*CN- spreads the world map out on the floor and searches for her beloved country through the magnifying glass… and then, plants a huge kiss on it*
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MALAYSIA!!!”
It’s the last day today. My so-called break. This one week has been rather relaxing… a somewhat therapeutic period for my poor, overly stressed soul and heavily loaded mind. So much so that I dread going back to the hectic routine in Klang. Sigh. Plus, this will be our final posting in HTAR Klang. I’ll be doing General Medicine, while Jel on Surgery. I loved Paediatrics and Surgery, thought they are interesting. Medicine is interesting too - and mind bogging. It’s just like an ocean stretched out in front of you. You’d either drown in it or swim real hard and long to finally reach land. And nobody can do anything to save you. Only you can help yourself. Basically you see more and more horizons, its ends are just too faraway. I never did see the ends of this vast ocean. That’s why it scares me. I feel like I’m gonna die drowning this time.
Then there’s the end-of-posting exam 2 months later, followed by 2 weeks’ worth of study break for us to prepare for the GRAND FINALS. *gulp* I know I’m being a whiny here, but I’m gonna miss home a lot, Mom’s cooking, relaxing afternoons and my daily full 8-hour sleep. May not get to blog as much. But I think I can afford an occasional post 
I’d try my best to be optimistic. It won’t be that bad if I look at the bright side right? Hehe. Sometimes, growing up is indeed a huge battle for me. And usually, I haven’t got a choice but to let God take charge - mould me, strengthen me, and surprise me. Till here then… take care, you guys!
Many years ago, my house mailbox frequently welcomes letters in all shapes and sizes, colours and senders apart from the necessary bills and important documents meant to make Mom and Dad frown, sigh and complain. Most of those beautiful mails were from my long-time Australian and Norwegian. Once in a while I’d also receive parcels filled with little surprises e.g. an assortment of candies, makeup, pictures of my penpals and their family and friends, postcards, keychains, collectible scented erases, bookmarks, etc. Nice eh? Hehe.
The most extraordinary gift ever was a box of Norwegian cheese and a “knife” Norwegians use to slice and serve cheese which looks exactly like our garden spade! I don’t know what made my smart penpal think that she could actually mail me CHEESE by post that arrived 1 week later all the way from Norway to my dear tropical Malaysia. She claimed it could stand the heat, wouldn’t melt so easily (M&Ms?) and need not be stored in the refrigerator. Anyway, the cheese came to me abit squishy in its box and with its weird shape it looked anything but appealing. It smelt good though but I wouldn’t dare to consume dairy products that had travel from one continent to the other for 7 days in a box!
In the end I stored it in the fridge hoping that Dad, an all-time cheese lover would gobble it up so that I wouldn’t feel too guilty for not treating my penpal’s pressy with pride. Well, he didn’t eat it. He pretended not to notice it. He’s crazy about cheese and it’s impossible he couldn’t see that huge whitish yellow thing sitting amongst the usual Kraft Singles cheese packets. And I though Norway Cheese looked almost irresistable, albeit a bit out of shape due to “improper mail handling”. To cut the long story short, Norway Cheese was sent straight to the garbage bin 1 month later when Mom decided that it’s occupying too much space in her fridge.
And I told my penpal it tasted delicious. Yeah, I told a lie but I couldn’t help it!! I kept the spade cheese cutter (whatever you called it) though.
Eversince I studied in UM, my correspondence with my penpals began to lag. What used to be a monthly exchange of stories, joy and woes gradually became an annual affair. Recently, I browsed through her letters and discovered I am 2 years late! =p Although my mailbox doesn’t receive as much exciting snailmails and parcels as before, it is still stuffed with all kinds of other mailing stuff. They are what I call JUNK MAIL. However, they are no ordinary junk mail. They are basically letters addressed to me as a DOCTOR, yes… as in Dr. CYANIDE-THE-COUCH-POTATO, their most valued customer, introducing me to loads of commercial goods with endless sheets of promotional pamphlets, magazines, etc. Among the common ones that I’ve come across are digital cameras, DVD players, Hi-fi systems, desktops, laptops, printers, furniture and the worst of all… housing investment plans!! Somewhere in between the advertising pages are usually order forms with persuasive opening lines to make sure that I’m aware of the high-grade quality of their products and how I’m gonna lose out to the entire world or worse, fail my practice if I do not make a purchase of their prized goods with my CREDIT CARD (where in the hell do I own a credit card when my bank account amount does not even exceed RM300?!).
