the Bomoh still wins

Looks like university memories never leave u. cz those were one of the best times u went through in the short 25 years lived so far. was looking through some old photos, brought a huge smile plastered onto my face.

on and off I'm being reminded that trust takes the lead in any decision ppl make. in the past 2 months of work in sibu, i've seen several, not just one, cases where patients decide to default treatment or refuse surgery bcz they opted for traditional medical treatment. Not the traditional medicine degree holder, but bomohs, massage men, kung fu master of sorts who practise in most often, the outskirts or rural areas. they live in vicinity of the folks, know them, interacted with them and have a strong relationship with them, prolly since the old great grandmother days where the practice was passed down through generations. (apologies if my sentences are incoherent/filled with grammatical error. rushing for time but kiasu wana post this up).and these cases aren't petty muscle aches that relief with analgesia / traditional meds that are pumped filled with steroids that give instantaneous and temporary relief, thus being dubbed 'magical' and making these medicine masters infamous for healing. these are cases of bone fractures with complete displacement / un-united fractures that need osteoclasis (breaking the bone, realignment to straighten it, and holding it together again in the correct alignment with plate n screws). there's a risk of bone deformity, limb shortening, malunion of bone. the patients are young (teens) who cannot make proper judgement (okla maybe they can). but they're influenced by ppl who're close to them. aunties n uncles n neighbours who have had 'similar' experiences with the medicine man in the kampung whose bone have healed nicely. obviously those were close fractures with minimal displacement that can unite on their own without much intervention other than splints.

the first few times I felt really frustrated. i was going on n on counselling the family, relatives, the patient. not to refuse surgery.

long story short, efforts were in vain. they requested to leave the hospital.

oh the frustration.

it was later on I realised it's a common practice. for folks to seek traditional healing rather than 'western' medicine. it's the element of trust we still cannot beat bcz i don't know, we lack the common touch, don't speak their lingo, don't fully understand their culture, have different skin colour (we cannot deny that there is an inherent unspoken bond that unite ppl of the same race together) etc.

all i could do was tell the patient that in the event the traditional medicine doesnt work, do not hesitate to come back.

Patient's autonomy after all. Sigh. hvg said that i don't deny that physical treatment doesn't constitute 100% of a healing process. there's still the human mental emotional factor.

Pre call

It's my first day oncall today.

I mean, pre-call. hehe.

*prays hard that nothing too serious happens tonight in the hospital.

Finally off tag and life can slow down a little aka I have time to do my laundry. xP my friend was right. no time to iron ur clothes. just gotta start getting more clothes that do not require ironing. gosh do i sound like a mad woman alrdy? oh no no. i'm making it clear. i dont run to the hospital everyday with wrinkled clothes and tangled hair and upside down glasses. things still run pretty decent. hehe.

Ortho was/is a good posting for me to adapt to HO life. I'm deeply thankful to colleagues and bosses who have helped me a lot x1000 a long the way to pick up and learn new things. one thing i've learnt thus far would be that working together in a team is really really important to be effective. you can never work alone. you watch each other's backs and help one another. really grateful whenever my colleagues remind me on things i forgot to do etc.

As I'm on night shift today, 9pm to 12pm the next day, I got the day free (yay!). went for breakfast with my dear aunties. had kongpia :D the ones fried with meat. yums.

kongpia :D

and went to the mall to grab some stuffs. gosh. the more i saw, the more i bought. now the fridge is filled up. grins. there's this bakery called Bread Sense in sibu that sells awesome breads, pastries n cakes. I just tasted their hazelnut roll. yums. :P

creamy hazelnut

tried to sleep in the afternoon as prophylaxis to be able to stay up all night. end results included a really weird dream about going on a boat ride in a temple with ppl pouring honey on me (err..) and eating grilled fish that cost rm85 that was paid for by a random stranger. simply.... weird. @@

keeping fingers crossed for tonight!

