Friday, September 03, 2004
Today's Random Thoughts
Damn. I had so many thoughts in my head today. where did they vanish to. Sting's in the background obliterating my brain.
I know that diamonds mean money for this art, but that's not the shape of my heart.
- some would do well to learn that.
Lessee. Where were we.
Oh yeah. Summer's back! for a while anyway.
Today in the park, getting a tan (yes! really!!) and studying for my MRCS i saw :
Two kids in the grass. Bloke and bird. Being friendly.
Eh. Did he just put his hand down her trouse... avert eyes. At least they weren't making much noise.
The lucky bastard... she's so blondddde. And beautiful too. dammit.
Nice old grandmotherly woman doddered past and suddenly they were all prim and proper again. hee.
Shortly after,
two chinese blokes in the grass. Sing/malaysian from the sounds of it. Holding hands.
Avert eyes. don'tstaredon'tstaredon'tstare. Eh. he's carressing his... avert eyes.
Random Question : Do any of you guys have this problem with midges? They seem to like me. Big cloud of em kept following me around the park :\ Not the biting kind. The irritating buzz in the air aimlessly in a great cloud kind. pissed the heck outta me so I killed them all with one fell sweep of my jacket. Then had to clean em off my jacket :(
Oh yeah.
Someone asked in a comment sometime back what the criteria for brain death are. Seeing as I just revised them today, here they are :
*****
(this is really gonna be boring. sorry in advance.)
Brain Stem Death
-tests must be done by two doctors, both 5 years post registration, one of whom must be a consultant. Neither should be members of a transplant team. At least 6 hours should have elapsed between onset of coma and the first set of diagnostic tests.
-preconditions (ie these must exist before the diagnosis is made)
1) apnoeic coma requiring ventilation (ie not breathing spontaneously)
2) known cause of (potentially) "irreversible" brain damage eg head injury or bleed into the brain
-exclusions (ie these must not exist at time of diagnosis since they mimic brainstem death)
1) hypothermia, which is body temperature < 35 degrees
2) hasn't had a (nervous sytem) depressant drug, including sedatives, morphine or other opiate, or a muscle relaxant
3) no metabolic derangements, including electrolytes, sodium, liver problems
-tests (these centre about central nervous function)
1) no pupillary reflexes to light (direct / indirect)
2) no corneal reflex (ie touching the eye with cotton wool doesn't cause blinking)
3) no response to pain to the face, which is a reflex involving certain cranial nerves
4) no "normal" eye movements in response to cold water injected into the ear, which should cause physiological nystagmus (eyes jerk)
5) no gag reflex
6) doesn't breathe for 10 min after being disconnected from the ventilator (oxygen is run via a tube into the trachea to keep the patient alive) - duration shortened if the patient becomes unstable before this (and put back on the ventilator)
if these criteria are all met, the patient is legally "braindead" (ie brainstem)
a second set of tests has to be done to confirm.
yeah, so to whoever asked me - there's your answer. it was too long to fit in a comment and you didn't leave an email address... so there you go.
*****
Oh, have I mentioned? I'm no longer part of the NHS. Time to invest in a tin mug. Preparations for homecoming are... in progress.
This is going to be... interesting.
Anyhow, after several hours in the sun dehydration began to set in, so I went to the gym. I love my gym, it has free drinks and newspapers, and cable TV. Uh, not that I visit expressly for the purpose of the facilities of course. oh nono.
At the gym, I had several slightly-less-boring-than-usual thoughts :
1) 2.4 km in 11:04, again. tomorrow, we'll crank the speed up a little... The strange thing today is I didn't break a sweat. Eh? Not at all. Don't get me wrong, it was still exhilarating agony as always... I love sprinting the last 200m just to get that slight buzz from the adrenaline, although I could do without the lungs-on-fire-head-exploding crap that follows after. But... no sweat. I must have been more dehydrated than I thought.
So 3L of rapid rehydration later (honest. I drank all the cola in the machines up. A lot of people were pissed off with me. giggle) I hit the weights. Which led to thought number
2) I think I must live near a modelling centre. Or a porn studio.
