Hodgepodge
1) I just returned from watching My Sister’s Keeper. There wasn’t a dry eye in the cinema. Go watch if you need a good cry and to feel some emotion (you cold hearted bastards). We are currently in our haematology block so the movie has great relevance to what are currently learning. Which also explains why I had things like “Unexplained nose bleeds and bruising! It’s Acute Myeloid Leukaemia! Gillick Competence!” whispered into my ear intermittently throughout the film. Med geeks.
2) Our tutor was telling us about Captain Chemo, an interactive animation programme developed by the Royal Marsden hospital in the UK, based on the comic strips drawn by a child patient during his stay there. Just brilliant.
How do you tell a child he has a terminal illness and that your treatment will help him get better even though it is going to make him feel awful and sick and the treatment itself would be painful and uncomfortable.
If you have an opportunity to visit a child hospice or do something for terminally ill children, I would encourage you to. I wrote about this years ago, about the maturity of terminally ill children, where it is often the child his/herself that has to comfort his parent or visiting adult. ‘It’s ok, it’s medication day today, that’s why I don’t feel too well, don’t be sad mummy.’.
3) Adam looks like a delightful film from the trailer (That it is a rom com aside, it was winner of Sundance 2009, indie soundtrack, intelligent conversation written in, can’t be half bad lah), and also reminded me about the collection of literature I amassed when I was interested in finding out more about Asperger’s Syndrome at one point in time, half of which I have probably forgotten. Earlier this year, a course mate said, “I see you light up whenever you talk about depravity and the degradation and regression of the human mind, have you ever considered psychiatry?”. I started out fixated on O&G, but emergency medicine, psychiatry and surgery are starting to seem like appealing options.
I guess I am at a point in my life where I am (pardon the science-y analogy) akin to a stem cell, able to differentiate into any cell type if given the right stimulus. Ah…the phase where everything is full of possibilities, following which, resignation and final steady slow descent into despair (Might be the after effect of watching Revolutionary Road yesterday).
Possibilities.
I’d like to stay in this phase for awhile.
Lions hunt in groups and stalk their prey
I went for my first ever ward visit today, we managed to visit three patients in a vascular ward, all of whom were post-op and high on their extensive list of medication, was asked to take a history about presenting condition, past medical history, social history and overall systems review, after which, a pop quiz by our clinical coach in the nurses station about patient’s condition, medication and side effects, questions generated as she was thumbing through the patient’s case file.
Was eye balled, shot down, made to feel like a moron, but will live to see another day, or two :p
Dissection, also known as anatomization
We will be having our first hands on cadaver dissection class next week.
10 or more in a group, I am not sure if I will have the chance to put scalpel to flesh.
Want to cut.
three oh uh oh
I am turning the big three oh in January.
Did I imagine I would be where I am now when I reached 30? Not really.
I thought all the typical Singaporean things would happen by the time I hit 30.
The house, the car, the husband, a kid, a good job, stable income, biannual holidays, occasional contribution to charities, the works.
Where am I at this point in my life?
Broke, in debt, little savings, no stable job, no husband, living in a cheap rental property, scrimping on luxuries, spending my days cramming in information and highlighting.
Am I happy?
Well, I suppose, in the grand scheme of things.
Will this pay off?
I am not sure.
But, would I be any place else, doing anything thing else, left wondering, what if?
No, no really.
So, all things considering,
life is pretty good right now.
So what, if I didn’t conform to the Singaporean yuppie mould.
I am living my dream.
Bring on turning 30.
Connect the dots
I miss being able to really connect with someone.
I do not know if being forced into independence at the age of 17 and having to move around so much was necessarily a good thing, people’s dependence and neediness often scares me.
I think I will always be a little bit of a loner at heart.
Simple Simon
I made a trip to the hospital on Thursday for a test.
As I finished my climb uphill, about to make my descent down the other side, feeling oh so sorry for myself for having to walk 3km in the cold, I saw, over the crest of the hill an elderly couple, probably in their late 70s starting their climb uphill. He was a pudgy man, cheeks stained pink from the cold, sporting a blue shirt and a brown vest and carrying a large backpack. His wife, petite, head of grey, hair combed neat, a wooly jumper and navy blue skirt down to her ankles. She sat with poise and grace in her wheelchair as he pushed her uphill, brows furrowed as he concentrated on the task at hand.
Both had history lined into their faces and hands.
Will I be as fortunate to have someone to love and take care of me in my golden years, I thought?
Love seems to be a hundred fold more complicated as we get older, a feeling I get when I hear stories from friends and needless to say, from my own past experiences as well.
