Holy Mammaries!

I was more than a little amused this morning when I read in the news about a woman attacking policemen by squirting breast milk onto them while in a drunken stupor! LOL!

When I posted the news on Facebook, one of my FB friend commented, “I hope she didn’t say “breast you, breast you!!!”. An ‘ah lian’ will pronounce it that way but then again, this woman in the news was no oriental and presumably fluent in English.

Which brings to my mind a rather peculiar episode which happened while I was a medical student. We were posted to a rural maternity hospital in a little Indian town called Karkala and the lecturer who was a live-in obstetrician was a no-nonsense kind of woman. But then again, even the most constipated prude would have a chink somewhere in her armour.

And so, one day, while she was conducting the grand round in the maternity ward, she suddenly turned to us and asked:

“Do you know how far can breast milk travel?”

We were stunned! None of us dared to give an answer. She then called a woman who had just given birth a few days earlier to expose her breast and promptly gave it a good squeeze! (Admittedly it wasn’t a very professional thing to do)

It was lactose-in-motion as we watched, with gaping mouths, a stream of breast milk flew across the room.

The final verdict: at least 6 feet!

This lecturer will forever stay in my mind as one of the quirky lecturers I have ever studied under, alongside the guy who swayed into the classroom with dishevelled hair and half-buttoned shirt because he was stone drunk and the other guy who asked us if we know what is the taste of semen during a class on histology!!!

Is it any wonder I turned out this way?!! LOL!!!

290611 @ 1138

A beautiful poem

I’ve always found it hard to understand poems – I have a few poetry books at home which I never finished reading. I think poetry should be read when one is free of the daily grind and stress of surviving, preferably lying in a hammock on a tropical island with the gentle salty breeze caressing my face while I wear a straw hat, sip on my pinacalada and watch the sun set!

But this poem (written in Malay) stirred my heart. How beautiful are the words – it’s amazing how a few words could dig deep into the Malaysian psyche and bring out the exact emotion that many Malaysians feel.

Unggun Bersih (A Samad Said)

Semakin lara kita didera bara -
kita laungkan juga pesan merdeka:
Demokrasi sebenderang mentari
sehasrat hajat semurni harga diri.

Lama resah kita – demokrasi luka;
lama duka kita – demokrasi lara.
Demokrasi yang angkuh, kita cemuhi;
suara bebas yang utuh, kita idami!
Dua abad lalu Sam Adams berseru:
(di Boston dijirus teh ke laut biru):
Tak diperlu gempita sorak yang gebu,
diperlu hanya unggun api yang syahdu.

Kini menyalalah unggun sakti itu;
kini merebaklah nyala unggun itu.

I’m not going to attempt to translate it (Google Translate did an awful job). Maybe some of my more eloquent readers who are fluent in Malay and English can translate for us!

PS: The author of the poem was probed for writing a ‘seditious poem’ by the Malaysian Police.

280611 @ 1050

Migration

There is a recurring theme whenever I engage in a conversation with the people I come in contact with in the past 9 months. While some asked me in a cursory manner, others were on a mission.

I’m talking about migration.

A lot of people seem to assume that I want to migrate to Australia simply because I am here! True, I love Melbourne and there are so many things that I love about this place and Australia in general.

I love the work culture, the professionalism in the work place, the vast opportunity for gaining knowledge, the positive attitude of the people here, the much more relaxing pace of work, the lovely and ever changing weather, the coffee (!) and I could go on and on and on.

On the other hand there are many things that I do not like about Melbourne. The list could be equally long as well. I’m not going to elaborate here – have a cuppa with me and I will tell you!

True, many of my friends have migrated here for the sake of their children’s future and I can understand that. I would want with all my heart for my kids to be able to compete on a level ground and be rewarded solely based on their ability and merit – this is a pipe dream in Malaysia.

I would be lying if I were to say I haven’t thought about migrating here and leave behind the cesspool of a country that I was born in. I dream about living here, with my family, having a decent job with a decent pay, and enjoy the freedom here. Australia is a blessed country.

When I am asked if I want to migrate here, I usually find myself at lost for words. Frankly I don’t know.

What I do know is there is work to be done back home. There are so many things and ideas I want to try out!!!!

