I'm so touched I'm moved to tears

Our Housebuying experience

2011-04-02T08:09:00.000-07:00

As i went into the housebuying experience a complete property noob, I certainly learnt alot frm it. Catechol's much better, as he has some property agent contacts and a good friend who is a successful property agent, so he's privy to quite a few of their tricks (lesson of the day: Any good property agent will have a basketful of tricks).
I thought i'd write this entry not only cos it's amusing, but also it's a reminder to the future house-buying me: We went into this with the main goal of getting an affordable temporary house with a stringent set of criteria and a good knowledge of what makes property agents tick, and yet.. faced with the pressures of bidding war and the emotional stress of it all, we still almost succumbed to emotion and nearly overpaid for a house before settling on this one (more on that later).
Anyway hope this helps:

The Mie And Liang Unorthodox guide to buying a house:

Step 1: Know your finances

Because the property market is against buyers currently, our plan is to buy a small temporary house first and wait for the prices to drop, our initial plan was to rent but the rental prices are also exhorbitant, the sums worked out to be that buying a 3 rm flat is still most affordable.
Know all the stamp duty, legal fees and agent fees and whatever cash you need to pay upfront, we have met some agents who tried to 'scare' us into buying by calculating amount and saying 'you see, this house cov low already and the upfront cash is still so much. You want to buy another house, the cov might be higher, do you have that amount of cash on hand?", some agents even quoted us the wrong legal fees and tried to con us into giving a larger amt of agent fee.

We initally attempted to apply for HDB loan, but after using up a whole month of patience with emails, phone calls and delay tactics, Liang decided to go for bank loan. Any 'good' property agent will ask you if your bank loan has been settled, and if your reply is negative, they will offer to 'help' you with a recommendation. (If you want me to spell out why this is not such a gd idea, you can ask me in person.)
With regards to which bank loan is the best, I seriously have no idea (refer Liang), I'm sure I had a blank look on my face when the loan officer attempted to explain the terms of loan to me (probably the same blank look whenever Prof C tries to teach during rounds).
Housing loan interest is one of the lowest in s'pore, so we took up full loan and put the money to greater use in investments. (This is obviously quoted blindly from Liang, I can't give u more details cos it was too cheem and I drifted off after the second sentence when Liang was explaining to me.. ssh.. dun tell him that)
Interesting property fact: do you know that if you were to buy condo/private property in geylang, no local bank will be willing to give u the mortgage? Haha they so biased.
Anyway, pls refer to Liang if you have any questions on the finances part of the deal, you know i'm useless in this aspect... yawn.....

Step 2: Know your wishes
According to Liang, in order to not pay premium price or fall madly in love with a house, we need to keep a clear mind and follow strictly a list of criteria (shrugs shoulders)

Liang's wishes:
1) Near his house
2) Reasonable price

My wishes:
1) Either walking distance to mrt OR access to at least 10 bus routes
2) Not lower than 7th floor
3) Near Liang's house
4) Near at least 2 hospitals
5) Within 3 mrt stops to my house
6) Near food (i figured i've had enough of living on top of a hill)
7) Must not be very old
.
.
And the list went on, and new wishes have a tendency to be added unpredictably, so in the end, my wishing rights were stripped and I was only limited to top 3 wishes.

Based on these criteria, we shortlisted a few neighbourhoods to base our search on, but after awhile we realised that most of the flats there are 4 to 5 room flats.

This was also the time when suddenly my dad decide to make known his wishes:
1) Door facing must be certain direction - northeast, northwest, west, southwest (he even drew us a compass and when I expressed my abject horror, he said 'u lucky both u and Liang have same direction so still got 50% of the directions mah')
2) Must not be in 'seedy' neighbourhood
3) Must have some 'greenery' like park or hill around (it's some feng shui thingy, i suspect this is the reason why i need to climb a hill home everyday of my 27 years)
4) Past owners must not have 'bad vibes' eg. divorce. (He even asked me why one couple did not have children even though they were married for 6 years.)
5) Must be approved by Sandy first (apparently Sandy will be able to tell us if there are ghosts around, i think he much over-estimated Sandy's abilities.)

When I objected vehemently to all these saying we already have a hard time finding a house, without all his added nonsense, he just very nonchalantly said, "when the house is right for you, everything will just come naturally into place." -_-'++
[Some of his nonsense got to Liang, who got a great kick out of the fact that our final choice is a 'natural west' as he likes to call it]

Step 3: Don't be ruled by emotions
After a long time in fruitless searching through the property ads, we finally chanced across a semi-suitable flat in an area walking distance to Liang's house, and best of all, it is on the 16th floor which is the top floor of the block. [Interesting property fact number 2: why is it that when agents advertise that the flat is above xth floor, the actual floor is x+2 without fail??? Is there some unspoken agent rule??? Liang and i are very perturbed by this.]

i fell in love with the view, fell in love with the neighbourhood though the flat itself is rather rundown. Only problem is... yes... the door. We stood at the door for a good 5 min peering at a compass needle that flickers between north and north-west each second. So I called my dad, and he says if we really like the flat, we can actually tilt the door (thus Liang coined the term 'natural west' and 'fake west') My dad even took a cab down to check out the area and gave his stamp of approval (it's next to a hill). So happily, we put a bid for the flat, which Liang tot was quite a gd bid but I was afraid that it wasn't good enough because it was a good 8000 below the asking price. But becos Liang was so confident (he kept bragging that his Valentine's present to me is a house), I also got quite excited and started dreaming abt the renovation. So of course, we lost the bid. Someone offered cov of $39 000! Naturally, I got very, very upset and disappointed because I guess I really thought that we could get that house. I think Liang felt really, really guilty, because after that he suggested expanding our search to 4 room flats as well.

Step 4: Know your opponent

Between that house and our last choice, we spent countless hours at viewings, I took extended lunch breaks in the middle of a work day, skipped mmed lectures, left early for gatherings, left way early for P's hen night (sorry dear) and almost had to go for second appointment in the sari for P's wedding.

In between, we got played by very experienced agents, agents who instituted a bidding war with some other 'invisible' party, agents who dropped us like a brick once they realised that we have no interest in using their recommended buyer's agent... Through it all, Liang kind of became the emotional one because he felt so bad that he 'lost' me that first house which i liked so much and he became amiable to the ridiculous demands and prices of the various agents.

The last viewing was the most memorable. We actually already had a verbal agreement with the owner of our now house but a new listing in a different block in the same neighbourhood came up and we tot we'd go and see. I made the mistake of admitting that i prefer the new house cos of the view and the renovation. So when the owner made the ridiculous demand of 30k cov regardless of valuation (beware in instances where valuation is not out yet), Liang agreed, and I had to hurriedly jump in and insist on a cap and sort of got into a civilised argument with the owner (who was VERY rude and an absolute b*tch). So without even discussing with Liang, I rejected her. (which turned out to be a very good thing indeed because we later found out that the actual valuation was 10k above what we estimated).

Step 5: 'Fate' might really lend a helping hand

I guess fate dictates that we should stick with our original owner and not back out on him, also as Liang kept emphasising it was a 'natural west'.
The now house is actually in the same block as the very first flat we went to and is better cos it's a corner unit. (So my parents had already liked the place, and after making yet another trip down there to check out the 'vibes' of the door of particular flat, they approved.) But i didn't let myself fall in love with it, partly cos i don't want to be disapointed and secondly, I was freakin pissed off by the seller agent.

She was a total nincompoop and I caught her lying to my face not once but 3 times in the first viewing. When I tried to explain to her that she got her facts wrong about the resale prices of the units in the area (naturally we are familiar since we went to see the very flats that she mentioned), she just looked embarassed then rudely argued with me.
In the course of our dealings with her over the past few weeks, she was rude and ignorant and made a whole lot of mistakes which i need to clean up for her (I was even more familiar than her in the hdb application procedure and form filling... grrrrr).
But whenever Liang complains abt her (he gets very annoyed cos she calls him 'Tan Ah!' on the phone for some weird reason), I would remind him, if not for her laziness and incompetence, we probably wouldn't have managed to successfully close the deal.
I mean, how many agents would willingly let us have a face-to-face negotiation with the seller himself without trying to increase the price and we actually managed to push the price down to 4k below asking? (the seller is quite a nice guy actually, we know cos we spent 2 hours chatting with him to build rapport while the agent just stood by and join us in small talk) And how many agents when they found out that even though we're unrepresented we refuse their buyer agent and still let us continue with negotiation? The best part is, cos she did not have otp on hand, we only had a verbal agreement on the deal, so when we called her again 1 week later, I half-expected her to say that the house had been sold to someone else for a higher price already, but she didn't! She really just close shop and spent the week sleeping at home!

And that concludes our house buying adventure (well, we still have to suffer through few more appointments with hdb and the nincompoop agent, i just hope she doesn't screw up again. We had to call her a few days ago to tell her to amend her forms cos she filled up the date wrongly).

Oh and the time that i left P's hen-night early and the appointment after P's wedding? That was the viewing for this house... =)

Little things

2011-03-29T08:22:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to write an entry regarding our hilarious journey thru house hunting, i even have it all framed in my head, but i kept getting waylaid by alot of sai gang at work, more and more presentations to do (i just did one today that my boss dumped on me with just 3 days notice), and helping Catechol with his new stall which is opening soon.
Will try to get down to doing it this weekend (which is my first weekend where i'm not on call or post-call this month).
Just a small entry to whet ur appetite now:

Reasons why I think I am going to enjoy my new house:

1) Walking distance to Liang's place (this is quite important to both of us)
2) Still relatively near my area now (Already my parents have made at least 3 trips, i think my dad 4, just to 'scope out the area' and 'have a feel of the place'. more on their weird antics later)
3) NOT at Rivervale or Punggol (no offense to the pple staying there, but to someone who don't drive, these places may as well be in jb)
4) There is a HUGE hawker with pretty decent food and at least 3 other coffee shops just a few metres away. (Those of u who have been to my hse would appreciate why I'm so happy with this.)
5) Taking into consideration point number 1 and point number 4, I may not need to cook for the next 5 years.
6) There is a soya bean specialty stall in the neighbourhood mall that sells darn good soya bean drink and tau huay. Ever since i've left marine parade where i drink the very nice soya bean everyday, i've been on the search and disappointed time and again for its replacement. I'm now addicted to this new stall.
7) There are some very old-school and interesting shops in the 'mall' including a pet shop and a vet!
8) I noticed at least 2 clinics that open very long hours, and we all know what that means....
9)I will still be walking distance to a pool and a gym.
10) I will be walking distance to K-Box!!!
11) I will finally have friendly and not so suspect neighbours.

Cons:
1) Still pretty inconvenient compared to my house now in terms of accessibility train wise.
2) Nothing beats walking distance to SGH
3) I will be very near Wk's alma mater, whom people say is haunted??!!!

Wedding Woes #1

2011-03-06T19:11:00.001-08:00

Yay i've discovered the trick to blogging at work.. So from now on while i'm waiting for them to trickle in during Sat clinic i can blog!

I've decided to come up with a new category in my blog called 'Wedding Woes' cos i predict there'd be quite a few more woes coming up.

In fact I can think of one right now: "The Losing Weight before Wedding Woe aka the persistent woe"

Anyway, 2 weeks ago Liang and I spent quite a significant amt of time debating a rather headache issue and till the end of the discussion we still can't quite come up with a solution. We debated the issue the whole time throughout walking from Millenia to marina, through shopping around Marina, through queuing for dinner and throughout the whole dinner and yet the issues is still not solved.

No, it's not abt the guest list (we haven even opened that pandora's box yet), it's not abt the 'pin4 jin1' (yet another Pandora box, but smaller), it's not abt what should be the even more pressing housing issue (a very tedious process but i'll blog abt it later), it's not abt the also very pressing issue of Liang's new stall and the million and one things we need to discuss abt that. Usually when we put our minds to it and seriously brainstorm abt something we can arrive at a mutually agreeable decision quite quickly, this is one time when we are really at our wits' end.

Ladies and gentleman (I assume only got 1 gentleman reading my blog), introducing .. The JieMei Issue. Or rather The Lack of Brother Issue. Because it's really really not possible for Liang to think of 8 suitable, sporting xiongdi candidates.

My solution of the two rounds of gatecrashing, you can imagine, was met with quite alot of reluctance. But even if i can eventually get him to agree to it, there's just too much logistics involved. Not to mention the whole timing issue. Knowing my dad, if the 'auspicious timing' is going to be 7am in the morning, you can be sure everything must be ready by 6.59am, no room for allowances. Which prob means all the gatecrashing must start at 6am. And also it's not going to look too nice in the photos with 8 jiemeis and 4 xiongdis.

Liang's suggestion was that since there's 8 jiemeis, it would make numerical sense for 4 of the Jiemeis to 'double' as xiongdis so that there would be equal numbers of people on both sides of the gate. I just gave him a look -_-" and din bother giving a reply to that.

Then i thought we might divide the games into two separate days, like what P did with hers. He's agreeable, but thinks most likely he'll have to do the unofficial games alone, cos even if he's got really good friends, it prob wun be fair on the friends to get sabo-ed on TWO occasions. But i thought that just looks too sad (and also too much like gang bullying).

Liang then suggested that perhaps he could hire some musclemen/stuntmen to top up the remaining xiongdis haha, which i have to admit, that idea warrants some consideration.

Sigh........ so in essence, I'm still at a loss what to do

Verbal Prelude to our Wedding Photography

2011-02-12T08:12:00.000-08:00

There are many couples and brides-to-be out there who wished to document down their love story. Or more like they want to note down for all posterity the hard work done for their wedding preparation so that few yrs down the road they can look back at their blog and sigh, "dear, see last time I did so much research work for our wedding, don't you think it's your turn to do the dishes now??!!"

As you can see, I'm not a very bridezilla kind of bride, you can even say that i'm way at the other end of the spectrum (i suspect i may be even more chill than zh abt her wedding). To me, the best part abt planning a wedding is firstly, the excuse to go on a expensive long holiday ie. the honeymoon, and, the pre-wedding shoot. But i do want to note down some parts of the wedding process and I definitely, definitely want to record our househunting process (for the reasons stated above).
So for chronology sake, I thought I'd just blog abt the pre-wedding shoot first, skip the nitty-gritty wedding planning details all together then jump straight onto the house-hunting part. (I'm also gonna skip the proposal story since most of you know it already and SOME of you even embellished it quite a bit).

Anyway, you know that my pre-wedding photoshoot has been done already, like way before the actual planning for the wedding. i blame it entirely on the lousy leave system of my previous posting.
You see, initially Liang and I had saved up and planned for a 2 week New Zealand trip and i had even begged Sm for her itinerary and planned out the entire road trip route and hotels when I found out that my leave which I requested for in march has been rejected and 14 days of leave has been given to me in january instead. Since there is a policy of 'take-it-or-leave-it-and-dont-expect-me-to-give-you-another-day' instituted by the leave monster, i took the leave indeed.

However, because it's holiday period for the locals then, hotels/rentals/everything prices rose by more than 1.5 to 2 times. We decided to forego New Zealand, and Liang suggested going Taiwan again. So i thought, might as well use the new zealand budget and settle our wedding photography there too, sort of like a working holiday.

Liang was for the idea, so i started my research with one major obstacle. Most of the taiwan bridal studios have their websites in traditional chinese and their only way of communication to them is via email! (which i assume needs to be written in chinese too??) So not having much of a choice we went into the only singapore based Taiwan shop who very importantly can do all the liasing for us, spoke to someone there for an hour, saw their gorgeous photos and paid the deposit after much much bargaining. Thereby saving Liang from the ordeal of what most bridegrooms must go through: the dreary trudge through all the studios of Tanjong pagar road.

It was a really fun and unique experience, the photoshoot. We settled everything in 3 days. 1st day - gown choosing, with help from their really chio and cute assistants. 1st day evening - meet up with photographer, called Lin-Sir who told us not to drink water that night and then in his next breath gave us tourist info and directions to a nearby night food street. Very conflicting. 2nd day- photoshoot. 3rd day- choose photos. Rest of the trip - tour around taiwan.

On the day of the shoot we had to wake up really early and for some reason, I was feeling quite nervous so only managed to gobble down half of a sandwich and some soup. Then it was the long long process of hair and makeup, during which i had a nice chat w the MUA and her assistants (there were 2-3 pple working on me at once) and they complimented me on my good command of chinese *smug look directed at Liang, who fell asleep prob because he was too bored and couldn't contribute much to our conversation due to his inferior chinese muahaha*

When I jerk him awake an hour later, I had on full makeup and my hair looking like Medusa's in rollers. He took a bleary look at my face and gave quite a frightened start. Hmmph... quite insulting, i tell you.

We then hired a cab for the day and our first stop was this huge park that had ponds and hills, forests and parks. And I really learnt to appreciate the magic of the camera. I mean, we can be standing on a man made footpath over-looking an obviously man made pond, but Lin-Sir and his assistant, who is called XiaoZhi (too cute lar all these taiwanese names) constructed a swing from a tree branch in 10min and they managed to make it look all natural and fairytale like. There was this shot where we were basically at this tiny lavender grass patch in the middle of a business district next to the mrt station, and he actually managed to make it look like a huge lavender field. Amazing!
And by basically following his instructions blindly, like "hold her hand like this, and "look at him like that" and "look at the ground" "look at that tree and smile" "look at XiaoZhi's hand" while I'm thinking 'why the heck am i smiling lovingly at somebody's hand", we actually managed to take alot of great shots.

After what felt like a million shots and getting in and out of the cab a hundred times to go to different small areas of the park, we went back to the studio, where i was immediately shooed into stuffing myself into a very tight corsetted 2nd gown. Then while working on my hair and make up again, they gave us a delicious looking bento which I unfortunately couldn't eat much of, due to an extremely tight dress and sitting ramrod straight for the MUA doing my hair.

The weather was holding up pretty good, since the sun was out and even though it was supposed to be winter, it was actually warm enough to be prancing around in evening gowns.
And so the day continued with more cab rides, more gown and hair change.
Until our second last venue of the day which was supposed to be 'sunset at the beach'. Gorgeous scenery, but it was starting to get cold. So it was a matter of wrapping myself up in a shawl that they prepared for me, hiding behind Catechol from the very strong seabreeze, then when Lin-Sir had the perfect angle, run to the spot, smile, try not to shiver too much, and then run back again to XiaoZhi and the shawl.
By this time, I am getting extremely tired, had a splitting headache from the cold wind and was feeling rather car sick, so it was a grumpy me during the last gown change stop in the studio. I was feeling too ill to speak to Catechol even though he kept smiling at me cos I was looking very 'bride-like' in a proper wedding gown with veil.
After a number of studio shots i was bundled again in the shawl to be brought to the last photoshoot venue, which was 'Night scene at Love River' (i requested for a night scene cos I thought it would look quite romantic, boy did i regret my decision).
Accompanied by encouraging words from passersby like 'Jia you! Xin1 niang2 must be very cold', and 'Xin Niang hen3 piao4 liang4. jia you' , I braved the winter air in my thin gown but you could tell the smile was certainly strained. And during the cab ride, I just felt so sick and nauseous, be it from the numerous car rides or the tight gowns that i've been wearing the whole day, the moment I reached the studio I just ran into the toilet and threw up every pathetic thing I ate the whole day including my breakfast. My theory is that my gowns were so tight that it was impossible for peristalsis to occur.

Very much later, after we had finished the process of choosing our photos, Catechol commented that because they know our AD date is more than one year away, and I kept asking them if there's any way of photoshopping tummies and fats (sadly no) and my episode of vomiting, they may suspect that there might be *ahem* another reason behind my predicament.

Anyway, despite all that, I really had fun and we ended up with a really gorgeous set of photos.

You must be thinking now, "I got conned into reading this whole lengthy, boring, wordy post and there's not even a single wedding photo to see?!!!"
Sorry folks, no revealing of photos till the actual day. In fact to date, only my parents, his mum, 2 relatives and ...... Wk has seen the album! And only because she offered to send me home from dinner in exchange for seeing the album (you could also say that she kidnapped me).

So see ya at the wedding.. grinz

A Full Circle

2011-02-11T07:59:00.000-08:00

I was going to blog abt something else altogether today but reading my previous entry, I got reminded of how depressed I am 3 months ago, and I just need to write a 'reply' entry to that previous one.

I learnt alot in the past 3 months. Medically, I learnt what I needed to know to survive on call, but most importantly, I re-familiarised myself with the little intricacies of ward work and how to run around efficiently, how to deal with the many idiosyncracies of ur various bosses and how to joke around with ur colleagues that just make u feel better abt ur day.

Now that i'm in a new place, I think I can look back and say that things aren't that bad after all. Of course, nowadays I'm in a generally happier mood so maybe that may have tinted how i remember the past few mths. Cos whenever I bump into my ex-colleagues now, they invariably say things like 'hey you look so happy now' or 'your hair is down!!' or 'you look different!'
Haha

But I suppose I just want to say, that no matter how bad things may look initially, your coping mechanism will eventually kick in, and you may find yourself enjoying your work even, like how i did in my last month.
And also, the only thing that beats your con telling you at the end of the posting that you've done well, is the fact that it is the same 'dementia-prone' con who gave you hell and made you feel like crap in your first week of work.

Starting over

2010-11-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

Leaving behind OPS to work 14hr days with no lunch and no pee break and standing on your feet ALL day and being scolded by your very bizaare boss or worse NOT being scolded by your very nice boss even though you are obviously crap at your job and making alot of mistakes in presenting cases (I haven presented crap in 2yrs) and forgetting blood test results and doing HO changes ON TOP of learning MO stuff and dealing with the stupid stupid stupid COW and dealing with expectations and not knowing how to manage simple things is making me slip from euphoria for the past year right down into depression now.

I have LOA, insomnia (I sleep 3 hrs everyday only becos I wake up at 3am in a panic and fearful abt the next day], anhedonia, unwillingness to go out and meet friends and tearful moods.
And i haven't even gone through my first call yet.

As such, despite this being my birthday today, somehow it didn't feel like it, and in fact i forgot that it was my birthday until 2 days ago when my mum passed me my red packet.

But my dear gal Wk said something today that brought alot of comfort to me and I remembered that in my first HO month I also had a very tough time.
So I searched through my blog archives and came across this very paragraph that I myself wrote describing that:

"You may be worked to the very core of your being, you may be hanging to the last threads of your sanity, you may go home in tears everyday, you may see nothing ahead of you but day after day of non-stop work.
But once you get out of this darkest times of your life, the relief and the incredulity at actually coping with your work and finishing ahead of time is the best gift you can ever receive."

Pray for me that I don't kill someone in the meantime. I know i am.

Free time

2010-09-02T01:33:00.001-07:00

I know I've been neglecting my blog.

It's come to that point when I actually feel guilty everytime I look at it, which explains my absence from my own tag board.

Anyway as you all probably guessed the sole reason I've not been blogging is cos I've not been doing anything productive with my brain lately, as such there is a direct co-relation with me not blogging (I only blog when I'm supposed to be reading up/studying for exams).

I'm blogging now because I've come across quite alot of free time when I've been relieving at a particular clinic.

So I've decided to spend my time wisely by blogging in betw giving mcs like nobody's business (I tend to be more lenient with mcs when I'm out, in hopes of promoting business to that clinic. And I only ever scold ns boys when I'm back in home ground, i think those clinic-hopping ones must be very confused with my about face).

Over the past numerous weeks relieving, I have also done quite alot of research in helping Liang's business, research on all the confusing new hdb rules, research on possible short trips during my upcoming oct leave with friends and research on 2 separate 10day vacation itinerary. Don't ask mewhy they call me to go help out when there's really not much help needed, we've asked each other umpteen times but no omegas an answer.

Yes, what does it say abt me if I have no ideas whatsoever regarding the actual wedding or housing but I've got the nitty gritty of not one but TWO honeymoon plans all written out already? [two plans because the second plan is for back-up just in case the first one can't go through if there are leave conflicts]

In fact if there is any way of circumventing the whole wedding issue and jump straight into the holiday part of the deal I would be all for it.

Ok I shall abruptly end my blog here cos everyone else has left and they're closing up.

The secret of watching movies

2010-05-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

While at a conference lunch, sitting at the same small table as our boss, another clinic boss and a boss no.2, me and my colleagues had the following conversation...
(pseudonyms used to protect their highly secretive identities)

Abit Dense Guy: later I need to go off early, can't stay for the whole conference
Movie Extraodinaire Guy: why u watching 'movie' is it?
KPO Gal: No lar, he doesn't watch 'movies' on weekends one
Abit Dense Guy aka ADG: (really quite dense) huh? Nowadays like got no good movie leh. If got, we go watch together!
Passerby A: I think he wrong frequency.
KPO Gal aka KPG: you know! movies as in like the movie you went to watch yesterday?? In Pasir Ris???? (wagging her eyebrows)
ADG: OHHHHHHH! that movie ah. $6.50 one rite!
Movie Extraodinaire Guy aka MEG: so how was the movie?
ADG: not bad!!! Not much plot for $6.50 movie!! Very boring heh heh heh

From there, our conversation deteoriated...