I miss the simplicity of youth, when love was a less complex emotion, one devoid of expectations, unfavourable circumstances, cerebral considerations, responsibilities, where you thought less about the future and just enjoyed the emotion at hand.
Simple.
How do we keep things simple and just… love?
Piazza, New York catcher
Bell & Sebastian
Elope with me, Miss Private, and we’ll sail around the world
I will be your Ferdinand and you my wayward girl
How many nights of talking in hotel rooms can you take?
How many nights of limping around on pagan holidays?
Oh, elope with me in private and we’ll set something ablaze
A trail for the devil to erase
San Francisco’s calling us, the Giants and Mets will play
Piazza, New York catcher, are you straight or are you gay?
We hung about the stadium, we’ve got no place to stay
We hung about the Tenderloin and tenderly you tell
About the saddest book you ever read, it always makes you cry
The statue’s crying too and well he may
I love you, I’ve a drowning grip on your adoring face
I love you, my responsibility has found a place, beside you
and strong warnings in the guise of gentle words
Come wave upon me from the wider family net absurd
You’ll take care of her, I know it, you will do a better job,
Maybe, but not what she deserves
Elope with me, Miss Private, and we’ll drink ourselves awake
We’ll taste the coffee houses and award certificates
A privy seal to keep the feel of 1960′s style
We’ll comment on the decor and we’ll help a passer by
And at dusk when work is over we’ll continue the debate
In a borrowed bedroom virginal and spare
The catcher hits for 318 and catches every day
The preacher puts religion first and rests on holidays
He goes into cathedrals and lies prostrate on the floor
He knows the drink affects his speed, he’s praying for
a doorway back into the life he wants and the confession of the bench
Life outside the diamond is a wrench
I wish that you were here with me to pass the dull weekend
I know it wouldn’t come to love, my heroine pretend
A lady stepping from the songs we love until this day
You’d settle for an epitaph like ‘Walk Away, Renee’
The sun upon the roof in winter will draw you out like a flower
Meet you at the statue in an hour
Meet you at the statue in an hour
Expensive is not better
A photo of Orchard Road taken with a simple iphone camera by the person who schooled me in photography 101.
You don’t need fancy pants cameras to take nice photos.
Economics: I like chicken rice, I buy alot of it, Uncle has to make more.
How on earth the children of a business man father and social worker mother ended up finding that their interests lay in international relations and medicine still confounds me. Having said that, elements of my parents’ life and work experiences have very evidently shaped both our perspectives on life.
I absolutely hated economics when I took it during a brief stint in a Singaporean Junior College, but quite clearly my brother swung to the other end of the spectrum.
Trade, commerce, foreign affairs. What the!
Similarly, my winge about having to read stacks of journals on semen analysis was met with uncomfortable shifty eyes over skype yesterday. Ah, every bit the asian family still.
Jo: Right. So humor me, when you say policy conceptualization, these policies are meant for?
Joshua: so for example, today I told my boss some preliminary ideas on commercialisation
Joshua: and I told him ACS (Jakarta) (yes there is one apparently) expanded by finding a local partner to join the ACS family, so one why of encouraging schools to expand overseas is to help them find local partners and provide legal advice
Joshua: I also told him that traditionally companies expand overseas because they face srinking market share at home
Joshua: so we could increase the number of schools, at least the number of privately funded ones like ACS, SJI, etc
Joshua: but that wasn’t the right approach, as he said it was something EDB would say
Joshua: and EDB is in charge of operationalising objectives
Joshua: on the conceptual front, the questions would be “Does encouraging schools to expand overseas lead to a decrease in overseas applications for those school places from those countries?”
Joshua: talking about rich indonesians who send their kids to Singapore
Jo: Right. So rather than coming up with strategies to facilitate the expansion of these private schools, you study and theorise the effect that this move might have on education in Singapore.
Joshua: yeah, but you also want to look at how things might be operationalised though
Joshua: it’s a strange mix
Joshua: I mean, in my answer to his question on the trade off, I said it depends how you expand. If you target the expat population in Indonesia probably not.
Jo: Interesting. So what MTI is, in a sense, is that it acts as a watchdog of trade and commercialization in Singapore? In this case, MTI would work with EDB, EDB are the operational men on the ground so to speak?
Joshua: yeah, my boss would say that MTI occupies a very small space which tries to identify potential trade offs in policy decisions which might weigh against a project that seems worthwhile for the next 5 years, but actually really isn’t.
Jo: I can understand why your head would hurt 
Joshua: yes, now you get it! And even understanding why my brain would hurt hurts in itself!
