"My favourite season is coming!" Lat exclaimed excitedly, proudly displaying that megawatt smile of his in between mouthfuls of ham-and-cheese sandwich during lunch at the cafeteria.
"What? Summer?" we asked. Though we complain about the heat incessantly, it's hard not to be perky about the warmer months to come, because there's sunshine, plenty of sunshine.
"No..." he grinned, shoving the last of his ham-and-cheese into his oral cavity. "CHERRY SEASON!!"
If there is one moment of solitude to be found at work, it is the moment where you have the whole intern's room to yourself, typing up discharge summaries next to the window with the sound of rain as your background music.
For the very first time since realising that my intern life is eerily resembling the storyline of The House of God, that my outlook is sadly paralleling those of the Fat Man's ("THE PATIENT IS THE ONE WITH THE DISEASE"), and that my frustrations are flawlessly executed by Dr. Perry Cox and his sarcastic callousness on Scrubs ("Oh my God. What happened in your life that made you so needy that you’ve got to fill every waking second by babbling on?”), I actually smiled. There is an indescribable sense of beautiful melancholy in the grey skies and in listening to the droplets of rain pelting against the window pane. Strong gales ripple through the immaculately lined trees in the courtyard where my window looks out to, sending those Jacarandas pirouetting like punctilious dancers in Swan Lake.
For a split second, I am reminded of the northeast monsoon that usually sends flashfloods to KL around this time of the year. But more so, the summer rain in November brings me back to a time when it was raining in Saigon, and when a certain someone was there to shield me from the storm:
Corner of Bui Thi Xuan and Ton That Thung Roads.
Instant noodles never tasted so extraordinarily yum.
Tea time at Tous Les Jour.
It's still raining in Saigon.
Bookshop stop.
On a rainy day at Nhu Lan's, comfort is a hearty bowl of Bun Rieu.
Rainy afternoons in the hotel.
Contentment is good humour and icy sweet cafe sua da brought in from the stall outside the hotel.
Toasting banh mi's well into the rainy nights.
Beer and banh mi make me very happy.
And so does he (well, most of the time, anyway).
*More photos of my Ho Chi Minh City excursion can be found here.
Mornings can be ridiculously busy. One minute you're doing rounds, trying to examine the patient and chart their obs while scanning through their med chart and chasing up bloods and scans all at the same time, the next minute your pager gives off a high-pitched shrill and sends you searching for the nearest unoccupied phone, which, of course, is located 10 miles away because all the available phones nearby are being occupied by your fellow interns answering their pagers while rolling their eyes at you and throwing you a nod of sympathy before entertaining what is potentially a useless page 99% of the time.
The fact is that one can become so conditioned to what I call the "Pager Reflex" that one doesn't really listen to the person on the other end of the line anymore upon answering the page. I write this from personal experience because, once you've had 3 million bleeps all happening at the same time, one after another-- even while you're halfway through your 117th page-- your speech becomes so mechanically rapid that it doesn't make you sound human. And you certainly don't feel human.
There was a morning when I had to answer yet another page in the middle of ward rounds. Miraculously there was an unoccupied phone, so I attacked it like a rugby player on the field-- much to the amusement of nursing staff-- and dialled the 5-digit number that had appeared on my pager. When the line got through, I reflexively chirped my well-rehearsed line at a speed of 90 miles an hour, wanting to get this over and done with ASAP (I'd gotta get back to my rounds, after all), knowing full well that the person on the other end was mumbling the usual introductory blahs-- and was almost stunned into a stifled giggle when I found out who it was:
"Helloit'sJunhereMedFintern" "Hello it's Dr. B here..." (if you must know, we both were uttering introductories at the same time)
*Pause*
"Yes, I know, Jun, it's Dr. B here, Med F Consultant."
Oh. Right. Ha ha. Of course he knew it was me, his intern. Like, duh.
A lot of things have been getting on my nerves lately. The 39C heat. The temptation to dig into ice-cream every day in the 39C heat. The lack of willpower to resist that tub of Sara Lee in the 39C heat. Unnecessary pages. Unnecessary pages from people who speak very... very... sloooow...leee... More unnecessary pages in the midst of waiting for previous pager to finish... their... sentences... and getstraighttothefuckingpoint.
But one thing that frustrates me most is this: Why do marriages have to involve so much paperwork? Why does there have to be witnesses to a Registration of Marriage, which basically involves just signing your names on a piece of paper and pledging that you'll love each other eternally and take care of each other forever (which both of you are already sickeningly aware of anyway)? And if there needs to be witnesses, are you expected to put on a happy clappy smiley face while you sign your life away? Damnit what if I don't feel like smiling on that day? Does that mean I'm not happy? Damnit what if I don't want any witnesses to my Registration of Marriage? Does that mean I don't love him? Damnit what if the marriage (in lawful terms) breaks down in 10 years' time? Does that mean that the witnesses were deluded by our protrayal of love?
