Quite frankly, I’m speechless.
Monthly Archives: March 2012
A not so clever clever patient
Not too long ago, I had a patient who has been under follow-up in my clinic for a while now who one day complained of prolonged coughing. When asked how long has the cough been, he answered, “A few months”.
There was no fever and the cough was dry. Auscultation of the chest was normal.
When asked why he did not seek advise earlier, he said, “Oh, I knew that Methadone (he used to be on Methadone to help kick his intravenous drug use habit) will suppress the cough and so for the last 2 months, I restarted myself on Methadone!”
On a hunch, we ordered an X-ray of his chest and this was what we saw:
Sigh…
The patient was immediately started on anti-TB medications. To think that he has been sitting together with many of my immuno-suppressed patients in the air-conditioned waiting room outside the clinic and coughing his lungs out makes me shudder.
Related articles
Getting connected in HK
This post is for internet-dependent people from Malaysia who wants to visit Hong Kong and wants to know how to stay connected (cheaply) there.
The first thing I bought upon arriving in HK last weekend was to go hunt for a SIM card for my iPhone. In my haste to pack and travel, I plain forgot to inform my telco that I needed roaming access and so when I landed in HK, my phone connection went dead – and that’s bad news for a Facebook addict.
The flight from KLIA to HK was sheer torture, as I left the free wifi at the former, hopped onto the Cathay Pacific flight and finally got connected momentarily with the free wifi in HK international airport 3.5 hours later. Btw, if you ever considered flying with Cathay Pacific, DON”T! The cabin was warm beyond words (must be trying to save on fuel), the seats were cramped, the food was awful, the movie selections suck (the best I could find was Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 1 in FRENCH!!!), and the service leaves much to be desired.
Anyway, while browsing the stores at the Chun King Mansion on in Tsim Tsa Tsui (the CBD of mainland HK), one could be excused for thinking he has landed in the Indian subcontinent instead. Within this complex were hundreds of Indians, Pakistanis, Bengalis, Bangladeshis, etc. They were all selling the same things – bags, IT gadgets from China, phones, porn mags and DVDs, and food. One could easily get a good Indian meal for a fraction of the price you will pay outside for HK Chinese cuisine. This was where I bought my SIM card.
The card cost me HKD 98 (about RM 39) and the telco was ’3′. I have come across this telco before when I was in Melbourne. The card was preloaded with HKD 98 which can be used for local and international calls and blazingly fast internet access! The best part about the SIM card is that, while the charge for internet access was HKD 2 for every 1 MB, the daily internet charge is capped at HKD 26, which works out to be around RM 10/day! This is far cheaper than any roaming deals you can find in Malaysia. 
So, with HKD 98 in the SIM card, I had awesome virtually unlimited internet access for the 3 days I was in HK. Now, that’s value for money.
The SIM card does not fit into the iPhone slot, but it didn’ t matter, the storekeeper was all too happy to cut it to the appropriate size.
And oh, if you wanna get your hands on the latest iPad or the iPhone 4S, HK is the place to go.
Hyper-dense-ity
I was at the Celcom outlet yesterday to terminate my internet subscription because I had recently upgraded the internet in my home from 1 MBps to 4 Mbps. Previously, I was under the Celcom + TMnet plan called ‘Home, Hop and Away’ which included the miserable 1MBps connection at home and a SIM card for internet on the go.
The transaction was done in a jiffy and the service was excellent (I wasted paying 80 sen for parking thinking it would take a long time for the termination to be done). Before leaving the outlet, I took a look at the display cabinet which contained various tablet covers.
A very cheery lady immediately came over and asked if she could be of assistance.
I said to her: “I’m looking for a cover for the iPad.“
She: “Oh. Yes we have that!“
I was delighted!….for about 3 seconds because her next sentence took my breath away, quite literally.
She: “May I know what brand is your iPad?“
Me: “Um…you know, THE iPad?”
