I babble, I ramble, and I rattle

These pics were taken on 16 February 2010 using my phone but I am only publishing them now because I have just found my data cable which had gone missing since we moved to Setia Alam just before Christmas last year.

Guess where I found it? In the bathroom cabinet (of all places!!!), no thanks to Mama who kept it there when I didn’t have any furniture in my room yet.

It has been many many years since I last saw a live lion dance (I love lion dances. The lions are so cute!) so imagine my excitement when I saw one when I went to Subang Parade last month! It was really entertaining.

.

.

.

.

.

Hard to believe but Ba’ah’s pic of JFK control tower taken in 2008 made it to the print issue of Newsday (New York), 5 March 2010.

.

One middle aged guy came to our emergency department complaining of headache and one episode of fainting at work that morning. Not long after that, he suddenly became unresponsive.

The CT scan of his brain was reported to be normal.

Unsatisfied, our specialist ordered for MRI brain. The report was grim. He had multiple infarcts in the left midbrain and both thalami. Basically he had a stroke… A bad one.

He was not talking (he could not talk) and there was no family members to be contacted despite us engaging the assistance from the police. They could only trace his friends.

Somehow, someone managed to get hold of a fellow cleaner in the hospital who happens to know the patient and his family because she stays near the patient’s house and is a friend of the family. After 1 day, she managed to trace the relevant contact numbers.

Apparently he left his family in Perak more than 25 years ago and had not contacted them ever since. They had no idea if he was still alive or not. Imagine their surprise when suddenly they received a phone call from a stranger from a hospital far away to inform them that their long lost family member had suffered a stroke and needs someone to take care of him.

His sister, her husband and their daughter came over to the hospital today and saw him again after more than 25 years… Not in a very good condition. He was fully awake and alert… But bedridden and can barely talk comprehensibly with his extremely slurred speech.

It was a story worth publishing in the newspapers my blog… A family reunion after 25 years gone missing without a trace… It was a sad one.

They requested that he be transferred to Hospital Teluk Intan which is nearer to his family’s (his parents, aunts, uncles, etc) houses so that it would be easier for them to visit and learn the necessary nursing care should he be discharged from the hospital soon.

I almost had to accompany him in the ambulance to Teluk Intan but since we could not arrange for an ambulance to leave the hospital before 5pm (one just left to go to Muar, one on the way to Penang, two already booked to send patients to two other hospitals), our specialist decided that the house officer on call (instead of me) should go. What a relief.

I finally came home at 7.30am and gobbled my KFC dinner which was my first ‘real’ meal in >24 hours.

I was on call on Monday… managed to have proper lunch that day… Followed by a crazy call that evening during which I managed to steal a 5-minute break and gobbled up 1 miserable roti canai.

I did get to sleep take a nap for 30minutes before being called back to work. That was the morning I had a big time scolding from my head of department because a patient did not have an intravenous line.

It was the ED team’s fault!!! Ok, it feels really good for blaming other people but I should have checked too. I should have not taken it for granted that everyone who came to yellow zone in ED with history of fitting gets an IV line. Even the ED staff nurses couldn’t figure out how come the patient never had an IV line.

Anyway, because of that, my ward work was delayed and by the time I returned to the ward, things were piling up. I took a 5-minute break to quickly eat my muffins (Gardenia’s chocolate muffins… yummy! ) as well as a packet of Milo and went straight back to work.

Managed to leave the hospital at 6.30pm that day… And ‘collapsed’ as soon as I reached home. I only woke up at 6am this morning, a bit late for work. As usual, ate my muffins (I always take 2 muffins… they put 2 in one packet ) and my compulsory morning packet of Milo on my way to work.

I was so busy in the ward today I didn’t even realised that it was already 6pm (my round with the MO/ specialist only started at 1.30pm!!!) and finished work around 7pm. Good thing Mama already bought KFC for me as I was really really starving. Thanks, Mama.

Ok, need sleep now. Tomorrow back to work.

Another great show over the weekend.

.

For more pics, please visit my GALLERY.

Had another show of fireworks on Sunday night which lasted until 1am. Sleepy and exhausted as I was, I really couldn’t resist having another go at taking the pictures.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Yes, my timings were bad.

For more pics, please visit my GALLERY.

Warning: This post is very long in the sense that it contains 21 pictures.

