Hello Classssss!
Greetings from Incredible India! Right now its 2.08pm an i'm in slacking in the Hospital Library. The internet here is crazy, dying as and when it likes.. So Internet access is a prized commodity! hahaa.. Well, if you all must have heard by now, I'm in Pondicherry, a small former french colony located in the state of Tamil Nadu, India! Well, I think that enough of a geography lesson.
Suffice to say, i'm here till 7th March doing an elective in General Surgery at Jawaharal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research.(JIPMER,in short) It is a Tertiary Hospital that provides free medical care, beds, food and surgery to the people. I Kinda chose this place coz its one of the top 5 Medical Colleges in whole of India (I dunno the current rankings..) But that's beside the point, i'm kinda doing this elective to see how rural medicine is like, how medicine is practiced in developing countries, to see the late stage spectrum of disease, to see how life is like in India, and to see if I really wanna become a Surgeon. hahaha.. so many objectives and prespectives to put in place in such a short span of 1 month.
Well, its been about 2 weeks plus here and I must say im really enjoying myself learning and absorbing as much as I can, although I kinda miss things back home. In this short span of time, I have seen and observed soooo many things in the wards, clinics than I have seen back home. There is also a huge huge huge disparity between our standard of living and medical care here and in Singapore. And, if I have learnt anything from this whole trip, it is this, SINGAPOREANS OUGHT NOT TO COMPLAIN ABOUT ANYTHING, ANYMORE. Once you have seen what I have seen here, you would thank your lucky stars that you live a life you live now.
Down here, people are so poor, many havent bathed for a time long enough that they really really really smell so bad that I had to wear a mask and had difficulty breathing when I assisted in the care of the patient in the minor Operating Theatre. Even after the patient left, the stench lingered on till the next day. It is that bad... You have to smell it to believe it. Many of them are so poor that they walk barefooted all their lives with cracked feet, and you sometimes really wonder that maybe all they have is just that dirty piece of loin cloth around them. They are so poor and uneducated... WE need to help them, help them out of their misery. Many times i have seen soooo many countless patients with metastatic cancers... Stage 4, in the clinics. And what i find most heart-wrenching is having learnt that they came from many miles away to JIPMER coz its a free hospital, only to learn the sad truth that their fungating breast lump the size of an orange has spread to her liver and bones. Soooo many cancer patients, all Stage 3 and above.
Survival for them is so slim. YOU KNOW their FATE, YOU KNOW how long more the have got, and consciously YOU KNOW that this man i see before me today, wont be here this time, next year. YOU KNOW all this, but the sad thruth, is that the poor patient doesnt. They dont have a clue. The poor man in rags with who has come to you with a huge mass on the corner of their jaw, and huge swellings in their neck and tells you that his daughter is getting married soon, has to be told the most shocking news of their life that they have stage 3 metastatic Oral Cancer. This stories repeat itself again and again. It is only then that you feel that everyone back home is blessed. There are sooo many 50% or more total burns cases in India, and many are suicide cases. Many are young girls that douse themselves in kerosene and set themselve alight...the sad fact is many live just long enough to go through the excruciating pain before they die. Sad sad sad...
People at home complain about waiting time to see a doctor... BS! Here, people can wait for DAYS before they get seen in clinic! And its not coz of the doctors, but its because of the sheer patient load! We see 4000 patients a day. CAn you imagine your queue number being that long? And worst thing is this, the clinics close at 2pm. So if you dont get seen today, patients just camp outside the clinics till the next morning when the floodgates open and all rush once more to line up and register to see a doctor. This repeats itself on a daily basis. Can you imagine the time you take to see the doctor? And can you imagine the no. of patients the doctor sees? Kinda puts into prespective that these guys work alot harder and get paid alot less than at home. Singapore doctors are already crying when they see 35 cases.
Singaporeans have alot to thank their medical system for! Seriously... At home, patients are treated well. We do Incision and drainage of large abscess under General Anesthesia so you sleep through it. But here, it is drained with little Local Anesthetic or NONE AT ALL! So the patients are fully conscious of the EXCRUCIATING PAIN. You then ask yourself, why? Why are they doing it like this? Its coz, of poor funding, poor resources, poor patients... They have soooo many Incision and drainage cases here that if they are all done in the OT, the surgeon will not stop work and the OTs cant be used for other cases. Things are different here. Patients and doctors face alot of hardship here. There are flies en the Emergency department... Sometimes, a fly settles down onto your wound site... how do you keep things sterile like this?! The Emergency Resuscitation Room is almost non existent.. I saw before my very eyes, the whole process of how a man just expired infront of me, because of the lack of speed of the emergency staff. Sigh... If you thought your life was bad, come here and place yourself in their shoes. Whatever the hardship and life is like here, people eventually get around. People eventually adapt, people eventually accept that this is the way of life, it is how things are like here. It sad, but true.