And until I find peace in my heart, it’s gonna be a “No” for now – but it’s certainly an option to consider. I love this place but for now my heart is elsewhere.

Serious advertising

I’m told that the advertising industry in Australia is big business. I’ve always enjoyed watching advertisements on TV (some times more than I enjoy the actual show) and Aussie TV have some of the best and hilarious advertisements ever. Of course, there are some pretty crappy ones as well which I have blogged about before here and here.

Sometimes, these advertising company go to extremes. It wasn’t too long ago when a company selling bathroom product turned a number of bus stops in Melbourne into outdoor showers ~ complete with a bath mat stuck to the ground just next to the seats and a shower screen hung around it!

And this morning, on my way to work on the tram, I snapped this photo:

A company peddling insurance and credit card has uprooted the normal seats and replaced it with this orange-colored sofa!! How cool is that?!

I don’t think this stunt can be done in Malaysia for the following reasons:

1. The sofa wouldn’t last 5 minutes – it would either be stolen or vandalized or a vagabond would be sleeping on it.

2. The color orange would be interpreted as anti-establishment by the ruling government because the opposition happened to have a ‘reformation booklet’ named ‘The Orange Book’!

Jimbo – noodle seller

I remember when I was in year two and I had to tell the teacher what I want to be when I grow up. Much to my teacher’s chagrin, I blurted out these 3 desired choices:

1. Noodle seller
2. Street sweeper
3. Cowboy (the Lone Ranger was all the craze on TV back then)

I remember being hauled into the teacher’s room together with my visibly concerned mother for ‘group counseling’.

“Your son lacks motivation and ambition”, admonished the teacher to my poor mum.

Frankly, my poor mum didn’t think it was such a bad idea to be a noodle seller or a street sweeper. The cowboy bit might have been a little hard to swallow. I mean whoever heard of a Chinese cowboy?!!! (Jackie Chan wasn’t in the picture then)

“Next time just say scientist, doctor and teacher”, my mum advised me when I got home which I dutifully regurgitated the following year, much to the satisfaction of my teacher then. Apparently these were the ‘preferred occupations’ back then. Rock stars, tennis players and poodle-carrying-socialites weren’t considered real work those days.

Recently one of my Facebook friend living in Hawaii sent me this picture:

Looks like there’s another Jimbo on the other side of the world who did become a noodle seller!! How cool is that?!!

Anyone knows any street sweeping Jimbo or masked gun-toting-lasso-throwing-horse-riding Jimbo out there? Let me know!!!

240611 @ 0923

Crazed driver

I’ve never been good at computer games. Even back in those days when ATARI was all the craze I never quite jumped on the bandwagon. Even playing TETRIS was a struggle for me as I attempted in vain to turn those darn falling blocks and put them in place. Somehow my fingers are somewhat disconnected from my brain – which may explain why I am not a surgeon. I mean, it wouldn’t do to have my brain sending signals to a non-responsive hand while performing a life-saving surgery would it?!

Anyway, yesterday I downloaded a free app on iTunes called Need For Speed. It’s not something that I would normally download (apps like Medscape, ePocrates, and Evernote are more in keeping with my constitution) although in a moment of insanity, I did purchase Angry Birds a while ago. Playing the latter proved more taxing than diagnosing the Flinders Island Tick-borne Disease!!

I downloaded NFS mainly for my son to play with when I get home, only to be told by him that “mummy has it on her iPad” on Skype last night!

Sigh.

Feeling somewhat deflated, I decided to give the game a try. Now the basis of the game is to chase or be chased. I chose the ‘to chase’ option and was assigned a police car. The instruction said to tap lightly on the left hand corner of the iPad to brake and to lightly sweep upwards on the right screen to get a nitro boost. To navigate, I simply had to tilt the iPad to the left or right and the car would turn likewise. My goal was to chase crooks in 3 separate race cars. How difficult can that be?!

Easy peasy!

NOT!

In the span of the chase, I crashed into road dividers, poles, road banks, almost went over a cliff, stranded myself in a few sand banks, killed a few cows, drove into an oncoming truck, had multiple honks from other drivers on the road, did a few 180 and 360 degree turns and with the nitro boost, I almost wiped out an entire village! The left hand corner of my iPad now has an indelible mark as a result of me trying to stop my possessed runaway police car!

