Some pictures from Chinese New Year in Malaysia

As with any good medical student , I must learn to list out the things that happened on my trip like the way Denise Goh lists out the 350 differentials to Cyclospora diarrhea.

1. Knowing I have a new nephew and he's a 40 day old vaccum delivery infant. Mother is my cousin , and father is a Malay. I call him a word that vaguely sounds like "Anas" ( goodness Anus? goood boy -- niiicee and bigg) coz' I can't really pronounce his Malay name. The baby is lovely but he always needs someone to carry.

2. Waiting like a dog for 4-5 hours at Kuala Lumpur International Airport where you get the usual bad service from Malaysia Airlines counter staff and the all the wonderful service of Andrew and the rest of the SQ staff who assured me that I will get a flight home. Well I did eventually , after waiting for like 5 hrs on SQ 119 which was at 10pm ( I arrived at 5 pm ). of course the lovely geishas on the flight were all too happy to relieve me of my tension.

3. Bringing back all the chocolate biscuits , cheap freshly-baked Famous Amos butterscotch cookies which were like 7-8 dollars cheaper than Singapore , and the lovely oh so lovely cheese cookies which was baked by a nice Indonesian lady and given to my cousin.

4. Being forced to measure the blood pressures of all my relatives , and to snatch away a tin of love letters from my uncle who is running a BP of 150/110 on combination medications.

5. Receiving 1/3 of my usual hong pao coz' the entire Ow family didn't come down to the ancestral home in Bentong because Uncle Ow was just recovering from the gastrectomy. It was good to see him as good as normal although the operation was like so major.

6. Meeting all my cousins , nephews and nieces one more time !!!!!

HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR EVERYBODY !!

Back From Kuala Lumpur

Back from 4 hot , sweaty sticky days at Bentong Pahang , and I must say that more than ever , taking the SQ/MH shuttle flight service to KL is more of a pain than a convenience. Long gone were the days where they had flights every hour or even half hour to KL ; now I had to be at the mercy of those passengers holding the more expensive confirmed tickets , as there were at most 20 seats open to stand-by passengers like me. Thankfully that Prof Prabha cancelled his Paeds Surg lecture that Friday ( that was like the best news I had heard in WEEKS ) , and I could rush straight down to the airport.

I was quite sad actually to leave NUH coz I had made a really nice young friend in whom I call "Wisely". She is a patient who has to spend her New Year hols in hospital because a really nasty steroid-dependent nephrotic syndrome. Incidentally , it happened to be cao cao's ward assessment cum professorial case presentation. It was quite ironic that she got kind of ticked off by the Prof about not taking initiative to explore deeper in the history as she simply ascribed it as a "girl who wouldn't talk to anyone". It was just so clear that "Wisely" wasn't a girl that would talk to anyone simply , and language was clearly not a factor when she was happily talking in English to the friendly Malay ward clerk. It was a matter of who she wanted to talk to , coz' she even snubbed Prof Yap in the face hehe.

There was so much about her that one could learn : at her age of 8 , she has learnt to be so much more mature and strong a girl because of her disease. It saddens me a bit to know that after all, despite her strong front and cool nature , she is after all a young child who is valiantly fighting a life-long battle with a chronic ailment.

Was still a bit sad for "Wisely" while waiting for my queue number to be called at the SQ counter. I dropped off at around 3.30 pm at Terminal 2 hoping to catch the SQ 116 flight. It was apparent that the number system had failed , and they were only calling standby ticket holders like me ONLY after booked ticket holders were cleared. This was financially more viable as booked tickets were a lot more expensive. I hoped for the best ; smiled a winsome smile at the SIA counter staff , and *ding dong* I was one of the lucky 20 passengers on stand-by to get the SQ 116 flight.

I must have been really tired coz' I settled in the wrong seat. A SIA stewardess , in a geisha-like manner, sashayed to me and purred "Seerrr .. 57A is over there ..." I sheepishly changed my seats like a raped geisha in shame. The Boeing 777 took off with a full load of passengers for the short 30 min hop to KL.

Finally got to KL - took KLIA express at the ridiculous price of 35 ringgit one way to KL Sentral. Weaved through a sea of sweaty Malaysians all gelleking around the station with nothing much to do. The station was impossibly crowded - all the taxis were full and there were none available for the next half hour. The queue for the LRT counter snaked across the main hall. A Malay girl tried to cut my queue in the ticket counter for the LRT. I used my precocious ass and luggage to edge her mannerless presence out of the queue.

