All you need is a little piece from the heavens

I was driving through Middlesbrough a few days ago during the middle of a particularly cloudy day. The sky was as grey as only Northern England could be, a desolate shadow clinging to the ceiling above with an incessant drizzle that served to wash away any remnants of joy that the citizens below might have harboured. The bleak industrial landscape did not help – after all, it is meant to be the city on which Ridley Scott based his urban dystopia in Blade Runner.

One sometimes gets the feeling of being completely alone in the world, of being forsaken as society marches toward whatever goal that happens to be the flavour of the day. You get the impression that some people trudge through life like an item on the assembly line, regularly ticking the appropriate boxes to ensure that they’re moving along in perfect sync with society’s expectations.

And for what purpose?

To feel accepted, to receive the acknowledgement that they are an individual. Not being able to craft a personality for themselves, they seek the approval of the masses to elevate them to a pedestal of their own imagining. And it’s quite sad to realise that if only they had to courage to break free, they would have the opportunity to reach much loftier heights.

But I digress, as usual.

At one point during the drive, a ray of sunshine burst through. Rather pitifully, I might add. It did not survive for a significant period of time, but the very next time I glanced into the rear-view mirror, I was rewarded by the delightful and sublime image of a rainbow defiantly strewn across the elephant-grey sky. And I continued my journey with an inkling of a smile to my face, humming along to the random music spouting out from the radio, consoled by the fact that as Charles Dickens’ pointed out more than a century ago, it’s always the best of times and the worst of times.

How do you deal with such idiocy?

The National Fatwa Council has declared that yoga is haram in Islam and Muslims are banned from practising it. “Because of this, we believe that it is inappropriate for Muslims to do yoga. The council has declared that practising yoga, when it comes together with the three elements (of physical movements, chanting and worshipping), is haram,” the chairman told a press conference yesterday.

He noted that while merely doing the physical movements of yoga without the worshipping and chanting might not be against religious beliefs, Muslims
should avoid practising it altogether as “doing one part of yoga would lead to another”. “In Islam, a believer must not do things that can erode one’s aqidah or faith. Doing yoga, even just the physical movements, is a step towards erosion of one’s faith in the religion, hence Muslims should avoid it,” he said.

I applaud this move by the council, one that is extremely visionary in its execution. They have obviously done thorough research and have more than sufficient evidence to prove that participation in yoga has led to the detriment of many a Muslim's faith. I eagerly look forward to them publishing the results of this research, as I am sure their decision was based on facts and was not made arbitrarily.

It is very heartening to note that in a time of where issues such as global warming and global economic decline are grabbing the headlines and the thoughts of many an intellectual, the members of this council have hit the nail on its head and brought to the forefront an issue that is dear to all of us, and will adversely affect the spiritual growth of our nation.

The council should continue to studiously not produce statements regarding the state of governance in our country and focus on the very essential matters. Fatwas regarding our responsibility for the environment, or even issues that have been around for decades such as the 'haram-ness' of smoking cigarettes (a product that only serves to kill, and goes against the tenet of looking after the body that was given to us by God) will have to take a backseat as we tackle the more important issues of the day.

I look forward to the day fatwas are issued against activities such as watching Bollywood movies, practising tai chi, reading works of western philosophy, using the Gregorian calendar, glimpsing Michaelangelo's Pieta (or any other work of art based on Christianity) and listening to Handel's Hallelujah Chorus are all banned, as they are based on works/ideas of other religions/ideologies and will lead to the dilution of a Muslim's faith in Malaysia.

In fact, the council should encourage the banning of all books that contain thoughts and ideas that they do not agree with. A bonfire should be built sometime soon to commerate this event, and this should be followed by the introduction of law prosecuting thought crimes. And we can then all look forward to everyone being perfect Muslims and the beginning of heaven on Earth.

Getting ahead. Or not.

In the past, I have alluded to the fact that of all the shows on telly that are based on medicine, Scrubs is the show that is closest to reality. Not because every junior doctor walks around with a monologue in his head and shoots off on a tangential daydream, but rather the fact that the monologue tends to reflect a fair number of the issues that we face as doctors.

