I Failed My Finals

Just for Laughs #12 - A Crazy Patient

2010-04-27T12:52:00.000+08:00

*SW = something wrong

Me:                         Morning! How can i help you, ma’am?

Auntie SW:         The rain was really heavy out there.

Me:                         Yup, it’s been raining season lately. How can i help you?

Auntie SW:         You see, i have this condition A that requires me to take warfarin, i have been taking it for ......

(rambling on and on about her disease for the last 10 years for 5 minutes while i was busy accessing my terminal for her old records in the hospital)

Me:                         Yes, i see that you have this condition for the last 10 years, and your last INR test done yesterday was great! But can you tell me what brings you here today?

Auntie SW:         Oh ok.

She flipped out a referral letter from her private cardiologist that she saw this morning. It was directed to the cardiology team taking care of her in my hospital, with a recommendation to lower her dose of warfarin.

Me:                         Hmm. You just saw your cardiologist this morning, and this letter is directed to the National Heart Centre. Where do i fit in this picture?

Auntie SW:         Oh i am going for a cataract operation in 2 weeks time in your hospital.

Me:                         So?

Auntie SW:         Can you please help me update my new warfarin dose in your computer system?

Me:                         Auntie, do you realise this visit costs you 90 dollar?

Auntie SW:         Yes i do.

Me:                         You could have just waited for the day you come for the operation and let them know of your new warfarin dose you know? The nurses then will serve you warfarin at your new dose.

Auntie SW:         But... what if they serve me the wrong dose? I can die from that!!

Me:                         Auntie...... No one dies from bleeding from a cataract op, even if you have warfarin on board. And you could have saved this 90 dollar by showing them the letter on day of admission.

Auntie SW:         Nevermind, i can pay the 90 dollar. Just update my new dosage on your computer for me.

Me:                         Auntie i can’t do that. My emergency room’s record do now show on their electronic prescription database.

Auntie SW:         Can you just try?

Me:                         It can’t be done. (My heart rate presently 140/minutes)

Auntie SW:         Really?

Me:                         Yes.... Auntie, why don’t i just cancel your visit and save you the 90 dollar? You just show your letter on admission as i have told you just now.

Auntie SW:         Hmm... Can you do an INR test for me today? I am willing to pay 90 dollar for that.

Me:                         YOU HAD JUST DONE AN INR TEST YESTERDAY! WHAT’S THE POINT? AND PAYING 90 DOLLAR JUST FOR A TEST ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!!!

(i mildly raised my voice. just mildly, believe me. really. )

Auntie SW:         (sheepishly) Ok then. I go home then. You really cancelling my visit for real?

Me:                         YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Auntie SW:         Ok then. Bye. (walking out, then turning back) I really don’t need an INR test today?

Me:                         YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. Bye.

Went through the trouble of erasing my entries and instructed the nurses to cancel the visit. So much trouble for saving 90 dollars. She might be dirty rich, despite the haggard clothing.

Was half way through my another consult when i heard a door knock, and the door was opened without me acknowledging first.

Auntie SW:         (popping her head in) Why don’t you uncancel my visit and do an INR test for me?

Me:                         (Heart rate 180/minute, face flushed with anger) I AM NOT GOING TO DO AN INR TEST FOR YOU AND YOU STOP WASTING MY TIME! GRRRRRRRRRRR

Auntie SW:         Ok ok... sorry.... (sheepishly went out again)

Being a doctor is a real health hazard. My cardiovascular risk must have gone through the roof that day.

Sharing: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

2010-04-13T02:32:00.000+08:00

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn
Those who think they're unlucky should change their outlook and discover how to generate good fortune, says Richard Wiseman

Richard Wiseman Published: 12:01AM GMT 09 Jan 2003
Comments 1 | Comment on this article

A decade ago, I set out to investigate luck. I wanted to examine the impact on people's lives of chance opportunities, lucky breaks and being in the right place at the right time. After many experiments, I believe that I now understand why some people are luckier than others and that it is possible to become luckier.

To launch my study, I placed advertisements in national newspapers and magazines, asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me. Over the years, 400 extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research from all walks of life: the youngest is an 18-year-old student, the oldest an 84-year-old retired accountant.

Jessica, a 42-year-old forensic scientist, is typical of the lucky group. As she explained: "I have my dream job, two wonderful children and a great guy whom I love very much. It's amazing; when I look back at my life, I realise I have been lucky in just about every area."

In contrast, Carolyn, a 34-year-old care assistant, is typical of the unlucky group. She is accident-prone. In one week, she twisted her ankle in a pothole, injured her back in another fall and reversed her car into a tree during a driving lesson. She was also unlucky in love and felt she was always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Over the years, I interviewed these volunteers, asked them to complete diaries, questionnaires and intelligence tests, and invited them to participate in experiments. The findings have revealed that although unlucky people have almost no insight into the real causes of their good and bad luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their fortune.

Take the case of chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not. I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities.

I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: "Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper." This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2in high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

For fun, I placed a second large message halfway through the newspaper: "Stop counting. Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win £250." Again, the unlucky people missed the opportunity because they were still too busy looking for photographs.

Personality tests revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people's ability to notice the unexpected. In one experiment, people were asked to watch a moving dot in the centre of a computer screen. Without warning, large dots would occasionally be flashed at the edges of the screen. Nearly all participants noticed these large dots.

The experiment was then repeated with a second group of people, who were offered a large financial reward for accurately watching the centre dot, creating more anxiety. They became focused on the centre dot and more than a third of them missed the large dots when they appeared on the screen. The harder they looked, the less they saw.

And so it is with luck - unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.

My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

I wondered whether these four principles could be used to increase the amount of good luck that people encounter in their lives. To find out, I created a "luck school" - a simple experiment that examined whether people's luck can be enhanced by getting them to think and behave like a lucky person.

I asked a group of lucky and unlucky volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck.

One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80 per cent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier. While lucky people became luckier, the unlucky had become lucky. Take Carolyn, whom I introduced at the start of this article. After graduating from "luck school", she has passed her driving test after three years of trying, was no longer accident-prone and became more confident.
In the wake of these studies, I think there are three easy techniques that can help to maximise good fortune:

Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell - a reason to consider a decision carefully.

Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.

Richard Wiseman is a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire. His book, The Luck Factor (Century), is available for £9.99 + £1.99 p&p. To order, please call Telegraph Books Direct on 0870 155 7222.

An NS Boy's Earnest Attempt at an Excuse

2010-04-13T00:24:00.000+08:00

Background:

Time and Place: Sunday morning, in P3 (Priority 3) clinic

Quirk: Instead of the usual mix of elderly and young people looking genuinely sick, all the patients lined up to be seen were:

18-19 years old who were supposed to be ghettoed inside National Service Camps (NS boys)
dressed up so well that they should have been in a mall instead. And also wore perfumes.

pink rosy cheeks

Me: struggling hard to spend more time on genuinely sick patients while sifting through a pile of NS boys flocking to the ED to get medical certificates to delay going back to their camp after a long weekend.

Me: cough? colour of phlegm?

NS boy 1: yes. green.

NS boy 2: yes. slightly greenish yellow.

NS boy 3: yup. tinge of green.

NS boy 4: cough so much that my throat hurts, and the phlegm i spit are all greenish!!
.
.
.
. (patience wearing thin)
.

NS boy N: yes. the sputum green in colour loh!

Frustrated at the same predictable answers to all my questions, as if they were all using the same ’NS Boy’s Handbook to Getting Medical Certificates’, I slammed the table and blasted.

Me: Why all the NS boys are coughing out greenish sputum?!

(NS boy N was shocked by the sudden hostility, hence a pause of few seconds, looking contemplative)

NS boy N (sheepishly offered) : err... maybe water in Tuas ... not clean?

I fell off my chair.

Driving Me Nuts

2010-03-22T21:41:00.000+08:00

Me: Any other complaints , sir?

Patient: (silence)

Me: Hmm. Ok, Do you have A?

Patient: Sometimes.

Me: When you have A, do you get B?

Patient: A bit.

Me: What about C?

Patient: Ya, sometimes.

Me: D?

Patient: Oh yes. Occasionally.

Me: Er....

Patient: I have E too!

Me: (exasperated)

stepH's Magic #1

2010-03-21T00:22:00.000+08:00

Chai Boey, it’s my favouritest dish, that my mum hesitated a little too long before teaching Steph. Hehe

Steph is a wonderful cook. I guess it’s time to showcase her cookings, and make you guys envious!

Marry Him!

2010-03-15T00:11:00.001+08:00

This really makes for a hilarious read. Read on my instapaper today. Just to share.

MARRY HIM!

THE CASE FOR SETTLING FOR MR. GOOD ENOUGH

By Lori Gottlieb
Illustration by Lou Brooks

See web-only content:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/marry-him/6651/
About six months after my son was born, he and I were sitting on a blanket at the park with a close friend and her daughter. It was a sunny summer weekend, and other parents and their kids picnicked nearby—mothers munching berries and lounging on the grass, fathers tossing balls with their giddy toddlers. My friend and I, who, in fits of self-empowerment, had conceived our babies with donor sperm because we hadn’t met Mr. Right yet, surveyed the idyllic scene.

“Ah, this is the dream,” I said, and we nodded in silence for a minute, then burst out laughing. In some ways, I meant it: we’d both dreamed of motherhood, and here we were, picnicking in the park with our children. But it was also decidedly not the dream. The dream, like that of our mothers and their mothers from time immemorial, was to fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).

To the outside world, of course, we still call ourselves feminists and insist—vehemently, even—that we’re independent and self-sufficient and don’t believe in any of that damsel-in-distress stuff, but in reality, we aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle, we’re women who want a traditional family. And despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra to get married young was finally (and, it seemed, refreshingly) replaced by encouragement to postpone that milestone in pursuit of high ideals (education! career! but also true love!), every woman I know—no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure—feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.

VIDEO: Lori Gottlieb explains why women should stop holding out for Mr. Right
Oh, I know—I’m guessing there are single 30-year-old women reading this right now who will be writing letters to the editor to say that the women I know aren’t widely representative, that I’ve been co-opted by the cult of the feminist backlash, and basically, that I have no idea what I’m talking about. And all I can say is, if you say you’re not worried, either you’re in denial or you’re lying. In fact, take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous.

Whether you acknowledge it or not, there’s good reason to worry. By the time 35th-birthday-brunch celebrations roll around for still-single women, serious, irreversible life issues masquerading as “jokes” creep into public conversation: Well, I don’t feel old, but my eggs sure do! or Maybe this year I’ll marry Todd. I’m not getting any younger! The birthday girl smiles a bit too widely as she delivers these lines, and everyone laughs a little too hard for a little too long, not because we find these sentiments funny, but because we’re awkwardly acknowledging how unfunny they are. At their core, they pose one of the most complicated, painful, and pervasive dilemmas many single women are forced to grapple with nowadays: Is it better to be alone, or to settle?

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year. (It’s hard to maintain that level of zing when the conversation morphs into discussions about who’s changing the diapers or balancing the checkbook.)

Obviously, I wasn’t always an advocate of settling. In fact, it took not settling to make me realize that settling is the better option, and even though settling is a rampant phenomenon, talking about it in a positive light makes people profoundly uncomfortable. Whenever I make the case for settling, people look at me with creased brows of disapproval or frowns of disappointment, the way a child might look at an older sibling who just informed her that Jerry’s Kids aren’t going to walk, even if you send them money. It’s not only politically incorrect to get behind settling, it’s downright un-American. Our culture tells us to keep our eyes on the prize (while our mothers, who know better, tell us not to be so picky), and the theme of holding out for true love (whatever that is—look at the divorce rate) permeates our collective mentality.

Even situation comedies, starting in the 1970s with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and going all the way to Friends, feature endearing single women in the dating trenches, and there’s supposed to be something romantic and even heroic about their search for true love. Of course, the crucial difference is that, whereas the earlier series begins after Mary has been jilted by her fiancé, the more modern-day Friends opens as Rachel Green leaves her nice-guy orthodontist fiancé at the altar simply because she isn’t feeling it. But either way, in episode after episode, as both women continue to be unlucky in love, settling starts to look pretty darn appealing. Mary is supposed to be contentedly independent and fulfilled by her newsroom family, but in fact her life seems lonely. Are we to assume that at the end of the series, Mary, by then in her late 30s, found her soul mate after the lights in the newsroom went out and her work family was disbanded? If her experience was anything like mine or that of my single friends, it’s unlikely.

And while Rachel and her supposed soul mate, Ross, finally get together (for the umpteenth time) in the finale of Friends, do we feel confident that she’ll be happier with Ross than she would have been had she settled down with Barry, the orthodontist, 10 years earlier? She and Ross have passion but have never had long-term stability, and the fireworks she experiences with him but not with Barry might actually turn out to be a liability, given how many times their relationship has already gone up in flames. It’s equally questionable whether Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw, who cheated on her kindhearted and generous boyfriend, Aidan, only to end up with the more exciting but self-absorbed Mr. Big, will be better off in the framework of marriage and family. (Some time after the breakup, when Carrie ran into Aidan on the street, he was carrying his infant in a Baby Björn. Can anyone imagine Mr. Big walking around with a Björn?)

When we’re holding out for deep romantic love, we have the fantasy that this level of passionate intensity will make us happier. But marrying Mr. Good Enough might be an equally viable option, especially if you’re looking for a stable, reliable life companion. Madame Bovary might not see it that way, but if she’d remained single, I’ll bet she would have been even more depressed than she was while living with her tedious but caring husband.

What I didn’t realize when I decided, in my 30s, to break up with boyfriends I might otherwise have ended up marrying, is that while settling seems like an enormous act of resignation when you’re looking at it from the vantage point of a single person, once you take the plunge and do it, you’ll probably be relatively content. It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about whom you want to go on vacation with; it’s about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.

I don’t mean to say that settling is ideal. I’m simply saying that it might have gotten an undeservedly bad rap. As the only single woman in my son’s mommy-and-me group, I used to listen each week to a litany of unrelenting complaints about people’s husbands and feel pretty good about my decision to hold out for the right guy, only to realize that these women wouldn’t trade places with me for a second, no matter how dull their marriages might be or how desperately they might long for a different husband. They, like me, would rather feel alone in a marriage than actually be alone, because they, like me, realize that marriage ultimately isn’t about cosmic connection—it’s about how having a teammate, even if he’s not the love of your life, is better than not having one at all.

The couples my friend and I saw at the park that summer were enviable but not because they seemed so in love—they were enviable because the husbands played with the kids for 20 minutes so their wives could eat lunch. In practice, my married friends with kids don’t spend that much time with their husbands anyway (between work and child care), and in many cases, their biggest complaint seems to be that they never see each other. So if you rarely see your husband—but he’s a decent guy who takes out the trash and sets up the baby gear, and he provides a second income that allows you to spend time with your child instead of working 60 hours a week to support a family on your own—how much does it matter whether the guy you marry is The One?

It’s not that I’ve become jaded to the point that I don’t believe in, or even crave, romantic connection. It’s that my understanding of it has changed. In my formative years, romance was John Cusack and Ione Skye in Say Anything. But when I think about marriage nowadays, my role models are the television characters Will and Grace, who, though Will was gay and his relationship with Grace was platonic, were one of the most romantic couples I can think of. What I long for in a marriage is that sense of having a partner in crime. Someone who knows your day-to-day trivia. Someone who both calls you on your bullshit and puts up with your quirks. So what if Will and Grace weren’t having sex with each other? How many long- married couples are having much sex anyway?

