Don't Settle First

Been soo very busy lately. Everything is 'urgent' and 'important'. Sigh. In the midst of my tied up schedule, I still get to curik some precious time to use Facebook for a while. FB-ing again huh Chel? Great. But seriously, sometimes FB does help to motivate people. Check out what I found from FB:

Let's make a checklist whether this thing actually goes to me:

Young lady                        Check

Single lady                        Check

Loves Jesus                     Check

So it does goes to me...hehe...

By the way, Yoga finally approved of me being a girl today. Hah! I am soo on my way to becoming a real laydeh. Thanks to my new haircut. Gonna upload one picture of me with my new hair soon. And don't I look laavleh~ *That's what people have been telling me anyway, totally not self-absorbing*

Gooda Newza :P

I am deliriously happy. Umm, no... that's not exactly the right word. I'm overjoyed? Jubilant? Over the moon? Ah, it seems like all those words are such an understatement. Maybe I should just say no words can describe how I feel right now.

It's about our elective posting. Our uni have some kinda MoU with Osaka University and they gave 4 spots to be filled by those who want to do their elective posting there. No more, no less. So for someone like me who had been wanting to do my elective posting in Japan, we had to go for an interview, in groups, with the deputy dean, to see who deserves the spot. Darn it, twas such a fierce competition. I even have doubts (yeah, me and my doubts..ugh!) that our group can get it. But then I gave myself a pep talk and kept praying. And my Dad proved my doubts wrong. Today I got a message from one of my group member that we're going to Osaka next year, baby! My goodness, do I hear a hallelujah or what!?

Picture courtesy of flickr. 

We'll be going in winter by the way. Can't really see any sakura blooming in that season of the year (which has always been one of my dreams when I finally get to go to Japan one day). But hey, no fuss about elective posting applications and free accommodation for a month? I'm just too blessed to complain. Hehe.

My next mission --> Pass all my postings in fourth year and I'm good to go. Yosshhh!

Mark 11:24 (NIV)

"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." J

Falling for the Bully

I scolded him, annoyed him, agitated him, ordered him around, asked told him to redo his work from scratch because none of his work got anything to do with what we were doing. Sigh. I'm a bit of a perfectionist so I always want the things that I do to be perfect. Even if it can't be perfect, at least it has to be up to my level of acceptance and I'm telling you, that level is freakingly high. I admit this is one of my most annoying trait. Sorry for never mentioning this. Yet he fell for me.

Oh my sweet Lord baby Jesus Son of God, what on earth is so attractive about a bully?? I don't understand. Really, I don't. I may be shamelessly declare myself to be 'awesome' when I'm with my friends, but honestly, I never really find myself to be an attractive female. Not in looks nor personality. Which what makes me even more perturbed when someone would openly confess that he fell for me, of all people, after I practically bullied him! 

When a person likes someone, shouldn't he/she be giving the other person hints or something first? At least I'll be prepared for something like that. I'd even give an appropriate respond if I like the person back too. But that confession...it all happened so fast I never saw it coming. Hit me like a 4 ton oil tank trucker, which resulted in a super duper massively huge explosion! That explosion particularly affects my emotional state. I'm currently in a state of bafflement, and I don't think I like it. What am I supposed to do now?  T_T

Happpy Birthday me!

Well waddya know, I just turned 22 a few days ago. Woot woot!

I didn’t really expect to be able to celebrate, let alone frolic on my big day, thanks to our pretty tight schedule. *Killjoy!* Even the night before my birthday we had something going on, something academic and entirely too unawesome even for a medical student’s liking. But hey, Yoga, Ee Theng and Kamini, being thoughtful as always, managed to kidnap me right after the boring event and tried their best to make the night to be quite a birthday celebration. They said, never in a million years would they allow me to sit in my room all alone (although I do have a roommate) on my birthday. Aww...isn't that just flattering?

It was kinda late for us to go for dinner, and Sibu being Sibu, most of the shops were closed before 10. Or maybe 9, seeing that we drove to a few different places but they were all locked and bolted already. It was only 9.30pm. Heh. We wind up dining at this fancy restaurant called The Ark (or maybe it was Arch) which had a really nice ambience and the foods were scrumptiousss.

Above  Oh, that's just Ee Theng, me and Yoga, trying to be photogenic in the dark. Too bad Kamini's not in the picture.
Below  One of the dishes we ordered. Too hungry that we don't even bother taking pictures after the first dish.