OH well, I think I have written a little too much on the side of disparity between Singapore and India. haha.
But dont worry, I have ALOT MORE happy stuff to talk about and many photos to show which is the bulk of my trip, but i can only do that when i return. SO many things to say about the food, the people, the operations I assisted in, the stuff I've seen, the many places I've visited in Pondicherry, and much much more...
In anycase, do stay tuned! Hope everyone is doing well guys! hahaaa...
Regards, Victor.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
WL in UCLA (USA)
Ok, WL turn now...
Just to set things straight - WL is not enjoying his stay here. But then... what else do you expect from WL? Does WL ever enjoy anything? No... Life sucks. Period.
Major complaints so far, and lessons to be learnt (in descending order of importance):
1) DO NOT live in a Shared Room. Do not underestimate the power of sharing a room with another person has on one's mental health. WL is going nuts now... LITERALLY. Need to see Dr Melvyn. Not to say my roomate is the roomate from hell... but seriously there is no privacy! I have not felt so violated ever!!! This is like a total regression of my rights!!! I feel like I'm being raped everyday!!!
2) DO NOT eat on a Meal Plan. Oh, in case you were wondering WL is living in a Dorm. Now... No laughing! No laughing dude!!! It's not funny!!! See... this is what happens when you spend 1 second and using your ass to make the decision on where to live!!! Stupid WL...
3) Because of pt 2, I am eating Chicken everyday. I swear... I am developing Chicken phobia. I'm in America, you know the world's only superpower... and they do not serve Fish or Prawns in the Dining Halls!!! Let me categorically state UCLA Dorms do not qualify as being part of a "Developed Country". I'm living in 3rd world conditions here man...
4) Food sucks. But then again I think it's because of pt 2 and 3, and most importantly my choice of what to eat is limited. One would think with the variety of food offered at the Dining Halls, WL will find stuff he likes to eat. Hey, that was my reasoning too! Wrong....!
5) Because of my fixed Meal Plan, WL has no chance to eat microwave food! Dude, I'm in America... land of the Microwave Ovens! I haven't eaten Microwave Food since I got here! This is ridiculous!
6) Despite the glowing reviews of customer service in the Western World... let me just say that the Banks and Telcos here are just as evil/bad as the Banks and Telcos back home. Don't do business with the Bank of Americunt. T-Mobile is evil.
7) Climbing stairs. I'm sure you know how much I love climbing eh? I'm fucking jinxed. NJC was on a fucking hill with a shitload of stairs. NUS is on a fucking hill with a shitload of stairs. UCLA, in particular my Dorm is on THE HILL, and you can count on WL to mutter "fuck fuck fuck" everyday as he walks up and down the stairs to get to campus. Always remember to check the topology of the terrain! I swear the next educational institute I go to will not be on a hill!!!
8) Americans have a walking fetish. The UCLA Shuttle Bus and the great genius who designed it decided that the route it should take is around the campus not inside it. So how do you get from one point on campus to another point? Walk... And you know how much WL loves to walk, yeah I really get turned on when I walk long distances. In America, either walk (which I hate) or get a car (which is a problem since I can't drive nor do I have the money to rent a car). Note to self: Learn driving before I graduate.
9) Americans have a burger fetish. If you like bread (like my mother), you're in heaven. If you don't (like me), you're in hell. Oh ya, Fish-n-Chips is not American Food, I can't find it anywhere!, I speculate it's British Food.
10) There are no naked drunk girls walking in the corridor of my dorm, knocking on my door asking me for sex (contrary to what Dhruv mentioned a few years back). Dude, I'm fucking disappointed!!!
11) After more than 6 wks here, I realized that in America, Party = Sex. No wonder I haven't seen any fucking action here cause WL doesn't attend parties.
