I honestly can't recall when my last post was, and that's a bad thing. Somehow I can't find it in me to compose a post while in hall, be it a consequence of a whole host of activities, there's always something that seems to take precedence, or perhaps because as much as I love having SH as my roommate, it does make for some little awkwardness when it comes to composing my thoughts in privacy. Weekends seem to pass in a blur, too much to do, too little time, so all I have are these rare moments to sit down, take a deep breath and attempt, to varying degrees of success, to recall and reflect over the things that have happened.
Let's start with the most striking one first.
On my way to DnD at the Marina Mandarin yesterday, a lady taming the bus I was on suddenly collapsed. She was sitting in the middle of the last row of seats at the back of the bus, so she toppled, face forwards, landing heavily on the floor. It wasn't simply fainting; her whole body started convulsing, I think she actually managed to bite her dentures so hard that they cracked, shards lying on the floor, everyone, myself included, was stunned. I got down beside her, but didn't quite know what to do; if I turned her around, was there a chance she'd choke from anything inside her mouth? But leaving her facedown there couldn't be a good thing as well. And I was, I must admit, more than a little afraid to touch her, she was shaking so, so, badly. Another middle-aged guy came over, and together we turned her onto her back, hands supporting her head. Her teeth were locked together, the inside of her mouth seemed to be lacerated, blood bubbling out of it. We frantically got someone to call an ambulance, and asked around for something to slot inbetween her teeth, some packets of tissue, a Tupperware lid, but her teeth were clenched together so tightly that they couldn't be pried apart. Fortunately she didn't seem to have bitten onto her tongue. So all we could do was squat there and support her head, hoping frantically that she'd be okay, waiting for the ambulance to come. The convulsions stopped after a minute or so, we called out to her to no response. "Are you okay?" "Do you understand what I'm saying?" "Do you know what happened to you?" In English and Chinese. An eternity passed. She gradually regained consciousness, was able to move and sit up by herself, back facing us. She either couldn't or wouldn't reply to our questions. Time passed, she still seemed disorientated but was able to give us her name, at least. More time passed. I have no idea what the supposed response time for an ambulance to arrive is supposed to be, but what I'm saying is that that ambulance seemed to take forever to arrive, 10 mins at the very least, so I'm very thankful her condition didn't seem to be very critical. We stayed with her till the ambulance arrived, and the attendants took over, before finally alighting from the bus to continue the trip to YCK MRT. It's the first time I've got someone else's blood on my hands, probably not going to be too rare an occurence in the future given my chosen profession, but I hope I'll be able to react at least a little better should there be further occurrences in the unforeseen future. I found myself so helpless, not knowing what to do, and I'm not proud of myself for that, but not shying away and at least trying to help has to count for something, doesn't it? Thankfully she seemed fine.
Academically speaking, the past week has been a pretty chill one, a TBL session on Tuesday, which I spent the better part of Sunday and Monday preparing for - burning the midnight oil seems like a normal thing nowadays - a wholly unremarkable practical session; analyzing the rate of malate dehydrogenase catalyzed reaction via the production of NADH with the use of a spectrophotometer; repeating the same few steps over and over again to produce a set of results, we were damn shocked when there was an anomaly, apparently someone had forgotten to put in the NAD+ haha, and practical results analysis which can be summed up as "How to use Excel for Dummies" (which I am, unfortunately), MedSoc Exco elections on Thursday and a visit to Bukit Batok Polyclinic on Friday, a prelude to the upcoming week's attachment there. I don't feel like dwelling on how the election turned out etc, though class politics are always an interesting point of discussion, so I'll talk about the experience at BBP instead. Definitely an interesting experience; they have an area set aside on the third floor for our training, we started off with training re the 7 steps to a proper handwash, spent perhaps a little too much time on that but I guess it does help to reinforce the necessity for proper hand hygiene. That was followed up by some interaction with simulated patients, which I find a really cool aspect of the LKCSoM. The idea is that next week, we'll have to interact with actual patients in the polyclinic, so rather than have us go in wholly unprepared, they have specially trained actors for us to practice on as well as to give us feedback, letting us know what we did well, and also what we have to work upon. Apparently I have a little issue with personal space xP A very fun experience, which hopefully will help to do away with the intimation factor that's always present in novel interactions, and make me a lot more confident in speaking to and dealing with strangers and patients.
Now on to the fun part haha. I applied to join NTU's shooting club again, which may or may not be a lamb knowingly going forth to be slaughtered once more. I initially had all intentions of doing it on a purely recreational basis, but after going for the trials on Monday, they (and by that I mean some random senior whose name idek) told me the club doesn't really have enough shooters on the men's rifle team (and all the other teams for that matter =.=) and that I'd kinda be on the provisional and possibly even main team by default. Since that means that trainings are entirely FOC and the minimum training requirement is about 3 hours a week, which I'd more or less been planning to put in in the first place, I wasn't too resistant to the idea. Shooting once more after so long was simultaneously frustrating and enjoyable. So many aspects of my 动作 which I'd taken so long to iron out cropped up once more, and my mental weakness has exposed itself once more, idk whether I was half-expecting for all these problems to have miraculously vanished, but there they are again, familiar adversaries, as if they'd never left me (or I, them). Shooting is a struggle for me, has always been, perhaps will ever be, but maybe that's why I like it. It is probably the purest form of introspection, so I'll carry on with it and see how things go. At the moment, I'm just glad to say that I'm Shooting Stuff once more~
Let's see what I did for the rest of the week: Attended a couple of JCRC rallies, incredibly boring but I was obliged to turn up to support some friends, went for an Archery fun shoot after playing "Inter-house" Captains Ball and soccer with some of my classmates on Wednesday (scored a totally random game-ending goal when Marcel's clearance rebounded off my shin to trace a fine trajectory into the goal trolololol) unfortunately I doubt I'll be able to join Archery, fun as it seems, the training commitment (3x a week for comp, Fridays for recre) doesn't really work at all for my current schedule, it does seem like an awesome sport though, kinda makes me think about the could-have-beens, but that's all in the past now. Celebrated Melinda and Willis' birthday as an OG past midnight on Thursday, and that's about it. DnD on Saturday was possibly a huge waste of money, though I'll try to frame this as positively as possible. Somehow I just didn't find myself quite up to it, never really got into the mood to enjoy myself. Bleh.
Ok, I'm off for dinner and after that, the match versus ManU hahah it's probably the reason behind my decision not to "bookin" to hall tonight, who knows whether I'd be able to stream from there, and anyway tomorrow starts off at Novena so I can afford to make the trip from home.
I realize that of late I've been dealing with "events" rather than thoughts or feelings, I guess I haven't really found it within myself to reach within and splash it all out, so this'll have to do for now.
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