I've finally officially started to pack. And it wasn't as simple as I thought, the reason being that most of the clothes I brought home from there will definitely make its way there again. However, it took me hours to decide which ones to bring! I couldn't possibly bring all, right.

I finally managed to whittle off some clothes which I could bring later on. But then, I was filling the suitcase until it's almost full, and only then did I realise that there was no space for my shoes, toiletries, or anything else! Then I made some calculations, and realised I needed to bring 7 pairs of footwear! One heels, one sports, one flat sandal, 2 closed flats (one formal, one casual) and 2 slippers (one for outdoor, one for toilet). Thats the minimum, no question.

Then there's all the other essential barang-barang - hairdryer, iron, kettle, laptop, CD-man, lamp etc. that needs to be put somewhere (box or bag?) (not enough boxes! too many bags!).

All this kind of incessant mind babble was going around in my head while I was trying to get some sleep since 1.30 just now. (Watched Spartacus on Cinemax; awesome)

Besides that, there was me trying to think of things to put me to sleep (I'm not sure whether it actually made it worse). There was ALSO me thinking neurotic thoughts of studying medicine. Scaring myself with thoughts of failure, madness and brain death.

Then, I'll think of my friends there, what we'll do, whether we'll pull through fine, our future, my future...

AND I also thought about him, reminiscing, thinking up of crazy (im)possibilities... THEN I suddenly thought, "He sure did look sexy in the AIMST t-shirt."

THEN!!! I thought about my AIMST t-shirt. So I got up, switched on the light and looked for my AIMST t-shirt in my closet. Couldn't find it! OH NO. Frustratedly, decided I'd have to rummage around for it in the other rooms tomorrow. Switched off the light. Tried to sleep. Still blowing my nose.

BUT! Even before attempting sleep, I was already worrying about my missing earphones. At one point, I got up, switched on the light and started looking in my room for the umpteenth time. Couldn't find it. Made mental note to ask parents and sis if I had borrowed to them tomorrow (or later today).

I was getting paranoid about missing things and suddenly I remembered that I needed to bring a headscarf there now. Remembered my favourite black one. Remembered that I borrowed it to my old maid. Wondered whether she put it back before she left. Got up again. Looked in my closet. And OF COURSE, it was nowhere to be found. Disappointed and frustrated, made mental note to look in her old room (and anywhere else where it could be!) later.

Went back to bed, had more fits of sneezes that gave me a headache and had me running to the bathroom to expel some snot. Tried to sleep, but instead thought about what CDs to bring (can't bring all yet!). Remembered that I found the Il Divo album cover downstairs few weeks ago. Forgot where the CD of that album was! SO, got up, light on, opened the album case, and lo and behold, the CD was right where it was supposed to be. Surprise, surprise.

BUT THEN! Saw the small padlock for my suitcase on that table too. The other one was missing. Remembered sis borrowed it. Remembered that she took the keys. Checked my tag where I hung the keys... all the keys were gone! Keys for the laptop lock and both padlocks! Another strike. Another mental note.

OH YES. Did I mention about how many things still unsettled? My paint by numbers unfinished. Packing. Stupid JPA delays and no letter!!! Shopping not done. Meeting old friends, not possible. Driving, nil. Payment method later? Not settled. Burn CDs, not done. Pick up pants from tailor and camera from repairs, not done. Scholarly preparation for the course, nothing! Mental preparation, still shaky. *hyperventilates

At this point, I gave up trying to switch off the light and sleeping. Thought that tonight's unceasing brain activity would make an amusing story, so here I am, retelling each neural pathway that occurred, connecting past, present and future. And not necessarily in that order. Any wonder that with all this in my head right now, I have yet to keel over... with my tissue box beside me.

But strangely enough - besides my still intact sanity right now, so much so I can still Facebook and blog - my sneezes have disappeared. Did it go away only when my state of mind is fixed on "DISPOSE" by way of rambling here? Only when I'm not actively doing all the things I should be doing i.e looking for all the missing things?

How cruelly ironic.

P.S. But I guess it's worth mentioning that I did have a cup of really black coffee with 3 sugars this morning.

Grrrrr.....sigh.

Random thing of the day:

The key of succeeding at anything is patience.

Whether you want to make a good masak lemak kuning without ruining the santan. Or finishing a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Or make the one you love love you back.

I've proven it works for the masak lemak and the jigsaw. The last one....not yet. :)

Anyway, weekend's already over. I didn't even feel it. WHY DO WEEKENDS DO THAT? It's totally unfair. So, what did I do this weekend...

Friday: Went to my sister's friend's sister's wedding. Beautiful ceremony. Beautiful, truly, madly, deeply in love couple. Attempted poco-poco for the first time ever in my life. It's not easy!

