enchanted glass

the man who was thursday

2012-02-12T10:59:00.000+08:00

i must have been thoroughly impressionable when i was younger, for i remember this being a very large part of some summer vacation or other. i call it summer vacation because the-long-dark-tea-time-of-the-soul-between-a-levels-and-finally-getting-into-med-school may not evoke similar feelings in readers, that it does in me. haha. along with h2g2, and all manner of great writing that is notso popularist in nature, but which i have unfortunately forgotten the names of. HAHA. so much for reading highbrow lit & then talking about it ehh. em foster was a jc thing i think, not a holiday thing. but i was ridiculously excited when i went to florence nevertheless. ah well. anyone lit-inclined should read the man who was thursday, & father brown. LOVE gk chesterton.

and also, i love eggs benedict. so so much. today i recalled our flat brunch to this small quaint cafe in the middle of grassmarket/ haymarket/ the middle of nowhere, on a lazy saturday morning, where we had eggs benedict and they started to play live jazz (in the middle of the day?!) and it was just perfect. asmuch as i only remember the good bits, of course we all know nothing can ever be perfection itself, but that day, that day was pretty much close to it.

that said,
~
There are things to be said. No doubt.

And in one way or another
they will be said. But to whom tell

the silences? With whom share them
now? For a moment the sky is
empty and then there was a bird.

—from "There Are Things to be Said" by Cid Corman

there are so many things i want to say, but i dont dare to, because of everything that occured in my pasts. not that anything particularly big or exciting ever happened just that. maybe because nothing ever happened and thus i dont want to talk about it.

maybe because i feel that in such happiness & contentment, my particular brand of madness should not be brought in. i know its not philosophically logical? maybe? to say that what happens before should happen again but its just that, when you feel yourself heading down the same roads, the same trains of thought, then it's like... eh... this again. it's like... hey, i dont want to go through this laundry cycle again. i want to press the stop button & go back to my zen existence. sure it can get boring at times but i know how to spice my life up and if all else fails i guess i could go bungeejumping in the grand canyon or something. the point is there is always something one can DO & i firmly believe in that.

i guess it's all in the mind. the human mind can only comphrehend so much, can only recognise patterns. it can only shy away from things which remind it too much of other things. and i have no answer. but i do know, that definitely i am more mature i know i keep saying this but honestly it is true. i kind of feel a little sad that i'm no longer the person who really believed with every iota of heart & soul that it would work out, but at the same time, i feel highly relieved coz i also know that i never want to be so ridiculously beliving ever again in ANYTHING. maturity doesnt necessarily make you happier, more stable, cooler, more successful in your endeavors, or whatever.

it just means the absence of clearcut unhappiness. it means that the enchanted stainedglass stays as it is, intact, and never, ever shatters. so when light shines through it, finally, you understand the meaning of perfection.

anyway, this is just to say, that i was happy, am happy, will be happy. that it wont factor into anything at all because i dont really think that i could open the gates ever again. but i was so extremely happy, it's so perfect. no one, and i mean no one has ever made me feel this way... no, no. it is as it is, so it goes.

under a certain little star

2012-02-11T10:23:00.001+08:00

between the coffee palpitations and the increased gastroparesis, between the hyperventilation, tachycardia and increased blood pressure, i find peace

running late at night is so enchanting. you feel like every streetlight is your closest friend; every car like a curious dog. the fleeting, ever-changing lines of silvery, aubergine, aquamarine, maroon saloons sail by on the gray seas; the moonlight glancing off their flanks. my favourite places in the universe are lighted up like a lighthouse, calling boats to dock, calling people to put down their anchors, trim their sails, and turn their rudders in the right direction.

while i definitely will be putting all my faith in the right places, i've been concurrently making concrete plans as well. not because i don't trust, but quite the opposite: because my trust is so absolute, i don't want to let Him down with my human follibles.

a) run every morning - seeing as i have spent the past few days lazing around the house like a narcoleptic slug.... when i run, i have all this YES I CAN DO THIS YAHOO GO GO GO!! you are invincible! you can run forever and beat all odds! you can turn everything to your advantage, you can negotiate for world peace and succeed!! .... you get the idea. wahaha.
b) build a brick wall
i love the feeling of building the case, making it watertight, fireproof, idiotproof, tornado-safe
c) poetry - it awakens the left hemisphere of the mind

and thus

Under a Certain Little Star
by Wislawa Szymborska
translated by Joanna Trzeciak

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity in case I'm mistaken.
Don't be angry, happiness, that I take you for my own.
My apologies to time for the quantity of world overlooked per second.
My apologies to an old love for treating a new one as the first.
My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the abyss.
My apologies to those in train stations for sleeping soundly at five in the morning.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing sometimes.
Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing in with a spoonful of water.
And you, O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage,
staring, motionless, always at the same spot,
absolve me even if you happen to be stuffed.
My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs.
My apologies to large questions for small answers.
Truth, do not pay me too much attention.
Solemnity, be magnanimous toward me.
Bear with me, O mystery of being, for pulling threads from your veil.
Soul, don't blame me that I've got you so seldom.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere.
My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and woman.
I know that as long as I live nothing can excuse me,
since I am my own obstacle.
Do not hold it against me, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,
and then labor to make them light.

corinthians

2012-02-10T15:27:00.001+08:00

"my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness"
2 corinthians 12:9

this is the real thing, it really is

words seem insufficient. lots of poetry percolating around my head these days, but i seem unable to put pen to paper. i'm coming up with plenty of puns for you-know-what though, hehehe

honestly speaking, i think it can go either way.

this is what i pray for, as i lace up my running shoes at five am in the dark - a rainbow, assurance that He will not give us more than we can handle; a dove, sign of approaching land. peace, grace, and hope.

i am the least perfect person for any task, let alone one of such mammoth proportions. just because this happens to be my one talent in the whole world, does not correspond to me being the only one with this talent.

but if i, who am so amazingly unworthy and untalented, manage this, let it be known that it was not my doing, but God's. and quite honestly, if i really pull this off, all glory be to God. it certainly cannot have come from anything conceived by me.

on the other hand, if i don't... all i can say is God give me mercy and protect me from global hatred and global warming and please fry any eggs that might be thrown at me.

after apple-picking

2012-02-05T23:19:00.001+08:00

managed to find my poetic-voice back! although, i think that if there were a specific memory/ person/ feeling attached to it, it would be a far stronger poem. as it stands, it's just a glossed-up version of a meterological phenomenon, it's not a strand spooled out of a rainbow-coloured cottoncandy experience, filled with dancing horses; it's not part of any bittersweet memory that i never want to remember again. anyway, i cant currently remember any bittersweet memory i swore up and down never to remember again, because..... DUH. haha!

dithering up & down about a Decision. hai, choices. i like it, there is no question about that, but LONGTERM COMMITMENTS bleh i'm not too good with things like that. but if i dont do it now, there may never be a good time to do it again :( guess ultimately it depends on the timing/ timetables/ understandingness etc. will talk to g on tues or somethingg i guess.

spent the whole of saturday feeling like a kid in a candy store. actually considering the amount of sparkles/ decorations/ sweetthings/ colorfulthings in the holland v baking shop, i was pretty much in one. it was nice exploring the back end of holland v too! i realise why people say its like an angmoh place, i think its the place in sg that feels most uk/europish with the cafes and restaurants under the apartments. and mango dresses were particularly pretty too! retail therapy heaven, even if i didnt buy anything -yet -, i'm totally going back soon!

i also realised that maybe instead of circling round and round with my philosophical questions, i can never find the answer by myself, i need to turn to God. sometimes its MEANT to be cloudy with a chance of meatballs. and in such cases it's better to just take the leap of faith and trust.

trusting is closing your eyes and falling backwards. it isnt abseiling 2cm and then asking them to pull you back (heh obs memories). it isn't checking and re-checking your equipment, packing and repacking your backpacks, it isnt wondering what the weather will be like two days from now and thinking that a wisp in the sky is a Sign, or deciding which mountain to climb based on the shapes of the clouds in the sky. it isn't based on anything concrete (cos erm then that's no longer blind faith...) nor is it based on prediction-hodge-podge. it's based on the idea that you just go about doing whatever you are meant to be doing, and whatever is the outcome, then it'll be fine. :) i mean, as long as you are doing His will.

the usual proverbs "commit your plans to the Lord, and your work will be established"

training for the rain

2012-02-04T10:40:00.002+08:00

this article is inspiring! :)

dear God,
please be with us as we prepare. no matter what, at least let it be an enjoyable experience, and let that atmosphere of goodcheer & hilarity carry on seamlessly into the realthing. i honestly believe that we have the capacity to bring it to a new level. i just pray that You be with us and give us your blessing, such that we can carry it to fruition. i don't ask for a miracle per se, just that you protect us from personal stupidities [i dont know about the others, but i am queen of random stupidities at the worst times] & help us to do the best we can do. but most of all i feel that if we have a ball when preparing then everything will be smoothsailing. please please help us. i dont really understand or know why we are called to this at all, i am assuming it goes beyond personal materialism and such, and that it is Your will. i really hope it is, haha, but erm whatever it is, just be with us.

i know that when i was younger, i did not have the right attitude towards all of this. and i know that you will help those who help themselves. i will definitely try my best, no questions asked, and i know that in the past, things happened for a certain reason. and that even in that moment when i thought my trust had been misplaced, You were protecting me from things i could not have understood. now, i think i understand some of those reasons, although i am not sure that i can ever understand your ways fully. and so now i put those memories aside, and trust in you. because if i could have gone down that path so easily without You intervening & putting me back on the path that you want me to go on, then i think that i am more than equal to the challenge that awaits me :) if that makes any sense.

- me

cookiedough

2012-02-04T10:25:00.003+08:00

ive been trying not to depend on God for anything reccently. not in the i-dont-believe way, but in the i dont want to think that the universe owes me anything way. which is good, because it really doesn't. but i do think that specifics aside, he WILL give us peace/ happiness/ grace. i really do think that. its just that sometimes the specifics matter too.

but faced with uncertainties (because i mean, seriously, no matter how chilled out or whatever one is, there is always the POSSIBILITY) & worry, there is honestly... nowhere else to turn. there is no OPTION of just having myself to blame. i dont really want to have any reason for blame haha.

this brings us to the question of WHY. greed? curiosity? spontaneonity? (if there is anything that can be said about this, it was not a spontaneous decision). but it goes without saying too that it is something i Want. and it is something that i feel is not going against my gut feeling of what is Right. maybe the route to conclusion is a litle convuluted, but... it is right, yes it is.

okay, fine, i'm scared. who wouldnt be. maybe it's time to put my trust in God again. he DID get me into this situation. i'm sure he'll bring me through it. sure, it's not going to be the easiest cakewalk ever (cake! hee) but i'm going to fight til the end and go down fighting, do the best i can. victory doesnt have to be conventional; you just have to make your own definition of victory and aim for that. the sort of thing where, no matter what happens, you can LIVE WITH YOURSELF. actually, that's the hardest kind of all.

so this is me, trusting completely that's its gonna be ok. trusting that this which ive conveniently not thought about for all this while, this unlikely thing, is going to turn into a miracle. sometimes it's not like the miracles happen with lots of warning & goodfeelings about it (actually, rarely). sometimes the miracles come out of nowhere, unexpectedly, and that makes it all the sweeter. and no i'm not expecting one, i'm just saying that i trust that it's going to be okay. i dont know what okay is, but i hope that it'll be okay okay, not just like ehhhh allright, not uncommittal dithering but an assured thing

i love challenges, right? this may not quite be like running a 21k without training cos i know i can do it. it's more like the sea swim. God, this is linked irrevocably to that time, right? when the siren call was so loud i could barely resist it. the things i learnt from that, can be extrapolated to this time. lessons learnt are never wasted. i'm not equipped for the sea swim. i've never swum with sharks, dolphins, not even goldfish. i'm not ready to have people kick water in my mouth, i'm not ready for the jellyfish. i'm not ready to plunge into the ocean on a cold windy morning. but You got up with me at five am, You drive me to the seaside, You signed me up for this. and so maybe i can't walk on water, but You taught me how to swim

~

this post is not about medicine per se, but when searching for prayers online (LOL) i chanced upon this physician's prayer, which i quite like :) for what i am REALLy praying for, im not sure if there is a specific prayer. maybe that sort of thing, you should pray silently in your own heart, in your own words. but that is just, one thing along the road of life. to be a good doctor, well, that's my lifegoal, the ultimate one. and i must not forget that, but i also must conquer this challenge with everything i have.

Almighty God, I rejoice that You have gifted me and granted talent to me in the area of healing. I look daily to Jesus Christ, our Great Physician, as to what my life must reflect.

I have an example of Jesus' very words saying: Luk 4:23 "Doubtless you will say unto me this parable, physician, heal thyself." For this reason I look to You and You only for making me not only a healer, but one that walks in integrity according to Your divine will.

Saint Luke was recorded in the Bible as being the beloved physician. He also educated himself and followed the path of Jesus. May I always do likewise.

Lord, people look up to me; may I set a Godly example.

Lord, people depend on me; may I not disappoint them.

Lord, people come seeking healing; may I not fail them.

Father God, my life is in Your hands and the many that come to me have placed their lives in my care based upon my knowledge and skilled abilities.

May I affect their life for good.

May I bring to them Your healing power.

May I be free in my profession to proclaim Your glorious name.

May I never fail or forsake You or others because I have had personal reasons to not excel or to let my guard down.

May I continue my education and knowledge to stay advanced in the latest medical marvels available.

May I diagnose with wisdom.

May I treat all with dignity and respect.

May I never fail to proclaim that my life is dedicated to You.

May I never be hasty or rude.

May I always keep in mind that You who has called me to this great undertaking, will always prevail that Your will be done.

May I accept the outcome of all my patients with the humility of knowing You are in control.

Lord God, bless not just me, but all that seek treatment through me. I ask in the name of Jesus Christ alone. Amen

on why i dont believe in rainbows

2012-02-03T01:51:00.001+08:00

there is a blog i read, which is v inspiring and all. but honestly, i stopped believing in teh rainbows a long, long time ago

its just that, at every turn i always got too distracted by more pressing things, and it doesnt always do to sit & stare at the clouds & ponder Life, too much

since the kind rejection from my most reccent poetry submission, btw i really mean kind coz they dont always reply if they dont use your stuff, and the guy was really constructive with his comments, he's totally right that i need to rein in the puns HAHA ok he said it in a far more poetic way for sure. i've been trying to do just that, make the images and the words worth their weight. the problem is that while my past works have some chance of that, they're... solidified, like old friends. i cant unravel my old poems like sweaters, it doesnt work like that. i know, i know, personal and public poetry. i'm sure my poems can be read in the public realm too and evoke emotion in people who dont really want to know about my Life. its just that.... my Life is too worked into the poems for me to undo them and make them mean any more than they already do

okay, so moving on, i decide to write new stuff. well surprise, surprise, for me, the poem comes from the puns. any other way and i end up with cheeezy drivel i wouldnt even put to paper.

then i think, maybe there is just all this... GUNK. FBC and LFTs and whatnots that stand between me, and worthy verse. maybe if i write and write and write out all the flotsam, the real stuff will come out. i like that idea. that there is a layer of... something, that if you just got rid of, everything would magically work out

because for me, poetry is just that. these days, that is. it used to be something i wrote when i was really unhappy e.g angsting over math tests? write poems about the moon. i still love writing about the moon, btw. and space. yes, clearly i am john keats. LOL. no actually that would be autumn & spring. i dont like to write about the seasons, becos i feel that localizes the poems to somewhere outside of sg, where really i may not have intended it to. and also coz i tried before and i think that automatically clichefies it... for some reason. the moment you write 'winter' or 'autumn' it gives it a whole sheen and then i cant concentrate on the Point anymore. whatever the point is

isnt it so thoroughly pretentious to write about writing so candidly when i havent produced anything of worth within memory?! probably, but i dont care.

somewhere along the line, when i started to suppress my emotions because i began to feel it would hurt too much... i guess that's when i started losing my poetry. the one i wrote about my shoes? i guess that's an allowable amount of sadness to have. and it's not unforgivable, but yet something i needed to work through. losing things i was never meant to have, i dont know, that's something entirely different. and its not like my shoes are able to recognise themselves in my poems. heh.

that said, i used to have a really bad habit of showing people poems about themselves. lol. it's evil i know. now i've said that, people will think poems i show them are about them ;p

im not sure if this is about poems, or rainbows. i dont really wanna talk about the rainbows. just that, everytime i read all that kinda stuff, i just feel stuff like 'but what abt the people who dont get the rainbows' i dont know does that make sense. it does but i guess it isnt socially acceptable, per se. i think hope is just a v dangerous thing to peddle. i just about accept the one about inherent goodness in life cos well thats something really relative isnt it. but this specific type of hope... i dont know. ive grown up i guess.

maybe i used up all my store of hope on my last miracle. it sounds silly, if you keep getting miracles, cant you hope all the more? well what are the CHANCES man, miracles are by definition not everyday occurances. how many miracles can one person get. and if there were to be any miracles i should hope i win the _________, yeah, THAT'LL be a miracle

just a thought. in actuality, i havent thought about it since forever. and today was spent wishing my random dyspepsia away. SO RANDOM. but i dont have early satiety (FAR FROM IT) so not gastric outlet obstruction. whewww.

anyway, pall med is over!! 2.5ish more weeks of randomly going to a diff place every morning. i find this v stressful. i doubt the amazing race is for me. they shld give us clues at the end of each day, at least that might be more exciting. suspensE.

and also i am getting rather tired of discussing residencies cos i feel like we are all talking in the abstract which really frustrates me. i know there are concrete steps i can take to make things a reality but some steps are further than others and guh i just dont ever like counting my chickens beforehandd.

this is just a random post. in truth, it was quite fun today travelling around with the home care team, it was like those rural docs that travel around by car and their bags seeing pts! and srsly we really travelled like for hrsss from bishan to near ktph and back.

the whole experience was v positive really, the pall med drs are in general VERY nice & humanistic & charismatic hahahaa i actually told that to the reg during the ttsh pall med debrief becos...she really was THAT nice that i felt like i was talking to a friend
me: i was actually v surprised that although the drs see such depressing things everyday, they're such... cheerful & charismatic people!
reg: i will tell them that
and HAHA she really did! zzzzz

but yes i discussed this with some of my cg mates and we concluded that to go into this field, pple are usually extremely chock-full of humanity to begin with, so that makes perfect sense.

okay so on that note i shall go and sleep. it has been a v fun day reading abt cholecystectomies, but notsofun having dyspepsia.

because it's you

2012-01-30T23:03:00.001+08:00

LOL the poem-of-the-day in my email inbox is... an o&g poem

anyway, am now suffering the consequence of having a LOVELY hols where i did everything i wanted to. well, not everything, like i didnt trek up the himalayas or organise a conference or save the world ;p but chill out & spend time with loved ones & finally act like a human being for once? CHECK. i seriously hung out with almost every single one of my friends too! cept d, who whatsapped me the DAY AFTER i decided it was time for Serious Work. oh well. im looking forward to going to dublin & james joyce-ing my way around it. so i shall defo see him at some point in time!

seriously. taking the 2+2 as a 4 week block, i feel mostt satisfied looking back upon it :):)

anyways we're on our palliative care attachment now, and following the general trend of fam med tutors, the one today was really nice + engaging + etcetc. seriously when the tutor has lunch with your group, it makes such a difference. makes you feel like they're a human being!! and the place we were at today was very definitely a catholic place. really nice to see all the crosses around & stories of the saints' lives hanging on the walls.

for a little while, i felt like i should work there cos it is clearly such an incredibly noble profession & obviously such a catholic place, like i should give back for all he has given me. and i really wanted to, to, because well the feeling you get is basically like walking around in church... this deep sense of peace and God's presence. its really very hard to say no to that spirituality-filled env. but then i realised with some sadness that goodintentions nothwithstanding, i dont really have the personality/character/fortitude to do so. the tutor was telling us that he chose pall med because he really wants to give pple a good end to their lives and he is so passionate abt that & clearly believes in that 100%, that gives him life satisfaction. its then that i realised (even as my mind was full of admiration) that the point is to use whatever He has given in the best place possible, so as to put it to the best use. and whether i am capable enough/ will get it, i definitely know that my heart lies with _____. and its no cakewalk either, im sure i will put in enough calls and endure lots of scoldings for my ineptitude, to feel like i'm fulfilling my penance. i probably didnt articulate this properly, but oh well. but it was just such a beautiful example of putting one's talents to use for God. i'm sure that the exact implementation differs for everyone. maybe they dont raise up peds drs as saints particularly but its ok its actually v hard to be a saint (from the little of their lives ive read) and i think im rather far from it anyway haha.

