Original & Unplugged

closure

2009-04-26T14:31:00.004+10:00

I've decided that this isn't going to work for me anymore; it's just too hard to share moments that I've had with patients or with colleagues because all the things I really want to say cannot be said here, not only because I am so restricted by privacy acts, but also because of the cottage industry that is my profession.

The other matter is one more self-imposed rather than anything - the fact that I've taken on board so much more this year leaves me very, very little time to sit down to write.

And considering also, that in my yesteryears this place was so much more pivotal when I was still wandering in love, life and study... the truth is that I don't really need this avenue as much anymore.

Still, I love writing, photography, food and design. But I can't commit now. Maybe another space, another genre, another life?

This will be the end of the Original & Unplugged series. Four years, 450 posts.

One month trial

2009-04-12T09:27:00.004+10:00

At various points of last year, I was very interested in knowing how I would cope if I didn't blog, and whether I would have the same quality of life. I know that blogs are these somewhat vague spaces people use to ditch their mental baggage, and sometimes the baggage comes back, but at first when you get rid of it there's always this initial sense of calm, and then later the sense of whether there was too much self exposure.

Blogging is like a yodeling in a vast mountain range. It's incredibly liberating but it's sometimes too hard to be anonymous, and you never really know who's listening on the other side.

Having left this space inactive for one month leaves me in a strange place. It was quite to hard to let go at first, and then slowly but surely it felt easier to forget that blogging should be in fact a pastime rather than an obsession by any stretch of the imagination. Then I felt really free. But I also realised that my mental capacity to process ideas had deteriorated, and increasingly I would find it harder to comment on matters beyond work or close to home.

And now I feel like a bottle of carbonated drink that been given a good shake and I really really need to open up.

Or more like an old lady who got kidnapped and tortured by people who injected carbonated drink into her bladder, given her a good shake up and then left her out in the cold so her bladder would shrink.

Highlights and lowlights include:

April Fool's Day

One of our senior physios put a sign on each of our department doors which said, "Use other door" and damn, we all got punked!

Another junior physio and I decided to play a trick on our immediate senior (still junior in the department) where I wore an arm sling pretending that I dislocated my shoulder the night before at basketball, and the best part was that he complained about the poor fitting of it and went on to redo the whole for me! What a cracker!

Official Work

I survived supervising students! I'd never actually thought that I was good enough to teach them, and there are times I still feel very out of my depth because they are quite late into their course. The other day I ran a tute all by myself, which wasn't supposed to happen but everyone else was busy bar myself (which happens a lot actually... haha!). The truth is I love teaching and helping others help themselves get better. And I think it makes me a better clinician too.

Everyone at work is getting hitched and/or pregnant! Gosh I suppose it must be the thermoneutral environment of the hospital that's good for incubation.

There are things I like about work and there are things I really dislike about it. I now realise that the first year is a really important year to cement yourself in a strongly supportive environment, and let's just say, I've yet to find it. (see paragraph 2)

Unofficial Work

Initially: I've joined another football club this year as team sports physio, but work under the mentorship of an affiliate private practice. The annoying part of it is ironically the best part of it also - keeping medical records and injury reports. Who else spends an additional half hour unpaid each training or game night to type out injury reports and circulating them?!

Now: My enthusiasm has waned a little and I sometimes almost can't be bothered going all textbook basics on these players to cover all bases because the dilemma is both my own and my mentor's expectations being unrealised by the sheer old age - sometimes laziness - of these footy boys in performing their rehab adequately to encouraging results.

lost art of deprivation

2009-03-20T23:31:00.003+11:00

This week was absolute chaos. Another job, more hours and adjustment to warm weather once more. In fact, I was so confused this week that I thought summer was coming and hence was going to buy a friend a beach towel for the coming 'summer'.

Meanwhile at work I took the opportunity to get a free flu vaccine, which ironically made me fluish and itchy in the throat this week. It probably didn't help that I had about 4 spring rolls the night before.

I lost much of my appetite. I ate less, and slept less and the more work through at me the more I readily absorbed it, still eager in the early phase of my employment, which still feels somewhat foreign to me.

My second job is being a sports physio for another amateur football team, in a league far lower than what I was previously doing, but the responsibilities I have are much higher. I now have to be accountable for everything I assess and treat, and relay everything to my boss at the private practice. While the money is pretty good, I do it because I get more job satisfaction than my current day job.

I've been thinking a lot about my plans lately. Like what I want to achieve this year for myself and for family, relationships etc. I realise it takes courage to work through some of the issues I face, and actually do something about it. It's all too easy to just let it slide and fudge it over with some excuse, and sweep it under the c'est la vie carpet.

I had one of those Vicky Cristina Barcelona moments today (not the polyamorous ones - I wish) when I decided to put all distractions aside and stare blankly into the spaces that exist only because it hasn't been invaded by every other aspect of society. I refused and fought against the clanging noises of a crowded tram, the loudness and emptiness of the dialogues, and even though I had my mp3 player with me, I think I just needed to completely unplug myself for just a little while.

The idea of complete mental deprivation was something I was quite familiar with when I was younger, but now I am much more cognizant of my surroundings and thoughts and various perceptions that over time, I find it much, much harder to reconcile.

little bizarre incidents

2009-03-11T22:59:00.004+11:00

A lot of small incidents happened over the long weekend actually but I never actually got round to typing any of it out because I was too busy enjoying it.

