Singaporean oh Singaporean

A peasant was overseeing his herd of animals in the last family farm in Singapore when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the peasant, "If I tell you exactly how many sows and piglets you have in your herd, will you give me a piglet?"

The peasant looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers,"Sure, why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the peasant and says, "You have exactly 986 pigs and piglets."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my piglets," says the peasant. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the peasant says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my piglet?" The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a MP for the PAP", says the peasant.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the peasant. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid inspite of your million dollar salary for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about pigs. This is a herd of goats. Now give me back my dog."

Nudging of the end

Okay you might wonder what i'm talking about. But i'm sure many of you will be able to relate to this.

Easter holidays are coming to an end in a couple of days and heck it always sucks when holidays end. But worse than that is the couple of days before when you know you haven't really spent your holidays well and you haven't really done anything but still you don't want it to end.

It's the couple of days when there's this niggly wiggly feeling, that nudge of discomfort in your heart knowing that it's gonna be life as usual again, and it suddenly makes you realise how you much you dislike life in its usual routine.

But hey, that's life ain't it.

Welcome to reality.

Day 1: Standing on the shoulders of Giants

Yay! After much procrastination (almost 2 years worth), the 5 of us finally were on our way to the Giant's Causeway. Packed with anticipation and sandwiches to last us the day, off we went...



Me driving our rented Ford Fiesta. Weather was so good I actually needed my sunglasses!



The 5 of us on our first pitstop of the day, some random castle somewhere. I'm surprised we actually found our way to the causeway at all.

5 very empty stomachs stopped to refuel at our lil picnic by the seaside. The view was picturesque but we had our food in the blistering cold. Where had the sun gone?!?

Continued our journey and stopped at our first real spot, the Glenariff waterfalls (I think?!)

That's Hsiao Boon all happy-looking after the hike. No one knows we had to stop about 37 times on our way up coz of her wengina (means chest pain, sorry for the jargon). Anyone with decent intelligence will start looking for a waterfall photo. Sorry none of those coz... erm just because...

Next stop, the "worlds most dangerous rope bridge", the Carrick-a-reed.

OKlah. It's not that dangerous.

On the other side of the bridge, me soul-searching while the Sibubuaya repents from his old ways.

So then it was back in the car, and off to our last destination: the Giant's Causeway.

Tis me looking all TVB superstarish and all (or so I'd like to think).

The 4 of us posing on the unique rocks while Hsiao Boon is somewhere washing her blistered foot in some rancid fungating pond.

Finally, truely standing on the shoulder of Giant's.

(Boy do I make it sound better than it actually is...)


The End

Easter holidays!!!

Boy oh boy never before have I ever felt like I needed a holiday this much. Anyway, here's an article for UK medical graduates about the MMC and MTAS rubbish writen by a local paper.

Cheeky but so, so true.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/03/10/do1002.xml

Enjoy! Pictures from our trip will be up soon ;)

Final week, last post, lost hour

Okay I'm whinny.

Yes Woei Lin. Yes Boren. Yes Joanne. Yes Jen Ping. Yes Jenn Yi. Yes Yijun.

Yes I'm whinny.

I know it took me this long to realise that but honestly, how can you blame me. I lost an hour of sleep and I practically lost my entire weekend. All I wanna do is whine!!!

This is my last post before I go back for a full-on 5 days (of Paeds) in Craigavon. Wish me luck and if all goes well (and quickly enough), we'll be looking forward to a very nice Easter :)

Hopefully I'll return on Friday with some pictures of my accomodation and the hospital (not that they're very interesting).

If any of you girls upstairs are reading, please sort our trip out please please please puhleeeese.

One more week and Giant's Causeway, here we come!!! Yipee!!!

300

Last night we went to Thai Village for dinner to celebrate Kartini's farewell to Malaysia. For all Belfast people, if you have little money and big appetite (which is most people i suppose), Thai Village definitely ain't the place for you.

Went to catch 300 afterwards. Not a bad movie, but perhaps not as good as I expected. Basically a story of 300 Spartans slaughtering something like 570,000 Persians (who are the baddies) before dying themselves.

If you are sensitive enough, you can almost feel a tinge of the west versus the world scenario being proposed throughout the movie. Let me simplify.

Look closely enough, the Spartans and the "keh leh feh" Greeks are obviously all angmohs.

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that Persians on the other hand, are either invariably Asians or Africans, some Latinos (I think), a horde of monsters dressed up as Japs (who are the elite, surprise surprise...), couple of giant elephants and ya, a rhinoceros.

Anyway, (before any racist sentiments are stirred) the movie was generally entertaining (with ample blood and breasts to be experienced) and probably worth the watch.

Finally, just to say goodbye to Kartini who has definitely given an angle to my experiences upstairs with the girls. May you someday finish your food and dispose of it before it becomes rotten. Other than that, it's definitely been a pleasure knowing you.

Take care and all the best in the future :)

Car choices

Okay some of you might know that I am planning to get a car.

You know, one of the 5 Cs all Singaporean women look for:

1)Condo

2)Car

3)Credit card

4)Cash

5)Country club

So anyway, buying a car is like maybe like marrying a woman, you wanna get it right the first time. You want something reliable, long lasting, low-maintenance, comfortable to ride and preferably something that doesn't depreciate too much with a decent second hand value (boy can I feel the frowns already...)

Seeing that I am not Abramovich's "godson", here are, in my opinion the top choices for a student start-up ride (of course when he uses his head to buy a car, and not his heart or his balls).

Mmm-hmm. This is really a car one would buy with his head. Ford Fiestas are sinfully cheap to run and maintain, doesn't look too fugly, great to buy second hand and holds its value well. And hey, it's British made after all. Not that that's really a plus point.

Second in line, but certainly not second in class. The Nazi-made super mini VW Polo is actually a compromise to the much desired Golf. Costs slightly more to run and maintain than the Ford, but hey, if you wanna buy a car, it oughta be German. Might even score better if you're seen riding this well built baby (obviously not refering to myself).



Here is Nissan's answer to the student focused supermini class rides, the funky looking Micra. Its looks might not cater to everyone in the audience, but to me it has a "beetlish" look about it and looking like the cult status VW Beetle can't be all a bad thing. Reasonable to run and maintain, and packed with features like greeting you upon entering and wishing you on your birthday has to earn some brownie points. Some models even have keyless-go on them, now that's some luxury to be drooled at in this class of cars.

A lot's been said, so I'm hoping that I'll get some opinions, heck even throw in some rides that aren't mentioned. Who knows you might get me thinking ;) Cheers!