Hey

"For here you are, standing there, loving me

Whether or not you should

So somewhere in my youth or childhood

I must have done something good"

Something Good from The Sound of Music (1965)

I've been gone far too long, I know, but just for the moment, I'm back. I have not written anything that's not a patient report or a discharge summary in an entire month, and I can't imagine that being very healthy for my psyche. Some people meditate or do yoga. Some hang out with friends. My thing is: I write.

I have a hundred specific things I want to write about but I fear I have neither the stamina nor drive to put them in words today. Today, I just want to talk in a vanilla Dear Diary kind of way about nothing.

Recently, I had a rather pernicious duty foisted on me by the boss - I was put in charge of the duty roster and my job is to distribute my department's manpower pool of half a hundred junior doctors to ensure that we remain smoothly operational. It's a much tougher job that it sounds. I receive complaints and demands in all hours of the day (and some hours at night) from the house officers I expected to herd and organise; all of them fighting over valuable operating theatre time which enables them to perform the required procedures which are prerequisites to graduating the posting. I receive a daily stream of complaints and demands ranging in tone from angry to weepy, and let me tell you: I find anyone in tears to be very off-putting. It throws me into traumatic flashbacks of my previous relationship with the Ex-Grrrfriend™.

Yesterday, a specialist texted me and asked me if I would like to participate in the research team of a study he was planning to launch, and I said "I do" and kissed the metaphorical bride. I don't fully know if I should have committed to it but research is something which I find far more fascinating than the care-giving facet of medicine - even if its in OB/GYN a specialty I'm not particularly fond of. But I certainly hunger for the experience. Tomorrow, I'll be meeting said specialist and be briefed on the details and all its devils. We'll see how it goes then.

Currently, I'm quite taken in by the soundtrack to Kari-gurashi no Arietti (or The Borrower Arrietty) which was written and performed by French French-Brettone singer and harper, Cécile Corbel, who sang in endearingly broken English and presumably broken Japanese as well. There are very warm and homey Celtic and Oriental fusion tones in the music and I couldn't stop listening to them. Also, after watching Arrietty, I'm increasingly convinced by the inherent advantage animated films have over their live-action counterparts. In live action movies, we see characters being played by recognisable stars we've seen in other works and in their usually very public lives, and the "reality baggage" can sometimes intrude into the performance. With animated films, particularly those voiced by obscure voice actors or seiyuu, the characters lives and breathes only within the movie's universe. In a way, I am far more likely to forget that they aren't real, and that makes me care more about them.

A couple of days ago, I discovered that there's a cineplex located a mere five minutes walk from where I live. I simply went to my fridge, grabbed a bottle of ice-cold ginger beer and a bag of crispy nori snack, walked a block down the street, and saw Warrior (because Tom Hardy ignites my latent homosexuality even more than Michael Fassbender). It's the next best thing to having my own private movie theatre. Sure, it's seedy and looks like one of those places which show nothing but skin flicks to half a dozen furiously-masturbating 40-something lonely dudes per screening, but it's still serviceable. Besides, it's on the 9th floor and has a romantic night view of the city and the river, and that's worth something. I daydreamed for a minute of buying the place, refurbishing it and turning it around - and then the beautiful madness passed.



Recapitulated,

k0k s3n w4i