Long story short, it was really awesome. It was a bit of Kate Winslet appreciation weekend because I spent the time watching Little Children and Revolutionary Road, and the weekend before I watched The Reader also. Very non-glossy, realistic films grappling with and commenting on the confines of our society and how it has shaped our behaviours. Kate did a marvellous job of bringing her characters to life with great measure and maintained a very convincing accent for whatever period and nationality she was playing. What a deserving actress.

And then later Mother teased me by leaving out an old recipe book for a Chinese red bean pancake that she was meaning to make all week, which sat on the table all weekend and it wasn't until Monday that I decided to ask what was going on, because by then all the ingredients were laid out neatly next to the recipe.

It's like giving me a box of Leggo bits and leaving the instructions open. Of course I will meddle!

It turned out to be less crispy than what the picture illustrated; rather, a little limp. The squeezing of the red bean paste was disgusting enough to deal with as it squirted itself into a nice long turd shape, only dark red. (Yummy haemorrhoids!)

Nonetheless I ate most of them.

Other bizarre things that happened include:

Had to retune my electric tuner with my voice because the stupid thing did not register the 4th string (D) and so sang it from memory and the stupid thing picked up on my voice, so I roughly tuned the string to my voice and in the end the stupid thing tuned in. Finally.

Next to my backyard, tried to learn a basketball pass behind my own body but for some reason it keeps flying off behind me instead of behind and around in front. Killed several plants.

Having only an hour to kill, went into JB Hi Fi the electronics/music store and got sucked in for a good hour and gathered about 5 different things in my hand until time ran out and realised how greedy I was so I bought only one cd, and the two people behind me were buying the same cd.

A couple of weeks ago I spoke to Fitness Freak regarding about rockclimbing tips and then when I went to check it out with Cookie and Lanky on the weekend, guess what? She was there!

Also lately I've been dreaming a lot about Harry Potter and my latest one was about Hermione and Harry finding this book with feathered wings, almost like the one from the series Charmed and for some reason Lord Voldemort actually had a proper nose. (Maybe I was thinking he might be suffering from sinus problems and subconsciously felt sorry for him?)

Play, don't work

2009-03-07T23:22:00.000+11:00

The Serious Need for Play

If play helps children become socialized, then lack of play should impede social development—and studies suggest that it does.

According to a 1997 study of children living in poverty and at high risk of school failure, published by the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation in Ypsilanti, Mich., kids who enrolled in play-oriented preschools are more socially adjusted later in life than are kids who attended play-free preschools where they were constantly instructed by teachers.

By age 23, more than one third of kids who had attended instruction-oriented preschools had been arrested for a felony as compared with fewer than one tenth of the kids who had been in play-oriented preschools. And as adults, fewer than 7 percent of the play-oriented preschool attendees had ever been suspended from work, but more than a quarter of the directly instructed kids had.

Lesson learnt: Make sure your kids play a lot.

the pd board

2009-03-04T23:03:00.000+11:00

As raised in the meeting, infection control has been very concerned about our cluttered desks and loose scraps of paper and dirty microwaves and unwashed dishes in the sink that they have issued us a warning which we, according to more senior staff, have evaded in the past due to the diligent efforts of our allied health assistants - both mothers - who have kept us all from arms reach of the infection control.

In other news I've been given the role of the professional development coordinator - which is as impressive as it sounds - whereby I have to organise and invite people to come to our department to talk about an exciting topic that will influence our practice. But that's not the exciting bit. The exciting bit is that I now am in charge of the professional development noticeboard(!) and I spent nearly an hour deciding on the layout because it was absolutely hideous no wonder nobody knew what was going on.

So I've decided that new events in PD deserve a section on the board to showcase the fact that it's new, complete with glittery golden ribbon surrounding it to attract more attention, and I spent a lot of time on the header.

It may not look like I spent an hour on this but things like this are 99% concept and 1% doing. I also made sure that I didn't make it too flash or else it would seem like I was trying too hard which would make me look like a total loser because everyone would think I have nothing better else to do than sit and think about header aesthetics when the focus should really be on my own professional development.

cheapened

2009-02-28T23:28:00.007+11:00

When the new cheap eats 2009 came out the other day I was impatiently waiting all week for the weekend so I could race out to Borders to check it out.

When I finally got there I found out that the bloody book costs $2.55 more than the RRP of $22.95! What a blatant ripoff! At first I got all confused because the price was printed on a largerthannormal tag that made it look like it was - for a moment - ON SPECIAL, much like the way supermarkets advertise some of their products with a largerthannormal pricetag stuck over the original one, and if you're cunning like myself you will flip up the larger one and find that the original one advertised the same price.

Plus it's ironic that they should choose to price a book like this higher rather than lower because clearly they don't have a clue who their target audience is.

Anyway, I flipped through the book today and in 2 seconds I realised that it's practically a carbon copy of the 2008 one (which I already own) and therefore I am disappointed that they haven't at least done something fresh with this one other than give it a fugly new cover. Fresh poo that is.

A couple of years ago the inclusion criteria was $25 and under for two courses excluding drinks but last year they upped it to $30 in light of rising food costs and to some extent, greed but I still bought it in 2008 because my 2005 one was getting outdated and there was a spanking new format to the pages that I liked and to some extent, I was greedy also.

