The past few days

have been harrowing, painful, horrible and I really don't want to talk about it.

But this is a blog about me yeah, and I'm obliged to update my audience about the happennings of my life. Before you read on, keep in mind that yes, the worst is over, I'm much much better off than the me of the past few days, so that's a big relief.

School had begun a couple of weeks ago, and this time round it's the Community Medicine posting. It consists of revision lectures/tutorials for the stuff we had learnt in year 2, plus a new module Occupational Medicine (got to visit a semiconductor wafer fab - the neighbour of the famous Xbox360 CPU fab plant).

But the beef of it was the Community Health Project. A lowdown. It's this hugeass project, with a group of about 40 trying to do up a professional research paper, using data collection and analysis. Sounds impressive? Not.



What actually happens is that we are at the whim and fancy of the professor in charge, acting like minions and labourers, doing all the dirty work of data collection, while the professor dictates what is to be done, then puts his name on the research paper.

Enough of the details. In summary:

1. The project was utter crap. The objectives were so poorly-defined, the methodology so messed-up, it's never going to amount to anything purposeful.

2. It involved getting to NUS on most days at 10am or 11am, then going to Clementi New Town to do door-to-door surveying, all the way to beyond 10pm when we call it a day (or rather, a night)



3. Was feeling so crabby about it I sorta flared up at my mum, and then I left for school in the morning, returned home to see her already asleep, awoke to find that she's already out to work, and so on, feeling totally crappy not knowing if she was still angry or anything after so long.

4. The results of the endless hours of door-to-door surveying was horribly diappointing. So many hours of effort and hardly anyone was willing to be surveyed. Self-doubt set in, naturally, and I was feeling totally useless about it, because the other surveying teams sorta did better.

5. All of day 1's and part of day 2's effort was all wasted, because the evil professor decided to write off all the results as a trial study rather than the actual survey at the last minute.

6. The quota keeps on increasing, the plans keep on changing at the whims of the professor. It's doubly, triply painful when one doesn't know when the hell will end.

7. I can't even meet up with any of my friends to destress or anything

8. Objectively, all the other groups are having it much easier. No weekends burnt, no leaving home at 9am and returning after 11pm for days in a row. And all the pain was just for something that simply didn't make any sense.

It was mindrape. As a consequence, I:

1. Blew up at random people. "What's wrong with this idiot? If he's not going to write legibly, then why does he bother writing at all and wasting my time?"

2. Oh well, feeling freaking frustrated at everything and feeling destructive. That and going bicycling in the morning peak (only time I'm free with that kinda schedule) is quite a deadly combination.

Somehow, when feelings of self-destruction set in, for that split-second I don't even care if I live or die when I tailgate the bus at 40kmh with just a couple of metres between 10-tonne behemoth and puny bicycle. Or when I weave through heavy traffic and challenge another heavy vehicle to win the spot in the yellow box. Somehow, I forget that I have only 1 life. And there's this part in me that convinces myself that if I survive this, I can survive anything.

On hindsight I could've gotten myself killed there and then. It's retarded. But at that moment it sure didn't feel that way.

3. Felt way worse than I had ever felt in a long long time. Lying on the bed, feeling too down and fearful for the terrors that preceded me for that day, not wanting to go to another day of that mind-raping project. Blasting U2 on the stereo and wallowing in self-pity until I ended up turning up late for the project on a couple of days.

4. Lost the mood to sleep/eat/play/do anything. Somehow this time round, no matter how my friends tried to cheer me up and all, it sorta didn't work. Words of encouragement don't change the fact that I still have to leave home at 9am and return past 11pm when my family is asleep, for something totally meaningless. I had to tackle this all by myself.



AND. I decided. After a very wet and depressing and unfruitful night. No more being mindraped for me. I think my sanity and my family matter more than some useless project and school grades. Maybe I'm weak - my teammates could stand the heat, although reluctantly, and I got mindraped by the exact same project and schedule. But what it comes to is, if I can't tolerate it, I just can't. No use forcing myself and losing my marbles along the way.

Just catching up with Ryan on the phone reinforced my decision. There are more important things. Grades and not letting teammates down may be quite high on the list of priorities, but what kind of life would that be if I can't even see my family awake, can't even meet my friends at all and when I get so messed-up by everything I could feel myself slowly bring mindraped?

Didn't turn up the next day for the project. Never regretted a moment of it. Caught up with Ryan, had a quick jaunt in the new shopping mall in Ang Mo Kio. It was raining, I was wet, I was leaving my teammates to face the hell by themselves, but I never felt that good in days.