Time really does fly. It’s the last week of posting for all of us at St. John’s. I’m currently doing one week of posting with the plastic surgery team. My impression of plastic surgery (before I joined the team) was totally skewed by nip/tuck. The show portrayed it to be a field all about beauty and cosmesis. But it’s not all like that at all, at least here in India, don’t know much about other countries. It kind of overlaps with the orthopedic field in Singapore. They deal with the usual burns, rhinoplasty etc. But they also deal with things like hand injuries which would have been in the hand surgery department in Singapore under ortho. They also do maxillofacial injuries which they have tones of because of the numerous road traffic accidents around.
I went to watch some surgeries yesterday and it has been one of the most exciting experience in India. Started early in the morning with a repair of the tragus of the ear due to some deformity. Not terrible exciting…but wait. There’s more to come. Second op was open reduction internal fixation of a fractured mandible. They started by putting multiple wires between the teeth and did something like braces which screwed the teeth together. In the midst of everything, it kinda looked like a horror movie because of all the wires sticking out of the mouth. Hard to explain in words.. Anyway, the highlight of the day was this patient with 30% burns all over her face and upper body. They did a surgery called tangential excision. Sounds quite benign right? WRONG! They use this instrument that looks and behaves a lot like the potato-skin peeler. And they peeled the burnt skin layer by layer. It was quite bloody with the blood dripping down the sheets all over the floor. Normally they would have done skin grafting at the same operation but the patient presented too late so infection has already set in. They will be doing the skin graft tomorrow, quite excited to watch it. It’s quite sad looking at burns patients because they must be in lots of pain and the road to recovery is very very very long. All the skin grafting, skin peeling and physiotherapy. Not to mention the scars.
All of us will be going to kerala for a week with a german elective student, manuel. Hmm..dunnoe how to spell his name. Anyway, hope it’ll be fun. It’s the monsoon season already so there’s lots of rain with the regular lightning and thunder and the fallen trees on the road. Hope it won’t rain so much in Kerala otherwise all our plans will be ruined. And after that, going home soon i am! Super duper excited. Can't wait to sleep in the comfort of my bed. Dumping my clothes to my maid to wash...haha...sorry tess. And waiting for food to be served to me. Watching tv in my PJS. And eating all the buffets!!
And last but definately not least, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOAN! hope you like the birthday card that me and von sent you.
Don't think i'll be blogging anymore in india. Will continue when i'm back in singapore. See ya guys soon!
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Safe, healthy and alive
Having a lazy Tuesday afternoon today. Supposed to continue ward rounds but the weather is so hot and I’m feeling quite yucky so decided to skip the rounds and come to the internet café instead. Everybody is safe and well in India. So DON’T WORRY! We are not venturing very far these days because I think we’re all very tired of traveling and seen most of the stuff we wanna see already.
We went to Mother Theresa home last weekend. It’s an orphanage for children with multiple disabilities – both mental and physical. They accept children who are abandoned or from very difficult backgrounds and provide them with food and shelter as well as physiotherapy. The children are kept there for as long as they can fit into the beds, then they’ll be transferred to some other homes. The children are very welcoming. From the moment we arrived, they all came towards us, held our hands, played with our watches and brought us to the playground. It’s really quite an eye opening experience. They are so open and warm….Looking at them, I can’t help feeling sorry but at the same time, I feel quite glad that they found a place to stay. I think all the sisters and the volunteers are doing a great job.
After visiting the home, we went to a big shopping complex called Bangalore Central at Residency road. It was their 1 year anniversary and they were giving out lots of freebies. At the entrance, they were giving away free ice-cream and bottled lipton tea. It was unlimited so being the kiasu Singaporeans that we all are, we stayed there for a while. Inside, they were giving away free makeovers (I’m sure wendy will love it!) and 25% discount for food.
Lastly, I stepped on cow dung on Sunday night on my way home from dinner. In my previous blog, I mentioned that there were many cows roaming the streets in India but I forgot to say that there’s dung everywhere too! Fresh dung, dried dung, not-so-big business and big business. No trip to India is complete without stepping on a pile of cow’s shit! The experience was not as horrendous as it sounds. It felt kind of spongy with lots of air in the middle. Probably it’s fart mixed with the stools. Haha…And (I think) it’s not that stinky either. I couldn’t smell anything unlike if you stepped on dog’s poo, the whole world will know. So yeah! My experience in India is almost complete.