THAT said i realise tt im actually in the middle/ slightly <50% of the class bellcurve thingummy whereas previously i thought that i was getting an A-ish mark based on some arbitary A-ish grade i had in my mind?! so UMM time to step it up yo. i really enjoy studying leisurely as opposed to SHIT I NEED TO KNOW THIS BEFORE WARD ROUND TMR ARGHHH which erm obviously i phailed at anyway since i still cannot rmb the CHADS2 score despite being pimped on it at int med ward rounds, reading up on it, dr loh's tut on it...

me: C is for... erm okay nevermind...H is for congestive heart failure!
yj: ... no C is for congestive HF, H is for hypertension
me: oh crap okay A is for atrial fibrillation
everyone *hysterics* NOO the chads2 score is for atrial fibrillation!! A is age...

me: oh right...

its like when i told my research supervisor
*confidently* oh, and i know how to use CPSS also
supervisor: *pause* you mean SPSS. CPSS is the patient records system

or during the GI tutorial
tutor: so when the patient is bleeding, what should you do?
me: give anti-coagulation!!

okay continuing this extremely random post, i'm now going to make a list of dramas i watched in 2011/2012 thus far that made me smile/ entertained me! and that i actually finished (the total number is actually rather low, surprisingly). because... um they entertained me! and haha if i dont record it it seems like all the hours will drifttt away into nothingness. okay i guess they already did. haha. into prettily-organised notes..

1. dream high
2. secret garden (the body switch was so hilarious! actually this just seems sooo long ago)
3. best love
4. scent of a woman (tango!! bucket lists!)
5. the musical (didnt finish the last 3 eps though, degenerated into ?!! it's such a pity because the first few eps were so fantastic)
6. what's up

currently watching: high kick. it's only 20 mins per episode and is so funny! seriously the best thing to accompany studying about gallstones. although, i really really miss how i met your mother/ gossip girl/ big bang theory. ARGHH.

the tomato plants

2012-01-19T12:54:00.003+08:00

[excerpts from] october by louise gluck

The light has changed;
middle C is tuned darker now.
And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed.

It is true that there is not enough beauty in the world.
It is also true that I am not competent to restore it.
Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.

I am
at work, though I am silent.

I was young here. Riding
the subway with my small book
as though to defend myself against
the same world:

you are not alone,
the poem said,
in the dark tunnel.

Vespers
by Louise Glück
In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer.

2012-01-18T14:09:00.000+08:00

i'm positive i've posted this before, but i can't help it. this is PHENOMENAL.

kickstarted teh mugging.... with a long brunch + catchup with nandita @ botanics yesterday! hehe. we literally walked all over the botanics! and had the most carbfilled but yummy lunch ever. literally. it was french toast + cinnamon + strawberries. amazing. and ahh i am so looking forward to visiting n&n and m & everyone else in the us... ONE DAY when i finally organize electives/ vacation there :) anyway after i finally got to the lib and sat down at 1230pm (SUCH EFFICIENCY. NOT), i got called away on a random mission, which only got finished at 130. so by the time i really started studying, i was extremely sleepy. btw, i don't have clinical narcolepsy, i checked and even did a research project in yr2 on narcolepsy before. HAHA.

despite that i studied the vasculitides! and met lots of people mugging away in the lib. and the m4s who are now free to holiday. lucky people!

anyway i must say that i LOVE MICKY YOOCHUN from DBSK. seriously. so so handsome. and he can sing like that despite having asthma?! and i must confess that when i found out he had asthma i... watched the youtube vid to pick up signs of respiratory distress, & wondered if he was barrel chested.... hoho. luckily i'm not friends with any dbsk fangirls ;p and i dont think his respi distress was THAT bad. he should just carry a personal nebulizer around! [/medicinegeek]

one time

2012-01-16T16:12:00.003+08:00

i fall asleep after morning breaks uh

no pain no gain
i dont count the few things that i lost
there are things to gain

the fire inside my heart keeps burning;
doesn't know how to die down, higher
there is nothing i can do for life;
this sweat down my forehead hasn't even dried yet

shout again for this moment
one time, one time
up to the sky, higher than the heaven

my expression-less reflection in the window says,
i know, you know, why do my tears keep flowing
up to the sun (up to the sun)

also, must restrain self from running to the botanics for bkfast w/ n tomorrow! lol. i really get obsessed with the most random things. in my defence, the botanics is really very pretty, i love running, i love running in pretty places & new routes (the canal is rather smelly. and i have run there for yeaaars).

notamorningperson

2012-01-15T20:16:00.001+08:00

TELL ME ABOUT IT.

on retrospect, going for rpm challenge the day after running freakin' long to botanics & back was a crazy idea. i was SMASHED. literally. i have never felt so exhausted ever. right now i feel like ive just ran a half-marathon. and having run a half-marathon multiple times before, i think i can vouch for that and say... yea, it feels pretty similar.

anyway it can't have been helped by my uber-weird sleeping habits reccently

now am doing writeup. again. yea it gets old really fast. i know that too.

the interesting thing today is that we have NO MEANS OF UPLOADING THIS WRITEUP. kinda takes all the motivation out of doing it... but i just know that if i dont do it, magically the way of uploading will reappear on ivle. then i'll be screwed. so im doing it! it better appear anyway.

another thought is that i must reaally focus on things i want to do. the problem is that there are so many things i want to do with my life. $300 for a cake decorating class actually seems reasonable! when you arent the one earning the $$ that is ;p

okay the 3 Ps and 3 Cs. why am i even bothering. paeds. paeds. come on you can do this!!

note to self: looking at food blogs to entertain yourself when doing work makes you eat more. nooo shit.

2012-01-15T11:01:00.001+08:00

sleepy ++. my sleep cycle is allmessedup, instead of alldressedup. sigh. as illustration, i woke up at 4pm yesterday?! anyway hols part2 has just started and i kicked it off with... uh waking up at 4pm & having a really painful run to the botanics. that took me ONE HOUR AND FOURTY MINUTES. to be fair i actually got there in 40 mins. then i sat on a bench for 10 minutes, then i painfully dragged myself back for the next however long the remainder of the time is. i think im getting unfit. i used to be able to do 40 mins there & 40 mins back. i thought i would be super sleepy after that but at 3am i was discovering the joys of a new baking shop at holland v! yay!

... and now i'm really, really sleepy

today i have to
1. finish my writeup
2. gym
3. family lunch/brunch
4. church
5. actually start studying

in this hols, i plan to
1. plan my electives (theoretically i can do what i was intending to, but pending ethical approval... let's all hope it works out!)
2. plan my post m3 hols!! :D
3. learn how to make cakes with fondant/icing etc
4. I REALLY WILL MAKE CINNAMON ROLLS. i have been aiming to do this like even before med sch LOL.
5. learn korean :):)
6. lose 5kg. wahahaha. actually in sg, i tend to put on weight during hols (as opposed to how when i actually flew back here for hols, i used to lose weight simply cos im guilt-tripped into exercising more, and im not eating out like super alot). and my cg is extremely happening with alot of outings haha. the last outing was thoroughly amusing even though we were all SUPER TIRED (from i dunno what also. is polyclinic very tiring clearly not. probably it is so un-tiring that we feel free to pursue other things outside and then stagger in barely awake yea that's it).
7. do things to be a better person [purposefully vague but i know what this means!!]
8. buy haruki murakami books :)
9. shop!
10. have a longrun to the botanics & back at least 1x/ week, hopefully 2x? hahaha. and that by the end i will be able to do it in 1 hr 20 mins ;p

and of course study. bleh. i think i aim to really study not like lay everything out infront of the comp and then bum. duh. seriously usually i bum forever and then study for 1 hr between 1am and 2am -_-
anyway to the people doing the conference thingy, good luck! im sure it'll be awesome, and thankyou for the break that we have coz of it HAHA thanks thanks really :)

what i talk about when i talk about running

2012-01-13T00:31:00.002+08:00

"If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation." - 1Q84

reccently i've been feeling atpeace with my future plans, which is nice. hehe. although i dont think that the dept is exactly going to poll all my friends & random tutors for my suitability, i just feel like the universe is planting signs & encouragement my way, like positive reinforcement, for my Dream

and linked with that, is the other parts of my Dream... i think that it will happen, yes, but i can't continue on this arc i'm going on now. i need to change Things, i need to do about a hundred diifferent other things, half of which i have some idea what to do and the other half of which i have no clue. but i just thought that it was a really good wakeup call.

in light of that, and trusting in God, i dont think i want to do what i agonised abt doing on friday. i dont think i'll have the time to machinate what i was planning to, and if all these yrs He has stopped me everytime i wanted to finally do it, i dont think that it can have been a coincidence. so then that begs the qn - what was the POINT of that whole shebang. maybe things dont have to have a point. maybe the beginning five minutes was the main point and the next few years were unimportant whitenoise. i always try to read too much into everything *cough poetry during lit class* and maybe, even for God's plan; ESPECIALLY for it, it's not really meant to be for me to dissect like a poem. or maybe i can dissect it all i want but the things i come up with arent really His intention anyway

just have been feeling like understandings click into place, and am glad for it.

realized, that the reason i feel so much peace about my futures now, is because i trust God to sort it out for me :)

hard boiled egg of wonderland

2012-01-12T00:03:00.005+08:00

reading haruki murakami interviews now. i think i must really sit down somewhere and read through his books from cover to cover, not just in standing up spurts when waiting for people at bookstores. true, every page is so like poetry that one is tempted to transiency, but still..

i think i fell in love once i read the part where he says his main characters are written to resemble nick carraway from the great gatsby. (actually, why did he not choose gatsby himself?!) but anyway. come to think of it, murakami is basically like the japanese fitzgerald. and he used to run a jazz bar. that must explain why "jazz leaks into his prose", as one review put it

i dont want to fill in my logbook. argh. so sleepy. i want to stay up all night reading murakami books. but i have one more fourty-five minute drive, one more prosaic day. and not to mention, i dont actually own any of his books

i nearly forgot my friday mission. i think, to heck with it.

2012-01-11T00:12:00.000+08:00

hi world, it is midnight and i am officially screwed for my case presentation tomorrow, and have absolutely NO motivation anymore

WHAT IS NEW.

okay i give up just 20 mins more and whatever i cant finish... erm i'll just hope that we cant fit 7 presentations into 1 session! haha!

scribble

2012-01-10T22:13:00.001+08:00

just sent the stupidest email of all time, essentially saying "hi guys sorry i have no suggestion" SUCH INTELLIGENCE. but really, i cant be faulted. it's 10pm and i have to produce a case writeup/ presentation/ somesuch thing of intangible form by 830am at a very far-flung place to my tutor. sigh. and its not really a chronic case either

WHY did i stay back until 530pm in this slack posting is beyond me. i think we must have broken the all-time record for staying behind in this particular segment of the posting. and SOUL-DESTROYING MRT RIDE, practically from one end of the green line to the other. not to mention the morning traffic jams. ughh

anyway i really cant think of anything. speaks volumes for my intel. its okay, i'm now a r-o-b-o-t. yeps.

that said, it was a really interesting day! we had the most fabulous tutor ever. i dont know, he just managed to integrate basic science, fam med principles, and all the stations in the service rotation BRILLIANTLY, all the while being entertaining & interesting. infact halfway thru going thru the answers to the worksheet he was like "eh actually i'm not answering the questions am i, i'm just talking about interesting things" but no, it was v good!!

and then after that in the afternoon h and me sat in on his clinic session, and interviewed (i dont think clerked is the word, as h was like asking half the qns for me, and it was more of a fam-med style ICEKAPS thing. after tt, h was like, i think u need to study more HAHA thanks thanks). this pt who was telling us "oh i dont like to tell doctors what i have, i see if they can guess it and then if they can, YES!!" when we went back to the room and mentioned it to the doctor he was like "nooooooo!" *head in hands* and yeah basically it was just the most interesting variety of patients ever in a polyclinic/primary care setting. take it from me, who saw 14 urtis in a row, and the moment i exchanged rooms, my friends saw a case of cellulutis. and i diagnosed a case of warts! awesome possum

oh and our tutor treated us to lunch. that guy is seriously the nicest and most generous tutor EVER.

now case writeup ARGH this is never-ending. or in this case, never-starting. i think if they want us to ICEKAPS our way thru can but the format should be more geared towards that...

2012-01-10T00:00:00.003+08:00

you know the classic saying "God grant me determination to continue when it looks bleak and serenity to stop when i should and wisdom to differentiate the two" OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. yeahh. i need that now. .

anyway i think i should have done it all those years ago. so easy to say that now, but i kept putting it off. oh well. hahah. i dont think there can be much ramification, not after all this time, but WHO KNOWS.

and after much thinking i have also come to the conclusion that the season of the 16 year old me is well and truly over. it was really fun, i dont deny that. i love inmaturity, emoangst, bummingaround and the highs and low, but i think that there are different seasons for things and i am very clear about what lies next

which leads me to...

i love it when people tell me i should go into _______ and that i am made for it. THANK YOU SO MUCH. seriously! hehe. just small things like that, really encourage and make my day. i consider this a healthy form of delusion. for unhealthy forms of delusion feel free to pm me, haha.

on that note, i would like to say that usually if i am indulging in delusions, i dont actually tell people unless forced to, as a learned character trait after years of subjecting my friends to unwanted, unlyrical prose about love, life and the universe. if i am talking about something... probably i think it is an amusing topic to talk about socially. i think unhealthy delusions are best pushed under the carpet & forgotten FOREVAH. yay! evolution yo.

and cute babies really make my day. :):) not just one day, they make everything worth it. whatever it is.

2012-01-08T22:50:00.003+08:00

good
1. i have cimmamon for cinnamon rolls!
2. i studied ascites today
3. church = :)

bad
1. ELECTIVES ARE STRESSING ME OUT SO MUCH. its freaking one month of my life, i would like to do sth productive. im sure that randomthings that i find rushedly can fill the time, but i want it to be more than that. i do have a project (finally), now the prob is making sure the bulk of the time is within the elective timeperiod. i could canvass for ANOTHER project, thereby making my hols zeroo, which is actually fine by me coz i love this speciality & would happily do ten projects in this area if i were allowed but then yunno, i foresee weird logistics working it alll out like maybe happily the first project works for electives and then i am wasting the depts time by straddling 2 projects, like being too greedy for projects (well, yeah, but only in the sense like how mice like to eat cheese!). okay and anyway i love to overestimate my abilities but two projects might really be too much. (unless its just lit review, haha. but then it wont be impactfull enough.)

ok. basically that is it i am v stressed about electives and WE HAVE TO DECLARE ON THE 10TH why is it so exciting and fastpaced huhh. like so if i declare i have plans, they may not plan for me?! but i may not want what they might want to plan for me...

okay maybe i will spend the month taking yoga classes to finally become certified. i must have taught friends + family like over 20 classes by now. but erm its 3000 and i dont even know what currency that is in and ARGH ONE MONTH OF MY LIFE i coulda spent jetting off to john hopkins or something, assuming they'd accept me.

and
2. i need to find a case for writeup by mon or tues :( even though the writeup itself is due like NEXT mon. bleh

haha ok i am sure the elective thing will work out. just that i have been going over the possibilities for awhile now and i just needed to lay out the thought process somewhere. i guess i will just try to get another project & thereby have stress ++ doing 2 projects & trust that either it isnt too hard or i have superhuman skillz coz i dont want to force the thing to fit in the 4 weeks if it cant, or like put it down as those 4 weeks and then errm find out too late that i finished everything too early/ the delay in waiting is too long

but what shall i write on the declaration thingy?! they should have a yes/no/MAYBE option hahah

2012-01-07T11:55:00.003+08:00

lol this is hilarious

so... what is right, i have NO IDEA, just go with da flow

haha really just being happily oblivious to everything is THE KEY lalala

repeat the same words

2012-01-06T13:56:00.000+08:00

you know sometimes you are just too exhausted to pick yourself up and start running again

these two weeks of hols were actually THOROUGHLY unproductive, putting my internal-medicine-robotory skillz completely to shame.

i barely studied, ate out gazillions of times (and gazillions of food) and hardly burnt anyy of it off. and i spent the whole time bumming around enjoying life hehe. but it was awesome (barring the part where i keep having to disarm my personal inefficiency danger alarm). goes to show how unusedd we are to glorious slackery i guess
to the point that when i tried to start up the engine again, i was just like zzzzz let me sleep longer please

BUT! now, marshmallow-fuelled, i am baaack on teh wagon! go go! but im not going for CTS. hahaha. today i shall
1. email my supervisor all the papers i found
2. do the irb form thing
3. study hypertension (from priscilla's)
4. dance hiphop!
5. return library books
6. borrow MORE books
7. procure ingredients to make yummy food (as per my DAILY resolution)

~

just keep having this feeling that i want to overhaul everything and commence perfection NOW but inertia.

and get rid of all the random thoughts in my head. paeds really cleared it out so efficiently. i was like an assault tank during that posting seriously. okay so it got extremely tiring constantly worrying about THE FUTURE but at least i dont have to think of all this. having time for oneself is excellent but thinking about unproductive things is FRUSTRATING.

