so keen to make quality of life assessments for other people and then terminate them - and if society is in agreement with this - then we can see the rise of a new breed of technician - a "death technician" if you may. (Wherefore the need to train for five years in med school just to deliver a lethal injection?)

I see no need for these technicians to be members of the medical faculty - in fact I believe it would irretrievably destroy the image of doctors and nurses that (some of) the public has come to cling to in this age of retreating moralities.

It's funny, isn't it, that the public wants their doctors to act on their behalves to save life and alleviate suffering - yet at the same time it wants them to do their bidding and take lives when they deem fit.

Amongst the medical profession there is a strong disinclination to take a stand. I've had consultants ranting on their ward rounds that doctors must never, ever reveal their religious stands, and that we should all wear a standardised doctors hat, to prevent insiduous symbols creeping into the establishment, like turbans and skullcaps. "We are there for the patients."
I've also learnt the hard way that intimating my personal inclinations results in mass condemnation - and so, although it's not very Christian of me to do so, I sit on my faith at work and go about the task of being a medical technician, buffered by the knowledge that at present at least, life IS still (mostly) sacred and that it's my duty to try to help - and that on a case by case basis, sometimes inaction is the more humane of potential courses of action.

But one wonders if, and when the day will come when we are called to kill - and whether there will be any leeway for us to refuse.

I have little doubt that people will skim read these words and either pause to nod in agreement, or condemn the writer as a pretentious git. Whichever way, at least you paused if only for an instant, to think. :)

*****
The Philosopher Prince

Compare and contrast these :

BBC

The Economist

The Age

Cherian George, Singapore Window

to these :

Chua Mui Hoong, Straits Times

Cherian George, Straits Times

It must be because they are foreign devils that they dare to think critically of our perfect leader, and question our future! They cannot understand since they were not born in Singapore! We do not live in fear, we live in Consensus! (where is con-sen...) How dare they insinuate that he is anything less than the warm, gentle, child-hugging baby-loving (get your minds out of the gutter lah!) people-person OUR media has clearly shown us that he is!

These foreign devils do not understand our confucian ethics and have no reverence or respect for authority, and they do not know the meaning of responsible journalism, unlike our own glorius media. Long live the Truth!

*****
One flew over...

Oh yeah. I'd been waiting to write this once the news became public but it completely slipped my feeble mind when the moment came and went, so this is a bit belated, but seems this lucky bastard got even luckier... so... congratulations lucian. :) God bless. Everyone brace yourselves. The baby pictures are about to begin...

A crossroads, running off in opposite directions a short distance, turning into a sheer precipice either side falling headily down to infinity.

The winds of fate buffet you incessantly, nearly taking you off your feet from time to time - only there are two fates, and each is at odds with the other. The whispers in your ear - perhaps, what if, maybe - are your own.

Which is the lesser of the two evils?

Where is my redemption?

What do I want?

zena raises the question of Doctors playing God in her entry dated 20 Aug 2004. I initially meant to post this on her blog in response, but her !"$%!ed comments system only allows 1000 word posts, and after eight attempts to break this into suitably bite-sized chunks I decided to sod it and write it all in its entirity here on my own blog.

So this one's for you, zena.


*****

I used to feel exactly the same way, watching my team make exactly those decisions as a pre-reg house officer. One of the worst memories I've ever had was in the first few weeks of my job, when one of the patients died for precisely those reasons - and rather unnecessarily. I still feel that way, and I suspect my team made a mistake which I didn't agree with. But I came to see that the converse was also true - much of the time the team was right.

As one matures in the profession one begins to realise that it's not so much a matter of unworthiness, power to the doctor, or even playing God - sometimes it truly is a matter of compassion.

You'll understand one day when you have to make that decision yourself - perhaps when you're crash-bleeped to resuscitate a 90something year old with cancer, and break half her ribs in the process because someone forgot to make a decision about resusc status, or perhaps when you meet that end-stage COPD patient who's clearly not going to make the night, and caught in that fine balance between hypoxic agitation and hypercapnoiec narcosis - what do you do then? let nature take its course and let him die flailing about in agony, with his wife in tears - or crank the oxygen up just a tiny bit and send him off to sleep forever?

Perhaps you won't be as unlucky as one of my colleagues who had to deal with a fortysomething year-old veteran of the vietnam war, whose exposure to agent orange had utterly destroyed his liver years later and transformed him into a walking skeleton on his last legs.

In his final days he was too weak to stand, and gradually becoming too weak to breathe. He wasn't long for this earth - yet against all advice, he wanted us to resuscitate him.

Do you know what the doctors did? They resuscitated him. Inappropriately. (He died after 20 minutes of CPR) DNAR orders can't be applied to a patient against his or her will no matter how futile the outcome will be. DNAR orders in themselves aren't evil - it's the misapplication of them that opens cans of worms.(eg maintaining a DNR order against a patient's wishes.)

I used to ask : how are we to know when a person is going to die?

The answer unfortunately is we can't, as doctors. We can only make informed guesses. The more senior you get, the better you get at guessing. Real medicine isn't the precise science the yanks seem to think it is - it's actually an imprecise art with a fair number of individual cases falling "beyond normal ranges".

My consultant was wrong occasionally - but he was also very often right. And so it should be - as you wrote, to err is human.

I think a fair number of doctors do accept their limitations. I find myself telling my patients a lot of the time that I don't have the answer to their questions. It beats telling them they're going to die when they're not - or telling them they'll live when they're going to die.