The point was made clear again to me whilst watching an episode during which Dr Cox/Perry was chastised by his retired mentor for ' not playing the game' and being too stubborn in sticking onto his principles (and thus preventing himself from being promoted), followed by an episode in which Dr Cox offers the opposite advice to JD and criticises him for wanting to please everyone.

To a certain degree, Dr Cox reminds me of a consultant that I used to work for who's currently doing battle with management. The similarities? They're both good doctors who would stop at nothing to ensure that their patients are given the best treatment, including telling the powers that be to fuck off. Unfortunately, this inevitably results in a huge bullseye being drawn on your back and you become target practice for the people whose toes you trample upon.

It may seem like a small thing, but anyone who's career-minded will have to decide on the manner in which they advance themselves at one point or another. If you have the pedigree or the appropriate contacts, then you are halfway there. Failing that, you will need to decide on either excelling in your job (and hoping that your work will be justly rewarded) or playing the office political game (i.e. saying the right things and kissing the right arses).

And by nature, most of us tend to choose the path of least resistance. Sweetie and I have been lucky so far, in that to a certain degree, we have had seniors who have taken an active interest in us based on our performances at the workplace. Neither one of us have had to rely on knowing the right people etc to be where we are today. There is still a measure of frustration at times though when you see the rewards heaped upon individuals who have 'played the game'.

I do get rather annoyed when people do things for the sake of getting a pat on the head, or go out of their way to make 'useful' contacts, but I really shouldn't be the one to judge as naturally, I might just be guilty of being presumptuous. At the end of the day, the game isn't that difficult to play and I am sure that most of us can utilise the skills should the occasion warrant it. For now though, I am actually quite pleased about Sweetie's comment that Dr Cox reminds her of me (although it's probably more due to my generous use of sarcasm).

Whether or not that's a good thing, only time will tell.

ENTJ

Of the four aspects of strategic analysis and definition it is marshaling or situational organizing role that reaches the highest development in the Fieldmarshal. As this kind of role is practiced some contingency organizing is necessary, so that the second suit of the Fieldmarshal's intellect is devising contingency plans.

Structural and functional engineering, though practiced in some degree in the course of organizational operations, tend to be not nearly as well developed and are soon outstripped by the rapidly growing skills in organizing. But it must be said that any kind of strategic exercise tends to bring added strength to engineering as well as organizing skills.

Hardly more than two percent of the total population, Fieldmarshals are bound to lead others, and from an early age they can be observed taking command of groups. In some cases, they simply find themselves in charge of groups, and are mystified as to how this happened. But the reason is that they have a strong natural urge to give structure and direction wherever they are - to harness people in the field and to direct them to achieve distant goals. They resemble Supervisors in their tendency to establish plans for a task, enterprise, or organization, but Fieldmarshals search more for policy and goals than for regulations and procedures.

They cannot not build organizations, and cannot not push to implement their goals. When in charge of an organization, whether in the military, business, education, or government, Fieldmarshals more than any other type desire (and generally have the ability) to visualize where the organization is going, and they seem able to communicate that vision to others.

Their organizational and coordinating skills tends to be highly developed, which means that they are likely to be good at systematizing, ordering priorities, generalizing, summarizing, at marshaling evidence, and at demonstrating their ideas. Their ability to organize, however, may be more highly developed than their ability to analyze, and the Fieldmarshal leader may need to turn to an Inventor or Architect to provide this kind of input.

Fieldmarshals will usually rise to positions of responsibility and enjoy being executives. They are tireless in their devotion to their jobs and can easily block out other areas of life for the sake of their work. Superb administrators in any field - medicine, law, business, education, government, the military - Fieldmarshals organize their units into smooth-functioning systems, planning in advance, keeping both short-term and long-range objectives well in mind.

For the Fieldmarshal, there must always be a goal-directed reason for doing anything, and people's feelings usually are not sufficient reason. They prefer decisions to be based on impersonal data, want to work from well thought-out plans, like to use engineered operations - and they expect others to follow suit. They are ever intent on reducing bureaucratic red tape, task redundancy, and aimless confusion in the workplace, and they are willing to dismiss employees who cannot get with the program and increase their efficiency.

Although Fieldmarshals are tolerant of established procedures, they can and will abandon any procedure when it can be shown to be ineffective in accomplishing its goal. Fieldmarshals root out and reject ineffectiveness and inefficiency, and are impatient with repetition of error.

