Girl Talk

As I sipped my cup of coffee this morning during the handover session, I can't help but notice how overwhelmingly female the paeds department was. There are 3 male consultants, 1 male registrar, 1 male SHO, and everyone else (about 20 of them) is female. And it just so happened that in this morning's meeting, I was the only guy present.

Now, usually I wouldn't have bothered, but the people who were present this morning were the type of individuals who giggle endlessly about the randomest of things and seem rather opionated about certain subjects. That by itself is barely tolerable, but add a fair amount of gossiping and bitching to the mix, and I couldn't help but wonder what I had gotten myself into.

There are a few notable characters in the group - Scrawny SHO (very friendly but overly obsessed with her weight, and she'd give the anorexic-looking Kate Moss a run for her money), Posh-Asian SHO (always complaining about the incompetence of others, whilst never forgetting to mention how she loves shopping in every other shop in the world), Emotional SHO (cries when there's a tough/sad clinical case), Tired SHO (always tired. duh), Tired Registrar (probably related to Tired SHO), Dr Poo (the lovely lady doc who reminds me of Julie Andrews. It's unfortunate that she subspecialises in diarrhoea and constipation, earning her this nickname among her colleagues), and Dr Know-It-All (SHO who's quite obviously hated by the rest, and is usually the topic of conversation when the word 'bitchy' is used). There are a few others, but I wouldn't bother going into too much details.

The main topic of conversation this morning was how guys tend to whine and whinge endlessly when they're sick. This was said with the occasional sly look in my direction. From personal experience, I do agree that we men tend to act like babies when we're not feeling particularly well (probably with the aim of getting an extra helping of TLC). But I wasn't about to agree with those bunch of ladies. Heck, I'd be like a sacrificial lamb who's voluntarily slashing its throat (which reminds me, an early Selamat Hari Raya Haji to all!). I decided that my fingernails were rather fascinating, and proceeded to spend the next few moments studying them intensely.