Book and Mr Private Hospital

I brought the book along to the hospital, in which I read a couple of pages before drowsiness engulfed me and I took a step back to enjoy the sensation where modern medicine helped my lungs function properly to pump sufficient oxygen into my body again.

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Being serious about something that is close to your heart comes naturally to most adults, assuming now that the general consensus, that your average adult is mature enough to make the decisions that may alter the course of a nation's future, stands. Be it on the international stage, a national scale, among your friends or just within the family, taking the firm steps to dissect and tackle an issue should be handled with maturity, knowing well the implications that may ensue.

For instance, if I'm feeling slightly nauseated and numb-minded after a 2 hour (give or take 10minutes) speed-reading run on the literature devises of Life, the Universe and Everything, or rather, it's prequel (namely The Restaurant at the End of the Universe), one would assume that I should set up a special committee in cyberspace to discuss the importance of banning such reads so that the younger generation would not have to be exposed to the nausea, mind-numbing text on ridiculous ideas about the universe. That said, depriving the future leaders from some creative and not to mention, fun reading to take their mind off things would, in my humble opinion, bring the world more chaos than it already has by nurturing a generation that is over-stressed and creativitiless. Another downside to filtering out such books of lunacy would be that the relevant authorities might cause civil unrest by taking away one of society's many hobbies, or to be more accurate, the joy of creating/laughing at nonexistent words such as creativitiless.

If you did not survive the paragraph above, here is a simply summary of the message your scribe is trying to put across:

The novel trilogy starting with "The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy" has been, despite it's side-effects, an absolutely exhilarating experience so far.

If you would care to look for a deeper meaning into what I'm trying to say, you might come across this strange illusion that I seem to advocate for the people's freedom to access whatever literary material they want, which, might or might not be true depending on your local government's stance on this.

OK,

so that's that for today's ridiculous writing.

To take things a little more seriously, I shall express my interest in touching on the PPSMI and our flawed administration, I would also be interested in pulling them apart, piece by piece, not letting slip the opportunity to leave no rock unturned until you grasp the sheer magnitude of the termite problem which eats at the core of our society's very structure, gnawing our civilization towards total collapse.

Now that I have make known my interest in touching on all these issues, I should, to avoid any confusion, let it be known that there will be no such discussion on a lazy Sunday afternoon, especially this one due to the experience last night.

I think that democratic bureaucracy has ruined a lot of lives since democracy/capitalism's introduction into the world. This point may be highlighted when a certain someone, not to say that this could not be referring to myself, goes to a private hospital some time during the night for one of the reasons people normally go to hospitals, which are listed as follows:

The person

1) works there

2) is sick

3) is through the 6-degrees of separation or less, related to a person who is sick,

Despite the impracticality of listing number 1 and 2 reasons when they are obviously covered by number 3, there is always a sense of fulfilment when one manages to compile a set of reasons and list them in point form; and I just so happen to be very keen on satisfying that particular sense today.

Back to the story:

So this person whom could not be dispelled to be not myself walks into the 24-hour emergency section of the hospital where he proceeds to complain to the person behind the registration counter that he's having a bout of asthma and would certainly be pleased if they pull him away from the border between life and death. What the person behind the registration counter did then was the epitome of our wonderful capitalist society- she handed the sick person a form, asking him to fill it out so that she could key in the important details into the system. FORTUNATELy for the agitated patient(and the person behind the counter for that matter), he was too engrossed with his asthma attack that he couldn't find the breath to point out the ridiculousness of the entire thing. Also to the patient's advantage was that his mother was there to fill up the form for him, so that he could at least save some energy for fighting for oxygen. After weighing, taking his temperature (I assume, this was done to establish that he is A(H1N1)-free), his blood-pressure and heart rate, and then jotting it down on an important-looking form, the nurse finally goes to the doctor and inform him of the patient's predicament. I don't know about you, but say that the patient collapses to the ground in the most spectacular fashion known to the world of theatrics since someone got voted off survivor's 10000th season, would the nurses then take immediate measure to bring him to the nebulizer (which incidentally, was located less than 20 steps away from the registration counter) and save him from suffocation? Or would they loud their approval at his wonderful act in depicting a person suffering from a fatal asthma attack by clapping their hands and filling up more forms describing the patient's behaviour- the aggressiveness of his twitching and floor-mopping before they move to save his life, at which moment he'd be lying completely still for some reason or another. This would probably leave a question mark for these happy form-filling people behind the counters to spend 5 seconds of their time mulling over on their way home from work (right in between the self-reminder to buy another can of cat food for Mr Whiskers and a picture of the door mat which the person found on that popular catalogue that would most certainly fit well in the living room)

