long way from home...

 Our nephrologist H asked me 2 days ago if I knew where G had gone….G was one of my closest friend in College, he was 3 years senior than me....

He was once a Asean Scholarship holder who did his junior college in Singapore and later admitted to Engineering Faulty of NUS. A truly scorer, but yet he was turned down by the NUS for medical course. He had later applied for medical school here in Taiwan.

He was the Malaysia Student Associated President of the College during my fresh man year. We had started a committee fighting for the recognition of Taiwan medical degree. And after years of work, we had achieved the target however he did not benefit from it. The recognition did not backdate and G had graduated then.

He was desperate and he went back to Malaysia joined the USM program and he had passed his medical licensing examination. He had however never joined the housemanship and came back here.

He had completed his training in internal medicine and later got a subspecialty in Gastroenterology.

He had found a job in northern part of the county and held the post of head of internal medicine department prior to his resignation.

I never thought he would left Taiwan again as he had married a Taiwanese.

When H asked me, I did a checked over the medical registry and found that G had got his 2012 APC in a hospital down south.

I called up the hospital yesterday and found that it was his first day at work…I did not get the chance to talk to him as he was not in his room…I called up his clinic today and left my email with the nurse as G was seeing his patient…..

The paid would definitely more handsome than what we get here, for a moment, I am thinking of going back….

There are a few barrier for me to go back to Malaysia…

1^st barrier is the working hour…where would I get a job similar to my current working hour….

The next barricade is the studies of Xian and Yun… the syllabus here is much more in depth and interesting here.. I just learnt from Yun yesterday that she was selected for a speech talking competition. She was given a 30 mins time to write her own speech and present it…. That was high school speech competition style.. write and then speech… Yun was doing well, but Xian is what I worried…. He would never caught up with the system and pressure back in Malaysia..

For me, it is still a long long way from home…..

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drug addict - zolpidem

We had those drug addict in the past who came to our ED bluffing their way for Pethidine jab…Nowadays, a new breed of them had been generated –zolpidem injection…

There is no IV form of Zolpidem however, one of the clever addict had come out with a solution. They crushed and zolpidem tablet and mix it with clean water, then inject into their vein….

JJ is a case of alcoholic cirrhosis patient. He had been a regular for the past 6 months. He had tried his best to squeeze as many zolpidem from us. Sometimes he sold it and sometimes he shared it….

He had denied of using IV drug 1 + years ago but lately he would claim that he had been using IV drug.

He craved for zolpidem, came to ED+OPD few times in a day asking for it. Sometimes he asked for admission…and most of us would refuse him....

The hospital did not want to complaint him as he had complaint to the national insurance bureau that we had mistreated him once..so we had to tolerate him…

There are few ways of stopping their act actually but still I never tell the management…. Just crush the zolpidem and mix it with sugar powder(pediatric use) and they won’t came to us any more….

Hell, I hate them….

Further studies

The Malaysia trip was a great one, we were able to look around and revisited many place. For a moment, I had a false feeling that we were still living in Malaysia….A lots of thing/event was so familiar but yet so far away…

However the major event was my brother in law wedding.

There was this bachelor night which later turned out to be a relative gathering.

I was surprised so many of Ving’s cousins came to Taiwan for studies. Unlike the old days where Malaysian would comment that – Why spending money for a non-recognized degree ? Rcognition is very important back in those days, however only countable of who ever I knew got a government servant job – one of them was my uncle who held a computer sciences degree from UK and work for a short while with Felda.

Lots of relative "advice" my parents - wah look at ur financial situation, with that kinda of limited money, you still want to invest in a place which is not recognized ?

With grace, they are wrong.....

Getting a practice license in malaysia is a breakthrough for a taiwan grad like me, but still,becoming a specialist seems nothing to shout about here in taiwan but in malaysia, it is something difficult....

I thank my parents for allowing me to complete my college by working very hard….

 

Malaysia - cars....

 

Compare to the past, the type of vehicle on the road had changed a lot….I had seen only countable Benz on the road, mostly C class and S and E class were very rare species.

The market <100k is predominated by Myvi and Saga especially in the range of 50-60k. With the price tag of 70-80k, Vios is the choice. Recon car had become less (in the past my dad told me that most of the Benz and BMW was recon car imported from elsewhere). A brand new top graded Benz and BMW cost a semi-D house in Klang.

For the 7 seaters , Alphad had predominated the market and Previa had been phased out. As for LSUV, Harrier 2.4 is the dominator but I doubt that those driver would satisfy with its power, the Lexus version which uses a 3.3L engine offered a more reasonable output. At the price of RM200+k, a second hand 4 yrs old Harrier is just a good looking toy which had poor C/P value.

The CRV had faded out from the market and I saw lots of Toyota RUSH(7 seaters) which is about RM80k+, Taiwan however had the shorter version (5 seaters) branded under Daihatsu (terios).. 

In the range of <RM100k, lots of variety to choose from but most of the car lack adequate safety feature….

The average income of Malaysian citizen had definitely gone up (eg. security guard entry salary is RM1300+ compare to the RM700+ in the past), more and more people afford to buy a car, but the major winner is the Malaysia govt which benefit from the tax scheme that punished those who can afford a car other than perodua/proton….

Malaysia traffic - attitude

I had always thought that the Taiwanese had bad driving attitude. But this trip , I found that  I am wrong.