We went to Mother Theresa home last weekend. It’s an orphanage for children with multiple disabilities – both mental and physical. They accept children who are abandoned or from very difficult backgrounds and provide them with food and shelter as well as physiotherapy. The children are kept there for as long as they can fit into the beds, then they’ll be transferred to some other homes. The children are very welcoming. From the moment we arrived, they all came towards us, held our hands, played with our watches and brought us to the playground. It’s really quite an eye opening experience. They are so open and warm….Looking at them, I can’t help feeling sorry but at the same time, I feel quite glad that they found a place to stay. I think all the sisters and the volunteers are doing a great job.
After visiting the home, we went to a big shopping complex called Bangalore Central at Residency road. It was their 1 year anniversary and they were giving out lots of freebies. At the entrance, they were giving away free ice-cream and bottled lipton tea. It was unlimited so being the kiasu Singaporeans that we all are, we stayed there for a while. Inside, they were giving away free makeovers (I’m sure wendy will love it!) and 25% discount for food.
Lastly, I stepped on cow dung on Sunday night on my way home from dinner. In my previous blog, I mentioned that there were many cows roaming the streets in India but I forgot to say that there’s dung everywhere too! Fresh dung, dried dung, not-so-big business and big business. No trip to India is complete without stepping on a pile of cow’s shit! The experience was not as horrendous as it sounds. It felt kind of spongy with lots of air in the middle. Probably it’s fart mixed with the stools. Haha…And (I think) it’s not that stinky either. I couldn’t smell anything unlike if you stepped on dog’s poo, the whole world will know. So yeah! My experience in India is almost complete.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
the indian way of life
India is a very interesting place. Very different from what I'm used to in singapore. So here's a list of the weird and wonderful of india...
1. Yummilicious tea! almost every morning, I'll go to the canteen and order a cup of tea for 3Rs. They serve it in small metal cups and they form a layer of "skin" on top if you leave it long enough. Very delicious.
my favourite meal of the day is breakfast. Love the dosai, khara bhath and everything indian and oily. very different from the usual roti prata, chee cheong fan and meefen that i'm used to in singapore.
2. Everything is super slow mo in india. Think nathan. So i'm also getting into the slow-mo act. Normally I'll spend half a day in the wards. Most days we go for ward rounds. It's kind of similar to singapore except they spend a longer time with each patient and allow them to ramble on and on about they stories. The doctors don't seem to be in a hurry to end their rounds. Don't know what they do in the afternoon cos I've never stayed there long enough to find out. haha.
Just a note about the rest, no everybody is as slack as me! So to all the relatives of my classmates like yvonne, your child is not slacking. Don't worry. The rest go for tutorials and lectures with the local med students every afternoon. Yvonne, kok pin, pinakin,and clara are doing a project with the paeds department on the patient profile in St. John's. They've been spending numerous afternoon working on that. Kudos to them!
3. Movies in india. Do you know that they have intermission in the middle of every movie they show in the cinema? It's kind of weird cos i dunnoe wat to do when there's a 10 min break. And by the time the movie starts, i can't remember what happened at the beginning already. There are lots of hindi movies showing here but they don't have subtitles so it's a little difficult to watch them. My last movie was XXX. erm....very action.
4. No toilet paper! Indians use water to wash up after they use the toilet. Although some shopping centers have toilet paper in their loos, most don't provide any. When travelling, we have to bring our own rolls and really ration them. They are quite costly here. They sell them here in individual rolls rather than the large packs they do in singapore, probably because nobody uses them except for the odd foreigners!
5. Peeing in public. The guys here like to stay facing the wall (along the pavement in the middle of the street) and pee! it's quite a cultural shock for me. When you walk down a path next to the road, you'll be greeted by the occasional smell of ammonia that's oh-so-interesting. They don't care if the rest of the world is passing by behind them. I guess if you have to do it, you have to do it. The funniest thing is that i once saw a urinal in the middle of the street. No, it's not a toilet, just plain urinals (albeit without flush) but yet nobody uses them!! There were still people peeing right next to it!
6. Cows. You can see cows along with people and vehicles along the street. They seem oblivious to the passing crowd. here's a riddle. why is the cow in the middle of the road?
Ans: Because it's jealous of the zebra crossing.
2nd answer: Because it's tired of jumping across the moon.
hee....i enjoy corny jokes like that.
