Leap Year

I felt like I needed to post something to day. Simply because if I don’t then I won’t get another chance for the next 4 years.

There isn’t much to report but 2 days ago I went to Farley’s, which is a supermarket in the area behind the hospital. The main reason to go there is because the bakery has a bill payment counter for things like water and electricity. My power bill for this month was RM49.90. Not as much as I expected but certainly is more than I had hoped. This requires further thinking regarding choosing between a gas stove or an induction cooker.

Still waiting for landline internet...

Sarikei

This was how it happened. Some people were doing some construction work on the road leading to town. In order to avoid the (minor) congestion on my way to buy some food on Sunday, I decided to take a detour. The lane I took actually connected to a dual carriageway. In order to get to town, I was supposed to make a U turn upon reaching the first set of traffic lights. I missed it.

Suddenly I found myself driving towards the airport. “No worries. I’ll just double back once I reach the airport roundabout,” so I thought to myself. However, when I reached the roundabout, I decided that perhaps I should go forward instead of making the 180 degree turn back to town. After all, I’ve never seen ‘what’s out there’.

Before I know it, I was on the Batang Rajang bridge and as I headed further forward I found myself on my way to Sarikei.

Sarikei is a little town about 90+ km from Sibu. It took me a little over an hour to reach and by the time I arrived in Sarikei it was already slightly after three in the afternoon. The road initially consisted of a dual carriage way (I guess in Malaysia we can call it a ‘highway’). However, after the Julau roundabout, it became a normal two way road. I must say the quality of the paving of these roads leave a lot to be desired. On the way it appeared that the main population of these parts are Chinese. There were not many longhouses along the way, unlike the road to Mukah.

Since I was driving alone and there was hardly any radio signal along the way, I spent most of the drive talking to myself, debating the merits of eventually getting a Myvi vs a (intracranial bleed inducing) Yamaha XJ6, the merits of an induction cooker vs a gas stove, and other such intellectually stimulating discussions. Of course the extent of how ‘intellectually stimulating’ such discussions can be is itself debatable considering I only had myself to talk to.

When I arrived there the town was rather quiet. Maybe because it was a hot Sunday afternoon. My first impression was that it looked and felt like most other small towns in Malaysia. Which is perhaps a polite way of saying that it was a rather boring generic place...

Sarikei is a small town. About the same size as Mukah maybe. The Rajang River flows by this town and apparently the main things that they produce around these parts are pineapples and pepper. I went to the market which sits across the road from the main ferry terminal but there wasn’t any pineapple left.

When I asked the burger lady from whom I bought a ‘Special Manjan Burger’ (beef and chicken burgers plus a frankfurter sausage and egg) about where I can get some aunthentic Sarawak pepper, she replied that I can get those in Kuching (huh?).

So after having my ‘Special Manjan Burger’ by the river, I began my journey home. Interestingly, there were in fact two roads leading back to Sibu. While the initial route was via the airport, the other route followed the Hulu Lanang Bridge into Sibu. There was a toll (for which I had absolutely no idea) for using the Hulu Lanang bridge but it appeared that this route was shorter and more comfortable compared to the one I took earlier. It cost RM3 for the toll.

Sometimes just having someone to talk to makes all the difference

Overall, my ad hoc journey to Sarikei was not particularly fun especially since I couldn’t get my hands on neither pepper nor pineapple. Maybe I should just get them from Giant...

The Black Pepper Board’s office is situated just outside Sarikei. Heck, even the Traxx FM advert says that Sarikei was supposed to be famous for its pepper

Shopping Spree

 

Delta Mall was described as the Low Yat Plaza of Sibu. To be honest there’s hardly any more IT in it than any average mall in KL. I got my oven from Parkson’s though since they are having a bonus point promotion for American Express and also because I have Bonuslink.

My pay for February has already been deposited. It appears that there were a few changes to it. The most notable for me is that the payment centre was changed from Kajang to Sibu. While the basic pay remains the same it appears that my Bantuan Sara Hidup (which is paid to those working in areas deemed to have a high cost of living) has been changed to Elaun Wilayah which is RM162.36 more than the former. I’m still getting my Imbuhan Tetap Perumahan though. This is unchanged from the RM250 that it was when I was working in Kajang. I actually expexted this to have been either cancelled or replaced with an Elaun Perumahan Wilayah. Either way I’m not complaining because the way I see it, it seems that I’m still lodging for free here. I didn’t do any calls this month so my income will be limited to that for now.

