I once took my blog down after being stalked by a clinically-diagnosed Schizophrenic I'd never met. I'd dealt with the mentally ill before, mostly in medical school. I understood her condition well (Psychiatry was, strangely, one of the things I really found interesting in med school) and that she couldn't help herself. It didn't help in the least bit to lessen the slowly mounting sense of alarm when the phone was ringing for the xth time, or when the gifts started showing up at the gym I went to. It didn't help when I picked up the phone, and conversations took oddly predictable yet incomprehensible slants, and somewhere in there I felt sorry for, and concerned for - someone else's patient.
I hope she's doing better now.
I tried to restart the blog some time later when things had simmered down. It had been hijacked by a porn site. Laugh.
These days I just can't find the time or will to write, and there's just so much happening in real life...
I ask prospective bright-eyed bushy-tailed hatchlings why they want to study medicine when they could be doing so, so much else.
The answer is always the same - I want to make a difference, I want to help people (or some permutation thereof). Always so rehearsed, and so unconvincing.
I can almost understand why the NUS interviewers asked me what they did : So why do you want to do medicine, aside from all that being nice and saving people shit?
Almost, but not quite. I would never ask that. There's the off chance that this person is actually for real - it happens - and not just in it for the "prestege" or "money". And right now, right here, he/she believes it with his/her heart. So just pause, and wait for the rest of the story. And then I tell them, I'm glad, because this will stay with you.
And if they haven't got a story, they just... want to help people, because.... well... it's good.
Then I inhale, and start telling them about how they'll feel one day in the distant future, watching their friends grow up around them while they languish in career infancy, drowning day to day in multitudes of thankless calls, succumbing slowly to Real Life after the glow fades.
I'm still glad to do what I do. I tell people it's because I like cutting off legs, and in truth part of me does (well, I like doing things well, and I think I do that pretty well... heh). But I much prefer saving legs. I say it's because I like the nature of the operations, and I really, really do. But, well : there's many other things I like too, and I really, really would like to be retired with all the time in the world to write, lounge around, and relax too :)
I've been asked what the point is, since these people will just go back to smoking anyway, and you'll see them again soon, and they'll be dead even sooner.
I guess I just have a story.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Much ado about Nothing
In the aftermath of events still unfolding in Japan it seems almost wrong for everyday, humdrum life to go on. It feels as if we shouldn't... be going about our daily chores, making inane chatter at work, screwing over colleagues for personal gain, stabbing each other in the backs... it just seems so wrong, somehow. And then the weirdos pitch in and start spreading hoax nuclear rain SMSs and make light of a tragedy of monumental proportions, and then self-centered morons write into the straits times complaining about how personally inconvenienced they were by the disaster (SIA where were you etc)... word. People are fucked up. Bigtime.
The Susan Lim scandal has lost momentum; knocked for six it will plod on now-unnoticed to a public that has cast judgement and moved on. Few people are left to care as the smoke clears.
I can't help but wonder what precipitated this bizarre show-and-tell by the Singapore Medical Council. The layman may not be able to discern the trees from the woods, but to an insider... it's even more bewildering. Wood? There's just matchsticks here.
I don't imagine that the court case is going to be cheap. Who will pay for it? Why we will of course - us doctors who pay our annual subscription, wonder what happens to it for a moment, and then stop caring... (ah suddenly the clouds are parting. This is the true destiny of our subscription monies!)
The butterfly effect had started... public mutterings of discontent, of rich and poor, of greed on an unusual scale so at odds with the "noble" field of medicine" were already rippling outwards and building to a crescendo just before the hammer of Mother Nature fell upon Japan and turned the mountain into a molehill.
Like the layman I'm burning for answers too - but to different questions.
I don't care how or why Susan Lim could have asked such outrageous prices. It's easy to understand how someone like Susan Lim could have asked the going prices that she did. Just put yourself in her shoes for an instant.
In her head she was "up there" with the best in the world. The much-touted Medical Hub of singapore had arrived in her mind, and she was the epicenter.
Her corporate website proclaims that common knowledge splattered all over wikipedia, and the web, thanks to unifem and the australian high commission - that she is the first surgeon to perform a successful liver transplant in asia.
Trawl back through time and reality emerges. The first liver transplants in Asia - living donor related (1989) and cadaveric (1964) - were done by the Japanese.
Susan Lim performed the first liver transplant in Singapore - not Asia. And she did it when she was young - in her mid thirties, as a young consultant.
Look still deeper and you will see the names of the three surgeons who were members in the team she "led". All of them Professors, all old enough to be her father (kind of), "assisting" her through one of the most difficult operations known to medicine. And suddenly the picture becomes much, much clearer.
Conjecture? A favourite amongst favourites, public recognition, going private.
Sounds a bit like a Taiwanese medical drama...
I don't know Dr Lim personally, and I don't think I'd care to after reading her reproduction of erroneous claims to regional fame.
She strikes me as someone driven to market herself at all costs. Someone selfish and self-centered.
This is what the public resentment really centered about - doctors aren't meant to be selfish or money-faced! They swore the Hippocratic oath! They're all meant to be paupers and Saints who toil without rest, and live hand to mouth until they die from it!!
Well fuck you. Doctors are people too, same as you are. And if you had the means to make big bucks - and if you ran a big business involving marketing yourself - you'd probably go the same way Susan Lim did. Don't kid yourself.
Granted, a larger proportion of medics don't than average, and not through want of talent. Medicine does weed out the oddballs that prioritize the needs of others over their own, and are willing to try to help alleviate suffering by forgoing some of their own pleasures of the flesh. That's what the "rigorous selection" is for, innit? But no system is perfect... and bear in mind that it's still just a job. In the same way that not all politicians are noble, not all models brainless, and not all lawyers incorrigible - not all doctors are blathering goody two-shoes who buy breakfast for their impoverished C-class patients every day and serve it on a silver platter, balanced precariously on bended knee.
Having said that, Dr Lim achieved her aim - she got to where she was through hard work and aggressive marketing and one (or two?) misleading claims - but this doesn't detract from the act that she got There. People came to her - rich people, like the Bruneian Sultanate. That alone shouts volumes about her regional reputation.
And frankly, if she was on the level - world best, patronized by royalty - then she had every damn right to charge the way she did. The UK surgeon who charged five hundred thousand pounds for two days consultation with this same patient -- two days -- why isn't anyone wondering about that? Why - because the white man must have been a world expert of course. His time was valuable.
So too, was Susan Lim's. She is an expert - in her patients' eyes - as much a world expert as Woffles Wu. So she charged tens of millions of dollars - so what? This was a very demanding patient that treated her more as a personal retainer than a consultant surgeon. The patient-doctor relationship was skewed towards client-consumer from the start. Respect appeared to be a one-way street. The patient demanded, the patient received.
Dr Lim claims she made her fees clear to her patient beforehand. The patient spent years prior to her death paying exorbitant fees apparently without complaint. This appears to corroborate those claims.
And everyone knows that when you do favours for asian royalty you get kickbacks. Perhaps Dr Lim doesn't have a thing for camels, Maserati's or expensive wine and just likes cold hard cash - we'll never know. This sort of stuff doesn't come out in court.
At the end of the day, this was a mutual agreement between doctor and patient. You treat me like a servant, take me away from work, and endanger my eyes - well sod you, I'll charge you like the royalty you are. (Just doing a House.)
Dr Lim did what all of us wish we could when dealing with our own patients from hell. And I kind-of applaud her, while hating her for it at the same time. I can empathize with her, even though I don't agree and certainly wouldn't have done it myself.
Was what she did so wrong? Step away from your pre (mis) conceptions of saints and doctors, and Hippocratic oaths (which just says we shall do no harm... and well. Taking money from a willing, very, very rich donor isn't exactly doing harm... Oh but wait, but the patient died! Surely that's evidence of harm! Think again. The woman had cancer. She was dying from the get-go. A recurrence? Was there curative surgery that... failed? Bollocks. You get cancer, you get cured, it comes back - them's the breaks. That's just bad luck and statistics, not a failure of the physician.) and look at it anew with unbiased eyes, from the view of a healthcare professional.
Does Susan deserve to be "disciplined" for entering into a mutual agreement with a willing patient? Did she deceive the patient in any way? Is it even overcharging when your patient is pre-warned about exorbitant costs and wants to go ahead? Would anyone bat an eye if Dr Lim had been a lawyer, or a businesswoman? Or a minister?
How much do the doctors-turned-ministers earn before they "fall from grace" and accept their paycuts to don the white short-sleeved shirt and long pants again? How do you think they were earning such big bucks before signing up for their one true calling? By seeing thousands of patients a day -- or charging big bucks to a privileged few?
And why, why on earth would the SMC build a case against it's own public image?
That's what bugs me the most. Why in the blue blazers would the one organization that was created with the sole purpose of protecting the profession seek to encite the public against itself? What could it have taken to bring this about?
One more thing.
1) Susan Lim sends bill to Royal family
2) Royal family complains to Ministry of Health
3) Ministry of Health assigns Singapore Medical Council to mediate
4) SMC raises disciplinary hearing
5) Hearing dissolved - allegations of prejudice
6) Susan Lim brings SMC to court to prevent hearing being raised again
7) Press involved
Hmm. Which one doesn't quite fit in there, one wonders? Which ones are closed-door events, and which open to the public?
Let's take a look at the key players.
Salma Khalik and Prof Satku aren't strangers to each other. Let's see what Prof Satku had to say about her reporting style, even if it was oblique. Not... exactly the best of friends, eh.
I've seen it said on forums that poor Prof Satku is a victim himself, removed from his position of power as Registrar to the SMC (hmm. once director medical services. Registrar must be a step up?) because the Men in White are staging some kind of cover up. The poor deluded fools.
Perhaps what Susan Lim herself has to say about Prof Satku can shed some light on his abrupt reassignment of duties, and why a new position - non-constitutional - was created and legalized expressly for this trial.
Does anybody smell a warm, fuzzy, long-tailed mammal?
The Susan Lim scandal has lost momentum; knocked for six it will plod on now-unnoticed to a public that has cast judgement and moved on. Few people are left to care as the smoke clears.
I can't help but wonder what precipitated this bizarre show-and-tell by the Singapore Medical Council. The layman may not be able to discern the trees from the woods, but to an insider... it's even more bewildering. Wood? There's just matchsticks here.
I don't imagine that the court case is going to be cheap. Who will pay for it? Why we will of course - us doctors who pay our annual subscription, wonder what happens to it for a moment, and then stop caring... (ah suddenly the clouds are parting. This is the true destiny of our subscription monies!)
The butterfly effect had started... public mutterings of discontent, of rich and poor, of greed on an unusual scale so at odds with the "noble" field of medicine" were already rippling outwards and building to a crescendo just before the hammer of Mother Nature fell upon Japan and turned the mountain into a molehill.
Like the layman I'm burning for answers too - but to different questions.
I don't care how or why Susan Lim could have asked such outrageous prices. It's easy to understand how someone like Susan Lim could have asked the going prices that she did. Just put yourself in her shoes for an instant.
In her head she was "up there" with the best in the world. The much-touted Medical Hub of singapore had arrived in her mind, and she was the epicenter.
Her corporate website proclaims that common knowledge splattered all over wikipedia, and the web, thanks to unifem and the australian high commission - that she is the first surgeon to perform a successful liver transplant in asia.
Trawl back through time and reality emerges. The first liver transplants in Asia - living donor related (1989) and cadaveric (1964) - were done by the Japanese.
Susan Lim performed the first liver transplant in Singapore - not Asia. And she did it when she was young - in her mid thirties, as a young consultant.