And I feel that there is such a thing as informed decision making - just how informed is the question - and that duty falls upon you, to as best inform your patient as you can, that he/she may make the best choice for themselves.

To decide that someone must live, no matter what - is just as paternalistic as deciding someone must die, regardless.

perhaps the best keepers of the temple are the patients themselves, provided they know exactly what lies ahead for them. A DNAR order can be appropriate, provided it's been fully discussed with the patient, who concurs with the team of doctors. Many people, myself included, would rather pass away with a modicum of dignity from their end-stage disease than suffer a traumatic but pointless resuscitation only to die from the same disease process a few days or hours later with half their ribs broken, burns to their chests and in multi-organ failure.

shrug. Maybe it's just a matter of us getting old and molded to the doctory mindset. Perhaps we play God out of habit. Or maybe it's not as black and white as you think, and perhaps the lay perception of "playing God" and "power trips" is really an intricate and complicated mix of humanity and compassion - and the problems arise when doctors who don't quite understand the rules, or don't really care enough about their patients misapply the orders.

A certain Brigadier General recently ascended to his seat at the Right Hand of... err sorry. I mean recently assumed the mantle of supreme leader of the nation of Singapore with this inaugral speech.

In it he raised the issue of meritocracy, which several intrepid individuals have seen fit to debate online, on a singapore government feedback website.

I'm certainly not brave enough to discuss the pros and cons of meritocracy with respect to the future of an entire nation, and my apolitical brain has difficulty grasping concepts like GDPs and national budgets, so I'll stick to the layman's perception of the issue by asking a question :

Is meritocracy killing our dreams?

We all have a dream. It's the great Singapore Dream, as espoused by our esteemed government - in as much as taking to task a singularly unique reporter who dared suggest that the economic slump might indicate that it was time that we changed the focus of our dreams from the five Cs - cash, credit card, condominium, car, country club membership to something more humane, which involved appreciating the simple things in life - can be interpreted as espousing a dream.

I never shared this dream. Perhaps it comes with being born with a silver spoon up my nose, as xena puts it. :)

Or perhaps I'm just a different type of person. I don't honestly know.
I do know that my career and lifestyle as a single doctor mean a stable income that frees me from the mundane worries of making ends meet. (although, truth be told as a poorly paid casualty doctor working for the NHS - that changed the picture dramatically. damn bills.) And that's all I really want insofar as the five Cs go. I just want enough to scrape by. Because there's so much more to life than obsessing over the material.

My dream was always to become a doctor. I don't know why - discussing it with T last night over too much wine and too little food (french!) I figured that perhaps it was because I was born a product of the system. EVERYONE wanted to be either a doctor, or a lawyer - maybe I was socially conditioned before I even knew the meaning of the words. (which would have been, ah, seven. I was a strange kid left to entertain himself in a library of books, since television and radio were nonexistent in my house - or at least, inaccessible to little old me unless I chanced to discover where my mum's latest hiding-place for The Key.)
Or perhaps it was a consequence of watching my dad go about his humble life, doctoring industriously and thanklessly to the ceaseless tide of patients.

Who knows? I've never really stopped to ask other doctors why they chose to join the ranks of an increasingly unappreciated group who're fast being stripped of the things that make them more than mere technicians - compassion, empathy and clinical intuition. Morale is low in the NHS which is fast becoming a safe haven for professional migrants from The Subcontinent. I suspect the same is true across the world - that morale is gradually waning. Latest reports have the attrition of nurses within the NHS at an all time low.

Moving swiftly back to our conversation last night over my rabbit saussage (singular) and pea. or was it a leaf of cabbage - T and I wondered a little more at Dido's tenacity - fooled her way through college, tried to make good by attending secretarial school, and doing a correspondence course in law at night, then abandoning all that for her true love - music. And as she puts it - it's the right life for her.

One of Ts friends recently abandoned doctoring for his true love - piloting. It's the right life for him, and he's happy now.

Sitting back and trying to put all the pieces together, I have to wonder if perhaps our push for an economically "vibrant", technologically advanced mini-metropolis is snuffing out the dreams of our children - to become firemen. And singers. And poets. And all the other careers we as stereotypes of Good Singaporeans sideline.

As with all stereotypes - this doesn't hold true all the time. I'm sure there are people out there back home who always dreamed of being firemen, and policemen, and are happy where they are now. I'm sure their parents encouraged and supported them through it all, and I'm sure they make up a substantial part of the country. I was born into the strata of society kindly defined by Goh Chok Tong as the non-heartlanders, and I suspect I'll receive all manner and lengths of stick about this someday from my heartlander compatriats. To be honest, I've always felt the divide is an artificial one - but unfortunately it's one that the nation has wholeheartedly subscribed to, and is therefore now a very real one.
My point being that the people I grew up with, and watched as they grew up - probably represent the minority. I certainly remember the "medical faculty" of my college with a small degree of derision. I remember our biology lecturer telling us all that we had to become doctors or be nothing at all. Simply because these kids had an interest in all three sciences. Apparently that was career-defining.

Where are the Didos and Eric Claptons in Singapore, one wonders.

I mean, heck even australia produces talent (Nicole Kidman, Kylie Minogue) and they're a stone's throw away. And they're not particularly fussed about it either way.

The closest we come are the big names back home like Tanya Chua and Kit Chan. Hmm and maybe Gurmit Singh. laughs.

And I have to admit, they're good - better than the layman could hope to be, anyhow.

But when will they ever produce a hit that sweeps the world - have we ever even had a one-hit-wonder for that matter?

