Truths of Old

The two most memorable lines of my year were spoken last night, and this morning respectively.

1) En-route to the bar on top of the Westin Stamford, the elevator stopped at the 69th storey.

Me : Ooh. Look, the 69th! Shall we get off at 69?

Friend : groan

Nobody else got the joke.

2) This morning, while seeing a pleasant English Geriatric (patient)

Registrar : Have you passed motion today?

English Patient : Motions are only passed in Parliament.

*****
Feel

I've been meaning to write about the Earthquake / Tsunami Tragedy for the longest time. And I still mean to. But right now, in my post-prandial state pre-bed and what with being on-call AGAIN after just doing one thursday, now is not the time.

Suffice to say that it was a terrible, terrible thing to happen and thousands of people are suffering in the aftermath - and they are the lucky ones, who survived.

I can't help but wonder at how lucky Singapore was to escape the effects of a three meter wave sweeping six kilometers inland with devastating force. And then spreading further northwards.

That would have been simply devastating.

*****
See

Did anyone else realise that just in front of that horrible Silkpro Monstrosity sitting on Orchard Road (that's right, they have a giant christmas tree called the Silkpro Celebration Tree) there is an outdoor skating rink?

It ends 2nd Jan 05.

Bugger. Typically, found out about it today and am on call tomorrow. I really wanted to give it a spin.

*****
Recall

Reading a friend describe her hiatus from Bloggerworld with the choice phrase "trying hard to resuscitate a lost persona" I couldn't help but think back to yesterday.

The feel of warm blood on my bare hands as I squeezed down hard on a rather-stiff ambu-bag, running on in autopilot. I didn't switch into lead role since there were so many seniors present, which in retrospect perhaps I should have - for just a moment things weren't as organised as they could have been. I just grabbed the ambu-bag, tried to get a seal, and squeezed. A me from another time would have pushed the senior at the head of the bed out of the way to get a better seal, till someone was ready to intubate for-real. A me from another time might even have lost his temper because the adrenaline and atropine weren't arriving quickly enough.

The me today, this me that lives in this strange land we call home is slowly being beaten into submission and silence, and conformity - to what everyone else thinks of you, to what the right role, as you see fit in your head is to play, is.

The me today just squeezed on his ambu bag, and felt rather sad that this woman was going to die.

*****
Forget

His finger wavered over the button, but, as always he couldn't hit "OK".

He put his phone away in his pocket - sometime later, in retrospect, he wondered if perhaps subconsciously he left the message on it, in its pre-sent form, just in case...

... someone called. And he automatically the OK button.

And so the message that never was, became.

*****
Speak

Happy New Year, world. Hope you're all having a great time hitting the bubbly, in a suitably sombre way befitting of a post regional-apocalypse catastrophy. I can just imagine everyone at Zouk right now, hanging their heads and shuffling their feet in dejection...

But seriously folks, Thank God that we are alive. And spare a thought for those who are not, who are going to die, and who have lost loved ones. And for all the others who have lost their homes, their possessions, their livelihoods, and their... their everydays.

Guesses and assumptions.

Is that the sum total of what we are?

Nobody has even stopped to ask "why".

I admit it. The matter, for now, still chafes.

Let it go. I shall not read.

It's funny how a spot of self-flagellation at the gym can ease all the worries of a rather woeful week. For a while, at least.

I discovered today that one of the last places to buy blank "old-world" cassettes is at 7/11.

While we're on the subject, I tried to top up my cash cards (I bought a spare yesterday, after being caught out one too many times by the stupid machines that do not accept mastercard electronic...) at 7/11 today only to be told by the pimply-faced server that "I can't do it here sir, you must step into the other queue."

Glance left, glance right. Raise eyebrow. (nobody else in shop)

"Over here sir."

ERr. okay. Shuffle right three steps.

"Okay. Wait a while. Someone will be with you"

server stares into space for a bit. Then shuffles right three steps and smiles brightly.

Re-minisce considers backing out of the shop in a hurry, but figures it's built into the hospital, so he's wearing his ultra-heavy stethoscope, and if need be he can swing it and put this nutcase out like a light.

Fortunately the rest of the transaction proceeded smoothly.

*****
Anyway, the reason I want a cassette tape is because I was wandering around on the piano sunday (I only feel... wrought enough to do this everything something troubles me enough to kickstart me, since otherwise it feels hollow and fake and I can't sustain it) and I created some pretty impressive stuff, even by my feeble standards.

Since I have the preliminary stages of BSE, I can't remember a thing about it now, much less replicate it. So next time this happens, I'm going to capture it on tape.

And if nobody's noticed yet, Sunday was a pretty bad day.

As were monday, and tuesday.

Tomorrow, I'm on call. Hopefully it'll be a better day then.

*****
I've had friends come and go over the years. I won't claim to be so callous as to not regret it.

I do.

But they fade with time, like old polaroids.

Only one of them is stored in the digital datavaults of my failing memory. Eternally preserved, in full technicolour detail. And securely locked away, where my conscious mind cannot access it.

It doesn't amaze me anymore that people would rather burn with indignation, than do something as simple as ask for the truth - which - sometimes, anyhow - is given freely.

So be it.

This is how the story shall play out.

I, then, am the villain. I, then was the "unreasonable one".

I am tired of bearing this cross for other people. But I have comfort in knowing that somewhere amongst the crowd, a very select few really do understand me. These few dwindle with time, but they are people I dare call friends.

Let these be the last words I speak here on this matter.

Please.

I am bewildered.

This internet /SMS thing has turned into a medium for indirect communication between people who should be able to speak their minds directly to each other.

And these responses are oblique, and point at something else which will apparently simply not be said.

Of course it's not just about ethics.

It's about people getting hurt, and about me giving a damn about my friends.

What I don't get is how I've managed to hurt one of them through asking her to help defend another?

Perhaps I should learn something from all this. Perhaps my original ethic was right all along.

Don't get personal.

*****
The Tsunami Effect

Apparently, the Official Singaporean response to the unthinkable catastrophies that occurred yesterday, the day after Christmas, that claimed thousands of lives was not one of compassion or sensitivity, but of petulent self-centredness.

Lots of ah-pu-neh-nehs die or suffer, nevermind, my holiday to phuket spoil. Nahbei, someone will have to pay me back for this.

I applaud yawningbread for astutely pointing out that the comments must have been led by the closed-questions from the media. I too wish it could be different in this third-world country we live in. We are, you know. We look and sound and smell like a developed nation, but we are primitive in our minds.

Sometimes it's not all about us, but about other people getting hurt.

I had thought that my own friends might be different from the rest of the flock.

I shall not make that same mistake twice.

Did you hear, the English have invented the world's smallest source of infinitely renewable clean energy. they call it the fission chip.

Ugh.

*****
Broke a few unwritten "rules" today.

1) drove the father's preciousssssssss.
In mitigation, they took the mother's car to the club without telling me in advance, leaving me with all of five minutes to get over my shock and horror on stepping into the garage, to come around to the idea of snagging the Key to the Preciousssss and making off with the One Thingummybob in order to get to church on time. It was quite an experience. I've never driven it before. Sort of like driving a very powerful tank.

