Blame it on the weather

''Why the heck turn off the AC in hot weather?? It's 29 degree Celsius today. Are they insane?...''

I was complaining non stop to the nurses, my groupmates, my patient...practically whoever i came across

"Chill, Yin!" one of my group mates was taken aback by my unusual crankiness

The hot weather has really got me into a bad mood, like a boiling kettle.

Even my partner's patient sensed my irritation

''she okay?''

"she's just allergic to the sun" my partner said seriously

I peered at him, acknowledging that i caught a hint of teasing in his voice

Allergic to the sun

well said!

FEAR

i'm scared

not sure of what

is it
a second failure?
or
being all alone in a battle against uncertainty?

wish me luck

ungracious brats

i know it's impossible to make everyone like me
but i can't help being upset when a little blender hates me

actually two

they despise me so much that they refuse to obey my command

i walked miles with sweat trickling down my face and dust stinging my eyes
i risked being burnt by the merciless sun and blown away by the gusty wind
just to find them a nice, cosy home

why blender why
in spite of my best efforts, they have the cheek to go on strike??!!

Screw them!!

I miss winter!

Here comes summer

the time i dread every year
the time i wish to move to north pole
the time i get drowsy, irritable and parched
the time i can pass out or get first degree burn after 5 min in the sun
the time i have to add sunblock to my monthly budget
the time my computer overheats and crashes
the time my fan works at full blast around the clock and i still feel sick

the world would be a better place if we could skip summer!

*melt*

stop spitting in our faces

The following letter was published in The Star on Feb 13, 2008. I know this is a bit old and you might have read it but i find it irritatingly ridiculous and misleading. Therefore, i decided to put it up here to share with my fellow dentists. I bet this letter will evoke as much indignation in you as in me, if not more. There are so many misconceptions about dentistry in this letter that i can't help wondering if it was really written by a doctor. To me, the writer sounds like an emotional, self-absorbed, ignorant and brainless jackass who doesn't give a damn to the implications of his irrational writing but simply expresses his personal grudge over dentists. Such a shame!



Dental visits a pain in the pocket

ACCORDING to statistics, about 10% of people who are 55 years and older will begin to lose their teeth. Whatever the cause attributed to each individual, age is the single biggest factor. ---> it's gum disease, not age. Please do some reading before you show off your knowledge coz it's embarrassing if you get the facts wrong

Because of our ageing population, the number of people who would become edentulous would be a substantial number. The market is huge.

Many old folks are at the mercy of dental surgeons, especially the ones who now describe themselves as implantologists. ---> yea right, we all can self-declare as an implantologist without attending a 5-yr course in dental schools and undergoing a 3-year specialist training...life is easy for dentist, isn't it?

Many of them wear doctor’s coats, carry stethoscopes and insist on being called doctors. They charge by the tooth for every implant. Current prices range from RM7,000 to RM9,000 for the implantation of a tooth. This does not include the cost of the replacement parts, surgery, X-rays, etc. ---> dental surgeons carry stethoscopes?? hmm...since when? insist on ebing called doctors?? Dude, anyone with an advanced doctorate can be called "Dr". It doesn't have to be a medical degree either

Hence, for about four to five teeth to be implanted in the average elderly person, the price can come up to RM45,000. This is more than the cost of a complex angioplasty, bypass operation, or a hip replacement. ---> The materials and kits used to construct implant are expensive, plus the laboratory costs, xrays and other surgical procedures like bone grafting, sinus elevation. It may not seem as complex as bypass operation but it is indeed a surgical procedure requiring skilled training and precision

There seems to be no regulation to control these prices. It is a free market, with dentists, specialists, as well as GPs competing and charging whatever the market can take.

Most older people are poor and have to depend on their relatives. And few family members want to pay these exorbitant charges.

Government specialists, curiously, do not provide teeth implants for most of these unfortunate victims. If they do, it is to learn the technique before leaving government service. ---> for a start, implant is not the only solution to replacing missing teeth. There are other options like dentures and bridges which are relatively more affordable.


While the cost of private medical care is now regulated and there are guidelines provided by the MMA, implantology is a wide open field with no control. Even the Malaysian Dental council has not tried to exert any control.