ADG: actually i dun think I'd be watching movie in Pasir ris anymore..
MEG: huh? why? Not enough plot for you??
KPG: cos he went to piss off the cinema staff *snigger snigger*
MEG: (who has good relations with various cinema staff) how come??
ADG: cos last week when I went for the movie, the movie err.. started late.. becos the.. err.. screening personel came late. And there was alot of other patrons who wanted to watch the movie, long queue outside the cinema.
So I scared the movie end late and went to call up the director of the movie to complain..
MEG: gasp! *utterly shocked at ADG's dense-ness*
KPG: it's no wonder they're pissed off at you
MEG: yar the last thing u want to do is to piss off ANY cinema related staff... I also had to wait sometimes when my movie start late.
KPG: There was once when my movie was ONE hour late due to some miscommunication so I just stood outside the cinema and err.. kindly advised other movie patrons to try their luck at another cinema! Never complain lor!
ADG: Oh no! I'm screwed!

Why I wish I were a guy at my workplace

2010-05-08T08:53:00.001-07:00

Sometimes being a female really sucks at my workplace because of the number
of requests you get And if you're the only female on duty, you can really drown in the workload buried under wave after wave of feminine angst... It never fails to depress the heck out of me whenever I see my whole queue of only females.

1) you have to see ALL, if not most, of the br**sts and va**nas that want to
be examined that day
- these always take thrice the amt of time you usu take because of all the hemming and hawing and the getting to the bed and undressing

2) fact: females talk more than males.

3) generalisation but most of the time true: females tend to be more highly strung and more difficult to pacify and reassure than men (I'm sure my esteemed O&G colleagues will agree)

4) females tend to come in with more than 1 problem, in fact working where I am now, they always come in with at least 3 issues.

Number 1+2+3+4 or any of the above combination make for very LONG and frustrating consults.

And there are also some v weird reasons why you get requested:

5) There is a common and worrying misconception that females are kinder and gentler and thus make better listeners. I AM SERIOUS. People have actually said this to my face before, during which I would valiantly try to defend my male counterparts "No they are all very good and kind one!" I exclaimed while the
listener stare disbelievingly at me.

6) strange old men walk into your room and say that they are "very happy to see you" even though you've never seen them before

7) strange old men walk into your room and complain abt bizaare genitalia
related problems.

quick post

2010-04-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

Sorry guys i know i've been neglecting my blog recently, think it's been the longest that i've stopped blogging.
Thought i'd just hurriedly blog smth to pacify u guys while I'm trying desperately to keep myself awake. I went out drinking with my colleagues to celebrate end of posting and got myself horribly drunk when they only agreed to let me leave to catch a cab before the midnight fare after i down my pint. So because i was rushing off I downed it very hurriedly and left immediately after. Downside of it was i got v quickly drunk in the cab and no way to work it off, so I had to eat some supper and drink a gallon of water to hide my drunk-ness from my parents.
So now everytime i lie down i feel like i've got splinting of the diaphragm.

It's been quite a strange feeling today seeing Boss giving gifts to our colleagues who were leaving (the whole ops actually pooled money to buy gifts for the mos who are leaving, so amusing, never see before) cos me and most of my colleagues would be staying on.
I just recently received devastating news. I've been, like a mad woman, crazily planning the wedding 1.5years before the actual event becos I'm predicting that I wouldn't have so much free daylight hours in the future after I got out of this lifestyle. But my boss just dropped a bombshell on me that I may actually have to stay yet another 1 more posting here even. Due to the traineeship timing. Darn! I need to rethink my options again v carefully... sian

test

2010-04-01T05:33:00.001-07:00

it,s too good to be true. if this works then i can blog from my phone
anywhere (in between irritating mc seekers) or during sailing yay

Sandy's NYHA score

2010-03-26T07:10:00.000-07:00

Something extremely exciting/darn hilarious happened at work today.
With all the weird sh*t that we've been dealing with this posting, I think we are all on the way to becoming psychos ourselves (our boss said smth abt us all being high at dinner the other day).

Anyway my Sandy has been quite sick a couple of months back.
It all started abt 6mths ago when the vet while asking some usual screening questions (like how we ask any CP/SOB) noted that Sandy has been coughing occasionally. And i learnt that coughing is like a sign of CCF in dogs!
The vet then asked questions abt when Sandy cough, is it when she's excited/barking/running? Is she more lethargic/still can run?
We told the vet very honestly that it's quite difficult to answer her questions as sandy is rather sedentary (to put it mildly).
And so a CXR was done: and lo and behold Sandy has what looked like consolidation/?pulmonary oedema in both lungs (yar i saw the films too).
She was then started on frusemide and some chim sounding heart medicine.

This was when she started to have urinary incontinence and increased urinary frequency but her cough didn't improve.
Slowly her NYHA score deteoriated, she couldn't walk/bark/scratch herself without coughing her self into a fit and would get very breathless after each episode. With each visit to the vet, her frusemide dosage was increased but that had to stop after a while because my mum refused to do a UECr (apparently the lab techs missed the vein in sandy's thigh and wanted to jab her neck!)

Anyway i kept bugging my mum to bring her back to the vet who repeated the CXR which shows no improvement. i asked my mum to ask the vet if it was just a simple infection but either there was a miscommunciation, my mum told me the vet mentioned smth abt hypertension in the lungs (does anyone else thinks this sounds like smoking?) and offered to do a $400 Dopler ultrasound of Sandy's heart which is so exclusive only the head of the whole place know how to do.
My mum very blurly agreed.

One week later, the ultrasound was normal, no SWMA (i assume) and no hypertensive cardiomyopathy (according to my mum).
And Sandy came home with some brand new medicine and a very ugly rectangular bald patch on her trunk (it's so ridiculous and ugly even i feel ashamed to post up a photo)

I looked in her new bag of medicines and what did i find but a packet of prednisolone and PROCODIN (which looked EXACTLY like the bottle i have in my medicine cabinet)
A few days later: Sandy was good as new again and took great joy at barking loudly at me everyday to feed her junk food.

I know it's difficult to diagnose without a history but this is simply ridiculous!

Anyway, i'm pleased to announce that Jack and Maggie (Jack's sister) have found good homes and after a harrowing 3 days looking after both of them (think of 2 energizer bunnies who pee everywhere, run at crazy speeds and fight with each other non-stop) , Sandy and I are relieved to have peace and quiet in the house again.

Temptation

2010-02-08T08:32:00.000-08:00

I've recently met someone new.
He's quite a funny and quirky character, very sweet and I have to say extremely cute with doe eyes and gorgeous hair.
And though it's only been two days, I'm guilty to say that i'm alrady developing a crush on him.
My parents adore him and he's quite enamoured of me too.
But i look at my first love, who also has a pair of soulful brown eyes that would rival anyone's, eyes who saw me through all the difficult times of my life, and i get so overwhelmed with guilt.
And so i resisted temptation, hardened my heart and said no.

Introducing....
Jack....

My neighbour's abandoned dog, who is a blond long-haired dachshund puppy! (for those of you who don't know, that's sandy's breed)
So when another neighbour asked us to help them babysit him, my parents agreed and my mum was VERY keen on adopting him for good.
My dad has even taking to calling him Jack, and said the chinese name can be Jie Lun (I think he confused Jack with Jay but i din have the heart to correct him, besides what kind of a name is Jay for a dog?)

So far it's day two of babysitting, and i have spent the last 2 days of my precious leave stuck in my living room, toilet training and scolding the pup.
I have forgotten how tiring puppy training is (yes i was the one who trained sandy 12yrs ago, she was toilet trained beautifully but now 12yrs later, dementia and incontinence set in and there goes all that training down the drain)

Except for the fact the the puppy is destroying everything in sight, and sandy is barking everytime i spare a bit of my attention playing with him or carrying him, things have been going well (no bloodshed).

I met up with some potential adopters last night and hopefully if all goes well they can take him off my hands. Meanwhile I hope Sandy can tahan the jealousy till then.

Jiemei updates

2010-02-07T01:42:00.000-08:00

Aren't you guys proud that i'm blogging just an astounding ONE HOUR after we met up?
Some of you may not even be home yet!
Muah haha i'm so proud of myself
(*coughs* remember what Wk said abt why i'm blogging more frequently now? Well she was absolutely right. I was supposed to settle the planning once and for all but somehow i just found myself blogging instead haha)

Well for those of you who suddenly couldn't turn up (frown at you know who),
please kindly keep your may Vesak day public holiday weekend free for a weekend of jiemei bonding (err gh you may or may not be included due to logistics reasons), spa pampering, relaxing massages and seafood eating (i added the last for me)

It's the last holiday before those of us who are married get G1P0-ed, those of us who are planning to get married get married, and those of us who are taking exams lead the prestigious but busy black-tagged lifestyle.

Keep your fingers crossed girls!

Suckered in

2010-01-24T07:43:00.000-08:00

In the past, sometimes when I look like i'm listening and nodding away, I'm actually inwardly rolling my eyes, pulling my hair and shouting "arrgghhhhhh!" inside.
Now i've progressed to mentally picturing myself standing up and giving them a hardy kick out the door.
It got so bad once that I actually found myself standing up but caught myself in time and quickly went to wash my hands.
What does that say abt me???

Anyway, those were on the bad days.

On good days, I actually find myself humming at times and being all cheery and smiley. Of cos a good lunch at a good restaurant is always a good motivation to work hard.

And yes my friends, I'm afraid to announce here that all the predictions made by my wiser seniors in the previous posting came true: I AM suckered in by the lifestyle.

I'm meeting up with friends almost every other week, I actually have time to run errands that can't usu be done on weekends, another friend is trying to psycho me to join a gym tog (God forbid i become like gh!), I'm thinking of swimming again since i can now reach home before the sun sets, I'm blogging more, I get to meet up with pple on public holidays and even the eves.

Say i'm easily tempted but yes, I'm suckered in.

Love talks

2010-01-20T00:42:00.000-08:00

As promised: one of my blogposts that i dug up from my many drafts...

I had a great time meeting up with friends that made up various stages of my life cycle in the past 2 mths that i've been in this posting (heh kudos to 'normal' working hours)
And it has been really nice catching up with everyone, finding out abt new relationships/new relationship status.
Some friends got surprisingly attached, others even more surprisingly remained not. The girls got prettier, while somehow strangely, guys ALL look the same, even down to their hairstyle tho we've not met up in at least 7yrs. People are talking abt engagement rings and BTOs and life insurance policies at jc gatherings, and it's at times like those that u feel ur age smacking you in the face. [My subconsious can't seem to grasp the fact that i'm not 18anymore, whenever i see a pt with Ic no. of S90..., i keep thinking i'm gonna deal with 12yo boys]

At my class gathering, my friends were just chatting abt the various stages of their relationships and i tot it'd be fun to write my own theories and those they shared with me here on my blog.
See if u agree!

1. Friends
The norm is that we all start off from being friends. Although in this modern day and age, the converse seems to be getting more and more prevalent. And also if you are one of those guys who are looking to our fairer friends from neighbouring countries, then shoo! you should stop reading this blog post, in fact, I would prefer it if you stop reading my blog altogether.

2. Ai Mei phase aka i-like-you-you-like-me phase or I like to call it the 'Ai Mai Ai Mai' phase
The most exciting part of the relationship where you sort of know that the other party likes you, where the guys pay extra attention in being nice to you or if in pri sch, tug on your pigtail and then run away, and the girls giggle loudly at everything the guys do and say.

3. 'eh! you want to go steady?'
Being a rather traditional girl myself *coughs* I would prefer it if the guy can pop the question to make things official, of cos, if you do ask the question above, I can gurantee that your success rate might be rather poor. Asking is MUCH more preferable to dragging your feet in AiMei phase and assuming that the girl will grasp your intention by osmosis. I've always admired those guys who knew what they want, and go all out to inform the girl. Well, of cos, I'm saying all these easily like it's chicken feed, but i think if i'm born a guy, I'd be too chicken to do any of it and most probably end up a loner at home watching tv everyday.

4. The Re4 Lian4 aka Madly-in-love phase
You meet up everyday, and spend the time apart chatting/smsing on the phone, you start and end the day thinking abt him, you feel sad everytime your time together is ending, you get a thrill everytime he holds your hands and steal quick kisses when you think no one is watching. You might declare to the whole world that he is THE ONE, and you've picked out your kids' names already. [My friends would be able to tell you that i did quite the converse by telling everyone that he is most likely NOT The one... ssshhh dun tell Catechol, he doesn't know that and obviously doesn't read this blog]

5. The stable phase
once you manage to emerge from all that craziness alive, you can truly begin to settle down and get comfortable with your status as a 'attached' couple. The problem is if one half of the couple emerges before the other, that's when you get the: 'why don't you want to spend time with me anymore?'s, 'are your friends more important than me?' and the 'you don't treasure our time together' and other similar drama things that's the stuff of ch8 dramas
You can enjoy regular weekend dates and not feel like you've been done an unjust punishment when your other half dun want to meet (even tho i still meet Catechol everyday, but at least whenever any one of my friends ask me out, I still place you guys over him k)

6. The One year Test
Here's when you find urself stagnating and thinking if you seriously see yourself with this person. Some I know lay down ultimatums ('if you dun give me the ring by next year, I'm moving on'), others may feel like 'taking a break'. Be it a day, a few weeks or even months apart (mine always infuriatingly only manage to last a few hrs) Either way, i believe it's just an obstacle you need to work your way through together and smth that at the end of the day bring you closer together.

7. The Three year Itch
Earlier or later than 3 years, it will come. It may come in the form of a temptation, a distraction, a new job or a family matter but it is going to happen.

8. The Lao fu Lao qi (literal translation: old husband old wife) phase
Here's when you pretty much decide that you're stuck with each other for the rest of your lives, despite knowing abt his snoring or stinky feet or strange dental habits or her less than ideal cooking or non-NEA approved food hygiene or propensity to kick you in your sleep when you snore.
(*coughs* resemblance to any characters living or dead is purely fictional).

Nua-ing

2010-01-19T00:22:00.001-08:00

Definition: a state of doing absolutely nothing with no purpose whatsoever

Due to the screwed up system of applying for leave for this posting, I got an extended 13day break in a month that is not very conducive for travelling (instead of march as i've originally requested for), and due to other various reasons, I had to scrap my New Zealand plan (even though I've had the itinerary 70% planned already), we went to somewhere more affordable instead.
As such I've got 4 days of leave left to kill by nua-ing at home.

By the last hour of Nua-ing Day 1: I was already rather sick of nua-ing and was suddenly gripped by 2 inclinations:
a) I suddenly realised that I've not been blogging for quite some time [is that a collective 'duh' i hear from you guys?]
b) I suddenly had a very stronge urge to blog

So on day 2 of nua-ing, I sat in front of my laptop and logged on to blogger.com but for the life of me, can't think of anything to blog abt. So i thought to sift through my many many unfinished drafts of blog entries [yes, these days i will blog halfway then get distracted by some other thing then forget all abt blogging. I so miss those days when, usu during mugging, a whole blog entry will just drift into my head and i just cannot continue mugging till i blog it out of my system. Or tht was my excuse then.]
So i tried to sift through my posts but blogger was lagging, and then i got distracted by smth else and forgot abt it.

Now is day 3 of nua-ing and i just spent the past 5min blogging abt how i need to blog but haven't.
I think i shall post up one of my drafts tmrw which coincidentally is also last day of nua-ing.
ok, my new year resolution for this year would be to blog more (and also to exercise more, as per my resolution for the past 10years of my life)

But then again, it takes me one day to realise i need to blog more, another day for me to get round to doing it halfway and a third day to blog abt the need to blog more. So i dun really see a high success rate here.

Maybe i'll blog abt my trip.

Soon.

Ode to all my new 'friends'

2009-12-23T07:30:00.000-08:00

It has really been an exhausting and depressing 2 weeks at work. After fake-smiling and talking non-stop at top speed for most part of the day, I'm so exhausted that i just want to hide in one corner and be anti-social. Somehow, the demographics of the pple i'm interacting with on a day to day, no make that 6-minute to 6-minute basis, just makes me all e more exhausted and hateful.

Plus i made the mistake of arranging for some 'extra-curricular' activities in the world of SAIL-ing after work (i was inspired by my fellow colleagues who are all veteran SAIL-ers) and it just drains the last of my patience and energy at the end of the day.

I got inspired to blog while doing flu just now, in betw giving out 2/7 mcs like nobody's business so as to avoid them coming on our precious half day tmrw! hurray for christmas eve!)
So i tot i'd write a poem for all the 'new friends' i made during my time here..

'Ode to you'

Hello! Welcome!
Stay as long as you want
A long list of questions, you say
No problem at all, I'm here to make your day

It's ok to worry abt that pimple
It's ok to care abt that scar
No your leg's not broken
No you don't have asthma
I'm sure that tummy is distressing
A sticky sensation on ur privates???!! OH how worrying

Have you tried these painkillers
Have you taken your losec?
Wow you refuse medication! That is just so heroic
Your pain's not better You want to see someone else?
Sure! one referral coming right up

Oh so you saw the specialist? Nothing wrong they say?
You want a second opinion and you came to see ME?!

Hmm i think it's spondylosis
No it's not a stroke
No it's not a heart attack
No it's not cancer
No it's not a fracture

*****

The above poem is based on the author's personal experience. Any resemblance to persons living is purely coincidental.

It's Finally Open!!

2009-10-05T10:03:00.000-07:00

After much toil, sweat and puking blood, the very very long-awaited Catechol's stall at Bishan CC is finally opening on 10/10/09!
I also put alot of my heart, sweat and blood into it so u guys must come support k!

See the promo description we're using that yours truly wrote here:

Sweet Stone @ Alfresco Bishan is an alfresco cafe offering mouth-watering claypot chocolate fondue, Belgium waffles and an array of home-made gelato, mini-sandwiches and refreshing drinks such as freshly made smoothies and interesting mocktails.

Coupled with a romantic candlelight ambience and chillax music in the background, it is the ultimate setting for a perfect date or a cool hangout for friends.

Opening special promotion on 10/10/09!
Simply recite the code “Alfresco Bishan Free Ice-cream Day!!” between 9am to 12pm or better still, wave hi to me (i’d be there after 6pm) and get a FREE scoop of gelato on me!
[If any kind soul offer to give me a lift from my workplace to bishan i'll give you unlimited servings ah! Wk are u tempted? hiak hiak]

Come join us at
Sweet Stone @ Alfresco Bishan
Bishan Comunity Club Level 2
51 Bishan Street 13

Turkey Day 2

2009-09-27T09:51:00.000-07:00

I think I was too numb with shock and exhaustion to fully comprehend our situation, because instead of breaking down in horror, I just said, "let's just walk."

So walk we did, tensing in fear, everytime a car whizz past us.

And after walking for what seemed like eternity, we spot the first sign of civilisation: a gas station.

We hurried towards it and pounce on the first (and only) person we saw: some gangster looking type washing his car.

When we asked him if he knows of any bus stations or shuttle bus to Capadoccia in the area, he looked really puzzled, (and for a heartstopping moment I tot he couldn't speak english), then he told us that there is NO bus station for miles and no shuttle bus either.
At our defeated looks, he then asked if we were perhaps referring to the public bus?? After he realised that we were so lost that we would do anything to get out of the area, he gave us explicit directions to a cross junction further down the road and told us that the bus only starts at 5.30am so we have at least 2 hours to kill, he even brought us to a quiet restaurant behind the gas station and told us to rest there first. After accepting our profuse thanks, he went back to washing his car.
After a few minutes, he came by again and said, "come! I show you where to wait." and brought us throught a deserted car park, some grass patch to the aforementioned cross-junction.
And it was a good thing he brought us because, there was no freaking way we could have found it on our own, as there were no signs at all/and no semblance of a bus stop. He told us to just wait by a street lamp and the bus will stop for us.

After eating some strange soup in the restaurant, it was 5.30am and we went to the street lamp, half thinking that we may have been duped.
And then at 5.40am, a tour bus, that looked just like the bus we took from Istanbul, stopped at the street lamp opposite and we looked dubiously at it. I seriously thought it was just another random tour bus stopping for a toilet break. Catechol ran up to it and we heard the miraculous words "yes we go Capadoccia!"
It wasn't until we were well on our way on the bus and the bus boy had collected 5euros from each of us that we began to appreciate the evilness of the bus company in Istanbul.

After about an hour of bus journey, the bus stopped suddenly at a rest station by the expressway for a toilet break for us and we were told that smaller buses will be bringing us in to Capadoccia. While I was in the loo, a friendly turkish guy who works at the bus station struck up conversation with Catechol and told us to wait in his office where he very charmingly showed us many pretty pictures of Capadoccia. He served us Turkish tea and about 2 seconds later we realised that he was trying to get us to sign up some tour package with him.
I had initially wanted to book day tours with our hotel, but Catechol was quite keen on settling a package first and the guy promised to pick us from our hotel, the price was comparable so i agreed.

Then finally...finally we arrived in the charming town of Capadoccia. Capadoccia used to be a town where travelling merchants would rest their camels while they themselves rest in cave homes.

The entire town consisted of tiny homes and buildings all carved out of stone and caves. We were staying at the very quaint Shoestring Cave Hotel, famous for its cave rooms.

On the stairway up to our room

When we arrived, the owner said that our rooms were not available yet as we were too early, so we hung around and waited and he chatted with us for awhile.
When he too tried to advertise his tour packages, we explained that we had already paid for one. His face immediately changed and asked if we signed up at the rest station. He then went on to angrily explained that those coporate bus companies have been strangling the tourist trade in Capadoccia with such unscruppulous means such that small local tour companies are struggling to survive. He also told stories of his previous guests being grossly overcharged, or being stranded at the rest station simply because they refused to buy their tours. We apologised for our ignorance but he just shook his head and looked really sad.
So we very guiltily decided to upgrade our room to one of their nicest rooms on the top floor with a fantastic view and pool just outside our door.

Our cave room - essentially just a cave made into a room

After a quick shower (no time for a much needed nap), we hurriedly went down the road to wait for our daytour bus (we were worried abt the bus coming directly up to our hotel given their history).
Our guilt was short-lived because I really enjoyed the tour greatly.
Capadoccia was beautiful and is still our favourite city in Turkey.

We saw ancient homes carved out of caves....

Churches, kitchens and dormitories carved out of caves...

Pigeon holes.. Those holes in the mountains are man-made, specially for pigeons to enter and do their business, after which men would come by and collect their droppings to be used as fuel [the thought just boggles the mind doesn't it]

Uchisar Mountain (you can actually climb it!)

We had buffet lunch where I had to admit that even I had problems stomaching some of the weird turkish food

So we had to eat this....

More nice scenery!

Fairy chimneys!! These were natural wind-blown phenomena and people in the past used to believe that fairies actually reside in them.

Another Turkey cliche

Funny rock-formations

We went to a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant near our hotel for dinner.
Capadoccia is famous for its pottery and also for this dish of meat stew in a clay urn-like pot.
They cook the raw meat in this half made claypot, put some wet clay on top to form the cover and cook the whole thing in the fire. Such that the only way you can eat ur food is to crack it open.
Catechol tried to carefully tap it like cracking an egg but failed dreadfully. But the owner very nicely came by to show us how to do it. He gave a mighty WHACK at the pot with his knife and it cracked open in two.

And that was the end of my last truly happy day in Turkey...

Turkey Day 1

2009-09-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

Ok so i went on this trip 1 year ago but i was too busy and exhausted then to blog abt it, and i was just looking through some of my photos just now and decided that it's too exciting/hilarious/memorable/expensive a trip not to immortalize it in words here...

My holiday started with me being post-call after a 27admissions night as a GS HO in HPB and me going post-call at 5pm with my reg bidding me farewell with "thanks for working so hard last night, enjoy Turkey, get urself married to a rich tycoon over there!"

I rushed home and packed furiously as i haven done an iota of packing since i was too exhausted working 14 hour days. So needless to say, i did close to zero research on the trip as well. [unlike my Japan trip which has been planned to perfection, as i spent every waking hour not mugging for MBBS, doing my research, so those were alot of waking hours.]

We went ot the airport at an unearthly time of 3am and flying SQ was a world of difference from the budget airlines we usually take, i fell asleep instantly.

