Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Day One, Medical Attachment. Armed with knowledge that it is never as exciting, As Advertised On TV. Till this day, I am eternally surprised why TV producers spare no effort in sensationalizing and blowing job descriptions out of proportion to produce punch-by-punch TV, every second ideally action-packed. Why can't they just portray the mundane day of a mundane middling doctor as it is? Some astute TV producers have already done it, with runaway success.
It's called reality TV.
Okay, yes, apologies are called for - a one week hiatus in production of highly riveting sitcoms like this one is a capital offence in some countries, punishable by stoning with surplus remote controls on huge pyres. Allow me to plead my case before you deliberate with the jury and read me the (no doubt rigged) verdict.
I just worry when my readership will dwindle to the point no one cares I'm posting.
Yeah...got sick, miraculously NOT the moment I came back from Mt Kinabalu, but rather, one day later. I have a good excuse for this, as always. I met a bunch of Seremban teachers on the mountain whose idea of an uber cool holiday in KK, as narrated by the "friendly, gushing hotel receptionist", was a walk in town to find the elusive Filipino Market.
Now, people, how does that sound to the kids? We splurged your scholarship money and deprived you of 3 kilograms of medical textbooks so we could walk around a city that, funnily enough, resembled a Malaysian one? I had different ideas for them. It was great reciprocity - I hitched a lift in their chartered van to KK (RM 11 saved!), THEY hitched a lift in my green Unser for one whole day in KK while I drove them to Tourist KK.
Faster than you could say "Tourist KK", I picked them up on Friday morning - it may help to put things into perspective that barely 18 hours ago I was still descending the bleeding mountain - my legs hurting me so badly the only thing I could reasonably do was drive. Scratch that. Drive automatic. How convenient.
First stop - Signal Hill, or in their words, "that green patch we see every morning from our hotel". Maybe it's because I have ONLY explored Penang and Sandakan extensively, but it seems every town in Malaysia has a little Bukit Bendera, Signal Hill, Bukit Istana, a rose by any other name is just as red. Or fragrant. Shakespeare must be turning in his grave. In essence, before I'm allowed to digress any further, it's the highest point in KK town, and due to the size (or lack thereof) of KK, you can see the cliched birds-eye sweep from the hill. To them, it was magical; for us it was baloney. When will we ever learn that charity begins at home?
At the foot of Signal Hill is the City Bird Sanctuary, possibly the only capital city in Malaysia with a mangrove forest smack in the middle of town like a big black paint blotch on a van Gogh. They spent many interested minutes peering at the horseshoe crabs there - I must say God must have been mucking around with his kindergarten watercolor set when he designed them, the hues and the whorls blew me away. Plus, they're so...small, something you've grown accustomed to crushing under your feet. Only magnifies the remorse once you sit up and take notice.
Next stop, Tuaran Mee and Leong Foon Susu. Word of warning - If you are a halal stickler who simply refuses to dine in an establishment without halal signage, wrong state, old chap. In KK, the rule of thumb: No pork? Check. No wine? Check. It's halal. Such is the ambience in KK that you order in MALAY in most Chinese shops, courtesy of the exclusively Filipino/Indonesian workforce. Songkoks and tudungs bobbing about in Chinese shops comes as no shock. Semenanjungs regularly experience culture shock when they go eat mamak food and realise most of it sucks - most Malays are either busy eating Chinese food or in Salim...Salim...oh Salim...the mere escape of these syllables brings to mind an institution.
Off to another institution I go. The daily bath. See, I never told you about the medical attachment today. Let this be a hard-earned lesson next time you read my blog, which at this rate, shall be renamed Delayed Transmission soon.