They got me a birthday cake and bought me this 'pure crystal pendant made with Swarovski element' which looks absolutely lovely! Aww...they're just so sweet! *sob sob* Tell you what, even if they lied to me (which I doubt they would) and the pendant is not exactly a pure crystal and it’s just tied to some nickel chain, I’m still gonna wear it proudly because never have I seen them so exuberantly thrilled when they gave me the gift box. Obviously they went through a whole lot of brainstorming to make sure I can bask in the glory of being a birthday girl (even though there was still a few hours before I become one). Uh-huh, it’s the thought that counts!

Above            Yup, that's my pendant. Fit for a 22-year-old..hehe

Below, left    Will you look at that, even great is understatement! 

Below, right  Some of the nonsense things they wrote to goof on me.

Oh, I got a few other birthday presents from my family and other friends too..hehe.. My best friends (I actually have a number of other friends who are also very dear to me) and a few other friends that I didn't really keep in touch with also texted and called just to wish me happy birthday. My life is surrounded by lots and lots of people who loves me, and I don’t think I mind growing old each day now. As long as I have these people to grow old with me. That way, none of them will diss me and call me ‘that old annoying granny’ because they’re old too. Hah!

P/S: Not much picture eh? Most pictures were taken using Yoga's phone and he still hasn't give me the pics yet.
        Hmmh...

Grumpy Chel

Gosh, I wish I can blog about something fun… but c’est la vie. I’d be dead if I never face any problem in my entire life. Reality bites people, don't they? 

This week has been one very frustrating week. Of course I face problems every day, that’s just one of the normal routine in a life of a typical human being. But this week is just bad, filled with all sorts of problems which are better left unblogged. Everything just went wrong in every possible way. And just when I thought there couldn’t be anything worse than what I’ve been through, another bad news comes right at me and slaps me in the face. Hard.

I pretended like the problems would just magically blow off. I even tried closing my eyes in hopes that everything would just go away once I open them again. Yea, sometimes I do that when I feel like I really can’t take it anymore. But news flash girl, problems don’t just vanish into thin air unless you face them. I know that. Of course I know that, but I still hope such thing is plausible. I’m feeling very gloomy at the moment. And grumpy. Hate hate hate it when I’m being grumpy! I really wish feelings can be help, but it can’t.

Then again, here are the things that's helping me from falling apart currently:

• "You are tempted in the same way all other human beings are. God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted any more than you can take. But when you are tempted, God will give you a way out so that you can stand up under it." (1 Corinthians 10:13)

• Pray girl, pray. The One you're praying to literally created the universe, what makes you think He can't help you with these?  J

• One day, I’m gonna face an even bigger problem, and then I’ll remember this moment and laugh at how devastated I feel right now when I actually thought this is the biggest problem in the universe.

Trying my best to stay optimistic. I know things will get better after this. Just have a lil faith, girl. He will bring me to pass.

Is Profanity a Necessity?

I’m a very loyal Facebook netizen and I visit the site very frequently. Thus, although I don’t converse with people that much, I get to see all sorts of status updates in my news feed displaying a variety of dispositions, opinions and some other difficult-to-categorize posts. What I’m trying to highlight here is the choice of words people use to properly present their frame of mind. Just so we're clear about this, I'm not trying to judge anyone by posting this. I have no right to judge, I'm aware of that, because we all have our own flaws. I'm just merely stating my opinion. We are, in fact, entitled to have one, right?

I took this picture from here.
(Quite an informative article if you care to read)

As much as I hate to admit it, countless times words such as ‘sh*t’ and ‘d*mn’ slips from my mouth, either unconsciously or involuntarily. It seems like those two words formed a permanent habitation on my tongue when they were first introduced to my limited vocabulary sometime during my misspent youth. In fact, there were more of those kind of words introduced to me in all sorts of languages and I had no problem uttering them audibly. I thought using those words will make me sound like I’m a really cool teenager, so I used them to impress my equally clueless friends. Eventually, those words became a habit, despite the warnings I got from my parents saying that the next time they hear me say those foul languages again, they’ll rub chillies on my mouth. I guess I was too smart to know those were just empty threats.


As I grow older (well not that old), I gather that it is not the use of cuss words or calling people with vulgar terms that makes you cool. It’s your personality. Your attitude. Not that I’m saying the most important thing in life is to be impressed by others, no…but you get my point, right? Slowly, I was able to shed those dirty words off of my phraseology one by one, although I'm still struggling to get rid of the two words mentioned earlier from emanating from me. As the saying goes, old habits die hard. Darn it, I think I'm making up excuses again.  I’m not proud of it okay, I’m just saying. Anyways, I managed to replace them with some less profane words whenever I'm at a conscious state of mind and able to stop myself from using the originally profane terms.

