Does your path really have to be chiseled
Out of the rock-face, next to the freeway

Must your desire to be accepted
Propel you headfirst into...

A spiralling darkness
That you flirt around
On the strings of humour
In tandem with warped charisma

A spiralling darkness
With masked dangers far greater
Than the scanty faux-velvet folds
That seem to secure your heart

But drag it down, it will
Together with the precious receptacle
The sparkling ruby showcased
By it's aged silver holder

Resist it,
Nay, flee from it!
Renounce it.
Come into the house built on rock
Crafted only for you by One
Your very own safe place


Along the same way, just over that hill
I'm standing
Cheering, encouraging
Praying, crying
Believing that make it, you will

With Love,

Someone who cares... so much.

Today

I got into hospital at 7:30am, then proceeded to rush around until 2pm-ish doing responsible surg stuff: discharge summaries, organising a tute, watching surgery etc.

En route to outpatients post-path/radiology/consultant Ward Rounds, I spotted Elvis Presley: hair, suit, sunnies, bling and all, having a cigarette outside outpatients clinic. The Elvis Presley sighting prompted this discussion between my intern and I:

Sue: Hey, check Elvis out!
Intern: What are you on about... oh my goodness, that IS Elvis! By the way, it's meant to be 25degC today.
Sue: Oh man, a whole afternoon of outpatients. I have to stay indoors. Or *jokingly*, I can go to the beach!
Intern: *Accompanied by wild arm gesticulating* F*&% Yeah!!! GO GO GO! Man, I CANNOT GO, I HAVE TO STAY HERE TIL 930PM! YOU CAN GO! SO GO! GO!
Sue: When you put it that way! :)

Which lead to this:



Which is an idyllic scene. Unfortunately, this photo was taken 5 years ago, on another unplanned beach day.

What really transpired was, I called Gaya to impulse meet me at the beach, which took an hour to drive there from Epping (including start-stop traffic near Toorak and Commercial Roads). We got to Brighton, and I changed into my bikini (ala Malaysian locker-room style, elbows galore under one's t-shirt) in my car next to a bus full of teenage boys. Gaya and I spread our towels onto the sand, and lie down to catch some rays.

It was picteresque. The brightly-painted Brighton Beach huts behind us, the cerulean blue sea as far as the eye can see. Windsurfers, and parasurfers having an absolute blast, speeding along, catching the waves. But wait... waves. Strong wind = Strong waves. Within 10 minutes, we had our jumpers on, as we stoically attempted to "enjoy the beach". As Gaya said, "We have to spend longer at the actual beach than the time it took for us to drive here!" Five minutes later, after a quick paddle, we were racing it back to the car, dragging towels and pulling on work pants again.

But mere wind did not daunt the skiving duo (well, to be honest, skiving singular, as Gaya was actually on leave). We ended back out in the sun again, but this time in Laurent on Church Street, sipping coffee and sampling funky pastries. Took about 40 minutes to get back into the city again, but what would life be sans spontaneity?

Right now though, I am dearly missing a little of this:



The handsome one in the middle turned a quarter-century old today!

Big big mental hug.

Delayed Response to Being Tagged

So, thanks to Drey , I now have to share 7 facts about myself.

1. My favourite time of the day is the time between when I get into bed and when I actually fall asleep. I love vainly trying to grasp my final thoughts, attempting to place a bookmark to keep place in my random musings, before giving up and surrendering to sweet, deep slumber. It doesn't happen very often, as sleep is often hard to come by.

2. I can't eat Haagen Daz mango sorbet anymore because I subsisted on pints of it together with tins of pappadums during my O-level exams.

3. When it snows, I turn into a complete kid. I stomp around making trails of footprints, chuck snowballs at friends, and try and slide down slopes.

4. I hate crying.

5. There's nothing that makes me feel better than spending time with my brother. I love watching his face light up to an off-key rendition of Polly Puts the Kettle On. He's so incredibly cute when he's fighting sleep because he wants to keep playing with his toy piano.

6. Beach holidays over mountain ones anyday.

7. I dislike the sterile smell of my bathroom after a good scrub. I much prefer the blend of my conditioner, Chanel perfume, fruity shower-gel and Nivea moisturiser that lingers long after my shower.

:)

Bedtime

The words are effortlessly swimming
Focusing however is effortful
Enya is playing on the stereo
She is good to float to

All the concepts meld into one
PowerofAttorneyPremorbidFunctionLaxatives
Twelve hours of continuous memorising
Alice, Alice, who the hell is Alice?

Paddles stream into Caddles
Which put caps of passionfruit on
To form big fat Daddles and paper aeroplanes,
To fly over the cuckoo's nest

Probably not the best (re)start.

To understand the title of this post, refer to the comments section of the last post. In faux-defence of what really is pure laziness, the baby featured above is so cute, and her aunty Sue likes stuffing her with food! Oh, and if her mum has any objections about her daughter's photos being posted here, I shall remove them.

For thoughts that closely mirror my current ones, read Agnes' post on modern technology. Maybe more on that later.

I'm back.

Signing off,

Sue, the leech.

It was just another Monday morning and I was striding hurriedly down the Degraves-Flinders underpass, rushing to catch my train out to Heidelberg. I did however (albeit barely) realise that there were three buskers compared to the usual one. That thought had just flitted across my muddled, slightly grumpy morning-brain when suddenly a couple of guitars started playing and two of the three buskers began a beautiful, well-harmonised version of The Everly Brothers' classic "All I Have To Do is Dream". Before I could stop myself, I felt a big cheesy grin come upon my face. I looked up (from my highly exciting shoes) and found that the tall grumpy looking (and slow-moving guy) in front of me was looking to the source of the music with the same unabashed yet slightly-embaressed grin that was plastered on my mug.

I wanted to stop and pop a golden coin in their battered opened cases, but with my train fast approaching and the sea of harried commuters between me and them, I merely silently thanked them and carried on.

"What exactly was I thanking them for", I pondered in the subsequent train ride? Was it the beautiful rendition of a classic in an unexpected setting? Or was it the innocent memory that it conjured up, of my then-little cousin Eddie sitting by the radio and painstakingly writing all the lyrics of this particular song out so that my mum could teach him how to sing it (imagine if he had picked a Queen song!). Or maybe it was just that on a Monday morning, someone would gently remind me to Dream. To in the rush, take a couple of minutes to renew my state-of-mind with either a daydream of the future, or just to let my mind punt down the canals of Venice, and stop at a bougainvilla wreathed hotel. The lazy appreciation of it's uniqueness and sepia-toned thoughts of romance, still clear despite time, through my mind's eye.

Well, it's certainly changed my iPod playlist this morning. From indie-rock to oldies. Currently, Johnny Nash's "I can see clearly now the rain has gone". How cornily apt.

A Sobering Thought

Was just having a chat with a friend of mine who has been an intern for a month regarding choice of careers in medicine.

Her philosophy (based on her experience on the ward so far) was,
"In the end, the choices you make are going to decide who's life you're going to have on your hands. Do you want that life to be a 90 year old terminally-ill man's, or that of a 8 year old kid?"

Well, the only 2 things in med so far that have excited me are Obstetrics & Gynaecology and Paediatrics. I'm not prepared to give up my life for the O&G lifestyle, which pretty much leaves Paeds.

It's definitely making me think twice about Paeds.

Hopefully when I start working, some other branch of medicine will enthrall me.