The Pensieve

My MO told me that he knew that I was in his team even before he came back from leave. OOO…

The powers of the internet and blogging!

Anyway HI MO! haha and thanks for the warning that I’m not entirely anonymous. :D *grinz*

Luckily I didn’t say anything too bad about my MO. haha… :P

Yeah, so anyway during team dinner that day (won’t say which day or u guys start to guess which team I’m in), found out some of the cons also read blogs. Apparently the con knew of her HO’s blog haha… but the poor HO didn’t know he was under ’surveillance’. Lolz… HMMM… yeah so m5 dobby, who knows, maybe your blog is on surveillance already. I know mine is. Sigh.

So these days I can’t really talk much about work, or grouch too much. :( I’ll probably get snapped up by some reporter scrounging for something to write. Or I’ll get some warning letter from HOD rite.

Anyway, I miss *** a lot! Was back that day for an eye appointment and gosh, I really miss the place! BOOHOO…

‘Lord Of the Flies’ was a book which had a title that chilled me to the bones even when I was a 12 year old ravenously devouring horror stories. The notions of savages and cannibalism which were the two words jumping out at me from the synopsis were enough to cause my guts to churn. This strange feeling persisted, till recently when I came across the book dressed up in an innocently colourful hard cover at our splendid newest library.

I’ve always been intrigued by the title, wondering what or who that ‘lord’ was.

A group of British schoolboys on an expedition get marooned on a sunny tropical island, with no adults, no survival skills and no experience of island living except for what they’ve read in Robinson Crusoe and the likes of such tales. Initially, they are civilised, organised and even hold assemblies to decide upon what to do. But as the days past, a savagery starts to emerge in them, they talk about hunting, killing and drawing blood from their prey, to the extent that they even start painting their faces and living in a tribe. Eventually, there is a power struggle as Ralph, the former head, who is level-headed and focussed on rescue is pitted against the blood thirsty Merridew and Roger, who are concerned about hunting, about using violence to resolve disputes, who steal fire from the others and build their own fort against the others.
The initial quarrels gravitate to the death of Simon, one of their own. He is clubbed and speared albeit accidentally, when the tribe is caught up in one of their almost ritualistic play-acting of the hunt.
Soon, the entire tribe turns against Piggy, the only one with brains in this group, and against Ralph. The conch, which bears the representation of order and civlisation amongst them, is crushed into smittereens, signifying the final descent into savagery.
Following the two unfortunate deaths, the rest turn against Ralph, and start hunting him with promises of ‘a spear sharpened at both ends’. Chilling indeed, as we see such innocent children playing by the lagoon transformed into painted faces welding spears and attacking fellow human beings.

I feel that Golding uses this novel to portray that men are inherently evil / savage / primal and that if there weren’t any civilisation or technology to bring us forward we would be stuck in a rut – killing, hunting and fighting each other to assert power over one another. I’m not sure whether I agree or not. Remember how there’s this Chinese Idiom that says that people are innately innocent? Or perhaps we are not born evil but circumstances force us to become ‘evil’ in order to survive? That would explain for office politics wouldn’t it? Of backstabbers and whistle blowers, and the whole myriad of undesirable characters…

Nevertheless, I’m glad I finally read it, that’s one less thing in this world that creeps me out. :D

Argh, simply can’t wait. Finally there’s something that involves minimal brains (except for counting money and reading maps), lots of sun, breeze and nice brown people! YEAH! A long awaited break from the drudgery of worklife. I now know that I am so NOT er-hem… Haha… so step one of my career is settled.

Ok, shall not talk about work. Work work work is what I do ALL day long. SIGH.

Perth.
Ok people, suggestions? I’m planning to go down to Margaret River, also to Albany… Wondering whether I should pop by the Pinnacles or not? Is the tour very ex? Are those rocks really cool? So far, those I’ve asked have just told me, ‘not bad, just some rocks’… Which, really isn’t very encouraging indeed!

How about car rental? Any good, cheap, trustworthy company to go for?

And also motels/hostels? Since I’ll need to bunk in those while in Margaret River and Albany…
Is it ok to just pop by and check in there and then? Ie. Not book ahead?

