If u plan to raise a child in Australia..

..or maybe any anglo-saxon country..
..or even in Malaysia (come to think of it)

don't name your child Sarah!

In my tutorial group of 16 people, of which half are guys..
there are 3 Sarahs! 3/8 chance of having a person named Sarah.

And in my bible study group last year..
there were 4 Sarahs!

And there is normally a Sarah or two among the nurses on the wards
which always results in me being "perasaan" (aka overrating self) when I hear "Sarah"

At least atm, I'm the Asian Sarah.

:)

It's now time to...

...buy chocolate bunnies and eggs!

The true Asian in me would only buy today when it's heavily discounted :)

Privileged

Having just completed my neurology term, I must really say that I am very privileged to be under my team. Even though I am just a lowly medical student and the bottom of the food chain, the registrars and intern have invited me to join them for lunches & even...."shout" (Australian lingo for buy) me lunches numerous times. And my registrar even bought me a box of chocolates! (It should be the other way around!)

The best part is that after work one day, they even asked me along to Bankstown (which is a good 40 min drive away) for Pho (Vietnamese beef soup) because our intern who's Viet recommended it.

Although I did walk around this term feeling like the biggest idiot as my neuroanatomy is not great, I've learn from this team about the personal side of medicine and working life. How connections and rapport with consultants must be developed.

And I hope I don't look that old, because I have been mistaken as the neurology registrar (not even an intern or resident!!!!) by a consultant... ^_^

***************************

There's new experiences everyday, some which are surprisingly delightful others which require another step of endurance.

Just can't put it in words.
Circumstances I would never have chosen or wished upon others even, yet somehow falls into place in His sovereign rule and wisdom.

Pleased BUT...

When the first winds of dissent blew at the BERSIH and HINDRAF protests, we Malaysians were still skeptical if BN will lose its 2/3 majority. Even as a facebook group was set up, still I didn't think it was possible.

I am especially pleased that Hindraf leader and ISA-detainee M Manoharan, on a DAP ticket, obtained 12,699 votes to win with a 7,184-vote majority. In prison, with no campaigning!
Again, I respect people who dare to protest and even go all the way to prison when they could be comfortable as rich Indian lawyers.

Now, it seems that BN will retain 2/3 but barely survive.
(*update...seems like BN only has a simple majority! for the 1st time in history!! Unbelievable!)

Who would have even imagined Lim Guan Eng being Penang CM? Or Kelantan, Kedah, Penang, Selangor & Perak be under opposition leadership?

Unfortunately UMNO (United Malays National Organization) has not lost that many seats and the biggest losers are MIC (Malaysian Indian Congress) and MCA (Malaysian Chinese Association).

Even as smses are being sent by Christians all over Malaysia because there's a sense of change, an electric atmosphere of both hope for a new change and fear that the current government will sow racial tensions.....

But we have woken up. Hopefully a change for the better!


Malaysians, pray pray pray.

This is groundbreaking!!

I am going to have RSI from repeatedly reloading Malaysiakini every 5 minutes.

So many big guns are going down in a blaze. This is something new, almost revolutionary for Malaysia!!! I am glad though that some really big fish have finally lost! Enough with the cracked highways and collapsing buildings!

But will this polarize us by race even more?
As much as I respect people like Lim Kit Siang, Tian Chua, Teresa Kok...can Barisan Rakyat be united enough to change Malaysia?

Will this be for the better?

I pray it will. Join me in prayer. :)

Anyway, it's time for

some non serious fun...(at my expense).

So, a few weeks back, during ward rounds a patient needed a new cannula. Of course no med student will not pass up the opportunity to poke patients so I went to get the equipment and set it all up.

Slowly but surely I put it in and a tinge of red flashback appeared. Success......

...until I fumbled around the kidney dish, looking for a cap!

You'd have guessed by now that I did not have a cap! And by now the blood was pouring out of the beautiful cannula I put in.
What's even better is that since it was a ward round, 2 registrars and my intern was there!
Of course they saved me by dashing to get a cap in the end, but not till there was a 30cm diameter of redness on the patient's sheets. Which was matched probably by the redness of my face.


Anyway, a obligatory picture of IMU seniors in Sydney.
We are surely growing in numbers as more uk people head over.


There's another fun experience of being a simulated comatose patient for the AMC exams, but that's for another day.