2) I did the coinflip thing - something I never really thought I'd do again - again today. But it was a true-blue coinflip this time. Not skewed, and without a predetermined answer : and for a very, very different purpose.

It came up heads the first time, but bounced off my hand onto the table, so I flipped it again, and it came up heads again the second time. It was exactly what S. was calling it, both times. I idly wondered if I kept flipping it, for this one instant, whether it would keep coming up heads - without my needing to even think about biasing the flip. It was a strange experience. An honest coinflip, who'da thunk.

And with that, I decided chance had made my decision for me, and so I broke my third unwritten rule.

3) I asked S if she was the type who would rather hear the whole truth, or whether she'd rather not know even if it might hurt her.

I asked her if she'd rather live in security, in the matrix, or whether she needed to know the Truth.

I asked her a great deal of other questions, over the week, about her thoughts about "hypothetical scenarios" involving men, and women.

I knew the answer to the last question even before she replied.

This last one, it was the most serious breach of all. It was a breach of ethics.
I don't do this. I don't get personally involved. I'm a watcher, I stand by and I watch in bitter silence. I know better than to blunder in where angels would fear to tread.

I let people discover things - for themselves. It's the only way most people can learn. Most people don't want to hear the truth.

But once in a blue moon, the dice roll a certain way, and you're not just able to - you're obliged to. And you give enough of a damn to put even friendship at stake.

V didn't understand; she still doesn't. She thinks she does, but she hasn't got a clue. I dread to think what she thinks of me, and of my motives.

I knew she wouldn't speak, and she didn't.

But for a moment, I had hoped that I might be wrong.

Is it fair to protect someone against the truth? Especially if that person is - someone like myself - someone who must know the truth, even if it burns?

And the answer to that is - no.

No.

*****
If we be sheep, then I am... not quite a wolf. Perhaps a sheepdog. Or maybe just a very bitter, rabid sheep.

*****
I've just heard the news, about the earthquake, and the tsunamis.

It's a frightening thought.

My father told me to stay well clear of the coastline, and of tall buildings.

I couldn't help but think that if a tsunami hit singapore, the whole country would be under water within seconds. Probably the only safe place would be the tall buildings, which would all be falling down anyhow.

And then I wondered which other parts of the world were hit.

I caught the Polar Express the other day. It may have been a simple children's story, but it was beautifully done and I couldn't help but like it.

It had the usual storyline of the jaded child who couldn't quite bring himself to believe in Santa Claus / Christmas; naturally, the next thing he knows he's on a trip to the north pole.

The interesting bit was the medium for the journey, a strange train complete with ghost riding shotgun.

And naturally, in the end, the boy believed again.

*****
I never believed in Santa Claus.

But for a while there, I believed in love.

In the film, the boy receives a wondrous bell from the north pole that only believers can hear. It gets harder as one grows older to keep hearing the call of the bell, and eventually when you shake it, nothing happens.

*****
Did anyone else notice the moon last night?

We had a full-moon on Christmas night, here on the equator.

I've discovered that the absolute minimum number of hours I can safely sleep for is two hours. I'm not getting any younger and gone are the 1 hour up, 1 hour down days of armed guard duty for the Singapore Armed Farces.

On call the day before yesterday was busy, and after doing several minor operations till five in the morning I had to patrol a few wards to do a few "favours" (ie obligatory jobs) for several of the other team doctors which I'd not had the time to earlier in the night, meaning my grand total number of hours of sleep fell to one. This, in retrospect was a mistake; I should just have worked through the night but somehow my body shut down at 6 am and my feet took me automatically to the MO rest cell. One thing led to another, and the next thing I remember was waking up and frantically limping (yes, limping. Going fencing the day after going for body combat was probably not a very clever thing to do) to the morning meeting, which I was predictably enough, late for.

As the day ground on the body began to protest even more, and by mid-day, after watching everyone else take their half-days off and flee the hospital grinning, and discovering that my team was going to theatre for an emergency laparotomy and then piles, and then... more stuff (either my team is really masochistic or we just have that classic, what is the term... arse luck...) the gastroenteritic symptoms that were slowly creeping up on me finally persuaded me to beg for my post-call (Which I am entitled to now, anyhow.)

I suspect I set a dangerous precedent and infleunced the other MO into also taking his post-call, but I didn't stick around long enough to find out. Bed was calling.

*****
Anyway, on this wonderful Christmas day, I am passing up a chance to rub shoulders with Singapore's richest and most elite at an exclusive lawn party (this is an annual trial for me. My father has some very trying friends. This year I have finally found an excuse not to attend!) in favour of going to body combat with a friend, and then attending a party at which I know all of 1 person. This means that instead of suffering the pretentious airs of 20something year old bitches and bastards kids of rich people I barely know, I will be getting my body worn down to a pulp before suffering the pretentious airs of 20something year old kids I do not know at all.

It should be fun.

*****
Merry Christmas.

No blank cards this year. Just a thought.

Singapore ranks 144th out of 166 places in its latest assessment of global press freedoms.

No, no. Wait, take heart.

This means that Singapore ranks 22nd out of 166 places on the scale of adept application and expert manipulation of the media to best achieve optimal information dissemination to a challenged population.

Yeah, baby. That's us, always leading the pack. Next year we'll be number one!

*****
You know you're growing old when the day after, the anger has burnt away, and you brush it all off after a moment's pause with : that one ought to be fine. She can handle herself. Why should I care?

Then you know how young you are when you realise - you do.

...And can she really?

Someday I'll outgrow this whole ethical thing. And just hack through the walls of discretion with a well-weighted sledgehammer. That ought to be fun.

*****
There are days when I want to fall through the sky into eternity.

Freedom.

I miss.

*****
Just for an instant I remembered how to strike.

Time slowed. My flailing fumbling in the dark fell away. I was dangerous.

And now I remember who I am.

Or at least, I remember now, for an instant, before everything around me slowly and methodically erases it away.

I think I understood, Grace Chow.

I used to say that there were essentially two types of guys : nice guys and bastards. And then laugh about it.

As I grow older, I'm beginning to realise that we're really divided into two camps - Ethical and unethical.

What makes little Jack Horny think he can get away with it, putting a finger in every pie?

And why is it whenever these things happen, us ethical types (whom everyone confides in) are sworn to secrecy on at least one front, and all we can do is stand by and rage in helpless, sputtering silence?

And why is it women always seem to fall for the nice-guy routine, anyhow? Sometimes I wish I was on the other team. I have a feeling I'd be really, really good at it. It might even be fun.

I'm getting much too old for this.

There's this sign on one of the houses in my estate that reads "Beware of Hungry Dog."

Everytime I walk past it I have this strange desire to stick a large notice on their gate that reads "Beware of SPCA".

*****
I stood on an AGV today while it wandered around the hospital.

It was good.

People here are so uptight. I was going to wheel myself around from OT to the recovery room to deliver the patient op notes which I'd just typed up, and all the other doctors in my team were genuinely shocked. They stopped short of telling me that it would make a bad impression, and I stopped short of asking - a bad impression on whom, exactly? The other theatre staff? All the patients in recovery are unconscious!

