21st September 2000

I've been away. Hence the lack of updates. I was up in a little village midway between Birmingham and Coventry doing a GP posting, which involved me living with one of the GPs in his converted farmhouse, and going in to work with him for two weeks. The GP was not gentle with me; he had me work Saturdays and Sundays as well. It's possibly the best firm I'll ever have, and one of the best experiences of my life. I was happy. The medicine was good, the teaching was good, the food was tremendous, and the whole feel about the place was cheery and warm. The GP actually involved me in far, far more than his professional life; he involved me in his family life (and political life!) as well. And he was a gem of a doctors as well; involving himself in his patients far beyond the call of duty. It was like living in a storybook; like living in Dr Doolittle. '

One of the patients had a tragic accident involving a train. The Dr brought me for the funeral, as a token of respect to the family, who were his friends as well - that's the difference between big-city GPs and country-GPs. Somehow, in the country the patients are your friends - all of them. You see them often, you gossip with them; you have the time to gossip, occasionally; and you see their kids through sickness and health. In the city, the doctor-patient transaction is obviously a financial one. Cold, impersonal. City-rised. I asked the Dr. if he had attended many funerals before this one. He rattled off a long list to me, recalling all his patients fondly.

The funeral was an extremely Anglican one; I can't go into details because somehow I feel that would be violating the confidentiality of the whole episode - but it was far, far more touching than any funeral I've attended back home. There was less regard for form and rules, and more regard for the dead, and the living. There was emotion, for real. Heaps of it. And more spirituality.

I put on 5 kg thanks to the efforts of Mrs Dr, who cooks extraordinarily well. In return, I paid them with Chinese mooncakes all the way from Singapore. Mooncakes are a seasonal delicacy; the ones I gave them were lotus-paste and pastry and, I reckoned, universally palatable. Judging from their reactions, they liked it (they ate 2 mooncakes in less than 5 minutes) I don't have the heart to tell them they won't find any quite like those here in the UK... the mooncakes here are about a quarter as large, and just don't taste the same.

So now I'm back in London, doing the second leg of my GP firm with a host of inner-city doctors, and the illusion's falling apart. Being a GP in the city, much like, I imagine, being a GP in Singapore, doesn't have that certain something that the countryside practices had. It's the same medicine, the same complaints, but the entire feel of the business is different. The patients come in sour-faced, and most ignore the presence of The Medical Student - in the countryside they positively fawned over him, no matter how ill they were. I've stopped rising from my seat to shake their hands now, after being ignored completely several times. The country GP had me sitting in his seat, carrying out the consultations; in the city surgery, I sit far removed in a corner, falling gradually asleep. Out in the country, the highlight of my day WAS the day, and coming home was simply for me to die a gentle death on the bed. Here, the highlight of my day is coming home, and unwinding. Getting on my computer. Cleaning up my flat. Watching television.

Do I want to be a GP? Yes, oh yes... somewhere in the countryside. Perhaps somewhere like australia, if the English weather gets to me. But not a GP back home, in Singapore - which I rather think I'll be returning to someday to stay. So... I guess I won't be a GP.

The weekend of my Balsall Common stint with the country GP was the weekend the UK Arts Feste was conducted; it just happened to be in Birmingham, so I took a train from Berkswell to Birmingham and watched it. That was another experience that struck me as simply amazing. So much diversity, so many different peoples, so much variety, so much... life. All in 1 city. Singapore, Cosmopolitan? We don't even know what the word means. The Sunday dawned warm and sunny, and I spent an idyllic afternoon on the verandah with the Drs cat, lying in the sun, pretending to read a textbook.

Today, I passed the Arsenal stadium, with the Gunner's shop, en route to the tube from the city-practice. Somehow, for all the complexity of the city, for all the grandeur... it doesn't begin to compare with the idyllic serenity of a little country village called Balsall Common.