Hehe… so excited…

Rating: ***.5/*****
Genre: Fiction
Summary: Entertaining and engaging story about a multimillionaire in the advertising business who decides to retire to the country side, set up his own hotel with a charming French lady and his ex-butler… He aims to create a different sort of life for himself, but little does he know that his happy little bubble is about to be endangered by the arrival of a band of thieves executing the perfect bank robbery who chance upon his hotel…

In my previous posting, I used to get called about hypocounts (ie. blood glucose levels) of <4 or >20. Perhaps the occasional 18 or so.

However, in my current workplaces, my calls are punctuated by fruitless conversations such as these:

Caller: Hi, my 20/6 has a high hypocount.
Me: Oh, you mean HI? (that would be >33.3)
Caller: 13!
Me: one-three or three-zero?
Caller: ONE-THREE
Me: Er, that’s ok. Don’t need insulin.
Caller: Sure or not? So high.
Me: No, don’t need.
Caller: Ok.
This exchange might take twenty seconds perhaps, nothing much but a blink of the eye in our daily life, but put 5 of these calls and the irritation together and it just stops me from doing the more important changes on call.

What I’d like to know is who taught the caller that 13 was a HIGH hypocount?
And I’d like to know what sort of training the callers in this workplace has been undergoing that taught them to bother the on-call with such inane questions.
One thing about some of the staff in this place is, they sadly do not exercise the significant amount of grey/white matter that I’m sure they possess.

On a call, I arrived at a nursing counter about 2 hours after they called me, since my pending tasks were: ink up drip for NBM pt and seeing a patient complaining of chesty cough. I saw to my horror a list of tasks written out for me at the counter, the last of which wrote: 10/2: BP 92/60.

It blinked red at me, so I questioned the staff nurse about why this wasn’t communicated to me by phone.

Her reply: Patient is so comfortable and sleeping.

I was really alarmed at her reply, I felt that even if it were so, should at least flag it up, so I advised her to flag it up the next time.

Her reply: You don’t tell me what to do, anyway your HO friend (apparently it was the active HO) went to see patient and said ‘just observe’.

Anyway I was quite pissed at her lofty views of her assessment. I went to see the patient, true enough manual BP was 80/50, not tachycardic though and quite comfortable, but still, it worried me that there was a drop from baseline of 110/90.

I casually asked the patient if indeed another doctor had came to see her previously, but she was rather certain she had been sleeping really well till I came along.

It was very disturbing to me to hear of another colleague apparently assessing only a patient’s vital charts instead of personally attending to the patient. It was equally disturbing that the nurse acted so complacently. Furthermore, when I lightly advised her to flag up BPs like this in future, she had retorted by saying that ‘next time I’ll call you for any small thing’.

That active HO who apparently had ‘assessed’ the patient (no doubt s/he had xray vision) or an uncanny ability to assess a patient by NOT looking at the person had not even bothered to do any documentation of sorts.

It’s this kind of (I don’t know how to describe this kind of attitude) that causes us to miss out real red flags.

Sigh.

Genre: Dark comedy
Rating: ***.5/*****
Too often have we heard or made remarks about the British as having a ‘stiff upper lip’, or being such humourless people, but over here, their austere and dignified exterior makes the film all the more hilarious. A funeral is associated with black, austerity, sombreness and grief. But over here, it is delightfully peppered with incidents… Ranging from the mortifying scene where a future son-in-law accidentally gets ‘high’ on drugs and ends up climbing the roof naked, to the awful discovery that the dignified deceased had was gay and had an affair with a midget, the endearing Uncle Alfie and the obnoxious ex-ONS. It’s both mightily entertaining with a poignant touch, as the family unites in the face of various adversities. The central message of this film, as portrayed by the speech that David (?) makes as he is enraged by the chaos at the funeral – That everyone has their flaws and imperfections, but it only matters that one does his best and lives a good life.

Sue Townsend writes about the British prime minister in a most impudent way, which is both entertaining and exhilarating. I can’t imagine such a book on our prime minister would ever get published in Singapore, and even if it did, I wonder what would happen to the author. Hah. It’s sad when a society isn’t open-minded enough (or confident) enough to laugh at herself.

In this daring satire of the British royal family, Edward Clare, the PM, crossdresses and transforms into Edwina St. Clare. Accompanied by Jack Sprat, policeman, they traverse across England, into the suburbs, the rural areas, the crime-filled areas… As he bumbles his way through life as commonfolk, he learns the value of family and personal life, and discovers for himself who he really is and what he really wants. In addition, he discovers the impracticality of many of those policies that he agonised over, and also learns to address the ‘bread and butter’ of his own nation.

A delightfully breezy read indeed!