Intermission #47

1. It's like everything is telling me to leave this damned hospital.

Never mind that I might not be adequately equipped in terms of knowledge, skills or clinical judgment. Never mind that I'm leaving friends behind. Never mind that I'm stepping into unfamiliar grounds.

I just feel in my heart - with great conviction! - that this is not a place for me. I can't, for the life of me, see myself developing properly if I remain in this backwater place.

It's like all departments are hostile towards each other. There is no respect, no trust.

Let's not even get me started on how ancient the infrastructure, the facilities are.

And the mindset. Oh, God, let's not even go there!

Dear God, save me, for I am powerless to save myself.

2. Now that the elections are over, can we just move on?

So BN retains the government seat. Did they really cheat? Only God Knows. But they can't afford to be complacent anymore.

All I know is, I'm sick of racial politics, regardless of which side incited it. I'm sick of opening my FB newsfeed and seeing hate and accusations, back to back.

Everybody needs "UBAH". And I mean it as change for the better, no matter what your political ideologies or worldview.

...I don't know what to believe in anymore. It's easier to give up than to constantly seek for the truth, in today's graying world, where authenticity is difficult to ascertain, despite the many sources of information available at our disposal. Such irony!

How do you seek the truth when there is slander all around, when people deal in lies, and people act more emotionally than rationally?

Is ignorance bliss? I'm starting to think so.

So please, let's just put all this conflict aside. Stop acting childish. Man up and stop being such a sore loser. Remember that the helm of governance is actually an amanah, and God will question you in the Afterlife.

...And for God's sake, clean up all the flags and banners. They're an eyesore already!

Current Music: Taking Over Me - Lawson

Madhouse

Despite our small number, the higher ups still make unreasonable demands.

It's as if they don't care. As if they're ignorant as to how we're also struggling to perform our most basic of duties, and yet they continue to pester us by making things more complicated, more convoluted than necessary.

It's bloody stupid.

Just leave us alone, damnit.

No matter how I try to push myself to go beyond my limits, there are always obstacles.

Is it fair that we the innocents must pay for the follies of the idiots in the management department, and the selfishness of those who only seek to save their own sorry a**es?

The answer came to me on a fellow friend's facebook entry on my newsfeed:

"Nasib baik ada Akhirat"

Because He is the Most Just of Judges.

...and at times I figured it's selfish to ask for life to be a breeze all the way. Because life's not a bed of roses. Especially when you realise that you have pricks in power.

Current Music: Love Story meets Viva la Vida - The Piano Guys

Intermission #45

Have you ever feel so small, so insignificant?

Have you ever felt so hurt that it feels like someone just tore your chest wide open and ripped your heart out of the praecordium, and then shred it to pieces?

Have you ever felt so betrayed by the ones you love and even by yourself?

Have you ever had so many back-to-back episodes of self-reprisals, like a barrage of machine guns taking shots at you?

And all these pain can't be drowned, can't be deleted, can't be ignored or denied.

Why do I do this to myself?

And so it goes on - this fear of attachment. Of getting hurt.

Upside Down

1. I'm astounded as to how ignorant I could be at times.

2. One reason why I chose this profession was because how I hated bureaucracy - the sense of being a "pak/mak turut" to your superiors because you're just a lowly kuli and so inexperienced and oh-so-styoopid.

Dear God, I didn't expect I could be more wrong. This is the epitome of bureaucracy.

Remember this rule?

(i) Your boss is always right.

(ii) If your boss is wrong, refer to rule number (i).

Yeah. My working environment is the perfect embodiment of this rule.

Which naturally brings us back to my point 1. Woe is me!

3. Perhaps rather than blowing your top and scolding us house officers (who are nothing but your cheap source of labour anyway), you MOs or specialists or whatnot's should just sit together and discuss among each other what each and everyone of you can request from each other, so that one department will not go and order bizarre and insane things from other departments.

It'd do a world of good rather than sitting together and complaining about us HOs. At least you'd probably understand each other better instead of condemning other departments for their so-called inefficiency or joblessness or whatever rubbish you can think of. Unless your egos are just too big to listen to other people.

