Post-KK Day1 at work is hard. :) After such an excellent weekend of merry-making and great food, I have sort of a hang-over at work this morning. I literally fell on my bed after a quick shower last night when I arrived back in Sandakan around 9pm. I even forgot to set my alarm but luckily my internal alarm was functioning this morning. I woke up exactly at 6.30am. I'm feeling so bloated after the weekend that now I'm planning to skip dinner from now on if possible. After all I have lunch almost 2.30pm everyday.

Wow the session today was pretty heavy. Imagine slides and slides of ECGs but it was quite an experience straining my eyes and forcing myself to figure out what each ECG tracing meant with 150 other doctors and paramedics.

I'm in KK! I didn't miss KK a bit but it's nice to sink my teeth into my fav McD double-cheese burger! :) Yeah... Sandakan doesn't have McD. Good thing too la... can cut down of grease. My 3G broadband is up and going so I can practically go online anyway where there's 3G, so cool. Tomorrow is the ECG workshop and I just got good news... will be meeting up with my 2 old housemates there! They are also attending. Apparently there is going to be quite a crowd. A team from IJN will be conducting the workshop.

I love Oprah. I was watching a segment on women and their finances and it got me thinking about my own money. So I decided that I should do everything I can to maximize my income. So I started doing locum. Last long weekend alone I earned quite a bit in 4 days just doing consultation work. It's really easy money. I really thank my parents for my education. I know many people earning lesser than what I made that 4 days, in a month.

I'll be making a short trip to KK this weekend for a course, my first as a MO. It's on arrhythmia and ECG, which are excellent topics, but honestly I'm more excited to eat and shop in KK. :)

A typical day in my working life here in Sandakan would be seeing between 60-80 patients in the diabetes and hypertension clinic where I'm currently posted to now in the outpatient department.

Some days are good:

1. compliant patients

Some days are bad:

1. patients with weird, diseaseless symptoms
2. those who adjusts their own medications and come back for review with rocket high blood pressure and unrecordable sugar reading (meaning ridiculously high)
3. patients from [2] who get some scolding and do the same thing again the next time around
4. non-compliant patients
5. those who tell you (doctors) what medications they need, the dosage, what their blood test results mean and when they should come back for their reviews
6. patients who complain about that one episode of headache that lasted about 5mins 5months ago and expect you to tell them what disease they had
7. patients who treat doctors like God and leave everything about their health into our hands and do not take any accountability
8. those who insist that Ranitidine is a medication for gout!!! just, just because their "best friend" told them so
9. patients who can't speak English/Malay/Mandarin and call themselves Malaysians
10. patients who suddenly after 3years on a certain anti-hypertensive tell you that the medication causes gidiness and "lemas" but never told the previous doctors who reviewed them the last 3 years just, just because they couldn't speak English/Malay/Mandarin and keep the medication in their medication museum at home

And it goes on for this list.

The point for my entry today: it's easy to make me happy.

I'm having a great life at the moment. My move to a new town and starting my new post and moving into a new place, meeting new people. All have been good.

But all these couldn't stop my heart from aching and tears streaming down my face every time I think of Stryker.

My dear 18-year-old mongrel Stryker, the most "durable" dog in the world, succumbed to intestinal obstruction early this week.

Stryker in my life taught me one very valuable lesson: when you hope and pray for something hard enough, you'll get it, for sure. Both times I collapsed on my knees and prayed for something very hard (both times for Stryker), they miraculously came through.

Sorry Stryker I didn't know you were sick, I would have prayed harder than usual.

Hope you enjoy heaven!