Because of this I have decided that I should go ahead with buying that oven. I’m still deferring on that induction cooker though. I really need to see how much my electricity bill has been so far before I can decide on that. An oven however is not difficult to decide on – there is no way I’m buying one of those big gas ovens. They are cumbersome and can be rather dangerous to operate. I’m not planning to bake ALL my bread very often anyway, so a small electric one should suffice. I’m really happy that I got one actually. Right now I’m still grinning. You see, I’m an easy man to please. Though currently I do have a few things that I wish I could buy:

iPhone 4s

Evevryone seems to have one and they do look very useful. However, my past experience with my now defunct Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini (What a ridiculously long name) has taught me that such phones tend to be rather unsuitable for on call purposes due to their short battery lives. For now I’ll stick with my trusted Nokia. That guy has battery life of more than 48 hours! It’s a work horse.

iPad

Rumour has it that iPad 3 is coming out in the next 1 or 2 months. I’ve seen some of the guys here using it to read books and the pharmacists seem to love them due to their portability (it’s like a go anywhere spreadsheet that won’t strain your eyes). I’m still lugging around my Morgan while these iPad users seem to have a portable library with them wherever they go. Makes me jealous. Plus e-books seems more convenient. iPads also seem cheaper than the iPhone so I’ll probably get one of these before the smart phone.

Canon EF 70-300mm L IS USM

I want a telephoto lens for my camera. When I look at my photo collection it seems that a lot of the more interesting ones were taken while I am on a moving vehicle. My current lenses don’t seem to have the reach. From reading the reviews it seems that the non L version of this focal length is just as good and is also a lot cheaper, but this one is an L lens. An L lens! A guy needs to have a dream right?

Toyota Hilux

I’ve seen quite a lot of road traffic accidents here in Sarawak. Apparently quite a number of them involved a Hilux. Usually the driver is safe but the guy that gets hit by one will usually have it quite bad. A legitimate way to run over Mat Rempits then...

Yamaha XJ6

One day, when my midlife crisis gets the better of me, I might get one of these death machines and hope that I won’t get run over by a Toyota Hilux.

Mail order bride

A fixed landline internet

I’m still waiting for that call from Streamyx.

The interior of Wisma Sanyan – where the Sibu Parkson’s is

My new oven! It’s a Faber 24 litre FEO 24 turbofan oven. Uses electricity and comes with a grease pan and a bake pan handle so I won’t need an oven mitt. It’s got heating elements both at the top and bottom. I'm loving it!

Today was no plastic bag day in Sibu. I think it’s good to have no plastic bag days. Although in reality plastic bags make up only a very very small amount of our daily waste, take up an almost negligible quantity of our landfill areas, and contributes to only a fraction of the current environmental predicament that our planet is in. The effect of no plastic bag days is perhaps more on the awareness that it raises than the actual direct benefit on the environment

Shifting Interest

Although the turtle like speed of my internet is the main reason for the slow pace at which this blog was updated over the past few weeks, there is another factor to for this – there are fewer interesting stories to in anaesthesia. Whereas being in the emergency department meant that there were a lot of patients with various interesting presentations and even more colourful stories behind them, I hardly get to hear any interesting presentation after moving to anaesthesia (of course the fact that most of my patients now have plastic tubes stuffed down their throats also contribute greatly to the lack of patient centred communication nowadays).

Take for example the patient that presented with chest pain at 3 a.m during my shift in the emergency department:

“When did you get the chest pain?”

“About an hour ago,”

“What were you doing at the time?”

“I was sleeping, then I felt this heaviness in my chest...” oh shit “...then I felt numb in my left hand...” oh shit shit “... so I did some push ups,” huh? What? Why?

“So when you were doing these push ups, did the pain get worse?”

“Yes. Somehow it did, strange.” Of course it’ll get worse! OMG!

About 2 minutes later it was apparent on the ECG that he had had a STEMI.

These days the interesting stories come not from talking to and observing patients but rather other from observing my co workers.