Look still deeper and you will see the names of the three surgeons who were members in the team she "led". All of them Professors, all old enough to be her father (kind of), "assisting" her through one of the most difficult operations known to medicine. And suddenly the picture becomes much, much clearer.
Conjecture? A favourite amongst favourites, public recognition, going private.
Sounds a bit like a Taiwanese medical drama...
I don't know Dr Lim personally, and I don't think I'd care to after reading her reproduction of erroneous claims to regional fame.
She strikes me as someone driven to market herself at all costs. Someone selfish and self-centered.
This is what the public resentment really centered about - doctors aren't meant to be selfish or money-faced! They swore the Hippocratic oath! They're all meant to be paupers and Saints who toil without rest, and live hand to mouth until they die from it!!
Well fuck you. Doctors are people too, same as you are. And if you had the means to make big bucks - and if you ran a big business involving marketing yourself - you'd probably go the same way Susan Lim did. Don't kid yourself.
Granted, a larger proportion of medics don't than average, and not through want of talent. Medicine does weed out the oddballs that prioritize the needs of others over their own, and are willing to try to help alleviate suffering by forgoing some of their own pleasures of the flesh. That's what the "rigorous selection" is for, innit? But no system is perfect... and bear in mind that it's still just a job. In the same way that not all politicians are noble, not all models brainless, and not all lawyers incorrigible - not all doctors are blathering goody two-shoes who buy breakfast for their impoverished C-class patients every day and serve it on a silver platter, balanced precariously on bended knee.
Having said that, Dr Lim achieved her aim - she got to where she was through hard work and aggressive marketing and one (or two?) misleading claims - but this doesn't detract from the act that she got There. People came to her - rich people, like the Bruneian Sultanate. That alone shouts volumes about her regional reputation.
And frankly, if she was on the level - world best, patronized by royalty - then she had every damn right to charge the way she did. The UK surgeon who charged five hundred thousand pounds for two days consultation with this same patient -- two days -- why isn't anyone wondering about that? Why - because the white man must have been a world expert of course. His time was valuable.
So too, was Susan Lim's. She is an expert - in her patients' eyes - as much a world expert as Woffles Wu. So she charged tens of millions of dollars - so what? This was a very demanding patient that treated her more as a personal retainer than a consultant surgeon. The patient-doctor relationship was skewed towards client-consumer from the start. Respect appeared to be a one-way street. The patient demanded, the patient received.
Dr Lim claims she made her fees clear to her patient beforehand. The patient spent years prior to her death paying exorbitant fees apparently without complaint. This appears to corroborate those claims.
And everyone knows that when you do favours for asian royalty you get kickbacks. Perhaps Dr Lim doesn't have a thing for camels, Maserati's or expensive wine and just likes cold hard cash - we'll never know. This sort of stuff doesn't come out in court.
At the end of the day, this was a mutual agreement between doctor and patient. You treat me like a servant, take me away from work, and endanger my eyes - well sod you, I'll charge you like the royalty you are. (Just doing a House.)
Dr Lim did what all of us wish we could when dealing with our own patients from hell. And I kind-of applaud her, while hating her for it at the same time. I can empathize with her, even though I don't agree and certainly wouldn't have done it myself.
Was what she did so wrong? Step away from your pre (mis) conceptions of saints and doctors, and Hippocratic oaths (which just says we shall do no harm... and well. Taking money from a willing, very, very rich donor isn't exactly doing harm... Oh but wait, but the patient died! Surely that's evidence of harm! Think again. The woman had cancer. She was dying from the get-go. A recurrence? Was there curative surgery that... failed? Bollocks. You get cancer, you get cured, it comes back - them's the breaks. That's just bad luck and statistics, not a failure of the physician.) and look at it anew with unbiased eyes, from the view of a healthcare professional.
Does Susan deserve to be "disciplined" for entering into a mutual agreement with a willing patient? Did she deceive the patient in any way? Is it even overcharging when your patient is pre-warned about exorbitant costs and wants to go ahead? Would anyone bat an eye if Dr Lim had been a lawyer, or a businesswoman? Or a minister?
How much do the doctors-turned-ministers earn before they "fall from grace" and accept their paycuts to don the white short-sleeved shirt and long pants again? How do you think they were earning such big bucks before signing up for their one true calling? By seeing thousands of patients a day -- or charging big bucks to a privileged few?
And why, why on earth would the SMC build a case against it's own public image?
That's what bugs me the most. Why in the blue blazers would the one organization that was created with the sole purpose of protecting the profession seek to encite the public against itself? What could it have taken to bring this about?
One more thing.
1) Susan Lim sends bill to Royal family
2) Royal family complains to Ministry of Health
3) Ministry of Health assigns Singapore Medical Council to mediate
4) SMC raises disciplinary hearing
5) Hearing dissolved - allegations of prejudice
6) Susan Lim brings SMC to court to prevent hearing being raised again
7) Press involved
Hmm. Which one doesn't quite fit in there, one wonders? Which ones are closed-door events, and which open to the public?
Let's take a look at the key players.
Salma Khalik and Prof Satku aren't strangers to each other. Let's see what Prof Satku had to say about her reporting style, even if it was oblique. Not... exactly the best of friends, eh.
I've seen it said on forums that poor Prof Satku is a victim himself, removed from his position of power as Registrar to the SMC (hmm. once director medical services. Registrar must be a step up?) because the Men in White are staging some kind of cover up. The poor deluded fools.
Perhaps what Susan Lim herself has to say about Prof Satku can shed some light on his abrupt reassignment of duties, and why a new position - non-constitutional - was created and legalized expressly for this trial.
Does anybody smell a warm, fuzzy, long-tailed mammal?
Saturday, September 25, 2010
In Fairness
While talking to the other half it struck me that no, it wasn't always like this. Being a doctor wasn't always rough - I enjoyed my housemanship.
Pause. Crickets chirping, and somewhere in the background the sound of locally-trained claws coming unsheathed.
Sure, I did my housemanship overseas where everyone's a wimp and nobody there works as hard as we do here, etcetcetc, people actually go out and drink on wednesday evenings and show up bleary eyed the next day for work, shock horror.
And horror of horrors we started work at 8.30 am, long after sunrise (especially in summer when the sun came up at four).
No horror stories there of people trudging to work at 6 am and leaving at 9-10 pm, sometimes midnight. No whinging about the tedium of running around ad nauseum arranging scans and taking bloods etcetc.
The thing is, we did work till late - not every day perhaps, but often enough. I remember well still being on the wards at 8.30 pm and bumping into my urology sister Cid who was also working past her hours and laughing about it. I remember how the other housemen used to be there too, and when the NHS started enforcing the calman act how we used to change into civvies and go on working.
There was something different about the feel of it all; we did it for our patients, whom we knew well and actually gave a damn about, and for the sense of cameraderie we felt for each other. We were happy.
It's the whole rat in an electrified cage thingie; the houserats here are trapped against their will receiving electric shocks unpredictably. Depression sets in.
We dictated our own suffering, we opted when to suffer and when not to, and we justified our pain in our heads as sacrifice, for other people so they wouldn't have to hurt so much.
I was happy as an SHO too, working crazy shifts that had me walking home in the wee hours past frozen lakes and leaving footprints in the snow. Same story.
The truth is being a doctor isn't all doom and gloom, and it isn't all drudgery and tedium.
I watch my housemen constantly losing their struggle day to day, and I watch myself occasionally berating them for not getting things done quickly enough, and I can't help but think maybe it doesn't have to be like this... Maybe there's some way to fix this mess. Maybe we could start work a little later, maybe enforce laws to restrict doctors' working hours -- transforming overtime into an act of volunteerism and selflessness. Maybe we'd be surprised at how good we really can be, at heart... instead of dictating that anyone failing to make the cut as a tireless mule is a "failure". But as each day passes yesteryear fades in memory and I begin to forget the way it used to be...
I'm still happy being a doctor, from time to time. I love stitching little things together, and I love being senselessly irradiated as I twiddle some wire down a long, narrow tube. But there's the crux - "from time to time".
In fairness, maybe it's possible to float through medicine on goodwill, selflessness and happy thoughts -- just not here, not now.
Pause. Crickets chirping, and somewhere in the background the sound of locally-trained claws coming unsheathed.
Sure, I did my housemanship overseas where everyone's a wimp and nobody there works as hard as we do here, etcetcetc, people actually go out and drink on wednesday evenings and show up bleary eyed the next day for work, shock horror.
And horror of horrors we started work at 8.30 am, long after sunrise (especially in summer when the sun came up at four).
No horror stories there of people trudging to work at 6 am and leaving at 9-10 pm, sometimes midnight. No whinging about the tedium of running around ad nauseum arranging scans and taking bloods etcetc.
The thing is, we did work till late - not every day perhaps, but often enough. I remember well still being on the wards at 8.30 pm and bumping into my urology sister Cid who was also working past her hours and laughing about it. I remember how the other housemen used to be there too, and when the NHS started enforcing the calman act how we used to change into civvies and go on working.
There was something different about the feel of it all; we did it for our patients, whom we knew well and actually gave a damn about, and for the sense of cameraderie we felt for each other. We were happy.
It's the whole rat in an electrified cage thingie; the houserats here are trapped against their will receiving electric shocks unpredictably. Depression sets in.
We dictated our own suffering, we opted when to suffer and when not to, and we justified our pain in our heads as sacrifice, for other people so they wouldn't have to hurt so much.
I was happy as an SHO too, working crazy shifts that had me walking home in the wee hours past frozen lakes and leaving footprints in the snow. Same story.
The truth is being a doctor isn't all doom and gloom, and it isn't all drudgery and tedium.
I watch my housemen constantly losing their struggle day to day, and I watch myself occasionally berating them for not getting things done quickly enough, and I can't help but think maybe it doesn't have to be like this... Maybe there's some way to fix this mess. Maybe we could start work a little later, maybe enforce laws to restrict doctors' working hours -- transforming overtime into an act of volunteerism and selflessness. Maybe we'd be surprised at how good we really can be, at heart... instead of dictating that anyone failing to make the cut as a tireless mule is a "failure". But as each day passes yesteryear fades in memory and I begin to forget the way it used to be...
I'm still happy being a doctor, from time to time. I love stitching little things together, and I love being senselessly irradiated as I twiddle some wire down a long, narrow tube. But there's the crux - "from time to time".
In fairness, maybe it's possible to float through medicine on goodwill, selflessness and happy thoughts -- just not here, not now.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
The Retelling
Talking to a friend of a friend the other day, or rather was being plied by him for answers about what it was like to be a doctor.
Listening to him tell me he wants to make a difference, and help where he can, when he can puts me in mind of a different time and place...
I was him once, all earnesty and bright eyed, waggy-tailed sincerity. An army of old men telling me to be prepared - do you really really want this; you must really want this, because the sky's the limit but the sky has a low ceiling... a legion of old men couldn't dampen my hopes.
A panel of four interviewers listening intently while I tell them just Why; tell them about how my father (whom I love a great deal but just can't bring myself to show it - it's just how I was raised and who I am now) treated my grandmother in her last days as she succumbed slowly and painfully to the ravages of hepatocellular carcinoma; watching his stoic silence as he put up her morphine, watching how he made the long trek across the island every day to be there with her after work... watching as the life drained out of both of them day by day made me realise I wanted to be like him; I wanted to be Good. Perhaps it showed in my eyes as I babbled incoherently, who knows : but the interview panels wanted me. And I wanted them, because they didn't throw me tired, bitter lines like "Why Do you Want to be a Doctor aside from Saving lives and All that Crap"... but simply wanted to know about me, and why I wanted what I did, as much as I did.
