what title?

2007-06-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

Bouncing off the walls today. Ended night shift rather late and by that time it was closer to noon than night. Just feeling very restless though not in a bad way. On the way home was just thinking how good it was if I could start training in wushu again - just had the weirdest compulsion to start performing a complicated series of leaps and kicks and slashing with a sword. Not in a rampaging sort lets-see-how-many-people-i-can-kill way; rather, it's a sublimation of the agression that I believe each of us carries within. To transform something as deadly as a sword (ok, I know they use blunted swords in performances) into an artisitic form. And the freedom - leaping and flying through the air, the feel of the weighted weapon in your arm, the sound of it parting the air. Gosh, I'm really waxing lyrical about this. I miss all of it.

That was another level, though. Even at the time I traind most regularly I couldn't do most of the showy stuff. I could imagine doing it, yes, so close but out of reach. Maybe another couple of years, if I'd kept at it. I didn't though; years out of practice now and feeling terribly unfit. Sigh. I miss the spring I felt even doing something as simple as walking. The agility and flexibility that came naturally with it. I have to crouch to pick something from the floor now, and keep bumping against corners. It didn't use to be like that. I'm getting old - old, and unfit.

When I arrived at home, still feeling restless, I picked up the guitar sitting gathering dust at the corner. Yet another victim of my career - I somehow had this idea that the calluses formed from pressing the strings will interfere with my work. Heh. So I started playing, well at least it's something I could do in my living room that won't break either the furniture or my bones. Now I got the Entree from Partita 1 stuck in my head and can't get it out. Argh. I don't know which is preferable - this, or the obssession to fly through the air.

2007-05-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

The taxi driver told me that the way I pronounced "emergency" in Chinese sounded like "economy". After several tries I still did not manage to get te correct tone. Getting farther afield, it started sounding like "golden chicken", and we spent most of the journey laughing about it.

Terribly slow going today. I hate getting druggies and psychiatric patients, and of course the universe decided to introduce a few today. Yet it was interesting to observe how one fakes Parkinsonism. And even more interesting to speculate why one wants to do that. The dark, or sometimes just plain ludicrous, side of the human psyche. The adventurous part of my brain often wonders just how exciting it will be to do psych... the last frontier and all that. At other times, though, I think it'll be demoralising or plain sad. Human frailty - there is no better way to witness that than running the emergency room at the mental institute, methinks. I get the occasional encounters with te neurotic or psychotic patients and usually can't stop obsessing how and why someone turns out that way. Nature? Nurture? I had a day at the paeds psych unit as a student and it was both a baffling yet harrowing experience; at least vicariously.

There was this girl of eleven who started cutting herself. Her mom was getting a divorce and se was doing it to "exert a semblance of control in her own life", thus our tutor expounded te theoretical aspects after the session.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder what became of that girl. Paracetamol overdose at fourteen? Get panic attacks at sixteen? Turns to drugs and alcohol at seventeen? Incarcerated in a mental hospital before she reaches the age of majority?

Or maybe she managed to put that all behind her and grew up more or less normal - but what is normal anyway? One who was found by the Bureau of Statistics to have no official complaint? Who served the Greater Community, never got fired and satisfied one's employer? Had anything been wrong... *we* should certainly have heard. Indeed.

(with thanks to W. H. Auden, 'The Unknown Citizen')

2007-05-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

How strange. I just ate blue eggs.

Who'd have guessed that if one scramble an egg with red cabbage one will end up with blue eggs?

There goes the useless fact of the day.

I've been thinking of writing about people who abuse the ED as a quick-fix to get a medical cert but of course I keep postponing it. This was all thanks to the super-crowded state of the ED of a certain hospital in this nation-state - for whatever reason there were just not enough medical officers working there for the past six months, so on bad days people have to wait for four hours or more to see a doctor. Now when you are rushing to prevent the account from being in the red (and the names on the list do turn red literally when they've been waiting longer than 110 minutes) there is nothing more irritating than to see a person who obviously fakes his symptoms so that he can get a day off.