Hillary Clinton, Napoleon, Margret Thatcher, Carl Sagan, Bill Gates, Golda Meir, Edward Teller, George Benard Shaw, and General George C. Marshall are examples of Rational Fieldmarshals.

Penatus maximus

I’m quite tired at the moment. Last week was horribly busy - I had to deal with all the patients from a weekend on-call by myself as Hannah was on nights. The weekend wasn’t much to look forward to either, as I was on-call again and it was busy enough to cause a headache. Thankfully, this week has been more manageable, as I have discharged most of my patients and my little helper is back. And it would’ve remained civilised if it wasn’t for the fact that we’ve been given another consultant to work for. Starting tomorrow.

Grrr!!!

One of the best advice that the first consultant that I ever worked for gave me was that I should actively seek out periods of rest during rotations to recuperate from work. I don’t find my job stressful from a clinical management point of view, but the battle that one does at times with certain imbeciles can be mentally draining.

A friend of mine once told me that he/she once came to a point where he/she did not actually care if the patients lived or died. And I can’t blame this person, as medicine is unfortunately not just about patient care and it can be a rather thankless trudge at times.

Luckily for me, I’ll be taking a week off at the end of the month. Besides a quick visit down south, I don’t think I’ll be doing anything exciting though. I’ll probably eat, sleep, read and watch the telly in between preparing for my job interviews and my poster presentation.

Yes they can

It is quite difficult to put into words the significance of Obama’s victory last night, despite the fact that acres of newspaper space is being devoted to it as I type this out. So I won’t even try to wax lyrical, although words will need to be spoken and written out to acknowledge this historical event.

I woke up at 3 in the morning to catch the latest news that served to confirm that the majority of the swing states have voted for Obama, thus pretty much handing victory over to him. It was sleep worth sacrificing. I stayed on to watch his victory speech, which was watched by hundreds of thousands of people of queued for hours to watch the gifted orator in person.

The speech was concise (a whole 15 minutes) and impressive, a speech not by a man who has won an election, but one who is preparing to take office. I was moved, a couple of my friends even teared. And we’re not even Americans, let alone Black Americans, for whom the moment must surely rank as one of the greatest in their lives. After all, it was only four decades ago that Martin Luther King dreamt of a world where the blacks would be judge by their character, and not by the colour of their skin.

Perhaps even more important than the fact that he is black, is the fact that he amassed such a following and galvanised the electorate to vote for change. It is worth bearing in mind that more votes have turned out than ever before, that he ran perhaps the most effective and efficient election campaign that I have ever seen with none of the usual infightings that usually plague such campaigns, and that at the end, the people who voted for him came from a cross section of ethnicities as well as ideologies. This self-described ‘skinny man with a funny name’ united his country with his difference, and made true his pledge in the Democratic convention of 2004 to cut across the political divide.

I have not felt this excited since Imaan and I hovered over my phone as we gleefully refreshed the Safari browser to update ourselves with the tectonic changes that were affecting the Malaysian political scene. Obama might not be the messiah that we all expect him to be (especially with the various issues that he will be left to deal with), but today he has given the world a rare gift.

A gift of hope.

History in the making

The final F1 race at Interlagos yesterday must go down as one of the most nail-biting, palpitation-inducing races ever (in my short lifespan anyway), with Lewis Hamilton barely being able to grasp the 5th place that was needed in order to be crowned the youngest ever world champion. The unexpected rainfall over the last few laps played havoc to the most carefully laid plans, and it is almost by sheer luck that Hamilton finished the way he did.

I am not the biggest Hamilton fan, but I have always supported McLaren so I am quite pleased with the end results. Especially when one considers the chaos of last year. Hats off to Massa though; he drove a perfect race, and only lost the championship by a single point.

History will also be made over at the States tomorrow; the country will either have its first black president or its first female vice-president. The opinion polls are all in favour of the former, and the rest of the world is pretty much hoping for a similar outcome.

I probably fall into the category of a 'paranoid liberal' i.e. one who does not believe that Obama will actually win until the results say so but we can only hope that he does win as while he will not be able to fulfill all expectations, I have no doubt that a future where McCain and Palin are in control of the executive is infinitely more frightening.