08th Aug 2022
Sometimes it feels like the trend to turn to sustainable energy is because there is a group of wealthy people who are trying to overthrow the old money of the fossil fuel industry. Or maybe it's to weaken their political influence. Seriously, the percentage of people who feel that the environmental issues are the top priorities can't be that high since there are much more urgent challenges we are all facing now everywhere in the developed world, yet here we are spending entire fortunes in tax money to greenwash everything.
Whether that's a good or bad thing, I wouldn't know, but it appears to me like there's a revolution in more ways than one.
09th Aug 2022
The issue might have been the latex mattress topper. Tried sleeping on the mattress directly last night because there wasn't space to fit another queen-sized item on the floor, and I didn't feel like flipping the mattress on its side on the floor while the topper rests directly on the bed frame, and as a result, didn't feel the sag.
Hmm...
12th Aug 2022
Working even as a student nurse is tiring, and this is despite the fact that we can't do most of the things regular nurses do, and anything we can do we have to do under supervision.
I'm tired enough that I am hesitating to continue a conversation with one of the three matches on Bumble because the next sentence is going to be to ask her out... and I feel like staying home all weekend. Worse still is how she's not overweight and she seems nice, only catch being she's Christian.
In my previous life, we'd definitely be setting a coffee or dinner date for this weekend or the next by now, but... I'm replying to everyone else but her.
What a change.
One of the staff nurses in charge of the cubicles next to mine on some shifts had the absolutely most adorable sneeze I've ever encountered. Too bad she's too young for me and a Malay. I couldn't resist a chuckle yesterday when she sneezed twice consecutively, it was so incredibly cute.
02nd Sep 2022
The final day of my fourth week of my first placement as a student nurse. The work itself isn't too bad since it is quite routine mostly, so while it is still challenging for me right now, it should not be once most tasks become muscle memory, like documenting I/O of each patient, changing patients' diapers, and helping them to the washroom.
But I was wrong about having time to work out before the morning shifts because even though I get up at 4am, the first hour is spent washing up and having my coffee. Just too sleepy to do anything strenuous, so from 5am I try to squeeze in one of the short calisthenic workouts with just 4-6 sets per session that also uses 135s breaks, then be ready to get out by 6am for my 7am shift. Better than nothing.
Or maybe they're actually effective, because I've lost 1kg of fats and 1kg of muscle mass (and about 300g of bone density) over the course of the last three weeks of working as a nurse, yet I feel little difference in functional strength. In fact according to my records, there has been no dip in my performance; on the contrary it is still improving in a few aspects, like pushups. Could be a psychological thing though, like I can do more reps only because I believe I can keep going.
Got a date with an Indian lady this weekend. Yet another first. Wonder how that's going to go.
Some of the patients have been very nice in an awkward way, by trying to buy us coffee or a meal while unable to get out of the ward (they're not allowed to till they're discharged or transferred), which they do by, for example, handing us a packet of instant coffee mix. The fact is that some of the staff nurses are much nicer people than I am, but they're just too busy with regular nursing tasks like documentation and medication rounds, so the patients don't really feel anything from them. I, as a student nurse, seem to give a damn about them more only because I can do very little of actual nursing work, eg nothing dealing with medication and sharp objects, so I seem to be around to help them with the little things much more often, which they interpret as being a very good human being and nurse.
04th Sep 2022
Pants split on Friday halfway through my shift while I bent over with legs apart to shift a patient higher up his bed. Fortunately it was rather close to the groin so it wasn't very visible, and I could walk slowly to ask the staff and my instructor for a sewing kit, though ultimately they handed me two large safety pins and a large stapler that saved my pants temporary. Also used a roll of micropore to reduce friction between the staples and my skin.
Was certainly interesting, but not the kind of event I had been hoping for. I want variety, not routine, particularly when I am still a student.