We had a brief stopover in Dubai, which is full of pictures of high tech buildings and rich people, you can almost smell the money in the air.

hmm.. potential husband, mr oil tycoon??

And finally we arrived in Turkey!!
Where we took a train bringing us to the city centre of Istanbul.
Check out the first truly Turkish sight we saw:

If a Turkish man making doner kebap doesn't yell Turkey, i dunno wat else does.
So being famished, we immediately set abt eating our first kebap sandwich in Turkey.
And it was goooooood.....

Our first meal in Turkey. I also like to call it Exhibit A.
[Over the course of our 8 day trip, we saw and bought from many many many more Turkish men shaving meat from kebab, such that if i were to see this sight in Singapore now, my immediate response is to gag and run away]

1st stop = booking our bus tickets to Capadoccia
Apparently, it is the done thing to travel between states in Turkey by bus. SO i asked Catechol before the trip if we should check out the bus timings and book the tickets first. But he says there;s no need to as there's this place where everyone goes to get tickets and that's the only place to go.
[can i mention here that for our Japan trip i read up on ALL the shinkansen lines and learn how to read their timetables so that i can figure out the EXACT train we need to take everyday]

So we followed a pack of ang moh tourists to this 'place' which is essentially a ginormous car park with rows of shops all selling bus tickets and vendors shouting and touting at the top of their voices (there were at least 100 shops, they were numbered so i'm not exaggerating.)

We wandered abt looking for a company that offers a direct route to capadoccia, which was surprisingly impossible, i think it had smth to do with the weekend. We finally found one which spoke english, open ot negotiations and promised us a free shuttle bus to our destination from the place that they're dropping us.
We worked out the timing details, paid for our tickets, dropped off our haversacks (mine weighed almost half my weight i think) and went off to do our first sightseeing in Turkey!

My MO asked me, "what do u do in Turkey?" I said, "see mosque lor" And he thought it was hilarious.
Very funny meh?

We went to this place called Basilica Cistern.

It's kinda like an underground drainage system that they used in ancient days. the moment you descend the stairs, and the cold air hits you in the face, it was just such an awe-inspiring sight, with a goose bumps raising and spine tingling eerie atmosphere.

With flash - it's actually really dark
just imagine this scene as far as the eyes can see
And as you navigate the walkways and peer into the stillness and darkness of the waters, you can almost picture moving shadows just beyond your sight.

We had Turkish Apple tea here. Very nice and romantic

We then visited Topkapi Palace (*coughs* e spelling is smth liddat lar.. so long liao can't really remember).
It's another must-go place.
A really nice way to spend the afternoon exploring the different museums and looking at the nice buildings.
But the real reason to go is this:

The awesome view
That's the 'Bosch' sea i think (Again *coughs* my geography not very good) Separating Turkey and Greece.

We had lunch there, which was another delicious doner kebab sandwich (you may start counting the number of kebap we ate if u so please) and a can of SGD7 dollar coke.
It was totally worth it, it was just so shiok and chillax there. To this day we still talk abt the $7 coke with fondness.

We hung around and briefly visited some more mosques, then it was time to go pack dinner (make a guess wat we dabao) and catch our overnight bus to Capadoccia.

It was on the bus that we first we began to suspect that maybe negotiating such a cheap price may not be such a good idea after all.
Cos we were placed right at the very end of a very crowded bus, where we were surrounded by noisy local kids and the air con was very stuffy.
I was amused though, by the fact that the bus came with its own Bus Waiter, who goes abt spraying Turkish perfume on our hands and giving out plastic cups of water.
[It gave us great amusement to compare the various 'services' offered by these bus boys on future bus trips.]

All in all it wasn't a very comfortable trip, with the bumpy ride and the cramped seats.
But what shocked me, made me flabberglasted, and so darn terrified was this:
At 3am, they woke us up and told us to alight with our luggage.
So Catechol and I sleepily got off the bus, and asked abt the shuttle bus, the bus boy pointed vaguely in a north wardly direction, and the bus drove off with ONLY the two of us alighted.

We then looked around us and fully took stock of our situation.
Because they dropped us off in front of a closed and deserted taxi company in freakin middle of nowhere. with NO buildings OR bus terminals that can be seen for MILES. And there weren't even any cars on the road.
I've never felt so scared EVER in my life, not even that time when Sm and I almost got caught in the middle of a gang brawl in London or that time when we got hopelessly lost in Japan for 3hours.

stay tuned for more turkey adventures...
Next up, how we got out of our predicament..
the beautiful Capadoccia with its fairy chimneys

Things we learn from tv

2009-09-18T10:19:00.001-07:00

I was eating dinner at 1am today while my mum watched some hk serial on doctors.
I caught 15min, and spent 14min of it laughing madly to myself..

Scene 1:
Pregnant patient talking on phone along hospital corridor.
suddenly clutched her tummy and sank to the floor in pain "ARRGH! My tummy pain!"
A chio doctor walked calmly up to her and says, "DON'T WORRY! It's most probably just a miscarriage!"
Next thing you know, the patient is in ot undergoing a crash caesar. The anesthetist persistently and repeatedly announced her vitals at 1 second intervals, "her bp is now 103/70! It's now 95/60......" while the OG guy who's the only one at the table, made 1 cut and said, "i see the head. Suction!"

The scene then cuts to a Neonatologist auscultating a healthy, pink 1-2 mth old baby(presumably judging from its size) stuffed into the neonatal inbubator. It was a terribly tight squeeze for the baby. The doctor then explained to the mother (same pt from just now) that because the baby is prematurely born before SEVEN MONTHS (whoa! 28weeker?!!) the organs are all underdeveloped, including the heart which is why the baby has irregular heart rhythm and needs cardiac surgery (P, can u explain how this is so??? I so confused).

Next scene: the mother stood tearfully at the window staring at her baby and suddenly the bells go off and we see closeup on the monitor HR 175 flashing wildly (hmmm isn't that normal for a neonate?) and hang on a sec, is that tombstone ST ELEVATIONS i see on the cardiac monitor?? OMG this baby is having a heart attack!!
The nurse then auscultated the baby and sent the baby for emergency surgery.

Scene 2:
Two doctors on their off day very suay-ly saw an unconscious young boy lying prone in a stairway. Doctor 1, at the head of the patient, used 1 finger to feel a spot under the ear, said, "the pt is still breathing."
Doctor 2, caressed the pt's left buttock, and pronounced, "no fractures!"

Next scene, in resus room, boy still unconscious but supine now. 2 nurses pounced on his legs and said, "no fractures!" (they seem to be really obsessed abt fractures)
The ER PAed specialist immediately flopped the patient over on his tummy and did a PR! (I was shocked speechless here) Got fresh blood on glove. He then asked for a proctoscope, and the nurse slapped a ginormous metal proctoscope (ouch) into his hand and very professionally squeezed gel onto it (i have no idea why this is the only part they got right). He then shove the whole thing into the patient and without removing the probe or using a light, diagnosed the patient as having anal tears secondary to sexual assault. (Best lor! You win already)

I read this article abt how a study in the US claimed that medical students are cultivating bad habits from watching medical dramas on tv.. The commonest mistake being shocking a asystole rhythm. It's scary the number of times u see that happening on tv. everytime i see teh defib machine while in a shopping centre, i give an invlountary shudder of fear at the thought of how just anybody can have access to it.

There are also some other 'interesting' ways to revive collapsed patients.
I saw the 'Nipple Twist' (darn hilarious.. Foreman doing it to HOuse) and also many versions of the precordial thump. One version i remember to this day was in ER, when the team was doing CPR on a patient with no avail, WHILE 2 repairmen were fixing the ceiling RIGHT next to the patient. So naturally, the ceiling collapsed onto the patient, there was a moment of shocked silence while waiting for the cloud of dust to settle, and hey presto! Sinus rhythm obtained!!

Shameless plugging

2009-09-11T09:13:00.000-07:00

It was nice having an impromptu gathering with half of the jie meis today, no thanks to Sm (who had a prior engagement), P (who gave me false hope by agreeing to come but then last minute say she can't becos of the 9/9/09 baby boom????) and Gh (who is MIA, period).
Anyway you guys missed out on eating FREE CHOCOLATE FONDUE!!

I happened to mention tht I have to leave early as i have to help out at Catechol's stall due to some unforeseen circumstances. So immediately Zh and Wk, especially Wk, wanted to come too and kpo. I tell you, never in my SIX years of knowing her have i seen Wk so eagerly offer to give me a lift somewhere. And that was how I unwillingly and very forcibly was forced to treat them to one chocolate fondue set. Heng not that ex hee hee...

Anyway in the short time that i was 'helping out' at the stall, I had fun, kinda reminded me of helping at my dad's shoe shop when I was young. (I was supposed to help for a longer time but I could slack off helping when e gals were around.. yay.. haha)
I think all I did was to smile winningly at and pounce on a few uncles and scoop a couple of bowls of gelato. Oh and also to draw a make-shift name card for a nice lady who wanted a card for our stall but cos the stall just opened so it's not available yet.

But Catechol says I drew in quite a few customers in the short time that I was standing there.
There was this rather creepy unkempt old man who came right up to me, and without even looking at the menu, pointed to the waffles and said "give me one". So I tried to upsell him by promoting the chocolate and gelato and he said "no! I cannot eat sweet things one." Oh no! I thought to myself, but our waffles got caramel so it already sweet! (the doctor in me struggled with my mercenery self for quite a bit there until Catechol hurriedly took the uncle's money and sent him on his way).

Anyhow.. if u happen to be in Chinatown Market pls do drop by and show your support k!! We are at Blk 335 Smith street #02-226. In a secluded corner near the famous Claypot Rice with the infamously long wait.
Errr... also pls kindly note that the offer for freebies is for today only because of err.. certain forceful circumstances.

Crusin'

2009-09-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

Nothing to blog abt, or rather, heaps to blog abt workwise but not allowed to blog it.. And after a long 11day break from work, i'm not used to the disturbed sleep-wake cycle again, so here i am blogging..

Photoblog of the one and only long break in this 6mth:
P's ROM!!
I just love it when i see friends at their ROM/wedding, it just makes me want to cry to see them so gloriously happy.
Congrats to the happy couple!! Thanks for inviting us!

First to the food at P's hse, ditto at her ROM:

I went on a cruise!!

It's always been a unattainable dream for me and my friends ever since mugging for 'A's to go on a cruise (for the 6 meals a day and the absolute slackness of the holiday. yes, my friends are as gluttony as me). Now that the unattainable dream has become slightly more attainable thanks to a slightly increased income and a credit card promo, we were all set to go until, because of some unforeseen circumstances and an inability to let go of an irrational fear of water, my friends had to pangsei me. So of cos i was disappointed.... until Catechol took pity on me and decided to pei me go instead!! Yay!!

It's an elitist world on board and everything, from boarding gates to welcome drink to queues, depends on ur class status, which is why i'm extremely glad (And guilty for being glad) that we upgraded.

Ecstatic abt our 'upgraded' balcony

Extremely tempted to wave goodbye here with a white hanky as we were sailing off like the good folks on the Titanic (hmmm, am i dating myself by even mentioning the Titanic?)

We found an extremely long and snaking queue outside the Theatre and tot some show was abt to start, just as we were abt to join the queue, some waitress asked us if we were "red cards" and told us to go directly in. "Wah liddat one ah?" I said very unglam-ly.

We went in and was greeted by a weird sight of alot of people hanging around and queueing up at a table, and we found out that it's all not abt a show at all, but abt reserving tables for a gala dinner. Feeling perplexed, we pored over the menus and realised that out of 4 restaurants, "red cards" can dine at 2 of the more prestigious ones for free whereas "blue cards" must pay extra.
And guess wat, by the time it's our turn, all the prestigious restaurants are taken up already, and we're left with the lousy ones.
Such is the proud kiasu spirit: The gates to the theatre opened at 3.30pm. We went in at 3.35pm.

I've lost count of the number of times i just look out at the sea and stone:
While sitting at our balcony

While eating

While walking by some random window

While slacking at the deck

While Catechol is gambling

While eating ice-cream

While getting sunburnt at Phuket

We came back from our Phuket trip just in time for our Gala dinner, which is supposed to be a formal affair.
And while i threw on an extremely casual dress, the ang mohs really blew my socks off by wearing real prom dresses (like those american gauzy dresses you only see on tv) and suits complete with the occasional bow tie.

With all the slacking by the sea i've been doing, it's no wonder i got horribly sunburnt.

It's been a fun (and slack and gluttony) holiday, but we're having second thoughts abt coming back. We lost money at Texas Holdem'!! Cleaned out on our last day by some ridiculously lucky dealer.. hmmph!

Anyway, i went back to work with everyone asking me where i've been cos i'm very obviously darker and peeling away like nobody's business.

It only takes so little....

2009-08-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

I may be grumpy and sleepy and hot and sweaty at 3am doing the unenviable tentage shift...
but just a simple 'thank you, you are very kind' from a knowledgeable 80yo uncle who can tell me absolutely everything abt his complicated medical hx in chinese including using the terms 1st degree AV block, or a previously anxious auntie joyously thanking me becos she can finally be assured that her chest pain is likely due to GERD and not MI, or even just a 40yo son very sweetly reassuring his mother that he would wait for her till her discharge despite e wee hours of the morning, can just brighten up my night and give me energy to tahan till e end of e shift.

But a son scolding his mother for bringing trouble to him and telling me before i even see the pt to admit her in the cheapest ward, getting uncooperative pts who refuse to or give weird no head-no-tail history one following another and another and another and with diff bloods to boot who ended up actually being very sick, and then finally when nearing the end of the gruelling shift being screwed up-side down for forgetting to do smth,
just destroys my morale and makes me want to cry at the thought of repeating the whole process again just a short 10hrs later.....

Dead giveaway

2009-08-07T08:55:00.000-07:00

Today i met up with a relative stranger whom I've only had contact with via email and over the phone.
While making small talk, Catechol asked him abt his age.

He replied "oh i'm the same age as her!" and pointed a finger at me and extremely confidently, announced: "you're 25 right?"
I recoiled in shock, and tried very hard to hide the look of abject horror on my face, thinking 'you mean it's so early to tell my age??!! I've always felt 18 at heart thank you very much!'

It was only after we parted ways that i finally got it...

And realised my mistake 10years ago, when in setting up my email account and Gmail asked me if i wanted to add my birth year to my user name cos my user name was in use already, i shouldn't have agreed so readily.

Catechol suggested that i change my email to username1995 which might last me for teh next 20 or so years before i have to change it again

Finally!

2009-07-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

Finally!!!

After seeing a screaming avulsed nail, an embarrassed buttock lump, a creepy para*cough*phimosis, a number of anxious hyperventilators (and no they are not all female), numerous 'huh? and that's why you came all the way here and waited 2hrs to see me for???!!!' cases, and a barrage of assaults by things in all shapes and sizes and in all manner...
I think i have finally, finally crawled out of the dark depressed cloud that had been my life for the past 2mths. I began to like working again!!

Or mayb it's cos i'm still refreshed and energized after my short leave (less than a week ago)
Indeed the turning point of me thinking "hey tis not so bad after all" came on my first day at work back from leave, and coincidentally, the first case i saw that day was of the aforementioned 'creepy' case.. *cough cough* [No i'm quite sure the nature of the case has no effect on lifting my mood whatsoever]

Anyway, now i got inspiration to blog again!! Yay!!

And hopefully no more sad posts.. and thanks to you guys who felt concerned abt those posts and wanted to ask me out, so sweet lar! Me is touched! And also thnks for STILL checking my blog even tho it hasn't seen any activity in eons [again refer to blog name pls]

Sleep-wake reversal

2009-06-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry for the absolute dearth of posts nowadays but i simply got no inspiration to blog.
Nothing to write abt since i dun do much anymore except rotting at home

So i've been sleeping at 3am and waking up at 12noon almost everyday for the past mth, which is making me disoriented cos my body clock thinks i'm on holiday but my head knows that i've got to get to work later in the day and thus the heavy feeling in my heart.
But on the other hand, it's kinda cool to be in the train at 9am surrounded by smartly dressed office crowd jostling and rushing to work while i'm in my most comfortable beachwear attire slowly trudging home from work.

I got a shock when i received a call on my workphone when i was having breakfast post-night shift one morning. I never get called nowadays (instead we get paged over the intercom, which is just as disruptive and twice as embarassing) so when i get calls it's always ALWAYS bad news like "come in 1hr early" or the dreaded "you need to come back on ur standby day" [which was why i wasn't really in the mood to chat when some good friends prank called me when i was on my way to work one day, it took me at least 5min to work out his voice and that was 5min filled with terror i tell you].

Anyway it turned out that it was some nurse from my EX-workplace calling me ONE MONTH after the posting ended to go assist some senior in ot. And because i haven't told anyone off since i changed hosp, i might have accidentally went overboard and released some of my pentup frustration of the past month while scolding tat poor nurse.

Yup this post is to showcase how sad my life has become now, pls dear friends let's meet up soon!

A depressing post

2009-06-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

A year ago today was the turning point in my HO career.
I had just spent the first HO month in utter despair, hopelessness and tears, fumbling along, trying so hard yet still getting scolded every single day, we never eat, never pee, never even drink a sip of water in the 15hours that is our working day. I never meet up with anybody and the only time I saw Catechol was when he send me home from work at 10pm during which time I don’t talk cos I’m gobbling down my first meal of the day.

And then finally I’m in another team, and I’m starting to find that I’m actually coping with changes. The turning point came when I actually began to think that I’m doing ok, that work is actually pretty enjoyable. And I never looked back since. Through Hepatobil, Onco and even Respi, through nonstop admissions, EOD calls and ridiculous bosses, I find satisfaction in my work, enjoyed my colleagues and most of the time even my bosses. I learned to be efficient so as to make time for meals, I’m on top of things and I seldom make mistakes.

And I went through all that just to find that I’m back full circle at where I was 1 year ago, with twice the despair, twice the hopelessness, and overwhelming stress.
I started to do stupid things again, and getting scolded for them. I lived every moment of my working time in fear. And I stopped eating, drinking and peeing, and because of the working hours, I no longer see anybody outside of work.

I’m still waiting for that elusive turning point, but with every passing moment, I feel myself sinking in hopelessness and sliding towards giving up.

Not exactly a Surprise! Party

2009-05-04T01:55:00.000-07:00

oh help oh help oh help oh help I have to be a O&G MO from tmrw onwards!

I think they expect me to do D&Cs even... Crap!

Anyway.. Since i promised u guys to blog abt the surprise party and it really is to blog-worthy to miss:

It all started with Zh saying that she wanted a surprise:
Now us jie-meis have limited experience with getting surprises, so this might bot be such a good idea.
Previous experiences with surprises include:

And Wk's surprise party.. I tot Zh would much rather prefer Wk's surprise than mine (am i right Zh?)

So that started a whole subterfuge involving finding out whether or not Zh's working/driving that day and Sm planning various extremely convoluted routes on 'conning' Zh to Wk's hse, as well as some 'innocent' comments to throw her off our scent (see tag).

But unfortunately, it was down to me, Sm and Lester to deal with the decorations...

I was despatched to do streamers, cos i can't blow balloons for nuts (see Wk's surprise birthday entry fro evidence)

Endangering my life for Zh

Luckily we got a man to do the job!

Hmmm wat looks wrong abt the banner?

Aniwei.. We slogged over the decorations and then okay-ed Gh to get the cake, who then okay-ed P to get Zh (meanwhile our poor Zh was just hanging abt hospital stoning).
And waited with bated breaths cameras and cakes at the ready...
But alas... due to a very unfortunate decision made by our dear Wk, we all got a very nasty surprise indeed.. when we heard Zh's and P's voices coming from BEHIND us!

So instead of shouting, "Surprise!" and "Happy Birthday Zh!" we all screamed as one, "WK!!!" "NOOO!!!" " why you bring them from there!!!"

MAjor SIGH!!

Zh (more amused than surprised) with Wk and Gh still furiously arguing in foreground
But it was nice having all the jiemeis tog again...

And our bdae gal sure perked up when we surprised her again with this:

With Ice Wine!!!!! Whoo hoo!!! (thanks Lester!!!!)

Predictably, our conversation sort of degenerated from that moment.

Zh (repeatedly): I WANT chicken! I Want CHICKEN!
Wk: Drink more drink more! One night 50dollars!
Me: I'm sleeeeeeeeeppy

The guys clean up...

The girls take photos...

While other girls are drunk...

We attempted to play a**hole taidi amidst much laughter and drunkenness (only me), much to everyone's amusement at Wk's from a**hole to president and back to a**hole predicament...

It was great fun!! We should do it again soon!

HO pet peeves

2009-04-27T03:46:00.000-07:00

So yet again, I’ve been guilted into blogging, by the birthday gal no less.
Can’t believe you have been checking everyday even though my blog hasn’t seen activity in the past 4months! (No inspiration to blog. Also busy facebooking! Haha)

Had fun with you jiemeis again today, will promise to blog once I get the photos from everyone.

Anyway, even though I’m still suffering from the aftereffects of our afternoon drinking felt even more postcall than on a normal postcall day), decided to blog abit here out of guilt.

Wanted to blog abt o&g but I think that will make me rather upset as I already feel very sad abt leaving my colleagues and my comfortable lifestyle now which consists of having breakfast after morning changes, visiting each other, having lunch then meeting for ice cream again.

I’m ectastatic abt having finished my last peripheral ward call. If things go according to plan, I may not do calls for the next 1 year! Less money but still Whoo hoo!

So of cos, in my current state of mind (pple who still need to do calls may not appreciate this so much), i didn't mind coming up with a list of top ten most irritating things you get called for in the middle of the night and my also very irritating reply to them, feel free to add on!

10. At 2am,
- Dr, pt want to talk to you regarding mx/blood results/plug feel uncomfortable/feel hot/why must have drip?
- Me: i'm very busy now, got many sick pts lor (this is most of the time true), tell the pt i can't come so soon. *drops by in an hour or two -> pt most prob will be sleeping soundly*

9. At 3am,
- Dr, pt say cannot BO, wants fleet NOW
- Me: why he want to spend the night shitting instead of sleeping?

8. - Dr, patient got temperature of 37.8 leh, not on panadol you know....
Me 1 yr ago: oh ok, what case is it? Is it onco case? Is the patient on antibiotics?
Me now: temperature of 37.8 no need to call dr one. If the next temperature more than 38 then call me again. *hang up*

7. - Dr, patient low urine output/NPU
Me, in my heart: bloody hell I also NPU for the whole day liao lor

6. - Dr, patient cannot sleep.
I learnt during the past yr that the drug i most often prescribe and with much enjoyment is piriton

5. - Dr, my pt's hypocount 10 leh
Me: ok *hang up*

4. - Dr, i'm calling from ward **, my patient's bld results come back: Na 133, K 3.5, Cl 90
Me: ... (also dunno wat to say)
Or better still, Dr, results for you to note in ward **. *hang up*

3. At 3am,
- Dr, pt pull out catheter and refuse to be inserted again. We try talk to him many times already, he still refuse.
Me: so what do you want me to do?

2. - Dr, pt say very hungry, the family buy noodle soup for him. Can let him eat or not?
Me: we already wrote there clear feeds 500ml. Wat do you think?
- Orh, so cannot is it?

1. - Dr, can come and set plug? Plug 3 days already must change
Me *roars*: WHY ARE YOU CALLING ME AT 4AM TO DO THIS???????!!!
- Becos IV Abx due at 4am and I off plug already/pt never eat the whole day and i off plug already
- *ROAR*

And the most irritating pet peeve....

- Dr, I'm calling from ward ** i got one patient...
Me *interrupts*: I'm not on call tonight
- ... he say he feel very itchy...
Me *louder*: I"M NOT ON CALL!!!!!!
- huh you not on call ah? Do you know who is on call ah???

My blogshop

2009-03-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

Hey guys i know i haven blogged in ages, really nothing much to blog abt...

I'm creeping towards the end of my long leave, feeling rather melancholy but it was a good break nua-ing around for 1 week, and i thought i would conserve my brain cells by dallying in doing my own blogshop, selling earrings (brand new one lar) and some couple wear stuff.

So dear friends do check out my new blog at jamiesblogshop.blogspot.com and support me k.. to quote Wk's favourite phrase "I give you frenship price!"

Having fun

2009-02-26T06:35:00.000-08:00

I must really apologise to all the nurses i've grumbled abt or showed 'black face' to in the past when they ask me to set plugs.
Cos now i'm grappling with a whole other kettle of fish.
A phenomenon i like to call - The Amazing Disappearing plug, plugs that disappear in the blink of an eye, before one can even mention the words "flush the plug".