What use is there in yakking at me when I'm only following orders?

And for the love of God don't bother asking me questions when you don't give me a chance to answer or give proper reasons.

And if you're just too high and mighty to entertain us HOs, then go yak at my superiors instead!

Honestly though. It feels as if all the higher ups do is complain about us rather than changing the hospital system or manner of management.

They're doing it wrong. But who are we to tell them that, hmm?

4. Don't think just because we're HOs, we have no idea what we're doing.

Oh wait, I forgot. We're your punching bag, your scapegoat, your black sheep. Getting scolded at for no good reason is apparently part of our job description.

...Pshaw! Is this what you call professionalism? Is there a need to make other people's lives more difficult than necessary?

5. I'm becoming less enthusiastic to join Pathology with each passing minute. Damn it.

6. God, when will this suffering end!?

I just hope I will not become like those that I now hate. Difficult, certainly, what with my own temper becoming more and more uncontrollable by the minute...

Current Music: Drive By - Train

Intermission #40

1. Getting real tired of all this crap, of this emotional roller coaster, and the unnecessary sources of stress.

I don't understand how some people can find even the smallest mistakes to point fingers at us lowly HOs.

How is it that people can find so much entertainment, so much sadistic joy in demeaning us the little people? Have they forgotten that they were once like us?

Or do they automatically judge us as incompetent just because we now subscribe to the shift system as opposed to their much demanding oncall system?

For all you know some of us lowly house officers are actually better than how they used to be back in those days in some aspects.

Of course there are those that are problematic, but what about the rest of us who work for real? Do all our hard work and energy go unnoticed?

Honestly, I don't enjoy my work anymore.

2. I can feel the distance growing between us, you who have risen above and I, still stuck in this gutter.

You who are having the time of your life, and I, struggling to find the small beacon of joy amidst all this despair.

You who have all the time on your hands, and I, always behind.

You who are in a crowd, while I, left deserted.

So forgive me for my inability to share your laughter, and - perhaps? - I shall forgive you for forsaking me.

Current Music: Hall of Fame - The Script featuring will.i.am

The Long and the Short of It

I'm making quite a name for myself as a no-nonsense, perpetually pissed off (senior) HO.

My scolding patients is not a new sight these days.

After 1 year in the system, I am already so severely disillusioned.

Is it that bad? Perhaps I exaggerate at times, but perhaps very few would argue with me if I say that the absurdities that this sorry excuse for a hospital dishes out to us house officers beats HTAA by a long, long shot.

Lab rules and protocols are moronic that I'm utterly embarrassed to adhere to their stupid system.

Patients boleh tahan jugak banyak cekadak diorang.

So called protocols and procedures retard our work.

Stupid CMEs are mostly a waste of time, when presenters obviously didn't put in much of an effort.

And for God's sake please stop calling me "Kak" already; I'm an effing doctor for crying out loud, stop telling me to change your IV drip!

And 2 years of HO-ship is too bloody long. Would I say that I'm learning? Hardly - most of my present knowledge I carried from my years as a medical student.

Four months of one posting is too long. What are we, cheap sources of labour!? Will all these insane levels of stress and overwhelming workload and lack of appreciation be worth it in the end?

I realise that the despair and disappointment in the general quality of HOs are not entirely fictional, but even so all this brouhaha is shedding light on an entirely wrong perspective. Even I occasionally facepalm at certain peers of mine, that at times I want nothing more than to fling my shoe in their direction.

I maintain that the higher ups should also share the blame, instead of making us the scapegoats just because we're the lowest in the hierarchy.

The working conditions could use a great deal of improvement. But what to do, the hospital is in poverty anyway.

The hospital is in near-shambles. The elevators are too damn slow, they give no meaning to "stat" anymore. As if the stupid procedures to enter the lab itself is not slowing things enough...

And don't even get me started on how stupid all this code asking business just to ask for blood.

I'm frankly surprised that the mortality rate of this hospital isn't any higher.

