All I want is to insert a quote from my new favourite movie into my title. Moonrise Kingdom, in case you were wondering. I'm partial to Wes Anderson's ways I guess, after Fantastic Mr Fox. But Suzy, oh Suzy! What a charming film, so glad I decided to watch it with one of my free tickets.
I've just packed my bags and I'm just about good to go. Just gotta shove this laptop into my bag and select up to 2 books to bring, if I can fit them into my bag. Not that bad, only took me 1-2 hours to pack. Biggest item has got to be the bolster. Half my check in comprises of my bolster hehe. I was just thinking what the heck, since I've got nth to bring why not bring along the ultimate in comfort.
And it's time to leave now. While maybe not all of us are going to leave for someplace else, don't be sad if you get to stay wherever you are surrounded by all of your friends and family, cause life always is a journey for us all. Bon voyage friends!
Friday 21 September 2012
Thursday 20 September 2012
Lives Put On Hold.
I kind of ended of my previous post with the intention of immediately launching into another one, but I didn't do that for reasons unknown. It's been a rather eventful few weeks. Or rather, few months ever since I've been back here. Maybe chronological is the best way to do this, so here goes!
I was supposed to go to Uganda and Kenya after my exams ended for a volunteering project at a school in South Uganda (I think, anyways away from where Kony is supposed to be operating) which was to last 2 weeks, before hitting the national parks there and the ones in Kenya for another 2 weeks for a grand total of a month in Africa. Unfortunately things didn't work out that way.
So what happened was that my auntie, who'd been battling cancer, learnt of my plans and declared that I was not to go, as she had concerns over my safety etc. Naturally my initial response was to bristle and get all annoyed, thinking how silly it was that I should cancel my plans based on an Internet campaign and the worries of a fearful aunt. I almost decided there and then that I would carry on regardless, possibly out of pure angst. Well, I didn't. I guess I realized that the right thing to do was to go back home after my exams then, or at least that that was what my parents really wanted, in spite of their never saying so out loud. I know they were glad I decided to come back early, so was my aunt, so I guess that makes it a right decision.
So I was back in Singapore. I visited my aunt a couple of times, by then she had been given about a month or two left to live. Then my grandma was admitted to the hospital for a skin infection, amongst other age-related complications. By then I'd started work already, with a stay-in rate of almost 1 night every 2 days, so I was pretty whacked. I tried to visit my grandma and my aunt on most of my days off, i.e. weekends or after work on a weekday which was pretty tiring. I'd end work, visit my grandma at alexandra hospital, and sleep almost immediately upon reaching home.
I think it made my parents happy to know that I was visiting my grandma regularly, especially since my siblings barely did for their own reasons. I think my grandma was happy to see me, not least because I usually bought food for her. I tried to give her something to look forward to by asking her what she wanted me to buy for her on my next visits, which usually made her smile and made her think. I try to make her think by asking her lots of questions, asking her about her routine, about events from a couple of days back, the contents of her meals etc. I worry that she'll start going senile soon.
Thankfully the staff at the hospital were amazing. Most of the nurses there would try to chat with my grandma and all, which was pretty amazing I think. I mean, they've gotta have tens of patients to take care of and with what I would guess is a pretty rapid turnover rate (patients admitting and discharging) they don't get much out of making friends anyway. I think they were just generally nice, which was brilliant. Some of them would even chat with me which was great, given that it's hard to sustain a prolonged conversation with a woman who's nearing 90 and hard of hearing.
For this to be a truthful record, I must confess that my trips there were made much more pleasant by the presence of some particularly noteworthy staff there. There was the rather pretty/cute nurse who would joke with me, whose name of course I never found out, despite the rather obvious name tags. I guess it's rather unseemly to be looking at a woman's chest like that, silly place to put name tags really. And there was the probable student physiologist, probable because she seemed too young to be an actual practicing one, but of course I never managed to ask her about that. Huh. Why I fail. But yeah, that was that, so I can't say that visiting my grandma was merely the onerous fulfilling of an obligation, it was occasionally rather enjoyable as well!
I guess I've changed in that regard as well. From the changing of my travel plans to my visiting my grandma in the hospital. I don't think I would have done the same had these scenarios happened last year. I would have put my back up and my foot down and insist on going to Uganda. I would probably have paid my grandma one visit at the hospital after constant nagging by my parents to do so. What's changed since then, and why? I was wondering myself, and wonder is the right word here. After skyping with my parents to inform them that yes, I would cancel my trip and head straight home after my papers, I kind of sat there in a daze. I wondered at what I had just done. I wondered that I had just scrapped a whole month worth of planned activities/traveling, opting instead to go back home early. I wondered that one whole month of my near future was altered just like that, one that I had been greatly anticipating too. I don't think words quite do justice here to the enormity of what I felt then, that I had in a few minutes, a few spoken sentences, radically changed my life (in the immediate sense).
In hindsight, I guess that it did change my life, or at least it was the culmination of the changes in my life.