The patients who cannot afford implants are given cheap dentures or a mix of implant and a bridge (if they can afford the latter). ---> excuse me, dentures are not cheap!

Having watched the implantation procedure, I think this is really a simple procedure, most of the time done under direct vision. There are no special tools required.

Most surgically trained medical GPs should be able to learn this procedure very quickly. There will, of course, be some difficult cases which can be left to the specialists. ---> is that a joke?? HA-HA-HA! So we should shut down dental schools and let the medics take over to cut down cost and redundancy..a world free of nasty, bloodsucking dentists...woohoo!

Dental surgeons, whether specialists or GPs, work in a very narrow field of the human body. From experience, I have learnt that they know little or nothing about the wider spectrum of medicine. ---> i see, so doctors work in a very wide field of human body. I'm sure you can treat my angina or lung cancer even though you are a gynaecologist. Am i right, DOCTOR??

The number of antibiotics they are familiar with is very few. They ask for a history of diseases that the patient may have but do not know how to assess how bad these diseases are or how they should be treated. ---> that's why we are dentist and you are doctor. Otherwise, who needs a doctor if dentist can handle all

They have no idea about emergencies that may occur with surgery or with drugs. ---> i think i heard of cardiac arrest, anaphylaxis, asthma attack, seizures, hypoglycaemia etc although i havent qualified

They do not know anything about cardiopulmonary resuscitation. ---> of coz, we study HHD for fun and play with the dummy because we are bored and have nothing better to do.

Because of these weaknesses, I would suggest the following remedial actions:

> The Malaysian Dental Council should investigate and control prices in this dog-eat-dog business. They must impose some discipline to care for poor old people. ---> right, it is unethical to charge the poor elderly but it is ethical to divert the cost to those who can afford so that your practice wont go bankrupt.

> The dental surgeon who calls himself an implantologist should give a written bill to the patient before he starts treatment. He should list all his immediate charges as well as charges for subsequent visits. ---> so the dentist must pray that the treatment will go perfectly smooth coz any cost of mishap or unforeseen incidents like broken post/crown that are not included in the bill goes back to the dentist.

> It should be possible to train technicians to do single implants. These technicians should be licensed and also given guidelines on charges. Prices would come down in a free market once you increase the supply. ---> extend the 3 year technician program to 5 years , which is the same duration as medicine and dentistry, only they dun gain the title of 'Dr' and earn less. But it's ok as long as the dentists dun get to drive Porsche

> Medical emergencies during a dental implant are rare but can happen. Hence it should be mandated that an anaesthetist should be on standby during any implant or surgical procedure done by a dentist. --->poor aneasthetist, i'm sorry but you have to work for free as i'm not allowed to increase the treatment charges

> The dentist should buy and place in his clinic emergency equipment. This would include a defibrillator, a heart monitor, a pulse oxymetre and an ECG machine. ---> with all these equipments you don't have to worry that your patient will die in the chair. Remember, they are cheap equipments so you have no excuse to raise the charge.

> The implantologist should be certified, which means going before a panel of peers who will verify if he has the knowledge and skills to perform large volume implantation. ---> i thought you said implant is very easy, even GPs can pick it up quickly...Hmmm

MEDICAL DOCTOR,
Kuala Lumpur.


My advice : read it just once and then laugh it off or it'll ruin your day

insensitivity or insecurity?

Why are some people so full of themselves?
Why can't they see constant bragging only makes people around them annoyed, not impressed?
Why the hell do they dwell on the belief that people show indifference to their bragging simply out of jealousy?

be it plain thick skin-ness or a cover-up for low self-esteem

I feel sorry for them, truly

*sigh*

Eyes don't lie

It's interesting to see how the police interrogates a suspect in cop shows.Starting with non-accusatory questions, they slowly build up the tension by creating different themes about why the suspect committed the crime,making blatant accusation and threatening then observe the suspect's reactions, both verbal and non-verbal. Sometimes they even incorporate other methods like deception, empathy and torture to lead the suspect into confession.
One of the notable interrogation techniques is known as NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) eye accessing cues that provides information about how a person's thinking by watching their eye movements.
Basically there are 6 main eye directions (assuming the person is facing you)


upper left ,visual construction (VC) : the person looking up-left is using their imagination to conjure up pictures in their mind. So, you can tell someone is lying when you ask them a memory-based question like "Have you been to New York?"