But now the economic downturn has well and truly enveloped our lifestyle and I think instead of boasting heaps more entries they should try and stay under the $25 limit again. And Borders, that applies to you too.

the curious case of the missing pager

2009-02-23T22:04:00.003+11:00

Denial is usually my friend, and today was no better example of this as my pager went missing from my table this morning when I showed up for work.

Last friday was a long time in work days, but a short time in weekends. Anything could have happened because as per usual, I would rush through seeing all my patients and decide who would be privileged enough to see the weekend physio, at the end of which it's a mad rush to drop everything attached to my body and flee this sometimes dreadful place of smelly patients and soiled linen.

I hunted around for a long time, and several people told me to go find several other people who might have it, only to find that those several people had in fact taken someone else's pagers by accident and I felt less like a fool for chasing people down corridors at which point I thought of Chinese Whispers not because everyone had everyone else's pagers but because there were a couple of Chinese people whispering in the corridors.

Meanwhile, my supervisor suggested I go down to the switchboard to go and find my pager.

"Excuse me? Switchboard?"

"Yeah, just go down to the main reception switchboard."

"Oh."

Up until this point I've always thought that switchboard was this euphemism for a underground dungeon where the wizards and witches would sit and play around with hundreds of buttons and speakers and boom orders through the PA system, like the wizard from Oz or Zordon in a giant glass cylinder from the Power Rangers. I never thought it was an actual place tangible, let alone accessible to the public.

"Excuse me, I'm from physio and I'm looking for my pager. Can you help me?"

"No, talk to your manager."

"She's not in."

"Well then talk to your deputy manager."

"But she told me to come here."

"Well I can't help you. Goodbye." Meanwhile I spot a row of pagers sitting on her shelf beside her, and she did not even so deign to check if one of them was mine.

I stormed off, miffed at this bespectacled receptionist's attitude. It's no wonder this hospital is so old and cranky - it's because people like her are still in it.

After what must have been an hour looking for my pager, my efforts thinned out and as with all search parties, the longer you have to look the less it is likely to appear. On the other hand I was wondering whether my pager had left me like an unsatisfied woman on a saturday night and wanted only to sit on my belt for the temporary thrill factor of it all with no intention of sticking by me through thick and thin (fluids) and through the ups and downs (of stairs). Whore.

In the end went I trudged up to my ward like a lost puppy when the Queen came BOUNDING towards me which, in itself was really really scary because I didn't know where to run in case she hit a weak spot in the floor and created this hole in the ground from which I will fall further, even if metaphorically speaking only. Then she smiled and said, "I think this is yours."

"Where did you find it?"

"It was just sitting there in the corner, waiting for you."

And so the curious case of the missing pager was solved.

He's just not that into The International

2009-02-22T22:04:00.011+11:00

There's this $8 movie coupon that went around work last week and everybody must be using it because the queues to the ticket booths were so long!

It was supposed to be He's just not that into you, because the girls at work said it was funny and were just so into it, while the boys were just not that into it and remained indifferent to their laughter and praise because afterall it's a chick flick not a dick flick. (Note the incessant and sometimes inappropriate use of italics - don't worry it's just a fad!)

Today was the day that I was willing to put that indifference aside and for once reserve judgment until the end of the film, but of course the sessions were full so we watched The International instead.

Several notable points:

Clive Oven has great screen presence and a good looking face but towered over the rest of the cast so it made him look the The Giant instead.

The movie had a great opening scene of a man dying on the street from what seemed like a heart attack after a brief and mysterious rendezvous with a bank executive who works with The International Bank of Business and Credit, from which the film gets its name. Lame if you ask me.

The best line of the movie was said in an early scene: I'm comfortable when I'm tense.

From there a chain of events rapidly unfold and we learn about the bank and its wheelerdealings with underground weaponry bought from China to be resold to other Third World Countries. The plot expands exponentially and so does the scenery, as we get swept away from one exotic location to the next, and to this one must wonder if it was another nod to its title as well.

This segues into one the film's stronger points - it's cinematography. A large repertoire of shooting techniques - bird's eye and short apertures and deadpan angles - are used to great effect, most of which backdropped against the most beautiful architecture the world has to offer.

Action-wise, much of the fun really took place in a life size replica of New York's Guggenheim Museum, whose representation of all that was civilised and understated was eventfully butchered by 20 minutes of non-stop gunfire and gore.

Heck even the windows came crashing down!

The film has it's epiphanous moments of clarity, brought out by lines such as "it's not about conflict, it's about the debt that comes with the conflict. Control the debt and you control the conflict." Profound yet not, but enough to provoke some thought.

The funny thing with it is that the suspense ebbs and flows, giving the film an unsettling character which intended or not, I will never know. The suspense of the mysterious death of the first man was never built upon, and very soon it was all questions and ludicrous subplots that I got tired of thinking how everything would play out and focused instead on Clive Owen's inability to smile at anything, Naomi Watt's boring character, and whether they were gonna get it on at some point because it was all getting too unreal to take in.

Next on the agenda: Slumdog and The Reader.

Lanky and the crazy bunch

2009-02-18T20:34:00.007+11:00

The day after Valentine-sucked-my-balls (see below), Lanky rang me up to do him a favour (it's not about sucking his balls). He wanted me to go over to his ex's house to pick up a signed document from her father.