Sigh. No sense of humour.

*****
Body Combat

I finally signed up with the gym today, and tried a bit of my usual machine-weight stuff.

Unfortunately membership came with a price (whatever happened to good old "membership has its privileges"?? - the friend who introduced me to the gym (huh?? It was my gym first!! in the UK!!!) wanted me to try out body combat.

Being the sweet, kind, generous, selfless (heh. not) kinda guy I am, I agreed. (it has nothing to do with the friend being rather pretty. honest. many of my female friends are pretty. I try my best to forgive them for it.)

So there I am flailing my arms around (it was actually kinda fun) in a huge crowd of sweaty, bouncing women and I can't help but marvel how full of energy they all are, what with their HAAAIYAAHS and HYAAAHS as they viciously punch, kick and claw the air in front of them to its constituent molecules, and why is it they can't feel that invisible mack track running over them repeatedly as it is doing to me??

Anyhow, much later the friend showed me what I was doing wrong. I was doing the moves like I really meant it. Real kicks and punches. In body combat you keep everything really small and controlled and neat. Probably the only person you could knock out with those jabs are little old ladies prone to fainting fits.

Nonetheless, for some warped reason it was fun, and I am going to attend the "clinic" to learn how to do the moves like I am acting on a hollywood movie. Small, neat, controlled TV stuff.

*****
More Random Memories

Right temple pressed tiredly against the lukewarm glass, eyes turned dully heavenwards not-really watching the long silver-orange lines of slow-motion raindrops cascading down onto him, preserved for a moment in the weak glow of the intermittent streetlamp flashing by.

Gazing through the tear-streaked windows to the soul of his parent's car, with his own eyes dry, he just feels too tired to think.

Too tired to live.

Another rivulet smears down the side of the window, turning the world into soft, gentle halos of red lights and yellow-orange blobs. A more poetic writer would postulate about the sky crying blood.

He just watches.

*

On the way to work, the taxi passes a road that is instantly familiar to him.

He remembers walking this way once, to a farewell party. To the beginning, of the end.

For a split second, he feels the wind on his skin again, and he's right there, outside the taxi, standing in the green-turfed middle divider waiting to cross.

*

En route to home, the taxi passes a turn-in, and he remembers an opulently lavish house, complete with ferrarri. He remembers other stuff too, but he remembers most clearly the pleasure he felt when someone he wanted to show up, really did show up.

*

The steps of Sydney Uni. Late at night, bathed in floodlit orange. Sheer and utter silence.

Breathing.

*

from izreloaded.com :

"Singapore students better than others

Singapore students are the best in Maths and Science as reported by The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2003. It is the third comparison of mathematics and science achievement carried out since 1995 by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), an international organization of national research institutions and governmental research agencies. TIMSS measures how well students acquired the mathematics and science knowledge that they have encountered in school. Primary four students in Singapore came out tops in the average mathematics scale scores of fourth-grade students. Second is Hong Kong and Japan. Singapore is also top in the average mathematics scale scores of eight-grade (secondary two) students. Korea is second while Hong Kong is third. Singapore students in those two age groups also came in first in the average science scale scores. Now, if only these kids grow up to be the next Einstein or Newton."

... (instead of emotional retards?)

*****
Bizarre

... is people playing Taboo reaching for film references to describe ordinary, everyday objects. (and taking two hundred words and approximately two thousand guesses in five seconds)

... and managing to guess what the word (eg gazebo / tricycle / pajamas) was.

Funny. I'd just have said "Bananas in...?"

Note to self : Never play taboo with Singapore Film Society members again. Ever.

Listening to an oriental expat ponder today that she didn't really belong "here", I paused to reflect that I don't really belong here either, despite being born and bred Singaporean.

It's funny how people don't usually stop to ask the right questions; or else know you well enough to know the answers without having to ask. There are some people you can hang out with for a really long time whom you will really get to know - but somehow will never really get to know you, at the same time.

That's quite a different issue though.

I've lived here for a fair bit of my life (although I've lived in London for a fair bit too) and both cities were wonderful, and awful at the same time.

I never really felt like I belonged in either city. It's not about language, or skin colour, or even about other people's opinions.

It's about whats in my heart; what I want, and need in life.

I don't belong here. I don't have the same needs, and I don't want specific things badly enough. Likewise with London.

Sometimes I really wonder what exactly it is I want? Is the answer simply - to be happy?

Shrug.

Someday I shall leave here, and not look back. If I tell myself that enough times, I may actually start to believe it.

It's not about quitting, or staying. It's about you, finding yourself. And if we're silly enough to believe the propaganda, well... it's our loss.

For me, the walls are falling in here. Quickly.

A recent exchange made me recall this one.
Q.E.D.

and in precisely five hours and fifty-nine minutes, re-minisce shall be embarking on a thirty-six hour sojourn towards sleeplessness. Yeah, another on-call. I so love my job. This time I better get to slice someone up good or I will have hissyfits.

As an aside, I've just realised how strange the sentence "yeah, me, this one's for you" sounds.

Anyhow, moving swiftly on.

Over lunch yesterday I was doing the usual rant-routine, being my usual misogynistic self (five syllables! ding!) and rambling about You Women being Vain (cf the female junior who had her good looks temporarily fractured in an accident) and predicting that she would opt for an operation which might well be unnecessary, to ensure the perpetuation of her continued sex-appeal. (In truth, I quite understand this, and I would have if I was a girl... I was just tweaking the other female doctors strings a little to wind em up. re-minisce does perverse things like this once in a while just for fun.)

So anyhow I decided to take a different tack, and posed the question to the other male doctors on the team. If you got knocked up, and suffered a minor fracture to your face that might leave a tiny dent in your head, would you opt for an operation to reduce that fragment, given all the potential complications of operation (because as we all know, all operations carry risks)

They all answered yes, undoubtedly, without a second's pause.

...

Men nowadays. Shrug.

*****

Incidentally, the female doctor decided not to. Pragmatism - 1, aesthetics - 0.

I think it says something about role reversal in these confused times we live in.

*****
After Sunset

caught this one with a friend tonight; it wasn't spectacularly good, but it was funny in parts, and rated okay in my books. I guess selma hayek helped quite a bit, or rather selma hayeks bits helped heaps. heh heh. So many gratuitious shots of her assets... I started giggling after a while. It (or rather, they) was quite literally in your face. That's hollywood for you. Lap it up, boys... cue sex scene.

So it wasn't quite Ocean's eleven, and so it wasn't... an intellectual movie. Still, somedays you just want to laugh (especially the day before a 36 hour stint) and this movie did have a couple laughs in it.

The Friend however was not amused; she thought it sucked.

I guess it all boils down to Pierce Brosnan looking a little patchy and raggedy, and Selma Hayek continuing to defy gravity even when lying flat on her back / front....

Heh.

*****
Random thoughts

It wasn't just the way She laughed, or the way She spoke, or even the things she said or the way she said them.

