Monday, January 03, 2005
Amotivated
They say that Post Call Day 2 is the worst of the lot.
I agree; the sheer and utter fatigue that saps you through the day is usually debilitating enough to make me fall asleep assisting in operations.
For some reason, today I stayed bright eyed and awake enough to understand what was going on in the ops. It wasn't till I took the long twenty-minute (long. hah. I remember two hour train rides to work...) drive home that i had to pinch myself, bite down hard on my finger, and sing along to stupid class 95 songs (which I like) in order to stay awake and not wreck the mother's spanking new shiny mazda 6 wossname car.
I like op days, they're a chance for me to read the papers. Most other days I come home and die after work, or else I go to the gym, then come home and die. Some days I meet up with a friend or two, then come home and die. Op days are different; during the five minutes we have for lunch I get to flip through the papers and look at all the pictures.
Recently all the news has been about Tsunami Aid, and how much Singapore is contributing, how poor the Indonesian response was, and how crap the Americans are at contributing to South East Asian crises (funnily enough though, turn the page and there are articles and pictures detailing how desperate villagers and victims are for food and water aid being delivered from US helicopters.)
Well, I don't know how the situation stands, but I am glad that Singapore is putting in money and effort into helping those affected. It's all good, no matter what anyone may say.
Sod the nationalistic stories about obnoxious Ozzy evacuees whinging about how they should have been treated better. Reporters who waste column space on feel-good-about-ourselves-in-this-time-of-crisis articles should be beaten about the head and sent back to journalism school (if there is such a thing). This IS a bad period for the region, and the world. It's bigger than us as individuals, and bigger than us as a country.
Let's just think about it, read about it. Try to empathise with the thousands who are suffering, and at least fail trying to empathise. And maybe, if we see fit, try to help in our own little ways.
Found a page on the local hospital intranet today about volunteering to provide aid in the affected areas, and am toying with the idea. I'm sure the mother and father will have choice words to share with me for even contemplating the idea; but, I dunno. Wonder if they'd have any use for a barely-trained surgeon, and a fairly incompetent medic. All I'm good for is Airway, Breathing, Circulation, Disability and Refer. Heh.
I received two emails recently from two of the people who read this blog. I shan't call you guys my "readers", or "blodgers" (xiaxue speak for loyalslave follower). But you guys are both wrong to some extent.
1) You do not know me.
Regardless of how intimately I may seem to be writing, I keep a lot of myself back. I show only a single facet - I may seem to show it often, and in detail, but in truth these represent small parts of the sum total of who I am. And anyone who reads me - only - will never really know who I am, or what I really think about things. There is no substitute for knowing a person in real life, and being close enough to hear, smell, and touch them (although that last is optional in most instances). Reading their thoughts - to me at least - does not translate into anything more than... reading their thoughts.
Do not presume to know me simply because you have read these pages for a year, two, or even three.
2) I do not agree. I don't think I write well enough to be published, and even if I did - that is not the reason for which I write.
I've written this before, countless times now. I'm rather tired of writing the same thing over and over again, so I shan't.
I honestly don't know why I write.
Once upon a time, when I first started writing in the Forgotten Age of Personal Webpages, I suspect I put my thoughts to e-media in the vain hope that someday someone (specific) would read them. It was like casting a letter in a bottle into the sea, and hoping that one day it would reach the love of your life.
Perhaps it was a coping mechanism. Perhaps it was an experiment by a not-terribly touchy-feely soul in romanticism.
As the wheel of time turns, and the seasons change, so too has my mind. And now, I don't know a lot more things; I don't know that I'm as right as I used to think I was (I used to think in black and white, now in shades of grey); I don't know if I was ever really in love with a particular Her (it becomes harder to remember) - although I do know that I still miss that person from time to time -
and I do know that whyever I am writing : whatever my motivation is
It is not for you. Or even for You.
It is for me.
Because I want to. And oftimes because I like to.
And sometimes, because I must.
The truth doesn't always set you free. Sometimes it even creates a hell of a mess. But in the Aftermath this was my take-home lesson, and by this shall I live for the rest of my life :
The truth must be spoken - even should it bring suffering. Because in the absence of truth : what do we really have, to remember the past by, and to guide our futures towards? How much more suffering will keeping our silence entail, in the long run?