7. Chinese food. They sell the usual staple of fried rice, wanton soup and fried noodles. They also have funny naming food like steamed momos (dumplings), chopsuey (prob crispy noodles), chicken lollipop and chicken 69. Haven't figured out what those are. Love to eat chinese food when i'm feeling homesick. It's not the same but beggars can't be choosers right?
ok...long blog. Clara and Jinnie have abandoned us and left india! Clara's continuing her elective in singapore and jinnie is going to china for some exchange. hope she can catch her flight to china tonight cos she missed her connecting flight this morning. Nathan's in tamil nadu so now left the 5 of of. Which will be the 5 that'll be travelling to kerala for the last week.
There's a meningococcal outbreak in Delhi and it just killed a young man yesterday i think. Read it in the papers just now. Delhi is quite far away from here so i think it's ok. but nathan's going there on thursday. hopefully everything will be controlled by then.
My bro just scared the hell out of me by saying that something terrible happened at home but nobody's injured. wanted to kill him!! Never ever say such scary things like that to somebody who's so far away from home. Turns out that somebody banged my car from the back. Chey! i knew my car was going to be in trouble without me to protect her. =) So i'm not that shocked. ok...school again tomorrow! surgery again.
1. Yummilicious tea! almost every morning, I'll go to the canteen and order a cup of tea for 3Rs. They serve it in small metal cups and they form a layer of "skin" on top if you leave it long enough. Very delicious.
my favourite meal of the day is breakfast. Love the dosai, khara bhath and everything indian and oily. very different from the usual roti prata, chee cheong fan and meefen that i'm used to in singapore.
2. Everything is super slow mo in india. Think nathan. So i'm also getting into the slow-mo act. Normally I'll spend half a day in the wards. Most days we go for ward rounds. It's kind of similar to singapore except they spend a longer time with each patient and allow them to ramble on and on about they stories. The doctors don't seem to be in a hurry to end their rounds. Don't know what they do in the afternoon cos I've never stayed there long enough to find out. haha.
Just a note about the rest, no everybody is as slack as me! So to all the relatives of my classmates like yvonne, your child is not slacking. Don't worry. The rest go for tutorials and lectures with the local med students every afternoon. Yvonne, kok pin, pinakin,and clara are doing a project with the paeds department on the patient profile in St. John's. They've been spending numerous afternoon working on that. Kudos to them!
3. Movies in india. Do you know that they have intermission in the middle of every movie they show in the cinema? It's kind of weird cos i dunnoe wat to do when there's a 10 min break. And by the time the movie starts, i can't remember what happened at the beginning already. There are lots of hindi movies showing here but they don't have subtitles so it's a little difficult to watch them. My last movie was XXX. erm....very action.
4. No toilet paper! Indians use water to wash up after they use the toilet. Although some shopping centers have toilet paper in their loos, most don't provide any. When travelling, we have to bring our own rolls and really ration them. They are quite costly here. They sell them here in individual rolls rather than the large packs they do in singapore, probably because nobody uses them except for the odd foreigners!
5. Peeing in public. The guys here like to stay facing the wall (along the pavement in the middle of the street) and pee! it's quite a cultural shock for me. When you walk down a path next to the road, you'll be greeted by the occasional smell of ammonia that's oh-so-interesting. They don't care if the rest of the world is passing by behind them. I guess if you have to do it, you have to do it. The funniest thing is that i once saw a urinal in the middle of the street. No, it's not a toilet, just plain urinals (albeit without flush) but yet nobody uses them!! There were still people peeing right next to it!
6. Cows. You can see cows along with people and vehicles along the street. They seem oblivious to the passing crowd. here's a riddle. why is the cow in the middle of the road?
Ans: Because it's jealous of the zebra crossing.
2nd answer: Because it's tired of jumping across the moon.
hee....i enjoy corny jokes like that.
7. Chinese food. They sell the usual staple of fried rice, wanton soup and fried noodles. They also have funny naming food like steamed momos (dumplings), chopsuey (prob crispy noodles), chicken lollipop and chicken 69. Haven't figured out what those are. Love to eat chinese food when i'm feeling homesick. It's not the same but beggars can't be choosers right?
ok...long blog. Clara and Jinnie have abandoned us and left india! Clara's continuing her elective in singapore and jinnie is going to china for some exchange. hope she can catch her flight to china tonight cos she missed her connecting flight this morning. Nathan's in tamil nadu so now left the 5 of of. Which will be the 5 that'll be travelling to kerala for the last week.