Cut back to present day, and I'm telling him : this fuzzy feeling you have right now isn't enough; it will melt away - it's inevitable. We can't be that person all the time, and as time passes you'll be that person less and less. You need something more... you just have to really, really want this; i'm mindful how I was told the same thing once upon a lifetime ago, and I thought secretly, but I'm not like you, I'll be different... and I secretly pitied the doctor on the other side of the conversation intimating that he was burning out; I'm not like you, I won't falter... I know I really, really want this.
And I realise how futile it all is; or perhaps I'm just choosing the words wrong.
So for those of you hopeful bunnies for whom its not too late, and for the rest who I would like to share this with - S, I wish I could have told you this since you told me what being a vet was like, and Agent J, who's busy saving the world right now and loves me enough to feel outraged on my behalf...
Being a doctor is getting that phone call after 3 gruelling hours of medical statistics made Hard (ie taught all wrong) and racing back to hospital at ten pm to fly into OT. Not because you want to impress the boss, or even because of a sense of duty to help him out while he vanquishes the monster, nor even because you owe it to this poor patient whose liver just keeps packing up post liver transplant, but because you need to know what went wrong, and you need to learn how to fix it; because you need to be there, for no particular reason. You just do.
Being a doctor is scrubbing out at one am, and gazing glassy eyed at the desolate, deserted road stretching out before you.
Getting home and eating cold carbonara out of the fridge because you're so damn hungry you can't wait the two minutes it takes to nuke it back to life. And marvelling at how divine it tastes - cream is such a wonderful, wonderful thing!
Dropping your clothes in a trail behind you like Hansel and Gretal did (well, perhaps those were tidbits and not clothes, but clothes would make for a more exciting story, no?) as you meander towards the toilet (say hello, late-night cockroach) to wash the sebum off your face and out of your eyes.
Flopping into bed and picking up that biostats book because time is short, and tomorrow is another day - and thinking Thank God this is me having an Easy Time, imagine if I was full-time right now.
And yet feeling - yes, this is what I want. It sucks ass, and some of my friends are being paid triple my salary and don't have to fork out thousands of dollars for radiation protection wear. For high powered operating binocular spectacles. For all sorts of things the government will shriek at when I try to claim it from them.
And said friends are working maybe half the total number of hours I am each week.
But it doesn't matter, because this is... me.
Listening to him tell me he wants to make a difference, and help where he can, when he can puts me in mind of a different time and place...
I was him once, all earnesty and bright eyed, waggy-tailed sincerity. An army of old men telling me to be prepared - do you really really want this; you must really want this, because the sky's the limit but the sky has a low ceiling... a legion of old men couldn't dampen my hopes.
A panel of four interviewers listening intently while I tell them just Why; tell them about how my father (whom I love a great deal but just can't bring myself to show it - it's just how I was raised and who I am now) treated my grandmother in her last days as she succumbed slowly and painfully to the ravages of hepatocellular carcinoma; watching his stoic silence as he put up her morphine, watching how he made the long trek across the island every day to be there with her after work... watching as the life drained out of both of them day by day made me realise I wanted to be like him; I wanted to be Good. Perhaps it showed in my eyes as I babbled incoherently, who knows : but the interview panels wanted me. And I wanted them, because they didn't throw me tired, bitter lines like "Why Do you Want to be a Doctor aside from Saving lives and All that Crap"... but simply wanted to know about me, and why I wanted what I did, as much as I did.
Cut back to present day, and I'm telling him : this fuzzy feeling you have right now isn't enough; it will melt away - it's inevitable. We can't be that person all the time, and as time passes you'll be that person less and less. You need something more... you just have to really, really want this; i'm mindful how I was told the same thing once upon a lifetime ago, and I thought secretly, but I'm not like you, I'll be different... and I secretly pitied the doctor on the other side of the conversation intimating that he was burning out; I'm not like you, I won't falter... I know I really, really want this.
And I realise how futile it all is; or perhaps I'm just choosing the words wrong.
So for those of you hopeful bunnies for whom its not too late, and for the rest who I would like to share this with - S, I wish I could have told you this since you told me what being a vet was like, and Agent J, who's busy saving the world right now and loves me enough to feel outraged on my behalf...
Being a doctor is getting that phone call after 3 gruelling hours of medical statistics made Hard (ie taught all wrong) and racing back to hospital at ten pm to fly into OT. Not because you want to impress the boss, or even because of a sense of duty to help him out while he vanquishes the monster, nor even because you owe it to this poor patient whose liver just keeps packing up post liver transplant, but because you need to know what went wrong, and you need to learn how to fix it; because you need to be there, for no particular reason. You just do.
Being a doctor is scrubbing out at one am, and gazing glassy eyed at the desolate, deserted road stretching out before you.
Getting home and eating cold carbonara out of the fridge because you're so damn hungry you can't wait the two minutes it takes to nuke it back to life. And marvelling at how divine it tastes - cream is such a wonderful, wonderful thing!
Dropping your clothes in a trail behind you like Hansel and Gretal did (well, perhaps those were tidbits and not clothes, but clothes would make for a more exciting story, no?) as you meander towards the toilet (say hello, late-night cockroach) to wash the sebum off your face and out of your eyes.
Flopping into bed and picking up that biostats book because time is short, and tomorrow is another day - and thinking Thank God this is me having an Easy Time, imagine if I was full-time right now.
And yet feeling - yes, this is what I want. It sucks ass, and some of my friends are being paid triple my salary and don't have to fork out thousands of dollars for radiation protection wear. For high powered operating binocular spectacles. For all sorts of things the government will shriek at when I try to claim it from them.
And said friends are working maybe half the total number of hours I am each week.
But it doesn't matter, because this is... me.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Legacy
The thing about blogs is that they immortalize us.
The last time I spoke to Slinky she was still with The Boy; she was worrying about the future and where things were going. That's how long ago it was.
Reading Slinky's posts about Labradorboy, and Captain Starlight (although it gets too a bit too intimate and iccky for comfort) I can't help but marvel at how much happened in the span of a year.
The Straits Times article didn't make any mention of Celina Chua being a blogger; I suppose being a straight cut-and-paste job from the Australian newspiece it wouldn't have done...
The thing about blogs is they immortalize us - but usually only an impression of us, whether it be that part we want to be best known for, or whether it be that part in us that we wish existed, or want the world to believe really exists... Online personas are like that... Look over a long enough period of time and the cracks in the mask start to show.
Sometimes we write down what we really think, sometimes we hide what we think for fear of persecution or ridicule. For some they're vehicles to advertise their "faces" or their lifestyles, but for some others they're private journals laid bare to the world for all to see.
I guess, as House puts it, everybody lies. And almost everybody has an agenda.
But once in a while people just write - about their lives, their loves, their pasts and presents, their doubts about the future and the things that make them laugh and cry... and yes, perhaps as some of Singapore's "top bloggers" are wont to say, these people aren't really bloggers.
Perhaps they're something else, because who knows what a blogger really is in these crazy mixed-up days?
These people, the way they write... their blogs pay them tribute after they're gone. They capture their essence in some way, and let you know who they really were. They make you feel and empathise with the writers, even through that one-way looking glass of yesterday. And perhaps they make you wish you had known the writer a little better.
And I realize again what I realized a while ago: that even though I had not been happy in years, even though I am chronically sleep-deprived and exams are in two weeks, even though I'm always broke and I have no idea where my future is headed, I am happy with my life. -- Slinky, Saturday October 31, 2009
I'm glad you were, Slinky. I'm glad.
Be well, now.
The last time I spoke to Slinky she was still with The Boy; she was worrying about the future and where things were going. That's how long ago it was.
Reading Slinky's posts about Labradorboy, and Captain Starlight (although it gets too a bit too intimate and iccky for comfort) I can't help but marvel at how much happened in the span of a year.
The Straits Times article didn't make any mention of Celina Chua being a blogger; I suppose being a straight cut-and-paste job from the Australian newspiece it wouldn't have done...
The thing about blogs is they immortalize us - but usually only an impression of us, whether it be that part we want to be best known for, or whether it be that part in us that we wish existed, or want the world to believe really exists... Online personas are like that... Look over a long enough period of time and the cracks in the mask start to show.
Sometimes we write down what we really think, sometimes we hide what we think for fear of persecution or ridicule. For some they're vehicles to advertise their "faces" or their lifestyles, but for some others they're private journals laid bare to the world for all to see.
I guess, as House puts it, everybody lies. And almost everybody has an agenda.
But once in a while people just write - about their lives, their loves, their pasts and presents, their doubts about the future and the things that make them laugh and cry... and yes, perhaps as some of Singapore's "top bloggers" are wont to say, these people aren't really bloggers.
Perhaps they're something else, because who knows what a blogger really is in these crazy mixed-up days?
These people, the way they write... their blogs pay them tribute after they're gone. They capture their essence in some way, and let you know who they really were. They make you feel and empathise with the writers, even through that one-way looking glass of yesterday. And perhaps they make you wish you had known the writer a little better.
And I realize again what I realized a while ago: that even though I had not been happy in years, even though I am chronically sleep-deprived and exams are in two weeks, even though I'm always broke and I have no idea where my future is headed, I am happy with my life. -- Slinky, Saturday October 31, 2009
I'm glad you were, Slinky. I'm glad.
Be well, now.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Farewell
I first met her online, in the immediate aftermath of the last breakup when I was feeling a little distraught and betrayed, and the gradual creeping realization that I'd been a terrible judge of character - of my own volition - and loved and trusted someone who I shouldn't even have been friends with was starting to set in.
I was at turns bitter, disappointed and resigned, and was spending a lot of time hanging around the lab working on a project because of the quiet and solitude it offered me away from trivial thoughts of red flags that I had ignored, balances in relationships, people taking other people for granted, and whether it was inevitable to stray when absolute trust was gifted; I needed to do.
I think it was a Sunday afternoon; I remember the evening sun streaming in. I messaged her on a whim, she was one of the strangers on my gchat, friend of a friend, and author of a blog which I liked to visit from time to time.
She was studying for an exam - either path or physiology - but took the time out to listen and offer what comfort she could. We spoke in between doing our work far past sundown and got to know each other. I remember she was funny, humorous and a good listener. And that she was happy - so happy - to be chasing down her dream of becoming a veterinarian, under all the growly resentment of having to mug for the malignant "basic" science exam-monsters that I once slew myself.
Everyday life got in the way, and we spoke less and less frequently. She flew back once and rang me up, and we came within a hair's breadth of meeting up for a coffee, but our schedules were just a little too busy and it didn't quite happen.
Life went on, and she became The Person who Posted Funny Snips about Being Assaulted by Horses and other Farm Animals on my facebook wall. I took it for granted that she would always be there, and that we would meet someday in the distant future; that she was a stone's throw away on gchat and sms. I treated her the way I treat most of my friends, which is poorly.
I saw the post by one of our mutual friends on facebook yesterday while I was dozing off in the tea room waiting for the operation to start; I followed the link and read the newspaper article. And somewhere along the way the pieces finally fell into place, in my muggy post-call, food-deprived head. My God, this person - this faintly familiar firstnamelastname - was Her. Double whammy, She was dead.
Dead in the worst possible way, at the prime of her life, in a trivial moment that cost her her life, driving her family back to the airport, the unlucky sole non-survivor of a tragic accident, dying on site just as help arrived with her family incapacitated all around her. Five weeks away from graduation, from attaining her dream.
Dead and gone. Her facebook wall is flooding over with sadness, with people pouring out their grief about missing her and hoping that she rests in peace; that's what bubbly, cheerful, brave people get when they die.
It's just not enough.
What they deserve is life; to be going on doing all the things that we loved and knew she loved doing.
Goodbye Slinky. We never met you and I, face to face, but you were one of the few good people I'm honoured to call "friend".