The question is, do I still feel the anger or astonishment (unexplainably, we like to use indecent words to express our stupefaction) in my being even after I choose to remove profanity from my vocabulary? Frankly, I do. So what's the point of uttering a morally-acceptable sentence when I still feel the same feeling I felt? Well, maybe because dirty words are just not nice to be heard or read by the ears or eyes of  the society. Maybe because I'm a Christian, and I have been taught to never ever use my mouth to articulate curse or swearing words (been taught about this since I was 5 yet it took me more than 10 years to finally obey the Lord's teaching). Or maybe because I found that the thing printed on the T-shirt below is quite true.

Picture taken from here,
just in case  you're interested to buy the t-shirt. ;-)

You see, of course we live in a free country, so we get to choose what word we want to use to form a perfectly understandable sentence. But the thing is, is it really necessary to use lewd words in one’s figure of speech? Hmm. I’ll just leave that for you to decide.

First Day as a Fourth Year

Today was our first day of class after 3 weeks of break. We started off with forensic medicine posting. This is how I imagined myself in this posting a day before class starts:

Picture taken from this site.

I know, too much expectation. Can’t help it, my mind just loooves to exaggerate things. Especially the ones I don’t have a clue about. But hey, this is how I was in class today:

Yup, that's the face.

Anyways, about the 3 weeks break, I should say something about that. Hmm, where should I start? Ah, maybe next time.  It’s important for me to succumb to my laziness today ‘cause I don’t think I’ll have much opportunity to do that for the rest of the week...zzzzz

Never mind, I'm Fine, It's Okay

Even in my dismay

I heard myself say

“Never mind, I’m fine, it’s okay.”

As my mind struggled to make up reasons

Just so it could justify your actions

Ah, how I wish my heart is closer to my brain

Because my mind’s effort to comfort

  was definitely in vain

For even after a myriad of excuses I fabricate

I still feel forlorn and desolate

Yes, I was hurt, I felt pain

But no, I refuse to complain

Of course I wasn’t surprised

When you earnestly apologized

Told me you never meant for things to be that way

You promised next time shall be a better day

That was when I audibly say

“Never mind, I’m fine, it’s okay.”

Who was I trying to console?

Was it you, or my wistful soul?

Despite the fact that I became melancholy

I told myself “Oh Rachel, please be jolly,

Your friend said sorry, isn’t that enough already?
Stop it girl, this is not you, honey.”

I know it’s childish for me to pout

About something my mind has properly reason out

But I can’t help myself from feeling the way that I do

Perhaps other people would feel the same way too

They say time can heal

I hope what they say is real

So that one day I could finally say

“Never mind, I’m fine, it’s okay.”

And meant it in every way

Dear friend, I hope you’ll never know about this

About the day that my feelings went amiss

   because of you, yet you did not notice

Relax pal, it’s not because you’re oblivious

I did my best to make sure it’s not obvious

I refuse to let you know

Because we're friends 

   and a friend is better than a foe, no?

I’ll be damned if I ever let my disposition show

Which is why I’m letting my emotions flow

In this sad hopeless poem

None will ever bother to fathom

Unattached, yet Rest Assured

You know when your relatives haven’t seen you for quite some time, there’s always a group of aunts and elder cousins who just love to bombard you with questions about your love life? Here’s an excerpt from that kind of conversation (based on first-hand experience):

Aunt 1              : Rachel! Anak adi’ doctor tau nih… (see translation below)

Me                   : *Smiles sheepishly*

Aunt 1              : 4^th year sudah ko ka? Bla bla bla… Dah ada boyfriend ko? Kenapa mummy ko cakap tak da?

Me                   : o.O

Aunt 2              : Belum ada? Kenapa belum ada lagi neng?

Mother             : Hmm… pandai ka tidak dia tu flirt dengan orang. I cannot imagine la Rachel flirting with anybody…

Aunt 1,2,3...5    : Hahaha~

Aunt 3              : Uih, jaga-jaga ko neng. Masa student ni la ko mula mencari. Nanti ko grad, tak ada laki berani 

                          datang dekat lagi sebab ko sudah jadi doctor. Takut mereka mau mengurat. Nanti join club 

                          “Forever a Bachelorette” la ko tu nanti…

Aunts & some unidentified persons : HAHAHAHA! (and on they go teasing me about it)

Seriously aunties? Like I haven’t gone through enough already for choosing this profession as my future career?  -_-‘

And mother. She used to just smile and throw the hang-on-there glance at me, now she chirps in the conversation too? Traitor much?