I haven't really mentioned this before, but the women who go to my gym are all like 6 feet tall with bodies that would make lara-croft turn a ghastly shade of green. And they have Good English features. I mean proper features. Cheekbones and noses. Not the slightly flattened features that predominate across the continent and probably result from years of darwinian selection and mebbe something to do with centuries of war and being clubbed in the faces by horny frenchman prior to rapacious ravishing. Going to the gym is like being in an issue of FHM except the models move. and bounce. Um, not that I'm staring or anything, you just can't help noticing. Also hard to ignore is that
3) the men don't look at the women. They look in the mirrors. Sometimes they look at each other. This has led me to conclude that they're all gay. They must be. I mean for chrissakes these women are Nordic Goddesses with bodies made for sin. okay, the majority of them are. And the closest the men get to chatting them up is the occasional "yawright?" before staring at their images and preening, before going back to lifting their puny weights.
4) That's right. The musclebound hunks at my gym either lift miserable little 5kg weights (what is THAT about???!?!) and preen, or else they do the manly 800kg thing and go UNNNNNNNNNNHHHHH while they do it, with all their veins popping out of their... everywhere... while the preeners goggle at them.
Note to world : You ogle, or you goggle. You do not oogle. I suppose you can google. heh. Sorry, I, pedant.
5) I wonder if Fitness First Singapore attracts the same crowd. Anyone?
So that was my boring day for y'all. I've gotta go hit the books tonight. Neoplasia and surgery. ug.
*****
Addendum
Oh I found this while doing the evading-study routine.
All I can say is : wimp.
There are girlies out there in this country with more street smarts than you.
It strikes me that while he's busy patting himself on the back for the life of luxury he lives in Singapore, he's wholly unable to function in the Rest of the World. Is that what we've created? A nation of spoilt brats who shudder in horror everytime they leave the country at how everywhere else is so.... eeeeyer... dirty, and smelly... and they have.... eeeeeeee... beggars.
's funny. I walk the streets everyday now, and I see the beggars. I ignore em. I've spoken to a few of them on the wards, a few hard luck cases of barristers reduced to homelessness by drugs, sure. And the vast majority I have no respect for - many do it because. They get welfare. They spend it on drink and drugs. They get money from dumb folks. They spend it on drink and drugs. They get mcdonald's surplus for supper. Or BK. Or sometimes even Pret. This is harsh, but many of them could break out of the rut if they really wanted to. But many of them... don't want to.
I see the crime. If you walk the right side of the street, keep your stuff deep in pockets that are hard to pick and your hands right in there with them, you're relatively safe. Maybe I've just led a charmed life so far. shrug.
I quote : "Westerners are unaware of the extent of their deprivation. On learning that I had flown in from Singapore, a taxi driver in rural England once asked what it was like there.
Anxious to steer clear of political controversy, I replied 'Very clean.' Swivelling round, the man demanded challengingly, 'Cleaner than London?'
Now I love London, its grace, dignity, noble buildings and hallowed traditions, but there is no denying that parts of this great city could learn a thing or two from Singapore in tidiness."
Laughs. He sees deprivation, I see diversity. I see deprivation in the artificial state we've created back home. The grand illusion of crimelessness, and racial harmony, and complete and utter cleanliness. Have any of you ever seen the cleaning squad that sweeps the streets at four in the morning? That's how it's done. That and the law, which threatens public humiliation and huge fines.
Don't get me wrong. It works for many people, and it even works for me sometimes. I like that Singapore's clean and green, although sometimes it bugs me that all the trees... lie... in exactly... the right place. You can almost imagine the blueprints sometimes, walking down the street - they include the trees and shrubs.
The thing is every city is like a person. It has it's own character, it's own beauty and it's own ugliness. Singapore's beauty is skin deep - and sometimes when I go home at look at it through my deprived eyes, it's so, so beautiful. It's a place to grow old, after having seen the world, when all the angst of youth and desires for freedom and expression have given way to the contented satisfaction of dying in your partner's arms. I don't think it's a very good place to grow up in though. They fuck with your mind. Singapore is a place for family and friends.
