Bitter nut

I have turned into a bitter person. Life and working environment is so adverse here that no one even pity you for being overworked. Working a nonstop 36 hours (sometimes more!) is a norm. No off day, mind you! Not even weekend off. Yes, seven days a week I kid you not. Never a day when you can wake up later than 430am. It is so bad I literally want to puke every day. I feel numb. No feeling whatsoever and yet, everything and everyone else moves around regardless.

I am bitter. I am so bitter. I get so irritable so easily I start cursing. This is how bad I have become and I cannot even stop to reflect or ponder. I have never-ending job lists that bosses demand to have in the ever shortest time. I have lost all humanity. I become annoyed when the patient's femoral catheter is removed when my boss clearly said not to remove, and then when we want to dialyse the patient, the primary team said no, we are busy.. You insert the catheter. What crap. At 5pm! It isn't even funny I was so furious.

I have turned out ugly. And I was forced to. No choices given. This career has killed me. I am just a shell without any feelings because the moment I feel, I just want to quit. I have never been a sharp person. I am not able to survive at this rate I am going.

This is Me

It must be silly years ago when my sister used to threaten me for fancying a random young swimmer on tv during the 1998 Commonwealth Games. He was just an uprising star that time, merely 14 or 15 years of age. Funnily enough, when he caught my attention, I had no idea he won the World Championships or what-not. I was completely clueless about him. Not to mention, we did not have internet nor Google. All I had was TV3 broadcast on the bulky huge television and newspaper clippings.

He suddenly became all so famous and a world renown champion few years down the line. I caught him on the television again during the Sydney 2000 Olympics and I remembered that very angina I got after he failed to win the 200m freestyle gold medal. It was comparable to watching Federer losing his Wimbledon in 2008 to Nadal, I must confess.

Some 10 years ago..

Somehow, after the Olympics in Athens, I lost track of this swimmer. He must have retired or something. Didn't I always say how medical school just suck the life out of you? Just no news whatsoever. Perhaps my ignorance got the better of me.

Just recently, I saw some Facebook feeds on Thorpe again. I was puzzled momentarily. Since when did I 'like' him on Facebook? I started following his tweets and read all the news/gossips that I have missed all these years. What is more, he just came out with his autobiography which I am itching to lay my hands on!

He was in Selfridges this week doing book signing and I just felt a deep pang of regret for not being there. London was where I lived for 3 years and now that I am so far away from this buzzing city, I feel so left out. If only he came out with his book this time last year, I would have gone to meet him in person!

However, that said, we have Twitter which makes life so much more interesting and amusing. It is the nearest we can get to celebrities, I must say. All these technology was not present back then in 1998. I wonder how would life be if there were internet and social networks back then?

A question to ponder...

That said, I have been called to duty and is now officially an employed house officer with the starting pay of a pathetic GBP500+ equivalent. I get more as a student and much more excitement too. That's life, I suppose? 10 kilos heavier now, with a self esteem as low as pomelo (just to make it rhyme), I am now embarking life in adulthood proper.

I might, shall I warn you first, disappear from the face of the earth when my proper clinical work ensues..

I already have it here. Chill.

I have been having strange dreams about myself not being able to complete medical school. In one of my dreams, I had to repeat my final year and I was wondering if I could make it by next year. I was worried about living arrangement ecetra. The next thing I remembered, I woke up puzzled.

Haven't I already come home for good?

Another dream was as confusing. Apparently, I quit Year 12 and restarted my entire GCE A Level nearly a decade ago. My dream was set in that particular era. Somehow, something was muddled up and then the big question was how was I supposed to complete my medical school with such mismatched study arrangements?

Not surprising, I woke up realising it was another nightmare.

It certainly felt like too surreal that I already have the degree Medicinae Baccalaureus, Baccalaureus Chirurgiae in my hands. Chill.

Somehow, I still get all these random nightmares now and then. Am I just anxious about starting work, or am I simply sleeping too much?

I know him so well

From the musical Chess.

Dreams..

.. are what we wake up from.

Elvin's post on Dreams made me ponder. Indeed, dreams are what we wake up from. When I was walking along Thames on South Bank, I often told myself how surreal everything felt. Too dreamlike to be real for me to actually live my life in London.

Now that I am miles away from London, it only reaffirms what I always felt like. My years in London were just like a dream. They feel so unreal - my memories. I do not know how long they are able to last. I have a feeling the consuming fire of housemanship might just wipe them all up. Soon.