Samsengs
Sometimes breaking one’s routine is good for one’s soul.
Playing with photoshop is really good fun, maybe whatever little free time I have can be spent learning more on how to fully exploit the programme!
Capturing
I have my head in the clouds.
I think that is why I go through life trying to capture moments, emotions, and try to set my room in a particular mood, mostly melancholic.
I think that is why I love Sigur Ros, because their music is so emotive, they manage to bring me through this epic emotional journey of longing, sadness, joy, celebration, yearning, I always feel drained after listening to an entire album.
I think that is why I go on holidays and take photos of inanimate things and people, trying to capture a mood rather than the structural icons of the city.
I am such a heavy person, sometimes I wish I had more lightness in my being.
De- what?
My mom told me that tonight was date night with my father and they were going to watch the Japanese film which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars this year. After she hung up I did a quick google search on the film. I remembered her telling me the title was Decadence and the search result Decadence +Japanese +film generated this. Of course I sat and stared at the screen for a bit thinking this can’t be right. Japanese +Best foreign film 2009 generated ‘Departures’. Ah!
Yes this looks more like a film my mother would pick 
Hey Chocolat
My friend Joanne aka the other Jo is a straight shooter. I have fond memories of when we used to work together back in 2004, she was always the one to bring joy to the room with her effervescence and always managed to build good relationships with the people on the accounts she handled. When Jo started up her little home business a while ago, I had no doubt that her cakes were going to be an extension of her personality. Honest, no fuss, happy cakes, cakes full of substance minus the frills. She recently set up a blog to bring her signature chocolate cakes to the public.
Her signature chocolate cakes are priced at:
6″ (500gm) for S$15 (serves 4-6)
8″ (1kg) for S$28 (serves 8-10)
She also does a mean carrot cake and recently added cupcakes to her repertoire as she had numerous requests for them.
Do pop by Hey Chocolat and have a look at Jo’s cakes, she’s a lovely person who puts heart into everything she does
Taking the time
When I arrived in Australia, I was missing a mumps vaccination required for the course and had to visit my local GP to get that sorted.
What struck me about the consult (that he was a handsome vietnamese chap aside) was that, even for something as trivial a routine vaccination, the GP took great pains to communicate each step of the consult to me. When it came time for the actual administration:
Doc: ‘I am not going to swab the area prior to the jab, do you know why?’
Gobsmacked Jo: ‘Err…no’
Doc: ‘Because, this is a live vaccine, if I swab your skin with alcohol, we run the risk of killing off some of the vaccine’
I was duly impressed. GPs back in Singapore rush through the consult, reply in a staccato monosyballic fashion and rarely offer any additional information unless asked. The fact is, people are more educated these days and with the advent of the internet, chances are, our patients are going to walk though our door with their own diagnoses printed off the internet. We as medical professionals need to take great pains to treat our patients as equals and explain things to them, we owe them that much.
Take for example antibiotics. I bet your local GP told you ‘You must finish the course’, sorry, I correct myself, your local GP probably got his/her clinic assistant to tell you that you must finish the course of antibiotics. So we do, we listen, we follow, but do we understand why? Did any of them take the time to explain:
‘If you do not finish your course of anitbiotics, the bacteria that is causing you this problem now will develop a resistance to the biotics I just prescribed you. This is very bad, because this bacteria can then mutate and generate a stronger army of bacteria which can lead to a worse form of the illness you have now, a form that the bioctics cannot destroy’
Had someone taken the time to explain this to me as a child, I might have finished the course of biotics voluntarily without needing my mother to watch over me with a stick.
Patients are not idiots.
Sure, time= money, and some doctors are trying to squeeze as many consults they can into a day to make it rich. But, I sure as hell do not envision my practice in the future to be run conveyor belt style, much like the very popular lasik clinics popping up all over Singapore, another rant for another time.
Home and decor
We were first introduced to Lladro in the lifestyle and home section of Isetan on the trip to Tokyo last October. My poor mental currency conversion had me excited and energizer rabbit jumpy for about 2 minutes thinking I would be the owner of The Lover, till I realised I was one zero short of the actual price in Singapore dollars.
The Fantasy Collection by Jaime Hayon for Lladro is something I would really love to own one day.
One day she says
Yeendia
A bunch of us really hope to make it to a teaching hospital in Delhi for our 4 week elective at the end of the year, following that we also hope to spend 2 weeks doing rural clinics/vaccinations/awareness outreach. Initially I was really hoping to head to Bihar to assist in a mission run community hospital, but a mate’s dad who is based in Delhi says the place would be too much of a culture shock for us city dwellers. As it is, he had to take a plane out of Delhi to Bangkok and then back to India again to get to Bihar as there are no flights that service Bihar internally. A quick read of the reviews on elective experiences in Bihar said the accommodation provided is rather shocking, complete with leaky roofs. Accommodation is really the last of my worries as my main concern in terms of choice of elective is where I can be of most use to the hospital and the community, creature comforts are secondary. In any case, the option in Delhi seems promising and I am sure we will learn alot from their hands on approach.
Quite frankly, going to a developing country armed with some basic knowledge and skills to partake in the process of improving the healthcare of the people in the region seemed like something unattainable 2 years ago. The fact that I have been given this amazing opportunity so early on in my medical education is really a privilege, not only for me, but the rest of my 300 odd colleagues. I may find out that I absolutely love the entire experience or be too shell shocked to enjoy my time there, either way, it’s time to put an end to the bright eyed wonder and heady idealism, time to quell the mystery surrounding medicine in a developing country and get my hands dirty. Hai-yah!
If all else fails, there’s always the Nepal trek, skiing and curry in excess to look forward to
