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I got these lovely cloth buttons from my favourite shop on the Haji Lane stretch – Soon Lee when I dropped by on Saturday for their 1st Anniversary celebrations. I had taken part in some contest they put up on their blog previously. It was a pleasant surprise to find that Sharon from the shop completely knows who I am by name too! The whole celebration was really fun, with a super cute ice cream uncle, colourful balloons and a great festive atmosphere. Here, the colourful buttons are pinned onto my staple white Zara shirt for tomorrow, all set to brighten my day!

The evening sun in the room yesterday illuminated everything nicely, and I was bored. Welcome to the place where I spend almost all my time in when I’m home. It’s a cosy, dark space with all my memorabilia and books scattered about.

ENT at CGH consists mostly of waiting around for consultants to be free to take you for tutorials, or just in general waiting around for time to pass, so that we can sign our log books and go home/go in pursuit of other pleasures. The clinics move at a comfortable pace, the staff are nice, and there’s a good range of conditions to see. It’s a fairly interesting specialty too, no doubt, but looking into noses and ears all day just doesn’t cut it for me. Ophthalmology over ENT anyday! Here’s Mogi on the comfortable patient chair attempting to expel his boredom, elicting some laughs from the rest of us whilst he’s at it.

Again, Zj and I amusing ourselves whilst waiting yet another hour for a tutorial to happen. Where’s Jerry?

I open my eyes and wake up to this view of sun rays peeking through my blinds in the morning. That is, if I get the luxury of being posted to CGH and having to be in hospital only at 9+ in the morning. Else its just a mad rush getting dressed and ready for school in the pre-dawn darkness. I liked the juxtaposition of light and dark, with the beams of light on my ceiling, that inspired bleary-eyed me to reach for the camera first thing in the morning.

Am currently exhausted and sleepy from a full day of lectures for the new ENT posting. My post-10km run left foot hurts too, especially when I bear weight on it. Hobbling around all day with a boring day of lectures is no fun.

I took this photograph yesterday when I accompanied my Mum to the temple in the afternoon (its some Buddhist festival today, which I know nothing about). She bought 2 lotus blooms to bring home for our altar table, and the lady at the stall very kindly wrapped the flowers in a bouquet of their own leaves for us. I thought that that was quite innovative, and well, it looked really beautiful anyway.

That, 1h 12mins, was the amount of time it took for Chiara and I to complete the 10km component of the Shape Run 2008 this morning! It may not be that fast, but proud of it I definitely am, since it’s my first 10k, and we surpassed my expectations since we didn’t stop to walk at all.

We got up at 6 this morning, and headed down to the Esplanade for the start of the run. Flag off was at 730, and they flagged off the 10km runners (who made up about a quarter of the 8000 runners) first, which was then followed by the 5km runners later. This was an all-girls’ run, so there were many “HAB” (Husbands and Boyfriends) waiting along the sidelines, cheering their girls on. One particularly doting husband even made a banner with his wife’s runner number, and stood at the side with their 2 young children yelling “____ all the wayyy!!!!”. That garnered him much applause from the impressed ladies doing the run.

Post-run was tremendously satisfying (and sweaty), and I ached everywhere. The whole run was tremendously mental, and I kept feeling like I was going to die. I was all ready to walk once we passed the 5km mark, but somehow we didn’t stop, and managed to last till the end. The fastest runner looped us before the 4km mark, 23mins into the race. 6km in 23mins. MAD. We saw plenty of friends there too, Liang si and her sister, Natalie Woong, Violet, and Aileen!

Post-run celebratory breakfast at the famous Jalan Tua Kong mee pok, an extra large bowl of mee with extra chilli and teh-ping. Truly excellent.

Next in sight: the Nike+ Human Race, 31st Aug!

John! I was randomly snapping away when I got this picture of him.

And this is Pam. Amazingly, these shots (and more) were caught in the span of a VERY animated 3 minute conversation with Aziah behind me.

Met up with a few of my old council friends back at RJC on Saturday. It was supposed to be a council gathering, but I couldn’t make it for the actual timing, and chose to catch up with them earlier instead. It was really great to see them again, especially Yingheng and Serjin whom I haven’t seen in years! The new RJ campus has a new addition! The Hodge Lodge, after our ex-principal Mr. Hodge. It’s an extremely comfortable room, with squishy comfy plush chairs, a Karaoke system (and a stage to sing on!), board games, and even a small room with Nintendo Wii, Playstation and other state of the art video games. To top it off, there’s a separate REAL movie cinema with proper cinema seats and a proper sound and projection system (not the usual lousy projector screens in the LT!). Insane. It’s open to students every afternoon. Imagine, RJ students these days have such a cool place to crash!! And this amazing facility is also available for booking by ex-students like us for class gatherings and the like.

I no longer walk around with my camera in hand 24/7, ready to snap away, hence I’ve been taking less photographs lately. There’s just no time but the present, and the less time I spend trying to capture the moment, the more time I actually have to enjoy it. This explains the recent barrage of shots that weren’t taken by me on this blog.

I caught the latest installment of the Batman series, the Dark Knight with Wenkien, Li, Joshua and Pooja on Thursday night at the Medicine charity event on the day it opened in Singapore. It was really pretty freaking damn awesome, and despite not really knowing the storyline (I grew up not reading comics, watching action cartoons or playing videogames, and blame it on the lack of a male sibling.), I still enjoyed the movie quite tremendously. Heath Ledger as the Joker really stole the show, although thinking about how he’s dead and watching him on screen with that creepy make up made me shudder a little. There were many many action sequences in the show that were unexpected and dramatic. And for such a long movie (it was about 2.5h), I really felt like I got enough bang for my buck.

My favourite Batmobile. Batman zooming around the streets of Gotham on it, with his cape flying behind him, looked insanely cool.

Today was the last day of Ophthalmology. After the EOPT and debriefing by the ADO, my CG headed to Bishan Sports Hall for a fantastic game of badminton. Playing with the boys (at their speed) really gave us a workout, and it was really really fun! I spent half the time trying not to laugh, since its not exactly easy to aim or hit the shuttlecock when I’m laughing, but the company was just too hilarious to help it. Shaun played like the wind, flying from one end of the court to the other, Mogi kept smashing us, Edwin had scary shots that looked like he was going to hit the shuttlecock very far but it’d land just at the net, and J had a mean short game. The girls were just happy that we managed to hit the shuttlecock at all, let alone place it in a challenging spot.

2 more days to the Shape run!

Found these pictures I saved in my computer ages ago. I no longer remember where I got them from and thus can’t credit them. However, they ARE adorable! Miniature men working on food shot in macro!

Today’s a day of staying at home and cramming for the Ophthalmology EOPTs tomorrow morning. I love short postings for their slackness and low expectations on a day to day basis, but not for the tests that come every 2 weeks that we need to cram for. A whole new subject of study (and hence a whole new book to mug) every 2 weeks! Fortunately, there’s the Medicine faculty’s charity screening of The Dark Knight later, and a night out with my buddies to look forward to.