Take for example the surgical medical officer in charge of all the urology cases. This guy has been at his job for about 8 years now. He can be shit scary when shit happens or when he gets stuck with his stenting, but he is proper grown man who still reads Gempak (I honestly thought they ceased publication long ago), watches Bleach while waiting for his OT, and plays Starcraft 2. I mean, I simply can’t help but find such a person interesting.

The other day Miss Yap asked me whether I was interested in surgery. Apparently they did ask the higher administrators about whether they can get more medical officers. She said that the admin people told her I was interested in anaesthesia. I was torn. On the one hand anaesthesia doesn’t interest me as much as it used to seeing as how I actually suck real bad at it. However my bosses are really nice. I mean today my head of department actually came into my OT to help me reverse one patient. Also, the deputy hospital director seemed to have gone through quite a lot of trouble to get me into anaesthesia and I didn’t want to annoy him. He’s a really nice guy.

The big BUT is that whenever I see people doing a surgery I can’t help but feel this itch to want to hold the needle holder and tie some sutures!

Some of the guys here do appendicectomies at their own leisurely sweet time. I mean, one hour and forty minutes?!?! The damn thing wasn’t even perforated and the patient was a boy. Yes, perhaps the bowel was slightly stuck but once you freed it out how long did you actually need to remove the damn thing??!?! This guy took ages to suture and ligate just the appendix (funny thing is, he was rather fast at ligating the mesoappendix though). And how long does it take to close the skin of a Lanz incision no longer than 3 inches, with non absorbable INTERRUPTED sutures!!!! I mean that wound was shorter than his dick FFS!! What was this guy looking for? A perfect cosmetic result? Dude, it’s an INTERRUPTED non-absorbable suture. How pretty do you think the scar will look like? Hell, even Rashid can do a prettier subcuticular suture in half that time...

Well, that was just me venting steam. For now I will continue to stay in anaesthesia and see if my skills improve.

Household Management

My internet is still slow. Despite it already being several days after paying my bill, the limit seems to still be enforced. The statistics on my computer showed that I have downloaded a total of over 650GB of data over this month, which I feel is totally bullshit. My hard drive is only 200GB and despite the large number of videos and songs on it there is still more than 50% empty space left. There is no way it could be 650GB.

The good news is Streamyx gave me a call and said that they can offer 1Mbps worth of internet speed in my area. This is good because at least there will be no download limit. I’m still waiting for the confirmation call from them.

I still have yet to get my electricity bill but my water bill for January was RM9.90. In Selangor I wouldn’t have had to pay any of it because it was still less than RM10. I suspect this month’s electricity bill will be high. Considering the fact that they haven’t actually sent me my January bills and I have been using more electricity lately. If it is still tolerable then I may go ahead with buying an induction cooker but if it is ridiculously high than I would have to get a tank of gas from one of those shops in Taman Permai.

Sliced bread is a rarity in Sibu. The only ones that I have seen are the in house supermarket bakery ones like in Giant and the one from Sibujaya Bakery. Maybe I should get an oven to bake my own bread...

I also hope that my credit card points are already enough for me to order that nifty looking Pensonic vacuum cleaner because sweeping the floor sucks.

Lock Out

My dad came over to Sibu for the weekend. Had some work apparently. So I went to meet him in town at the Tanahmas Hotel where he was staying. He wanted to come by my place and sleepover but I told him it was ridiculously messy (which it was) and told him I’ll take him to my place the following day.

The next day I took my dad to visit my abode (which have been somewhat cleaned by this point). After looking around we were meant to go get breakfast and he had some work to do in Julau. I wanted to come along of course, as it meant a free ride to Julau, which I’ve never been to. Upon exiting the house and locking the door behind us a sudden realisation gripped me – I had left the house keys inside the locked house!! Shit!

The last time something like this happened was when I was living in Burnside in Newcastle with Jacob whereby a strong wind slammed my room door shut and engaged it’s autolock mechanism. What followed was a daring stunt involving me tying a piece of rope around my waist and climbing out through the 1^st floor living room into my room. It was hoped that Jacob would have had a good hold on the other end of the string in case I slipped. I did get the door open but it turned out that instead of watching out for me, Jacob was busy watching tele. Bugger...