It wasn't just the sparkle in her eyes, or the way she used her eyebrows and her soul to communicate her thoughts to you, beamed across empty air with something so bright that it almost seemed to burn.

It was the way she listened; the way she responded; the way she made you feel like she knew just what you were trying to say to her - almost in advance.

The way She made you feel... welcome.

Perhaps that is the last ingredient.

Perhaps this is my philosopher's stone.

hours is the time :

1) it takes to finish work on time! Swoon. It's finally happened.

Tomorrow, the sky will fall.

2) it takes to meet two different female individuals for dinner and dessert, and get home in time for work tomorrow (Which may well be another story altogether, except that work is usually far too tedious to be even alluded to as a "story".)

3) taken for the body to recuperate from the horrors of a six hour operation - mine, not the patient's, unfortunately. For the patient one suspects it'll take a few more doses of twenty-four hours.

4) for certain individuals to get hot under the collar that their comments in my comments box aren't being replied to quickly enough for their liking - even though I've already stated rather bluntly that I'm not even going to go there. It's not even as flattering as someone calling for an encore, this constant demanding to be replied to. It's really rather amazing, people wander here (yes, yes it is public domain, I do realise that) and somehow expect to be entertained, and served on hand and foot, even if they start out on the wrong foot entirely by slamming the author for having an opinion that is unacceptable and irreconcilable to their own.

Yes, me, this article is for you.

Emotional tirade? Hmm? Who's bombarding whose comments box with a rather weak attempt at starting a flame war?

frown. Emotional tirade? Who did the "you are a doctor and hence a smart ass" and the "get out, brit scum" (sic) thingummy?

Ah, but as always, we are here to serve, and it is my duty as author of this blog to reply civilly. I think not.

Twit? You call that an emotional response? By my standards (ask areya) (hell, just listen to areya swear a couple times, then multiply whatever she's capable of by a factor of several thousand, although on the base pervertedness scale she does wind hands down and dirty) that's pretty mild. Bloody hell, when was the last time you heard someone else call them a twit, aside from primary school?

You want to tar me as some unreasonable bigot who hedges core issues and resorts to name calling, well go right ahead. I've written before, and I'm certainly not changing my mind on this one - that I don't really care what my readers think of me. And of "me" either. This is just a place for (points up top) My thoughts. Mine.

And yours too, if you'd care to contribute.

If you must contribute, at least contribute meaningfully. All this angry angsty stuff isn't leading anywhere. Not that I care, tomorrow I'll probably just post a deluge of thoughts and observations from the world I encounter tomorrow, and this post - and all those slightly desperate attempts to goad re-minisce into an angry, foaming-at-the-mouth tirade (which simply isn't going to happen) will be lost in the past.

If you really want me to answer your questions - at least ask them. If you want me to answer that I really think I am a brit, then sod off. If you have a question about a specific issue, go right ahead. I didn't detect any questions in your first post - just poorly veiled insults - and in the subsequent posts you appear to be gravitating towards a "in what way is the wool being pulled over our eyes, answer me, NOW." Which is probably the worst way to ask re-minisce a question, since he's rather perverse and hates being commanded around. However, some individuals have done an admirable job of answering it already, and for that I thank you.7

Censorship of the media is but one facet of the coin; consider that the mass media incorporates far more than the newspapers; consider also the other forms of mass media that are either sexed up (heh heh) or dumbed-down, and then consider national indoctrination education programmes, and also national service that teach you how to think - or rather, how not to. (Turning boys to men, or men to sheep?) Consider that your opinions are apparently, in this landmark establishing, ground-breaking century of change, now of enough value to be heard, but also wonder if hearing equates to action - or another black mark in the red book; also consider this supposedly imaginary climate of fear which many obviously crazed people (like narayanawhositwhatsit) have alluded to from time to time as a real and present entity, that oft times leads us to question - rightly or wrongly - every step the nation takes in the "right" (read - progressive) direction. And also to conclude that the best choice is to keep one's head down, since it doesn't affect my life, and all I really want to do is keep eating this yummy grass... bleat.

Calling the people sheep doesn't allude to their intelligence. It refers to their herd mentality. I'm not saying that Singaporeans are incapable of individual thought - simply postulating that they don't seem to do it much. The mental image of sheep grazing in a field around a celestial TV was just too much to resist as well. It's rather Gary Larson-esque. If you're offended by it, tough luck. Sheep is sheep, and if you don't like 'em, go bugger em. Heh.

I'm not going to answer the question for you - I've pointed you the right way by asking you to read the rest of this blog (well, rather, the bits that touch on pertinent issues. I admit the rest of it is just fluff for my amusement, which is probably why this is my personal blog. Interesting thought, innit?), and also the Not the Straits Times Forum on newsintercom. The info is easily within reach. It's not a case of me failing to persuade you, or, gasp, not daring to answer your rather inexpertly thrown gauntlet - it's a case of you not caring enough to reach out and grasp that knowledge - or perhaps you're not so much interested in receiving an answer at all, as in shooting it down?

One thing I've observed about us (myself, sadly included) is how prone we are to debate people, instead of the issues at stake. I'm all for a civilised, slung-mud-free debate. I quite enjoyed them back in school. Funny how it's only hormonally imabalanced teenagers who can manage to stick to issues rather than degenerate to the level of accusation and personal insult.

Incidentally, Peter, I wasn't quibbling over the spelling of the word. I was not-so-subtly pointing out to "me" that the words have completely different meanings - and when I first made that post, I quite deliberately wrote "unquantified rookie". In my response to urgh, I was pointing out that he'd misread me, and that I wrote unquantified, rather than unqualified (which is what he saw).

"me" unfortunately chose to take this as an instance of me nitpicking over spelling.

It's so not about spelling. It's as big a difference between the phrases "American President does War" and "American President does Whore".

Cough. No offence to either American President, of course.

*****
Nice Changes

I'll admit that I do tend to forget to write all the nice things about Singapore that pop into my mind (and then out again. think it's probably that spongiform thingummybob making it rather porous) from time to time, so I'll make a quick start here before I pop into bed. Tomorrow is, unfortunately, another (Work) day.

1) that transport fees haven't budged much since I left a decade ago. In the same time, London underground fees have nearly tripled. It's nice to still pay only $1.40 to cross the length of the entire island (nevermind that you can drive across it in approximately forty minutes)

2) all that sunlight that I never seem to have time to get out into... today's weather, with the breeze and all, was just perfect for sunbathing in

3) that the restaurant scene appears to be improving rapidly. Iggys would have rated as a very good restaurant to my mind, had it been set in london. In Singapore it's quite phenomenal. Yes, I know it's a double standard, but we're talking about two different countries at different stages of growth.

4) that everywhere you turn there are ATM machines. Unfortunately, my **** HSBC card is still next to useless...

Apparently, "unqualified" is the mis-spelt version of "unquantified".

mm.

Okay, today I was on for over thirteen hours. I just knocked off work not-so-long ago, and my grand plans to sign up with Fitness First have gone down the drain. The last op turned from a 3 hour monster into a 6 hour epic, and my legs have gone to jelly.

