Flying In The Face of Winning

I remember when I was a little boy, and my Singh friend, N, told me once how a tiny cockroach had decided to set up nest in his nine year old ear. He had to be brought to a clinic where the doctor poured some paraffin into his ear and then removed the offending creature with a pair of tweezers.

Little did I know that the way my stupid nine year old brain put that inconsequential piece of information into the "Important" folder instead of the Recycle Bin would one day come back to help me.

Not one, but two patients walked in the other day complaining that they had felt an insect crawl into their ear and they were fairly distressed because they could still hear the insects flying about in their ear.

(Bzzz... bzzz... bzzz.... gottogetthroughgottogetthroughgottogetthroughwhat'sthiswalldoinghere gottogetoutgottoget outwheretheheckamiwheretheheckamiohgoshohgosho bzzz...bzzz...bzzz...)

Today's recipe:

Insect Tartare

1. Lay the patient on the side, with the offending ear facing you.

2. Take a bottle of castor oil and pour it into the ear till it brims.

3. Position your light towards the ear and attempt to visualise the insect, failing which an otoscope may be of value.

4. Through the mess of blood and oil, once you have visualised the offending insect, you are now read to begin extraction.

5. Use a pair of tweezers/forceps and aim approximately at the angle where the insect was. After a few blind catches, you should be able to extract the insect. Check that the whole insect is intact.

You are now ready to enjoy your insect tartare. Serves 1.

Something about this really bugs me, y'know?

It was Melbourne Cup Day as well, and the nurses were going around collecting two dollars from everyone in the department. I hesitated for about five seconds before throwing my lot in, joining in the festivities. I reached into the box and drew out my alloted horse. Number 10. Viewed. It was two dollars I knew that I would never see again.

I was working in the doctors' area when the group of people that had gathered around the TV set in the tea room started streaming out after the main race in the Melbourne Cup. How'd it go? I asked one of the nurses. "Ten, twelve, four," she quoted the numbers of the trifecta.

"What?!" I said. My horse had won. By a nose, as replays would show it. "Drinks are on you!" smiled another nurse.

That completed an awesome day at work!

He works hard for his money. So hard for his money.

Random Memories: Fourteen Years Old

He remembers the World Cup Fever that had taken the host nation, the United States, by storm. A nation crazed about baseball and basketball had succumbed to the charms of the world game, if only for a few weeks.

World Cup fever spread through the world, and made its way into my humble school - as evidenced by the bleary eyes from the early morning wakes to watch the matches half a world away, and by the excited discussions along the school corridors, and also by kids taking to the school field with a reinvigorated, if brief, interest in the beautiful game.

But nothing said that World Cup was here more than the bookies. Little entrepreneurs emerged from the woodwork, taking bets from their classmates and friends; having done their research, they were often the victors, and occasionally the victims.

One such businesskid, however, did the foolhardy thing of keeping an account ledger which he was busily filling up in our Kemahiran Hidup (Living Skills) classes. We did learn about accounts in our KH classes, but he was doing it while a teacher was teaching us about electronics. He got found out, his ledger confiscated, and the repercussions were huge.

Let's just say the teachers cracked down hard on the bookies, and it finally worked its way down to every single student who had gambled on this World Cup. Alliances were lost in the blind panic that swept over every guilty boy, and threats were made to tattle out the students who would not volunteer themselves in an admission of guilt. If they were going down, they were going to drag every single guilty one down with them.

I made the grand total bet of fifty cents. On a game which I won. The winnings which I never collected! But in a school with moral standards way beyond the other school's of our time, the principle was that I still gambled.

We learnt our lessons that World Cup - we earned a minimum of two strokes each and an additional two week period of community service for the leaders of the school - the prefects and librarians who had failed to set a good example. The school toilet and stairs were cleaner places for our indiscretions.

I think although it was a painful period in our lives, a lot of us have come off better from having been discplined at school. These were formative years, and lessons that would save us grief many years down the line had to be learnt.

Even if it meant getting on your knees and scrubbing the stairs with your toothbrush as your teachers walked past, throwing sympathetic smiles at a punishment that many parents protested as being too severe.

Ora Et Labora. Work and Pray, my dear alma mater!