What about our national ambition for Olympic Glory in football?
Or any other sport for that matter?

Seems an Indonesian import nearly won us a medal at Athens recently. And of course I won't pretend that he's not Singaporean. Our table-tennis stars are a team of mainly Chinese imports - they've followed their dreams insofar as nationality goes, and committed themselves to a new citizenship. I applaud them for that, and for their talent.

But there seems to be a dearth of home-grown talent in anything other than engineering, and doctoring, and lawyering. Fields of "merit".

I remember training with our national fencers once upon a very long time ago.

What I remember was that we were all kids. Even the "grown ups".

And we were all part-time kids. Who paid for our own equipment, and had the luxury of training for free under a coach imported from mainland China.

The "adults" had their own cushy little businesses somewhere out there, and doubtlessly trained once or twice a week. And when the occasion demanded, assumed the mantle and tracksuit of national representation, went out there, and got slaughtered. Sometimes they'd win the odd SEA games medal and get put on a pedestal for a while, until their next defeat - then the media'd crucify them, after putting them on an impossible pedestal.

But they were part-timers. None of them dared, or had the passion - or support - to commit their lives to fencing.

I certainly wouldn't have. I could at the time - my life was in limbo while waiting for my national liabilty to expire, and for my dream of doctorhood to finally turn from faintly distant aspiration to real and present reality.

Of the three of us, only one I suspect had real Talent. Our best fencer had guts and determination, and trained obsessively to the point that he was extremely good.
I was out of my element, wielding a weapon that wasn't true to my personality. (Damn foil.) And the last was a bit of a lazy bum, but he had that flair, and sparkle that any fool could see that if he'd committed his life to the art, he'd have been up there.

But he didn't. I suppose it wouldn't have made sense.

Perhaps it's time we abandoned our national obsession with meritocracy and stopped to smell the roses. Perhaps it's time we stopped making fun of the Three Ms of the Malays (mina, moto, marlboro) and realise that there's room enough for that in our lives as well... that career-mindedness has it's place, but isn't the be-all and end-all of life. Perhaps it's time we gave our children the chance to dream again.

Or perhaps not.
In order to even begin to consider these nebulous concepts, we have to first learn how to think.

Still, one baby step at a time, eh?

This explains a lot.

quote :
'This is my life now, not just some funny little thing I do,' she says, as if it's a sudden realisation. 'I couldn't just walk away from it - I employ so many people. That's a weird thing. But I do feel this is the right life, that I'm not stuck in the wrong one.'

Amen to that.

*****
This chap on the other hand has it half-right.

He can see why the audience loves her - he has insight. But he's unable to empathise - he hasn't been there. Society operates within his mind upon very fixed rules. Dido's not "doing it right", she's not firing up her audience. He puzzles why, when he's probably feeling a bit bored at the way she's keeping all her clothes on - the audience is going crazy around him and singing along.

What he hasn't seen (because he hasn't quite been there himself?) - is that there can be strength in diffidence. There can be power in humility. That understatedness does not automatically equate with bland. And the people around him are a different type of people to himself. They're the type who know.

They're the type who feel.

"Like many people, I'm looking forward to 'White Flag', not just because I know it will be the last song in the set - but she fluffs it. Once again, the introduction, 'This song caused me a lot of trouble and was very messy to write,' is more interesting than what follows. She partially redeems herself with 'All You Want' during the encore but it's not enough to outweigh all the lifeless moments that preceded it."

Lifeless? Funny thing about Dido's White Flag is, closing your eyes, the music overwhelms, and drowns the (right) listener. Something about her lyrics (? about the way she thinks?) and her voice makes you drown - in yourself. She makes it feel like you're back, wherever you were once - she somehow inadvertently, in the retelling of her story, includes, and empathises with her audience. She reminds you that you're not alone, in your little flat listening to her CD accompanied to the clacks and clicks of your keyboard as you type. And at her concert, looking around you at the people around you swaying gently, eyes slightly glazed, you realise you're so, so not alone.

Rachel Stevens, as pretty as she is loses her magic the second you close your eyes. She doesn't sing with her soul, and her lyrics are rather empty.

Dido isn't pretty in my books - her features are a little too strong for that. I'd call her handsome (but I'm strange when it comes to me-isms (neologisms). I still mean it as a compliment, without any reference whatsoever to excessive masculinity) yet in the same breath, having watched her in concert, I'd rate her (if I really was the rating kinda guy lol) a 9 out of 10 - which is equivalent to 9 on the "pretty" scale - and pretty damn rare for this bloke. Goddamit I think I have become a fan. laughs.

I guess the difference between the two, incomparable as they are is that one is an entertainer - and the other is a bard.

It's 5.35 am and I'm sitting here watching the sun rise outside my window.

I didn't catch the sunrise on the Thames after Dido after all, since it decided to piss down and stay grey and cloudy till 1900 yesterday.

Today it's turning into the perfect dawn, and I'm sitting here in my bedroom watching it happen and wondering what I'm doing in here as opposed to out there. But this isn't the way I want it to happen. I want to sit on the Thames in the still of the night and watch it fade to light. I want to catch the way the water turns from black to brown, and the way the thames comes awake. I want to see what kind of strange people walk down the thames at 5 in the morning. (hmm. probably muggers.)

So it shan't be today then, since it's already too late. Tomorrow, it shall be.
I'm turning into a regular insomniac, aren't I?