Sometimes I wonder about what it says in terms of the nationalism in this country. So all healthy males 18 years old and above have to complete 2 and half years of military service. So? You'd think it's the end of the world if you see the whiners filing through the ED door on a daily basis. We have this thing called the Sunday night fever - somehow just hours before they have to book in to camp after the weekend off they start coming in for amazingly minor symptoms just for the hope of delaying the inevitable start of the week.

I usually give them what they want. A day off? Sure, doesn't cost me to be nice. Just get out of here and stop listing all your medical factoids. What's that? you've got foot rot? How long? Since you join the army 2 years ago? Well, my dear boy, the cure is simple. It's called ORD (for those who don't live here, it stands for Operationally Ready Date. Basically the time when one completes one's national service).

Unfortunately, I think this sort of practicality kind of backfires. I don't know if the hospital develops a reputation as a soft mark, because it seems I just see more and more of them every week. It got so bad that I was suggesting half tongue-in-cheek that we should create a fast lane for these guys so that you can save time and space. Maybe a table outside the department, with a huge sign saying NS BOYS THIS WAY. Then they're given a questionnaire of the common symptoms e.g. fever ___ days, runny nose ___ days, cough ___ days, vomitting, headache, muscle ache, etc. After that they get seen by an MO at the open space - one needs only look into their throats, listen to their lungs and make sure their necks are supple. After that they get a prescription based on the symptoms they tick. Oh, and don't forget the MC. Four or more symptoms get them 2 days off, but anything more than 10 symptoms gets a penalty of no MC, because that can only mean they're faking it. Furthermore, they earn the ire of the poor MO who's got to type all their symptoms.

It's quite useful to let people know the ground rules. On a particularly bad day not so long ago, I stood near the entry of the fever facility, which is basically this wooden structure housing the febrile patients (a measure which supposedly protect the rest of the population from such things like bird 'flu), and commented rather loudly to the nurse that I'm a very pro-MC doctor because I believe one should get enough rest before the symptoms get more severe. A stitch in time saves nine and all that jazz. It's just that I hate it when people start making up symptoms in hope of garnering more sympathy, and, presumably, longer MC.

I wonder if the guys inside overheard what I was saying. That day it seemed most of everyone came up with very reasonable complaints and gave their imagination a much needed rest. Everybody got to go home fast and I was happy, too.

2007-04-12T06:26:00.000-07:00

And I saw the light at the end of the tunnel... my eyes, my eyes!

For a second there I thought I'd say goodbye to the vision in my left eye.

All of this started because it was a good shift last night. Because it was a good shift last night, I was consequently fresh and perky in the morning. Practically bouncing off the wall. And as a result of that I collared one on my colleagues who happened to be a trainee Opthalmologist and asked him for an informal consult for an eye problem I've had for years. I was expecting maybe a few lines of discussion of possible diagnoses and what sort of things I've gotta watch out for, but this colleague, bless him, told me he'd gladly examine my eyes proper.

Now when you say proper eye examination it means dilating the pupils so that whoever it it examining can get a good peek into your soul - erm, I mean, your retina.

A couple of drops of Tropicamide later and I was sitting in a darkened room while waiting for the stuff to work their full effect on my poor unsuspecting iris sphincter muscles. After a while everything became so bright and I couldn't focus sharply on anything. I grabbed a lighted torchlight in my fist and it lit up my entire hand so much I could see the veins mapped on the luminous orange background like those pictures of fetuses.

But the eye examination itself. Gosh. I've in the past sat unflinching while a chinese physician tried to manipulate a broken collarbone into a better shape but this is just... well, not painful but it's just something I could not tolerate it seemed. It was like looking directly into the sun after an eclipse - not that I have tried that since they say it would ruin your eyesight. My dear colleague, and my common sense, assured me that the people who designed those slit lamp machines would certainly not let that happen, though. After a few miserable minutes during which I could see afterimages of the vessels in my own eyes my colleague finally declared he was done - or perhaps gave up is a better word. My eye just kept drifting closed beyond my control, despite my best efforts to cooperate with instructions to keep them open.

