Happy Birthday to Klunton~

After a terrifying lunch of bah kut teh at Balestier with the 3 stooges (where tea-bags were flung at our faces and where i was forced to wash 10 Cyclospora/Isospora-laden tea-cups and pay 10 over bucks for cyanide-laden tea-coloured urine and you zha kueythat tasted like soggy Triumph panties , i went home to rest while gooanhao meditated in school.

in the evening, gh , klinton met up again to celebrate klinton's 23rd birthday. after finding out our dear birthday boy doesn't take too well to seafood (soooo unlike henry and val sigh), we bypassed our initial option of pasir panjang see hum for a classier option of Jack's Place.



Ok larh Jack's alright though I always felt the set lunches were more worth it. i always had very fond memories of jack's coz' we always had rather top-notch steaks there since young. maybe coz i was full from the bah kut lunch, but i felt the steak was so tough despite being made to medium-rare. dunno lehz but the standard of the steaks seemed to have plunged lower than jessica simpson's IQ score.


At Island Cremery where i was giving the teh tarik ice-cream a go ... not bad larh, tr got taste (caveat: i still say the cempedak goreng pisang at Old Airport Rd is terrible - vouched by val as well :-P)



goonhao trying to stick his cone into klinton's oral orifice...:P


yay... aiyarh economic crisis so we bought the Baked Alaska.. the staff quite nice larh , turned off the fan so we could light up the candle (very pantang if the candle blow out for reasons other than the bdae boy's breath - like Elton John's Candle in the Wind for Princess Diana).

AnYway, klinton seemed very happy and we were all quite happy that we got to gossip so much hehehe. thanks for the Jack's Place treat klinton, but you shouldn't have larhzzz ~~ paiseh:)

sighz wonder when we will get to get together like this in this miserable final year of medicine :-( Clinton is rite, i should have listened to my instincts and became a flight attendant for JAL and put my Japanese to better use. 

LyCheeB Martini

After CDC lecture at Daily Scoop ...

damn sian .. no butterscotch again.

A grim reminder..

OMG i saw a male actor (well ex-celebrity i guess)at cdc today. he looked like a carcass of his former self - pale, cachexic, dishevelled. he was there with his boyfriend or partner i guess. gone were the days when he was still a fresh face in star search and pretty popular in supporting roles acting aside a very much younger (and much less scandalous: no thank you, we don't swallow)zoe tay in those teeny-boppish channel 8 dramas.

a grim reminder to some of ya to really think thrice or quadruplice before your gonadocerebral reflex overrules your higher centres.

The old ghost of 2SO3H RJC

Okie this 2 weeks are goin' to be dreadful .. first we have to study for the notorious ID posting test on friday PLUS a bonus PAEDS OSCE session on saturday. SIGH when this kind of situation arises, looks like the old ghost of JC2SO3H-RJC will have to be resurrected. Now where did i put that coffin key ...

Ahhh yess.. good friends like WAIPENG will remember when i took an unofficial 2 WEEK leave in the midst of the JC2 prelim period due to a severe bout of "malaria (read: bad air)". it turned out a bit ugly when my CT in charge ms eva hor had to call me up and sort of threaten to call my parents on me. sighz.. but not fair lorz i never took a SINGLE blue slip in mi life while some other girls in my class would have multiple attacks of headaches in a single WEEK lorz. I am surprised noone had died of a brain tumour yet if their complaints were realli genuine :PPP

One thing i dun like about CDC is that it is such open-grounds with not much trees that ppl can see you zao-ing very easily. I miss those dark corners and big white pillars of RJC .. where my disappearance could be as subtle as prof. quak sh's humour:PP

A good way to end a week!

Oh no i am beginning to feel that i am neglecting this blog with such a long gap between my posts. But bo pianz lor... doing a revision posting at NUH paeds is like debating about a case of nephrotic syndrome with Prof Yap HK i.e. a LOSING battle... the patients are overclerked, the tutorial groups are huge and there is a stingy assignment of tutors. Well i can go on bitchin' abt it for ages, but i guess it will come to naught. So i shall shut~

Anyway there were many good things that happened:

This is how i marked the end of paeds, with a generous buffet at marina mandarin: the sashimi is freshly sliced (i so dig the swordfish! -the pale coloured one) and the oysters are freshly shucked in front of ya (of course there are dumb blonde wives of IMF delegates who simply run off with an entire plate of unshucked oysters). There were some unusual offerings like suckling pig and ginseng soup (as in actual ginseng with the man-looking root and all!)

Again a BIG THANKS to CT for his discount card that allows me to get this buffet for
just 33 dollars~ for the ambience and offerings, it's a steal compared to most lower-scale buffets in town like Dragon Gate and etc.

Sad thing to note is that I am getting an intolerance to oysters -- it's my number 1 love but i seem to be getting a very strange greenish-yellow diarrhea from it. and it's quite unstoppable unless i take charcoal. plenty of peri-anal excoriations for me that night since my mum always buys those "No Frills" toilet paper from NTUC. sigh.