Saturday: Nothing really worth mentioning. Except maybe that I watched two movies that night, Hot Tub Time Machine and Sex In The City 2. The former was really funny in that lewd, stupid way with lots of swearing and some naughty scenes. Sex was as expected - luxurious settings in Abu Dhabi and lots and lots of gorgeous, to-die-for clothes. There also had to be some naughty scenes (hence the name, duh), but it wasn't as bad as the first Sex In The City movie. That one was really naughty! RAWWR.

Sunday: Nothing much. Woke up, ate nasi lemak, finished some of my dad's 1000 piece tiger jigsaw puzzle, went to grandma's house, ate cempedak goreng, pisang goreng and mee hoon, sent sis to Shah Alam, went home, had mushroom soup, bathed, made funny faces in the mirror, and here I am now. See, I told you it wasn't much.

This week is my last week at home and coincidentally, my aunt may be having her baby sometime this week. Looking forward to that. Not looking forward to packing. I haven't packed anything. I'll start soon (I hope). Then back to the far far away university with my friends and the bugs waiting.

Random thing of the day:

I had a dream last night/this morning that involved building a super complex hamster city (you know with those tunnels, mazes and slides) that featured no hamsters, just filling the whole thing with water and Froot Loops.

Yeah. It made no sense to me either. But I have to say, it was sort of a nightmare. Weird.

Perhaps I can make this page more interesting somehow. We shall have to see.

I just realised that for the year 2010, I only made 2 posts. 2 POSTS! What is wrong with me? I constantly say how I have many things to say, how I love writing, how I want to share my thoughts, regardless of its significance, with the world. And yet, I just stay on Facebook for hours, (illegally) download music, and potter about at home. My 3 months at home has certainly flown by. I am of course partly to blame because I wake up at noon everyday. It makes the day fly by all the faster. I'm not sure whether this is done consciously by body or not. Do I want my menial 3 month break to end quickly despite the years of hard work I expect to come? I just don't know.

Now that the end and beginning is near, it got me thinking of the career choice I made. Needless to say, I have heard from so many people how hard it is, how you are expected to act, how long the hours are, how socially-deprived you'll become, etc. The downs of the profession are endless. The only good thing I have heard is that if helping a sick person is your passion, no matter how torturous the job, you'll get the satisfaction. And that satisfaction is one that no one else can fully understand and share. Only you will know it.

From a young age, I must admit, I am used to excelling, always getting strings of As, always on the top tier of my class. I'm not be the best at everything - there was always someone better than me, someone with a better score, someone with a more admirable personality and achievement. But I try to do reasonably well every time, knowing my capabilities and my limits. I don't try too hard, because that just isn't me. I don't try to beat everyone and I certainly don't try to be overly studious. I like having fun too! I am human after all.

Yet, I do worry that I'll face a whole different ballgame during my medical training. Actually, I know it's totally different. Students no longer aim to score an A, they aim to pass. An A is too much of a far distant dream. It's that hard. I want to face this with a wary and ready perspective because I don't want to break down when I receive my first failure. And it isn't just about the exam part - which I agree with a friend of mine's opinion: that an exam is not necessarily the measure of how good you are as a doctor, the test is later when you are shoved into real life - I also worry whether I can handle the 'seconds-between-life-and-death' situations. We all have seen ER growing up, and many other medical dramas. They may be actors, but the job is real.

I pray I will have the courage and the strength to see through the choice I made. I myself am aware that after SPM, I could have chosen any path to embark on, whether it is law, biotechnology, astrophysics or even culinary arts. I know I can do pretty well in any course because whatever my choice, I'll do my best. However, looking back, I don't think I could have chosen any other. Despite how I would love to follow my parent's footsteps, and despite how my first true ambition was to be an astronomer/astrophysicist. I believe I'm not a quitter, especially when so much money is being invested on my future.

I'm currently reading a book about a 3rd year medical student who just started her clinical and subsequently found herself quite lost and detached from the alien world of medicine and hospitals despite her earlier training. A theme that came up was how doctors are supposed to act with patients, coldly professional vs. emotionally humane. Another theme was women in medicine. The setting for the book was nearly 30 years ago and perhaps the medical world has changed in that respect, but it still struck me that women still need to work twice as hard and be at level or better than their male counterparts to receive some respect. The character, just because she was a woman, faced indifference, disdain, condescension and even hatred from senior doctors at the hospital. To be honest, she deserved some of it but still, I hope such things are no longer a problem.

Another important point that struck me closer to home was how some medical students nowadays view their expensive education. A doctor said that the students assume that since their chosen profession is to help and serve the community, it is the community who owes students a good education and when students enter medical school, they become full of pride in the knowledge that their education is supported by the community. And then, these students graduate and fly off overseas for want of better pay, or because of their lackadaisical attitude, they make poor housemen or don't graduate at all and switch courses. This I know, happens here in Malaysia and elsewhere. The writer was right in opining that it is the would-be students who owe the community as most of the time, medical students are on scholarships or loans and either way, the money comes from taxpayers' earned ringgit. Of course, some are indeed fully self-funded, but we should be thankful that there is education provided for us, locally, available to all, and because its so expensive, there are means to reduce the financial burden. Directly or indirectly, we owe it to others to succeed and give back later on.