“I just want someone who’s willing to be in the trenches with me,” my single friend Jennifer told me, “and I never thought of marriage that way before.” Two of Jennifer’s friends married men who Jennifer believes aren’t even straight, and while Jennifer wouldn’t have made that choice a few years back, she wonders whether she might be capable of it in the future. “Maybe they understood something that I didn’t,” she said.

What they understood is this: as your priorities change from romance to family, the so-called “deal breakers” change. Some guys aren’t worldly, but they’d make great dads. Or you walk into a room and start talking to this person who is 5’4” and has an unfortunate nose, but he “gets” you. My long-married friend Renée offered this dating advice to me in an e-mail:

I would say even if he’s not the love of your life, make sure he’s someone you respect intellectually, makes you laugh, appreciates you … I bet there are plenty of these men in the older, overweight, and bald category (which they all eventually become anyway).
She wasn’t joking.

A number of my single women friends admit (in hushed voices and after I swear I won’t use their real names here) that they’d readily settle now but wouldn’t have 10 years ago. They believe that part of the problem is that we grew up idealizing marriage—and that if we’d had a more realistic understanding of its cold, hard benefits, we might have done things differently. Instead, we grew up thinking that marriage meant feeling some kind of divine spark, and so we walked away from uninspiring relationships that might have made us happy in the context of a family.

All marriages, of course, involve compromise, but where’s the cutoff? Where’s the line between compromising and settling, and at what age does that line seem to fade away? Choosing to spend your life with a guy who doesn’t delight in the small things in life might be considered settling at 30, but not at 35. By 40, if you get a cold shiver down your spine at the thought of embracing a certain guy, but you enjoy his company more than anyone else’s, is that settling or making an adult compromise?

Take the date I went on last night. The guy was substantially older. He had a long history of major depression and said, in reference to the movies he was writing, “I’m fascinated by comas” and “I have a strong interest in terrorists.” He’d never been married. He was rude to the waiter. But he very much wanted a family, and he was successful, handsome, and smart. As I looked at him from across the table, I thought, Yeah, I’ll see him again. Maybe I can settle for that. But my very next thought was, Maybe I can settle for better. It’s like musical chairs—when do you take a seat, any seat, just so you’re not left standing alone?

Back when I was still convinced I’d find my soul mate, I did, although I never articulated this, have certain requirements. I thought that the person I married would have to have a sense of wonderment about the world, would be both spontaneous and grounded, and would acknowledge that life is hard but also be able to navigate its ups and downs with humor. Many of the guys I dated possessed these qualities, but if one of them lacked a certain degree of kindness, another didn’t seem emotionally stable enough, and another’s values clashed with mine. Others were sweet but so boring that I preferred reading during dinner to sitting through another tedious conversation. I also dated someone who appeared to be highly compatible with me—we had much in common, and strong physical chemistry—but while our sensibilities were similar, they proved to be a half-note off, so we never quite felt in harmony, or never viewed the world through quite the same lens.

Now, though, I realize that if I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life, I’m at the age where I’ll likely need to settle for someone who is settling for me. What I and many women who hold out for true love forget is that we won’t always have the same appeal that we may have had in our 20s and early 30s. Having turned 40, I now have wrinkles, bags under my eyes, and hair in places I didn’t know hair could grow on women. With my nonworking life consumed by thoughts of potty training and playdates, I’ve become a far less interesting person than the one who went on hiking adventures and performed at comedy clubs. But when I chose to have a baby on my own, the plan was that I would continue to search for true connection afterward; it certainly wasn’t that I would have a baby alone only to settle later. After all, wouldn’t it have been wiser to settle for a higher caliber of “not Mr. Right” while my marital value was at its peak?

Those of us who choose not to settle in hopes of finding a soul mate later are almost like teenagers who believe they’re invulnerable to dying in a drunk-driving accident. We lose sight of our mortality. We forget that we, too, will age and become less alluring. And even if some men do find us engaging, and they’re ready to have a family, they’ll likely decide to marry someone younger with whom they can have their own biological children. Which is all the more reason to settle before settling is no longer an option.

I’ll be the first to admit that there’s something objectionable about making the case for settling, because it’s based on the premise that women’s biological clocks place them at the mercy of men, and that therefore a power dynamic dictates what should be an affair solely of the heart (not the heart and the ovaries). But I’m not the only woman who accepts settling as a valid choice—apparently so do the millions who buy bestselling relationship books that advocate settling but that, so as not to offend, simply spin the concept as a form of female empowerment.

Take, for instance, books like Men Are Like Fish: What Every Woman Needs to Know About Catching a Man or Find a Husband After 35 Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School, whose titles alone make it clear that today’s supposedly progressive bachelorettes aren’t waiting for old-fashioned true love to strike before they can get married. Instead, they’re buying dozens of proactive coaching manuals to learn how to strategically land a man. The actual man in question, though, seems so irrelevant that, to my mind, these women might as well grab a well-dressed guy off the street, drag him into the nearest bar, buy him a drink, and ask him to marry her. (Or, to retain her “power,” she should manipulate him into asking her.)

The approaches in these books may differ, but the message is the same: more important than love is marriage. To achieve that goal, women across the country are poring over guidebooks that all boil down to determining, “Does he like me?,” while completely overlooking the equally essential question, “Do I like him?” In other words, whatever compromises you have to make—including, but not limited to, pretending to be or actually becoming an entirely different person—make sure that you get some schmo to propose to you before you turn into a spinster.

Last year’s Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women makes the most blatant case for settling: if women were more willing to “think outside the box,” as one of the book’s married sources advises, many of them would be married. The author then trots out tales of professional, accomplished women happily dating a plumber, a park ranger, and an Army helicopter nurse. The moral is supposed to be “Don’t be too picky” but many of the anecdotes quote women who seem to be trying to convince not just the reader, but themselves, that they haven’t settled.

“I should be with some guy with a vast vocabulary who is very smart,” said Heather, a 30-year-old lawyer turned journalist. Instead, she’s dating an actor who didn’t finish college. “My boyfriend is fun, he’s smart, but he hasn’t gone through years of school. He wanted to pursue acting. And you can tell—he doesn’t have that background, and it never ever once bothered me. But for everyone else, [his lack of education] is what they see.” Another woman says she dates “the ‘secrets’ … guys other women don’t recognize as great.” How’s that for damning praise?

Meanwhile, in sugarcoating this message, the authors often resort to flattery, telling the reader to remember how fabulous, attractive, charming, and intelligent she is, in the hopes that she’ll project a more confident vibe on dates. In my case, though, the flattery backfired. I read these books thinking, Wait, if I’m such a great catch, why should I settle for anyone less than my equal? If I’m so fabulous, don’t I deserve true romantic connection?

Only one popular book that I can think of in the vast “find a man” genre (like most single women confounded by their singleness, I’m embarrassingly well versed) takes the opposite approach. In He’s Just Not That Into You, written by the happily married Greg Behrendt and the unhappily single Liz Tuccillo, the duo exhorts women not to settle. But the book’s format is telling: Behrendt gives perky pep talks to women unable to find a worthy match, while Tuccillo repeatedly comments on how hard it is to take her co-author’s advice, because while being with a partner who is “beneath you” (Behrendt’s term) is problematic, being single just plain “sucks” (Tuccillo’s term).

Before I got pregnant, though, I also read single-mom books such as Choosing Single Motherhood: The Thinking Woman’s Guide, whose chapter titles “Can I Afford It?” and “Dealing With the Stress” seemed like realistic antidotes to the faux-empowering man-hunting manual headings like “A Little Lingerie Can Go a Long Way.” But the book’s author, Mikki Morrissette, held out a tantalizing carrot. In her introduction, she describes having a daughter on her own; then, she writes, a few years later and five months pregnant with her son, “I met a guy I fell in love with. He and my daughter were in the delivery room when my son was born in January 2004.” Each time I read about single women having babies on their own and thriving instead of settling for Mr. Wrong and hiring a divorce lawyer, I felt all jazzed and ready to go. At the time, I truly believed, “I can have it all—a baby now, my soul mate later!”

Well … ha! Hahahaha. And ha.

Just as the relationship books fail to mention what happens after you triumphantly land a husband (you actually have to live with each other), these single-mom books fail to mention that once you have a baby alone, not only do you age about 10 years in the first 10 months, but if you don’t have time to shower, eat, urinate in a timely manner, or even leave the house except for work, where you spend every waking moment that your child is at day care, there’s very little chance that a man—much less The One—is going to knock on your door and join that party.

They also gloss over the cost of dating as a single mom: the time and money spent on online dating (because there are no single men at toddler birthday parties); the babysitter tab for all those boring blind dates; and, most frustrating, hours spent away from your beloved child. Even women who settle but end up divorced might be in a better position than those of us who became mothers on our own, because many ex-wives get both child-support payments and a free night off when the kids go to Dad’s house for a sleepover. Never-married moms don’t get the night off. At the end of the evening, we rush home to pay the babysitter, make any houseguest tiptoe around and speak in a hushed voice, then wake up at 6 a.m. at the first cries of “Mommy!”

Try bringing a guy home to that.

Settling is mostly a women’s game. Men settle far less often and, when they do, they don’t seem the least bit bothered by the fact that they’re settling.

My friend Alan, for instance, justified his choice of a “bland” wife who’s a good mom but with whom he shares little connection this way: “I think one-stop shopping is overrated. I get passion at my office with my work, or with my friends that I sometimes call or chat with—it’s not the same, and, boy, it would be exciting to have it with my spouse. But I spend more time with people at my office than I do with my spouse.”

Then there’s my friend Chris, a single 35-year-old marketing consultant who for three years dated someone he calls “the perfect woman”—a kind and beautiful surgeon. She broke off the relationship several times because, she told him with regret, she didn’t think she wanted to spend her life with him. Each time, Chris would persuade her to reconsider, until finally she called it off for good, saying that she just couldn’t marry somebody she wasn’t in love with. Chris was devastated, but now that his ex-girlfriend has reached 35, he’s suddenly hopeful about their future.

“By the time she turns 37,” Chris said confidently, “she’ll come back. And I’ll bet she’ll marry me then. I know she wants to have kids.” I asked Chris why he would want to be with a woman who wasn’t in love with him. Wouldn’t he be settling, too, by marrying someone who would be using him to have a family? Chris didn’t see it that way at all. “She’ll be settling,” Chris said cheerfully. “But not me. I get to marry the woman of my dreams. That’s not settling. That’s the fantasy.”

Chris believes that women are far too picky: everyone knows, he says, that a single middle-aged man still has appealing prospects; a single middle-aged woman likely doesn’t. And he’s right. Single women are painfully aware of this. I hear far more women than men talk about getting married as a goal to be met by a certain deadline. My friend Gabe points out that this allows men to be the true romantics; when a man breaks up with a perfectly acceptable woman because he’s “just not feeling it,” there’s none of the ambivalence a woman with a deadline feels. “Women are the least romantic,” Gabe said. “They think, ‘I can do that.’ For a lot of women, it becomes less about love and more about what they can live with.”

Not long ago, Gabe, who is 43, dated a woman he liked very much one-on-one, but he broke up with her because “she couldn’t be haimish”—comfortable—with his friends in a group setting. He has no regrets. A female friend who broke up with a guy because he “didn’t like to read” and who is now, too, a single mom (with, ironically, no time to read herself) similarly felt no regrets—at first. At the time, she couldn’t imagine settling, but here’s the Catch-22: “If I’d settled at 39,” she said, “I always would have had the fantasy that something better exists out there. Now I know better. Either way, I was screwed.”

The paradox, of course, is that the more it behooves a woman to settle, the less willing she is to settle; a woman in her mid- to late 30s is more discriminating than one in her 20s. She has friends who have known her since childhood, friends who will know her more intimately and understand her more viscerally than any man she meets in midlife. Her tastes and sense of self are more solidly formed. She says things like “He wants me to move downtown, but I love my home at the beach,” and, “But he’s just not curious,” and “Can I really spend my life with someone who’s allergic to dogs?”

I’ve been told that the reason so many women end up alone is that we have too many choices. I think it’s the opposite: we have no choice. If we could choose, we’d choose to be in a healthy marriage based on reciprocal passion and friendship. But the only choices on the table, it sometimes seems, are settle or risk being alone forever.That’s not a whole lot of choice.

Remember the movie Broadcast News? Holly Hunter’s dilemma—the choice between passion and friendship—is exactly the one many women over 30 are faced with. In the end, Holly Hunter’s character decides to wait for the right guy, but he (of course) never materializes. Meanwhile, her emotional soul mate, the Albert Brooks character, gets married (of course) and has children.

And no matter what women decide—settle or don’t settle—there’s a price to be paid, because there’s always going to be regret. Unless you meet the man of your dreams (who, by the way, doesn’t exist, precisely because you dreamed him up), there’s going to be a downside to getting married, but a possibly more profound downside to holding out for someone better.

My friend Jennifer summed it up this way: “When I used to hear women complaining bitterly about their husbands, I’d think, ‘How sad, they settled.’ Now it’s like, ‘God, that would be nice.’”

That’s why mothers tell their daughters to “keep an open mind” about the guy who spends his weekends playing Internet poker or touches your back for two minutes while watching ESPN and calls that “a massage.” The more-pertinent questions, to most concerned mothers of daughters in their 30s, have to do with whether the daughter’s boyfriend will make a good father; or, if he’s a workaholic, whether he can provide the environment for her to be a good mother. As my own mother once advised me, when I was dating a musician, “Everyone settles to some degree. You might as well settle pragmatically.”

I know all this now, and yet—here’s the problem—much as I’d like to settle, I can’t seem to do it. It’s not that I have to be dazzled by a guy anymore (though it would be nice). It’s not even that I have to think about him when he’s not around (though that would be nice, too). Nor is it that I’m unable to accept reality and make significant compromises because that’s what grown-ups do (I can and have—I had a baby on my own).

No, the problem is that the very nature of dating leaves women my age to wrestle with a completely different level of settling. It’s no longer a matter, as it was in my early 30s, of “just not feeling it,” of wanting to be in love. Consider the men whom older women I know have married in varying degrees of desperation over the past few years: a recovering alcoholic who doesn’t always go to his meetings; a trying-to-make-it-in-his-40s actor; a widower who has three nightmarish kids and who’s still actively grieving for his dead wife; and a socially awkward engineer (so socially awkward that he declined to attend his wife’s book party). It’s not that these women are crazy; it’s that the dating pool has dwindled dramatically and that, due to gender politics, the few available men tend to require far more of a concession than those who were single when we were younger. And while I have a much higher tolerance for settling than I did back then, now I have my son to consider. It’s one thing to settle for a subpar mate; it’s quite another to settle for a subpar father figure for my child. So while there’s more incentive to settle now, there’s less willingness to settle too much, because that would be a disservice to my son.

This doesn’t undermine my case for settling. Instead, it supports my argument to do it young, when settling involves constructing a family environment with a perfectly acceptable man who may not trip your romantic trigger—as opposed to doing it older, when settling involves selling your very soul in exchange for damaged goods. Admittedly, it’s a dicey case to make because, like the divorced women I know who claim they wouldn’t have done anything differently, because then they wouldn’t have Biff and Buffy, I, too, can’t imagine life without my magical son. (Although, had I had children with a Mr. Good Enough, wouldn’t I be as hopelessly in love with those children, too?) I also acknowledge the power of the grass-is-always-greener phenomenon, and allow for the possibility that my life alone is better (if far more difficult) than the life I would have in a comfortable but tepid marriage.