Screw everything, I'm outta here as soon as I can if I can help it.

Current Music: How to Go - School Food Punishment

Halfway There, Halfway Gone

"We often like to believe what we want to believe, often because the real facts challenge us too much. It is far easier to wallow in our prejudices than to seek out the truth in anything" ~ Marina Mahathir, The Star 30/08/2012.

1. Dear God, I can't believe that I'm already in Year Two of working.

I think of it as a mid-working life crisis. You know that you're long enough into the job that certain things are already second nature to you. You know enough people and are familiar with the procedures to get things done. You've worked long enough that you're already a familiar face to certain staffs.

And yet there are still things that still get to me.

How my stamina doesn't seem to have improved over the past year. How less tolerant I am to people - patients and relatives alike - who are bloody irritating. How pissed off I could get when my work is delayed no thanks to bureaucracy and the higher ups' ego and mood swings.

I like Medical because of the approach. But what I dislike about it is that it strikes me as a behavioural thing and thus, because of human fallacy and habits are just so hard to break, the process is endless.

Admissions are aplenty. Patients smell of cigarette smoke. Patients with psychiatric problems contributing to the chaos in the ward. And damn stupid elastoplasts that don't secure branulas properly should just rot in hell along with all the stupid, temperamental ECG machines.

This hospital is getting more and more idiotic.

2. The human factor in medicine is, as always, a great contributor to this love-hate (mostly hate, to be honest) I share with Medicine as a whole.

That is one reason why I shouldn't be allowed to practise clinical work.

But doing Pathology would mean abandoning the ward procedures, which previously actually took me some time to acquire.

Other specialties that I have considered include Anaesthesiology, Orthopaedics, Surgical and even ENT (I quote an MO of mine: "Easy no tension!").

Some people say I should worry about these options later. I say that I need something to look forward to, to work hard for.

All I know is, I need to get out of this damned hospital.

3. I feel old these few days. Maybe because a great number of fellow HOs in my current department are first posters, therefore are substantially younger (~2 years) than I am. Sometimes people mistook me for an MO - compounded by the fact that I prefer to roam around the ward without my white coat (I blame the global warming!).

A few people I already know are already MOs. I'm feeling some sort of delayed development here on my part.

4. Dang, esok keje lagi...

Current Music: Payphone - Maroon Five featuring Wiz Khalifa

Temperamental

...I blame the hormones. And myself too, I guess. Because we have always been taught not to blame others, and nobody likes to be blamed for others' problems.

I know I'd feel that way. And I also know for a fact - here I sort of blame my ego, but whatever - that I absolutely hate it when people contradict me.

Maybe it's because I spend an insane amount of time cogitating, weighing options, coming up with conclusions, rewinding scenarios in my already messed up brain. And so when it struck me that people tend to jump to conclusions only after analysing a small slice of my life, my behaviours, I get irritated...and I snap.

The rebel within me awoke today...though not exactly in front of the right people.

Maybe I've been far too lenient all my life. In which I allowed people to make decisions despite the fact that I'm the one who will be suffering the consequences. I allowed people push me around. I allowed them to nag me even when all I want is for them to just drop the effing issue. I stayed around to get an earful of their lectures even when I know very well that they are just working on assumptions.

Perhaps my Surgical posting has made me extra impatient, in that I can tune out whatever I refuse to hear up until a certain point before I actually burst, instead of letting it go.

I don't even want to have opinions anymore. What good is there, when what I say, what I do, who I am don't matter in the least?

Current Music: Fix You - Coldplay

Breaking Point

I can feel it. Something breaking in me - whether it is the last bit of my patience, my humanity, or my sanity, I have no idea.

Dear God, I'm surrounded by laziness and incompetence and inefficiency and utter nonsense. Not to say that I'm the best and the most capable person in the ward (or the department, but whatever), but at least I take my job seriously and think of people!

I can't function like this.

So much hate. So much despair...so much regret.

The only thing heavier than my footsteps to work, is the despair burdening my bosom.

