Tears Of The Road Ahead

i am now officially 2 years away to being a quarter of a century old. as far as birthdays went, it wasnt too eventful. but nice enough in its own way. got out of bed late, had a lunch binge at a hotel buffet, and got to watch a movie at night with Jo.

The Interpreter seemed like the only movie in the whole of GV Marina worth watching. i had my doubts, not remembering how the reviews in the papers turned out. it was well worth the risk. Sean Penn is a true workhorse actor with credible emotions, who put in a good turn as a Secret Service agent with a very vunerable, human side. Kidman excelled in a role which didnt require glam-ness per se, and even had a cute little south african accent to boot. excellent plot twists, excellent casting, just excellent. please watch this one.

Who Will You Think Of - Zhang Dongliang

Only You

usually dont blog so many times in a week, but i just felt the urge to reflect on all the stuff that's gone on since we started term. i think the class is going downhill. i suppose its a common theme in all my rants, cos we dont go out and blah blah yakkety-shmakkety. and frankly i do miss watching movies and drinking coffee and karaoke and windsurfing and all that jazz. but the decline has gotten to a level where now everyone i talk to feels a sense of detachment from the class, as if they have been left to fend for themselves. please people, remember that your support network extends to all 34 of us. most of us have made the effort to at least bond with our cluster during year 1 and 2... dont let a friendship slide just because we are in clinics now. we cannot chain our souls to the lab bench. please leave when you should, and not when its past our time. pissing off the profs and supporting staff one by one has no good outcome. i know that there's the perfectionist urge in all of us, and if we didnt have that we'd make pretty poor dental students. but yet theres the ability to sense when something is appropriate, when it is time to cover the wax, wipe off the omega trimmer and walk out the door for the night.

i'd also like to say that these 2 weeks wouldnt have been so bearable without the presence of my Lab Partner PJ. working with her next to me in OD is like having an extra pair of hands and an extra brain. certainly much more comfortable because i dont feel so alone. and her buoyant sense of humour is a definite added bonus. i think i'd really be lost without her, she means a lot to me.

My Will - Dream

Pick It Up And Carry On

after the last week of gaming, i have come to the conclusion that any players from CA, US and TH have connections of questionable reliability. and NUS connection is abysmal. ping times are excellent diagnostic tools where available but not easy to obtain due to firewalling. and if i see any more CA players who insist on their connections being good, i will just request that they be booted. im tired of having precious gaming time wasted.

gonna do my first hand scaling tomorrow. should be quite interesting, cos ive actually never scaled a live patient before. i mean... Oscar sure doesnt cut it as a simulator. he doesnt drool or bleed or complain. hope i learn a lot.

think im getting used to clinics work. the bothersome thing that is exact. and i hope that things will lighten up for the class. everyone seems so disturbed and stressed by clinics. frankly, its gonna be a way of life. have to adapt, or die.

My Wish - My Life - Do As Infinity

I Cannot Recreate What Life Was Like Through Photographs

love lazy saturdays! spent a good part of it asleep, to make up for all the stress that i've taken in through the week. got a new Robotech comic too, shows the wedding of Max and Miriya. now the only major event left for the week is the health screening at Lot 1 tomorrow.

Prof Hsu said that when man is out of contact with nature, he gets more frazzy. suppose its true. when you cannot see the stars or feel the wind blow in your hair, life seems so much more desperate. i know that i feel really good going to school in the morning because i can cross the overhead bridge and see the bouganvilleas in bloom and feel the wind toss my hair. and it all disappears by 11am, when i start to get hungry and floppy...

had a reminder about how to keep in mind people's styles of work in 2 different incidents that happened through the week. its just something so important, but we still forget that our lab partners dont know everything about how we like to have things done, or our character flaws. its something we'll have to work with slowly as we go on into year 3 and 4.

Ci Niao - F.I.R.

Blott En Dag

its been so long since i blogged, and so much has happened in the week. it seems as if im too busy to even read patient files, which isnt exactly good... and everyone is amazingly tired.

heres a song that came up during SF...

Day by day, and with each passing moment,

Strength I find, to meet my trials here;

Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment,

I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.

He whose heart is kind beyond all measure

Gives unto each day what He deems best—

Lovingly, its part of pain and pleasure,

Mingling toil with peace and rest.

.
Every day, the Lord Himself is near me

With a special mercy for each hour;

All my cares He fain would bear, and cheer me,

He Whose Name is Counselor and Pow’r.

The protection of His child and treasure

Is a charge that on Himself He laid;

“As thy days, thy strength shall be in measure,”

This the pledge to me He made.

.
Help me then in every tribulation

So to trust Thy promises, O Lord,

That I lose not faith’s sweet consolation

Offered me within Thy holy Word.

Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,

E’er to take, as from a father’s hand,

One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,

Till I reach the promised land.

is it not God and God alone who keeps me on my feet all day, and gives me the energy to do what i do? i couldnt do it alone, it would certainly be so much more miserable...

DotA v6.06 is out! gonna test-run it before i go crash. Sand King got balanced... see what else has changed...