But then my married friends say things like, “Oh, you’re so lucky, you don’t have to negotiate with your husband about the cost of piano lessons” or “You’re so lucky, you don’t have anyone putting the kid in front of the TV and you can raise your son the way you want.” I’ll even hear things like, “You’re so lucky, you don’t have to have sex with someone you don’t want to.”

The lists go on, and each time, I say, “OK, if you’re so unhappy, and if I’m so lucky, leave your husband! In fact, send him over here!”

Not one person has taken me up on this offer.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/marry-him/6651/

Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

Everybody 'Used to be an ER doctor!'

2010-03-10T02:18:00.003+08:00

It's such a good piece i just gotta share!

Everybody 'Used to be an ER doctor!'

By Edwin Leap

Years and years in emergency medicine have given me a very enlightening look at the various specialties that make up the ‘house of medicine.’ I am constantly amazed by the other professionals I meet. It astounds me that pediatricians can manage the tiniest of humans, barely larger than my palm. I am fascinated by the way an orthopedic surgeon can look at a fracture and reconstruct it in her mind; a kind of spatial organization totally foreign to my cerebral hemispheres.

General surgeons can navigate the complex plumbing of the human body and leave it running smooth as silk after injury or cancer. And neurologists are at home with the awe-inspiring, labyrinthine pathways of the human brain.
Internists and family physicians have the patience of Job himself, and radiologists can detect subtleties in gray shades that would leave an owl shaking his feathery head in wonder. There are so many amazing specialists, from intrepid obstetricians to ophthalmologists who apply optic physics to aging eyes.

Sometimes, I look at the talent all around me and wonder if I even belong in their world! I could not do what these people do. They impress me, for I do not have their talents. I am not like them! And yet, year after year, people say to me, and to you my readers, ‘I understand what you’re going through, I’ve done some emergency medicine!’

What exactly does that mean? ‘I’ve done some emergency medicine?’ Maybe I’m a little sensitive, but it’s always said with a kind of swagger that says, ‘Yep, anybody can do that; wasn’t challenging enough, so I decided to become a neurosurgeon!’
‘I’ve done some emergency medicine,’ usually means that someone worked in a ‘moon-lighting’ capacity. Or that they rotated through an emergeny department. Or that, while between jobs, they found an emergency department or urgent-care clinic where they could make some money until they actually became ‘real doctors.’.

Imagine the laughter if we returned the favor. ‘Yeah, I’ve done some heart surgery; you know, back when I was an intern and needed the extra money!’ ‘Cool, radiation oncology! I did some of that when I was between emergency departments!’ ‘Angioplasty? Sure, I did some in school. It was kind of cool, but it wasn’t for me.’ We’d be laughed out of the room.
So what makes everyone feel that emergency medicine is the thing anyone can do? I can tell you, at almost 20 years in the field, I have no idea what would possess someone to think our work was a kind of ‘medical default,’ available to any physician who could fog a mirror with their breath.

What makes us unique? If it is merely the ability to take punishment, day after day, week after week and year after year, well that’s enough to separate us from the majority of the pack. We can do that. We are the ones who alway take up the excess. When an office is full and a febrile child needs to be seen, that child is ours. When a surgeon is too busy to evaluate the complication, we get the pleasure. When the cardiologist’s patient codes during the stress test, like as not they’re sent to the emergency department. And when all of it happens simultaneously, just as four multiple trauma patients roll in, we still have to ‘medically clear’ the psychiatric commitment, and contend with the fact that other specialists are just too busy to come and help; despite their prior months of extensive ED experience.

But it’s more than that. Just as each variety of specialist has unique capabilities that are their trademarks, so do we. We think quickly, and make remarkably good decisions with a terrifying paucity of data. Our patients are mostly people we ‘don’t know from Adam’s house-cat,’ to use a lovely Southernism. Despite that, we are so good at snap evaluations that we can typically find at least the very bad things people have in time to intervene appropriately. We put the ‘M’ in multi-task; each room we enter may hold disease entities as varied as pulmonary embolism and hang-nail; but we can’t make light of any of it, since hang-nails may be MRSA infections, and what we thought was pulmonary embolism may also be cocaine addiction or drug-seeking.

We are masters and mistresses of negotiation, creativity and disposition. Our daily skill sets involve cajoling the anxious and insistent to be discharged, the drunk to sit still and the administrator to listen to our ideas. We must convince annoyed staff physician to admit the vague abdominal pain patient, and explain to the patient’s lawyer brother that we’re really doing a bang-up job. It isn’t that we are fiction-writers or deceivers, we are simply trying to weave the stories of the day into one great happy ending. And that requires some creative communication.

There’s more, and it’s only a partial list. We are expected to intubate through vomit, obtain IV access in the violent and delerious, wrestle and restrain the suicidal, splint the fracture, read most of our own X-rays (even as someone else is being paid to do it) and close the vast scalp-wound as the Meth junkie curses us. Our list of skills is long. But we have to do all of it while doing screening exams, sexual assault exams and ‘pre-incarceration’ exams. We have to do it all while everyone else looks over our shoulders with clip-boards, asking why we weren’t faster, why we weren’t more efficient, why we didn’t document more and why we didn’t spend more time at the bedside. We’re queried about why we gave so many pain pills, and why we didn’t give more pain pills; about why we paged when we should have called, and called when we should have paged. And all of it while all hades breaks loose around us.

Despite being considered the inbred mountain-folk of medicine, our talents are considerable. And most of them we learned by doing over, and over, for years at a time. We didn’t become experts by moon-lighting.
I have to say, most people who tell me ‘I used to do some emergency medicine,’ really didn’t. At least, not the way we do it. Not with the same dedication, long-suffering and skill. If they had, they would have hugged us and apologized for not bringing lunch. And more importantly, they would have been ashamed to make the comparison. Not because they’re bad. But because we’re so good.

Betrayal

2010-03-09T00:45:00.002+08:00

Usually i try to steer my conversations away from unhappy stuffs. I don't like to carry these unhappy feelings and unload them in other people's mind. Let the trouble be mine and my own. No one likes an old bus with a trailing toxic fume that suffocates.

But i haven't felt so angry for a long time that i need to vent. And i can't pinpoint what was it that pissed me off.
I wasn't proud of myself.

I thought i had a firm control on my temper, that i can take all kinds of shit. These 4 months in A&E kinda reinforced my belief, seeing all sorts of people and getting all kinds of insult hurled at me. I had so far maintained this zen-like smile (my imagination anyway, haha) rather effortlessly.

I never got worked up by whatever scathing comment i had gotten so far, since most of them were either intoxicated or completely out of their mind. I didn't in any way identify with the labels, and i didn't suspect in the faintest likelihood that they could be right anyway. I could laugh them away and frankly, i probably did not get that many of them anyway.

I raised my voice at the patient's family today. Tsk tsk, extremely not skilful.

The patient (himself quite apologetic) had been waiting for 3 hours for a bed, but unfortunately bed situation in my hospital after the chinese new year period has been like a bad drought. The family requested for an update, and soon started raising their voice at me as i approached the reason for the delay. Despite reassurance that we were doing all we can to comfort him in the interim while waiting for his bed (and the busy inpatient ward MO), they were unhappy that the nurses were unable to secure a bed sooner. As soon as i told them that post CNY a lot more patient had showed up en masse, hence the bed crunch, they accused me of giving them an excuse.

How the hell is that an excuse? (I said, that's an explanation! Aghast!)

No you are not giving me an explanation, you are giving me an excuse!
They were relentless. They weren't listening.

I should have recognised that earlier. I should have just kept my mouth shut and act dumb. But i kept trying to drill some sense into them, to no avail.

In the end i found myself with boiling temperature blood coursing through my body, and my ears must have been red like a chimpanzee's ass.

How the confrontation ended i could not remember clearly now. I guess it was Ramizah who came to my rescue, diverting some of their firepower.

Why are people with absolute no idea of hospital's logistics so liberal at throwing their judgement about a hospital's seeming inefficiency? Does being family to a patient grant you the right to misbehave and boss around?

'Why are you raising your voice at me?' I said it in the calmest possible manner. What i got was 'i am not raising my voice at you' in an increasing high pitch and amplitude, and the whole observation ward was looking at us.

I guess what i felt was betrayal. That caused the anger.

Why do families turn their back against us healthcare worker who are trying to help the patients fighting against our common enemy, the diseases and sufferings? Aren't we supposed to be in the same team? (I was foolish to think so, guess i am not jaded yet)

I stayed back for almost 2 hours after work to sort out my patients, and all i got are these lousy people who don't appreciate what we are doing, threatening/deciding to AOR but have no pride to stick to their ill-decision to the end. Even have the cheek to ask the nurse to tell me they want to stay anyway in the end, and to cancel AOR.

We are all trying our best, why can't these people just make our hard work a little more pleasant/easier?

*The saving grace is that i can recall at will many more angelic patients who genuinely appreciate our sacrifice and makes all these self -denial (of pleasures) so palatable that i won't mind doing it till all my teeth fall

**What do you expect? Life's like that. Didn't you read the fine print when you sign on?

(Warped) Logic

2010-03-05T23:12:00.003+08:00

An angry patient on why he was kicked out from an allied health providing unit, allegedly because he wasn't liked.

Patient: I guess i know why the nurses don't like me. 'Cause i don't like to talk to ladies.

Colleague: I think maybe your (explosive) tone plays a bigger role.

Patient: But you see, at home I also talk to my wife like that; how can these women expect any better?

Me and colleague: ...

What Kind Of Service Is This?!

2010-03-03T22:29:00.005+08:00

'Oi!!!!!!!'

An irate family yelled at the top of his lungs and launched into a tirade of abuse against the nurses, exasperated that despite his mother's call bell rang twice, there was no one attending to her bursting bladder.

Nevermind a nursing senior tried to placate him and had apologised profusely, he became more abusive in language. A young nurse saved the day by bringing in a bedpan, averting a potential major disaster where the patient floods the entire emergency room with her huge volume of urine produced over the eternity of last 30 minutes (a nurse attended to her barely half an hour ago), drowning those who had the misfortune of devoting their life to medicine and nursing in the emergency room, along with the other patients...

'WHAT KIND OF SERVICE IS THIS?!'

Folding his arms and flushed with anger, he majestically glared at the healthcare minions that scrambled at his roar.

I had the misfortune of being his mother's attending doctor. But that did not stop me from being indifferent. I walked away to see another patient, to save a life potentially, rather than getting tangled up in PR mess.

Some people are just impossible.

How do you rate a hospital's service?

What is the benchmark that you judge the quality of your hospital experience against?
What, really, is your expectation of an emergency department?
What, do you make of nurses?

Dear friends, please bear in mind that a hospital is neither a restaurant or a hotel.

A hospital's primary purpose is to care for the sick (all of them, which in a busy emergency department like ours, amount to at least 500 patients a day), and when resources are adequate, secondarily we try to keep everybody happy and satisfied while at it.

Contrast this to other major service industries where customer satisfaction takes a whole lot more importance. Theirs are industries revolving around expendable needs and luxuries, where they are free to outprice low-income segments just to afford the level of services expected of them.

Hospitals just cannot afford to behave like hotels, restaurants, or airlines.

Consequently, nurses are not there to serve your every fancy and need at the flick of your finger like waiters or bellboys that subsist on your goodwill and tips. Theirs is a profession to serve sick people in need. Caring and tending to people with genuine health issues is their calling.

They are not your butlers/waitresses/cabin crew/cleaners/janitors. So do not expect the same service from my nurses.

Your average waitress doesn't wipe your bottom when you lose control of your asshole, does she? She probably will scream at you, get disgusted, and throw you out of the door.

Your average hotel concierge won't entertain you if your wallet is bone bare, save checking you into a room. Money comes first, your need will only be met as much as your credit limit allows for. Nurses don't give a fiddler's fart about how poor you are. As long as you are sick, you are their patients.

So if you want to boss around, go to Resorts World. If you are sick and you still want to boss around, try private hospitals.

However, if you end up in a government restructured hospital, please remind yourself that we are spreaded extremely thin with limited resources, and we have no choice but to do some serious prioritization all the time. In another word, we decide what is important and gets our attention first, not you. Some tasks will just have to wait, within reasonable confines of course.

We cannot attend to a bursting bladder and a blocked heart with the same urgency just to keep you happy. You cannot afford to have us do so too. Think about it.

So what kind of service is this?

HEALTHCARE SERVICE. Thank you.

I Will Never Look At Deodorant The Same Way Again

2010-03-02T02:37:00.006+08:00

I have seen many similar XRs before but little did i suspect one day i will have the fortune of seeing one myself.

So far, i notice a unifying theme in their presentations.

It's usually a fall landing on buttock.
Somehow there's a cylindrical object of considerable girth that happens to be sitting upright on the floor at the point just where the anus will eventually end up at.
Somehow the cylinder stays resolutely still in the face of a crashing asshole, rather than tumbling aside as i would expect.
Somehow the cylinder has such a smooth entry into the rectum that there's absolutely no evidence of external injuries/tear around the abovementioned orifice. I mean, we are all a bunch of tight ass-ed people aren't we?
And sometimes, somehow, after retrieval of the object, there's a condom sitting over the top of the cylinder that the patient conveniently forgets to tell you about.

Come on, just tell us upfront what you were up to. The cylinder may look like a rocket, but it definitely isn't a rocket science to figure out.

Honesty is the best policy. My sympathy takes a free fall down the vertical cliff the moment you try to convince me of the plausibility of the above Somehows.

Random #1

2010-03-02T01:42:00.004+08:00

Time and again i will log into this blog and reminisce about the days that i was actively churning out posts.

I love writing, love letting ideas flow effortlessly from my mind to my fingers typing frantically away at the keyboard. The rhythmic clicking of my keyboard now kinda excites me.

Recently i have been thinking about resuming writing here more and more.

It strikes me hardest when i was returning from Penang after my brief Chinese New Year holiday. The moment i boarded the plane, looking at the plastic smile pasted over the cabin crew faces, i was awashed with emotions. For the umpteenth time i am leaving Penang, i still feel the reluctance. I want to put these feelings into words, immortalising it, so that one day i can return and read what i felt, checking it against what lingers on in my memory.

We forget all the time. We whitewash our past since we were first born. It's our inherent nature.

I want to remember today as it is, and be able to relive the moments from my writings.

I guess this qualify as an emo post. Haha. It's almost 2am now and i am having insomnia.

It's Been a Year!

2009-11-07T00:40:00.002+08:00

Haven't written anything for the last one year. Honestly i wasn't so busy with housemanship, but there just wasn't time to sit down and write in my leisure.

Maybe i will return to writing more prolific-ly soon. So long

Just for Laughs #11 - These Kids Are Really Damn Brilliant

2008-11-02T12:03:00.003+08:00

You've gotta give it to them. I wish i had the foresight.

12-Year-Old Boy Scouts Volunteer To Give Women Breast Exams

And yes you can also see how dumb mass media can be.

2008-09-15T19:41:00.003+08:00

Posted by Almighty asam =)

Happy birthday muaks

It's Over

2008-09-12T13:14:00.004+08:00

Feeling lame. (Well you can tell it's an angmoh, so it can't be me.)

And so it's over.

I don't feel exhilarated though. The feeling is just lame.

Long case was a breeze, and was told i did really well. Short cases was not as great but i guess it's good enough.

But the anticipated emancipatory joy is just not there.