I AM SO TIRED ! I finally got to meet my grandma , cousins and family for some light dinner of fish , cereal prawns at the usual Gombak restaurant. Then I went to my cousins' house to watch some old flick "Bring it On" on their computer. Then I went to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz because today had been a freakin' long day.

REALLY long day at Ward 45

Ok I must say this was a really crazy day full of unexpected surprises...

1. The seductive and almost hyper-sexual SMS Moth showed me in the morning , which Cao Cao sent to him ( supposedly by mistake hurh hurh ) last night before bed . ( Goodness - first dyspneic breath in the morning )

2. Discovering who my mystery neurology tutor was , when a patient immobilised with SMA was teasing me about not knowing who Dr. Chong SC was , and WORST , teasing me about taking a liking for older women just because I raved a bit about how good Prof Low was. ( GOODNESS - second dyspneic breath )

3. Getting a surprise call from the secretary that our ward assessment was suddenly tomorrow with the famous Netball Queen. ( OH MI GAWD -- pulmonary hypertension )

4. Seeing Dr. T Lim walk past and giving us the knowing "Please clerk as many patients and hopefully we will discuss 10x that many , even if it takes us until 12 am and the next Chinese New Year weekend" smile. ... ( ARGGGHHH .. SVT )

5. Getting a child patient with nephrotic syndrome challenge me to stop behaving like a kindergarten kid in front of her , or else risk getting my kidneys being transplanted out by Prof Yap. ( YEEEEEEEEEEKZZ ... Zonghan approaching with a lumbar puncture kit .. )

ECG flat ........ I just died of cardiac failure. Oh will the wonderful Dr. Blue Fern please revive me with a lovely digoxin kiss ?

Long drawn day at the new Renal Ward

First , we were like warned umpteen times by Jodie and Vanessa to attend the ward-rounds at Ward 45 ( Renal Ward ) otherwise face the death penalty. When I received the SMS to be punctual , I could swear my feet stepped a tad harder on the accelerator. SIAN .. I just don't know why I always have this sian feeling when I am in Paeds. It's probably because I have been so used to the pace of life in Surgical postings like O and G , when you always had weird things to do , from delivering babies in the Labour Ward to assisting with Caesareans in the OT to witnessing Vanaja winking her way through a myomectomy. For medical postings, it was just clerkship after clerkship.

And of course we had a tutorial by the very youthful and energetic Dr. A Yeoh , followed by the hyper-enthusiastic Dr. T Lim who kindly invited us to the Paeds Emergency. The thing about Dr. Lim is that he's very enthusiastic about teaching him , but I am a little fearful about his mood swings.

I found a new way how to get even with enemies the next time they irritate me in the Paeds ward. I will just crush them with the sliding shelves in the drug store. A kind nurse had kindly demonstrated this brilliant technique to me on her Filipina colleague today.

Memoirs of a Geisha ...

Geisha on steroids.

The day had come for the inaugural viewing of , my most long-awaited film. So after a long and hectic day at Paediatrics , after getting poked in the ribs by a father of a girl with Henoch Scholein purpura and worst being volunteered by the former to be a guinea pig for his daughter to play with ( goodness ), after a thankfully very beneficial but late interactive session with Dr. Quek , I quickly had dinner with our CG's very own two male geishas , Dien Rong and Gooanhao before speeding off to the MRT to pick up Kossie. At that time of the evening , the auntie always had only one or two chicken chops or fish and chips to offer. Haii .. but what to do , kossie had already eaten at home.

Two questions arose : which geisha would I like ? And the further question we asked was , was Cunli really like the geisha Sayuri , wilful and free-spirited ?

The show had splendid and colourful atmospheres and backdrops. It started off with a poignant introduction to Sayuri's past as a fisherman's daughter Chiko being sold to a geisha-house in Kyoto. Here there's this pervasive element of pathos as the directory elaborated quite a fair bit on the separation of Chiko aka Sayuri from her sister "Satsu". Then the sensualness and exotic tale of the geisha started : enters Queen Hatsumomo ( aka Hatsu-Yap Mo Mo ) , cunning , scheming , evil geisha . Unfortunately for her , she gets slapped by the geisha-house owner after developing a bleeding PV after having illicit sex with a hunky Japanese lover.