Ok, fine. I admit I’m very slow at picking up hints that a guy throw at me when he’s trying to tell that he has this I-like-you-more-than-a-friend kind of feelings towards me. I mean, come on dude, I think the hints were too subtle! My processor is kinda sloppy in this section. By the time I finally realise it, it would all be too late and I’d be too shy to clarify my findings. On the other hand, when I have that kind of feelings towards a guy, I’d be too embarrassed to confess it. No wonder I’m still very single. Meh.

But seriously people, I don’t think I’ll end up joining that ‘club’ anyway. Why? Because I’m young, and I have plenty of time! Hehe. And also because I believe that my Mr. Rib Owner does exist. Now who on earth is that? Behold, ladies and gents, introducing…the romantic side of Rachel!

*Imaginary background music: I Knew I Loved You by Savage Garden*

Are you familiar about the story in the second chapter of the book of Genesis in the Bible, the part where God created Eve from one of Adam’s ribs? Yup, that’s the idea. I believe God created me from my very own Adam too (ooohh), which could be anyone.  Anywho, I have a feeling God must have blessed him with a generous amount of patience and tolerance before He created me, just so he could bear this klutzy personality of mine. Hehe.

I suppose he’s out there somewhere, searching for his lost rib, so to speak. Of course I’ll meet some other guys who I thought might be him. But I think when you actually found someone that you can really connect to, you'll have some kind of intuition, telling you that that's THE person you're meant to be with. Besides, as a believer, I trust that my dear Creator Himself will tell me who is the right person for me. I will find him, sooner or later. I just hope it won’t take forever. But if it just happens to be that God made me so special that He did not create me from any Adam, I’d still be content because I have a perfect lover called Jesus. J

Note to my dear Mr. Rib Owner:

Whoever you are, albeit all the shenanigans you might have to deal with, do give me some obvious hints so that I won’t miss you when you happen to come around. Just please don’t make them too jaw-dropping that you would scare me away. I look forward to the day we’re finally going to meet…or perhaps we've actually met before?

Lun Bawang – English translation:

Anak adi’         Young lady/man

Tau                 Our/Us

Nih                  This

Neng               An endearment name for girls

* Anak adi’ doctor tau nih --> This young lady doctor of ours (or something like that)

Life In Sibu

Finally done with 3^rd year..phew! The result for my end of posting exam came out today and I passed my surgery posting. Yay! You could say I’m grateful that I passed all 4 postings, although the results didn’t come with flying colours. But there are still colours on them alright!

Well, after living in Sibu for 8 months, give and take, I feel like I’m having a little pang of loss at the thought of leaving a place that has given such pleasant memories to me. Now, to tell you the snippets of my life in Sibu, I’ll just break it down into 4 parts since its fairly easier for me to recall them this way. J

Medicine Posting

Uh-huh, this was indeed a helluva posting! It was the time of adjustment. I stayed in the hostel for the first time and got this sweet Indian girl, Kamini, as my roommate. And yeah, me and my bestie, Felicity, and 2 other friends got lost when we tried to go to Sibu town in the 1^st week. It was hilarious though, thinking how we assumed this one random car might bring us directly to town but he ended up going home instead. And we followed him. To his house.

This was also the posting when I become close to the awesome people of the world, Yoganantham and Ee Theng. We sound so 1Malaysia, don’t we? Its funny to think back how we hardly spoken a word to each other in pre-clinical years but end up becoming best buddies when we came to Sibu.

So, my first day in the ward. A whole new territory for me. I don’t know if this was just my imagination, but everyone in the ward just looked so tensed! I don’t even dare to come near the patients. Or the staffs. But in that devastated moment, just when I thought I am so going to screw my clinical years, that was when this nice person with a stethoscope hanging around his neck smiled and asked, “First day? Don’t worry la, you’ll get used to it soon.” Hey, so there are nice people in the ward too huh? And I soon learn that those people with stets around their neck, the smiling ones are the house officers (HOs), the poker-faced ones are the medical officers (MOs) and the ones with forever-in-agony looking faces are the specialists. But of course, this naming system comes with some exceptions. Hehe.

As I said, these nice people are really nice. The HOs helped us a lot. They taught us some stuffs, gave some tips and advices, and other significant kind of ‘help’ which was highly appreciated. Not forgetting the friendly nurses too. They were all very amiable. So that’s how I survived medicine posting. But being the klutz that I am, I have to admit I did do something that caused quite a stir in the ward..oops.. Sorry to those who were involved!