Last Sunday I was able to leave the hospital early enough to follow my family to visit my brother in the PLKN camp in Beranang, Negeri Sembilan.

National service, huh? I think I (and many many others out there) am doing more service to the nation compared to these school leavers who mostly I think would prefer to be elsewhere (e.g. hanging out with friends after finishing the 11 years compulsory schooling years -  or in my case back in 2001 when they had not started PLKN, already attending college for my A-Levels) rather than being stuck in an almost pointless camp in the middle of nowhere.

.

It was weird trying to have a good family together time when you know people are looking at you… You see, my brother became the leader of the camp and I think it is just natural for people to want to have a look at his family (who unlike other families, did not bring any food from outside to him ).

Ok, you might not see people looking at us in this picture but they surely did… Because our table was right in the middle of the hall and it was tea time!

.

I almost PUKED when I found out what these participants are being called at the camp… Wira and wirawati… Which roughly means heroes/ heroines. I think campers are more appropriate. Ok, no offense meant. Stupid joke, I know. But… but… it’s just nauseating to hear the words being uttered every 10 minutes via the loudspeaker and see them printed all over the camp!

.

Someone sure was glad to be out of the ‘jail’!

.

It started to rain heavily when we were about to leave. Visiting time was over so the ‘campers’ were  packing up their visitors registration counter when we took shelter from the rain there.

.

They soon left the place…

.

And so did we.

.

On our way home, we stopped by at Ice Room in Nilai. It’s a place that my parents recently discovered.

.

It’s a heaven for ice-cream lovers like ME!!!

.

Just look at the choices of ice cream available!

.

The wall deco is cute too.

.

The list-ticking procedure reminded me of the restaurant we went to in Makassar.

.

We had durian pancake as appetiser… It was simply delicious! Basically it’s real durian flesh mixed with some cream and wrapped in a layer of pancake. 

.

I also ordered deep-fried durian tempura… Which was ok but not as nice as the pancake as the inside tasted more like lempuk (durian paste) instead of pure durian flesh.

.

Ok… the ice creams that we ordered that day…

Clockwise from top left: Fruit cocktail, strawberry, passion fruit & mango, peanut, durian, mango. Each one of them costs only about RM9.

.

They were heavenly (but I thought the durian ice cream was a bit of a let down as it was not as richly flavoured as I hoped it to be)!

.

Grandpa helping himself to the ice cream…

.

The spoons are long enough for everyone to dig into others’ ice creams and they give out spoons according to the number of people at the table, not the number of ice creams ordered!

.

As for the main dish, Mama was disappointed with her soggy fish and chips.

.

I ordered asam fish which was fashionably late and made a grand entrance to the table with the fancy presentation. I’d say the gravy was good but was not very happy with the fish as it was obviously separately cooked from the gravy.

.

Less than an hour later…

.

It was a good outing. I managed to stuff myself silly.

What a title.

There has been a lot of fireworks in the neighbourhood lately but usually by the time I got my camera ready, the show was already over. Some of the fireworks were really impressive… Similar to the ones that you only get to see during new year or ‘Merdeka’ celebrations. Yesterday, they happened to do it in 2 sessions and I managed to get the camera on standby with me… But only the camera. No tripod.

Pics taken from our dining area. Better view from Ba’ah’s room, actually (from Ba’ah’s room, there won’t be any metal bars - from the parameter fence - obstructing the view).

.

Venue: Dr Ai Wei’s house in Subang Jaya (it’s right opposite Subang Avenue! Or at least could have described it as being near Subang Parade instead of Taylor’s College! )

Date: 19 February 2010

Time: 7.30pm onwards

Unfortunately not many people turned up to eat all the good food.

.

Dr Ai Wei was my MO when I was in the O&G department. It was good to see the O&G gang again.

Venue: Mont Kiara Equestrian Club

Date: 6 February

Time: 8pm onwards

Prior to the event itself, I had to help out with the MO’s sketch… It was about how the department turned upside down with the absence of the HOD a.k.a Big Boss (as he does ward rounds regularly and actively involved in surgical procedures in the hospital). Initially I was just supposed to record the scenes (i.e. as a videographer; something I have not done in several years) but since they found out that they were short of actors, I had to act as one of the patients.

.

The nerd wannabe (who borrowed my glasses, leaving me semi blind for a good one hour) and the gangster gambler…

.

