Friday, November 18, 2005
It's getting difficult to think of titles
I figured that if I only post something once every two weeks or so (yeah, I'm very busy, plus I'm an expert at procrastination) there's no point writing bland nice stuff, thus basically this post is going to be filled with griping.
Yesterday morning I happened to be taking a 95 with TVMobile, and to my utmost horror, they replaced Steven Chia with some ugly fat guy on Primetime Morning. It can't be true. It's not like I bother listening to the news because I have my iPod earphones on, but watching Steven Chia on PTM makes me smile every morning, because he just has these really cute gestures, like he's trying to be emotive and serious at the same time, and it's so fun to watch him. Oh, woe, how I will miss watching him on PTM every morning. Bring him back, I say! He's probably on leave; all the CNA anchors take turns to take extended leave, and Steven has been anchoring PTM for like really long without a break, so he deserves it, but still! His replacement is so ugly, meep. What happened to Richard Lui and Timothy Go anyway?
I totally love having an MP3 player, have I said this before? Before I got the iPod shuffle for my birthday present I would always wonder what it'd be like to have one, to be able to flood my ears with music I love instead of having to bear with irritating programmes on TVMobile or chattering passengers, and without having to go to the trouble of burning songs on to CDs just to listen to them and have to lug a heavy (compared to an MP3 player) Discman around wasting costly batteries. So yeah, my dream come true, finally. But the MP3 player comes with a whole bunch of problems, most of them being related to the fact that I can't hear stuff outside of what's blasting in my ears. Thus I have no idea when people are asking to be excused on public transport, and I find that I have to keep the player when I'm with a friend, because I think it's just polite to give full attention to whatever that person has to say instead of only hearing a few words because you're distracted by music. But in general, I still love my MP3 player.
I think the Forum page of the Straits Times is becoming my favourite section, because I love reading people write in to complain about some thing or other, and making minor things sound very serious and life-endangering or whatnot. Most of the time I don't know whether to feel tickled, or disturbed, because it seems to me that people are complaining about all kinds of little things nowadays. The most famous example, in my opinion, is the man who wrote in to complain about seeing 2 teenagers wearing T-shirts with offensive designs, one of which was a hand showing the middle finger, and the other the message "I'm surrounded by idiots", and proclaiming how such T-shirts should be considered against the law (according to some law or another). Like please, of all things, T-shirts? If people get offended by small things such as simple messages that are only meant to be funny, and aren't even sexually explicit, racist or anti-religious, what's next?
The other day there was another letter complaining about how this guy's mother couldn't get any sleep in a subsidised ward in the hospital because three other patients in the cubicle had maids staying over and these maids were chatting loudly all night. His point was that maids should not be allowed to stay over in the hospital, which is really quite unreasonable. Why would you want to deprive someone else of the right to be looked after? Surely if it was your own mother you would want to do all you want to keep her comfortable in the hospital, including getting a maid to look after her, so why can't other people do the same? Of course the maids are partially wrong for talking and disturbing the other patients, but you have to endure the noise for the amount you are paying, certainly? When you pay subsidised rates, you have to put up with a larger nurse:patient ratio, you have to wait longer in clinics, you don't get air-conditioning, you have to share your living environment with many others, yada yada. If you want to complain about any of that you'd do better to go stay in Class A.
I suppose tolerance is the hot byword of today; everyone promotes "tolerance". Someone replied to the guy who wrote the letter about the "offensive" T-shirts by saying he should be more tolerant of such things. I constantly have to remind myself that tolerance means respecting another person's right to what he believes in and his preferences, even if I may not totally agree with them, and not dismissing such people as idiots. It's easy to say, but difficult to practise, tolerance, because one's first instinct when faced with something that totally goes outside his or her sphere of acceptability is to respond with disgust, fear, repulsion, instead of politely nodding and going, "Hmm, how.. interesting." But to bring that state of disgust, fear and repulsion to a whole new level by asking for official action against such behaviour that they consider deviant is really undue, especially when such behaviour never hurt any person. I wonder if being intolerant is on a rising trend here, or it's just that the people who can't accept these things are just becoming more vocal about their thoughts.
I think it's probably natural for the older generation to not like the things that the younger generation like. I mean, surely your parents' parents were appalled by what their kids were wearing and turning into in the disco era (and equally appalled are their kids' kids, heh), and I'm personally appalled by how young kids are nowadays when they get handphones, because I lived without one until I was in JC1, and some of my friends even longer than that. Even if we don't like these trends, they are all part of societal progression, and to worry that such trends promote decadent lifestyles or whatnot is not unwarranted, but all that worrying just isn't really going to get anything changed. Clamping down on what you consider unbecoming is not going to make the world a better place just because it looks more pleasing to the eye.
I'm starting to get lost somewhere in this, so I'd better stop. I ramble so much.
Speaking of tolerance, something I simply cannot tolerate is stupidity. Yesterday morning it was raining like crazy, and when I was waiting at the bus stop for the bus, this foreign worker comes along with his umbrella and stands in the bus stop with his freaking umbrella open. Which is really really annoying because this ugly blue umbrella with red flowers all over it is blocking my view (and everyone else's of course) of the road and thus coming buses, so we have no idea if our bus is coming. And because the umbrella takes up a big round area at head-level, everyone wanting to walk from one end of the bus stop to the other has to be forced out of the shelter into the rain as they go past that stupid guy with the open umbrella. I'm like, how stupid can you get, you're standing in a shelter and you keep your umbrella open. And I don't know if I should say I'm not surprised or be appalled by the depths of sheer dumbness people can sink to. *implies everything but says nothing*
Today was my last day at NUH, and dang, I'll miss that place, because of the wonderful tutors we had. But not the insane travelling every morning and the food, no. I'll probably never want to do any posting at NUH when I'm a HO/MO, unless I've learnt to drive and gotten a car by then. The distance just kills me over and over again. But NUH paediatrics is so much better than NUH medicine, I have no idea why, even they are both internal medicine disciplines. I totally love paeds now, and I'm starting to see a trend where I love every posting I'm in (though I didn't really love Surgery) and will have a big dilemma choosing a specialty in the future. Bleh. And that's if I even attain the standard to be able to have a choice, ha ha.
That should be enough for one post. Have fun.
Avaris / 11/18/2005 08:06:00 PM
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