The Pensieve

Pain is there for a reason.

Your fingers get burnt taking cookies out of the oven, so that you learn to use mittens next time.

You trip, fall, and bump your knee, so that you learn to look at where you’re going. Or rather in my case, you bump into the phone booth right outside the ward, drawing gasps from patients and relatives), risking a posterior dislocation of your R shoulder, so next time you’ll learn not to walk too near to the wall… (in fact, any wall on your R side) (stop laffing EW!)

Reminds me of the time I walked into the huge TV sets during polyclinic posting and fell down… -_-

You get 10% burns from scalding hot water, so you learn never to switch off the kitchen lights, walk with a pot of boiling water and bump into the wall. (but then, only idiots like me do that)

But most importantly, you get hurt by people, so that you’ll learn to be more careful in trusting them in the future.

Btw, I think the overall lesson I need to learn is to get a referral for visual perimetry testing asap!

Thanks boss, I didn’t know you cared so much about your worker’s welfare…

This was written by da boss! (lolz)

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff Series: 10 Steps to Successful and Effortless Parallel Parking

1. Find an empty parallel parking slot. Make sure no one is looking (LOL sorry dope I jus cant stop luffing…)
2. Pull ahead of the empty slot and stop beside the car parked in front of the space. Maintain a distance of about 1 metre between your car and the other car. Your car should be parallel to the other car.
3. Put the car in reverse. Check that it is safe to reverse. Begin to back up slowly; as soon as the car starts moving, fully lock (2 full turns) your steering wheel to the left (if the parking lot is on your left) or vice versa.
4. Back slowly into the space, while looking at your right rear view mirror.
5. As soon as the side profile of your car is flush with the left front signal light (which should be at the left most of the bonnet of the behind car), unturn your steering wheel one round to the right.
6. Continue backing into the lot and turing your wheel away from the curb (by unturning your steering wheel to the right) as you do so.
7. Straighten out your wheel so that your car flushes into the lot. Adjust forwards and backwards as necessary.
8. You should find your car within the lot by this time!!! Haha if not…erm…go back to step 1.
9. If the car is still out after 3 tries, er…go back to step 1. Just gotta try and try and try and tahan all the ah bengs and ah lians sniggering.
10. IF ALL ELSE FAILS, turn on your hazard lights, open your bonnet, put a bowl of dry ice in your engine compartment. Come out of the car, pretend to be dam pissed and exclaim “WAH LAU EH my engine overheat. KNN…” pretend to kick your car tire abit den walk off coolly. Mentos will recruit you for their next advertisement.

OH NO NOT AGAIN!!!

Dopey and female colleague enters lift… We press level ‘3′. A middle-aged very tanned patient enters lift too… I help him press ‘1′. Uncle looks gratefully at me, proceeds to smile to me, then turns to the other side of the lift to smile at my female colleague…

Uncle: Ni3 men2 shi4 cong2 zhong1 guo2 lai2 de ma? Xian4 zai4 qing3 hen3 duo1 zhong1 guo2 ren2 le…

Me and female colleague: *speechless*

We shouldn’t have replied him in mandarin… should have said ‘No, sir, pray thee, you are mistaken, we’re from the beautiful land of Singapore’ (with a stiff upper lip)

My apologies to ‘female colleague’, if you weren’t stuck in the same lift as moi, you probably wouldn’t have gotten mistaken as a zhong guo mei! -_- (and trust me, you don’t look anywhere like one! maybe nepalese, thai or erm indonesian? but not cheena la…)

Zoomed from my current hospital to a western one in 15 min today (EW you were right!) Then proceeded to pick up some stuff from Bt Timah shopping centre… where I wasted like 15min trying to parallel park! -_- to the great amusement of two ahbengs, one auntie and one uncle… the ahbengs tried to help, to no avail… finally, their ahlian friend finished picking up their stuff and they drove off, leaving me with TWO parallel spaces to finally succeed in parking! WOOO…

I just need this sandbox to bury my head in! and stop sniggering boss!

Rating: ***/*****
Based on a novel by Christopher Priest. I think I might be interested in the book, but must see how good his command of the language is.

It’s one of the greyest film I’ve ever watched, and it’s good precisely because there’s no clear cut between the good and the bad, the moral and the perverse… and there’re lots of twists and turns, with clues slotted in at various points.

Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called “The Pledge”; the magician shows you something ordinary, but of course… it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”; the magician makes his ordinary something do something extraordinary. Now if you’re looking for the secret… you won’t find it, that’s why there’s a third act called, “The Prestige”; this is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you’ve never seen before.

The predominant theme is that of obsession, compulsions and ambition. Just how much are you willing to sacrifice for power? Two men, Angier (Hugh Jackman, *drool*), and Borden (Christian Bale *double drool*) play fueding magicians with great intensity, with Cutter (Michael Caine), sort of a mediator between the two; add in Olivia (common love interest, in a twisted sort of way) (Scarlett Johansson), and you’ve got a stellar cast!