Bravo Mr Private Hospital for delaying the saving of that patient for the sake of neat paperwork.

Itch and "The JY Incident"

My skin is itching like a b*tch. It's been like this since... It's been like this for quite awhile. And by that, I don't mean a few weeks. We're talking about months and years.

Description: Whenever I scratch my skin, it tends to swell up. This can be accentuated when I begin to scratch, resulting in lines upon lines of swollen skin, not to mention the blotches too.

I can narrow the possible reasons down to 2:

1) I'm allergic to something which triggers the itchy reaction.

2) My skin's just over-sensitive.

Will ask the doctor when I go in for my cholesterol and uric acid test next week.

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It was just like any other lecture-free day in Leeds. I was lying like a piece of log on the bed at 9am in the morning. Honestly, who the heck wakes up before 9 on a holiday. Anyway, I woke up to some sort of commotion outside. Frankly, it's still all a blur to me, but after gathering and piecing together information given by various sources, I've come to this final edit of the day's flow of events. So yeah, I woke up because someone was making quite a lot of noise. Disrupting my beauty sleep on a holiday morning usually gets me a wee bit cranky. Usually. This time, though, the circumstances gave the people responsible an exception pass.

I was hearing Jeremy's panicky voice. Words (I think) I managed to catch was "JiaYing- collapsed- Is she alright?!". One could even go as far to say that I kinda got the idea of what was happening before I actually lifted an eyelid. You see, JY- my neighbour- collapsed that eventful morning. According to her, both of her legs just switched off and with the help of ZY and CZhong, she was on her bed with her lifeless legs the next minute. Being the busybodies/concerned neighbours that we were, Germ and I made our way downstairs to check on her. It dawned on us that this could be something serious the minute they told us that she couldn't move her legs. If I'm not mistaken, she was having shortness of breath too. Curious to note that the hallway was dark... why weren't the lights on? Were they saving electricity? Darn, it just hit me that I won't be neighbours with them anymore next semester. That's a bummer.

ANYWAY, long story short, we booked a cab and brought her to the Student Medical Practice. Her entourage included quite a number of us (6? 7?). I felt that people were giving us weird stares. Yes, go on, stare at the asian parade. FORTUNATELY, the doctor said that it wasn't too serious. Actually, she later explained that the doctor wasn't too sure as to what caused her sudden collapse as by the time it was her turn, she could already walk (albeit groggily).

After the visit to the student medical practice, we decided to have something to eat at The Eldon- the pub 15 steps away from our main door. Some photos will be uploaded together with this post. Oh, I think we said goodbye to Adam that morning too. He was taking a flight back to KL for his Easter break. Lucky B8star0. He went on to tag all of us in his mamak meal photos on facebook. = . = EVIL.

This is Jet.

Anxious looks on their faces while waiting for JY to come out of the doctor's office.

Lunch time. (Neil's hair was long. wow.)

The star of the day :P. JY, looking relaxed with ZY beside her.

Lost book and MSLS

Know that face? The familiar painting that makes you go "I think I've seen you somewhere before".

Well, in a short span of 2 days, I met more than 1 person who gave me that feeling. I guess there are just too many people in the world right now that meeting a doppelganger can be unavoidable. (note: doppelganger=lookalike) Since we're on the topic of explaining words, I had some devastating news for myself: I've LOST my vocab notebook.

