God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference

Reinhold Niebuhr

but i dono how strongly i believe in god. i do believe in a god out there, but faith is not what it used to be. i dono if its cause of the way people around me think, or is it how differently i see the world now... wat is going on?

yet another week has passed....

yupz, its the fourth week that i'm in HK already... i got to say, its quite fast.... been doing a lot this past week man... really a lot...

well, for starters, i did the MMSE in canto, not really that hard, the whole thing was quite ok, until i reached the part of the "44 stone lions"... its was some canto phrase and i had so much problem with it la... my sup ended up laughing and then he just read it for me to the patient... but the patient was nice... he didn't laugh k... but then again, MMSE was not that difficult, wait till you try the NCSE in canto... i mean, how on earth do you read something like this to you patient in canto:" the beginning movement revealed the composer's intention" when i first saw it i was... How on earth do u read that in chinese man?!!? don't even tok about canto, the chinese was in 'fan ti', and my 'jian ti' is already worth laughing at le... well, resorted to pin yin and using english words to help read out the sentence... so far, i've done tat test thrice, i'm much better at it already... the next challenge ahead is COPM in canto.. let you know how i fair man...

this week is still bz, i still have 8 patients with me, and i see them everyday for like 2 hours... tok about the need of treatment planning... it really calls on the skill of prioritizing the treatment for different patients cos i got sessions where 3 of them come at the same time! really got to sit down and plan everyday what i want to do... i feel so hardworking now... lol

my mini project is not mini by any scale man!! its horri-gible!! i got to come up with a proposal for turning the ADL flat into a transitional living flat so that patients can live in there for a day or even overnight to see if they can survive at home... its so difficult to find literature man! so if anyone who stumbles on something you think i can use, don't hesitate, just mail it to me!!

oh ya, must so tell u about my daily trips upslope. i tried taking different buses home so as to find out if i can take other buses, and i end up walking up all kinds of slopes!! and there was one that was a killer, i just felt like i was climbing a flat wall! i felt like i needed ice picks to climb tat slope la, its like 60 plus degrees la...

and ya, if there are upslopes, there are down slopes too!! as there is only one mini bus that reaches my work place and everytime if i don't manage to catch the 7.10 bus, the next free buses will be packed. so i have to take another bus that will bring me closes to my work place. and sad to say, the nearest that these buses bring me is to the top of the hill where my work place is at the bottom!! its at the bottom!! i takes me 20 mins just to walk down can... and i remembered, the first day i tried to take the other buses, i was already late... so i was like walking damn fast downhill, my shins cramped on me!! i mean, it was tat bad... sighz... i so wish i got a car now... its so much easier....

okz... a long week ahead, let u know wat happens.... and i've started running already k!! whahahaha :p

just a update from hk...

to those who reads this space.... just a little update about things here in HK...

well, its coming to the end of the 3rd week here in HK already, and i can't wait to start hands on tml! finally man, after the whole week of orientation, its getting kinda boring and kinda wished that i was back in singpaore. hopefully work will take up most of the time. will let u know y on earth it takes me two weeks to start work later...

so the first week here was spent checking shu hui into her hostel, making sure that she has somewhere to live in and not get chased out on to the streets... then we kinda went to different places to look see abit... we didn't really buy much stuff, cos know us, we will spend everything and end up surviving on air for the next few weeks... lol.. we wend to places like the avenue of stars (shinny balls no longer there!! :p ), mong kok, ladies' market, the peak (yah, the peak, u know, the peak), xi yi jie (which translates literally to wash shirt street), to different streets with cheap stuff... and not to mention, we ate quite abit of stuff too!! lol... the food here comes in portions that even i can't finish! so can you imagine how much stuff people here in HK eat.. its kinda frightening... but food here ain't that cheap, its like 5-6 bucks for a bowl of something, and sometimes even more considering where you eat... yupz, but sure got loads of things to eat... oh ya, shu hui tried chou duo fu too!! hahaha, she didn't like it though, much to my pleasure cos i ended up eating it all!! whahahaha...

oh ya, did i tell u that i live only 5 mins walk away from the krispy kreme outlet!! whahaha... but i'm disciplined k, so far, i have only eaten 1 donut from there k :p

for the first 3 days of the 3nd week, we spent it visiting different settings of hospitals here in the west side of HK, and learning about their systems and such. its quite interesting their system, but kinda messy too... lol...
the rest of the 2nd week was esther holidays here in HK, and i spent the first 2 days lazing at my mom's friend's place, eating and slping away while dog-sitting for her as she was in macua. then i spend sat with my aunt's family grave sweeping (a term that i took from the sign i saw in china). boy am i glad singapore has so little graves, and at least my family don't have to visit them. cos the graves here in HK are built on slopes that are like 20 stories high can! i spent most of the day climbing steps... almost wanted to just throw myself down the stairs at the end of the day can... never climbed that many stairs in my life man... sunday was spent slacking at home too :P
monday was fun, for me, shu hui spent it stoning at the hostel :P i went to ocean park with my cousins! lol... but it was damn packed with people la... each ride had to q at least 30mins can... but it was still fun... am going back again with shu hui in may when there is like lesser crowd...

tues was spent at queen mary hospital... its like the acute hospital that serves this area of HK... my god, i got to tell u, i have not seen such a messy hospital before can, as compared to those in singapore... its really cramp with loads of things lying around and the HAs there are like constantly talking at the top of their lungs one can!! i was so very irritated.... if i do come to HK to work, i'm NOT going to work in the acute setting man.... but the therapist in the acute setting see between 4-12 patients a day.... quite slack hor?! lol... well, different system i guess... spent the whole day there at the hospital observing...

and now, today's activity and the explaination as to why i'm only starting work officially tml, is all thanks to the stupid employment visa. without it, i'm an illegal worker... hahaha... well, finally got it in hand, so work starts! yeah!! never been so happy to start work :P and getting this visa was not easy k, we had to travel to china and back in order to activate the visa. don't bother asking y its such a stupid process, just take it as it is. so after going down to the immigration office this morning to pick up our then 'invalid' visa, shu hui and i hopped on the train and started our boring journey to shen zhen. it took us 45 mins to get there and to HK$37 dollars train ride k! so bloody expensive.... neway, what happened next was kinda dumb... lol... we were in and out of shen zhen in lest than an hour! and most of it was spent waiting for the passports to get chopped!

and a funny thing was, the stupid customs officer on the 'land of the 4 million bicycles' tot my passport was a phoony can! make me stand at the side looking like some drug smuggler, and in the stupid clinical pants somemore. well, turns out that he doesn't know that we have changed the system of updating photos, and the new one is like laser printed on... so thats like y he tot i was trying to bluff my way through.. so dumb...

neway, we were more than glad to get out of the 'land of 4 million bicycles'. we headed back to the poly-u to settle more admin stuff. and we didn't had to report for work today cos by the time we went back, it was time to leave. so we decided to spend the rest of time in library (where else rite??) with our new found admin card that gave us access to everywhere in the uni. i got to say the library is a heaven compared to nyp's can.... everything was in place n there was everything... EVERYTHING can...!! they have AJOT that dates back to 1960s can!! i love the library!! whahaha....

okz... thats about all that we have done for now... let u know more the next time then....

oh ya, one more thing, transportation here is very very very very very complicated!! and ex too!!