So he wrote a referral letter filled with unfamiliar terms such as metamorphopsia and photopsia and arranged for me to go to the Eye Clinic for examination with better equipment than what we have in the ED.

All in all, it was an interesting morning.

2007-01-17T09:07:00.000-08:00

ah, 2007. another year in the making.

resolutions abound.. somehow i'm rather optimistic about this year. maybe it's the relatively increased amount of free time i have - sort of able to sort my thoughts and keep myself happy; which was hardly the case in my last posting.

this has also convinced me that eventually my career decision will be directed by such lifestyle choices. i want time to spend outside work. time to pursue my hobbies. time to spend with friends and loved ones. time to read. time to be alone. time to experiment in the kitchen. perhaps even time to join a proper choir and/or train in martial arts again (not at the same time).

2006-05-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

Playing God
- for Mr K: whichever way you choose to go, good luck be with you.

No, he's not doing very well at the moment, but we're keeping an eye on him and hopefully he will-

79 - 64 - 52 -

Ma'am, Sir, would you please wait outside.

(sh*t. Code Blue!)

ohgodhesdesaturatingstoppedbreathingnopulse-

one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-five-and
one-and-two-and-

(rumble of crash cart, schick of a curtain and we have our own little sweltering kingdom surrounded by damp curtains. you old man is our queen bee - languishing in your unconcerned stillness at the centre of frenzied activity while we, your worker bees, slave for the hatching of the next breath and the sustained pulse of artificially oxygenated blood flowing through your brain)

-fifteen

71 years old, full-house risk factors, previous stroke, no sir, he's ambulant - yes - independent
perfectly lucid he was talking to me earlier -

(crack of ribs, bouncing of the bed, face smothered by the consuming kiss of the silicone face mask of the respirator - at this age having such a wild time with a girl in bed is probably not too healthy for you)

one miligram adrenaline - resume cpr - come on, heart, you have to beat faster and harder than that - second dose adrenaline -

stop, he's coming back! BP? 130/70.

- where's the blade; someone lube the ET tube - check the balloon - suck the secretion - we'll paralyse him first he's too stiff - how's the potassium? prepare the sux, half vial, dilute with normal saline. nice and slow, that's it.

saturation 100%.

(relief)

ok, let's wheel him out.

2006-05-03T06:56:00.000-07:00

Ends and beginnings. Last day in my final posting as a trainee. That was yesterday. I'd been going to this hospital for the past four months, walking from home every morning and getting my breakfast from the coffeeshop across the road. Always the same thing - no matter how I try to deny it I suppose I'm a creature of habit after all. The man at the drinks stall knew me so well he would prepare the drink I always ordered the moment he saw me cross the road. Teh, ban sao. Tea (with milk and sugar), luke warm. Otherwise he would fill the whole cup with boiling water and I'd spend precious time trying to drink it without scalding my tongue.

So that day I walked out of the apartment wondering if I should tell the man behind the counter that I'm changing jobs - one sometimes wonders how familiar one should be with people one sees in the context of everyday life, yet who are neither an acquaintance nor a colleague. Sure enough I could stand and talk with the next person on a queue about the weather, but telling them that say, I could feel a storm approaching even when I'm indoors without access to a window, now that just feels a tad too personal. Anyway. I walked out and saw that the shop was closed. And it was still closed today. I wonder if they are undergoing renovation or maybe they have moved elsewhere.

Last day at work. The last day I could hide behind a 'P' in my registration number. P for Provisional. P for Protected. P for 'Prentice. And I always say that no matter how people try to make this line of work sounds scientific and all, it is mostly art, or rather craft, and I was an apprentice turned journeyman now.

2006-02-09T01:45:00.000-08:00

More musings from the zoo.

The people I care for can roughly be classified into three categories. One, people who have to stay and don't mind staying because they know they need the care; two, people who have to stay but don't want to; three, people who don't have to stay but want to.

The first and second categories, however, are actually extremes of a continuum.

