Before I forget about it completely, I should put a quick post about the roadtrip -- a wonderful, wonderful break, and meeting distant family connections, 

and enjoying the chillax kampung life in Malaysia.

There was this park called "Taman Tamadun Islam" in Terengganu that had various Islamic monuments and mosques in mini size -- very exciting!

They didn't miss out Masjid Sultan! Hehe. 

We were so psyched to see Singapore in a different country.

And of course, DURIAN. 

And being invited for home-made Nasi Dagang at 10 PM at night

-- el fresco kampung style!

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This trip also allowed me to slow down, and start on At The Loch Of The Green Corrie (while on the road in the car, or between moments in the hotel room) gifted and forced upon me by E -- and wonderfully so. (Ever since coming back to SG, I have had little peace of mind to keep reading this like I did on the trip -- sadness.)

This book is beautiful as books rarely are. And pays tribute to a poet, and poetry in general.

Rich day

All day we fished

the loch clasped in the throat

of Canisp, that scrawny mountain,

and caught trout and 

invisible treasures.

We walked home, ragged millionaires,

our minds jingling, our fingers

rustling the air.

And now, lying on the warm sand,

we see

the rim of the full moon

rest on a formal corrugation of water

at the feet of

a Britannia cloud:

sea and sky, one golden sovereign

that will never be spent.

-- Norman MacCaig

I feel so deprived and sad, when I think of how in crammed, busy Singapore, I, we, can scarcely understand, much less experience, this feeling of richness without riches; to be attached to the landscape, and the realness and concreteness of nature, the inexhaustibility of our God-given earth; to be able to feel content, and feel like what there is, is enough.

These personalities, these comedians -- John Oliver, Jon Stewart, Russell Brand -- do so well,

because, I suppose, truth is most palatable when wrapped in humour.

An exhausting week is over! Gosh, I was counting down painfully to tonight, no joke. And now Friday night is here, and I'm off on a roadtrip to Malaysia tomorrow! Alhamdulillah for this nice break. 

:DDD

But I have to say how crazy these past few days have been. I have been so tired, I feel like the black circles under my eyes are growing every second or something. So tired and scatterbrained that this morning while in the nursery wards, I misplaced my stethoscope, and hunted back and forth for it -- luckily it was hanging nicely alongside a cot, but I swear I have no idea how it got there. I was already accusing in my head one of the doctors for swiping it or something >.< because I felt like he was the only one hovering around where my stetho was and he was eyeing me very condescendingly for some reason. And then later, just before M was telling me to call G (ah crap, I do not enjoy the hectic inpatient life -- I will lament in another post perhaps), I dug around in my pouch and could not for the life of me find my phone! And then had another mad hunt for my phone while running between the nurseries. Fortunately, I learn that there are very nice nurses and also very nice doctors, who in the midst of treating fragile babies, helped me locate my phone. >.< Again, my phone was somewhere by a baby's cot, and I still don't know how it got there.

GODDDD. I will totally sujud syukur when inpatient training is done. It's like one of my life's mega hurdles.

One of my school-age kids, in the middle of session today, suddenly said, in all seriousness:


"... Can I say something?"

"Yes, you can, of course."

"You know... I am dyslexic."

(At this point, I was so over-whelmed by how adorable it was, I could barely contain from gushing over him in front of his face. I love these kids. Oh, honey, of course I know you're dyslexic -- it's all over your case file.)

"Yes, I saw that... How's that going?"

"I go to DAS now, every Saturday."


And I let him tell me a little bit about how he's learning to read every week. If they only realised how awesome they are, these kids -- instead of feeling like they had some terrible terminal disease. And even kids who have terminal illnesses, they shouldn't feel like they're inadequate or less worthy.

The way he said it, like he was telling me something disappointing about himself. Oh gosh, I wanted to hug him. So rare to have such highly-cognitive sparks on my caseload who can actually articulate the emotional turmoil they go through.

With all the constant talk and reminders from people about what one is supposed to be doing at this age (married, having kids, having a stable job, climbing the corporate ladder etc) -- a reminder from my past self...