I'll miss you.
I was at turns bitter, disappointed and resigned, and was spending a lot of time hanging around the lab working on a project because of the quiet and solitude it offered me away from trivial thoughts of red flags that I had ignored, balances in relationships, people taking other people for granted, and whether it was inevitable to stray when absolute trust was gifted; I needed to do.
I think it was a Sunday afternoon; I remember the evening sun streaming in. I messaged her on a whim, she was one of the strangers on my gchat, friend of a friend, and author of a blog which I liked to visit from time to time.
She was studying for an exam - either path or physiology - but took the time out to listen and offer what comfort she could. We spoke in between doing our work far past sundown and got to know each other. I remember she was funny, humorous and a good listener. And that she was happy - so happy - to be chasing down her dream of becoming a veterinarian, under all the growly resentment of having to mug for the malignant "basic" science exam-monsters that I once slew myself.
Everyday life got in the way, and we spoke less and less frequently. She flew back once and rang me up, and we came within a hair's breadth of meeting up for a coffee, but our schedules were just a little too busy and it didn't quite happen.
Life went on, and she became The Person who Posted Funny Snips about Being Assaulted by Horses and other Farm Animals on my facebook wall. I took it for granted that she would always be there, and that we would meet someday in the distant future; that she was a stone's throw away on gchat and sms. I treated her the way I treat most of my friends, which is poorly.
I saw the post by one of our mutual friends on facebook yesterday while I was dozing off in the tea room waiting for the operation to start; I followed the link and read the newspaper article. And somewhere along the way the pieces finally fell into place, in my muggy post-call, food-deprived head. My God, this person - this faintly familiar firstnamelastname - was Her. Double whammy, She was dead.
Dead in the worst possible way, at the prime of her life, in a trivial moment that cost her her life, driving her family back to the airport, the unlucky sole non-survivor of a tragic accident, dying on site just as help arrived with her family incapacitated all around her. Five weeks away from graduation, from attaining her dream.
Dead and gone. Her facebook wall is flooding over with sadness, with people pouring out their grief about missing her and hoping that she rests in peace; that's what bubbly, cheerful, brave people get when they die.
It's just not enough.
What they deserve is life; to be going on doing all the things that we loved and knew she loved doing.
Goodbye Slinky. We never met you and I, face to face, but you were one of the few good people I'm honoured to call "friend".
I'll miss you.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Apathy
Life passes by, and suddenly it seems I'm teetering on the brink of senility forgetting which day of the week it is. Give me another minute and I'll be on the other side of the looking glass, the guy in the hospital bed wondering why he's in hospital as hypoxia eats away the last vestiges of his sense and sensibility.
I remember what it was like to be a houseman; I really do. And I remember all the times I spent with L and A and D (hmm. my three closest friends. Left anterior descending... laugh) wondering about what we would be when we grew up.
I remember falling in... like... (because first reaction's always denial when it's real innit) with ***** surgery, impressionable baby houseman that I was. But there were so many possibilities then, and we all of us fancied ourselves a little bit of a House ourselves, a little bit of a Carter... Even bits physician and cool ER physician. No committments, just trial and error, a series of torrid affairs and blah relationships with subdisciplines, a life squandered. Come full circle, here I am again for real now after shopping thrice around the block for something else I could fall in like with and coming up nearly empty.
There are a few things I like, and they center about fine work; not because I fancy myself an artist but because there's something wonderful about sitting down and losing a few hours of your life doing something that feels slightly beyond your grasp and capabilities... and getting there against your own expectations.
Cruel irony then that thanks to the boss's excellent teaching I found myself flying through a laparoscopic operation today when in contrast I spent the rest of the day labouring on my own through much smaller operations.
All very boring.
Take home message, time flies, buildings collapse, people die, bad shit happens, and we turn into old farts.
I'm becoming a stereotype, blogging about work all the time. Work is becoming my life. Everything I feared, once upon a lifetime ago when I was roaming the streets of London as a free man are here and now.
And strangely, it's so very hard to care.
******
The other half is following xx's blog, and keeping me posted about her wedding and how her posts are blatent advertorials, her comments about expecting only the best if she has to pay for stuff because everything's given to her free these days, the rags to riches fairytale and forgotten roots, etcetcetc.
I find myself saying, well she wanted all this and she got it; good for her... and finding it... somehow unsurprising. Hard to really care.
And, well, really. Good for her... on to more interesting news...
I remember what it was like to be a houseman; I really do. And I remember all the times I spent with L and A and D (hmm. my three closest friends. Left anterior descending... laugh) wondering about what we would be when we grew up.
I remember falling in... like... (because first reaction's always denial when it's real innit) with ***** surgery, impressionable baby houseman that I was. But there were so many possibilities then, and we all of us fancied ourselves a little bit of a House ourselves, a little bit of a Carter... Even bits physician and cool ER physician. No committments, just trial and error, a series of torrid affairs and blah relationships with subdisciplines, a life squandered. Come full circle, here I am again for real now after shopping thrice around the block for something else I could fall in like with and coming up nearly empty.
There are a few things I like, and they center about fine work; not because I fancy myself an artist but because there's something wonderful about sitting down and losing a few hours of your life doing something that feels slightly beyond your grasp and capabilities... and getting there against your own expectations.
Cruel irony then that thanks to the boss's excellent teaching I found myself flying through a laparoscopic operation today when in contrast I spent the rest of the day labouring on my own through much smaller operations.
All very boring.
Take home message, time flies, buildings collapse, people die, bad shit happens, and we turn into old farts.
I'm becoming a stereotype, blogging about work all the time. Work is becoming my life. Everything I feared, once upon a lifetime ago when I was roaming the streets of London as a free man are here and now.
And strangely, it's so very hard to care.
******
The other half is following xx's blog, and keeping me posted about her wedding and how her posts are blatent advertorials, her comments about expecting only the best if she has to pay for stuff because everything's given to her free these days, the rags to riches fairytale and forgotten roots, etcetcetc.
I find myself saying, well she wanted all this and she got it; good for her... and finding it... somehow unsurprising. Hard to really care.
And, well, really. Good for her... on to more interesting news...
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
sigh
It's been a while.
Enough time to witness some bad things go down and wonder about healthcare and doctors in general in sunnyland. And to watch my boss recoil for fear of rocking the boat / repeating previously failed outcomes, and realise that perhaps one day i'll be like that too.
Listening to someone tell me today that I ought to complain to MOM about my seven day work week I felt like laughing.
And just tonight....
sitting down all ready for dinner, then the telephone call... we want to send for your case; we'll call you when we're sending ok?
hmm enough time for a shower then.
shower... riing.... hello? your patient is in OT now.
fume.
helter skelter pell mell back to work (twenty min, record time) dash in to OT, and .. voila, the gas men are only just wheeling the patient in to start the spinal.
sigh.
Enough time to witness some bad things go down and wonder about healthcare and doctors in general in sunnyland. And to watch my boss recoil for fear of rocking the boat / repeating previously failed outcomes, and realise that perhaps one day i'll be like that too.
Listening to someone tell me today that I ought to complain to MOM about my seven day work week I felt like laughing.
And just tonight....
sitting down all ready for dinner, then the telephone call... we want to send for your case; we'll call you when we're sending ok?
hmm enough time for a shower then.
shower... riing.... hello? your patient is in OT now.
fume.
helter skelter pell mell back to work (twenty min, record time) dash in to OT, and .. voila, the gas men are only just wheeling the patient in to start the spinal.
sigh.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Without a clue
Yesterday's news was all about a diplomat who allegedly ran down three people, killing one. Mainstream media went orgasmic, going to the extent of casting a verdict even before the trial had commenced (and in all likelihood will never begin thanks to diplomatic immunity). It was the kind of behaviour you'd expect from bloggers acting amateur sleuths (nancy drew without a clue) but not from people tasked with some form of responsible journalism. It reminded me how our supposed bastion of information is at the end of the day just another tabloid catering to the whims of a few.
Found out about the incident retrogradely; one of the consultants mentioned in passing on new year's eve that someone was getting the "gift of life" in emergency theater (ie a transplant). Didn't take much to connect the dots as more information came to light.
Badness begets badness. The perp who hit and ran deserves to be brought to justice whoever it was. But the lynch mob jumping the gun and pointing fingers with bloggers at the helm ought to be brought to task too.
The reality of the world is that neither will happen. Such is life.
*****
Found out about the incident retrogradely; one of the consultants mentioned in passing on new year's eve that someone was getting the "gift of life" in emergency theater (ie a transplant). Didn't take much to connect the dots as more information came to light.
Badness begets badness. The perp who hit and ran deserves to be brought to justice whoever it was. But the lynch mob jumping the gun and pointing fingers with bloggers at the helm ought to be brought to task too.
The reality of the world is that neither will happen. Such is life.
*****
Friday, December 4, 2009
The Wheel of Time
A cathartic moment as I was bringing a couple of the fledglings through a sebaceous cyst excision the other day...
I remember back when I was first starting out at an un-named district general hospital, and how the MO(S) used to talk me through the op before each op, and then observe me struggling and take over for a bit to show me a trick or two. I still feel like the same inept rookie sometimes, even doing something as simple as an excision biopsy - but I've learnt a few tricks through the years to make things easier for myself, and I know enough to guide my baby MOs back on track when they're so certain that sebaceous cyst with that almost unnoticeable scar-distorted punctum is a lipoma...
... and then it struck me that I'm the other guy now. Perhaps more patient than KR had been, or perhaps less. Perhaps spoon-feeding too much, or perhaps taking over too-often. I don't know. It doesn't really matter anyhow.
I thought to myself as I drove home how it feels like I learnt most of my basic surgical techniques in day surgery a lifetime ago, prompted along by veteran nurses itching to go home, and how lucky the kids are nowadays that we make it a point to always be there with them till they're ready to fly solo... and then I realise that one day those kids will probably be feeling the same way too, driving home from a long day's work, or not.
Learning how to do angioplasties today from M, realizing that one day I might well be the one teaching the rookie how to do something as basic as set a peripherally-inserted-central-line... something he said sank in through my haze of trying to look calm in the midst of my (hopefully) concealed panic and bewilderment at an unfamiliar routine - "they come back. They always come back."
He was talking about stenoses reoccurring in blood vessels, in arteries clogging up again after ballooning.
But somewhere in the disjoint mess of my head I know he's right - everything comes back in the end. Everything comes full circle. Life goes on, the scripts keep writing and unwriting themselves.
I remember back when I was first starting out at an un-named district general hospital, and how the MO(S) used to talk me through the op before each op, and then observe me struggling and take over for a bit to show me a trick or two. I still feel like the same inept rookie sometimes, even doing something as simple as an excision biopsy - but I've learnt a few tricks through the years to make things easier for myself, and I know enough to guide my baby MOs back on track when they're so certain that sebaceous cyst with that almost unnoticeable scar-distorted punctum is a lipoma...
... and then it struck me that I'm the other guy now. Perhaps more patient than KR had been, or perhaps less. Perhaps spoon-feeding too much, or perhaps taking over too-often. I don't know. It doesn't really matter anyhow.
I thought to myself as I drove home how it feels like I learnt most of my basic surgical techniques in day surgery a lifetime ago, prompted along by veteran nurses itching to go home, and how lucky the kids are nowadays that we make it a point to always be there with them till they're ready to fly solo... and then I realise that one day those kids will probably be feeling the same way too, driving home from a long day's work, or not.
Learning how to do angioplasties today from M, realizing that one day I might well be the one teaching the rookie how to do something as basic as set a peripherally-inserted-central-line... something he said sank in through my haze of trying to look calm in the midst of my (hopefully) concealed panic and bewilderment at an unfamiliar routine - "they come back. They always come back."
