Taipei Trip, Again

So you were thinking I'm simply obsessed with Taipei. It's true, the metropolis is packed with everything a mundane medical student yearns - excitement, entertainment, and expensive nadas. Hopped over there last weekend for a 3-day trip, which was fun but ended unfortunately with something lethal (will tell you more next time).

Started the day with some morning walk at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. Note the very controversial 'Freedom Square' mural. President Ma haven't got the time and money to remove that yet I suppose. With Dad's ex-classmate, who have to tiptoe to manage my height.

We were actually there for a Andy Warhol exhibition.

Taipei will be hosting the Summer Deaflympics this year.

The National Taiwan University School of Medicine - whenever Tzu Chi University angers us, most of us will swear we'd regretted not aiming higher for this - the oldest, most prestigious and most elite school of Taiwan.

And the NTU Hospital. Looks more like a hotel eh? They have Starbucks at the lobby, and convention centers for pharmaceutical companies and health-promoting programs you might confuse yourself you're in a Hilton or Shangri-la.

Take time off for a stroll along Taipei central. Albeit the filthy air, lots of pre-war Japanese style buildings are waiting for you.

A house Sun Yet-Sen stayed briefly on a visit to Taiwan shortly after independence.

An 80-year old bucket store. All wooden buckets, and wooden bathtubs.

Head over to Da-an district for some art and open-air sightseeing.

Your guides of the day - Aunt Mei Li and Auny Qiu Xia, both Dad's ex-classmate.

Yeah, Fail Me

My assignment for a (censored) class this week:

健康照護與人際溝通

3月25日作業

沈君毅

• Interesting read on Reader's Digest this month: 41 Secrets Your Doctor Would Never Share (Until Now).
• It needs no mention that a large portion of a physician's job prescription involves listening. Listening – a passive process where the people who pay us reveal information in his / her likeliness, and we were paid to process the information and come up with a diagnosis.
• And so says our teachers: modern doctors should not only incorporate the listening ability in their doctor-patient interaction, but also the observation and caring attitude.
• Before we delve further into how we can improve our observation skills, let's talk about my life:

1. If somebody do a study on how healthy I am and my risk factors for diseases, I dare not look at the results myself.
2. I practically live a life of complete saturation. I have no time for exercise, no quality time with family or friends, and certainly severely reduced time for sleep.
3. As a medical student, I am expected to know what's wrong with the patient before he or she even complete narrating his / her chief complaints. If I don't, at least I should pretend to. My upbringing in medical school said so.
4. To acquire that ability, I have to study very hard, they say. With a revolutionary timetable this year, they encourage us to self-study and perform group discussions with our classmates.
5. To prepare for that, I studied much more than regular, because I am an honest person – I do not want to discuss something I do not know about.
6. I have a collection of more than 15 books, including those from the library, to help me cope with all the barrages of information and knowledge.
7. I am feeling feverish now, with a terrible sore throat and mouth ulcer since the previous weekend. Even though it seems to be getting worse I cannot take the night off, because our final discussion session is tomorrow and I have yet to complete many of my tasks, including this report.
8. I am poor at time management? Maybe. But I am good in my studies, at least for the time being.
9. I have so little time I cannot remember when is the last time I take a good look at myself in the mirror – I don't know if any grey hair had sprouted out, or if my unusually thick eyebrows had become messy again.
10. So how will I find time to observe other patients when they come and complain in front of me?
11. I have very little quality time left in my life – I've given up my hobbies, quit attending Friday night parties, withhold myself from a relationship, and even skip unnecessary social functions – all to boost my study time to the maximum – to become what my teacher says – a doctor.
12. When there's so little quality of life in me. Am I fit to improve quality of life in my patients?
13. I know it would all turn out fine if I just take the day off, spend the day with someone I like (if there's still any), tuck into bed early and get a fresh start tomorrow.
14. But I can't. I have this report, and 3 more learning issues to read. I have a radiology exam tomorrow, a proposal to complete this weekend, and another exam next week.
15. And please, I'm not bad at time management.
16. The long and the short of it is, face it, my life is in complete disarray. The fan sitting beside me should be stowed away since last November; the books stacked up on my table is taller than me sitting; the photographs, pieces of papers, receipts, bookmarks from the Louvre, a medical dictionary, my choir scores are all laying in a typhoon-blown pattern beneath.
17. Am I qualified to sort out my patient's life? Given that my life is a complete mess itself?
18. No, I'm not taking any drugs to cope, at least for the time being.

