~JcZw

Coming up to my 500th post soon... I write a lot. A lot of nonsense. Yes. But well, its MY nonsense so everything's of value to me.

First Aiders in St. John, at least among ourselves who considered ourselves the best of the best, we train and train until we can do all our first aid procedures by instinct. By the time we were sec 4 and went for competiton, everything slide smoothly through our heads, a continuous mantra of "Sir sir, are you ok [as the casualty does not respond... casualty is unconscious], look listen feel, one thousand, two thousand" etc etc.

So much so that when it came to the crunch we were not afraid of approaching a casualty, not one who was sprawled over the steering wheel of his car gasping for breath, nor another who got hit a glancing blow in the head by a shotput during sports day. Neither did this instinct let me down when some nut played a prank on me which involved pretending to have a rather serious medical condition.

Of course, now in Medicine, things are not so clear cut. Our simulated casualties would never present with purpura and necrosis due to Neisseria meningitidis (too difficult to apply makeup, for one thing), nor proctitis due to N. gonorrhoea or however its spelt (unethical to do checkup in the middle of a hall during competition).

My point is, despite having most of our trainings being geared to win competitions, first aid was still branded into our souls, our instincts, reflexes, and until now I still occasionally learn something in medical school which makes me realise why I had to do what I was trained to do in first aid.

Extrapolating that, I wonder whether it is possible to do the same for values. To have your own morals and values seared into your soul so that when the crunch came, you would act instinctively, less out of thinking, but more of an ingrained sense of "this is AUTOMATICALLY wrong". I can't help thinking that the world would be a much happier, and dare I say, honourable, place if we could achieve this level of integrity with ourselves, such that we wouldn't spend time rationalizing our actions but would keep to our values.

By this I don't mean a perfect world, where no mistakes are made. Mistakes are, of course, mistakes. What I would like to avoid are situations which you know would lead you into trouble, but at the very moment that the decision must be made, you're confused utterly by a storm of emotions and cell signals which clogs up your cognitive functions like a immune complex in a renal vessel, brings you down the wrong path and bang, you've given yourself a lot of headache.

I've done it. If you're reading this, you might have done the same too. Sometimes when I can't sleep, and my mind is racing, I think about how I could have had so much happier a life if I hadn't been blinded by an misplaced sense of honour or commitment. Or sheer stupidity.

Sigh.

Anyway, it rained last night.

Silly camera doesn't do justice to the weather actually haha..

The heaviest rain I've had since I came to KE. I was having a fitful sleep, dreaming a rather incongruous dream about my PBL group, when there was a crash and my blinds got blown into my room. I woke up with a bang thinking a swarm of flying creatures had attacked me, and having a mental image at the back of my mind of inverted heart valves.

It was pouring. In almost solid sheets. In fact, G block, which I think I could hit with a water bomb if I chose to in good weather, looked so far away, and PGP was almost obscured. When I headed out to go to the toilet I couldn't see the faint outline of the satillite dish until the lightning lit up the area like one of Kokpun's diabolically bright flashes. The drains outside the E block lounge were solid columns of white water and for the hundredth time I wondered when E block would fall on F block.

But all in all the weather was nice. Even the night scenery. I put on my specs for about 5 min to watch the rain swirling in the wind, and watching the lightning flashes (shades of OCS!). But I had school the next day so couldn't stay up for long. Closed my windows and dropped off back to sleep.

The impending CAs are making me write random stuff... Shall make another attempt to reach Nerdvana before the night is out..