I guess i did not feel vindicated. The long case was simple, too simple to feel satisfied for doing well, while my performance at the short cases was wanting*.

Wanting simply because i had a high expectation. So don't get alarmed.

The short cases were a ulcerated papilloma, adult polycystic kidney disease, hallux valgus, and a plain AXR showing gas under diaphragm. Apart from the hallux valgus, the other 2 weren't the run-of-the-mill cases that we frequently get examined on.

All the templates of perfect approach and answers gone down the drain just like that.

Why do we even bother with short cases? What does it tell about a student?

Zilt.

Absolutely Beautiful Song

2008-09-10T20:14:00.002+08:00

"Pimples"

I used to care so much about what others think about
Almost didn't have a thought of my own
The slightest remark would make me embark
On the journey of self doubt
But that was a while ago
This guy has got stronger
If I knew then what I know now
I would have told myself don't worry any longer it's OK

[Chorus:]
'cause a face without pimples is like a sky without stars
Why waste a second not loving who you are
Those little imperfections make you beautiful, lovable, valuable,
They show your personality inside your heart
Reflecting who you are

Who you are
Who you are
Who you are

I wondered if I could trade my body with somebody else in magazines
Would the whole world fall at my feet?
I felt unworthy and would blame my failures on the ugliness I could see
When the mirror looked at me
Sometimes I feel like the little girl who doesn't belong in her own world
But I'm getting better
And I'm reminding myself

[Chorus]

Reflecting who you are
Reflecting who you are
Hmmm
Whoooooo whoa hmmmm oooooo

[Chorus]

Updates

2008-09-10T13:09:00.002+08:00

And so the theory papers are all over now. Now what's left is the make-it-or-break-it clinical examinations on friday, with a day of break before the final hurdle.

The past 3 days have been good. So don't worry. I just hope i won't get cold feet before the clinicals. You know, once bitten, twice shy.

It's rather weird to worry about exams.

Nevermind, i shall take refuge in the knowledge that i have identified my weaknesses and had taken measures to improve on delivery.

Time to go back to study.

Just for Laughs #10 - Lame

2008-09-06T15:03:00.003+08:00

This could be me, if i was female, white, plump, and well-off (see the necklace and awesome kitchen).

Just some random picture that resonated with my being. Haha.

Just for Laughs #9 - East West Dissociation

2008-09-04T12:28:00.005+08:00

* 3 days to finals! Woohoo!!

Been busy studying so didn't have much time posting new entries. But quite a few funny happenings transpired these few days. I will share one with you.

Coming from the great Malaise-ia, the idea of referring to my location in Singapore as being in the west or in the east of the island was quite foreign.

Rarely have i heard Malaise-ians saying they are staying in the east or west. Granted there are West and East Malaise-ia, and also West and East Coast, but when have you heard them being referred to in that manner? People proudly profess that they are from Kuching or Kuala Terengganu and so on.

So i can understand that some Malaise-ians CAN have difficulties associating with East/West.

I am staying in Bukit Batok*, just north of the blue bubble on the map above which marks Jurong East MRT interchange. Bukit Batok MRT station is only one stop away. Going by the location of Bukit Batok relative to the island, that would put me in the west of the island.

*No it's not a hill, and i don't see unusual concentration of coughing patients here. The only elevation in the island with lots of coughing TB patients is at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, which is at Novena, or the central of the island.

But this is classic.

Scenario: Reading a food blog and lamenting our poor fate of living in the west of the island where there is not much good makan place. The east of the island is where most of the population stays in, with a glut of ~~better~~ good food.

CJ: Sighs too bad we are staying in the west.

Someone*: West?

CJ: Yeah we are staying in the west of the island.

Someone*: Really?

CJ: (eyes rolling) Yeaaahhhhhh.....

Someone*: But it's Jurong EAST!!! Why would they call it east if it's in the west?!!!

CJ: (falls behind, mouth frothing, face twitching, and legs kicking = seizure from disbelief)

*Someone = Steph aka Almighty.

Another Accident During Breakfast

2008-08-30T11:31:00.006+08:00

I survived an explosion.

Yes, right here in Singapore. You may think it is such a safe country, but no one is safe from unexpected turns of events.

Impermanence of life, so Buddha taught...

Sighs.

The aftermath was absolutely gory, with remains of an organic being strewn all over the place.

My ears were still ringing from the deafening blast hours later; my heart still beating fast from the horrible experience.

I am safe though, don't worry. Unharmed. Unscathed.

(yeah i am making you scroll)

I did not lie. Egg is organic, isn't it? *

I will learn from the experience, and will not meddle lightly with weapons of cookery from now on.

The poached egg gadget bought from Daiso is such a bitch to use. Or it could just be me.

Likely the latter.

*Disclaimer: I did not char the top of the oven. Not ME! But there's a lesson to be learnt. Do not cook cup noodle in microwave. You are supposed to pour hot water in. If you have to microwave it, remove the paper/aluminium foil lid too, please...

Baldy that was me

2008-08-28T13:28:00.001+08:00

That was long ago yeah?

The Malaysian that ...

2008-08-28T00:17:00.003+08:00

An awesome photo

Saw this photo on my favourite retiree's blog.

Someone went...

'Ah i know, this is... this is...'

I thought she recognised the blog i was reading.

Then she came up with an impeccable follow-up.

'What's that towers called again?'

So much for being a Malaysian. Haha.

An Accident During Breakfast

2008-08-25T16:15:00.004+08:00

Screenshot from Midwest Teen Sex Show, an online sex education show with a twist.

What can happen when you eat a sandwich in front of your computer?

No i didn't spill my drink on the keyboard. Imagine something more unlikely.

You know what? I took one bite at my home-made sandwich, and the still runny egg yolk shot forth in a huge squirt, and landed squarely on my keyboard, running the entire length of that sleek white and aluminium darling of mine. Thank goodness it missed everything else.

My heart skipped a beat. I remained stunned for some time, not knowing what to do.

I never expect to be able to shoot that thick, viscous, proteinaceous fluid from between my mouth!

Luckily i had a silicone cover over my keyboard. Otherwise i guess i will be spending the rest of the day taking my keyboard apart and scrubbing it.

I continued to devour my sandwich before i cleaned up the mess.

Yellow c**shot on my keyboard. Eww...

Time to go back to read, and see more. I do hope my joke this time has been less subtle.

To Hell With Olympic Spirit

2008-08-23T07:13:00.007+08:00

*15 days to Finals! Am so glad it's finally coming...

**It's 7.14 am now, almost an hour since i woke up. No i am no early bird, i just could not go back to sleep. For the past 2 weeks that i had not been waking up, i was woken up anyway, either by Rags knocking on the door to check if Nesa was awake, or by Nesa leaving his alarm on while showering.

The regular disturbance did not come today, but i woke up anyway, unconsciously bracing for the faint-but-still-too-loud knock or the frenzied alarm. I always suspect there is a build-in precision clock somewhere in the human brains.

Do you know it's the second last day of Olympic Games already? I didn't, and was quite taken aback by my ignorance when i sought out the schedule.

By the way, what's the spirit of the Olympic? (I always have some misgivings towards this)

I always wonder why virtually everyone praises the spirit of the Olympic, in every speeches that is remotely related to Olympic Games. I vaguely remember i learnt something about it when i was in primary or secondary school, but whatever that was taught obviously did not make too much of an impact since i could not recall it well.

So i did some googling and here are what i have found.

By blending sport with culture and education, Olympism promotes a way of life based on:

The balanced development of the body, will and mind
The joy found in effort
The educational value of being a good role model
Respect for universal ethics including tolerance, generosity, unity, friendship, non-discrimination and respect for others.

(source: Olympism - What is it?)

But i beg to differ.

Olympic Games do not celebrate the balanced development of the body, will and mind. Tell me which of the athletes have a balanced development of all those? All the athletes who qualify for Olympic Games probably have lived all their lives training for the sports, and would have sacrificed the life that we commoners enjoy.

What they have instead, is actually overly developed body, overly toughened will, and overly simple mind.

*Gasps*

If life revolves entirely around winning game (mind you one cannot reach the Olympic Games if he/she does not breathe, eat, and sh*t thinking about that particular sports), i would have severe reservation on how developed, or rather balance, that mind can be.

Now let's talk about the joy found in effort.

Well, if u plant a mango seed and you savour the fruits you reap, yeah that is the joy found in effort. But in Olympic Games? Come on... For every one fellow who weeps in joy for winning the coveted gold medal, there are hundreds, if not thousands who languish in misery for effort that never paid off. It's not as bad for someone who obviously sucks in the sports, he/she at least would have gotten the cue not to try too hard and should instead work on other vocations, and make more babies to torture them with his/her unfulfilled dream. Imagine those fellas who have talent, and are groomed into ~~machines~~ sportsmen with a realistic chance to make it to the top, BUT NEVER MAKE IT.

Imagine a life of frustration, disappointment, and anguish.

And chances are these people have deviated so far from the route that social norm dictates that everyone else take, most notably the lack of proper schooling. (Think general, don't get too engrossed in the few who make it to the top in both education, and sports. Those are outliers.)

Are you guilty of playing up the hype of the sports, cheering them on, and indirectly cause these people to forgo a normal life?

Yes, they probably have an extraordinary life. As long as it lasts. Which is rather short actually. We are looking at the youngest cohort of retirees in every country. Wondering what to do with the rest of their lives, outside the limelight.

Thank you, my supporter. My ass.

Now, the education value of being a good role model.

Who?

I wonder if it's just me who is having some difficulty trying to associate Olympic Games and the role model thingy.

There was this celebrated loser who was trailing miles behind everyone else in the marathon, but persisted in making to the line anyway. Good role model eh? But sometimes in life, in your finite life, it's ok to call it quits before you try too hard for too long for too little reasons. Do they teach you that in Olympic? No. They cheer you on for the narrow moral triumph, and neglect the importance of thinking for yourself.

Would i persist to the line if it was me? Yes i would, but that's sports. It has absolutely no bearing on day-to-day life. If you forget to tell that disclaimer to kids, who all grow up in a poisonous environment that discourages too much thinking/questioning (think religion, and Malaysia, or Singapore in that matter), you will end up with stubborn fools who soldier on despite all obvious contraindications.

I am sure my mum would have killed me if i were him. (Source: The Star)

That damned word is faith. (And faith by default does not tolerate intellectual probing, the less brain you use the better it is, since you only need to praise... Oh that reminds me of the small nifty gadget that mum switches on during auspicious days, that chants Buddhist prayers non stop. In spite of a brain, that gadget must be going to the heavens! Rejoice!)

Respect for universal ethics including yadda yadda yadda....

I say...

no tolerance because if you are tolerant there is no need to see if you are 0.01 second faster than someone else in swimming, and do that once every 4 years for that matter.

no generosity because conferring recognition to only the top 3, while disappointing thousands of aspiring gold medallist who worked their behind off, is in no way being generous. If that does not convince you, see how many countries that have poured in millions in nurturing sports, and sadism*, but produced absolutely no medal. Hey Malaysia, you don't snigger. You are not much better off.

*I say sadism too, because these sportsmen work so hard to be in the top 3, but if you make it easier to get a medal, like giving a 4th or 5th iron or titanium medal, i tell you for sure they will be all up in arms protesting. It's only meaningful to them because if they win, it's at the expense of everyone else losing. No win-win situation. Oh whip me hard...

No unity because you don't see sprinters holding hand and run to the line together. They try hard to go ahead of the others. The only unity i see, is a group of people who otherwise have no business of gathering in one place in so huge a number, united in sweating, breathing in humanly odours, and screaming their lungs off. Such a display of unity must have done humanity many good...

No friendship... Well with headlines like this (Read: Beijing Provides 100,000 Condoms for the Athletes), I guess there must be some new ~~amorous~~ friendships abound in Beijing.

No non-discrimination. Because if you can't help seeing poorer countries with less resources doing really badly in the medal tally! You don't have to exclude to discriminate. You can include, and still discriminate. And the whole point of gold medal is to discriminate the best from the rest! What non-discrimination bullshit.

And absolutely no respect for others. You see how the photographers never take photos of the losers? Hey those poor chaps flew thousands of miles to that great polluted city too ok?

Exhale...

Well i must admit that in spite of all the badmouthing that i do on Olympic Games, i cannot make a clear-cut case that this huge waste of money totally lacks merit. But we must take a pinch of salt and think for ourselves, what is the cost for every little grain of national pride we feel, and does it mean as much as the media trumpets it to be.

And before you get bored of my tirades, do you know what the Olympic Rings mean?

(Source: The Olympic Rings)

Deep indeed. Heh.

Engrish, Armpit Hair and Apple

2008-08-19T20:21:00.006+08:00

Just some random stuffs today.

I stumbled across some Engrish last few days.

'suppose'

I can't understand why these established chain of restaurants, while minting money, can't be bothered to vet their Engrish properly. Mind you these places are almost impeccable in their other aspects of services which make these flaws all the more glaring.

It's like seeing a gorgeous lady perfect in all respects, but does not shave arm pit hair.

From where i plucked this photo from, this girl supposedly keep the armpit hair for revenge. I don't want to imagine what revenge it is. Eww

It is just heart-wrenching to see*.

*This does not, in any way, represent my personal view on armpit hair ok? I am just stating the cultural norm, heh.

While we are at it, check this funny korean prank.

There's also this photo that Almighty dug up recently. It's about me!

Just as sweet, no?

Well, CJ is short for Chuen Jye which is supposed to be pronounced as Jun Jie.

So if you eat an apple a day but worry that it will keep me away, buy this brand of apple. Then you will have both!

Ok i am being lame.

Now i shall go back to cursing someone's soft palate that simply vibrates too much.

In Defense of Lee Chong Wei

2008-08-17T22:36:00.005+08:00

The guy who broke 27 million hearts. Note the inconvenient protuberance. Don't tell me you never notice that. Bulls**t

I am feeling mightily depressed. I guess there are a lot of people out there who feel the same like me, both in Malaysia, and Singapore.

Been feeling lousy ever since watching the Olympic gold medal match between Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan.

It could have been so much better played out. He should have put up a better fight.

I suppose there are a lot of enraged Malaysians ready to lash out at Lee CW now, having dashed the dream of a first Olympic gold medal, and derailed a much anticipated public holiday too.

But i gotta put across my 2 cents in his defence.

True, Lee Chong Wei was not playing his usual games. He simply could not.

His face during the match was that of a cowered opponent, not his usual expressionless poker face. I guess it was only normal to be intimidated, after all he was playing a Chinese opponent in a Chinese gymnasium, filled with Chinese spectators that thundered out a deafening 'Lin Dan Jia You!' non stop for the entire match. The resulting din permitted little intrusion of cheer for him, as far as i could tell from the live telecast.

Got this from either BBC or Official Olympics sportsmen profile. They could have easily given him a more complimenting picture.

He must have felt like he was battling an entire army, one billion strong, all by himself.

The irony is he is a chinese too, but we humans are very fixated on artificial stuffs, such as borders of nations.

But that's not all.

He had to shoulder the unenviable monumental task of gaining the country's first ever Olympic gold medal, which unfortunately translates very well into risk disappointing 27 million people should he fail.

I almost forgot he campaigned for Ling Hee Leong's bid to enter the parliament not so long ago. Tsk tsk tsk. Stick to sports la.

It's plain sad that the nation has no realistic hope of winning any medals in other sports. In a sense, he was made to pay for the inadequacies of the country's sports development programme. The burden would not have been so heavy if he did not have to be treated as the sole beacon of hope, the sole torch bearer who could bring us glory.

