Leaving

Last night I turned down going to dinner because I was knackered from a gung-ho afternoon of teaching at the hospital and I basically had not finished my ACS Presentation for my consultant tomorrow yet. And also because I had been misinformed or misunderstood somehow and thought that K was leaving on Saturday instead.

A part of me was horrified that he was leaving today instead, and that I would probably never see him again. Then again, a part of me silently agreed that I had done the right thing and had not gone to see him 'one last time' before he left.

I called K last night to talk to him before he left and for some reason, my voice broke off halfway and wavered dangerously in the midst of my sentence.

"I can't believe you're leaving for good. It seems like just yesterday that I met you and we became such good friends."

Sporadic though I must admit our conversations have been over the past 2 years or so, it is impossible to deny that he was always there for me, through my darkest moments, through tears and laughter, and through the quotes he left me for encouragement that sometimes did not make sense at all!

So many people enter and leave your life.

Hundreds of thousands of people.

You have to keep your door open so they can come in.

But it also means you have to let them go.

So much for never being an emo wreck when it comes to friends.

Thank you for everything all these years xxx

Walking On

Just came back from a Liverpool vs Man Utd match, which ended in a victorious 2-0! WOOTS! I had gone with little hope of a win, saying that I would be happy with a 0-0 draw, as Liverpool's run had been horrendous before this with 4 defeats in a row. But who knew, Man Utd was shyte today.

Like JH said, I should definitely watch more football from now onwards and give Liverpool all my good luck vibes.

Saw 'The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus' the night before with Hanna and Hugo, of which I did not understand one bit at all. I had to run off halfway for a booze session in honour of my Daisy Hoo's birthday, which did not end well at all because I was completely wasted by the end of it. The worst I've ever experienced so far. Thank God for a friend like her who took care of me and patiently attended to my needs although I was a total mess. No more booze for a while now.

And the booze has also made me lose my voice, almost completely. How am I supposed to clerk patients this week now?

ARGH.

Busy Bee

I thought I would be home early on Monday since my consultant didn't have clinic at Epsom this week. Teaching for that day was cancelled right after my radiology tutorial ended at 9.45 am. Technically, I had the entire freaking day free. Instead, I decided to go to the ECG room, and after finding that it was being taken over by a bunch of surgery med students (pffttt go to your theatres or go somewhere else!), I suggested we go over to A&E to irritate some of the poor doctors there. I ended up on the service of this reallyyy nice SpR around - who just reminds me of my dad btw, although I lent him my pen to fill in a form and he ran off with it and I could not locate him after! ARGH! - and V was taught some amazing ECG stuff by this SHO.

Finally spotted a pneumothorax and collapsed lung on the CXR, attempted ABGs but it was too difficult so the SpR took over. And ABGs totally are not easy by the way, because today during rounds, our team's SpR tried on this old lady and after two people jabbed her like ten times, everyone finally gave up. Then assessed a priority chest pain patient with another Reg, and then was asked to run through the ECG (ARGH!! Well, at least I got better after ystdy), and after that another CXR. Managed to put some of my well-acquired knowledge from my IJN Elective days to good use. Then the Reg shooed me back home saying that it was 5 pm and she thought I had been there long enough. And I was! From around before 11 am till 5 pm, and missing lunch in between too!

V was exclaiming later how she thought A&E was really cool, and this reminded me of how a couple of my friends have been professing their interests in Emergency Medicine. Compared to yesterday's fast-paced experience, ward rounds this morning was realllyy snoozy with the team's new Reg and the F1. After that I tried to clerk a patient who obviously had a very large multinodular goitre but to no avail because she was completely confused and could not even answer the first 5 questions of the MMSE. V and I just trawled through the patient notes after that and looked up a couple of the follow-up investigations on Clinical Manager.

Then I had clinic in the afternoon with my regular consultant. Rheum clinic, is as V puts it, 'mindblowingly boring', but I love Dr D heaps. He is like a kindly father and so funny at times too, although he may be a man of few words and little constructive criticism. I still have a soft spot for Rheum, however, because it is a running problem in my family.

Now I need to do my incredibly boring essay. Argh. Such a buzzkill after two such lovely, busy days.

Transitioning Through Time? Or Not

While talking to some friends last night, I realised, at that moment, how much I had changed as a person, along with my interests and habits.

I remember a time in the not-so-distant past when I loved Classical music. I loved going for concerts and worshipped anyone who played the violin well. When I later took up the flute and was made a part of the orchestra for the opening ceremony of a certain church, it was the best thing that had happened to me, indefinitely.

As of now, I have not touched my flute for a good 4 years. My piano reminds shut beneath its dusty lid in Malaysia. And when F brought up the idea that I could get a keyboard and use headphones to play here, I bit my tongue to prevent myself from saying that I had completely lost interest in everything music-related.