I seriously do not know how these people got my address and name. The only time I admit being a medical student who would probably graduate in year 2007 written in black and white was when I signed up for the Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) membership and subscription for its monthly news. THAT - came by post faithfully each month.
Mom relishes in keeping those irritating promotional letters for me because it somehow delights her to see my name printed with the prefix Dr. The first time she saw it she actually called me on the phone excitedly and laughing away. Told her a thousand times to throw all of that away but she still keeps them for my return during weekends or semester breaks. It’s annoying for me to see my name with that prefix which I don’t even own. Perhaps I’m too sensitive? But I can’t help it! I’m not yet a doctor, and I still wonder if I can still be one at the rate I’m going now. Geez… it sure freaks me out and place unnecessary pressure on me each time I saw my name addressed that way. Paranoia? Maybe. Maybe that explains why I rarely reveal the fact that I’m a medical student unless people asks. The reason? I just can’t take the way they’d make a big hooha out of it exclaiming how smart I must have been, how difficult is it to get into UM, etc making me all red and not sure how to respond. They have no idea I’m very much blank, blur, lost and stressed about this entire medical course thingy. Then as usual, they’d go into my studies, my postings, my idea on future specialisation, all the money-making issues, etc.
I wish… that someday, all of them will react the same way when they get to know that I’m doing medicine:
“What are you studying now?”
“Medicine”
“Ohh.. I see *nods and smiles*” … goes on to talk about something else, anything!
Muahahahhahaha… ok, forgive me. It’s just me, whether you like it or not =p
Please be warned. This is a very long post 
It all started with this letter in the STAR education section on 7th August, 2005…
AFTER years of struggling and hard work, my son’s dream of becoming a doctor finally paid off when he was offered a place to study medicine at Universiti Malaya (UM).
The registration for the new students at UM began on July 3, followed by the orientation programme. To the best of my knowledge, the orientation programme is meant to provide information to the new undergraduates pertaining to their studies, to familiarise them with life and the facilities in campus, the rules and regulations, and most importantly, to get to know the senior students. However, instead of a warm welcome from the seniors, the orientation programme has proven to be a nightmare.
The new students were made to perform various silly acts such as bowing to the seniors. They are not to look into the seniors’ eyes or patronise the mini-market for their daily necessities, etc.
Their hand phones were kept by the seniors and they were not allowed to contact their parents, family members, and friends. All these so-called orientation programmes go on until 2am or 3am, and they have to get up by am the next day. They have barely three hours of sleep and no time to do daily chores such as washing clothes. My son is not feeling well now and I am worried about his health both physically and mentally, if this continues.
Life in UM is not what he thought it would be – it’s been rather like living together with a group of gangsters or in a secret society. Medical faculty students are future doctors. The university should provide a conducive environment to mould these young, ambitious and energetic people to become thoughtful, considerate, dedicated and patriotic citizens.
They should not live in fear of their seniors and pass on this attitude to the subsequent year’s freshies. I wonder whether these are the traditions of all universities?
Could the UM authorities or someone in the Higher Education Ministry seriously look into this problem and put a stop to it before it becomes worse?
The university should organise educational and motivational programmes for the orientation week which both senior students and fresh undergraduates can look forward to.
UM should prohibit orientation programmes initiated or organised by senior students which could tarnish the good image of this top 100-ranked university.
WORRIED PARENT
Via e-mail
Then many replies ensured.