so yeah just random reflections

and also i think that some things, once gone, can really never be gotten back again. especially when one deals with it so clearly & specifically to the end. or rather, shall we say, some things just dont have to be said. oh well. nevertheless, sometimes it's also just that ethically, for fairness and balance in the universe, what goes around must come around. it doesn't always have to go to the fullest conclusion of perfection. or maybe it is the saving-me thing haha that hasn't happened to me for so long (maybe coz i havent really needed to be saved much from anything thank goodness.) but nah, i think it deserves it's own standalone place in the forests of the mind. and i havent really been able to discern anything for a long time now (have i been a particularly bad girl, or is this teh dark tea-time of the soul spiritually speaking or whaaaat),

but something that struck me very strongly was that this is good, and this is God's will. i dont even know which exact bit particularly but i just felt the peace & happiness that i prayed for. i dont know how or what or when or why, but i know its gonna be okay, much more than okay in fact

koyote's repeat the same words
i LOVE the beat! makes u wanna jump up and start dancing

:)

2012-01-05T23:28:00.001+08:00

Super stuffed from the bbq zomg. I conclude that our cg guys are super good at shopping for and bbqing the bbq stuff. And the marshmallows were win! The other day also had massive amts of food + bubbletea + fellowship w the edin pple yeyNow i feel like an extremely happy + overfed pufferfish hahahh. But anyway, will give thanks where it is due, thank you God for all this. Oh and our tutor now is SUPER nice. Srsly. After tut he was like "ok guys lets go for drinks now!" and was like chatting w uus for 1 hour! And we saw an uber cool case today too

2012-01-04T02:21:00.001+08:00

i love these days when it all becomes clear... God's plan, inasmuch of its entirely as i am allowed to see now. i am so happy, that finally, at least, this is worth this much. (and trust me, it is worth a lot). to have this be real to me at last, all i can say is that i could not have had it any sooner, and deserved it. let's just say, thank you for the random out of nowhere burst of stuff. for something so random, in the context of this, actually, means a lotand the best thing is that finally my eyes are opened, and it means everything to me

nye

2011-12-31T19:21:00.001+08:00

wow i'm speechless.. i think rain deserves every accolade he has and probably much more. he is just fantasticness embodied.

and to prove that he STILL has it, this is a more reccent vid
LOVE. ~happy new year's eve everyone :)

overview of 2011

2011-12-30T20:19:00.002+08:00

the first line of the first post of each month [using discretion, like half my posts seem to be OMG BIG BANG WON AN AWARD! or zomg i am so tired here goes a youtube video. this is amazing! awesome! hot guys with sixpacks!! no actually i never say the last one... haha. but on that note i swear the today newspaper folks keep talking about kpop actors and their abs. like. "there are two reasons to watch this movie. won bin, and his six-packs." ohhh-kay, well i understand where they're coming from!] so then i chose something that reflected the month better haha

so here goes!
jan: is ridiculously tired, and it's only the first day of school...
feb: my post-ca treat was splurging on books! yeah, okay, i've had rather a lot of post-ca treats. it was reaally traumatising!!
mar: There are two kinds of happiness in the world. One is a happiness that you realize after the fact. The other is a happiness that you feel in the moment.

april:
me: hey have you seen michael?
classmate: *stunned look* do you mean meckel's diverticulum?

may: dinner parties are EXHAUSTING. particularly when you have to find the teacups & teapots & sugar halfway through the thing.

june: you know it's going to be good, when you unexpectedly meet the person who showed you that every single chance encounter was for some greater good you couldnt see at the time.

july:
happy things
1. i have a smartphone! and angry birds and medscape and all the rest of it. it is AWESOME. in the return of the innenduoes ie slippery slope nooo, i was trying to understand how the wifi emmitting thingy works (cos my cg mate has a wifi thingy i can use to do internet stuff with), so i was like "you mean as long as xx is around i can do anything i want" LOL which clearly everyone took the wrong way ;p
[note: THEY ARE STILL SAYING THIS!! haha.]

aug: Today was good =) I'm really learning tons everyday. What scares me is that it's not enough, yknow like too little too late?!

september: Happy is happy but im totally burnt out..
They say you need to talk to pts to learn but wasting good cases on my ignorance = ugh

[note: i have 2 words... INTERNAL MEDICINE]

october: GEN MED IS OVER WHOOPEE
i've never been so glad for anything to be over. oh wait, ortho. oh wait, year 2 exams... lol ANYWAY.

november: :)
"you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you"
John 15:16

december:
"whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you" John 15:16
PAEDS EOPT IS OVER!!!
~

also... HOW did the year go by so fast?! it's been a lovely year, all said. many moments of stress, EXAMS, etc, but also many new friends made, new experiences, new lessons learnt about Life & things. not so sure about medicine... HAHA. seriously pple keep teaching us about Life. i pretty much liked it.

my resolutions for next year are... too many really. i get obsessive abt list-making & making resolutions. once i made a calender for my gen med posting coz its so confusing w/ all the different tutorials everyday, and left my notebook in the mo room. when i returned, some m5 guy was looking at my notebook going WOW WHOSE IS THIS, SO ORGANIZED! heheh

1. LEARN TO DRIVE. or rather, to park/ reverse etc. i can drive in a straight line okayyy
2. bake more! this yr i baked 2 choc cakes & 1 cherry pie hahaha so proud of myself
3. not so much about studying more as being more efficient at what i actually am studying. and erm put it in a format that either i can rmb it or i can retrive it the night before whatever big exam hahaha. its always so confusing with notes everywhere man. or maybe i need to upgrade my brain's RAM...

4. break 2hrs for a marathon. okay. this is pretty much impossible. bwahaha
5. run more! i really really should. but i like to sleep in in the mornings. sigh.
6. be a better person

i think i totally have improved on the friend front. ask any of my friends! i havent pangsehed anyone since foreverr, altho this is mostly coz i now only say yes if i can make it (DOH). and also since, apart from the nus pple, most of my friends are studying overseas HAHA so theres noone to pangseh. and i met up w pple so many times this hols :D grin. i am becoming a HUMAN BEING peoplez. ok wait there's still the 3rd jan edin thingy, please do not foil me idiopathic stomach cramps!! haha but no seriously its definitely easier if people arent asking u to hang out every week. and plus for my cg mates i see them everyday, non-pangsehable coz i'm in trouble if i skip school right haha so yea. oh tt reminds me i resolve to DECREASE THE PUNS/INNENDUOES. or maybe just not say them in public places. okay that sounds even worse. okay i give up. HAHA

and after 2 weeks of slacking i realize i LIKE being busy, if only it didnt also come with the SIDE EFFECT of being so freakin exhausted the whole time. you dont say. anyway we still have like 1.5 more mths of fam med + 2 more weeks holiday, so, i think its more of slacking than busy craziness for me. BUT I REALLY SHOULD STUDY for the final exams. something tells me it's gonna be scaaary shit.

amazing race

2011-12-28T12:56:00.003+08:00

have spent the past 1.5 weeks running all over sg doing random stuff hahah. like going to kovan to play badminton, lots of last-min christmas lunches & dinners, caroling, etc etc. and baking! ok i only baked once, but i spent soo much time dithering over whether to do it or not (typicall). and even went for the kids christmas pageant! ok thaT was really totally random. anyway yea so it was like exhibiting cuteness overload x 100 e.g kids dancing to bruno mars but not really like pyrotechnic pro-ness, haha, i guess its hard to train kids to do anyth so i understand the organisers' difficulties in putting up the pageant! i was DA-ing a kid behind me when everyone was standing up to look at the crib or sth. so freaaking cute! i think the kid was kinda shy tho hahahaha i was quite scared she would loudly burst out crying in the middle of church ;p the pageant was gd in the sense that it makes you realise kids are innocent and more christlike than hardenedworldlytraumatisedangsty grownups, and u dont realise this until u are one of the aforementioned grownups, so, kinda ironic/ inevitable reaally. if only they had like...a STORYLINE or something, woulda been better.
and i keep getting co-opted into things randomly, like i dont think i planned my holidays that closely, infACT my plan was just to CHILLL not run everywhere like a headless chicken. oh well. maybe its just that the chilling doesnt imprint itself onto my memory. seeing as i sleep in like craazy everyday & have been computergamering uber much, i guess i've effectively slacked off! hehe.

macarons! i now have most ingredients except PIPING TIPS. grah pretty macarons, i want

also i have like 4 mths + to sort out an elective for the end of yr 3. ARGHHH. ok i know its totally unimpt but HELLO its 1 month of my life, id like to do something useful with that time thanksss. and btw the restrictions are really... grah.

wishes

2011-12-22T14:15:00.001+08:00

somehow, i feel this great sense of relief. it just feels like God pulled me back from the brink of something. i still think it was the right thing to do to try, definitely, 100%. i couldnt have lived with myself if i didn't. but to actually go ahead and do it is a baad idea

life does work in funny ways. but this time, its funny good

anyway just finished the kids xmas party caroling. :) it was pretty good! got to know some of my batchmates better since i literally didnt know ANYONE there before. okay maybe know as brief accquaintances but never talked to them before much. and seriously the guitar-playing santa claus dude was AWESOME. like firstly his guitar skillz are ++ and also he was like "ho.ho.ho. i am santa claus" HAHAHA we found the extra clarification hilarious. rather like terry prattchett's santa claus (check out hogfather). anyway the kids really loved him. there's something about being a child and santa i guess! anyway i have respectt for the people organizing, think they are doing a v gd job & sth meaningful indeed. and they have the coolest gift boxes. if i were a kid id totally want it too. also starring was this random kid who followed us around the ward and made the darnest comments. it was like we were interviewing him for some tv christmas special 'well christmas to me is... it comes every year, so i just celebrate it lah" and "lets sing something... not too noisy!" LOL all the songs by definition generate -some-noise. and about the ward clerk "let's sing the cashier a christmas carol!" and he laughed at the santa claus when he played wrongly. lolll sho cute.

also did i mention results are out and i got an A :D hehehe how rare this is for me. assuming the a grade is what i think it is. okay wtv i think its a good mark, finito :)

chocolatedust

2011-12-20T13:09:00.000+08:00

was feeling extremely BLAH this morning when i woke up thinking of the 100 things i have to doo

but then there was this flourless chocolate cake which caused chocolatedust to fly EVERYWHERE. and surrounded by chocolate there is really nothing to do but feel inexplicably HYPER AND HAPPY

*bounces off walls*

okay, i did taste test some of the batter to check it would be yummy. HEHE. some only, really!!

i wuv baking :):)

letusjustlove

2011-12-14T23:55:00.001+08:00

as a result of some unintelligent choices (did i REALLY have to surf what wiki says about h2g2 books this afternoon?!), i now have 20mins to finish my writeup. this sounds so luxurious except i have been writing it for the past two nights and thus far barely 950 words. and mind you most of the words are headings.

the last writeup i showed my gp and she was like very good! lots of headings! and actually i put them in out of desperation. haha it was quite funny

anyway if i dont finish by midnight & print to let her vet AND writeup all the cases in the logbook for signing, i will be superr sleepy tmr. i need to wake up at 8am to eat bfast/ change etc EVEN THOUGH the place is like 5mins by car from home -_- inefficiency yo. i dunno why either, dont ask me! time and space somehow conflates to make a super near location take a long time to get to

and and the funny thing is i feel like i need more sleep in gp posting? maybe coz we need to stand for 3 hrs and if i fall over and sleep its quite... bad haha. sy and i were mouthing 'i'm sleepy!' 'me too!' to each other which i think the gp heard coz after tt she told every pt 'medical students... i need to ask them qns or they will fall asleep' hahaha. and i think coz i CAN sleep more, i do. so every morning from 8-8.20 is spent catching ineffectual bursts of guilty sleep. anyway i dunno why i am just super sleepy despite the great sleep luxury (as opposed to other postings, not compared to vacationing in the bahamas DUH)

also read some interesting stuff (re: unintelligent choices that results in a rushed job now, compromising LOVELY SLEEP & sanity) that made me think about teh past. haha but i shall refrain from philosophizing abt debate until _______ is over. ps thanks c for the joke, i used it, HAHA.
listening to - a pink's let us just love from the protect the boss ost

anyway edit FINISHED WRITEUP YAY unfortunately it is 1am hello extreme sleepiness later.

editing rights

2011-12-14T15:40:00.001+08:00

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
i like this editing rights idea. so often we ply God with thousands of prayers, sure, its good to pray, but it doesnt mean that automatically we will get everything all at once like a genie. which is probably better, if you've ever read any genie stories hahah. people's wishes are not wise, oh no.

yesterday night was a night of epiphanies. haha. and maybe that needed to be sorted out, before ___________. the result though was that i was EXTREMELY sleepy today. but it's okay, one doesnt feel so enlightened so often. and tumblr'ed my way through the afternoon. in the end, i got what i wanted, yep :)
i love the daily bread email i get everyday. a reccent one was 'our daily bread- free pizza'. HAHA. i want!! nah it isnt pizza pizza. but today, i feel like i got a slice of free pizza :):) i really do. and the hours spent coming to grips with stuff yesterday, made this all the more sweet.

of rheumatology & chocolate cake

2011-12-13T19:47:00.000+08:00

If I could catch the green lantern of the firefly
I could see to write you a letter.
-- amy lowell

stuck with writeup. although in this instance, its a good excuse not to run. i ran during the weekend and was totally zonked out after. bleh can you say unfit. i shall wake up at 6am to run tomorrow!! *promises self*

360/1500 words. i think i shall go into -extreme- detail about the patient's diet, writing it like a paean to singapore hawker food (not coz the guy is a glutton, i highly doubt so, but cos i HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO WRITE)

char kway teow, nasi
lemak, chicken
rice, ban mian,
.......

i really dont like writeups. i like this poem though.

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.

Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.

Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

- robert frost.

wow no idea what it means but it sounds so pretty. what on EARTH does that allude to and how can such visions have pranced into his mind's eye. like "something is there that doesn't love a wall"
"always wrong to the light, so never seeing"
yeah. tell me 'bout it.

the downside to having sent alot of emails reccently about research/ poem submissions/ thingsingeneral is that i keeeeeep checking my email on my phone. im going to get trigger thumb soon.

yesterday was studying rheumatoid arthritis - the full works, with priscilla's internal medicine, davidsons, uptodate, blablabla. i realised there are 100 things i dont know. like FELTY'S DISEASE. so enlightened now. but i was researching highteas at the same time. it was just so highly incongruous. after looking at millions of pictures of cake i felt super jelat, like i had just eaten a boatload of buttercream, flour and strawberries.

and then i felt the need to run. but fam med makes me super sleepy. maybe im paying for my ENERGISER BUNNY MODE for the last dunno how many months.

or maybe i'm just pathologically lazy and will sleep given any opportunity. yeah, that.

likeadream

2011-12-13T16:16:00.001+08:00

one write up, two more morning clinics, and one more set of lectures standing between me and holiday!!

although i have been actually practically on holiday since paeds posting finished ;p except that no holiday involves waking up at 8am as far as i am concerned.

trax's like a dream has pretty lyrics

wordlessly, only

sighs increase
yawns come out from
the obvious expressions

as i walk on the path of time,
the world of you and i which used to shine
become miserable memories and
keeps on faintly erasing

at some point the seasons passed
and time went by
the accustomed two eyes with
no feeling makes me feel so sad
~
on the bright side, prolific mornings thinking of poetry during gp clinic. :)
haha actually i think its pretty awesome that the gp builds relationships so well with her patients. i think the gp im attached to is an extremely good dr both in terms of medicine and in the art of healing & communication. if only i could be as good as talking to people as her! some of her pts literally fly to sg just to see her. there was a funny bit where she was talking to a patient about cny celebrations at their house and i was thinking 'wow how cool, she is so close to her patients!!' then the gp turned to us and said 'oh this is my niece' HAHA.

bleh. writeup.

oh something that occured to me is that in the midst of enjoying life/ making further lists of all the things i wanna do, i realized that it feels really too... indulgent and materialistic. must i really have more dresses and shop at zara/ topshop/ h&m/ river island to be happy? must i really watch a thousand plays and ballets, must i really spend $$ to learn contemp to be happy? well, yes on the plays. HAHA. not sure about the other stuffs. i just think that chasing down every single thing on the wishlist isnt necessary for happiness. its true that getting what you want (in whatever form) is great, but sometimes happiness just is being. but i enjoyed the indulgences of the past few weeks. LOL. and wicked... well if miraculously someone goes with me sureee but i think paying 200 bucks to drag an unwilling family member along is not a good idea hhaha. but but christmas carolling is coming up! and high tea with michellee and lots of people coming back :) this december i can be social haha. THAT part of post-exam i lovee. not so much about the going out part, but more of the People :)

~

i liked the dream. it was one of the best i have ever had. it almost felt real

2011-12-11T23:51:00.001+08:00

I sent off a lot of emails and put plans into action today. It feels great being able to focus and not have the spectre o exams looming overhead constantly. Some plans were old ones, as far back as may this year, which just refuses to come to fruition. Some things i was really excited about. But maybe this diversion is meant to be. I solidified my long simmering urge to try anotherangle, and to try for something else beyond the deadline during church, so hopefully it goes well haha. Lets noot put the discernment spin on that though..Had a greatt weekend with shopping, playhouse and lunch with nat and sharon!! Hermitry makes socialization all the sweeter:) i loved the world of warcraft bits and the internetstuff was so well done!! M4 play was awesomee too. Who wrote the script such brilliance

a lost puppy

2011-12-08T17:29:00.003+08:00

The crowds overflowing in the golden and silver malls

~
Gp has been pretty nice and slack! Except the writeup but i understand that they need us to do SOME work hahaa. There was a good case as i waited outside to come in at 9am (why is sy always so early??), and after that was all URTI's and seamen having checkups!! Sigh.
And lots of food for thought. Clearly what we think is best in life isnt always best huh? Quite jarring in a sense esp if you consider all the wishes that have been popping up in my brain haha but timely!!

~
But i have to say this. Thank you for believing in me. Really. I will never forget that

yeats

2011-12-06T21:35:00.004+08:00

let's just quote yeats, and anything i can think of. it makes it easier

"never give all the heart, for love
will hardly seem worth thinking of..."
"for everything that's lovely is
but a brief, dreamy, kind delight"

~
OKAY emo-unanswerable-philosophical mood overr

had a BRILLIANT weekend!!!
high tea yummmm & then a friend's party. had quite a gd chat with miah (on my part, i dunno if he thinks the same, HAHA!!) we were talking about discernment, and something he said really struck me "discernment is usually about something big, not like something like what shall i eat for lunch or shall i drink coca cola" it's SO OBVIOUS but was so striking at that moment. in the time when you are confused about things then everything blurs together and you arent really best placed to judge. but then someone says something which may be v obvious or not really related but somehow is the FINAL PIECE OF THE JIGSAW PUZZLE. it just felt like that. there was more i know this sounds so inconsequentiall but anyway i always enjoy talking about discernment :) so yeah

also caught up with christen and talked to shariff more (he is really v nice!!)

and back to the thoughtfulness bit, i guess i kinda needed it, but ive decided to be 100% positive from now on!! okay finee 99% cos i guess the world doesnt really like negativity nope but it's not just SOCIAL CONVENTION its a firm belief that if you are happy... it just multiplies itself. or something. forgive me, I HAVE ENDLESS WRITEUPS. now on fam med writeup :(:(

but nevermind, had quite a nice time playing comp games + nice mix of social stuffs

i am also still highly confused.
but this i know, trust in the Lord your God with all your heart.

i dont know what will happen,
but i trust him.

because today, was not possible without his grace, and i will not ever forget that.

brownie points

2011-12-02T11:33:00.002+08:00

"whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you" John 15:16

PAEDS EOPT IS OVER!!!