There's a hundred different tomorrows in my head, and a hundred different yesterdays - right now - and I just want to fall through the floor into eternity. I haven't got a clue what that means, but I yearn so hard my limbs hurt. Maybe it's time for my medication again... heh.

Do any of you believe in alternate realities, and divergent futures? Who knows what might have happened - or is going to happen to me, in one of those other lifetimes. To me. It's a strange thought. I watch meme people around me everyday, and envy them just a little. What is it like, one wonders - how safe it must be! to see only your world, and consider only your priorities. How easy life must be to just cruise on by, and make yourself happy.

It's going to be such a beautiful day.

Sometimes we forget how therapeutic words can be.
One of my friends wrote this in the aftermath, to cope.
It's very moving in it's own strange way. And it's all true.

I think it's a poignant reminder to us all... to seize life.

Well I had a wonderful time in Rhodes - 2 weeks.
First of all my camera gets nicked from the room, then some of the wife’s clothes, BUT something even more terrible happened.
As we drove along a typical Greek nasty road, a motor cycle passed us at high speed; it was the chopper type, so not really built for fast speed and awful roads. On the back was a lovely blonde Greek girl, and her boy friend was driving.
Now I don't know if any of you know this, but if someone dies in a road accident in Greece, they place a sort of religious shrine at the side of the road to remember them.
Well as this motor cycle came speeding past, Noticed it was bouncing around a lot and found the conditions a bit tuff ( I have been driving bikes for 26 years), I then turned to our driver and said " they are going to have a shrine if they carry on", Words which I was about to eat.:(
Ploughing into a back of a car which is doing 30 mph, on a bike doing 80 mph is very silly, and this is what happened, the driver stayed on the bike as the rear of the car stopped him from going over it, But the girl did fly over the car, and the impact was such, the car they hit was propelled forward, so much so it then ran over the poor girl whom had been flung 50 yards or so up the road.
Having just come round the corner we saw this picture of carnage, I made our driver stop and ran out to look for the girl, I could see the bike driver and he was a bit ripped up, the driver of the car they hit was covered in blood, as the impact had thrown their blood on him via the back window of the car.
I ran up the road pass the car they had hit and looked all around for the girl whom I guessed had been slung forward, for about 10 secs in circles, desperately hoping to find her, Yes but I did, as I turned back to the car wreck, I saw her blonde hair from beneath the right front wheel of the car.........................
I ran over to the car where some spack Greek decided to push the car which in turn was crushing the girl!
Now being a rather large chap around 16 stone, I showed this guy my disapproval of what he was doing by pushing him away from the car with considerable force, and told him, and the other zombies whom where shuffling slowly towards the wreck that we must lift the car off the girl, it was a smallish car and I figured we could do it.
Now they where either, deaf, thick as poo or terrified as they seemed to hang back, only by running up to them and screaming foul words did they realize I wanted them to help me lift the car, three guys took one side and I had the other, we then lifted the car of her, don't ask me how I done my side on my own, Perhaps the situation had given me super powers or a blast of strength.
After this I went down on my knees to asses the poor girl, whom by now was fitting badly and calling for her mum.
I could not place her in the recovery position, because the back of her skull had came off, and around 4 pints of blood and brains where on the floor, I took her pulse, it was weak and slow, I checked her stomach and chest area, it was ripped up bad by the low valance of the car, I knew then she was beyond help.........
I got some guys to hold towels over her and shade her whilst I cooled her forehead with water waiting for the ambulance to arrive,
They flung her in the back like a bit of meat, no post hospital care like our paramedics.
After smoking 20 fags in 2 mins, we then went to our beach for a swim.
Later that day, I went to change some cash to euros, and was told of a fatality...... it was her, this is how I found out she had died, I must admit I felt a bit ill for a few mins.
That night I got drunk, People kept telling me I had done all I could, but it did not really help.
I think my wife summed it up best as we went to bed that night, she said

An English gentleman gave dignity and soothed a Greek Goddess as she lay dying, he whom gave this, gave the last and greatest gift of all.

God bless you my Greek girl, blonde hair and around 28 years old
I never knew you, but I tried for you.
Not wearing crash helmets on a motor bike = death.

I don't really have any words fitting for the occasion - all I can do is thank God that Tim was there, and offer a small prayer for the girl, and her family.

God, forgive us our daily stupidities - and forgive us our pitiful humanities... and grant that we live life as it should be done. with Grace, and Compassion.

******
Sigh. I suppose I really should have turned the other cheek.
So I'm taking down the wearereallytiredofxiaxue email transcript.
I'll leave the few comments so that wossname can continue abusing me since it seems to amuse him... but yeah. my bad.

Another chap on the fast-track to going direct to jail without passing Go. What is it with these subversive elements popping up everywhere, calling our beloved press names? (I, conformist!) See? Re-minisce learns fast, all honour, power and glory be to SPH's name.

I like his sheep avatar though. Wonder if he's welsh? I hear they... roast... sheep there.

heh heh.

*****
Interesting Excerpt

by way of the comedian guy (everybody's a comedian nowadays...) above :

"The legal precedent for the judiciary's stand on entrapment goes back to 1991, when the Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed labourer How Poh Sun's appeal against the death sentence and rejected his grounds that the CNB had used a decoy to lure him into a lucrative heroin deal.

How's lawyer argued that the entrapment was 'morally reprehensible', but the three-judge court felt morality had no part to play in reaching their verdict. What mattered was that How, 50, had trafficked the drug."

Err. They... asked a judge... to factor in morality into the case.