I remember a time when I knew absolutely everything and anything about football. The EPL, The Bundesliga, The Serie A, The World Cup.....name the tournament and the team, and chances are that I could break down a short analysis of tactics and styles for you in great depth. Now, it has been months since I have watched an EPL match on TV. Name me any other EPL team besides Liverpool and I would not be able to provide you with much input at all, apart from *gasp!* 'How CAN you say Liverpool sucks?!'

Then there was the time when I loved writing. I wrote short stories, proses, poems, articles about my opinions on life, and later blog entries....and everything seemed to flow naturally from the tips of my fingers on to the keyboard. I loved reading, and I loved writing, so much so that it was almost a daily thing to do without further thought to it.

Now, when I think of writing, my mind is blank from inspiration. I feel nothing, I know nothing, I care about nothing besides the mound of work piling up around me and making and organising my notes into files.

A few years ago, I had a love-hate relationship with David Gray's song 'This Year's Love', simply because I had started off hating the song, only to move on to a time when listening the song could put a wistful look on my face.

A couple of days ago, I came across the MV on someone's blog and decided to watch it, just because I had never seen it before. A good minute or so into the song, I decided to close the window because I was bored out of my wits.

I am a person of many extremes. And after all of the above, I realise how fickle I can be when it comes to my obsessions or flinging off stuff into my 'Been there, done that' box. Sometimes I wonder how it is that I spent years of my life labelling this guy as 'fickle' or 'absolutely having no idea about what he wants' when I am about three levels worse than him myself.

Again, another case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Bits and Bops

It's been one long week indeed.

When Monday swings around the corner, the long week just looms ahead and you feel tired just thinking about it. Then Wednesday comes and suddenly everything fast forwards and it's TGIF! And then once again, the weekend disappears all too soon.

I haven't blogged in ages, with the excuse that I am busy and caught up with too many things, and my days are so filled with tasks to do that I don't even have time to open up Blogger and update my blog. But truth be told, I haven't mugged properly in ages, and as for finishing up tasks, I am still stuck halfway through my mind-blowingly boring essay on Health Inequalities which I had vowed to finish last week. Pfft.

I guess that in short, nothing very much has happened at all since the last time I updated. Well, apart from the fact that about a week and a half ago I was bestowed with an incredible gift of seemingly idiopathic abdominal cramps / epigastric pain / bloating, which I had mistaken for menstrual cramps in the beginning, but then proceeded to drag on for 10 days and made life extremely inconvenient for me!

Thank God that now with Proton Pump Inhibitors the bad gastritis has gone, and was not something more than that.

Was on-call last Thursday, from the day till 10 pm, amidst grand rounds, presentations, lectures and so on, which turned out to be one incredible experience. Although I had been warned that the consultant on-call was one tough cookie at first and was a no-nonsense kind of woman, she turned out to be an incredible teacher and I actually found her sarcasm extremely funny at some points. In short, it was one of the first times I felt like I was doing real medicine throughout the past few years.

Having said that, it is only the first week, and I've got to keep up the spirits for the next 6 weeks or so. So hopefully we'll fare well in that department.

On another note, I have been pondering about the definition of 'maturity' these past few days. How do you consider a person 'mature'? It is easy for me to scoff off everyone as 'childish' or 'immature' or 'clueless about life', and yet how much more seasoned am I to judge people as such? I have not gone through a whole life of World War II with battles scars as proof to show that I have slaved through life to be considered worldly enough. And here we are in a profession that demands mental strength, maturity and a level-headed attitude amongst all other things. Many times I have found myself to be increasingly childish amongst my recent dapples with Junior Doctors, Post Grad students and so on, and here I am writing off others as the same. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Definitely food for thought, this one.

I like the busy schedule that is taking over my life, to be honest. I like having countless things to do and long hours away from home, and the ability to shut out everything and everyone around me and just focus on the main thing right in front of me, i.e. the patient, case notes, investigation results, and so on.

Although I must admit, I do miss shopping. Hur hur.

Abercrombie and Fitch

I must have the worst self control of any human being alive.

Ever since my mum got me my grey off-shoulder Abercrombie and Fitch sweater a few years ago, I've been actively wondering where there was another A&F store for me to raid (erm I mean visit and window shop).

I'd never actually been accustomed to Abercrombie and Fitch's style before this, and I had never known that there was a retail outlet in London (yes I know. Blasphemy!) until I saw people carrying shopping bags walking down Regent Street two years ago. After that, it always occurred to me to go home and google map its location, but somehow I never got around to doing it!