Every city has its upsides and downsides. Leaving Singapore and whinging about how everywhere else isn't Singapore-ish enough for you is like going out and meeting people and whining that they're not enough like your ex-girlfriend. Or in Mr Datta-Ray's case, probably Lee Kuan Yew. Laugh. Too tall. Not bald enough. Too soft spoken. Not sen... oops. freudian slip. hee hee.
You just gotta learn to accept the differences, and drink in the beauty of the individual. I mean it'd be like going to Rome and saying there aren't enough skyscrapers like Singapore. And failing to notice the beauties hidden in a city that existed millenia before your own. It'd be like travelling to Bruges and saying there are too many canals and bridges for your liking, unlike good old Singapore.
He loves london for it's grace and dignity? Fuck. I must not be living in the same london. Noble buildings? err. Dirty and grubby more like. I love the way they restore the buildings so they look just as dirty afterwards. Honest, they even replace bricks with dirty-looking bricks. I seen it.
Hallowed traditions. err. yeah. right.
Well, I'll say this : London's appeal is in it's diversity. In it's... everything. There is SO MUCH here. And to be honest, so much more. Part of the charm is the dirt. And part of it is the unexpected shininess of Canary Wharf. And part of it is the humanity, that involves everyone from prostitutes to paramedics. And not just ministers and celebrities. These people are really Alive. Fucked up, sure. A little bit sad, sure. But oh, so alive.
I pity Mr Sunanda K. Datta-Ray. He sees with his eyes wide shut.
But who can blame him. He's a product of the system. He either doesn't know better - or he's keeping his eyes closed on purpose. I guess everybody needs a ricebowl.
I love this bit : "The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies. The views expressed here are his own. This article first appeared in Business Standard, a New Delhi newspaper."
Can anyone spell insular arse licker?
(paraphrased from http://singabloodypore.blogspot.com/)The views expressed herein are not my own. The writer is an unemployed bum lying on his bed. This article first appeared in a blog unworthy of note.
I know that diamonds mean money for this art, but that's not the shape of my heart.
- some would do well to learn that.
Lessee. Where were we.
Oh yeah. Summer's back! for a while anyway.
Today in the park, getting a tan (yes! really!!) and studying for my MRCS i saw :
Two kids in the grass. Bloke and bird. Being friendly.
Eh. Did he just put his hand down her trouse... avert eyes. At least they weren't making much noise.
The lucky bastard... she's so blondddde. And beautiful too. dammit.
Nice old grandmotherly woman doddered past and suddenly they were all prim and proper again. hee.
Shortly after,
two chinese blokes in the grass. Sing/malaysian from the sounds of it. Holding hands.
Avert eyes. don'tstaredon'tstaredon'tstare. Eh. he's carressing his... avert eyes.
Random Question : Do any of you guys have this problem with midges? They seem to like me. Big cloud of em kept following me around the park :\ Not the biting kind. The irritating buzz in the air aimlessly in a great cloud kind. pissed the heck outta me so I killed them all with one fell sweep of my jacket. Then had to clean em off my jacket :(
Oh yeah.
Someone asked in a comment sometime back what the criteria for brain death are. Seeing as I just revised them today, here they are :
*****
(this is really gonna be boring. sorry in advance.)
Brain Stem Death
-tests must be done by two doctors, both 5 years post registration, one of whom must be a consultant. Neither should be members of a transplant team. At least 6 hours should have elapsed between onset of coma and the first set of diagnostic tests.
