Back from KKB

Yay, I'm finally back home from KKB. It was a fun experience for me afterall! Made lotsa new friends and did lotsa fun stuffs. Lets see...

On the Sunday evening (23rd January), I boarded the bus at around 5pm. I sat beside Ronald and we chatted for a while before going to sleep. The trip was a pretty long one, we reached there at 6 something. The warden briefed us on the availability of food and entertainment around the place and we soon got the keys to our respective houses. My housemates were Wei Shen, Wei Ming, Ronald and David. At night we all walked to town for dinner... it was a pretty long walk, took about 30 minutes to get to town. Had dinner at a mamak stall, then roamed the town for a bit. Some of them went shopping for necessities at the grocery stores before we headed home. We then played cards till it was pretty late before going to sleep. I had the whole room to myself, however it was really warm and hard to sleep at night. I eventually fell asleep and that was how I spent my first night in KKB.


So well, the next day (Monday, 24th January) we had to be posted at the KKB Community Clinic... The bus came to pick us up at 7:30am. At the first stop the group A members were dropped off, and supposedly some of us too... but somehow the bus driver called us back up and told us that this wasn't the community clinic of KKB. So... we went back up and ended up at a place called Klinik Kesihatan Kuala Kubu Baharu. Sounds correct? Well, we went in... apparently, the doctors didn't seem to be around. So we walked around and watched nurses tending to mothers bringing their babies and stuffs. Strangely that's all there were... post-natal moms with their babies. We asked Timothy to send a message to Miss Tana the moment we discovered that there were no doctors. About 1 hour later, at 10 something. Miss Tana called and sounded really really furious. The reason? We were at the wrong place at the wrong time... sheesh!! Stupid bus driver! We all walked back to the hospital, which was about 30minutes away. Fortunately we didn't get any scolding because Miss Tana discovered that it was the bus driver's fault.

David and I were assigned to observer a doctor. Her name was Dr.Ng, along with a Chinese Staff nurse which seemed pretty experienced. Dr. Ng was pretty helpful and told us about some stuffs. Both doctor and nurse were enthusiastic about us medical students and tried to help in every way they could. However quite on the contrary, the doctor which Jebbrine and Sally were assigned to (Dr. Leong) seemed really unmotivated to work. Seems he even said that he regretted becoming a doctor... well, if the country's gonna be filled with these kinda doctors in the future... I'm gonna have good business coming in if I have a clinic =P

I don't know really... perhaps some people were being forced into becoming a doctor. As for me, it was the matter of personal choice. Even though sometimes I felt that it isn't something for me, maybe a little regretful... I really don't mind becoming a doctor. Its not really a bad profession... here in Malaysia, there's bound to be a job somewhere as a doctor. So far there's always a shortage of doctors in the government sector. Not really surprising... like duh! Professionals practising in private hospitals get like 3 times as much pay as compared to those working with the government. So you be the judge. I'd quit the moment I've done my 3 years of compulsory service under the government. Why? Lets compare

Government :-
- guaranteed job (iron rice bowl, like the Chinese say =P)
- more cases to attend to (probably beneficial for the first few years)
- longer hours (good for workaholics)
- low(er) pay (need I say more?)
- get all the benefits of being a government servant, like pensions, government loan, bla bla bla (probably good)

Private :-
- less cases (more tea-breaks? =P)
- relatively shorter hours
- 3 times as much pay
- yada, yada, yada.... I'm going private, no doubt.
And unless the government introduces a huge pay-raise to government serving doctors, there will ALWAYS be a deficit of doctors in government hospitals.


Well, back to the point... I would see myself as one of the doctors who are enthusiastic about future fellow doctors in the training. So far, all the medical staffs I've come across seemed to be very supportive and helpful to medical students... Sunny even got a discount, only having to pay 20 bucks to see a specialist (private).

The bus came at 4pm to take us back to the houses we're staying in. I bathed, napped a while until 7pm then went with the whole bunch to eat in town. Today we went to a chinese restaurant to eat. It was Mun Yee's birthday yesterday, so Ben Shen and some of the guys bought her a cake (from all of us). We celebrated, and after dinner went to buy waffle ice-cream. We went to play snooker. Only 5 people though, the rest of them went walking around shopping for stuffs. So, Wei Ming, Alex, Ben Shen, Hai Fon and I played. Its my first time playing, found that its much harder than pool, the table's a lot bigger... but it was fun though. We all planned to go to Frazer's hill the next day, as it was Thaipusam. That night we played mafia till late into the night. Fun fun!