At the end of this posting, I got the chance to explore the food in Sibu. The kampua mee, kompia and other types of food which I’m not sure if I’ll ever get the spelling right. Hehe. The food was indeed nice to my tongue and tummy.

Obstetrics & Gynaecology Posting

For the first time in my 21 years of life, I saw with my own two eyeballs how a baby came out into the world by natural birth. Whoah! I was out of breath, and extremely traumatized. And when they did episiotomy, I was like “Shoot, I am so adopting!” But currently I’m considering C-section. Hehe. After seeing all these I become more appreciative of my parents. They’ve gone through so much just to see me grow into such a nice young lady. Ehem.

The staffs here are rather.. erm.. appalling, I would say. Not going to elaborate on that. But not all of them are. Some are really kind and understanding too. At least I get to conduct one delivery..oh yeah! It was a boy, looked so much like his mother..aww~~

I even had the opportunity to lose my 2 fingers! Err… you just have to know what’s going on in O&G in order to understand that sentence. On this one fine day, I was quietly standing somewhere close to this HO while he was clerking. So there he was, looking around for some nurses but couldn’t find any, he just had to ask me to be his chaperone to do PE. Vaginal examination (VE) included. God bless those nurses for not being around! Since I am this type who just can’t resist myself from asking so many questions, so I guess he decided the best way to shut me up is by telling me to do VE myself. Haha! Looks like curiosity doesn’t kill the cat the whole time huh? By the way, I know some of you might think its gross for me to be all hyped up just because I did VE. Well understand this, might as well I get all hyped up now while I’m still interested to learn before I get bored with it when I finally get to do it for the sake of working.

Paediatrics Posting

It was all about kids, kids and kids. I’m the youngest child of 4 siblings, and believe it or not, I still have that Last Child Syndrome in me. I don’t have much experience in handling kids, and I don’t expect I’ll be able to tolerate naughty kids without becoming a tyrant. But surprise surprise, in some unexplainable way, the kids in the wards have managed to make their way into my heart. I’m a bit motherly now. I think.

We celebrated Ee Theng’s 21^st birthday in a dark eerie park in the middle of the night. Yes, the kind of midnight when the clock strikes 12. Needless to say, bad decisions do make good stories. If the decision didn’t end up with a tragedy I mean. And that park shall forever be in our mind. Hehe.

Surgery Posting

This is when I realise we (me, Ee Theng and Yoga) can communicate and tell jokes to each other just by making eye contact when we were in the OT. Just by rolling our eyeballs, moving our eyebrows up and down and tilting our head in some unfashionable way, we still get the joke. Awesooome! This is what you call ‘the power of bonding’.

Hmm.. what else? Ok, there’s this one doctor in this department who will never look at you nor stare at you. He only glares at you. At least that’s how I felt every time I see him around. I always wonder what exactly his problem was. What an intricate individual. Sometimes I even have this ridiculous urge to ask “Did I ran over your dog or something? Given my ‘exquisite’ driving skills. Because I don’t remember ever doing anything to you to make you this mad at me.” Heh.

Oh, last night we had a party at a friend’s house. It was wickedly awesome. The food was yummy, the company were lively and enjoyable, and the activities were random yet witty! I never knew my lecturers, my seniors and some of my batch mates could actually act in such an unexpected manner that my insupressible laughter rendered me unable to speak. I laughed so freaking hard that my tummy aches. I think we all did. What a crazy night to remember. Too bad I didn’t take any pictures because I was too caught up in the moment.

So there it is. Bits and pieces of my life in Sibu. There’s more to be told actually but I don’t think I’ll be able to write each and every one of them. I’m leaving Sibu tomorrow. I’m pretty sure I will miss Sibu, its simplicity and all the vivid memories it left me with. But oh well, life must go on, right?

The Debut

Yup, I was bored. I have a week before my final exam as a third year med student kicks off and my mood to study had gone since morning. Well, thanks to that insolent thoughtful study mood who had left me some time to brood over the fact that I haven't studied enough for the upcoming exam, I eventually decided not to waste my precious time being depressed, and end up creating my very own blog instead. Brava! 


But I'm still at the level where I'm trying to make myself familiar with all these unfamiliar looking buttons and whatnot. Still very new to this page..teehee.. So here's to my first blog post, looking forward to publicly muse about the nice and not so nice things in life! :)