There's a meningococcal outbreak in Delhi and it just killed a young man yesterday i think. Read it in the papers just now. Delhi is quite far away from here so i think it's ok. but nathan's going there on thursday. hopefully everything will be controlled by then.
My bro just scared the hell out of me by saying that something terrible happened at home but nobody's injured. wanted to kill him!! Never ever say such scary things like that to somebody who's so far away from home. Turns out that somebody banged my car from the back. Chey! i knew my car was going to be in trouble without me to protect her. =) So i'm not that shocked. ok...school again tomorrow! surgery again.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
what happens in goa stays in goa
hi people!haven't been blogging for a long time because I've been really busy. This is the start of a new week of posting. Am starting general surgery for 2 weeks with nathan and melvin. Did 2 days of community medicine last week. It's a posting where we had to take a van/bus out to the outskirts of bangalore and visit the people living in the rural areas. St. John's has a hospital called Mingalur hospital runned by their post-graduates and interns. It's fully supported by staff from St. John's although there are no full time nurses posted there. It's very interesting because after graduating from St. John's, the post-graduates must serve 2 years in the rural areas before getting their post-graduate degrees at St. John's for free.
Went to Goa over the weekend. It's a beautiful place with great beaches facing the Arabian sea. The waves are never ending, and there's always a wonderful sea breeze. The most interesting thing (i think) was the trip there and back. We took a 16 hour non-aircon sleeper coach from Bangalore to Goa. I've never taken anything like that in my entire life! It's a bus full of double decker beds on both sides. Quite comfortable if you are not feeling nauseated. I slept the entire way back this morning. It's a great and cheap way to travel.
I spent lots of time lazing on the beach. Did parasailing for 400Rs for a few short minutes but i think it's worth it! Super duper fun! Nathan went for jetskiing too! Did a small black henna tatoo on dolphins on my right ankle. Other than that, went to some night clubs there. The most interesting one is Club Cabbana. (dunnoe how to spell). It's up on a hill with swimming pools, couches and beds everywhere. Beautiful place. If u are visiting Goa, do check it out!
I think many things happened in goa but what happens in goa stays in goa! haha. sorry for the suspense. but i just had to add it in. actually nothing much happened lah...dun let your imaginations run wild! going for dinner soon! feel like eating california pizza kitchen!!
Went to Goa over the weekend. It's a beautiful place with great beaches facing the Arabian sea. The waves are never ending, and there's always a wonderful sea breeze. The most interesting thing (i think) was the trip there and back. We took a 16 hour non-aircon sleeper coach from Bangalore to Goa. I've never taken anything like that in my entire life! It's a bus full of double decker beds on both sides. Quite comfortable if you are not feeling nauseated. I slept the entire way back this morning. It's a great and cheap way to travel.
I spent lots of time lazing on the beach. Did parasailing for 400Rs for a few short minutes but i think it's worth it! Super duper fun! Nathan went for jetskiing too! Did a small black henna tatoo on dolphins on my right ankle. Other than that, went to some night clubs there. The most interesting one is Club Cabbana. (dunnoe how to spell). It's up on a hill with swimming pools, couches and beds everywhere. Beautiful place. If u are visiting Goa, do check it out!
I think many things happened in goa but what happens in goa stays in goa! haha. sorry for the suspense. but i just had to add it in. actually nothing much happened lah...dun let your imaginations run wild! going for dinner soon! feel like eating california pizza kitchen!!
Monday, May 02, 2005
Clara's birthday!
Saturday was Clara’s birthday. We celebrated it by going to Lalbagh garden in the morning. It’s one of the many gardens of India, but it can’t be compared with the Botanical gardens in Ooty. Nothing much there I think. Can’t even remember what I saw there already. Haha. We then proceeded to Bull’s temple. It’s has a bull carved out of a single granite and it sits in the middle of the temple. Quite interesting. There was a small playground near the temple and we had tones of fun taking funny photos and playing with the swings, slides and see-saw. Just like the good old days. We ended the day by going to the famous Sunny’s. It’s a nice restaurant that’s recommended by the guide book and other elective students here. I had a really good piece of steak which cost me only abt S$12. Although expensive by india’s standard, it’s quite a reasonable price cf to Singapore.
