chinatown finds

even the script screams "chinese". don't know about you but every single mainland chinese person i know has that exact handwriting. must be something they were taught in school :) this whole fascination with chinese new year didn't really kick in back home. this isn't my first new year away because my very naughty folks occasionally traveled over the new year break. heyy when your parents can't take much time off work, you grab every opportunity! but this is my first time spending chinese new year alone-ish. sure, there were singsoc activities that i could've gone for, and contrary to popular belief, i do have a handful of asian friends. haha, sorry side comment that popped up in response to a mass email i sent friends far away. in fact, how else would one find such a bakery but for the guidance of a friend from hong kong who said the egg tarts were authentic.

occupational hazards

saw umbilical hernia for the first time on the ward last week and it sprang to mind when this little guy came outta his red net bag. sort of how S' pyloric stenosis story concerning his newborn and projectile vomit is forever etched in memory.

sushi sunday

eagle-eyed J knows a good deal when he sees one 

it was definitely half-decent, whew. my inner sushi snob disparages anything inauthentic but authentic is hard to be had on a student budget. plus, J and T, who each worked in japan for a year, have developed discerning palates when it comes to japanese fare. knowing this passed J's taste test was reassuring and i was quick to jump on the bandwagon.

J and T. lucked out with good friends :) in related news, they've both signed up for the cairngorms trip in two weeks. eggcitement...

and flowers just because they really brighten up winter!

exploring the 'hood

to risk letting you infer that i've a non-existent social life, one of my favourite things to do when i'm around for the weekend is to explore the town on foot. because i don't like crowds, this solo expedition usually happens around 8am. to have an 8am start, i'm normally in bed by 11pm. which means i stay in on -gasps- friday and saturday night. ah, friday nights. gone are the boozy days of freshman year. the nekidlawyers, as we called ourselves, formed a lonely hearts club to the theme song "friday i'm in love". we were at timbre most weeks, with the odd foray into wala's or a smoky joint at arab street. however, as with most lonely hearts clubs, our membership dwindled as the nekidlawyers ventured into coupleland, some never to return. but they were great times and make for great stories of many a beer-fueled emo night belting "wonderwall" and other timbre regulars.

fast forward five years, the nekidlawyers have probably re-formed a working chapter back home. when i was working (haha) friday nights were sacred. we'd have to go out. and we'd have to drink. and we'd have to do something to let off steam from the work week. so underdeveloped our coping mechanisms were ;) so very different from fridays now. my current friday night options are medsoc where they start drinking at uni at 8pm, followed in not-so-quick succession by bar1, bar2, club1, club2 as the night wears on. grinding with drunk teenagers? not really my idea of a good night. 

 

so i take it geriatric-easy and spring awake on saturday morning to wander where the river was beautiful in the winter morning light.

and i headed for the boating lake near where i stay today, snapping these shots along the way.

the pond was frozen around the swans! would've laughed if that wasn't a cruel thing to do :P

the new improved version

on the second day of the edinburgh race, A asked why i'd joined wilderness. we were walking uphill, not treacherously, but possibly the most demanding part of our relatively simple route. i'd a politically correct answer at the ready. in a nutshell: grew up in a city, never had the chance to explore the outdoors, figured i should make the most of my time in the uk, started with the short country walk, realised it wasn't all that bad and took it incrementally from there. ok, so not quite "a nutshell". the real reason only just came to me after reading the latest modern love offering on the new york times.

i started going outdoors because of the manfriend, something i'm slow to acknowledge because it makes me feel weak, approval-craving and overly submissive.

those in the know appreciate that kai takes "action man" to a new level. in addition to his respectable day job, he's thrived in the army, graduating top of his officer corps and enjoying accelerated promotion to captain while still in his mid-20s. mind you, this is at least a decade ahead of schedule, and he hadn't even signed on as an army regular. throw him in the wild and he's survival personified. unfortunately, or not, his relaxed gungho to outdoor activities saw us going on holidays wayyy out of my comfort zone. everything that could be climbed (waterfalls in tioman, waterfalls in iceland, glaciers in iceland, volcanoes in santorini, the samaria gorge in crete, the machu picchu in peru...) he'd want to climb and i played the compliant companion with great reluctance.