Escaped to KL for 2 days for convo. interesting exchange of stories from work with the buddies. hehe. unfortunately, we didnt partay into the morning cz everyone was exhausted from tagging and travelling to KL so we all slept like pigs at our own places on saturday night. aww man... hope to be able to travel with them again one day when we take some days off together n head off somewhr :D

Argh I cant rotate this photo.

Behind the gong with dear dad, mum and sister xD

my line of buddies (a few imported ahaha) we had to take multiple shots cz everyone came at diff times.

Add caption

with Yim Fong, a very dear sister, shepherd, leader and friend

Pui Ling, Sin Jie, Laine, Wei Wei, Sze Ying, Li Chin

First Steps in Sibu

So I set foot on Sibu soil 2 days ago, accompanied with hopes and fears.
Something that struck me the most in just 2 days of being here is the warmth of ppl who offered much help to the me, the lost girl from Kuching.

Sibu is a pretty widespread town, 7 hours drive from Kuching, 40mins if by flight. it reminds me a lot of Teluk Intan, even its hospital. but it differs from kuching in the sense that the area is large, and places to go are sparsely distributed. no traffic problem tho, so although the places may not be that near to one another, it doesn't take too much time to travel between places.

Huge huge thanks to Alex for offering n providing much help to me in moving to Sibu. thanks to him, i found a place to stay within a day of knowing my posting. that really helps settle a lot.
Also, to my uncle and his family for ferrying me around to buy furniture, groceries for the entire day to make sure I was all settled in. To be honest I didn't know them very well, but the amount of help they gave me was amazing. seriously touched. as a friend told me, going to sibu would get me in touch with my foochow roots. quite true. haha. i visited 3 relatives in a day, had lunch with them and listened to lots n lots of foochow the entire day. time for me to embrace my inner foochow being. lol xP my aunty said she would teach me some foochow, but haha i doubt i'd be able to catch much. we'll see how much i can rmb in a few mths time. ahah.

currently in orientation phase n will be starting tag in Ortho at the end of the week. wish me lots of luck n keep me in prayers. :) thanks!

meeting up before parting ways for induction

stealing dinner time for western food along Kpg Baru.

my induction group, the Umbrellas, or rather Umbrellites :P

Lunch with elaine and wei wei after induction before we head home and to our respective places of work

Touching down at Sibu airport on Sunday morning

my first plate of Sibu kampua at Rasa Sayang with my uncle and family

Lunch with the relatives. :)

Credits to alex for taking me to the Noodle House in sibu, famous for its layered crepe.

This seafood restaurant has delish prawns and steamed fish (in some baked salt thingy).

Off to some mad crash course studying (so I wont embarrass myself n ukm - the pressure!)

The Induction Letter

Received my induction letter today. It's to be in KL on the 7-11th Oct.
Although I have been awaiting this letter for a pretty long time, and ranting that I can't wait to start work, receiving it for real is an entirely different kinda feeling. My first reaction was @@ HELPPPPP!!!! Took me about an hour to talk it out (more like scream at each other in caps on fb msgr) with some friends to bring down the sympathetic fight n flight stimulation lol! still feel the after effect of the scariness of the whole idea of starting work soon. but i guess the feeling will wear off in the next few days (and resurface when i get to KL to await the posting letter).

uhhh..... wish me luck! haha. will update on my posting soon. zomg zomg zomg zomg zomg

n haha owh yeah, had a nice bday celebration back home :) this year is pretty special. got to celebrate with a dear sister who shares the same bday and meet a bunch of really nice ppl. thank you guys and girls!

With dear mum and grandma

awesome dad -at Laughter Pedal Food - quirky name :P

lots of teresian schmates were back in kch this yr :D

dear Ruth brought us together. happy birthday Ruth!

Thankful for the LG too and for the great ppl God has placed in my life.

Bunny Paos

Short attention span.