Anyway, Im just glad i'm getting out of the madhouse soon. And into a few more days of organized bloodsucking before my leave.. yay!

We just had our Mid-Trimester gathering and had quite a good turn out.
And we’re even thinking abt making it into a two weekly affair, machiam like antenatal follow-up.
I’m love working with such a friendly and fun group of colleagues. I really missed that when I left GS.

And in this posting, it’s close to impossible NOT to socialize.

No matter what time i turn up for lunch (anytime betw 12 to 2) I will always meet people i know in kopitiam (for a combi of reasons of us taking a loooonng lunch break and us having staggered lunch timings in accordance to our workload, of cos the slacker pple can just park their butts at the table for the whole two hours and book seats for the rest)

When I was in a slacker ward previously, Mf and I used to meet up with the usual suspects for breakfast spontaneously. We just naturally gravitate towards the waffle stall after we finish our changes.

And I used to join afternoon rounds everyday, ie. I would go round the other wards to either offer help or get herded along for ice-cream rounds.

I almost cried tears of gratitude the other day when friends pop up unannounced in your ward and silently help to clear up the mountain of stuff on the nursing counter. These angels really kept me sane when i'm the only one left holding the fort in the madhouse.

I had the most fun in the labour ward though, amidst the odd Caesar and of cos, the MANY episiotomies, this was what my partner (in crime) and I got up to:

- laughing hysterically at any and everything (even the clerk and the midwives ask us why we’re always so happy)
- eating “ang ku kuehs” (this is such an obscure reference made by Ws that I think only us and the midwives who hear us laughing abt it knew)
- disappearing for breakfast after rounds everyday (a habit strongly encouraged by our Mo). Sometimes the nurses take great joy in surreptitiously letting us know that they know we went off “Dr Lee, when you come back up, can you….” Or “Is the other HO also with you?” and sometimes, not so surreptitiously, “Dr Lee, you at break is it!”
- talking crap with the many poor thing friends who turn up with CTGs in tow
- taking photos of the poor thing friends and the even more poor thing MO
- "following" for each other .. heehee
- throwing a pizza party!! on own turf where sadly we labour ward pple missed cos we were too busy and had to accept help from our frenz to gulp down a few pieces of very cold pizza
- attempting to look 'meredith grey'-ish becoz not out of coolness but becos we were just simply too cold

I love my Labour Ward gang!

We're going to the Zoo! Zoo! Zoo!

2009-01-25T08:15:00.000-08:00

We're going to the zoo! Zoo! Zoo!
You can come along too! Too! Too!"

I remember when ages ago i was still young and energetic i used to sing this song all the time to bug the hell out of Catechol, but he still refuse to budge and bring me to the zoo. ("Now go for wat?! Next time got kids liao then go mah, if not wasted!"

Now that i'm all old and too lethargic to drag my creaking joints out into the sun, i finally got my long time wish fulfilled.

I have to thank my dear gal and her guy who had complimentary passes to the zoo, which means that anytime that suit their fancy they (plus 2 others) can go to the zoo! (Can you believe it?! I used to volunteer at the zoo and even I din get free tix lor)

Me is happy!

The white tiger looks rather cagey though, it kept pacing that narrow ledge repeatedly while i watch on uneasily (of cos when we mention to our other friends the night before that we were going to the zoo, someone invariably just have to mention that white tiger incident -_-")

I love otters!

I was very amused that some of the animals have been adopted by local companies that's related to animals, like the lions by SPC, Jaguars by Jaguar (duh) and this giraffe is Growie, adopted by that milk powder company that goes "Grow! Grow! Grow!" in their advertisement.

We thought the baboons' butts look like cancerous growths

I can't help it, i like taking photos of animals' butts

Catechol was very very excited abt lions, they are his fav animal (for all the wrong reasons) but the lone lion in the zoo just look sad and frumpy. Kinda reminded me of the wounded lion statue in Switzerland.

We love horsies!

I had fun, I really really did! And it was cool double-dating with my dear gal.
Thanks gal, we must do this again some day!

Third posting

2009-01-15T05:30:00.000-08:00

I have a love-hate relationship with CTGs.

I get really irritated when the nurses call me for CTGs, especially just after I made a trip down to LW and especially after I made a point of asking at least 3 times if there are any more CTGs.
But also it’s ridiculous the amount of joy I get when I manage to grab an unsuspecting MO to sign without spending too much time or trouble. Got one MO always say to me, “wah! I come and review my patient in the ward liddat also can get captured by you.”
So you can imagine I nearly wept tears of joy when post-call Prof actually said to me, “come come are those CTGs signed? I sign for you!”

It’s been close to 2weeks now, they put me in the slackest ward and still I’m not very used to how things get done here:

- why do we have to label the forms ourselves (I accept that here I have to do every single FBC, UECr but how come I have to sign and label forms too? Have I been too spoilt by the SGH nurses, can’t remember if I used to paste stickies and label forms in changi)
- why do we have to chop chop our name on every single freakin thing we touch?
- why we are not expected to manage patients at all

Anyway I’ve learnt (thru the hard way) not to think too much but to just carry out the orders like robots, and periodically look inwardly at my brain to see that it’s still around.
It’s a nice reprieve from Medicine so I’m not going to complain (too much) but I foresee a thick layer of rust coating my brain at the end of 4 months.

I’m very sad to realize that all my blog entries in the recent 8mths have been abt work, and nothing else. So my resolution here is to try my best to change that. In other words, to get myself a life.

TWO more to go

2008-12-25T03:34:00.000-08:00

Yay TWO more calls to go!

I can't believe some people are actually sad that this posting is ending. Me, everytime i do a countdown i feel like dancing about the place. I've had enuf of writing problem lists and correcting discharge summaries and dealing with my ward ** attitude everyday.

I just survived yet another awful call and really i can't wait for it all to be over.

I had fun meeting up with u jiemeis at long last (Sm can we have th ephotos??) it's nice to talk abt something other than work and of cos, the 'sticky date' was to die for.
Do you think we can meet up more often next posting?? (Cos technically only 2 out of 6 of us will be working. Sorry Wk)

My call with my teary eye was really quite funny (another sleepless night of cos) but at least i was working for my fav B2 nurses (they are the best!) and onco patients (who are always very nice and pleasant). Every time i had to set plug and esp when i catheterise patients I would tear away most pitifully. I think my patients were most amused.
And of cos, I had even more difficulty than usual doing catheterisations with just one eye (i dunno if it's my luck or wat but i always have alot of trouble with cath-ing, be it because of anatomy or silly uncles who pee away when i was in the middle of it, i think i just dun have the gift for it lar). Oh well! I'm looking forward to the next 4mths of ab-so-lute-ly ZERO catheterisations to be done, muahahaha!

Merry Christmas one and all!!!
Let's all do the countown together: 6 more days to go!

So lucky

2008-12-15T23:14:00.000-08:00

I've been so bored at home cos i can't read, i can't (really) blog, I can't (really) watch tv and i can't (rally) sleep.

The only thing i can do with ease now is eat. -_-

I told my secretary my mc is till tis friday and immediately i got an sms to tell me tat technically i have to be back at work on sat.
(in other words "u jolly well get ur ass in asap after slacking off for so long")

The ophthalmo guy says i'm in no position to work till next week though, but decided to give me mc till fri only cos he "sensed my reluctance" to take mc for so long. When actually what i'm thinking is, "i HAVE to do call on friday! if not that would mean 4 calls in 8days!"
So with or without sight i will be doing my call that day.

Let's all cross our fingers and hope there wun be many difficult plugs to set that day.

Anyway i told Wk i've got an infected corneal ulcer and the dear girl only said 2 words:

"So lucky"

-_-"

I've got an infected corneal ulcer

2008-12-14T05:33:00.000-08:00

I've been bumbling about with my eyes close and tearing like crazy from my right eye for the past 2 days.

The GP says: "I admire u ur grim determination to bear with pain, most people would have seeked medical attention right away."

My dad says: "See this is what u get for insisting on going out for holiday instead of resting at home on ur leave."

The A&E MO says: "Ooh! It really IS an ulcer!"

The Eye guy says to his MO: "It's a good thing she's on leave or she could have gotten it from one of her patients." (gulp! did he mean MRSA???)

Catechol says: "dear u can sing the Wei Lian Chu Mo song now."

My fellow respi HO who covered for me while i was on leave, says: "Come back soon!!! I hate ward ** coverage."

I was running around KK today trying to hunt down HODs, and getting hopelessly lost cos i cant read the signs or 'see the light' (inside joke that only Wk knows) when i met some friends doing O&G now,
and they said, "woah! ur eyes quite bad."

AND they also said, "O&G's NOT a bed of roses like they told you. It's actually quite bad now due to the lack of HOs."

I said, "OH no! What have i done???!!!!"

Anyway, what's done is done and whether i get paeds or o&g i'm just looking forward to the end of medicine and awful calls.

Im just pissed that i have to spend my days at home half blind and applying eye drops every hour. (yup! no sleep for me).

I was trying very hard to recall if i had seen a case of corneal ulcer during my opthalmo posting but for the life of me i can't remember. Think i was having too good a time enjoying myself and slacking away.

He got discharged!!!!!!!

2008-11-13T06:25:00.000-08:00

In answer to Wk's comment: 'cos i enjoyed using my leave to do absolutely nothing at all'.
[I did perm my hair though, so now i'm a ex-P lookalike. Think that was so lame only a select few will get it. So if u wanna see my new hair, you will have to find time to meet up with me lor hiak hiak hiak]

Here's the long overdue photos:

I've said it once and i'm not afraid to say it again, "So sad Sm cannot come! I miss her!!! And all the gossip!"

Just had my first day of work back from leave.
Some things change (the nurses are still calling the other HOs.. yippee..), some things don't (my patients are still around).
The others say, "good! You're all refreshed from your leave, can work hard now!" '___' "

Luckily, we've sort of successfully managed to arrange a HO get-together after work drinking session tmrw just so we can have smth to look forward to.
Well, actually, dunno if it's successful yet. It's more of like a whichever's discipline finished changes first, hurry up, rush down to reserve the table for us. Unfortunately, think got quite a few from Gastro and of course the four of us, and i'm already prepared to arrive the latest.

And even more excitingly, somebody managed to arrange a ex-cgh gs outing! Ahh so fun, i miss those guys so much... And just shortly after i received the notification, I got a sms from a fren, regarding one of our ex-patients who finally managed to get discharged [for those of you were my ex-colleagues: he whom everyone knows and on whom we had done 6am blds on during our 4mths there] OMG! I can just imagine the whole team, no make that the whole gs department, throwing a celebration in honour of him.
Haha feels like our HO get-together is to celebrate his discharge lo.

But before all that, we have to go for some communication skills test first, which i heard is going to be damn embarrassing.
It so doesn't bode well when everyone i've spoken to who had previously gone for the session, says "oh that! Yar i remember it." with a wry grin on their faces.

6 more weeks to go before 5day work week! I can't wait.

We are 6 months old!

2008-11-01T06:56:00.000-07:00

It's a testament to how much i miss changi when i force Catechol to drive all the way to the east today to hunt down this market that's one of my fav sneak-away lunch places. But sadly, and quite expectedly, I failed to describe the address to Catechol -_-"

One thing abt working with Easterners is that even though you may lunch with different kakis, everyone seems to know where all the good food places are.

A comment like "That time Ms Koh treated us to very good cheng teng...." will invariably be met with "oh ya! I know the place, the cheng teng is damn good!" or "ok! let's go there for lunch, i know how to go!"
Or "Ed brought me to this market near his army camp with good pasta, do u know..." will see us at the very market 10min later.

Or
Me: "What market is this?"
Jw: "I dunno, i call it the round market." (The market is circular in configuration)
Me: "Round market???? Isn't there a proper name?"
Ph: I also know it as the round market.

As such, it is quite impossible for 2 Westerners to revisit all these places.

.
.
.

Anyway, i find it quite disconcerting to be working at my current workplace where i find my private and working worlds clashing horribly.
I was just talking to my mo who live next to this shopping centre that i hung out at almost weekly ever since my teenage formative years. And she immediately came up with an impressive list of Colleagues She has Spotted at said Shopping Centre, which includes more than a few of my bosses. Very scary i tell you.
And sometimes, i find myself suppressing a shudder when i read the addresses of some of my patients.
Much too close for comfort.

I know i haven been blogging much, too tired and my life has been too boring to blog.
And this is most likely my last post in a long long time as i head into the 2 busiest postings ever.

After one whole month of lamenting my fate, and hearing "Oh no, you're going there next mth? Very busy! It's the worst!" from at least 10 HOs, 5MOs, a few nurses and even my GP (!), i think i have finally accepted my fate.

On a happier note, I've got 5 glorioous days of leave next week!
I'm available on 11th and 12th of nov if anyone's leave clash with mine and would like to meet up!

Lonely calls

2008-09-20T00:59:00.000-07:00

And so I’ve survived another call.

I can’t help reflecting in my post call state that doing calls here is really very very depressing and lonely, I always find myself in a grumpy mood everytime I’m on call.

Previously, for GS HO1 calls, I’m almost always in a cheerful mood, because I find GS active calls are quite fun, that is, before the cases start piling up.

I start my call joking with the nurses and scolding them for calling me for new cases at 9am in the morning, and then groan loudly in the later part of the day, “why liddat??!!! The cases just don’t stop!” and the nurses would say, “yar you always so suay one”
And at around 3-4am while hanging out at my favourite ward 16 where the nurses feed you with food and gossip (once on a particularly bad call, one of them even made me tea), I can always bump into the active Orthopod and we would trade stories while furiously making the list. Invariably my HO1 calls always clash with D or Mc’s and the nice guys have more than once offered to help me with my bloods. So nice the feeling of helping each other out.

Even with the Orthopods I don’t really know, you can always strike up a conversation to brighten up your call, like:
Me: Hey, did you hear abt the mass cas with the overturned lorry of bangalas?
E: Yes! I got one of them.
Me: Hey I got the driver. Do you know if any more are coming up?
E: My guy told me the rest went home. Phew!

My overturned lorry of bangalas is a classic story, I told everyone abt it.

It first began with how one day both me and my MO was on call on another team’s take, and he was laughing at how many new cases they have already. I scolded him, “don’t say that! We’re on take this fri, will have retribution one!”
MO: “nvm wat, I’m on leave, may you get a lorry full of bangalas come in on you.!”
Apparently that’s his fav curse and he has been saying that for eons.

So suay suay it was raining on my call day and the A&E Reg casually mentioned to me that there is a mass casualty coming in.
I frantically asked the A&E nurses for any gossip and they told me it was an overturned lorry load of bangalas.
“Huh!!!!” I wailed desolately. This was when I was already in the CT room, so naturally the nurse and the radiographers happily shared stories abt their experiences with mass cas involving bangalas and creative ways to tell them apart while I just marveled at my luck.
After I returned to the A&E, I heard the P2 room fill with bangalas who were erm…all rather vocal with their distress -_-“

I told everyone in the wards that a lorry full of bangalas overturned on me. Ph, cos he’s my teammate, patted me on the back consolingly, E (my other teammate) uttered his usual curse of “si mi lao gao!” And EVERYONE ELSE whom I told the story to laughed loudly and prolongedly.
Heng heng only got 9 bangalas, I later found out. An orthopod meanly said, “maybe it’s a lorry of 9 which collided with a bus of 30.” -_-“

Even that MO who was on leave found out abt it cos when he came back the first thing he did was to laugh at me abt it. Turned out my con was so excited abt the case he actually immediately put in on his facebk.

Sigh!

I miss those days!

Turkey photos

2008-09-12T19:36:00.001-07:00

After my first month of end work at 10pm-eat dinner on car-bathe-then sleep immediately after, and three months of end work at 8pm-sleep on train-eat dinner-home, bathe and sleep immediately after, I suddenly find that i have alot of free time on my hands.
I only realised this when i found myself going to sleep at 9.30pm at night. Thats when I told myself, jeez, i have got to do smth besides eat, watch tv and sleep.

So i decided to finally go thru my holiday photos and post some up here:

Of course first ust put up the obligatory photos of the mosques
(My MOs asked me: What the hell d you do in Turkey???
Me: See mosques lor
MOs: screeched with laughter
See mosque very funny meh?)

Of unbelievably breathtaking beautiful scenery:

Of funny rock-formations

What do you mean they look..erm.. weird.
I think they look just like what their name suggests: fairy chimneys.

A camel

And a last one of me looking happy, cos i look like a miserable bitch in the remaining of the photos to come.

More photos later.

First week

2008-09-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

I never thought I'd say this, but i really miss my ex-hospital and GS!!

I miss the nice bosses
I miss the friendly nurses who you can gossip with while working
I miss my fellow HOs
I miss my MOs
I miss having 98.8% of my colleagues and bosses being guys
I miss the numerous and fast computers and printers that actually work
I miss the cosy MO rooms where at least 6 of us can do discharges at the same time chat with each other.
I miss the blood trays
I miss the bld c/s sets +++++
I miss the cso
I miss the call dinners
I miss the team dinners
I even miss the team list!

I just feel so alone all the time, with no one to talk to. And i miss having the autonomy for my patients. And i miss the satisfaction of taking care of my patients and reporting my work during exit.

Now, all i am is truly a glorified pen.
I just feel so sian all the time that i become damn slow and stupid. I think my Reg is rather disgusted with me.

Today we had a sort of impromptu get-together with some of my ex-partners and it made me feel so much better to have them feel exactly the same way i do.
We all had varying degrees of depression in our first week.

Sigh what am i going to do?

Last week

2008-08-26T03:51:00.000-07:00

The one thing abt being in a slack, err i mean, not so busy team, after an extrememly extremely busy team is that when you're waiting for your ex-teammates for dinner, you wait really long.

I'm now so bored i'm actually blogging (breaking my own vow to not blog on a public computer), to think i could have left at the unprecedented time of 4.55pm loh! Bah!

Last week in GS, having bittersweet feelings abt it... Happy cos i'm looking forward to having a new working environment (and of cos no more loooong train rides and expensive cab rides everyday) and also looking forward to all the team dinners and farewell lunch, but sad cos it's been a really nice three months (minus first month) here and i would definitely miss the bosses and nurses here.

I've realised tht alot of things which i previously thought abt myself has changed during my time here:

eg. Me of the extreme good call luck actually have quite horrible luck after all. (despite all the mee 'siam' and 'shui jiao' i ate)

eg. I used to think i'm quite lucky one, but i'm actually the 'suay kia' here. I actually have EIGHT M&MS under my name, can you believe it? Heng my fren did one for me, so I only have SEVEN cases to present in FOUR months. Most people only have 1 or 2 lor! Just call me the Angel of Death.
[Over here, the HOs present Mortality cases instead of MOs. I also dunno why. I think it's to punish us for being so suay]

eg. I have tried to "curse" myself into having a good call, you know, like my famous line "I want to see snow", I always go "I will have only 10 admissions this call!" but those days always end up my worst calls ever. Now, I just keep quiet and refuse to say anything.
Even when the other day, my MO came up to me and said, "Looks like you're having a good one eh" i shushed him loudly. At 7am, I announced loudly and proudly to Ph, my teammate, "Yay! Good call! I managed to predischarge some pts some more!" And immediately after that, TWO Trauma Activation came in -_-"

Argh.. gotta go.. the nurses spied me hanging around and now i have to go do changes.

Anyway, wat's our plans for sat??

Reflections

2008-08-18T08:06:00.000-07:00

I think after 4mths of being in close proximity for long hours with the people i work with (or rather *cough* work for), some of their temperament has sort of rubbed off on me.
I've become much more impatient and have gained something of a bad temper.
I want things to be done stat.
I get mildly PO-ed when people dilly-dally when things can be done in half the time.
I multi-task such that everytime i sit down to do a discharge/write blue letters, i just have to talk to the other HOs in the vicinity (even the orthopods) or the nurses.
I get VERY angry when my post-exit time gets wasted by people/ridiculous calls from nurses when all i want to do is to finish my changes, get the list done and get out of the hospital asap. This irritation increases exponentially after 7.30pm.
I get twitchy when ward rounds are too slow.
Everything i do during call is done with the motivation of getting the patient into OT ASAP and facilitating discharge the next day.

I blame it all on the past 3.5months. I used to be so nice and patient and mild manner-ed lor!
But that said, I would really really really really miss the department after i'm gone. Really, I could not have asked for a friendlier working environment and i really enjoyed the cammeraderie betw the HOs and even with the seniors and bosses.

It's so nice to lend a much appreciated helping hand to a colleague whom you know is just dying under the workload.
Or have someone else help you so that we can all go off early tog or go for lunch tog.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It was the medical students' last day with us on fri, and i was very touched and surprised to receive cards and sweets and chocolates from various groups of them. Some i dun even recognise.
I felt so bad that they are thanking me for working them like slaves, and i didnt even teach them much cos i was too busy.
Thus they have successfully guilted me into promising to give them tutorials in their medical posting, what i didn't realise until too late is that they will ALL be going to the same hospital next month. Oops! Hope they dun remember my phone number.
Speaking of which, I found out with my very own eyes that they actually have a TV in their lounge!!!! WTH!!! Hmmph!!!
Ph and I sneaked into their lounge and watched the China-Sin table tennis match with all the medical students on their last day, which was a welcome change from watching the Olympics in our fav patients room during rounds and TDS (that's another story for another day).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have so many other things to blog abt my time here, its been really quite fun. Like the adrenaline high we get when we managed to get lunch successfully. Or that time i gathered the other teams' HOs on an impromptu outside lunch and we got well and truly caught by my bosses no less ("horrr! Caught you! How ARE the patients?"). (And a few nurses: "Jamie, just now afternoon i saw you all outside eating lunch leh!") How we have our fav theme song that i would start humming whenever it's time to visit a certain patient.

But i'm too tired now, cos i'm post post call.

Commencement

2008-07-27T08:07:00.001-07:00

Coolness! Wk and I are united again!
Haha maybe she can even give me lifts in the morning! Aww how sweetly reminiscent of our sip days, hor Wk my dearest? (do u want to give me lifts everyday so tat we can reminisce tog? heeheehee)
And also some of my colleagues now are going to the same hosp too! I already warned the future orthopod that if i catch him slacking away at one corner while i'm worked half dead i'm gonna be so PO-ed. And he had the gall to say, "haha and i'm not going to help AT ALL." Bleh! So much for going thru thick and thin tog here.
I sms-ed a fellow HO fren who's there now, and she replied, "yay! come suffer tog with me!" Crap!

By a lucky fluke of miscommunication, my MO asked for post-call for me at an obscenely early time, which resulted in me going off at 2pm. So I'm still feeling quite high now which is why i'm blogging and not sleeping like the dead. (I did sleep like the dead on the train back and also in the train station while waiting for Catechol tho, i have GOT to stop sleeping on trains, I keep missing my stop and I'm positive I look an absolute sight!)

New team this week. Still not used to the pattern of this team. I'm still used to (or mayb so traumatised it's embedded in my brain) the hurricane style of ward rounds of the previous team.
In the previous team i go, "ptvomitx2tempafebvitalsstableNBONopassingflatusleftsump300righsump250aspnilRdrainamylase1034Ldrainamylase560" all in one breath. And the con will immediately say, in his one breath, "offRsumpoffRmorrisonskeepleftsumpsenddrainforamylasespigotNG8to8rptblds6amgetachecktubeapptfortdy" with the last plan usu said as he's walking off. And usu when i finish writing the plan i rarely have time to draw the abdomen and scribble down some exam findings before the con has disappeared from view.

In this team i can say, "Wah! She's now afebrile!"
AC: "Waahh! REally ah??!!!!!"
MO: "it's a miracle!!!!!"
And that will be it.

Anyway i think i will enjoy the last mth here. It's nice to know how things run and know most of the nurses such that they will offer you food and occasionally take blds for you and you have someone to chat with while doing work.

But I will DEFINITELY not missed the long uncomfortable train ride home when i dunno when i will sucumb and drool on the shoulder of the guy next to me when i sleep.

On a different note, here are the long long long overdue commencement photos:

My official photographer of the day

My fellow HO partner who went through thick and thin with me. Absolute torture in the first month, and quite a stressful third month. Check out his eyebags. Mine were covered with a layer of thick makeup.

My fav guys from my ex cg. Missed those guys!

I LOVE this photo!!!!!!

With Gh at last!

With Sm AT LAST!!!

Last Day of Leave

2008-07-22T04:29:00.000-07:00

Ugh...

I'm exhausted after my Turkey trip.. I think i lost even more weight if possible.
And I brought home with me as a sourvenir, the Turkish flu, the Turkish GE (very bad), sunburn and aching muscles.