The date went quite well, got a second date. As expected, communication was a little challenging when we spoke too quickly due to our accents. She's travelled some, so it wasn't new to her either. In any case, this isn't a big issue as proven by my time with the Taiwanese who'd preferred to speak Mandarin that I'm rather poor at.
She also seemed quite eager for our dates which I find strange, so I will have to try to figure out why soon.
To be clear, it's strange only because in several ways, she's out of my league. This is really my first time dating someone as slim as her, not to mention she's much better educated and in a more lucrative line given she's renting a one-bedroom apartment just for herself in this time when property prices are known to be ridiculous. And she's far prettier in real life than in her photos, likely due to the lighting and her skin tone.
So why does she appear to be so happy to go out with me?
Time-wise, it is more sensible to do cardio on weekdays because it is the second fastest of my workouts at half an hour. Since my afternoon shifts require me to be done by 10.30am, perhaps this should be moved to such days, and leave the long strength training to my weekends when there is more time. The shortest workouts, the 4-6 sets of calisthenic exercises lasting up to 30mins, will still be reserved for just before morning shifts.
This gives 2-3 days for cardio, 2-3 days for maintenance workouts aka calisthenics, and 2 days for strength. Sounds fine to me.
07th Sep 2022
Cold sores are back. Fuck.
15th Sep 2022
CI asked me to get a memo from my GP on Monday, so I went to the clinic before my afternoon shift... only to be told it wasn't healed enough for me to return to work, so she extended my MC dramatically - for the rest of the week. So here I am playing Mass Effect.
Was looking at the ship "Normandy", thinking about how it is cool to name a ship after a famous region of a country, so if Singapore ever gets its own spaceships, will they name one of them... the "Yio Chu Kang"?
Anyway listened to my GP and avoided exercise until it healed, but getting back to the routine proved more challenging than usual, probably because I used to be driven by preceding progress, but this clinical has had me dropping two whole kilos in the first three weeks - one kilo fats and one kilo muscle mass. The fats part was awesome, but losing two to three months' worth of hard work in building muscle mass this quickly was a real heartache.
This shows I have to eat more than what I had been eating, so the amount has increased, during the fourth and fifth weeks.
16th Sep 2022
So the reason I've got two coffee capsule machines is because my brother replaced his Nespresso machine with an incredible lever espresso machine that cost about S$3k.
Around two weeks ago I went on a date with this Indian lady I'm still seeing tomorrow, and the Italian restaurant served a pretty good espresso for the dessert. This reminded me of why I upgraded from my coffee press and moka pot to capsule machines - the goal was to get better and more consistent coffees, including espressos.
The capsule machines could never do it, not once, not anywhere, not even with their multitude of espresso capsules, not even with ristretto capsules.
This reminded me of what a good espresso tastes, and thus renewed my search for it. Now that I am more financially free as compared to the last years of my running the business during the pandemic, I can consider the better options - the total will hit what my brother spent of S$3k. However, unlike his setup, this will include S$1k on the automatic grinder and S$2k on the espresso machine. After doing some research (not that much tbh), my conclusion is that the set up will consist of the Niche Zero and the Rancilio Silvia Pro.
The Niche Zero must come first because all good coffees depend primarily not on the coffee machine but the grinder, and this grinder seems to be unbeatable in terms of being a single-dose grinder for the home, being easy to use and maintain.
The Rancilio Silvia Pro is great for relatively new people because according to award-winning barista James Hoffmann, it serves great espresso right out of the box, requiring few changes and tinkling. This might discourage experienced users who prefer to customise their stuff, but that would make a great entry point for someone like myself who's unfamiliar with such coffee machines and just want a good espresso.
My student days have made me spend a lot less on everything, so for example, last month during my clinical, I'd been so busy my expenditure had gone down to slightly over S$1k, freeing up quite a bit of cash, making this affordable.
Anyways, the final battle in ME1 with the fully indoctrinated Saren crashed my PC thrice before I turned my fan towards it at full blast. That actually work...