2. My DVD writer FINALLY works, and i won't have to start scurrying to friends' houses to burn stuff. thank god for nero express , and of course the website from which i downloaded it from hehe.

14th September 2006 : A day that will live in infamy

There are seldom times where I break down: the only times when I broke down was when my parents get into fights or some crisis in my family.

But i would never imagine that a guy in my Medicine yr 5 batch would be able to bring me down with just his nasty and caustic words alone.
It started when I was conducting this feedback session about the class' anxieties about the MBBS exam. It was done in a rushed and hurried manner I must say:- the earlier CTS session had overran by half an hour!! and i lost my 15 minutes pocket of time. but lan lan , prof t. was pushing for me to get it done asap..

Nevertheless i did manage to get 10 over opinions from the class about the issue. I thought it was not too bad considering we only had 10 minutes. When I ended the session on the insistence of this grouchy prof from NUH conducting the electives symposium, YC just strutted down and told me in the face "That was a TOTAL waste of time".

I was like aghast with shock. Anyhow I later shot him an email that he can choose to contact Prof. T if he wishes to clarify the issue. He replied with a fiery email filled with harshy-worded comments and personal attacks stating that i had "demanded" feedback from a resistant class when they had no experience whatsoever about the MBBS et al. It was apparent to me that he did not understand what I had set out to do, and it was precisely Prof. T's intention to get feedback BEFORE the actual exam format was being released. Prof T was nice enough to reply YC with an email to defend me.

Later, when YC challenged me to a verbal war over the phone, he said he had already spoken to Prof. T and had no problems with my content, but was critical of my style. He said that sitting in the audience, he said I was "patronising", "dismissive of the class' comments", "presenting a biased, skewed view of what Prof. T had originally intended for me to deliver. In addition, he also said I was "using Prof. T's name to crush him" because I "didn't want my authority to be questioned". To top me off, at the end of the 20 hateful and hurting conversation on the phone, he had to say he "understands perfectly what i am saying, but i DON't understand a word what he's saying". He's right - amidst all the personal attacks and harsh words, I couldn't understand what his aim was. He first started off firing at my content in the email, and later changed his tone over the phone and said he was now vehemently against the style in which I presented the feedback session.

He even said this really hateful statement: "Normally, they say don't shoot the messenger, blame the content. But yesterday i felt the messenger (i.e. me) should be shot." I was like aghast.. how can a person , a human being be so hateful ? I just broke down after that .. i think i cried for like half an hour and lamented my feelings to several of my friends. I also found out that he had done similar antics to the previous class reps, and some told me that this wasn't going to be the first or last time he will do this to me.

I was so upset and miserable that I just went to bed and slept through the entire friday evening. missing my shows and etc. I just never understood how a person can be so hateful, when i am only his peer , a classmate. i just feel i dun deserve this when me and guanhao dun get aNYthing out of typing out long-winded emails , and organising such feedback sessions esp in my final year. while others did warn me about his arrogance and condescending ways, i never realised i would get so affected by just his words alone.

Anyway a big shout to TR , GH , joline , clinton and choonta for reassuring me and consoling me. it was just such a horrible day.

A well-spent (?) recess

Well i guess this recess was a well-earnt break from the dreariness of SIP.. but staying at home and watching re-runs of B- horror flicks on HBO/Cinemax/Star Movies isn't exactly the best way to spend it i guess..

Watched . Thought that Miranda Priestly was rather over-hyped as a uber-boss.. i have DEFInitely met worse characters than that especially back in my alma mater secondary school. Just that the ones I met don't dump mink coats and Ferragamo accessories on desks, but stacks of comprehension worksheets. Lurrve the slutty humour though, especially the montage of scenes where Andy sashays down NY 7th Avenue in a eye-boggling spin of outfits. I really do miss new york city , especially with this new academic year proving dreary and tiring.

I can't believe on the other hand that I spent HALF a day reading through the LiveJournals of some local theatre actor/model Edric (always featured in our local ads). I say, the social circle of these ppl in theatre is just eNormous, and their daily exploits is filled with so much vibrance and glamour. One minute they can be jet-setting to India for a shoot, a 3 day sojourn to Bangkok, and their incredible network of friends have really eclectic tastes/habits too as reflected by their own LJs. From SQ stewards to models to what-have-you.. i certainly was really in awe reading about their various exploits (i won't elaborate).

Which brings me back to reality that in Medicine, especially as a house officer, the whole world out there, is just like literally shut off. Your life just runs like a mechanical Soviet-era clockwork: wake,hospital duties,eat(+/-),sleep. Sure a lot of ppl would treasure this predictability and stability of a career, but it always awes me to see what glamorous and chic lifestyles the ppl lead in the other professions (especially of the artsy-fartsy kind). I definitely know some of the stuff that these guys do would be a strict NO-NO in our medical circle, so it's kind of like a forbidden fruit thing i guess. Nice to look, maybe can touch but cannot eat. Sigh.