of rotting at home...

i realise i've been quite content to rot at home (when previously i couldnt bear rotting) and here's why:

wikipedia!!

ahhahaah... it has become my favourite web page. i can spend hours in front of the computer reading article after article =)

amid going for driving lessons, occasionally touching dizi and guqin, and shopping. hah.

in need of persuasion

well. can someone out there convince me that i ought to go for the activities organised for nus freshmen? because if there is one phrase to describe my attitude towards the entire thing right now, its "100% bochup."

something's seriously wrong if the things i look forward to the most abt uni life are
1. mugging;
2. new laptop;
3. possible language classes; (even if they dont give it to me i'm going to sign up for lessons anyway)
4. graduation.

天涯歌女

天涯呀 海角
觅呀觅知音
小妹妹唱歌
郎奏琴
郎呀咱们俩是一条心
爱呀爱呀 郎呀
咱们俩是一条心
家山呀 北望
泪呀泪沾襟
小妹妹想郎
直到今
郎呀患难之交恩爱深
爱呀爱呀 郎呀
患难之交恩爱深
人生呀
谁不惜呀惜青春
小妹妹似线 郎似针
郎呀 穿在一起不离分
爱呀爱呀 郎呀
穿在一起不离分

my aunt bought a collection of cds entirely by 周旋 for my grandma when i was in primary school. 天涯歌女 is the first song on the first cd. i liked it so much (the singing style, the melody, and the instruments used. hehehe) that when i got my first tape recorder in pri sch i borrowed the cd to record it on the tape containing my favourite songs at that point in time. i never returned the cd... and it probably belongs to me now.

today i learnt that... (2)

i ought to seriously reconsider my criteria for cabbing when delivering bread alone. by lowering the threshold to 4 instead of 5 full bags of food. 5 bags by myself is mission impossible; 4 bags is mission-nearly-impossible-but-possible-with-a-lot-of-luck.

and i finally sent off my application to study german in nus under the language preparation programme for eventual student exchange to germany in my 2nd or 3rd year. -phew- deadline's tmr. i had a hard time trying to write the 300-word essay (yea i know 300 words is nothing compared to my loooooooong appeal letter to monash which i think has failed due to the deafening silence on their part...) because, well, why else do i want to go to germany besides the fact that its not in singapore and its a life changing experience? so the last 2 days were spent trying to squeeze points abt the country out of a blank mind, which i think i did quite well. managed to mention medicine, music, philosophy, geography in 2 paragraphs and the life experiences lessons blah blah blah in 1. i think my chances might be higher since they seem quite set on me applying for it by sending me 2 emails telling me about the programme. unless they sent it to everyone else as well... well, no matter what i most certainly hope i'd get it; if i really cannot do undergraduate mbbs overseas i DEFINATELY want this chance. in fact, i want it so much that if i do get it and i am offered a place in aust i think my heart will break. and we all know how much i want to be offered a place in medical sch... (if you didnt know by now, the answer is VERY BADLY. tsk where have you been. hahaha) if nus cant give me my first choice can they at least give me this...?

i forgot to mention this a few days ago. patient comes in asking if we can somehow manage to squeeze her in before the clinic closes (the good news is that we did =D) and she was telling us about the problems she had with her eyesight recently. as she was describing her symptoms somehow the idea of retinal detachment came to mind as i remember reading a story on it before. after she came out of the consultation room she was shaking her head and saying "lucky i saw the dr early", then i realised she was referred to emergency because of, well, suspected retinal detachment. i hope she's well. =)

if you're interested, here's retinal detachment off wikipedia.

and today, i had the enormous good fortune to see the 2 patients who left the most lasting impact on me walk through the clinic doors 10mins from each other: the first patient who threw the queue number at me, and the last patient who scolded me for no good reason.

last day of work tomorrow! boy.. time really flies. and then after that, a trip to taiwan in the works! hehehehe =)

1 - 1 = 0

what's good about today:
1. interesting case. (well, maybe not so for the patient, because he had to go to the ED) with a learning point.
2. i got to listen to patient's lung sounds using the stethoscope! =)

what's not so good about today:
1. i put on the stethoscope wrongly.
2. i couldnt hear a damned thing.
3. even after putting the stethoscope on properly.

