Wednesday, November 30, 2005
This is the 2nd day of my so-called job attachment at Geylang Polyclinic in case anyone doesn't know. Yup, I'd signed up for the school job attachment thing under 'Medical Attachment'. The job attachment is more like us being Sai Kang Warriors (Shit Work Warriors if you translate it directly). And it's practically shit work! No kidding!
Day 1
Let me start of with the most interesting and most 'fascinating' 1st day of work...
Jes and I agreed to meet up at SengKang but not surprising, both of us were late thus reported late for job the very first day. The stuff we had to do there was quite unexpected actually. We are not actually working in a polyclinic but an elderly day care centre that happens to be the top for of the polyclinic. Chim right? haha! So it's more like taking care of the elderly and stuff. So much like an old folk's home but what we are supposed to do there is far more than that. There's a total of 13 of us this week to go down to help out. So we were being showed around by this Pilipino worker, Rosewana. She's real cute and nice. All of us were being assigned different task for each day. So it's more like rotating our task for the 5 days.
I don't know if I'm lucky or what cause Wei Xiang and I were being assigned to Home Care on my very first day and attached to Maria, another Pilipino worker. For Home Care right, we actually have to go to the patient's house to do bathing/cleaning, dressing of wound (if any), physiotherapy, etc. It's like Home Nursing in other words. I was pretty excited about it at first. It's the first time doing this kind of stuff. However Wei Xiang was pretty worried though he himself is also a SJAB officer but he said he doesn't do Home Nursing at all. Moreover he just break camp (his corp SJAB training camp) so he was damn shacked and tried.
Anyway, we headed to the first patient at Bedok, Abdul Shaharf aged 80+ and is half paralyzed due to stroke. Maria said he's one of the better-off patients she had to attend as he stays in a 4 room flat and his daughters and sons are very supportive of him. There's also a maid to attend to him and his wife. So Maria helped him to bathe while both of us watched. There's still quite ok. However he hasn't been shitting that day so Maria had to help him in that! She inserted to 2 pills right into his anus. She said the pills will helped him to shit and it does! However as he isn't really able to control his muscles, Maria thus comes in damn handy. At first Wei Xiang and me were like what she trying to do as she put on her gloves and lie the old man in his bed and took off his diapers (yes, most of the elderly there wear diapers). Then she suddenly stuck her index finger right into his anus! Ouch! And there she went practically digging the shit out! Oh man! The room stinks! And the fan wasn't off! Oh man! I almost wanted to faint there already! So continued her digging for like 20 minutes?! God! Her gloves are 'soiled' and she very funny also, kept saying her hands are too small can't dig out some of it as she could feel there's more of the bowels in there. Then said like the bowels are quite hard and there's more. Wah piang! Then the old man kept say "I'm shivering... I'm shivering..." According to Maria, it's quite normal as he has to put in a lot of energy to shit. The family is actually very nice though. They offered us drinks and snacks to eat after the physiotherapy was done.
The process is indeed gross but it's really an eye-opener. Really. Cause most of the others don't get to experience this when we asked around. I really kow tow to Maria lo! She damn pro and good! She's not afraid of getting herself dirty and I can see that she really enjoys her work a lot.
We got back to the centre after that while Maria continues her visit to Clementi and so on. There's nothing much to do back there actually. Too much man power I say. Until we were assigned some stupid administrative stuff to do. We had to made duplicate copies of the registration files for them and everything is damn messy lo! Spent quite a long time doing that. Thankfully the others joined in.
Went off for night training with Jes and Val. I was freaking off form. Sul kept criticizing on my harai goshi. I don't know if it was because I played with Randal. He's pretty short you see so it's kind of weird. Whatever it is, I suck on Monday's training. =(
Day2I got up freaking late today as I was damn tired la! I was late again. Ok, I agree I'm petty. Just don't like people to stop me from doing things that's so minor. Rules are meant to be broken right? Be more flexible la! Kao! It doesn't hurt you if I sign in the same time as you guys right? Sickening bimbo. Too bad I just like to say what I want. Blehx!
Nytiana and I were assigned to follow the ambulance today. There're ambulance that's allocated for the centre for it to fetched the elderly there everyday. It's like a school bus actually but just that these 'pupils' sit on wheelchairs and are old. Tsktsk! It's pretty fun and time passed very quickly. Haha! We were attached to Uncle Vincent and another Uncle Moustache (don't know his name). Uncle Moustache is very nice. He tells us a lot of his experience and gives us precious advice on life. Damn jealous lo! He visited a LOT of countries before like Venice, Holland, Italy, France, etc. you name it he went there before lo! Cause he used to be working as an engineer in SIA so he got to travel a lot. So good right! But he's now half-retired so come to the centre to help.
All of us were told to make bookmarks for the centre so that they could sell it when Christmas is near. So yup, tomorrow has to start work and the book mark isn't easy to do. Got a lot of steps cause it's more like origami cum arts and crafts. Quite chim. It's because the ah ma who used to do the bookmarks was unfortunately being hospitalized so who have to helped to finished them.
Today is actually pretty fun. I'm more open to them today I think so it's easier to interact with them. I realize that these elderly though they aren't in the pink of health but some of them are real cute and nice. You would just laugh and the way they react and stuff they say =) But there's some you would really feel sad for them of course. Nobody wants to be like this. It's pretty sad and scary come to think of it. The thought of going old and your health deteriorating day by day it's quite sad. But that's life isn't it?
Train alone at lavender today. Ya, valmond went but he didn't play. He hurt his elbow yesterday while playing ground technique with Melvina. Got arm locked. Haha! Revenge for pulling her hair out! Tsktsk! Kidding! There's so much kids today! Mostly Caucasians. But I prefer today's training actually. There's more uchikumi and more sweating. Practiced on ippon seionage and kouchi gari together on different people. Pretty good feeling and some of the people are pretty pro and good. Kind of suck and the randori and ground part. Actually really sucky. Pissed off with myself as I think I'm not doing my best. I know I need to
siam but I'm damn retard. And that's not only once. Sul also said I'm very stiff and rigid and that cause me to lose a point. He corrected my mistakes quite a lot today. Must learnt from my mistakes and not repeat them again in the future. I think today's training is really useful. Learnt a lot from myself I think. The stupid stuff I do and don't do during randori. Night training is really more on self reflection and correcting my errors. Sparring with the people there (mostly guys) has made me more open to what other people would do and open to different styles and techniques I think.
"Don't think so much! Grab & Go!"
...
xoxo