upper right , visual remembering (VR) : the person looking up-right is retrieving images from their memory, which means their answers are not a mere fabrication.





middle left, auditory construction (AC) : the person looking into that direction is constructing a sound , that's the direction the person's eye could go to when asked about what someone is going to say






middle Right , auditory remembering (AR) : this is the direction of remembering a sound when asked about what someone said before







lower left Kinesthetic (k) : this is the direction the eyes go to when someone is thinking about how something makes them feel.





lower right ,auditory digital (AD) : an indication of internal dialog. The person is reciting a conversation in his head.






However, the directions should be reversed if the person is a lefty.

such a simple trick to spot liars..whether accurate or not, it's up to you to find out.
Honestly, i feel like trying it on people around me...so you know what i'm up to if i gaze into your eyes when talking to you. Dun say i didn't warn you...lol

Here's a thought.
Which direction should you look before you answer when your gf/bf asks
Do you love me?

behind closed doors

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind those closed/ locked doors?

Here is where the story starts….
5 girls were walking home after dinner on a chilly spring night
All of sudden they heard some knocking noise coming from the back of a locked door they had just walked past

A asked if any of them heard the sound
B said yes
C and D weren’t sure
E noticed there was light under the door and the main entrance of the store was half-closed

They froze there for a while, waiting for more signs
Just when they thought they heard it incorrectly, the knocking sound came back, less loud than the previous one
Looking at one another, each of them began to come up with their own speculations
Could it be that someone is trapped inside?
someone is moving stuff inside since it’s a storage(looks like it)?
Some spooky paranormal phenomena?
a naughty prank from some bored security guys?
the latest “American funniest video’’ or "You’ve been framed’’ shooting?

There was only one way to find out. The girls turned back and knocked on the door
Hello,anybody in there??

No answer

Seconds later, it knocked back

The girls knocked harder and increased their volume at the same time
Still, no answer.
The strange thing was every time they knocked, they heard the same knocking sound from the other side of the door almost right away although there was no one responding them

Curious and leery, A&B decided to drag another 3 people, F,G and H into their mini investigation

F,G and H reluctantly knocked on the door one by one,
Again, the knock echoed instantly
F presumed that it was the anti-theft device that mimicked knocking sound to create a sort of scarecrow effect while G and H chuckled at how the technology had just fooled 5 ingenuous girls who were clearly influenced by commercialized concepts of horror

Now the mystery solved. The girls continued their journey home but they couldn’t help wondering
The anti-theft system didn’t justify for the sound they all heard when there was no one knocking on it
So,
What if there was really someone being locked in there?
What if someone was trying to call for help but the door was soundproof which explained why only the pounding sound was heard?

Isn’t it disturbing???

P/S this story is a modified, partial work of ficiton. For original and unabridged version, please refer to Helen's blog :P:P

An old friend revisited

I have been voluntarily chained into a state of quiescence lol
not sleeping but reading
that curl-up-and-read-in-bed kind of reading
so it's akin to sleeping, only you keep your eyes open and change posture every so often (not recommended if you are weight obsessed or hyperthyroid or imaginary-impaired) :P

What actually sparked off my old pastime was the movie "The Reader", a film adaptation of a German novel by Bernhard Schlink. Stirred by Hanna's enduring passion for being read to and shame of being illiterate, I decided to revive my old hobby which has been abandoned for nearly 2 years

Looking back on the books I read during school days and outside college i realised my memory retains little about them...i can recall only a few,i mean a very few of them!
Such a waste of time you say
i say it's budget-friendly, in the sense that you can read them over and over, still get surprised at bits you'd forgotten as if it's a different story each time u reread.

Having said that, i do remember one or two books in which i got so emotionally involved that i wept like a baby. Perhaps that's one of the signs of a good book.


