Sunday, September 24, 2006

Did I fool you into thinking I'm dead?

One of my nearly one-monthly posts again. Sorry, and I'm really not surprised if people have stopped reading.

Anyway, what can I blog about? I could complain about Ortho. It keeps hitting me painfully in the face that this is what it's like to do something you really don't like; waking up every day has become torturous where it was never so, or maybe I'm just getting old and feeling the effects of lack of sleep more keenly. NUH sucks because it's so far away, and every single 95 is so packed I thank my lucky stars if I can find a seat on one instead of rocking unsteadily on my feet with bleary eyes, and help me if the bus happens to have no air-conditioning. Argh. The only good things about NUH is that the teaching has been good so far, and of course I get to see the wonderful Dr. RW (who talked to me the other day and put me on cloud nine) and other nice people. Bad thing is that the MO I hate the most is doing ortho here too, and in the same ward that I'm posted to. First day of posting and already we got a taste of his horrid sarcasm and his oh-so-mighty way of snubbing medical students. Die, idiot.

Possibly I'm not the only one who thinks the ortho posting should be a lot shorter than 8 weeks; after a frenzied first 4 weeks of mugging to meet questions thrown at us by registrars and consultants who expect us to know everything (no real surprise there, it's the same for every posting), the next 4 weeks doesn't really turn up cases that we have never seen before or don't know the general management of. I gave up reading my Apley and turned to reading fiction books (I think other people have done the same in putting aside the small Apley and turning to the huge version since they've probably read the small book 3 times already) because I was just too abjectly bored. I've just finished the series The Tears of Artamon by Sarah Ash, a pretty interesting series by a relatively new author, with a well-crafted plot (rather difficult to find authors who can fit plots in 3 books nowadays and still make them enthralling) but with a bit more twists and turns than I'd like. It wasn't exactly spine-thrilling, captivating fantasy the way I like it, but I finished the series so I guess it's not too bad.

It's starting to get rather difficult to find good fantasy series/books to read these days, when I feel like I've almost seen all the possible plotlines in fantasy that authors can think up. Also, it comes to a point where I've read the best of what fantasy has to offer, which I think comes from Robert Jordan (Book 11 of Wheel of Time finally brought something good to the table where previous books were kind of slow and draggy) and of course my favourite author Janny Wurts. In such a situation I can't help comparing new books that I read to the best and almost all fall short, though of course I can appreciate some of the fresh and interesting concepts each author tries to create a unique story with, with their varying degrees of success. Another point is that I'm kind of against starting new series which the author hasn't written the last book too, since I think I'm caught in enough unfinished series to not want any more to plague me, unless they're fantastically written.

I'm kind of thinking of starting on Juliet Marillier's Sevenwaters trilogy, wonder if it's any good. But part of me says I should go back to mugging Ortho because I haven't touched the injuries section. Oh, dilemma, dilemma.

I also watched 2 very good movies in the past weeks: Singapore Dreaming and The Banquet. Singapore Dreaming is probably the best Singapore movie I've watched (maybe because I'm biased against Jack Neo movies - they always seem so gimmicky and the dialogue can be a little contrived) because of it's simple storytelling underlied by pure Singaporean-ness that touched something inside of my heartlander self, haha. It's a movie that lies very close to heart, and I'd recommend that everyone watch it, though not all may find it quite as poignant as I did. The Banquet was also excellent; I love these dynastic Chinese shows where people speak in such lyrical Chinese and utter proverbs every other line. The pacing was excellent, though I wouldn't recommend it for people who aren't patient because it does tend to leave you hanging for a long while, and the ending was spectacular for the long-expected slaughter, except for the final scene that left us hanging and rather annoyed.

I think I'm not cut out to be a movie reviewer, my comments are absolutely useless. Just go watch the movies.

It's rather annoying when there's so much you want to say but you can't, and even being cryptic is useless because if you want to be cryptic you might as well just say it directly. Suffice it to say that perhaps I tend to have the same kind of expectations of others that I have of myself, or rather I wish they could do for me as I try to do for them, but as with all things in life such is never to be. Perhaps it's too early to say, time will make all things clear in the end and maybe it'll be a nice ending, but I never dare to hope. Heh, what did I say now about being cryptic?

It's so difficult to be happy when things keep falling apart here and there (not all at once but one at a time, even more annoying), but I keep telling myself that people who have it a lot worse than me aren't complaining as much as me, so I should just learn to live with it. Thus, I am learning, bear with me. Oh, the joys of self-psychotherapy.

I shall crawl back into my hermit's shell now. Sunlight isn't all that great for me after all.

Avaris / 9/24/2006 09:15:00 PM

0 consumed