-preconditions (ie these must exist before the diagnosis is made)
1) apnoeic coma requiring ventilation (ie not breathing spontaneously)
2) known cause of (potentially) "irreversible" brain damage eg head injury or bleed into the brain
-exclusions (ie these must not exist at time of diagnosis since they mimic brainstem death)
1) hypothermia, which is body temperature < 35 degrees
2) hasn't had a (nervous sytem) depressant drug, including sedatives, morphine or other opiate, or a muscle relaxant
3) no metabolic derangements, including electrolytes, sodium, liver problems
-tests (these centre about central nervous function)
1) no pupillary reflexes to light (direct / indirect)
2) no corneal reflex (ie touching the eye with cotton wool doesn't cause blinking)
3) no response to pain to the face, which is a reflex involving certain cranial nerves
4) no "normal" eye movements in response to cold water injected into the ear, which should cause physiological nystagmus (eyes jerk)
5) no gag reflex
6) doesn't breathe for 10 min after being disconnected from the ventilator (oxygen is run via a tube into the trachea to keep the patient alive) - duration shortened if the patient becomes unstable before this (and put back on the ventilator)
if these criteria are all met, the patient is legally "braindead" (ie brainstem)
a second set of tests has to be done to confirm.
yeah, so to whoever asked me - there's your answer. it was too long to fit in a comment and you didn't leave an email address... so there you go.
*****
Oh, have I mentioned? I'm no longer part of the NHS. Time to invest in a tin mug. Preparations for homecoming are... in progress.
This is going to be... interesting.
Anyhow, after several hours in the sun dehydration began to set in, so I went to the gym. I love my gym, it has free drinks and newspapers, and cable TV. Uh, not that I visit expressly for the purpose of the facilities of course. oh nono.
At the gym, I had several slightly-less-boring-than-usual thoughts :
1) 2.4 km in 11:04, again. tomorrow, we'll crank the speed up a little... The strange thing today is I didn't break a sweat. Eh? Not at all. Don't get me wrong, it was still exhilarating agony as always... I love sprinting the last 200m just to get that slight buzz from the adrenaline, although I could do without the lungs-on-fire-head-exploding crap that follows after. But... no sweat. I must have been more dehydrated than I thought.
So 3L of rapid rehydration later (honest. I drank all the cola in the machines up. A lot of people were pissed off with me. giggle) I hit the weights. Which led to thought number
2) I think I must live near a modelling centre. Or a porn studio.
I haven't really mentioned this before, but the women who go to my gym are all like 6 feet tall with bodies that would make lara-croft turn a ghastly shade of green. And they have Good English features. I mean proper features. Cheekbones and noses. Not the slightly flattened features that predominate across the continent and probably result from years of darwinian selection and mebbe something to do with centuries of war and being clubbed in the faces by horny frenchman prior to rapacious ravishing. Going to the gym is like being in an issue of FHM except the models move. and bounce. Um, not that I'm staring or anything, you just can't help noticing. Also hard to ignore is that
3) the men don't look at the women. They look in the mirrors. Sometimes they look at each other. This has led me to conclude that they're all gay. They must be. I mean for chrissakes these women are Nordic Goddesses with bodies made for sin. okay, the majority of them are. And the closest the men get to chatting them up is the occasional "yawright?" before staring at their images and preening, before going back to lifting their puny weights.
4) That's right. The musclebound hunks at my gym either lift miserable little 5kg weights (what is THAT about???!?!) and preen, or else they do the manly 800kg thing and go UNNNNNNNNNNHHHHH while they do it, with all their veins popping out of their... everywhere... while the preeners goggle at them.
Note to world : You ogle, or you goggle. You do not oogle. I suppose you can google. heh. Sorry, I, pedant.
5) I wonder if Fitness First Singapore attracts the same crowd. Anyone?
So that was my boring day for y'all. I've gotta go hit the books tonight. Neoplasia and surgery. ug.
*****
Addendum
Oh I found this while doing the evading-study routine.
All I can say is : wimp.
There are girlies out there in this country with more street smarts than you.
It strikes me that while he's busy patting himself on the back for the life of luxury he lives in Singapore, he's wholly unable to function in the Rest of the World. Is that what we've created? A nation of spoilt brats who shudder in horror everytime they leave the country at how everywhere else is so.... eeeeyer... dirty, and smelly... and they have.... eeeeeeee... beggars.