Traffic had become very heavy since I left Malaysia 9 years ago. The amount of car had increased and biker had decrease leading to the JAM…..I had remembered once a story related by my dad. There was this Mat Salleh (Caucasian, in malay) who came to Malaysia for a tour. He was unable to tolerate the spicy Malaysia food and saw the sign “24 JAM” hanging  at some of the petrol station. So he decided to buy a lot of bread along his drive from KL to JB(no high way then). He had later arrived at a petrol station with a similar sign and enter the office ( no mesra shop of coz then) and find the manager inside. He told the manager – I wanted to buy jam, the manager replied,”we open 24 jam but no selling jam…”

During the strand in the traffic, I had noticed that most of the vehicle had only 1 passenger, the driver. That is the cause of the traffic jam…although road had been built in the past but still it never catches up the speed of car owning…

I had finally realized that why traffic branch named the operation “ops sikap” – There Malaysian drivers had attitude problem ..

Some of the drivers tend to omit the speed limit, driving at 110km/h in the middle lane, I had many car over-passing me at the inner-lane like falcon. Most of the speeders are not performance car but Saga and Myvi. Without the TCS/ESP system and upgraded braking system, I doubt they could maneuver in a desperate condition.

Unlike most of the speeder/offender in Taiwan who tends to avoid the blocker by switching lane , Malaysia speeder/offender likes to flash their head light and closing in as close as possible to the car blocking their way, I regard their act as “ini jalan Gua punya Bapak punya, Siam la…”

I had been a traffic offender in the past, pushing my Z to the limit, I was comfortable with the control as Z had excellent maneuver capability…. for the past 1 year, I started my path of repentance under teaching from the LORD, no speeding, no offence, no grey area when driving and the conclusion of obvious – stepping the oil pedal hard does not guarantee a faster arrival most of the time the time difference would be 5-10 minutes…so why burn money ?

 

Trip - D2

We supposed to roll off at 7am but Xian fever did not subside. I decided to call up the resort at Taman Negara and postponed the trip to summer holiday….

It would be a long wait but still, it would be suffering with a ill child. Our last trip to Singapore ended up almost disastrous when Xian and Yun caught fever. I ended up sending them to the Changi Airport at 4am. The air asia was upgrading on the day and they actually stopped selling ticket at the counter. I went to the counter of firefly and found that it was all fully booked… I went back to the steward and begged him hard and finally he tried to reboot the system and found that it is still working. I bought 3 darn expensive air asia Sin-LCCT ticket for Ving and both the kid….

The rest of the day was free and Ving and I took a ride…We toured the Klang City and went to a couple of shopping spot. A good shopping trip and some good food….

It had been years after my last drive in Klang… Some road had changed but the direction was mostly the same. It was so familiar and I felt that I had never left Malaysia….

We had a drive back to the place where Ving and I spent the afternoon enjoying goreng pisang....the goreng pisang stall at the junction of Southern Park is still there.... price had gone up and the piece had become smaller....

home D1 - grace

It was smooth journey…We pushed out at 7am and I took us 4:30 hrs to complete the 360km (2 stop for toilet included). We managed to stop at the aviation museum for a short trip and headed to the car park. We planned to had our lunch at the museum but apparently the canteen had stopped functioning. We proceeded to the car park and hopefully we could get something cheap to eat. On our last year trip to China, we had a luxurious meal at a hotel restaurant outlet at the airport. The transit was smooth and managed to be at the check-in counter in time. The queue was quit long and since web check in was done, the process was smooth.

The immigration and airport security checking part were smooth and we landed at a the only food outlet at terminal one. The price of the food was even cheaper than the food court in Taipei.

We managed to finish it and Ving had an uneventful shopping round. Xian had grumbled a little as the B737-800 plane we took did not have any inflight entertainment system. He was looking forward to it…

We had ordered 2 children meals and 2 vegetarian meals. Tasty with enough volume….

The in-flight movie “In time” was a little bit unreasonable but still it was good event to kill time, I was too tired to play the GBA fire-emblem as I had a very bad sleep for the past few days.

It took us less than 20 minutes before we hit the arrival hall. My bro-in-law Tango had not arrived yet and I left Ving with the kiddo and headed to the car rental pickup side. It took me quite a while for me to get to the basement of block D. I proceed to the office and the staff N had told greet me and said he knew me… I told him that he don’t , he had seen someone else -> my brother… My brother had rented an Altis last week after he had asked me for car rental advice in Malaysia. I had did a some research and found that HAWK car rental offered the lowest rate. I booked a Waja instead even though my brother highly recommended Altis (it was a RM300 different…) I told him that I sticked to Waja…

N told me that I was in luck, all his car was out and he decided to give me an upgrade… he is going to give me an Slyphy….

I thank lord at the instance, HE had lead me so far and given me so many GRACE ->Psam 121:8 The LORD will protect you in all you do , now and forevermore…

Well, thence come my 1^st challenge. I had to park the car before I go and grabbed Ving and kiddo.

I prayed and alas I did it with no problem. Tango was there with his friend, we did a handing over of the luggage and I led them to the car. They were amazed with the GRACE of the LORD. The seat was comfortable and enough room for them at the back.

I had a slow and steady drive at the beginning and found that the handling was smooth and thank god, I had the feel of it within minutes…

We managed to get Jalan Ong Kim Wee and tasted satey chelup before we ended up in our destination hotel…..

A budget hotel with small room for 3 but we were managed to squeeze in 4 of us.

The hotel was chosen as breakfast was not included….

Everyone was exhausted and we were looking forward to the trip tomorrow…