Marathon mammoth mangled blog entry

What does one do when there’s so much to cover in such a short attention span?

Do what the music video directors do. Scenes that rapidly flicker into the next within a drumbeat, 5-minute music videos that manage to convey the story, the mood and the rhythm all at once.

Every word is of essence. Brevity at its best.

Rainy tuesday. Borders.

Went a little ahead of Ryan so hung around the shops on the 2nd level of Wheelock. Some idiot mistook me as staff in the Apple shop. Window shopped for a moment before heading down.

(Tinny rhythm guitar over frentic bass line)

Borders. Dirty joke books rock, but look only at the short ones, because they’re always the best. “Brown San Francisco gerbil says to white gerbil: you must be new in town.” The greatest jokes are those you don’t understand instantly, but 2 seconds later you go OH and realise how witty it was.

Looked for Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time. Nopes. Can’t find it. Lately there’s been a lull in the modern fiction scene – nothing groundbreaking, and many of the books being sold lately are just sophomore efforts by award-winning writers trying – but failing – to get that special spark going again.

(Drum interlude and scene change). Plaza Singapura



San Bookshop. I found the book. Ryan found his book too. Conclusion? Borders can’t beat small cosy bookshops.

Met up with Ferret like before. Comfort in familiarity. Cue Death Note 2 review from previous entry.



Ferret's nachos.

(Guitar solo and a crescendo of drums)



Plaza Singapura has this 24-hour Macdonalds. Just chilled and chatted over food, and under the shelter that kept us from the relentless rain.

(Interlude/sleep)

Morning. Checked phone and, WTF, friend’s badly hurt in accident. Tan Tock Seng Hospital. The ward number’s a High Dependency Unit. Not a good thing. Doesn’t take a person who had done his General Surgery posting in that exact hospital and following ward rounds right into that ward to know.

Made use of the dry morning to do a quick run in Bishan Park. Somehow, hamstrings feel strained. Not good.
Did some homework at home, and Internet’s horrible this morning. Word got around that an undersea cable in Taiwan had broken due to an earthquake, which really makes me wonder why Singapore’s internet providers are smart enough to put all their eggs into just 1 basket and hope that that single route’s always alright.



Flipped through Ultimate Fantastic Four comics, and to be honest it’s not too bad, despite me not being an action-comic fan. I admit it, I’m a sucker for back-stories and character development. But as for the action-pages (well, that’s what action-comics are supposed to be all about, eh?) I flip through them with glazed eyes. Static pictures just don’t go well with action. I’d rather watch an animation or even a movie. But all in all? It really ain’t too bad at all.

Junction 8.

Returned the DVDs. I hate crowds when I have errands to do and am always zipping from place to place, furiously overtaking people who just wander aimlessly and stop at the exits of escalators causing major human pile-ups.

Recce’d the video game shop for the Nintendo DS. $238, and there’s this thing for $100+ that lets you play games from your own flash memory card (i.e. pirated, downloaded)

Novena Square.

Early, so browsed through magazines. Men’s Health is, what do I say, retarded? It glorifies vanity, obsessions, frivolous money-wasting and, well, from a medical standpoint, fallacies and bad advise that makes me go ‘what the hell were they thinking? Who are they thinking of killing?”



Rolling Stone had this cover of Borat, photochopped with a Hard Gay costume that’s really amusing. They have an interview with the actor Sacha Baron Cohen, which is really rare because he hardly gives interviews out of either 1 of his 3 personas, Borat, Bruno or Ali G. Still, he doesn’t not reveal much about himself, for good reason. It’d be funnier and easier to believe that Borat, Bruno and Ali G are real people.

Reached TTSH with Ferret and Ryan. Oh well, friend’s quite badly hurt. During my 8-week posting there we went thru these patient lists that show the patient name, bed number, medical problems and treatment plan. And he’d prolly have at least 3 lines under the medical problems column (usually it’s 1 liners like ‘appendicitis s/p appendectomy’ or such, seldom 3 full lines). And to be honest? In my 8 weeks in TTSH General Surgery, I hardly saw anything quite that bad. But he’ll be fine. I know that. He’s improving.

It’s times like this that makes me feel so damn helpless, despite everything the doctors and nurses can do, the patient’s still in pain. And I really hate it when me, being who am I, am expected to know what to do, to be able to change things, to be dependable in such situations.

But really, what the fuck can I do? I’m not Superman. Everyone tells me how I should do things in future, everyone wants to have a say. But I’m just me. I’m human, just like you and me. You want a perfect healer who vanishes the wounds and soothes the pain 100%, I’d suggest you’d have better luck with religion. Not medicine. Just walking into a hospital brings all these bad vibes crashing in at once.

No that I have got this off my chest, online strangers, please know that I am not obliged to help you in any way (in the first place I usually can’t) just because of who I am.

Plaza Singapura. Again.

Met up. Big group. Crowds. Sorta fun. Night at the Museum. Movie’s a 3.5/5. Silly but entertaining but yet rather forgettable. Somehow it just doesn’t feel like a movie I should do a full review on. It’s just a sweet-but-forgettable comedy. Nothing special to it, nothing to die for.

Déjà vu. Hung around the same 24h Macs. Enjoyed. Yeah.

Reached home. Internet’s still messed up. Singapore’s internet infrastructure’s messed up. Why place all their eggs in their basket and route ALL their overseas traffic just through 1 route via Taiwan? When the earthquake struck, it sent internet access down to its knees in an instant.

They can route it elsewhere instead. It’s technically possible, I know that as a fact. Because that’s what they’ve been doing – but only after, and not before, the Taiwan cables were disrupted.