... and now i am all alone in science library doing my ethics writeup. like, LITERALLY, there is no one else in the computer room. this is sooo odd. dont science people come to study in the library too?! (i imagine everyone from medicine is either doing writeup/ out celebrating).

but going to lunch w hanyu/ meihua soon. then tonight i'm going to orchard to SHOP and BUY BOOKS. not to sound bimbotic but wearing the same like 10 dresses everyday is boring me out of my mind. and i just saw that wicked is NOT sold out! question is, do i wanna pay 100 dollars for a lousy seat?! hmmmmm difficult difficult. but it's such a great experience, i mean. WICKED. :(

debate trials on the 7th. haha i really spent a long time thinking if i shld join or not. and fbing sean abt it. haha! ultimately i thinkk i will go with a) if i get in
b) if i am projected to get cramps on that day HAHAHA and most imptly but the hardest barometer (yet the easiest, in some ways), if God wants me to do it. its just that that is sensitive but not specific. HAHA. like the TACHYPNOEA FOR PNEUMONIA DFDGHFLGHLFJHGLJXFLH okay moving on.

reflections on paeds

firstly, i had an AWESOME TIME. even though the atmosphere (in the 2nd hosp) is so academic and stressful, i feel like i have learned so much not just in paeds, but in gen med. i like how everything is so specific and we must memorize head circumference, how much it grows each month of life, etc. reminds me of heart of darkness hee. I REALLY love little kids. as i stepped into the lift just now, i saw the cutest looking kid, strapped to his dad in one of those kangaroo looking things, waving his arms and legs. zomg.

even though our tutors could sometimes be very stressful HAHA, on hindsight, the tutorials which we all took turns to do "exam-style long case and short case" were very good practices. because we learnt to clerk blindly and present and answer when we got interrogated. for me, my last long case was really brilliant. in the sense that it was SO complicated, and i was so confused (the mother told me "she has... ACHONDROPLASIA, diagnosed antenatally". btw, i dont think u can dx that antenatally.) and oht really grilled me a lot for it. but magically i managed to come to a conclusion, list all the issues and everything. just really pleased with how neatly it turned out despite the difficulties :):) and that made me realise how impt the stress of performing during tuts is.

i was really self conscious and competitive this posting, to be perfectly honest. i was so scared that i would screw up any chance of me getting in next time. i think its just that, when you are in a place which is calling out to you like a greek siren, when you want it so badly, it really matters to you what you do. i didnt purposely want to be this way, or like it, but i really couldnt help it. and even contacting tutors actually makes me v stressed. HOWEVER i think ultimately i didnt offend any tutors hahaha even tho i think my mini cex arranging is sO not professional - i sat in his clinic, and at the end told him i was to do mini cex with him/ the 2nd time i caught him as he was going home. hahahaha. but once i realized where i stand (not too good, haha!) i sort of gave up expecting anything and just worked harder to fill the holes & ultimately it turned out ok.

i think on the balance, i am definitely better at paeds than anything else. but the problem is, not necessarily better than OTHER PEOPLE at paeds. see what i mean about competitiveness... sigh. residency makes you consider all this stuff so early :(:( i dunch want. i just want to hop and skip and run. that makes me... around 5 years old, according to my DA notes. why is it so hard to be a doctor for kids. why do you have to be so zai in order to see little kids everyday and smile everyday and fix little kids. i really dont know.

as you can see, most of my posting was spent either mugging, portfolio-ing, or trying to crystal-ball my future. most of my kk posting was spent playing with kids. hahaha.

okay DISCERNMENT ASIDE, i also enjoyed meeting new people! cos we're kinda put together with some people from other cgs for some things. got to know s and s little better (s keeps hitting me when i say silly things during clinics etc!! haha i joined her for renal/ child development clinic randomly during outpatients. and also was with her for ward embedding). and s - when we went to cck. its actually pretty nice, cos im not the sort of person to make friends upfront but rather naturally through doing stuff together so yay! more friends = always good.

my tutors i think were v nice!! like literally, they're not people that intimidate you. i think i gave up impressing my main tutor so then i wasnt so scared hahaha but anyway he doesnt tekan me much so it isnt so bad. and mainly he is just thoroughly entertaining. i look forward to being the MO sitting at the computer overhearing his tutorials and hearing him tekan m3 students ;p

so in summary, i plan to make brownies this weekend :) and watch a movie! and annthea's bday tmr! and go to church to thank God & st joseph of cupertino. eopt went good. got 70% :) as my med sch average is usually wayyy below that, all i can say is, this is my answer.

although coz i only got 60++ for my portfolio in nuh, i dont know if ill get A overall. its okay lah. i tried my best, and i got the answer i was looking for. that's enough. :)

NO MORE GUNNER THOUGHTS FOR THE REST OF M3!! YAY! back to lovely slacking off hehe

you&i

2011-11-30T20:43:00.002+08:00

this is so benjamin button. well clearly not a carbon copy, but the atmosphere/ music/ time travelling. AND THE GOOSE.

spent today at sgh. played with lots of kids, one kid was really the sweetest... EVER. they were discussing his lang delay and he kept talking to me hehe 'BEAR!' 'MIAOW!' 'NO!'. it was just sho cute. i love it when kids go out and wave bye to you (no doubt you gotta shamelessly beg them 'wave bye bye! like this! byeeee! byeee!!' before they actually do it.)

more importantly, identified lots of holes i need to fix. go go power rangerssss

oh yeah our tutor mixed up times (ithink, or forgot about us) so he was like 'nevermind lets meet after the test to go through answers!' -_- haha dont get me wrong, im quite keen, but i dont like discussing answers after testsss.
anyway dont worry i know God really doesnt owe me anything, and like the bridesmaids in the parable who never lighted their oil lamps, we need to be PREPARED. and it is really my own inefficiency as usual that puts me in this situation. which is nothing new, but hey self reflection! good for selfimprovement yo

anyway just as i left saw a case being adm for neonatal jaundice, quite cool to actually see it happening (not cool for the surprised parents). and one other mum actually thanked the dr for her gd explaination of physiological jaundice. one of those 'knowledge actually makes a difference in people's lives & helps them!!' moments. and the longterm followup of ex-premies yeahh

lovesong

2011-11-30T00:02:00.004+08:00

BIG BANG WON BEST MUSIC VIDEO FOR THE MNET AWARDS! held in singapore! *happy dance* that just made my studying-neonatology-at-midnight that much happier

no actually i really like neonatology. if i were any better at doing moro's reflex, i would sign up to be a neonatologist in a heartbeat. paeds surg, i have realised, is NOT my cup of tea. thank goodness i never started any surg projects. i had the most difficult time staying awake in paeds surg lectures in the other hosp, it was like secondary school physics all over again

today is a rather happy day! mcqs + good company + tutorial cancelled and can go home early HAHA. met sandesh/ rachel when printing stuff, and met a senior i really respect very much & who i remember as being one of the warmest friendliest people around! maybe it was chv or something i dont really know how we know each other that well haha but yay it was really v nice

these two occurances made me understand the Plan once again. i really wouldnt have it any other way, you know. okay. i can think of some better, less complicated ways. but this one turned out so well. really thank God.

cms peeps - altho i dont talk to them often since clinical years started, i think same as how anyone you break bread with you form bonds with, definitely those you pray with, you will. and christmas carol with. haha. and they're literally God-given friends. it's different from pccf, sure, but different good.

L - im glad that i have 2x more friends (or maybe 4x? or maybe the overlaps cancel out... haha) as we discussed! but more importantly, its not the number but the PEOPLE. like i met michelle chng the other day in the lounge haha i rmb when i met her by chance outside lt29 lastyr it was like *cue longlost friend hugging*. indeeed it was. so hm even though i dont really keep in touch with those people, i can still feel their genuine warmth & loveliness when i meet them after so long. haha. it's pretty awesome.

edit: i met fen in sgh on my way to the library and then spent like my lunch break gossiping about the usual stuff - postings, tutors, residency, sip, selectives, electives... hahaha. twas nice! it was pretty cool thinking about how far ive come since p4 & we were all doing all those random gep projects & putting up plays etc hahahah

footprints

2011-11-28T23:33:00.003+08:00

i am so not studying for mcq. ZOMGGGGG. will someone please save me from myself?!

just now my friend was filling up a form or something (i think?!)
"discipline? none"

HAHAHA

i thought it was hilarious. now i see, IT APPLIES TO ME TOO

a lot of thoughts, distilled into these
1) that time God really led me to do it
2) this time?!
3) i should really be more mature & not just randomly go with my desires/ feelings/ what i -think- God is saying hai sometimes it is so obvious sometimes it is really so like eh am i looking into a crystal ball or is it really

i'm just looking for hope & peace. which option lets me find it?

cowardly shirking or WISELY REFRAINING, which is it?
compared to this, i feel 100x more sure & at peace with paeds. so maybe the outcome of this, isnt that impt. but whenever i think of not doing it, i feel like im running away. i dont know from WHAT. hahaha i may not even get picked so wait & see!

it's been an interesting evening contemplating God's plans & my methods of discernment (not very good)

the oft-quoted

2011-11-27T22:31:00.003+08:00

this picture from tea& cookies makes me think: life is awesome

"but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint"
isaiah 40:31

"we are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair"
2 corinthians 4:8

i think of you again at the sound of rain

2011-11-27T16:21:00.003+08:00

so apt! C.N blue's love in the rain. and it is raining now. haha

*supposed* to be mugging for paeds mcq right now though so i didnt read through the eng subs, not representative of my train of thought! lol

right now all i am thinking is "i want to go to disneyland" SIGH. really really sian of studying. i AM interested in the subject matter just thoroughly burnt out & wanting a holiday. ONE MORE WEEK!! fam med better really be a holiday or there is gonna be a whole lot of dissappointed pple

2011-11-27T10:19:00.001+08:00

How can anyone be so perfect

winter rose

2011-11-26T21:23:00.005+08:00

song of teh day

funny stuff!
*cg mates complaining about how the seat i picked is directly under the sun & too hot*
me: oh nevermind, at least we wont get vitamin C deficiency!!

yes, yes, i know, no need to rub it in...

during portfolio
tutor: so what are the phenotypes of asthma?
my friend: viral induced, exercise induced.... *long pause in which i try to surrepitiously whisper stuff to him* and the unknown type, where we don't know what it is

and THE BEST, LIKE EVER
me: hey where are you guys now?
c: oh we're just showing dr rajeev some magic tricks
me: .... okayyy

so the trick he showed is the one where u write down a capital city and think of it really hard and c tells you what city ur thinking of

next day
c: you know, just now i went to ask dr rajeev a qn abt a patient, and he looked at me and said "i'm thinking of the answer right now, can you tell me what it is?"

HAHAHAHA
the conclusion is, i think c needs to do more magic tricks to brighten up our lives. the making a rasin dissappear during developmental assessment of a 2 yo kid was pretty awesome too. unfortunately as our professor was playing peek a boo behind him at that moment, he missed the cool show of magic. hahaha.

chua chu kang polyclinic well baby assessment was pretty fun! i was kinda dreading it cos i was sooo tired and it is soo far but my DA has improved lots since then!! yay yay. the dr running it was very good also, and clearly very old & senior. like all our profs are his juniors/ housemen!!

and was discussing paeds with shariff on the mrt back, it was v encouraging

Also yeah i guess good marks are the icing on the cake
and yeah, i'm also obsessed with cake icing & frosting ;p so, that's me. hehe.

thank you God for two rather good assessments, let me trust in you for the portfolio :)

see, at the end of this posting, i was going to decide my entire life
i have decided the following
1) no, i dont really need to decide now
2) its when no matter what you still wanna do it, that you should

2011-11-23T23:57:00.002+08:00

2/3 down!!

All i have to do is summarise scientific literature on dka and charm my printer and im done!!!
It all seems sooo far awayy
Midnight, i can do this! At least i dont have to go for prerounds and present anyone tmr =p but i enjoyed knowing all the good cases 1st, tracing blood results and going to watch the renal ultrasound. Mainly cos my male classmate was dancing and bouncing around with a flashing pink heart to distract the kid. He was pretty awesome even just singing the alphabet song too! Wow u shoulda seen the kids fascinated face. That guy is Amazing
(and it was hilarious too hehe)

2011-11-22T23:37:00.003+08:00

mini-cex = truly a miracle. as in, the miracle occured that it was allright, not the type of miracle where i need to be rescued from the grand mess i made. although i havent figured out if maybe the mess was meant to be, the other time. i think basically i clearly know what i am deficient in (cough physical examination) and i should totally fix it.... sometime. i highly doubt i can fix it in the next 2 weeks in this thoroughly overclerked place :(:(

and um, knowledge, and BRAIN POWER. that one, fixability varies

nevertheless, i am very grateful

unfortunately, half of this 4 weeks' marks also depends on PORTFOLIO

all my cases are common cases, but ATYPICAL, making finding guidelines horrible.
but usually, hard work doesnt deter me. some dramas to cheer myself up, food (i had a brownie just now hehe) and thoughts of long runs usually do the trick

but something i find i can't work through is PHYSICAL PAIN
which makes me emphathise muchly with patients. so okay, plus point

minus point is i have this freaking headache which makes me unable to do anything now but sleep. so i only have tomorrow night to finish this portfolio. do-able but i doubt it'll be a ball of a time

oh sorry, i meant the TWO portfolios
i would bang my head against the wall but that might increase the pain.

worst thing is, ive been sitting here since 6pm trying to work, but the thing just doesnt go away. i havent even been slacking off or sleeping or anything. oh i ran for 50 minutes which possibly made it worse YAY GOOD ONE

i sincerely hope this goes away tomorrow, where i have to finish the entire unfinished ward embedding form urghhhh

okay happy stuff
this v cute boy in the ward who is clearly recovering is SO HAPPY and was sad that my friends were having tutorial and couldnt play with him. SO CUTEE. so then he got them to play card games with him after. hardened, stressed out medical students! truly amazing sight. then then my friend won the game, so he went to his cupboard, and PRESENTED HIM WITH A CHOCOLATE EGG. omg. sweetness overload. really touching moment, even though the chocolate didnt go to me. i think the best is how he was doing percussion on his penguin when i passed by him in the ward the other day

TO DO
wednesday
1. present at ward rounds
2. follow a patient off somewhere to watch a scan or sth being done
3. watch a ho take blood or something
4. GET FORM SIGNED OFF
5. rush home and rush portfolio (please God, no more headache, or ANY sort of physical pain! even hard work looks good now. on that note, please let me not catch any of the random viruses all the little kids are carrying. i do like kids and i do like learning about their diseases but i really am not too enamoured with the idea of catching transmissible diseases. infact my medstudentitis makes me POSITIVELY paranoid like when i had headache and vomiting during my GE episode i thought it might be raised ICP)
6. PRINT PORTFOLIO
7. do emergency simulation thingy thingy

thursday
1. hand up portfolio
2. REJOICE

friday
1. go to chua chu kang for gen paeds clinic (sigh. so far)
2. REJOICE REJOICE REJOICE
3. oh wait, portfolio review

weekend
REALLY REJOICE

week after
1. lock self in library and do mcqs

so fun

after that, teas/lunches/ plays, etc YAY. it all seems so faaar away

i am a child of the promise

2011-11-21T20:33:00.004+08:00

From 'Identity in Christ'

"I've been given great promises":

by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 Peter 1 : 4)

"The Good Shepherd":

14 `I am the good shepherd, the one who really cares for the sheep. I know my sheep and my sheep know me.
15 So my Father knows me and I know him. I am willing to die to save the sheep.
16 `I have some other sheep which are not with these sheep. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice. (John 10 : 14-16)

the glacial stairway

2011-11-19T10:34:00.002+08:00

be it writeup or whatever, something about today makes me obsessed with lyricism, with re-writing, with beauty

about how it is freezing inside and suntan worthy outside

this review of a new collection is one of the prettiest paeans i ever heard. and the lines themselves justify the equally elegiac love poetry to the poetry

and yes, i know, i should be analysing electrolytes

imbalance, is all it is

"an impressive collection from a sculptor of light" i want to sculpt light, too. "Unsustainable light, discontinuous song, unpayable debt"
"couplets that shine like desert sun on barbed wire". tuscany poetry? count me in. "luxuriously empty air" Paradisal sight, which extends to infinity, / Arcades, stars, shadows, the eyes staring through us.

on the pyrenees, the poet writes
forward and upwards to life on the crystal blocks!
the skies here are never less than total

shampoo

2011-11-19T09:59:00.001+08:00

THE SHAMPOO Elizabeth Bishop

The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.

And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you've been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.

The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
-- Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.

~
actually, i have no idea what it means
but it's pretty
poetry is free therapy for the neurones

eating the salmon of knowledge from tins

2011-11-19T09:31:00.002+08:00

poem for a birthday
by Douglas Dunn

I still can't get over that lousy conjurer,
All thirty quids' worth of rank incompetence.
It wasn't yesterday. Eleven years since,
Almost to the hour. That slipshod sorcerer,

Butter-fingered wizard … Remember, when
No kids applauded as each trick misfired,
And he didn't notice? Then did it again,
Again, and laughed it off, tittered, perspired,

Wiping his brow, until his grand finale
When the white rabbit shat on his shaking hand,
And made a break for it? Don't shillyshally,
Bunny-boy. Run for it. We'll understand.

You deserve a magician. We all do.
And that fake pencil-line moustache, which fell off?
Don't be like him. Just you be true to you.
Do what you do, my son. It'll be enough.

~
never has there been such a brilliance of unmagical magic. it is in the negative space, that the chair-legs take form

"Had I not been awake I would have missed it"

i love this line "you deserve a magician. we all do"

and no i am not referring to the two i know ;p everyone needs everyday magic, i think
some spark, somewhere

some password that goes through when you wait long enough
the locked doors that open through wishing and waiting

lean forward and put a finger/on where you think the dream is - my life asleep, jo shapcott

what is poetry but little fragments of happiness - not complete tomes, but little shards. when dreams splinter, you knit them together. when the crystal ball is pawned to the local jeweller, you need a new method of fortune-telling

a new mythology

greece falls, you need to find new gods

(yes there is only one God, i am well aware)
but you say this with your mouth and you well know that you worship so many other things
why bother giving up your life for this
poetry requires no sacrifice
the words fall at your feet like sparks from firewood
arcing through the air
free birds

i only watch reruns now
or films about geese,
and yet i'm waiting for the miracle
i used to find in early black and white
- john burnside, late show

i guess this entry is a homage to the rainbow of poetry that makes me happy on this sunny saturday morning
i feel like reading larkin

moon that embraces the sun

2011-11-18T11:06:00.002+08:00

wow really sian ++

in lounge doing writeup. fair call last night i guess, 1 respi 1 endo 1 neuro case. there's a neuro case i could clerk later. just the general inertia of sitting in front of a computer i guess

memorable things about call
the pts mum was annoyed that the drs kept calling the FRIENDS to ask abt the nature of the attack "its unacceptable!" she said, but doesnt mind us bugging the patient/ herself/ family members. quite amused by that. how easily annoyed can eleven year old boys get & what ramifications does that have on life the universe & everything?

the multiple waits outside the icu door for people to open it for us. a good exercise in faith as our belief was usually rewarded

~

reading play reviews as usual, interval drinks is so beautifully written, i dont even have to watch the play, the review itself is so effervescent and illuminating, it has the ability to light up the dark corner of boredom in the most hardened post-call person

an except (or you can check out www.intervaldrinks.blogspot.com)
"But by rooting it so firmly in time, the light that shines around the edges of the text is dulled. The play becomes a fixed, rigid thing rather than something questing and illuminating.."

