Smile

To all my classmates and everyone reading:

"...although a tear may be ever so near, that's the time you must keep on trying.
Smile what's the use of crying. You'll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just smile."

And just for a taste of the good o'l 70's, here's "Our Love Affair" from An Affair to Remember. How many times do you see John Williams accompanying for Groban?

A Monastic Lifestyle

The start of term marks a lot of excitement for different categories of people:

• the freshmen - their first weeks in school sampling everything the institution and its people has to offer, and seeing the beauties of Hualien
• the sophomores - gossiping about good looking juniors and dishing up a really exciting orientation camp. They would soon learn how to juggle between work and play in a highly competitive environment both academically and in co-curricular activities
• the juniors - dissecting, studying, dissecting, studying...the cycle continues
• the clerks (Year 5) - at long last, they can jump out of their elephant skins (uniforms of TCU). They would have a shorter version of a physician's robe with their name on whenever they're in the hospital. And they would start the endless days and nights working in the hospital - where sickness, politics and passion blinds the mind.

How am I coping you ask? I find the monastic lifestyle of anatomy and dissection not as bad as it sounds. The key, according to seniors, is to get a good night's sleep, every day without fail. When you attend classes with full concentration, that automatically reduces the time for revision and subsequently improves life quality - sounds something out of an economics textbook.
As we are studying long hours, we would avoid staying in the dorm as the PC will always tempt me into idling time away. I also put some of my studying strategies on trial this semester - here comes economics again - the higher scores you intend to pursue during the exams, the effort you have to invest is exponentially higher. For example, you would have to study 10 hours for a score of 70, but for a score of 85 you might have to do 25 hours and for 90, 40 hours perhaps. Moral behind the story? Just do my best and don't blow out.
I regret I would not have as much time and energy as last year for exciting activities. The urge of passing will drive me to study, but in the meantime I would learn new ways of leisure to suit my highly demanding lifestyle. A few examples to quote: a highly seductive novel such as Harry Potter would be a no-no; a movie is only yes on weekends, and when I've finished studying; a brief read of Time magazine is a yes; a weekend outing to Taipei is a no...
All these are for nurturing a conscientious doctor in the future - you'll see if I do. And remind me of the effort and sacrifice so many others did for me when I turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to compassion.

Something I Will Miss

As winter approaches, I will definitely start missing the long daylights and warm sunshine back home.

Our Silent Mentor 2

"Even when I'm left with my only bowl of rice, if others need it, I would still give my half to her," such are the golden words of Mdm. Lee, our silent mentor. A typical Taiwanese lady - strong in heart, thrifty and caring, she was the mother to 4 successful children.
After her husband's untimely death, which left her and the family with debts and the mortgage, she learned cooking from her in-laws. Subsequently setting up her own restaurant which would later pay for all of her children's university education. A thrifty person by nature, she would not hesitate to pay up when it comes to her children's education, as she is being deprived of education herself when she was young. This also subsequently fueled her passion for learning - taking up English when her French in-laws came visiting and recipes from the television.
She was diagnosed with metastatic third stage lung cancer at age 60. On the second day she got to know of her illness, she voluntarily shaved off her head - "I wouldn't like the hair falling all over," she said. A traditionalist though, she broke the taboo and decided in donating her body, saying "if you bury me, the rotting would hurt; if you incinerate me, the burning would hurt. I would like the pain to be contributive to some noble cause."
Mdm. Lee passed peacefully on July 1 2006, with company of all her family and friends. She is indeed a kindred spirit whose personality and strength her family members will well remember. For the next 4 months and eternally we would all be grateful for Mdm. Lee's contribution as well as her respected undertakings in life.