So much for the millions we poured into developing sports (or trying to build some sports hall in London for dubious reasons.)

All in all, the odds were completely against him.

Yes he definitely could have played better, but the circumstances could have been a lot better too. Don't give the poor chap a hard time. He must be the most depressed person in the entire Malaysia now.

Now if you would excuse me, i have my own depression from empathizing too much with that fellow Penangite to nurse now. Good nite.

Oh ya, we got a silver medal, if you have forgotten about that somehow.

A Distress Call Transcript

2008-08-14T20:35:00.006+08:00

I came across this distress call transcript a few days back while killing time on the MRT with my phone, surfing on BBC.

Fortunately, few of us will ever have to make such a call, or will be at the receiving end of such distress calls, but i gather the essence of humanity so starkly portrayed in the conversation will make reading it a worthwhile experience.

I am really impressed by the professionalism of the operator.

The 999 call from massacre house

Two drug dealers have been convicted of shooting dead three men at a house in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire. Moments after the massacre one of the men's girlfriends, Claire Evans, who had herself been stabbed, rang 999. The following are edited extracts of the transcript of that call.

The Cowells lived in the commuter town of Bishop's Stortford

Operator: Ambulance, emergency.

Miss Evans: I need an ambulance.

Operator: Where do you want the ambulance to come to?

Miss Evans: Plaw Hatch Close, Bishop's Stortford.

Operator: Plaw Hatch Close?

Miss Evans: Yeah, please. I've been stabbed loads. Can you hurry up.

Operator: You've been stabbed. OK.

Miss Evans: Please hurry... I think the people are still here.

Operator: The people are still there are they? OK.

Miss Evans: Please hurry.

Operator: Right, well we've got the police as well as the ambulance on the way to you OK? So try not to panic.

Miss Evans: I've got my daughter here as well.

Operator: All right my love, all right. Now where have you been stabbed?

Miss Evans: Everywhere, in my head, my back, everywhere.

Operator: And the attackers are still there?

Miss Evans: I think they've gone. I'm not sure.

Operator: Right, OK. Is there any serious bleeding my love?

Miss Evans: Yeah, I'm covered... it's everywhere, it's pouring, I don't know if I'm going to live.

Operator: Come on now stay positive. You've got a little girl there, OK? Stay positive my love. OK, try and be calm, we've got the police and the ambulance on the way to you now. How old is your little girl?

Miss Evans: Three.

Operator: Right, is she there, can she see what's happened?

Miss Evans: Yeah, she can see it, I can't move... It really hurts...

Operator: Are you in a house or a flat?

Miss Evans: In a house.

Operator: Who lives there with you then?

Miss Evans: It's my boyfriend's parents' house.

Operator: Right, and are they there?

Miss Evans: Yeah, they're downstairs, I think. I think I heard guns as well I think.

Operator: You heard guns as well?

Miss Evans: Yeah, downstairs.

Operator: And you think you've heard some shots downstairs?

Miss Evans: Yes [voice in the background, inaudible].

Operator: Who's that with you?

Miss Evans: It's my boyfriend's cousin [Ian Jennings].

Operator: OK. Can I talk to him, can I talk to him my love?

Mr Jennings: Hello.

Operator: Hello, this is the ambulance service... This lady has been stabbed, yeah?

Mr Jennings: Pardon?

Operator: The lady you're with now has been stabbed, is that right?

Mr Jennings: Yeah, the lady's been stabbed, yes.

Operator: She said she heard some gunshots as well.

Mr Jennings: Yeah.

Operator: Is there anybody in the house injured?

Mr Jennings: Five people that are injured. She's been stabbed in the back and everything. Oh, God... Did they take all the gear? Did you see?

Miss Evans: No idea. Ian, where's Matt?

Mr Jennings: Dead mate, so is that Tony.

Operator: Right, OK my love now they're nearly with you now OK?

Mr Jennings: I think my mum's lying down there.

Operator: Are you all right?

Miss Evans: No, I think he just told me my boyfriend's dead... Please hurry up.

Operator: Right, what did you just say to me?

Miss Evans: I think he just said my boyfriend's dead.

Matthew Cowell (right) and his father lay dead downstairs

Operator: Listen, listen to me my love. The ambulance is almost with you, OK?

Mr Jennings: She can't talk.

Operator: Try and stay calm. I know it's very very difficult and I know you must be in a lot of pain... How's the little girl, is she all right?

Miss Evans: She's shaking.

Operator: Yeah, I'm sure she is.

Miss Evans: All this blood is pouring out of me.

Operator: Well, I'll stay on the phone my love, I won't let you go until they get to you.

Miss Evans: I think my boyfriend's gone.

Operator: Now where is your boyfriend, downstairs?

Miss Evans: He must be downstairs and I think that his dad's gone and all.

Operator: You think that your boyfriend and his dad are both dead?

Miss Evans: Yeah... This pain's getting really, really bad, really, really bad.

Operator: Right, OK.

Miss Evans: I think they've just pulled up, can you send them upstairs.

Operator: Have they just turned up?

Miss Evans: Yeah.

Operator: All right, well, are you going to go now or do you want me to stay until they come up to you?

Miss Evans: No, they're here, thank you very much.

Operator: You're more than welcome my love, I hope this is all all right for you.

Miss Evans: Thank you.

Operator: All right, take care now.

Miss Evans: Bye.

Recalcitrant Patient

2008-08-12T17:15:00.006+08:00

*Names and identities changed in this article. Coming next: The nuances of keeping clean, and cleaning...

'Morning Mr Liew', greets the consultant running the morning rounds.

Mr Liew turned over to look at us quizzically, his head still nesting in the comfort of pillow. Peering at us intensely through fatigued eyelids that refused to hold up, he nodded at us once, and went back in search of deep slumber.

Out of luck. The registrar goes on to pat at his shoulder repeatedly, much to his dismay.

'Afebrile, vitals stable. Sats 99% at room air. Input and output...' I mumble as i read the clinical chart, while the MO(medical officer) scribbles at the case notes.

I glance about the bed in the meantime, sizing up the patient in the clinical sense. Mr Liew is a new patient that was admitted while i was away so i have no knowledge of his diagnosis at all.

A middle age chinese man, unkempt and unshaven, his appearance tells a tale of someone who did not have the favours of life shining upon him. His coarse features have a certain air of rebelliousness. Wearing a double chin and a sizeable beer belly, he probably was not too scrupulous about his health. Grinning at us with a display of yellow-stained teeth, he must have smoked like a chimney. I wonder what his problem is.

The consultant goes to the end of bed and begins pulling the carefully tucked-in blanket out.

Mr Liew shifts his weight around lazily as the blanket is being pulled away. I notice something moving in the pocket of his patient shirt.

Through the thin yellow fabric, i can make out the rectangular shape of the object. Unable to tell what it is on first look, i turned my attention to his left foot, which is much more relevant than whatever that nestles in his pocket.

He has had a transmetatarsal amputation (think chopping all toes and half of the foot transversely) of his left foot, exposing an array of cross-sectional bones and tendons buried within flesh.

Being a patient of my team of doctors, this can only mean he has peripheral arterial disease, a condition where arteries in the peripheries (especially lower limbs) get clogged up with cholesterol or narrowed, causing the toes and feet to die off.

The typical patient is an elderly man/woman with poorly controlled diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, and smokes too. However Mr Liew is only 40 years old.

Listening to the conversation between the consultant and patient, i am shocked to discover that Mr Liew had an episode of cardiac arrest during his current hospital stay too.

40 years old. That's really too young to have so many health issues.

'When can i go home?' The patient asks impatiently, and rather animatedly as we inspect the condition of the amputated foot. The consultant has a hard time trying to convince him that he is not well enough to go home.

Holding a sterile dressing towel in one hand, i lift whatever is left of his left foot up with another hand. As i lift his left foot high up to slide in the dressing towel, the mysterious rectangular object in his pocket slides out. I feel the same surprise that punters winning jackpot must have felt, minus the thrill.

It's a box of cigarette, complete with a pictorial warning of a gangrenous foot. How fitting!

I can literally see dark clouds hovering over the consultant's eyebrows. I can almost make out the sound of thunder as he chastises the patient for smoking. I steal a look at the sky outside, thank goodness it is a clear day with plenty of sunshine.

Mr Liew looks at us defiantly, and shrugs his shoulders. I swear all of us look really defeated at that moment. Sometimes all the advances in modern medicine seem so futile.

Why smoke again? When it has caused you to lose half of your foot? When it has made your heart stop once?

I have no answer to that, and I hate to admit that i see traces of my friends in Mr Liew, friends that i care about.

Life and How To Survive It

2008-08-07T20:53:00.003+08:00

* In the 50 odd years of nationhood, Malaysia has only had one person charged with sodomy. And make it twice while you are at it! Oh do you know what's Malaysia's top export now? Fish! Fishy politicians!

Jenson from Medical Dharma Circle shared on our Yahoogroup this convocation address to NTU graduating class of 2008 by Adrian Tan, a litigation lawyer from a leading law firm in Singapore. I really like the speech, finding it to be exceedingly insightful.

He was telling us not to work, get hated and learn to love. And the best part is that they all make sense!

Go read it, give it a few minutes.

(speech lifted from Mr Wang Says So blog)

Life and How to Survive It

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan "Arbeit macht frei" was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

You’re going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there’s no life expectancy.

Accidental Tacklessness

2008-08-06T23:49:00.006+08:00

* Just received my exam notice today (actually i haven't checked my mailbox in days). 32 more days. CC was a bit jittery today, thinking about how the exam could go wrong. Shaken from the failure, we all now share the paranoia of being penalised for less than good reasons. Well, we can't do much about it apart from better preparing ourselves for the subjectivity of the exams.

There was one other reason drawing me to KL last weekend.

Even though seeing my old friend was the major motivation, i was also seriously craving for one hawker stall that i stumbled on sometime back and had been frequenting every time i had the chance since then. In my indecision of skipping school vs staying back to study for finals, it tipped me over in favour of skipping school.

Stomach rules, every - single - time.

Yong Tau Fu! (picture lifted from here)

Anyway, we were supposed to meet up with 2 other friends in KL for supper, and I insisted that we were only going to have supper near Petaling Street opposite this Hai-O shop, savouring super-delectable yong tau fu, despite the lack of parking space around the area and the constant traffic jam that plagued the streets. No matter how much they protested, i remained adamant that we would not dine anywhere else.

Reluctantly they gave in to my demand, and we arrived at Petaling Street.

I got down the car, and immediately felt a little unease creeping up my chest. I couldn't find tables strewn over the five-foot path that i knew so well. There was also some signs of construction going on there.

I was wondering if the stall had to relocate further down the street to make way for the construction when i saw similar plastic tables further down. I wasted no time to check out the place, but was a little flabbergasted to find that apart from the plastic tables the place bore little resemblance to what i remembered.

I read the signboard of the shop which read 'So and so' claypot bee tai bak, stir-fried roasted pork ...

'Ah... Just another eatery. No yong tau fu here...'

Before i could finish reading the signboard, a middle age waiter approached us.

'Eh uncle where has the yong tau fu stall further down the street gone to?' I asked immediately.

He looked at me with an expression that on hindsight reeked of being pissed off, and told me flatly that there was never a yong tau fu stall there.

His answer had taken me so aback that i did not know how to respond.

I know it was now the 7th lunar month, and probably lots of ghosts prowl the streets now, but i clearly remembered i ate yong tau fu there for 3 times. And the cook wasn't particularly pale, long-haired, clad in white flowing robes or hovering above ground...

Before i could scare myself more of having dined at a supposedly non-existent yong tau fu stall, he alluded, 'we sell yong tau fu here also.'

'We sold yong tau fu FIRST, since more than 20 years ago...' He just couldn't resist saying that.

Then i knew immediately he was lying about the non-existence of the other stall.

I got a little bit pissed that he lied so blatantly. Why the need to go so low? Can't he just tell me the other stall was closed for the day, torn down, or something. The truth isn't going to damage his business at all, is it?

Sighs.

Not knowing what to do, and where else to go, we sat down anyway for our supper.

Then i looked at the signboard again, it said 'So and so' claypot bee tai bak, stir-fried roasted pork and YONG TAU FU...

If only i had known they were rivals, i wouldn't have asked him so bluntly about his competitor's whereabout.

The middle age guy was behaving rather aloof the entire night, while taking order, while serving, and while taking my payment.

I just hoped he didn't spit in my yong tau fu.

It didn't taste too bad la even if he did. Haha.

Back From KL

2008-08-05T23:33:00.006+08:00

*Can someone enlighten me on why i can't sign in to blogger.com using my home broadband, but can do so on my broadband-on-mobile account? (Hands up in air in frustration)

An excellent photo of Sunrise in KL, lifted from here.

So my one day in KL became 2 full days. I had originally planned to come back on Monday, skipping only one day of school. But life always has a mind of its own, and loves to upset plans.

The truth is - it's amazing how easy it was to throw hesitancy and guilt of skipping an extra day of school down the drain when i was having a good time there.

Lesson: Guilt is not an absolute; how much it weighs really depends on the circumstances it lives in.

Just for Laughs #8

2008-07-31T00:24:00.003+08:00

* The internet connection was acting up for the past few days, can't seem to log into blogger.com at all.

Fractured Penis

Stumbled upon this 2 days back on this blog which happened to have stumbled upon this on another blog.

What do you think happened?

(Don't go groping for that bone ya... )

HK TVB Interviewing Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng

2008-07-24T16:16:00.002+08:00

Just to share. Unfortunately all 3 clips are all in Cantonese and Mandarin, without English sub.

香港无线电视节目- [檳城在望]

Clean/Neat Freak That I Am

2008-07-22T22:40:00.002+08:00

I have been memorizing the location of visible specks of dirt on the floor at home for some time. Not by choice though, the dirts just leave imprints in my mind naturally.

Everyday i have been visually confirming their existence everytime i move around the house. They are essentially invisible, however my cursed eyes pick them up readily, and they do irritate me.

But i was training myself to get used to them. I have to.

Now that i am staying with my friends in an apartment, we have to calibrate our expectations. I can't go about cleaning the house everyday, or demand them to do that all the time.

Come to think about it, it must really be a pain to stay with a freak like me.

I have never thought of myself being any different from everyone else all my life, till i came to university and lived in a dorm, then i started getting 'Keep Clean' door tag and getting called OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder, think the woman who frantically and repeatedly wiping an already clean table in some movie. For some reason people here think of me that way)

Anyway after staring at the specks of dust and trying to get used to living with them harmoniously for some time, i gave up.

I swept the whole house again today. Really messed up i am.

But there' still hope.

This still appeals to me. Hehe.

Mercedes Saves You More Money Than Proton Would!

2008-07-22T20:23:00.010+08:00

* Recently i have been tormenting my clinical groupmates with Malaysian politics over lunch. It just never fails to make them erupt in frenzied laughter. The antics are always darn funny. Here's the latest one.

Even the orang utans are put to shame by their antics

The latest talk in town was Terengganu State Government's purchase of a fleet of Mercedes Benz for the State Executive Councillors.

(source: The Star)

Well, i really don't care if they buy Mercedes or beamers. They can even buy Bentleys, as long as they do their job (properly) and deliver. Any self-respecting corporations would provide progressively better rides for their executives up the hierarchy. Good results should be remunerated with just rewards. Otherwise there would be no incentives to work ~~their ass off~~ hard, right?

But these buffoons just have to mess it up.