@@

It's when the well meaning intention to switch on the laptop to complete a document ends up with u watching several youtube videos, chatting with a few friends on fb, scrolling through the infinite newsfeed and finally wondering why you're on ur laptop in the first place. when you remember, you convince urself that you'd get it done the next day instead. procrastination at it's best. lol xP it must have been so much easier to avoid procrastination 20 years back when there was no internet. NooOoooOOoo......

tried making pao today. hahah. got the recipe off a cooking show on TVB. if a cooking dummy like me can successfully make them, anyone of u guys can. :D

Pao ingredients
All purpose flour 2 cups
Light protein flour 1 cup
Sugar 5 Tbsp
Yeast 1 tsp
Baking powder 2 tsp
Water Slightly less than 1 cup

mix them all together n knead the dough for a while. xD maybe like around 5 mins?

then add in 1 Tbsp of cooking oil and knead the dough until u feel that ur fingers are no longer oily (as in the oil's all absorbed into the dough).
Keep dough covered up n let it rise for about 10 mins. It's then all ready to be filled with any filling of ur choice. :P

The tv show taught us how to cut bunny ears / hedgehog pricks into the pao. just use a pair of scissors n nip off triangles over the round pao surface.

Then steam for about 7 mins.

 Product:

the hedgehog looks a little like a pineapple

obese bunnies. i guess if u want ur bunnies to look better, keep to making smaller sized paos.

Not the most beautiful paos on earth xD but well it's good for tea. hehe. I put in mushrooms and soy sauce chicken (cooked beforehand) for the filling cz it's a lot faster than making a yam/red bean paste.

I guess when i make exaggerated exclamations most of the time I nvr really keep to them. rmb myself thinking that all those steps were so tiresome n telling my mum 'I'll never ever make paos, I'll just go buy them.' n after telling ppl i'll nvr want to go kayaking again after the crazy close-to-death 3 hour kayaking experience at Krabi that left me with stinging muscles the entire day, i think i actually wana kayak again. :P

Hope to be able to come up with more interesting things to do while I'm still on hols :)

That said, guess.... i better start working on that document.

*for those interested to make yam paste for pao filling:
Cut yam into pieces n steam til cooked. Mash them. Add 3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup creamer/milk powder (as much as u like. rephrase, to ur liking). add 3 Tbsp corn flour and 2 Tbsp wheatflour. add a little water. then fry it in some oil in a pan (to thicken the paste so that it doesnt liquefy too much when u steam the pao). this rationalization is all from the cooking show. grins. js regurgitating wadever the show host said. have fun trying !

Saratok Medical Mission

Post mission trip, you know that it'll be just moments when the post trip syndrome kicks in. hehe. Feeling slightly light headed and surreal at the moment. The past 2 days have been eye opening and needless to say much fun. :)

Looking not so far back, I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity to join the Msian Medical Fellowship in their mission to Kuching. We visited two villages near the town of Saratok, which is about just 3 hours away from Sibu and 40mins away from Sarikei. Somehow i feel that this wasn't just mere coincidence that i stumbled upon this opportunity when Sun asked some of us if we were interested after her f6 classmate Nicky asked her.

This experience taught me several things about the way of life of the Ibans living in longhouses not far off from the small towns in Swak. the one we visited was relatively modern, being bricked walled and having electricity. i realised tho that clean water supply wasn't readily and abundantly available. the longhouse concept was still there, with one longhouse having about 20 plus minus rooms, each housing one family and sharing a common area in front. In a team consisting of medical students and doctor, we ran a health clinic with supplies of mostly OTC drugs, did simple health talks and played games with the children. So this was what I realised in hindsight of the health check we did. Most of the villagers needed a place to share their problems, be it strictly medical problems, or plain emotional ones. They are not entirely desolated, with a hospital available 1 hour away. But fact is, simple medical supplies such as Paracetamol, vitamins and gastric meds are not within reach of your fav pharmacy store. logically, Paracetamol isn't really worth travelling on a 2 hour return trip to the nearest clinic. therefore, magic PCMs that relieve the aches and pains that seem so insignificant to us city folks is a fairly big deal to them. imagine having a splitting headache and not having any painkillers around. xS