But it's the third category of people that always raise mixed feelings in me. On one side I, like most people, find them a pest. Not only because they're probably depriving a genuinely ill person from a place, but also because they tend to be attention-seeking and present something that people in the game euphemistically call a "diagnostic problem".

However, at the same time I feel pity for them. What could possibly turn someone to be like them? There are many reasons, of course. Some obvious, some not so. I've seen one who was a homeless person, for who a bed in a hospital is a respite from the driving rain outside. He enjoys hospital food, which is no doubt a sight better than what he can get. Another person I've seen was actually wanted by the police. Yet another, was unconsciously trying to get out of national service. Some, however, have a job, a place to live, a family. One wonders what they get out of pulling all these stunts.

2006-02-05T01:01:00.000-08:00

More than a year. And thought it was just a phase, that is, until a certain park-ranger dropped a note and i realised that people do read this blog, and hey, why don't I start writing again, then?

I know some people write no matter what; I'm not one of them.

One year and so many things have changed, it's like I'm an entirely different person. Well, not entirely, since the real me, if there is such a thing, is still recognisable beneath all this worldly trappings. Or so I'd like to think. I passed my exams, I started working for real, I get a salary, I rent a place to live. And I work. Did I say work? Yes. Seventy-five hours a week if I'm lucky. Ninety or more otherwise. Yet this idea is exciting enough to drag my sleepy ass out of bed and start typing.

So here, an experiment: I want to make this a blog that even read by my closest friends will still make them wonder if it is written by someone they know. I was calculating how vague I could be, yet still make this interesting.

Name, obviously out. Nobody I know uses their real name online.

Gender, hmm. Will be more interestingly vague if I can keep that out, too, although granted it's more difficult to do in English.

Occupation. Let's see. Say I'm a carer (with apologies to Mr Ishiguro). I care for people who are unwell. I work in an institution where unwell people are put together and cared for until they're back on their feet, or dead, or until we manage to get someplace else to take care of them.

The rest is irrelevant. I'm just a human being doing what society expects me to do, doing it (I hope) decently enough, and liking it enough to hope that this is what I'l be doing for the rest of my life.

2005-01-23T06:27:00.000-08:00

wow, two days in a row. this must be some sort of record.

can barely lift my arms - just went for tae kwon do training right after being a complete couch potato for more than two months. thought i'd continue being one until the end of the semester; being a final year student is a sacrosant excuse from getting involved in anything not to do with academic work. but the instructor - classmate of mine, so the excuse didn't worth zilch - said he's going to be late so would i please lead the class in warm-up and sort or keep them busy until he arrived? being a (nominal) captain, of course i was obliged to do it.

in the end, he arrived on time, and although he said it's ok if i don't join the training, my pride didn't let me to take that escape route. an hour later, i wish i had.

2005-01-23T01:10:00.000-08:00

blogger: people of the year? even one whose turnover is a measly eight entries in a year? whatever.

was thinking of setting up a new one just for the next two months. going to write every day. must. should. ought to. though usually i never do, in the end. all the noble ambitions i forget in less than 24 hours. now if i get a dollar for each of them...

i just went through the exam schedule. first paper, an MCQ paper, on the 8th march. got a nice palpitation and i immediately grabbed my oxford handbook and read a few pages to calm down. stress is good for me; now at least i have the motivation to study.

on an entirely different note, i have two new tuition students. the universe has its own devices to present temptations in the most tempting ways. thought the two brothers would be my last students. ever.