"The stagecraft is impressive, blending elements of clowning and physical theatre with puppetry, and there is something particularly satisfying in the way they utilise every prop to create a recognisable world: a balloon and a piece of fabric become a small child, a coat-stand becomes a dashing young suitor, a picnic blanket and a straw hat create a fleeting yet idyllic afternoon in the sun. But while these shards of memory, these glimpses into the past, are often genuinely moving, in the favouring of the archetypal over the specific, the production is self-limiting. Mrs Benjamin, the woman who is both the absence and the presence at the centre of the piece, is not so much an individual as a portrait of every aging person whose sun-flecked past has faded to grey."

"The performers spend a very long time establishing that it is the house itself that is telling the story: so we see the floor getting overexcited at the memory of the hoover, while the chimney alternates between soot-clogged coughing and minor flirtations with the front row."

i like the bit about the chimney. HAHAHA. and the over-excited floor.

well i suppose, on the balance, it's mostly cos when you really seriously consider something, you think more seriously about the ramifications of everything. i never considered internal medicine in ttsh before going there, so i really cant be bothered what they thought of me. but i do think that our cardio tutor was the most unassuming, enthusiastic, kind and friendly fellow ever. hello he wishes us happy birthdays on fb and reads my poems! wow. and he was for ever contacting us for tutorials at random times of the day. our neuro tutor has actually won a best tutor award so yeah selfexplainatory. even though we didnt see him super a lot, he was clearly always bursting with love for teaching/ neuro, and clearly is extremely pro at what he does. and the ward reg who was only in my ward for 3 days really went over and above with giving us so many mini-cexes and good feedback. i wonder when medicine results are coming out, i hope i do deccently hahah

but yeah, reccently, just been really stressed because i feel like everything i do, can have so many consequences. and i feel like i have not evolved enough to deal with human beings in a professional manner. i feel like i dont have enough knowledge & i dont know how to fix it. sigh. but somehow sometimes it's allright. i dont know if it's completely ALL allright, yet, i guess that's something to reflect on at the end of the posting. i just realise that i dont deal with things in a coolly detached, professional enough manner as i would like to, and when i try to do so, i find that i have no reserves/ experience/ inner ability to do so. it's like trying rock-climbing for the first time. which is pretty disturbing

but equinamity comes with ability i guess, false confidence is of absolutely no use nor benefit

okay going to finish up writeup, try to do some ward stuffs, clerk a nephrotic syndrome & buy banana cake from bengawan solo. MY NEWEST OBSESSION!

a poem a day

2011-11-15T21:38:00.002+08:00

Wow life is getting hectic, and lots to think about. Am i suited for this? Who knows! Haha. I cant really stretch myself further even though i can see the improvements to be made. Strange feeling... I sometimes feel like giving up but then i feel unease soo i guess its not meant to be fortunetelling, this. Im just glad to have sth to aspire to and to motivate me, what is life without dreams yea?

Pluses
- unexpectedly enthused and energetic tutors that bring life to a dull sleepy day haha i really enjoyed today's tut!!
- the little girl who when asked abt her meds, said "im scared u wont understand!" me "HAHA dont worry im sure ill understand a few!!" she starts naming and... I rly dunno haaha
then later when clerking the next pt "tugtug" *why are u the only one sitting down!* to guansen "u shld sit down too! My mummy says its bad for posture!
Then she sat chatting to us, swinging her legs and holding a teddy bear
wow saccharine overdose. Hee
- today doing pe, thought the kid said painful but actually he was asking if i have facebook!
- cg mate just before starting examination, leaves the room muttering "i need to get my alcohol!"
LOL he meant handrub
- waiting til 7+ for a pt, and after dinner they escaped from me!! I find it quite funny actually heh
esp since.. I want to observe the gait, so if he keeps walking back & forth.. But i wld have loved to talk to him, looks like sucha sweet lil boy

minuses

- my chronic irresponsibility, inability to plan or think logically

on eagles wings

2011-11-08T23:10:00.004+08:00

"you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you"
John 15:16

comforting words yo

and some slightly less comforting ones, reminding one that it isn't exactly a free lunch; you gotta sing for your supper

"stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open to door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes"
Luke 12:35-37

PHAIL, UTTER PHAIL. on the bright side i dont think being unprepared for an exam equates to being spiritually unprepared. i just happen to be equally inept in both reams, is all.

and finally
"He said to them 'Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there', and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you'"
matthew 17:20

~

kk paeds is OVER!! i really enjoy the part where, we clear out our lockers, hand up all the forms & attendance sheets & cards, and walk out freely of the hospital, knowing there is nothing pressing to do the next day. it's like my cg mate said, in UTTER JOY after gen med; LOOK THERE IS NOTHING ON MY PHONE CALENDAR!! yeahhh man tell me about it!

but, i guess i feel rather unfinished here. i could definitely work there, it's a rather nice place. i like all the kiddy decorations everywhere; bright colors; goodness, i like all the kids! let's face it, we all know med school can definitely get tiring/ depressing/ dull. doing the same thing everyday, trawling the wards only to come up with asthma, runny nose... blahblah... it's not really exciting, even for the most hard-core-paeds-gunner. which i ASPIRE to be, but not sure if i succeeded ;p

but THE KIDS. the cute chubby things toddling around everywhere, being bounced in their parents' arms, smiling and waving and vocalizing. it's just SO FREAKING CUTE. they never fail to make my day, even on the worst days. you know some of these kids, have really ugh diseases, but even so, some of them are so uncomphrehensive, at one month old etc, just lying on their backs, now smiling now crying, appeased by angry birds and teddy bears

i dont think i can ever fully put into words the magic of hanging around small children, or how much i enjoy it, and how much i really want to do it forever. as i dissolved slowly during my exam, this seemed all to float away in lord of the rings smoke rings; i tried to grab it back, gollum-style... i dont know if i succeeded. who knows.

to summarize: the highlight of this four weeks is NOT waking up everyday at freaking 630am. it's the chance to learn how to play with kids, which i have actually never done EVER in my life.

i think it's been a bit thin on the actual medical knowledge to be perfectly honest, which is something i regret. on one hand, it's not my fault my tutors kept going on leave & portfolio, etc etc, not counting portfolio week & nuhs lectures week we did technically have 3/week HAHAHA and if you count paeds surg + neonatology i'm good. but if you dont then ARGH I AM SO SORRY GUYS. trust me that i feel it just as keenly, if not perhaps, 100x more keenly than you guys do.

so clearly, i have lots to do in the next 3.5 weeks
yeahh! bring it on.

big bang!!

2011-11-07T09:56:00.004+08:00

*notice, fangirling up ahead*

Big Bang just won worldwide act for the MTV EMA awards!!! OMG OMG. I didn't even vote for them, haha oops. I know this sounds dotty & usually I'm not actually a rabid fangirl, I just appreciate nice music (have you ever heard tonight by Big Bang? It is THE WORKS), but when I watched the video of Tonight blaring through the speakers at the MTV EMA awards, and the five of them leaping out of their seats, high-fiving everyone in sight, it was truly BLISS. It's like supporting a sport team I guess. When they lose *cough gd smoking weed* you feel bummed, when they win it's joy and celebrations!!

No really, I haven't seen them look so enthusiastic and blissfully joyful about anything for quite awhile now. So YAY!! No matter what happens, they won a MTV award!! Haha im trying to temper this to sound less fangirl so it sounds oddly rational

YAY YAY YAY I LOVE BIG BANG!! sarangheyo oppa~ :):)

just to share a great video

THEIR DANCING. zomg

wonder world

2011-11-07T01:10:00.004+08:00

WONDER GIRLS ARE BAAACK!

the people responsible for inducting me into k-pop, and thereby giving me HOURS of happiness, increased productivity, joy, running, etc...

seriously, sometimes i think the greatest joy in life is to run out at 630am with your ipod and feel completely invincible

haha. nah, there are greater joys. but that particular one is pretty awesome.

on an unrelated note

i didnt know it was this possible to want something so badly... which is something indeed, coming from me. will it, will it not, will it, will it not....what i am just amazed about is that i keep doing silly stuff and still the doors have not closed. wow. that in itself, is something to be amazed about. i would give it all up to God as usual if i were a better human being. i hardly think i can expect anything from the universe, i dont even earn my keep by being a worthy human being and SAVING LIVES or whatever. long long way to go

maybe the point is to make me really want it

(uh... i have wanted many things in the past. i dont think it works like that)

today's sermon/ gospel was about the bridesmaids who fell asleep/ didn't bring enough oil. to cut a long story short, when they finally proccured the oil, the groom (ie Jesus) locked the doors & said he did not know them. the (bigger) moral of the story: we don't know the hour or day He will come

the smaller(?) moral: BE PREPARED

goodness i was STRONGLY reminded of my mini-cex which i was really highly unprepared for in every single sense of the word. & rushing there, without half my equipment, without the form even. gah gah gah. it's all material stuff, i know, doesnt count, small percentage etc... all that is not relevant. what gets me is that i was unprepared. and that really freaks me out

that said, being a slave to the material desires of this world (visions of dresses, bags, holidays to dream locales, indulging in endless movies and music) oh goodness i feel like going to a cave now. anyway even after chasing the papers and things... even if i manage to be prepared enough for the challenges of the secular world, i am so NOT prepared for that of the endtimes.

so the being chronically unprepared, chronically taking odd ways to do things, that really freaks me out SO much. i dont think there is a second chance, when it comes to eternal life. we just have to live our lives properly NOW.

religious musings aside,

i am SO BAD at learning my lesson. how many times must i shoot myself in the feet before i realise. gah

note to whoever might read this: this isnt angst! haha just trying to figure Life out. and CATHARSIS YO

thoughts on an imperfect science

2011-11-05T10:35:00.004+08:00

i feel really random today, so:

A Young Poet
by Jane Miller

For begging beauty
one can hardly blame the artist

sleeping like butter in the sun
taking no action for action

some prefer being a yellow rose petal
I learned when I traveled

the young poet saying a prayer
is a form of panic

~

Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. —John 4:14

The tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of fools pours forth foolishness. —Proverbs 15:2

must. stop. saying. stupid. things

~

also i really feel like reading an atul gawande book. if only it would drop from the sky now. except as they are currently doing something to the ceiling above my room i better not talk about anything dropping from anywhere

sometimes it is like ohh so sleepy so inadequate so stupid then i read long epistles of people trying to get even a semblance of what i have, not even material things in life but even just... medical school & i think that fine so i am nowhere near the bastions of excellence but IT DOESNT REALLY MATTER. pass = mbbs right

~

about my mini-cex i think probably i shouldnt detail until the marks are out hahaha it might sound too alarming or something. basically, i learnt a great deal, that would have been catastrophic if i went into the year-end exams not knowing. and that the term "a series of unfortunate events", which can easily be applied to many of the days in my life, is PERFECTLY SUITED for it.

maybe i shouldn't have brought those stickers. i LITERALLY had butterflies the whole day there, and RIGHTLY SO. to add insult to injury, the little girl kept taking all my stickers, so i stood there watching butterflies and hearts fly out of my posssession, feeling like my marks & my confidence were following the same path too. but i have to say, the patient & her mum were SUPER DUPER NICE. i couldnt have asked for a nicer, better patient experience. the con was like "you guys are experts already!" coz people keep going to them for mini-cex and the mum was like "oh no, no, i couldnt have done it as well as she did!" well considering that the consultant head-desked or rather, head-bedded quite a few times, i highly doubt anyone would consider it GOOD, so the mum must really be a thoroughly positive and optimistic and extremely nice person.

also i really feel like running another marathon to get rid of internal medicine + peds weight gain, but if i run it -just- after paeds eopt i might actually apoptosize hahahha

finally

im beginning to think that love means nothing to me. its just now something i can give freely like a commodity or something. its really disturbing. either i just have too much love to spread around, or really i have none at all and imma cold-hearteddd person yea unfortunately i think thats it. boo.

oh and
i'm glad i went for all saints day. goodness knows, i have a mountain of debt to pay back in gratitude & thousands more prayers in the making

paeds in a new hospital next week: may i not screw up, and may i ORGANIZE MORE TUTORIALS FOR MY GROUP. crap. currently we literally know NOTHING.

tomorrow

2011-11-04T22:55:00.002+08:00

There’s no no tomorrow
I’m stopped still from that time, that place
It’s the last, lingering moment
Although for you, it was just a passing day

Til you come back, everyday is yesterday

love taeyang's dancing! although random jazzy moves in the desert are... quite odd. speaking of that, jazz on monday! yay for public holidays.

a random reflection thus far:
ortho
i actually really enjoyed my time in ortho, possibly because of the honeymoon period in cgh hahaha. that said my cgh tutor was actually very good and we must have done the knee physical exam like hundreds of time for him during clinic. there's something quite cool and camaraderie-ish about the entire department having to report for the 7am morning rounds in the seminar room, with the HOs stressed out and presenting cases, with the hierachy of sitting position and the consultants publically grilling people on random questions. it's kinda what i always imagined medicine to be like, so it was pretty awesome. i don't think i've ever experienced that in any other posting to date!

and i think my whole cg knows exactly WHAT i miss about cgh ;p and no, it is nottt mr bean. we also got to try out the whole gowning-up for theatre thing at our leisure, which was good, although not so when we inadvertently went out of the sterile area once and had to re-gown hahaha. the indian dude chinmaya made friends with for the spine tutorial was AWESOME too hoho

nuh ortho! i arrive to find that both my tutors are in MAURITIUS. correction, one is still there, and the other picks up my call when in transit. actually i cant remember much about nuh ortho, except i felt that ortho surgeons really do love their job as evidenced by their collective enthusiasm at cool cases. and that one tutor scolded me for not asking enough questions and another told me "stop asking questions for the sake of asking them!!" hahaha. and somehow i feel that on the scale of surgeons, ortho surgeons are actually nicer than general surgeons. also, SCRUBBING IN AND ASSISTING WITH SURGERY when the mo felt faint and fled. SO EPIC. and then cake after that with the consultant and reg.

and the most epic thing about nuh ortho was doing the debate, i think it sort of only hit me the NIGHT BEFORE THE MCQ, doing thousands of mcqs, that i maybe should have studied harderrr. i guess if i had done one or the other, i could have done better in either, and starting internal medicine right after that weekend was TORTURE hahaha.

despite that: ortho still went okay! one mark shy of an A :D well assuming an A is what i think it is. i'll take what i can get! despite prof aziz throwing everything on the table and shouting at me "how can you be so stupid!" and not asking red flags for spine history taking long case, and not to mention the fire alarm halfway through the theory paper -_- i vividly remember writing neurofibromatosis as the thing started going off.

anyway good times! i dont have any major regrets other than the severe time crunch due to too many obligations towards the end, but it made me prioritise my time better! will reflect on the gen med posting... at some other time :)

2011-11-02T23:17:00.003+08:00

:)

maybe not everything needs to be explained
you shouldn't have smiled at me that night, you really shouldnt. you should have just walked past as usual like a ship passing in the night

go away

2011-10-30T10:53:00.004+08:00

dyspepsia + myalgia + fatigue for 3 days = ???

hate this :( also some things have THOROUGHLY thrown my schedule out of whack.

however, this is officially the maddest thing ever :D

2011-10-27T23:25:00.003+08:00

friday friday!

Quotes:
"eh my patients dad is really angry his kid got dengue. He wants to know the name of the mosquito"
"isnt it... aedes egypti?"
"OHhhh u mean, not the personal name of the mosquito?"

Hahahah

2011-10-27T22:42:00.002+08:00

Something happened which reminded me so irrevocably of you

actually, lots of things do. Just whether i choose to think of it or not
usually i don't

so i just laughed cos im so happy that i dont fall intothe same cropcircles

this is just to say

2011-10-26T01:05:00.003+08:00

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

ps william carlos williams was a paediatrician. inspiring indeed. sometimes you just need this kinda stuff to keep you on the road. like when you are sleepy and there is portfolio...

BUT enough of all the usual programming. i'm 22! i didnt really notice since it's been like GOING BACK TO KINDERGARTEN heh.
happy +++

hm im not sure if fb msges really mean much to people coz sometimes i know, me also, i just see the notification then i just automatically go and type a msg to the person. BUT to me, this round the msges really meant a lot. because every single one meant to me, a new friend, or a really loyal, cherished old friend. a really difficult portfolio has made me unable to finish replying yet, but it was v heartwarming.

people like MICHELLE, MANYUN, SHARON etc still ooze such warmth in their tone when wishing me, who is like the MOST RECALCITRANT, most-likely-to-back-out of mad schemes friend ever. or like whose skype randomly dies during exciting gossip (that part is soo not my fault though. i must have rebooted my comp like ten times.) i really. wow. i can't believe God has given me such great friends for so long. and yea i totally know that with me being me, i coulda lost them at any time. THANK YOU SO MUCH GUYS FOR STICKING WITH ME. much love.

my cg for THOROUGHLY SURPRISING ME <3

people i have known for 3 yrs plus, and who honestly, i may never see again, but who take the effort to write something heartfelt... guys, it really makes it worthwhile to know that in that time, i have done something WORTHWHILE with my life. i have made some connections that, at least in the past year, has not COMPLETELY eroded yet. i dont honestly regret anything anymore (i am sorry) but trust me when i say, i did spend quite some time remembering the past. because i feel it is just PHILOSOPHICALLY WRONG to forget so fast. its kinda sad really, cos it shows human nature in such great clarity. but you know the YUAN QING BU RU JING LING proverb. so so true. God gives and takes away eh?

some people like HL and IVY who are (by nature of the forces of... LIFE), always around, i really feel so happy to bump into you guys randomly in nuh. i'm so glad that due to fortuitious circumstances we still see each other often. it reminds me of such happy times during cell :) ok i dont see them THAT often, but randomly yes. hahaha. i always see HL in the nuh kopitiam though!

to every single person in nus med who has made me so much significantly happier in this year than i was last year, i am really very fortunate to have met you guys. like i said, i know its just a dropped one-liner that i am guilty of as well haha but it just somehow, felt so significant to me. like a physical reminder of a new friend made, someone who i would have just walked past in the lt one year ago but who now i would chat with at at lockers, talk to during combined lectures, etc. of course, i really dont know that many people in my class hahaha but then ehhh who does the class is so big la.

and of course as ever, thank God :)
now all i need to do is try my best to do what i must well. it's difficult but... if it be God's will, i know i will get it. i dont dare to think of anything else. i suppose if i dont get it i can try a&e, or something. but for the meantime, try.

and most of all, thank God that i am good with kids. i think if after all that wishing i was lousy and kids all didnt like me it woulda been ughh. but luckily, quite the reverse! especially really small babies who dunno anything. hahahaha. the moro reflex is so adorable. or maybe the sucking & rooting. ahh i can't choose!

alligator sky

2011-10-23T09:48:00.002+08:00

Dear God, I was terribly lost,
When the galaxies crossed,
And the Sun went dark.
Dear God, You're the only North Star,
I would follow this far.