The backstory

Up until recently, Lanky was renting from an apartment under his ex's father's name. This was because early last year Lanky was still a student and as a universal inclination, landlords dislike renting out to students because they are rowdy, dirty, don't look after the place rarara. Anyway for the past year, while he was still dating the her, he was happily living under her father's name but he knew that he would be indebted to her father in some way.

Months of going out passed and the more Lanky saw her, the barer the relationship got. As Lanky got busier with homework, the more she wanted to speak to him but the more he wanted to put the phone down to knuckle down on work. This posed a problem and to make matters worse, she ended up crawling under his skin and used her wiles to woo his parents and grandparents and extended family into falling in love with her just as he was falling out of it.

Eventually late last year they broke up and of course her father found out, and thus the living arrangements became very awkward, like Obama letting Osama live in the White House.

So he cut things off with them and decided to move out.

At the house

Despite having spoken to her on a number of social occasions, she didn't seem to recognise me at her gate. She ran down anyway for a closer look, darted out halfway, realised that she wasn't appropriately dressed then ran back in to change. All I wanted was to speak to her father about this form I was supposed to pick up.

"Hey. How are you? What are you doing here?

"I'm here to pick up a form from your dad."

(Yells out to Dad. Dad comes out, bluntly asked me why Lanky didn't give me instructions to The Pickup ie to obtain the said document from the letter box myself. He then shoves it in between the gates and walks off.)

"So this means that there's nothing more right? No more communication, no more emails or messages...." she says.

"Uh. I guess so."

There was more to the conversation than what I wrote here, but the gist of it was: she hates his guts and Lanky doesn't give a shit about it.

Several thoughts ran through my mind:

What could Lanky have possibly done to this girl so much so that she is now swearing about why her father had slipped the fact that Lanky has now moved to North Melbourne, because "now if I ever go to North Melbourne I will be reminded of him or worse, run into him."
Sometimes fruits come from rotten trees, and her father is one of them. For one I barely know the guy and he's giving me attitude as if I were Lanky and for two as a mature grown-up the illmanneredness is unacceptable. Talk about shooting the messenger.
When you see someone from your room window upstairs, and are still confused about who they are, why would you run downstairs wearing your tiny tanktops and bum shorts if you didn't know who they were?

Valentine can go suck my balls

2009-02-16T22:28:00.004+11:00

Last saturday, the Ubiquitous Couples invade again with their oversized stuffed toys, their stalks of roses and lovestruck faces which gives me the urge to stab their faces with their own roses and then stuff the bears in their mouths so they can suffocate on their own puppy love.

It's really stifling you know. V-day sucks and it sucks balls because let's face it, there's nothing that spells romance MORE than doing something totally unspontaneous and predictable and cliched.

In saying that, despite all this cynicism and a personal vendetta against public displays of affection, just so I could prove a point that I can, IN FACT, be romantic if I wanted to, I booked a table at Rumi.

Rumi (pronounced 'roomy') was great. It's this smallish (how ironic), pared down laid back hangout-y restaurant that is known for great Lebanese food. I wanted to casualise the evening to make it less pressuring for myself to uphold the basic standards of civilised eating, opting instead for a place where I could get down and dirty with my hands, somewhere I can prop my elbows on the table, and to busy myself with the eating so I will not have to excuse myself to the toilet everytime the conversation well runs dry.

Cookie and I thought we'd be clever and Anti-Valentinian and decided to be as uncoupley as we could possibly be. Try as we might, sometimes when you're a couple it's not that easy getting out of couple mode. Like when we were ordering drinks and we kept asking what each other what we thought about each one as they took our fancy, as if not wanting to offend the other with the choice of our own drink. I'm sure the waitress found it annoying.

I read somewhere that restaurants generally find V-day annoying too. It makes a boring night for them because they have to micro-manage all the extra tables of two and nobody adds anything different to the stagnant atmosphere. There are more dockets to write up, more special orders to get wrong and more chances that the restaurant won't make much money because apart from alcohol, couples are only mostly paying for the atmosphere and gastronomic charade to impress.

Anyhow, hot yoghurt soup, fried lambs' brains and rice pilaf with noodles were some of the highlights of the meal - all fruits that fall far from the tree as far as Lebanese cuisine goes. No babbaghanoush, tabbouli or hummus. Delightful.

Service was prompt yet breathable. Being in a Middle-Eastern eatery, and considering we were in the middle of bo-ho town, the waitresses looked suitably gypsy and free spirited but no less knowledgeable and discerning in their service. It was largely faultless save the end when we wanted to leave the place as the bill never came until practically begged for.

This posed a dilemma. I wanted to tip them for their hitherto excellent service on such a busy night but in the end dilemma solved itself because I paid by credit card and I didn't know how to tip them. Hahaha! I guess I could have left some loose change.

But that would be so unspontaneous, predictable and cliched right?

Paraskavedekatriaphobia

2009-02-14T08:34:00.006+11:00

I am normally not superstitious but certain occurrences freaked me out yesterday (in no order whatsoever):

I saw a black cat roaming my lawn (and I never see black cats in my area).
The sole of my shoe broke. (Used blu tac to stick it on for the rest of the day - worked surprisingly well.)
Witnessed a car accident on the way home.
Two of my patients got derailed from their path of recovery. Ugh. Some of them have been here since I started and I fear that I have an overdeveloped personal relationship with them. Ironic coming from someone who used to be afraid of any form of commitment.