2004-10-08T09:35:00.000-07:00

noticed that my last posting was on the 15th june. that's almost four months ago... tsk-tsk. if this were a hotmail account it'd have been deleted. which brought me to the question, why the heck am i still using my hotmail account anyway? with the measly 2 mb capacity, the pop-ups and the spam it's enough to make any decent web user run screaming. well, to asnwer my own question (who else is there to answer it otherwise? if it's any new personality of yours, it's time to visit the shrink again, you ninny!) it's prolly just a mild case of sentimentality. it's my first ever email account, opened in december 1997, the year i took my 'o' level exams, and i'm still using it until today. more than ever, in fact, but that's a story for another day. six years plus, that's quite an achivement for an email account, don't you think?

been feeling hyper for the entire evening; not strange considering i've been sleeping 10-12 hours a day for most of the week. would fall asleep before dawn and wake up around lunch time. would spend a few hours surfing or reading, nothing strenuous, and take a two-hour nap by 6pm. would wake up just before the dining hall closed, that would be at eight, and rush there with the good ol' plastic container (which came with the vietnamese noodles my sis bought some time in june, the day she was filling up some healthcare forms for the college she was going to).

if i die this week i can't blame the higher-ups for putting me in some sort of porcine hell. or perhaps heaven.

2004-06-15T23:46:00.000-07:00

a friend asked me to take photos of her wedding. she had hired a real photographer to take outdoor and studio pictures, but wanted some taken during the service as well. it was a casual job, nothing fancy. in fact, she offered me a loan of her ps digital camera for the job. i told her i'd use both her digital and my canon slr, because i want to try a hand at wedding photography.

no matter how casual the assignment is, i can't help feeling nervous. the wedding will be in november but i've started browsing for tips and techniques, and started an ever-lengthening list of equipment to buy. a decent flash, check. a longer zoom lens, check. a shutter release remote control, check. a foldable reflector, check. a soft-focus filter, check. an ND graduated filter... the list just kept growing.

well, it'll nice to get everything, but i'm going to get back to her for more information about the time and venue so i can be more selective in getting additional equipment. nevertheless, the zoom lens, a sigma 28-300 mm, and the flash, a 420EX, are indisposable. they'll cost 900 sg dollars though, and an extra 350 if i want the more powerful 550EX.

the thing about photography is, money matters. it's not like being, say, a watercolor painter, where skills matter a lot more than materials. not that i'm saying photography does not require skills; quite the opposite. though with the advent of affordable digital SLRs one observes a boom of newbie photographers who get plenty of decent pictures via trial and error rather than technical skills. one can compare the difference between learning the violin versus the harmonica as an analogy. to play the violin some basic training is needed before one can pick out a tune. the harmonica, on the other hand, allows anyone with minimal knowledge of music to start playing almost instantly. both are equally hard to play well, though.

i use a film camera. before i start shooting i've done my homework with the basics of lighting, exposure and composition. but still i need dozens, if not hundreds, of them in order to develop the necessary skills, as what every photographer worth his salt would suggest. and since i join online forums, it irks me when people pick on dust specks and other artefacts even after i've explained that i use negative film and scan the print at home. they just don't understand the inefficiency of the process since they can shoot hundreds of film, select the ones they like, delete the rest, and post the best ones on the forum.

2004-06-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

the house lizard (gecko, cecak) must be the stupidest animal on god's green earth. this is what a friend claimed a few years' ago. at the time i was still too charitable, or else hadn't found enough evidence to make my own verdict. today i found the last straw, after saving a lizard from death by drowning in a pot of swill water that someone left in the kitchenette.

when i saw the lizard it was floating belly up and i thought it was surely dead, look at that greenish tint on its pale, puffy skin. then it gulped. i went for a closer look, and the lizard suddenly jumped into action. either it was smarter than i had thought, knowing that help was at hand, or else it was much stupider, perhaps thinking that i was a predator who's going to gobble its appetising form up.

i fished it out of the scummy water with a fork (not mine, thank goodness) and suddenly realised that it was the third time in my life that i saved a lizard from certain death. the magic number. lizards are stupid.

for the sake of completeness, the other two incidences involving lizards are:

1. one starving fella thought he had stumbled into lizard heaven when he saw a flypaper full of, what else, flies. crawled up and got stuck. i had to peel it off the sticky paper.

2. found a forlorn and rather dessicated (but alive) lizard when i poured some powdered drinks out of it's foil container. finding itself at the bottom of my mug, it sprang into action by running in circles, before finally catching on to the idea that a mug has an opening at the top.

and the friend of mine, who didn't need three examples to prove the idiocy (or rather, lack of self-preservation; you don't find cocroaches getting into all these embarassing situations) of this species, once found that a kettle of water he set to boil turned into lizard stock as one managed to crawl in and got boiled to death. i never asked if he found out only after he drank the water.