"... yesterday's movie night was nice, although I was close to falling asleep at the end of the movie cause I was so tired. The pizza was fantastic, Nerney's flat was beautiful (seriously gorgeous and well-tended greenery) and the projector and screen provided me with my much-missed cinematic experience. And Pleasantville was nice even though I'd watched it more than once before.

I like the bit at the end of the movie, when David's mum complains how she's such a wreck cause she's forty years old and a widow and miserable. How when her husband was still alive they had planned for the perfect car, the perfect house, the perfect life. And how everything's wrong now and it's not supposed to be like this. And David tells her, "It's okay. It's not supposed to be anything."

It's not supposed to be anything. I'm okay, I guess."

-- March 4th, 2007

It's not supposed to be anything! :) I'm still okay, I guess.

Life-long learning indeed.

In this trying period, I am learning to grapple with failure, and struggling to understand what it really means to work hard and not give up. I wish I had tried more and failed more as a child (and not stayed so safe), so that I'm not such an amateur at this. It's a silly thing to always want to do well, and not try at something challenging enough that you fail. Try at something impossible or at least more difficult, so that you fail, and then life will scare you less. (When I have a kid some day, this is going into his or her syllabus.) Because you fail... and then so what? Life goes on, damn it. And the learning continues.

Besides, just picking yourself up after you fall is an act of jihad.

"Any art or skill is possessed by those who have formed the habit of operating according to its rules. In fact, the artist or craftsman in any field differs thus from those who lack his skill. He has a habit they lack. You know what I mean by habit here. I do not mean drug addition. Your skill in playing golf or tennis, your technique in driving a car or cooking soup, is a habit. You acquired it by performing the acts which constitute the whole operation.

There is no other way of forming a habit of operation than by operating. That is what it means to say one learns to do by doing. The difference between your activity before and after you have formed a habit is a difference in facility and readiness. You can do the same thing much better than when you started. That is what it meants to say practice makes perfect. What you do very imperfectly at first you gradually come to do with the kind of almost automatic perfection that an instinctive performance has. You do something as if you were to the manner born, as if the activity were as natural to you as walking or eating. That is what it means to say that habit is the second nature.

One thing is clear. Knowing the rules of an art is not the same as having the habit. When we speak of a man as skilled in any way, we do not mean that he knows the rules of doing something, but that he possesses the habit of doing it. Of course, it is true that knowing the rules, more or less explicitly, is a condition of getting the skill. You cannot follow rules you do not know. Nor can you acquire an atristic habit—any craft or skill— without following rules. The art as something which can be taught consists of rules to be followed in operation. The art as something which can be learned and possessed consists of the habit which results from operating according to the rules."

-- How To Read A Book, by Adler Mortimer

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On other fun things, I have completed Fated To Love You, the korean drama -- and it was overall very lovely and I'm contemplating getting it for my Mum to watch. More importantly, this drama introduced me to the famous and much-loved Jang Hyuk, and now I'm finally compelled to look up his popular historical drama Chuno, which has been raved about numerously before but I just never got around to it.

Anyway, this guy -- ah! The quintessential opposite of the pretty flower boys so famous in Kpop culture today; so manly and guy and rugged good looks, even in a character as nutty as his was in this rom-com. I am not surprised Running Man's Jong Kook and him are best buds -- I imagine them hanging out at the juice bar after working out at the gym or mountain climbing every weekend. HAHA. So crazy fit and that hero-physique --- hello, I am anticipating him as this famous Chuno hero character -- because you know hero archetypes and historical fiction is my real genre, hehe.

Until then, Fated To Love You, thank you for a lovely time and for making me temporarily believe in fairytales again.

September already! :O

I think this blog needs to grow up. Like it needs a new direction or something (or at least a layout change, omg!), but I can't make myself spare the time or the effort to try out anything.

Anyways, finishing up a korean drama (that's sorta distracting me from the mugging for inpatient dysphagia, oops), "Fated to Love You" -- a korean remake of the famous Taiwanese drama I remember watching sporadically back in the youthful undergraduate days; and one of my professors sharing a clip of it in one of my USP modules! ahah.

This has been lovely, and such a fairytale.

Beautiful song:

And I was thinking, laughing to myself: fortunately or unfortunately, life is not a korean drama.