The main casts…

From left: Dr Nisa, Dr Mayuha, Dr Vicky, Farah Khalida, Dr Siva & Dr Wana

.

On the day itself, I arrived late with (Farah) Apoo and Ayu. Mr Shankar was already halfway with his speech by then.

.

The emcees for the evening were Dr Siva and Dr Mayuha.

.

We almost cancelled the HO sketch because we didn’t even had the time to practice. We only managed to go through the entire script in the small on call room the day before the event itself. In addition to that, one of the main actors was post call on that day and overslept.

However, after a short discussion, we decided to go on with it… And rehearsed twice while others enjoyed their dinner and other performances.

The dishes that I the entire HO sketch team had to skip.

.

Me… As Snow White (they really dabbed WHITE powder on my face on the stage in front of the audience - hence the white patches on my face/ scarf) who turned into Beast with one of my admirers. I really had fun with the stupid sketch. It was definitely much much better than the MOs’ sketch. We made Mr Shukri laugh again (previously, we made him laugh during the short sketch during the Breast Cancer Awareness Forum).

.

Other performances include an Ulik Mayang dance by the staff nurses from ward 5B…

.

A live performance from other house officers…

.

And a dance show by Comel…

.

There were several other performances but I was too busy rehearsing with my friends to take any pictures.

Later that night, me and my friends were surprised to see another Zorro… now much thinner (we were wondering how did Mr Shankar turned SOOOOO small!)! Turned out to be Encik Astapa!

.

After the rehearsal, I was too lazy to remove the white powder from my face because I knew they were going to put it on again in no time. After the performance, I guess I just couldn’t be bothered to clean it up. Therefore in all the pictures, I look like tepung gomak.

.

This is the only picture of me that I sort of like…

.

For more pics, please visit my GALLERY.

Most of the pictures were actually taken by my friends as I was either too busy doing other things… or was just not in the mood to take pictures.

I was on call on the 13th.

When people were happily having their big dinner with their families, I was busy attending to patients (gosh, I am really sick of seeing dengue patients. The outbreak is really quite bad!).

While we shiver in the coldness of the emergency department (never underestimate the power of the air-condition there ), we could hear explosions of fireworks outside in the real world, which started just before midnight.

Then I saw my MO walking in with a bouquet of roses from her husband… So sweet…

I did not manage to get any sleep that night because of the number of patients who came in. There was one lady who I will never forget and made me wonder if I should specialise in psychiatry. She just had a miscarriage last week and started having altered behaviour after being discharged from the hospital.

She has two children, aged 20 and 9. When the 1st child was 9 years old, she had her first miscarriage and developed strange behaviour which lasted for a month. Now that the second child is 9 years old, she had her second miscarriage and also developed the same problem. Interesting coincidence, don’t you think?

When I first talked to her, she was talking as if she was someone else (even the son said her voice was different). ‘She’ was asking me to allow her home because she was not supposed to be there and she needs to clean up her house. ‘She’ told me that A (the patient) was a very rude and unfriendly lady who has done many bad things to other people. Then she started telling me that she was hungry and wanted to eat blood.

I started to get goosebumps as the computer next to her bed started making clicking sounds as if someone was using it.

Since her hand was continuously moving underneath the blanket, I asked her what she was doing. She explained that she was dead and she needed to clean herself because she didn’t want to go to the other world not properly cleaned. She also started to apologise for being a really bad wife and deserved everything that was happening. Curious, I asked her what did she do to deserve what happened to her. She then said, “I fed my husband dirty blood” and continued with her rantings.

All the while she never opened her eyes, claiming to be embarrassed to see anyone. Her son then told me that she had been crawling around the house; Ju-On style and softly singing lullaby in the middle of the night. Spooky…

Anyway, as soon as I reached home yesterday afternoon, I immediately collapsed in my room, only to wake up for a short while during the outburst of fireworks last night. I pulled my bedroom curtain to watch the show and went back to sleep right after it ended. Then I woke up late for work this morning.

Today, people were discussing how their Valentine’s day was. Just in case anyone is wondering, nope, I didn’t get anything.

On another note, I love the  ED staff. Highly efficient, they’re also a fun and funny bunch of people. The male staff nurses refused to be called staff nurses and insisted that they’re male nurses. As if there is any difference (apart from the gender issue).