Friday, June 22, 2007
What's Up, Doc.?
Ahhh... Finally the end of the week. I'm just enjoying the peaceful Friday night slurping on yoghurt and of course, tuning to some Bossa tracks. I'm glad that I'm finally working rather than slack around in front of the TV. The only drawback of working is I can't really exercise as much as I want or used to.
In any case, a new guy came around today - through a recruitment agency - and coincidentally he's my classmate in primary school. What a surprise. It's been eons since I've last seen him (right about 10 years).
Working in a hospital, besides the monotonous work, I can't seem to keep my mind off the morbid imaginations that simultaneously pop into my mind as I sieve through patients' folders. One colleague who handles incoming and updating of new clinical reports was quite taken aback when he observed that most of the incoming cases were cancer related. Come to think of it, I thought cancer IS the top killer disease in Singapore? Oh well. Another thing which bothers me is the thickness of the folders; they can range from very thin (with just a couple of documents inside) to 6-10 folders patient, each 1 inch thick. I can only sympathise - if not empathise with - the patients. Moreover, medical fees definitely pile up proportionately with the stack of folders. With so many folers, it's not surprising to change upon folders of people whom you may know.
It's the 4th day since I've started and today I was asked to assist another permanent staff to trace folders to be sent to the hospital clinics for upcoming appointments. Searching halfway, and delighted at finding another folder off the dusty steel cabinet, I doublechecked the name. To my surprise, it happened to be my secondary school chemistry teacher's folder. I wasted no time in reading the contents (I threw away Integrity at that time in favour of kaypohism) but my efforts were continuously thwarted by other people passing by. After countless trials, I gave up. Damn.
Well, I think it was quite exciting to find a folder of someone I knew. At least it gave me a little tiny boost of morale. Imagine having to ferret out about only 200 folders each day out of at least 2 million folders! Sometimes the files are not arranged properly and some cabinets are filled to the brim, some spilling onto the ground and some laying on the top of the entire steel cabinet. There is an organised filing system - just insufficient space for more cabinets. But it seems to have worked well all these years, so no one's complaining much.
I finally got an external hard drive at the PC exhibition. It's so cool and it's lying on my table now. I can finally dump everything from my laptop into it. What a relief! My laptop's been pushed to the limit time and time again, almost bursting at its storage seams.
I went with my father, brother and uncle.The PC show was terribly crowded as always. We arrived shortly after 12, and the place was already pretty packed. As we made our way through the booths, we ended up with a hard drive and a few packets of ink cartridges for my printer. By this time the place was more crowded than ever as people jostled and pushed their way through the ever packed passages.
There's nothing extra special about the PC show except for a few new products. It might as well be a PC sales convention. Everyone is trying to sell everything and anything - make more subscriptions, and make more sales. After viewing the new hand-held PC - which is possibly one of the few products worth checking out - from Sony, which turned out to be quite unappealing, we left Suntec.
Seriously I don't know if the hard drive will last for how long. Everyone I know says that it will spoil some day so I have to get a new one again. Then how do I know when it will die out on me? What becomes of my data? I can't possibly estimate and get a new hard drive on standby, right? But I don't really care now because I am still thinking of what to transfer over. Everything or selectively? All the dramas?
It's so nice to look at it. So cool.
Oh yes one last thing. I borrowed a book called Basic Spanish a couple of days back from the library. It's to prep myself for my impending module on Spanish (if I am going to get it next semester, really). I love Spanish. It has this ruggedness and street flair to it while still possessing style and glam. Think of Zara, Mango and Ibiza! As like all new subjects, Spanish is totally foreign to me; I know nothing except cero, uno, dos, tres and cuatro (0 to 4). Yet I feel quite passionate about learning it. I chose it over French, Japanese, German and Italian. Not sure why. I just feel this attraction to the language. I think it's like whatever some people say: It's so cool.
I also saw DVDs on languages at the PC show. Actually I wanted to get one but the price got the better of me ($47!). The disc's good because they teach the students on word pronunciation, unlike reading from a book. But I still have my doubts... Hur hur.
I am still waiting for the day when I can blog in Spanish!
Many condolences to MJ and his family. Carrousel, Yen, MH & gf and I went for MJ's grandmother's funeral wake a few days back. It was quite a sombre occasion for MJ's family. In any case, they must have hidden their emotions really well as some of them were laughing and chatting; this was more like a gathering of sort.
In any case, we stayed for about an hour until we decided to leave before there's no more trains and buses. Before leaving, it's only customary to give the bereaved some token of condolences (obviously it's money in this case). As usual, I didn't bring money at all because I was in a rush and I didn't bother to get money at North Point Shopping Centre before attending the wake.
Without a doubt I had to borrow money. Yen was against the idea because it's bad luck for the borrower (not sure about the lender, though)! I am not one to mess with the unnatural so I panicked. I called my mum and she said it doesn't hurt to borrow since I didn't bring money. Carrousel's mom said it's ok to borrow as long as there's a change of hands of the money. Then following a short while more of panicking, I decided to borrow money from Wendy.
By this time, Yen was also panicking, because before she went for the wake, she already inquired about everything and anything that was needed to know or be done from her mother. So naturally when someone falls out of tradition... She's on Red Alert.
Since the money issue was resolved, we then turned to leave. But Yen said we weren't supposed to bade MJ farewell or goodbyes or whatever because of bad luck. We tried. I tried. But I still said goodbye. I blurted it out so absent-mindedly I didn't realise it myself. What a dork. As Carrousel and Yen were frantically trying to leave the place, MJ also wanted to say goodbye to them. But both of them just sped away...
For most of the journey back I was pretty paranoid as flashes of images kept popping out of my brain: falling branches, speeding cars that will charge up the curb on me, falling bird poo, miss the last bus, etc.
There was one last thing. I went into my home to get a bowl of water, then went out of the doorstep again to clean my hands and face. Hur hur.