Restored Post

Almost immediately after making my mean comments about RJ girls on Monday, I began to feel bad. Normally, I'm quite mean (though never malicious), but this time I'd topped even myself.

For those not aware of my strange notions, I have no objections to people being ugly. Indeed it is in some ways it contributes to character, and people take you less seriously if you are attractive, Ceteris Paribus.

Anyhow, I seem to be suffering retribution now.

It all started when I agreed to take over Duty Medic 2i/c duty on Tuesday from Tse Ming. Normally, this is quite a slack job, involving sitting semi-slumbering in the sickbay the whole day.

However, Tuesday was just not my day. After about an hour after taking over duty, spent happily sitting on the chair, I got my first "guests" (apart from one patient with sore eyes already residing in the sick bay).

In a way, I was happy to take care of the first new patient - at least it would bring some meaning to my day. However, more and more patients quickly poured in, adding to my workload more quickly than I could cut it down. Then someone came stretchered in from the SOC ground with chest pains.

In the end, the whole sickbay, all 10 beds, were filled (and apparently at one point they had to open 2 stretchers to accommodate 2 extra people temporarily), so the MOs had to be told not to sent people there (presumably they sent the lucky later patients home to rest). To make it worse, 4 of them were on drips (and 1 more joined them later). So I had a full flock to tend to, and they required a lot of care - most required their parameters (Temperature, Respiratory Rate, Pulse Rate and Blood Pressure, the last of which I forgot) taken every 4 hours, and I was supposed to spoonfeed all of them (literally) - I had to supervise everyone's consumption of medicine. And of course there were all the forms required by ISO. With so much to do, even if I remembered to do some things, I had no time to do them as I was busy doing others. Most seriously, I let some people's IV packs run out, so instead of reloading their drip packs from the top, I had to unscrew the admin sets from the catheters and screw in new ones. From ~8:30 to 3:15, I had not the time to take more than 2 minutes to sit and rest, save for a 5 minute lunch. And to add insult to injury, one patient retuned the radio from 92.4 to 93.3. How wude! In the end I was so stressed I went to hide in the toilet and cry.

Later in the day all of the patients were discharged, but for one who had sore eyes. I thought that after such a hectic day, I would be able to have a peaceful night, at least, but the patient with sore eyes disappeared for a while, leading to some distress on my part, and one guy reported sick and we had to send him to Tengah Air Base's Medical Centre, and I ended up sleeping at about 12:30.

Wednesday promised to be a normal day but I got to sign an extra duty, given by my Medical Officer, because I neglected to classify a patient who complained of asthma, albeit occuring 5 days ago and slight, as "Priority 2" (which oddly enough is higher than Priority 1). So I went to hide in the toilet for a short while again.

And besides these things happenning, I've also been feeling indescribably (in quality rather than quantity) screwed up. Geraldine blames it on hormones.

I guess what comes around, goes around.

On the upside, on Tuesday, I managed to be civil, polite, nice even to everyone, especially my patients (I'm sure being sick, and especially having the Yakult Straw stuck in your arm for hours with cold saline pouring into you is bad enough without having a grumpy medical orderly tending to you).

Also, I felt a touch better after getting my extra duty. At least it's not useless like confinement, where one sweeps the road and does other rubbish like rolling giant stones up hills, which then roll down just as you near the top - oh wait, we're not Titans. At least by doing duty, I'm saving someone else's weekend. Also, I'm not quite sure how and if they keep track of extra duties on top of regimental ones - ie if in the end, I'll have ended up doing more weekend duties than others who have not committed grievous sins, and even if I will have, it won't make that much difference over the long run, as the agony of burning weekends will be averaged out over time. Also, my extra duty is on the 24th of August, and just as a sum of money you're promised in the future (as profits or otherwise), has to have a discount rate applied to it to get a Net Present Value (NPV), so does future suffering have a NPV lower than its actual magnitude. Finally, perhaps the catalyst that brought me over the energy hill past that particular bout of depression was my being amused by how the clerk knew that I was carrying the duty medic forecast - in my reverie, I'd forgotten to take off my armband.


