2/4 day before going back to medical..

i attempted to have a cool day today, studying in the sun in the park amongst the elderly kung kung's and por por's savouring the spring breeze, ran into the public library and found a few books on watercolour (oh this afternoon's trial was a disaster, will tell you about it later)... and felt like a housewife strolling in the shops in noon wearing those heels...

kind of sorted out my room again while putting on the rose face mask from julie. this time it's much better, my medical books and leisure books are in different shelfs now. and i've got the empty files ready for filing the journals... it looks like i can't buy anymore books, i don't have any more space for them. i'd been doing things all day, suddenly a tinge of sadness dropped on the floor. i remembered what it was. yea i'm still feeling a bit lonely, perhaps still waiting for a call. or two?? i dare not even think.

anyhow, i dropped that thought and did a bit of work. later on, i started my first attempt at watercolour painting, it ended in disaster... i was to paint the sky with some morning beige clouds, it ended up a blue streaks with two yellow blobs. am i that rubbish?? should i be thankful that i bought the cheapest box of colour?? i want going to paint something for somebody, even that piece of paper was ruined by the masking tape. i guess i'm too stupid to 'act' too professionally and taped the piece of paper onto my drawing board with the wrong type, 'cow skin'!!

i had my last day's work at emergency dept today... i didn't take it as the last day, just working quietly as i always have been. out of the blue a policeman came and sat by my side. i didn't recognise him. he told me i attended him a few months back when he collapsed and came into hospital. i looked in the computer records and remembered who he was, he was the one i scolded after refusing to be admitted to the hospital after i had spent 1 hour on him doing all sorts of investigations..

now he came saying how much he appreciated my efforts. he finally was admitted to hospital and had many more investigations done. i was without words.

there's something i forgot to tell you today. i walked toward 'rose garden' in tuen mun this morning to renew my id card, and while waiting for the light rail i looked up a tree and saw a craze of flamboyant flowers in bright orange! i hadn't brought my camera with me! they were the same ones that i saw on sassoon road while walking down to medical school many years ago, i still remembered that one fine day, i still remembered how i felt and how i wrote it down... can i tell you about it one day?

i was sad to say goodbye. you well know who i'll be missing the most.

but i know you'll never leave, right?

The youth without regret

When you're young, if you fall in love with someone, please, if you will, treat her gently.

No matter how long or short in love you were, if you could treat each other gently, then, every single moment would be beautiful.

Even if it's time to part, you should say bye bye kindly, and remind yourself of such appreciation, thanking her for giving you a piece of memory.

As, when you finally have grown up, you'll only realise, then, at the moment of turning your head back, the youth without hatred is without regret, just like the full moon quietly sitting up on the mountain.

(my first attempt at using positive film...)

ooh la la, i missed the india program again tonight.
found out i'm always looking for india programs to be on discovery channel. sounds like i really need an indian break. i wanna go to taj mahal..............

too bad, sharon isn't really into indian food, grace hasn't tried, and seabreeze just said no, that was nice! and even more unfortunately, i've got... uh... one ... two... three pimples on my face, so no greasy food for the time being! looks like i have to stick to boring things for now. but i still have shanghainese, or B-son dessert, or chicken congee, yes??

so i've got my may study leave and london trip all planned out. pure study until the 12th, then flying on the 13th arriving at 6am and picked up by helen in her pyjamas at 7am. then i'll stay in balham for 3 days (oh gosh, i used to be so frightened of this name!!), spend some good time having dinner with sarah and helen, and then exam on the 16th, then now i've cancelled my plan to romantic paris on the 17th. i don't think cyril will be pleased to know that. je regrette. but a 24 hour/hkd 1200 trip to paris doesn't sound too promising. so... i have nothing planned for 17th and 18th. i just wish tessa can come down to london from longdown!!!!, or, i might go to the national portrait gallery or victoria&albert on my own like when i was 17, OR, i'd spend an hour or two at covent garden to buy souvenirs for uhum, uhum and uhum. (but then there's no money left after buying the piano and the flight tickets!!)

i think i'll just take my small camera with me and snap something for you. i'll do that...

well yea, that needs some good studying beforehand, just like tonight. i'm quite pleased with my endurability... for once.

when does your exam finish kandice?? are you going to get me something from india as hinted by this diary entry? love bets

2 days ago i went to a concert with verone, flora and grace. i'd been looking forward to it for days because it was Sebelius' Finlandia and Rachmaninoff's piano concerto no. 3, both my favourite orchestral pieces.

