SISUAHLAI: A personal blog

BO SU CHO adj.,n.,v. "not much to do"

Hi. It's not often you see me writing about myself. I am going to abandon my usual blog writing style and write something much more connected to reality i.e. myself, which (surprise, surprise) is far from sisuahlai.

I have given in my resignation letter (tears streaming down my cheek, yes, play that violin) a week ago. I feel so liberated. Liberated from doctoring responsibilities and the stress of making sure my patients get better, and getting top level care, no less. I have discovered that in my years as a doctor, I am really a paranoid person. If I had a complicated case, I would just sit and think about it all day and everywhere, during dinner, in the shower, in bed, and if I thought of a better solution, I would call the ward, even at 3 in the freakin morning, just to tell the nurse about what needed to be done. Kerrazy. But that's me. So I am glad I've detached myself from all these. I need a break. For those of you who still stick to this job with the same amount of passion as the first day you walked onto a hospital ward, hats off to you, you really have my admiration. Not you lot who sit in your private clinics for few hours a day and then head off for golf or whatever you do after work. I mean real passion.

But I am going to miss my working environment, the wonderful people I've worked with in the Emergency Department. I have never seen a more dedicated group of nurses, who in my opinion, earn peanuts for the amout of effort they put in. Someone told me that for anyone who want to be a nurse in the UK health system, he or she must have led a terrible past life, I could clearly see why now. But the department is not made of doctors and nurses, the people who really hold this place together are the radiographers, lab technicians, ambulance crew, porters, hostesses, receptionists and cleaners. I have so much respect for them.

Alright, enough of this boring girly-type oscar-night speech. By the way, my sis thinks blogging are for teenagers and for bo su cho people, so if I continue with the above tone, I might totally fail to prove her wrong. (She is so adorable. I hope her new business venture pays her better than her current job.)

This is Week One of work freedom. But someone has to pay the bills. Thankfully my skills are not confined to hospital work. I have made more money this week (at home) than had I gone to work all week. In ringgit terms, I have made more than RM10k in the last 4 days. If I can keep this up, my wife says I'll be heading for retirement very soon. No, no. Me retire? Kerazzy. I need to work, I get bored too easily (so Mr Kenny Sia, who I suspect secretly reads this blog, you'd better write something interesting on your blog, my attention span cannot hold it any longer... he he, I have gone off xiaxue, she has lost all ability to blog!)

Going back to me... I much prefer helping people free of charge. I will elaborate on this next time. So it's good to be rich, only if the wealth can be shared by the people close to you (first!) and then the rest of the world. To quote a popular philisopher, most of us only care about money makin', selfishness got us in the the wrong direction (Justin Timberlake in Where Is the Love).

Ok more about me, I am beginning to enjoy cooking. My current fave is tuna salad. I don't mean canned tuna that taste like salty chicken. This is fresh tuna steak lightly pan-fried, served with fresh baby lettuce dressed with red wine vinegar and olive oil. The keyword here is FRESH ingredient, jamie oliver-style. We have bought some crab meat yesterday, it is still in the fridge. We could not decide on the best way to prepare it. We'll sleep over this for now. If any of you sisuahlai readers want to help, please e-mail your best crab recipe. I might video-blog your recipe, who knows.