I
was making myself a drink in the kitchen, then I got distracted by a
memory, a memory once forgotten, and somehow, by accident, or by
chance, the cup fell and everything scattered, spilled all over the
white tiled floor.
I
suppose most people, perhaps almost everyone, must have had shadows
of their past. Memories that they had forced themselves to forget,
inhibited, locked in a safe, at the dark corner of their mind.
Yet,
somehow, after a couple of months, sometimes even years, somehow, no
matter how powerful your mind tries to inhibit the memories, you
never quite forget them.
For
Boon Lee, I suppose it must have been 'okane'. Even after happily
married, one sudden day, her zhimui (sister friend) would suddenly
watsapp her and say: guess what? I saw okane the other day on the
street with another girl. Thought you would like to know. And the
thing is, I could tell that there was a part of her which had not
quite let go the shadow of her past.
God
always have His plans. His reasons. As for me, when mine revisited my
mind, I just had to spill everything. Pure foolishness and stupidity I have to admit. So there I was, on my fours, scrubbing
the floors of my kitchen. As the tiles became cleaner, my mind
clearer. As if the shadows of my past being wiped away. I was so
soiled that I had to took a shower after that. And that made me feel
better.
It
made me think. Does everyone else have a shadow of their past? How do
they cope with it? What if they need to face it almost everyday? What
if they lived in fear of being reminded of the past? Was I ever, by
chance a shadow of someone else's?
P/s:
Back to reality. No time for mind games, just finding excuses not to
study. Sigh...
Say we wake up at 6 in the morning, get to work at 7, plus minus the traffic jam, starts work at 8am, be very lucky enough to leave at 5pm, reach home in more or less 6pm… that is like 7am-6pm, which makes about 11 hours which is 45% of our day (11 out of 24 hours), EXCLUDING on-calls, studies, etc… furthermore, if we were to minus 8 hours of sleep, our job makes up 68% of our life… (i know, it is a sad fact, isn't it)
So, whateverJOB we choose, seriously, we MUST LOVE (LOVE, not just like, yes, deep-down-inside-L-O-V-E) it, right???
Then, we get home, we spend the remaining 13 hours with our love ones, whether friends, family, or the other half… laughed about what happened at work... share each other's experience, give each other comfort, give each other a pat in the shoulder, encouragement, love, smiles, support, surely, we SHOULD have a home to get back to, shouldn’t we? shouldn't we enjoy the other part of life to the fullest??
So, if we were to have a life partner, we SHOULD LOVE (LOVE, not just like) him (or her), right???
Imagine, if you had to remove that first half… so like I had to go to work, doing something I don’t like, 11 hours a day, for lets say, the next 2 years… how would it feel like?? Living that daily routine, dreading to get up for work, beingblue all mondays and throughout the week.... Horrible. ain't it??? Well, at least I get to come home to people I loved… maybe that will make up for the 45% of the day, maybe not enough...
On the other hand, imagine, if you keep the first, and remove the second half… so like, I do something I like very much, live my passion, follow my dreams… but at the end of the day, I come home to an empty rented home… cuddle myself to sleep, treat myself when ill, dapao food home or called for delivery, watch VCD on my laptop until i doze off, … is that happiness?
So,
when forced to make a decision, i was torn apart between two worlds...
my eyes are painful, somewhat red from all the rubbing, somewhat watery from all the tearing...
my heart is retching, aching with each breathe i take, hurting with every thoughts of you...
why? when you promised happiness, you gave pain instead? why? when you said you will be there, you were not? why? when you made promises, you broke them one by one?
is it true? that one need to walk down the path, the path covered with shattered glass, and let their feet bleed, with every step, sharp pain shooting up the spine, yet, thou shall keep walking, to reach the destination of happiness...
what if you thought you have found happiness, and later found out, that it was all a white lie... a fairytale that never exist, a pacifier for little kids...
i wondered how could you have let it be, how could you have let it go, perhaps, somethings weren't as important, perhaps sweet words, were only words...
and i, i only deserved to be in this dark space...
perhaps what they predicted was right everyone was given a certain amount of happiness and i am starting to reach the end of my quota... the tip of the toothpaste tube....
I guess I had too much on my mind lately… You know, after graduating, you are to step into the working world, a new phase of life. And there are options, many options. It is about time to plan our future, to decide where we stand 10 years from now. What decisions we make today, decides tomorrow. And being a Libran, decisions are what I feared most. And therefore, I had put a lot of thoughts into this.