Finlandia brought me back to my childhood in england, to the moment when i was playing the bassoon part in the joint school orchestra in the boys school hall, jocelyn sitting beside me, playing the same piece.

i was so captured. such nostalgia.

(well, just less than 2 months' time i'll be seeing sarah and helen in london again, i'd say it's a good news out of a bad one at least..)

after the concert, verone bought us some yummy XTC gelato as we walked along the seafront espanade, it brought me back to reality. the tsimshatsui seafront i was so used to a few years ago, so present yet such past-tense now... i winked and found no tears in my eyelids... somehow instinctly, i grabbed my phone from my jeans and found i had missed a call...... i'd accidentally turned off the ring, oops.

* * *
doesn't it make you feel good when someone says he likes you to moan (complain)? somebody said only close ppl do it..

god, i feel terrible.

i know the day has come when i feel emptiness from the inside. i'd rather hope it's just my imagination, but it doesn't feel like that. how grey is the sky above, clothing and pressing me down like a heavy blanket. can't breathe. can't understand why you mean so to me. i'm going to move to a different place in less than 2 weeks. i feels like july, when i moved to this unknown town, that feeling of solitude, bleakness and fright, i'm re-experiencing all that. can you sympathesise?

i wonder if there are anybody on earth who actually lives up to the promises they say?
anyway, i gotta forget all. study hard.

i'm so shocked
so disappointed

Goodbye is the saddest word

Chuchu, looking skinny and weak

Tonight, I felt my heart being torn into a thousand pieces. As I ate the chicken congee, the second dosing of my iron supplement from you, my tears dropped onto the soup.
I haven't lost anything, I know, actually, I didn't have anything right from the start, but it's the concept, the symbolic meaning of 'once', I wish it were real, it was wasn't it??
Letting go is the most difficult thing to do. But as I get back to my own self once again I see myself so explicitly needing a makeover. Ah how much do i need one.
And you'll always be that special someone in my heart, no matter where you are.
Good night,
Bets

16 May 2005

30-40-50

There are three lovely ladies with stomach cancer in my ward, their beds are in a row together in the same corner of my ward, one's in her 30's, another in her 40's, and the other one's in her 50's. They all have disseminated disease, meaning their cancers have spread to other places in the body and their disease is incurable, and each one of them, thinner than i am, came in with their own problems, one with fever and kidney infection, the other with fluid filling up in her lungs and abdomen making her difficult to breathe, and the other one just having had an operation done with part of her gut connected to her abdomen wall (bypass), still recouperating.But each of them greets me with a big smile every day when I step into the ward. They love to see me as I talk loads (and cough loads too this week!) and I love getting to know about them. The connection grew from the day I told them about my photo-taking, they were keen to see my photos. I told them about my hobbies, my loves and just funny stuff. Today, they were happy to see me as I promised them I'd bring my pinhole camera and my japanese photos from home to show them, after having seen my old box of pinhole photos. They loved it. I'm surprised that it'd brighten their dull days in the hospital. And 2 of them would like to buy the pinhole now, one to give to her friend, one to give to her son... Sometimes, there's a sort of feeling in your head and you just wish you can do your best. Even though you have no idea what the outcome might be. I guess, it's this impulse that had held me here for this long.

i think i'm just going to leave my load and look like nothing has happened. this world's sarcastic. i don't like it. what the.
i hate being a good person, it doesn't do me any good.



oh. i miss you, jackie. you appreciate me.