Likely conclusion is that even with all the fans, the circulation isn't enough. But then again I had also restarted the game before that fourth try, so it could be that too. We will never know because I am not playing that part again.
Was on Normal difficulty so the entire game felt so easy, I was going around with a pistol and barely had to use my abilities, therefore it felt appropriate to turn it up in ME2... to Insanity. Holy cow even the first few enemies almost killed me, but I've since adapted, so the first boss, the huge Mech where we first meet Tali again, was quite ok.
I think Insanity is going to be fine, there aren't any particularly challenging bosses in this game that stand out in my memory, quite unlike the Krogan battlemaster at the Prothean ruin where we first encounter Liara in ME1.
30th Sep 2022
Ok, definitely crashing my PC because of the heat, because it crashed again in ME2 when the Collector General first assumed direct control over a drone in a fight with us, and then it didn't crash when I aimed my fan towards my desktop the second time I ran it.
Looks like installing all the fans around it still isn't enough.
Finally finished my clinical earlier this week. Never a boring day, because there was a covid positive patient the day before my last day, after my morning shift, who was then transferred before I returned for my final day's morning shift. This meant all remaining patients were close contacts and we had to don N95 masks, and whoever worked with the patients in the cubicle had to don full PPE.
And then there was an elderly patient with hyperactive delirium admitted on the second last day, very confused and had to be restrained. But he was clear-minded enough by lunch on the following day, which was great because he seemed like a really gentle friendly man.
Also had a patient for the past two weeks with sexual disinhibition secondary to his dementia, but because he had to be tended to by male nurses it was challenging to find another ward to transfer him to, and this was made even more challenging when his cubicle had that covid case. By my last day, he had had two victims among us nurses, and it warranted regular patrols by security guards.
He's medically a pervert, I guess. But because it was due to his dementia... can we really blame him? It might have been right to restrain him, but there is really no ill feeling towards him, as far as I'm concerned.
16th Oct 2022
So went for a trip to JB the weekend clinical was over, to stay at a new hotel Opero that turned out to be quite a bargain for the price, even had fresh thosai for breakfast. Too bad it was clear their maintenance had some serious room for improvement, and it won't be long before Opero will become another rundown hotel in Malaysia that looks nice only on the outside.
Food was great though, nice to drive around Johor for food. Haven't had fish lips before, so these shark lips cooked in black bean sauce were amazing. Shark lips are like jelly, it was like eating collagen on bones, and the bones themselves were really cartilage so the restaurant owner told us we could save them and slow-cook the bones to make a really good broth.
The following weekend was a 3-night cruise to Penang on the Genting Dream. Turned out the upgrades weren't discounted, but we did it anyway because the original balcony staterooms were free anyway, we were only port taxes and gratuities totalling S$50/pax/night without the upgrades.
So the result was that three of my friends took a Palace Deluxe Suite while another friend took a Palace Deluxe Premium Suite with me, this arrangement resulted in us paying about S$250/pax/night for the cruise.
And I now know the cruises use days instead of nights for their calculations, but I am more comfortable going with how hotels do it.
The cruise itself was pretty nice, great value for money, particularly with the company I had. Our days went like this: wake up in time for lunch, followed by high tea in the lounge next to the restaurant at 3.30pm, then move on to the snack menu in the same lounge where they had some pretty great food like laksa and chicken wings. At about 5.30pm, it's happy hour at the bar, so we head there for some alcohol, nuts, and a nicer environment for chitchat. Dinner typically has two time slots: 5.30pm and 7.30pm, so if it is the former, we skip happy hour, otherwise we stay till about 7.15pm and head to the restaurant that's already been booked by our butler since the embarkation day. After dinner, it's mahjong till we finish all four winds, and it's bedtime. On the one day our dinner was 5.30pm, we headed to the casino after the meal instead, where I registered for the membership, spent S$200 at baccarat and left with S$230 (learnt to settle for small wins years ago). 15% ROI was a pretty good number anyway.