Election

With the minimal knowledge I have in marketing, what I do know is that advertisers often have a target audience and thus place advertisements accordingly.

Which is interesting but not surprising that on the webportal of Malaysiakini, there's an advertised link for migration to Australia. Maybe the rational is that people will get so sick of the current situation in Malaysia and thus, viola, they will click on the link.

I wonder how many of us who formerly professed our desire to serve God still care about the going ins and outs of the country or are we more busy finding ways to advance our careers? Or even merely the best sale, stuff to buy, places to go?

With the election heating up, there's so much to read, to know, to follow.
The injustice, corruption, increasing restriction of religious freedom.

But, I will not say anything because I don't have the right to, until and unless I turn the tide and choose to return home. I cannot write proudly and patriotically like Crz. Cuz he has chosen to stay back.

An eventful week

....where 12 patients passed on in 1 week.
And not just merely patients I see on rounds, but patients that I admitted personally.

Some people may call it post traumatic stress; but I actually dream last week that I had lung ca with 4 weeks to live. (My enemies will breath a sigh of relief! haha :) ).
But it wasn't a nightmare because in the dream I felt okay and just wanted to see my family before I die. I guess in some sense, having tasted a little bit of the sorrows in life, it's alright to "leave" this earth and there's not much I miss.

....and when I am tempted to complaint and feel sorry for myself, I am reminded that I am (at least atm) not terminally ill. In the midst of unwelcome circumstances, there's still so much to be grateful and genuinely thankful for!

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.
Hebrews 12: 28-29

(*disclaimer, I've not learnt nor practiced the full extend of this verse, esp the consuming fire part...which is why I add this disclaimer, as having tasted a little bit of heat, I know that truly I am far off from living this out)

Happy CNY

Of course, this is still my all time favourite

Capre Diem

Rounding the wards; especially when you see patients with similar disease but now in the "special unit"....

....I couldn't help but send a quick SMS to my mum "I love you. Haha"

Every day is a perfect day to say that. And every day is an purchased miracle from God, Ps Daniel Ho.

What's normal?

They were still playing with the resident cat on the ward, smiling at nurses, eagerly eating free ice cream from the fridge.
Only 8 and 10. Was to be their first day back at school but they weren't in their uniforms.

Their father had passed on only an hour or two before.

I can't help but wonder, do they understand the true impact of how their lives have changed?
The "trials" in my life are mere blips compared to theirs and it's a good month for me if I don't tear.
How life can be hard without a father?

But maybe they do; their mother smiled in her sobs as she showed the last pictures of her husband. That eating ice cream and simply going on with life is what's life about.

A crack of vulnerability

I think one of the hardest things of last year was moving to a completely foreign country, suddenly jammed into 4th year as the pioneer batch from a university no one here knows about and then having to rebuild friendships from scratch.

Which by and large is not too far away from what everyone else in IMU experiences when we are suddenly scattered around the world; but fresh from the harrowing experiences of cancer, I struggled to give and listen to airy descriptions of what I did during the weekend nor did not know how to answer "how are yous"
Do you be honest and tell the whole emotional drama to a person whom you only know by name and faculty? And it was a dilemma, for I was dying to have deep conversations yet if a stranger was to walk up to me and poured out their life story, I'd probably freak out!

How do you ask your church friends whom you've probably only meet a few times "How does a loving God fit into the picture of death?" And like it or not, I was not there and am not there as some of my closest friends struggle thousands of kilometers away, vice versa it is unfair of me to expect them to be there all the time.

And even follow up seems a little disjointed. I speak to my pastors back home and then I speak to my pastors here, my pastors back home know me and work through some things; the pastors here know me as I struggle through my current issues. Which is working alright at the moment; but it does take effort and coordination (of which I am grateful to my leaders for being so patient and gracious with me!)

Also, in a sense I've always pathologically looked up to him as the leader. More than expecting calls or emails, I guess what I was really looking for at that point was someone who'd work with me through my theological questions and doubts. Where when my father himself was troubled and my mother needed all the comfort and assurance, where when I had to bridge the gap for my younger sisters, someone who would listen, whom it would be alright to say "I really want to believe in God but I am struggling to." "I am hurting, I don't know where else to turn to because even God seems far now, help me, pray with me"
Though it was not his fault and yes, he has been gracious and respectful so yea don't send flaming emails to him. Haha.