i cant even begin to describe how embarrassed i felt for not being able to hear a difference, and having to admit that, sorry dr h, but i dont know what i'm supposed to hear, and after knowing what i'm supposed to hear, that i cant hear a thing. and then she said, well, its okie, most people need to practice hundreds of times before they can distinguish anything, you'd learn next time.

the other day i was chatting with dr c and i said, hey, this is the last time you're going to see me! at least, for a while, hopefully. and he went, okay, hopefully next time when we meet again, i will be a consultant and you will be my little HO and i can bully you muahahaha. eh dont liddat la i dont want to be a HO only after so many years! but yep, hopefully next time when i'm finally a HO/MO you'd be the big shot consultant. but pls dont bully me. hahahahaha after all, i might be a -cmi- foreign grad and i'd need all the help i can get. nahh if i do study mbbs overseas, i promise, i will be a CAN Make It foreign grad instead of the CANNOT Make It kind. ah, but that's subject to admission to university...

okay (current) wishful thinking aside, i realise that my last 2-3 visits to the ED when bringing a patient down have been coloured by er, arguing with the triage staff. maybe its a good thing i'm going to be unemployed soon (dont like quitting - sounds like i'm giving up..) or else i just might get blacklisted or something. hahahaa but sometimes i really dont get it... its like, i'm telling you the dr already assessed this patient and says he/she may collapse any moment and you're just treating the patient like any other non-urgent patient clogging up the ED. -shrug- good to keep order in the ED... but like i said, some things ought to be expedited.

away from work.. i LOVE 大长今!!!!!!! hahahahahaha

getting incoherent, shall end here.

天籁回音

2nd anniversary of hcco's 天籁回音 =)

" 三十年来, 我们走过了冬的萧索凄迷, 春的明朗欢悦, 实现了梦想, 缔造了神话. 愿心中的荡气回肠与过往的绕梁余音, 化为天地间最纯正的天籁献给您..."

(anyway, any typos or 错别字, if not in the original text on the programme booklet, are my fault okie.. hahaha)

how NOT to spend your off day.

there are many many many ways to spend an off day. i spent mine in a not-so-novel way: asleep for 21 hrs, awake for 3.

in other words, i spent yesterday being sick.

and i skipped my last monday morning shift too: i didnt go to work. however, this puts me in a quandry, because when i woke up again at 10am, my fever has gone down. which means i dont have an mc to explain away my absence from work today as no dr will give an mc when there's no fever -_- and i absolutely refuse to pay $20 for an mc.

bleh.

one more thing. i HATE working with someone. BAH.

reading...

dr. robert jastrow on the Big Bang:

for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. he has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

for some reason the last line has been nagging at me for the last few days. maybe its just my overactive imagination imagine some smug scientist struggling up a mountain only for his smirk to be replaced by the realisation that he isnt the first one there...

as the entry suggests, i've been doing some reading these few days. (well, some would be an understatement) been trying to understand this book hs lent me a few weeks ago (but that doesnt compare to the length of time he ate my hitchhikers' guide to galaxy...) but i er, abandoned it for the time being in favour of the 3 easier-to-read books dr hoe gave me on thurs. i'm finished with the first book (except for this chapter which i couldnt understand at all- but that's hardly surprising given my kindergarden knowledge of the bible...) in a nutshell it was abt the authencity of the New Testament. i decided to skip the 2nd book which deals with questions and go straight to the third book first (science and religion) since i figured its more relevant to me. but its an uphill struggle with the big bang theory currently- PHYSICSSSS zzzz. but the chapter on evolution is quite interesting. i have to admit that evolution initially did make some sense to me, but its in direct contradiction to what the bible says about the origins of the world. and somehow, after being constantly bombarded with the thought that empirical knowledge is superior and science, experimentally determined, cannot be wrong, i was quite confused. i guess i forgot abt the distinction between macroevolution and microevolution. microevolution is true because we do see examples of that everywhere, but the evidence for macroevolution is very shaky. some of the evidence for macroevolution has been falsified and there are parts of circular reasoning.