Run that by me again??

Dood. (cough. peer pressure.) Never talk to judges about morality and ethics. They have the LAW to uphold!

Scary thought for the day :

Shady man on street : Go on, say it with me. I-am-a-taliban-terrorist.
You : No.
Shady man : Come on, it'll be fun.
You : No.
Shady man : I'll give you two million bucks and an AK47
You : No.
Shady man : Heck howbaout some ecstasy and heroin
You : NO!
Shady man : Okay tell you what, I'll throw in Fann Wong as well, free of charge.
You : ...
Shady man : Okay that's it. You're under arrest. Read him his rights, boys.

The comedown after the climax is a bitter pill to swallow. Still feeling a bit high after last night, even though we didn't have a drop to drink.

All that's left is Dido, on CD, who doesn't actually compare to Dido in life. She sounds a lot more dispassionate on her CD - and yet still so wonderful. Err. I should stop blathering or I might actually become a (cough) fan.

But she's so blonde...

moving swiftly on. (I wonder if they have medications that would sort me out?)

*****
Hunter

In breaking news, Shewhoshallnotbenamed (I wonder if she's related to voldemort?) has requested that I take down the wearereallytiredof(shewhoshallnotbenamed'srealname).blogspot.com site.

Thing is she doesn't know how good she's got it already. I could've put a permanent link up top left. snigger. As it is, at the rate I write all of this will be forgotten iin time and a deluge of random rambles before tomorrow. And I could have made the blog a public-listed blog. Shrug.

Several of what I can only assume are her loyal "blodgers" have arrived and begun to unleash a (rather predictable) hail of abuse on me. Twiddle thumbs. I suppose that should make me feel upset... heh.

I'll be the first to admit that I hold stereotypes in my head. Fortunately, I'm also fairly open to debate and I'm more than ready to have my prejudices dismantled in the light of sufficiently persuasive arguments.

My stereotype of Singaporeans (my countrymen!) from what I remembered was that they were nice enough in their own ways - but unable to accomodate views other than their own. And their prejudices in turn were insurmountable because of this.

So it's been nice (note. nice. just nice.) reading your comments - a lot of you have proven fairly sensible, thoughtful and mature - and willing at least to give the matter of free reign of the press - to abuse the truth - some thought at least. And I concede that many of you are right - the country is probably not ready for a responsible media.

I just wish it was different, is all.

Apparently however - you guys are all my "niche market" or so xiaxue claims. Oh no, I said her name - will she descend like a cloud of locusts on hapless re-minisce? chuckle.

Two take-home messages today :

One is that the people who wander through here are people. Not ardent fans, not hormonally-charged preteen idol-worshippers, not identity-seekers desperate for an ounce of angst and attitude, present for the sole purpose of oiling my self-esteem. But real people. Some of you are my peers - and some aren't. Many of you write your own blogs, in turn - and many of you write well.

You're all people. Not tools. Not things.
You're just another guy - and just another girl - and all of you have unique perspectives on the world.

I maintain that I still write for myself... and all of you are accidental voyeurs of inconsequence - and I wouldn't have it any other way. I like that we don't know each other, but exchange points of view. I like that we make each other think. I suppose it's the appeal of the "intimate stranger."

I've never really told many of my friends about this blog. I prefer speaking my thoughts to the wind... even if the wind is made up of people.

So no, you're not my niche market, and I'm not your messiah. I'm just a guy, only a guy - bleeding his thoughts (only his thoughts!) and feelings as they come to him.

I suppose we can't choose our adversaries - we make them. Perhaps xiaxue bit off more than she could chew -- because unlike her esteemed self, who "doesn't care" so much that she dedicates entire diatribes (nothing to do with africans, loincloths and penis size, thank you very much youknowwho) to telling the world how little she cares about her detractors - i honestly don't give a damn what people think about me, or whether they think I'm a good writer, or a traitor to my country. I just want to write. and think.

Am I baiting her as one of her ardent "blodgers" wants to think? (what a horrible term... well I think so anyhow.)

Pish. She'd know if I was baiting her. Re-minisce can be as subtle as... a rusty penknife inna back - if he wants to. Although he has to take his hat off to the bulldozer... bulldozers always beat knives. flat.

It's a free world - the people who pass through here can feel free to know that I won't delete their posts, no matter how offensive or crude. We all have points of view. These are mine.

Those are yours.

Fair enough. We'll all still be alive tomorrow.

The other take-home message is that emails are a two way process. And life is a many way process. We're all alone inside our heads - we're all islands in our minds.

But the souls we encounter on a daily basis are other islands just as large as our own - if not larger.
Everyone has their own points of view to share. Everyone deserves some measure of civility - until they abuse it.

And that everyone bleeds if you cut them.

Just don't go biting the dangerous ones. Laughs.


(I) want to be a Hunter again
I want to see the world alone again
To take a chance on life again
So let me go

- Dido, Hunter

What you can't tell from this photo :

She's a tiny little slip of a woman... but what a voice.
Oops. This just in. Dido stands at 172 cm tall. Err. Make that a pretty tall slip of a woman.

And her eyes.
She wrote those songs. It shows in her eyes.

She's also amazingly understated, and wryly humourous. When about to sing a brand-new previously unheard song to us for her encore, she didn't tell us any of that. She just told us why she wrote it, what it was about, then matter of factly sat down at her keyboard and began to sing.

T thought White Flag was about not surrendering, and trying to get back together.
I suppose that's one possible way of interpreting it. Somehow, looking at Dido's eyes as she sang... that wasn't it at all.


