A Week's Worth

Hey guys,


I’ve been laying low this past week. The usual stuff. Swarmed with work.
Went through last week with 3 days, full of meetings and courses in Ipoh. Which resulted in me going to work at 6.45 am and returning home at 8 pm. I work in a kampung. This is not supposed to happen.

This week, I have three out patient days in a row in three different clinics. Each clinic averages 40-55 patients per out patient day. Do the math.

What do we do on an outpatient day in a dental clinic? Well, 90% are extraction cases, the rest are fillings, prosthodontics and scaling requests which we do if time permits or reappointed to appointment days, if we’re too jammed up. On bad days, difficult extraction cases will turn to surgical cases and on nightmarish and all–hell-break-loose days, in the middle of it all, there will be referred emergency cases with badly cut up faces and mouths and broken teeth and broken jaws.

But that hardly happens. Knock on wood.

Anyway, the good to all this is, I can consider all those extractions as my cross training. So I get 3 cross training days and extra lunch break time to run. And my boss announced in last week’s meeting that us U44s will be bumped up a notch to U48 by the end of this year. A little later than our medical friends but better late than never. If this sounds French to you, well basically it means I’ll be promoted again. I won’t be as high flying as you guys in the private sector but hey, it’ll get me by the remainder of my contract. Alhamdulillah..


And talking about kampung ( I was, just a bit a while then), due to the recent boom in the Arowana business here, there’s a sudden increase of old men driving those flashy sports cars on the road. You see all those sporty edition of Mazdas, Mercedes, BMWs and what have yous ( with leather interiors), Red! Yellow! Black!, roaring down the road just to stop at kedai runcit Ah Yong or the local roti canai stall. I bet, no other kampung has this much sports car crazed old men. Even the pembantu farmasi here drives the new model of Honda Accord and he’s only a minor share holder ( okay, that’s not a sports car but still..) And just the other day I saw one old geezer riding a convertible. Really? Seriously?In a kampung? Is it worth inhaling all those insects while you drive?

It’s ridiculous.

Me? No way I’m gambling my life savings in a bunch of fishies. And the fish ponds are ruining our scenic paddy fields. You look left and right and it’s one project after the other. I’m so glad I heard the local authorities are putting a stop in new Arowana Projects. It’s about time I guess. I’m sick and tired of looking at another one in progress.
Bak kata orang utara : Cemuih.


‘Running for Fun” a.k.a training in search of a better half marathon has been commencing well. We do our weekend LSD after Subuh ( instead of starting the run before), if you can call it an LSD. Last week’s ‘long run’ was a puny 11K. Heh heh heh ( I’m grinning as I write this and I can see you snickering too) but no matter, the mileage will increase from time to time.



And we’ve successfully converted ourselves into vegetarians 3 days a week. I was skeptical with hub’s plan a few months back but surprisingly vegetarian meals aren’t that hard to prepare. No thawing required! And I’m not talking about raw salad, microbiotic grains and all that yucky stuff. I’m taking about Asian vegetarian dishes eg sambal-ed aubergines, stir fry kangkung, sweet and sour bean curd,fu chuk and suhun, dalcha curry with papadom naming a few. And the kids are accepting it well. But we don’t like those vege meats. They taste weird and chemical-ly and chewy and personally I think it beats the purpose of vegetarianism is you want chicken or beef flavored soy products. At least, that’s what I think.


Well, that’s all I have for today.
Toodles.