We're in Group 11, with Mdm. Lee as our silent mentor

And the picture of a portion of us, before the course officially begins

Our Silent Mentor 1

I shall talk about the silent mentor (大體老師) in this post.
Medicine is a field of trial and error. Like so many other fields of knowledge, the current understanding of medicine is laid upon thousands of years of drug misuse, failed medication, and dead bodies. Sure, some extraordinary (or naively optimistic) trials got famed, and among these the penicillin won Alexander Fleming a Nobel prize.
The same goes for the field of anatomy. The human body had intrigued ourselves since time memorial, and thanks to curiosity as well as an abundance of cadavers the human body is completely mapped 300 years ago. England by chance a heaven of grave robbers since early times, was the center propelling human anatomy - during its prime students of medicine were known to openly steal cadavers to assist in their studies. Anatomy is not only limited to medicine alone - Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo also grave robbed to study the human structure for art.
Until the 80s cadavers for medicinal education are usually unidentified corpses collected from morgues in the country. Medical students dissect on cadavers without identity, and many have treated them without respect. Education promoting respect and appreciation for them are nonexistent. And after a complete dissection corpses will usually be discarded - nothing from the cadaver remembered except anatomical knowledges for the student.
Tzu Chi University is the first university in Taiwan, and perhaps all of Asia, to promote the Silent Mentor program - where cadavers are donated from the public. One get to sign up voluntarily to become a silent mentor, and after one's death the body will be preserved until it is dissected by students. Among some differences between the silent mentor and the normal cadavers are:

1. Medical students get to know the deceased through family visits - during the visit students will be introduced to a person who is willing to sacrifice his / her body for laying the basal foundation of a doctor. Besides understanding the reason behind this noble cause, students start to see a cadaver as a 'person' - who prior to death, a significant being with love and feelings - a father, a grandmother, a daughter.
   
2. All silent mentors are identifiable and legally obtained - willingly donated.
3. Silent mentors are respectfully preserved (individually sealed) - some schools simply leave cadavers in a pool of formalin until dissection time.
4. Upon completion of dissection, the silent mentor will be suturized and respectfully incinerated in a day-long ceremony with prescence of family members and close friends.
5. Ashes of the cadaver will be kept in a memorium.

The direct result of the silent mentor program is a close and intimate bond between the student and their silent mentor. Students were always awed by the spirit of sacrifice showed by the deceased - in traditional Chinese, or perhaps Asian culture it is only culturally appropriate to die with a complete body. By sacrificing a 'complete' death, our silent mentors brought us into the realm of medicine - allowing us to cut, probe, feel every inch of her body after her death, she intuited in us a strong foundation of medicine as well as the respectful etiquette of seeing a deceased as a being.
Some silent mentors left words before passing, they usually sound:

• "I would be happy to suffer a hundred mistaken cuts on me than to have the future doctor make a mistaken cut on a living patient."
• "When you start dissecting my body, its the time I will truly rest in peace for I had fulfiled a noble cause."
• From a 9-year old mentor "I am too young to contribute to society (she was diagnosed with leukemia at an extremely young age). The only thing I could contribute is my body upon my death."
  
• From my mentor "If I am buried, the rotting will hurt; if I am incinerated, the burning would hurt; if I am dissected, it would hurt as well but this is a contributive pain, a necessary sacrifice."

With such noble and willing silent mentors it is no wonder that anatomy and dissection of TCU is held among the highest regard in the school. It is the reason we all look forward to the semester despite the mountains of knowledge and fatigue it comes with.
I would tell more about our silent mentor, a 61-year old lady, Mdm. Lee, in my next post.

Paris 3

God: Sim Jun Yi, the lazy guy who went to Paris, promised to blog a trilogy but only completed two...
Me: I...I...I did the youtube clip. That was considered the third sequel.
God: Lazy and yet lots of excuses. You will be punished for owing your readers!
Me: Please...merciful God...I will do it very soon!
God: You better be, or else I'll befall upon you endless troubles this semester, and you will pay equally for what you owe.
Me: I'll do it right away sweet lord!
God: Go! And don't write anymore rubbish such as the useless Trivial Nothings!

La Defense is the modern commercial district of Paris, located approximately 10 minutes away by train, it houses chic and savvy companies hiring suit-wearing and robe-droning workforces

Quite literally a city within itself, filled with offices and food outlets in every nook and corner

Then comes the Marais, the second oldest district of Paris with its distinctive medieval architecture and students still in their salad-and-sandwich days

The Luxembourg district is for the average middle class Parisians - nice little parks surrounded by busy cafes and city council offices

La Grand Palace houses Musee de Beaux Arts or Beautiful Arts Museum, senseless isn't it?