• So how should we improve observation skills clinically? I suggest improving our quality of life and the way we're trained.
• Medical school now focuses on, still, only the academic and knowledge part. You either fit in or you get out. You have to become a physician, capable of working 48 hours without sleep, multitasking all the while and planning strategies against viruses, bacteria, cancers and your colleagues.
• We have no other options but to become less trusting, more suspicious, and colder towards each other. We start to believe there's a motive behind everything.
• And so I'm sorry for the coldness towards our patients. It's just something we're taught in school.
• We race with every single minute, so that the extra minutes we accumulate everyday could go to more sleep, a little hobby and maybe maintaining a relationship.
• And so I'm sorry for all the rushing and interrupting you when you're starting your 15-year complains. We must do this, or else we might end up sick and die earlier than you.
  

Defaulted

Yeah, I defaulted on blogging.
Here's one just to satisfy the 'randomness'. Se (if) from Cinema Paradiso, sung by a very young Josh Groban.



If I had had more time.

Trivial Nothings March

Here comes:

• From BBC Headlines "Worst crisis since 1930s says Fed" directly above "Malaysia acts to bolster economy". It seems that the global depression never gets too overexposed on the media - which is a good thing since it reminds us not to overspend and keep more cash at hand - but on the other hand how effective are these reports when we only get to see them before bedtime?
• A gratitude feast for all teachers of the Anatomy Department this Friday. I expected it to be of less effort and more sincerity, but again I was proven naive and too implicit. Preparations stretched the entire weekend with some sacrificing sleep hours to complete just the invitation card. I found out this afternoon, however, that there are still naive and implicit people like me around, and quite a number of them.
• Medicine is a highly competitive field, not just because it's the most sought-after profession, but also because these professionals are highly intelligent - both in memory and strategy. Add on an ounce too much of sensitivity and you get hurt feelings and misunderstandings.
• Enough about masterminding - my download, 97MB, has been ongoing for 2 hours, and now stuck at 73%. And it's bedtime now. The lesson learned - never download anything more than 50MB in the evening - where EVERYBODY goes online and spread viruses that consumes bandwidth.
• More on school - more integrated program (IPs) in the future, with plans of replacing all professors with something called PBL (problem-based learning; a better synonym for 'self study').
• A miraculous plan isn't it? Sack professors to cut costs, going all 'self study' so that evaluation committees will love us, breed doctors more adept at talking than working - patients love doctors who are 'warm, informative, and friendly', and increase medical accidents to boost the economy by channeling cash from the wealthy to the poor. Ladies and gentlemen, the winner of the Nobel Economic Prize this year!
• Read in Newsweek - "a few years ago it seems cool to be on facebook. Now with over (don't remember the figure) of users, it seems cool to be not on facebook." I'm cool!
  

The Final Journey

Our silent mentors were cremated last Saturday, followed by a rather lengthy memorial service attended by the largest crowd ever in school history. Needless to say it was very touching, extremely tear-provoking and poisonously inspiring. The following two video clips (from Da Ai News Television, of course, no one is interested in a humble memorial service that day, everybody is busy reporting the economic crisis and Obama) are just 2-minute illustrations of the entire day, but I think it portrays our spirit of appreciation to our silent mentors nicely enough.

Cremation last rites


Memorial service