Friday, July 08, 2005

A big trashcan

This is another of those posts where I get totally random and write a smattering of various thoughts accumulated in my brain over the week. Yes, somehow my brain still has enough free space in it for junk thoughts, amazingly.

It's like everyone is talking about the London bomb blasts. When I first heard the news it was like, Oh my, is this related to the IOC? (And no, I wasn't thinking It's the French!) It's really quite shocking news, especially because it isn't just one blast but four, planned with such frightening precision, turning celebrations into turmoil and tragedy. I'm sorry to say this, but mostly when I read about bomb blasts in the papers it just doesn't have any impact on me. I just can't help feeling that all this is so far away, and all I have is a sense of detached disapproval, nothing much stronger. Even the tsunamis in December last year didn't really affect me very much. Which is why I was totally perplexed when, reading the papers today about the London attacks I felt like my heart actually went out to them, and this immense sense of sadness came over me. Not just plain sadness, but a sense of Why do things have to be this way?, a deep feeling of pain, of helpless muted anger.

I suppose for me London is the centre of something I've always looked up to in the world. Not just a simple country, but a people and a culture and a symbol, a bastion that has withstood so much in the way of wars and other blows and yet continued being the best. (Yes it's so much better than America, please) So my heart goes out to all the people who were hurt or killed in the blasts, and all their loved ones and people who loved them, may they find the strength to carry on. Words are totally inadequate for the pain they must be going through right now, I know, but I know not what else I can do. To me, London will always be the greatest city, no matter what happens, and it is forever a place I will want to visit.

Gah, so emotional now.

On to other things, then. Phase 37 of Gundam SEED Destiny is so highly charged with emotion as well! It's really good to see Athrun making a firm decision finally, and Meyrin showing a previously unseen strength in choosing to escape with Athrun, even though in part she didn't really have much of a choice. Poor Shinn, he's so confused by his conflicting desires to end the war with his strength and to question if it's really justified to attack friends, but his psychological background tips the balance, complete with the excessively-replayed scene of Mayu's arm. Rey is bloody evil, that's what he is; you would never have thought he'd be such a fanatical nut, saying all that rubbish about being loyal to Dullindal. So it really seems that his heritage is not something he can escape from, and he's going to be the next insane pawn in the final battle. Bleh.

To put a rather humorous touch to everything, it seems Shinn needs to relook his strategy of stabbing Gundams in their cockpit areas, because out of the two times he does it the pilots survive both times. But who's complaining, since no one wants Kira and Athrun to die. For the first time in the series I actually feel sorry for Meer, because she's yet another pawn in Dullindal's cosmic chess game, one who knows she's being used and yet cannot break free because at least as a pawn she has a purpose, and she is loved by so many people. Anyway this is the kind of episode I love best in any anime series, where there's tonnes of character development, and everything comes into position for some kind of huge climactic showdown, all paths converging.

Gundam SEED Destiny is unlimited love! And Lacus rocks, as usual.

Sometimes I find so many quirky parts in my mind I wonder whether there's any sanity in it at all. I have these episodes where everytime I see something my mind automatically turns to some really weird visions related to that thing, and the more I try to stop it the worse it gets. Okay, you don't understand. So here are examples. For some years now everytime I look at a down-going flight of stairs (i.e. when I'm standing at the top looking down, as opposed to standing at the bottom looking up) I have the most vivid mental images (well, not images, since it's more like a video playback) of myself falling down it, bones snapping and joints dislocating along the way. It happens all the time in the LT, because I'm sitting next to the stairs. And you can blame the bone-breaking and joint-dislocating on anatomy lessons, I suppose.

If that wasn't bad enough, I found out just a few days ago that everytime my eyes spot a prominent vein on any person's arms or legs I get images of needles piercing them and crimson blood flashback-ing into the needle. Yes, I know it's very disturbing. I'm totally freaked out. But yes I'm thinking a lot of taking blood lately, because so far I've only had one successful attempt, and that was on what the MO called a "whopping big vein" (And really, I've never seen such a huge arm vein in my life). I could have set a successful IV cannula the other day, but panicked because I wasn't familiar with the NUH apparatus and basically screwed everything up after hitting the vein. All my fault, really, I should have familiarised myself before even trying.

I joined rounds today for the first time in 2 weeks (yes, I'm a slacker, I know) and it was so good because the MO was like the best MO in the world or something and the HO was the same and they were so obliging and explained so much to me when I stood around staring blankly. I am so totally grateful to them, and sometimes you can't help but think how impressive it is that there are so many wonderfully nice HOs and MOs when they must be really stressed out and tired. If it were me I'd probably be quite snappish and impatient, but nice people really make a medical student's day. And now I'm really sad because I'm moving to another ward next week. But I heard the HOs and MOs there are really nice too, so this time I must get to know them earlier and not wait till it's too late.

Had this really weird talk today with Jon where I was gushing about a certain registrar (yes, the one who was on night call) and how nice he is. He has the best manners in the world, like seriously, and the way he talks is so poetic! Haha I'm probably not making sense, but he uses the most lyrical and beautiful expressions when talking to patients (albeit those who can actually understand him), things like "Well, it looks like you've done your dinner justice, haven't you?". And that example doesn't even do him justice, there are far more examples that I can't remember off-hand. Oh, swoon. Put me in a Jane Austen novel, and I'd probably die happy there. And Jon was suitably disturbed, as usual. After a while we find that out of all the conversations that I have with Jon about more than half involve me making some statement that makes him feel very disturbed. He suggested that I might have fantasies of sticking scopes into patients today, which I, for the first time, felt rather disturbed by, because I so do not. Besides, it doesn't look like fun, no matter which side of the scope you're on.

I'm suddenly reminded of a conversation I was a part of more than two weeks ago, about medical students having obsessive-compulsive traits, and how common these traits actually are in the med student population, because four out of the five people talking about this subject admitted to having OC-traits, myself included. And I found that Chi Hsien and I should probably never work on something together, that involves writing reports, because apparently he can't stand justified paragraph alignment because of the uneven space-widths, and has to read Word documents in left-align, while I cannot stand left-aligned paragraphs because of the uneven jutting-out sentences at the right side, and the first thing I do when I read a document that's in left-align is to make everything justified. Haha we'd probably tear each other's throats out bickering about paragraph alignment.

Oh blah blah blah. That's a lot more junk than I estimated. I suppose it's like a compensation for the irregular blogging. Most days I get home and find that I have so little time that I spend almost none of it in front of the computer, rather paradoxically choosing instead to get my daily dose of Internet from the hospital cluster.

Avaris / 7/08/2005 08:14:00 PM

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