Gah and i have to start work tmrw...

Though it'd be nice to see everyone again, all I can say is: it really sucks to have to wake up at 5 plus again.. boo!

In a bad mood now, will try to blog abt my hol in the future.

My first weekend off

2008-06-13T19:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday i was in the cso at 6.30pm preparing my presentation when suddenly a disembodied voice (you know how it is in the cso: never a good idea to gossip abt ur bosses or anyone for that matter there cos u never know who might be behind the partition beside you) that sounded like my consultant called out "JAMIE!"
I said, "yes?" uncertainly, half-expecting him to pop up and instruct me something that i have to do asap, and also half-thinking, "am i so sick i'm hearing voices?", and my con's disembodied voice called out again, "go home and have a good rest tmrw"

Awwww!
"Oh, thanks!" I called out to the room in the general direction of his voice, cos i still wasn't able to locate him.

But who cares cos:
Yay I got my first off in 6weeks today!
But i'm horribly horribly sick.. Bleh!
And i have to cover the fort all by myself tmrw, and present at xray conference on mon.. sigh
But it's ok... i'm still in a delirious mood... Never had i appreciated sleeping late on a Saturday more (actually i still got a few calls in the middle of the night cos i was supposed to be on call but a kind friend switched calls with me last min cos i'm sick (febrile Tmax i-dunno-lar-but-it-was-so-bad-i've-been-making-alot-of-silly-mistakes)

so it went like this:
4am..
Nurse: Dr Lee, i'm calling from ward 47, my patient.....
Me, croaking into the phone: Eh! I change call with Dr *** leh, can u call him instead?
Nurse (prob can't understand me cos of my cough-induced frog-like voice): huh? hello?
Me, screams: call Dr ***, he's the passive today!
Nurse: huh? Orh sorry
Me *hangs up*

Ah.. the joy of watching brainless weekend morning cartoons, slowly enjoying my morning cup of tea (without gulping down my breakfast at top speed so that i can eat faster than my bosses) and enjoying a morning dump haha

Anyway, are u guys absolutely furious abt our phone bills???
I had advanced warning abt it from the other HOs so i was mentally prepared, otherwise when i open my bill, i would have AMI-ed on the spot (btw, that was a good one, Wk)

My phone bill:
Incoming 890.5min $133.94
Outgoing 277.9min $41.74
SMS 109messages $5.45
Amount payable $52.60 !!!!!!!!!!WTH???!!!!!!

I kept track of my outgoing calls on my phone and i so did not make 300 minute of calls!!!!
Anyway, someone went to call 'the phone company concerned' and they said that everytime someone is unable to reach you and the call gets diverted to ur voicemail this is considered as 1 outgoing call.
And in 'my workplace' somehow the reception is horrendous at night so I can get up to 20-30 diverted calls during one nightcall, so my advice is cancel the call divert function on your phone NOW.
'The phone company concerned' also agreed to reimburse us our supposedly free SMSes next month...

My First in 5 weeks

2008-06-08T06:16:00.000-07:00

Today after exit round, my con said out of the blue, "Jamie, go off first."

I'm so used to them saying "Jamie, go to here-and-here and do this-and-this" and "Jamie, go to there NOW and get that done NOW", I just sort of stared at him with a "huh? go where?" look on my face (also, I'm post-call, so mentation drops by 70%), and he said again, "go off first. This is an order. The rest will do ur work for you." I opened my mouth to protest, and he said, "this is an order. I want you all to go home and rest so that i can overwork you again tmrw." Haha.

And that was how I got my first post-call in 5weeks. Even though that was at 12noon on a sunday but I still very happy le.
In fact I was so ecstatic that i'm finally leaving the hospital in the 'early afternoon' that i immediately arranged for a 'k-lunch' session. And realised that singing with only 30min of sleep the previous day is not a good idea at all, totally lost my voice in 3hrs.

Hope i dun get scolded tmrw.

Yay I like my new team! Will definitely enjoy my remaining three weeks here, and then 11days of countdown to my long awaited leave. I can't wait!

Hope u guys are doing ok too...

What I learnt from the past month: You may be worked to the very core of your being, you may be hanging to the last threads of your sanity, you may go home in tears everyday, you may see nothing ahead of you but day after day of non-stop work.
But once you get out of this darkest times of your life, the relief and the incredulity at actually coping with your work and finishing ahead of time is the best gift you can ever receive.

Hang in there guys!

1 month down

2008-06-01T05:59:00.000-07:00

And so, for our pains this past month we had a lovely hanabi dinner treat from our boss..

How come they dun have this 'thank you' dinner at the start of the posting instead?? It's so weird having to relax and enjoy yourself with people who chides you almost on a EOD basis, then finally u relax enuf to enjoy yourself at the end of the dinner, and you think, awww too bad we're leaving the team soon already....
I think it's all a ploy to keep us on our toes the whole month, work us to the bone and then send us off all nice and relaxed to the next team to have the process repeated all over again.
I enjoyed the dinner tho, although i confirmed that my appetite has really shrunk to pathetic portions. The bosses' impression was that most of the MUGA scan tracer activity is found in one person only, and that person is not me! In fact, i think i ate the least.

Haha and my con is really very funny, I quite enjoyed listening to all his tales abt his HO days. Really can't imagine how they get by then without the technology and the nurses that we have now.
The other day I covered Endo and both their printers broke down, and I had to discharge FORTY patients by hand, including writing out prescriptions and MCs, and on top of taking consent and setting plugs. I got a blister for my efforts, and nearly die-ded.

My con say next time HOs should just go around carrying video cameras, so instead of frantically searching for the yellow sheet and documenting down everything that was discussed, we can film it down instead. haha will definitely cut down my workload and stress levels by half.

Anyway, i've got mixed feelings abt moving on to another team. I'm glad because i think i would enjoy a change and hopefully leave behind the days of 15working hrs (non-call days) for good but sad, cos i'd really miss my friends, esp my fellow sufferee who slogged along with me till 10pm everyday (most days later) for those awful weeks. And I would certainly miss a few of our special 'friends' (my con coined this term, not me), some were there with us right from the very beginning, and as i passed these 'friends' over to the new peeps today, I marvelled at how well i got to know them (well, i should since I wrote a ridiculous number of blue letters for them) and felt abit apprehensive abt getting to know new 'friends' all over again.

Oh well, 1 month down.
I'm now counting down to my long leave (1 month and 11 more days to go) and then I'd be counting down to the days of post-calls, MOs who you see for more than 3hrs a day, no more of frantically clerking SDA cases on top of elective cases and most importantly of all: NO MORE LISTS!!!!!!

2008-05-23T09:05:00.000-07:00

Things are going to get better.

They have to.

I wouldn't know how i'm going to cope other wise.

Confirm will lose weight

2008-05-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, thanks for asking abt me..
I'm still alive...

Barely....

Working from 7am (sometimes 6am) to 9pm (sometimes 10-11pm) every single freaking day (weekends is 3pm) is no joke...
Having to work till 9pm on post-call with zero sleep is no joke...
Having nothing to eat the whole day until 10pm at night is ... well i'm kinda used to it already, u'd be surprised by how much my appetite has decreased now.
Having zero sleep during calls and still being expected to function at top-notch the next day is no joke.
[I must say, I've done various funny things on post-call days, like nearly toppling off my chair while dozing at M&M, falling asleep with my eyes open in the middle of doing a discharge summary, i think I actually typed out snippets of my dream in the discharge, and to my horror, even printed it out!, falling asleep in the middle of a busy restaurant halfway through lunch (this was on a sun) and not even realising it, falling asleep in the middle of talking]. All i can say is, there goes all my hopes of getting a car this yr, I've been so tired nowadays that outside working hours, I fall asleep when i sit down anywhere anytime.

It's been a rollercoaster ride so far, on bad days when the list is impossible and u have so many changes and the nurses still call you every five minutes for changes and new elective cases, I'm close to slipping into depression, on good days (weekends) I go bouncing around the hospital smiling at everyone and even the ward clerk would comment that i look chirpy.

But i'm surviving, and learning to make the most out of things and trying (hard) to find joy in whatever i'm doing everyday.
And I really learnt to appreciate (some of) my patients and my colleagues. The other HOs are all wonderful and we help out and encourage each other everyday.

I'm just looking forward to my 2nd month when hopefully, hopefully i can get some weekends and post-calls off.

First Day

2008-05-02T07:26:00.000-07:00

I.AM.EXHAUSTED.

My working hours are from 6.30am to 8.00pm today, and in this time, I drank zero sips of water, went to the toilet zero times, gobbled up 1/4 of a packed lunch (before the meeting began and we were sort of obliged to stop eating), sat a total of less than 30minutes and spent the rest of the time walking and walking and walking and sometimes running, and climbing stairs (e lifts went cuckoo on me after 6pm, or rather i still can't figure out the system, so i had to use the stairs).

Was utterly utterly exhausted when i left the wards, and when i saw the friendly shuttle bus (so colourful, and got neon blue lights twinkling at me some more), i just crawled onto it and collapsed onto the nearest seat.

But I cheered up immensely when I saw a familiar figure slouched his way onto the bus, and collapsed onto the seat beside me. We looked at each other from our collapsed positions (i couldn't move, really) with identical looks of defeat on our faces.
The sense of camaraderie is comforting.

Poor Hag... I felt better abt my day already after hearing abt his crazy day.

Cynical and Pre-Cynical

2008-04-30T01:23:00.000-07:00

Our first day of work tmrw..
just want to give everyone an encouraging hug and a consoling pat on the shoulder.
May we all have nice consultants, nicer regs, the nicest MOs and super nicest patients...
May we all have manageable calls and at least be able to eat 1 meal and visit the toilet once everyday.
May we all survive.

I'm going to miss everyone sooooooooooooo much!! Jie-meis, non-jiemeis, med peeps, non-med peeps, and Sandy.
And Wk, after spending 5years in hospitals tog, i think i'd be lost (literally lost) without you...
Zh, u must take over the burning torch and take over my duties as her PA, which includes pointing out to her your colleagues, whispering to her the names of people that she is talking to, and also informing her of any jiemei gatherings, or impt meetings since she doesn't check her mail. btw, also will have people sms u to tell u to pass messages to her since she doesn't check her sms-es. These people include our friends, her sis and occasionally, her sis's bf.

Sob sob sob sob sob.....
Miss u guys......

Nothing to blog abt

2008-04-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

And so we're not allowed to talk or blog abt anything that happened within the four walls (or rather, many walls) of our workplace.
I also found out today that even though no names were mentioned, the lawyers can still find a way somehow.
sheez.. and i tot i was being careful with my fake names and asterisks and all..

But i think I would comply with this rule, not because i want to protect my a*s (well, partly that of cos), but because i don't like the idea of trivializing somebody's (a stranger no less) suffering or traumatizing experience into a blog entry or as a dinner table topic, just for entertainment purposes or to impress your friends. That's why i always feel uncomfortable whenever somebody talked shop in too much detail.

Not that i'm on the moral high ground here, I'm sure I've broken this rule countless times in the past when I was still a student (noticed how i sneakily purple-ly included the word 'student'? aiyah, just in case mah), and I'm sure I would forget abt this in the future when I'm tired and frustrated and just want to rant here.
So please, u guys must remind me k...

So I guess I can only blog abt mundane stuff like the food i ate and the places I went in the future.

But wait, according to our seniors' talks today, we would have ZERO social life and ZERO sunlight for the next year!

Liddat how?

Maybe this blog will become a log of the number of hours i slept...
or the number of hours of sunlight i managed to absorb (machiam like plant)....
or the number of mian baos i forced myself to eat (haha i tot that was so funny), and i actually heard someone behind me say "heng i always eat bread one!" [oh no! i HATE bread, and i LOVE baos] ~ will explain more abt silly myths and karma (good i hope) in the future

or the weird people i encounter on the train in the morning [I got accosted by a bunch of young punks on the train at 6am today. There i was having a nice nap when they very loudly entered the train, stood right in front of me and very loudly blasted techno music and then very loudly started to dance. And kept bumping into my leg some more.
I tried to give them a steely glare, but my heavy eyelids didn't allow me to open my eyes for more than 2mm for more than 3seconds. So i just tried to sleep, thinking "why? why must it be techno? why can't they dance to jazz or michael buble or smth?" And then I realised that while i'm going to work after going to bed at 11pm and then having early morning awakening at 3am, these kids are actually going home from whatever activities they were doing all night. And they still had energy to dance non-stop from city hall to whatever stop after i got off.. I felt like such an old fogey (and dun say i am)]

Photos as promised.

2008-04-25T07:09:00.000-07:00

To the one with the phone of no bluetooth and who wanted me to upload the photos here, nah.. the photos as promised:

Ya i know my friends look great.
Message to guys out there: if u want to get to know them, you have to go through my highly selective criteria first. Growl!

We ate at Sofra, Turkish restaurant at Shaw tower, nice food, nice ambience.

I went there again for dinner recently and they have this promotion for a 10day Turkey, Istanbul tour.
So tempt me lor!!!
[I want to go Turkey, and Egypt, and Greece, and Jordan, and South Africa, and Ireland, and NZ!
With mandatory clearing of leave every 4 months, all i can say is: the impossible dream]

Hey yan and bao, check this out:
When I was looking thru these photos, I tot they look familiar, so i did this:

5years ago:

haha.. got grow older anot?

Sama sama..

heehee

the good old days

Our new old phone

2008-04-24T09:04:00.000-07:00

And so we got our phones today.

Because we were so amused with it, we were all grinning away and the consultant of the workshop promised (and I din doubt her one bit) that we may be smiling now but give us a week or so and we'd feel like throwing the phone out the window.

The phone is so ancient it's actually quite funny. Compared to phones we're used to nowadays, it's functions just bring me back to my jc days when everyone tot the 3310 is just the coolest.
You know how some phones write things like "the 5MP camera phone" big big on their boxes cos theyre so proud of that fact? WEll this one says, "one touch flashlight" big big underneath the model name. Yes, the phone actually does have a flashlight, hmmm i wonder if that's one of the reasons why they gave us this phone??

Ya like anyone would use this to transilluminate a hydrocoele. Cue horrific mental image of someone doing just that and then absentmindedly picking up a call...... EEEW gross! Ugh! I'm sick.

Also, we all thought the same thing when we first saw the phone, "wah! this phone looks so hardy, confirm cant even smash it against the wall one".. and i realised THIS must be the real reason why the powers-that-be decided this is the phone for us.
It's even written on the box: dust and splash proof. It's so hardy, some of us even had trouble opening the phone to put the batt in. (I wonder if it's drop-from-9th-floor-proof).

Anyway, it has been fun (and traumatizing) snatching each other's phone boxes and saving their numbers. Before i even realised what was happening, everyone had already recorded my number in their phones and it was threats galore abt calling me in the middle of the night with numerous 'realistic' calls.
[I don't care how many times u've sent me to the mrt station, or if u're bigger sized or older (cough cough) than me, if any of u give me prank calls, I WILL humtump u to a pulp and de-friend u forever.]

We were also going around collating numbers among fellow colleagues. Ph was the first to come up to me when I haven't even opened my box yet. I regarded him with narrowed suspicious eyes, "why u so eager want my number?" And he raised an eyebrow at me. And i cant stop the mental image of gigantic arrows heading in my direction and me running and shrieking in the opp direction while taking blood and tracing results at the same time.

Wah... am i so stressed already?

End of Pathetic Break and HO bag

2008-04-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

I can't believe our break is over.
Super depressed today at the thought of our pathetic 3 week (ya we finally made it thru and abt to start on the most difficult phase of our life and they only give us 3 weeks of R&R) break coming to an end just in the blink of an eye..

Three weeks where got enough???!!!
Got friends I haven't met, shopping I haven't shopped, things I haven't bought, blog entries in my head I haven't written, food I haven't eat, places I haven't gone, and definitely did not satisfy the stipulated number of hours that should be spent sleeping and slacking.

Major SIGH

So to get myself in the mood of starting school (sorry, work) again, I took out the HO bag u jiemeis bought me for my birthday. You'd be pleased to know for the past 4months, it's still in its original plastic wrapping still carefully kept in the OG bag.
This was one hour ago.

So what have I been doing for this past one hour:

The wrapping very difficult to take out leh!!
Not that i'm complaining abt your present, If anything, I'm appreciating its beauty more spending the past one hour at such close contact with it.
But really quite frustrating loh.

At one point I just started sniping and sniping at the plastic at all the edges I could get hold off and tearing at the plastic, but this was what i ended up with:

A piece of plastic stuck behind the leather thingy.

And was suddenly reminded of the proper technique of removing the stitches for chest tube and drains (you know, the cut at one end ONLY, cos if u cut at both ends a piece of suture will e left behind and u have to dig and dig for it?)

Argh!

If i can't even remove a lousy piece of plastic what's going to happen to me on 2nd may?

Japan Trip Part Five

2008-04-19T07:43:00.000-07:00

Went down early to our hotel restaurant for the already booked breakfast buffet to be pleasantly surprised by the spread available. In short, ALL the food items that I've eaten for breakfast over the past 4days were available in that one buffet alone.

The highlight of the day is our trip to Miyajima island, famous for its floating torii.

Very nice oh, that's not a postcard photo, I really took it.. Just nice we went at high tide, so we can see the torii at its most beautiful (actually not just nice, I went to check the tide forecast first one)

We took the JR ferry (free!) from JR Miyajima station (30min ride from Hiroshima).
Sights from ferry:

One of the main reasons why I like Miyajima so much, is not because of the scenery, but because deers actually roam freely on the entire island. The Japanese think deers are sacred animals so no harm is done to them.

I really really wanted to feed them, but I couldn't find any vendors selling the deer biscuit (I remember the first time i went Japan, we went to Nara and they had deers there too, and yours truly tasted abit of the deer biscuit cos it looked really delicious. I have no valid excuse. I was 15).

As a result, the deers here were really hungry. And they all seem to have a penchant for eating paper, one snatched my map from my hand when I wasn't paying attention and gobbled up the entire piece lor.

The floating torii is part of Itsukushima-jinja shrine. Previously, the island is considered sacred, so people can only visit the shrine but they had to enter through the floating torii.

I like the red colour architecture of the shrine.

After that, we sort of milled around looking at more deers, shopping for sourvenirs and making deer jokes.

The other main attraction of the island is taking the ropeway to the top of Mt Misen to take in the view, but we decided that was too expensive ($30). and i vehemently vetoed the 4hr long hike to the top of the mountain. So Liang decided we should go look for the deer park in the hopes of seeing more deer. According to the guide, it'd only take 20minutes up the mountain, so I went along with the idea. Oh What a Fool am I!

Took a break at this sakura park where we discovered that deers actually like eating the sakura blossoms.

And I saw Sandy!! Aka mini long haired dachshund, beige in colour. (Have I mentioned that the Japanese absolutely LOVE dachshunds?? I saw 5times more dachshunds here than in my entire lifetime)

And how come this 'Sandy' is prettier, faster, stronger, braver (he wanted to attack the deer) and guai-er than my own Sandy?

After that, we hiked and we hiked and still cannot find the so-called Momijidan deer park. Hiked for 40minutes lor, i started to have the sneaking suspicion that Liang is leading me by the wrong way to trick me into climbing all the way to the mountain top.

Then finally, we saw Momijidan garden, with no deer in sight. And I put my foot down and insist that we head back.
(We conclude that rather than staying obediently in the park, all the deers decide to roam around the jetty where they can hang around tourists. )

Guess who took this: The mother of all self-shot pics, can see the sign somemore lor:

As we head back to the jetty, we tried one of their local delicacies: oyster. Since we both hate oysters, we decided to go for their fried breaded oysters. The oyster took me by surprise as it is still so fresh that it has alot of juice lor, so I succeeded in getting oyster juice on myself.
Also shopped at their local produce stall and bought back some yummy cakes for sourvenirs (sorry u guys, the cakes are only good for 10days).

We then went back to Hiroshima, where it was another mad scramble to get our luggage from the hotel and buy lunch to catch our train back to Tokyo.
Yet another bento lunch:

After a gruelling five hour journey. we finally arrived in Tokyo, and made our way to Ueno station as our hostel is located there.
This is when we faced our big major booboo of the trip.
Cos we somehow lost the reservation of the hostel on which the directions are printed, and I did not write another copy of the directions in my notebook as I assumed that Liang printed, so we ended up totally lost because the small hostel is not reflected on any map we looked at.
We just walked and walked around the huge station with our heavy luggage but no one could help us. Finally, decided to go into a internet cafe and beg the nice Caucasian using the com to let us use for 3minutes...

But still we got lost! As it was already dark and the hostel is in such a ulu place, and looked so nondescript that we walked by it at least 10times. Every single time I walked by I would look at it, and think it's a carpark as there's a huge car park sign next to it.
Thanks to a very very very nice gentlemen, who didn't know where's our hostel and didn't know a word of english, but just took our hotel address and asked around the neighbourhood, and a very nice restaurant boss who took out her street directory, he finally led us all the way to the doorstep of the hostel. SO NICE!!! I gave him a 90degree bow of gratitude.
So it was such that we only took 2hrs to reach our hostel when actually it only takes 10minutes from the JR station.

Immediately headed out to dinner at a fast-food chain.
Yummy food (cheese curry ricebowl and salad with beef rice bowl)

And a waiter who is super efficient and hardworking, he was the only one running the whole place and was cooking, cleaning, washing and collecting money at top speed.
Think he looks quite cool too:

Sights around Ueno (gives me the feeling of bugis + abit of geylang):
seedy Pachinko (gambling slot machines) parlours and lots of young punks.

Ended a stressful evening with a McPork burger haha.. super cheap 1.20 only.

Japan Trip Part Four

2008-04-18T07:26:00.000-07:00

We left Kyoto early to head for Hiroshima.
Had to transit in Osaka, where we did some shopping in the unbelievably huge station.

Everytime we arrive at a station we look out for this board which tells us which track to head to in the confusing maze that is all JR stations.

Arrived in Hiroshima after 2 hrs.
Hiroshima gave me a different feel altogether, it's not like old town kyoto, or bustling Tokyo, but it has a rather peaceful and quiet feel to it.

And in Hiroshima was where we got lost for the first time, we tried to locate our hotel using the city map, and I even have a photo of the hotel in my handphone, but strangely the hotel just couldn't be found at the spot the map said it would be. Liang even went off to run around the area, leaving me with the luggage. And 2minutes after he's gone, I realised tat all this time we have been looking at the wrong icon on the map, the name Ark Hotel on the map is surrounded by 2 icons and the one we've been looking at for the past 20minutes belong to another hotel altogether. Doh! *palm face*

First thing we did was to find some place for lunch.

Decided to eat at another cheap restaurant with importantly, a wide array of plastic food samples. The menu is again no help, but the waitress very kindly said, "sam-pa! sam-pa!" and she went outside the restaurant to patiently wait for me to point out the food samples. The restaurant is another friendly, homely affair where we can sit on tatami and watch tv even.

The main (and only) tourist attraction in Hiroshima is the Peace Memorial Park, we decided to walk 25minutes there. Hiroshima is so small you can practically walk everywhere.
Peaceful city sights:

The museum depicts the history of events leading up to the Atomic Bombing and its aftermath. The photos and specimens of medical effects of radiation were really quite chilling. Not to be derogatory, but I really didn't understand why they had to include so many (close to 100) exhibits of personal items of people who died in the bombing and then tell lengthy detailed sentimental stories abt these people. Kinda took away the impact of the photos.

The A-bomb Dome is the epicentre of the atomic bomb destruction. As such it remained relatively unscathed in the explosion.
This is the actual building:

Children's Peace Memorial in memory of leukaemia victim Sadako, who folded 1000 paper cranes in the hopes of recovering. Folding of paper cranes symbolises the fulfillment of one's wishes.

Our hotel also thoughtfully placed a paper crane for us in our room.

The Centograph and Flame of Peace which would only be extinguished after the last nuclear weapon on earth is destroyed.
We can only live in hope.

A common sight to behold during Sakura season is that the most junior person in the company gets sent to 'chope' a space on the blue mat for his entire company from CEO to cleaning person and they will all drink and eat under the sakura together.

I am put to shame by Liang's self-shot skills:

My attempt:

We then had dinner at a Japanese BBQ restaurant recommended by our hotel.

The moment we stepped in, we stuck out like a sore thumb, because every single table is occupied by Japanese office guys in white shirts and black pants all behaving raucously and drinking beer like water.
Liang trying to fit in:

The manager who came to serve us speaks perfect English, so we decided to support him by having the extravagant buffet set (abt $30 per pax). The food was gooooood.