It is quite rare to pick up serious illness among them cz those who're really ill would've gone to the hospital. they're fairly compliant to their anti hypertensive meds. but having a doctor to just follow up on them and encourage them to reassure them that they're doing fine and doing well by being medically compliant is a boost to them. things like sleeping problems that you know you can't really treat come up in the conversation. you know you can't offer definite solutions, but at least you can hear them out, ask them if they're stressed out, listen to their problems and offer a simple prayer. it's the psychological aspect that makes the bigger difference here. this is where human touch does wonders that the most intelligent robots cant.

cute children :P

I also come to appreciate the simple faith and sincerity they have, hosting us with amazing hospitality. had several endearing moments chatting with them. simply love the children who mostly have large curious eyes (oh so cute). plus the cats there are really cute and clean xP i think some of my coursemates would've catnapped them back if they saw them. also sat through an Iban service and cell group and sang Iban songs. :D hehe. and not to forget the Iban dishes we got to savour. (camera's spoilt so i shall wait for pictures from the others) one of them is pulut rice in monkey cups (periuk kera). thr's also fried ginger, pucuk ubi, bamboo catfish, bamboo chicken. several others. supercalifragilisticexpedidelicious!

ah thr u go. the rice in the monkey cups. :P

on top of that I think what made the trip most memorable is the friendship made. :) most awesome fun loving teammates in this trip. honestly missing everyone already. i'm personally encouraged spiritually by the pastors in the team and teammates who are really passionate in walking the talk. in the Iban service on sun morning, a girl approached us to say that our testimonies spoke into her situation and encouraged her to continue serving Him as she takes her next step into UPSI next month. It couldn't be more mind blowing to see how God puts everything into place to encourage His children. What more can I say. Simply blessed. :)

the team with pastor and his family and church mbrs.

note: what i'm sharing is very specific to the area i visited, it probably (or most definitely) doesn't reflect the conditions of the longhouses in other areas. Swak is afterall very diversified with widespread population.

with Pastor Henli who ferried us down in the 5 long hour journey
huge thx to Xun Jin who provided great insight and words of wisdom throughout the trip, Nicky for leading the team, also bernard for throwing in Counterpain meds into the drug collection. :P

If u're interested to know more about MMF, visit their website here

Muses

Having lots of free time on your hands does make you ponder a lot. My self worth, how far i'll make it in life, what defines success, what if I had not done medicine, where would I be in a few years time, life partner musings, friends etc. it's a crazy hoard of things that can plaque ur mind.
Right now safe to say there isn't one big thing that's constantly in my head,but i've learnt a few lessons so far.
1. Always go to a friend for that piece of advice / to get an emotional boost. it makes a difference.
2. Pray in all circumstances.
3. The grass will always look greener on the other side, so quit the wishful thinking. eheh...
3. Be easy going n enjoy life as it is.
Just received the first letter from the public service telling me i'm accepted into government service. currently awaiting the second letter that would summon me to work after Raya.
Joining a trip to 2 villages to provide medical help and services this weekend. to be honest, it's a first for me. previously only been involved in running health screening booths in KL. hope it'll be an eye opener for me in many ways.
Thought I was starting to get spiritually dry but thankfully Hope Logos came :) bought a few books from it. really reasonably cheap! rm8/12/16 mostly. took a tour around the ship as well cz one of my life group members is a volunteer on board. our tour guide Sander from Netherlands told us that when they were sailing in the middle of the ocean at night, when u gaze at the stars in the pitch black sky, u get the feeling of being one of the Israelites in the desert star gazing in the night. :)) costs about rm2400 per month to volunteer on board and sail with them though. phps in future? hehe. but honestly am more interested to run health services for rural areas in future when resources are available :)
Had a gathering with my old church (Chin Fu methodist church) friends. it was pretty good and we havent seen one another for a good 6 yrs. thank you geu jung for bringing ev1 together! God has His amazing way of reconnecting ppl. :)
As working days approach, i feel a kind of tug deep inside me, telling me to spend the rest of the holidays really wisely. ahaha. just taking everyday slowly nw, enjoying the family time n improving my cooking skills lol :P
hope to be inspired in the trip this weekend!