A Walk To Remember

This one is too hard to be forgotten. I watched the movie b4 I read the book(due to the scarcity of English literature in my hometown) I thought the movies adapted from novels usually lacked authenticity and insight of the story so I effortfully went to MPH bookstore in KL to look for it.Guess what! I stood by the shelf, finishing it in 2 hours. By the time i flipped to the last page, my eyes were already swollen like two eggs. What happened right after that was unforgettably embarrassing. People looked at me as though they had just seen a bullied girl craving for comfort. One woman even approached me to make sure i was ok. In the end I had to flee to the toilet and hide in there until my red, puffy eyes had disappeared. I may forget the whole course of dentistry 20 years later but certainly not this one.

Falling Leaves

I read this book totally based on my best friend's exaggerated remarks
I've never cried so much in all my life!
I scanned through the synopsis at the back - typical true story of an unwanted daughter
so predictable! i thought
Little did i know, i cried my heart out as i was reading it. Only this time i was in my room. No more drama like the previous book... phewww!
"Did you cry?" a quizzical look from her
" A little" i lied.

Man and Boy

Probably the last book to burst my tear glands (i'm not going to read another tear-jerking book, i swear! maybe..sort of..hopefully)
I wouldn't say it's the best book i have ever read but it's definitely, highly readable. considering there aren't many as heart wrenching and witty books written from male perspective as female fiction in the market. It's basically about a man screwing up and learning from his screw-ups. Precisely like what the critics claimed I cried 5 times and laughed out loud 4




All right, I can feel bookworms tickling me now

Ta!

I salute you, Sir!

"Arrr..arr....." my patient moaned with her face scrunched up.
A 6 month pregnant lady who speaks very limited English

"still hurting?" i repeated that probably just a little less than a zillion times

"It's infection!" Helen said in a certain tone of voice.

i know but i can't just leave it, can i?

After 4 cartridges of Lignocaine and her buccal mucosa going from red to white due to local anaesthetic pooling she still complained of pain. It has to be infection!

Like a deflating balloon, our patience was slowly wearing thin and we had to summon Dr. Wotherspoon to save the day.

One thing about clinical tutors, they have the magic of making what seems to be grueling to us a lot easier.
And, he did it!He managed to numb the patient with only one cartridge of LA(damn!).
Oh well,what's new?

"Here you go!" Dr. Wotherspoon,chipper and laid-back as always, handed me over the forcep.

So,i took out the tooth, leaving the last one to Helen.It was a badly decayed premolar with merely one standing cusp, I call it a survivor

5 minutes later, I changed my mind.

It was a friggin plague!

Crack!!

We both stared at the tooth in horror.

Oh no, one bit of the root was broken inside!!

The next 20 minutes was like a strenuous battle between 2 exasperating dental students and a teeny weeny root
and apparently, size doesn't matter at all coz the little root won
*ouch* *ouch*

Once again, we had to succumb to the mindset of ''admit it, you suck in oral surgery!"

Dr. Lalli came around, listened to our problem and then dropped a bomb

"Top up the LA.We are gonna raise the flap!"

Huh, surgical removal???? You can't be serious!

Thank goodness that Dr Lalli was held up in another bay so we got Dr. Wotherspoon to help us instead. Sure enough, he flipped the remaining root out like flicking a bug off shoulder. Actually i didn't witness how he did it. I was too busy looking for a missing tooth that I missed the classic moment.

"How did he do it?" I asked when Helen was holding the gory suction tip with the damn root that got us into the bloody game of hide-and-seek for a good 20 minutes

"Dunno" she shrugged

A sudden furious relief struck me.You know that kind of relief that you are spared the trouble but at the same time you are mad at yourself for being incapable.

I wanted Dr. Wotherspoon to be my brother(he's only 27, too young to be my father). I wanted him to teach me how to play games with those wilily stubborn teeth. I wanted him to inspire me to be a competent dentist along with a devil-may-care attitude.

Dream on!

serves me right

if i fail,
for

...studying last minute
...underestimating oral pathology
...overrating my aptitude
and worst of all,
...trusting my bird brain over my gut instincts

''the initial judgment one gets is always right" -- my primary school English teacher's favourite quote

took me almost 12 years to believe that

OUTRAGEOUS ABSURDITY!!!!