I blame palliative care for bringing up all these emotions again!
But in an essence, I guess I am learning to live out what I always used to sing.....
(blindly and in ignorance!! A song, and along with many songs After cancer (AC,haha) I wished I've never sung without thinking...)

"You're all I want, You're all I've ever needed. You're all I want. Help me know You are near."

So yea, is He really all we want? All we need?
Is He really enough for us when things are stripped away?

My sister,

.....is going to the best uni in the world, haha, in my own biased opinion.

IMU dentistry!
and twinning to Oz!
Congrats babes. Haha.

A demonstration of IMU's lameness:

The weight of wings

You have heard me tell of Gladys Aylward, the 'small woman' of China, whom I heard speak many years ago at Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta. She told how when she was a child she had two great sorrows. One, that while all her friends had beautiful golden hair, hers was black. The other, that while her friends were still growing, she stopped. She was about four feet ten inches tall. But when at last she reached the country to which God had called her to be a missionary, she stood on the wharf in Shanghai and looked around at the people to whom He had called her.

"Every single one of them," she said, "had black hair. And every single one of them had stopped growing when I did. And I said, 'Lord God, You know what You're doing!'"
Elisabeth Elliot

And so, surprisingly I feel different arriving back; not quite so damp anymore
a wee bit more hopeful with a tinge of expectation and a dash of excitement.

I choose to be hopeful even though hope opens the possibility of dashed expectations.
I choose to trust that He knows what He's doing.

Sydney is my home, for this season.

For now..

I am so unprepared to start clinical school again on Monday!
Having arrived only in Dec and starting so soon, I don't feel rested enough.

And I am starting with a "great" block, palliative care.
For one thing, our medical blocks are randomly allocated and I already did an oncology block for my 1st posting last year. Is it a coincidence?

Have had great conversations.
It has convinced me more than ever, God does answer prayers but in ways we never imagined.
That those close are going deep because we prayed that we as a group of believers in IMU wanted to be doctors/health professionals who made a difference, who understood compassion. For until and unless we have wrestled with the questions of suffering, doubt and pain how can we ask dying people to look to God? How callous and shallow of us if we do.

The paradox

As my youngest sister and I were just talking, her statements surprised me.

"When so many bad things happen, you end up feeling "whatever."New bad news doesn't make you so sad anymore, but you also don't feel happy when good things come. You become numb."

I am not surprised at the statement itself, because it's been what I've felt this year. My sobering surprise was that she, at 17, have lost the innocence and rose colored glasses while I only woke up to this rude reality called life at 21.

As I look back at this year, I am still at a lost to respond correctly to God/people.

A new sensitivity awaken; to participate in the fellowship of suffering.

This post is a new year request to pray for the following people.
People I hold with regard, whom I cry for; because if it hurts so bad in my own minor hiccups, I know the struggle must be so much more magnified in theirs.

1) The Chin family.

I can only marvel at their love for God. The choice they made in staying in a tiny village away from Phomn Pehn, where there's no electricity or running water! For Ps Kenneth to give up his engineering career. Learning a new language. The kids who are home schooled, not having a fridge let alone a TV or internet.

And yet there's a deeper story still, because their son Jonathan has a hole in his heart. Having been to Cambodia, the rural hospitals are such that cows graze 50 meters away, where not every hospital has electricity (forget about basics like X-rays or even sterilizing equipment). Yet they are willing to take up their cross and obey.
Do pray that God's favor will rest upon this family and their ministry.

2) My grandmother
When I came back in July this year, I actually made an emergency flight from KL to Sibu and back in 1 day because my grandfather was deteriorating. I've never spoken of it, but it was depressing as he was nose-fed and had both legs amputated to his thighs. Ever since his dementia, she was his primary care giver. He passed away on my birthday this year.

Due to my bad Hokkien we have rarely spoken deeply. And my mother has had her own cancer thing to deal with at the same time, so it's hard to physically show care and His love to my grandmother.
Do pray for her that, although I don't know how, she will know this God who love enough to die for us.

3) Our IMU senior
It's odd because I've never met this guy and don't know him personally.
Yet when I read his site, I couldn't help but feel for him as well.
Perhaps there's a sense of connection from reading all the get well messages from IMU CFers around the world on his blog. Perhaps because he was/is part of IMU (IMC) CF.