DAMNIT WHY CAN'T THE LAW JUST RECOGNISE POST-IT WEDDINGS??!
Today, as I was pottering along Rundle Mall in the 39C heat, a polka-dot figure caught my eye. It was a little girl, no more than 5, with brunette curls tumbling down her bright polka-dot dress. She was pushing a stroller that was about as big as her. Her father had his hand on the handle, guiding it as they ambled along. In the stroller lay her baby brother, who appeared to be sound asleep. There was a white helium balloon tied to her right wrist. Every now and then, she would glance up at her balloon and tug at her wrist, as if to make sure it was still floating above her head.
Just outside KFC, the stroller came to a jolting halt. The sudden shift in momentum must have woken her baby brother, because he started to whimper and cry. The little girl scooted around to the side of the stroller and stuck her head under the shade, cooing to her brother and reaching in to mother him like how big sisters do. It was at this moment that the ribbon on her wrist came loose, and her white helium balloon floated its way up into the crisp, clear skies.
Taken aback by the realisation of what had just occured, the little girl turned and stared helplessly at what was her white helium balloon just 5 seconds ago, drifting towards its own freedom. Shocked, she burst into tears. She forgot all about her baby brother in that instant. In that instant, she was not his big sister. She was just a 5-year-old kid who had lost her white helium balloon.
So Derek and Meredith had pledged their love and commitment to each other on ordinary Post-It notes, on an ordinary day, in an ordinary room, dressed in ordinary clothes, with no one to witness their testimony but their ordinary selves. It was probably the most unromantically down-to-earth yet most adorably heartwarming non-wedding. To me, that day had paradoxically become extraordinary in its allusion to how most love stories began-- on an ordinary day, with ordinary people leading ordinary lives, perhaps in ordinary buildings, perhaps on ordinary streets.
Admittedly, I, too, once dreamed of dressing like "one of those idiots on top of a wedding cake" (to echo Meredith's sentiments). Now, the idea of a Post-It Wedding is so much more appealing and pragmatic. It combines the elements of purity and practicality. As far as two people are concerned, love needs no witnesses. It is felt in the hearts of each, and when they get married, they're not going to have fairytale endings. They're going to be impounded by the realities of career demands and personal sacrifices, mortgage payments, loans and finances, dealing with soiled diapers and impetuous teenage outbursts if they decide to raise a family, and the ugly possibility of inadvertently letting love slip away in the midst of the chaos. So the pompous showcasing of commitment with extraordinarily grand wedding dinners where 99% of guests will customarily turn up 2 hours late for your big day, really doesn't do justice to capture the true essence of love.
Love in itself is pure; no frills. It is the connection between two souls that transcends all things material. It is the silent endurance of pain, if pain is the fuel for passion. It is warm casserole on the dining table when you get home, and chicken soup simmering in the cast-iron pot. It is the last thing you see when you close your eyes, and the first when you wake up. It is reaching out for an OJ in the fridge on a lazy Sunday morning, only to be pleasantly surprised by the non-wedding vows scribbled on the magnetic whiteboard stuck to your refrigerator door. Now that, would be what I'd call a perfect start to a perfectly ordinary day in the lives of a perfectly ordinary couple.
Before I became the residential pre-therapy Meredith Grey in the relationship department (dark and twisty), I was an Isobel Stevens (hopeful and eternally optimistic about happy fairytale endings). Lately, I have become a self-loathing, self-pitying cynic when it comes to love. Deep down, I know that the abominable feeling of antipathy was triggered by news of a 9-year-long marathon that had finally reached the finishing line. That twinge of envy bites just a little bit more acridly into my own experience of being dangerously dispirited, after clinging on to what appears to be loose vines on the cliff of false hopes for the past 9 years. It had sucked all the optimism in me and had sent me spiralling down a dizzying vortex of emotions that I can't even begin to describe. It had shaken my faith in thinking that the vines I'm holding on to won't snap. It had made me question the very essence and existence of relationships-- including mine-- and I realised, with much shock and surprise, that I am too much of a weakling to hold on to gossamers of uncertainty in the ugly patchwork of an LTR/LDR.
I am exhausted. I am running without knowing where the finishing line is. I can't see the finishing line, and no relationship GPS is going to give me any directions. It doesn't matter how we cross the finishing line-- if there is one. I just want to be able to see the finishing line. I want certainty, no questions asked, no room for rejection, nor capacity for doubt:
"I'm not gonna get down on one knee, I'm not gonna ask a question. I love you, Meredith Grey, and I wanna spend my life, with you."