Oh telescope, keep an eye on my only hope,
Lest I blink and be swept off the narrow road.
Hercules, you've got nothing to say to me,
'Cause you're not the blinding light that I need.

For He is the saving grace of the Galaxies!
He is the saving grace of the Galaxies

- owl city, galaxies

going back at 5pm is really the most painful thing on earth. i met the nice HO who showed us the v good case the other day, then had to suffer the steady stream of medical students trying to look at the case notes. although probably the one who suffered most was the deluged kid. i asked him "is it a lot of people keep coming to talk to you?" *nod nod* i gave him a sticker, and he took it like he was doing me a favor. LOL. haha i actually heard the ho chatting to his friend on friday afternoon (as hanyu and i hogged the casenotes like parasites) "and if you want to be a medical student, you should go feel the _______" anyway so when he saw me he almost apoptosized that i was there on sat evening HAHAHA then started angsting "it's saturday, i'm on call, and im depressed!!" and gave me a good case. YAY. unfortunately it was really awkward as the regs were literally writing in the case notes, so it's quite difficult to peer over their shoulders

wow my life is so happening isnt it. ON A BRIGHTER NOTE, i cant go out for exciting celebrations but baking will commence :D

but honestly, doing kk peds during my bday is the BEST PRESENT EVER. :):)

mystery train

2011-10-22T00:54:00.002+08:00

just realized i have go back tomorrow morning to find out some details about my case writeups -_- i had such grand plans for the weekend!! okay fine not -reaally- but certainly cooler stuff than going back on sat. and i hate going back and asking people questions -_- the good thing is my case write up patients are all like primary school aged and i can take history from them, as opposed to like a one month baby. but then im TOTALLY stumped for DA. it's like you dont talk about ADLs for a 30 year old, im guessing you dont say "this is a 12 year old who can draw a straight line, fix and follow, climb stairs..." unless there is related pathology la

but anyway thank goodness they are v nice people! although what do teenage boys like. probably not stickers right. football??! mc donalds?!

on the bright side, i love mystery train's new song. even though i have no idea who they are

i was allright until last night when you walked into my dreams

balloon

2011-10-21T22:30:00.002+08:00

no of case writeups done = 0
no of kids i have branded with frog/ balloon stickers = infinity
no of kids who i have lost entire sheets of stickers to = 2
no of kids with kawasaki's disease = 3 (and i thought it was supposed to be rare?!)
no of times i have gotten lost in the hospital = every single day
how long it takes on average for someone to get from the 6th floor lockers to the 6th floor wards in the next tower = 30 minutes

number of times i have run in the past week = ONE ><

no of cases that have broken my heart thus far = two

ecclesiastes

2011-10-18T21:40:00.002+08:00

He has made everything beautiful in its time. ecclesiastes 3:11
~

cant help but wonder sometimes, is it that some things are not planned, or that i am just messing up God's plan?!.

so many things, i dont think i coulda done it any other way. for all the good things i've accidentally done, i am heartily grateful.

there were one or two things that unexpectedly went a little off-track yesterday, when i thought i'd got it all down pat. it all happened so fast, and weirdly and argh i am just best at this kinda thing really. but then logistics-wise,today has been really good. i did all the stuff i want to do, plus managed to have a nap in the middle of the day ;p all greatly helped by ending at 1pm due to the cancelled paeds surg lecture hehehe

haish. but i still cant beat myself up about doing some stuff. i suppose it's just... a me thing to do. but i usually can leave a good impression on people for at least a year at a go, i dont usually do weird stuff early on in my accquaintances ARGHH okay nevermind, never mind. God turns all things to good! how he will do this is totally beyond me! and if he's to turn anything to good i vote for my impending mini-cex on a neonate instead hahaha.

maybe life just really is what you make of it

to think of fate, and what you missed out on by your own stupidity is too depressing really. just failing to do something is just barely acceptable, messing up teh PLAN is infinitely worse.

here end random thoughts, for we have FOUR 2 HR LECTURES TOMORROW. very soul-sucking ones where they make you do mcqs and TRACK YOUR SCORES. and CALL YOU UP IF YOU DONT DO WELL. oh goodness. guess no one's going to be nominating me as a good student in this posting anytime soon. (not like that ever happens). but better to do mcqs made by the professor than dubious ones from noobmed.com or some weird website or other, the night before the exam!

iheartthis

2011-10-18T15:36:00.006+08:00

this morning i stumbled into some stranger than usual wards to talk to patients. i realized that the wonderland atmosphere of 62 is not quite the same everywhere. but strangely enough, it doesn't deter me. it challenges me to make myself a better person

the people i met were understandably stressed, harried, etc, but they were very kind & actually wished us well as we left, despite my clear noobness:

in a few years time i hope then i can do something rather than just offer stickers & listen.

sometimes book learning/ rote-clerking is good, to add on to your store of head knowledge. it was, what people would call, a "good case". but thinking of it in that way really makes me feel subhuman.

hai there is more i would like to say, but i dont know how to say it, and privacy issues. like i really wanted to write about my tuesdays with morrie, well friday really, moment, but i dont know how to. literally. how do you put a moment into words, one that you can't really understand yourself

airbag

2011-10-17T18:58:00.002+08:00

i wish i would think before i speak

but today was really :)

rainbow

2011-10-17T00:11:00.002+08:00

i heart sushi!

clinics on friday were really v good, and i presented at ward rounds. first time i've ever heard anyone say "not too bad!" but could just be the reg is v nice

spent the weekend reading the diana wynne jones books i bought with the KINO VOUCHERS I WON *happy squee*. talk about satisfaction. they were really lovely. but now i'm going to die for the interactives tomorrow arghh. also skyped with michelle which was, as usual, full of the usual stuff ;p BUT highly marked with my computer GOING OFF EVERY FIVE MINUTES i'm sure you can see why that might get in the way

anyway, highly worried about the mini-CEX at the end of this four weeks, coz my tutor is a neonatologist so ALMOST CERTAINLY i'll get a neonate. ARGHHH. but honestly speaking i've had extremely low expectations of myself + really thick skin after the epic-ness that was TTSH gen med, so ANYTHING will be a happy surprise.

here's to one more week of feeling sleepy and alice-in-wonderland-lost, as i descend upon the wards with my newly-accquired stash of stickers, raisins & windmills!

(and as always, praying for grace. i can feel that i was called for this, and i don't want my human bumbling to mess up anything.)

angrybirds!

2011-10-13T19:56:00.005+08:00

for the next eight weeks: playing with cute children & babies everyday, waving my angrybird toy at happy/ runny nosed-faces, bribing the entire ward 62 with my stickers, and catching rhinitis. i love this so much.

yesterday i arrived at 730am to go bribe a primary school kid with dinosaur stickers. today we had a tutorial and the tutor went up to the pt and said "which of these is your doctor?" the kid looked at him and said "shes not my doctor, she's my medical student" AWWW so cute!! omg omg. although im not so sure he liked us so much after the ensuing 1 hour tutorial over his head. i lent him my phone to play angry birds HAHA as diversion.

ahh its just really nice to walk out of the ward at 5pm and see your friend playing with a toddler in the background. to walk around during wardrounds dispensing stickers & pacifying children. and you get to walk in on 2 guys going "look, kitty, kitty!!" to a small girl clinging onto her dad hee

this is worth everything. i could do this forever

2011-10-09T00:05:00.003+08:00

what freaks me out is, that at the base of things i am not a good person. i guess i am not really :(

pray for
1. goodwill
2. self-restraint
3. wisdom

the question is not about wrongness or rightness but rather, what to do.

maybe the only way is pray for grace

infinite paradise

2011-10-08T01:44:00.002+08:00

GEN MED IS OVER WHOOPEE

i've never been so glad for anything to be over. oh wait, ortho. oh wait, year 2 exams... lol ANYWAY.

the past few days have been spent in a flurry clearing up admin odds & ends, writing thank you cards, clerking last min cases.

i want to say that i absolutely LOVE my cg. thank you so much guys for making this a fantastic 8 weeks. i have identified a staggering amount of personal flaws in this 8 weeks, but thank you for putting up with me, laughing at all my lame jokes, listening to all my random shizz, tolerating the blonde jokes (c, im paraphrasing here to be pc). we had an AMAZING end of posting celebration which involved crepes & pizza at marche, chocolate fondue and an enron-risque movie at m's house, and medical taboo! SO BRILLIANT why did we never think of this idea before hahaha. really suitable ending to an epic eight weeks.

as i wrote my thank you cards, the eight weeks flashed by my eyes. i remembered the first tutorial: HOW TO MAKE PATIENTS LIKE YOU. while its still a hit or miss thing for me, i think that i can get it around 70% of the time and depending on my energy level/ the exoticness of the thing the patient has, i can actually establish a pretty good rapport! the patient being grumpy etc doesnt usually matter anymore. i can make people happier! yey. clerked an amazing case for the final mini-cex yesterday and today when i went to the ward to get my scores the patient walked out of the ward with his son & waved happily to me. you can't get any better than that sometimes.

i remembered all the times sitting in neuro tuts with possibly the most passionate and enthusiastic tutor ever who really loves his students. i remembered our adorable cardio tutor and how i will always think of his face/ voice giving us the heart failure tuts if anyone questions me on hf/ murmurs EVER. i remembered the gi tutorials where i felt like syncope-ing but the great information on liver just kept coming like a waterfall, the pain/ flc clinics in which the tutor taught us hx taking and pe excellently except he thought it was our first day not our last HAHAHAHA. anyways, there's more but memory fails me. all the epic chart stimulated recalls with our core tutor. will definitely go through everything thoroughly and self-reflect (not that im gunner, this is on advice from people!).

and... paeds is coming up! no matter what, i think i owe it to myself to at least give it a good shot :) and... have fun.

on another note, i think i will ALWAYS wonder what the cases the ward reg told me were interesting to clerk, on the last day, but i never got round to.

2011-10-01T21:25:00.003+08:00

this was a good reminder. maybe. maybe someday i can be equally worthwhile in some way or another.

meanwhile... looking at loveandbravery.com... SO PRETTY...

i think i need to survive on love & fresh air for the next two mths. hahaha. pretty dressess... i want :(

was distracted by a whole multitude of things during mass, then this came to my mind.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" - matthew 6:25

ah well.

in any case, this is making me v happy now
http://www.paris-in-photos.com/wordpress/
:):)

more medicine ramblings

2011-09-28T20:56:00.005+08:00

currently i'm very happy & high

suspect it's because i actually left the hospital around 5pm!! and i didn't spend the day rushing from tutorial to tutorial! and i got a lift this morning! and PRIMARILY coz i'm now bumming instead of furiously revising. wow clearly it doesnt take much to make me happy.

weekend:
was a weekend of unexpected turns. like i asked for a lift somewhere & got transported to a family crab gathering instead. (but still, family so +++)

i was intending to go to sleep but ended up having a long, much-delayed gosspy conversation with michelle. I LOVE MICHELLE OMG seriously she just GETS these things. other people would consider it dumb/ inane/ whatever but somehow when i talk to her about it it makes SENSE. primarily because she has such a way of... intellectualizing what is the anti-thesis of intellectuality. hahaha. anyway we could be talking about the sun & it would be fun, honestly. yay yay. except i was SO SLEEPY THE NEXT DAY.

monday:
i can't remember much but i think i got a chocolate chip cookie in the morning lecture so YAY COOKIE

tuesday:
i think i managed to squeeze in a long case for respi here so whoopee
also had a geri tutorial where i was so tired i thought i was going to fall over & syncope (HAHAHA) but nevertheless clerked a very sweet old lady. the other group painfully clerked an old man in hokkien, then when presenting him, it transpired that he can communicate with one of the guys in PERFECT MALAY hahahaha
and then i studied haemato all night SO PRODUCTIVE wow

wednesday:
we had the most perfect ambulatory clinic ever where we learnt so much! except the nurse kept talking in chinese about how there were SO MANY STUDENTS & we are sitting everywhere messily lol it was quite funny coz... we can understand chinese. but really learnt a lot in this clinic.
then after lunch, i managed to whip through a few short cases - prosthetic valves & a respi case (DEPRESSING, I MISSED A PLEURAL EFFUSION).
and after the x ray tutorial (which was less painful than expected), i got guilt-tripped into doing somemore short cases which were VERY GOOD. the signs that is. and the 2nd guy is really super super sweet. my friend asked him if she can come by the next few days to listen somemore to his heart and he was like sure, sure no problem!! *happy grin*. although, why does she need to do that..?? haha.

there was also another good case but there was a loong line of drs wanting to do exit round on him after his physiotherapy so ANOTHER DAY(this means never, or at some really inconvenient time)

so now i'm just bumming & not preparing chart stimulated recall for tomorrow! yay! if i even want to do it after CLINICS THE WHOLE DAY & walking back from CDC at 5pm?!

what really struck me is as i walked out to the mrt with my friend, she was bubbling over with random funny stuff that happened, and i was just like, wanting to lie down and sleep for ten years. really impressed with her... vervor & erm enthusiasm for life even after a super tiring day/ THE PAST SIX WEEKS man.

i need to get back that!

but seeing all the old aunties & uncles in the hospital actually does make me treasure youth quite a bit. it really is true that youth is wasted on the young. SO i intend to maxx out life man. maybe staying in the hospital until late isn't precisely the EPITOMY of coolness, but a few years more and it gets closer! and that really brings you back to the qn: WHAT IS THE POINT OF MY LIFE. honestly, i think that if i even just practice medicine for 30 yrs or more, and not do anything like WIN A NOBEL PRIZE or whatever (not like i want to), that is worthwhile. i dont even have to save anyone's life, just do all the usual stuff a usual doctor does. i probably would contribute to qol/ save desaturating/ the usual acutely ill pple that come in thru a & e etc. and that's totally enough for me. and when we go home bemoaning the fact that 4-5pm is considered early & slack then i guess i need to REFORMAT my mindset to the fact that yes, i am physically & mentally tired but it is, PHILOSOPHICALLY SPEAKING, the only way to make anything out of this life (for me).

THAT SAID i keep having visions of baking yummy stuff/ pretty dresses swimming around my head. i dont know why!! hahaha. but i will, i will.

one more week and two days.

as a precaution, i hereby solemnly swear that i will not be sad if i suck at paeds as much as i suck at medicine. because true, kids are not small adults but it's STILL MEDICINE & i STILL HAVE TO TALK TO PEOPLE. but kids are cute. hehe. sooo just take it as a time to play with cute kids & learn about a subject that i really enjoy and think is the most awesome in the whole world. yep.

mooncakes

2011-09-25T11:44:00.003+08:00

hellohello,

yesterday i ran to the botanics & back, then i came back and had watermelon & mooncakes

i love mooncakes. it's like chang-e and hope & dreams & immortality & the eternal inscrutability of the moon, all distilled into one perfectly-formed rounded cake. it's like eating moonlight. it's like suddenly being transported to france and inbibing champagne & blue cheese.

the botanics is really far though. like. really supah far. the first 40 minutes was ethereal. i was running in the gathering gloom, as cars zoomed by on the highways. i can't remember what it was that made me feel so happy. was it the color of the sky? the songs on my ipod? the past the future or the present? i could have turned back at any time; sometimes in fact on my rare runs these days i actually only do 40 minutes before the rain comes, or before i have to turn back to start the drive to ttsh. but something made me keep on running, until i reached the white gates. everywhere are people in sunglasses & summer shorts & caps in bunches, taking photographs. the soft lights in the garden bushes remind me of gatsby's parties. i run home thinking that i really really want a gatsby-themed wedding. the botanics is really so pretty at night. it's like fairyland. but that aside, the 2nd 40 minutes was pure physical torture. the only thing that kept me going was the green light at the end of the dock HAHA nah kidding, its cos i didnt bring a bus card ;p

today, i'm having yet another awesome sunday looking out at the vines growing on the arch outside my window (hahaha sounds so french-chateaux like), studying ecgs

last night, i turned on skype for the first time since forever. it used to be suuuch a big part of my life. WELL I DONT MISS it. i certainly dont miss being chained to a 10pm skype timing. i've talked about freedom before, and i think most of all the greatest freedom is this. LOL. i also realized that in general i'm someone who loves freedom and not being accountable to anyone about anything. anyway this time it was to catch up with a friend! who was not online LOL i think aft/evening is toooo broad a span of time. but but i managed to catch nat and we had quite a nice conversation about neuro/med/ life. she's working in the sleep lab at duke!! how awesome is that!!

i also read the happiness project by gretchen rubin (as in the website, not the book). inspiring stuff man. as you can tell, i didnt do thaaat much work yesterday. LOL. it really doesnt matter to me anymore. i'm not very sure why, but i think its something to do with how i was realizing that sustained stress & pushing myself to remember a million things made me so cranky and tired all the time. if i chill out more during the weekends, i can retain more of what i learn during the week, instead of spending the time being passed out in the MO room, or coming home early to sleep coz im so burnt out. now i just stay later to clerk pts after tutorials/ for calls/ to follow random people around if they have cool stuff they wanna show me. i think it works better like this. i used to push myself like a water bufflo especially on sundays, and start monday feeling like i'd been run over by an express train. NOT FUN.