I'm hugely grateful that I'm on government scholarship and my 1/4 of a million ringgit worth of tuition is being paid for. The only thing asked of me is to graduate and serve the people who in some way may have contributed to my education. If it weren't for my scholarship, I probably couldn't have chosen medicine. Taking medicine is a huge undertaking and demands much dedication, hard work and responsibility. I'm expecting a lot from myself I know, but that is my motivation. No one expects more of me than myself.

Wow, I honestly didn't realise this post would be so serious. But I guess it is some sort of relief for me. Putting hopes to writing is a form of conviction, isn't it? Now I have to aspire to live up to the expectations I blurted out here, or not I'm a filthy hypocrite. Ugh, I hate hypocrisy.

Anyway, I'll end this post on a lighter note with some quite funny cartoons. :)

In fact, I remember telling the interviewers at my JPA interview that I liked to talk. Came the reply, "Yes, we can see that." Haha.

But hey, expressing yourself is, I believe, very important and it is therapeutic. Seriously. Why else do people pay hundreds of dollars to see some guy with a degree in psychiatry, sit in a big comfy chair and spend the next hour just talking? I daresay, talking is good for you. Its the easiest way to express yourself. After all, even before we learned to walk, our parents would first teach us how say 'mummy' or 'daddy'. Words came first. It is Man's most relied upon mean of communication with each other. And needless to say, the power of the word is, well, powerful. Yeah.

Ok, beginning to talk crap here. :)

Ah, but that is what talking is all about, isn't it? Its about crapping (not the actual moving of bowels, mind you), bullshitting, puffing out air and some words strung together in hopes of resembling a sentence. Does it matter whether it means anything? Not really. Does it matter whether people understand you? *laughs with head dramatically thrown back* No. Why? Because really, how many people take the time to actually listen and try to empathise, to understand? Not many. And sometimes, the talker frankly does not give a damn whether what he said lit up a bloody candle in the listener. Sometimes, it's all about letting something off your chest. From personal experience, I know that once the thing, which is squatting on your brain and messing up the other more important matters you should be more concerned with, is released by communication, it quickly becomes so little in importance that you wonder why it bothered you so much in the first place.

Of course, it would do you and your victimised listener more good if you realised that earlier. Way before you had to waste energy just venting. But! at that moment of distress, the parasite was eating away at your sanity, you can't think of anything else. So you gotta let it out. Like I always say, never bottle up your feelings with hopes it will all go away. It may just lie dormant for a while, but these things tend to pile up like dust bunnies under your bed and you can't keep trying to just sweep them under the rug. The rug is only so big. There ain't gonna be enough rug after a while. And no, don't go looking for another rug, silly. Throw those annoying dust bunnies out for DBKL to pick up! (DBKL in this case being your lucky friend or stranger that gets to listen to or read your crap)

Ah, crapping is good for you! (Both meanings apply XD)

Another thing, I think it's a shame when people hold themselves back because of the fear of being judged when you do open your mouth and let your thoughts be said aloud. It's a shame when you don't talk because you think no one is gonna listen. Take my advice, don't care about all that. Be selfish. Think about your satisfaction from blowing off some of that steam. The person on the receiving end need not even be someone you know well. And if you are so humane, choose a safe place where if anyone comes across your steaming pile of crap, they can choose to stay or walk away and you couldn't care less either way. Nowadays, there are so many places that people tell stuff like "Hey I just had a shit and the turd's huge, dude!" to the whole world! LOL. Places like Twitter, Facebook. Like a blog. :)

In fact, I honestly don't care if my blog has many followers, let alone be read by more than 3 people (and one of them being me, haha). I don't care whether you agree or disagree with me. I don't care if you don't like what I say. I don't care if you don't bloody like me. Because I wasn't born to be aesthetically pleasing and perfect. I'm not here to please others. I'm here because I still want to be here. And while we still breathe the same air on this tiny place called Earth, we'll just have to accept it and make the most of it. Live with it.

Somebody's T-shirt reads: "MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR"

I love that saying for more than one reason.

O.O

Oops. HAHAHA....

P.S. I just realised just how many references I made to ahem, faeces, in this post. I swear, it is was purely coincidental. And has absolutely NOTHING to do with any personal issues on the subject. XD Hahahaha...

P.P.S. I confess, there was a time when I wondered whether the URL for my blog was appropriate because other blog URLs were much simpler. Now I know for sure that it suits perfect all along. :)