Surabaya Day 3: Mount Bromo

We finished with the handing out of IDEM brochures midway through the second day and proceeded to plan for our remaining hours.

We found this:

"Mount Bromo also Gunung Bromo, located in the Tengger Caldera, is one of the most popular tourist attractions in East Java, Indonesia. It is an active volcano and part of the Tengger massif, and even though at 2329 meters it is not the highest peak of the massif, it is the most well known."




Travel and a tour of the region was provided for by Haryono Travels at a fee of 360,000 Rp or ~SGD$57 per person.

The 4 hour drive southwards started at midnight. Our ride was comfortable with seats that we could recline completely to an impressive horizontal. I lost consciousness before we started and awoke shortly before we arrived.

Closer up the mountain, at the resort, the air was still, fresh and suprisingly cold. We knew it would be around 5 degrees celsius, but overestimated our tolerance for the chill. This was despite my 2 T shirts, 1 sweater, and borrowed jacket.

The remaining ride up to the 2,329 metre peak of Mt. Bromo, to the viewing gallery, was continued by Jeep.

We were early, and froze our asses off, waiting almost an hour for sunrise.

Also, the gallery was getting crowded, tourists and locals alike swarming the area and snapping away in the pre-dawn darkness.

Being blinded by multiple flashes from a sea of
cameras was particularly annoying.

Also at the viewing gallery the Tengger Caldera (where smoke is emerging from) can be spotted.

Next up the jeep took us to down to the Caldera itself.

We dismounted far beyond the temple and trudged in (pumice- like) ash towards the crater. Along the way locals peddled horse rides up for a mere 5,000Rp. We politely declined offers that came our way and obstinately ascended.

And after all the climing in ash, we arrived at the famed 247 steps up.

Tired, hungry, but finally staring into the mouth of Tenggar Caldera.

Recommended Reading

A semi-sci-fi modern day love story, soon to be a motion picture starring Eric Bana and Rachael McAdams.

I Caved

Lust got the better of me that day.
It was a moment of weakness, and I walked out, $409 poorer, weighed down with guilt.


But watching Lost in all its deserved 22" of 8 bit coloured glory, almost justifies the hasty, deplorable purchase made in the final hour of IT Show Mayhem.

Even the stinging reproach from my parents later could not undermine the fact that I now had the best instrument in my limited financial prowess to watch the movies and videos I so love.

It is pure beauty. And I am the beholder.

DotA

Talking to patient @ ACS

Me: Any intention to get braces done?

Patient: Huh? Bracers? No lah, unless I playing strength Hero and I'm sure I won't die early game. (Patient referring to arm armour in DOTA, on right)

He was deliberately trying to be funny, but I wasn't in a particularly jovial mood and replied with a low grunt, supressing the not-so-nice words forming in my mind.

I found out why they kept making DotA references. I spotted this poster in its full-coloured A4 glory, blazoned on a piller in the canteen.

So here I am blogging at 10:25am in the school hols, F.I.R. blaring in the background, my entire class of patients deciding not to come because, as they so accurately put it - They're training for competitions.

School seems like such a foreign place these days.

This cracked me up so much I'm sure the students outside my mobile heard me. Enjoy.

Letting go

Helped my parents clean out the storeroom.

There were the old black and white photographs of my gruff-looking grandparents, old german engineering magazines that my dad brought back from his overseas attachment in the 70's.
Then there were my things-

The badass supersoaker that was my weapon of choice against friends in the swimming pool. I was like 7? spraying wavering streams of chlorinated water with my unwieldly grasp.

The Sega Megadrive that was my reward in Primary 3 for doing well in the mid year exams, but would later cause my downfall :)

It was a chronological mess that hit me with waves of nostalgia. They're worthless now, but irreplaceable snapshots of my life from a different day and age.

My dad was reluctant to discard the dusty box of German magazines. " I might need them later," he tried to convince the rest of us, albeit unsuccessfully. "I'll get rid of them when I retire," he promised.

I looked at the relics from my past and decided they had to go. Granted they reminded me of long gone youth and innocence, but my childhood has already made me who I am, and clinging on, reminiscing old days, seems rather counter productive when I should be looking ahead. People are worth remembering, these things are not.

Because really, those memories were good, but I want better ones in time to come.

I'm doing future Sat morning duties with the worst ever combination of colleagues. To prove my point I told 2 guys the above statement and both guessed the 2 names in an instant.

I wonder who planned the revised schedule.
Was it da-Fairy? Who hates my guts for dissenting against her almighty will?
Or the black widow, who smiles at Kenneth and Charles but wags the disapproving finger in my direction.
Or Cruel Chance, punishing me for being in blissful atas schools with penance most apt, forcing me into assiduous slavery.

Someone out there hates my life a lot more than me.

Lydia Piano Version

To Zanarkand from Final Fantasy X

Guess who's playing :)

Had a patient called Wei Yi today.

Me: Hi, you are Wei Yi rite?

WY: Uh. Ya.

Waiting friends: (With gusto) Baby, 你就是我的唯一...... (Massive Laughter)

(P.S. Wei yi is the title of a certain Wang Lee Hom Song)

* * *

Waiting Student 1: 2 Men walk into a bar, the 3rd man ducked.

Waiting Student 2 (From China): Huh?

Waiting Student 1: (repeat....) 3rd man ducked, the 4th man ducked, the 5th man goose. Geddit?

Waiting Student 2: (Puzzled as hell but trying to look intelligent)

Waiting Student 3: Oh my god, you're so lame i can't see your legs.

Me: (thinking) Sheesh, I hope I wasn't this retarded when I was 15.....

