Public Health Campaign

We interrupt this blogcast to bring you a message:

Must advertise this because planning for it had already taken so much of my precious holiday time. Yup, I'll be involved in the free marketing for UCSI health campaign for the public to raise awareness of diabetes and its effects to mankind. There'll be free health screening for blood pressure, body fat, blood glucose & cholesterol*; health education exhibitions on diabetes; and demonstrations of first-aid & breast self-examination. If you think your internal engines need to be checked, please join me in Sunway Pyramid this weekend! (Did I say please? Yeah, please!)


*Blood glucose & cholesterol tests for 45 years old and above only (As usual, the disclaimers are written in the smallest font possible)

Back to stone age

Terminated my streamyx account today. One of the final things to do before moving over to KT because both my parents don't use the internet. Well, also partly due to my cheapo-ism of not wanting to pay another month of fees since their billing date is on the 28th of every month.

Posting this using dial-up connection @ 41.2kbps. It took around 5 minutes to load this page. Haha... and we think that streamyx is slow. It's been soooo long since I've used dial-up that I was surprised to hear the music accompaniment when we first dial up to connect to the internet. And not to forget every minute connected costs 4cents. Which reminds me, I'd better stop here till I can find somewhere with free wireless connection.

Tick Tock

I've always thought that it's gonna be a looong way more. It has always been "I'll have to wait until I pass the Yr2 examinations then only think about it" or "It's all the way in July lah".

It was not until the question of "When are you leaving?" became more frequent (it's like everybody's favourite question now, perhaps something to break the ice when people start a conversation), and the fact that I've bought the plane ticket last Fri that it dawned upon me, it's gonna be real soon! And this time hopefully it's not the embarassing "I'm going off tomorrow!" but yet you still see me in KL the next week kind of leaving.

I know there must be a reason why I was allowed to stay in KL for an extra 2 years, and hopefully I've achieve it. As the day looms nearer, the question that lingers in my mind now is, "What would you do if you only had one more month to be in KL?" Perhaps, watching all the movies I can before venturing into no-cinema land? Hmm... sounds shallow. Any contributions are welcomed.

Fear Factor

Had a taste of the crispy, crunchy, finger lickin' good fried...

crickets at the Cambodian workshop in PITH! Couldn't bear the thought of putting it in my mouth at first when I saw a whole swarm of them in the container (just like a lot of others who were at the workshop, with many showing disgusted faces), but managed to gather just enough guts to do so, especially after the Cambodian brother told us that it is expensive & that he had to risk the customs check to bring them to us.

So I took one small little creature, looked at it, made sure that it was dead, put it in my mouth, *crunch* *crunch*... it didn't taste so bad after all! It's all in the mind apparently.

Of course, the highlight of the youth challenge shouldn't be the crickets, but the message which came strongly: "Don't waste your life!". One of the major things that hinders our mission of telling others the good news is when we make our lives all about ourselves, chasing the 'Chinese dream' of getting as much material posessions as we can; instead of hearing & following what God calls us to do. He reminded us about the parable of the rich fool, who stored up so much wealth for himself but was not rich in God's eyes , and when his life is demanded of him, who will be receiving what he has stored up for himself? May we never end up that way.

Scissorhands wannabe

Witnessed the first surgery in my life today... really exciting stuff. It was an orchidectomy (not cutting orchids, but one of the more intimate parts of the male body)

Many questions regarding surgery that I had all these while were answered within the 3 to 4 hours of standing there and watching Dr. Wong (of Pudu Specialist Center, where I was attached to) performing it... questions like 'When you cut someone open, won't they just continue to bleed?', 'How does suturing really work?' etc.

Also went on ward rounds with him, mostly seeing him do dressing on diabetic foot ulcers. Wouldn't want to post the pictures here or else your most recent meal might just rush out of your throat (If you're curious, just google 'diabetic foot ulcers' and you'll see them). As scary as it is, it is already a very common and real disease: one contributing factor being the high consumption of sugar in our diet (yes, I'm guilty of this too). Perhaps the govt should think of pasting pictures of the ulcers in sugar packets, soft drinks, chocolates (err... ok, maybe not the irresistable chocolates) & sweet packets too just like they had done for cigarettes.

The elusive letter

Since young we've been ingrained with a mission to chase after a letter of the alphabet.
Our parents tell us to study hard, send us to tuition etc. so that we'll get strings of it in our results slip.
The media highlights some people who'd take so many subjects just to get more of it.
The people around us gleam with more delight when they hear that we've achieved it instead of the 2nd letter of the alphabet (some might even ask "What happened?" if we don't achieve it).
Sometimes I can't help but wonder, "Is it really that important?".

Oh well, I guess we can't run away from the fact that it is the sole marker of our academic performance, and getting it shows how responsible we are in our studies.

In my quest to obtain the elusive letter in the recent exam, I got a taste of what Hollywood might have been in American Idol, haha. (Look at my previous post - You've gotta be careful what you wished for). Here's the story, besides the normal exam that everyone has to go through, there is an additional exam called VIVA (pronounced 'wai-wa'), which is an oral examination set up by the lecturers for students who almost passed or almost got a distinction to see whether we deserved to be elevated to a better grade.

So there I was, sitting in front of 4 of my lecturers and an external examiner where (instead of singing,) I was being grilled & bombarded with questions for about 30 to 45 minutes. Alas, not every story has a happy ending. I still didn't manage to grab hold of that elusive letter but I'm thankful for the opportunity to taste what VIVA is like, and the fact that God had guided me through the 5 weeks of preparation and throughout the entire exam.

Ps. If you're still wondering what letter of the alphabet it is, it's an A

Deafening silence

You won't know how to appreciate something until it's being taken away. How true.

Experienced what it's like to be partially deaf for 1 whole week when my right ear was stuck. It all came about due to an overzealous attempt to clean the ear which resulted in the cerumen being pushed further in towards my ear drum instead of being removed.
Lesson learnt: DON'T dig your ears. It is there for a purpose, which is to trap dust, particles and microorganisms & prevent them from colonizing our external ear.

So, I was partially deaf. It is quite frustrating when I can't hear clearly what people are saying (like an old uncle), having to turn to the other functioning ear all the time, having a feeling of it being stuck & constantly trying to remove it, and having to listen to my own voice (not that i hate my voice). The good thing about the entire ordeal is that I'm amazed again at this beautiful instrument that God created. Imagine a world without ears: Think no iPods, radio, mobile phones, movies without sound effects, no nagging from parents (wait, the last one shouldn't be in the list)... but you get the idea, it would be a less musical world! And the way that it conducts sound to the inner ear and changes it to nerve signals so that we can interpret the diversity of different sounds is just so harmonious. Thank God for our ears.

On another note, I'm going to Hollywood!