The not-so-bad stuff (in no particular order):
1) Online shopping rules! I don't have to walk at all to order stuff. To date, I have ordered 8 items to my address :) Caveat: You must have a US-based debit/credit card to do online shopping in America. Don't believe the shit advertisements back home that your Mastercard or Visa is universally accepted. It is not. Your Singapore card is broken here... useless for online shopping. An additional point to note, that if you do not have a US-based debit/credit card (like I did for the first 5 weeks!!!), you are really deprived of this online-ness in this country. However, sad to say to truly take advantage of online shopping you have to reside in US for at least one year. This way, you can order 6-mth worth of groceries and have it shipped to you for free, and you never ever need to walk to the supermarket!!! Also, you can order the X61 Tablet PC that sadly has only US warranty but it is fucking cheap... it has been on perpetual offer since Dec 2007, and I am really pulling my hair out cause I can't buy it (no warranty in Singapore). Arghh!!!
2) The Mexicans make good food, as I found out eventually, because once u remove the vegetables they serve FISH and PRAWNS. Middle finger to the rest of the fishless and prawnless food here.
3) Newegg is good. Amazon is good. Ebay is good. Most companies dealing with computers and IT have good service, but you need to chose the good ones. Much better than the telcos and the fucking banks here.
Other misc observations:
1) Fundamentally, there is no difference between LA and Singapore. People talk about culture shock, I haven't seen it yet. Maybe it's because LA has a large proportion of Asians. So far the major problems have been Digital Shock (in the first 5 weeks), in which all my finances were hardcopy (no debit card remember)... almost went nuts. Only main lingering problem is specific to my accommodations and meal plans, in which I cannot back out of without a substantial amount of money.
2) While America is very much similar to Singapore, it is also different in many aspects. It's like chirality. Everything is same but different. Cars come from the other side of the road, you board the bus on the other side, power sockets have no switch, papers are Letter size not A4 (now you know why MS Office defaults to Letter format eh?), etc...
3) African Americans are referred to as Blacks, Caucasians as Whites. Asians are referred to as Asians... why? I thought it would be Yellow, doesn't follow the trend...
4) Asian girls here are seriously underaged. I swear some of the girls in lecture look like secondary schoolgirls. Damn... I'm an old fossil now!!! This sucks...
5) UCLA has an appalling standard of Inorganic Chemistry. I'm not kidding. In terms of knowledge taught in undergrad courses, the American here are seriously under-learning. But then again, America is top in research... obviously they're doing something right and Singapore is doing something wrong...
6) In America, Med School is treated at the Grad School level, meaning you can only apply after you complete your first degree. I support this system. It's seriously better than the Singapore system, where a bunch of 18 year old kiddies get to join Med School based on A-Level results and interviews... At least this way, the Americans must wayang for 4 years before getting into Med School unlike in Singapore where you wayang for 2 years only... and trust me wayang at the university level is much tougher than at the JC level. Seriously I'm like WTF... No wonder Singapore doctors sucks... Hey isn't alot of the people in our class doctors? LOL... Oops... You can't kill WL remember! Hippocratic oath!!!
Finally, why I hate UCLA. My wife is appearing for a convention on 2-7 Apr 07 in Vancouver. Theoretically, I can go see her and take a photo with her. As in the REAL PERSON. But... thanks to UCLA and their fucked up Quarter system, school ends on 25 Mar 2008, and that leaves me homeless for 2 weeks+. The cost of the accommodation from now till the convention, the convention tickets itself and the bus trip from LA to Vancouver and back... is staggering. Fuck... I should have gone to UBC. Why? Cause mid-Apr is still term time, and it's in Vancouver!!! Arghh!!!
Oh ya if you're bored you can drop by at:
http://uncleinucla.blogspot.com/
There is like almost 180 posts at the moment, so I advise you not to waste your time reading through it. In short, about 1/3 of the post is WL complaining about housing/food and threatening to bomb various American companies. Another 1/3 is on WL lamenting on how lazy he is and how he is not doing any work here. The remainder 1/3 is some more "serious" analysis on America and Singapore.
Oh ya, UCLA is damn slack. I'm taking 20 Credits (MCs) now and I have too much time on my hand. No, don't ask me to tour the place. Details in my blog. And do you believe that the academic counselor was reluctant to allow me to take 20 Credits (max is 19)??? WTH man... Fuck UCLA... there is no pressure...
Just to set things straight - WL is not enjoying his stay here. But then... what else do you expect from WL? Does WL ever enjoy anything? No... Life sucks. Period.
