First off, my whole residency appeal – I played a gamble in going without a migration agent (not really a choice either, at any rate), therefore without plenty of legal advice, and won. I really won’t suggest anyone to do the same thing, it was a most stressful 4 weeks leading up to that, and I definitely hope I won’t have to go through that again.

The judge/member (as they call themselves, but don’t be fooled), was a very pleasant guy who also made the whole affair quite casual so it was a lot easier on me to think through what I have to say and not to make any legal boo-boos. of course, in my writing to the judge, I will give it that I gave a very casual approach as well, leading to very casual use of colloquial terms.

All in all, I had say, never again, even if it worked to my advantage.

I received the letter he promised today, which was a write up of the facts of the proceedings. Amongst it was something I… pretty much expected but was still somewhat enraged to see. My wonderfully inept and useless ex boss? He dobbed me in to say that someone pretty much forged the forms I asked him to sign and that he has doubts about our relationship etc etc because we don’t seem to know each other very well.

Funny that, he was the one who offered us a deposit on our current home. Not to mention, we both have been under his employment for the same length of time. Even if we were together, that’s a damn long time to not know each other.

In Chinese, we have this word ?, which can be translated to many things… One of which is being “vengeful” or “determined”. As my dad said, he’s goddamn ? lor… Then again, my dad believes that we should always leave everyone a “backdoor” out of every situation, never to “burn any bridges” so to speak.

That he was determined to hurt both of us in such a manner and caused us so much grief in over the last couple of year (I will just blame the year of the Tiger for last year, really), while expecting it (I even told immigration that it would happen, but they won’t believe me), I was still vaguely enraged yet amused.

?… Did he think that being so ? and completely vengeful, nothing will come back and bite him? Funny that 2 years later, he was the one crawling to Waife, hoping to get Waife to come help since everyone had abandoned him. Waife ignored him, of course. At the end of the day, he sold the business at a loss, he lost everyone who was loyal and supportive of him, and all of it was his doing. Considering how much he hated Canberra, and how long it finally took for him to sell that business (about 3 years, so to speak), I had say Karma came and bite him in the ass.

Yes it did create a bunch of problems… simply because the left hand was not talking to the right hand. I mentioned to immi about possible issues leading from an idiotic Mr McFarlane who might commit perjury just to get at me, but the lady at immi didn’t believe me and would not take in the materials suggesting that he has ulterior motives. the whole conversation was meant to at least be documented but nothing was mentioned. Which resulted in me needing to explain myself (guilty before proven otherwise in such situations) before a judge.

Do you know what perjury is, Mr McFarlane? it’s called lying before officials therefore obstructing and costing them time and wasted resources (i.e. your tax money) on important matters. idiot.

Anyways, secondly!! I WENT TO MELBOURNE!! woohoo! holiday away from Canberra. I haven’t gone to Melbourne for ages, and most people should know by now Melbourne > Sydney for me. So, this was a welcomed time away! I won’t bore you with what I did there, except that it was at least fun, and I saw, for free!, the blackened imitation of Tutankhamun’s corpse! and lots of pectoral jewellery! and fishes! <3

I also got myself an old school polaroid SX 70 The Button (which is about as old as me LOLOLOL) as well as some Impossible Project Film – but of course, my inability to read manuals before using something caused a lot of fails… may I present, big fail:

It still look arty from some angles, but hey, I kinda prefer to see a little more shapes to that!

In all other news, since my residency is more or less resolved, I am going “back” to sort out more paperwork, specifically that of my Singapore IC (green card, ID, whateverthefuck) which I very nicely lost last year. I am sure enough of you have heard by now, but to gain citizenship here (achievable within the next 18 months or less, so it was suggested), I need my IC so I can bloody surrender it.

Therefore I am going home to get a new IC so I can bin it. hahaha, so dumb right? oh wells.

I won’t be home for very long, however, I don’t have much leave and would personally prefer to see/help Japan rather than stay in SG and get severely mocked and harassed by my mother (aiya, you all know the story la). And, I do want to see a lot of you, which I have damn promised left and right in the past 3-4 years hahaha.

So, if we can, can we kind of plan this thing properly so I do see all of you? please send me emails/message me on facebook/whatsapp/however you want to communicate so we can do a good and proper meetup/farewell (maybe I will get banned from coming back to Singapore for 3 years after I quit being singaporean hahahahaha because I said I don’t want to be in the same citizenship as TPL hahahaha).

AND AND AND, MAYBE!! JUST MAYBE! I CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT COMICON!! maybe not this year, next? BUT COMICON!!! <3

Current Mood:  accomplished

I have been real sick about 6 months now, and haven’t told many people about it. I kind of thought it was such a soppy thing to tell anyone, really, and the worse was being found and consoled in the emergency department by one of my resident’s family.

And, frankly, I couldn’t be more ashamed.

If you are wondering where all that came about, well, I always thought that if I am working in an industry like this, I ought to be the “strong one”, not the other way around. So, yes, I was incredibly embarrassed.

