A Royal Brunch

Last Monday morning, the Sultan of Selangor officially opened the new MediPlex building at SJMC and I attended the ceremony and was invited to be present for the brunch as well.

The ceremony was a late morning affair, meaning that I was able to do a bit of my ward round before attending the event, returning to complete it later after the ceremony before the afternoon clinic. It spelt for a hectic day at the office but nonetheless I was honoured to be invited.

The ceremony started sharply at 10, with the new Permaisuri in attendance which also became the focus of attention. Tight security meant that there were no selfie but truth be told, the whole ordeal was not as boring as I thought. While waiting for the Sultan, I had the chance to mingle and bumped into Zul, a photography buddy who worked for one of the big Insurance firm. My seat for the ceremony was on the second row offering a good view of the whole event.

The CEO doing a great job with his speechThe new Permaisuri appeared to be a hitOur CEO - an Australian - did a good job in pronouncing the Sultan's name and his was the only speech of the morning. Next came a short video of SJMC - which was rather slick! - followed by the Officiation by the Sultan. He then left the hall to visit the new Physio Department next door while I was ushered to the first floor to wait for the brunch later. More mingling.

The meal was excellent. And it was prepared in house by our Hospital Chef. That guy could cook! I only wished that our canteen food was just as good ....

And now to the serious businessThe startersAnd the mainsThe food went down well and the company was good. I didn't take the cue from Anita to bring along my business card though ... Silly me! The whole event ended at noon. Off I went to complete my rounds after that ....

A great experience none the less .... and great food!

Swafoto?

I’ve never been at the cutting edge of all things Bahasa Malaysia. I always took it for granted that the Malay word for selfies would be something with the same sound. It turned out that I couldn’t be more wrong.

The word is “swafoto”.

That came as a shock. I wonder what would wefie be?

A Nice Stay

I was pleasantly surprised with the weekend stay in JB. The hotel - a Double Tree - certainly maintained their standard when it came to rooms and food. The breakfast spread in had there on the couple of mornings were better than expected.

From my window

And the main surprise I had was the staffing. They were all Malaysian as far as I could tell, from the receptionist, waiters, room service and parking operator. Close to Singapore where most of the skilled workers in this sector would have gone to, it was refreshing to see this.

The meeting was within the same hotel block and my lecture was only a lift-ride away. The room was also comfortable although it was mainly for work, and I had quiet night on the couple of evenings there. Combination of need for rest and laziness sorted that one out.

Cookie Reflection

A few days had passed since the UPSR results came out. Idlan didn't want me to go into anything specific but suffice to say that he did fine.

He had settled well at his new school and the UPSR results did not carry much weight for his immediate future plans. We won't be applying to any other schools and most of my friends who had children at a similar age with Idlan must be feeling the pressure now. The results would determine which school they would enrolled for their secondary years.

On reflection, I was glad that Idlan wasn't put through the pressure of tuitions like most of his classmate had to go through. We had tutors coming to our house but they were mainly to help him with his concentration and exam techniques. He did most of the revising himself, but he got bored easily. The tutors came and helped him think out of the box and relate the subjects to real life situation. He enjoyed that.

We also had a BM tutor coming over because frankly his Bahasa Melayu was pretty weak. We always made sure that his weekends were free and he had time for his video games and other things.

Yes, we had a lot of pressure from others for not taking him through extra lessons but I always believe that going to school was not just about passing exams. At the beginning of the year, I gave him the choice of either to sit the UPSR or just go straight into I-GCSE. He decided for the former because most of his friends were taking the exams as well. His school had been putting too much emphasis on exams and I was never comfortable with that notion.

So, the deal was to change school as soon as he was done with the UPSR. Within a few days of completing UPSR, Idlan was gone. He went into Year 8 in another school across town.

When the exam results came out, we were more excited about it than Idlan himself. We always believed that exams are to gauge knowledge, not memory. We were happy that there were plenty of KBAT (higher level thinking questions) rather than the standard ones. Idlan felt that the result should be OK, and it was.

His new school is something completely different to Sri Utama, his previous one. There were more emphasis on character development and extracurricular activities. He was doing experiments rather than reading about them. When he had arts class, everything was provided down to the crayons and papers. He was really enjoying his class - despite having to get on the bus at 6.30 in the morning.

Last Thursday for instance - the day the UPSR results came out - he didn't want to follow us to Sri Utama to pick up his results because he had a class event. The class was having a poetry day with a "slam poet" coming all the way from England.

With his UPSR done, it looked like we would be taking a sabbatical from the National Curriculum. I hope that one day, the emphasis would come back to character-building, leadership and extracurricular activities. We were building a human being, not a machine ...

It's a JB Weekend

I was finally there. Arrived early evening on the Friday and I went straight to the shower and had some food since I have yet to finalise my slides. Had to do some tweaking before bed.

Rather than joining a dinner symposium, I decided to have my meal in the room and just had a quiet night.

The room was comfortable and I must say I overslept this morning, waking up later than I planned. I spent the morning sorting out my slide decks and enjoying the sun and the free wifi. I joined the faculty for lunch before doing my session, and planned to venture out to have a look outside before leaving early tomorrow morning.

That was my Boss Dr Ng Soo Chin giving his talk. The podium sign has yet to be changed.There were dinner planned out but I decided against joining, preferring to stay in instead. It was not common for me to have a quiet night, and as such I decided to enjoy it.

I also got to meet a few of my ex-nurses at the meeting and it was great to catch up with them.