He was talking about stenoses reoccurring in blood vessels, in arteries clogging up again after ballooning.
But somewhere in the disjoint mess of my head I know he's right - everything comes back in the end. Everything comes full circle. Life goes on, the scripts keep writing and unwriting themselves.
Monday, October 19, 2009
For Life
"I've slept with a few hot chicks in my time..." he said.
"How about you? How many girls have you fucked?"
I looked at him, and thought : this is him when he's sober?
"You don't need my stamp of approval." I said.
"Damn right I don't, I've already got her, and I'm marryig her" he said, missing the point entirely.
It turns my stomach sometimes, interacting with elements of "high society" in Singapore.
*****
I've made some monumental mistakes in my time, loved people I shouldn't have bothered with and hurt people I loved; told a few misguided then-white lies that have caused too much pain, spoken too bluntly and caused more.
I remember things wrong, I'm emotional, I'm fraught with fallibility.
But if there's one mistake I don't ever want to make, it's to rush headlong into a marriage destined for disaster.
Because marriage is for life... not for-ever, but for life. For a shared life that ought to be special to two people.
Not for anything else, wealth, fame or power. But for life.
"How about you? How many girls have you fucked?"
I looked at him, and thought : this is him when he's sober?
"You don't need my stamp of approval." I said.
"Damn right I don't, I've already got her, and I'm marryig her" he said, missing the point entirely.
It turns my stomach sometimes, interacting with elements of "high society" in Singapore.
*****
I've made some monumental mistakes in my time, loved people I shouldn't have bothered with and hurt people I loved; told a few misguided then-white lies that have caused too much pain, spoken too bluntly and caused more.
I remember things wrong, I'm emotional, I'm fraught with fallibility.
But if there's one mistake I don't ever want to make, it's to rush headlong into a marriage destined for disaster.
Because marriage is for life... not for-ever, but for life. For a shared life that ought to be special to two people.
Not for anything else, wealth, fame or power. But for life.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
What's Hot and What's Not
Hypothetical scenario.
Imagine a bloke. Goes out clubbing to meet girls. Meets and flirts with a lot of girls, gets it on with one or two, hooks up with one, gets her believing that they're committed to each other.
After an undefined and variable while decides that he is stuck in a rut, starts going clubbing and flirting with other girls again ("acting single", a nurse I knew once put it) even while continuing to claim love and committment to the first girl, perhaps gets it on with one or two, then loses the first girl for the second. Feels no remorse about it, because after all he didn't love the first girl, and it's not really cheating right... and it's all about me! Repeat cycle ad-nauseum, over and over again.
What words come to mind?
Certainly to mine, all sorts of unpleasant ones.
Now turn it all on its head.
The other half has been following the blog of a girl who's just like that. (of course, she goes out with blokes and not birds.) She thinks that must make the girl hot.
I guess it's one of those societal stereotypes...
Sometimes we have the same discussion about one of her some-kind-of-friends who is kinda skanky and puts out a lot; boasts to her about being fingered by strangers in public etc, and for some crazy reason the other half thinks makes her hot.
I look at said friend and see someone who just isn't hot. She's just... cheap. And a little sad. I feel a little sad for her.
It's the same with the girl in the story above. Sad.
These people call themselves hot. They desperately want to think of themselves as hot, and they want the world to see them that way too.
But at heart they're unhappy with themselves. They're insecure. They're just... ill.
It strikes me as just a little funny, and unfair in an odd way that we automatically peg guys who "play" as bastards, but girls who "play"... must be hot to play. Men get moral judgements, women get assumptions into the way they look.
Hot isn't about being able to sleep with a lot of men at once, or to turn many of them over like an autumn gust of wind turns over leaves.
You can be ugly. Short. Fat. Have weird cheekbones. A weird nose. Bad teeth. And still sleep with a lot of men / women, or run through girl/boy friends like water. If you're undiscerning, if you're cheap, if you don't really care... the point is. If you don't treat relationships like they're special. If you don't treat your partners like they're special. If you only treat yourself like you're special. Then you get all that...
You don't have to be hot. Just very, very self-centered.
Hot is... simply about being hot.
Hot is in the way a girl's eyes light up when she laughs, the way her hair falls across her face, the shape of her lips, the way she moves. Perhaps the shape of her body, the length of her legs, perhaps the way she speaks.
Hot is something unconscious that you simply have, or that you learnt, or that you were born with.
I never thought either of the two girls above were hot. I thought one of them was attractive, once - but that was because she wore an elaborate mask, built entirely out of lies.
*********
It's easy to play; it's easy to run through women like water, or men like a hot knife through butter. You just have to show that you want to play, and that you don't really... care. You just have to... put out.
S wanted me to play; she wanted me to be the guy in the book. She thought I might need lessons, that it would do something good for my self confidence.
She didn't quite get it right.
I don't need to play. I don't even want to.
One of J's friends - an image consultant who creates "players" - was rather acerbic when she was asked to work on me, once upon a lifetime ago. She said but you're already right, just the way you are...
I know I could play; it would be so very, very easy. I know the words; I know how to time the little smiles, I know how to make that kind of eye contact. I know how to reach out and touch at just the right moment, I know how to lie.
I don't want to. It wouldn't... give me anything worth remembering.
******
A friend of mine once told me how lonely he was; he was fucking a different girl almost every night. He went out clubbing, and got drunk, and the half-drunk girls thought he was kinda cute; best of all he gave off the vibe - I'm not serious, I don't want to know you, I just want a fuck.
And so he got fucked; it was that simple. Some of it's mind games, some of the girls wanted to "win", to change him. Some of them just wanted to fuck, and recognised a commitment free lay when they saw him. He got lots of action with all sorts of chicks, some hot, some not, some rather... cough... underaged.
On the surface he was happy, carefree, well-fucked.
Sometimes he'd confide in me though, and that was when he'd talk about how he hated his life, how little meaning it all had, how he missed The Girl, the one girl he went so crazy about he wrote poetry - imagine that! - and how they spent all summer together and didn't touch that much, and how he fell in love with her.
******
Fucking a stranger isn't a special memory. Regardless of how hot he or she was.
Special memories aren't the ones that are just about "me, me me."
Special memories are the ones that are shared. The things that really give us a sense of fulfillment are the things we share, the moments when we touch the lives of others, and have our own lives touched in return. Moments of actually giving a damn about someone other than yourself.
I think human beings are hard-wired that way; I think it all ties in with that unspoken fear of being alone, living alone, dying alone without meaning anything to anyone else. Of passing through this life unremembered, and being forgotten.
Imagine a bloke. Goes out clubbing to meet girls. Meets and flirts with a lot of girls, gets it on with one or two, hooks up with one, gets her believing that they're committed to each other.
After an undefined and variable while decides that he is stuck in a rut, starts going clubbing and flirting with other girls again ("acting single", a nurse I knew once put it) even while continuing to claim love and committment to the first girl, perhaps gets it on with one or two, then loses the first girl for the second. Feels no remorse about it, because after all he didn't love the first girl, and it's not really cheating right... and it's all about me! Repeat cycle ad-nauseum, over and over again.
What words come to mind?
Certainly to mine, all sorts of unpleasant ones.
Now turn it all on its head.
The other half has been following the blog of a girl who's just like that. (of course, she goes out with blokes and not birds.) She thinks that must make the girl hot.
I guess it's one of those societal stereotypes...
Sometimes we have the same discussion about one of her some-kind-of-friends who is kinda skanky and puts out a lot; boasts to her about being fingered by strangers in public etc, and for some crazy reason the other half thinks makes her hot.
I look at said friend and see someone who just isn't hot. She's just... cheap. And a little sad. I feel a little sad for her.
It's the same with the girl in the story above. Sad.
These people call themselves hot. They desperately want to think of themselves as hot, and they want the world to see them that way too.
But at heart they're unhappy with themselves. They're insecure. They're just... ill.
It strikes me as just a little funny, and unfair in an odd way that we automatically peg guys who "play" as bastards, but girls who "play"... must be hot to play. Men get moral judgements, women get assumptions into the way they look.
Hot isn't about being able to sleep with a lot of men at once, or to turn many of them over like an autumn gust of wind turns over leaves.
You can be ugly. Short. Fat. Have weird cheekbones. A weird nose. Bad teeth. And still sleep with a lot of men / women, or run through girl/boy friends like water. If you're undiscerning, if you're cheap, if you don't really care... the point is. If you don't treat relationships like they're special. If you don't treat your partners like they're special. If you only treat yourself like you're special. Then you get all that...
You don't have to be hot. Just very, very self-centered.
Hot is... simply about being hot.
Hot is in the way a girl's eyes light up when she laughs, the way her hair falls across her face, the shape of her lips, the way she moves. Perhaps the shape of her body, the length of her legs, perhaps the way she speaks.
Hot is something unconscious that you simply have, or that you learnt, or that you were born with.
I never thought either of the two girls above were hot. I thought one of them was attractive, once - but that was because she wore an elaborate mask, built entirely out of lies.
*********
It's easy to play; it's easy to run through women like water, or men like a hot knife through butter. You just have to show that you want to play, and that you don't really... care. You just have to... put out.
S wanted me to play; she wanted me to be the guy in the book. She thought I might need lessons, that it would do something good for my self confidence.
She didn't quite get it right.
I don't need to play. I don't even want to.
One of J's friends - an image consultant who creates "players" - was rather acerbic when she was asked to work on me, once upon a lifetime ago. She said but you're already right, just the way you are...
I know I could play; it would be so very, very easy. I know the words; I know how to time the little smiles, I know how to make that kind of eye contact. I know how to reach out and touch at just the right moment, I know how to lie.
I don't want to. It wouldn't... give me anything worth remembering.
******
A friend of mine once told me how lonely he was; he was fucking a different girl almost every night. He went out clubbing, and got drunk, and the half-drunk girls thought he was kinda cute; best of all he gave off the vibe - I'm not serious, I don't want to know you, I just want a fuck.
And so he got fucked; it was that simple. Some of it's mind games, some of the girls wanted to "win", to change him. Some of them just wanted to fuck, and recognised a commitment free lay when they saw him. He got lots of action with all sorts of chicks, some hot, some not, some rather... cough... underaged.
On the surface he was happy, carefree, well-fucked.
Sometimes he'd confide in me though, and that was when he'd talk about how he hated his life, how little meaning it all had, how he missed The Girl, the one girl he went so crazy about he wrote poetry - imagine that! - and how they spent all summer together and didn't touch that much, and how he fell in love with her.
******
Fucking a stranger isn't a special memory. Regardless of how hot he or she was.
Special memories aren't the ones that are just about "me, me me."
Special memories are the ones that are shared. The things that really give us a sense of fulfillment are the things we share, the moments when we touch the lives of others, and have our own lives touched in return. Moments of actually giving a damn about someone other than yourself.
I think human beings are hard-wired that way; I think it all ties in with that unspoken fear of being alone, living alone, dying alone without meaning anything to anyone else. Of passing through this life unremembered, and being forgotten.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Bad Apples
Much ado about nothing :
Singapore's best choice for the much-coveted crown of Miss Singapore World apparently goes, quite simply, to the best-looking contestant. (bad run this year, hey)
Nevermind if she turns out to have kleptomaniac tendancies and an almost-criminal-conviction for fraud waived for the "fact" that she's schizophrenic to boot.
Aside from the unspoken but obvious point that Sandra Bullock made a lifetime ago ("...world peace?") that International Beauty Queens are as much about an idea as an appearance... about quasi-diplomacy and representation on a world-stage of... many things... about choosing someone with that something extra special from a crowd of incredibly beautiful women, well.