The Invalides plays a major role in propagating the French Revolution - a huge amount of arms were stolen from here during the start of the revolution

Commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte, it was a house for retired soldiers. Now a battle and warfare museum.

The origin of the can-can dance - La Moulin Rouge! Located at the gate of Montmartre, it is a fantasy for both to-be artists living here as well as tourists seeking...sexual gratification

Sorbonne, or the University of Paris. Only one of the many colleges in the district, the Sorbonne has alumni ranging from French patriot Hugo to Chinese premiere Chou Enlai - an interesting note: the International Olympics Committee was born in the rooms of this university

Pantheon - remembering the great and the good

...such as St-Exupery, writer of Le Petit Prince (The Little Price), who also happens to be one of the premiere French pilots during WWII

French patriotism - The National Convention urges its people: live free or die

Mr. and Mrs. Curie contributed to modern physics and radiology. How many people got two elements - polonium and radium - and a scientific unit - Curie - named after them? Both happen to be professors at the Sorbonne, too

Needless to say Victor Hugo is present as well, contributing to French nationalism through his writings as well as his policies which changed France later in his life

Musee d'Orsay, originally a train station, houses impressionist art from Monet to Van Gogh. A very appealing museum to visit should you wish to escape from the other art forms

The Thinker by Rodin - at Musee Rodin would be my last stop in France before heading home the following morning

As mentioned in my film, and as precisely described by Hemingway, Paris is a moving gastronomical feast. You have the history flowing by just next to you - Napoleon marching with his soldiers under the Triumphal Arch; Curie discovering radiologic particles late in the night at the Sorbonne; the French revolutionaries storming the Bastille and Invalides...
The blood, sweat, tears and cries of joy that echoes through Paris' 2000 years of history is simply too intense for the travellor to sample in a brief 5 days' time.
And we still have not got to the French lifestyle - following a madame to the morning market for the day's freshest produce, purchasing a baguette on the way home; cheese, wine, music, cuisine, joie de vivre...
It's been 5 weeks since I left France. The spirit of fighting for freedom and enjoying the littlest joys of life still lingers within me. For me the French taught me 'liberty' to its fullest, and that life is not always about scores and efficiency.
Merci beaucoup!

Trivial Nothings

Here comes the September edition of Trivial Nothings:

• Americano left to chill will taste like something between a mixture of Chinese medicine and drain water.
• What I've been dreading since July is seemingly surreal - expecting burning whether back in Hualien, I was surprised to find cloudy skies and quite some rain for 4 consecutive days since my arrival.
• And despite being relocated (read: outcast) to the highest floor of our dorm, the room managed to stay cool. Partly thanks to the cloud and rain, and partly to the new-bought 2-horsepower exhaust fan blowing in cool air from outside.
• The school is relatively empty - majority of students are still holidaying. The emptiness made for some romantic and melancholic scenes, also part of the weather to blame.
  
• I find Newsweek, Times and National Geographic magazine in our school library, but no Readers' Digest - which I think strange because RD is supposed to be the digest of all articles published worldwide, edited and 'digested' down to bite-sized portions for busy and lazy young generations. But then again, much of what the school does is beyond my rational understanding.
• See the amount of food-related phrases on the previous point? I'm hungry, at 12 midnight. And I have nothing edible around me, just as usual. That's how I'm losing weight in Taiwan.
• Exams in 8 days' time. And I went for a movie this evening.
• Seniors would say the start-of-term exam for Anatomy and Dissection is rather important because it contributes about 20% of the total score. As one described - if you do well this once, you can lie all semester and still manage a pass.
• I however, did the math carefully - if we get an 18 for the 20% overall, that means for the next 5 mid-terms (yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have 5 mid-terms across 17 weeks of lessons) we would have to score between 8 to 10 out of 16% overall each.
• But then again life is not about exams, it's about how much you learn - experience!
• So pray with me for a best foot forward this semester!