I think I have paraskavedekatriaphobia. i.e. afraid of Friday the 13th.

Where do we go from here?

2009-02-11T21:10:00.005+11:00

Last week, it was the ungodly heatwave. This week it's chilly winds. And somewhere in between, the deadly combination of the two engulfed half of Melbourne's outer suburbs in flames.

source

"Hey is Mr X, Mrs Y and Mrs Z ready to go now?" the Queen asks.

"Well, um, not really. They need to be seen one more time and I need to do their discharge summary," I reply. "Why?"

"Because we are desperate for beds."

She's right. The next day the emergency department was full of patients with second and third degree burns or with breathing difficulties due to smoke inhalation. Half my ward was full of burn victims whose homes have been lost to the blaze, and are now waiting for blood transfusions and skin grafts but surgery can only go so fast. It's devastating.

Being in a outer suburban hospital means we have a huge catchment area. Police are suspecting arson and are hurriedly trying to find the bastards who started this. They say most arsonists operate as solo criminals, not organised gangs, which makes them harder to trace and capture.

Due to our relatively flat land, winds can pick up enormously and like giant bellows, blow smoke and fumes and embers so far reaching than we have no hope of escaping when it comes. Luckily it has not reached the city fringes, but that's not to say it won't. Leafy suburbs, such as mine, are probably sitting along the line of fire and each day passes with more anxiety than the last.

The death toll is now over a 150 people and counting.

I cannot even begin to imagine how hard our firemen are fighting, because we are not prepared for this infernal affair at all. Considering how prone we are to bushfires, combined with the unprecedented heatwaves, you would think the government would have put some thought and money into preparing our firefighters for this disaster, instead of trying to throw money into people's laps to seduce them into spending and putting back into the economy. Why? Because we can never be more prepared when lives are at stake and there's nothing quite as scary as being burnt alive or trapped in a burning house. If everybody dies, Mr Rudd, then who's going to spend huh?

And what happens if the whole city catches fire? What will we do? Where can we run? The only thing I can think of is cramming into underground tunnels and jumping into the Port Phillip Bay. And then the whales will probably die as well because they'll keep sucking our bodies into their blowholes.

At the very least and as ugly as this scene is, thousands of people have kindly contributed to the Victorian Burn Relief Appeal. While Coles the supermarket chain have dedicated this friday's profits to the burn relief, Woolworth's on the other hand are a bit slow on the uptake and are still asking for donations for farmers struggling through the drought. If you had to choose between helping to save a life or helping to improve the quality of your apples, what would you choose?

Nonetheless, the physical and psychological burns are deep and I think we need all the financial aloe vera we can get.

Tired

2009-02-09T22:14:00.003+11:00

Sometimes I find, that the thing I need to say most, is the thing I find most difficult saying.

:::

I need to be... inspired again.

I feel so self-aware now!

2009-02-07T23:28:00.007+11:00

Part One:

free enneagram test

According to the free e-book, these are my qualities:

Type Seven - The Optimist

Type Seven has a gift for looking on the bright side of life and thinking up exciting new options. Sevens see themselves as ‘the life and soul of the party’. Whether at work or play, they take it upon themselves to lighten the mood and help others to see the glass as half-full (and just waiting for a top-up). Because they are so good at infecting others with their enthusiasm they are charming company and usually surrounded by a group of friends. Problems arise when their optimism leads them to gloss over difficulties and makes them afraid of facing up to the darker side of life.

The stereotype of the Seven is the bon viveur and party animal (I don't quite think so), and there’s no denying most Sevens have a taste for the finer things in life (this bit is true) - but their optimism can also be applied to serious technical, business or life problems, where they can be relied upon to bring a solution-focused mindset and plenty of practical creativity.

At their best Sevens are delightful people, the first names on the list when invitations are going out and the last to leave at the end of the evening. They are concerned with others’ pleasure as much as their own, and will go to considerable lengths to ensure that everyone has what they need for a good time - all the while insisting that ‘it’s my pleasure’ (I actually say this quite a lot). They are also wise enough to acknowledge problems when they arise, and to apply their intelligence and creativity to finding workable solutions.

At their worst Sevens cling to pleasure, sometimes to the point of addiction, as a way of avoiding difficulties and shirking their responsibility. Delight in the good things in life becomes a sense of entitlement, and they react angrily when others refuse to play the game and indulge their whims. Formerly charming, they can be bitterly critical and hurtful of their ‘so-called friends’. The dark side of the Optimist is the selfish Hedonist.

Part Two:

This diagram just means that when I am faced with difficulties I will go with the flow of the arrows and tend to retreat and take on the bad qualities of Type 1 but when things go well I will tend to go against the arrows and take on the good qualities of Type 5.

At their best Fives are wise teachers, generous with their learning and eager to help others. They are able to set aside their own prejudices and examine the data impartially, often reaching an original conclusions that it is hard to contest. They know the joy of learning for its own sake, regardless of trappings such as qualifications or high status positions. They are able to balance deep thought with a healthy awareness of their own feelings and deeply felt connections to those around them.