Major complaints so far, and lessons to be learnt (in descending order of importance):
1) DO NOT live in a Shared Room. Do not underestimate the power of sharing a room with another person has on one's mental health. WL is going nuts now... LITERALLY. Need to see Dr Melvyn. Not to say my roomate is the roomate from hell... but seriously there is no privacy! I have not felt so violated ever!!! This is like a total regression of my rights!!! I feel like I'm being raped everyday!!!
2) DO NOT eat on a Meal Plan. Oh, in case you were wondering WL is living in a Dorm. Now... No laughing! No laughing dude!!! It's not funny!!! See... this is what happens when you spend 1 second and using your ass to make the decision on where to live!!! Stupid WL...
3) Because of pt 2, I am eating Chicken everyday. I swear... I am developing Chicken phobia. I'm in America, you know the world's only superpower... and they do not serve Fish or Prawns in the Dining Halls!!! Let me categorically state UCLA Dorms do not qualify as being part of a "Developed Country". I'm living in 3rd world conditions here man...
4) Food sucks. But then again I think it's because of pt 2 and 3, and most importantly my choice of what to eat is limited. One would think with the variety of food offered at the Dining Halls, WL will find stuff he likes to eat. Hey, that was my reasoning too! Wrong....!
5) Because of my fixed Meal Plan, WL has no chance to eat microwave food! Dude, I'm in America... land of the Microwave Ovens! I haven't eaten Microwave Food since I got here! This is ridiculous!
6) Despite the glowing reviews of customer service in the Western World... let me just say that the Banks and Telcos here are just as evil/bad as the Banks and Telcos back home. Don't do business with the Bank of Americunt. T-Mobile is evil.
7) Climbing stairs. I'm sure you know how much I love climbing eh? I'm fucking jinxed. NJC was on a fucking hill with a shitload of stairs. NUS is on a fucking hill with a shitload of stairs. UCLA, in particular my Dorm is on THE HILL, and you can count on WL to mutter "fuck fuck fuck" everyday as he walks up and down the stairs to get to campus. Always remember to check the topology of the terrain! I swear the next educational institute I go to will not be on a hill!!!
8) Americans have a walking fetish. The UCLA Shuttle Bus and the great genius who designed it decided that the route it should take is around the campus not inside it. So how do you get from one point on campus to another point? Walk... And you know how much WL loves to walk, yeah I really get turned on when I walk long distances. In America, either walk (which I hate) or get a car (which is a problem since I can't drive nor do I have the money to rent a car). Note to self: Learn driving before I graduate.
9) Americans have a burger fetish. If you like bread (like my mother), you're in heaven. If you don't (like me), you're in hell. Oh ya, Fish-n-Chips is not American Food, I can't find it anywhere!, I speculate it's British Food.
10) There are no naked drunk girls walking in the corridor of my dorm, knocking on my door asking me for sex (contrary to what Dhruv mentioned a few years back). Dude, I'm fucking disappointed!!!
11) After more than 6 wks here, I realized that in America, Party = Sex. No wonder I haven't seen any fucking action here cause WL doesn't attend parties.
The not-so-bad stuff (in no particular order):
1) Online shopping rules! I don't have to walk at all to order stuff. To date, I have ordered 8 items to my address :) Caveat: You must have a US-based debit/credit card to do online shopping in America. Don't believe the shit advertisements back home that your Mastercard or Visa is universally accepted. It is not. Your Singapore card is broken here... useless for online shopping. An additional point to note, that if you do not have a US-based debit/credit card (like I did for the first 5 weeks!!!), you are really deprived of this online-ness in this country. However, sad to say to truly take advantage of online shopping you have to reside in US for at least one year. This way, you can order 6-mth worth of groceries and have it shipped to you for free, and you never ever need to walk to the supermarket!!! Also, you can order the X61 Tablet PC that sadly has only US warranty but it is fucking cheap... it has been on perpetual offer since Dec 2007, and I am really pulling my hair out cause I can't buy it (no warranty in Singapore). Arghh!!!
2) The Mexicans make good food, as I found out eventually, because once u remove the vegetables they serve FISH and PRAWNS. Middle finger to the rest of the fishless and prawnless food here.
3) Newegg is good. Amazon is good. Ebay is good. Most companies dealing with computers and IT have good service, but you need to chose the good ones. Much better than the telcos and the fucking banks here.
Other misc observations:
1) Fundamentally, there is no difference between LA and Singapore. People talk about culture shock, I haven't seen it yet. Maybe it's because LA has a large proportion of Asians. So far the major problems have been Digital Shock (in the first 5 weeks), in which all my finances were hardcopy (no debit card remember)... almost went nuts. Only main lingering problem is specific to my accommodations and meal plans, in which I cannot back out of without a substantial amount of money.