The only prob is that the manager disappeared after that and we had difficulty asking for refills (I think it's his evil ploy), but heng, we very innovative. I was looking at the menu and amidst the jumble of japanese words, I found the chinese word for cow, so i very cleverly pointed to that, and lo and behold the waitress brought us a plateful of tender melt-in-your-mouth beef slices.
Liang wanted chicken wings, i found the chinese word for chicken but that was followed by the words "mao mao" (=fur in chinese), so we scared it stands for chicken skin, so Liang also cleverly pointed to his chicken wing bones and we flapped our arms for good measure. Think the waiter enjoyed our act, cos he gave us a huge plate of wings.

We emerged from the restaurant very very full and happy:

And the long 20minute walk back to our hotel in the freezing cold digested most of our food for us so I didn't feel too guilty falling asleep on a full stomach.

Japan Trip Part Three

2008-04-17T03:11:00.000-07:00

Again woke up early at 5am (zao sui zao qi sleep early wake early, I felt like I was gh) and had breakfast in the very nice restaurant in the ryokan.
View as we eat breakfast:

Traditional Japanese breakfast:

We then took the bus to Kinkakuji (by now, taking the bus is no big deal for us liao, feel very proud of that fact). As we were walking towards the temple, Liang refused to trust my directions and insisted on stopping to check the map himself. A nice old lady walked over to us and said:

her: smth smth smth ka?? (din understand again)
me: Kinkakuji??
her: smth smth smth (i din understand her directions, but I just knew we were walking in the correct direction, so i said..
me: massugu?? (=straight?)
her: hai hai. massugu desu

So Liang had no choice but to admit i'm right, muahahaha.

The Kinkakuji is a famous temple in Kyoto, renowned for its golden pavillion and its reflection in the pond.

It's freaking full of tourists even though it's so early in the morning. Think this is the first time we encountered tourists in our three days here cos the past few days I tried to avoid the popular tourist atractions, so we hurry up took the opportunity to ask people to take photos for us.

It's also a tourist trap, with many sourvenirs on sale.
[I can't help myself and bought a good luck charm for my friend, when i saw the pink, flowery 'good match' charm I tot of her immediately, cos she, like me, like pink and flowery stuff and I obviously can't buy for myself with Liang standing there mah. When I gave it to her, she asked me where to put it and I said, "err maybe can tuck into ur *cough* undergarments so that u can emit 'attractive vibes' wherever u go." hahahaha]

After that, we found our way to Chion-in temple. I actually intended to take a bus to somewhere else instead, but the lure of the air-conditioned and convenient subway made me change my itinerary. It was a wrong move tho, as we found out that Chion-in temple was a long, long walk away from subway.
It was quite an amusing walk, cos alot of the local folks got off the train tog with us and we all walked up a long slope tog, kinda like a school excursion liddat. I din realise this at first, until Liang and I stopped to take a photo, and suddenly throngs and throngs of people overtook us.

Chion-in temple is a temple for wisdom, and also has many pretty sakura blossoms.

During Gion festival, it's a popular temple for geishas to visit.
I said, "this temple is for wise people one"
Liang: "that's me!"

I suppose the steep climb symbolises the tough journey to attain wisdom.

However, we found a sideroad that's less steep, prob for the older folks to walk up. Heehee.

We then headed to our next must-see temple in kyoto, Kiyomizudera temple.

After walking 10minutes, we chanced upon Maruyama park, a popular park during cherry blossom season.

We were simply astounded by the number of people hanging around, having picnics on those ubiquitous blue mats.

Also, saw two short-haired Sandys aka dachshunds aka Ah-Te, my mother's old dog last time.

I asked someone for directions to Kiyomizudera temple and how long to get there, and the woman said, "ni-ju pun (=20min)".
Remember this 20min, dear friends, remember.

By now, total walking time is probably 1 whole hour, so we also rested for awhile in the park. Poor liang is exhausted. And i'm freaking hot from all the walking. You can see as the day progress, me slowly dismantling parts of my outfit.

And so we walked, and we walked. Along with many many many people.

Up very very steep slopes.

20minutes came and went.
Liang kept saying that maybe my lousy grasp of japanese caused me to think that lady said twenty minutes when she really meant twenty hours.

And we finally reached! At 40min!
To discover to my horror, that there is still a steep climb to reach the main temple itself

This is a badly taken photo of the entrance because i just very tiredly snap the photo from the bench i collapsed onto when i saw it.

Quite funny, there we were, trying to drink the very last drop of water we own and looking utterly exhausted, when suddenly the lady next to me started blabbling to me in Japanese, i told her I didn't understand.
And she stood up, and repeated her speech slowly, and emphasizing a few words repeatedly.
I caught the word 'ocha' (=tea) but looked very bewildered at why this lady was telling me abt tea. She then mimed the drink tea action, and i finally figured out that she's trying to tell us that just left at the top of the steep flight of stairs, there's a station where there's free tea. Free! she stressed.
She must have seen how we were so thirsty and thus tried to get this important msg across to us.
Haiyo, so embarrassing lor!

This is what all the hard work is for, the amazing hanging temple of Kiyomizudera.

The entire temple is overhanging a cliff, and supported only by wooden pillars, no nails and metal involved.

It's one of the nominees for the new 7 wonders of the world.

However, you can tell from my cheesed off face that i'm really really really very tired.

There is also this portion of the temple where there's 2 tiny stone statues placed 10m apart and if one can walk from 1 statue to the other with their eyes closed then they will find true love. I wanted to take a look, but i think it's on another steep slope, so i decided to give it a miss.

Felt a bit cheated, climb so long but din see much. But saw some incredibly beautiful sakura tho, pacified me abit.

We then took a shorter, but still long, route downhill, and immediately popped into the first (cheap) restaurant we saw.
One thing abt menus in Japanese restaurants that are catered to locals, is that the menus are all in jap. Not Romanji (where they use alphabets to spell out the jap translation) or even hiragana (which i can read abit) but katakana. I then walked out of the restaurant to look at the food samples and try to memorise their names, when the very nice manager saw me and he asked, "smth smth menyuu??" and I "hai"-ed (by then i've already learnt that hai-ing my way thru most questions get me the result i want) and he passed me a picture book menu, yay!

My tempura udon

After a nice long lunch, we considered our options and decided to go for another strenuous 45minute stroll along the Path of Philosophy, cos it sounded like a quiet peaceful stroll along the river and sakura.

Little did i know that there were tons of other people who also wanted to stroll along this path, i thought we'd be the only crazy people with this idea.

Very interesting and fun nonetheless, feel a sense of bonding to my fellow walkers, bonded by the common admiration for sakura.

Bought myself a pretty ice-cream to cheer up the stroll, very nice. Dunno what flavour, tho Liang thinks it's bubblegum.

He grumpy lar, cos i tot the ice-cream has a mix of green tea flavour (looks green on the poster) but turns out it's just vanilla.

So we walk walk walk walk walk walk, and we really walked for 40minutes lo.
Sights along the river:

haha then we jumped on the first bus we saw that brings us to Gion corner and happily took a nap on it.

Gion corner is where tourists go to capture photos of geishas, because thats where they go for their appointments.

And i really do mean capture, because only the lucky ones get to catch sight of them (for free, of cos).
While the junior geishas (maikos) are more open to the public, they dun mind strolling along the streets while we run after them and take photos like paparazzi, the true geishas are a secretive sort, they sit in their cabs right up to the door of the establishment, and then furtively run in to their appointment.

That said, Liang and I were really lucky.

I managed to take a good photo of a Maiko the moment we reach, and also would have had shot another geisha if this uncle din jump in front of me at the last min, thus resulting in me having a photo of his oily scalp.

We also saw 4 or 5 'true' geishas in their cabs and try as we might to 'snipe' them (liang's term, snipe as in sniper) we failed, and took various photos of roads, traffic cones and tires.

After the first 15min of excitement, Liang grew tired of being a sniper (he got so bored he sniped me and then moved on to sniping inanimate objects, which defeats the purpose of sniping really) as there were no more geishas in sight (one can easily imagine that you can really spend a fruitless 1hr here) and I got hungry.

We decided to walk over to Nishiki Market for dinner.

Along the way, I visited my first Japan toilet that's in a shopping centre, cos there were signs in English at the entrance of shopping centres welcoming us to use their toilets. What a welcome change to our S'pore toilets.
The toilet also deserves a small mention on its own.

When I first sat down on the toilet seat, I jumped up immediately in disgust, because it is warm and i thought that was the heat left behind by the previous occupant. shudders, but then i realised that the toilet seat is actually electronically heated, whoa, utter bliss in the cold weather.. the Amazing Toilet (it's so amazing it deserves capital letters) also has a button that provides a loud flushing sound that drowns out any embarrassing sounds that might be produced while u do ur business, and a button that produces a refreshing scent haha. Also not forgetting those that provide cleaning functions, but i gave them a miss. Needless to say, I spent quite alot of time on that seat exploring the various buttons.

Dinner was at a family restaurant, these places usually offer a staggering variety of both Japanese and Western dishes, that is of average quality but cheap price. Most importantly, they have a photo menu.

The meal costs us less than 20dollars in total!

After dinner, we were under pressure to leave asap or face the fate of spending the night at ulu town, so we had to ask for directions to the subway.
I flagged down this nerdy looking jap student, but he din understand what;s 'subway'! I tried some other jap words for 'station' but he just looked at us blankly.
Then I said, "it's okay" and sort of waved him off, and he looked damn apologetic and muttered a sincere apology and gave me a full 120 degree bow! If I weren't so stressed I would have burst out laughing.
Liang asked a middle-aged lady in English, and she mimed the 'underground' action, you know, the move hand down a slide action, and we got our directions and ran like hell to catch the train, much like the locals here. (everyone even the chiobus in their high heels run in subway stations. Amazing)

Forgot to mention, at the office next to the gates (look exactly like our control station), one guy will stand at the open window and everytime someone walks through the gates, which is like 20 every minute, the poor person has to say "arigato gozaimasu" (=thank you). What a sucky job!

We managed to catch the last bus by the skin of our teeth.
And that concludes our time in Kyoto, it's really a beautiful city brimming with culture and traditional Japan charm. I think it's my favourite city.

Japan Trip Part Two

2008-04-09T23:18:00.000-07:00

Woke up bright and early for a long day ahead of us (we woke up at 5am singapore time and it was already freaking bright).

Our breakfast (the website i booked the hotel from bluff me say is American buffet breakfast, but think this is better):

Behold the nasty natou:

(the natou is a notorious dish supposedly smelly, and disgusting and an acquired taste. Some people swore by it. I remember watching this anime where the hero is this very good-looking, cool, smart, amazing, popular hero whose only flaw is his love for natou. haha very funny when the girls found out)

After breakfast, we checked out, and decided to squeeze in a trip to the Imperial Palace before heading to Kyoto.
Liang very sillily brought a huge haversack as luggage, and a another backpack as handcarry. So it was either he carry the backpack in front and risk looking like a pregnant man, or carry it on his back somehow.
So i did this:

[If u guys din realise already, my supposed luggage is just a backpack. Same backpack i brought on 2day chalets in sentosa.I just stuffed it full to the brim, stuff a few clothing into my hand carry, and voila, i'm the world's lightest traveller (for a girl, that is)]

Me on the local train to Imperial Palace:

Very crowded on the train, and most people are either reading a book, using their laptops or sleeping.

At the Imperial Palace (which I assume is where the royal family is still residing, since we're not able to enter the palace itself, just roam around its gardens, which is very very pretty):

Me with Tokyo Tower in background (cue: Liang saying for umpteen time "heng we never go, can see from here")

One of the small buildings of the palace compound (with a true blue moat surrounding the grounds):

This is not a lousy photo, it's really very difficult to take a photo of the elusive Palace.

We then headed back to the JR Tokyo Station to take the shinkansen (=bullet train) to Kyoto.
The Tokyo Station, looks like King's Cross Station in London!

Taking a photo with our bullet train:

There are two types of bullet trains in Japan, the normal ones (hikari) and the high class ones (nozomi) which are faster, better, cleaner and cater mostly to businessmen because they are hideously hideously expensive. The JR pass only allows you to use the hikari trains, so if u mistakenly get onto the nozomi, you will confirm puke at the price difference u have to pay if u get caught.

The nozomi:

Liang is very amused with the word nozomi, and insist on calling himself that. He has already taken to calling me 'atsui' cos he says that word also sound very cute.

The JR trains in Japan are scarily efficient, punctual, and leave the station after stopping for just a few minutes (so make sure u're punctual, and fast or u'll miss the train, like how we did on our last day. A very scary day. More on that later). They even have station attendants who will bow repeatedly in rhythm. Quite funny.

Our bento lunches:

I got sold on the pretty box:

And it was delicious too, for a bento

And after 2hours, we arrived in Kyoto.

The JR Kyoto station is HUGE, and looks really grand.

It has a 9 storey Isetan incoporated into it, which I think also belongs to JR cos the sign says 'JR Isetan'.
We started making jokes abt how we can go in and buy whatever we want cos owning the JR pass, everything is free.

After we got the various maps and bus guides and travel passes, we headed off on the JR bus (free again!) to our ryokan (=Japanese inn), Ryokan Yamazaki.

On the bus, I saw this Kyoto university with students milling around outside like a scene from some Jap anime, and it also had many many sakura trees on its grounds.

One of our fellow JR bus passengers is a pretty Jap girl in full kimono gear complete with sandals and beautifully bunned up hair. I noticed her because she was strangely alone, and she was falling asleep on the long bus journey. She got off at a temple.
(Remember this girl, dear friends, remember)

Our ryokan is a family run, home style inn which provided many thoughtful touches that made it such an enjoyable stay. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Especially since we had initially planned to go Mt Fuji which costs a bomb to stay at a ryokan there, I had booked our Kyoto accomodation in a cheap hostel called 'Kyoto's cheapest inn', with a name like that, I didn't have very high expectations.
So I'm really glad we scraped our Mt Fuji plan and spent two days in Kyoto instead. Also, we saw Mt Fuji on our way to Kyoto in the bullet train, and Liang said "ok. saw already no need to go liao".
[Sidenote: the reason why I included Mt Fuji in the itinerary is because Liang kept wanting to go there. So i said jokingly, "why u want to go? to climb it is it?" He said, "yar!" I only found out much later, like 1 week before the trip later, that he was dead serious. He really wanted to climb to the summit of Mt Fuiji. With me, who haven't exercised in 5years. On the first day of spring. After I cruelly dashed his hopes "dear, nobody climb Mt Fuji in spring one", we decided to buang it for Kyoto. Heehee]

The garden in our ryokan

A japanese style living room all to ourselves

After that, we asked the owner how to go to Arashiyama, a small scenic town known for its cherry blossoms and bamboo forests. He gave us very complicated directions and we fumbled ahead, only to figure out (at Arashiyama), by scrutinizing our bus guides and maps a faster and cheaper way. Oh well.

As you can see, our ryokan is situated in the middle of nowhere, which all added to its peaceful and rustic charm.

When we boarded the bus, we were surprised to see that girl again, haha, and she was still sleeping.

The owner told us to take a new railway which will take us direct to Arashiyama and after asking alot of people and even a friendly policeman, we realised that the station to board this new railway is here:

Haha.. very rustic indeed.

While we were fumbling around, walking around the subway station near our ryokan like headless flies, we bumped into kimono girl (affectionately christened so by Liang) again! She also look very lost, and she was still alone.

But all was worth it when I saw the charming town of Arashiyama.
And again I took alot of photos of sakura.

Bought green tea ice-cream even though it was really cold.

There were alot of people there, gathered on mats below the sakura blossoms cos we came to Kyoto at the right time when all the cherry blossoms are in full bloom (they're only in full bloom for less than 1 week before they start to fall, so we were very lucky indeed). We also spotted many camera crews and professional photographers and I think I spotted an artiste!

Well, I know he's an artiste cos tons of people are crowding around him taking lots of photos, but I think I recognise him in some jap drama i watched before! So exciting!

More pretty desktop worthy photos:

We bought takopachi. Very yummy esp in the cold weather.

After that, it grew really dark, and even though we found the bamboo forest, it was so creepy we decided to give it a miss.
This was also when in horror, I saw kimono girl across the street from us, heading away from bamboo forest.

Very creepy i tell you.

Liang wanted to take a photo of her, but I scared later she din 'appear' on film, then what would I do?

We decided to leave then, cos we needed to catch the last bus back to our ryokan, if not we'd be stranded in the middle of nowhere.
This is where we have to wait for our bus:

It's also known as the deadest town ever.

To buy dinner, we have to hop onto the subway to the next station all the time hoping we can get back in time to catch the bus.
This was where we bought dinner, it's a stall that specialises on selling bentos.

Our bento dinner:

Sleeping on the tatami mattress is no joke. The blankets are so thick and heavy I feel quite suffocated but it's so cold i can't do without the blankets.

Japan Trip Part One

2008-04-09T03:08:00.000-07:00

I don't usually write those i-went-here-today-and-we-ate-that-and-that-movie-was-good type of entries, which probably explains why i seldom blog.
But i spent so much effort planning for my japan trip and i had such a fun time there i just wanted to blog down every detail for my own entertainment.
Also, if ever u guys want to go on a free & easy Japan trip, think this would be useful lo. I used to think it's an impossible task, but surprisingly, with a fair bit of planning, a fair bit of thick skin, and a bit of language, it can be done with relative ease and a whole lot of fun.
In fact, I was very surprised to find that i had even more difficulty with the language barrier in hk as compared to Japan, and I went with only what little bit of jap language i retained from 7 years ago, and some mugging on the train rides lor.
Wonder what that meant abt my grasp of the Cantonese dialect, die liao lar, liddat.
Anyway, i apologise for the lengthy prose, you guys can just skip to the pretty, pretty photos of sakura.

After doing months and months of research, and started planning for this trip since 1 year ago, it really seemed quite surreal when the day finally arrived to embark upon my Japan trip. I felt like I was dreaming.

This was in part due to the fact that I only had 2 hours of sleep so I was probably still semi-conscious at the airport.
I only reached home at 10pm the night before (hmmph), and had to frantically do all my packing then. (I couldn't pack that morn, becos, essentially, I couldn't do anything that morn. then after the gd news, was a trip to my grandfather's and then to my hairdresser for a badly needed haircut.. where i fell asleep. scary thing, falling asleep at the hairdresser, not in a Sweeny Todd kinda scary, but more like a i-hope-i-dun-end-up-botak way, ended up getting my hair curled without my knowledge lor! heng is temporary one)

Usually, on our trips tog, we were always almost the last to check-in and board the plane (note i said, always almost, and not almost always), so this time, becos my mum kept telling me must check-in 2hrs before boarding, and I also confirmed with rm (they're taking the same flight) who said the same thing I made Liang come pick me at 3.30am so that we can reach the airport at 4am for our flight at 6am.

Lo and behold! We reached at 3.55am, and not a soul was in sight (at least to my bleary sleep filled eyes). We completed our check in at 4.03am, even with the 'special comprehensive' questioning with questions like 'where did u pack ur bag" and "who pack ur bag for u", resulting in me giving very incredulous looks and saying, "err.. myself???"
Liang then made alot of mas related jokes:
"who pack ur bag?"
"maaaa..... ther"

-_-"

By 4.10am, he had already grumbled umpteen times why we're here so early.. and saying how only silly people go so early lor.
Tried looking arnd for jerry they all but didn't see them...
When we boarded the plane (We were among the last again, cos we fell asleep at the food court), I asked them what time they reached and they said, "3.45am" -_-" hahaha

Our airplane meals:

Mee goreng and Chicken omelette (ew!)

Spent the 7hrs re-watching Enchanted, and watching Robots (good!) , playing that silly mahjong tiles game that I suppose is found on every airline cos we saw that on air france too, and talking to jerry.

Arrived at 2pm, and it was cold!! I got abit worried, cos i only brought my one and only thin holiday jacket that I wear to everywhere (even indoors), and Liang was very shocked by my silliness. I put on a brave face and said, "no worries! i very strong one!" only to hear jerry say, "is that all you're wearing???" Hmmph he's a fine one to say lor cos he looked like he's just going to lt29!

First photo in Japan (at the airport, while queuing for customs):

After a bewildering time looking for the JR (Japan Rail) pass tickets place (for anyone going to Japan, the JR pass is a MUST. Even tho it's 300 plus, but can use like siao. On their bullet trains, local trains, buses and even ferries! Liang is very impressed, "wah! this JR so li hai, I must go back and buy their shares!" -_-"), and feeling a momentary panic "OMG what the heck am I going to do in the next 6 days with the language barrier??!!!", we managed to get our reserved seats on the Narita Express to Shinjuku, and parted ways with the rest, who are embarking on a long, long looooooong train ride.

First meal in Japan:

Unagi bento.
The first of many, many many more bentos to come

What happened at the bento stall:
Liang *points to sample* : One. *points 1 finger at bento lady*
Bento lady: hai. smth smth smth (that I dun understand)
Liang: can make hot??
Bento lady *stares blankly*
Me: errrr..... atsui??? *makes fire action* [I actually learnt this word as "the weather is atsui", hope the bento lady is not inwardly rolling on the floor laughing at me]
Bento lady: ah! kochira? (=here?)
Me: yar!
Bento lady: hai! smth smth.. mate smth smth [which i translated to Liang as 'must wait for awhile', smoke him abit]

But in the end, we managed to get our "atsui" bento to eat on the train, so Liang was rather impressed.
An interesting sight to behold on Japanese trains is that everyone eats on trains. Then after eating they will very neatly cover everything up, and at the station, painstakingly separate their rubbish into respective paper, plastic bottles or paper cups bins.
Very impressive!
There's also a train lady (usu an extremely cute Japanese girl) pushing a trolley of tidbits, bento boxes, bottled drinks and coffee, who will call out her wares in an (extremely act-) cute voice, and will bow to u if u buy from her. The ang mohs usu buy from them, I forced Liang to buy from the train's vending machine even though he wanted to buy from her so that the girl can bow to us.

We arrived in Shinjuku in no time.
The station was filled with tons and tons of people and most of them were running to catch their trains.
Tried to take photos of the scene, but cannot leh.

[throughout this trip, i have tried to take photos of alot of chio people but always too late to capture them.]

I was also blown away by the hustle and bustle of the city itself.

Anyways, thanks to my trusty map printed from hotel website, and astute sense of direction (hmmph), I managed to find the hotel without once stopping to ask for directions. Needless to say, I was very. very. very. very proud of myself.

We also chanced upon a little peaceful shrine next to our hotel, it was so beautiful we just had to go in to take photos.

I took many, many what i like to call "desktop worthy" photos.

We stayed in the Sunlite Shinjuku Hotel, and as of most (cheap) hotels in Tokyo, there is only one word to describe the room: tiny, and two words to describe the toilet: incredibly tiny. One can literally sit on the toilet bowl, and brush teeth and bathe all at the same time cos everything is within arm's reach.

After checking in, we stumbled around the area looking for somewhere to eat. Rm actually gave me the address to 'the best tempura ever' but sadly, in my haste to pack, i forgot to bring.
We accidentally walked along the fringes of the kabukicho (aka red light district) [but didn't really see anything, think we were (sadly) too early], and ended up at the BEST and MOST popular ramen restaurant in Tokyo.

How do we know this? Because the shop told us. Literally. A humanless voice was shouting through loudspeakers in english, chinese, japanese and korean. "Prease try eet" it said, rather cutely.

They also ranked their popular dishes from no.1 to no.10, haha very cute. And the moment we stepped in, we were greeted (the head waiter will shout out smth, then every other chef/waiter will greet us enthusiastically too) and immediately shown to our seats in 2seconds, given water in 5seconds and the food arrived in 90seconds.
Very, very impressive.

And the food is good.
I especially love my hard boiled egg with the jelly like yolk.

The weather became very, very,very cold at night.
I at first wanted to go Tokyo Tower one (cos most of the jap dramas i watched featured the Tokyo Tower and it was very beautiful), we asked our hotel manager how to go, and he explained the fastest way would be to take their local subway and walk 20minutes. If we take the JR local train (where we can use the JR pass) it would take 25min on foot.
Liangl was very shocked.
Actually I already knew all these from my research, not that i was purple-ly keeping it from him, i just wanted to wait for a more opportune time to break the news. Like when we're actually walking there.
So because the poor guy is so cold he can hardly talk, I decided to scrape my romantic Tokyo Tower plan for cheapo Tokyo Metropolitan building plan, where we can also go to the 45th storey Observatory deck and see the Tokyo nightview and it's free some more.

