Four Years

I had been a Member of the Hospital Medical Advisory Board for the past two sessions - four years. I was the secretary for the last couple, and yesterday we held a fresh election which I did not stand for.

It was not too taxing but I had to spend a few afternoons a month attending meetings and other duties. Time to take a break. During that period, I was involved in Doctor's Agreement negotiations, implementation of GST - and now the removal of it - and also the introduction of the computer system at the hospital that was still a bone of contention at work.

So, the job was concluded with the minutes of the Staff Meeting held today. Time to sign off!

Long Queue

I was not sure why but the traffic had been crazy this morning. As I took a peak out the window while having my shower, I was surprised. The traffic led all the way down Bukit Pantai, and the start of the queue was way up the hill.

There may have been an accident somewhere further down and it did not look good. I waited for half an hour and it did not get any better. So, I decided to get some work done while waiting. Luckily I don’t have any clinics this morning. It was all ward stuff.

Fingers crossed, hopefully things would improve soon ...

Back to Business

Things were slowly picking up after almost the whole of KL stood still following a super-long weekend post-election. The road were pretty empty in the morning and I did not have to make any school runs. On the domestic front, my father-in-law had also been discharged.

Anita had been busy sorting him out in Gombak and she was clearly tired in the evening. I had taken a couple of days off to celebrate the start of Ramadhan, although I still do my morning rounds.

I had some paperwork to complete during those days off, rounding off my stuff for the MSH Meeting. I also had to do some shopping and sorting out the bills. I wouldn’t mind doing some shopping for Raya as well while I was at that!

Day Minus 1

I have just finished my clinic this morning and half of the patients on the list did not turn up. I am pretty sure it had a lot to do with the election tomorrow.

The road heading to work this morning was practically empty, and the hospital lobby was also rather quiet.

There would be more shenanigans tonight with the parties trying to pull last minute fence-sitter to vote their way. There would be a national address by Najib while at the same time, Tun M would be blazing the net. I hope that there would not be any blocking of the bandwidth - I already had VPN installed just in case!

It will be a fun day tomorrow hopefully and I am praying that there would be peace.

A New Instrument

As mentioned before, when it came to pen, I was very fussy. I loved to write but since my hospital went paperless, I had to change tact. Certainly it made me miss my pen.

I always carried a couple of pen with me in coat. As a houseman, I used to carry three. A ballpen, always black and of a broad nib, and a fountain pen - again broadest nib available carrying a blue ink. My third pen used to be another fountain carrying a red ink. I used to write all my blood results in red at the left side of the medical notes. That made looking for results that much easier.

Now, my ball pen was a Mont Blanc. I used to carry a Parker fountain before I discovered Pelikan. I dabbled with other fountain brands including another Mont Blanc, but that unit stayed on my table. The nib wasn't smooth enough. But the Pelikan was great - going well with my royal blue Pelikan 4001 ink.

3 years back I changed to a Lamy before going back to Pelikan.

A few months back, I tried a Faber-Castell and it felt great. The main thing about them was the heft that it had, balanced at the nib. Not all fountain have that kind of balance. So, I tried a few of their models before finally settling for one. But unfortunately they didn't have a broad nib in stock. I had to order one.

So, I received the call that order was in and the timing was perfect as it had quite a bit of discount for the Xmas sale period. Been using it all evening and I was certainly liking it.

My Pelikan pen was of special broad-nibbed, heavy flow model which wasn't designed for daily use. The fact that it lasted 3 years was a bonus. Time to shift. So, great news all around ...