So, getting a Mercedes is more economical, in the long run, than our good old Proton Perdana V6. Really?

Hmm, i get what he meant. You see, if you are chauffeured in a Mercedes, you don't have to do long-distance journeys anymore. Everybody will come driving to them instead!

But wait, they are getting new rides, not new breast implants right? New rides won't do that magic bit...

Anyway, last i checked (heh), the cost of maintenance goes up as the car gets more expensive, not the other way round. Well well.

Oh wait! He really has a point there. Those Mercedes do have more durable gearboxes.

But firstly i can't understand why the gearboxes needed to be replaced twice. Probably they had some Schumacher-wannabe moonlighting as chauffeur, racing down the expressway at breakneck speed and executing drifts ala Too Fast Too Furious style on a daily basis.

Sup Gearbox. The only gearbox that needs regular replacement.

But wait, a Perdana (RM120000k?) + repairs costing RM50000 = RM170000 is still half the price of what they had paid for a Mercedes E Class.

And who the hell repairs a car for RM50000? Unless you repair your wallet at the same time too. You know, claimable expenses. You know, Ah Kong's account. You know, Malaysian politicians.

Oooh.... Mercedes save you fuel costs... That's like saying showering using a fire hydrant saves you water bill. Come on...

Yes you can fetch a high price, but how much is the loss? Selling a second hand Mercedes at RM150k, you still lose RM195k. If you give away that pathetic Perdana V6 for free, your loss is only RM120k.

The only far-sightedness i could detect is that of a medical issue.

Yeah right, I am sure. I hope the angles that linger in his mind aren't all curves.

More likely this, right?

As if it's not tax-payers' money if it didn't come from oil royalties.

Is it just me, or you too feel that all those BN politicians are treating us like idiots?

The more i think about it the more incensed i become...

Do You Offer Your Seat?

2008-07-21T18:33:00.003+08:00

Please offer your seat to old folks who would not tolerate a bumpy ride as well as you.

I was on this shuttle bus to the MRT station when i saw that.

3 boys in their late adolescence pretending not to see an old lady who had to endure the entire bus journey, who was standing right next to them, clutching desperately at a handle that was too high for her reach.

They had the audacity to slump on their lazy bums while letting a frail old grandma suffer the bumpy ride on her knees that were wrecked by osteoarthritis...

Shame on you, kids.

I am guilty as well. I should have lashed out at these imbeciles. Such disrespect. Such thoughtlessness!

*I offered my seat to another lady. Unfortunately my ass is not big enough to occupy 2 seats. Otherwise i would graciously offer the poor lady as well.

What it would take...

Penang Hokkien in Peril?

2008-07-18T15:11:00.006+08:00

Links: Here and here

There have been calls by a certain people for the revival of speaking Penang Hokkien for the past few days.

Everytime i read these, i end up scratching my head, imagining really hard whether i live in the same Penang they were talking about.

There was no shortage of people speaking hokkien wherever i go, last i went home.

You know the interest in Hokkien hasn't waned a single bit when kids everywhere in Penang belt out obscenities with incredible ease.

KNNCCB!

Absolutely no shortage of people scolding KNNCCB!

The pin-point accuracy of their pronunciation, coupled with appropriate inflection, delivers the message convincingly, the feat only a native speaker of Penang Hokkien would be able to pull off satisfactorily.

And they were calling for parents to teach their kids Hokkien, saying that it's even more important now that Penang was already listed a Unesco World Heritage Site.

(Lifted from The Star article mentioned above)

What rubbish is this?

Where would you be able to find tourists who speak Hokkien, or who would attempt to speak Hokkien? Fujian Province in China and Taiwan, perhaps. But beyond these places? Seriously.

If you want your kids to speak hokkien, look no further than Chinese medium school, or the more unruly national high schools. Send them there, and they shall speak perfect Hokkien (courses on obscenities included, FOC).

Even my alma mater, the high and mighty Chung Ling High School.

It's the jewel of Chinese-medium education in Penang, and the place every boy from Chinese-medium primary school aspires to study in. Only the top scorers from Chinese-medium primary schools will be enrolled. To the pinnacle of Chinese-medium high school education...

(But the products they mould us into are not always good, as evidenced by yours truly)

But it's really a Hokkien medium school.

Penang in Year 1986

2008-07-17T20:12:00.002+08:00

I miss Penang Hill

Was surprised to find out that one colleague of mine in the department i work in has some ties to the little island i call home.

His grandfather had migrated to Penang many years ago from Tamil Nadu, and over the years he was elected a Member of the Parliament for Datuk Keramat area, and was subsequently conferred a Datukship. Really impressive.

While he remained with his families in Tamil Nadu, he had visited Penang many times.

He has seen the ups and downs of Penang, he claimed.

Penang in Year 1986 was comparable to Singapore. It was as impressive, as inspiring, and full of promise in his eyes.

He came back 10 years later, only to discover that Penang has lost its allure.

He is going to Penang to take his postgraduate exam next month. I am waiting for his assessment.

Definitely, Maybe

2008-07-16T23:23:00.006+08:00

Just finished watching the the movie over dinner tonight. Nowadays life has gotten so busy that i have to watch movies over several sitting, mostly over meals.

If i get any busier than this, i probably have to further multitask on the comfort of the toilet bowl. Haha.

The movie was really good. The only regret i have while watching this movie was my company.

Nesa is just too tall, too big, too dark, and too hairy.

Anyway the movie is about a father trying to tell his inquisitive daughter about his life story before marriage, the many complicated relationships he had, and getting the daughter to guess who's her real mother in the story. The plot was great, and the acting brilliant.

And i am sure you will grow to love Abigail Breslin. She's an absolute angel. A 12 year-old angel.

I don't know if it's my paternal instinct acting up, but i would really love to have a daughter like that.

But... If only i can somehow skip the incessant crying baby and non-stop soiling diapers phase, and fast forward to the age where we can have sweet heart to heart talk.

That's hardly possible. Let's forget about it for the time being. Whatever it is, I have got to pass my finals before i can have any such grand plans.

Was thinking about whether it is possible to have a similar discussion with a 12 year old girl in Malaysia/Singapore, on the father's love life before she came into being, on his many stumbles and mistakes, shedding the macho father persona.

I find it hard to conjure such a picture in a local setting. Anyway a 12 year old girl in Malaysia/Singapore would be too busy studying for their primary school final exams to be bothering about her father's love life. Kids nowadays are really having it bad. I never studied when i was 12. (I think, because i can't remember doing so. haha)

Anyway go watch it, you won't be disappointed.

---

This part of the conversations somehow lingers very long in my mind. I guess it's insightful.

WILLIAM: a fetching young intern just started a week ago.

APRIL: Great. Ask her out.

WILLIAM: I should, shouldn't I?

WILLIAM: I don't think I will. You see, I don't want a fling.

WILLIAM: I want the real deal.

APRIL: Forget about the real deal. You don't find it, it finds you.

WILLIAM: does that mean? I don't know what that means.

APRIL: It means that you get to a certain age and then you're ready.

APRIL: You know, you're ready for kids or a commitment or, you know...

WAITRESS: Sir.

APRIL: ...a mortgage.

WAITRESS: Table's ready. Okay.

WILLIAM: Thanks.

APRIL: You know what I mean?

APRIL: And the person that you're with then,they become the one.

WILLIAM: you're saying it's not who, but it's when.

APRIL: Exactly.

WILLIAM: Okay. All right.

WILLIAM: So there's never been a guy, ever, that made you think, this is it.

WILLIAM: This is him. This is the one.

APRIL: (hesitate) No.

WILLIAM: Okay, then why aren't you out there, you know, enjoying yourself?

APRIL: I am.

WILLIAM: You are?

APRIL: Yes. Right now I'm seeing this guy, Kevin.

WILLIAM: Kevin?

APRIL: Kevin.

WILLIAM: Who the hell's Kevin?

WILLIAM: Where did... How come you never, you know, mentioned anything about him?

APRIL: I'm mentioning him now.

Old (Fart) Student

2008-07-13T22:17:00.005+08:00

'Hey Sir!'

I glanced over my shoulder. A pretty young thing was trailing me as i hurried along the walkway next to the MRT station.

Do you remember Michael Jackson had this song Pretty Young Thing?

Dressed in an apple green spaghetti top and a jean skirt, she did not look dressed up enough to be working for the credit card companies. Those companies usually stipulate formal dressing code, even for their part-timers.

Excluding the differential of working for credit card company, my provisional diagnosis was that of a survey questionnaire administrator.

With the tell-tale sign of a writing pad over her ~~bosom~~ chest, she casted me a million dollar smile, and her lips twitched in preparation to vocalise.

'I am in a hurry.' I pre-empted her, not wanting to waste my time, and hers.

'Oh I won't take too long.'

I know.

Not impressed, my feet continued carrying me at a velocity of 1 metre per second, I repeated, 'I am really in a hurry.'

'Sir are you working?'

I was like, Bingo! They will usually leave me alone after i tell them i am still a lowly student. I gleefully proclaimed that i am a student.

But i wasn't at all prepared for what comes next.

She shot me an incredulous look.

The same kind of incredulous expression. Check out his cool T-shirt. Led Zeppelin.

'You are still a student?!' Her tone was that of a complete disbelief. Maybe even disgust. Haha.

'Yes I am.' I bluntly replied. I was like, what the heck. Haven't you seen 25 years old students before?

So you have problem with a student's age... (Notre Dame de Namur honored their oldest graduate Ruth Singleton 82 who graduated in the school of arts and humanities)

Before i have even finished my train of thought, or rather the train of curses mentally, she poof-ed into the thin air, nowhere to be seen.

&%$!?>@...

Blasphemy

2008-07-09T17:02:00.005+08:00

* It's meant to be funny ok? Don't take it too seriously. Especially if you are religious.

Was on an mrt the other day when it happened.

I was being my usual self: totally absorbed in the wonders of my book, completely oblivious to my surrounding, cocooning in the blissful sphere of serenity gazing at lines and lines of printed text.

You can send a whole cell of terrorists barging into the train and blow it into smithereens, and i would perish without having any single inkling of what the hell has happened.

But not this one.

The force is strong in this one...

I saw someone gingerly taking a seat next to me from the corner of my vision. I stole a glance to my side and i swear a church bell rung in my head.

It was an elderly nun, reading her copy of well-worn leatherbound holy book, complete with an air of serenity.

I looked at my book, and i gulped.

Tada!

I then pressed the pages opened very widely to make sure the covers were safely out of her sight.

What was it that i fear? That she would ~~exorcize me~~ start telling me i was a sinner and i needed to believe in the Holy Trinity? That she would chastise me for reading that yellow book?

Even though i am a non-believer, i do respect all those who have devoted their entire life to a seminary vocation, believing firmly and selflessly that they are doing good to mankind, irrespective of religions.

*That is until they start talking nonsense. My respect for them then will take a slow but sure spiral down into some abysmal depth.

Anyway, i was feeling rather disrespectful to be reading that book next to her. Perhaps that's how it feels to be drooling over some skimpily clad chick featured on Playboy's cover page, while seated next to her mother. While humming will.i.am's I Got It From My Mama.

Baby where’d you get your body from?
Tell me where’d you get your body from.
Baby where’d you get your body from?
Tell me where’d you get your body from.
I got it from my mamma.
I got it from my mamma.
I got it from my mamma.
I got it got it got got it…

Wonderfully respectful isn't it?

Anyway i resumed reading my book, while she started doing the fishing thing in the midst of a underground mrt tunnel.

Fishing without killing. (For the clueless, it's the act of losing neck tone followed by jerking backwards while dozing off)

She must have dreamed of landing a huge catch when she dropped her holy book on the floor, scattering many pieces of notes and so on all over the floor IN FRONT OF ME.

What followed was an extremely contortion of my body done out of supreme desperation.

Man he looks like Koh Tsu Koon doesn't he?

Reluctant to put my book down for fear of her reading the title, i tried balancing my bag on my thighs, and by means of internal rotating my left arm, slightly flexing my elbow, over-pronating my forearm, flexing my wrist to the max with fingers extended and somehow had the book safely tugged out of her sight to the other side, nestled between my back and the back rest of the seat.

Then I had to bend my body forward and lowered myself to the dangerous level of farting assholes, stretching my right hand far ahead of me to pick up those scattered notes and pictures that any further my right shoulder was sure to dislocate.

No one offered to help. I guess they were too engrossed watching an idiot performing contortionistic performance.

Oh did i mention that my cheek was hovering perilously close to the other CHEEKS of fellow commuters too?

While stepping out of the train, i couldn't help but marvel at all these interesting coincidences that happen in life. The faithful probably will claim that God is trying to send me a message, and i better heed the calling lest i invite God's wrath.

Well, i say He should spend some time writing a new Holy Book.

This one bored that poor nun to slumber.

Commencement 2008

2008-07-08T19:20:00.003+08:00

Let me tell you how it feels when all your friends are attending convocation/commencement and you are not.

It really sucks.

Imagine being jilted by the hot girl who went out for a steamy date with every guy friend you have, but stop short of hanging out with you.

Imagine happily queuing up for Baskin Robbin's free ice cream and have the shutter of the stall come crashing down at your face. At a loss of what to do, you turn back to give that helpless shrug to the person behind you in the queue.

There's no one there.

Imagine you are queuing up to enter Noah's Ark, but Noah told you that God didn't invite you. While walking down the primitive staircase, stepping on manures everywhere, you vaguely hear sound of crashing waves approaching.

Imagine all of your family went out for an overseas holiday, and they were so engrossed about the whole thing that they forgot about you completely at departure, leaving you staying alone at home while they were having a blast at some exotic places.

Imagine, that you are this guy.

Ok that's how i am feeling now while everyone is attending the commencement now. They must be queuing up to enter the august hall and get their hold on the scrolls now.

Probably they are listening to the valedictorian speech now. About how great the educational experience is.

I guess some of you start to pity me at this point of time.

But think twice.

A hot girl who goes out for a steamy date with every one of your guy friends probably is called a hooker. And your friends? Bald retirees with a beer belly, and grease from dinner's steak smearing the lips.

Baskin Robbin ice cream? Ok i don't fancy it too much. I don't need more atheroma clogging my arteries, now that i already have significant cardiovascular risk factor.

God-forsaken and looking at the leaving Ark? Ok i am a Buddhist so i am kinda prepared for it. Till my next life... But before that i will frantically finish reading my 'God is Not Great' while nodding frantically.

And gotten left behind by family?

I will blow up the house like him*!

*I really hate to see what a jackass he grows up to be

Not too bad huh.

I am going to shower then will go meet all my friends after the ceremony.

Hmm whose gown should i grab to take my pseudo-graduation photos?

Dried Up

2008-07-06T00:10:00.003+08:00

So dry... (Dam near Horsham, Australia)

I flipped open my wallet that had accompanied me for the past 7 years, revealing only 2 pathetic pieces of notes. Unwilling to believe the barrenness, i proceeded to check the other compartments of the wallet, knowing full well that i had never misplaced notes in my wallet.

'Ah... No more,' I exhaled.

My finances was drying up fast, especially with the extra expenses of moving into a new house, both anticipated and unanticipated. And gosh the unanticipated ones were numerous.

As a result of the severe murderous financial drought, the balance in my bank account plunge progressively, resembling more and more of a critically dried up lake by the days. The lake that was supposed to nourish me through my university years.

But NUH paid me my part-time wages today!

Haha. The exhilaration at seeing the number reflected on my bank balance today was just otherworldly. I was totally thrilled by that sum of money, albeit only peanuts.