At their worst Ones become obsessed with the ‘right way’ to do things and refuse to give themselves or anyone else any peace until conformity is achieved. High standards give birth to a harsh ‘inner critic’ with which they constantly berate themselves for their failings, so that they constantly feel guilty and irritable. Not content with making their own lives a misery, they insist that others conform to their rules, with dogmatic pronouncements and even violent ‘punishment’. The dark side of the Achiever is the merciless Critic.

The first week of the rest of my life

2009-02-05T19:52:00.003+11:00

It's day 3 of starting full time work. My ward is a manageable 30 beds and I only really need to see patients who the Nurse Unit Manager thinks I should, otherwise I don't have to bother trudging around reading all the patient histories to find out who I need to see.

The NUM is a real queen bee and she knows it. There are times in the day where I can't see any of my patients so I sit and take mind breaks from the constant go go go of patient time, and watch the Queen. She sits on her poor, overused desk chair that surely must have lost all suspension and ability to be readjusted, seeing that her sizeable arse rarely ever leaves it. This is her throne, her pride rock, from which she waves and hollers to her nurse minions to do her dirty work. Literally.

Unfortunately, despite my newfound independence in physio, I am still subjected to her opinions as to what she feels I should do. I obey of course, because this is my first job and it's my first week, and to piss off the Queen would be utter suicide. I don't know yet if she's the passive aggressive type, and whether she'll tell that all the patients that need to be seen do not need to be seen, and those who don't, do. And when my department finds out what a mess my ward is she can potentially f**k my budding career.

Meanwhile. I forget that I am no longer a student. When given a patient, I used to hurry to go read their histories, talk to their specific nurses, and then complete a comprehensive assessment and treatment. Everything that was happening around me meanwhile - completely oblivious. Once done, I would quickly forget the names of all the people I intereacted with because in the end I knew it was temporary and it wouldn't matter, so why waste the brainpower to commit?

But it's different now. I am here for 4 months and like all work microclimates, if I don't adapt and assimilate and remember people's names I will die. I know this will take time because I'm busy in the day, and my own department prefers that we spend morning tea and lunch together in the staff room, so opportunities to mingle and chat in the ward are few and cherished. In fact, those anecdotal jokes and bitch stories are welcome relief from the mundanities of patient care, acting as juicy titbits to keep us all buoyant through the day.

As a ward of very diverse ethnic backgrounds, the humour generally has to stay family-friendly and fairly straightforward. Not that I'm complaining because I'm still new and it's always nice to get some of the general humour come your way; though I can forsee it to be quite tiresome.

Fortunately for myself, as opposed to being the only green person, we have another: the social worker. I can't decide if she has a harder job than I do, because social workers are meant to be all caring and understanding but at the same time inquisitive and gently probing to delve into the deep shit patients find themselves in and somehow find a way to help shovel them out. She probably wonders the same thing about me, like how on earth I get a 100kg patient out of bed by myself on day 1 post-op.

My secret? I have a big arse myself to counterlever.

Late last night

2009-02-02T22:14:00.005+11:00

I wrote a 5 paragraph long email to my manager about my trading story and how I so unfortunately landed myself in such a tight spot, only to realise that she is not going to be back until it is too late, and so I tweaked the whole email to send it to her deputy, who is incidentally my supervisor during the next 4 months of my rotation. (I am doing 3 rotations this year, each in different streams, each lasting 4 months.)

Ironically, I spent more than 2 hours constructing the email in the first place because I didn't want to overload them with information nor did I want to seem like I had not put in the effort to deal with it by less disruptive means, nor seem like I was simply finding a way to wriggle out of work. But it seems being verbose and honest pays dividends: she said ok.

:::

Orientation day turned out to be a real bore. Had to relearn CPR for the hundredth time because every year it keeps changing. What, does life support get mood swings or something?

Like a hamster on smokes

2009-02-01T10:07:00.003+11:00

Today is an important day of my life. I am standing on the cusp of my budding career and I have realised all too late that today is the last day of the no-strings-attached holiday. Guess what? I am spending it on physio revision. Gone are the days when the enduring hours of school and college and uni reward us with timely blocks of vacation, and even though they progressively wean you off them, you still take them for granted and want more and more. It’s like smoking.

From now on, each holiday is earned, not given. What I will be entitled to is going to be tough to get used to, like a heavy smoker now handed the occasional cigarette.

In fact, because I have to earn it, it’s more like a heavy smoking hamster who gets handed the occasional cigarette while in a running wheel.

:::

I am over asking people what they do for work. It’s such a status thing. What you do for work doesn’t tell me as much about you as what you do during the holidays. No two people spend their holidays doing exactly the same thing, now do they? Not unless you’re dead.

I have always believed that people are meant to be balanced. So if you work in an industry that is highly mathematical or technical, people will find a way to spend their holidays on something completely artistic or emotional. Likewise as students, you spend so much time intensively studying, that all you want to do during your holiday is muck about and doing the least you can get away with because all those expectations get tiresome.

Sadly as we grow older we can get away with less, and the divider that we use to separate our work and personal life becomes more and more porous, and this is more apparent as we age because we commit more and more of ourselves to each and everything intertwines. That must be what a lifestyle is – the intertwinement of work and personal life such that they can no longer be neatly compartmentalised into something definitive or tangible, and the result is a way of living that has become synonymous with our very selves.