2004-06-11T02:52:00.000-07:00

the time before an exam is always highly charged for me. and for most people too, for that matter. but personally, i never understand people who mope for the fact that they get a B- instead of a B. they passed, so what's the problem?! it's a different case for me, who plays at the pass/fail level. failure means retaking the test: another round of misery, or even staying back a year, which is both humiliating and costly. sometimes i wonder if this is due to some subconscious masochistic impulse. or probably it's just the gambling gene that runs strong in my family.

so, exam time equals excitement. to my consternation, it's also the time when i feel most compelled to write. i used to think it's just simple procrastination. but now i entertain the possibility that during exam time, probably owing to adrenaline overdrive, i become quite a different person. more headstrong, confident and less tolerant. certainly more opinionated. hence a boom time for writings on my observations of the human condition (both my own and others), and the education system. too bad i can't spare the time to write, as i have to read about a thousand pages in two days if i want a fair chance at passing.

and then there is also some definite reluctance to air my feelings on how things shouldn't be run in the faculty. after all, i don't have an alternative to offer and i don't want to be diagnosed with the backseat driver syndrome. not only that, i realise that the dislike is mutual. i don't like them, they don't like me; for i'm one of the problematic students who never hand up assignments on time and fail exams on a regular basis. thus the best solution, i believe, is to grin and bear it and hopefully some day soon this is going to end.

2004-05-09T08:38:00.000-07:00

i found a young pigeon, still unable to fly, on friday. kept it for two days in my room. found it dead this evening. in such a short time, i realised i'd become rather attached to it, being the sentimental sop that i am. even though the bird would have died anyway if i'd left it alone, i still feel guilty for its death. this morning it looked so lifely, flapping away as if learning to fly, and the leg that was lame was getting better i thought. i fed it and went out the whole day. when i came back around six, it was dead in its cage, covered in red ants. i don't know why it died, and that's the worst thing. was it the food i gave that killed it? was it the ants, attacking the already injured bird? (what a horrible way to die) or perhaps it was already sick at the time i found it?

i had lots of pets when i was younger and had seen many of them die for various reasons. yet it never got easier. by this age i though i'd outgrown this kind of childish attachments, but it seemed i was sadly mistaken.

2004-04-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

back home for a week or so. had my specs repaired so i had to go without them for twenty-four hours; it was a good exercise to develop empathy towards the visually impaired. i could read - barely - when the page was open 5cm away from my face. even then i got a headache after a few minutes. i typed with my nose nearly touching the keyboard (still can't touch-type after all these years). while roasting chicken i had to get a second opinion on whether it had browned enough. television was only good for the sound; might as well turned on the radio. for 24 hours i couldn't do anything useful; i'm sure learning to play songs by ear on the guitar did not count as useful work.

that's for the indoors, where i spent most of my time. with worse than 6/100 vision anyone should stay indoors in a city with such haphazard traffic. as a pedestrian you should always watch out for potholes, ditches, ruts, puddles and the rest of their extended family. never trust planks or boards laid across as a bridge to safety, if possible always let someone else use it first and see what happens. on dirt roads, watch out for loose stones. better wear an ankle guard to be on the safe side. on busy streets don't even consider the pavements safe for there are a hundred and one other uses for them other than being a convenient surface for you to stroll on. be especially careful not to stumble across babies left out there to beg for loose change. these are non-traffic-related precautions. if i get started on the traffic i won't finish my admonitions until next morning.

no matter what a mess my hometown is - high unemployment rate, lousy infrastructure, poor maintenance, corruption from top to toe - every time i come home i fall in love with it all over again. people are generally friendly and helpful, creative and resourceful. there is relatively low crime rate - people still dare open their car windows while waiting for the light to turn green at intersections. and the buskers, they must be one of the first things a visitor will notice. in one trip downtown i heard at least five different instruments and songs that varies from traditional stringed instrument to a saxophone. add to that the fact that these buskers have to approach cars at the intersection, play music and pass a can around while watching for oncoming traffic out of the corner of their eyes. the ultimate multitasking indeed.