Fortunately enough, rare though as they may be, there are those occasions that I could share some laughter, a jovial chat and the promise of some gastronomic indulgence. Though I do wish, every so often, for this distance from home to just disappear, because there are times that one just need the friendly reassurance that it's not just one person - you - against this mad, mad world.

Not forgetting, a certain smile that could light up my dark and grievous world, an infectious laughter, and a bundle of memories that could bring this...pleasant sense of gastritis (that possibly no proton pump inhibitor could ever resolve).

And this prayer that I extend to Him the Almighty.

They are the small beacon of hope - possible the only factors that still enables me to go on...but how further and how long more?

Current Music: Domino - Jessie J.

P/s: Karniza, dude, you are right...It seems like lately all I am capable of putting down into words is depressing. Shall I refer myself to a psychiatrist?

Clash of Postulations

The world today is not the same as before. Different generations act and respond differently.

I don't know if my realistic (read: pessimistic) standpoint is to blame, but I seem to think that things are more complicated than they appear to be. As in, there are aspects that are just beyond our control, that the outcome is not as simple as either A or B. My parents, on the other hand, equipped with their own life experiences, tend to think that their views are right - or, more right than mine, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Yes, occasionally there will be debates in the house. In a way I do appreciate the fact that they let me voice out what I think (despite my feeble hopes of emerging as the champion, pfft!), rather than telling me to just shut my mouth and nod reluctantly to whatever they were saying.

They make the wrong comparisons.

I tend to get emotional because they don't seem to see the reason behind my arguments.

They say that all that I have come to know - and adore - will bring me nowhere but towards a disastrous end.

I say that time is not my side - yet. Is it not the Holy Quran that said that man is ever hasty? ["Dan memang manusia bersifat tergesa-gesa" (17:11)]

At the end of the day their skepticism placed me in doubt...and I get bitter all over again.

Bitter and grieved.


Current Music: Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You) - Kelly Clarkson

An Ending is Just A Beginning of Something Else

*If you are looking for happy stuff, please cease reading at once and look elsewhere. If you are looking for a glimpse of the darkness that has consumed me at the moment, then so be it; My advice, carry on with caution.

Done with 2 weeks of tagging in the Surgical Department, and honestly, I dislike it immensely.

Somehow the hospital always manages to throw one surprise after another - and not in a good way, I assure you. Just when I thought that the Paeds nursery actually runs on havoc alone, along comes 4-2 and somehow, suddenly nothing actually makes sense.

The passover system is stupid, hands down. We are not nurses, and honestly, we are burdened with enough unnecessary tasks as it is. And the rounds take too much time, leaving us with little time to get things done before the next rounds begin.

And it's horribly ridiculous when you have more MOs than HOs doing the rounds. At one point I just wanted to purse my lips and just do what we HOs essentially are - secretaries.

We are understaffed. How can we complete any of the ward work when we are expected to go for OT (one person for elective, one person for emergency operations), daycare, scope room, and the radiology department to go begging for urgent scans? 

Also, the schedule is crazy. There is no making sense when all you have in your hands and around you is insanity.

In whatever establishment, there needs to be a system. No matter how many times I have emphasised the fact that I thrive on entropy in the past, it no longer applies when there are just too many people in the picture. Hence there needs a good teamwork, a good sense of responsibility, a mutual feeling of "I've got your back".

Here, it's like people's negative qualities manifest only too easily. Everyone is too busy saving their own skin. We're too busy passing over things that the ward work is compromised.

I like to think that I'm not as negative as people make me out to be, so imagine my rage when I was accused of being too judgmental over people instead of trying to be more positive about the whole situation.

I frankly am quite tired of trying to look for a positive aspect when it's greatly overshadowed by the negative and the insanity.

And tomorrow...honestly, I'm scared to face tomorrow.

Can't today stay instead? Because today, after one week of torture...I savoured joy.

Current Music: Rolling in the Deep - Adele

Tough

They say tough times don't last, but tough people do.

I say, life gets tougher because it assumes you do too.

What do you do when everything falls apart, and you know that you're next in the line of fire?

