D-day...D-1....

Day by day passed and I was hoping get my ballot paper on time. As the day draw closer, my anxiety rises; my option had changed from EMS to courier services that offer same day or next day services. I had read through the net and found that there is fellow Malaysian who was willing to deliver the ballot paper to relevant office…. My options had run out as the countdown tick; mailing option had faded out and my final option was to fly back and delivered it personally. If I could receive my ballot paper on 5/7, I would take a flight back on 5/8 and delivered it to the office on 5/9 as the flight from TPE or KHH arrived in KUL late in the afternoon. So receiving the paper after 5/7 was hopeless…..

Well, at the 5/7 evening, I had given up hope and thought that the ballot papers should have been swallowed by someone. At the noon of 5/8, a courier van came and I got 2 DHL envelopes…. The date of posting was 5/5….4 days before the ballot day, apparently the SPR does not want us to vote. I grinned and told Ving about the news. I was not worried as my voting area was stronghold of PH…but yet, I despised the act of SPR of playing dirty.

Nomination day = 4/28, local postal voting date = 5/4, to be fair, we should have received my ballot paper before 5/4. However the ballot papers were sent out on 5/5, 1 days after the local postal voting. There was only a 4 days window for the ballot paper to reach the respective voter. Unless the courier service could be done on a next day arrival basis it was a mission impossible, furthermore, 5/4 was Friday, the delay over Weekend would be obviously another obstacle….

Well, nothing could be done…

Over those few days, the ruling party had stressed over the media that there would not be any tsunami. However the Merdeka Survey Center had published a very queer survey stating that the BN vote would be down to 30+% but would still retained control over the parliament. Weird indeed, but I felt that the result was actually being manipulate before it was published.

post ops....

Ving left us by 2pm and I took over the job of nursing aid. Xian woke up and he was troubled by wound pain. Xian sensory perception was outstanding he had good eye sight, good hearing and also very sensitive to pain. He had no problem of tolerating the pain while laying still, but the pain was torturing when he attempted to get down from bed.

Urine output was an important index for post ops care…5 hours past the surgery and Xian had tried very hard and no urine output was noted. He felt uneasy to do it on the bed and we had tried a lot of method; sitting over the bedside, sitting on the toilet. Every single way led involved getting out from bed and both of us were exhausted. After 9 hrs of struggle, he had finally emptied his bladder. He was indeed dehydrated, over 2000cc was infused/drunk and only 300cc of urine noted. I felt comfortable but did not enjoy a good night sleep. I had awakened on hourly basis to check on the drip and Xian condition.

The pain was better on D2 but was still disturbing. Ving visited us on twice a day bringing us food and supply. On D3, the bed next to us was discharged and I had chartered the room. Nowadays, single occupancy room in the hospital had become very difficult to get as many patients had insurance and afforded to stay in a single occupancy room. When the single room is not available one could still chartered a double room and turn it into a single room (the pay was of course more expensive). When Xian got admitted there was no single room nor any double room to charter. I had to squeeze myself on the foldable chair for first 2 nights.

Taking care of patient with post abdominal surgery was not a simple task. The mission of going to toilet is a great challenge. Every steps was pain and it took forever to complete the few meter walk.

I had day shift on D3 and Ving had come to look after Xian but he was way better and the pain was much tolerable…

Xian was discharged on D5 but it was not the end of the story…..

the destiny road....D1

Xian was complaining of abdomen distension and easy satiety since early this year. I had given him some antacid but did not seem to work….I was a little bit worried but did not come out with any definite diagnosis until that day…..

I was finishing my night shift and Ving had called me up and told me that Xian is having fever and abdominal pain. I asked about diarrhea and vomiting and Ving had given me a negative answer. I asked Ving to pass the phone to Xian and asked him to do a deep palpitation over his rt and left lower abdomen. Xian knew how to do it as months ago, he had an episode of abd pain with fever and I did a physical examination over him. He given me an answer that I did not want to hear…..

I told Ving to grab some clothing and send him over to the hospital after dropping Yun at school.

I was praying while waiting for their arrival, hoping for a non-surgery miracle but I knew that the great one had made his decision. Xian had arrived in a bitter melon face; he had kept asking me what would happen to him….I told him we would proceed with the CT scan and see that how would the event progress….

Xian had told me during the process that the pain had started around 3am and he was hoping it become better in the morning after he gone to toilet. The pain was initially over the epigastric region….Well, typical appendicitis story, but CT is currently the key to definite diagnosis.

I pulled some string for an urgent CT and informed my general surgeon colleague about a possible case of appendicitis.

The CT had confirmed the great one decision and I broke the news to Ving. Xian was still in his denial stage and kept telling me that he would be doomed. The next decision was to do a laparoscopic or traditional appendectomy. The decision was actually simple as Xian appendix was retrocecal and very long; its end almost in contact with the liver tip. I told my colleague that I would opt for a traditional appendectomy. Again, I told my anesthetist that I would like to join the team for the anesthesia period as Xian would be very anxiety facing the ops. After a short wait, Xian was send to the theatre and I entered to aid the process. The anesthetist and his team were friendly enough to joke around and tried to pacify Xian anxiety. Xian had fallen into sleep after diprivan was given….I left the room and joined Ving at the waiting room for an agony  wait. 45 mins after the ops start, the OT nurse who came out and picked up their lunch box had told me that they were closing the wound and asked me to the joined team . I finally sighed and feeling of fatigue had swarmed over my body; no rest was noted after last night stressful shift….