Anyhow, moving on now. Because I've just kept this in my drafts for more than a month. I guess I never really change after all! All this procrastination, although in my defence I must say that work was excruciatingly taxing and I never had any energy to do anything.
The one observation I wanted to record here was that of all those people's lives being put on hold. In the old folk's home, where all its residents are merely there waiting for the inevitable. All those people visiting them, especially those I saw who were there every single day, it's like pressing the pause button in their lives while they wait out what they dread, not living their own lives even. In the hospital, in the old folk's home, wherever it was. And I felt pretty sad.
I was supposed to go to Uganda and Kenya after my exams ended for a volunteering project at a school in South Uganda (I think, anyways away from where Kony is supposed to be operating) which was to last 2 weeks, before hitting the national parks there and the ones in Kenya for another 2 weeks for a grand total of a month in Africa. Unfortunately things didn't work out that way.
So what happened was that my auntie, who'd been battling cancer, learnt of my plans and declared that I was not to go, as she had concerns over my safety etc. Naturally my initial response was to bristle and get all annoyed, thinking how silly it was that I should cancel my plans based on an Internet campaign and the worries of a fearful aunt. I almost decided there and then that I would carry on regardless, possibly out of pure angst. Well, I didn't. I guess I realized that the right thing to do was to go back home after my exams then, or at least that that was what my parents really wanted, in spite of their never saying so out loud. I know they were glad I decided to come back early, so was my aunt, so I guess that makes it a right decision.
So I was back in Singapore. I visited my aunt a couple of times, by then she had been given about a month or two left to live. Then my grandma was admitted to the hospital for a skin infection, amongst other age-related complications. By then I'd started work already, with a stay-in rate of almost 1 night every 2 days, so I was pretty whacked. I tried to visit my grandma and my aunt on most of my days off, i.e. weekends or after work on a weekday which was pretty tiring. I'd end work, visit my grandma at alexandra hospital, and sleep almost immediately upon reaching home.
I think it made my parents happy to know that I was visiting my grandma regularly, especially since my siblings barely did for their own reasons. I think my grandma was happy to see me, not least because I usually bought food for her. I tried to give her something to look forward to by asking her what she wanted me to buy for her on my next visits, which usually made her smile and made her think. I try to make her think by asking her lots of questions, asking her about her routine, about events from a couple of days back, the contents of her meals etc. I worry that she'll start going senile soon.
Thankfully the staff at the hospital were amazing. Most of the nurses there would try to chat with my grandma and all, which was pretty amazing I think. I mean, they've gotta have tens of patients to take care of and with what I would guess is a pretty rapid turnover rate (patients admitting and discharging) they don't get much out of making friends anyway. I think they were just generally nice, which was brilliant. Some of them would even chat with me which was great, given that it's hard to sustain a prolonged conversation with a woman who's nearing 90 and hard of hearing.
For this to be a truthful record, I must confess that my trips there were made much more pleasant by the presence of some particularly noteworthy staff there. There was the rather pretty/cute nurse who would joke with me, whose name of course I never found out, despite the rather obvious name tags. I guess it's rather unseemly to be looking at a woman's chest like that, silly place to put name tags really. And there was the probable student physiologist, probable because she seemed too young to be an actual practicing one, but of course I never managed to ask her about that. Huh. Why I fail. But yeah, that was that, so I can't say that visiting my grandma was merely the onerous fulfilling of an obligation, it was occasionally rather enjoyable as well!
I guess I've changed in that regard as well. From the changing of my travel plans to my visiting my grandma in the hospital. I don't think I would have done the same had these scenarios happened last year. I would have put my back up and my foot down and insist on going to Uganda. I would probably have paid my grandma one visit at the hospital after constant nagging by my parents to do so. What's changed since then, and why? I was wondering myself, and wonder is the right word here. After skyping with my parents to inform them that yes, I would cancel my trip and head straight home after my papers, I kind of sat there in a daze. I wondered at what I had just done. I wondered that I had just scrapped a whole month worth of planned activities/traveling, opting instead to go back home early. I wondered that one whole month of my near future was altered just like that, one that I had been greatly anticipating too. I don't think words quite do justice here to the enormity of what I felt then, that I had in a few minutes, a few spoken sentences, radically changed my life (in the immediate sense).
In hindsight, I guess that it did change my life, or at least it was the culmination of the changes in my life.
Anyhow, moving on now. Because I've just kept this in my drafts for more than a month. I guess I never really change after all! All this procrastination, although in my defence I must say that work was excruciatingly taxing and I never had any energy to do anything.
The one observation I wanted to record here was that of all those people's lives being put on hold. In the old folk's home, where all its residents are merely there waiting for the inevitable. All those people visiting them, especially those I saw who were there every single day, it's like pressing the pause button in their lives while they wait out what they dread, not living their own lives even. In the hospital, in the old folk's home, wherever it was. And I felt pretty sad.
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