The highlight of the movie for me was to see Sayuri mature into a elegant and graceful geisha in her own right. The dance sequences and exotic performances by Sayuri was spectacular , and especially the particular dance sequence in which she was enshrounded in this blue eerie light in a theatre and was prancing around in a rain of rice like a case of untreated Tourette's syndrome. Frankly , it was testimony to the fact that it was not the dance itself that was fantastic but the whole get-up of the geisha , the lightings and the music that made the sequence spectacular. On a good day , some patients in sporadic locations of IMH on haloperidol withdrawal can pull off similar antics ....

The fan dances were also fantastic by Sayuri. What we found puzzling was why the act of passing a rice cake or an apple to a guy was a signal by the geisha to the man that she wanted "his eel to visit her unexplored cave". Goodness you got to be really careful who you pass food to nowadays.

The theory of Hatsu - Yap Mo Mo came from my recollection of a strange incident in Nepal when I remembered visiting the 4E bunk to look for my headmistress Miss Koe. When I entered the bunk, I was shocked to see everyone gathered solemnly like in prayer and the entire bunk was lit with the eerie glow of candles. There , I saw Yap Mo Mo lying still on a table surrounded by candles. I was instantly asked by the 4E guys to leave as Yap Mo Mo "needed rest". We were instantly jolted back to a recollection of this , when we saw a shrine lit with candles in the movie where Hatsu-Yap Mo Mo , Queen Geisha rests in peace.

To top it off , this MADTV spoof of
http://www.youtube.com/w/Memoirs-of-a-Geisha--Mad-TV?v=_AQvqsZFgDY&search=Memoirs%20Geisha%20MadTV
is simply hilarious with Connie Chung making a repeat performance. I totally dig the moment when 'she' aka Bobby Lee from MadTV ( aka Su Chin Park ) is asked to make a man stop with one look ... "IT HARD" ..

Feeling Happier through Paediatrics

Ok it has been a really tiring time for the past 2 weeks .. I cannot remember which is the day where I had a good night's rest with all the interactive sessions ending at like 7.00 pm plus. What's more the tutorials cover topics so broad and far-flung that it is really difficult to concentrate and lend focus to any discipline in Paediatrics in particular. It's like one minute you are clerking a case with all the florid signs of thalassemia , and next you are scrambling down to ICU to auscultate some cardiac murmur with Dr. Terence Lim and in an hour , Prof Low is expecting me to discuss all I can about asthma and angioedema.

The plus side is that you get to meet all the wonderful kids , and it was such a joy to play with all of them. The one thing great about kids was their eternal innocence, and it was certainly much more fulfilling to play with them than to see all the glorious signs.

This week's low was making Dr. T Lim pissed off with us , and it could have been really avoided. We ended our tutorial with Prof Low at 12.30 pm and we had a tutorial with him at 1pm. We bumped into him while in the ward , and he asked us to get our lunch first. I was worried we won't make it back , and just like our previous encounter with Dr. Jeanette Lee at the Family Medicine tutorial , I sort of had a hunch that he would be veeeeeerrry pissed if we were late. To my surprise , the rest didn't really seem to bother that we were going to be late. That said , it is very very difficult to get food within half an hour in NUH, but I knew excuses like this almost never work especially when you are dealing with time-pressed clinicians. It's like there's this assumption that he would be nice , and just happily wait for us since we needed our lunch. I mean what kind of freaking assumption is that ?? True enough , we got ticked off by him, and the most horrible thing was that Dr Lim called me directly and I was the first to have to explain things. DAMN. Thankfully I have some experience from , and just kept apologising and keeping my head low , like a geisha who had spilt a nano-ounce of tea on the tatami mat.

Some highlights were eating with Henry and Val at Chinatown on Friday evening .. As usual, we ordered the Big Prawn mee ( which we always faithfully patronise at Old Airport Road ) , and even paid 10 bucks for the largest bowl. It was to my horror that the soup was bland , the prawns not even comparable to the size of the prawns offered for the medium , cheaper bowls at Old Airport Rd , and the mee was tasteless. I was so disgusted that I ordered another bowl of porridge to wash away my disappointment. We were joined by a family of loud-mouthed ( but amicable thankfully ) members who were all interrogating me for the location of the porridge stall so they can buy their "ji zha" porridge.