FOR THE RECORD, thus far i've studied arrhythmias and all the different causes of chest pain and paid particular attention to PLEURITIC CHEST PAIN which is disturbing coz i never heard of it ever before friday. it's true, you never know what you dont know.

we have two weeks extra holiday in jan. should i go to korea for a holiday? go to uk to settle bank stuff/ visit d in dublin/ michelle in oxford? (if she's even there at that time, haha). should i bone up on gen med? should i study up for surgery? ARGH I DONT KNOWWW...

anyway. work beckons. ciao :)

smoothie

2011-09-24T00:04:00.002+08:00

Feel v accomplished this week and not as run down as usual :) though 6pm discussing loss of consciousness and confusion with c and the tutor was pretty painful haha. But good stuff! There are puns there but i wont bother lol

volunteered for a tutorial and it was a truly enlightening experience. On reflection the good is my diabetes and dialysis hx is good, but the system qns like renal, chestpain totally dissapeared :( but when the guy was marking me he told me apart from the one impt thing i missed my hx taking was v focused and gd and i should continue like that. Yay!! First time anyone in gen med has told me that hoho felt v encouraged after tt :) but yes i know where to improve also.

andante

2011-09-21T23:14:00.004+08:00

today was quite nice. it involved chocolate cake, GONGCHA, and the answer to everything ;p

on an unrelated note, chart stimulated recall tomorrow. ARGHHH.

also had an unexpected surprise the other night, with the usual weirdness & things lost in translation, and general happiness :) it kinda obliterates something i was pretty hung up upon so i guess that's a good thing overall.

amusingly, a patient the other day was commenting on me with despair "hai, she's so useless... cant speak hokkien, cant speak cantonese, can't speak teochew... only can speak english and HWA YU *this last said with special derision*" LOL. and the best thing is i think she genuinely felt i was being left out in the all-hokkien conversation and was trying to entertain me/ involve me or SOMETHING ahaha. anyway i was more amused than anything. i was left alone in the cubicle with her for awhile and she enthusiastically tried to engage me in further animated hokkien.

haha okay CHART STIMULATED RECALL, bye world

long way

2011-09-18T01:01:00.004+08:00

JYJ's new album! well actually this song has been out since forever but anwyway, their voices are really beautiful in this

out of everything, the fact that i suck at clinical medicine is possibly the most upsetting. i can accept everything else, but this is really... UGHH. well the only way is to jiayou :) guess i can look forward to being competent in the FUTURE (and i probably will, what with all this excellent training.) just that for this particular posting ummm i've just got to try my best without the trying being reflected in results. GAHH i'm so used to amping up my game and magically seeing the fruits of my labor. why is it that i can do that for maths which i hate, but not medicine which i love, i DO NOT UNDERSTAND. maybe eight weeks is just too short a time.

i kind of just want a normal mini-cex >< it's not all about the marks, i fully understand that btw. but my first one was a surg case and my third was a o&g one... furthermore i was able to correctly answer all the treatment, even all the antibiotics that i couldnt remember during the first one >< i got all 6/9 for the 2nd one which was a perfectly normal GI case with an abdo exam. so... it's not that i am not improving, i am, it just isn't showing. oh well. I JUST WANT 60% for my medicine posting and i'll be satisfied. partly coz i know i cant really expect more.

i would LOVE to say this is a situational thing coz i keep getting sucky mini-cexes, but that's too dangerous, to assume your bad showing is due to something other than your own incompetence, yknow what i mean? i dont want to be a bad workman that blames his tools. i can live with just being a bad workman that knows it, and does something about it.

and next week is going to be UGHH what with trying to hit 80 entries for case writeup (thanks for randomly springing this news on us in the middle of an innocuous feedback session ugh)

another jyj song! random find. i guess jyj had an even longer way to go than me. but they're also bigger stars to start with HAHA. also i just watched the part on scent of a woman where the lead character fangirls over junsu and signs up for his fanmeeting through... NEFARIOUS MEANS hehe. and also the tango parts of SOW were nothing short of AMAZING. why does that never happen to me. with LEE DONG WOOK, SPECIFICALLY. ;p cannot just be anyone man.

OKAY so the emo-part is overr
actually, its only difficult coz i want it to be. coz i have certain expectations, because my pattern is to massively improve myself every time i identify the need to. i'm sure you can imagine how tiring it is go to home every day and think OKAY I NEED TO IMPROVE MY CARDIO X 100!! YEAH! *pumps fist*... seriously, i cant really keep this up. it's a good thought though. good to be motivated instead of being a lazy slug yo.

that saiddd i've been having a good time thanks to the entertainment around me. and the fact that my HO is so relatable & so willing to teach (i'm seriously willing to just stand at one side & observe the team!! but she will always come over & explain everything to me). and the m5 on the team is just highly amusing for some reason hahaha and always cheerful x 100. although i think i kinda freaked him out on the day int med broke me LOL but yea the comfort was much appreciated. thanks hanyang. :):)

on the religious side...
erm i still kind of suck at this. but honestly i think being a good doctor is the best way forward right now. the best way to give glory to God is really to do the best at, erm, what i think he has called me to do. the best way is not to watch korean dramas all day long so i can be a happy funny and very sweet and nice to all around me. unless he has called me to do so. which... no, i dont think so. and what, me? of course i'm not capable of watching k-dramas 24/7. hehehe.

i'm in two minds about the me not wanting to go for mass the other day thingy SIGH why does right now have to be int med SIGH. so i went, and it was pretty nice, altho if i didnt feel so physically shitty the next day, and so emotionally shitty on the day itself, it would probably have been a cooler experience overall. no dont get me wrong, on the good side, it was a v cool religious experience, and i mean, i'm not going to see _______ much so i really like the idea of hanging out one last time (plus i did totally tell him he's the one going away so he gets to choose what we do for the last time). and i felt really affirmed on that day itself. i kind of felt like it was a mini-sacrifice i could make (i mean, how much really are we able to sacrifice for the Lord on the daily basis). it was even in the words "i make this sacrifice to you today". of course i know what that refers to, but at that moment, i felt this great shame. like i couldnt even bear to make this small sacrifice for someone who died for me. gahhhh. although, i prefer not to make sacrifices during the really short duration of int med (refer above), but maybe that's the whole point... if you can afford to do so, it ISNT A SACRIFICE. so, hmm. and thereafter i had the whole usual I AM SUCH A LOUSY FRIEND angst and i kept planning to make ________ cupcakes to say SORRY I REALLY SUCK and well of course life intervenes and since i am barely hanging on with internal medicine i think you know where my best-laid plans are going. i was literally writing the card in the MO room desperately before going. in fact that morning i was hanging around a discussion btw the HO and M5 and then i told them "eh i'm going to buy something now" and they gave me a really odd look like i was skiving hahaha i guess i was, OH WELL.

lol this is hilarious since only _________ reads this. DONT READ THIS, I HOPE YOU DIDNT READ THIS. sorry man i really needed to vent.
HAVE A SAFE FLIGHT and ENJOY YOURSELF & STUDY HARD! be a better medical student & doctor than me :):) thanks for everything ever. i think you totally saved my soul, a thousand times over, so honestly i am indebted to you :)

tango

2011-09-17T13:07:00.001+08:00

the tango has started! on scent of a woman. YAY!! the series actually finished but i'm only now at episode 5.

also, life has a strange way of happening. the blur sip student ends up comforting me (i dont rly think he had a choice) over stuff & spouting all the life-wisdom things. i go for masses i didn't intend to go for. i go to hand up my case reports to my HO and stumble upon a bedside ultrasound of the heart. i get a surg case for my 1st mini-cex and an o&G case for the 3rd. (i thought 3 was supposed to be my lucky number!!!!!!) i stayed until 7pm on a friday until the team chased me home coz there was exciting stuff and i love to see them in the thinking process hahaha for once it's not me being stumped. the cardio consult started grilling everyone about the anatomy of the heart "you think you call me for consult is free one?"

strawberry

2011-09-12T20:58:00.003+08:00

even if it's not necessary

2011-09-11T21:34:00.004+08:00

sermon was GREAT. was about forgiveness.

"how many times must i forgive my enemy, Lord? seven times"
"no, not seven, but seventy-seven times"

SO MANY. ehh. i cannot do it man. well apparently its the DECISION to forgive that counts hahha wow thats nice of the church to understand the difficulty of being human. anyway, seemed to have an effect on the congregation coz i saw lots of pple surrepititiously wiping away their tears (which is not really a common sight in a catholic church..)

after that, came back for PRATA zomggg i think i need to run another 21k now!! but +1 for family time, i like! calories must be spent on pple who deserve it la. like i would never eat sinful chocolate cake with my greatest enemy, forgiveness or no... MOVING ON...

i did a good thing today! err, i think! haha. anyway. just happy tt i did sth for someone else's benefit/ happiness than my own. as u can tell, that is not really a regular occurance. ANYWAYS. it is GOOD. and i just wrote a poem i like rather alot. the sort that makes me wanna send it to all my friends and get their opinion HAHAHA but no its okay i have long given up that bad habit (incase u think its great, u can talk to the people who used to be my long-suffering poetry vetters. they actually used to commiserate with each other about it. think the bard in asterix hehe). i'll put it on wb though!

anyway, although i was too tired to even decide beforehand about the weekend, like whether i should chill/ study/ whatever, it turned out pretty nice. im not sure what i did but i think RECUPERATING from the week was pretty much it. actually after our mon and tues 5 tutorials thing i was quite gone alr. and i had a mini-cex somewhere in the week too >< i think although i still dunno anything abt medicine, i know what i need to focus on this next week (and the rest of the posting really), i kinda know what's expected. and the best thing is only 4 pts to round on each morning!! (haha. later tmr i go and find TEN NEW ADMISSIONS OVER THE WEEKEND.. stay healthy people!! please!). i actually collected cool cases on friday but i think they must be all discharged by now :(

but NEVERMIND, i can feel it, it's gonna be a great week. i think i'm just happy and wellfed from prata. hahahaha. also yea the whole letting go of things & forgiveness thingy. maybe thats why reccently my prayers havent been answered. its like in that book - heidi? the snow flowers? ahhh something along those lines. where the girl couldnt pray for sth really really impt coz she was pissed with someone and hadnt let go of it entirely yet. well. i shall let you know if suddenly tmr really good stuff starts happening. HAHAHA. i doubt it la. but happiness is also a state of mind :) i feel random chinks of sunlight for no good reason so NOT COMPLAINING, bring next week on!!

miracles

2011-09-10T01:33:00.004+08:00

it's one year, exactly

although the EXISTENTIAL ANGST nevah goes away (as evinced by the past post...i think it's just me. HAHA), it's been the most fruitful year of my life. in which I have been living out a miracle God gave to me. :)

when the going gets tough, it strikes me that it's a good thing i wanted medicine with every bit of my soul; that i was willing to do ANYTHING for it. all the idealistic dreams i held so dearly to me like a christmas bubble, all the carefully woven rationalizations about how this is the ONLY WORTHWHILE THING TO DO IN LIFE, like a magic carpet.

lightbulb moments in tutorials and the fantastic teaching at ttsh aside, the people are the ones who make everything worthwhile.

i never want to say too much coz i find it cheesy. haha. but today, i must mention it. i know i always talk about how m3 is very tiring, etc. but honestly, with my cg, there is always hilarity (cough picking up murmurs...;p). love you guys. thank you for making the past year so great. i love how the seniors are all so nice and generous with the teaching. like my very zai HO, like the m5s who randomly teach me things (like this guy who i just met in the MO room was quizzing me on the 3 causes of elevated ST segments?). my HO was post-call today but she actually gave me and YJ a neuro tutorial, and then she answered all my 101 questions abt the patient's medication. the new SIP student is quite blur haha but he's so friendly! it's just sucha... jc atmosphere, for lack of a better word.

it's funny how life works. do you know what?

i think i found my bluebird, and it was really here, all along.

it's funny how when things are put into perspective, everything changes. okay sure black & white cookies make me cringe for awhile now, but compared to the larger scheme of things; its like black versus white. so yeah, saccharine tastes, cloying stickiness of memory - hey, you can't say it isn't sweet, you cant say it's a waste.

this is the stuff

2011-09-09T23:41:00.004+08:00

Sometimes i get really ahead of myself second-guessing God. Maybe the point is that it is beyond our understanding. if you get it right away, it's probably wrong. Whatever you think it is now... the OPPOSITE will be true.

I feel like such a refractory recalcitrant. Like everytime, I never learn, I never go in the way He intends me to go afterwards, so He has to keep doing this.

But maybe it's all to bring you to the point where you are broken.

This is the stuff you use.

God, the unexpected has broken me. What do I do now?

2011-09-06T23:57:00.000+08:00

i think the juggling of medicine with outside activities is something that, hands down, i fail at.

happy end

2011-09-05T22:09:00.003+08:00

life has been ENDLESSLY EXCITING. lol well i guess it depends what you define it as. i really suck at medicine but i love it equally. like einstein said, if you love what you do, then you won't have to work a day in your life :) ok im not sure that this can't be considered work, but it sure beats doing mathematics.

today was pretty crazy. half of it's the kind of thing that you can either choose to laugh or cry about. but despite myself it was hilarious when my tutor started joking around with the patient "why dont eat fish! you're sick of fish... you're a fisherman is it!!" haha you really need to be him to pull that off. and then the debrief which was really useful. each time i meet him i improve by like 100x. after that i somehow mustered up the energy to clerk like 4 patients today and hanyu was even commenting that i've improved.

although im not sure how positively i should take the comment "do u feel liz is improving! she can actually talk to people now! it used to be so awkward" THANKS AH hahahaha. no really i have discovered the secret. it involves making patients laugh at my bad chinese & tripping over things. yes. i am going to be such a great doctor.

oh further hilarity
senior: why dont you guys go and listen to the guy in that bed
me and my friend: wow~! thank you!~ *happily take history for 20 mins*
senior: ... i told you guys to listen to his HEART SOUNDS, not to his story!!

during tutorial
GI tutor: so... the guy is bleeding, what do you do?
me *confidently*: sir, i would give him anti-coagulants!

a new beginning tomorrow in a new ward! so exciting. here's to LESS WEIRD STUFF, and more clerking

why

2011-09-04T22:53:00.002+08:00

ok here goes the emo-ness, forgive me

mass was good :) went to st mary's and the sermon was v good. unfortunately i can only rmb this part. priest, in serious tone: "eternal life, forgiveness, hope, peace and joy.... so how ah?!"

YES I WONDER TOO. i guess the consensus is, it's hard.

i keep seeing my friend's musings on fb which basically say "God, please hold me together, cos I can't hold myself together" and. yeah. it feels like that. only i wish i felt like this LESS. hmmmm... to feel alive but feel like you're falling apart, or to numb yourself with work and feel inhuman?! luckily for me, there's so much stuff to do that i'm more guilty of being inhuman than anything else. but whenever i see the latest angst-ridden update, it sort of opens the door to humanity again. WHICH IS BAD. FEELING IS BAAAD.

i don't know how to say it. reccently ive been thinking that it doesnt really matter too much what you feel at any particular time of the day... except it DOES coz if you feel shitty, you feel shitty... and yes, it matters to yourself (duh). gone are the days in jc i used to prize angst (why, again?!). i think it had something to do with literature and TRAGIC HEROES we always had to write essays about, and CATHARSIS being oh-so-important. maybe sometimes it's better to live life, hello oedipus/ dr faustus are CLEARLY not examples of eternal happiness.

now i think i prize brainless happiness over anything else. again, not something to be proud of...

so, what CAN i be proud of?!

i can be proud of this: i went for mass today, on time, on a day where i just wanted to sleep the (muscular) pain away. no seriously. i'm not getting any prizes on earth but it's not really the earthly prizes i was ever looking for. what scares me the most is getting distracted by all the temporary shiny glittery things and losing the main point. it's like failing the final test (hehe such a singaporean way of thinking...). but, pragmatism aside, i really do owe God a lot. i always have long shopping lists of prayers, no matter how sincere, it's just... things i want. good health for everyone. good exam marks. to get along well with people. can these even be considered good prayers.... at the end of the day, i guess, he really doesn't owe me ANYTHING. the balance is so not in my favor when basically He sacrificed himself for us and sometimes i cant even bring myself to go to church cos i wanna read another article on medscape. in edinburgh, sometimes, i needed to go running and thus i didnt go to church. ON THE BRIGHT SIDE since yr 3 has started, i havent missed a single sunday.

and yet, even though i cant even do this simple thing like turn up every sunday (but i can turn up for school and exams even through DEHIBILATING CRAMPS), he still gave me all these miracles that i really didnt deserve. i dont want to go into details, but so many times, i prayed for these impossible things. in fact, i actually prayed so much that by the time he granted them, i'd long stopped praying. it gets tiring to keep on saying the same thing every time. and you dont want to not-believe. so a kind of self-defense. but i guess, by then, i'd ceased to believe believe. does this make any sense?!

so. even though the prayers dont dry up; we ALWAYS need something MORE. today i realized that everything i have is already perfectly planned. that everything i dont have, i dont have it for a reason too. sometimes the reason is more obvious than others and sometimes i just dont wanna accept the reasons. i think, you were meant to prove a point to me, and ok the point has been proven. im just grateful. and most importantly, you brought sanity to my world, literally the day after i'd cried all night. and people like this, i consider, to have been sent by God. so i really want to thank you for that. yep :)

time, please stop - davichi

2011-09-04T22:31:00.004+08:00

we're changing ward on tuesday :( i'll kind of miss 9b. i guess it won't really be the same if none of the original people are there anyway, and we didnt have the longest time with the consultant coz she was on leave the 1st week of our posting. but it was a great experience :) my only regret is my ignorance prevented me from making the most of it. that's what i feel strongly about this entire posting actually. i just feel so frustrated that i cannot be more efficient and allocate my time/ brainspace properly to best make use of the excellent resources at our disposal.

NEVERTHELESS, i have learnt a lot from 9b these three weeks. even though its a renal/gen med ward, some of the most interesting cases have passed through, it's pretty amazing. and i've had the luck to do case writeups on these patients. and more importantly, get to know them as people as well :)

some of the highlights include the philosophizing on drug abuses halfway through ward rounds, and the con asking the very guai-looking HO for his thoughts on it
HO: "er.... not much experience in that area.."

and the m5s who just came for SIP are so nice! they tell me when there are good cases and one of them actually went with me to clerk and gave feedback (the feedback is that... I AM VERY LOUSY AT THIS. he didnt say it explicitly but the looks of horror were self-explainatory =p) and i did a PR on a patient with him, like we actually gowned up and everything wow so exciting. for more details you can ask me privately. (as you can tell, i have not done many PRs before..). and the other m5 was randomly giving me tutorials on diabetes in the middle of ward rounds (??). anyway, for people who i've only known for 3 days, i must say i'll kinda miss them hahaha. i think they're pretty horrified at my not-clerking that much and knowledge (THE BALANCE THAT I CAN NEVER GET sigh). haha coz i was regaling them with my mini-CEX tales

me: oh, a highlight was when the con asked me what is augmentin and I DIDN'T KNOW
m5: ... augmentin is..
me: yeah now i know... cloxacillin and clauvulinic acid. i told her use piptazo for cellulitis.
m5: ... do you know what piptazo is used for?
me *triumphantly*: GRAM-POSITIVE BACTERIA!!
*looks of horror all round*

soo now i am mugging antibiotics. i have gotten as far as what one should do with an infected central line but... it is time to sleep.

story of my life. anyway here's to yet another week! i hope my new ward is nice :):) and much thanks to everyone who has helped me this past 3 weeks, ESP my HO buddy BC, who was so helpful and kind the entire time, and answered all my totally seemingly unrelated medicine questions at random times.

easier to run

2011-09-04T17:30:00.004+08:00

thoughts
1. when there are 2 roads, i will ALWAYS take the one less travelled, without thoughts of whether the roads converge back again (haha i mean at the narrow parts, i dont mean i took alot of shortcuts and bypassed the proper route ;P)

2. life would be nicer if every 10 minutes balloons popped up to inform you "keep up the good work!"

3. the epitome of procrastination must be not training for a 21k

4. ow.