A man at the peak of his career; coming out of this unknown med uni in Malaysia called IMU, going overseas, probably with the big financial sacrifice of his family and finally making it in Mayo Clinic. A man who has chosen a tough specialty, Onco/Haem. And from the request IMU CF recently received from SAD's Charlene to pray for him, most likely a very active Christian during his student days in IMU. For more info, visit his site as I can't write what I have no 1st hand knowledge about.
Do pray that God will be gracious and watch over him and his fiancee.


There are more friends, people I do care about but I just can't list out as due to privacy/ respect. Pray for them and me included, that in the ups and downs in life, somehow beyond human understanding, He will be more than enough.

It's hard

..not to be jealous, hearing different stories. Of course am really happy and glad for the numerous joyful testimonies of God's providence in their lives.

A year has passed and I feel I've taken so many steps back instead.
Perpetually fighting 1 setback after another; rejection, useless dreams, dilemmas and death
Even scarier to sit with my mentors and be told that this season might last years!

But one day at a time.
If I don't trust in God, there's nothing left to trust in

Right now..

..Lord, only You know.

After a long time

A few posts back, I wrote about this
After being away for a year, it was interesting to return back to the streets of Chow Kit.

As it drizzled prior to starting, the humidity mixed with the fumes of the traffic in addition to the clouds of cigarette smoke nearly choked the atmosphere under the tent. Yet the stench from the nearby garbage dump did not dampen the appetites of those who were gathered. Just a few familiar faces I recognize, I wonder where the others I knew have gone; prison? a changed life? death?

Grey hairs have started to colour Ps Richard's hair, no doubt the opening of another drug rehab home specially for women is busy work. The street ministry has grown even more than what I read about; there's now another street feeding at the same time in Brickfields, ministering to the dumb and deaf.

Since Christmas is coming near, a cell group has came to sing carols. The significance of the song Away in the Manger hits home as the voices strain to compete with the honking from the streets. No crib for his bed, indeed, many of those there had no real home.

I feel awkward returning, I struggle to speak my terrible Mandarin and my Bahasa now has a weird accent. Also, now I feel more comfortable hiding behind my medical knowledge; I found it easier to talk to a man about cutting down on smoking rather than about Jesus. Plus they are suspicious of me as well, a stranger. I used to know the regulars and they were my friends.

The visit back has tug a few heart strings. I am encouraged that the IMU juniors are trying to go every forthnight. I used to sell this ministry to CF and cg to not much success and yet a group of juniors I don't know have chose to go. Which I feel is God's timing as if people went during my time, I would have probably claimed the credit but now, it is God's.

Yet with it comes the reminder of my lost dreams. Certain things I dare not even hope or think about because the future is so fluid, unpredictable.

Anyway, I had pictures but silly me forgot to bring back my camera cable.

And as I was passing by..

...on transit, there was a large group of men waiting in the airport lounge. Of east-Asian origin, their clothes showed their humble backgrounds while they laid down on the floor on their white woven bags, resting from a long flight. Their agent, a rather fierce looking middle aged woman stood clutching a swath of passports and documents.

Rather unkindly but in all honesty, the 1st thought that crossed my mind when passing this group was "I hope they are not on my flight!" for there was a slight stench, probably as many had not had a shower since travelling miles? from their home village to the city to catch their flight.

Yet after moving into the waiting area, looking at them from across the glass partition, I was reminded that in many ways we have much in common, only that my family's migration happened 60+ years earlier in a time where laws and citizenships were fluid.

Both my grandfathers migrated from famine striken China to Malaysia and had blue collar jobs where my maternal grandfather started of as a labourer in the docks carrying goods. It's only by God's grace and hard work, our family is what it is today.

The men waiting out there had poorer prospects. Most will have to work hard, construction jobs for perhaps Rm10-20 (USD 3-5) per day. All have left their families and will not see them for the next 3-5 years.

And this is why I really love and believe in the work of my church who have started a Nepali and Bahasa service. Of people who have sacrificed their time to care for these people; my maid's cell group leader is a rich Chinese man who picks all the maids up for cell group in his house every Wednesday.

Indeed, despite the NEP policy that has forced us to study privately and overseas, in comparison to other migrants, we are still blessed.