What really stood out for me was the bed - it was soft and wraps you up into a cocoon, yet doesn't hurt your back. The age of the label of the mattress made it even more impressive, because it was still good after all those years of use. So now rather than the espresso setup, I plan to get a similar bed in the future. The mattress itself will probably be about S$3k-5k, the bed frame will likely have to be custom-made for the 2m by 2m mattress and will cost about S$1.5k-2k, so effectively needing a S$7k buffer.
19th Oct 2022
She seems serious. We seem serious. She's really good at looking confident without actually being more confident than some of the other ladies I've dated. Explains her job.
21st Oct 2022
Why freeze-dried fruits/vegetables are not as popular as I expected - they stick to the molars.
24th Oct 2022
Should I look into oncology nursing?
25th Oct 2022
And another bites the dust. She'd been retiscient with her replies recently, and today I find that she's revamped her Bumble profile (I use our past convo as reference, and looked at her profile also because I suspected she was no longer interested).
On the surface she was great, out of my league, but inside she had a certain darkness she occasionally let seep out. I was actually planning to ask about it next date, because to be fair, we all have wounds that may or may not have healed. Was also trying to find out more, so looked around for her social media but turned out to have none, which made understanding her much more difficult, and could also point to the possibility that she had been badly hurt and still hasn't recovered. She did give me a vague impression that she had difficulty in forming a deeper relationship.
And if she has never had a social media account beyond the texting stuff, as unlikely as it may be for ladies in my age group, there are not too many possible reasons for it. It is not like the issues that army brats face are secrets.
Loneliness might have played a part in pushing her to me, let's be clear about that. A woman living alone in a foreign country two years after her mother passes away, even if her sister is in the country, there has to be a huge amount of loneliness there.
Did her issues also have anything to do with the fact that despite her sister being here all these years, she never got out of her country till now? Also despite the fact that she clearly has a disdain for her own country. And she spotted negative behaviours very well, and could be rather sarcastic about it.
I might have dodged a bullet here. What a sad day though, because for once I was finally considering working on it rather than move on, just because she was great on so many levels and that no one was perfect. But now that she's gone this far, staying together would probably leading to cheating, either her or myself. I must admit that there wasn't very much chemistry between us, even though there also haven't been many dates so far. Four only, in almost two months since we matched.
On the bright side, I have finally conceded to myself that my ability to force my will upon others needs work. It is true that I like to throw the responsibility of decisions to them, and this is a common turn-off for at least two of them, and as a nurse, I must be able to make decisions and get others to follow them. Back when I ran the business, I never needed to do much of that, when I make a decision, the staff follows just because.
Anyways, yes, I am affected by this, yet again, though this time enough to get up and type this essay to make her seem less likeable. Maybe because I am indeed shallow, and this was the first woman in my love life who'd been actually slim and pretty. My first attempt at reaching for something beyond the low-hanging fruits. Yet again this proves that if someone seems too amazing to be single at this age without getting divorced, there has to be a good reason for that, although one man's meat may be another man's poison, so I'm just hoping to find someone whose big reason for being single is something I can swallow with ease.
Strange that I am typing this little essay just less than a week after saying she seemed serious about us. How terrible I must be at judging people. In fact, the entirety of this little episode has been recorded in this one rant, not that I normally say much about any of my relationships here.
A friend had been pushing for a mutual friend. Should I consider? Of course I must wait, probably a month, before actually deciding.
In any case, I wanted to try to work on it because of the Taiwanese girl. On hindsight, it might have been a better idea to have persisted rather than move on so quickly as was typical of me, but regardless, it is the past, a lesson that I have learnt. And again, to be frank, her religion was a massive turn-off, and I did not know it was normal to have a date just once a fortnight.
And that is all. Hope getting this off my chest will help me sleep tonight. It's a quarter passed one, and I've to get up at six.
6.30am now with my morning coffee. She told me her cousin had her phone while they were drunk, so I might have messed up.
