Jumping all over topic

The best oncalls are the ones where no matter how busy you are during the day, you still get uninterrupted sleep later on the night. Even a mere three hours should be okay to get you going the rest of the day.

It was one of those days when you had a whole bunch of stable patients, but they came with weird complaints. Luckily for me, I could always clerk them in for observation. Should nothing is wrong with them in the first place, the MO in charge can always discharge them.

It's just a few minutes after 7 and already the A&E is starting to get patients. It's usually MVA patients this early. I hope that at least the patient's conscious, unlike the ex YB who yesterday was involved in a head on collision.

You can tell how important a patient is in the hierarchy of the society by the size of the crowd that is hanging about the hospital. The last time we had a VIP, a crowd the size of a small kampung (including all four wives, apparently) came to see him.

My sister is getting married this August. Weddings have become really expensive nowadays, don't you think? Maybe it's time we stepped out of the box and do away with wasteful habits such as fancy invitation cards and do a Maya Karin. You do realise that most of them end up in rubbish bins?

The other thing is the door gifts. Remember a few years back when everyone started using those pearly-multisheened ceramic egg holders? Too ugly to use to decorate but too 'sayang' to throw away? When I first got married and moved into Abg's house, I was soooo itching to get rid of them. They were just gathering dust in the old cabinet anyway.

I think a good doorgift should be useful, and if not, at least recyclable. Ma used to save every bunga telur she got whenever she went for weddings and 'cukur jambul's and 'maulud nabi's, that after a while she would have a HUGE bunch of non matching ones displayed right by the phone.

What she did was, when it was time for her to host a maulud of her own, clean up every single one and use them as doorgifts. Jimat, right? and they actually looked nice on the bunga pahar stand, despite being missmatched and all.

I think the problem with our society is that we are too scared of 'losing face' and wanting to please everyone else, BUT ourselves. Relatives are the worst. Especially when it comes to weddings. Everyone wants to give their idea on how much 'hantaran' money the bride should get, where the wedding should be held, how big the event should be and beware should you just brush off any ideas, or you would find yourself being given the cold shoulder come next family gathering.

Talking about recycling, after that three day conference in KK, I've now ended up with about 4-6 bags and a tonne of leaflets. I've decided that from now on, the bags will be coming with us on shopping trips so that we don't end up with plastic bags. The bags that they were giving away at the various booths were the cloth type, and rather sturdy too. We had a trial run at the recent pasar tani, and the bag I had easily carried 4 small papayas, three bags of onions, a bunch of long beans and a few other stuff. One makcik was really impressed when we insisted, no plastic bag please. Besides, they were more comfortable to carry and were less painful on the fingers.

Good eh? I think Ma would be proud. She's always tried to make us reuse things when we were younger, though at that time it was called being frugal rather than recycling.

Now, if only I can locate a paper recycling centre in KB......