*Spoilers ahead*
So what exactly is Borden’s secret in the Transported Man that Angier has been obsessing over?
- Borden has a twin, Fallon
That makes everything shown in the film fit into place, like how Borden seemed to love both his wife Sara and his assistant Olivia just as much, and how he behaves oddly in the companion of each woman.

And what exactly is the greatest invention by mankind? The powerful, destructive invention by Nikola Tesla (David Bowie)?
- It’s actually a ‘photocopier’ (for lack of a better word to describe)…
What happens every night was that Angier would create a photocopy of himself, which would fall thru the secret trapdoor into a tank of water which was automatically locking, thus drowning the poor man. The photocopy (identical in all aspects of thought) would then enjoy the prestige by appearing at the opposite end of the hall! Imagine having to drown yourself 100 times! (that’s how many times Angier staged his ‘the new transported man’ performance) The cool part is that the audience doesn’t get to see all this until the final act…

He was willing to go thru the suffering (both physical) and the mental torment (his wife drowned the same way) every night just so that Borden would be tempted enough to go backstage to discover the secret of his magic. And true enough, Borden did that, and he saw ‘Angier’ drowning… whereupon, the stage having been set (there were no witnesses, the only person backstage, was blind), sealed his fate as a murderer, and was summarily hanged.

My friend asked me: What would you do if you had such a powerful secret? One that the world wasn’t prepared for?
- I really don’t know… Despite having thought it thru this weekend. Can’t deny I’m an ambitious person; and the thought of absolute power (to a control freak like me) is almost intoxicating… hehe… but then I think there’s still a modicum of decency left in me to make the right choice. I think absolute power would be having the ability to stop myself from abusing the power that has come into my possession.

Visit the official site

Yesterday, finally managed to check out Vivocity, the mega-mall that’s been the talk of the town! It’s HUGEEE, really huge, but I think I barely checked out a quarter of it? Not very sure, just covered the area between the MRT and the cinema. haha…

It’s remniscent of CDG airport, cuz of the wide-open spaces and all the glass displays, just that the shops there are bigger. Anyway, I guess that place will get boring soon, cuz there’re just that many shops in Sg. Sian… Zara mango tangs pull n bear six guess levi iora ying yang bysi g2000 chomel blah blah blah… what’s new? There’re loads of eating places there, but you got to go really early, I had dinner at 530pm that day! (haha my team exited by 430 that day!) By 6pm, most of the eating places were crowded already.

Ate at this new restaurant (I think it’s new), called ‘dian4 xiao3 er4′, mainly Chinese dishes… I like the ma po tou fu a lot ;) heh… Not too keen on that ginseng duck that day, sorry J you had to finish most of it, I’d caught sight of the marrow and then this scene of coring out a patient’s bone marrow with him squirming in pain just flashed thru my mind…

There’s this other cafe called ‘White Dog Cafe’, interesting name… Swensen over there also looks v cool, upclass and all that, AG, we go try one day!

Just one more thing left to do, that’s to check out the bay side view… The restaurant has a great view of the open air area, and I think it’ll be cool to have coffee by the sea… and look at the merlion at night! So nice! Haha… Boss, don’t anyhow buang the merlion into the sea k!

One last thing, the cinema is FANTASTIC! There’s so much leg room, even though we were late and had to wade thru half the row, we avoided the usual stepping on people’s toes saga or tripping over people’s bags sequels… Curiously, the movie screen is rather tall too! One word of warning though, that place is freezing!

after movie yday got quite dopey, hmmmm i think the ginseng duck hadn’t kicked in yet… and i woke up pretty unrested… dopied with my cousin all thru till around lunch time… too tired to lunch (for fear of falling asleep head down into soup and scalding my face… haha i’ve had enough of burns, gauze and tagaderm, probably developing an allergy to tagaderm already)

saw boss online, and went to irritate him a bit then dopied a bit with ramachandran… finally fell asleep face down on the sofa while my mother was asking me about vivocity… i woke up a while later to find her answering her own questions on vivocity.

tonite when i’m finally awake i’ll blog something about vivocity and look out for my review on ‘The Prestige’ too!

Awaiting AG to sign in too…

So which one are you?

I used to be the optimist, but now I’m learning to be a realist.

Hmmmm lemme think….

Eh… nooooo, most of my close friends are already mentally quite unbalanced, so I think I’m the only sane one around lor…

Today was my dopiest day ever… (for those who’ve always wondered why I’m called ‘dopey’, this is why),

First, I managed to use whatever energy left to drive down to the hospital… Then I promptly took a shut eye at the student’s centre, got roused by a cg mate and went to the MO room at the ward, where I promptly fell asleep on the bed in the call room. While nodding off, I also hit my lower lip against the headrest. :S (EW did u hear an odd sound?)

