Within 4 walls

Today I feel like walking. Walking to somewhere, to nowhere. Doesn't matter. Round the block maybe, or to the park, or just off into the dark.

I just want to place one foot in front of the other and walk off these feelings of frustration that I just can't place a finger on much less give voice to. I just want to keep walking till my feet are sore and I'm out of breath and collapse in an exhausted but contented heap.

But I don't because I think of all the dangers out there for a girl walking alone aimlessly in the dark. And I think of the responsibilities of tomorrow, the need to eat dinner and go to work tomorrow. So my feet do the sensible thing and find their way back home.

Sitting in the stillness of JL's cousin's house in Sydney listening to the gentle whirring of the CPU as I browse through blogs and reflect on the day's events. We spent yesterday visiting the fish market, eating a sumptious meal of grilled whole flounder, chips and cute wee scallops buried in layers of melted cheese and taking the ferry to some unknown destination and enjoying the sights of opera house and harbour bridge and as we cruised along. It's the ideal sort of holiday. Lots of food, lots of sleep, lots of opportunity to rest one's feet, meandering through the streets of Sydney mindlessly with little on the agenda. All this travelling on buses, trains and ferries with JL has given me the chance to get to know her better too, to see a different perspective, where life is taken with a pinch of salt and events in life dealt with as they come. And with time I begin to think that in some ways she's right, life is so unpredictable that sometimes the best way to deal with life is to take it as it comes. Sure, there will be the bitter along the way but it only makes the sweet all the more sweeter. I love the way she embraces life, sees each hurdle as a challenge and as I listen to her on the boat I can't help but do a mental contrast of her attitudes and mine. I am a person who values stability to its utmost, who likes associating with things that are constant, who places loyalty, faithfulness and steadfastness above all other virtues. And then my thoughts switch to contemplating the future, of being out in the working world next year, having the responsibility of making sure the patients are well cared for on my shoulders and I can't help but feel excited yet afraid both at once. And then my mind reels on to the thoughts of possibly getting married, having children, looking after my parents when they grow old, perhaps doing all three while juggling a career all at once and here's when it becomes rather overwhelming and I find myself beating the thoughts back into the recesses of my mind with promises to myself to think about them in the future but one at a time. And then I wonder, since when have I become like this, from a person who so embraced the progressions through life--high school, uni, marriage, childbirth-- to one so filled with trepidation about the future?
Recently too, I've been getting these flags popping up every once so often in my mind, little "I must be more..." flags, I call them, reminding myself that to be a good doctor, daughter, wife (perhaps), mother (perhaps), I have to be more organised, caring, obliging, loving, accommodating... aargh... its too much really, and so I cope with it in the one way I've learnt well-- we beat it back into the recesses of my mind

Just completed 2 sets of OSCEs and as usual, have a funny story to tell about the stupid things Hilda does during the exams (she invariably will have at least one). Had this station with a guy who had come into the GP coz his girlfriend thinks he's drinking too much and we were asked to take an alcohol history. The interview was going well, and I was on a roll, asking all the right questions, "how much are you drinking, how many times a week, what sort of alcohol do you drink etc..." then suddenly I remembered I had to see if he had developed tolerance towards alcohol. And coz he was the cool, shaggy haired, tattoo type, and since he wasn't happy about coming in to see the GP, I felt like I had to develop more of a connection and for some strange, only God knows why reason I said " so, do you feel you have to drink more nowadays to get the same effect, like you know, the same BUZZ?" Oh my gosh, what I was thinking I honestly do not know but it came out so wrong and the patient couldn't help but giggle. And then it all went downhill from there. Lesson learnt? Hilda should NEVER try to sound cool. Especially not in the OSCEs.

Almost a year since I've written. There has been so much going on, life's ins and outs, struggles, questions, uncertainties but also many moments of joy and learning, where my "strict perspectives" are broadened, the horizon of my mind expanded. Why I should choose now to write, 3 days before my final exams I cannot fathom. I suppose I always tend to get these brief moments of pensiveness before the exams, that punctuate pages upon pages of diabetes management and differentials of hypertension.