I know, You think that, I shouldn't, still love you
or tell you that
But if I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it,
where's the sense in that
I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder or
return to where we were

(But) I will go down with this ship
I won't put my hands up and surrender
there will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love, and always will be

I know I left too much mess and destruction
to come back again
(And) I caused nothing but trouble, I understand if you
can't talk to me again
And if you live by the rules that it's over
then I'm sure that that makes sense

(And) I will go down with this ship
I won't put my hands up and surrender
there will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love, and always will be

And when we meet
(which) I'm sure we will
All that was there
will be there still
I'll let it pass
and hold my tongue
and you will think
that I've moved on

I will go down with this ship
I won't put my hands up and surrender
there will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love, and always will be

I will go down with this ship
I won't put my hands up and surrender
there will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love, and always will be

- Dido, White Flag


*****
Men are from Mars, Women are from Snickers

Something a friend emailed to me about her (ex) man leaving, nevermind the reason, he left triggered this memory. (sic)

She : it's a bummer you're not here.

pause.

She : Why did you go to the UK anyhow?

He : Because you told me to!

She : Of course I told you to, it would have been better for (reason).
I really wanted (what she really wanted).

He : ...

She : Oh, you Fool.

*****
Insomnia, episode #12581967129410

I can't sleep. Dido's lyrics are haunting me, and it's coming up on sunrise. I figured I'd do a walk down the Thames and snap a few pics of the sunrise over the water - because who knows? I may never see this godforsaken little hellhole that I've come to love over the years, ever again.

Somewhere in my quest to stay awake (not much of a challenge, really) I found Charmaine Chua's little tussel with the Truth. Pandora's box undone, a dragon has emerged (with a lion head) and woe betide the foolish ozzie for having ever deigned to write about the mighty Singapore!

In the aftermath of some comments touching on medical ethics (eg some old /unstable people can't handle the truth about their imminent demises, so we should protect them from the news), the dully indignant and defensive voices that Charmain's post of her (rather penetrating) friend "S"'s e-letter to her about Singapore's political shortfalls elicited brought Jessep's little conversation with Kaffee in A Few Good Men to mind.

I can't help but add this : to compare a few infirm, insane old people to an entire nation of millions of healthy people, in support of a rather flawed argument that the ignorance is bliss is... well. shrug.

There will always be extremes. To extend the poor analogy further, I've encountered old fogeys on my wards as a doctor. I've had all manner of relatives ask me to not tell gran she's dying.

Three quarters of the time Gran's fully compos mentis, and already knows she's dying - just not what of. For chrissakes, it's her body falling apart around her. If there's one person who'd know without needing to be told - it's the person who's dying.

How much more terrible to be vanquished by the unspoken foe, than the known, identified, enemy. A good death... surely encompasses some small degree of control of the circumstances surrounding it?

The other quarter of the time, the discretion to tell, or not isn't in the hands of the family. It's in the hands of the doctor. And it is a burden we bear. And quite often, I don't. But these are extreme and isolated cases. And I take no pride in them.

What then, a good life? Surely perception of truth - and awareness are part of sentience - and part of life.

Do we really feel that it's better to be blinkered to the truth, than to have our illusions shattered? Wouldn't you want to know if your wife or girlfriend was cheating on you - or would you rather the revelation come later, when you discover that the son she birthed was by another man?

Wouldn't you rather know that love has faded - or never was, than discover so a decade - or a lifetime later? Maybe when she's taken your kids and credit card to some distant land?

Wouldn't you rather know that you had cancer - or were going to be involved in a fatal traincrash a month from today -- so that you could spend your last days well, and make the final reconciliations you never had the chance to, and do the last things you always wanted to... than to be caught in your "prime", offguard with your pants down?

What you DO with your truth is up to you. Some would choose to return to the matrix. Some would seek to improve the matrix. And some would seek to live in reality, as ugly as it may be.

I think I must concede 'S's point though.
Perhaps, in time our people will grow up.
Or perhaps not.

Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee (Tom Cruise): I think I'm entitled to them.
Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessep: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.

For the Catholics amongst us, today marks the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady. Hear me out before switching off, I do have a point. I think.
The sermon today centred about the sanctity of life - all life, no matter how humble or broken. All things great and small, all things bold and meek. All things beautiful, and ugly. In God's eyes, at least, the beautiful, intelligent supermodel is no better than the geriatric, Parkinsonian old woman. With a flourish, and almost as an afterthought, the priest added, "who's also incontinent", bringing all my wonderful memories of life as a medical (as opposed to surgical, or emergency) doctor back to mind.

long pause.

okay, moving swiftly on.

I'd like to thank Londoner for a comment he left on my blog. Since I can't get my permalink function to work (if anyone has any bright ideas, please inform) I'm going to reproduce the whole dang thing here :

Londoner - As you know, I have no connection to Singapore whatsoever. I found your blog following the link from Reynolds' blog. And I kept reading because... well, because you CAN write, and I like how intimately you share your thoughts, and I like your descriptions of London.

I read XiaXue's blog, having followed the link from your blog, and while it is vaguely amusing, I didn't understand what all the fuss was about. She also really put me off Singapore- no offence. But she makes it sound like a nanny state full of mindlessly patriotic, bitchily beautiful, and vaguely silly people. I am not saying this is the truth of the matter, but what with her being apparently the nation's favourite blog...? Um, I dunno. You, however, present a rather more favourable picture.