A while back, I was unlucky enough to be struck by a thunderbolt from Heaven - the last donation card for the Army Half Marathon. Theoretically, there is no minimum amount, but our Company Sergeant Major imposed a minimum sum of $5. I thought of handing in a token amount of $1, but as the lao jiaos pointed out, if I did that, I'd immediately get "arrowed" the next time he needed someone to do a dirty job. So I came up with $4 of my own money, and Boon Wei contributed $1 - but he didn't have change at that time. I wonder if he'll remember to give me $1 back, and I don't have the heart or tenacity to chase him. At least I got to invent (or rather, use other people's) names. So listed on my card are "Nelson Kwei", "Joy Chia" and "Lim Liying". Whee. Actually I'd wanted to put names like "skcus siht" ("this sucks" in reverse, if you didn't notice), but with the Army you better not play. Not too much, at any rate.

I am rather upset with myself. Some time in camp, I was thinking of #1 to #7, and I forgot who #5 was, thinking #6 was #5, and I've just checked it up. Sheesh, #5 is one of the most prolific of them all.

I was chatting with the duty medic on Tuesday, and it turns out he's a senior from RI who went to Hualalalala JC.

Tengah Air Base, which I sorta toured Tuesday night, is very big, and there were few signs, so we got quite lost while cruising around, looking for the Medical Centre. Most of the buildings there look like holdovers from colonial times which've been retrofitted, so the place has some character. And they've some interesting posters - there's a Driver's (sic) Pledge, and the RSAF Core Values include Safety and Team Spirit in addition to the 7 SAF ones.

Oddly, the numbers we dial for the various lines for our camp are not the same as the ones that are displayed on the caller ID when those same numbers are used to dial out. Hmm.

Tse Ming tells me he's gotten no offs or confinements since he was posted in last June. Wah. I must really learn how to take care of myself - apparently I "always seem to get the wrong message" and "don't know what's going wrong". What's new?

Today some guy came to teach us about the SAR21. Apart from being extremely boring, he also had atrocious English, but I didn't get all excited. I think I've become sorta jaded towards Bad Army English. Besides which, a lot of the mistakes repeat. Of course it didn't help thatthe Senior Medic was beside me for the first part of the lecture.

Of all the strange reasons to OOC from BMT: One guy couldn't adjust, and this manifested itself in psycho-somatic problems - after a week of BMT, he started hyperventilating, so the MO OOCed him.


I have just under 22 months and 2 weeks left. That translates to 618 days, correct to the nearest 0.5, not including today. My brother in law says that the hardest period of indenture is the time from the 7th month to the 18th month (at least for us cursed 2 1/2 year soldiers).

I hope I can go to Melbourne during my leave. We've range the day after our last day of leave, which means we've to come back by Saturday night. And I've duty on the Monday just before leave commences. Maybe I can do some jiggling of duties...


Instead of cramming all the details into one, loosely connected post, I tried to write thematically, at least for the first part of this post, on my retribution. That should make this more readable.

Sometimes I think I waste too much time blogging, especially since I write about stuff that's often not significant or even interesting (which'd redeem even the most trivial details).

I think there's a Phillips Curve style tradeoff between time and readibility and elegance. Hmm.

I am blogging about blogging. I suppose that'd make it meta-blogging! (Just as thinking about thinking, an equally irritating concept, qualifies as meta-cognition)


Quotes:

"the details are often amusing but they're so many it's hard to get to the end" (sms on my posts) - I try my best, but it's so irresistible to note down everything I find vaguely amusing it's much ado about nothing

"[On RJ girls being ugly] i thought rj girls are the best in singapore" (sms from Royston)

"Downgrade is definitely the way to go" (sms)

"[On life in HQ MC] I almost forgot that I was a soldier"