What do you do when you know everything out there is screwing you up - some slowly and bit by bit, while others just knock you down even when your hands are up in the air in surrender - but you're just too powerless, too insignificant to actually bring about any wind of change?

What do you do when you can see how things are just so very wrong, but you cannot help but be enslaved by it because that's how just the effing system is and how some aspects in your environment is just so uncivilised that you start to lose hope in humanity itself?

What do you do when you're just so bloody tired of all this nonsense and you feel the urge to just scream out and somehow outdo all the babies' cries?

Would you run, even just for a little while, to escape all the stupidity that seems too eager to consume you in its tide?

I have lost my compassion...and I know it'll be tough regaining it.

I bloody hate the hospital.

"Then don't feel, just do!"

So I was told. But it just robs me of whatever joy I had left. Like a low-paid worker who does the same darn thing over and over again, with little to no room to improve him or herself.

And suppressing all this negative energy? It only delays the pain, as the comeback shows that it is capable of becoming even badder and more intimidating...and more crippling.

What is left to feel when you're too scared to feel joy and happiness, but too scared to feel pain and sorrow?

What do you do when your anger is so close to exploding, and yet there is no safe outlet anywhere?

What do you say when you have nobody to listen to your wails and bitter cries?

What do you do when you know the only thing you can do is to withdraw from people, and yet you're scared to be left alone with nothing but your gloomy and fearful thoughts?

What do you think about when your own thread of thoughts are full of disjointed things, as if there is a checkpoint in your head somewhere - perhaps your last glimmer of sanity? - that acts to cease those horrible monsters residing in your head before they take over and shut you down?

Monsters in my head. They're like parasites that suck whatever is left of me, and I am too weak to put up a fight.

What do you do when you look up to the Heavens and pray hard, but words just failed you and you just freeze there, knowing that despite the incoherence that punctuates your speech, God Knows what is it that you yearn to tell Him?
And so, these tears. And yet, with their release, my pain is not decreasing in the least.

I ask thee - what do you do when you have too many questions but the answers are nowhere in sight?

Rhetorical questions can be hard to answer, are they not?

Current Music: Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People

Intermission #32

I can't take it anymore.

There has to be a limit to what kind of stupidity that the superiors are putting us into. If you want things to be done, how's about stop introducing stupid rules that restrict us in our job?

The breaking point is so near, it's like something is breaking in my chest, and I'm suffocating. Overwhelmed by all this rubbish that I'm in - against my own will, and yet still too powerless to do anything about this.

I'm starting to forget what happiness feels like. One thing for sure - even during my convocation I felt numb, apathetic.

Current Music: Awaken - Maher Zain

Intermission #30

...If there is one thing that I absolutely cannot stand, it is people being uncivilised.

Since when is it cool to hit on random people? Especially when an example of said random person happens to be one stressed out, recently started houseman who was stuck doing discharge summaries as if she's actually a clerk and relatives nagging on when the deuce can their son/brother/etc get out of the ward?

It impedes on my professional front, which means that there is a real danger of my spite making itself known to the whole wide world.

So maybe I'm actually pissed off at something else or maybe even with myself, but whatever, and I'm starting to lose it, bit by bit.

Makes one wonder how long it'll take before I actually snap, yes?


...So maybe I'm actually pissed off because it's not the person I'd like to who's actually doing the wooing. Damn it, self, what the deuce is wrong with you!?

...Pardon the colourful language. It's the stress talking, I assure you.

Hanging On

Today will be my third day offtag, and I can safely say that I'm hatin' the shift system.

From what I could see from my two days' worth of experience, the department doesn't have enough House Officers to work in shifts. In the morning, there are only at most 3 or 4 HOs in each ward, but that's before they get called to the OT, to the clinic, to review the patient(s) in the first class ward. And because the clinic always demands for as many HOs as possible, yesterday my ward practically had zero HO around - until the second shift person came in, who was stuck doing the discharge summaries.