To those who still have no-strings-attached holidays, make sure you treat them like free samples of food and savour each morsel that comes by, because by the time it’s no longer free, it won’t taste as good anymore.

100 push ups

2009-02-01T10:06:00.000+11:00

I just did a 100 push ups.

Why? Because I recently paid $3000 against Father’s wishes for a trading kit that’s guaranteed profit, with a full money back guarantee if you’re not satisfied. And now, I fear that I will not be able to get this money back because of legalities I was not aware of before and that is why I had to do those push ups. I feel better now.

It’s this kind of recklessness and stubbornness that gets me into trouble. I am normally not like that with most people, but with Father we have this tendency to rub against each other the wrong way and his tone of voice always seems to have this undercurrent of disapproval. I hate that.

After all the passing years of adolescence and through the budding years of my adulthood, he’s always there to exert his influence on my decisions and I know he means well, but I must have this yearning to be independent about what choices I make because if not I would not have been so insistent that I was doing the right thing.

Now, it feels like I have just lost whatever credibility I have earned over the years as being a somewhat independent young adult, relegated to his lousy perception that I cannot make my own informed decisions wisely.

You can choose friends but you can’t choose family (unless you’re the Pitts) so for now I must face the stark consequence of my actions, and hope that the lesson learned will not incur the $3000 price tag.

So hot, so tight, so awesome

2009-01-29T20:32:00.004+11:00

It seems Lacoste forsees all men to have tiny penises, or that this suit will finally put an end to all that on court crotch-adjusting. *coughAndyRoddickcough*

:::

Anyhow, highlights from the tennis:

The athleticism behind wheelchair tennis is so amazing, because for every serve and volley, they must brace with their core to prevent the ball knocking them over, and they can move around the court without using their arms with the same trunk rotation as we do while running.
Being 40 plus degrees, they've decided to move all outdoor matches indoors and so for our cheap ground pass, we managed to watch every match without moving. In air con.
Tossed all matter of masculinity out the window by queuing for half an hour in the hot sun at the Garnier stand which offered hair styling, facials or massages and at the end of the it, received a goody bag of all the new Garnier products (worth about $30). But being the generous lad I am I gave it to mother when I got home, to which she said, "WHY DIDN'T YOU QUEUE UP AGAIN?"
Managed to catch a glimpse of the Water Buffalo (aka Serena Williams) warming up for her winning match. Like you need to warm up on a 40 degree day like this.

Australia Pays

2009-01-28T02:14:00.003+11:00

Police were called in to secure the area and its troublemakers in the suburb of Manly, Sydney. Once again, raucous patrotrism is misplaced on Australia Day and what we end up is racially motivated riots who vent themselves by smashing cars and shopwindows of different ethnic groups and shouting profanities and slogans like, "Get out, we're full!"

They say alcohol is the reason for this, but it pains me to believe it is not so simple. The sentiment must be there for it to have risen in the first place, and this is just one example of how alcohol has helped unleash it, but deep down we know that you can't keep a lid on simmering hot water forever.

I have no doubt that each generation should learn to build a tolerance and understanding of another ethnic group as they become more accustomed to it. But if this little algorithm will ever banish racism to the history books, or will there always be that little bit of yin with the yang?

What will they lose next?

2009-01-23T18:51:00.003+11:00

True enough, The Company has moved me to another place again. They sent me a message less than 24 hours before my next shift commenced. No longer am I serving a la carte as per earlier rostered, but it turns out that I was listed at another venue – at buffet service – during the times I was serving a la carte, and so the buffet people had thought I was a no-show for the past 3 days.

The thing with the buffet venue is that I must wear a white business shirt, unlike the a la carte venue where they provide a neat black jacket a la Dr Evil. There are only two out of eight venues which require you to bring a white shirt, but I took my chance* on the buffet not being one of them.

“I don’t have a white shirt today,” I admitted.

“Then you have to pay $20 for a white shirt,” said the sign-in lady.

“But I only found out last night that I was to be working at the buffet area and I didn’t know you needed to bring a white shirt.” I tried my best to appeal to her sense of compassion but I was about as pitiful as a meowing homeless cat.

A slim-built man was sitting in the corner as this conversation unfolded, and as it turned out, he held a fair amount of authority in The Company and so to my great surprise he waived the fee and told her that it was okay that I just borrow it for today. I dropped my bag off for my shift.

Six hours later, I returned to retrieve my bag post-shift. It was an especially early finish and the opportunity to linger about on the Australian Open grounds presented itself, but at this point the polo shirt I wore to work went missing. Not only did it seem silly that I should have misplaced my polo t-shirt somewhere, which for two years of working I have never ever been silly enough to do and therefore unlikely, but also because it was that very day that I was supposed to return the white shirt that I should lose my only piece of clothing. Struck by a bolt of horror, I wondered if I would have to go home topless and suck my gut in the whole way home.

Because it was so hot, it was a viable option, and I could possibly blend in with the male fans who walked around topless. I thought long and hard how my corporate black trousers would assimilate into the sea of extravagant colours and hats and flags of patriotic supporters, like the way you assimilate jam with prawns. Otherwise, I would be perfect fodder for broadcasters looking for some ridiculous footage for the 6pm news.