Days Of Days Over You - Love Psychedelico

The Legend Of The Thornbird

i just got the new F.I.R. CD! its pretty good, good tunes and some thematic linkage to their last album. more thumpy music for my DotA playlist...

watched The Pacifier yesterday with Jo. it wasnt too bad really. coherent plotline, good comic work and Vin Diesel can actually look paternal. quite amazed by that. also a very Jacky Chan-esque fight scene in a nursery room. it was great to watch and de-stress to yesterday...

got a new patient today. a Filipina from church is having pain, Prof Foong said it looks like a pulpitis. i hope i can slot her into the Wednesday Perio session to begin E&D, and if there really is a pulpitis that requires intervention the OD doctor will have to step in... either way its a learning experience.

LOVE*3 - F.I.R.

No Way Through

one week of clinics gone by. got to say its been the most tiring school week ever! im actually quite amazed im still alive, all the clinics is just so sapping. and people can still stay late after school and do work. its just crazy.

got to go out for a while today. it woulda been longer if we coulda dislodged some people out of the lab faster... but it was good to walk the streets and see the sights, eat food not cooked on Kent Ridge and just have fun. on the one hand clinics are interesting, but on the other hand we still need to de-stress. at least my cluster isnt too would up... most of my new cluster people are okay workers.

Lofty Spires Of Ice That Pierce The Intense Azure Vault

day one of school has gone by. one patient seen, and i want to die! guess its pretty common all ard the class, for those who had to see patients. esp for A and B cluster, since we were solo-ing the session. at least i got my stuff banged into exact. i still have to rearrange appointments with a patient due to not knowing that RP sessions are meant to be spent working on more pre-clinical stuff. and theres all the E&D stuff to clear up! still have to find out wtf my patient is on. high platelet count? platelet depressor? what in the world? splenectomy? man... the things you never knew you never knew.

i miss my holidays already. studyin for the RP test tomorrow just highlighted that my brain probably atrophied with joy while i was on holiday. or shrank in the cold of Yulong Xueshan. that place was fun! even though the area at the top of the mountain was so small and restricted, snow is always great to mess around with (but not to live in, i'll qualify) and the view on the way up rocked. i think i'd actually willingly consider Yunnan as a honeymoon destination. places like Heilong Tang and Yulong Xueshan are really scenic. makes Singapore look so small and boring... not that this is a revolutionary statement.

i really should find time to finish off the paladin. the armour has been brown-washed and drybrushed and highlighted. work on the tunic has started. and thats it.

Nagai Aida - Kiroro

Take My Picture Off the Wall If It Just Won't Sing For You

here i am freezing my toes off in a Lijiang hotel room. amazing place, a low-rise hotel concept with amazing facilities, like a computer in my room! the china trip really looks like its a lot more fun than i thought it would be...

to summarise all of the places i've been so far would be to exhaust my infamously bad memory. i've skated in the middle of Kunming City, eaten dog ribs and roasted chicken heart seated on woven straw stools. i've strolled the streats of Lijiang Old Town and been in too many photos courtesy of my Dad. i've seen toilets ranging from long-drop-into-cesspit to amazingly nice public toilets in a historical district. i've strolled the park in HeiLongTang and the streets of Kunming after midnight. and yet...

every time i hear Sun Yanzi on the radio i think of home. every time i see the planet hanging out near the Big Dipper at night i think of the ones i left behind. guess im still a Singaporean at heart. because whats important to me is still there. my heart, my home, my life, my DotA clan. this place is great but at the end of it all i'll be glad to be back. even without the huo guo.

Ni Hao Zhou Jielun - An Youqi

Are We There Yet?

in Terminal One siphoning the free starhub net access from terminal thingy. its laggggeeeee! but its free, so not too much to complain about.

to my total amazement i actually managed to get 2 or 3 patients for Week 1! yeah, now i'll have stuff to do for perio and OD sessions. really got to thank God for all the calling that got done at the last minute. and even the perio patient who transmogrified into a partial denture case. when we bring her in we'll see how her perio status is lah... hope she can go straight on to the RD but if not we'll have to stabilise her gums lah.

without DotA for a week... scary thought. and no Anime on Central. tried smsing Charles to ask him to tape it for me but not reply. damn!

Patience

got a little dosing of reality today. finally got my fat ass round to calling patients and 2 of them said straight off that they wanna be discharged! scum... i now have a serious problem with finding perio patients. was so sad i called Shafiq to bitch to him and din even call the OD patients. dammit... and this holiday is being a pain in the posterior. goddamn it... i dont mind going off if everything and i mean everything is all tied up so that i dont have to come back to worry about stuff. but obviously everything is not okay with clinics and patients. want to go and kill stuff right now.

got some personal clinic visit time down at Trinity Dental. was a pretty good insight into the life of a GP... dont know if thats the life for me yet but it looks workable... the kinda practise that you can grow into and watch your patients for all the years. its not the most glamorous work out in our field... but hey it cant be that way for all of us.

Lazy Gun - Jet