As for me, yesterday I was called down to the clinic before the morning round was barely halfway, and as I attended to the patients in the clinic, suddenly I was informed that I had to enter the OT to assist. And so I ran - at one point I even got lost, but let's leave that aside - and because the OT staffs who had no work was busy with some Raya feast, the people lining up at the table kind of blocked my way.

Sigh. Fortunately though, a colleague managed to brief me on what a HO is supposed to do in the OT, so I suppose I got the gist of it - missing only one or two duties. Anyhow. It was a case of closed fracture of proximal third of right femur - in fact, one of the first cases that I clerked in the ward - and so the operation was interlocking nail of right femur.

The problem? Because I'm of (below?) average height, and the MOs who were doing the op were tall people, the OT table was at least at the level of my chest. And when I had to retract the muscle upwards, I had to do it while standing on my toes. Because we're talking about retracting the anterior thigh muscles, which are strong like whoa, this morning I woke up with aches all over my body.

Ortho can be fun, but maybe I'm just physically not built for it.

As for the oncall the night before - it could get pretty hectic with handling new admissions, post-op reviews, keeping a straight face as a post-op patient in pain scolded me when I advised him to elevate his lower limb in view of his swollen foot, a certain nurse's rudeness and possessiveness over an injection trolley (I commend my self-control for not yelling out "What the hell is your problem, woman!?" there and then), further blood-taking procedures...and people's branulas keep on leaking and/or being pulled out.

I must have inserted at least 8 branulas on that day alone, but I'm pretty thankful that the veins of Melaka people are easier to find and poke than those of Kuantan.

Suffice to say, my first oncall was all right - although the sleep that followed was anything but restful, as I still dreamt of being in the ward and talking to a colleague *coughcough*, causing intermittent disruptions in my sleep.

And so, the saga continues. I'm on oncall duty tonight, from 10pm until 10am tomorrow morning. Here's to praying that it will be an uneventful one, because I don't think my body is ready to handle too many serious cases at once.

...I need to get a proper life, and proper food. Surviving on a cup of Nescafe for long stretches of hours can be damaging in the long run. And my heart...my poor heart.

...After a certain point, I don't know what to think anymore, and just let the waves of Life push me to the shores, as He Sees fit.

At least I can look forward to my parents' visit tomorrow, if He Wills it.


Current Music: Seigi no Koe ga Kikoeru kai? - Hirata Hiroaki & Morita Masakazu

Overload

"The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead. [Which means:] To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget." - Arundhati Roy

It's getting uglier. So ugly it's repulsive, it's blasphemy.

What on God's Earth is wrong with...every single thing!? Why are utter morons holding the strings, the baton to the orchestra? Why can't some people just act their age already?

Why is it that most people appear so selfish it's just so inhumane? (...Myself notwithstanding? Really? Oh dear...) I used to think that the only thing that is limitless in a person is his or her dreams - perhaps now I may add 'ego' to that list?

Why do people no longer respond to kindness with kindness too? Why is it that people's good will gets manipulated out of context only too easily? Why is it that lies always seem to prevail over truth? Why does it feel as if our lives are being controlled by capitalists and corruption?

Is everything a mere fabrication, a veil to blind?

Is this how humanity spirals down to destruction? Are we already in the final chapter, or are things just getting started?

One thing I'm quite certain of - I'm so sick of all this bull.

Current Music: What The Hell - Avril Lavigne

Intermission #19

They say never let fear take over.

I don't know if it's just some ironic coincidence, but I seem to recall that this is not the first time that my exams happen to take place at a time when trouble is brewing at another part of the world. Some time before it was the tsunami, then there was also the flood...and now, the genocide in Libya, and my exams are in three days' time.

It was during clinic with a lecturer yesterday when he brought up the issue, which I shamefully displayed my ignorance on the issue. Dr. U was saying how a bit of depression is good - I quote, "depressed people have better reality testing" and "those people who never had an episode of depression have high tendency to become overconfident" and they might terrorise other people, "like what Gadaffi is doing".

So there. Meanwhile, here I am, getting all jittery and depressed for the coming exams, and in an attempt to allay those uneasy feelings, I try to be thankful that the situation wasn't any worse...and I started thinking how bad things are for other people.