I entered the OT and saw the culprit; the appendix was swollen and it was the biggest one I had seen for decade. Extubation was done and I had chat with the anesthetist while waiting for Xian recovery from anesthesia. He told me the traditional method was a good choice; once there was a gynecologist who opted for laparoscopic appendectomy and ended up with a rupture of appendix while being removed from the peritoneal cavity. The consequence was a one month open dressing of wound.

Well, everything was smooth until now, but I knew that the worst was waiting for me….

D-day.....prelude

My feeling toward GE14 was complicated, after all those of years of frustration, I had given up hope that any miracle would happen…….Earlier this year, I was looking forward to the date of GE14, it would mean another trip up north for all of us. However I was wrong, the SPR had announced that the postal vote with be sent by post and we would have to sent it back to the returning officer before 5pm on the date of election. For a moment, something inside of me had urged me to fly back and carried out my duty, but it was not feasible as kiddo will be schooling and Xian is about to face his form 3 examination; it would be a unfair to the rest of the family if I fly back alone. So it was postal voting again for both of us. The registration was actually a painful one. Flipping through my passport was not enough to fill in the section of stay in Malaysia; the autogate entry[both in Malaysia and Taiwan] had left no stamping on the my passport. My reliable source was the airline company records. I took me quite sometimes to complete the registration.

I got the confirmation email about my application few days later. News regarding GE were starting to flood the media; all I saw was those old tricks…threatening about losing right, racist remark. Those all tricks had been working since my childhood, It had worked many times and I can’t find any reason that it shouldn’t this time, but there was this small flame in my heart that hoping for a change….

life of a developer....

It had been a year since I had dipped into the world of web developer...The progression was slow as I was stuck with the aspx way of retrieving data from database. I had written a wcf service but was unable to proceed as my NAS had an ARM processor and I was unable to host aspx....
I had read up a lot but was unable to make a good leap. I decided to use the html ajax php method. The project is to build a mobile EMR so that I can use mobile phone, tablet during my future medical mission. Well, it is more difficult than aspx and wcf but yet worth a try.
There were lots of resource over the net but the learning process was slow as I need to get answer from time to time by googling. The project was changed after a short while to a CPR recording mobile webpage. I got the inspiration from a local beef shop POS system which utilized mobile phone for counting how many plates the customer had consumed. A simple listview with a long list of button; just click the relevant items and sent...
I managed to get the listview working in 1 months and I was stuck with the datajson to php part.....There were a few technical details which is not mentioned over the net. It took me few weeks and I had completed module of ajax , json, php to and fro mysql server, the job was completed but there was another task waiting for me...

Since 1+ years ago, Ving was given the task of doing roll call in the church. The task is a complicated one as it involved counting the head not only during the mass, but also others activity. Name lists came from 4 different section in small piece of papers and she would need to enter the name onto the national roll call list over the net. If would often need 2-3 hours to complete the task. I had occasionally help her out and found that it could be done a more effective way….

The project started small with only one webpage and a database to manage…It later bloated up like a balloon….I gained many skills, techniques by googling…The task seems simple initially; chose date->chose gathering type->tick who was present from the listview-   >save[write to database]. 

However later I decided it should be reproducible; you can click the date and the data is retrieved so that you don’t have to tick the whole list again should you wanted to add or delete entry…

Then someone asked for a weekly statistic list…another one asked if visitor could be added…again someone asked  if visitor could be placed on the list for a certain period…so and so and so customization were requested…

Well…it took an enormous effort and time for me to coup with those requests… Now it served the whole church instead of our section…..

My next urgent task is to move it out from my NAS ...

let the nature do its job.....

The last few months was an agony not only for me but for my colleague. Our new head of department L had started to 'harass' the ED staff....

Nursing colleagues had been yelled and tagged with unpleasant word equivalent to 'no brainer'. Setting up rules and breaking them whenever he thought was suitable. Nursing staff had tolerated and eventually made complaint but yet the management had asked them to tolerate as L is currently the new kid on the block and the management wishes to rely on him for further advancement.

He had trolled the grey area and sometimes performing unethical acts which violated protocol. Events were reported but no action was taken.....

Nursing staffs are planning for a mass resignation in the near future and I am not happy looking at their plan....

It had been a comfortable working environment until the recent 6 months where L started to 'exercise' his power as HOD. K is one of the victim as L had been stalking him closely. 

I had been irritated but chosen to maintain a 'do nothing' posture....

backlogging....and conclusion of 2017

Appreciation was what I learnt during my last trip. Life was getting harder as the working environment became more hazardous. Interference was noted after Lem left. As the senior staff in our department, I was harassed less. A couple near misses that merely dragged me to medico-legal suit due to some reckless and unethical acts. I had tolerated such events and decided to do nothing…

A trip back to Malaysia was planned and it was a complicated one for me. I had not been having reunion dinner for over 10+ years with my parents and my brother. As our working force expended, this is the 1^st time in 10 years, I could be able to stay over Chinese new year eve.

The fly thru option was available for K city to Senai airport; it was my first choice but I had something to settle before I made the reservation – the overnight stay in sama-sama KLIA2. Unfortunately, it was not available at the time I did the search. Well, I had to give up the idea of getting fly thru but to do 3 separate purchases. KHH->Senai(fly thru), Senai->KUL, KUL->KHH. The interesting part was the price was NT10k less than purchasing a to-fro fly thru. I had noticed it sometimes ago and found that, the price of round trip from KUL to KHH vs KHH to KUL is different. You get a cheaper price if the initial departure city is KUL.

Well, I secured a room with the Plaza Premium lounge at KLIA2 gateway at the price of 1/3 of sama-sama (breakfast also included !!!).     

Despite of being disturbed on my job, I was struggling to learn JAVA; a tough task for a person with 70% of white hair….