However, in my humble opinion, I feel that this is the best response so far…
I REFER to the letter “Nightmare of orientation” (StarEducation, Aug 7) where the writer urged the relevant authorities to prohibit orientation programmes for medical students in a public university. I would like to voice my opinion on several issues.
Firstly, the writer felt that bowing to the seniors is a very silly act. Does this mean that he will never bow to his professors or his patients, irrespective of whether they are old, young, poor or even mentally retarded? Does this mean that he will never bend down to touch and examine his patients’ feet?
The writer was also unhappy about the fact that he had to stay up till 3am with very little time to sleep!
Didn’t anyone inform him that sometimes a doctor does not sleep for days, especially when he or she is on call. Forget about doing daily chores – there might not even be time for meals.
The writer was also extremely worried about his son’s mental and physical health as his son was already not feeling well because of the long orientation programme. Then, I think he had better reconsider whether he is fit mentally and physically to under go the medical training for five years or even embark upon a career as a doctor.
If he is unwilling to sacrifice his sleep and his time, then it is still not too late to withdraw from the programme.
Please remember that to be a good doctor, it is not enough to be intelligent – there must be lots of dedication and sacrifice too.
MARGARET
Via e-mail
I’ve been through orientation in UM (obviously) and as much as I did not particularly like it then, looking back, it did serve some purpose of some sort. In the end of it all, I guess, I did get to know almost all my seniors in the span of 2 months. We had to memorize all their names, which school and state they are from etc. Can’t say I remember all of them until now and vice versa, but it did help to break the ice as we were all essentially living together in the same hostel. If I was not forced into it by the so-called orientation, I doubt I would have made the initiative to get to know them on my own. Now that I’m a senior, I realised that the seniors also had to memorize the juniors names, as well as to make the effort to get to know the juniors. It’s a two-way thing.
The aims of orientation were also apparently to eliminate pride and to train the newbies to handle mental stress. It may sound like a lame excuse to bully the freshies and on reflection, I don’t quite agree with some of the methods applied by certain seniors. Nevertheless, it is not fair to generalise all seniors as being mean or fierce as there were also many seniors who were very nice to us. The silly, crazy and somewhat humiliating things we had to do were alright in moderation, and were even fun at times. However, the unnecessary scolding, mental ragging and intimidation were not.
The orientation nowadays have mellowed so much compared to that in the past. Although it’s hard to irradicate it once and for all, at least some things are improving for the better. Funny that it is only recently that we hear parents calling up the university authorities, writing to the papers etc. Are kids nowaday getting more pampered than before? Can’t they survive a little pressure and discomfort without whining and complaining? Can parents protect their kids forever?
The world out there is harsh. There will always be good and bad, altogether in the same basket. It is our own choice to filter out the bad and to make the best out of the good. If one has a right mindset and approach to orientation, it can definitely be turned into a learning experience. If one can’t handle the stress of orientation, then I would suggest really reviewing one’s decision to study medicine. As a 4th year medical student, the stress I went through during orientation is nothing to what I am facing now, and will face in the future.
It’s not just in the university. Bullying/Ragging/Whatever-you-want-to-call-it, can and will happen anywhere, especially in the working world. Banning it is not the solution. Heck, ragging is already banned anyway. Those who were severely ragged, tend to end up being mean raggers due to the quest for revenge. But can you completely remove this perpertual cycle? Not unless you kill all those people once and for all. Thus, the only thing you can do, no matter what you went through, is to vow to yourself to be a good senior and to not be a victim of these ragging cycle…
I’m. So. Pathetic.
Since we only have one car for a household of three and I have to go to the bank while Mom needs it for work (well, Dad always loses out to us when it comes to “car-fighting”) , I followed Mom to work. She drove me to 2 local bookstores and 2 banks before finally heading to her office at the other end of town. She refused to send me back home which is in another end of Muar so I had to linger around her office till lunch break.