Let’s see, there are two sides of the coin, at this moment. One side offers better working conditions, more advanced technology, better working hours (having only 1-2 oncalls per week), and halved the housemanship period (one year only). More importantly, it promised better opportunities for postgraduate programs (postgraduate training after housemanship itself!), educational funds and sponsorships. As a bonus, you get better salary and higher increments. It is almost like a dream come true.
On the other side of the coin, you have the hectic working conditions, work politics, every-other-day-calls (EOD) pushing a straight 36hours call and then given the night off and expected to report back the next day for another 36 hours call. On top of that, the doubled housemanship period (2 years), sleepless nights, heavy workloads, and your superior pushing you beyond your limits. Opportunities for post-graduate programs, from what I gathered, was somewhat slim, especially if you plan to opt a surgical field. The competitions are great, too many demands, yet too little supply. And the salary? Oh boy, you would certainly be surprised if I were to show you our starting salary… and with only an increment on RM100 yearly… so, I don’t think anyone would want to opt to be a chronic MO, now to think of it…
Funny, despite all that and more, I turned down the offer to work in Singapore.
A friend of mine once said, there is no ending to this argument, this debate. Either way, they had their pros and cons. In the end, you just have to close your eyes, shut your mind, search deep within you and follow your heart.
So, there I am, back at the beginning. I came back to the big question, why am I here? Why did I take this path? Why did I study Medicine in the first place? Knowing that this is probably one of the most challenging professions on Earth! One that requires sacrifices, choices… yet here I am…
-To make a difference-
Why else take up medicine if not to one day treat you family, friends and loved ones?
After a year of consideration, and cracking my mind for the past whole month, I have decided… Yet, yesterday, Su Yin and my cousin asked me again, why did I rejected the offer to Singapore… and today, MK asked. In fact, everyday, people had been asking… and news on the papers has been disappointing… news like this(1) and this(2).... it sometimes clouds my mind… perhaps I needed reassurance that I had made the right choice.
So, I needed to blog about this.
I want to constantly remind myself why I chose this path. I needed to remind myself, constantly.
-HOPE-
Something I strongly held on to. I have hopes that the Malaysian Health System can be improved. Hopes that there are still many doors opened for us, opportunities for us to specialize in our desired post-graduate field. Hopes that after 10 years, when I looked back, I would be glad I made this decision.
Sometimes, it strike my mind, that if I were to take the greener road, the comfortable path, I would probably be away for a solid 10 years. It’s like uprooting yourself, starting a fresh. And there is a fat chance that one may not come back to the country. My friends thought that I think too far ahead. And so, I was thinking, if all our good doctors were to leave our country, despite the lack-of-doctor-crisis, who else is there to treat our loved ones? The vicious cycle continues…
Perhaps, it was because I was trained locally, I felt that I owed it to the country, that I should serve our people… Did I sound almost too patriotic? Haha! Very unlike-shinyin, ei?
Besides, my Professor, Prof Shahrir, once said, 'Don't go, the Singaporeans are just using you...'. Perhaps, he was right. Singaporeans are smart people, they would not do a losing business.
In fact, during the interview with Dr Liam, the Singaporean Recruitment team, I popped out the question, 'Why employ us?', despite knowing very well the answer, perhaps i needed reassurance. He answered, 'because we are building 2 new hospitals, and we do not have enough doctors to sustain the hospitals'. '2 new hospitals?' 'Yup, we plan to make Singapore the one-stop Medical Centre' 'What about your local students?' 'We had opened new medical schools, but it would take another 5 years before they graduate and practice'.
So, the fact hits hard.
1. The Singaporeans wants to build new hospitals to earn money 2. They did not have enough resources 3. They needed us Repeat: THEY NEEDED US
So really, to think about it, the decision is all up to us. Do you want to help them? and if you noticed close enough, we were needed merely to fill in the gap.
My dad had this interesting illustration for this... He said that our country nurtured us from young, right from the seeds, with patience, with love, and when we start bearing fruits, the Singapore government added some fertilizer, promised a better future, and start plucking us...
It would be nice though, if our country itself can provide us, that better future. I think most of the people who left the country, was doing it against their heart. They were disappointed, and perhaps lacked the sense of security... the reassurance...
So maybe today, I felt that I loved my country, I loved my people, I loved my family, I loved my friends, I loved them too much to leave… I loved the life here. The people. (and the food, of course!)