and just for the record, i've been doing a lot of sneaking around when reading. if i get caught... die man. explosion at jurong west coming your way.

travelling light is a nice book. i dont feel like returning it muahahahaaha i really enjoyed the book. but i guess i'm still light years away from living my life as it suggests.. i think for most people its very difficult to admit that we dont have as much control over our lives as we'd like to think we have. for one i confess i hate the idea, but i have to realise that its true. which begets my question again: where does one know if one should continue to struggle, or to just accept what has been given? (guess the context in my life is pretty obvious)

i dont want to stop here like that but i need the toilet quite badly and my mind isnt really churning out words apart from -pee pee pee pee pee- so i think i'd stop here ahhhhhh

what a wonderful world...

the world is filled with nice people =)

like the random passerby who helped me flag a cab "you sure do have your hands full!", and the taxi uncle who only charged me half the fare because "you doing volunteer work ma, so i help u like that lor."

8 days of work left. (technically its only 7, since its off day on sunday) and i have mixed feelings. i sure wont miss the at-times-ridiculous working environment, overly-demanding patients and some stupid people, but i think i will miss the challenge of having to adapt and survive, some people, some really really nice and appreciative patients, and of course the doctors. yea, despite all the shit i get, i think i'd actually miss work. i've learnt so much; about myself, about people, about the system. i think i'd leave the reflections till another day though: i'm not unemployed yet, so i shdnt count my chickens till they're hatched. (i dont care if its eggs or chickens, i prefer chickens)

and of course, the job has made me ask myself, knowing full well how heavy the responsibility can be, do i still really want to go through all the hardship to be a doctor? i wont deny that i had severe doubts at some low points (most notably the platelet count incident) but at the end of it all, i still want to. there's something drawing me to this. (almost kamikaze-like, dont you think?) well. it remains to be seen whether i can, since am currently a (pending and not really keen) science student at the esteemed local university (sorry- btw the business sch advertisements really suck. and they are thinking of going global with them. man i dare not imagine cringe cringe cringe its not visionary, its ridiculous!)

its been food food food for the last 2 days. had guqin lesson ytd, after which laoshi treated me to lunch (i dunno if he intended the treat hmm) and i attempted to teach him how to use his new laptop (yea laugh please, ME teaching someone how to use a COMPUTER haha.) which failed quite miserably because 1. no microsoft office installed, 2. no internet connection. after that it was work, and dinner break was spent pigging out at novena square with tsinli =) too bad our days of meeting up for lunch/dinner at novena (far far far away from home) are numbered, but we can always meet up more often =) and then today dr treated me to a "farewell lunch" (i ate till i nearly burst - i have a very small appetite and its terrible to waste food...) i learnt that her initial plans were either medicine or teaching (deja vu anyone?) and her parents didnt exactly approve of her religion choice at the start too (deja vu x2)

and i got this last night =)

there are many reasons why i love co, and here are 4 of them =)

hcco concert was.. well, i've heard some opinions that it wasnt as impressive as expected, but perhaps its because of the music genre. its hard to get fired up over a song if you dont exactly like or understand it. but i must say, i started out thinking that xibei really sucks as a song(s), but now i conclude that its a nice piece. the juniors did a fantastic job for a song which has never been attempted by other school orchestras because of its difficulty technically and musically-wise. not to mention mengdie -ahem- another what people would call a weird song at first glance, but upon closer inspection can set off a lot of thoughts. i guess mengdie, like dong, will always belong to hcco.

to stop procastinating =)

blood donation

by stating on my blog that i intend to donate blood, there's no way i can chicken out of my decision to donate blood before going uni.

and hopefully, this time round, i wont fall sick three days just before the date i picked. and hopefully they are satisfied with my health status too. hm.

just wondering...

if i died today, would anyone come to my funeral?

nothing to blog abt

i'm sure nobody wants to hear me whine and rant all over again (which is precisely what i feel like doing now) abt my life, so i shall just declare "nothing to blog abt" and leave it as that.