6th November 2000

It's a cold grey day, and I'm on my hour's lunch-break : a bacon and chicken sandwich and a miniscule elven-sized cup of tea. This isn't a cup, it's a thimble. I'm breaking tradition here by not for once ad-libbing in front of my computer after work. Normally, during lulls like this I either veg out or write Anna a letter. I can't veg today - the tea's just not kicking in and I know I'll fall asleep and end up late for my "friendly" midwife antenatal clinic. And I can't write Anna a letter 'cos Anna's still replying to my last letter. Far as I know, she's still at "Dear XZ"...

My big (and only) brother's been online a lot lately - It's so weird, in a way, seeing him on ICQ. For all I know, he reads my ramblings too. So hi big brother! if youre reading this. How are you?

On Anna and Australia - my elective Down Under seems to be taking form, whilst the Africa/America notion's fading gradually into yesteryear. Now, both Anna and D. are working on "persuading" me to go (I suspect D. has electroconvulsive therapy lined up next on her list) and I think it's working. I'm TIRED of cold, grey rainy dirty cities. I'm tired of turning, day by day, into a cold-grey lifeless person -like the timesavers in Momo. I want somewhere alive! and warm, and so that's either Africa or Australia - but Australia seems the warmer, what with all the not-so-subtle psychological manipulations of D. and Anna. I watched some 'roos on the outback on telly the other night and they were great. Did you know baby 'roos can run at 4 days old, and they're really awkward getting into and out of mummy's pouch? (and mummy gets bored if they take too long trying and wanders off) I didn't - I've never been to the wilds of Australia, never seen the outback. If I do go, I reckon i'll be based in Melbourne - somehow, all roads in my life seem to lead there for some reason. I've often wondered what it'd have been like if I'd accepted Melbourne as my med school - I had two acceptances 2 years consecutively and decided both times to go to the UK. Doh! Cest la vie.

4 day old babies - I've spent the entire morning with a friendly community midwife visiting newly borns (and an ancient ginger tom) in their houses. As someone else put it - babies are so cute! As long as they're someone else's. Perfect little minuature people, complete with little hands, feet and squeaky voices. (one of the babies had inspiratory stridor to make things worse.) The tom was a perfect little person too for that matter, but a deal more grouchy and "macho". He spent an entire 1/2 hour glowering at me and trying to involve me in a staring match. I politely declined.

One of the babies was all tubed up in the ICU of the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. Now that's a beautiful, happy hospital, and if there was a single reason I'd stay in this dismal grey badger-warren of a city, it'd be to work there. Only time will tell...

Time. Something I won't have much of this week. I'm on call everry day after today, and I seem to have two consecutive 36 hour stints. The organisers have been kind enough to bless me with a half day Sunday, praise be. I'm definitely falling asleep in church this week.

Amusing Anecdotes. Well, the joke about the plane crash has unexpectedly transmuted into reality. I wrote that line shortly before hearing about the crash (clairvoyance?) and in the light of all the fatalities, it's just completely become something trivial and insensitive. So I'll babble about the plane crash a bit instead. It happened - it seems so surreal, but it happened. I remember as a child, flying on holiday with my parents. The words Air Crash and SIA just didn't happen together in the same sentence. SQ was safe. Everything was safe. And good, and wonerful. Then came the Challenger explosion, a tragedy that shook the world, and, in Singapore, probably just me. Now, in retrospect, that seems an odd blessing. How far more glorious and painless it must be to be obliterated, smashed into tiny pieces in a second, soaring through the clear blue sky - than to be seared alive in your seat on the ground, or perhaps to choke slowly to death on the acrid smoke, unable to find your way to the nearest exit because the staff have fled. Sure, we read about our one heroine stewardess who risked life and limb to save passnegers, and we commend her. But the other non-local papers tell the rest of the story - that the rest of the crew left the plane irst, their lives paramount to them, more so than the passengers whose lives were their responsibility. Their superior knowledge of the 'plane's internal architecture - surely a fiery, smokey mess post-crash - and location of the fire exits abandoned in a panicked bid to save their own skins. Would it have taken so much for them to have worked together to quickly and efficiently evacuate the passengers in a co-ordinated fashion? We'll never know.

Pilot error! the taiwanese papers scream. SQ reputation unaffected! the local media declare. Well, who the fuck cares? The people DIED - why do we hear so little about the people who really mattered, or their surviving friends and reltives? How does reputation of the air carrier even come into any of this? I guess it hits that much closer to home - SQ. A local airliner, one I fly almost exclusively. It could have been me! It could have been you. And we're not talking national lottery. A friend I once had has a sister in Taiwan. It could have been her sister, or her. God willing, it was neither. Well, enough tragedy.

An amusing anecdote on dopplegangers. Some time back I met a medic who's the spitting image of a girl I once knew. That girl was very, very young (and strangel similar to myself at her age) and rather pretty - and I suspect she knew it. So I haltingly blurt to her (the medic) have you ever been mistaken for someone else. The look she gives me makes me realise how much like a cheap come-on line that sounds. (groan) She wants to know who this person is, fair enough I think, so I say you probably won't know her, she's a lot younger than you are. (double groan. Nose dive! Nosedive! Pull up!! pull up!!!) Luckily she starts obsessing about who this perso is (who is she who is she tell me now or i will pull your heart out through your tonsils - ok maybe not quite in those words) You can almost hear the wheels turning : WHAT! There's someone else out there as pretty as ME?!!? (Ok, that was completely uncalled for, but being tthe unusually empathic person I am I could sense it) I tell her she was from (such and such) college. She calmly remarks, oh, so was I, now who was it. Groan.

Anyhow. A final short spiel on friendship. Friendship is many, many things, but one thing it is not is intentionally excommunicating someone. In my life, I have had several true friends who still are, and few "real" friens who seemed real at the time but are no longer - so I guess that makes them "false" friends, and myself have been a true friend to a very few, and an absolutely shite one to many others. I wonder if any of them miss me? Then I wonder if I miss any of them. And I wonder who that was who left that bizarre message on my answering machine.

Well, my lunch break is over now. This was my letter to you, Anna. I'm sorry you can't read it on the bus-ride home this time. :)