Rediscovering Eden
Who am I, that the Lord of all the earth
Would care to know my name
Would care to feel my hurt
Who am I, that the bright and morning Star
Would choose to light the way
For my ever wandering heart
Not because of who I am
But because of what You've done
Not because of what I've done
But because of who You are
I am a flower quickly fading
Here today and gone tomorrow
A wave tossed in the ocean
A vapor in the wind
Still You hear me when I'm calling
Lord, You catch me when I'm falling
And You've told me who I am
I am Yours, I am Yours
Who Am I, that the eyes that see my sin
Would look on me with love
and watch me rise again
Who Am I, that the voice that calmed the sea
Would call out through the rain
And calm the storm in me
Whom shall I fear
Whom shall I fear
I am Yours
dailies
Saturday, July 25, 2009
After my 1st week as a 实习生(houseman).
-11:06 AM
Unlike the norm, we didnt have a Summer break. We started our houseman year straight after our final exams. I must say that working from 8am to 5pm every day while having to recall stuff which I’ve learned last year is TIRING physically but I like the fact that we get to do hands-on. I am currently in the Acupuncture Department with A and YC. Apart from poking needles into patients we are allowed to everything else. E.g.拔罐, put clip-ons on the needles poking the main acupuncture points to give electric stimulation, remove the needles etc. But because its something I’ve learned last year,I’ve forgotten a lot of my stuff and had to re-cap everything quickly because the doctor we are attached to will question us randomly. Thank God she is nice and will tell us nicely to check it out when we dont know.
Its interesting chatting with the patients,cos you get to know how they get a particular disease of illnesses and what they do. Most of them are quite friendly especially when they realise that you are a Singaporean! Some get excited and tell you that they’ve been to the Merlion and Sentosa (i had a patient said ‘lan-to-sa’ the first round and another patient had to correct him). Most of them said that Singapore is really small but really clean. Indeed a Singaporean or infact most foreigners will look at their own country under a different light after you leave home. We become proud of our country and we dont like it when people talk bad about our nation. We look forward to see our little red dot again and anticipate seeing Changi’s control tower while our airplane is making its landing.In fact,for this year’s national day, EVERYONE in our class have booked seats and are going to the Singapore Embassy in Beijing to watch the National Day Parade. I can bet at our age,if we were in Singapore, very few will be so excited even if they were to go for the live show.
Back to my patients:
Patient 1:减肥auntie-Shes really friendly and always smile at me although I can only smile at her with my eyes cos I’m wearing a mask. She came here to lose weight! It is true that acupuncture can help one lose weight! There are 2 methods, I name them Fast and Slow. Fast: We’ll poke the points which help you lose water quickly and so your weight goes down tremendously fast,maybe around 5kg in 1 month? But the moment you drink too much or eat too much it comes back. Not the right way in the doctor’s opinion cos its not losing the real fat. Slow: We’ll poke the points that reduce your fat (i highly suspect,though not very sure,that those points increase one’s metabolic rate the way exercise does so). The weight goes down quite slowly, about 1-1.5kg per month. Apart from poking, we also use 治疗仪 which are two pieces placed at the fatty areas which gives electric stimulation. We also use a lamp to shine on certain spots to improve blood circulation. (I’m feeling a little weird translating TCM to English,one of the reasons why i rather learn TCM in Chinese than in English. It just doesn’t flow.) And you have to come back several times of course. The auntie told me that once her weight went down, she didnt come and it came back and so she came again. haha.
Patient 2:Fat guy-He is one of those that has been to Singapore. When I first attended to him, he asked me where i was from and so I asked him to guess. He said he doesn’t know and so I asked him back where he is from and he said he is from Earth. I laughed and told him I’m a Martian from Outer Space and he was quite tickled by my response. He talks quite a lot although he is suppose to keep still when we are poking needles on his face. He came because he is recovering from Left facial paralysis. Once the needles next to the corner of his mouth dropped off and I didnt know what to do although my first impulse was to poke it back but I stopped myself in time. I asked the teacher and she said just throw the needle away and stimulate another point cos he talks too much.haha. Before he left, i told him its time for him to return to Earth and he said yea, the Earth is in his hands. haha~.
Patient 3:A pretty lady came in and I started chatting with her while putting her electric clips on for her. I got to know that she had her left face paralysed 2 years ago and recently in March, she had difficult with her left leg. While treating her illnesses, she also wanted to lose some weight although she isnt fat in my opinion and so the doctor poke some of the lose-weight points too. I was suprise to know that her face paralysis was due to the fan blowing directly at her face the night before! It isn’t a myth apparently and I immediately decided that i’ll either on the air-con or make the fan rotate when im hot,no matter what, its not going to blow at one spot on me.I dont want my muscles at that one area to tense up and I dont want my nerves to lose their sensitivity.
Patient 4:I saw a granny that look A LOT like my paternal grandmother, i was like oh my goodness. And she likes to look at me and scrutinise my face (or my eyes cos i’m wearing a mask) too.haha.
***
Oh oh, I found out that my Korean Senior is a Catholic cos he treated us to a Korean restaurant once and i kept observing him to see if he prays before his meals because there are many Christians in Korea. And I saw him doing the point-to-head,point-to-left-shoulder,point-to-right-shoulder thing before his meal and so I concluded that he must be a Catholic. During one of chats, he asked me if there were many Catholics in Singapore and I misinterpreted and thought that he was asking me whether i am a Catholic to which I said i’m a Christian. And that led to us conversing about which religion having the most number of believers in our own countries.