Needless to say, out of that exercise...I get more depressed.

Yeah, it backfired.

God Help Us all.

Current Music: No Moral (TV Size) - Itou Kanako

What's the Deal, y'all?

Warning: If you're looking for happy, then I'd advise refraining from reading this entry.

I was once scoffed at for keeping a blog.

Blogs are not, as I was told, the Islamic way of coping with things. There are other more acceptable ways of doing it, and while those were valid points, I was still stubborn with my stand but, being the pacifist that I am, I held my tongue instead of going into full scale debater mode.

Not out of fear of defeat, mind you, but more of tiredness. There are some things that, no matter how true they are to you, or how strong your conviction is, are not worth fighting and ruining relationships for. Thus, the peaceful middle way of agreeing to disagree.

I see blogging as a highly beneficial activity - otherwise I'd have terminated this blog and you, dear reader, would not have regularly updated sites to feed you with depressive thoughts as to how deplorable things are. It is a form of sublimation - which is a mature defense mechanism, whereby one responds to a negative feeling by channeling the negative energies to more productive ends, such as dabbling in writing or other aesthetics. Which would explain why most poets and writers of ye old days were conjuring up depressing poems and stuff that highlighted the forlornness of this transient life, the frailty of the human psyche.

There is some beauty in the broken, but to the one holding the burden...could the same be said?

Besides, blogging saves me the trouble of looking for people to confide in. Because, hey, everyone has his or her own problems, so it's not like they can actually take an extra load of problems, especially those that don't pertain to their daily lives or interests. See it as myself doing others a favour, will you!?

Occasionally I've toyed with the idea of dabbling into literature as a career, but seeing how difficult it is to cater to the public's whim - especially when it's not in tandem with one's own internal whims - I had to decide against it. (Naturally, my parents would never entertain such ambition!) Writing gives me the opportunity to dive deeper and learn more about myself - most of my entries were written freely, with not much planning or editing prior to the publishing. It's surprising how things actually unfold - oftentimes although I begin my entries with despair, the light of hope somehow slips through. The reverse also holds true though...

Compare this to while one is studying the cold hard facts. For example, the lists of clinical features of bronchial asthma. While you may relate the presentation with the pathology behind it, how far do you feel like you're learning more about yourself? Or, even worse - the mechanism of action of a, say, diuretic that acts to promote micturition...does that make you feel closer to your own kidney? Maybe not to yourself per se, but it sure gives some appreciation as to what the drug is doing to your patient, and you then share the joy when said patient's problems are ameliorated. But that's what a healthy human being should be doing, yes? To strive for the betterment of other people? Does this mean sacrificing one's own identity and positive perspective towards life as a whole?

Perhaps my problem is of different nature - the more I dive into the unknown territories within me, the more I seem to lose touch with the outside world, and hence a reduced threshold to accept the absurdities that the world throws at me.

It's derealisation, whereby I feel that I'm separated from the world around me. Like I'm outside looking in, forever not understanding the workings of the human mind other than my own.

So maybe...I am in the wrong course after all. Because my understanding of human beings has started to become so...ugly, that it's significantly different than that of mine ten years ago.

Or maybe the world is just going to the dogs. I mean, it's one of the signs of the end of the world after all...

Perhaps my personality type is at fault. While I started with idealism, it is easily crumbled, shaping into unspoken pessimism. Faith is so precariously fragile, that I become scared. My pacifist nature, people misuse and start to take advantage, almost like bullying me to do things that I'd rather not. It's everyone's responsibility, dangit, so why can't some people just behave accordingly instead of letting your fears take over you and get everyone else in trouble whereas we were initially ready to support you in your undertakings!? Are we not already adults!? How long do you expect to run?

And I know I've mentioned this before, but let me say it again: The maxim about fighting fire with water as the best option? I say this: bollocks.

Apparently it's impossible to knock some sense into some people using common courtesy and positive reinforcement. Childish much? Darn right.

