Food for thought

Now let’s continue from where we left off...

The first 2 days of work was rather interesting. There were a lot of things that Sibu does differently to Kajang. For one, not all cases that warrant admission need to be discussed with the MO on call of the respective departments – this is true only for paeds and ortho though, which makes me wonder how could they actually control their admissions.

The appointment system uses a computer system called TPC (TelePrimaryCare) which is in fact VERY impressive for a centre located an ocean (well, a sea) away from the MSC while the hospital located just down the road and which in fact receives a lot of patients from the MSC (i.e Kajang) still uses piles of paper to arrange their appointments.

Each patient carries a summary of their past medical history in the form of a patient card that contains some summary of past clinic visits, admissions and investigations. Therefore the comment “I wish we had a previous ECG to compare this with,” is not that commonly heard. This also means that the language barrier problem that I alluded to earlier is not as crippling to my day to day dealings as initially feared (although my inability to converse in Iban is still a significant handicap).

During my stay in Perdana Inn I would usually get food from a Pasar Malam in Sibu town. Its located in the parking lot in front of the converted Palace Theater, near Premier Department Store (what??!!! There’s a department store in Sibu??!! – Oh yes there is! There’s even a Parkson! And a Tesco! Wait... it’s actually DAesco...).

For the first night I ate rice with umai from a food court near the pasar malam. Then I ate rice with umai from the pasar malam itself. Then I ate rice with umai from the pasar malam again, from another vendor... though I did ask for buah dabai that time. I’ll post a picture of rice with umai when I feel like having rice with umai again (plus or minus buah dabai).

On Monday 19 Dec 2011 I finally managed to completed all the documentation required to get the keys to my quarters. It went a bit like the following:

First I needed the signature of the Hospital Director (who was absent at the time so the ‘Pemangku Pengarah’ signed it for me) as the one leasing out the place.

Then I needed the signature of a witness. The lady in charge of quarters was happy to oblige in this regard.

Then I needed the signature of my Head of Department to prove that I actually work here.

Then I needed to get a duty stamp for the document from internal revenues (LHDN) to legalise the documents.

Then I needed to go to the Sarawak Water Board’s office to get running water reconnected.

Then I needed to go to SESCO (Sarawak Energy Supply Company, they don’t have TNB here) to pay a deposit of RM450 to get a document to be taken to LHDN to get a duty stamp to legalise the said document so that it can be submitted back to SESCO with the stamp and signature of the Hospital Director so that I can get electricity. I was initially quite confused..

Then I needed to bring all these documents back to hospital office to get my keys and pay RM600 as  deposit for the quarters.

I moved in the next day.

p/s: today I had my first kampua goreng - it looked and tasted like maggie goreng... (maybe it is)