The point is: I did not read XiaXue's blog after that initial perusal, mostly because of the points you make in your bitchaboutxiaxue.com site or whatever it is. And no, she CAN'T write, and yes, you can.

However, in terms of what I think of the site. I dunno. It seems totally immature to me. But then again, if I was reading it in the context of being a Singaporean who has XiaXue forced down my throat, nah. I probably wouldn't find it QUITE so ridiculous a venture.

And please, PLEASEdon't fall in love with XiaXue. Have some self-respect.

Thanks for taking the time to write all that, Londoner. And unlike Xiaxue, I'm not going to use it as evidence that I'm a fantastic writer - even if 1000 of you wrote the same. laughs. How I see myself is a factor of what people say about me, as well as how I think about myself, and fortunately (or not) - the cynic, and critic within me believes in a more introspective rather than receptive view of the world around him. I might be a prolific writer, but I by no means believe I'm a fantastic one. I rate myself pretty average on an international scale, and (cough) dare I say it, above average on a "local" scale (meaning wrt Singapore). My forte lies more in cutting things into little pieces with sharp instruments a foot and a half long. Beam.

Now where was I.

Ah yes, I was about to launch an attack on the press. Yes, I've had a rethink after today's sermon (God knows why) and I've come to realise that the true demons of society are not the Xiaxues, who will always exist - crass, foul-mouthed, common, and attention-seeking -- but the manipulators of society. The media.

Y'know what, I rather suspect Xiaxue's right. I'm none too bright. I keep banging my head on walls. I wonder if I'll survive my imminent return to Singapore, what with all these new friends I'm making. Twiddle thumbs.

Sometimes I read myself and despair at how disorganised my thoughts have become. I'm a rambler now - I've been a doctor for too long, and out of touch with the debate scene for yonks. Doctors have their own little lingo for communicating with each other, and we forget after a while how to be ordinary folks. Well, folks - this is me trying to speak to you.

*****
There will always be Xiaxue-esque people. They exist the world over - look at the Big Brother hopefuls for one. I wouldn't so much call it a personality defect, as a propensity towards taking the path of least resistance. And I suppose we can't really blame them for it.

Given the history of our country (ie Singapore) since independence, and the ostensibly draconian rule we unwittingly grew up under, sheltered by the protective umbrella of a government that knew better - I guess we really ought to be grateful that all voices are being heard in society now, even the rude, uncouth voices that according to the Straits Times, put Brixton fish-sellers to shame. Odd that... if anything I'da pegged London Cabbies for the most prolifiec swearers in the UK. Hmm. Or maybe the football players. laughs.

The odd thing about Xiaxue is that while being common and crass, she is also cunningly PC - note the way she's staunchly pro singapore, and pro government, and the figures she chooses to make fun of - Tony Tan, that most benign of creatures. Put one foot wrong and cast a slur on one of the Lees, and I rather suspect she wouldn't have made the papers. Or even... well, enough of that. And enough of Xiaxue.

I guess the thing that's always really gotten to me about our country is the media. Like most other presses around the world, ours is keen to iconify and deify. Celebrities attain cult-like status quickly within the shire thanks to the efforts of the press. Everyone wants to be hip, and cool like beautiful Miss X, and hunky Mr Y. Our carefully brainwashed sheep baaa in approval everytime some new fresh-faced public figure is crafted, and suddenly all the girls have a new hairstyle.

Politicians on the other hand attain God-like status. Nobody would be stupid enough to emulate them, and certainly nobody would be dumb enough to criticise them publically.

That's how it was while I was growing up, and I admit I was touched by it too. Local celebrity. Waah. So pretty. Wah. So rich. Wahhh. So completely unlike me. I'll never become anyone like that, what with my ordinary looks and ordinary social standing (insecurity is very much part of being Singaporean, isn't it?)

Funny thing is, when I came over here I found myself unable to look at local celebrities the same way after. Frankly, most of them are slightly less talented than that John Smith's (I think) cardboard cutout figure who at least is funny. And I dunno but somehow that fresh-faced ephemeral look just gets so boring after a while - especially when they ALL look like clones of each other. Given the small pool of supposed "talent", watching TCS shows is quite a pain as well. The same talentless actors crop up over, and over, and over, and over again... today a thrillingly ordinary policeman, tomorrow a less than convincing doctor, the next... etc. How many of them honestly have panache and savoir-faire? How many of them, for that matter have wit? And how many actually have brai... cough. Okay, I won't go there. laughs.

The thing that I resent about our media is that not everybody has a voice. Not everybody gets to enjoy their five minutes of fame (obviously) - this is true in any society. But the top dogs who do the picking and choosing always choose the SAME type of people. Apparently someone up there's had a moment of inspiration. Let's be different, let's choose a teenaged girl who's really foul-mouthed and make her the next best thing since sliced bread!

wow. What an astounding imagination. Someone give the man a Tiger. Heck, throw a nobel peace prize in while you're at it. Preferably in his Tiger.

The thing that bugs me is - where are the other voices? Where're the voices in support of good old fashioned decency, to balance this new, cool, hip rudeness? And I'm not talking about the cliched, prim and proper voices of our grandmothers who, if they had their ways, would have us all (men included) wearing chastity belts with low voltage "re-education" devices incorporated. I'm not talking about the ludicrously anal-retentive Christians the media always delights in choosing as the "other extreme". I'm talking about that decidedly everyday, common sense voice of lay decency that most of the people know, that resides within their hearts.

