Smoking My Public Holiday Away

Dear Diary,

Well… kinda spent the precious hours of my public holiday (Vesak Day) at a smoking cessation road-show today. Yup, it was supposed to be a fulfilling experience… serving the community and encouraging people to quit smoking. They asked if any of the pharmacists wanted to give an interview which would be telecasted on television. I declined. Too tired. The slightly warm atmosphere made it almost tempting to drift into dreamland. It was only the constant straining of my vocals in those perennial counselling that kept me awake. Pardon me but sometimes I just feel that mission of the noble road-show organising department had been blurred by the sponsorship and funding of a pharmaceutical company which obviously had vested interest. Couldn’t help feeling a little more like a product promoter than a true blue unbiased counsellor. Got a pharmacy student to do some of the counselling as I invigilate her.

Was so exhausted that I was dozing off on the bus home. The military trainings on two evenings each week are taking toil on my body. Aching and lethargic… pretty much summed up my sensation. Maybe I am growing older. Yet, the neurons are firing in my mind like never before. I don’t really have a slightest idea where I should be heading in life from here. Do a further study next year? I need more stable working hours. It did not really console me much when I read the newspapers today and it stated that the Duke-NUS graduate medical school (GMS) had such great competition for entry that only far less than 10% of the applicants were the chosen 26.

Strangely, later that evening…. I had that very unusual feeling of relief that I did not get into the GMS. Facing a prospect of 4 more gruelling years of education, a huge cartload of financial debts, loss of opportunity costs…. I hope I am not having a “sour grapes” psychological self-deluding attitude. I am very much in condition to move on and to adapt. God has definitely played a very strong role in picking me up each time I fall. Somehow, also felt that I am learning much from my students as much as they are learning from me. They showed me the joy, the desire, the passion and the adventure-seeking attitude which once used to sparkle my eyes during my university days.

I used to ask “Why?” I guess I was self-centred and I obviously forget that in the Lord’s Prayer, it goes “Thy Will be done…” If God can redeem me, a nobody, with His very Son… I am sure I can trust that He will guide me where I should be heading. Ok, a church friend just called me up minutes ago to tell me that I appeared in the Chinese Evening News on television for quite a long while in that smoking cessation news segment…. Hey, anyone got a recording of that? I wanna see myself doing the smoking cessation counselling! Haha…Goodnight! =P

God Bless,

Andrew