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| Thursday, January 01, 2009 In view of the new year and of the increasing personal demand for user friendliness, I have moved to a different account where my new year post can be found. Have so far used the same blog skin for slightly more than 3 years, and have written 517 posts including this one. Am not discarding this one yet though, am proud of it and may find more use for it yet. Cheerio, and happy new year ~JcZw~ at 12:00 pm
Sunday, December 28, 2008 10.20 in the evening. I'm sitting in my hall room with an unopened file of microB having just moved back in. As far as I know none of my acquaintances are in hall, save maybe for the handballers. I'm feeling very sian. Something like depressed but not so serious. Cos the youths in the church which I finally connected to at Church camp are at youth camp (ironically, at Changi Beach Club, the site of the finale of Medicamp), while I have to study. Cos tomorrow there's a full day of handball and a friendly the day after so I cannot go back to Changi at all. Cos though I feel my handball's improved, I still lack the height needed to cover the goal effectively and this is still being gleefully exploited and I dunno how to compensate for it. Cos I know that from now on, the rest of my life is gonna follow a wonky time table which is gonna kick my social life out of the window. Cos when I start studying Streptococcus I can barely remember what I read for Staphylococcus Urgh. Just some very spoilt thoughts from someone who's struck a sudden bout of enviousness of the rest of the world. ~JcZw~ at 10:22 pm
Saturday, December 27, 2008 As from today, I've played my most injurious soccer match since Primary 4. Just when I was getting used to pace of intra-fac games, I got a message calling me for a game with the medicine soccer team against some external team. Dunno how many tiers of goalkeepers from Mayank down they had to dig before they got to me heh. So played for the first time on new artificial turf at VS (the last time I saw it, it was a potholed piece of sand). The first dive already promised the astro burns to follow. I must say though, that not being covered with new layers of mud with each progressive dive was a treat. The game didn't go well, admittedly. My heart was in my room in hall with my microbiology stuff, and made quite a few mistakes. None of them led to goals, thank goodness, but I must say that I gave the defenders many heart attacks. In retrospect actually things went quite well aside from a free kick with nearly took down the post of the goal. I got a touch but only succeeded in straining my finger which was wrapped in Leukoplast as always. On the outfield side... well, we were losing in ball in almost every 50-50 situation. So the ball would start quite far up, but would be tackled by an opponent, brought closer, forcing a tackle from our own side, whereupon the ball would spin clear, and almost invariably fall to the feet of an opposing player. Nothing like playing behind ZhengXian, Kevin, Ian, Wenjie and Samuel in the M2s team, who give me a lot more confidence. Oh the outfielders weren't bad, but just not that coordinated. Caught a long ball into the penalty area, dived at the feet of another player who had the ball, and ran out to kick a loose ball away. Then an attacker cut in from the wing, outmuscled the defender, and fired into the goal from hmmm 11 meters out. My dive was just a little too slow. An opponent running into the penalty area got brought down by another Medic. The penalty went low to my right. I was reacting and not predicting so again just a little too slow. 0-2 In the second half, a long ball fell to the attacker just inside the penalty area. He took two steps and shot. I dived left, parried the shot, but it still trickled into a corner of the goal. The 4th goal was the best. A free kick was met by a attacker on the right who headed the ball back across the penalty area to another opponent who took one touch to control the ball. I ran to the left and dived to smother the shot, but hey, it wasn't there already. He'd passed it AGAIN across the goal, or it'd taken a deflection, but it was going into the right corner. When the game evolves such that the opponents can start doing 2-on-1s with you, life's not worth living. Oh we were scoring too of course, but not quite as many heh. Then came the clanger 10 min from time. Again, a skirmish at the edge of the penalty box. Again, the Medic was dispossessed. The large white striker turned and unleashed a snap shot on the turn, low and left. Down I went, hands first. Down came the ball, hit the ground, and oh the wicked bounciness of the artificial surface! It rose above my hands and hit me smack in the left eye. Down I went. Down I stayed. Bright lights flashed. Little birds sang. The miniature solar systems orbited in my head. When I opened my eyes the first word in my mind, incongruously, was "scotomata". This evaporated when I finally found my specs which had been bent into a funny shape (at Parkway later, I found out that the mechanism in the joints had been twisted too so the damage was terminal). The referee suggested I play without specs. I told him my degree was 900. He couldn't stop chuckling after that. So I played for the last 10 min with funny specs. When your eyesight is 900 degrees and you don't have good specs, everything's funny. 5 minutes can see you developing a headache. When your eyesight is 900 degrees and you don't have good specs, your depth perception goes. If I didn't know that the field was completely flat, I would have been wondering whether each line between the light and dark patches of the pitch was flat or ascending or descending. The next drop kick I did was horrendous. Misjudged the height of the ball completely. Possibly the worst mistake of the day. Well so that ended the game. We didn't win. The margin wasn't big, but it was enough. Later on I discovered that my left orbit had taken the hit too and so the sides were slowly swelling up. Maybe I'll get a black eye like in the cartoons. What a day indeed. And on an end note, I just discovered that playing on artificial turf predisposes people to a higher risk fo MRSA infection ~JcZw~ at 6:15 pm