's funny. I walk the streets everyday now, and I see the beggars. I ignore em. I've spoken to a few of them on the wards, a few hard luck cases of barristers reduced to homelessness by drugs, sure. And the vast majority I have no respect for - many do it because. They get welfare. They spend it on drink and drugs. They get money from dumb folks. They spend it on drink and drugs. They get mcdonald's surplus for supper. Or BK. Or sometimes even Pret. This is harsh, but many of them could break out of the rut if they really wanted to. But many of them... don't want to.
I see the crime. If you walk the right side of the street, keep your stuff deep in pockets that are hard to pick and your hands right in there with them, you're relatively safe. Maybe I've just led a charmed life so far. shrug.
I quote : "Westerners are unaware of the extent of their deprivation. On learning that I had flown in from Singapore, a taxi driver in rural England once asked what it was like there.
Anxious to steer clear of political controversy, I replied 'Very clean.' Swivelling round, the man demanded challengingly, 'Cleaner than London?'
Now I love London, its grace, dignity, noble buildings and hallowed traditions, but there is no denying that parts of this great city could learn a thing or two from Singapore in tidiness."
Laughs. He sees deprivation, I see diversity. I see deprivation in the artificial state we've created back home. The grand illusion of crimelessness, and racial harmony, and complete and utter cleanliness. Have any of you ever seen the cleaning squad that sweeps the streets at four in the morning? That's how it's done. That and the law, which threatens public humiliation and huge fines.
Don't get me wrong. It works for many people, and it even works for me sometimes. I like that Singapore's clean and green, although sometimes it bugs me that all the trees... lie... in exactly... the right place. You can almost imagine the blueprints sometimes, walking down the street - they include the trees and shrubs.
The thing is every city is like a person. It has it's own character, it's own beauty and it's own ugliness. Singapore's beauty is skin deep - and sometimes when I go home at look at it through my deprived eyes, it's so, so beautiful. It's a place to grow old, after having seen the world, when all the angst of youth and desires for freedom and expression have given way to the contented satisfaction of dying in your partner's arms. I don't think it's a very good place to grow up in though. They fuck with your mind. Singapore is a place for family and friends.
Every city has its upsides and downsides. Leaving Singapore and whinging about how everywhere else isn't Singapore-ish enough for you is like going out and meeting people and whining that they're not enough like your ex-girlfriend. Or in Mr Datta-Ray's case, probably Lee Kuan Yew. Laugh. Too tall. Not bald enough. Too soft spoken. Not sen... oops. freudian slip. hee hee.
You just gotta learn to accept the differences, and drink in the beauty of the individual. I mean it'd be like going to Rome and saying there aren't enough skyscrapers like Singapore. And failing to notice the beauties hidden in a city that existed millenia before your own. It'd be like travelling to Bruges and saying there are too many canals and bridges for your liking, unlike good old Singapore.
He loves london for it's grace and dignity? Fuck. I must not be living in the same london. Noble buildings? err. Dirty and grubby more like. I love the way they restore the buildings so they look just as dirty afterwards. Honest, they even replace bricks with dirty-looking bricks. I seen it.
Hallowed traditions. err. yeah. right.
Well, I'll say this : London's appeal is in it's diversity. In it's... everything. There is SO MUCH here. And to be honest, so much more. Part of the charm is the dirt. And part of it is the unexpected shininess of Canary Wharf. And part of it is the humanity, that involves everyone from prostitutes to paramedics. And not just ministers and celebrities. These people are really Alive. Fucked up, sure. A little bit sad, sure. But oh, so alive.
I pity Mr Sunanda K. Datta-Ray. He sees with his eyes wide shut.
But who can blame him. He's a product of the system. He either doesn't know better - or he's keeping his eyes closed on purpose. I guess everybody needs a ricebowl.
I love this bit : "The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies. The views expressed here are his own. This article first appeared in Business Standard, a New Delhi newspaper."
Can anyone spell insular arse licker?
(paraphrased from http://singabloodypore.blogspot.com/)The views expressed herein are not my own. The writer is an unemployed bum lying on his bed. This article first appeared in a blog unworthy of note.