Another highlight is when I went out with family + Robert/Ling for a buffet at Sakura Restaurant. This was a Japanese / Western buffet for just 26 bucks , and I had really my doubts when I heard this place was at the Singapore Science Centre. I mean who the f***_*_)_() eats at the Singapore Science Centre ??! We all drove there in two cars, and I was pleasantly surprised that there was free parking at least. True enough, there were a lot of yao gwees who were swarming around the buffet counters. No orderliness or decorum like that observed at Meritus Mandarin Buffet I had with Lil' and CT during the post-Xmas period. Just mad crowds of obese , Diabetic Idol-wannabes. I was pleasantly surprised to know there was oysters and a spread of sashimi available like in Mandarin , but to my horror , when the woman brought out the oysters , a swarm of Diabetic Idols started a prong-fight with one another , jabbing wildly with the metal prongs just to get the best oysters. The suckiest thing was that the oysters were all those huge kind , and the bigger the oyster , the yuckier and more vomit-inducing it tastes. Of course, i ate all the oysers anyway , and soon went to the toilet 12 times after that , passing out pea-soup meconium.

I hope the rest of the Paeds posting will go smoothly , and the dreariness of having to wake up early in the morning just to know I will be on my feet for 12+ hours , will soon fade. As Kossie says , there's no easy road to becoming a doctor. Hurh hurh.

Dragging My Feet Through Paediatrics

It was like of a super "chau sian" feeling to have to go back for the last posting of the M4 academic year before Pathology exam. Even more sian was the fact that the break we had after the posting was meant for a continuous non-stop mugging session for the humongous Pathology exam we had ahead of us. Not to mention after the wonderful holidays , it was time to work with 'Ah Nao' again . urgh. So it was of course with a lot of dreariness that I had to wake up early on a Monday morning to go for the Paeds briefing.

I have never felt so long in a posting before .. it was like a couple of cursory lectures which didn't really teach much , and we were like plunged into the wards. There was no objective and structured teaching programme implemented in the first week unlike Ortho and O&G. I love playing with kids a lot , especially my nephew , but it was like super weary having to force out differential diagnoses from these young ones .. 4 CGs were cramming into the little Ward 47 , and the new house officers didn't look pleased either. So basically I have no idea what to do , but I guess the previous batch's advice was just to let your survival instincts step in. What a way to start the new year.

PLUS the fact I was like having this perpetual tummy upset since the HK Trip and the oyster buffet I had with CT and Lil' on 30th December 2005. It was like this constant feeling of bloatedness with like a mega degree of flatulence (I reckon the amount of gas I passed is suffice to inflate Richard Branson's hot air balloon for his next RTW trip .. ) and loose stools. I even got up in the middle of the night at 3 am ( when I had to wake up at 7 am the next morning for some crummy X ray Round , thanks a lot ) just to go to the loo. I do not know what struck me , but somehow I feel that I am not the same James I used to be. The same James which could easily phagocytose the most exotic of meals like goose intestines or ox tongue. Somehow I still have a tremendous craving for food , but my gut seems to have gone awry.

What made me even more super-pissed was this bitch of an auntie who actually taunted me and called me a liar in the NUH canteen in front of god knows how many professors and staff there. I had ordered a lamb chop with my NUH Kopitiam card, attempted to charge it but the value was insufficient. I promptly topped it up ,and returned to pay for the lamb chop. Moments later, Zonghan came over to ask me to get a chicken wing for him .. at that point, I was actually feeling not too good -- kinda nauseous and my tummy was rumbling. So I reckon eating a chicken wing myself might help ( what kind of logic is this ???! God save me ). So I asked the auntie to charge an extra 2 bucks for the 2 chicken wings. To my horror, she inputted the cost of a lamb chop = 5 bucks + 2 bucks for the chicken wings. I told her that she had already charged me for the lamb chop just 2-3 minutes earlier. She insisted that I had not paid , as my card didn't have value in it. She started to accuse me of telling a lie and as I was ransacking my wallet for the receipt , she started to taunt me. I suddenly remembered I had thrown the receipt into Henry's tray and rushed back. Henry , being in an absence seizure as usual, muttered Cunli cleared the tray. Thankfully Cunli did not empty the trash on the tray for I found my receipt and marched back to the Western food stall.

I sternly told the lady off not to accuse people without any evidence, and her apology was this totally unsincere "Sorry lor !". I nearly lost it but as Cunli always reminded me from my O and G times to "relax ... don't worry" Zen-master style.

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Plus the fact I spent 285 bucks on a new Emporio Armani specs . I am BROKE !

This was definitely a bad week.