And I'm so utterly, _utterly_ sick and tired of all this inane things that people - myself included - do without fail.

...

Judging by the state of things, I can't say that my future looks well. If things go on like this and I still can't handle things properly, I see only three possibilities:
i) I end up having mood disorders - be it major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder (God Forbid!)
ii) I end up writing poetry that have perpetually sad, depressive tones
iii) both of the above.

...Dear God, no.

Current Music: Kimi no Negai wo - Miyavi

Intermission #15

First post for year 2011. Whee(?).

I don't really like it how certain TV shows toy around with emotions. Maybe that's why we tune in to shows or hold on to books - we want to _feel_ something during the course and/or by the end of the journey, otherwise we're just robots computing the data that come in and nothing more. Otherwise we might as well skip those things and settle for other means of passing time or hobby.

I'm honestly getting so tired of reality shows. There'll be those who'll be painted as the bad persons, the kind of person you'll love to hate, and then we'll see how the contestants backstab each other and act all hypocritical and stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's real life, and nobody really plays nice anyway so where's the harm in that?

Oh, I don't know. I just don't like seeing things get ugly...and here you'll argue that if things remain all rosy and peaceful there will be no climax, no story. *shrug*

Could things get worse? Oh yeah. When local shows start copying the shows' formats and all. I mean, people, how's about some original ideas for a change!? It's terribly degrading!

...For the record, I rather think that The Biggest Loser is a bit unfair. People have different metabolic rates, yeah? (Or maybe it works the same way as...creativity in Project Runway or just about all the singing competitions out there.)

Oh. And I'm frankly sick of singing competitions already. How about coming up with lyrics that have better quality, or those that are more inspired? It'd be better than some echolalia or sounding like a bad broken record. Or word salad, whatever.

...But as long as these baneful shows still sell, there's no way those companies are going to stop churning them out. I suppose there will soon come a day that I may not need a television set - yerp, because even the news are not worth watching anyway. Pfft.

Current Music: Heaven - Jars of Clay

Soredemo Chikyuu wa Mawatteiru

Even so, the Earth continues to spin. Title is based on the Shaft anime, Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru.

Everybody's watches, even though they may differ by up to ten minutes or more despite being in the same time zone, generally run in the same speed. One second on your watch should be of the same duration on mine.

Nonetheless this doesn't mean that our brains work at the same speed. Brains and physicals...basically everything else.

We each face different things in life. No matter how we find ourselves in the same situation, your perspective differ from mine. Experiences may be the same, but what we get from it, how it eventually shapes up, could mean a world of differences.

Time brings changes. Changes that could be good to some or to most, but damaging to the rest.

Sometimes we forget that we are adults. Sometimes the situations we find ourselves in revert us back to our former selves. Former ugly selves, ones that we thought we had vanquished aeons ago.

Regardless, I respect how people have their own demons - inner or outer demons - to face and to conquer. So I make it my business to not trouble people beyond what is necessary. Which probably makes me a tad dysfunctional, but what else is new?

I've long given up expectations, which explains why I tend to approach things with little to no enthusiasm, except in very select cases. This method has served me well...until things became worse than what I had anticipated.

I wanted to blame my lack of foresight, but I can't. Because there's no way of doing it without instigating a whole new load of angst, one which I'd probably could never handle for the life of me.

Playing hide and seek doesn't seem to work. It always finds me, most of the time at the most undesirable moment and company. While I'm busy juggling with life's challenges and all this emotional baggage, people move on and tend to assume that I'd be all right with _everything_ they decide on - even when their verdict affects me enormously.

I'm sick of hiding behind pleasantries when there is no justification for it. My rights need to be fought for, and nobody else is going to do it for me. It's probably not in their job description anyway.

It's a futile battle, but I can't go down without a fight. A civilised fight, at least to the best of my capabilities. If there is no space for a win-win situation, then so be it. But no way am I going to be satisfied with loss, because I've been compromising enough for far too long.

The game is on.

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Now playing: Carolina Liar - Show Me What I'm Looking For
via FoxyTunes