Finally, I topped all possibilities by falling asleep in front of another CG mate, in the midst of our conversation…

Yawned my way through taking bloods and was too anhedonic to respond to insults from this irrrrritating patient. (I’d so love to give him a needle thoracostomy, grrrr…)

Then stubbed my toe on a chair while heading towards the sink. There was a patient sitting out of his bed, and he actually exclaimed in glee, ‘WA, second person to walk into the chair leh! You all don’t look where you’re walking ah?’ *ouch ouch ouch*

Finally, almost crashed into the expressway barrier at the sharp exit to my area! Tian ah! Scared the hell out of me… I’ve had my first two brushes liao, don’t want to meet my third and last that soon…

Anyway, this is my prescription:

Slap BC q10min/PRN *ouch*

(BC: both cheeks)

Made a long-awaited trip back to my secondary school that day, and it felt like I’d never left that place at all. It’s a place where I was the happiest, despite falling ill in Sec 4. It’s a place where people were genuinely nice to each other… come to think of it, might have been a bit surreal. Heh. (Maybe I was just too innocent then…)

SCGS is a place where nuturing and extra-0urricular activities, especially of the artistic/linguistic nature were emphasised over grades. Our teachers and principal never nagged us about the school’s standing or about our grades, but we still did pretty well. :D

I remember spending most of my time doing the following:
1. chit-chatting at assembly area, chit-chatting in the toilet, chit-chatting during break and recess, in class, after school and during lab sessions. I really talked a lot.
2. struggling with weird projects like patterns and numbers, building pop up games, writing biographies of my parents, journals, building bridges, planting spices, feeding fish, building web sites…
3. going off to bubble tea / coffee bean / hang out at taka/wisma/far east after school
4. having band sectionals…
5. designing t-shirts/banners, practising for sing and sync, decorating the classroom, preparing for cultural day…
6. shrieking… (my memory was jolted after Ms Heng told us to take note of the current gals… they do shriek and scream a lot… v excitable)

Anyway, we met Miss Heng, a teacher and principal of SCGS for almost 40 years. She was the one we went back specially to visit, ‘cos she’s retiring end of this year. Sob. Hehe… most of my other friends don’t understand why SC gals have been flocking back to say their goodbyes to her. I suppose that’s ‘cos they never had a principal who really cared for them, who would chit chat with us when she met us ard the school, who’d read the daily announcements and give highly interesting speeches every wk. (I never fell asleep at any one of them you know! And that’s a feat indeed!)

When we met Ms Heng, instantaneously we clammed up and acted like guilty school kids…

Ms Heng: So what are you girls up to now?
SC gal 1: Oh I’m doing policy exec for NS…
SC gal 2: I’m with IDA.
Ms Heng: Ah, so you girls… when you were in sec school, you’d never think of being involved in policy work rite? And IDA… such responsibility… Cannot believe you all were siao siao in the past!
Us: Are you sure we were that crazy?
Ms Heng: Mark my words… you better go see your teachers now, and take a look at the girls, they’re just like you were then!

Later on… while walking along the corridors…
SC girl: Good afternoon mdm’s!
US: (speechless) Er…. Do we look that old?!?!!? (in undertones)

Okay, some of the areas in SCGS, pardon the lousy angles… it’s the HAZE!

Assembly area
Where we spend about 20 min daily sitting on the ground and just talking…

‘Study’ area
This studying area was organised a few years after we left. Really nice and green right? :D

Koi pond
The famous koi pond, been there since the new school was built. One of our teachers even took her wedding photos there! Noted that I couldn’t find the koi we nicknamed ‘Ms Heng’ now…

Choreographing…
This is roughly what we girls spent a significant amount of time doing… Trying to choreograph some sort of dance or play or presentation. SC is big on the arts! The gals here were probably practising their performance for Ms Heng’s farewell concert.

The legendary mee pok and the man behind it
Here you can see the LEGENDARY meepok! Part of our aims in our trip back was to sample this familiar dish again… It hasn’t changed over so many years :) Brings a smile to our faces… The poor mee pok man is so old and kyphotic now…

The daily horrifying jam within the school compound around dismissal time
Everyday during the dismissal time for the primary school kids (especially), we’ve got this massive jam right in the school compound and also along Dunearn Road… haha… all these spoilt chauffered kids…

Btw it’s costs SGD300 to join the alumni, life-long membership. I’ll KIV till when I become an MO. Can’t wait to have little girls, I’m going to send them to SCGS! And like what Sanz said, where would we send our little boys?

Click here to visit the school’s website.
And we have a wiki too!