So the whole ‘going to Julau with my dad’ plan had to give way to ‘I need to figure out a way to get back inside my own house’ plan. The guard at the place contacted a certain Pn Rajmah for me who is apparently the custodian of spare keys for the quarters. This is what she had to say to me:

“Actually I don’t have a spare key to your flat. It was given to you when you first moved in,” OMG WTF??!?!?! How did I not notice??!!

“What we can do is I can contact one of the FMS technicians and see if they open it for you. If they can open the lock without damaging it then that’s that. However if the lock gets damaged you will have to replace it.” Of course I agreed to the plan, it was all I had.

So after about one hour of trying to pick the lock, we came to a consensus to just break the damned thing open. Utilising a hammer and very little mercy to my poor lock, the FMS guy finally managed to create a hole where the door knob used to be.

The new knob was RM30+ and I bought a padlock as well. I’ve decided from now on to avoid using the knob's lock but instead to use the padlock. It’s the type where you can’t operate it without it’s keys so the same kind of crap doesn’t happen again.

 

What’s left of my old knob (the one from the door, the other ‘knob’ is working just fine)

From now on, all my door is gonna get is this padlock

Catching Up

On the 7^th of February my old housemate (it was actually a chalet) Andrew took me out for dinner at a place near the Malay Kampong area. Because “Bandung” (which apparently is quite famous) was closed, we went to this place in front of the community hall. We had some form of nasi goreng and ikan bakar.

Catching up with Andrew and Ming Shiuan I learnt a few things about some old acquaintances:

Ah Hong is working in KL. Apparently still not married.

Li Yin is working in Singapore. Apparently already married.

Charles has family in Sibu.

Andrew’s kid is already one year and two months old.

Chin Lik is still in Cambridge, already a doctor but still has not finished his medical degree.

Aliff Nor is working with Tony Fernandez.

Ihab appeared on TV singing Siti Nurhaliza songs with Noraniza Idris.

 

“What’s his name?”

“Michelle”

“Oh, it’s a girl, ooops.”

Michelle definitely looks more like mommy than daddy

Private thoughts

It’s been awhile since I posted anything on this blog and I apologize for that. There has been some problem with my internet connection. Namely the fact that it has a download limit of 4 GB and I have spent it all on porn watching Mandy Niko on youtube.

Anyway, the first couple of weeks in my new department have not been very motivating. The nurse scolded me for not getting rid of the MA’s sharps, the MA scolded me for being stupid (and arrogant), the HO scolded me for not washing the laryngoscope’s blade and the MO scolded me for not knowing how to prepare an LMA on the metal introducer thingy (to be honest I’ve been to operating rooms in the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, to North Tees Hospital, and to Kajang Hospital and that was the first time that I’ve ever seen an LMA metal introducer thingy, heck even Morgan the textbook has no mention of it. In fact all the LMA instruction diagrams I’ve seen shows the hands stuffing the damn thing into someone’s mouth WITHOUT the metal introducer thingy). Well, at least the 2 new specialists are really nice. One of them is so keen to teach that I actually feel bad for being genuinely stupid (as opposed to feel annoyed bad because people keep scolding me). Anyway I guess I should take it like what my new boss said “Masuk kandang kambing mengembek.”

Speaking of doing as the Romans do, there are some rather interesting differences with regards to terms used in daily practise here on the East side. They call it NPO for nil per oral as opposed to NBM for nil by mouth. RTA for road traffic accidents as opposed to MVA for motor vehicle accidents. HGT for Hypo count (how the hell?) as opposed to GM for glucose monitoring (and how did people end up with BM anyway?). They don’t have RP here for renal profile, instead we get BUSE/Creat for blood urea and serum electrolytes / creatinine and they don’t offer creatinine and LFT after office hours because apparently renal and liver failures don’t happen after 5 o’clock (full marks if you notice the sarcasm).

They don’t have a dedicated emergency or trauma OT here so the on call guy actually has to finish off all of his/her elective cases before calling for the emergency ones. Having seen this set up for about 3 weeks now the thought that keeps coming back to my head was “Come on la... We have freaking 8 (EIGHT!) OTs. Just set one aside for all those emergency cases and let’s get them done with”. Worse still there is his policy whereby after 4 o’clock they only allow 2 emergency OT on simultaneously despite there being a lot of manpower left after the elective sessions. I mean, I know that if there are not enough people (e.g going for pre medication rounds, not enough nurses etc) we can’t run an OT but there is no premed rounds on Fridays. Why let the cases be postponed at night when there is hardly anyone around?

