Singapore External Elective (part 1)

*Takes a deep breath*

I've been putting off blogging for wayyy too long now. I'd better start at the begining: Dec 2008, post finals. After bumming around for a few weeks and basking in the glory of doing absolutely nothing, I embarked on my journey to the neighboring country of Singapore for a month-long medical elective in Singapore General Hospital. Was attached to the plastics, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery department for 2 weeks and emergency department for another 2. Actually the elective was 50% learning experience and 50% convenient excuse to tour Singapore. It's been nearly 10 years since I've been there! The only thing I remembered from my childhood trip was Haw Par Villa (back then it was a cool place to visit, the new Haw Par Villa is just sad). I stayed at Jeremy's father's church friend (such a mouthful) for the 4 weeks. It was a good thing Jeremy helped me out. If he didn't I would have been forced to rough it out in this backpacker's hostel near Geylang. -_-"

Spending New Year's Eve in Singapore unfortunately wasn't as fun as partying with my Subang friends. Cynthia did invite me to join the party at her place, but there was a bit of a transport issue. So instead I wandered over to Marina Square to catch the fireworks display. Eventually found a place to park my camera and tripod at the fire escape stairs at the top floor food court. It sounds pathetic but it's way better than getting groped in the heaping millions on ground level. Had some nice meals with Jeremy, Jason & Cynthia. Visited one of the newer clubs there and did a lot of random wandering after hospital hours. I managed to cover most of the 'touristy places' in my month there, thank goodness.

The plastic surgery team was generally nice, albeit busy and overworked (like most doctors in Singapore). The department deals with all sorts of things from reconstruction post-cancer resection/trauma to burns and elective/asesthetic surgeries. A bit disappointed that I missed the chance to watch 2 really cool surgeries: one was a female-to-male reassignment surgery and another involved the Singaporean MP who was set on fire. To my surprise, the consultants enjoyed teaching students. It's really amazing how wide the field of plastic surgery is. Like, they can pluck out a piece of meat from somewhere and stick it into a defect, and the patient feels whole again! Well... something like that la. Anyway the most important thing I learnt from my little posting there is There is no such thing as perfection. It's so difficult to balance out function and aesthetics. A lot of it depends on the patient's expectations. Happiness really is a state of mind.

OK.. here's part 1 of my Singapore photos. There's just too many of them, even after serious cropping and editing. Please mouse over/CLICK the photos to get the captions (if any).