Ris Low isn't exactly beautiful. Perhaps good-looking at best (though not to my eye).
Nor does she possess a heart of gold (it takes an even measure of self-centredness, malice, and sheer stupidity to try to pull off credit card fraud on an ex-customer, methinks) and she doesn't have an impeccable integrity, or, now, even the semblance of one.
She doesn't have poise and grace (most commonly conveyed through cool-headedness, wit, and clear diction)
In short, she doesn't have anything remotely special, that might make her stand half a chance in a crowd full of women possessing at least some measure of the above - who have been SELECTED by their countries BECAUSE they possess qualities that stand out.
I can only hazard how she won her crown (hint, it involves a lot of Boomzing).
I don't know. I think I'd choose a well-spoken plain-Jane (plain but not ugly of course) with grace, poise, wit, intelligence, kindness and... a lack of a criminal record... to represent Singapore any day over a... badly-spoken plain-Jane with... none of the above.
I might even go with the first girl over a beautiful but inarticulate, self-centered, graceless, witless and stupid ah-lian... simply because it's all about putting our best foot forwards to the world. As opposed to our worst.
Yes, it's choosing to represent Singapore in a certain light, in a way that perhaps it's not. Our people aren't well-spoken (thank you, Beyonce) as a whole. Yes, it's all wayang.
But every other country out there is doing just the same. And none of those girls who'll appear on stage on the fateful day looks remotely like the average girl from her country, nor sounds or thinks like them. And none of them has a known criminal record.
Because it's impossible to fall in love with someone who is grasping, selfish and deceitful, if even for an instant, sitting at a desk with three other judges - or sitting halfway across the world in a sofa with the remote in your hand.
And that's what Miss World is about - the paragon of womanhood that all humanity falls in love with.
*****
People who lie, who cheat, who steal, who use, who hurt - selfish, self-serving people.
They are common. They are all around. They are the monsters within us set free by owners who love themselves too much.
*****
Talking to a friend the other night we found ourselves agreeing that you must never try to see the best in some people. And that it becomes too late if it gets personal.
I used to want to believe in people. I thought that perhaps being placed in positions of responsibility over other people made people think a certain way, and that maybe it was because people weren't doing much to contribute to other people's lives that they became self-centered and selfish enough to hurt others for their self-gain. Maybe if they did, they would change for the better. I used to think that criminals, given half a chance could be reformed, and that you can't help being born the way you look, the parents you were born to, the neighbourhood you grew up in... maybe if things were different then, well who knows.
I realise now that I was making excuses for them.
The truth is what I learnt living and working in London for the many years that I did.
Some people just steal because they want to - because it gives them a sense of achievement.
Some people just want so much to win, or to be loved, or to be worshipped... anything at all -- that they are willing to lie, cheat, or hurt others for their own gain.
That's just the way it goes.
Some people are just bad. You can't help them - and they don't want to be helped anyway - they want to be bad. And You must never try to see the best in them. Because if you do and it gets personal, then it's too late.
Other people are just ill. You can't help them. They will die ill. That's just the way it is.
Said friend says he can suss out within minutes who is "real" and who is not, and that the real people are few and far between.
They are; and they are precious.
These are people we are the richer for knowing, for however long we know them.
These are people who were good, or who chose to try to be good, or who turned good from bad - because they wanted to.
These are people to keep close; these are people worth remembering.
I came to the (now obvious) cathartic conclusion when I was very young, perhaps ten or so - that we only live life once. And then I had a host of existential worries about the lack of meaning of life; the lack of a reason for life at all, for order in a world doomed to chaos, for darkness in a world of fading light. I felt an overwhelming need to live my life "right", to tread carefully in places of light and avoid the darkness, to never take a step wrong. I was afraid that the darkness would infect and take some meaning away from who I thought of as "me". I thought that in that final moment just before we died... in that moment when we thought back and remembered our pasts, that that would be the clincher. That would be when I knew whether my life had meant anything to me, or not, or whether I had wasted and cheapened it.
Today I still think that the meaning in life is in how we live it. And I know first-hand that the darkness does rub off on me. Perhaps it does detract from some of my life's meaning, perhaps the bad people steal some of it away for themselves.
How we remember it is entirely up to us.
We can choose to remember the good people, and to not dwell on the bad. To remember the people who gave us truths, and forget the ones who lied to us.
******
Sometimes the other half worries that I might still love my past.
Perhaps it was because I was badly hurt when I met her, and having never been betrayed herself she equates the pain and confusion I felt then with love. I was "emo", and
unhappy.
Two of my ex girlfriends lied to and cheated on me.
One had the decency to come clean about it to me; the other didn't have the decency to even admit it to herself.
It hurt me both times, a lot. And it taught me something - about how to react to betrayal, I think. I'm still not quite sure. But it made a few things clearer in my head.
The reasons it hurts when lies start becoming exposed are - as they like to say in medicine - multifactorial. Firstly it shows you just how bad a judge of character you have been - these were bad people, not just at a moment in time but since they were born, the telltale clues were all there all along; Secondly it leaves you wondering just where and when truth ended and falsehood began - or if there was ever any truth at all. Lastly it makes you feel like your life has been cheapened, and some meaning taken away from you.
It's a different feeling to just breaking up with someone on honest terms. It's more than just disappointment, and it has nothing to do with residual love.
It's bad. Evil, almost.
The thing that lingers in your heart and mind isn't the person, but the betrayal; the pain they wrought on someone else without care - while claiming they loved them.
The people are easy to forget; they were betrayers and can never be trusted again. People like this are no good for friendship - much less love.
I made the mistake of trying to be "good" and to do the right thing and find forgiveness in my heart both times. Once I wound up being infected by the darkness and telling what I thought were white lies in the process.
Ironically in the immediate aftermath of the later-day ex I reestablished - if only for a while - contact with the "old testament"-ex and it was her words : these things (ie girls betraying) happen to you because you are too weak - which made me realise just how these people think. (and had me feeling "dirty" for even bothing to reply to that ex again)
How blind they are to the people around them. It takes infinitely more strength to live for someone else than to live for yourself; to inconvenience yourself for their benefit; to back down when you are right and they are wrong. How full of conceit and twisted they must be to feel that things like this are about the strong and the weak, and to borrow a phrase from Ris Low - "all about me!" (...Boomz)
I realised then that the solution is neither forgiveness, nor hatred, nor hoping for karmic retribution in the future, nor being assimilated and going rogue in return.
The solution is moving on and away, forgetting the past. Re-minisce, no more.
Singapore's best choice for the much-coveted crown of Miss Singapore World apparently goes, quite simply, to the best-looking contestant. (bad run this year, hey)
Nevermind if she turns out to have kleptomaniac tendancies and an almost-criminal-conviction for fraud waived for the "fact" that she's schizophrenic to boot.
Aside from the unspoken but obvious point that Sandra Bullock made a lifetime ago ("...world peace?") that International Beauty Queens are as much about an idea as an appearance... about quasi-diplomacy and representation on a world-stage of... many things... about choosing someone with that something extra special from a crowd of incredibly beautiful women, well.
Ris Low isn't exactly beautiful. Perhaps good-looking at best (though not to my eye).
Nor does she possess a heart of gold (it takes an even measure of self-centredness, malice, and sheer stupidity to try to pull off credit card fraud on an ex-customer, methinks) and she doesn't have an impeccable integrity, or, now, even the semblance of one.
She doesn't have poise and grace (most commonly conveyed through cool-headedness, wit, and clear diction)
In short, she doesn't have anything remotely special, that might make her stand half a chance in a crowd full of women possessing at least some measure of the above - who have been SELECTED by their countries BECAUSE they possess qualities that stand out.
I can only hazard how she won her crown (hint, it involves a lot of Boomzing).
I don't know. I think I'd choose a well-spoken plain-Jane (plain but not ugly of course) with grace, poise, wit, intelligence, kindness and... a lack of a criminal record... to represent Singapore any day over a... badly-spoken plain-Jane with... none of the above.
I might even go with the first girl over a beautiful but inarticulate, self-centered, graceless, witless and stupid ah-lian... simply because it's all about putting our best foot forwards to the world. As opposed to our worst.
Yes, it's choosing to represent Singapore in a certain light, in a way that perhaps it's not. Our people aren't well-spoken (thank you, Beyonce) as a whole. Yes, it's all wayang.
But every other country out there is doing just the same. And none of those girls who'll appear on stage on the fateful day looks remotely like the average girl from her country, nor sounds or thinks like them. And none of them has a known criminal record.
Because it's impossible to fall in love with someone who is grasping, selfish and deceitful, if even for an instant, sitting at a desk with three other judges - or sitting halfway across the world in a sofa with the remote in your hand.
And that's what Miss World is about - the paragon of womanhood that all humanity falls in love with.
*****
People who lie, who cheat, who steal, who use, who hurt - selfish, self-serving people.
They are common. They are all around. They are the monsters within us set free by owners who love themselves too much.
*****
Talking to a friend the other night we found ourselves agreeing that you must never try to see the best in some people. And that it becomes too late if it gets personal.
I used to want to believe in people. I thought that perhaps being placed in positions of responsibility over other people made people think a certain way, and that maybe it was because people weren't doing much to contribute to other people's lives that they became self-centered and selfish enough to hurt others for their self-gain. Maybe if they did, they would change for the better. I used to think that criminals, given half a chance could be reformed, and that you can't help being born the way you look, the parents you were born to, the neighbourhood you grew up in... maybe if things were different then, well who knows.
I realise now that I was making excuses for them.
The truth is what I learnt living and working in London for the many years that I did.
Some people just steal because they want to - because it gives them a sense of achievement.
Some people just want so much to win, or to be loved, or to be worshipped... anything at all -- that they are willing to lie, cheat, or hurt others for their own gain.
That's just the way it goes.
Some people are just bad. You can't help them - and they don't want to be helped anyway - they want to be bad. And You must never try to see the best in them. Because if you do and it gets personal, then it's too late.
Other people are just ill. You can't help them. They will die ill. That's just the way it is.
Said friend says he can suss out within minutes who is "real" and who is not, and that the real people are few and far between.
They are; and they are precious.
These are people we are the richer for knowing, for however long we know them.
These are people who were good, or who chose to try to be good, or who turned good from bad - because they wanted to.
These are people to keep close; these are people worth remembering.
I came to the (now obvious) cathartic conclusion when I was very young, perhaps ten or so - that we only live life once. And then I had a host of existential worries about the lack of meaning of life; the lack of a reason for life at all, for order in a world doomed to chaos, for darkness in a world of fading light. I felt an overwhelming need to live my life "right", to tread carefully in places of light and avoid the darkness, to never take a step wrong. I was afraid that the darkness would infect and take some meaning away from who I thought of as "me". I thought that in that final moment just before we died... in that moment when we thought back and remembered our pasts, that that would be the clincher. That would be when I knew whether my life had meant anything to me, or not, or whether I had wasted and cheapened it.
Today I still think that the meaning in life is in how we live it. And I know first-hand that the darkness does rub off on me. Perhaps it does detract from some of my life's meaning, perhaps the bad people steal some of it away for themselves.
How we remember it is entirely up to us.
We can choose to remember the good people, and to not dwell on the bad. To remember the people who gave us truths, and forget the ones who lied to us.
******
Sometimes the other half worries that I might still love my past.
Perhaps it was because I was badly hurt when I met her, and having never been betrayed herself she equates the pain and confusion I felt then with love. I was "emo", and
unhappy.
Two of my ex girlfriends lied to and cheated on me.
One had the decency to come clean about it to me; the other didn't have the decency to even admit it to herself.
It hurt me both times, a lot. And it taught me something - about how to react to betrayal, I think. I'm still not quite sure. But it made a few things clearer in my head.