I believe the answer to that last question is - too much. Far too much.
I agree; the sheer and utter fatigue that saps you through the day is usually debilitating enough to make me fall asleep assisting in operations.
For some reason, today I stayed bright eyed and awake enough to understand what was going on in the ops. It wasn't till I took the long twenty-minute (long. hah. I remember two hour train rides to work...) drive home that i had to pinch myself, bite down hard on my finger, and sing along to stupid class 95 songs (which I like) in order to stay awake and not wreck the mother's spanking new shiny mazda 6 wossname car.
I like op days, they're a chance for me to read the papers. Most other days I come home and die after work, or else I go to the gym, then come home and die. Some days I meet up with a friend or two, then come home and die. Op days are different; during the five minutes we have for lunch I get to flip through the papers and look at all the pictures.
Recently all the news has been about Tsunami Aid, and how much Singapore is contributing, how poor the Indonesian response was, and how crap the Americans are at contributing to South East Asian crises (funnily enough though, turn the page and there are articles and pictures detailing how desperate villagers and victims are for food and water aid being delivered from US helicopters.)
Well, I don't know how the situation stands, but I am glad that Singapore is putting in money and effort into helping those affected. It's all good, no matter what anyone may say.
Sod the nationalistic stories about obnoxious Ozzy evacuees whinging about how they should have been treated better. Reporters who waste column space on feel-good-about-ourselves-in-this-time-of-crisis articles should be beaten about the head and sent back to journalism school (if there is such a thing). This IS a bad period for the region, and the world. It's bigger than us as individuals, and bigger than us as a country.
Let's just think about it, read about it. Try to empathise with the thousands who are suffering, and at least fail trying to empathise. And maybe, if we see fit, try to help in our own little ways.
Found a page on the local hospital intranet today about volunteering to provide aid in the affected areas, and am toying with the idea. I'm sure the mother and father will have choice words to share with me for even contemplating the idea; but, I dunno. Wonder if they'd have any use for a barely-trained surgeon, and a fairly incompetent medic. All I'm good for is Airway, Breathing, Circulation, Disability and Refer. Heh.
I received two emails recently from two of the people who read this blog. I shan't call you guys my "readers", or "blodgers" (xiaxue speak for loyal
1) You do not know me.
Regardless of how intimately I may seem to be writing, I keep a lot of myself back. I show only a single facet - I may seem to show it often, and in detail, but in truth these represent small parts of the sum total of who I am. And anyone who reads me - only - will never really know who I am, or what I really think about things. There is no substitute for knowing a person in real life, and being close enough to hear, smell, and touch them (although that last is optional in most instances). Reading their thoughts - to me at least - does not translate into anything more than... reading their thoughts.
Do not presume to know me simply because you have read these pages for a year, two, or even three.
2) I do not agree. I don't think I write well enough to be published, and even if I did - that is not the reason for which I write.
I've written this before, countless times now. I'm rather tired of writing the same thing over and over again, so I shan't.
I honestly don't know why I write.
Once upon a time, when I first started writing in the Forgotten Age of Personal Webpages, I suspect I put my thoughts to e-media in the vain hope that someday someone (specific) would read them. It was like casting a letter in a bottle into the sea, and hoping that one day it would reach the love of your life.
Perhaps it was a coping mechanism. Perhaps it was an experiment by a not-terribly touchy-feely soul in romanticism.
As the wheel of time turns, and the seasons change, so too has my mind. And now, I don't know a lot more things; I don't know that I'm as right as I used to think I was (I used to think in black and white, now in shades of grey); I don't know if I was ever really in love with a particular Her (it becomes harder to remember) - although I do know that I still miss that person from time to time -
and I do know that whyever I am writing : whatever my motivation is
It is not for you. Or even for You.
It is for me.
Because I want to. And oftimes because I like to.
And sometimes, because I must.
The truth doesn't always set you free. Sometimes it even creates a hell of a mess. But in the Aftermath this was my take-home lesson, and by this shall I live for the rest of my life :
The truth must be spoken - even should it bring suffering. Because in the absence of truth : what do we really have, to remember the past by, and to guide our futures towards? How much more suffering will keeping our silence entail, in the long run?
I believe the answer to that last question is - too much. Far too much.