And I hope
Yes, I do
I hope that, I will be loved in returned.
Hope, faith and love can take a person very far indeed...
Like Robert Frost once said, I took the road less travelled by, and that had made all the difference!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ p/s: i'll be leaving for my BTN and induction course tomorrow at Pontian, Johor & Port Dickson respectively... will keep you all updated whenever possible ^^
Event: Cellphone stolen (pickpocket) Model: K750i Venue: Kota Kinabalu Night Market Time : 9:47pm Weather : Gloomy
After a day trip at Kota Klias, watching Probosis Monkeys and fireflies, still half awake and drowsy, we decided to dropped by KK's infamous night market to buy some avocardo drink... well, i heard it was infamous for its variety of food, the crowd, but little did i know, it was also famous for the evil pick-pockets/snatch thieves who lurks the dark corner of the market...
The night market was bright, colourful. I snapped a few pictures, i wondered whether he must have spotted me that moment. We dropped by a few fruit stalls. Blended Avocardo, we insisted we wanted that, and persisted until we found a stall which sells them. The last avocardo, not very fresh. So, we decided to buy an avocardo from another stall, and bring it to the blended fruit drink stall for our blended avocardo. I know, we sound almost too persistent.
Could it be the auntie at the fruit stall? The little boy whom i waved to as he brought his little orange juice? The guy who sells cigarettes at the corner, with his evil hawk eyes? The man who brushed past? The lovely ladies at the fruit drink stalls? The many people whom passed us by? I really cannot tell...
and i wondered,
Should i have been more careful, perhaps things like this can be avoided... if i didn't want avocardo juice, if i would have just go home like a contented little kid, if i wasn't so distracted by the night market scene, if i wasn't watching the little boy at the orange juice stall, if i hadn't wander off to the corner of the market, if i hadn't put my phone in my pocket, if only the phone wasn't in a black velvet pouch with a string, it just made it too easy for him.... tempting in fact... too many ifsss....
i concluded that: When we go out to crowded places, EVERYONE is a pick-pocket until proven otherwise...
when i am less careful, it's my fault? am i to blame? or simply my bad luck?
then i wondered, why do people steal? Why do people take things that doesn't belong to them?
Perhaps, they were very poor people who had many mouths to feed, struggling to make ends met. NO. NO, this does not gives you the right to steal. Stealing, is unforgivable.
Would you steal if you had the chance? Would you take something which if not yours? What if you know that you would not get caught and would be punished? Is it the laws and regulations that hold you back? or simply the principal that thou shall not steal?
Tell a lie, that's stealing a person's right to the truth. Kill a person, that's stealing a person's life, stealing a husband from a wife, stealing a father from his children. Rape a women, that's stealing her rights, her dignity.
Stealing is indeed one of the worst sins on Earth.
Anyway, back to my story. Well, i can think positive, like i'm glad noone got hurt and my new camera wasn't stolen. Yet, losing this phone who had been with me through thick and thin, it's still depressing. i've got like 5 or more congratulations wishes, that i can have an excuse to get a new phone... but not now, not when i'm totally broke,... and my laptop dead... and i'm currently unemployed... life sucks, sometimes....
Lingesh sent me an interesting link today. It was a story written by Topher, who is a Caribbean medical student at St. George’s University. I liked his medical school metaphor : pancakes every morning. Here's the article, enjoy reading: (don't forget to watch the video at the end- it's classic!!)
Medical school is like trying to eat five pancakes every morning for breakfast.
At the beginning of each course, we’re given a syllabus telling us how we’re going to be graded, the question break-down for each test, and the schedule of lectures each day for the next 4-5 months. Nothing is going to sneak up on you unless you can’t read the print on the page (in which case you’re blind and things sneak up on you all the time).
But it’s sunny outside or snowing outside or Tuesday. Whatever. You’re in medical school to become a doctor, not to be in a classroom (scheduling conflicts here) and you find yourself out on the weekends, maybe catching a movie on the weekday, and so on. You blow off the first week of any course because the material is supposed to be introductory and you certainly blow off the first week after any exam to recuperate. Maybe you take off two weeks if it was especially difficult and draining.
Eventually though, the next exam is closer than the last exam and you have to return to the desk and pretend to be a serious student. The first week back studying, you won’t be as efficient and as familiar with the material as you were leading up to the last test, so there’s some built-in catching up to do. You can’t understand the material taught TODAY because you blew off the introduction, so until you catch up, you keep falling behind. By the time you’re back in your stride the exam is so close you can feel it’s breath on your neck and you still have material to cover on a first pass. Let’s not forget: you haven’t reviewed or committed anything to memory at this point. It’s now that you understand the truth:
Medical school is like trying to eat five pancakes every morning for breakfast.