In order to pass time and not to look like a sulky toddler teenager daughter in tow, I talked to her boss, the maid and one of her clients. After that I leafed through her office documents, calendar, magazines, pretending as if I know something, trying to look really thoughtful and busy. Few minutes before the taste of freedom, one of Mom’s friend walked into the office building to pass her some gifts. She’s a long-time family friend of ours and as usual, she exclaimed at the sight of me and started bombarding me with thousands of questions medical students hate to answer e.g. which are you gonna graduate?, how is your studies?, what are you gonna specialise in?, etc. Just when I finished “layan-ing” that Aunty with my standard answers and wide smiles hoping to mask my frustrations over the typical “interview” I face ever so often, she asked how long is my break going to be and when am I going back to Klang.
Just before I could answer, Mom told the Aunty that she’s GETTING TIRED OF ME and SHE HOPED I’D HURRY BACK TO KLANG so that SHE CAN GET HER LIFE BACK WITHOUT ME ANNOYING HER AND DISRUPTING HER ROUTINE. She went on to complain about how she had to ferry me here and there, prepare my favourite dishes, bring me out to my favourite stalls, listen to me complain about life, etc. Then they both laughed at me like I’m some funny looking exhibit.
*sob*
So you see… nobody wants me. Even my own Mom finds me a “space occuping lesion”.
She’d better not keep calling me on the phone soon after I go back to Klang this weekend even when she’s got nothing to say to me. As annoying as I can be, I know she’s going to miss me. Hah! I’d remind her that I WAS A NUISANCE to her then… muahahhahaha!!
Saw this cheeky squirrel name generator at Dobbs’ blog. Tried it out and found myself laughing until my sides ached. My squirrel name is Chief McBushy. CN- is Arch Bishop Drunkenpaws.
The funniest is when I entered a friend’s entire family tree and I ended up with:
Mr. Twitchy Furrycheeks marrying Ms. Commander Nibbles His Nuts, and producing a daughter, Corporal Furryfart and a son, Sergeant Nutless.
ROFTLOL 
They call him Lion Heart – boy who picked up a bomb and lived
From Chris Ayres in Oakland, California
SALEH KHALAF’S face tells you everything you need to know about collateral damage. The boy’s left eyeball is missing, his teeth smashed, his skull slightly swollen.
Saleh’s right arm turns into a stump below the elbow. His left arm is fine — apart from the three missing fingers. Saleh, aged ten, gets by, in his cheerful way, with a dextrous little left thumb and what remains of his teeth.
“I love America better than Iraq,” says the grinning child, whose doctors call him Lion Heart. “Too much bullets in Iraq. Too much bombs. I remember waking up in America. I like that very much, thank you.”
With that, Saleh gets up on his slightly crooked, wobbly legs (clad in Gap combat trousers) and chases his sisters through the outpatient clinic of the Children’s Hospital & Research Centre at Oakland, California.
Then you notice the odd shape of Saleh’s belly — caused by having his intestines blown out by the explosive device that he picked up in his village in southern Iraq, thinking it was a toy. His mother tried to scoop them up with her hands and put them back.
Saleh’s 16-year-old brother, Dia, did not survive the blast.
The story of Saleh Khalaf, the second son of a taxi driver from the Shia village of Badaa, near al-Nasiriyah, is among the most remarkable tales of human suffering, endurance and generosity to emerge from the Iraq conflict.
Unlike the purported rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, however, the saving of Saleh Khalaf by US soldiers and doctors has not been trumpeted by the Pentagon — perhaps because his injuries were most likely caused by an unexploded American cluster bomb.
Saleh’s father, Raheem, accompanying his son to his first outpatient check-up after 30 operations in two years, still finds it hard to recount the story of his son’s extraordinary journey to America.
It began after the brothers picked up the unexploded munition on their way back from school in October 2003. At the hospital in al-Nasariyah there were no medications and the unpaid staff often did not turn up for work. Desperate, and overwhelmed with grief at the loss of his oldest son, Mr Khalaf drove to the US airbase at Tallil and approached the checkpoint, knowing he could be shot as a suicide bomber.
