VAS-COOL-LAR

When the junior doctors get together, we enjoy nothing more than comparing the different surgical teams and consultants. Well, I lie. My friends enjoy ridiculous amount of alcohol (yea, don't start) and alcohol makes everything funny and people laugh (and/or cry but let's not go there).

And what is not funny about the orthopaedics?

I love my vascular rotation but we never have jokes as funny as the orthopaedics do. Two of the best so far belong to them.

What is the difference between love and osteomyelitis?
Osteomyelitis lasts forever.

What is the function of the heart according to an orthopaedic surgeon?
To pump cefuroxime.

If you don't laugh at those, fine, you're not lame/cool (depending on how you look at it) but these are the jokes told by the registrars themselves. You gotta love them for loving the jokes.

I love my vascular rotation but we're not the jocks of the surgical wards. Not in a long long time. But the vascular service in BVH is still growing. My consultant came here 5 years ago and is responsible for turning the service to what it is now.

5 years since the hospital now offers, among others, distal bypasses surgeries, EVARs and a modern vascular lab; all of which did not exist back then.

So yes, when they were awarded the Best Service Transformation award, he jumped up and high-fived the rest of the team but he deserved to. All lights turned to the vascular table.

Absolutely no idea where the orthopaedics were sitting.

Congratulations to the vascular team :)

TALK

Some days are just mind-numbingly dull. You spend 10-12 hours at work, most of the time doing things you've done countless times before that you can get on without even focusing. It's like you've memorized some horribly long play and your body just acts without thinking.

And then you come back, throw something in the oven/microwave/boiling water and flip through tv/internet sites/Sky (I love Sky but for fuck's sake, get better shows!) and before you know it, it'll be bedtime and work soon approaches again.

Bet it's depressing just reading that.

Dennis and I made a point to spend one hour occasionally to have quiet time so we could talk.

Fine, it was my idea and I was being a pain in the ass; but I absolutely did not wring his hands or threaten him in any ways.

Okay, maybe a little bit. But it was nothing more than the equivalent of threatening to take away a child's chocolate if he doesn't stop crying. It wasn't like I was going to ban him from playing games forever. No, not guilty, never.

I don't know exactly why girls like talking and sharing stuffs. It is a pain sometimes. But it's not always easy to get to know someone. There are dozens of year worth of stories before you met him/her; and those stories shaped who s/he is now and perhaps who s/he is going to be in the future.

It's goddamn unfortunate that getting to know someone is a long, albeit not necessarily painful, process. There is no point-click-download-unzip and tadah you know everything about someone. That would eliminate talking for sure.

But then again, everyone has to learn how to shut a girl up. I mean, nice ways to shut a girl up.

No, that one doesn't count. Geez.

DRESS

Girly is probably one of the last adjectives I would use to describe myself. Don't get me wrong, I would scream if cockroaches started crawling up my legs; or rats jumping on me; or alternatively I would look at babies especially when they're making those happy gurgling sounds.

But that's probably the upper limit how much my ovaries can handle.

My boyfriend is trying to do the impossible. He has bought me my first dress since I was a toddler (yes there was a picture of me when I was 2-3 years old and I was wearing a skirt and holding and eating a bowl of lychees - no, I have destroyed the evidence; no one will ever ever ever see it).

How my ovaries groan for being overworked.

Now, the question is why is he trying to do whatever my friends have been unsuccessfully trying the last 6 years of my life? He thinks I love him more than I love my friends therefore he will be the one who gets me to wear a dress.

Well, he's not right but not entirely wrong.

Now, I do not know what people in good loving relationships do, but I do know what people in dysfunctional relationships do. I will get him to try something he's not keen on. Like, off the top of my head: watching Sex and the City.

Yea... that's just how we roll.

And by the way, after I've put on the thingy.
Me: There, you happy?
Him: Damnit, I love you more in jeans.

And I didn't even tell him to say that. Unscripted, baby!

CHANGE

My younger brother couldn't be more different than my older brother. He has been with the same girl since he was 14 (they're very unfortunately broken up now but like one of those couples who are meant to be together, I don't think they're quite finished with each other yet; hence I'm still talking about them in the present tense). We joked that if we were going to do things the traditional way - i.e. older siblings marry first before the younger ones do - that we would never get married.

My older brother and the altar are two negative forces - forever repelling each other. No girl will ever manage to drag my brother to the altar. Not unless it is the perfect girl we're talking about.

The one. The soulmate. Or whatever shit you kids are calling it nowadays.

Now, before the hate starts, my older brother is not your standard commitment-phobic immature man-child. He is one hell of a decent guy. He knows exactly who he's meant to be with. Unfortunately, he still hasn't found her.

Me: You're just being picky.
Him: I am not being picky.
Him: I know there are girls out there who I can simply marry but..
Him: I have to find the one, you know.

Not strangely enough, I of course didn't know what he was talking about.

For years I have listened to my girl friends how they're trying to find love, I have never really appreciated how difficult it could be for the men.

But no, I will not go to the whole who's more difficult to find love; men or women blahblahblah. I have to get up early for work tomorrow.