You know you can do it. A Premed advisory committee endorsed you saying, “He has the stomach for it. He’s committed.” And you prove them all right. Every day you show up with your first-year optimism and your annoying hunger for learning and you clean that plate (just kidding, it’s adorable). But you begin to notice that those pancakes are slowing you down a little each day and the sugar highs and lows are screwing with your sleep. Smart person that you are, you decide to pass on the flapjacks one day. You think to yourself, “Self, I’m going to eat ten pancakes tomorrow so that I don’t have to eat any today.”
But it never stops. Turns out that “self” isn’t the most responsible lender, and before you know it there are 40 pancakes in front of you and your plate needs to be clean by tomorrow. So yeah, at this point it looks impossible. But really, it’s your fault.
In the future, as I like to imagine it, I’ll be in charge of all medical school admissions. The process will be six weeks long and will consist of nothing more than showing up each morning to eat five pancakes, at which point you can then go about whatever you were going to do that day. At the end of the five weeks a few jaded, newly diabetic hopefuls will come to my office and, mixed with both pride and resignation say, “I did it. I finished those goddamn pancakes.”
“Wow,” I’ll say. “That’s very impressive. You must be very proud, and your parents must be very proud. Just one more thing.” They’ll reflexively clutch their stomachs, shifting their girth from one hip onto the next and groan, “What’s that?”
“Regurgitate it.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As much as i liked to laugh at this metaphor, i could not. I find my very self in those shoes. My stacks of pancakes is nearly as high as the ceiling, standing tall and proud, like the Petronas Twin Tower, overlooking me, challenging me to gobble them down.
arGHHhhh!!
You see the pancakes. You dream of pancakes. You hallucinate of pancakes!
I am developing an evil plan to drug the examiners, and maybe smuggle the stack of pancakes into the exam hall and throw them all in the bin!! Who's with me?? - in my dreams!
The truth is, noone can help you eat those pancakes.
You have to settle your stack of pancakes.
Sometimes, i felt the walls closing in, almost suffocating, as the days count down, time cruelly past us, the pancakes stack higher.
We cannot afford to give up, can we? Just merely inches away... How we managed to get this far is a mystery. How can we go on, another mystery. Yes, we are just inches away, inches away to graduating, to finally achieve our dreams, make your parents proud, save lives, blah, blah, blah..
little do we realized, this is just the beginning...
firstly, i would like to apologize for not updating my blog for quite some time.. and for deleting the two previous posts,.. i had been going through a so-called 'repairing phase'.. -was recovering from some sort of trauma... and the weather had been bad lately... well, bad for me (it had been raining, on and off), but it might not have been bad for you... and so, i suffered the consequences of me, being non-compliance to my meds, oh well..
i guess i need to reassure everyone, shinLoo especially, (i was surprised to get your text message that day, worried), so, i need to reassure you all that i am fine...
people break, all the time, but people recover, given time...
i shall try not to blog too much about depressing things, my blog itself had been pretty depressing already... firstly, the color itself, being black, dark, is depressing.... the wards, had been depressing, with healthy patients coming back, sick, stories which painfully make your heart sore... and there goes the counter-transference theory and all..
and depression, is contagious, therefore, i had to quarantine myself, at least for a while... it is funny though, how depression sometimes manifest itself in physical signs and symptoms, but i shall talk about that, maybe next time...
there was this book i read lately: For one more day (by Mitch Albom), about the line, between living and dying. You draw this line somewhere in this world, and if you never cross it, you'll never consider throwing yourself off a building or swollowing a bottle of pills - but if you do (cross that imaginary line), you might. And you would ask yourself, how close would you actually get to the line?
the truth is, THERE IS NO LINE. there is only your life, how you messed it up, and who is there to save you.
or who isn't.
on the lighter tone, there will be sunshine after the rain, always.. and not forgetting the beautiful rainbow, only if you bother to look :)
Dear friends and readers, Thank you for dropping by and leaving comments/ shoutouts. More importantly, thank you for being there...
please accept my apology that, lately, i may be busy with work and not have time to reply youir messages/comments, but rest assured, each and everyone is read, and highly appreciated :)
have a nice day! ^^