To really understand the magnitude of this problem, no, this DISASTER, you've gotta go back to 2006 when I founded the blue notebook to improve my vocabulary. The way it works is that when I come across an interesting unknown word, I'll jot it down together with its definition and- when I'm not too lazy- an example of its application. The same goes for those attractive, awesome and/or meaningful string of sentences that gives you that "WoW" response when you read them.

So yeah, it's GONE now. Like my toy soldier back in kindy, or that workbook in primary that went *POOF*, resulting in pretty harsh lashings from the teacher (I wasn't lying when I said I lost my homework OK!). Then again, the rotan wasn't a stranger to me. Let's just say that when I was in Primary school, my palm and the stick were friends (not best friends, but not JUST a passing acquaintance either).

So hopefully, the important blue book will manifest itself soon.

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On a side note, the weekend was spent attending the 3rd Annual Malaysian Student Leaders Summit at Nikko Hotel. Thanks to Guo shen, I got to park at his place right across the street on both mornings to avoid the wallet-murder parking rate at the hotel. Notably, I missed quite a number of speakers whom I really wanted to see in person. One of them was of course, Tun Dr. Mahathir, our former PM. From what I've garnered from the participants, the talk was a letdown due to the lack of his usual fiery and compelling tone. Nonetheless, ask anyone in Malaysia who's above 25 and they'll tell you how his oratory skills used to keep audiences hooked and under his spell. Too bad I missed it. Even a below-par talk by the old man (who looks younger for his age I must admit) would be satisfactory for yours truly. It wasn't meant to be though.. maybe next time.

The reason for my absence during a big chunk of the 1st day was because of the Leeds predeparture talk at their office at Menara Weld in which we- the Malaysian and Singaporean Society- had a slot to present a short introductory clip. Finally met up with part of the committee. Heard Weiwei broke his arm. Need to confirm. (Confirmed, he broke it in an armwrestling match with his bro.. way to go.). ANYWAY, the place was packed by 3.30. Even as the talk was underway, families continued to trickle into the cramped office (sanitizing and registering before entering, of course). After the presentations, Eilien, the MASSoc and LUMSoc people were bombarded with questions ranging from "Do I have to bring a duvet?" to "Do you think the bus or train is better?". Met some cool people at the 2nd day of the Summit. Certainly made my day when Khairy and Tian Chua started to jab at one another, each jab with more intent than the last. It got even better during the QandA session. "WHere is the consistency YB Khairy? I want to know your stand!". Then came the media frenzy with Dr Koh, ex-CM of Penang when he made his way into the hall.

At this point, I was pretty sleepy and was nodding myself to sleep while the speakers talked about the legal aspects of unity and whatnot.

Come the next MSLS, hopefully I'll be able to attend and listen to some good presentations. Some bigger names too perhaps. (Unlike this year, when invited guests such as the Selangor Sultan, PM AND DPM did not turn up).

Back to the basics

The thing about boundaries- even those which are in existance for your own good- is that while protecting us from some anticipated dangers, they tend to stymie our potential to grow and improve. Developing skills and maintaining that high standard you've achieved in a specific field can only be fulfilled to an extent when good-intentioned limits are imposed. I've found that once you reach a certain point,the limitations, though not unstretchable, can do its 'thing' whereby it effectively stops you from proceeding further in your pursuit of taking something to a higher level. It stops you because you get nestled in that warm and cosy layer of mediocrity.

Yes, you promise that you'll come back to this later... but as father time trods along towards eternity, I find that I had forgotten about this little ambition and had happily gone with the flow. Recently, when it was called upon, it failed to materialize. Only then did I realize that when push comes to shove, I still do not possess what it takes. So yeah, it's back to the basics now. And this time, I'm going to make sure it is nurtured to its full potential, regardless of the stigmatized boundaries.