As I sit and mull over the fact that these are my final exams of med school ever, I'm amazed at how quickly 6 years have flown by. though having said that I feel ready to move on and start earning my keep-- 6 years of "parasiting from parents" as a friend puts it has been more than enough. Funnily enough though, a part of me likes preparing for these exams and doesn't want it to end. It's weird, I know. But somehow as prepares for the exams the cadence of life is lulled and there is this singleness of mind and heart that works towards a purpose that is noble.

My apologies for the protracted silence over the holidays. It is usually during the holidays that I am the most silent simply coz there's always so much to do, so many people to catch up with that there's a lot less time to reflect upon the ordinary things in life. But lots have been going on-- the conclusion of the exams, my flight back home the day after, my week long trip to Langkawi with my family, immediately following which 2 intense weeks in medical oncology. And now 4 weeks later, here I am, sitting in the library at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, having crossed 4? continents in just as many weeks.

I am in Glasgow doing a 4 week stint in Plastic Surgery. Plastic surgery is simply fascinating--there are a whole multitude of procedures to see from breast reconstructions to trauma lists to major head and neck surgery. And the plastic surgeons? Simply divine. =) I think it is the nature of such a specialty that requires a delicate combination of gentleness, appreciation of beauty, steadiness and thoroughness that selects for such a fine breed of gentlemen. So I'm definitely enjoying these 4 weeks being the happy recipient of such chivalry before I'm thrown back into the grind of having doors slammed as I walk through them, having to lug supermarketing and being left standing indefinitely as these guys happily rest their sore feet. =) (oops, sorry guys)

A few words on glasgow. The beautiful thing about Glasgow is that is that one always knows what to expect from it; you can always bet your bottom dollar that it will be horribly cold, wet and windy--aye, with hardly any exceptions to the rule. But even though I whinge constantly about the cold and the rain, I always come back. There's something about dusty, dreary, industrialised Glasgow that charms me. Perhaps it is the dreariness the weather brings that appeals to that melancholic side of me, but I think more so it is the people who always keep me warm inside, who give me that sense of deep seated contentment. There are always beautiful moments in glasgow, talking to my sis while cuddled into the sofa, sitting with PS on the front seat of a double decker bus returning from the campsies watching the rain hitting the windscreen in front of us and that one exultant moment in Inverness when all the hard work in the last few weeks of the year was suddenly made well worth it.

It's time to go now, got to head for surgery but there's so much more to write about. About people and outpatients and things learnt in church and other reflections. Shall continue soon when I find the time!

Have been sitting at the Baillieu library computers frantically trying to cram when I looked up and saw 2 poems pasted up on the wall:

"Like the vacant stare
of office windows
I look upon this world.

I wait in dark doorways
and there I stay, waiting
waiting in vain
for that that will not come.

waiting for what
I must but create.
the waiter of this world
I will remain forever
in this state."

The second one:
" Starved for words,
not thoughts,
only words.

I know what I
think, feel, see.

I know not what to say."

I wonder who wrote them. They are somehow so dark and full of despair, yet so honest, reflective and full of truth. was he/she calling out for attention? For help? Or just to find reprieve through writing and being comforted by the fact that someone out there now knows?

hmm... poetry can be such a cathartic experience sometimes-- it lets you express yourself freely behind a veneer of ambiguity, but at the end of the day we still need people, don't we? Words, beautiful as they are, only offer momentary reprieve. I hope he/she finds that listening ear.

In the middle of cramming all about atopic dermatitis in kids and had this irrestible urge to blog about last night's hilarious conversation with my Dad. It went like this:

"Hi Dad!"
" Hi..."
"I hear you're getting baptised. Are you excited?"
"I'm more excited about you coming back lah..." (Hah! my Dad can be so sweet sometimes)
The conversation continues and then he asks:
"You know your pretty friend?"
"Huh, which one, got so many."
" The one who had dinner with us before?"
"Oh, that one ah. Haha, you think she's pretty ah?"
Protracted pause.
"No lah, I where got say she's pretty. All I will say is that she's a lot more attractive than you." (Wah, thanks a lot man.)

Well, parents. Okay mine at least. They never let you reside under this delusional cloud of being bold, intelligent and beautiful. My feet are always kept firmly on cold, solid ground. Which in many ways, I suppose, isn't a bad thing. =)