Ugh stress...

Dalat

  This cute girl was on the boat to Dalat

Some update about what’s been happening. I’ve been having some bumpy time since starting work in anaesthesia. During my second day I was scolded by the OT MA for being too stupid. Then I got scolded by the MO for not being much of a help during a difficult spinal which made me feel stupid as well. Then I saw houseman doing BTL which made me feel even more stupid. Then the anaesth housemen induced a patient all by himself which made me feel like I’m actually as a matter of fact the stupidest doctor in the whole department. Oh well...

So this morning after waking up early and arriving at the OT with a view of tagging with Kak Asmah, only to notice that my tagging was scheduled to be tomorrow. So I did what anyone on an elective would do. I hopped on a boat and went to Dalat.

The boats to Dalat are a lot smaller and far more infrequent than the ones heading to Kapit. I guess maybe this is because of the existence of road transport to Dalat from Sibu. This one has no air conditioning, unlike the boat I took when I went to Kapit.

 

More luggages are placed on the boat’s roof. Before departing we had to register our names with the River Board so that it will be easier to identify our bloated corpses in case the small boat capsizes. I don’t know how to swim. Fortunately (i guess) life jackets are provided.

 Cute girl with milk bottle and stinky pillow. I'm beginning to want one

Dalat is down river from Sibu. So it’s the opposite way of Kapit. Shipbuilding, logging, and sago processing seem to be the main activity in these parts. As the Rajang River leaves Sibu, it splits into two parts. The one on which we were travelling on was the called the Igan River. This one flows northwards. The other branch continues to flow Westward as the Rajang River.

 

We made a few stops at little villages along the Igan. These jetties were like little bus stops.

The boat ride was smooth which I am sure is a lot better than taking a bus on Sarawak’s bumpy roads. I doubt I’ll be able to sleep like this on a bus in these parts.

 

Daddy, can I have your family. Your kid is awesomely cute and her mom is not bad herself. I’ll trade them with my hundred ringgit blue Nokia.

This village straddles an off shoot of the Igan River. There were water houses along its length. The blue machine is a water pump that feeds a treatment tank.

 

The ride to Dalat from Sibu costs RM20 one way. No discounts for return trips. Children get to ride for RM15.

Floating toilet. It’s a good job they have a treatment plant for their water in Kut. They take dumps, piss, and drink off the same river. I wonder how they keep their bums steady in rough waters...

 

There seemed to have been a wedding going on in Kut.

We arrived in Dalat after around two hours. This is mainly a Melanau community, with a sizeable Chinese presence. All along the Western banks of the river were water houses.

Public toilets in Dalat are amazingly clean. I don’t mind paying thirty cents for toilets this clean. Now to go look for the Kelidieng. 

The main reason I came to Dalat was for the Kelidieng – a sort of Melanau totem pole. The fact that I went through all that trouble for a pole may somewhat reflect on my chauvinistic subconscious...

Besides, this was recommended by the Sarawak Tourism Board’s brochure that I picked up from some hotel in Sibu a couple of weeks ago. According to the brochure the Kelidieng is just outside the district office. When I got to the district office, the only poles available were lamp posts. I almost gave up and while walking back to town for a meal, I noticed a small park right next to the jetty, the other way from the district office. In the middle of it was the Kelidieng. 

Go here if you can’t read what it says. In fact just click on the link. The English on this little sign is even worse than mine. The point to note here is that the Sarawak Tourism Boards brochure is nearly 5 years out of date. They moved this huge pole here in 2008.

That is a really big pole, though I don’t think I can fit in that hole.

The last boat out of Dalat to Sibu was at 12.20pm. On the way back the boat’s driver (is that what you call them?) took a shortcut through what appears to be a drain. 

Kampung Nyabor just outside Sibu. We arrived back in Sibu at just after 2pm. All in all I thought the trip was rather fun. Just like my previous trip to Kapit, the journey is what made the outing worthwhile.

This tattoo parlour is near the main ferry terminal in Sibu. This sort of signboard may incite some serious race riots if it was in KL.

 

I wonder if it can make me as strong as Apek...