The reasons it hurts when lies start becoming exposed are - as they like to say in medicine - multifactorial. Firstly it shows you just how bad a judge of character you have been - these were bad people, not just at a moment in time but since they were born, the telltale clues were all there all along; Secondly it leaves you wondering just where and when truth ended and falsehood began - or if there was ever any truth at all. Lastly it makes you feel like your life has been cheapened, and some meaning taken away from you.
It's a different feeling to just breaking up with someone on honest terms. It's more than just disappointment, and it has nothing to do with residual love.
It's bad. Evil, almost.
The thing that lingers in your heart and mind isn't the person, but the betrayal; the pain they wrought on someone else without care - while claiming they loved them.
The people are easy to forget; they were betrayers and can never be trusted again. People like this are no good for friendship - much less love.
I made the mistake of trying to be "good" and to do the right thing and find forgiveness in my heart both times. Once I wound up being infected by the darkness and telling what I thought were white lies in the process.
Ironically in the immediate aftermath of the later-day ex I reestablished - if only for a while - contact with the "old testament"-ex and it was her words : these things (ie girls betraying) happen to you because you are too weak - which made me realise just how these people think. (and had me feeling "dirty" for even bothing to reply to that ex again)
How blind they are to the people around them. It takes infinitely more strength to live for someone else than to live for yourself; to inconvenience yourself for their benefit; to back down when you are right and they are wrong. How full of conceit and twisted they must be to feel that things like this are about the strong and the weak, and to borrow a phrase from Ris Low - "all about me!" (...Boomz)
I realised then that the solution is neither forgiveness, nor hatred, nor hoping for karmic retribution in the future, nor being assimilated and going rogue in return.
The solution is moving on and away, forgetting the past. Re-minisce, no more.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Changes
One of the peculiarities of the singaporean healthcare system is the "black tag". Scaling the rungs of the responsibilitity-ladder earns you a nondescript black name badge that looks suspiciously similar to the low-cost primary school "monitor" tags we used to get as kids. People invariably wear them, it's a sort-of status-symbol cum insignia of "rank" - donning the tag confers on the wearer some form of intangible power which most patients and relatives probably don't know - much less care - about, but which identifies you to another doctor as a "senior" doctor.
The irony is that the nametags for junior doctors are actually kind of nice - sure, the hospital logo tends to rub off over time, but it's actually aesthetically quite appealing.
I've been watching one of my colleagues making the switch to his black tag with a little amusement; shortly after passing his surgical exam he - in typical fashion for him - took to wearing his new badge (almost with... wild abandon...) after his previous badge ostensibly "went missing" in his bosses car. Nevermind that he's wearing the trappings without having to don the associated mantle of responsibility of registrarship... the tag makes him happy, and well, we all share his happiness at taking that step towards the rest of his life. We all know how proud he is of, well, himself. :)
I've been slowly suffocating over the past fortnight after abruptly turning into the registrar-in-lieu for my team, our previous registrar having taken the opportunity to scamper for freedom once I swapped into her team. I don't begrudge her her holiday - I've been doing this a mere fortnight and I'm nearly running on empty... I can't begin to imagine how tired she must be after six months on the job... and I knew what I was in for when I decided to commit my life to my subspecialty. Still... the body is tired, the joints actually hurt (gee) and my back is aching... it's all somatisation I know, all in my head. But staying back till eleven in the evening post-call to chop off bits of my patients because there's nobody else who can do it, and because if I wait too long they're going to die... dozing off multiple times on the drive home... it's sobering.
I'm loth to put on my black tag. I'm not "official" yet, I'm still me. And I'm still weak; I want what little time I have left to zone-out before all this becomes all too real (as it is... right now...) and I can't wait for my reg to come back from her holiday... It's exciting to be handed that instrument that till-now only the consultant would wield intra-op and be told to go ahead and throw that stitch, and it's rewarding to see that anastomosis hold-up. It's.... a little frightening to be told to carry-on without senior support in ops which I've only ever watched or been brought-through once or twice before, but never actually flown solo in... and really rewarding to throw that final stitch and know that my patient ought to be just-fine. And it's humbling to be confronted with a retroperitoneal, retrocaecal appendix and be caught in a dilemma -- to play the registrar you're not-quite-yet and open the retroperitoneum -- or to call for senior support because if anything goes wrong you're still technically a junior - and realise that you're really not all that brave after all.
I guess I'm different from The Gentleman. I'll wear my blocky black tag when I have to - when I'm taking my team on the round when maybe, just maybe it makes that much of a difference when I'm doing battle with that nice old irish man's ex-SPG battleaxe of a wife who's inconsiderately called me out of operating theater just so she can try to browbeat me into keeping him in hospital - against medical advice and against his own wishes - because she needs time to formulate a concerted campaign in her quest to lodge a complaint about the ward nurses. But in between, well, I really like my old tag, and I still like cutting out little tiny skin lumps and creating cosmetically pleasing scars in the quiet sanctitude of the day-surgery OT making small talk with my nurses and patients.
The irony is that the nametags for junior doctors are actually kind of nice - sure, the hospital logo tends to rub off over time, but it's actually aesthetically quite appealing.
I've been watching one of my colleagues making the switch to his black tag with a little amusement; shortly after passing his surgical exam he - in typical fashion for him - took to wearing his new badge (almost with... wild abandon...) after his previous badge ostensibly "went missing" in his bosses car. Nevermind that he's wearing the trappings without having to don the associated mantle of responsibility of registrarship... the tag makes him happy, and well, we all share his happiness at taking that step towards the rest of his life. We all know how proud he is of, well, himself. :)
I've been slowly suffocating over the past fortnight after abruptly turning into the registrar-in-lieu for my team, our previous registrar having taken the opportunity to scamper for freedom once I swapped into her team. I don't begrudge her her holiday - I've been doing this a mere fortnight and I'm nearly running on empty... I can't begin to imagine how tired she must be after six months on the job... and I knew what I was in for when I decided to commit my life to my subspecialty. Still... the body is tired, the joints actually hurt (gee) and my back is aching... it's all somatisation I know, all in my head. But staying back till eleven in the evening post-call to chop off bits of my patients because there's nobody else who can do it, and because if I wait too long they're going to die... dozing off multiple times on the drive home... it's sobering.
I'm loth to put on my black tag. I'm not "official" yet, I'm still me. And I'm still weak; I want what little time I have left to zone-out before all this becomes all too real (as it is... right now...) and I can't wait for my reg to come back from her holiday... It's exciting to be handed that instrument that till-now only the consultant would wield intra-op and be told to go ahead and throw that stitch, and it's rewarding to see that anastomosis hold-up. It's.... a little frightening to be told to carry-on without senior support in ops which I've only ever watched or been brought-through once or twice before, but never actually flown solo in... and really rewarding to throw that final stitch and know that my patient ought to be just-fine. And it's humbling to be confronted with a retroperitoneal, retrocaecal appendix and be caught in a dilemma -- to play the registrar you're not-quite-yet and open the retroperitoneum -- or to call for senior support because if anything goes wrong you're still technically a junior - and realise that you're really not all that brave after all.
I guess I'm different from The Gentleman. I'll wear my blocky black tag when I have to - when I'm taking my team on the round when maybe, just maybe it makes that much of a difference when I'm doing battle with that nice old irish man's ex-SPG battleaxe of a wife who's inconsiderately called me out of operating theater just so she can try to browbeat me into keeping him in hospital - against medical advice and against his own wishes - because she needs time to formulate a concerted campaign in her quest to lodge a complaint about the ward nurses. But in between, well, I really like my old tag, and I still like cutting out little tiny skin lumps and creating cosmetically pleasing scars in the quiet sanctitude of the day-surgery OT making small talk with my nurses and patients.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Freedom
Words of wisdom to the inexperienced : never argue with your examiners.
Life after the final furlong, aka the membership examination... goes on. Going out for drinks and meals without a textbook in hand comes like a refreshing breeze after a stagnant summer's night; and then the "arrows" come flying thick and fast, and suddenly there's just too much to do all at the same time, amidst preparing to host the local examinations, applying for advanced training, and returning to on-calls.
Speaking of which, after a month's reprieve from calls, the First Call was absolutely exhausting. The body forgets these things, the way a night without any sleep on your feet feels (which is completely different to a night on the floor or in bed reading a textbook in an adrenaline-charged last-minute frenzy). At one point my back, feet and calves hurt so much I began to wonder if perhaps I was experiencing sciatica...
In older news, I remember a colleague and newfound friend de-stressing with me after work and chatting about life in general; for some (mm. some time back, but perhaps it was after we met the chest-drain bottle product rep) he volunteered that pharma reps are generally manipulative people, because in his opinion people self-select into their jobs. Once upon a time I might have argued that maybe it's the other way around; jobs change people. Looking around at my other medical colleagues, at him, and at myself, I realised he was right. People self-select into jobs; not just doctors, lawyers, drug reps... but pretty much every and any one. There's a reason orthopods all drive flashy cars, and why general surgeons don't...
Maybe it's the ones who selected wrong the first time who cross-careers... maybe... just maybe I'd be happy sending people to jail instead. Hmmmm...
Life after the final furlong, aka the membership examination... goes on. Going out for drinks and meals without a textbook in hand comes like a refreshing breeze after a stagnant summer's night; and then the "arrows" come flying thick and fast, and suddenly there's just too much to do all at the same time, amidst preparing to host the local examinations, applying for advanced training, and returning to on-calls.
Speaking of which, after a month's reprieve from calls, the First Call was absolutely exhausting. The body forgets these things, the way a night without any sleep on your feet feels (which is completely different to a night on the floor or in bed reading a textbook in an adrenaline-charged last-minute frenzy). At one point my back, feet and calves hurt so much I began to wonder if perhaps I was experiencing sciatica...
In older news, I remember a colleague and newfound friend de-stressing with me after work and chatting about life in general; for some (mm. some time back, but perhaps it was after we met the chest-drain bottle product rep) he volunteered that pharma reps are generally manipulative people, because in his opinion people self-select into their jobs. Once upon a time I might have argued that maybe it's the other way around; jobs change people. Looking around at my other medical colleagues, at him, and at myself, I realised he was right. People self-select into jobs; not just doctors, lawyers, drug reps... but pretty much every and any one. There's a reason orthopods all drive flashy cars, and why general surgeons don't...
Maybe it's the ones who selected wrong the first time who cross-careers... maybe... just maybe I'd be happy sending people to jail instead. Hmmmm...
Saturday, February 21, 2009
O_o
After arguing with the nice white haired old lady who was in for an investigation the next day about why I needed to take her blood...
Old Lady : "Ni jie hun le mah?" (are you married)
Re-Me : "... err hai mei you..." (no)
Old Lady : "Ni hen piao liang wor..." (you're very beautiful)
Re-Me : "... um. xie xie." (err. thanks.)
Whips out needle, and is taking blood in silence.
Old Lady : "Lang zai... lang zai..." (pretty boy.)
Re-Me : "..." (...)
Yep, that's me. Old lady killer.
Old Lady : "Ni jie hun le mah?" (are you married)
Re-Me : "... err hai mei you..." (no)
Old Lady : "Ni hen piao liang wor..." (you're very beautiful)
Re-Me : "... um. xie xie." (err. thanks.)
Whips out needle, and is taking blood in silence.
Old Lady : "Lang zai... lang zai..." (pretty boy.)
Re-Me : "..." (...)
Yep, that's me. Old lady killer.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Who's That Girl (in progress)
I can't help comparing this to this .
What strikes me most isn't that the two sites share a suspicious similarity but how completely differently they come across to the reader.