Whinge, whinge, whinge. My fellow medical officers have worked out that we're being paid less on a per-hour basis than mcdonald's staff. This is merely an interesting observation of course, since we are clearly not in it for the money, and doctors deserve to work long hours since they knew it would be tough when they signed up for it. These opinions are actual quotes from previous forum articles which managed to sear themselves into my brain. Back then, I protested on principle from my comfy-chair in the United Kingdom, on behalf of my silent colleagues an ocean away. Right now I'm in the hot seat, and what gets me is why the doctors aren't putting up more fight. I can only hazard that they are too exhausted to bother to hold their heads up.

Rant mode on.

Anyway, I just thought I'd be utterly unoriginal and write that sleep-deprived doctors are not safe, and it is a bad thing for doctors to work 36 hours straight with only 3 hours sleep in between. You the public may think we deserve it, since we were stupid enough to sign up for a supposedly astronomically-paying, highly prestigious job. In truth, we think that you the public deserve better, and safer healthcare, but if you're going to flog us to death then it's your own bleeding fault if we accidentally decapitate you during an operation to remove that ugly wart from your nose.

Cough. Rant mode off.

Anyhow, a pretty weird thing happened over the weekend. One of our house officers got into a car-accident and has been admitted under the care of her own team. That's just... plain weird. I would so hate to be in her situation.

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In other news, we "assessed" the house officers today, which involved giving them marks out of ten. I couldn't help but feel a sense of disquiet as everyone smugly intoned sevens and seven point fives out of ten. It seemed so utterly pointless, and rather... inhuman to rate them with numbers, instead of words. Too... clinical. You are seven point five, and she is eight. She is better than you, and She is the best of the lot.

Frown.

Does it really matter? Each one of them, reduced to a mere number, is one of us, one of our own. Part of the fold, with his or her own dreams and hopes for the future.

I couldn't help but laugh along, however, when one of the girls (the looker of the lot) was pulling seven point fives and eights from the predominantly male crowd, and the only female consultant rather petulantly stated "that's because you all think she's pretty!" and proceeded to give her a substantially lower score. Women. Meow. Heh heh heh.

It was a bit like Hospital Idol. Heh heh.

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It's amazing that some people get upset that I occasionally slag-off Singapore.

I call it as I see it. I see good and bad things about "home" (the way the mist comes off the forests after a rainy day is quite pretty), yet somehow I am only supposed to write about the good things, because apparently I am slagging off "their country".

Mm, last I checked, it was my country too.

If we can't laugh at our own country, then who can? And if we can't slag it off... well, that just makes us sad, defensive, insular twits.

And I refuse to be a sad, defensive, insular twit. We're Singapore, not Communist China. We may not be West, but we aren't quite that East either.

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Speaking of East and West, here I was thinking I'd managed to adapt pretty well and localise my accent and mannerisms, when V had to go and burst my bubble and tell me that I really sound like I'm just "passing through" and that I "don't have a Singaporean accent at all" (har? is it? where got. don't have lah!)... I feel so deflated now. I mean, it honestly takes effort you know. Nabei.

I wish weekends lasted longer. Onepointsomething days just isn't long enough. Sigh.

So anyhow, after returning home from my on call and collapsing dead into bed, the next thing I know is I wake up to the sound of my mom clanking around the house. (She moves around much more loudly and more often than absolutely necessary whenever her son is lying prone or supine in bed. Well, that's how it feels, anyhow. Sometimes it feels like she's walking around in circles outside my door playing drunken sailor...)

A bare one hour later.

So my dreams of a sleeping beauty slumber into eternity horribly dashed, I decided to take a sojourn out of my humble abode in quest of sustenance to feed the vastly hollow receptacle of my brain. (shrug. feeling long-winded today. sue me.)

In truth, I went to buy some medical textbooks at Bras Basah. I tried to get Surgery for Dummies but apparently they don't stock that title, nor Basic Appendicectomy made easy for Morons. So I had to settle for a surgical management textbook and a large atlas of operations the size of a small pony. You know how they say knowledge can be lethal? You bet, just thump someone onna head with one of my two new textbooks and I reckon they'd either die instantly, or awaken thirty years later from their coma to discover that the world has been overrun by hostile machines. Or something.

It wasn't that hard lugging the stuff back home though, since my wallet was now considerably lighter.

On the way home...

... I swung by St Andrew's Cathedral. St Andrew's is the cathedral church of the Anglican diocese in Singapore. My mum and I visited occasionally when I was a kid (let's not go into that, except to say that I've been to loads of different churches by my mum's side as she seeked for whatever it was she was looking for) but we were never really frequent flyers there, although her best friend is one of the senior choir members. Still, it's always felt like... I dunno, home... to my faith, and we'd visit for Christmas watchnight service and stuff (but never stay late, or even for communion, because my mom has this thing about leaving before the crowds get heavy and traffic becomes difficult. She's not exactly an expert driver.) and in my later years I used to try to persuade her to visit St Andrew's more often (as opposed to not going to church at all, or attending some really dodgy church somewhere near my place)

It's funny how some memories bubble back through the mists of time, and you can almost feel yourself back there again, just as you were when you were young. You can almost even see the way the light hit the buildings, at - just that angle - and smell the smells of yesteryear.

Just for an instant, before reality drags you back into the present, and all the cranes and construction thingummies appear pop back into existence and uglify the scene you were holding close to your heart, in your head.

*****
Today I watched a fencing "friendly" competition at Fencing Masters, and it was wonderful.

Fencing competitions from my past, when I was a contestant rather than a spectator, were sterile, rather Singaporean events.

They're traditionally (and to present day, still are) held at Clementi Sports hall, a huge, hot, cavernous structure housing heaps of tennis courts. The competition takes up only an eighth the floor space, and people continue to play badminton around you as you fence.

Contestants sit grouped in their own little cliques and shoot each other dirty looks; and in between they pulverise the fencing dummies set up around the peripheries of the action.

Food is on a BYO basis. Supposedly the competitions are well-organised and efficient, but it always felt to me that there was still a phenomenal amount of time wasting, and equipment failures - which are essentially part of the sport all over the world, and somehow fundamental to the experience. Dramatically waving your arms around to dispute a dodgy president-call (much like tennis) is important for showmanship... it's all part of the game.

I never really thought about it, and it just was the way things were always done.

Till today when I showed up at Fencing Masters. It's not a huge place; the studio is probably smaller than the average dance hall.

It was packed with sixty fencers sitting / lying on the floor chatting to each other, playing cards, and in the main part of the room, fencing on three pistes in close proximity to each other. It had a very homely feel to it all, and people were really getting to know each other, and more importantly, having fun. Registration fees had gone into food for the contestants (instead of into the organiser's pockets) and into Kinokuniya book vouchers for lucky-draw winners which were being announced periodically.

It was great. And that's precisely what the sport needs - fencing is a very esoteric sport. The usual TV clips of competitions in Clementi are dry, and show two white-bedecked figures mathematically pricking each other with oversized needles. It makes the average viewer lie back and switch off, and think - poncy gits with their fancy expensive equipment.