He is a nice senior who always allows me to practise 拔罐on him and always checks my administrative stuff to make sure its in order. YC,A and I were suprised to find out that he’s married with his Korean wife and baby girl in Beijing! And and, his wife is expecting again! They will probably go back to Korea for the wife to give birth as they did for the first because its difficult to find an affordable hospital with a good environment. :)
My coat which is a little crumpled cos I fold it up everyday and bring it home and back to the hospital everyday. I refuse to leave it in the locker room cos we don’t have our own personal lockers. and yes, i’m hereby 小玲 (they cant call me 小蔡 cos the 2 classmates with me also share the same surname) or 双学位实习生007。haha,i like my number very much actually though I dont think I’ll like being called using a number. A patient called me 蔡大夫 though.
I’ve got to work half-days on weekends. Today is my off day and tomorrow I’ve got to go back to the hospital. AHH! Some of my friends in the other departments have already started working night-shifts, not that I mind but I fall asleep quite easily nowadays and i wonder whats going to happen to my contact lens especially if its a impromptu-kind of night shift.
A start of a brand new year and the start of many things,it doesn’t feel as if I’ve had a proper break. But its okay, I think I’ve found a way to rest on and off during the day. I cant pia all the way cos i think we’ll all lost stamina.
***
I went to BICF’s Embassy (Young Adult’s) service last Thursday 22nd July 2009, which happened to be the day of the Eclipse as well! It comes only once in 60 years and though it was dark, we couldn’t see a thing cos it was so FOGGY! BJ should improve her air!
Thursday itself wasn’t a good day for me anyway cos for the past 4 nights,i always lie on the bed and fall asleep unknowingly and wake up at 2-3am to realise that my specs are on my bed, the light is on and my comp isn’t off and honestly,i’m becoming quite disturbed that I cant have proper sleep. On Thursday, my stomach felt queasy the moment I woke up and while eating breakfast, I had to eat very slowly else I’ll puke the very next moment. I went off for work. I felt really unwell and I couldnt stand for very long and kept resting. I didn’t want to make a bad impression but I really couldn’t take the long periods of standing and waiting on patients. I allowed a classmate to poke my 内关to stop the giddyness and the puking feeling and then i took a long needle, drag my chair to the teacher and asked her to teach me how to poke 足三里,a point which improves my digestive system.She was quite shock that i poked myself so swiftly but honestly, i couldn’t feel any pain at all,maybe my senses were numbed, i don’t know.
After that,the teacher and another Chinese houseman or graduate student were analysing my fingers after realising that my fingers are quite soft and curvy. They were quite amused with it and asked me if I dance and I told them I did Ballet and Chinese dance for a while before giving that up and continuing on with Pianoforte due to the lack of time.
During lunch, I seriously couldn’t eat and I came down late cos Senior wanted me to do 拔罐 so when i came down,only a few dishes remained and I ordered cucumber with egg without rice and its rediculously expensive at 4.00RMB when a cucumber cos 0.30RMB at Carrefour. Ok,I’m becoming auntie-fied. Anyway, it took me so long to finish the food cos if I was afraid I’ll become hungry later on if I don’t eat. Took me 45 mins? to finish.
THe afternoon was bad too. I was hoping that there would be fewer patients but ALL the hospital patients came down and because one of the other doctors was not on duty,her patients came to our clinic too and woa! I literally forced myself to work and had to really remember what the teacher tells me to do..normally, i don’t have to use that much brain power to remember.
It was raining in the evening and I was deliberating for a long time whether or not I should go for YA. I went anyway with YY and A. We took a cab to Sanlitun to buy certain basics from Uniqlo cos its super cheap now,i was tempted to buy guy’s shirts for my bro but decided he can choose himself when he comes, i’m a little broke after shopping at all the good sales at Zara,Bershka,etc (it rhymes :P). Btw, sales here is way better than in Spore I must say, really good and cheap and branded stuff. Then we were waiting for the bus to go church and I was speaking in English when we realise that these 2 guys were looking and kept looking at US. I shut up.
They thought we couldn’t understand Mandarin and said we are probably from the Philippines! ARGH! Fat guy patient had also commented that both A and I look like Malays! When they realise we speak Mandarin, they said we had to be Chinese and they continued scrutinising us and we moved away and they followed and we moved further away, glad that their bus came and they were off.
Anw, we reached church,sang songs, met M.H’s friend S.C and the sermon began. The sermon was by Greg Smith on ‘Finding Your Purpose in Life’ and it wasn’t meant to be a seat-around-and-listen session cos he spoke a little, giving the main points on S-Spiritual Gifts;H-Heart Issues(no its not BGR,its referring to Passion);A-Ability;P-Personality;E-Experience = SHAPE! and so we went into groups for discussion and all and A and YY both knew that I wasnt in the right frame of mind cos i was still feeling a tad unwell and my already-small eyes were closing and looked as if i was sleeping but no, i wasn’t! The sermon was good I felt, spurs you to think more about life, whether you are just here to start life, to get on with life, to get into the monotony of career and the norm of starting a family just cos you are of age, getting old and finally passing on.
When I got home that night, though unwell still, I thank God I went for the service cos its mind-intriguing, no more seating on pews and getting spoon-fed; YY,A and I shared our lives once again, something so rare due to our different schedules and busyness yet something precious.
“And all too soon this life will past, only the things done for Christ will last.”
-Anonymous-