On the way there, I spotted vending machines selling the familiar Royal Milk Tea.
Which was also sold in Ah, haha, and came highly recommended by friends who said that it's damn nice and when they were in Japan, they had to buy it every 100m or so to keep themselves warm.
When I bought it in Ah, the can was so freaking hot, i had to wrap my white coat around it. In Japan, by the time i collected my change and got round to opening it, the can already cooled to lukewarm liao sigh.

A freezing fifteen minutes walk later, we arrived at the building to find it teeming with tourists. Was very surprised, tot only i'm cheapskate enuf to go there.
Shinjuku nightview with a tiny Tokyo Tower in the distance:

Scolded Liang for the sleepy face, so the next time i told him to take a photo he did this:

This, i suppose, is their equivalent of bars. I saw alot of working people drinking and eating yakitori inside.

And then, we dragged our tired freezing feet back to the hotel.

"O! How sweet is he!"

2008-04-07T08:58:00.001-07:00

Since a select few of you wanted me to blog abt this incident, and I think it's too good a blogging opportunity to miss, I decided to blog abt it. BUT, in a rather oblique manner to protect the interests of the persons involved.
What resulted is a totally nonsensical post.

Disclaimer: This blog entry is purely fictional. Any resemblance to person/persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
It's all but a total load of crap.

We never knew their intentions.
Sneaky holiday plans roused our suspicions.
It all started with
A 'handsome' reflection of a mysterious stranger

A mis-directed hug
Dubious intentions in shared baths
But all was confirmed, when she said,
"O! How sweet is he!"

Fate had many a hand in it
Their paths crossed with
An incident in THE toilet
Sparring words and raging battles

With many a LONG-LASTING memory
How we were shocked

Scandalized

When she said,
"O! How sweet is he!"

And the night wore on

Family jewels were at stake

I have high hopes for them

When she said,
"O! How sweet is he!"

Hahahahahaha... i think this is the MOST ridiculous post i've ever written.

What I did on my first (relative) free day of freedom

2008-04-07T05:19:00.000-07:00

Minus away the 31st of March where I spent half the day moping around, and the 6 hectic days of my holiday, today is the first day of absolute slackness of my holiday, so I tot I'd like to blog down what I did (and also I just wanted to blog a simple short post to warm up for the intensive blogging of my Japan trip in the days to come).

Woke up at 2pm. (hey this is not considered late ok, since I only touched down at 2am this morning, and fell asleep at 4am)

Made myself breakfast (yes, 'breakfast'. this includes my normal standard breakfast of sweet tea and leftover supper from night before. All the green tea and ocha in Japan made me crave for super sweet lipton tea like crazy)

Slacked and watched tv until 4pm.

Went out to visit grandfather cos he's doing not too well (Warning: MBBS-related stuff, dun read if u dun want bad memories./ Start: my dad forced me to auscultate him, and for a moment I was abit confused to find my stethoscope in bell position, cos that's never the case. Then I remembered that the last time i used it is to auscultate for that stupid MS. Immediate nightmarish flashbacks./ End MBBS talk)

Went home to continue unpacking.

Met Catechol for dinner at 5.30pm.

Ate Singaporish food: Wonton mee and ayam penyet. That silly Catechol wanted to eat ichiban boshi lor, normally I would have jumped at the suggestion, but this time I put my foot down firmly. "Don't you feel sick of jap already??!!!" I screamed at him. He said, "no leh, got sense of continuity" .... -_-"

Went to lib at 8pm (to force Catechol to study)

Ran into YS there!
It was very funny. I couldn't recognise him cos he looked so different from his usual clinic self, I wouldn't have seen him if I didn't notice someone staring at me when I entered the lib.
He was like "WHAT ARE YOU DOING here??!!!"
I said, non-chalantly, "mugging lar!" (was carrying Catechol's file for him, so I suppose I do look like I'm going to mug)
Him: "WHAT?! mug wat.. I'm here to borrow computer games lor!"
Me: "Mug for fun lar! hahahahaha"
And we both grinned to ourselves in absolute glee.

Now blogging in lib while I transfer the many many many holiday photos into my laptop.

I dread to think of the mountain of photos to upload, and the many many blog entries still waiting for me to write.

How do i upload photos as a collage ah?
Someone tell me quick or i have to upload my photos one by one onto my blog. Can die.

The last day of MBBS.....

2008-03-30T23:15:00.000-07:00

….. and I’m an emotional wreck.

I’ve pictured this moment in my mind so many times! I would skip out of the exam ward grinning in excitement. Maybe give my friends a hug or two. Then, grab my phone back from the co-ordinators excitedly and sms everyone I know that my exams have ended and ask them when we can meet up.

Instead, I walked out of the exam room still in shock, my face expressionless, just like how my face looks like whenever I take exams.
Around me, everyone had worried looks on their faces, and they were all discussing worriedly and complaining abt their examiners.

I think I was just in a state of numb shock, I can’t believe I fumbled so badly today.
I walked out of nuh with rm, still able to discuss post-exam plans.
I got on the bus, and just started predicting my marks, and calculating whether or not I might fail, over and over and over again.

And then I met up with my mum, and that was when an immense wave of self-disappointment engulfed me. I didn’t know what hit me, but tears just welled up and I started crying uncontrollably.
I don’t know if it’s the stress after an extremely long day, the stress after an extremely long month, having nothing to focus on to sweep aside my emotions or the chronic lack of sleep this past week, I just never pictured the end of my exams to make me this emotional.

I was so, so tired even at 10pm, but the moment my head hit my pillow, I just kept having flashbacks of how I screwed up today.
I was so worried abt getting the vivas, I couldn’t even sleep a wink the whole night.

It was literally the worst night of my life.
The second worst night was the night before release of the uni posting results.

Someday, I hope to look back on this day and laugh.

Update:
I can’t believe they made us wait so long for the list! I’m forever grateful to my jie-meis who sms-ed me and updated me and to BOTH Wk and P who called me at the same time! And to my parents who came home from work to sit at home with me to wait. And to my friends who asked how I was feeling. I just sat in my room the whole 2 hours, praying “please let me pass please let me pass” over and over again.

Yes! WE made it through together!

Argh I’m an emotional wreck!

MBBS Day 8

2008-03-25T02:37:00.000-07:00

And the night before I could only sleep for 2 hours. Was so nervous I couldn't sleep! I close my eyes and hear voices firing questions at me lor! This is what happens when u read the accounts just before u sleep.

Prof Low looks super shocked to see us all hanging around cso, says: "what are u all doing here?"
Us: "Waiting for viva list lor!"
Him: "None of you all failed! Go home!" Made shooing motions with arm.

I shall take him on his word and assume that means we din get straight subs either. Yay!

We survived surg clinicals!!!

I survived Thomas's splint (dammit! imagine my look of horror when I saw my examiner standing next to that! I asked around after, and we concluded that only he brings students to that station lor!), winging of scapula (ugh!), an ulnar (i think) that looks like a trigger finger of the 4th digit, and a head of surgery which disagreed with my mx for follicular ca.

Thank goodness for a nice long case (colorectal).
Thank goodness for lovely, lovely examiners...
Thank goodness I didn't kena the Smiling One or the Infamous One who were both with us today.

2 more to go guys!

Things Ive been doing instead of mugging

2008-03-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

1. tv

2. blog

3. blog-surf.. compulsively

4. check my blog comments... compulsively

5. dream up devious ways of scaring sandy up from sleep (she has presbycusis. When I told my vet that, she went 'clap, clap' 'clap, clap' behind sandy's ears and sandy din even blink lor. Sadly, I noticed this at around the same time as her one episode of hematuria last month.. and for one scary moment, i actually thought "Alport's syndrome!!!!")

6. pluck my white hair.. obsessively. I'm not kidding lor, I do this at least once in 3 days!!! Look-see! This was done at one sitting:

7. read through the mbbs briefing slides... obsessively (i'm crazy, i know)

8. peep at the construction work going on at the building next to mine aka my old pri sch (this is very very interesting.. will blog abt this next time)... compulsively

9. eat

10. dream abt post-exam plans

Anyway jiemeis, as per tradition from previous years, I think it's abt time we shld discuss our celebratory meal venue on my blog.. since we wun be seeing each other till the 31st.
I just realised that betw all of us, we have to avoid jap food, thai food, korean food, ?chinese food (is gh still going tw or are u ALSO changing ur plans to going korea??? hiak hiak hiak hiak), western food and...... err scottish food??? (i dare u guys to try their sheep's bladder thingy so that u can tell me how it tastes like!!!! pleeeaaase??)

So here's my contribution: Shokudo food bazaar at raffles city, it's like a Japanese version of Marche (and as usual when the japs copy smth they always do it better). I've heard quite alot of good reviews abt it, they offer western food, western food with jap twist and normal jap food. We wanted to try it, but there was a freakin long queue and Catechol boycotts anywhere with queues longer than 25pple.

Can check out a review and photos here: http://sparklette.net/archives/shokudo-japanese-food-bazaar/

Lastly, here's a funny photo to cheer u up:

I think she looks like she's taking a passport photo lor

MBBS Day 5, 6 & 7

2008-03-19T04:39:00.000-07:00

Seems to be over in a blink...

Went around telling everyone its our last paper today! *mimes action of drawing a paper* And Wq turns to me and said, "yar cos the rest no need papers just need our hands" and mimes showing me his hands.. haha

How true.. the tools of our trade lies in our hands and our eyes (dun I sound like prof lau here?) and our mouths I suppose.. to take history..

Anyway, I'm a happy gal today, despite the disastrous mcqs.. din mug hard enuf for o&g, the reason for my misery is also the reason for my happiness, cos after today, no more mugging o&g yay!!! No more mugging all the 101 things that can go wrong during pregnancy (and none came out lor crap!).. no more memorising all the hormones and their actions and when to give this drug and that...

Yay!!! Taking a well-not-so-deserved break today..

It's really really the final leg now.. Jia you, its make it or break it time...

Final countdown (cue dr leesh fav song) : 11 days to freedom

MBBS Day 4

2008-03-15T03:25:00.000-07:00

Osce - could be worse. So i'm not complaining.

Worst station: Intubation.
My first station! With emed Prof Suresh some more! Waaaaaahh.. the odds are against me even before i start lor!
And it's intubation! My anesthesia tutor told me before that intubation is not required of medical students and house officers lor...
Sigh.. as a result I was super ga-bra throughout the station,not sure if i intubated successfully, think i saw the chest rise a few mm,but might be my brain playing tricks on me cos I was willing it to move. Anyhow, dun care, just went on to check for breath sounds.
Then I got scolded for not wearing gloves some more.
Sigh.. got me so flustered at the end that when I went for the second station : the geri counselling one, I talked at like 500words/min lor. The daughter just stared at me blankly.

Favourite station: Angry son abt father's above knee amputation
I got the ttsh Ortho Prof Low, he very cute, when I walked in and said "good morning" he said "Afternoon already!" Note that the previous 6 stations all never say anything.
Then the angry patient son also look very funny, like he ran out of steam being angry.
I suppose they're supposed to stand so that the moment I walk in they're going to pounce on us and barrage us with accusations.
But when I looked at him uncertainly (err you mean this young dude is the patient's son? he look younger than me lor!) he also looked back at me uncertainly, like he's standing becuase he's not allowed to sit like that. And silently.
So I have to say,"err.. i understand that you are angry....?? please sit down." haha.

Bloody hell.. I spent too much time mugging for med and the osces, my surg is almost mon-existent.. die die die

MBBS Day 3

2008-03-13T23:59:00.000-07:00

Each and everyone of those 160 freakin MCQ was a killer.

MBBS Day 2

2008-03-12T00:44:00.000-07:00

I miss those days of yore when I can go with minimal sleep to the exam hall, survive purely on adrenaline through the paper, the post-exam celebrations, the obligatory post-exam tuition session (whoa I'm such a responsible tutor) and through the yearly post-exam blog posts at 1am at night cos I'm too high to sleep and then finally crashing from 4am till 12noon the next day...

After two consecutive (i'm so tired i forgot how to spell) nights of insomnia, I felt freakin tired and sick-ly at 6am (early morn awakening) this morn and couldn't get anything done at all. Crawled into the auditorium at 9.30 and u guys all asked me if i'm ok, cos i look "paler than ever". I just collapsed onto the table and with oxford as a pillow ( hopefully, diffusion = things move from higher concentration gradient to lower concentration) tried to sleep. And Wk said I look very cool cos i'm the only one in the whole auditorium sleeping while others are mugging. So i said, loudly, "It's just the MBBS, I dun care!" and then burst out laughing cos the words just sounded so ridiculous.
Oh and while I was trying to sleep, I eavesdropped on a VERY interesting arument betw our dear gh and wk abt THE Wine party Toilet incident and who made whose day more. Haha damn funny.

Funny incident of the day was when we were stuck in the jam before entering the PC cluster and Hagrid was mugging in front of me, I didn't want to disturb him cos he was so furiously mugging, but gh went to peep at his oxford and said, "Myeloma????!!!!!!!" Hahahaha... Not only did we all laugh at him, I even said, "eh hag! If myeloma comes out, I'll give you $10 lor!" Haha.. I think pre-exam stress has the propensity to make me obnoxious.

I like the new direction of the MBBS exams, testing us on practical stuff rather than theory. I mean, as a HO, who cares abt the pathophysiology behind G6PD deficiency, or whether mongols have a higher chance of getting leukemia (past yr paeds mcq, like wth?). Practical stuff very impt lor... Whether you should bao-toh your senior con to the medical council or secretly tell the hospital so that they can take appropriate measures (to cover their as**es), hahahaha. Whoa I think I grew two white hairs just thinking abt that question lor. And I got the illegal immigrant question wrong cos I didn't want to report him. He so poor thing got end-stage renal failure already still want to call police to arrest him??!!

I got alot more things to say abt the computer system and the invigilators but I shan't.
Super sleepy, think i must nap.

Soldier on peeps! haha

19 days to freedom.

MBBS Day 1

2008-03-11T00:11:00.000-07:00

I was freaking nervous this morning, I had early morning awakening as per usual on my exam days, but today after I woke up, I realised my IBS is acting up like never before. I had to go FIVE times in the space of 45minutes! Very disruptive and disturbing, I just kept running in and out of the toilet continuously, and I even felt nauseous and retched a couple of times...
sheez...

Then, my whole family woke up to send me off, and they kept telling me repeatedly not to be nervous. Even Sandy sent me to the lift hahaha. And I felt a teensy weensy bit better.
Catechol tried to cheer me up by telling me lame jokes and letting me listen to Glenn Ong on the car radio (he dun like him because both me and Jamie yeo adore him haha).
Then I reached pgp and immediately I saw a friendly face in ZH, who wished me all the best and in his usual way, was marvelling at all the students sprawled all over the place mugging.
I was looking for the staircase to the basement (where I know there would be a toilet) and found one of those yellow signs in front of it, and L mugging right by the sign, so I asked him if we're allowed to go down, and he told me, "no we're all stuck here".
I chatted with him for awhile, then heard a voice call me from above (haha) and saw Sc's smiling face talking to me. And the sight cheered me up too cos from my angle it looked like a disembodied head smiling down at me from above the parapet ahahaha.
Then L tried to bluff me that we're all barred from going down because we're late and missed the exaam and i realised that he's been bluffing me all this time.. -_-" haha these guys never fail to cheer me up...

Then I went down the stairs and was momentarily disorientated by the mass of people around me, and saw in the far distance a familiar red bag. Then I squinted closely and saw my dear Wk who was strangely wrapped around some railing of a staircase in some dark corner. After taking a few more steps, I realised P and gh were there too. And they looked quite funny, cos instead of standing in a tight circle talking, they kinda looked like they're posing for some poster. With Wk at one end, P sitting in the middle, and gh standing next to the railing at the other end. Anyway, I only had time to announce, "I need to find a toilet" before the doors to the hall opened (gates to hell opened) and we all had to go in.

I sat down at my seat, and to my delight saw P sitting at the table beside me and we "yay"ed tog, "nice to see a familiar face" she says. Then I looked to my right, and saw Wq! and we both "eh!" simultaneously, and he kept talking to me and we started making predictions abt what topics would come out based on the invigilators present. hahaha

By this time, I stopped feeling nervous liao. But my bowels are still irritable like crazy.

Then, prof said "you may begin now" and everything fades into the background.....

All in all today's paper was OK lar (makes fibrillating hand wave) I like the fact that I can pass without studying too hard. Let's all hope the other papers will be like tat too. Say it with me peeps, "I wish for no "write short notes"."

Ok, I fulfilled all your demands for a blog entry liao... need to go mug now...
And I just realised the trial MEQ paper is gone! Bah!

it's D-day

2008-03-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

Crap. I can't believe it's already here. Where has the last 2 weeks disappeared to?

All the best peeps! We can do this!!!!!!!

The new countdown to freedom has begun.

Countdown

2008-03-02T20:47:00.000-08:00

I installed a countdown timer on my laptop dashboard (mac) like 2months ago, so that everytime I logged on to the internet I can see the little countdown at the corner there reminding me the number of days left to D-Day (aka Dead-, Die-, DUM-dum-DUUM -day) .
And everyday without fail, I will log on. And everyday without fail I will draw in a deep breath when i see the number of days left, like every number is a shocker, even though I have obviously seen that number + 1 just yesterday.

Today, I surpassed myself at my silliness and AhQ-ness when I let out a tiny scream when I saw: "1 week left to MBBS"

Tired

2008-02-29T00:09:00.000-08:00

I've been feeling too depressed and tired to blog... and ya, my mugging has been lagging seriously behind too.. but just feel too tired to feel panic, if u know what i mean...

Will blog again when i get myself out of this self-induced funk.

Meanwhile, i've been doing some digging into my memories and came up with some of what i think are my bestest memories.. including one of my most fav pics of gh... haha see if u can find it.. ie, look to your right.

Day of Lasts

2008-02-25T00:21:00.000-08:00

hahahahahaha......... I'm very amused!! You all check so many times for wat?! And i will be very embarrassed if u're going to put my blog as ur homepage, zh...

Anyway.. as i predicted, I'm blogging again!! Whoa! IF i got as much inspiration to write essays/smoke clinicals for MBBS as my inspiration to blog now, then I got nothing to fear liao! Really can slack now hahahahahaha......
Today, the bad news we all are discussing today is the fact that the med vivas list will be out the next day after the exams, dunno abt you confident guys, but I confirm wun be able to sleep one lor... Think maybe i may blog thru the night.. haha.. but then again, dunno if by then i still have the inspiration to blog or not.. hmmmm...

Today is our last day in nus, and thus also marked a number of lasts for me, so i decided to blog abt it so tat i can reflect back on this day with fondness (gasp, i just realised that last fri was the last day of the cg!! but somehow, didn't really feel much abt it. All i could think of was: "hurry up rush to the wards! it's the last day before we're barred!")

Last day in NUS:

LAst 95 trip: hmm this was quite some time back cos today i got a lift. Heng got lift if not surely late, afterall for the last 95% of the time i was on 95, I was late lor.
In Year 1 & 2, i used to always take the bus that make me reach 5-10min (depending on jam conditions) after the lecture starts. I call this the "just nice will be late" bus. And it's always the same few pple on this bus haha. My esteemed bus mate used to tell me, "I time my arrival to just nice reach at the third slide cos the first two slides are introduction." Sometimes, I will be lucky enuf to squeeze on to the "reach just on time as the lecturer dim the lights" bus, that accounts for the remaining 4% of my journeys to sch.
In fact last time, I used to give SOME PEOPLE (points at gh and zh) scares all the time. When they see me walking to the 95 bus stop at buona, waving and smiling at them, they would always give me the same reaction: 1) shocked/terrified face ; followed by 2) immediately check the time on their watch; 3) say "die liao lar! See you means will be late". It's quite funny, sometimes got two of them tog, then they would both do exactly the same thing. [That was a test day, so i'm early.]

LAst test in nus: used the 4B pencil I bought before the very first test in 5 years ago in co-op. I remember I ran into my jc fren there and she asked me why me and apparently a whole lot of other medicine peeps are buying 4B pencils, and i said, "tmrw got test! must use 4B pencils one. And it's true/false negative marking! Gotta go bye!" And I scuttled off to mug.
I think I only sharpened that pencil twice in the course of 5years.

Last mugging session in betw lessons in lib: Science lib is just not the same. There was an old auntie sitting next to our table, and a little girl running around. Like ???!!!!! I miss the medicine lib where I can sit at my favourite table and gaze out the window to gauge when is an opportune time to leave haha (only fellow patrons of shuttle bus know wat i'm talking abt)

Last meal in science canteen: Ate what I eat all the time (other than the miserable months leading up to the Europe trip when my budget was $1 per meal) which is Indian food. Was contemplating if i should eat Bambino's, cos I did say that the second and last time I would eat there is on the last day of sch (so fast, the day has come) to give them another chance. But Indian had my fav fried egg AND my fav fav brinjal, so too tempted liao ha.

LAst time in LT28: managed to get 'our row'. We just needed zj in front of the projector and gh in front of us to complete the picture haha

Last lecture: just highlighted to us what we already know 5years ago : the efficiency and eptitude of our dear DO.

So dearly wish I can type in last day of mugging here too....
Oh well, on the day I can finally say that, I will come back here and edit this entry again.
So watch this space in.. say, oh another 40-50 years ya...

Not a good idea

2008-02-23T04:42:00.000-08:00

And I'm blogging again! Wk hit the nail on the head when she said, "you're blogging more, that means youre mugging more." Ya, by mugging, I mean, I sit at my table, flip open to the correct page, and then when i start to mug, the seed of an idea of an entry just miraculously floats into my head, and as always, the seed just gets bigger and bigger, and I start penning the start of the entry in my head, and then that's it, it justs blocks out all other things in my mind and the only way I can get rid of it is if i blog everything down and press the 'publish' button.

Yesterday, I blogged so that I can come to sch today and happily announce to you guys to check my blog. And I imagined u guys to say, "ya! we read your pri sch entry already!" And then, I would gleefully say, "I've blogged A NEW ENTRY!" So that for once, I can tell you guys that I blogged instead of you guys telling me that I haven't blogged.

BUT! Today, I was simply astounded that all of you (bar Wk, she's seriously behind), and even you my non-jiemei friend, read my new entry liao!! Very touched leh!! (points to name of blog)
And you all pounced on me full of burning questions because of my random entry.
Let's clear the air once and for all: NO! I have NO plans to get married in the near and even the not-so-near future!!!
How come got so many friends ask me? Even Zj! I caught him asking Zh, who asked him to ask me myself, and he did!! -_-"

Anyway, since we were discussing the Singapore Eye proposal today and had such an enlightening discussion abt it, i thought i'd record it down here, to help those guys who are planning on doing the very thing.
Found out from someone, think it was one of the guys (not bad sia, planning for the future) that to do the aforementioned proposing in Singapore Eye (I insist on calling it this because i think its real name doesn't make sense, and also hopefully this way i wun be sued) costs you a tidy sum of $2800!!!!

???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Got so many pple willing to pay $2800 to propose???!!!!!

To me, I got many thoughts running thru my mind when i heard of this scheme.
Firstly, logistics:
You spend $2800 on a empty moving large room, so of cos you have to make it nice right? But hey, decorating services is not included in the $2800. So you have to do-it-yourself. Cue mental image of a guy dressed in a suit hanging up streamers and blowing balloons. If the five of us, when doing Wk's birthday party had so much trouble blowing balloons, (ok lar minus me, cos i can't blow balloons, refer to december 2006 blog entry for photos of our attempts), think that one guy will be quite poor thing. And quite funny to have the capsule done up like a kid's birthday party.

Then, must have somewhere to sit right, preferably got table also, so that can have romantic dinner. Err so unless you drive a lorry, I figure you have to get one of those foldable kinds. And chairs?? Somehow in my mind floats the image of those red colour plastic chairs used for funeral kind. How abt some music? Aiyo, dun have powerpoint for radio, but nvm, nowadays can use handphone.

Secondly, the dignity:
Bear in mind that because your capsule will be obviously 'special', I bet you that every single person in all the other capsules will be peering at your capsule like people in front of a fish tank to see what you're up to.
So even if things dun go well, cannot be grumpy or burst into tears, must still act like the girl had actually accepted like tat.
If lar, IF, the girl of your dreams reject you how? How to face her for the next 45minutes?? Better have some backup plan lor, like memorise the whole skyline of Singapore, so you can spew into a running commentary of the scenary like a tour guide.

