Long Time No Blog/ Pretend, smile, nod (double A-side blog entry)

Long Time No Blog
I wanted to blog earlier but stupid Blogger was down, like always. So this week marked the start of a new clinical posting, and I still don't know what to make out of it.

The classmate I can't stand, is still as selfish and uncaring as before. I think I cannot tolerate her anymore. The next time she POKES the patient while I'm doing the physical examination, I'm not going to just politely ask her to stop it.

I mean, that's a person she's poking and causing pain. A fellow human being. For all we know you and I may be the ones lying in the hospital bed instead. I think lessons on empathy are totally lost on people who don't even treat anyone else as human.

I think it's a crazy conspiracy but perhaps my classmates are trying to make me look inferior and stupid. This is a posting I'm better at. This is a posting where I have expressed my intellectual curiosity and seriously cared about what I was learning. I think they're not comfortable with realsing that I'm no inept slacker.

Enough about school, because there's nothing much that would interest the average blog reader.


Didn't get to watch Snakes on a Plane because i) schedule changes, became a bit of a rush if I had wanted to watch it 2) had a bad headache on that day - I have frequent headaches, mostly due to my habit of abusing caffeine.


Been having quite reasonable amounts of fresh air lately. 2 bike rides and a jog. Took some photos of nature with my new camera phone. Then after every bike, endure the splitting headaches that often come next. I shouldn't abuse so much caffeine.

Clinical attachments are depressing when you see that all the medical professionals, and even senior students have become a deathly shade of pale, after spending so much time on work and study that they hardly have any time out there in the sun. It's depressing. I don't want to end up like that, and rest assured, I'm trying my best.

So there's my life for the past week, some good some bad. Last night, I got thinking.

Pretend, smile, nod.
My generation grew up with the Internet. We learn about how people live overseas, the things that they value and the entertainment they have over there.

Well you already know that cultures, beliefs, traditions and lifestyles aren't one-size-fit-all. Assuming that a Singaporean lifestyle would be the most appropriate for everyone born in Singapore would be naive. There are many who leave a country and find themselves much happier elsewhere. There are others who, despite derision from family and friends, found happiness in another religion.

And so on the Internet we find beliefs that we think suit us better, music that soothes our senses better than what we hear locally and most of all, adopt a global view of things. No more blindly proclaiming 'I love Singapore, because that's where I am!'.

And then we find that we can't realy fit into where we live in.

Personally, I am disgusted by the very place I live in. I live in a country whose media constantly makes westernised nations appear racist and nasty, while locals have so many racial slurs - for the Chinese, they're so nasty I can't quote them here.

People refuse to sit next to a person of a certain race in the bus in the belief that they are unhygenic and all reek of coconut oil.

People who can insult westerners for being decadent while in our own backyard we forget about our own local religious hero who raped his 5 daughters repeatedly. Somehow, for a misdeed that severe, the media coverage was short and quick.

When I was young I was proud of how Singapore seems to have citizens who are virtuous and upright. Now I'm embarassed that this facade is built on a scaffold of selective media reporting and draconian laws. People don't obey because they are virtuous and upright, but wish to keep their job and their money. If they're really that great, how come they don't follow road signs?

And the music I chose to listen to doesn't receive any significant airplay locally. When my schoolmates talk about the latest album by whatever Taiwanese singer, I have no idea what they're gushing about and I just gotta smile and nod my head like they're speaking a language I don't know. Pretend, smile, nod.

The practical and global views I have are incompatible with local culture. Every seventh lunar month, I choke and cough because Chinese culture dictates that we should burn paper offerings for the dead. Maybe we shouldn't pollute our own environment for something as absurd as that I say. I have no respect for tradition, they say. Pretend, smile, nod.

The local jokes people tell all the time, I don't understand because I don't know the Hokkien dialect. I'm terrible in Mandarin and barbers, hawkers and people all over ask me if I'm local just because I can't speak fluent Mandarin. Pretend, smile, nod.

I'm Singaporean, but for all it's worth, I'm a foreigner to Singapore's culture. Pretend, smile, nod. Maybe it's all the Internet's fault.