:::

In other news, I did a double-take on Elena Dementieva as I walked past her along a corridor. My verdict: she’s tall but not so attractive close-up. Where oh where are you Sharapova?

* (I actually took the chance as I arrived on site because it didn’t even cross my mind till then, so really the chance wasn't so much chance as a tempt of fate.)

Please, don't snap your fingers at us

2009-01-20T21:30:00.007+11:00

Money is cruel – it makes you do things you don't enjoy.

It's been 7 months since I last waited on tables. I work for a dodgy catering company whose acronym spells disorganisation and it's the last time I will work for them. Waiting for them can sometimes be taken in a literal sense, because it has become so common for them to notify you of changes or non-changes at the last minute. 5 minutes within ending a 7 hour shift (sans break), they go, “Do you want to do the dinner shift too? We could use more people.”

So I thought, of course you need more people. At the rate you’re burning us, you’re going to need to call Wen Jiabao soon.

Fortunately, I have a choice. I'm not living off what I make there, because I'm sure there are plenty others who link up day shifts to night shifts to day shifts to make ends meet. How they cope, I will never know.

If waiters ever need to do something for themselves – and this applies to those who are professional and dedicated enough to call it a career – it’s time they gather some momentum to protect their rights from unruly customers, chefs and restaurant managers.

Waiters always seem to get the short straw. Anything that goes wrong on the floor is immediately blamed on them. Today I got blamed for setting the entrée knives too slowly, but at the same time I know they will blame me if I didn’t set it right. You never win. The customer, the manager and the chef are always right, and the waiter is always wrong.

:::

These Louis ghost chairs, which I have hitherto loved, are now the bane of my waiterly existence because I nearly fell squarely over one today and now, I hope they find a factory fault in all the chairs so they banish them for good, or alternatively I could rally up all the other waiters to kill off these annoyingly see-through chairs (Expecto Partronum!), and then just hope there’s no such as thing as a ghost of a ghost that comes back to haunt us.

:::

On a lighter note, I met someone by the name of Qantas today! I didn't bother with the jokes though however.

Vomitty stuff

2009-01-19T15:44:00.003+11:00

I have a confession to make: I like to watch women shop.

It wouldn’t have been so weird a confession if I had stopped after women, but this strange liking for the female browse-around is my latest nicotine, my hobby du jour.

Despite the numerous times accompanying women to women stores, I still feel that undeniable discomfort when I am the only male in the store. You’d think it's the fact that you're surrounded by foreign things that have no place on your body (normally) that's giving you the heebie-jeebies, which you would think gets easier as time goes by, but it doesn’t. And the only thing that can ever soothe the discomfort is when there's another similar male in the same store, halving it with you. Or if there are two or three others. And the more there are the easier it gets until it reaches an arbituary point when there's more men than women and that when you start to panic.

When women shop – or at least when Cookie does – it’s in very calculated fashion. Each piece taken off the rack is a very strategic move, because it has to look good, feel good, priced well and it has to match. Tick, tick, tick. Don't get me wrong, men look for the same things, only we have much less allocated wardrobe space in our heads to remember what goes with what. We buy it because you say it's nice, because when you say it's nice, IT'S NICE.

Designers must know how difficult it is to please the general female population, which is why they generate hundreds of styles of clothes for them to try. Sometimes you can tell whether a garment has been well-designed, or for lack of a better term, sewing machine vomit.

In my experience being a store prop outside the change rooms, I have spent many moments observing women as they walk around the store. Most women know what to get for their body types, but there are some who simply love the vomitty stuff and the best part of this activity is trying to guess if they're serious or not, because if they aren't then it's just fun to watch; but if they are then it's just fucking hilarious.

You see, because shopping is such a personal activity (how many times have you shooed off the sales assistant?), everyone is so self-absorbed ticking their own boxes that no one ever pays attention to anyone else in the store, much less A GUY who is standing by the change room looking bored.

Sometimes, I cannot contain myself and leak through my eyes, which I quickly and awkwardly turn into a dashing smile as my offending target walks by in her pyjama-curtain number. Sometimes, I wish I was half-robot so my eyes could take photos, so I can go home and hang them on my wardrobe door to remind myself that I don't dress that badly after all.

Burn notice

2009-01-11T12:49:00.005+11:00

Spoke to Toad last night over the phone, the person who suddenly took off the day of our graduation, without so much the intention of bidding farewell or to keep in touch. I learnt that he has just returned to Melbourne from Brisbane with all these plans to do some stuff and to see some people, and when further probed, continues to fabricate noise as though he has something to hide.

But we finally agreed that I will see him in the next week, but I bet you it will end up in a 15 minute coffee conversation skimming the surface of his latest happenings, him the enigma and I the irritated fool who keeps trying to reach for something in the dark.

And equal sentiments to Seaweed who suddenly decided to return to Japan for good, and not bothering to tell us till 5 days of departure, as though the 4 years we've known each other meant nothing more than one of those sushi sauce condiments in the shape of a fish.

It hurts once, and hurts again. But I think at some point your efforts to reach out become more of a matter of self-gratification than genuine intention, because you know well enough that they will withdraw or decline and so in the end you tell yourself that you've tried so the guilt of their situation does not rest on you. But because you know that, there's always going to be that ounce of rebound guilt we spend the rest of our lives learning to deal with.