I won’t go into detail of what I am sick with, but suffice to say, the doctors still don’t know either.

However, what this post is about is more of how horrified I am with the whole health system at the moment, and the people working with it. This is also a reminder to myself of who I don’t want to be.

I have been bleeding for about 6 months straight, this part is something that I don’t mind sharing. The first time I went into hospital, it was from the sheer length and amount of blood I was producing. I waited nearly 6 hours before I was attended to, and then I was grilled by the doctor.

“why are you here today? what caused you to come through the triage? what was so urgent?”

“you’re not dying, dead, bleeding to death or in deathly pain, you shouldn’t have gone through ED, your life was not threatened.”

I don’t know lady, but bleeding for at least more than 2 months this extensively would cause you to worry if you aren’t a doctor – or even if you are a doctor, isn’t it? Plus, I have a right to think I am bleeding internally… considering all factors – fatigue, sore legs, unable to walk steadily, I have a right to think I deserved to come through ED.

At some point, my memory started going. I lost sheets of paper, I lost track of time. Most importantly, I lost the referral letter to the ultrasound and I forgot about a possible follow up with the clinic, mostly useless anyways since they referred me to a doctor who HAD ALREADY RESIGNED.

Before I went in the 2nd time, I made sure I called this time asking for advice what to do, since the Dr was no longer there. This time, there was some pain involved, but I made sure I was nice and civilised to anyone I met. The midwife on the phone suggested I come through the emergency department again, so as to see a particular doctor.

Again, I was told the same thing by another doctor, this time just a little more stern and sharp about it. My blood works were ok – I am seriously not dying, I need to stop wasting people’s time and there are people who need the beds etc etc. Then, I was kicked off the ward pretty much.

By the 3rd time, which I did the same thing, calling midwives and all, I was just admitted into ED itself as I was completely breathless from the pain. No one was listening to me, even when I said I was in pain. It took another nurse to come around, whom I begged for some pain relief, before I got some. And then I finally saw a doctor about 4 hours after I got in.

The wait was not the problem, the timing of when the 4 hours later was. A bed solved part of the problem since i could curl up enough to control the pain WITH the pain relief, and I finally took a rest. The thing was… my bleeding has never been nocturnal. Of course, what drove me to go in there again, really, was finding a giant pink piece of tissue in my hands. Not like your usually clotty looking ones – this looked like it was alive. I freaked.

However, despite me saying all that to the doc, it wasn’t till another 3 hours or so later (2200 hrs) before she examined me and declared that there’s only minor bleeding. I mentioned there might be a lesion – “oh can’t see anything”. well, what can you see manually up a pipe? whatever you can see close to you.

And when she asks what I was thinking of getting done by coming into ED, I suggested a couple of procedures to 1) find out and 2) possibly fix the problem if it’s a minor one, I was brushed off with “they only do those between monday to fridays in the day. They are closed on Sundays and will only perform those for those who have life threatening problems.”

So, I was sent home, increased medications and like 2 tablets of pain relief and pandered off completely.

I spent that week crawling around in pain.

All this time, I really only saw my GP once. I have mentioned to some how much I adore him because he respects me and gives me knowledge, but this whole time, there was also a feeling of urgency and the trust factor that MAYBE the hospital will be able to help me immediately. however, the hospital kept insisting that I need to see my GP before they would see me again. So I finally returned to the GP after getting some other tests done – because maybe, just maybe, I can really only trust in him

In the 2 days that I went to see him (long story short, all the tests done by the hospitals were not returned to me nor were it forwarded to him), I got referred to a specialist, discovered that everything else “seems normal” on tests – BUT the procedures I asked for in my last visit to the ED were the right procedures to really test me and fix me.

BECAUSE. ALL. THE. MEDICATIONS. THEY. HAVE. GIVEN. ME. MADE. THE. TESTS. USELESS. False readings, false counts, false everything.

It would take 2 months at least before the last trace of all those tablets gets out of my system enough to give it an accurate reading. I am so fucking pissed. Do you realised how hard it is to take blood out of me? how much pain it involves, how many bruises? and for how many vials in total this whole time? One vial actually had to be “refilled” because that’s how small and fragile my veins are.

But, beyond angry for all the pandering off, telling off, disdain they held for their patient, the disbelief, the uncaring… I am now relieved. Relieved that at least 2 persons out of the whole fucking system believed me. Do you know how relieving that felt?

It’s a surgery, the queue is still about 2 months – but fuck, someone believed me and is doing something FOR ME! I am not being pandered off! yes yes and yes!

When I was waiting for my GP on the 2nd day, a lady was being carted into the treatment room for hypoglycaemia. She looked pale, faint and semi-conscious. This loudmouth beside me said if it was her mum, she wouldn’t be here, she would be in the hospital.

The queue would have been an hour to 2 long, even if she did seemed to have something life threatening. But, most importantly, the question to ask is…

How would they have treated her?