One more hurdle overcome!

*Don't worry as I have sorted out my financial woes. This dried-up-lake phenomenon should not repeat itself.

Barren

2008-07-03T21:55:00.004+08:00

*Kids have comedy central, Malaysians have politics! Catch the latest saucy conspiracy theories from the Bolehland! Now featuring Najib, Anwar, and possibly another mattress! Look no further than Malaysiakini.com.

I don't mean my fertility. I mean my blog lah...

I am so drained.

I am fine but am just so damn tired juggling everything. Everyday is now so jam-packed that i have almost no time for myself.

A typical day now is extremely regimented and starts at 6am sharp. Gotta get ready to leave by 6.45am.

Ward round starts at 7.30am and am expected to be present (but at least they kinda involve me and grill me on and off, which is good). After the rounds i will head straight to work at CTVS department to crunch in data to obtain Euroscores.

Yeah they scored at the Euro 2008 but you really don't want to score too much at my kind of Euroscore

I know Euroscore sounds awfully european football but there's nothing exciting about it. It is some statistical analysis of a patient's risk in open heart surgery. And i have awfully a lot of patients data to process.

But at least i am getting paid, and the hours are extremely flexible so i am not complaining.

Apart from the time to attend tutorial, lunch, or clerking patients on my own, i am always there in the department working on the numbers. So nowadays everyday feels really like a working day. And at the end of the day, i feel as if i am as tired as everyone else who really work the entire day.

My footsteps are slow and heavy. My eyes are dim. Like a zombie.

Walking zombie. I like this kind.

The worst part comes after i arrive at home. I still have to study for my finals.

And i have absolutely no energy left to study. Haha.

And gone are the days when i stay up till 3am to study. Now i fall asleep soundly exactly at 12am everyday.

So please bear with me if you find this blog to be very barren ok?

J.K. Rowling's Commencement Speech at Harvard 2008

2008-06-30T22:38:00.004+08:00

* I guess one day other medical students who fail their finals would stumble across my blog, and if you do, don't miss reading her speech

One of the things that i cherish most about running my own blog is that now there exists a means for me to easily share the gems that i come across everyday.

Had a briefing with Prof Dean Koh this morning on our remedial general surgery posting, and he told us about this must-read speech by J.K. Rowling, the famous author who brought Harry Potter to life.

She was being conferred an honorary degree at Harvard University this year, and was invited to give a commencement speech to the graduating class as well. Her complete script below.

Thanks to Joo Wei for promptly finding the article and sharing with all of us.

---

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

Harvard University Commencement Address

J.K. Rowling

Copyright June 2008

As prepared for delivery

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,

The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.

Anwar's Sodomy: The Inherent Unsatisfactoriness of Religions

2008-06-29T09:28:00.004+08:00

* Anwar is accused of sodomy yet again. A religious crime punishable by law, and exploited in politics (probably). This entry is my response to the inherent unsatisfactory state of religions.

** Full text of Malaysiakini article on Anwar's sodomy at the end of the entry.

*** Even if you are just mildly religious, you may want to think twice before reading on. You may get really angry with me at the end of the article.

I was only 14 in 1997, when i first heard of the words sodomy and liwat (in Malay) from news report on Anwar's alleged sodomy and political fallout.

I had no idea what the heck it was about when everyone in school suddenly started teasing everyone else about getting sodomized (I was from a boy's school then that was full of adolescent boys heh). I found out the meaning soon enough, but was puzzled as to why would anyone want to do that.

I suppose it was for the lack of a receptive sexual organ in the males, but if that takes place between two consenting adult males, why would it be an offense to anyone else?

Then i learned that it was forbidden in Islam. That was the first instance i had a taste of how religion could actually dictate how people live.

But who came out with the rules? Some says God.

I think otherwise. It could very well be a misguided lunatic who thought he heard from God.

These days we call it auditory hallucination.

Perhaps we are placing too much faith in holy books across all religions whose origins could no longer be traced. Perhaps we are holding too dear those teachings that made little sense, and the original intention when those teachings were preached was anyone's guess now. We have commandments, but we have little insight into the preceding events that led to its being.

Instead we try too hard to explain those absurdities.

We resort to more accomplished beings in our respective religions for explanations, and we listen with full satisfaction of their understanding of the teachings. While forgetting you and me can as easily come up with those explanations ourselves.

Human has inherent abilities to make perfect sense of happenings that had already taken place. You can explain anything, provided it HAS already happened. Anything at all. That's how columnist makes a living.

That explains why religions are so lacking in prophecy, while full of retrospective wisdom. Simply because it's a human invention.

No ordinary human can foretell future, but everyone has his/her 2 cents on why something happened. Normal human beings use their logic to interpret the situations. Those whose religiosity surpasses one's own logic proudly utilize their understanding of the religion, which unfortunately is often very narrow.

God's wrath. Bad karma.

(Think of those RELIGIOUS comments on why New Orleans was flooded, why China was struck with an earthquake, why Tsunami bleached coastal countries)

*You may claim that religious groups are the first to offer help, i agree, but they are often the first to come out with stupid comments as well.

They often blame it on something so abstract and intangible, that you hardly can argue with since there is so little substance to poke at. The religious fervor makes up for its lack in logic.

The same fervor that makes you unwilling to argue with an angry old lady ~~stubborn old hag~~ whose demands aren't met.

Powerful emotions.

Powerful emotions that led us into wars. Think of Iraq. Think of your recent outburst with anyone.

Those powerful emotions that cloud our consciousness and make us do stupid mistakes.

Now think of when powerful emotions has done you any good the last time.

Think harder.

That's why we should never make any decisions when we are overwhelmed by emotions. They hardly have ever done us any good.

Now back to religion. You can extol its merit for all you want, but for all the good deeds that a religious person can do, any nonbeliever is capable of doing them too. When they do it, they do it absolutely without religious pretense, without hoping for a divine reward.

Yes atheists are capable of crimes too, but atheists are unable to band together to commit organised crime. Think of the religious conflicts, the religious persecution of nonbelievers, the Crusade, terrorism, etc.

Only in the name of religion can normal conscientious human beings commit the most heinous crimes, without remorse. Well, country and ethnicity can to a certain extent achieve that too.

So what are their similarities?

They are all artificial, all human inventions. They all tend to make us feel special, feel superior above others. Different from others, yet uncomfortably so.

They all substitute individual reasoning skills with a common group-think. They all turn us into mindless zombies serving the wish of the persons who have learnt to manipulate us, doing their biddings while feeling all righteous.

Are you a religious pawn waiting to be mobilized?

Don't follow blindly what anyone tells you. Even if they are your religious superior, for they will falter as easily as any one of us. The only difference is that they are darn good at projecting an image of infallibility.

Use your logic to interpret why you are doing what you have been doing. Is that because everybody has been doing it too? Are you a subject of group-think?

The world will be a much better place if all of us who observes a religion questions its rationale, and cease following blindly.

At least Malaysia will be a better country.

---

Aide alleges sodomy: Report lodged

Jun 28, 08 11:03pm

A police report has been lodged against PKR

de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim for allegedly sodomosing one of his aides - the second time that such an accusation had been made in over 10 years.

The report was lodged by the 23-year-old alleged victim at the Jalan Travers police station at 6pm.

KL police chief Muhammad Sabtu Osman confirmed that the report had been made.

The man has been sent to Hospital Kuala Lumpur for a medical examination.

"Yes, we have received a police report from an aide of Anwar Ibrahim that he was sodomised. But no, we will not arrest Anwar at the moment," added deputy federal police chief Ismail Omar.

"We will investigate this report first. We will look into it and carry out the necessary steps before issuing any warrant of arrest," he was quoted by AFP.

It is learnt that Anwar met with a number of party leaders at an emergency meeting late tonight.

At 11.15pm, PKR sent out an SMS message stating that the police had detained Anwar's special aide Saiful Bahari this afternoon and forced him to lodge a police report about being sodomised by his boss.

It added that the police are expected to arrest Anwar soon.

Meanwhile, Anwar is expected to comment on this latest crisis at a pre-arranged press conference tomorrow.

The press conference is scheduled to be held after a meeting between Anwar and all PKR members of parliament and state assemblypersons.

Anwar expecting the worst

Party sources said that Anwar was chairing a party supreme council meeting at a hotel in Shah Alam when he received an SMS at about 9pm on Saturday night about the police report lodged against him.

He apparently then told the party leaders that his aide Saiful had been missing for two days.

"He then received another SMS at about 9.30pm and his face changed dramatically after reading that SMS," a party insider toldMalaysiakini.

"He did not reveal details of the SMS but merely said that the situation was very serious," added the insider.

Anwar is said to have left the supreme council meeting to meet his lawyers until about 11pm.

The council however continued their meeting without Anwar.

Party leaders are saying that they have to be prepared for any eventuality.

DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang wrote in his blog that he had spoken to Anwar over the phone and that the PKR leader was expecting the worst.

Press statement at 1.25am

Anwar issued a press statement at about 1.25am, saying that the report lodged against him was a "complete fabrication".

The following is his statement in full:

"The police report lodged against me earlier today is a complete fabrication. I believe we are witnessing a repeat of the methods used against me in 1998 when false allegations were made under duress. This is clearly a desperate attempt by the Barisan Nasional regime to arrest the movement of the Malaysian people towards freedom, democracy and justice.

"The report has been organised by interested parties to attack me in retaliation for evidence I have recently obtained implicating IGP (inspector-general of police) Musa Hassan and the AG (attorney-general) Gani Patail in misconduct including fabrication of evidence in the cases launched against me in 1998-1999. This vile attack will not prevent me from releasing this dossier to the public.

"I urge the Malaysian people to stand against the repressive forces that will be unleashed by the government in the coming days and weeks. We expect the media, the judiciary and the police force to all come under the direct and unchecked control of the executive.

"My fellow Malaysians - we took a bold step forward on March 8 towards a new dawn for freedom and justice for all of our citizens. This people's movement for change must go on with all of our strength and conviction."

Accused of sodomy in 1997

Meanwhile, at about 1am about 400 people had gathered outside the hotel in Shah Alam to ensure that nothing happened to Anwar.

The party leaders and Anwar's lawyer SN Nair also held a press conference at the Shah Alam hotel at about 1.30am where they distributed Anwar's statement.

Anwar, a former deputy prime minister and finance minister of Malaysia, was sacked from the government in 1997 for allegedly being involved in sodomy and abuse of power.

In 1999, he was sentenced in a highly controversial trial to six years in prison for corruption, and in 2000, to another nine years for alleged homosexual acts.

However in 2004, the Federal Court - the country's highest court - reversed the second conviction and he was released.

Anwar has always maintained that the charges were a government hatched political conspiracy against him, a move denied by the government.

The Hulk's Weight

2008-06-24T20:26:00.003+08:00

The trailer was really cool. I am really looking forward to watching it.

Has anybody thought of the Hulk's weight?

I mean, he looks even bigger than an elephant when he is that huge green piece of rippling muscles, and an average adult elephant already weighs between 4.5 to 6 tonnes.

Hmm...

As usual i had my sudden flash of brilliance and i discovered the Hulk's weight, accurately.

It's merely 70kg. 2 kg lighter than me. (Hey i am tougher than the Hulk!!)

NAME..Edward Norton Jr.

HEIGHT..185 cms

WEIGHT..70 kgs

DATE OF BIRTH..August 18, 1969

PLACE OF BIRTH..Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

EDUCATION..Columbia School for Theatrical Arts in Columbia, Maryland; Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Maryland (1987)

(taken from here)

You see, according to law of physics, mass is a constant. You can change shape and so on, but ultimately, you can't create mass out of thin air.

So, if you ever chance upon the Hulk in its monstrous green-ery, don't fret. He should be of the consistency of a mushy candy floss, for such a huge size at only 70kg.

See how happy the girl is with pink version of the Hulk

Lick him.

NO FIT

2008-06-22T20:15:00.004+08:00

Nesa was telling me yesterday about some absurdity that was being practised at the Immigration checkpoints. I had a good laugh but the full impact wasn't felt until i saw it happening this morning at Woodlands Checkpoint, en route to Senai Airport.

A Caucasian lady in a full length figure-hugging red dress that accentuated her willowy figure was lining up just ahead of me to cross the checkpoint. There must had been some issue with her passport or so, for the immigration officer and herself spent a long time explaining to each other, seemingly to no avail even with the help of waving limbs.

Eventually their animated discussion ended abruptly, and she was told to put her thumb on a scanner. ~~She's not a particularly hot lady so~~ I naturally turned my attention to the screen of the immigration officer's computer, trying to peek at the content. Surprisingly, this monitor was not protected with a privacy screen protector*.

*A privacy screen protector would make viewing angle so narrow that no one else apart from the officer directly in front of the screen would be able to see anything shown on the screen.

A detailed scan of the thumbprint turned up, then out of the blue the face of Mas Selamat popped out really big on the screen.

NO FIT, the system proudly declare on the screen in huge green letters.

The officer glanced at the Caucasian lady again, and satisfied with his visual assessment he dismissed the lady and beckoned at me.

He sized me up a bit, then took my passport and student pass to scan, never softening his intent gaze on me even for a bit. He then gestured for me to use the thumb print scanner.

The system showed error, and again i felt a pair of concrete-boring gaze befalling on my cheeks. Probably he was trying to make out if i was donning a mask ala Mission Impossible.

He must have decided that Mas Selamat would have more self respect to use a better looking mask, for he stop analyzing my face.

He asked me to use my left thumb instead, and this time it registered.

NO FIT. Those huge green words were plastered all over the screen again. He waved me goodbye coolly.

I sighed in relief. You know, i do look a lot like Mas Selamat in that picture.

I have brownish skin, 2 eyes, 1 nose, 1 mouth, 2 ears, and a short crop of hair too. Minus the facial hair. (I shaved them ok, not that i am not manly enough. Ha)

Maybe Mas Selamat was tall and willowy too, that must be why the officer was gawking at the lady. Did i say gawking?

Mas Selamat must be able to take many shapes too, as Nesa saw an officer trying the thumbprint of an old, hunch-backed lady who probably had genu varum from osteoarthritis.

Mas Selamat must be a magical being, for the immigration officials to think he is capable of taking so many shapes. If he is magical, then why bother.

It's just darn ridiculous.

* the lady's footwear shop PRETTYFIT should take a cue from the immigration officials. Instead of disappointing their customers by saying there's no more size with earnest face that tries extremely hard to be apologetic, they should just install a screen and say NO FIT, with Mas Selamat's face. At least we will all get a good laugh.

Across Time and Death

2008-06-19T22:22:00.003+08:00

Do you believe in reincarnation? (I do, as a Buddhist this concept was not at odds with what i was brought up to believe.)

This is a rather short but interesting read on the account of Jenny Cockell who grew up having dreams about her past life as Mary.

Those dreams haunted her entire life, because Mary died at a premature age of thirty five years old, leaving behind a brood of kids under the care of an alcoholic and abusive husbands.

Even as a small child she possessed maternal instinct and would worry incessantly about her children who she left behind.

Tormented by maternal worries for her children, whom by now would be old enough to be her parents, she set out on an extraordinary adventure to find them all.

It's a very good read, but it's a non fiction so don't expect the thrills of fictional stories.

You don't have to agree with reincarnation to read about that book. Yes you will maybe end up doubting your faith, but as i have always said, a belief that cannot stand up to scrutiny and questioning probably isn't worth believing at all.