Fencing needs exposure in Singapore; it needs people to join up because they enjoy it - because it really, honest-to-god, is fun. The crying shame of it all is that there are so few of us who do it, still (even despite media blitzes over the last few years) - because it's not seen as something you do for fun, but something you do to waste money on (eg young professionals, or spoilt brats of rich kids.)

In truth, after the initial investment in your kit, and your weapon, expenditure from then on is pretty static. It's sorta like buying three tennis rackets, and nothing more from then on. (or a really expensive ipod...)

Typically nobody from the press was there, but if any of you pick up on this article (hard stare at MB) - there are video clips available of the gathering.

What fencing does NOT need is sterile, barren efficiency. It needs a human touch to make people interested in it - it doesn't need to be corporatised.

Sorry, V, but I don't think O's doing it any favours - even if she thinks she is.

*****
Dinner was with pleasant company at an establishment called Iggy's.

The food was good, and the ambience was excellent. It was a good night out. Not quite on par with the "haute coutour" I've been lucky enough to dip into in the UK, but very good nonetheless. And as Ignatious the owner tells me, they're still ironing out all the creases.

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The A train

I got on a Healthy Lifestyle train today.

The entire train was plastered with pictures of Zoe Tay caught in mid stride (yeah right) healthily climbing up a stair (singular, making it really a step) sans case.
It had interesting trivia on it, like "I exercise 30 minutes a day, 5 times a week" and it even had Tay Someone Else (some bloke) telling people to eat healthy.

Eat healthy. Exercise. Live healthy. More fruits and vegatables, less fat. Do neck stretching exercises to relieve stress. It's cool to be healthy! Be like Zoe Tay! (ie whore yourself shamelessly to the government for money. Funny how the posters don't tell us how much ice cream / chocolate she eats or how late she sleeps to everyday or... whatever little skeletons she might have in her closet.)

AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhhh

somebody get me the hell out of this place.

I think I can honestly hear the mouse clicks up there in the sky now, as some White-beshirted official decides what the next best thought for the Layman to think is.

And an entire MRT train worth of the SAME healthy lifestyle stickups, posted ad nauseum?

AAAAAAAAAAArg.

To show my utter contempt for the climate of micromanagement of the sheeps' minds, I gouged a hole in Zoe Tay's left breast with my fingernail, surreptitiously, behind my back as I leaned against a glass panel. Ha.

Honestly, we are exactly like sheep in a pen here, with a big TV screen in the middle. We graze contentedly, day in and out till we die, doing our own little thing, and when the TV screen flickers to life we pause mid-bite on our cud to goggle dully at it while a Thought is rammed into our mash-for-brains, before returning to grazing.

We're really living in the Matrix. OR maybe the Trumann Show.

Okay, seeing as I have this chronic Foot In Mouth Syndrome, I'm just going to shoot my mouth off once more.

This time I think I'll just incur the wrath of a few individuals (including the Nutplane, seeing as it's her job...) rather than the mass enmity I earned myself the last time I posted an actual Opinion on here. But what the hey, its gotta be said and it'll just chafe at me otherwise, so here goes nothing.

The Moblog Awards, sponsored by - take a wild guess... go on, you can do it, think Singapore Idol, think MMS voting (lame, lame, lame!!!!! Who really won that day, think about it?)... think further back to the NDP moblogs and even further back to mydreamd8 and SMS commenting on blogs... yeah that's right, Singtel!

I think it really, honestly sucks.

I read some of the blogs today, suffering from a temporary leave of sanity (am currently surfing the post on-call endorphine high) and damn, some of the chicks are hot, and sure, a few can string sentences together pretty well, dispelling that adage about inverse proportionality of bust size and brains (although, to this cynic, just reaffirming the wonders of cosmetic enhancement surgery in today's crooked world. hubba hubba, private practice here I come...) but, but and but.

These "blogs", they're not by writers. This is just another lame money making scam hosted by money-hungry monopolist, Singtel. And the depressing thing is it'll probably work, too.

I mean some of the "contestants" are clearly models, and sure, they can write. But come this time next year and those blogs will be gone. Here today, gone tomorrow - created with the express purpose of winning a competition. There is no love for writing there, although certainly, there is aptitude.

Half the contestants write prettily about... absolutely nothing at all. Reading them is addictive, what with their sexy pictures plastered here and there and their little indiscreet semi-sexposes about their lives... but it leaves this reader unsated, and feeling a disgruntled sense of... something. Something is lacking. And that is conviction, and sincerity.

I guess it's certainly a step up from the competitions of yesteryear, when half the contestants couldn't even string sentences together, even given a yard of yarn and a pint of sellys super-stick glue. And the competition went on, nonetheless - then, it was really all about pictures.

I'll be the first to confess that some of the contestants this time around appear to have brains as well, and many are certainly attractive for their confidence, apparent poise, and yes, their looks as well.

It's sort of like a Miss Universe contest, only using internet media as the platform. This time next year, all the runner ups, and all the second runner ups will be forgotten in the haze of the past, and even Miss Uniblog herself will be sidelined somewhere seeling cosmetic products, or mebbe... world peace. Okay, that was harsh; she'll probably be a multibillionairess married to some rich old fogey and spoiling herself silly being the princess of her dreams.

(Sigh, sometimes I just have to wonder if being born female might have been more fun...)

I dunno why it bothers me, but it does. This product is sleeker and shinier than the last; it's been improved - but the fundamental design flaw remains.

And we're not supposed to be able to notice - because it's wearing a shinier facade?

(apologies to any mobloggers I may have offended, and may I say your photo galleries are all very edible indeed.)

*****
The Thin Line

Speaking of attraction, I'll be the first to confess that I find some (although not necessarily all) of my female friends attractive.

Armchair philosophers have it that there must be a degree of attraction in the first place for people to become friends - since friendship is, in itself, a relationship.

I think that's a load of piffle. Balderdash. (No offence, agoogoowhositwossname)

I'm not attracted to some of my female friends - certainly not in the way I attribute meaning to the word - although I really enjoy hanging out with them and chilling, and its always a bummer when you lose them to marriage, or other men / life circumstances / women (yeah it's happened).

(Oh yeah... and / or enjoying freebies thanks to the attention from rabid males that they generate... heh heh) (although it must also be noted that watching old friends get enthusiastically felt up their skirts by random strangers at dodgy clubs is not necessarily as pleasant an experience as it sounds)

But here's the disclaimer - even with those friends whom I feel attracted to - physically / intellectually - I don't take that flying leap that... people used to - myself included, unfortunately - attempt to goad forlorn writers like the author of AmongstOtherThings into.

It's one thing to be attracted to / flirt with a friend, and quite another to try to hook up with them. I'd have to have a major brain injury to want to move in on some of the chicks I know (and even then, I have a funny feeling I'd rather just lay in bed and stare at my iv drip dribbling to expiration, drop by excruciating drop, the way most of our brain injured patients tend to do)... whether it be a question of obvious incompatabilities, irritating (read - maddeningly irritating) quirks, or plain and simple lack of trust -- yes, this does sound funny, but I don't trust some of my friends, or rather, I'd trust them as a friend, but not as a partner.

