Sunday 15 November 2009

Wedding Season

I thought it would be good to summarise a book that I just read. So here it goes...

The title: Wedding Season

Sarah, a very focused and successful wedding planner who ironically does not believe in the existence of love. Even if she has the slightest faith that it does exist, she knows well enough that she is not one of the very few lucky people who is blessed with it. Sarah met 2 lovely ladies, Bron (the hairdresser) and Elsa (the dressmaker) at one of her many succesful wedding events. They bonded quickly and started to become a team in organising a double wedding for an A-list Hollywood starlet and Sarah's very own sister, Lily. In the process, Sarah found herself unexpectedly fallen for Hugo, who is not just a very good friend but an irresistible charming photographer who she had worked with for many years. Sarah battles between professionalism and her strong feelings towards Hugo, who she later discovered is engaged to a beautiful exotic girl named Electra. This is a beautiful story about a journey of three lovely ladies and their individual relationships as they worked together trying to organise the two perfect weddings.

My opinion about the book:

The reason I read this book is because I thought the synopsis was quite "catchy". Mainly because I find Sarah and I have some things in common - or at least our opinion about love is similar. She, however, found her true love in the end (as all love stories go). No comments on that. I am in the REAL world!

Having said that, I find the book rather lenghty and descriptive, giving too much information on rather uninteresting things (at least to me); i.e on the decorations that they used for the wedding or the finest details of the furnitures in the house

Anyway, I enjoyed the ending. Happy and lame. As I like it. Makes me believe that love exist for a moment.

Yes, just for a moment...

Friday 13 November 2009

Hygiene

Hygiene. I think it is overrated in the hospital I work in. The hospital authority hires people who would appear once in a blue moon, carry out a spot check and subsequently rate our hygiene in an hour. Questions are:

1. How accurate is that? And based on that hour we will be labelled as achieving 90% hygiene as per guidelines.

2. How about using the money to employ junior doctors so that we are not flooded by work? We provide cheap labour for the amount of work that we do! Besides, it will definitely be a better investment.

I recently came in contact with a patient positive with H1N1. Out of curiosity, my registrar asked one of the nurses working in Infection Unit, "So far, how many staff members have been diagnosed with H1N1?" Unsurprisingly, the answer was, "none of the nurses but 2 medical staff"

At that moment it dawned on me that nurses are more law abiding than us, doctors.

Statements like:

1. It is protected lunch time
2. I am not signed off for male cathetherisation, or putting in a venflon
3. Please wear the gown because the the patient is MRSA positive even
when the patient needed early defibrillation

are common amongst nurses but not amongst doctors. (At least not in the hospital we work in).

I reckon doctors are not very good in taking care of themselves. They often forego their necessities for their patients. I used to think that that is very noble. I used to think for that very reason, only selected people can be doctors.

I change my view now. I realise that we need to learn how to love ourselves.

I learnt that we should go for toilet breaks regardless how busy it is. I learnt that we should have lunch breaks. It is because I learnt that if we get ill, the consequences are bigger than just a 20 minute lunch break

It is a difficult change but I think it will do all of us good.

I got a call last evening from my consultant, "You are tested to be H1N1 positive"

I rest my case.