* * *
20 May, 2005
What is a youth? What is happiness

I'm not happy today.My friend died.She was a 14 year old girl from Macau coming to Hong Kong for bone marrow transplant. She was well, looking good and happy.Within a few weeks she was bold, locked up in a room with plastic walls, lines running out from her veins and she became yellow, always vomiting when I went to talk to her. Her smile was gone.I remembered when she first arrived, looking bewildered at everything, jumping and smiling and talking to me. 'The hospital is a boring place', she told me. I always saw her jumping and running around the ward, acting not exactly like a 14 year old. But then I thought, wasn't it great to be so young and so carefree... what the heck. That is YOUTH.But now, she's no more. It made me cry hearing this news today. I was shocked to bits.I cannot believe someone so lively and so 'here' with me was gone. My friend, Tak Fan.I cannot believe a 4-person family is now shattered. How lonely would her sister be.I cannot believe why a happy and well-behaved child gets taken away by God. She deserved all the best.

Sometimes, I thought I deserved more too. But now I don't ask for anything else.

"I want to be a storyteller. At the end of each day, I want to be able to sit down and find the story, no matter how obscured it may be. Trace a story through the weeks, through the years. And in doing this, I want to break down that unhappy wall between the creatives and the suits. It’s a useless, tired distinction: the CEO is busy managing the story of the business just as the directors, producers and writers frantically spin their stories for the audience. I want to know both spheres.
I know that my greatest liability is my fear to leap – fear of freefall, of letting go of one foothold in order to leap to another. And so I will always embrace errors of commission (seized an opportunity, might regret it), at the expense of errors of omission (do nothing). Because so often errors of commission are not errors at all… they are the small, deliberate affirmations, the spontaneous and unexpected moments that end up defining us, that we live for. That we live to tell stories about. "

hello.
i bet you have forgotten about my homepage, or write me emails. but i know you haven't forgotten about me. having integrated into your everyday in some way, i'm starting to feel more comfortable being your best friend, your confident, your listener, your student and teacher. since a few years back i became reluctant of getting close to others. though you know my innate personality is a naive and friendly person not knowing the real faces of some cruel people out there. no wonder, the past welded a huge wound in me, i didn't think it'd heal. it hasn't really, but you nurse it everyday....
yesterday, i went to g's home for the night. it kinda gave me a few reflections, on my home planning, my study planning, my life planning... and i rushed home this morning sorting out my life in a practical way. i'm no more studying in my sitting room, but in my real study. the dining table is finally clear of books/notes and my laptop is right by the window letting me see the on-going traffic outside. i also have a heater by my side. you know my natural insulation isn't of much use! people like ken has been so surprised that i haven't bought a heater for 2 years since i'm leaving away from home coz i'm so afraid of the cold! i really should say i have wasted a little time today too, it's only a few hours to go now so i have to study hard. i know you must be working hard too. i will too, and i look forward to talk to you tonight...
betty

spring's here!

it's been a rather quiet call night. though not quiet literally, but quiet for unmanagable things. Saturday night's always a hit for hospitals for late night goers. i had patients who's been arguing in restaurants late at night and ended up wounded in the eye, or those who's felt ill after a night of clubbing, and somebody who chose to end their lives by drug overdose. um, also an old lady who said farewell to the earth, she was looking so peaceful, i didn't feel like disturbing her.

now woken up from a morning's sleep, life's back to it's cycle. it's unbearably quiet here in my flat so i'm going to sneak out for fresh air... how about dinner with g tonight?

cyril's email today mentioned he exactly understood my confusion since moving to tuen mun! and i was talking to seabreeze the other day on the phone, i asked, do i sound incredibly boring? and he said yes! no wonder, my life revolves around sleeping, eating, dreaming, studying.. . though there's actually a little more than that.... luckily my friends kept it going. however, no music, no photography, no nice food apart from that i cook (gosh, i had to break into my cupboard to see if my big camera is any rusty/mouldy yesterday!), perhaps i really need some meows and 'queek queek' (in case you can't imagine this sound, it's turtle walking on the floor) soon! seabreeze might help 'transfer' some turtles or parrots!! to brighten up my life sometime... oooh..... will chuchu get annoyed by such noise?!

