Woke up at an unearthly 7 am this morning to rush down to nus for the munus vball training. I'd half wanted to just skip it since it's labour day, 7 am, and the fact that my grandpa just got warded for another copd exacerbation but since i've already promised the juniors, i went ahead anyway. When i received lian kiat's sms last week about the munus games i assumed that we were going down to KL this year but it slipped my mind that we already went last year so this year it's MU's turn to come to singapore. Tentatively promised them that i'll play for med this coming sat, though it means lots of rearrangements of tuitions/vball/cc stuff since it's gonna occupy half a day. Haha apparently lian kiat told the m1 who's coordinating that i'm the "three-fold man" then i was like, "huh?" when yan yuan (the m1) told me about it. He then went on to explain that if i played, our chances of winning will increase by 3-fold and being the humble me, i said yah right, from "1% to 3%?" and immediately i knew it was quite an insensitive thing to say...and indeed the m1 said "aiyoh you underestimate us loh, only 1%?!" lol. In any case we had quite a good morning of "training" though it was more like me , weeming (hc vball junior) and lian kiat (rj vballer) playing against the m1 guys. Still, we gave them some pointers and they did improve during the session which IS the purpose of the games rather than winning. Winning in sports is always a bonus, you learn so much more through the process especially in team sports, vball being case in point for me. =]

I left early to cook pasta since we gotta go visit grandpa in ttsh after lunch and i actually tried cooking the pasta without consulting any recipe relying on just my gut feeling and it turned out as...
Yes yes, it looked quite delicious but i thought it was quite a flop! Seriously. The angel hair pasta was good, but i shouldn't have used low fat milk and a whole egg in the sauce cos it looked pukey, and on the pretext of being health conscious, i didn't add salt either. Hence, it turned out quite bland (luckily there was sliced bacon) and the sauce too watery. =( My family was quite supportive though, and told me to try again. Will definitely consult a recipe this time and maybe just improvise from there!

We then visited my grandpa in ttsh and it feels different to be in a hospital in civi clothes and without my student tag: you can't just go to the case notes and read from it to find out what's wrong and what's the progress like a med student. When i first reached the high dependency unit, i got a shock cos although i knew all along he has terminal copd, i've never seen him in this state, hooked up to monitors, breathing from a venturi mask, NG tube inserted and semi-conscious. My heart sank a bit there and then but after checking out the familiar monitors and asking the nurse, he's actually quite stable. Heaved a huge sigh of relief, and explained the situation to my concerned relatives and then i realized that my grandpa's actually on DNR status already. Although i'm used to see doctors deal with end of life issues with some patients' relatives, when it actually happens to someone who's dear to you, it's really not as straightforward decision to make as i thought it was...

Went home before heading out to get my cui grip changed and a new pair of tennis shoes at queensway before heading to my virgin tennis lesson with david at pine grove condo. It was greattttttttttttt. We did some forehand and single-backhand drills today and i'm so glad i went for the lesson to correct some of my wrong strokes. Still need lots of practice though, and i'm already looking at next monday for the second lesson! After the lesson, i started worrying how to get to dawn's house for dinner which she's kindly invited some of those at changi over as although it was nearby, there was an intimidating 1 km walk in from the bus stop. Then i checked my handphone, and i got a few smses from dawn saying that rodney could give me a lift in. I never knew rodney very well even after 4 years in medicine but after tonight, it totally reinforced my belief that we should never let other people influence your impression of someone else until you really have a chance to get to know the person better. Somehow i've always been proven wrong after having worked with some of the people in med, and forged quite a few solid friendships this way =] So, next time when i hear something bad about a person, i will take it with a pinch of salt until the person does it to me. If not, the person is just a friend waiting to be made =]
wongy was here on 10:45 PM