farewell

alright, finished my attachment at sembawang camp liao, said my farewells and all tt. got the pple at camp some tau sar piah from balestier (the buying of the tau sar piah is in itself drama). it's really been a very enriching experience these 2 months over there, and i've learnt alot about the navy medical service, the people there, work structure and flow, at the same time learnt to write papers and design research studies.

got to know many terrific individuals too like daniel (my boss), boon hor (very shuai mo who's getting married next year liao; same church, took real good care of me), chris (who is a super fitness guy who trashes my 10km timing) jonathon (who's really friendly, whom i can talk to frankly as a friend), eric (a really street-wise guy offering me great hospitality and who has a impressive work attitude), and CNMO who took real care of me and made sure i was comfortable and enjoyed my attachment there.

nice pple, nice enviroment. right now i'm considering going back to navy after i graduate.

boon hor brought me to do a chamber/dry dive today. and we actually went down to 50m!!! bottom time was 10 mins. i did the dive with 5 other medics, squeezing into the small chamber... and at 50m we ALL suffered from nitrogen narcosis and were laughing uncontrollably for some time.

SERIOUSLY.

it was really an experience to get 'narced'. now, we were actually supposed to take pulse and bp when we were at 50m, but because the stethoscope was spoilt we were unable to take bp. all of us took pulse, but most of us were laughing out loud when we took pulse. really after abt 5 mins i managed to get a hold on myself, took my pulse and observed the other medics.

wah i tell u, they were just clowning around and laughing ard. but we all managed to take our pulse after a couple of reminders from each other.

1 thing worth noting was tt all of us sounded just like when u just breathed in helium. all of us sounded like donald duck... which is actually the reason why we started laughing... we were actually all ok as we descended till 50m, until we opened our mouths and realised tt we all sounded like dear donald.

WAHAHAHA...

another thing worth noting also is tt the chamber was SUPER HOT as we descended. maybe it had something to do with the increased heat conductivity as the density of the air increased to 5 times normal. sweating like in a sauna... but as we ascended at the end of the dive, the cooling effect was amazing. very shiok.

but anyway it was really an experience to remember. did it w/o medical clearance, which is actually not allowed. (muahaha) well, boon hor's the boss at chamber, so we bended the rules a little. thankful for the chance to use the chambers.

in the afternoon all the MOs and me and some of the senior medics went to nee soon to attend a research seminar given by a COFM A/Prof. haha, i conveniently forgot her name liao... but anyway, the lecture was some CME thingy, which explains for the enthusiastic participation in attendence; though i must say tt 1/2 the pple attending were sleeping as the lecture was going on. it was on epidemiological studies and how to process info from your surveys, plan your studies etc. very statistics - which i incidently don't have an interest for.

met andy (who is a VERY eligible bachelor) at the seminar. haven't seen him for some time and chatted with him for a while before going to the library to look for kenny. played a couple of rounds of gunbound with him of which i lost all the matches. got trashed hands down.

great day, better days ahead. :) cheers!