my love-hate relationship (really fond of kai, hate the outdoors) escalated and i wanted so much to share his interests, but couldn't. then i started medsch and right there at freshers' fayre was the wildernessmedics booth, advertising medical teaching (yay!) and the chance to save lives (double yay!) outdoors (hmmm). interestingg... 

so off i went to the introductory walk, followed in quick succession by weekends away and sometime between the double rainbows over hexham and bathing out of a tiny teapot in swaledale, i was hooked. overcoming that mental barrier of the fear of physical exhaustion was hard, something i attribute to my abnormally active self-preservation instinct. once that was dealt with, however, i realised i really enjoyed walking uphill. this new-found enthusiasm snowballed into a generally affinity for the outdoors, much to kai's delight.

having assuaged my conscience that i'm doing the outdoors out of my own volition, and on my terms, takes away the edge of bitter resentment. guess i'm no longer entertaining the occasional thought of shoving kai off the mountain! so my cheesy take home message is: change must come from within. there you go, a bit of relationship101 on this sunny winter morning.

thanks for reading. non-mushy posting will resume shortly.

vindication and validation

let me first apologise for this self-satisfied post.

and now you've been warned, much as i think it's mega uncool to talk about school and grades, my inner singaporean occasionally craves occular proof of academic adequacy.

so let's just say that i've been completely vindicated for rushing our last assignment, submitting it days before it was actually due just so i could flee to continental europe for the some hedonistic holidaying. and that term exam i returned in the nick of time to sit for? not too shabby either. amazing what abject fear and desperation does for productivity.

it's not often that i manage to have my cake (ample and uninterrupted family time) and eat it (no negative impact on what i was actually supposed to be doing). for the last week i've been wondering if my ill-discipline was going to bite me in the behind but big sigh of relief when both results came back. looking forward to the sushi celebration this weekend :)

hip hip hurrah!

lesson learnt

headed an hour out of the city for our patient visit this afternoon and was 40minutes early. killed some time in the local pub and learnt that i'm often too unaware for my own good. we'd just settled down with our drinks (yes yes, non-alcoholic...) when B suddenly said, "let's go.". a little bewildered, i downed my diet coke and followed him back out into the cold.

turns out that it was a really rough pub and B had good reason to suspect that more than half the patrons were on drugs. the trigger for our getaway was when this guy who'd been eyeballing us the whole time left the table next to us to make a phone call, all the while still staring at us. seemed harmless enough to me, maybe he was talking to his ladyfriend... but according to B, it was already a rough area, compounded by the rowdy, trackies-and-trainer clad types in the pub and how at the back of his mind he remembered our patient's husband telling us to avoid that pub at all costs. 

we left unscathed and it was an uneventful walk to our patient's yet all the while B was ever vigilant. apparently he was afraid there'd be a gang of thugs waiting outside the pub. not like we looked like we were worth robbing, or so i thought, but i trust B. he seems to have a pretty good sense of danger and hmm i guess it was a timely reminder that i'm no longer in safe singapore. that and how our patient's husband insists on sending us back to the train station after each visit because the area is not pretty at night.

scottish souvenir

got this off the wilderness album - a big thank you and photo credits to whoever took it :)

orange you easy

once again i'm reminded how small i am and how little i know :) signed up for the weekend trip to edinburgh because i saw the word "ceilidh" on the agenda. am proud to announce that after my first ceilidh last christmas, i'm a competitive dancing convert. gotta love the energy of a ceilidh and the atmosphere is electric! however, this selective reading, a skill acquired over years of skimming reams of lecture notes, did not serve me well. little did i know that there was a two day orienteering race involved. 