So yeah, that's a bit of a bummer. Guess I'm condemned to ogling med students. Heh heh heh heh heh.

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Speaking of which, who needs soap operas when you can get all the melodrama you want, involving young and fresh-faced barely post-teen kids arguing loudly and passionately in public over their stormy love lives??

I'm talking about med students again. In hospital corridors and waiting areas.

Man, the world I knew and grew up in is fast becoming a thing of the past.

Think I'll just hunker down with my popcorn. Heh heh heh eh hehh.

Okay, last night wasn't too bad, I got three hours of sleep.

Oh my God, I'm turning into one of Them. I mean, one of Us.

Gaa. Next thing I know I sure talk like them one, then how.

Aaaa.

Okay, but seriously.

I had a pretty good call, didn't get to do much since I'm still the unquantified rookie (That's the experience coming back from abroad... nobody trusts you. Or maybe it's just because I look dodgy. But I swear my MBBS, bought from a Pakistan website is 100% genuine, or at least printed to look that way!) except observe a couple appendixes.

To be honest, the last time I saw an appendicectomy was ages and ages ago as a med student (when I saw a LOT. The UK experience was wandering into theatre a lot, being told to scrub in, then being utterly ignored while trying to peer over the tabletop at an operating field barely within sight thanks to the towering 2m tall surgeons. Well it felt like that anyhow.) and having not done ANY reading at all (I really must go and buy myself a surgical textbook one of these days...) I don't really have a clue, so it was good to watch and be talked through part of an appedicectomy; nevermind that one was perforated and the other was perforated, retrocaecal, and necrotic at the base (doh!) meaning the op was done by the registrar instead, with very little in the way of explanation, and a lot of swearing.

Anyhow, I got to saucerise (layspeak : make big cut, dig around with finger a lot, and then make wound even bigger! whee.) 1 (one) abscess. Yay me.

*****
My local bank, HSBC just posted me a USB lamp in the mail. It didn't come with a letter or anything, it just arrived as a small unmarked package. I'm leaving it far away in the corner of the room, and imagining that it's making small ticking noises, or else trailing a suspicious white powder from the USB cable.

I don't get it. Why? Why??

*****
I was going to follow-on to my post about the Obscene Orchard XXXmas Phallictrees with a rant wondering why nobody else seems perturbed by the weird, vaguely frightening singing-and-dancing/writhing trees with the weird-butterfly-thingummybobs-on lining the rest of Orchard Road, but it seems that somebody's already beaten me to it.

Shrug.
I remember a time when walking down Orchard Road was a perfectly safe, wholesome family event...

Twelve hours at work today, of which eleven were spent in theatre freezing slowly to death.

Someone explain this one to me. We overheat theaters in the UK and we overcool them in Singapore.

Oh, yes, of course it's to keep temperatures optimal for the patients. Uh huh. Hence the reason why patients can get hypothermia in SINGAPORE during long operations. yup.

Anyway I am very tired, and am beginning to feel like nothing is worth this. Were the theatre nursese to suddenly whip their clothes off and prance around, I'd still want to go home and crash after eleven hours of holding retractors.

Which is just what I'm going to do, right now.

I finally feel like a real doctor.

It isn't wearing the stethoscope that does it. I'm beginning to feel tempted to stop bringing my Very Expensive Littman Godsknowswhat Cardiologywhositwhatsit (it's not a regular cardiology master III, but something even more select than that. Got it at a bargain off a med student in the UK...) in to work and misplacing it (as one does)... and just knicking one off one of the house officers whenever I need one.

It's not the name badge - we're not quite like cops, just a badge and a gun. There's more to being a Real doctor in my head than the stethoscope and the badge.

It wasn't even the swanky namecards that The Employers printed for us (what on earth for I have no idea) or even the nice Name Stamp with Identity Number (everything has identity numbers in Singapore...) that gave me that final sense of belonging.

You guessed it. I've been paid at last...

*****

I just don't get it. Why do we have to seek consent from patients' families when the patients - corpus mentus, albeit decrepit - are averse to having procedures done to them? Wouldn't that amount to assault?

*****

I really don't get why my parents lock up their half of the house even when I am still in it.

This means that when I get the Urge to do something like play the piano - usually the (only) time when I do something really unusual like make up a really nice piece of music in a key I am unfamiliar with (in other words not C major, A minor or B flat major) I can't. This is really frustrating. I mean, what is it with them? Are they afraid I'll rob them blind of the furniture and light fixtures or something??!

That does it. I'm leaving the house, and I'm taking the Grand Piano with me. GRrrr.

*****

God Bless you, Grace Chow. I didn't know you in life, but I wish I could have. Reading you in death is a poor substitute. You read - like you were a remarkable person. You wrote words that weren't simply slapped to media for the fleeting pleasure of garnering attention, but your words linger instead; you touched the minds and left an aftertaste in the hearts of those who savoured you. You lived life the way I wish I could.

Die well.

I carry a Sheaffer pen to work. It's probably a stupid thing to do since experience in the UK taught me that in hospitals, pens are predestined to wind up in someone else's pocket - you think it's the nurses and doctors wot are promiscuous, think again. It's the pens and the tourniquets.

The Sheaffer is kinda battered now and some of the gold-leaf is coming off. It's my dad's; the first day I went to work I asked him if he had a nice pen I could borrow since, well, I'm spoilt and used to using reassuringly heavy pens at work that can also double as a self-defence tool if need be. My dad whipped out a pen and gave it to me.

It brings back memories of another lifetime.

*****
Once upon a time there was a boy who wanted to buy one of his friends a pen. Dressed in his poorly-fitting camo uniform, he circled the sales counter somewhere in Raffles City rather warily, peering at the expensive Wasserman / Parker / Brand-named pens on display and being thoroughly ignored by the sales assistant. Obviously those lessons about camo breaking up artificial lines and blending in with any landscape - even concrete! - held true here as well.

And then he saw it, lying alongside it's pencil partner, gold and slender and slightly understated in a glass case, and he knew he had to get it for her.

How much does that cost, he asked, prepared to pay the earth for this... perfect... present.

His jaw dropped as he found out that he'd have to pay the sky as well. One whole month's salary! His mind whirled, and so did the shop assistant, back towards... somewhere more important and interesting and leaving him in a lurch.

It took him all the way to the MRT train to make up his mind - as the doors slid shut with a hiss, he knew. He got on the next train back towards town, and when he whipped out his card to actually pay for it the salesgirl almost keeled over in shock.

Anyway, that pen represented a Good doctor to me; it was the pen I associated with my father.

*****
He never did tell Her why he bought Her that particular pen.

I am STILL penniless! Even despite receiving my first paycheck. Apparently the bank never received that transfer from my employers after all!

I feel so cheated.

And so poor.

Spare change? Hungry. Penniless. Not yet homeless.
*****

So here I am at 2 am, the day after my on-call from hell (no specifics, save for a brief mention of bleeding GI tracts, ruptured ectopic, and blood, blood, blood all night) preparing a case for discussion tomorrow.

And I'm not even being paid for this.

GRrrrrr. Why DO I do this again?

