Thursday 30 October 2008

Decisions, Decisions

People make bad decisions. All the time. And although I haven't gone to the extent of actually carrying out a survey to ask the number of times the average person makes bad decisions, I'm quite confident that the findings of the said survey can be summarised as x > 1 whereby x is the number of bad decisions made resulting in a serious desire to bury one's head underground.


Some of the bad decisions that we make are irreversible; like the time you asked the most popular girl in school to be your girlfriend and she bluntly turned you down, citing 'I'm not interested in boys who are shorter than me' as a reason. Or how about the time you thought that it'd be a good laugh to make fun of your friend in front of other friends, only to realise that he now no longer wants to talk to you. Sure you can pretend that it never happened - 'Oh, her? Nah...I never was interested in her anyway. She walks funny' or 'Ali? Ali who? I never had a friend by the name of Ali who I unknowingly hurt his feelings before' - but let's be honest with ourselves. The truth is that they live on forever deep in the darkest chamber of our hearts, right?

Some bad decisions carry with them slightly more bearable consequences. These usually come in the form of items (e.g. DSLRs) bought at an impulse with money which should have been invested in more fruitful activities such as endless late night suppers at the local mamak stall just to use the free internet service provided there.

And finally, you have bad decisions which you can simply put behind you and look forward to the future. These are the bad decisions which most of us make most of the time, and yet funnily enough, they are also the ones which we can never seem to let go of. I suppose it's because they make people nostalgic and are oh, what's the phrase again - 'of sentimental value'? 

The thing is, there really is nothing to be nostalgic of. If there is anything that I've learnt from reading cheap self-help parodies, it's that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Which is why we recycle the same fashion trends over and over again.

So yes. Don't mull on the past. Look to the future. Just beware of being too optimistic (a bad decision I made once)

Thursday 16 October 2008

Ball Kicking and its Benefits

Short entries that chronicle my life don't make for an enjoyable reading experience. I know that for a fact because I also started having nightmares after reading back the previous couple of posts. Even more worrying is that I have received emails from several concerned mums who reported that since the past few days, their children have been talking about how they 'never want to go online again' and 'that awful blog'. 


Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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It has always been said that due to the enormous range of topics to cover, apart from reading, medical students do not have time for other worldly activities such as exercise. In fact, I remember a prominent ophthalmologist saying that the only exercise back during her student days was walking back and forth from the hospital. 

But that's all in the past now and with the advent of digital SLRs, the iPhone and Kopi Jantan, medical students are expected to not only become bookworms, but healthy bookworms. It is because of that very reason that I took up playing indoor football which is funnily enough called futsal.

Futsal is a godsend for city folks who have neither the time nor the perfectly mowed fields to play proper football on. Futsal is played on an artificial piece of turf about the size of a basketball court with its perimeter covered by a net. It's said that the net is to keep the ball from going places as a result of disastrous ball kicking skills, but I suspect that its real purpose is to keep unruly opponent benchwarmers from stepping in and stirring up a fuss during a match.

Now, I've been playing the sport long enough to tell you that the amount of stamina required is no less than that required from playing football on the field. In fact, from my careful observations (and also from the exhaustive hours put into the game), I can say with confidence that futsal is a much, much more physically challenging game. This is because a lot of energy is used up to perform skills and stunts that are a requisite for the game, for example: running, dribbling the ball and shouting taunts at your opponents who have just missed an easy shot. It goes without saying that that latter takes up most of the energy expenditure.

Futsal is great in the sense that you can play it at any time under any weather condition. This is something that medical students are extremely grateful for since they're too tired to play in the afternoon after a whacked out day at the hospital, so they usually arrange for late night games (particularly in the range of 11 p.m. to 1 a.m.) so that they can continue to feel whacked out during tomorrow's ward rounds.

Yes, futsal is one of Man's better innovations I have to admit that. But in the end, it is also the same innovation that gave me a twisted knee a couple of weeks back -.-"

Sunday 12 October 2008

I Want To Scream


I have just finished my clinical exams. I could write a lengthy post about how I feel post-assessment but since people keep harping on and on about how 'a picture paints a thousand words', I'll just let the picture above tell my tale.


postscript: pardon my current obsession with explosions and all things macabre. I'm not turning into one of those goth kids you so commonly see all over the place these days, rest assured.

Saturday 11 October 2008

Turmoil

Apart from stories with bad cliffhangers and the contestants from a certain local fantasy academy, one of the things which I despise most in life is the ominous feeling that accompanies exams (which so happens to be just around the corner). The sinking feeling of not being able to finish covering all the necessary chapters sickens me to the stomach, but then again, that could also be attributed to the bad eating habits that come along with the package.

But lamentations will remain at that - mere lamentations. Unless I do something about it. Sharpish.

Scenic view of my emotions at present

Thursday 9 October 2008

Escapism

Since my DSLR dreams seem rather distant at the moment (that, combined with the fact that I have exams next week), I've decided to wash down all the pain and bitterness with a spot of Photoshop.

Photoshop - creating self comforting delusions for pitiful DSLR would-be-owners since last Thursday. Oh, and a catalyst for bad grammar too. 

What my dreams initially appeared to be

What they have morphed into