remember getting the email from K to pick a course while at a bar in salzburg. too absorbed by the mug of gluehwine i was nursing, i casually tossed my phone at the manfriend and asked him to sign me up for the easiest course. he didn't miss a beat, "you mean the one designed for 6-8 year olds?!". despite my drunken insistence, the manfriend refused to comply, putting me down for the course one level up and "ideal for experienced youngsters and novice adults". oh he gives me more credit than due.

so the weekend rolled around and it was off to edinburgh, there i was thinking the race route would be signposted, with smiling volunteers pointing the way. or not. guess i should've realised that defeats the purpose of 'orienteering'. almost had a panic attack when i saw the city race (day 1) map. WHERE WERE ALL THE ROAD NAMES?! and, hang on a sec, what's this spinning thing with arrows K's distributing? vaguely recall being taught about lodestone in primary school science. could this, gasps, be a compass??? to my immense relief, help came in the form of J and E, two lovely coursemates who very kindly let me tag along. so the three of us set off and while the two of them conquered edinburgh, i contently trailed behind in a state of "social loafing" (ooH! new behavioral pattern! the things medsch exams  teach you...)

J and E were absolute superstars and they found ALL the 29 checkpoints dotted around the city and we made it back to the finish line, proudly 60-62 out of 66. not too shabby for a start! for the uninitiated, an orienteering race is one where runners are given an unmarked map with a list of checkpoints and we're to find each point sequentially and beep in to log that we'd completed that part of the course. as if running 13km wasn't hard enough, try doing that in an unfamiliar city, navigating with a compass while weaving in between throngs of curious tourists...

the next day, we set off bright and early for the rural orienteering around arthur's seat. this time, J and E were doing the intermediate course while i had been signed up for pre-beginner, as per above. but again, as luck would have it, A and T were on the same route. as were the young, the elderly and an intellectually disabled young man... have nothing but respect for the children and little old ladies who made the race look so easy, scampering up and downhill, and for the intellectually disabled young man who beat me hands down at map reading. really shows the power of unconditional love and support to raise him to practically normal function. aww :) 

gathered at the registration tent

having ran the whole 13+km yesterday, T and A decided to take today easy, and me along with them :)

lovely view from the side of arthur's seat

not something to be proud of, but a kindergarten troop on the same course whizzed right by us :/

after a grueling hour of thrills and spills, we rewarded ourselves with some giant cake and coffee while waiting for the rest to finish. doesn't A look so happy? :)

back home and have learnt so much about orienteering i feel one step closer to being a fully-functioning adult. also, being overtaken by wee babies taught me that all the race winners must have been orienteering since they could walk. it's such a different lifestyle where parents accompany their toddlers on these races, and children as young as 6 run the easier course on their own. have to admit that for all of five seconds i held my parents responsible for my lack of orienteering ability. if only they'd imparted the relevant skills earlier.

can't wait for the next trip - to the cairngorms, i hear! heading to the north of scotland in the dead of winter isn't quite my idea of fun, yet, but yay to overcoming fear.

cultural differences

went by the GP surgery for my early birthday present, courtesy of the NHS. gotta love how they take care of EVERYTHING. it's really cradle to grave, like i learnt during social studies. much gratitude to the NHS for meeting my health and screening needs. wow. 

relatively discomfort-free morning aside, i traipsed to waitrose to buy lunch for tomorrow. funny story - the last time i'd to bring my own lunch for a wilderness trip, i packed steamed tofu, mushroom and spinach in ziplock bag, and stashed it in a cylindrical tupperwear. little did i know that by the time i opened my lunch, on top of a freezing mountain, the contents looked like something a zombie (because they eat brains) might have regurgitated. the tofu was pulverised, the wolfberries looked like blood clots and the mushroom "juice" gave it a disgusting greyish brown tinge. everyone was too polite to say anything but boyy did i feel like a right royal retard, trying my darndest to chug the unintentionally liquid-diet with all the nonchalance i could muster. J might've noticed me cringe and very sweetly offered me some maltloaf to wash the mush down. so i made a mental note to subsequently eat what "normal people" eat - sandwiches, crisps and fruit. 