*****
There's these giant christmas tree thingies along orchard road that shaft slowly up and down on hydraulic poles. I just don't get them, and I have this vague uneasy feeling there's some form of sexual inneundo behind them...

*****
I don't get the weird Giant Christmas Tree setup at Orchard.. park? (near the MRT) tonight either. A Beauty Tree? Sponsored by some beauty product manufacturer? Riiight. Think we're losing the plot here, people. Christmas, fat man, reindeer, goodwill to everyone yadda yadda? Oh heck, let's just get with the times. *sticks fingers down back of throat*

*****
It's all very strange in retrospect. I looked at the insides of a young lady last night, and even dabbed at her reproductive organs a couple times with a piece of dry gauze, and I didn't even flinch. I guess the litres of blood in her abdominal cavity kinda change the picture a little, innit?

Before any of you get deviant thoughts, this snippet was inspired by a female friend describing the sheer horror and tense unpleasantness in the air during the dreaded smear / swab test young women are regularly subjected to by their gynaecologists / GPs.

Well, let me tell you that it isn't that pleasant for the doctor either (although it does become routine)... and I can't for the life of me imagine why any red blooded male would want to become a gynae. All that stuff about looking up women's cracks is a load of bollocks... I think the twits who say that inspired them are just trying to cover up their crass love for money with a supposed obsession with sex. As if that's going to make them more attractive to anyone... err. although it does seem to work. bugger.

So yeah, looking inside young ladies isn't really that great a thing. And somehow when they're on the brink of death, lying splayed out on that operating table in all their stark naked glory minutes before being given a shot at life - the last thing on your mind, if you're a normal person, is sex.

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Women are simply unfathomable.

You explain (in an unfamiliar tongue... ugh) to the young woman that she's critically ill and that she needs an operation to save her life, and she nods to indicate that she understands.

And then she asks you if there is really no other way... maybe some kind of medicine?

(Your registrar has just told her the full extent of the problem, using scary words that mean internal rupture, bleeding inside, almost certain death...)

You repeat that there is no other way.

She asks what if we don't find anything wrong?

You tell her that given what we suspect is wrong with her... that would be a blessing. You remind her that what we suspect is a condition that will kill her.

She pauses as something - ? realisation? finally begins to dawn in her eyes.

Pause.

"Is it going to be a big scar?"

...

...Women.

*****
On the bright side, clinical acumen finally shone through last night like a beacon in the darkness of tides of protocols and unnecessary investigations performed more for the sake of litigation or academicia than anything else.

Time to theatre was almost immediate, and no time-wasting and potentially fatal, unnecessary Ultrasound scans / CT scans or even DPLs were performed. It was open-and-shut, and actually fairly straightforward (except perhaps to the medical students who were clustering around us and making me feel rather claustrophobic)

Thinking back to the talk given by an orthopod recently about a woman who had a fractured pelvis, clinically unstable with low b/p who went to CT (accompanied by magic HO) and (still managed to) ruptured a retroperitoneal haematoma (and therefore died)... one reflects on the aptness of that wonderful term we use in the UK to describe CT scanners (and unstable patients) :

"the Doughnut of Death"

*****
I walked out of a ward today to find an AGV trying to converse with a dustbin and sounding rather surprised that the dustbin was ignoring it. It was rather funny.

"Hello? Hello? Hello! Hello? Hello..."

Heh heh heh.

If there's one thing I'll say for the Singapore media - it certainly loves its celebrities.

This past week the papers and radio have been abuzz with news of Glenn Ong (who?) and Jamie Yeo (ha?) tying the knot, and with the results of the First Ever Singapore Idol contest.

I won't begrudge that Taufik probably deserved to win - I didn't even watch Singapore Idol, but judging by all the positive feedback, and my own boss's comments (wah, this Taufik guy, not bad huh) I reckon the kid probably has talent pouring out his ears. But honestly... full page (chains of) news articles? I guess that goes to show how little in the way of news we have in Singapore :
Call me a snob (certainly quite a few of you seem to enjoy doing it...) but I don't get the Singa-celebrity thingumagig either. I mean, I've seen Stars like Dido in life, and had friends who met Patrick Stewart, and... wossname. Some blonde chick who lives in Kensington... in real life. And I get that - they're big. They have training, drive, and dare I say it, talent. They've hit the world by storm (even unnamed blonde chick whose name just slips my mind. dammit.) and they're larger than life. Someday, hopefully, Taufik will be right up there with them. (this is called optimism. It is extremely rare coming from re-minisce.) I've read about Taiwanese celebrities and seen their pictures, and I get that. Many of them look... simply inhumanly pretty. Some of them can even sing.

I just don't get the Singa-celeb scene. They're not born. They're created. One Media to bind them all - the media hypes them up and turns them into demigods which they simply aren't. "Acting talent" on the local scene seems confined to chinese soaps. Melodrama belongs there - but on the small screen in English it simply doesn't work. So what we get instead are Generation X wannabe models and starlets trying to act cool / bubbly / rad, and winding-up looking pek-chek / bored / boring / insipid / trying-too-hard.

I'm unsure whether to peg it to lack of talent (but my inner soul screams NOooo... what with fivepointsomething million people on this little dot, there has to be talent out there!!) or inadequate training.

So when I encounter Singa-celeb stories (except in the vein of Really Talented People) in the papers or on the radio, I tend to tune them out automatically. Background noise, slightly less bearable than the incessant music-box elevator music that plays in the hospital every day.

*****
A Strange Proposition

Someone is proposing to hold a BloggerCon(...vention, not ...vict) in Singapore.

He/she/it also mentioned that I'd been aluded to in the comments too, so I moseyed on over to have a look. (narcissist that I am)

Imagine my surprise when I found out just who had mentioned me. Ha. At least in my defence I can honestly say that if and when I do bring this particular individual up in writing, it's usually to cast disparaging pseudosociological allusions towards the state of Singaporean society today. (Funnily enough, the odd weirdo insists that this translates into desperately trying to get into somebody else's pants. Dang. Maybe I shoulda been a sociologist instead.)

What's her excuse?

Anyhow, I think it's an intriguing idea (the Bloggercon) and if not for that fact that I already know in advance that I will either be

1)on call

or

2)post call (ie : walking dead)

regardless of which day they pick (or, at least that's how life feels to me at the moment) I might entertain the idea for a second or two. (before going home to bed.)

I know this makes me sound like a sad git with no life.

Unfortunately, that appears to be the reality at present moment. Thank goodness for the odd friend who lets me bum around her place and watch her telly. (you see, she must be odd. q.e.d.)

Did I mention I have no telly at home either?

Sniff.

*****
Farewell My Concubine

Am currently halfway through Farewell My Concubine (DVD). I wonder how I managed to miss it the first time around. It's good. The chinese opera does get on my nerves occasionally but something about it - not sure what exactly, possibly the cinematography? - is compelling to watch.

*****
Model Mahjong

Hahahahehehehheh. This little anecdote is funny. Dang. Now why don't models ever ask me to play mahjong? (pointed look at the 'dozer...)

Drat. I must be either fugly or dodgy. bugger. heh heh.