So today, with Noemi - who also vehemently expressed an interest to visit the A&F store - we google mapped its location right on the spot while strolling down Regent Street. Initial plan was to go to Picadilly Circus to watch a movie, mind you, but our legs saw us turning into the famed Savile Row and entering the A&F store, where my jaw proceeded to drop in awe thereafter.

The shop had the most amazing concept ever, with loud music booming through fabulous speakers all around and the best looking lot of salespeople I'd ever seen! We sifted through the massive outlet, and both floors, despite how difficult it was to navigate our way through the dim lights and the throngs of shoppers, and eventually found ourselves face-to-face with the signature A&F look this season: Checks.

I'd been lusting after a checkered button-down-shirt since the start of this season - possibly influenced by how good Zac Efron looks in them - and I'd even tried on a couple on the High Street while shopping with Daisy Hoo, but the instant my eyes fell on these plaid shirts in A&F, I knew I would end up walking out with one (if it fit, of course). I was lucky to locate an XS in the colour I wanted as soooo many of them were out of that size, and we left the store after many bouts of queuing, i.e. first, for me to try on my shirts, and then the longest one of all - to pay!!

It helped of course, that there was soooooo much eye-candy in that store! I had more fun ogling some of the guys most of the time than properly contemplating whether I should spend that much on a plaid shirt. I pretty much decided in 2 minutes that I would buy it and spent the rest of the time trying not to swoon at the sight of the male models around.

As far as rip-off American brands in the UK are concerned, I'm pretty much sold. Noemi and I are making it a pact to visit the store again every time she comes to the city.

Yes, I know. I am that weak. Shoot me. Haha.

Hungry Eyes

A few headlines did well to shock me today.

The first being the news that Patrick Swayze had finally succumbed to the battle with pancreatic cancer. It seemed just a while ago that I had read about him being diagnosed with this terminal condition but the fact that he had managed to fight it for....almost a year (?) made me take off my imaginary hat to this guy.

Sometimes it amazes me that the amount of determination one individual has can be so different compared to another's. Or even how one person's outlook on life and it's many bends can be so positive compared to another person's glass half empty.

Last week, during GP, Wei and I had a fabulous time chatting to this lady who had been battling MS for a good 7 years, and at the end, even I was pondering if even she had more energy and a more optimistic take on life than I did.

I'm checking myself right now, making sure that I appreciate all that I have in life right now, the most obvious being my given opportunity to study medicine, and not get carried away with dossing around because heck, RCT lectures and comm skills can sometimes be oh-so-dreary.

Am listening to 'Hungry Eyes' off the Dirty Dancing OST because watching Youtube videos of Patrick Swayze in that movie made me feel sad, thinking of what a brilliant dancer he was.

And the second shitteous piece of news was that Fed-Ex lost the US Open title to Del Potro with what my friend described as 'horrendous playing'.

Sometimes time seems to fly past when you're not keeping track.

Manchester

I had been seriously considering hitting Selfridges or Harrods over the last Bank Holiday weekend to do some horrifying damage to my bank account, when Pei Hua brought up the idea of visiting Manchester. I pondered over the idea for a great many days until Yuan Lih got fed up and decided to make the choice for me of not going, but a sudden huge pang of missing Pei Hua and some rash decisions saw me chugging on the train to Manchester in the end.

Probably the best rash decision I have made EVER!

Manchester was heaps of fun....rain, wind and freezing weather aside. Kee Fong provided plenty of hysterical laughter opportunities throughout the entire trip (Thank You for your hospitality, my brother sent from heaven! Lol) and I had the most amazing time catching up with Pei Hua, with Kee Fong professing his amazement every now and then at how the two of us just couldn't stop talking. I had a good time talking to Daniel for one night as well, before he fled off to Preston the next day, and even managed to do some shopping (albeit very mild compared to the damage I might have done in London).

At San Carlo, which turned out to be a swanky Italian restaurant frequented by celebs, i.e mainly Man Utd footballers.

Rio Ferdinand, Ryan Giggs, Michael Owen, Paul Scholes.....on the wall. Too bad I didn't see Rio in real life.

I miss Pei Hua already!!!

Found a new drinking buddy in Kee Fong. Too bad we didn't have much time to drink more.

It wasn't half as pricey as a place like this would cost in London, although Voon kept insisting that I have become some atas queen =P

And even saw Scooby Doo on the street! Hahahah

Overall, I had the best weekend getaway in AGES! The money forked out for the train tickets couldn't have been more well spent, and I had the most cushy accomodation at Hotel KF (aka Kee Fong's posh apartment).

Will definitely visit the windy, rainy city again one day...this time to Old Trafford (to throw eggs at it...hahaha I kid, I kid).

I left Manchester with the heaviest heart. It's times like these when you realise there will always be those friends you've found along the way who are irreplaceable in your heart.

Thanks for one of the best times of my life, Pei Hua and Kee Fong! xxx