The missing Malaysian...

I had been following the news of a missing Malaysian student(LWS) since 1+ months ago. He was found recently near the east coast and later brought to our ED for an medical review (in our ED) on his way back to the university where he studied.

My colleague L had seen him and he was later interviewed by the media (which he remark was altered and mis-interpreted)

I googled and found some interesting facts…

Facts:

1.  LWS is a international student major in computer engineering studying in FW university. He is currently in his year 2.

2.  He was granted a 1^st year tuition fee exemption during his entrance.(international student pay 2x of the tuition fee than oversea Chinese student.)

3.  He is a mature student age 35 who had saved up for 10 years to do his undergraduate course.

4.  He had difficulty in his grades during his first year and had failed 2/3 of his subject this semester. The school is counseling him for a transfer so that he could continue his study here in Taiwan

5.  He had packed up and drawn 30k out of his account (80k) and leaved the campus with his bike.

6.  He had checked into a local hotel further up north with 4 other foreign students few days later.

7.  A call from northern tip of Taiwan was made to the police claiming that he was safe few weeks after his disappearance.

8.  He was found wandering in front of a police station near GuanShan few days ago.

9.  Upon found, he was noted with speech difficulty and claimed that he had lost his memory. (partially and selectively loss of memory was noted- which I think was crxp…)

10.             He refused to communicate verbally. He could only communicate with the police via writing (in English).

11. He is a junior from my high school back in Malaysia.

It was a very sad and dramatic event for the fellow Malaysian. He had tried hard to save up and further his study so that he could have a better and different life. 

Unfortunately it didn’t go smooth as he wishes….

I was a lucky person as I had a smooth studying process and most of the credit should go to my parents who financed my studies despite of their financial condition. I knew the feeling of being a poor student. Keeping up with study is another challenge as I had to face the elite back in my college days.

I think LWS had known about his faith of being expelled or transferred from his study and decided to go for a trip rounding the island before the event occur. This island is a good place to travel...Even the ex-communist premier from the mainland is willing to crawl to Alishan if he is allowed to pay a visit here.

 LWS had taken good look around the island and later needed an excuse to cover his act. Well, he chose the "path of forget" and hopefully he could return to the Boleh land and continue his previous life without an undergraduate diploma. It was cruel and brutal for him after so many years of dreaming.

I had related this story to my kids; I told them that if you have a chance and luxury to study straight after your high school : don’t hesitate and grab the chance. I would support them all the way. Working and doing part time study is not fun at all; they had seen the time and stress I undergone few years ago. But yet I told them to study is a life long process, so enjoy it and don’t hate it …..

Satun 2015: the trip

The second trip to Satun was unlike the first one; I had become a veteran and thought I knew a lot regarding a medical relief trip. I was caught by surprised when the local mission told me that we would be doing medical check-up in school and villagers apart from my main job of seeing patients. I was not prepared for that and I hate doing medical check-up. No ground to object and I have to comply with the job. With the instrument I brought it should be enough but yet, I need a vision chart….Luckily, I had dug up a couple of the vision chart from their store and downloaded a color blindness checking app from the net.

There were always some problems in each stop for me to tackle; with grace, I was able to overcome those problems.

The lodging was better as the local mission office had rented a house and converted it into a rest house for missioners. As usual, weather was bad; we were hit by downpour from time to time. Food was nice as I enjoyed the local spicy Thai food. I had a chance of visiting an evening market and landed my hand on some local roadside snack. Those food look similar to some counter Malay food, but yet they tasted differently.

I was in a dilemma during the end of the trip as I tried to figure out what is the plan of the great one. It was beyond my wisdom to compile his will but yet, I tried my best to please him. However, I knew it is not the right thing to do; I just need to follow the flow.

I had decided lately that I would sit still and not to participate in any mission this year. I needed a break; to enjoy some fun time with my family or maybe hide myself in the attic doing CQB and playing kungfu game….

hospital evaluation

We had just been through our hospital evaluation few days ago …

Unlike the past, I was not burden with any responsibility this time. The hospital evaluation was scheduled around at the end of the year, however we were informed that it would be held in April in March. Most of the unit had gone into havoc mode as they are only half prepared for the evaluation. However, our ED which received a 2^nd level emergency care certification has to be prepared all the time for any spot check; thence we were good to go anytime. The rest of the staff had been doing overtime for almost 2 weeks during that period. 

The evaluation went smooth anyway….

from VS2008 to VS2015....access to mysql....

About 1 year ago, the vendor of the EMR system of our hospital had come to our hospital for demonstration. They had presented their upgrade plan for our progress note and medical order system(which is currently using the old system I had written with the VB2008). The offer was not an impressive one as no demo program was shown. The management had however requested the vendor to present us with something that look like the system which I had implemented almost 8 years ago. They had asked me if I could provide them with the source code, and I gladly complied. Frank said, I was not a good programmer then, sometimes, it would took me a good couple of hours to understand what I had written in the past. I had however stopped any further development of the program since then. I would make minor modification and correction as per request by my colleague from time to time. At the end of last year, The new triage system was implemented and I needed to upgrade the ED triage program. I decided to upgrade the old VS2008 to VS 2012 as the OS my computer was running  xp. The upgrade did not go smooth and I was force to take a leap to VS2015. After 1 + months of struggle I had finally migrated my program from VS2008 to VS2015 with some info gathered from the net.

At that point, I was quite confident and proceeded with the upgrading of database. I managed to install a mysql server on the qnap NAS in my house. Later the MIS department leader had provided me with an old computer running server2012. I configured a mysql server on it as well and shifted the whole database over to the new home. The effect was stunning as the access time was very fast comparing with the Microsoft Access DB I used in the past.

The MIS leader had however informed me that the hospital had decided not to purchase the new progress note system from our vendor as they were unable to come up with any demo program.

Well, it was a milestone for me as my program now looks like something mature enough to be called a product.

I had finished the nursing record part and will be going to launch next month….

Well, my next step is web based….