Check out the first link. Patrick Moberg saw the "girl of his dreams" on the subway in 2007. He was attracted to her but didn't get to speak with her, so he sought her out by writing on his blog about her, and asking strangers to help him find her.
The thing about his site - NYGirlOfMyDreams.com isn't how eloquent or effusive he is... it's simply how sweetly and sincerely the whole thing was done. It's rather light on text, and pretty in-your-face. There's so much to like there, from the unstated happy-puppy "I met you and I'm bowled over by you" sentiment, to the cutesy line drawings of the girl which betray just how much he noticed about her that he liked (fancy braided hair, flower in hair... etc), what she looked like (rosy cheeks) and just what she was doing (writing in a notepad... awwww) at the time.
This is a man who's either madly in love, or a nutjob stalker with the whole set of Ginsu knives.
But then there's more, he draws himself in too. No self-praise, but a simple self description to try to jog her memory a bit, skinny, tall, and he drew what he was wearing. And then there's that almost self-deprecating, slightly rueful little arrow pointing to his head that says "not insane".
It's just sooo cute; the guy knows he's lost it, and he knows everyone else will know it when they see his site, but he doesn't care... he just wants her.
He leaves his name and his phone number (and email address) for her, laying bare his whole life to all sorts of unpleasant repercussions. He takes a flying leap...
If I'd seen the girl, I'd have called him. Hell, if I'd been the girl (which, cough, since I'm male I couldn't have been) I'd have called him... without any reservations.
And there's more... she really did. There's that next little ecstatic post of mr happy-faced rectangle holding up a sign in joy. You know that something good happened... if only for a while, or perhaps longer.
The whole thing is almost saccharinely infused with hope and then happiness. It's really hard not to smile at.
And then there's our home-grown version, girl on bus.
(now at http://blog.girlonbus.com/)
I can't help but notice how often the word "I" appears in there.
I was labeled stalker. I was described as 'creepy'. How do I become a stalker when I've already lost her?
and
I was labeled 'despo'. Yes I'm definitely 'despo' or desperate. This is how I feel when I've lost something worthy. I have the attention from endless amounts of attractive people whom I think its worthless. If you've been wondering, yes, I'm gorgeous.
...and then
There were people who tried to find out who I am. I wouldn't mind letting you know, if you are a decent person, really. But this thing is set up by a friend who has a credit card to help me pay on behalf
... right. How much does it cost to host a domain again? $7 a month?
His next post, "lightheartedness" goes something like this :
I am taking this lightheartedly. Its like, who knows after knowing her she might disgust me or freak me out in certain ways?
Thanks again to so many of the kind people out there for the inspiring and flattering words. Thanks to those who helped in any way.
To the girl (if you have decided not to respond): I'm fine with it, but at least just tell me why. And you may also ask me to stop looking for you.
Next post on :
I've communicated with some local reporters. Some of them questioned about my identity. And they also advised that people would be more receptive if I were more open.
I tend to be a low-profile person therefore I'm not comfortable revealing personal info, especially on the internet. There are people who think that I'm not 'real'. Some even think that this could be some kind of a viral marketing. However, I need to protect my privacy. It's just simply being careful, although some people might think I must be up to no good.
Some of you might have already seen the article on me in (联合晚报) (31th Jan 2009). But just to give you a picture: I'm in my twenties, chinese and currently an undergrad.
And suddenly he's writing for an audience. About himself, being low-profile, but not, being private, but being in the paper, etc.
And then :
Like what I said in the previous post, I insist in protecting my identity (although some people still think that I'm not sincere/afraid of criticism), simply because but I'm not desperate/crazy enough to the extent of going public. Understand that some people dislike unwanted attention.
However, I did meet up with some of the reporters and had some photos taken. You might want to check out The Newpaper on Saturday the 14th, and The Straits Times on Sunday the 15th.
(Edit: For certain reasons The Straits Times did not run the story. 'D' from The Straits Times [if you are reading this] : I'm sorry to hear about it. But you're a great reporter who made me feel at ease. )
Some of you guys are right about the website being too direct and plain(not fanciful). Perhaps its because I have no hidden agenda and therefore the tendency to get my point across in a straightforward manner.
By the way, Happy Valentine's Day to all of you. Enjoy :)
The thing is, he's not writing to the girl anymore. He's not even writing for her.
He's writing for himself.
About himself.
He even went as far as to say the girl might gross him out, and that he's good looking, etcetc.
Over a month and still no girl; some of his "supporters" (and that's what it's turned into, a popularity contest) blame it on singaporean girls being this, and that, and uppity, and blah blah.
Some of the detractors think the girls will think he's a stalker, that he's creepy etc.
The truth is he's just lost the plot. The girl won't, because he's really more interested in himself now, than he is in her. This is his five minutes in the limelight, and she's just a badly drawn stick figure.
Sweet? I think not.
*****
Perhaps it just goes to show how sometimes there's a "right" way to say something, and .... a very, very wrong, in a "don't-even-go-there"-way to go about the same.
*****
ps : ... there are singaporeans that find the whole thing romantic.
sigh. I guess it's the concept that counts, not the packaging. roll eyes.
What strikes me most isn't that the two sites share a suspicious similarity but how completely differently they come across to the reader.
Check out the first link. Patrick Moberg saw the "girl of his dreams" on the subway in 2007. He was attracted to her but didn't get to speak with her, so he sought her out by writing on his blog about her, and asking strangers to help him find her.
The thing about his site - NYGirlOfMyDreams.com isn't how eloquent or effusive he is... it's simply how sweetly and sincerely the whole thing was done. It's rather light on text, and pretty in-your-face. There's so much to like there, from the unstated happy-puppy "I met you and I'm bowled over by you" sentiment, to the cutesy line drawings of the girl which betray just how much he noticed about her that he liked (fancy braided hair, flower in hair... etc), what she looked like (rosy cheeks) and just what she was doing (writing in a notepad... awwww) at the time.
This is a man who's either madly in love, or a nutjob stalker with the whole set of Ginsu knives.
But then there's more, he draws himself in too. No self-praise, but a simple self description to try to jog her memory a bit, skinny, tall, and he drew what he was wearing. And then there's that almost self-deprecating, slightly rueful little arrow pointing to his head that says "not insane".
It's just sooo cute; the guy knows he's lost it, and he knows everyone else will know it when they see his site, but he doesn't care... he just wants her.
He leaves his name and his phone number (and email address) for her, laying bare his whole life to all sorts of unpleasant repercussions. He takes a flying leap...
If I'd seen the girl, I'd have called him. Hell, if I'd been the girl (which, cough, since I'm male I couldn't have been) I'd have called him... without any reservations.
And there's more... she really did. There's that next little ecstatic post of mr happy-faced rectangle holding up a sign in joy. You know that something good happened... if only for a while, or perhaps longer.
The whole thing is almost saccharinely infused with hope and then happiness. It's really hard not to smile at.
And then there's our home-grown version, girl on bus.
(now at http://blog.girlonbus.com/)
I can't help but notice how often the word "I" appears in there.
I was labeled stalker. I was described as 'creepy'. How do I become a stalker when I've already lost her?
and
I was labeled 'despo'. Yes I'm definitely 'despo' or desperate. This is how I feel when I've lost something worthy. I have the attention from endless amounts of attractive people whom I think its worthless. If you've been wondering, yes, I'm gorgeous.
...and then
There were people who tried to find out who I am. I wouldn't mind letting you know, if you are a decent person, really. But this thing is set up by a friend who has a credit card to help me pay on behalf
... right. How much does it cost to host a domain again? $7 a month?
His next post, "lightheartedness" goes something like this :
I am taking this lightheartedly. Its like, who knows after knowing her she might disgust me or freak me out in certain ways?
Thanks again to so many of the kind people out there for the inspiring and flattering words. Thanks to those who helped in any way.
To the girl (if you have decided not to respond): I'm fine with it, but at least just tell me why. And you may also ask me to stop looking for you.
Next post on :
I've communicated with some local reporters. Some of them questioned about my identity. And they also advised that people would be more receptive if I were more open.
I tend to be a low-profile person therefore I'm not comfortable revealing personal info, especially on the internet. There are people who think that I'm not 'real'. Some even think that this could be some kind of a viral marketing. However, I need to protect my privacy. It's just simply being careful, although some people might think I must be up to no good.
Some of you might have already seen the article on me in (联合晚报) (31th Jan 2009). But just to give you a picture: I'm in my twenties, chinese and currently an undergrad.
And suddenly he's writing for an audience. About himself, being low-profile, but not, being private, but being in the paper, etc.
And then :
Like what I said in the previous post, I insist in protecting my identity (although some people still think that I'm not sincere/afraid of criticism), simply because but I'm not desperate/crazy enough to the extent of going public. Understand that some people dislike unwanted attention.
However, I did meet up with some of the reporters and had some photos taken. You might want to check out The Newpaper on Saturday the 14th, and The Straits Times on Sunday the 15th.
(Edit: For certain reasons The Straits Times did not run the story. 'D' from The Straits Times [if you are reading this] : I'm sorry to hear about it. But you're a great reporter who made me feel at ease. )
Some of you guys are right about the website being too direct and plain(not fanciful). Perhaps its because I have no hidden agenda and therefore the tendency to get my point across in a straightforward manner.
By the way, Happy Valentine's Day to all of you. Enjoy :)
The thing is, he's not writing to the girl anymore. He's not even writing for her.
He's writing for himself.
About himself.
He even went as far as to say the girl might gross him out, and that he's good looking, etcetc.
Over a month and still no girl; some of his "supporters" (and that's what it's turned into, a popularity contest) blame it on singaporean girls being this, and that, and uppity, and blah blah.
Some of the detractors think the girls will think he's a stalker, that he's creepy etc.
The truth is he's just lost the plot. The girl won't, because he's really more interested in himself now, than he is in her. This is his five minutes in the limelight, and she's just a badly drawn stick figure.
Sweet? I think not.
*****
Perhaps it just goes to show how sometimes there's a "right" way to say something, and .... a very, very wrong, in a "don't-even-go-there"-way to go about the same.
*****
ps : ... there are singaporeans that find the whole thing romantic.
sigh. I guess it's the concept that counts, not the packaging. roll eyes.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
My way
"I'd like... an iced tea, please."
She raised an eyebrow. "I think you should have the ice tea with lemonade, would you like one, it's very nice..."
"Err. Okay, I'll have an ice tea with lemonade."
"Would you like it done my way?" (two thumbs up)
"What's your way?"
"Grande, my way... its good!"
"Rigghht. Okay, I'll have it your way."
(Several seconds later)
"Yeah, it's good."
"You won't get it done this way anywhere else!"
"What, not even at another S*******?"
"Not like this, this is my way!"
"Um. okay thanks."
"Will you be sitting down here?"
"... yes?"
... bemused.
*****
Sitting here pretending to study the RAAS, and missing the assassin.
She raised an eyebrow. "I think you should have the ice tea with lemonade, would you like one, it's very nice..."
"Err. Okay, I'll have an ice tea with lemonade."
"Would you like it done my way?" (two thumbs up)
"What's your way?"
"Grande, my way... its good!"
"Rigghht. Okay, I'll have it your way."
(Several seconds later)
"Yeah, it's good."
"You won't get it done this way anywhere else!"
"What, not even at another S*******?"
"Not like this, this is my way!"
"Um. okay thanks."
"Will you be sitting down here?"
"... yes?"
... bemused.
*****
Sitting here pretending to study the RAAS, and missing the assassin.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Ironside
Her eyes on his, as they lie eye to eye, tracing the line of his face with her fingertips.
"...scary"
"... that's just the way it goes..."
"...scary"
"... that's just the way it goes..."
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