Friday, June 30, 2006

16 million shades of gray

Wow I haven't blogged in ages. And to think that my holidays were actually quite eventful, quite a bit more so than previous holidays that usually left me feeling depressed, empty and raring to go back to clinical postings. Oh well, I was also eager to return to the hospital at the end of this two-week period of holidays, but of course as a much happier person. Heh. Anyway I think I had better do some blogging before Emed rolls around and my computer will be so untouched it will actually grow cobwebs.

This is going to be a pretty long post, that really isn't very interesting, but it's kind of strange to ask you not to read it now I've written it anyway. You've been warned, though.

Seems a little odd to blog about things that are nearly three weeks past. Everyone knows I went to Malaysia for the first three days of the holidays, it's in my previous post. Nothing great, only KL and Genting and a brief stop in Malacca; it's only Malaysia after all. Did some mad shopping in KL because we went with a tour group and they only allowed us two hours in the big shopping mall including for lunch, so we were rushing around trying to buy whatever we needed. And after that Genting was pretty average; I went in to the casino for the first time in my life because my mother kept pushing me (and yes, I did really want to see what it was like inside, though I regretted it the moment I was hit by clouds of cigarette smoke) and said I needed the "experience". Riight. Thus I ended up feeding the Malaysian economy 20 ringgit for half an hour of mindless button pushing on one of those jackpot machines. And I found that I could imagine myself feeding in money for the longest time just hoping to win something, so that was a pretty scary thought. It's all too easy to get addicted to gambling, sheesh, and I am weak. Haha.

The trip was kind of spoilt by my dad falling sick with some viral flu on the first day, and being thoroughly miserable for the entire duration. The cold weather in Genting didn't help, and neither did the stuffiness of the lousy hotel room (and they dare call it the First World Hotel). Without much surprise my mom and I fell sick with the same URTI symptoms and fever a couple of days after we returned from Malaysia (positive contact history) and so did some other people in the same tour group, so I heard. So I spent a few days being miserable and still going out with friends despite feeling that way, so it's a good thing I didn't infect anyone else.

It seems I'm always falling sick during holiday periods, maybe because I really hate falling sick during posting periods and missing a few days at hospital. This is perhaps the sign of a workaholic, or so my mom says. I must say it doesn't sound so bad to work without much long breaks, but I'll most probably be singing another tune when I actually start working, so don't hold me to that.

The other notable event in the holidays was the two-day-one-night chalet I organised with three other classmates from RI. We started the day with KTV and then headed to the chalet in Pasir Ris to check in (we kept having slips of the tongue and saying book-in, much to our collective horror) and promptly start a game of mahjong. We're such mahjong fanatics, or maybe it's just me, but I'm still darn lousy at it, crud. At around 11 pm we went out to take a nice leisurely walk in Pasir Ris park, which was a really enjoyable and relaxing experience, not to mention the fun we had taking rubbishy pictures at various parts of the park (some of which you can view at orionway's blog). We had intended to play whole-night (or tong1 xiao1) mahhjong, but after a good supper of cup noodles everyone was rather stuporous and we ended up sleeping and not playing, how disappointing. Oh well, but it was a thoroughly fun experience, so I'd like have another chalet sometime.

I also watched Cars with Raymond during the break, after much persuasion by him because I felt it wasn't a very nice movie, but it was surprisingly good. I thought it was all about car-racing, and honestly the first part of the movie, where they were showing the protagonist in a car race, was really boring, but things developed from there and filled up into a funny, feel-good kind of thing that Pixar is so good at. So yeah, great movie that I'd recommend anyone to watch, and like with most other movies nowadays you should stay until the credits are all done.

Phew. What a long section on holiday activities, and I only touched on notable events.

Now for a end-of-posting review of the DR posting; it's really quite strange to have a posting that lasts only a week, but I can't for the life of me imagine it being longer, haha. Maybe a day, because there weren't enough lectures to cover a lot of important things; they didn't even have any lecture on chest x-ray! Oh well. And DR only goes to confirm my opinion that SGH is a wonderful place to do a posting, like TTSH; the teaching programme is well-planned, and the people are mostly really nice and willing to teach even though they're all so busy. Wonderful, and the food is cheap too, so I save a lot, haha.

Radiologists are a pretty impressive lot of people because they know so much anatomy, even more that the surgeons like to talk about, but I guess anatomy is their ricebowl so they need to know it very well. I keep wondering how anyone can find it enjoyable to sit in front of computer consoles the entire day peering at mostly black-and-white images looking for abnormalities; it's terribly straining on the eyes, so much so that after ten minutes of peering our eyes start to water and slip shut, and sometimes an abnormality is so subtle we can't be convinced that it's there. The pictures do appeal to my visual sense and my like for anatomy, but I really don't want to do that for weeks on end, let alone months or years.

Emed starts next week, and I'm so excited, but I'm doing my posting at CGH, which is low on serious cases. That's apparently compensated for by good teaching, so I do hope that that is the case, otherwise I would be rather disappointed. But the good thing is the hospital is near my house so I can shuttle to and fro easily; much better than if I had gotten NUH.

Until the next time I find myself free to blog, enjoy your postings, and general lives, for people not in Medicine.

Avaris / 6/30/2006 08:24:00 PM

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