2) While America is very much similar to Singapore, it is also different in many aspects. It's like chirality. Everything is same but different. Cars come from the other side of the road, you board the bus on the other side, power sockets have no switch, papers are Letter size not A4 (now you know why MS Office defaults to Letter format eh?), etc...
3) African Americans are referred to as Blacks, Caucasians as Whites. Asians are referred to as Asians... why? I thought it would be Yellow, doesn't follow the trend...
4) Asian girls here are seriously underaged. I swear some of the girls in lecture look like secondary schoolgirls. Damn... I'm an old fossil now!!! This sucks...
5) UCLA has an appalling standard of Inorganic Chemistry. I'm not kidding. In terms of knowledge taught in undergrad courses, the American here are seriously under-learning. But then again, America is top in research... obviously they're doing something right and Singapore is doing something wrong...
6) In America, Med School is treated at the Grad School level, meaning you can only apply after you complete your first degree. I support this system. It's seriously better than the Singapore system, where a bunch of 18 year old kiddies get to join Med School based on A-Level results and interviews... At least this way, the Americans must wayang for 4 years before getting into Med School unlike in Singapore where you wayang for 2 years only... and trust me wayang at the university level is much tougher than at the JC level. Seriously I'm like WTF... No wonder Singapore doctors sucks... Hey isn't alot of the people in our class doctors? LOL... Oops... You can't kill WL remember! Hippocratic oath!!!
Finally, why I hate UCLA. My wife is appearing for a convention on 2-7 Apr 07 in Vancouver. Theoretically, I can go see her and take a photo with her. As in the REAL PERSON. But... thanks to UCLA and their fucked up Quarter system, school ends on 25 Mar 2008, and that leaves me homeless for 2 weeks+. The cost of the accommodation from now till the convention, the convention tickets itself and the bus trip from LA to Vancouver and back... is staggering. Fuck... I should have gone to UBC. Why? Cause mid-Apr is still term time, and it's in Vancouver!!! Arghh!!!
Oh ya if you're bored you can drop by at:
http://uncleinucla.blogspot.com/
There is like almost 180 posts at the moment, so I advise you not to waste your time reading through it. In short, about 1/3 of the post is WL complaining about housing/food and threatening to bomb various American companies. Another 1/3 is on WL lamenting on how lazy he is and how he is not doing any work here. The remainder 1/3 is some more "serious" analysis on America and Singapore.
Oh ya, UCLA is damn slack. I'm taking 20 Credits (MCs) now and I have too much time on my hand. No, don't ask me to tour the place. Details in my blog. And do you believe that the academic counselor was reluctant to allow me to take 20 Credits (max is 19)??? WTH man... Fuck UCLA... there is no pressure...
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
USA > S'pore! but our food thrashes them!! Haha
Hey guys!
How's everyone doing? Did the laser-mania thing ever materialise? (i don't think so right? haiz) Seems like victor is the most active poster on this blog.. Write something, guys n gals!
Besides the rather heavy workload over at GT here, I'm enjoying myself rather well.. :) Just went to Nashville and back.. Visited an underground waterfall called Ruby Falls, and some place called Rock city (where it's just stones n more stones.) But the moral of the story is to study b4 u go, coz the test that followed right aft the wkend trip was cuiz-ed..
Btw, Wee liang! Would love to hear from u if u're reading this blog! Post something to share k?
Let's keep up this blog, esp since victor is enjoying himself in Pondicherry n doesnt have freely available internet connection (i presume).. So, less chat in the little box to ur top right; more content on the blog itself! (write a bit also can lah..)
2 pics to share! (The stadium pic was taken at a NBA game.. Hawks won Lakers leh, John..)
Hear from u guys! Take care.
Wei Feng
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Happy CNY!
Hi Guys... Guess you are all too busy with your busy lives!!! But anyway, here is a Chinese New Year Greetings from me to you guys!!! :):):)
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! HOPE THIS YEAR WILL BRING LOADS OF PROSPERITY FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY IN EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE!
(and lots of $$$$$$...) hehheh.
Regards,
Victor..
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! HOPE THIS YEAR WILL BRING LOADS OF PROSPERITY FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY IN EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE!
(and lots of $$$$$$...) hehheh.
Regards,
Victor..
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