Life Is Fragile

2008-06-19T12:58:00.003+08:00

(taken from her blog)

This is heart wrenching.

We live our lives as if tomorrow is nothing short of a certainty.

We scoff at people who teaches us to treasure every moment and live it to the fullest.

We laugh at the teaching of impermanence of everything.

We wait, and we say another day. A better time.

Some people's tomorrow never come.

And we usually are ignorant about it.

Remember the young trainee pilot, Clifton Lam, who collapsed and died in Brunei while undergoing jungle training?

Read the blog entry dated 18th June of his girlfriend, and mourn for the loss of a life unrealised.

Excerpt:

It was only awhile ago we last talked,
it was merely 11 days ago i last heard him on the phone,
his comforting words, assurance that he'll be back very soon,
we talked for awhile, us saying how much we missed
each others presence, hugs and kisses,
him sharing his days there, him telling me his going into the jungle,
him saying he'll be not be contactable for the next 4 days,
him telling me not to be worried, not to miss him, he'll do the missing . .

Singtel's Broadband on Mobile vs Telekom's Streamyx

2008-06-19T11:51:00.009+08:00

Am down with a bout of fever and chill since last night.

Wrapped myself up like a tortilla wrap and slept at an uncharacteristic early hour at 12 am.

Woke up feeling better today but still a little bit feverish. Feeling rather drowsy also, so i give hospital rounds a slip today.

That's the privilege of being a medical student, as compared to working as a houseman. My friends who are working now have to drag their asses to work even if they are having diarrhoea from gastroenteritis.

Anyway i shared my smartphone's internet connection to my mac, using bluetooth PAN, and am pretty impressed with the connection speed. (Here's an excellent blogpost on how to do it)

Not bad huh Singtel Broadband on Mobile.

I am using the 1Mbps plan (free upgrade from 512kbps plan which i pay around 20 dollar monthly.) There are options to subscribe up to 3.6 Mbps.

Those using Streamyx in Malaysia is going to be green with envy. Haha.

5xmom tiu-ing Streanyx on the poor broadband performance in Malaysia today. Haha.

There's even a website set up just to bitch about Streamyx.

Telekom's Streamyx, Malaysia's supposed leading internet provider. Haha.

And loads of interesting artwork on the subject, taken from here. Enjoy!

Umbrella Ella ella, eh eh eh, eh eh eh

2008-06-17T19:55:00.007+08:00

Yeah being young and broke really sucks.

Saw an old frail lady trying to cross the neighbourhood street in small weak steps, with a makeshift walking stick (an umbrella). Many buses were plying that street so i held her arm and led her through the traffic.

Charles Darwin's walking stick. Just thought it was interesting.

Holding to her arm reminded me so much of my own grandmother. The same old loose skinfold with almost no discernible flesh below, but the muscles would defiantly taut with strength when they support themselves against the walking aid before making another step forward.

Lots of old people in Singapore use umbrella instead of a proper walking stick. Some worry about the perceived stigma of carrying a walking stick. The old lady i met just liked it for the light weight frame, ~~just like Rihanna.~~

Every single step was huge effort to them. It just reminded me of how much i took my own youth for granted. It was also inspiring that despite their frailty for marauding age, they persisted in being as independent as they could.

But whatever it is umbrellas are not made to bear the stress of human weight. It will be quite tragic if it breaks; these old folks will get a fracture or two for sure.

But just lend a hand anyway when you see these old people crossing the street ya.

There are walking stick in an umbrella's disguise out there. Let those who need them know of this option.

The Last Night

2008-06-15T02:28:00.010+08:00

* Be warned. Possibly the most boring and jumbled up post. Blogging from my skeletal new room, using internet connection that is shared from my mobile at 260 kbps.

** Just don't read. Damn boring.

I really miss the view outside my window in KE. Now i get lots and lots of HDB instead of trees.

--- A post i typed 2 nights ago but never got time to finish it up ---

Door tag made by the Block Committee. Good effort, but under-utilised by boring people like me.

Have been feeling rather depressed for the past few days. It's 3.23 am now and i still can't sleep.

As evidenced by a week's worth of dust on my speakers.

I have even neglected my routine weekly 'spring' cleaning. That's highly unusual, as all my close friends would gladly ~~bitch about it~~ tell you about my obsessive trait to clean (we call it OCD for obsessive compulsive disorder).

The level 8 that can only be accessed by staircase. No lift.

I feel sad leaving this place.

I have stayed in this room for the past 4 years. So many things have happened in the span of 4 years. (I stayed in Prince George's Park in my first year. Joined KE as a new senior)

Even gone bald once! Thanks to everyone who made Flag Day a big success 3 years ago. (Yes i was sunburnt too, from standing under the hot sun for too long on Rag Day)

*I pledged to shave bald if the hall residents under my leadership would manage to raise SGD 10000 on Flag Day. In the end 5 more guys joined me voluntarily to shave our heads bald. Haha.

Previously KE Hall was raising just a few thousands every year, but our new Hall Master tasked me to do better than that. Well i am proud to say that we raised a tidy SGD 28000! And we have never looked back since, and the amount we raised kept going up and up. I hear this year they are trying to surpass SGD 90000!

The room silently witnessed my growth (character and abdominal girth, unfortunately).

My shoe boxes, one of it houses a pair of severely under-utilised running shoes. The badminton shoes too.

It is also a witness to my many mistakes and unaccomplished ideals.

As i leave the room, i shall bear in mind my blunders and shall never repeat them ever again.

---

More random shots. Just for my own remembrance.

It's messy.

When i was in primary school, my favourite teacher taught us that the state of the wardrobe would tell us a lot about his/her personality. i have since strived to keep a tidy wardrobe.

Random footwears. Don't ask me why i put them this way. I don't know.

The rubbish bins that are totally unpredictable in behaviour.

No more collecting 20 cents coins to pay for dryer's usage.

The piece of cloth i use to shield my computer from direct sunlight.

No more walking down 2 stories to fill up my jug.

No more annoying ants that would even go for water in my jug.

Who's Your Daddy #1 (The Tale of 4 Hotdogs)

2008-06-13T21:48:00.007+08:00

Dear Child,

I went to Ikea* this evening, to pick up some boxes.

*Ikea is one of the few places that manages to make both men and women squirm in joy every time they step in, when your daddy is still in his twenties. No, it's not a love hotel, if you wonder. Yes you are right, people do squirm in joy there too, but Ikea achieves that mostly by just selling awesome furnitures at a cheap price (not always).

The boxes are meant to carry my books, as daddy will have to move to a new apartment shared by Uncle Nesa, Uncle Rags and Auntie Lydia in Bukit Batok. Even though daddy hasn't graduated and can continue to stay in KEVII Hall, i prefer to move out with the uncles and auntie. Otherwise i will probably die of boredom being the oldest guy around, and you will probably never see daylight.

Anyway, i haven't had dinner when i arrived at Alexandra, where Ikea the swedish furniture supermart was located. I originally intended to dine in a nearby hawker centre, but it was rather warm and humid so i decided i would just eat in the cold comfort of Ikea's restaurant.

But there were too many people queuing up. There must have been 20 people lining up for Swedish meatballs, so i just walked away.

Daddy usually won't choose to get stuck in a long queue just for food, even if it's good.

So i went downstairs to eat Ikea's hotdog* instead.

The identical hotdog that i ate (lifted from here)

* I don't know if people at your time still eats hotdog, or still calls it so. PETA might already have made you ban hotdogs. It's not really a dog. It's just a sausage that is wrapped in a long bun, and you get to choose what sauce to put on top; a choice of mustard, ketchup and chilli. Daddy never likes chilli sauce.

Child, one day you will realise that women in their skin alone wields a lot of power. (lifted from here)

At one dollar a hotdog it's really cheap. I ordered a hotdog and a soft drink at $1.70. Before the cashier could pay me the change, i already ordered an extra one. Yeah your daddy kinda eats a lot.

Anyway i finished the 2 hotdogs in no time. I folded the paper wrap into neat small squares and threw them away into the bins. You must throw the litters properly too ok?

(lifted from here)

But 2 hotdogs weren't enough, so i went to buy another 2 more.

(Sorry child your daddy really eats a lot. But i am not obese. I just have high BMI. Really, you can ask any of the aunties or uncles who know daddy in university. It's either the result of dense bones or a dense brain. You guess which.)

So, for the comfort of air conditioning (i wonder how bad global warming is at your time), and my reluctance (why waste time?) to line up in a long queue, i ate 4 hotdogs. Most people would find it slightly crazy to eat 4 hotdogs. That's usually the province of the crazy Americans (and Uncle Nesa, that crazy uncle once walloped 11 pieces of KFC at one go)

Crazy Americans posing with 5 hotdogs there. (lifted from here) Heh

Lastly, just wanted to tell you, my child, that life isn't always fair. Don't always compare with others. Just be happy with what you have got.

Ikea Hotdog in Norway (lifted from here)

Some people just have it longer.

Talk About Coincidence

2008-06-12T17:43:00.004+08:00

Life has its funny ways of pulling your legs.

Last time when i told everyone not to worry about failing med school, i ended up failing it myself.

This time it's much more subtle, but just as funny.

Yeah failing med school is painfully funny.

Anyway, my last entry was about dolphins humping each other in an advertisement on a news portal, The Star Online. Regretfully the post was inevitably laced with saucy jokes, i don't know why. Seriously.

Then when i sent it to Nuffnang's Innit blog aggregate for submission, the anti-spam measure told me to type the word MATURE.

...

I hope the next time i post something about failing my finals, it won't tell me to type AGAIN.

Please.

Just for Laughs #7 (The Unintentional Perverse by Malaysian Airlines)

2008-06-12T08:33:00.011+08:00

For the past few days i haven't been able to focus on the news while reading The Star Online.

My attention wavers every few seconds from the news item. It's getting really frustrated.

It's something about the Malaysian Airlines.

The crews waiting anxiously in their sometimes overly tight uniform.

Something about Brisbane.

Brisbane is one great place to be in. I love the weather there. (lifted from here)

Something about Safari.

There's something very Singaporean about this picture... Ah.. They ACTUALLY queue. Oi hurry up!

Just across the causeway.

(Anyway this is a record breaking Irish setter by giving birth to 16 puppies. A much meaningful feat than making teh tarik in the space. Read here.)

Something keeps... distracting me on my screen. It's just plain perverse.

Gickr.com

Gosh look at the dolphin's eye. I swear it looks dreamy!

I had been there. But I didn't get to ~~do this~~ go Dolphin Safari.

But these guys seem to know Brisbane really well.

That explains the glee. Woohoo!

(If you are getting wet in Brisbane, go visit this website. Did i say wet? I meant wed. Getting old these days)

Now when are you going to Brisbane?

Or you rather go here?

Disclaimer: I am straight. ~~Even though I am staying in a double room with a muscular Indian hunk. Hi Nesa. haha~~

Thanks for the flash of doubt ya.

Just for Laughs #6 (Don't Pop Your Nuts!)

2008-06-09T20:39:00.002+08:00

And every doctor in the hospitals (in Singapore) is carrying 2 phones in their pockets... And they don't stop ringing!!!

The next time their phones are ringing all the time in your presence, don't hold grudge against them for making you wait ok? Just think of meatballs in a microwave. Popping.

Smoking hot. Try replacing that Swedish Flag to Singaporean one too.

Pray for our doctors' ~~balls~~ fertility ya?

Just For Laughs #5

2008-06-09T18:58:00.003+08:00

Came across this last week when i was doing my little part in the great Water Cycle.

Senior Minister Goh doing his part in the great neWater Cycle too. The other end of the spectrum though. Only in Singapore!

REAL MEN AIM RIGHT

Some doctor came later the day and tried to be cheeky.

'OR LEFT ? UP? DOWN?'

The reply came swiftly.

The way that best suits your 'equipment' to achieve the desired result of the art of perfect urination.

The other use of THE equipment. Can you see the dog's expression!

What are your thoughts on pee-stained toilet seats?

---

Here are some other 'artworks' in the toilets.

Such wisdom! (Really.) Unfortunately I couldn't make out the replies.

*Here's a great read for everyone who has an opinion on religions. If you don't, formulate one then go read. Thanks to Pacey for sharing.

Hmm... That's really... subtle.

Don't laugh! Why are you making fun of serious efforts to conserve the environment. Tsk tsk.

A Boring Blog

2008-06-07T12:36:00.013+08:00

My blog reflects the true boring state of mine. How so?

1. Not talented enough in photography so i always end up lifting relevant pictures from Google Images.

Relevant to me right? Heh. (from Hold Your Stick Steady Ya!)

2. Can't paint at all so i use other people's masterpieces.

Someone actually searched for 'fat naked lady' images and ended up in this entry in my blog. Haha such fetishes.

3. No enemies in life to flame on my blog. But even if i do, i doubt i have the balls.

Eh i am not asking anyone to blast them ok? But i will be eternally grateful for that. (lifted from this blog)

Hey i do have balls ok? I will need these for contact sports.

If you really have to ask. it's The Hog.

4. Lack the relevant anatomy to post up sexy pictures of my own.

You know, i have always envied those photographers. Best job on earth. Now that's getting paid doing a job you love.

5. No cash to eat at fancy places that i can write about.

6. No money to travel around and make you envy.

This is taken on Penang Hill. No fancy Eurotrip.

7. Grown too old to write teenager's angsty rants about how somebody pissed me off by doing absolutely nothing.

This one has potential. Look forward to her blog.

8. Not old enough to dispense wisdom.

Wise Old Man too ~~dirty~~ busy at the moment.

9. No *ahem romps to chronicle about. Unlike THE hustler (be warned: mature content)

Research assistant, anyone?

10. Not in an industry where i can blog about my work and not get into trouble.

The book started from this great blog. Go read.

11. No pet to take cute photos with and blog about. No, my Almighty is not a pet ok? Because she will ~~kill~~ starve me if i say so.

I wonder which pet shop she hails from. Gonna pay a visit some day.

12. Not enough time for anything in life.

Argh another day gone!!!!

That's why. I really wonder why you are reading my blog. Seriously...

---

Anyway i started typing this entry wanting to inform you guys about the new Snapshots functionality that i added to all the links on my blog. You should have noticed by now the sometimes irritating bubbles.

But since i use so much outside content for my blog i guess this is a good addition to us all, and potentially can save some time of yours.

Here's a little information on how it can be utilised even better.

Clubbing

2008-06-05T23:44:00.007+08:00

*An entry for the medical people

'Eh, you mean by looking at the fingers you can tell whether the person had been clubbing ar?'

'I also go clubbing a lot, will my fingers become like his too?!'

Not this exciting, but definitely more lasting

*sweat

Actually when i first started clinical years i am guilty of mistaking finger clubbing as THAT clubbing. You know, being young and ignorant...

Anyway, i came across an interesting article from Malaysian Medical Resources this evening, that some Leeds researchers have finally found the pathophysiology of clubbing. No more mere hypothesis after 2000 years since Hippocrates' time (supposedly)!

(taken from Medical News Today)

Go on and read the full article, and don't forget to memorise both PGE2 and 15-HPGD. You will need that to impress your colleagues.

A Couple of Sensible Ideas

2008-06-05T17:30:00.009+08:00

The Wife says this.

(Source: The Star)

The Husband says this.

(Source: Malaysiakini)

That pretty much sums up what i think. Let's move on.

---

Update at 6.20pm

The Old Man says this. (Damn cool sideburn right!)

Easily the best article on the issue. Go read.

Funny that the old enemies make the most sense today.