She: “Oh! You mean, the APPLE brand of iPad? Oh, sorry sir, for that brand we don’t have the covers. We only sell covers for Samsung brand of iPads“
*face-palm* + *head-wall*
Relativity
I remember the first day I reported for work in Melbourne more than a year ago. It was a Monday and, according to the registrar, apparently the busiest day of the week. In the morning, there was the grand hematology ward round and in the afternoon there was the weekly clinic.
I asked the registrar how many patients are expected that afternoon. He shook his head and said, “We have a lot of patients today. It’s gonna be a long day”.
And so, that afternoon, I braced myself for a ‘long day’ at the clinic. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised that ‘long’ is relative. It turned out that we had a total of 8 patients that afternoon who was seen by three physicians!
One of them asked me how many patients are there in my clinic and I answered, “Between 30-40 patients seen by a specialist and one or two medical officers“. They were stunned. One of them said, “Wow! I’ll never complain again!“.
To be fair to my Aussie colleagues, they take a blardy long time with each patient, averaging about an hour per patient. It’s a luxury I can ill afford in Malaysia with the heavy patient load.
Last weekend, I was in Hong Kong attending a regional workshop on HAND (HIV Associated Neurocognitive Disorders). Whilst there, I discovered from my Thai, Cambodian and Vietnamese counterparts that they see an average of 30-100 patients per doctor per day!!!!
WOW!!!
I’ll never complain again.
John Carter
We went to watch John Carter at the theatre the other day. The film is Disney’s latest summer release and carried a PG12 rating (children below 12 had to be accompanied by a parent).
I’m not going to spoil it for you by revealing the plot, although you can read it here. Suffice to say that, while my 9-year-old son thoroughly enjoyed the movie (he laughed so loud, we were almost embarrassed), the rest of us thought the movie was only “so-so”. Sitting through 120 minutes of the movie was quite a torture and truth be told, I was almost overjoyed when it finally ended. Thankfully I did not develop pressure sores.
Not that the movie was bad in any particular way. It just lacks the ‘WOW!!’ factor. You know, the feeling one gets when one sees a scene like perhaps the light-saber duel in Star Wars or the first glimpse of Pandora in Avatar.
I think I would have enjoyed the movie more if:
1. Dejah Thoris, the warrior princess of Helium (her city on Mars) did not look like a man in wigs on anabolic steroids. (If I were John Carter, I’d rather not go back to Mars).
2. Helium wasn’t called ‘Helium’. I’ve always equated ‘helium’ with funny voices after inhalation of the gas.
3. John Carter had more testosterone than Dejah Thoris, or perhaps less estrogen.
4. The space crafts did not look like they were stolen from the set of Avatar and fitted with cropped grasshopper wings.
5. Tars Tarkas, the leader of the Tharks, did not look like an ectopic character who wandered off the set of Star Wars.
6. Those cute little green creatures which hatched on Mars did not look like they were offsprings of Shrek.
7. The hyperactive-super fast Mar’s version of a dog that became John Carter’s pet did not look like a juvenile version of Jabba-the-Hutt in Return of the Jedi.
8. The music score wasn’t so uninspiring or cheesy.
9. Shang, the busy-body celestial-but-mortal Thern, did not looked like he overdosed on SKII and Fair & Lovely facial cream.
10. The plot in parts, did not make me feel like I was watching Cowboys vs Aliens.
11. The people in the cinema did not include infants who whined and yelled intermittently throughout the film, idiots who did not know how to mute their blardy hand phones, imbeciles who had the need to check their FB updates every 3.5 seconds or the lovey-dovey couple behind me who giggled incessantly while whispering sweet nothings in Chinese loud enough to be heard in the next cinema hall. I almost wished I had a real light saber.
It was very annoying to watch John Cater romancing his testosterone-laden love interest accompanied by the unappreciated background noise of mobile phones, whiny babies and loud oriental foreplay.
I read it’s going to be a trilogy. Frankly I’m not holding my breath in anticipation.