Saturday was also SWYKE’s day. It’s the day designated by swyke to hang out at some desert place (started with cheesecake at Hilton) and bitch about guys. We had it since JC days and this is the first year we didn’t meet up on 30th april. So sad. It’s partly my fault cos I’m in India, but the rest are also everywhere around the world. Kat is in US and Yuwen is in China. Poor wendy, still stuck in Singapore because of electives.
Sunday was very exciting for us. We went to Nathan’s friend’s sister’s wedding at St. Patrick’s church. It’s kind of like a typical catholic wedding/mass in Singapore except the bride is in a white sari. Quite a cool experience. The hymns and songs of worship are similar to Singapore, it’s like everybody speaking the same language even though we’re so far away from each other. After the wedding, we went to Brigade road for some shopping. Bought a cute little chess set for 90Rs (100Rs about S$4) even though I dunnoe how to play chess! Haha. Lastly, we went to the Jayamahal palace hotel which is still under renovations. It is managed by Pinakin’s grand uncle so we all got a yummy dinner for free. It’ll be opening at the end of the month and room rates are 3000Rs per night. It’s a private palace converted to a hotel. The best thing was, it is owned by a King from Gujurat and he was there yesterday to oversee the renovations and we got to see a glimpse of him. Couldn’t really see his face very clearly cos it was quite dark. Don’t know how many kings are there in India but according to Pinakin, there are many because everybody in India behaves like a king! =)
We had dinner on a lawn next to a fountain with colourful lights. Fireworks was going off in the background. Mosquitoes kissing our feet. It’s quite a romantic place. A perfect place for a wedding.
In case you all start thinking that I’m slacking because I’m supposed to be India to study and not sightsee…you are right! I’m totally slacking and I’m getting good at it. I can lay in bed all afternoon doing nothing and feel really happy and satisfied. Haha. I’m enjoying the moment because I know when I go home, it’s going to be work work work all the way! Today is Monday again and I just started a 2-day posting with cardio-thoracic team. The people are really nice and they are very willing to teach. They made us present chest x-rays to the entire team. So I just said some crap and hope it makes sense. =) They don’t have any surgeries this week because all the big shots are on leave so fortunately unfortunately for us.
Saturday was also SWYKE’s day. It’s the day designated by swyke to hang out at some desert place (started with cheesecake at Hilton) and bitch about guys. We had it since JC days and this is the first year we didn’t meet up on 30th april. So sad. It’s partly my fault cos I’m in India, but the rest are also everywhere around the world. Kat is in US and Yuwen is in China. Poor wendy, still stuck in Singapore because of electives.
Sunday was very exciting for us. We went to Nathan’s friend’s sister’s wedding at St. Patrick’s church. It’s kind of like a typical catholic wedding/mass in Singapore except the bride is in a white sari. Quite a cool experience. The hymns and songs of worship are similar to Singapore, it’s like everybody speaking the same language even though we’re so far away from each other. After the wedding, we went to Brigade road for some shopping. Bought a cute little chess set for 90Rs (100Rs about S$4) even though I dunnoe how to play chess! Haha. Lastly, we went to the Jayamahal palace hotel which is still under renovations. It is managed by Pinakin’s grand uncle so we all got a yummy dinner for free. It’ll be opening at the end of the month and room rates are 3000Rs per night. It’s a private palace converted to a hotel. The best thing was, it is owned by a King from Gujurat and he was there yesterday to oversee the renovations and we got to see a glimpse of him. Couldn’t really see his face very clearly cos it was quite dark. Don’t know how many kings are there in India but according to Pinakin, there are many because everybody in India behaves like a king! =)
We had dinner on a lawn next to a fountain with colourful lights. Fireworks was going off in the background. Mosquitoes kissing our feet. It’s quite a romantic place. A perfect place for a wedding.
In case you all start thinking that I’m slacking because I’m supposed to be India to study and not sightsee…you are right! I’m totally slacking and I’m getting good at it. I can lay in bed all afternoon doing nothing and feel really happy and satisfied. Haha. I’m enjoying the moment because I know when I go home, it’s going to be work work work all the way! Today is Monday again and I just started a 2-day posting with cardio-thoracic team. The people are really nice and they are very willing to teach. They made us present chest x-rays to the entire team. So I just said some crap and hope it makes sense. =) They don’t have any surgeries this week because all the big shots are on leave so fortunately unfortunately for us.
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