*heart attack*

isn't it a wonder

we all know certain things that happen in the movies never happen in real life

for example,
ugly girls can become a beauty simply by removing their glasses and redoing their hair; any computer system can be hacked into; phones always work unless the killer is near or something bad is going to happen to the user (battery gone flat usually); haunted houses are always run down, dirty and old; bombs are always defused within the last three seconds, never at twelve or twenty seven; whenever you see something strange/unbelievable, if you take someone else back to see the same thing then it will always be gone...

Yet, something really strange happened today
something i thought i'd only see in Fringe or any sci-fi show where things are allowed to happen without regard to reality

My internet has been dead for 3 weeks came back to life this morning
The question is

HOW?

No one came to repair it after i reported to site manager twice and for both times i got the same response

''we don't deal with internet. go to computing service department''

What?!asking someone from computing service in mile end to come and fix my internet??

That doesn't make sense.

A guy in computing service advised me to speak with floyer house manager if it's the wall socket acting up.

''they should be responsible for everything in the inventory''

That makes sense.

ok..I get it. It's a hell lot of work to repair the socket or hub or whatever u call it...imagine have to knock out parts of the wall and change the cable...perhaps this kind of messy task will only be seen to when it's time to renovate the floor

i was fed up with going back and forth and still getting nothing resolved so i resorted to going online in the library

I really thought it'd remain like that until i move into a new room which only happens in july

but dunno why and how
my internet is back on, inexplicably
after 3 weeks

I was more mystified than excited the moment i saw the long-lost ''local area network connected 10.0Mbps'' icon

How is that possible??? (sounds like Broyles)
if that is in Fringe, it'll fall into the category of strange things happen in Walter's lab
unexplainable
so don't bother to reason
just enjoy the internet while it's here

now i wonder if it will disappear when i turn off my computer
should i worry??

hmmm...

congrats....to me?!

For the past two weeks i've been living with no internet access in my room, getting used to onlining in library for just a couple of hours a day, watching videos with my headphone while everyone else is burying their noses in books (makes me guilty for .... one minute or maybe less) and learning how to console myself when people look at me in shock and disbelief every time i share my internetless story with them ( a good acclimatisation for internetless life in Southend)

But today i found something to beat my internetless blues

FOX PICKS UP SECOND SEASON OF “FRINGE”

No. 1 New Series Among Adults 18-49 Renewed for Full Season

Season Finale Guest-Starring Leonard Nimoy Airs

Tuesday, May 12, on FOX

FOX has renewed FRINGE, the No. 1 new series among Adults 18-49, with a full second season, it was announced today by Kevin Reilly, President, Entertainment for Fox Broadcasting Company.

“FRINGE proved to be a notable addition to our schedule all season and it really has fans buzzing as it builds to a fantastic season finale,” said Reilly. “J.J. and the whole Bad Robot team have been phenomenal partners, and we look forward to years of making great television with them.”

“FRINGE continues to gain momentum, creatively and with viewers,” said J.J. Abrams, series co-creator and executive producer. “We couldn’t be more thrilled that FRINGE will continue to freak people out for at least another season!”

FRINGE has captivated audiences this season, winning its Tuesday time period weekly among key demographics and ranks as the No. 1 new series in primetime among Adults 18-49.

That means i will have to keep coming back to library and hogging the computer

that's how much i love Fringe!!

*wink*

expect the unexpected

York,
a surprisingly small, walking-friendly medieval city with overpriced attractions and no sign of Yorkshire Pudding

but granted us our very own version of 'the sisterhood of the traveling BAG'!!!

Hail to the spirit of unitedness (150pd!)

*wink*

Busted!

One of the worst things that could ever happen to someone who is heavily relying on internet for communication n entertainment is
losing internet access!
Maybe it's a sign my angry laptop is throwing to protest against overwork but at least gimme an early warning so that i can be more well-prepared (perhaps download more stuff b4hand..:P)

sigh..time to learn how to live primitive

*sob*