Has Moved

After gazillion attempts to full export this blog, it's finally successful.
The move is more managerial than anything as I share a group blog also.

For future reading fun (not really) please go to: SiveFive

Cheers.

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Too Chinese Apparently

So I spent nye reading a book. Not just any book, an autobiography.
And I spent new year day finishing aforementioned book.
It was good. I don't regret it. Whatevs.

And then my uni friends and I decided to take a roadtrip to rural australia for the weekend. Whereby I learnt that I cannot cook much .. besides salad. Heck, that's not even cooking. There were a few funny encounters. It is like the town is in asian-shock. In the park, we were greeted with "Anyoung! Ni hao ma!" I am neither korean or chinese.

A couple of days later I travelled to the highlands. It's quite beautiful, the colourful foliage in the autumn and spring makes it retirement town.

So my parents being the partay animals that they are, decided they'd outparty me and stay out even later. I went to sleep at 330am with the front door deadlocked (because I'd forgotten and not out of spite ok) only to wake up to the sound of rocks been thrown at the window, thirty-five missed calls and half a dozen voicemail. Guess who.
There's something wrong with this picture.
Oh, and I found out later my dad has climbed the balcony attempting a break-in. Fail.

If I haven't proven to you that I'm lame yet - I may be playing golf and lawnbowls this weekend. Hurrah!

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'Tis The Season To Be Jolly

If I've said this already, I'll say it again. I love this time of the year.
More specifically, I love Christmas and all the days leading up to it.
It usually demands little sleep and lots of running around.


Where my time went since the last time I posted:- drove to the beach post-exams.
- played ping-pong badly (thank goodness no photographic evidence of that)
- played mahjong equally badly
- DMMs over late-night ice-creams
- christmas carolling at the nursing homes
- cupcakes


- bbq meat on skewers production line
-carols & songs around the crib
- bargain finds that make the day :)
- too many hours of choir practice
- a southern hemisphere Christmas.. at 34 degrees celsius!
- oh yeah, and passed ze exams
- retreat to the beach for the weekend with kind strangers which gave me the seabreeze, silence, and conversations that I needed to hear.
- yet more charity dinners



Tired today. Will post more substantially soon.
In the meantime, Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

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One Soul-ar Cycle of Searching

Today I handed in my forms and admin papers for my final rotation of the year. It has been my first year of clinical exposure. The feelings of incredulity still linger as I write this entry, I cannot believe how fast it has gone. Indeed, the past ten months have raced on leaving me with much mixed emotions and nostalgia for some reason.

Perhaps because I've come to know that I'm grown up. That I have responsibilities. That I am accountable. That I can no longer run.

With a year that has brought me to places I've never been before, within and without myself, I do not know where to begin. Shall I start with the bureaucracy of the system? The wonderful volunteers and professionals I met in the community working for the underprivileged? The dying geriatrics with so many issues, not least of all depression? The marvel of the inflating lung during cardiothoracic surgery? The twenty-something friend diagnosed with lung Ca? The funeral for a twenty-one year-old? The buzz of being able to answer your consultant's questioning? The sudden and unexplained lost of what could have been a wonderful friendship? The swimming sea of mountainous work? The forging of new friendships and the fading away of old ones? The loneliness of being alone. The unexpected and unrequited courtship? The demands of a higher calling?

And perhaps this is why it feels like a year of rollercoaster rides.

I've come to realise that embracing this profession means accepting that there will be moments where you will be lonely, even if you are not alone. Especially when you are not alone. It is lonely because it demands so much of your life away from friends, families and people and places you care about. It is lonely because you place yourself at the most intimate and poignant moments of a stranger's life and then it is expected of you to walk away afterwards. Nobody ever teaches you how to deal with that. So you carry it with you. I hate goodbyes but am grateful for the privilege of meeting.

Without supportive people who are in the same boat, my outlook on this year may have been very different. Because of them, I am encouraged.
Without a source of constancy in my life, this year would be meaningless. But it was not.
For even the smallest crack in the wall is enough to allow the light to enter.

It's been a year that has taken me to polarising emotions. How strange it is to reflect on my tiny place in this world. What wonder!

So the words to sum up this year:
Inspiration.
Fear.
Joy.
Humbled.
Bittersweet.
Incomprehension.
Laughter.
Driving.
Questions.
Path.
Fleeting.
Books.

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Breaking The Silence

I know I haven't blogged in awhile. What can I say, life got busy I guess. It's been an emotionally and physically draining few months. I could go into all the dramatic turmoils, epiphanies and self-discovery journey blah blah that's been this year. Let's not, or we could be here for awhile.

Anyway, ward work and the teams has kept me busy so there isn't a lot of reflection to begin with. One thing I like about it has been the routine it's given me, which is also the same thing I hate - I have troubles saying goodbye. Seven-thirty on a friday night and I can't seem to tear myself away from the team and our septic patient because I can't muster the guts to say I need to go home. Call that abandonment issues, whatever.

This is turning out to be one boring entry. Huh.
I'll write more later when I am more articulate.

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Keep On Keeping On

It's been awhile. Why haven't I updated? Life.
My good friend reminded me to do so again.With all that has happened, there hasn't been a chance to process it all and it's come to a point where there is so much inside and it's starting to get to me.

First of all, the beginning of something that may have been wonderful and the end of it. Realising that no matter how hard you try, reality catches up with you and then finding out you have already chosen the path to take long before without even knowing. When choosing to do med.

At the expense of being ungrateful for the opportunity that's been given to me, I'll say it; medicine is sacrifice. So much sacrifice. So much so that I've been ruminating thoughts of whether it is worth it, and the answer has always been the same. Yes. Don't ask me why, I cannot explain it yet. Still, a part of me feels like I'm mourning the intangible loss, the "what ifs".

So I guess this is my closure. Thank you for everything.

As for my clinical experience, it's been an amazing journey so far. It is a privileged world that one steps into, and it is a brotherhood of the pursuit of good (most of the time). However, I don't feel like talking about it now. It is becoming too much of my life already.

Sometimes I envision the future and I hope it will all fall into place. I sincerely hope to be amongst the ones with something special that survives anything. Need to trust more.

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What A Week!

Five deadlines later... I am grateful to have completed them by the same day.
In the midst of the race with time, I found out one of my friend has lost motivation for studying and deferred. In moments of stress, it made me question myself too - and that scared me a little.
What I do have, is hope that when I do bounce back, my resilience is stronger than previously. And that keeps me going.
Love keeps me going. And grace sustains me.
What this community rotation has done for me, above all else, is that it has made me love humanity more than I ever have.

Chesterton proposes an amazing paradox that I believe is so true and so accurate.

Can he hate [the world] enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist?

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