a few weeks ago when i got looking for pianos, i spotted a clavinova that cost hkd 35000. how the feel was incredible. i got playing and felt that it was part of me. that's just too bad... i might have to buy a real piano instead now (that's cheaper to afford), hehe...

so, i'll leave the last question to sort out by itself, will it be me in paris in may? seabreeze's gonna say i've gone bonkers, again... (though my mum said the same thing)

(My bedroom when i was still at boarding school... the flowers were given by my teacher after my piano recital... oh how much i miss my vases, each of them...)

To quote from my poet Xi Mu Rong....

　　幸福的愛情都是一种模樣，而不幸的愛情卻各有各的成因，最常見的原因有兩個：太早，或者，太遲。 　　年輕的你，有足夠的理由相信：你將會得到這世間最幸福的一份愛。 　　所以，我也有足夠的理由勸告你，要耐心地等待。不要太早地相信任何的甜言蜜語，不管那些話語是出于善意或是惡意，對你都沒有絲毫的好處。果實要成熟了以后才會香甜，幸福也是一樣。

* * *
yea, i'm feeling a little depressed these days

kandice, flush the loo!!! can you see the horizon out there? it's getting closer and closer.... i remember my final days were bittersweet, i was faced with so much uncertainty but also so much security of love... looking back 2 years later, although it still makes me cry, knowing the so-called security was no more other than subliming untouchable smoke. but such is youth.

i've been going to library to study too, feels great doesn't it? do you have company when you study? it'd be so good if you've studied with me coz i know you'll always brighten and crack me up. you're my sunshine...

are you going to be busy after your exams? will you have time to see me? i don't know, perhaps i should wait until my exam is over in mid may, but it'll be your turn in london then. oh well... there's so much unknown about our future. but however windy it may be things will go straight in the end. God always pulls us through. and you know? i always have faith in you. so proud of you babe, of your honey sweet personality and your strong courage and influence.

love you loads, enjoy the last written exam of your mbbs
bets

what it means to be content

life has a funny way. for the past few days, it felt really bleak and i cried in my bed thinking of several people who'd given up on me, one by one. they who left without a sound and didn't turn their heads back, are such meanies. i had thought i'd been really lonely since. the bleak air of this place didn't help at all. i don't like talking to you and then suddenly i hear you at your door, just quickly say bye bye and hang up the phone. i don't like that spontaneity, like how i was used to being treated. today, you tell me you will never leave, i smiled but kind of reluctant to absorb in, after all, i've always been the one who's hurt. who can give me real promises.

lying on my bed today, i thought, actually... things are not so bad. i'm fine on my own and my value comes from me and not from others. i enjoy my way of living and there are so much waiting for me to do. all throughout my childhood i have been planning what i'd become, and it surprises me how this 'librarian' has been piling up to form the directory for adulthood. it's funny. how i'm just starting to use it now.

i've all along been looking for someone who'd share my vision with me, someone who'd walk my path and hold my hands. perhaps there's not someone like that (coz..) but i'm content on being this girl i see in the mirror, at last. life has a funny way, of sorting you out...

(look ahead onto the unknown)

been soo blimey freezing these few days. been forcing myself sitting in my study in the cold and not slip into bed. didn't help at all with my disappointed soul. ok, so now i have to fly to london in may to retake my exam... but missing a few marks is more than enough for me.

oh well, life's full of up and downs. hope i'll soon have some up's... um, i'm waiting, haha... you know who you are.

hey kandice, how's your revision. can you ring me sometime?? always have your answering machine on. you have to work your hardest! soon will be all paid off, that's what i say to myself now. um, got a nice song to share with you... like the melody...

http://www.cmidi.com/mymidi/midi_mp3/1132154965_1.mp3