love supermarkets, and especially love waitrose. it's such an upmarket treat that i only go that way when i'm feeling decadent. the packed food section is a dream and i'd fun picking lunch for tomorrow. although i did get a little carried away and somehow left with lunch and dinner for today too! so tomorrow, as i tuck into my (very conventional) mushroom risotto and vegetable soup, i foresee no cause for shame :)

in other news, successfully unclogged the kitchen sink with my trusty bag of soda crystals that have seen me through too many burnt pots to count. need to hoover my room, and pack for the weekend away. not the partyanimer of fridays, but it'll do.

banana bread

limited as the kitchen might be, the ladies in 2D churn out a truly scrumptious loaf of banana bread. really warms the cockles on a cold winter night. i could subsist on this and be completely content. wow! yay for friendly neighbours, and freshly baked goodies.

morning finds

the only upside to this really weird jetlag (in between singapore and GMT, probably on bombay time...) where i sleep at 9pm and wake at 4am is that i get to see the brilliant sunrise if i venture out in the morning. like so. on a related note, however, highly concerned i'll fall asleep mid-race in edinburgh tomorrow and not even be awake when it's time to ceilidh :(

lazy mornings

had the rest of the week off after the exams and made the most of the downtime. didn't realise i'd been on the go for over a month and holidaying in such hard work ;) it'd been awhile since i last went to the river so on tuesday night i went to bed without setting my alarm (such a luxury!) and woke when i wanted on wednesday. moseyed over to the water and walked up and down the banks. was last there when the manfriend first settled me in and we'd dinner at the quayside on one of his last nights. this time, i brought my trusty moleskine (thanks carol!) to jot down what looked like interesting cafes and bars. it was a lovey brisk morning, with just enough cloud cover to keep my freckle phobia at bay. 

was back in my flat by lunch time because the cleaning lady was coming but soon got a text from G, who was doing some walking of her own! turns out she'd just walked across the bridge and was in the city centre killing some time. mentioned that i'd passed the bridge during my morning jaunt but didn't cross it and she offered to walk with me. helps that we both enjoy long walks! back to the water and across the bridge this time. we were rewarded for our industry by this charming little cafe on the other side where we stopped for coffee. chatted with the fit fijian former rugby world cup player who opened it, and he gifted us with half a dozen italian cookies :) sweet!

home and happy

funny how home now refers to two separate places.

came back to my flat and was semi-relieved to find it as i'd left it, the only change being the pile of christmas cards on my desk the cleaning lady must've brought in :)

really like this separate, selfish existence i'm afforded as a student. the independence and privacy is worth any amount of laundry or cooking required to sustain such a lifestyle. of course, seeing how i was meaning to study this weekend, food's been limited to whatever the cafe across the street has to offer. this morning alone, it's been a toasted focaccia, sour cream and chive dip, cream crackers with cream cheese, hot chocolate, a large cheese savoury, creamy vegetable soup and more chocolate than i care to admit to. and oops, we've not even hit lunch yet! much as i'd love to blame the cold, it's truly my non-existent restraint. hmm wasn't panic supposed to suppress appetite?

also have the weirdest jetlag where i sleep from 6pm to 3am, wake for 3 hours then go back to sleep for another 3. not the most conducive of sleep patterns. exams monday and tuesday then have the rest of the week off. well, almost. have a hospital visit on thursday then on friday i'm headed to edinburgh :) yay to a good week - and resuming normal sleep.

homeward bound

only discovered we'd reading week pretty late in the semester - which threw my winter holiday plans topsy turvy. had initially planned an ambitious eurotrip in lieu of coming home, and then suddenly there was time to come home too! which i was more than happy to do. that said, it's been tough trying to revise while surrounded by distraction. which makes me feel a bit silly because i've been an unproductive hermit all week :( like if i wasn't going to get any work done, i may as well have caught up with friends. boo!

looking forward to returning to the UK with its welcome break from the excesses of home. in a strange way, i miss my ascetic lifestyle and am in dire need of a good detox. also, it looks like singers will soon cease to be home base, which is at the same time both exciting and a little unnerving.