Thursday, December 25, 2008 Carolling at Quality Hotel with the church today. I was the only one from my rather expansive family to take part. Even more ironic was that I'm the one with the closest exam =X Infernal bacteria. And their antibiotics. Much smaller group than last year, but still quite high nevertheless. A lot of people came to watch and to take pictures. And we sang our lungs out heh (No splitting into sections dealing with your own particular range here). On the whole, a good show, and more importantly a good testimony to what we believe in =) Group pic at the end of the thing. But the new thing this year was going to the blocks opposite to sing. They were of the older variety, small flats occupied with a variety of people, but mainly the elderly. I'll long remember singing songs like "you yi jian li wu", talking to them, reaching through the grills of the house to shake hands with them. We sang for near an hour straight until our voices all became quite strained. The image of singers nodules floated unwanted into my head. God bless these people and keep them healthy, even in their immunocompromised days. Had a more sobering experience on the MRT ride home. Was on the train from City Hall back to Kembangan when a man shuffled into the carriage looking for a seat. I remember him very clearly - brown sandals, olive green Converse satchel, black cap and clutching a box of Ferraro Roche tightly to him. No doubt a Christmas present to someone he cared for. He found a seat and sat down, not a big deal since the train was pretty empty (Because everyone was at parties, according to Dezhi). A very ordinary scene at this time of the year. Except his face and arms were criss-crossed with angry nodules and swellings, across his lips and his ears, twisting his fingers. The people who were near him imperceptibly shrank away. The old man next to him looked him up and down. I would be lying if I didn't admit that the sight made me feel uncomfortable myself. I could only think of mycobacteria or hypertrophic scars as a cause. But there you have it. We study about all these terrible things in the textbooks but nothing quite prepares you for the real thing, as we used to discuss back in SJ. Just an ordinary guy, with his own programme, his own ideas, and definitely, from what he carried, with his own friends and loved ones much like any of us. But a guy whom some might say got a raw deal with life. It was a harsh reminder of my reasons for wanting to do medicine, and what the job entails. Ultimately, it's for these people whom the various bugs and pathology indiscrimnately attack that we mug. ~JcZw~ at 1:03 am
Tuesday, December 23, 2008 I finally understand why in Sec 4 God gave me a nice, but also idiosyncratic, law-abiding teacher-in-charge for my CCA =) 4 years down the line things have worked out for good. Thank God! Christmas feels happier suddenly. Though microB is still in dire straits. Now we have been through the harvest Winter has truly begun Now we have walked in the chill of the night We are waiting for, waiting for, for the saviour's day Many have come from the valleys Many have come from the hills Many have started there journey home To be with someone, with someone, on the saviour's day Open your eyes on saviour's day Don't look back or turn away Life can be yours if you only stay He is calling you, calling you, on the saviour's day Joining the old and the young ones Joining the black and the white Meeting the need of the hungry is he Will we ever remeber him on the saviour's day Open your eyes on saviour's day Don't look back or turn away Life can be yours if you only stay He is calling you, calling you, on the saviour's day Here's to the God of the present (raise your glasses) Here's to the God of the past (praise to the king) Here's to the hope in the future he brings We will sing to him, sing to him, on the saviour's day ~JcZw~ at 2:48 pm
Monday, December 22, 2008 Isn't life interesting. Just when I thought everything was going smoothly, something jumps out and gives me a hearty smack on the face. Murphy's law 1 Jonathan 0 No matter how hard we try, red tape gets in the way. I don't know why such a simple procedure requires so many levels of authorization. The last time I saw something like that, I was reading "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston. And I'm not even playing with filoviruses. Too much red tape, not enough time. How to finish microB? Still, there's always a fascination with wondering how God will turn things around and make everything fall into place. Kinda like those feel-good shows when the good guys get into worst and worst situations but you know they're gonna win in the end. Meanwhile its Deck the hols with bouts of Coxiella-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la and all the other little bugs with disproportionately long names. ~JcZw~ at 7:07 pm
Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Am now in Holiday Inn Melaka, in the aforementioned state of Malaysia. Life has been good =) A fair share of relaxing, listening to God's words, and studying about gonococcus. Have limited online so shall stop here. But well, will write more about it another day ~JcZw~ at 10:22 pm
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