[For the girls, if say you are really caught in the abovementioned situation, and very sadly and unfortunately you are going to reject this guy, then I have some advice for you too. You can either choose a) hem and haw till the 43rd minute until the capsule is near ground level again then say "No thank you! Sorry!" and jump out. But of cos, this only works if the guy is man enough to not arrange with the control tower to stay in mid-air till you say yes. b) reject him directly and then come up with 45reasons as to why you're doing so, provided that you can expound for 1minute on each reason. Think carefully, there are only so many ways you can say, "I'm not ready".
lastly, c) memorise the above tour guide spiel. This one quite difficult cos the Eye may be a surprise destination. Try your best to smoke your way through. Talking abt the merlion is a good idea, cos if u talk abt the legend, the history, developments, various locations and the differences betw each merlion at the various location, i think can take up at least 15minutes.]

Lastly, and most importantly, the money:
$2800 is really alot of money for an empty room with a view. Want view can also take the lift in Pan PAc hotel, free one. I think some people can have the whole wedding for less than that amount of money. And if your girl truly loves you, I'm sure she wouldn't want you to spend such a ridiculous sum of money on her, right?

Random post

2008-02-22T00:30:00.001-08:00

As per tradition for the last 3 years or so, I always ALWAYS get alot of inspiration to blog in the few weeks leading up to the exam, so here I am again!

******************

Mugging for the Psych Test yesterday just confirms my conviction that I'm pathologically depressed.
DSM-IV criteria:
At least one of :a) low mood (check) Or b) anhedonia (no lei. I can definitely still feel the interest to watch alot of tv, read (non-medicine stuff of cos), talk on the phone, go shopping, blog surf, blog)
And four others of:
1) Loss of appetite (check: definitely reduced from buffet queen proportions) 2) psychomotor retardation (check) 3) low energy (check check check) 4) suicidal thoughts (check) 5) guilt (check check check check) 6) loss of confidence (check) 7) negative thinking (check: i'm going to fail i'm going to fail i'm going to fail) 8) insomnia (sadly no) or hypersomnia (check x 100)
For two weeks (for months liao, and I foresee it to last another month)

******************

Psychomed test is a joke. Just anyhow-ly humtum CBT for everything also can get correct.

******************

To get me through this trying time, I used to envision what a happy time I'd have in my post-MBBS holidays. Thinking abt visiting my favourite country, the country I fell in love with on my first trip there just 5min after getting off the tour bus, puts a smile on my face, and looking at pictures of the extensive research I've done just makes me so happy.
But now, somehow, this just doesn't motivate me anymore.
I found the need to escalate my own psychotherapy from the incentive type to the fear tactic type.

Now, I just envision myself failing.

*******************

On another totally random note:

Him: Got alot of people propose on the Singapore Eye leh! Like quite romantic hor! Think I would have done that too.
Me, with a loud derisive snort: HUH?! But thats just so unoriginal!!!!
Him: (silence)
Me: And so is proposing on Eiffel Tower...... Suntec fountain of wealth....... romantic restaurants.......... (lists a few more examples)

To drive the nail in further,
Me: I would be SO unimpressed. (nods head with conviction)
Him: OK LOR!! How abt sky diving out of a SIA plane then I float to your window and show you a 'Marry Me!!' sign? Or deep sea diving in the Great Barrier Reef?
Me: YA.. then you can put the ring in one of those huge clams.. hahahaha

Why I love school then but hate school now

2008-02-20T06:36:00.000-08:00

1. My pri sch is only 2minutes walk from my hse, hahaha

2. School always ends before 2pm LATEST.

3. It is possible to do well without studying AT ALL.

4. Because there is almost no homework to do, I can always sleep before 10.

5. I love all subjects because they are all so fun!

6. Remember music lessons???

7. Teachers believe in positive reinforcement, and so shower us with gold stars and 'excellent' chops. In those good old days, I even got 'neat and tidy work' comments lor! Hahahahahahaha

8. To facilitate group discussion, our classroom arrangement is such that we sit in 'F' formations, which means, instead of just your neighbour to whisper to during lessons, you have another 4 more pple to chat with.

8. In class, we do silly mindless work like xi2 zi4 (write the same chinese words alot of times), where we chat happily, and someone would usually issue the 'see who can write finish first' challenge, I usually end up writing one side of the word first vertically down the page, then write the other side. Which of cos totally defeats the purpose of xi zi.

9. Dictation is done at such a leisurely pace that even got time to sharpen pencil, not like now, when I literally got carpopedal spasms from writing too fast in lectures.

10. Spelling and ting1 xie3 (chinese spelling) is fun because I like to laugh at my friends who cover their answers with hankerchiefs and their bags.

11. Reading abt the antics of Ahmad, Bala, Gopal, Sumei, Peihua and John who like to share cakes and compare their pocket money, and if some of them have more than the rest, they must always give a sum of money to their friends to make things equal.

12. Finding the all elusive tiny animals hiding in pages of the Pets coursebook, oh how I miss the colourful and cute animals. And so exciting the game! Everytime without fail, on the day that i buy the textbooks, I will rush home and find all the animals on every page.

13. Playing with each other's pencil boxes, remember those contraptions with a million and one buttons and secret compartments?? hahaha

14. Starving or eating bread during recess(i only have 50cents a day!) so that I can save money to buy those cute little toys from the school bookshop.

15. Teachers praise you for saying, "t'cher, MAY i go to the toilet?" instead of saying "Can I"

16. Practical tests test you on your ability to measure length of eggs and identify substances with your five senses.

17. Science experiements - need I say more

18. The only time I feel terrified in class is when a student with a gauze in mouth hands those ugly brown cards to the teacher and she says, "the following students are required at the dental nurse now...."

19. Being asked to 'put your fingers on your lips" haha so cute.

20. Being asked to hold hands with your partner (who MUST be of the opposite gender) when you queue up, and everyone immediately starts digging for their hankerchiefs and papers or even leaves (I kena before) to minimise contact. hahahahaha

21. Nobody laughs at me for writing the most fantastic essays (by fantastic, I mean really out of the world storylines). Things like, "one rainy sunday afternoon, I was taking my cat out for a walk (??!!!) and out of the blue, I saw an old looking wizard (!!!) who wanted me to let him have a sip of water (???)" And they all NEVER end with ".. I woke up. It was a dream."

22. Tuition was fun. fun and more fun. In fact, they were pretty useless, I only went because my tuition teacher lives in my block and also my tuition mates are my best friend and one of the boys I sorta like. We spend our days playing marco polo and hide and seek during tuition. And helping the boy I sorta like woo the girl he's 'madly in love' with, who also happens to be my other best friend. [Hahaha.. these BGR or in those innocent days, are called husband-wife relationships in primary sch are extremely cute and complicated lar... Anyway, in summary, boy I sorta like and his best friend both like my best friend so I've been helping boy I sorta like 'woo' my best friend (awww) but after a long and trying time, my best friend 'chose' his best friend, and he immediately decides to like me instead. But sadly, I've already moved on to like someone else liao. HAHAHAHA! Think I shall blog more abt all these, very cute one]

And lastly, and most importantly, the only thing that requires mugging then, is Chinese meanings, and even if dun mug, also can pass, cos only got five questions.

Sigh, those were the days.

Happy

2008-02-14T08:21:00.000-08:00

It’s a befitting end to my Valentine’s Day celebration to watch Amazing Race Asia together.
Yay!!!!!! So happy that the Singapore team won, I’ve been rooting for them from the start. Not like that horrible woman, Wk, being the PR that she is, she supported neither the S’pore team nor the Malaysia team, but cheered for the cute Philipino boys instead..
Even I, chose my country over good looks lor!

Anyway, I was really proud of the way the S’pore team ran the whole race, they didn’t resort to any lying or cheating, and maintained a polite and optimistic front the whole way, even when the whole country cursed and swore as one when they let their cab leave and we all thought they were going to lose for sure.
And I think it’s rather heart-warming to know that they won despite, or maybe even because of, his disability.
I felt a burst of patriotic pride when he told the taxi drivers to “support S’pore! S’pore team is going to win!” Machiam like election liddat.
Haha liang kept shouting, “ask the taxi drivers to help you lar!! Sabo the other teams!”
And when the Malaysian girls got in their cab, he screamed “drive them to Tanah Merah!!!!!!!!!!!!”
If he joins the Race, he would be the Amazing Race Asian version of Rob. -_-“
Does that make me Amber? Nah… I’m definitely not as chio.. or as unopinionated.

Even at the end of the show, Liang still cannot understand why they didn’t call their relatives ahead of time to arrange cabs and everything for them, and why the taxi drivers didn’t “drop them at Sungei Buloh and let them die”.
I explained, “aiyah! The taxi uncles kiasi mah! On tv leh, got evidence! They scared they no business next time, now taxi so expensive!”

Exciting day in psych... NOT

2008-02-12T06:07:00.000-08:00

Someone announced to all of us n*h peeps (or at least those who bothered to turn up for psych tut) that she was given a ‘good’ look-and-proceed case (Explanation: In our clinical exam, one of our cases may involve our examiner telling us to ‘look’ and ‘proceed to examine whatever we might think is necessary’)
She went to the patient’s bed, and gasp! to her horror, she found herself face to face with xxx (a certain local B-list actor, who used to be quite big.. oops! I mean, popular -_-“, and whom many might say is good-looking)!!!!

Immediately, the whole class asked as one, “huh?! Why isn’t he in private?”
“Maybe now no more money!”, we all sniggered.
“Hmmm I wonder what is he here for?!”
Someone said excitedly, “maybe it’s a herniarrhaphy!”
Hiak hiak hiak –evil laughter-

[Explanation: a hernia is an outpouching of intestinal contents through a defect in the abdominal wall, most commonly in the groin. In this case, they commonly present as scrotal swellings. For us unfortunate medical students, and the even more unfortunate patients, this is a MUST SEE MUST KNOW case, because it will confirm plus 100% guarantee come out for MBBS. So everytime we hear news of a hernia in the wards, we’ll all swoop down upon the patient like gloved vultures.]

Anyway, no I didn’t find out what was his actual diagnosis because.. please do you all think I’m the ba-gua gossipy type who will go find out this kind of inconsequential news???!!

Ok ok, so I fooled no one with my ridiculous spiel…..
I went to the bed but realized I was given the wrong bed number (an old Hokkien speaking auntie was in that bed), but no worries, I’ll ask the guys tmrw.

[Hint: this actor have acted in both English and Chinese dramas, and also strangely a lot of my non-Chinese friends claim to like him.]

Ode to you

2008-02-03T09:40:00.000-08:00

I knew I’d love you before I met you
And when I saw you, you took my breath away
I remember the day you belong to me, I was so happy
Not only do you amaze me with your looks,
I love the feel of you, the feel of your velvety back, in my hands
Whenever I bring you out, my friends would praise and admire you,
I would give a dismissive wave and say, “look good only lar”,
But inwardly, my heart overflows with love for you.
You were better than all my ex-es can ever be, and with you, I’m truly happy
I learn to depend on you, and you are perfect for me in every way.

But now, after close to two years, I’m finally beginning to see your true colours.
My good friend warned me about you, but I ignored her, choosing to trust in you instead,
Not believing that you would be capable of such deeds.
Then recently I slowly began to see signs.
And I opened my heart to the possibility that my friends could be right.
A few days ago, when two friends confronted me with the truth at the same time,
I realized that I couldn’t live in denial anymore.
And so, I asked my family and friends, and gathered more evidence of your betrayal.
All these months, I thought they were just misunderstandings.
But now I know
The magnitude of what you did behind my back.

It hurts me to the very core of my being, when I finally decided to let you go.
But even as I tell myself that, even as I open myself to the idea of a replacement,
I know that I still love you very much so.
Everyone else pales in comparison to you, and despite myself,
I wished that you could go back to how you were before.
Even when I find someone else, you will still be my greatest love in my heart.

So now, I’m announcing to everyone, to give me recommendations.
I’ve tried, but I simply can’t find a suitable replacement to my fancy.
Because…

I really, really…..

Need to…. change my phone.

My phone and its velvet-y back
Teeheeheeheeheehee…
I had so much fun writing this entry.

What happened is this lar:
People have been saying that I always can’t be contacted. And Wk had been telling me for eons that I always never pick up her calls, but I thought she was exaggerating, or that got poor reception or smth.

Then on Friday, Mc ask me why I rejected his call, then I was like, “no what, you got call me meh?”, and sure enough, when I checked my phone, got his miss call.
And immediately Wk, who was beside me, nonchalant-ly piped up that she also called me that afternoon but I also rejected her call, which was even stranger cos the phone never ring, and also there was no miss calls displayed. And she say that it always happen before, so often that she also can’t be bothered to tell me that she calls me.

I was utterly shocked. My phone rejects calls without my knowledge???!!!

So I asked around, and indeed almost everyone I asked experienced that before! They all just assumed that I very busy, so reject their calls. And I naturally don’t return calls cos I didn’t even know there were miss calls in the first place!
!!!!! SO all this time, people must have been thinking I’m one heck of a ‘tao’ bi*ch!!!

And that was when I finally decided to change my phone. I really, really like this phone a lot lor, I even went to send it for repair a few months ago even though the stupid repair service took three weeks.

The problem is, to date, I still can’t find a phone that I like enough, so that I will feel happy using it, instead of missing my current phone.
Sigh!

Anyway, the whole purpose of this boh liao post is to tell everyone to sms me instead if you can’t get me on my hp.
And more importantly: I never tao you hor, it’s my phone!

We are different.

2008-01-29T01:48:00.000-08:00

Just as I find the sgh surg wards getting more and more crowded with non-SGH surg peeps, I found myself leaving hospital earlier and earlier. (left at record time of 1.30pm today!)

This is partly due to a most humbling experience of a colorectal tut with a known MBBS examiner.
I was kinda drifting in and out of stoning (the bloody tut was at 7.30am lo, and even tho i live like 10min away i still have to wake up early for my IBS k...) and sudd i was asked abt the extracolonic manifestations of FAP. The person in front of me had already said "pass!" and i just can't get rid of my mind block so I said "pass" also, and the tutor looked hopefully at the guy next to me, who said, "err I didn't know there were extracolonic manifestations".
You can imagine at this moment, the tutor's face looked rather black liao, and then he threw us the stinger, "don't you know abt 'chirpy'?"
In my stoned state, I wrote down: extracolonic manifestations of FAP = chirpy, then gave myself a mental shake while my mind went "HUH???" I leaned over to look at my neighbour's notes and he also wrote "chirpy".
"C-H-R-P-E", he announced to the silent room, there was a pause, while pple with pdas frantically whipped them out.
(in the rare event that you guys dont know, it's congenital hypertrophy of the retinal pigment epithelium)

Then, after a few more of these cringe-worthy moments, the tutor says, "I think you guys should read up more, going to the wards is important but you also need to build up on your knowledge."
I thought that sounds familiar, like I've heard it alot of times before, but smth seems abit different. It all became clear when he says, "Usually students have the problem of reading too much and lacking clinical skills, but i think this group NEEDS TO READ MORE".

Some irritating voice in my mind went: KUA KUA KUUUAA!

That day, my entire cg left before 3pm, and the only reason why the other cgs stayed is because they've got tutorial.

The Fifth dimension

2008-01-26T08:22:00.000-08:00

Sorry I know I haven been blogging much...

In fact, I haven been doing anything much...
I haven been eating much....
I haven been going out much....
I haven been reading much....
I haven been watching tv much....
And I definitely haven been mugging much...

It's Saturday again.. And tmrw is Sunday, and the day after that is Monday ie. start of third week of surg posting. And I still haven even reached the ligament of Treiz yet [I have been trying to work my way systematically down from head to toe].
And i looked back at the past week and for the life of me I can't remember a single productive thing I did... (OMG kinda freaking out already here...)
It's like smth out of some sci-fi movie, where has all that time gone? (Or maybe i've got some dissociation disorder or smth)

Tmrw I'm supposed to meet up with my ex-colleagues, and just now I tried to recall when was the last time I met up with them. I remember that night I was super grumpy cos I was having acute colicky severe abdo pain (I literally had to walk doubled over to try to get a cab home) that marked the onset of one of the worst gastroenteritis I've had in the history of all my GEs (yes, I remember significant events of my life by my GEs).
Here was my thought process: That was at the end of the year, because I caught the bug from Liang who allegedly caught it from his whole family, who allegedly blamed it on their Christmas lunch. Hmmm, but I dun recall meeting up with them during the dec hols last year because of all the lectures. So that GE I remember must be from last last dec, but that can't be right.. Maybe I confused it with another GE (that's the prob with marking your life events with GEs), oh but wait, I remember distinctly feeling POed because my that one GE not only spoiled my gathering with my ex-colleagues, but also made me missed out on the New Year's Booze Party with Wx.
Which means the last time we met up was more than one year ago?????!!!! What the freak??!!! HOw did that happen??? What was I doing during the few hols I had last year?
I honestly can't remember.

Oh crap.

The tutor.. continued

2008-01-09T07:10:00.000-08:00

It's wednesday again.. and I went for tutorial with bated breaths. And when after 15min and dr x din mention anything abt a tutorial with THE tutor, I breathed a ginormous sigh of relief. T said to me, "today he zi dong (automatic) never ask us for tut. I think he got the msg that we're not very interested. Last week you two din turn up, he damn sad lar... Din tell us as many stories and he kept repeating his words." I said, "awww... he misses us... heh heh.. u guys should thank us, we did u all a favour."
And we continued seeing patients happily...

Then after tutorial, just as we were leaving the ward, we saw HIM talking to a patient, and I think he caught the panicked look on our faces.. But we escaped unscathed.

Then at 6.03pm today, I received a sms from our grp rep, and I quote: "We're screwed. Tomorrow ward 2 2.30. Radioactive cows. He called me to tell me. Who's going?" I was in the national lib then, surrounded by quiet readers, and when I saw the sms, I let out a loud "oh shit!" and then collapsed on the table laughing mirthlessly, muttering "noooooo!" like a mad woman, Catechol was so worried he immediately grabbed my hp from my hands to read the sms that caused me to have such big da3 ji1 (fatal blow).

NO choice, it's fate. We're meant to have one last session with him. I'm only going because we have excuse to leave early cos got lecture...

An enthusiastic tutor

2008-01-02T03:36:00.000-08:00

If there's one thing we learn in the five years of medical school, it is that us medical students are the bottom of the medical food chain, we are parasites that feed upon our tutors' time, and we need to call them to humbly ask for a bit of their time and if anyone else is having tutorials, we hang around and try to eavsedrop.

So what is the problem with a tutor who enthusiastically gives us at least 2.5hrs of tutorials without fail every week?

Let me try to clue you in to our situation:

- After the first tutorial, we have never initiated contact with him since, and yet we still have tutorials every week.
- When he asked for a combined tutorial, we tried to warn the rest when informing them cos we feel we had to take informed consent (ie. when they regret their decision to come, we can say don't say we didn't warn you), and sure enough, ten minute into the tut, Wl turned to me and said, "i see what u mean".
- When we are all minding our own business in the ward, he swooped down on us and asked if we're waiting for him for tutorial. We hurriedly said that we're waiting for another tutor (truth) and he said, "ok i'll see you at 4.30 then, your tutorial should have ended by then." That was at 2pm.
- He called up our cg rep and told him tat he can give us a tutorial that day, our cg rep very tactfully and cleverly said that we're all in sgh tat day (half-truth), but the tutor even more cleverly said "we can meet at 4.30."
- One of us tried to escape (out of the kindness of my heart, I shall not mention names) but he captured 'said student' walking away from the designated meeting place and he said," hey aren't you in my tut grp? we meeting in tat ward rite?" And 'said student' was forced to say that he/she was going to the toilet. Hahahahahaha.... 'said student' was very pissed indeed..
- During that tutorial, one of us was sleeping so obviously that he was almost leaning on his neighbour's shoulders, someone was mugging under the table, someone was doodling on his book, someone was looking pissed (me), and we were all not looking at him, and yet tutorial can still go on uninterrupted for 2hours. (There were only 8 of us and we were all sitting around a table).

Still not clued in? How abt this:
- in our first week, he said he wasn't free to give us tutorial that day but he can meet us for a talk, he ended up talking for 1 plus hour abt everything under the sun that has nothing to do with medicine.
- we can spend two hours going through 1 long case, but maybe only 2minutes of the 2 hours is useful.
- some of the topics he spoke of during tutorials include cows. Actually, I honestly don't remember cos i always immediately switched off the moment i sensed him going off-tangent, but the others mentioned the 'cow-topic' as one of the worst topics ever, you can ask Wk abt it...

The only reason why I'm in a good enuf mood to blog abt this today is because our great escape worked.

Gasp! It's now 2008!

2007-12-31T08:46:00.000-08:00

For the 240 or so of us, 2008 just means these four measly letters: MBBS

In year 2003, we were all ecstatic and for some of us (ie. me) bewildered that we actually got accepted into this ridiculously difficult to get in course. I went around, in a blur, with Snell, Lippincotts and (what's the physio text again?), asking everyone, "do we reaaaally have to memorise all these???" and going for tutorials where we actually had homework and we get to prepare answers for tutorial (I didn't then, and now when tutorials are like a free-for-all gameshow where you have no idea what question is coming next, I sorely regret not having done so then)
And when I fill in those pesky bank loan forms regarding "year of graduation", 5 years is just such a long time that I had to literally count out the years on my hand, "2003..04..05...... oh i graduate in 2008!"

In year 2004, we went through the year of fortnightly CAs, started the tradition of post-CA lunches, getting smart enuf to pon some tutorials and crash others, skipped PBL sessions with certain tutors.....
.... and when the relatives ask, "when you graduate?" I answer, "haha still long, still got 4 years..."

In year 2005, we got released into the hospitals and we approached our first patients half-excitedly and with great trepidation. We feel embarrassed about asking personal questions and we (or at least I) feel very apologetic for bothering the patients so I always chop chop examine them, or if they reject me, I always go away apologising profusely.
And when the doctors say, "Year 3s? You're still babies! Long way to go!" We just laugh happily," Yeah! hahaha", the thought of graduating seems so intangible then.

In year 2006, we had an enjoyable fourth year doing all the small postings and parking our butts in the nursing counters at kk for 24hrs to fight hard to deliver babies. We formed great friendships with our cg mates whom we spent abt 10hours a day tog for the most part of 2 years. I think year four is my favourite year, where we had enough confidence and knowledge to feel comfortable around patients and where the stress of exams are not yet among us. The electives were great, where I truly enjoyed a relaxing fruitful self-directed learning.
And when the same relatives ask the same question. I always answer chirpily. "two more years to go... not so soon"

In year 2007, I spent the first 8 months in denial... and the last 4 months descending gradually into depression.
And somehow it seems like more people are asking the now dreaded question, and I would say, "next year march... hopefully" with a grimace. [even on Christmas Day, I still insist on saying NEXT YEAR march, even though next year is just 1week away.]

And now.. it's 2008........
.
.
.
AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

A different Christmas

2007-12-24T07:40:00.000-08:00

It really really really sucks to study on a Christmas eve night, it must be the most sad thing I've ever done..
[So I've decided to cheer myself up by watching house.. hiak hiak.. season 4 is really funny, appeals to my sardonic humour]

Wishing everyone a Merry Merry Christmas, make the most of it ya....
And a Happy Happy New Year, try la....

Fishy Surprise

2007-12-22T08:24:00.000-08:00

We celebrated our dear jiemeis’ birthdays today and like always, we had our usual dose of screeching laughter and scandalizing fun. A night of chilli padis, innovative but ?painful pumps, hatching eggs, chromosomal karyotype, matching pipes, wrist drops and the true meaning behind the sharing and giving of fries.
(I always think that some wannabe script writer should listen in to our conversations and write down everything we say, he would either make a killing selling it to some B-grade comedy producer, or die from scandalized shock. )

And with a lucky twist of fate (I’m sure Sm would beg to differ), we ended up at Fish & Co. where we had a lot of “fishy fun and fishy surprises” (*snigger snigger* don’t look at me, it’s directly quoted from Fish & Co k) We were reminiscing abt Zh’s birthday celebration aka embarrassing stand on chair moment last year, before the advent of Hunky (not this H) Hao. [For more info, pls refer to my blog entry in April 2006]. And before Sm could say “I don’t want to suffer Zh’s fate” P again did what she always do and asked a waiter abt it and we were pleasantly surprised to find out abt a 10% discount on top of a free dessert and a Fish & Co birthday rap, at which we all went ‘huh?’

Heh heh.. I took a video of the whole thing, I thought the staff did a very enthusiastic job, and you can see Wk beaming widely throughout and Sm smiling in mortification.

Must affirm Gh for the great photos taken of Wk:

It's like she's saying "gimme! gimme!"

It's always satisfying to give Wk birthday presents cos she's always so obviously happy

Opening a confusing present

A secret message?

Deciphered at last

Happy!