2004-04-09T12:40:00.000-07:00

"A man began to give large doses of cod-liver oil to his Dobberman because he had been told that the stuff was good for dogs. Each day he would hold the head of the protesting dog between his knees, force its jaws open and pour the liquid down its throat.

One day the dog broke lose and spilt the oil on the floor. To the man's great surprise, it returned to lick the spoon. That is when he discovered that what the dog had been fighting was not the oil but his method of administering it."

this is one of the stories from de Mello's "the Prayer of the Frog", the closest approximation to a bible for me, agnostic that i am. was flipping through it when the story caught my eye and realisation dawned that for the past six years or so, i'd been the dog. it's not cod liver oil though, which i don't mind - thanks to early conditioning - but the way education is administered in this country. you do it this way. you better memorise this verbatim. why? never mind why, this is just the way we do things here (read: this was the method i was taught).

it used to be more bearable in pre-u. perhaps because i was not as jaded as i am now, or perhaps because the amount of knowledge i had to master was much less compared to university that it didn't take that much effort and i had the rest of the time to use as i pleased. different kettle of fish now. and all the more sickening because uni should have spelled greater freedom.

even then, the education system of this country is better than what i had before coming here. emigrating to a more advanced neighbouring country at the tender age of fifteen gave me the opportunity to contrast two wholly distinct approaches to education. here is definitely better than there. if i had to do it all over again, i wouldn't change a thing.

but it is ironic that the system that allowed me to stretch and expand has so soon become too stifling. maybe it has something to do with the size of the country, or maybe it is the national obsession for good, quick results. nevermind that they lack depth, we just want the simple, straightforward solution, thank you very much. or maybe the two are related; it's their secret of success. for a tiny, bureaucratic nation, they sure are efficient. so efficient that they started to teach creativity and entrepreneurship in the classroom, once the bigshots decided those qualities are desirable. no, desirability had nothing to do with it. they're necessary for the survival of the nation, that's all.

2004-03-27T07:56:00.000-08:00

twenty days after the first entry, and that one was not even finished cos someone needed the computer urgently. not a very good start. but who cares...

yesterday i read a newspaper article about a mother of two who jumped off a tall building with her daughters because she found out she had cancer. the photograph was cropped to show only a patch of grass, her right arm and the left arm of one daughter (the other was on her other side), with a piece of red string linking their wrists. it gave me nightmares.

today i found that there is only one purpose to attending medical school: to pass the final exam. nevermind that what they teach won't be of use once you graduate and become a doctor. there is only one goal; let's hear that again: to pass the final exam.

i have intellectual, moral and emotional objections to this piece of wisdom. the first two have been neutralised.

2004-03-07T05:24:00.000-08:00

full moon tonight. or maybe it was yesterday, today's moon is a bit flatter in comparison. but who cares, i could see the rabbit on the moon, complete with its two long ears, one more floppy than the other, or perhaps it meant something in rabbit body language, and its little tuft of a tail.

where i grew up information was never reliable; it had a habit of changing without notice, and i'd learned never to put too much faith in what i was told, or so i thought. all information was equal since each had similar chances of being inaccurate. just a matter of probability. parents were easy, after all, they broke their promises all the time. but it was painful to find out that school teachers could be wrong too. first time i argued with a teacher was when i tried to convince her that humans were mammals, too, that we didn't have our own exclusive niche in the taxonomic tree. that was in primary six. little did i know what that was a prelude of.

but no matter how unreliable, these things have ways to filter into your subconscious unnoticed, only to resurface much later. thus the rabbit on the moon. or was it a chinese fairy princess? the one that flew up there to escape from her over-curious husband, if i remember correctly, and so the rabbit's ears become loops of hair. and the tail a basket of flowers or something.