Some old friends came over to my place. One of them asked about my trip to Scandinavia with the intention of going.

Dug out some old videos, photos etc. of the September '06 trip and took a stroll down memory lane. I wonder when, if ever, I will revisit the Nordic states and once again peer into the azure waters of the fjords of Norway, or steal wistful glimpses at those long unending legs of models outside nightclubs :)

Europe is often romanticised, some say there is an undeserving hype. But having been there once, I have been seduced.

Even if a Lumpar Meal costs S$17.66.

Pay Rise!

The much talked-about, long awaited pay hike is finally in effect.
Friends in NHG don't fret. Yours should be coming lah.
In any case yr Dec bonus already worth 10 months of our difference in salary :(

More salt for the old gangrenous wounds

Brother: Eh, how much do u get paid in an hour?

Me: [grumble, stoopid mental sums] uh, about $20?

Brother: Hah! My fren in army getting paid $30 an hour per student to teach piano to grade 1 students! And he doesn't need to pay income tax some more. Hah. Your pay damn low sia.

Me: Wah, that's almost double what my female colleagues earn.

Brother: [smugness permeating] Wah, u all damn loser sia.

New Theme for the New Year

Decided to make my working environment more pleasant for myself and patients alike.
For one I will be bringing my spare speakers over and playing smooth, soothing music (Lounge/ Bossa Nova etc. An example:

Tom Jobim

1. Thinking of placing some magazines for my waiting area and Tien Tien's imported female magazines spring to mind. So does the ominous vision of being censured by the school authorities and my bosses at HPB.
2. Toying with the idea of having dimmed lights like some of the town practices (and pubs). May either look classy or sleazy with really contrasting repercussions.

Any suggestions pls add comment!

Le Fort I Surgery

Something to show patients when explaining orthognathic surgery:

Our cups runneth over

A 2nd stint at wine tasting for a couple of us at Amichi's.

Wine wasn't as varied as our first visit, but hey, my personal maxim is never to spit on charity.

Beginning to think we have untapped potential to become full-fledged alcoholics.

And for the insiders who were there and the outsiders who know what I'm talking ABT - Do not feed the Monkey!

You know the expression "so easy XYZ can do it blindfolded"? Here's what it means:

Balls.

Some people are too busy playing the good guys that they think we can stop time. Or would volunteer to work way overtime.

Are they really stupid or simply out of their freakin' minds? I like to think it's a little of both.

A patient with an appointment at 4pm came in at 5:10. Anterior CR. No pain, and absolutely no chance of her dying because of the decay.

So while the nurses were busy playing their little game of tai-chi, yours truly was pissed off enough to go tell the naive little girl outside that unfortunately, time and DOs wait for no man, woman, boy or girl.
Not even Gisele Bündchen.

Okay, maybe Gisele. But just her.

And I told her to make another appointment in front of the morons that had just allowed her to register. I hope that sings a clear message to my overzealous tormentors. Poke us hard enough and we're not gonna lie there dumbly getting mind-fucked by you imbeciles. They probably bitched to her that DOs like myself lack that little bit of altruism, but hey, whose fault is it that she came late? Whose fault is it that she has decayed teeth? Whose fault is it that she believed the fools who told her that she'd be seen at 5:10?

I also find nurses who douse me with sarcasm (the bitchy, not the jovial, play play kind) extremely unpleasant and objectionable. Especially if they go around poking their heads into cubicles, trying to catch me slacking red-handed. Hey I'm slack and I HATE seeing freaking kids. I don't hide it and I can't be [unique expletive] bothered to pretend that I'm typing treatment notes or having a stomachache when all I want to do is play with facebook. I'm not THAT person.

So if some nurse decides she wants to be a snide little [<--keyword] spycam that catches DOs stretching for a minute or counting the times I visit the toilet then sure, I applaud thy patience. But if that's all you do, assisting on occasion, then I say bah! Hypocrite.

Slack den slack lah, dun pretend.

Linux Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy)

I honestly thought it would be a breeze.

For the uninitiated, Linux is THE open-source (read: FREE) Operating System that's out there for the masses. So yesterday, I took the plunge and installed it on my Laptop.

I was impressed with driver compatibility. No issue with difficult to find laptop drivers at all.

Open-Office, Ubuntu's answer to Micro$oft's stranglehold on word processing, presentation and spreadsheet software, worked like a charm, and really, it looks a lot better than the ancient, dated Windows XP that we love to hate.


The hurdles came when it came to installing programs. You had to learn a whole freaking language to do it. Case in point my installation of Beryl, which was supposed to grant me an uber cool Grafical User Interface (GUI).

I had to copy and spew complicated lines of codes and start figuring things out like a puzzle. But hey, I'm 25 in a few weeks. I'm a little old for that.

So alas, here I am, defeated, dejected, and reinstalling that overused copy of Windows XP, the old adage proven yet again-

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Compliments that have been directed to a particular counter staff at work:

"He is able to make Adeline [daughter] feel relaxed."
(yeah, just like an Osim chair)

"My child was very happy with his attention towards her. I appreciate him. Very good."
(The recep shows attention?! Why aren't your mental alarms sounding off?)

It is easy to be nice when all you do is overwork the underpaid Doctors by sending in walk-in patients who have no urgent need for treatment. This despite the eye-catching sign outside that clearly says walk-ins will not be entertained.
Try being the good guy when you're wielding the injection needle and restraining bawling, struggling kids, while the helpless mother stands guiltily in the the corner, tears streaming as if witnessing an execution.

Oh yes, maybe we should let counter staff diagnose problems and alleviate pain next time.