Basically I hit everything EXCEPT the 3 crooks that I was supposed to chase!

I went to bed feeling more deflated than before I started playing.

I worry about driving my car when I get home.

230611 @ 0855

Jimbo was here

Some people do not like the geotagging feature of the iPhone – you know, where each and every photo you snap is tagged to the exact location where the shot was taken. Some people are concerned as anyone viewing the photos can potentially track where the other person has been to or worst, they may even track you back to where your home is.

But I, on the other hand love the feature!

Why?

Because when I look back at the 1548 photos I have taken with my phone in the last 9 months in Melbourne, the geotagging feature shows me where I have been and I reckon that many years down the road when my memory may fail me, this feature can help me recall better.

So, in the last 9 months I have been to the following places in Australia:

I’ve visited the Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. (I visited Darwin last year as well, so I’ve also been to the Northern Territory)

Places I’ve been to around Brisbane, Sydney and Victoria.

And finally, the places I have visited in Victoria.

Only 3 more states to go. Perhaps next time when I return to Australia.

210611 @ 2012

PS: blogged using the iPad. The wordpress app sucks!

Turkey Neck

My neck will look like this in a couple of years.

I made a startling and unpleasant discovery this morning when I looked into the mirror.

Etched like the Grand Canyon, transversely across the front of my neck were two deep skin creases (read: ugly wrinkles!). I swear it wasn’t there yesterday!

Sigh.

It’s yet another sign of growing old in addition to other ominous signs that have also ‘appeared overnight’ lately:

1. Deep furrows on my forehead (I’d like to think it’s a sign of intellect, but who am I kidding?!)
2. Crows feet at the eye corners
3. Discordant colored hairs in all sorts of anatomical distribution (why can’t they make hair dyes for areas other than the scalp?!!!)
4. New hairs sprouting where there were never any before
5. A receding hairline (wish I could turn my face 180 degrees around)
6. Nasal hair that seem to grow faster than I can trim them
7. The beginning of liver spots here, there, and there and there….
8. Moles and skin tags

Altogether not a pretty picture.

Old age doesn’t look good on me.

Thank God for the chilly Melbourne winter. At least my scarf hides the turkey neck.

Father’s Day

I didn’t blog about Father’s Day this year mainly because I was so busy moving out from my apartment and I had no reliable internet to use. Also, in Australia, Father’s Day is celebrated in September and it wasn’t a big deal here last Sunday when just about everyone else around the world were saying ‘thank you’ to their daddies. Aussies are weird on that way.

But truth be told, I miss my dad, a lot. I think I have not spent enough time to get to know the man who gave so much for me and whose life influenced my life in more ways than I care to admit. I’m gonna try to make up for lost time when I get home. I also miss my kids back home, and although they forgot to wish me this year, I know (at least I hope so) I have a place in their hearts and I’m gonna try to be a better dad.

There were heaps of Father’s Day comments on Facebook and blogs over the weekend and reading some of them brought me close to tears and a great measure of homesickness. A particular video on FB that a friend posted left me sobbing.

I’m such a sentimental fool.

Anyway, while blog-hopping, I came across this wonderfully candid and beautiful post. I’m reproducing it here. Take a read: Ten Ways to Say “Thank you, Dad”.

Melbourne University

Say the word “campus” and my mind would conjure up a sprawling ground dotted with old red brick buildings, each with its own character and its place in history. Within the halls of these buildings are where knowledge and skills are passed from one generation of sages to a younger generations of apprentices.

I’ve had the privilege of learning in a few of these traditional campuses – the National University of Malaysia, the university-town of Manipal, India and the University of Malaya. Each of these sprawling campuses have their own distinct ‘flavour’. Maniple even had it’s own scenic look out sot called ‘end point’ which was a popular haunt for people in love or people like me who enjoys a spot of solitude overlooking a lazy river far down below and watch the sun set while listening to the theme from ‘Dying Young‘ by Kenny G on my headphones attached to my cassette player (yeah I actually had one of these antiques).

In Malaysia, such campuses are rare. These days universities and colleges these days are more likely to be refurbished once-abandoned shopping complexes or even shop lots! I kid you not.

Last weekend, I decided to explore the hallowed grounds of Melbourne University.

The place is beautiful! This is how a campus is suppose to be.

I’d like to share some pictures here:

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