“I knew it was dangerous,” he says through an interpreter. “The soldiers surrounded me with guns and I put up my hands.” A friendly Iraqi interpreter intervened on his behalf. Sobbing, Mr Khalaf begged for help and the soldiers were so moved that they sent an ambulance for Saleh.
The child was close to death when he reached the base. Gangrene was spreading through his abdomen. Jay Johannigman, a US Air Force doctor, performed emergency surgery to keep the boy alive.
The doctor, 47, then used the internet to find an American hospital that would perform the much more complex operations required for the boy’s survival. Only the Children’s Hospital at Oakland answered his plea, and its doctors agreed to give their services free. With the Pentagon’s approval, Saleh and his father were flown 35 hours to California as the boy’s condition rapidly deteriorated. He arrived just in time, and the process of excruciatingly painful surgery began.
Saleh had his final operation this month. Surgeons removed a fingertip-sized piece of shrapnel lodged deep within his brain. “The metal went through his eye socket and across his brain to the other side. It missed the main arteries by millimetres,” says Peter Sun, a 39-year-old Chinese-American neurosurgeon, as he examines his young patient. “It was really quite miraculous that he managed to survive.”While his son was recovering in California, Mr Khalaf had other worries. Militants back in Iraq were accusing the rest of his family of being spies.
Following pleas from the hospital, the US granted the family political asylum. Saleh’s mother, Hadia, and her other children — Zahara, 6, Marwa, 3, and Ali, 1 — were driven through Iraq to Jordan at speeds of 110mph to escape bandits. The family is now slowly becoming Americanised. Mr Khalaf, who works as a gardener at the hospital, sports a rockabilly Elvis hairdo, electric-blue shirt and tasselled loafers. The Khalafs have a flat in Oakland, paid from a trust fund: the money came from readers moved by an account of Saleh’s plight in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Occasionally Saleh’s trauma resurfaces. “I remember me and my brother playing,” he announces, unprompted, in a tiny voice that is rapidly losing its Iraqi accent. “I draw him sometimes, and I talk to him when I’m by myself. I miss my brother.”
In a second, he’s a normal American kid again, excitedly chatting about having gone swimming in the Pacific with his father. Asked what he likes best about his new life, Saleh replies with a grin: “McDonald’s”.
Sometimes… in the midst of global violence and evil doings, it is heartwarming to know that goodness still exists and overflowing in abundance from “God’s earth angels” to those who need some comfort and spirit uplift.
What happened this morning (SMSes)…
CN- : Eh… it’s our factorz bday today!
Jel : Really?Are u sure?
CN- : Yr 1st post is 2day’s date la..How?celeb?hehe
Jel : Haha.so its 2 years old.cool
CN- gave Jel a missed call. (a miss call signifies OK in CN/Jel language)
So…
HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY, dear blog!!
*stroke blog* (Gerrard’s style)
We’re so sorry we forgot about your birthday. 
But hey… better late than never eh? In fact, we’re on the dot, we’re not late! Haha… and see what we’ve got here - some champagne, a grand looking cake from Baskin Robbins, a bunch of pink roses (hey, Jel.. factorz is a male or female??) and loads of cool CDs. Well, Jel and I love CDs so I figured you’d love them too. There are tonnes of party food out there for our readers as well. See, they’re all here with funky caps looking cuter than ever and they can’t wait to sing you the birthday song and blow the candles! Aren’t you a celebrity now?
*blog still sulking*
Err…
*CN- nudges Jel*
Hey Jel… what now? She/He’s still sulking… Hmm… *puts on thinking cap*
We’re sorry, we don’t mean to hurt you. Comon, give us a smile!
No matter what, dear bloggie… WE LOVE YOU!!! *bear hugz*
*all three smile*
… and live blog happily forever after.
P/S: Hehe, yeah we’re 2 this year. Thanx for being there as always Don’t worry.. more crap to come :p
Welcome to the all new factorz at blogsome! I’ve been wanting to categorize and store our posts systematically, and I guess WordPress is the answer
Anyway, hope you like the new look