5. it's quite cute to hear army boys post- run and their deluge of swearwords and macho bonding. cute in the sense that army boys are usually all a few yrs my junior haha. (i spent one hour sitting on the grass waiting for my dad to finish the 10k)

overall, i know honestly that if i trained i coulda done a lot better, coz my base fitness now is much better than last time, and i definitely have a lot more muscle mass (which i haaate, girls should not have muscle :() but anyway since i have it i should use it riiight. this hit me around 10k when i realized i couldn't up the intensity for the second half (this comes from... training properly for <2 weeks and only running around 8k each time.) but hey i still did better than when i was training with the cross-country team!! not bad not bad :) i dunno how i did the amazing 2 hrs 12 mins in edinburgh... maybe coz the loch ness monster was running behind me for some charity. hahaha. i really couldnt bear the thought of losing to it ;p seriously i ran it so fast alot of my friends came AFTER i was done to support me (coz i told them usually i take 2.5hrs).

ALSO yesterday i was literally on my way out the door when i picked up the race pack and saw "5.15 am flag off" OMG I was thinking i'd WAKE UP at 5.15am... so of course i couldnt go for d's thing. :( but seriously, irresponsible as i am, i really cannot run 21k on <6 hrs of sleep. like, i just physically cant... and i was so traumatized by eliza's tales of doing gen med at ttsh and getting acute renal failure. LOL. actually halfway i realized no PB for me and i was like - heck it, as long as i dont get ARF!! so i am vv sorry (but i was vacillating for days before so yeahhhh aiya the usual LEOPARDS DONT CHANGE THEIR SPOTS) and i will make it up to you! yes i will. except i cant give you leprechaun gold coz i dont have anyyy.

NOW. I MUST STUDY.
i feel really lucky to be able to run :) i will never cease to be grateful for that. <3 thank you God.

2011-09-03T12:50:00.003+08:00

Happy is happy but im totally burnt out..

They say you need to talk to pts to learn but wasting good cases on my ignorance = ugh

On a seperate note, I havent felt this way in a long time. All i want is yesterday's poem to see the light of day
Its like drinking chai latte from starbucks, its like everlasting sunny weekends. I never want it to end. But if it will, it will. So it goes...

overdosing on matthew west's songs

scattered words and empty thoughts seem to pour from my heart
im so torn, seems i dont know where to start
but its now that i feel your grace fall like rain
cos i still believe in your faithfulness
i still believe in your truth
i still believe in your holy word

even when i dont see i still believe
though the qns still fog up my mind
with promises i still seem to bear
even when answers slowly unwind
Its my heart i see you prepare

well in brokeness i can see this was your will for me
so help me to know you are near
-i still believe, jeremy camp

2011-08-30T22:40:00.003+08:00

totally exhausted, but i know what to do :)

there is God's peace in my heart. i realized God really does send me an angel everytime i need one. tonight he sent annthea & guess what, my senior angela is also doing a posting at the same hospital. LOL.

the interesting thing is, it always takes me a while to recognise her. haha! i guess, sometimes it takes awhile for u to realize the people God place in your life :)

black&white

2011-08-30T17:50:00.002+08:00

I have fought the good fight,
I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
-2 Tim 4:7

i want to say this on sunday :)

have started training, FINALLY. let me just solemnly swear that i will train EARLIER IN ADVANCE for future races. there's nothing like the prospect of COLLAPSING ON RACE DAY to make you keep on running despite a strong desire to stop. or being LAST. haha. well i think army boys who walk will probably be slower. this is why i like SAM better than stan chart HAHAH.

anyway today went for awesome hot yoga then went to meet manyun for lunch at holland v. i FULLY INTENDED for it to be just lunch then come back and mug, but of courseee (and i really shoulda expected it) it stretched until 4+ whoops. it was fun though! a much needed break :) there was also the obligatory do-embarrassing-photo-taking-and-almost-get-chased-out-of places.

now... i have to study haematology, allergic reactions (we have 4 papers to read BEFORE the tutorial), and the ever-present "study for mini-cex", also known as reading up everything and anything and getting something which you miraculously didnt study for. i hope not! haha.

!

2011-08-28T10:24:00.003+08:00

For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?
- Matthew 16:26

wow. i was just thinking about this reccently, and this was the gospel reading for mass yesterday.

... this is getting rather freaky.

this weekend i havent really done any work, although i pushed back meeting some friends :( but next week is going to be more social (im sure i will regret that when work piles upon me.) i cant help it though, one is my best friend from sec school who is flying back to the us on thurs and another is a farewell party for another best friend who is going off to uk to start med school :)

i've basically spent it running, sleeping in (a lot. heh), going to vote with my family, going to church (guilt-free), reading baking blogs (hehehe)

lots of chillaxingg, much needed.

the funny thing is for the first week, i was running around like a headless chicken, trying to read up for everything, and to do everything. would you believe, i have finished THREE CASE WRITEUPS by the 2nd week. LOL.

for the second week, i think i was beginning to lose it. i just had like severe malaise, fatigue and narcolepsy. LOLOL. maybe its prodromal for something... and i bumbled my way thru tutorials etc... ugh not good.

who knows what wk 3 will bring. frankly, i've ceased to care. no doubt ill try my best, but when your best doesnt elicit much benefit, it gets really disheartening. i've come to realize that excellence is not for me, unless i want to breakdown, ive come to realize that my inherent competitiveness is all well & good except this is BEYOND MY CAPABILITIES and i just cant do it. so if i want to compete and be DA BEST i just.... will try very hard and not be able to do it.

in a way, this is what i accepted in RGS, and it kept me sane and i did quite okay in the end too :) its all about accepting what u can and cannot do, and just crossing ur fingers and hoping that on balance everything will be ok. and even tho i'm horrible at chem practs i always randomly picked answers and got them right

i just gotta trust in that :)
yes, i know GREAT STRATEGY..

2011-08-26T21:21:00.002+08:00

plans

(ie deluding myself that this weekend isnt going to be that bad)
1. long run tomorrow morning!! :D i plan to run the 8k route around the mainroute and back, then add 2k more along the canal. good schtuff. saturday morning runs with music are always the best.

2. voting for the president! hahah democracy yo

3. starbucks until late, if it isnt too crowded. chai latte :)

TGIF

2011-08-26T20:10:00.003+08:00

this week feels like the most interminable and most tiring ever. it's just another day that i stagger home with grand plans and collapse into bed and dont really do much. it's just another day that i dont train for my 21k. but honestly, that's just for fun, i dont really care if i train for it or not. although i really hope i actually survive it... HAHA. i can feel the fats accumulating at a scary rate. but aiya i dont know, whether i study or not, it doesnt make much difference.

what pisses me off is, whether i study or not i don't seem to know ANYTHING. when push comes to shove. fair enough, i didnt really study the valvular diseases today for cardio tutorial.. but hehe funnily enough, i actually got the diagnosis right!! even if by luck. i dont think ill get many marks if i present it that way though. i was mostly studying GI last night... for the mini-CEX i DIDN'T have today.

realize that i am not really lazy or stupid. i'm just... INEFFICIENT. inefficient at prioritizing my time to study, and inefficient at the ACTUAL PROCESS of studying. okay, that makes me feel slightly better about myself. woohoo. but like i studied like crazy for the thyroid tut, and i fell asleep during the entire tut and i didnt volunteer to do the pe anyway... SIGH i just can't win.

goodthings about today
1) managed to present at ward rounds and i think i answered almost all the qns right! :):)
2) consultant took my case notes to read + sign (i dunno if this is gd coz i was rushing it in the morning...)
3) my HO and MO both took my 1st and second case notes to read + sign and were so nice as to tell me they want to give me verbal feedback about it (and i heard my MO telling yj's HO "she wrote so much in the column! i dunno what other questions to ask her!" which made me feel v productive hahaha)
4) STARBUCKS FRIDAY at ttsh. nuff said.
5) i was privy to a "tutorial" in the MO room coz a consultant was teaching another doctor all about polycythemia ruba vera. (in general, not coz there is a pt warded with this, hehe clarification that im not invading privacy :))

6) we tried to go see some pt with good signs who was not there... but ended up visiting another pt who was really SUPER nice, and had some other good signs which is really must see must know. and he was zomg SO NICE. he even gave me feedback like a good teacher ;p he was like "dont be offended ah, but you know the stethoscope, are you supposed to press it on lightly or press more? because i see all your friends press very hard but you never press hard..."
sin yuan was like "maybe she's very shy..." HAHAHA

and you know how everything is over we always profusely thank the pt. this guy kept telling us "jiayou! jiayou!" wow rly so nice. people like this make difficult times brighter :)

the bad
1) the consultant kept asking me about the patients on the other side of the ward (which i dont go to that often anyway since i usually talk to pts on the side my ho is taking care of...) and she kept asking me if i clerked them, to which the answer is... no. oops.
2) so i duly went to clerk one of the guys on that side, got interrupted by a nurse, another nurse told her to let me finish, i dropped my notebook in surprise at the sudden interruption and decided to go off and do something else instead
3) i got hit by the COW on ward rounds
4) i put my case write up down on the table to draw the curtains and it got totally wet, and i loudly said "shit shit shit life sucks" HAHA i hope no one heard me...
5) i didn't have mini-CEX today (maybe this is good. im clearly not ready.)
6) i stayed back until 4++ to wait for my friend to finish mini-CEX and the pt had left (but i saw another pt, ref above haha)... AND thus i didnt run today (good excuse.... no seriously i'm SO tired i really cannot get myself out the door.)

don't hold your breath

2011-08-25T21:23:00.003+08:00

today after a particularly ungracious episode on my part i found myself thinking, is this REALLY the best way to serve God, or is it worse to do this, and lose my soul.

but. sigh, it's just 8 weeks. it's tough partly cos of the short time i guess. it's a challenge to fit everything in & still be a nice human being, but i'll try. and pray that i can handle my challenges with grace :)

also my neuro project is getting published :):) what did i say about my luck always saving itself up HEHH. what else is going to come out of that angsty summer, WE WILL SEE. and what joy is going to come out of this internal medicine torture?! wow, i really can't imagine. nah i'm kidding, i know the universe doesn't owe me anything.

also, i know i have no life apart from medicine. HAHAH. i should meet up with nat/ sharon who are back and manyun who is leaving soon. how to la how to... BUT FOR THE RECORD, I LOVE YOU GUYS!! hehe

banana - g.na

2011-08-23T21:50:00.004+08:00

This is sucha cool song.

I think im working at tmax. Or vmax, whatever u call it. That's not the issue so much as i dont like going in circles and ending up in the same place. Kinda like alice in wonderland. You can run as fast as you can, but it only keeps u on the same spot

Was supposed to start 21k trainin today but since i effectually slept thru every tut after the excellent rash and cushings tut during ward rounds by my amazing con, who is more of a pro ;p, just came home and was out the moment my head hit the pillow

ah well. Theres always tomorrow :)and theres always the wkend, and public holidays! And my neuro tutor really likes poetry as evinced by his fb. I wish he could be my boss!! Apart from that he is uuuber cool

ON THAT NOTE. I SHALL STAY UNTIL 6PM TOMORROW. YES I WILL.

a bitter day
it will all get erased like this
it will all be forgotten someday

i might smile when the time comes
but i guess i can't help it right now

even though the weather is great, my mood is not
i struggle becos of these situations i can't handle
the exact opposite of me
the world continues spinning as if nothing happened

you're living fine
it's not fair. this is unfair
nothing goes right
i missed the place where i supposed to get off this morning
becos i suddenly thought of you, i got off at a lonesome station

i cant do anything
even though i'm sad because im thinking of you again right now
even though it will be difficult, i'll keep trying to erase you

it'll be forgotten little by little
when time passes, i'll be able to smile and reminisce
instead of saying that time heals everything
tell me something that actually works
a bitter day
it will all get erased like this
that day will come

i LOVE this bit.
instead of saying that time heals everything
tell me something that actually works

supersuperman - super junior

2011-08-22T19:19:00.006+08:00

there are some imperial students on summer attachment now. it reminds me of... me really. DUHH i WONDER WHY. in a good way la :)

even though life is officially WEIRD, i think im really blessed. i dont think that anything can endure forever. and in light of that, although sometimes things hurt ridiculously, i am so so thankful for the fact that, there has always been good things in my life. well, maybe sometimes i have to dig deeper than usual, but... it's kinda always there.

the road to anything can't be smooth. but it's not really always the journey that counts. like frodo and the ring. sometimes it really matters if you deliver the ring to modor or not, you know?

anyway just now the chillout session in the kopitiam instead of following the onzzz people who rushed up to the ward was nice. haha. i think my brain really cannot tahan the influx of information already. SUE ME, CALL ME LAZY, i donch care. well of course i do. but there comes a time when sanity >> looking hardworking.

also the method of imprinting cases into peoples minds by giving them mindblowing tutorials is very funny if u ask me. but i guess it works. also it prevents people from falling asleep.

to this day i will always remember david tai impersonating an old auntie having asthma, his thyroid examination tutorial HAHAHA with the how-to-check-for-sweaty-palms bit, and how he caught me out using my thyroid cheatsheet to check for tremors and thus magically remembering everything i forgot. and a whole host of hilarity which doesnt always have much to do with medicine particularly LOL.

like when the hand guy went on a tirade about being selfmotivated and pple who pop the pimples & don't and then stared at me and demanded:
"are you the kind of person who pops her pimples or who doesnt???" (ps in this context, its good to pop them. hahaha ortho vs derm ;p)
me, blurly: "... i don't have pimples.."

yeah, not my finest moment. oh wait, my worst moment was being unable to cut sutures in the OT!

okay this is random. i just opened my book to the thyroid examination & remembered my csfc tutor, who i rmb being terrified of. i think he's a pretty cool dude though now i think about it.

2011-08-21T22:45:00.003+08:00

it's like a crab at the bottom of the sea
an earthworm coming up after a rainstorm
the small leak that sinks the great ship

its something i can photoshop over in my life
a play i can rewrite a thousand times. it's
just another song that plays on the radio

so easily forgettable. it's not like a palmar
crease that signifies something more, its
not a red flag, not a white flag, not

anything at all that waves not
even a sea amemone. it will never be
as pretty and perfect as that

it will be forever the great barrier reef
sharks fin, becoming extinct shortly
it will be like the end of the world that
they keep on portenting but never comes

in short, it means nothing at all
tomorrow feels like a day
where i will wear too much eyeshadow

tears keep flowing and flowing [Wheesung]

2011-08-21T22:21:00.006+08:00

tonight there is no poetry

coming at me at 100km/h with the force of a jetplane from the north pole
like a thousand frozen rainbow flying fish
like an ice-kachang maker gone out of whack
like an ice lemon tea vending machine venting all the anger it never got to vent
like an avalaunche of goldcoins
that turned out to be leprechaun gold

i used to think that some good would come out of all the bad,
i really really did
i used to believe in the goodness of the universe (lets not bring God into this...)
to restore the balance of things eventually
but the weight of truth tips the balance

life, you WIN

raspberry ricotta scones

2011-08-21T12:29:00.002+08:00

From Smitten Kitchen!

on a random note, being busy is good cos you cant think of anything else. but then sometimes the busy-ness abates, and then you realize why you shouldnt sweep things under the carpet. thats the danger isn't it? putting all your energies into something & then realizing that apart from it, there isnt much else. ie existential crisis. i used to think existential criseses were essential for life, like when i went off to do playwriting & things during jc. i just needed to feel like i was doing something awesome & endless maths papers dont really fit that definition. dont get me wrong i like medicine & there really ISNT time for anything else but. just sometimes you feel like nothing you're doing has any bearing on anything else of importance.

like everytime i come across the word 'space-occupying lesion' i immediately think of medical students ;p no seriously, i think that when i eventually graduate i will probably be of some benefit to people as a HO, etc. i read in the papers that our generation is considered iGenY, ie people who think they can change the world by sitting infront of a computer. HAHA thats hilarious. its quite true. but... i dont know, its pretty difficult to change the world no matter what you do. as gandhi said - you must be the change you want to see in the world. micro vs macro. the norway dude wanted to make a stand. i guess he changed SOMETHING, notsure how good it turned out. maybe he shoulda been apathetic & been a WoW addict. or something domesticated like sims3. even people in the UN etc... how much do they change? sure, policies etc, but its so difficult to make a good policy. there will always be loopholes somewhere, look at GM food. all people can say is "distribution problem". that has always pissed me off in discussions about gm food. and you know what they say about diplomatic redtape and how all these international discussions just go round in circles. WHAT CHANGES. even if things change, not everyone can work in the UN...

maybe small changes etc, but again, not everyone is going to work in international NGOs, maybe people just want to work in a coolstartup near an MRT station & spend their evenings at clarkequay/blujazz, things like that. haha anyway, none of these ramblings apply to my job next time.

its true, when i was younger i wanted desperately to join Doctors Without Borders. but now, haih, i think that i can change things for the better for people by practicing medicine in this country as well.

also:borders closed *cries flood of tears* and i think i contributed to it by always going there and hardly buying anything ever *cries even more* BUT i bought my agatha christie book as a reward for studying so hard in m2... so... i did contribute 50 dollars. but that is NOT enough to repay borders for all the love, comfort, books, joy & happiness, friendship & companionship it has given me all these years. i have always liked borders and going there used to be a treat/ family outing, until i went to RGS, at which point borders became my second home. i really go there very very often, and now that it's gone, its like a part of me is gone too. maybe that's part of the random melancholy that has settled over me... randomly. i know that the book selection has been declining, etc. but i still love the atmosphere. everytime in secondary school i used to be sad about an exam/ stressed about projects/ my future, and even in jc really, i would always go to borders and read for a few hours, anything and everything really. highbrow literature, fight club, chicklit, science fiction, travel literature, diana wynne jones, magazines, cookbooks. i remember post exam ennui, when i didnt know what to do with myself. i walked in and read travel guidebooks and eat,pray,love, and walked out and booked airplane tickets to italy.

however, i know that my reading books & not really buying, like everyone else in singapore did; my using borders as a meeting point for friends & hangingout activity, is part of the reason why it closed down. i wish i had tons of money all at my discretion; i wouldnt buy all the pretty printed dresses that keep flying around my head like sugarcandy, i would buy ALL THE BOOKS IN BORDERS and let it keep running FOREVAH. but i dont have the means (does anyone. lol), and anyway, its closed now, it's too late :(

dear Borders, thank you for all the happiness that you have brought to tons of people for the past few years. i promise to help you clear your stock & buy books at your clearance sale; i'll starve if i need to, because if not, i'll regret forever at not saying thank you for everything. the silent comforting presence of the bookshelves in times of desperation, uncertainly, loveslost, unreasonability, is something i'll never find anywhere else ever again.

even though i didnt start this post off as a paean to borders, i think its pretty fitting. the one place i always walked through philosophizing about things, the one place i always walked out off knowing what to do next. the one place that perhaps, changed the world, but now that the world has changed, left it behind.

sarangheyo :):)

IATB

2011-08-21T01:15:00.004+08:00

my project for august is learning the choreography for 2NE1's I Am The Best :) no reason really except that it's great stuff & there are tons of covers on youtube so plenty of material to cross-refer to. heh

and one day i will make the best mocha coconut frappuchino cupcakes EVAH. one day. REALLY