but first! exams to be conquered, then a two day race in edinburgh right after :)

pertinent to doctorlawyerindianchief

hello! a friend shared this on facebook and it was too good not to repost. found is especially pertinent and some parts were even downright funny. i'm often asked why the switch and most people think i'm stark raving mad to go back to school after being called to the bar. i don't blame them - but over the past few months, i've refined my short answer (yes, i do try to spare most people the agony of the long version) and am happy to put it up here.

i'd always wanted to be a doctor but after 1) an emotionally and physically draining internship at 19 and 2) the prospect of only completing specialisation a decade after graduating, i chickened out of the blood, gore and hard work. switched paths comfortably enough and had a glorious 4 years in lawsch. however, throughout lawsch the desire to become a doctor didn't die a natural death like i'd expected. instead, it grew to a point where i almost applied to medsch in my second year of lawsch. decided against dropping out and strangely, wanted to complete what i began, with part of me hoping that i'd eventually grow to enjoy law enough to practice. applied to medsch at the manfriend's insistence upon returning from my grad trip. truth be told, it was probably the incessant whinging that drove him to unilaterally sign me up for the entrance exam. and for that, i am ever grateful. 

started my training contract and really enjoyed the six months as a practice trainee. worked harder than i'd ever worked before, learnt more than i ever had, met people i have nothing but admiration and awe for, made solid friends. yet despite the dream-like experience, i still wanted to be a doctor. and when even the best of legal practice couldn't compel me to stay in the industry, i knew it would be ok to go. which brings us up to speed! 

apologies for the lengthy preamble, here's the link haha. and the parts that cracked me up have been excerpted for your convenience.

4) You will get yourself a job of dubious remuneration.

You put in 4 years of med school, and at least 4 years of residency (up to 8 if you’re a surgeon).  You even did a fellowship and got paid a pittance while doing that.  And for all the good you’re doing humanity — you are healing people, for godssakes —  you should get paid more than some spreadsheet jockey shifting around numbers, some lawyer defending tobacco companies or some consultant maximizing a client’s shareholder value, whatever the hell that means. Right? Wrong. For the same time spent out of college, your I-banking, lawyering and consulting buddies are making 2-5 times as much as you are. 

And now, the only reason why you should go into medicine:

You have only ever envisioned yourself as a doctor and can only derive professional fulfillment in life by taking care of sick people. There’s really no other reason, and lord knows the world needs docs.  Prestige, money, job security, making mom happy, proving something, can’t think of anything else to do, better than being a lawyer, etc are all incredibly bad reasons for becoming a doc.

http://uncommonstudentmd.com/medschool/2012/1/1/the-top-10-reasons-why-you-should-not-go-to-medical-school-a.html?_ft_qid=5693419936360069430#

happy 2012

hello hello :) how was your new year's? trust 2012 is off to a promising start. 

in a wee bit of a pickle at the moment. yet again my hedonism has gotten the better of me and, um, this eurotrip ends 48h before my exams begin. i.e. return to my flat just before i need to take the exam i was supposed to spend the past four weeks revising for. hmm. people say insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different outcome, and mind you, it was possible to holiday till the very last minute then still scrape through an open book exam. no magic, just speed-writing and sticky tabs in the wonderful set of notes acquired from generous seniors. 

but now, oh now, it's a completely different ballgame because i need to memorise things all over again. and rightly so! wouldn't want my doctor to have to run something by dr. google during a consultation. would you? so, uh, i tell myself that for the finals in june (or is it may? i forget) i will chain myself to my desk, steadfastly ignoring the siren calls of easyjet and my student railcard. 

in happier news, i do believe we're getting married in june. been subconsciously avoiding the use of the M word on this blog. since getting engaged in may, it's been this big happy blur on the horizon but when the clock struck 12 two days ago, it hit me like a freight train that this happy blur comes into focus this year. which was a sobering thought amidst the unregulated, free-for-all firework display by the big church in reykjavik.