The thing that's always wowed me about England is that you get All Sorts here. For every pro-war columnist out there, there's at least another anti-war writer - and quite often they appear on opposite pages in the same newspaper. There is a diversity of thought here that appeals. There is a recognition that the truth is quite often subjective - and the people who transform it into particular realities aren't the mediamen, but the readers.

Back home, you get One "Sort", until in-vogue becomes passe, and then we move on to another "Sort". And I don't just mean celebrity figures - it's all pervasive, in nearly everything we take for granted.

Does anyone remember when chewing gum suddenly became illegal?
Where were the public voices to point out, quite matter of factly, that that was just plain stupid?
Instead, we just rolled over and pretty much said "but muuuuuuuuuuuuuum..."

And now that we've got our gum back... where are the voices to say "duuuuuuuuuuurrr!"

And honestly, what message are we trying to give our youth now? Be like Xiaxue? Learn to say fuck fuck fucking fuck at least twice in every line we write? That ruthlessly "slandering" other people and then strutting around after engaging in self-promotion is okay, as long as we're "humourous" while we do it? What about that older message that we're fast forgetting - that swearing (incessantly) is unbecoming, and laughing at other people's misfortunes is ungracious? Are we forgetting how much infinitely more pleasurable it is to laugh along with someone, rather than at him/her?

Aren't we even going to give our kids a choice? We all know by now that they can't really think for themselves - they only think they can. Saturate their minds with a single image for long enough, and they lose their ability to think outside the box - or rather, the less three-dimensional picture-frame. Heck, most of us can barely think for ourselves as it is. (myself included, quite often.)

What happened to our push for a "Gracious Society" anyhow?

The people still remember. It's obvious, reading Sara's account of national day that Goh Chok Tong got a tearful heroes sendoff - and I suspect it wasn't so much because of his Godlike status - he never did wear that mantle, even when the press tried to push it onto him - but more because he was quietly thoughtful and competent, and if not meek - then certainly not arrogant. The gentle giant, soft-spoken almost to the point of diffidence. Someone from another time, almost. (compare to George Bush jr, a genuine, true blue (and red and white) Great American Contemporary Neanderthal for maximum effect.)

I'm trying my best not to let my personal biases come into play here - so I'll reiterate that there will always be people like Xiaxue, and they will always have a role to play within society. They belong - in fact, in America, they appear to predominate. heh.

I don't know, I honestly don't.

The problem is our (selective) media. And there's two ways around it - either they refrain from deifying people, or else they take some responsibility into their hands (or rather, quills. okay, biros.) and become a thinking press that strives to balance fact for fact and icon for icon, and allow the people to make their own minds up about what's hip, what's cool, and what's true. I know one or two of the reporters who used to give a damn about responsible journalism. Where did they slink to, I wonder?

Does anyone remember my rant about that supposed "medical expert" who wrote that all strokes should be thrombolysed? It's fascinating that in Singapore a guy who barely qualified from med school becomes an overnight medical guru, whereas in the UK long-established university professor-clinicians (and not just mere doctors!) are invited to write columns, and have the common sense not to proclaim what they write as law.

Black and white print went out the door eons ago - why then are we still being forced to think in monochrome?

I write all this because for some crazy reason, I care.
It doesn't come across, I suppose, in my many dreamy photologs about London. I'm the proto-globalvillager. The neo-citizen with tenuous allegiances, who makes his home where his heart wants to. Someone like, sigh, Xiaxue on the other hand is staunchly nationalistic - her country is her country, because its her country and she will defend it to the death. She will defend her masters land and words from the evil foreigners.

And I don't know why I should care. Except, as Nicholas put it on his blog (metastasis) - Singapore is our home because we live there, with our families. The things we truly care about are friends and family. The rest of it - what our government would like us to think is a given - is really an optional extension. Caring for the country itself, and the fate of the country - that's a completely different matter.

I know that I'm a critical thinker - although quite probably not the keenest of the lot. It's nothing to be proud of - and once upon a time it was something to be ashamed of, as according to the PAP. Does anyone remember the days of yesteryear when it took the offensive against "cynics"? Evil people who would bring down the empire? Anyone who thought critically was automatically a cynic.

The people I cared most about were critical thinkers - the people I called my friends, once.

The funny thing is most of them have left the country to take up permanent residence in the states. And, inevitably, time and work committments eroded our friendships till today they're mere whispers in the wind.

Yet something bugs me about it all. I want for Singapore to grow - in the right direction. I want for the people to learn to think critically for themselves - whether or not they choose to exercise that capability would be entirely up to them. But like the matrix - shouldn't everyone be given a chance to see outside their box? To decide which reality suits them better.

I've almost given up hope of this ever happening. To be honest, as Gandalf said, there never really was much hope - only a fool's hope.

And it's entirely imaginable, given the current trend that one day I'll be forced to turn my back on my country of birth. I, renegade.

But right now, right this moment - I still burn.

Is this so hidiously unpatriotic of me? What, one wonders went through Lee Kuan Yew's mind once upon a time, after he graduated from a UK university and went home, to change the way his people thought? Was he being unpatriotic then?

Corny as this sounds - I'd like to sound a clarion call to the people who really do give a damn about their country, and who don't just parrot the noises. Let us call for a shred of responsibility from our media. Let us call for "revolution".

Err and just in case Big Brother misunderstands me - I'm not calling for a change of government. I'm calling for a "new paradigm" of thought as you guys so often love to call it. I'm calling for a re-realisation of the ideals the New Singapore was founded upon, once.