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I just returned from a short getaway to Macau, Zhu Hai and Hong Kong at 11.30pm, Christmas Day. The trip was not without its hitches - the tour guide in Macau got us a bus too small to put our luggage into, while the theme park in Zhu Hai was almost deserted except for the ride operators. The best part of the trip was definitely Hong Kong, where I got to meet up with 2 of my aunts and a cousin whom I had not seen for a long time, and where there was excellent food and shopping.
In Hong Kong I stayed at a part of the new territories called Sha Tin, near a fashionable shopping mall creatively named New Town Plaza. Unsurprisingly, Sha Tin is supposed to be a "new town", though my dad says it had been around even during our last trip to Hong Kong, which was at least ten years ago. The area was teeming with people throughout our stay there, especially during Christmas and Christmas eve, when celebrations were organised for the shoppers and residents.

Picture quiz!
1. Name the place in Macau:
a)
b)


2. Name the place in Hong Kong:
a)
b)c)
3. Name the food:
a)b)

Answers

I'm going to Hong Kong and Macau from 20-25 Dec. Will update more when I return :)

Gordon, my golden retriever, is feeling depressed right now because he did not get the long walk that he wanted today. He is due for walks at around 6pm every evening, but today it was raining, and so we did not go.
Gordon did not make a sound. But when dinner (dog food) was served, he refused to touch it. Even after my sister and I finished our dinner at 8pm, Gordon was still refusing his dinner. What if the crows take the dinner!
Well my sister and I took it as a sign of Gordon's displeasure. And we brought him out for a 10 minute walk. At first we just crossed the road, then we allowed him to bring us a bit further, and further.
Then I decided, "Gordon has had his fair share of walks, let's go home." And I said, "let's go Gordon" and Gordon just lay down on the ground and refused to budge. It took much coaxing to get Gordon to return home.
And now at last glance Gordon was still not eating. Oh wait, I hear something. Was that him tucking into his food bowl?

TBM (The Best Market) and MFC

The Family Medicine posting is great fun but can be hard work as well. Why do I say so?

1. There is variety. I get exposure to many different practices - 1 gp, 1 polyclinic, 1 palliative care hospital, 2 home visits and 1 community hospital.

2. If you get an enthusiastic polyclinic (like Outram Polyclinic), you get rotations within a rotation - visits to the
a. family practice clinic and family practice nurse (senior family medicine doctors see chronic disease like diabetes and high blood pressure),
b. general clinic (cough, colds, flu, plus random things like abdominal pain, from babies to elderly), c. nurse counsellor (nurse counselling on asthma control, diabetes monitoring and control etc),
d. dressing room (where we do dressings for wounds, not where we dress up),
e. women's health 'clinic' (a little-publicised area where a nurse advises on matters of contraception, pap smears and mammograms. Pap smears are available at $15)
f. the laboratory! (where blood tests and even ecg is done)
g. the pharmacy (where the medications are kept and prepared for use)
....

3. You have lots of time for lunch. More than you've ever had even if you combine Medicine and Surgery. You might get a chance to eat at nice places like Tiong Bahru Market (TBM) and Maxwell Food Centre and try the delicious but not-so-healthy food like fried Hokkien Prawn Mee, fried kway teow, chee kueh and peanut soup. You might even get to try a strange offering called sharks meat lor mee which is essentially deep fried "query" sharks meat in lor mee.

4. You get interesting teaching sessions on conditions that you might actually be asked on by your relatives.

5. If you're lucky, you even get to do a self quiz to assess your learning style :)

6. But when you get home, you might feel stressed out by the amount of reading you need to do coz you still haven't got your basics right. Like how to diagnose diabetes. (oops)

7. The looming prospect of a pharmacology continuous assessment is forever at the back of your head, and there are tons of notes to read up on.

8. The looming datelines of 2 case write-ups and a community medicine patient study er, looms in the not-so-distant horizon.

Maybe not so good a time to go blogging. -.-