Of literary pursuits

We have these 'Professional Development' sessions in the 4th week of every 5-week run that makes up the bulk of our medical curriculum this current annum. These sessions are designed, as indicated by the astute label, to endeavour to keep track of our...professional development. With every path in life, every career, every pursuit, there are ups and downs and all sorts of joys and pitfalls. Like confrontations with your own moral beliefs over closing one eye and having said morals beaten out of you. Learning that you should always protect yourself whatever you do, lest you get hit with a lawsuit claiming malpractice. Getting insight as to how to avoid bad communication and becoming a complete prick of a practitioner. Or just having a life outside of medicine, avoiding having it consume you till you're bone-tired and worked to the ground. These PD sessions help us cope with these issues and help us come to terms with what has or may overwhelm us in it's entirety. Or at least that's the skeleton of what is meant to structure these sessions.

We've been divided into 6 groups this year of about 12-13 per group. Our individual group gets further split in half for these sessions to make up our PD group. In mine, we don't follow the themes set out for each meeting. Instead, we just sit around with our assigned mentor and he asks us about our past 5 weeks in fast-forward. And we talk. The past 2 sessions we talked about balancing med and non-med life. How best to possibly maximise both and still be happy and satisfied. What non-medical books we've read.

I was loathe to say I hadn't been reading any (unless you counted my Kaikan Phrase at the time lol). I feel like the 24 hours in a day is not enough sometimes. They just whiz by and after a blink, you're 3 days down the week. Well, maybe not that bad. But anyhow, I feel like academics aside, there just isn't any time to. Once I get home, all I wanna do is slack and relax. One could argue that this is ample time to kick back with a page-turning paperback but, despite reading at a relatively speedy rate, I still prefer having loads of time at my disposal to do so. I get so engrossed (given it's a good book!) that I have to finish it and if I had to do that in one sitting with the evening left, then once I emerge from the trance-like state of the book-world, it'd be hours of my life gone! It's either that or stop a few chapters in to continue another time which leads to another time until you've lost the plot and need to refresh. Well, that is how I see it. As it is, that's why I end up catching up on all my reading in bulk during the holidays.

Anyway, thinking on about it, I haven't actually abandoned reading completely. I get my fix of a multitude of wonderfully written pieces of fanfiction here and there. I blog-hop. I have lj communities. And manga surely counts! Because in the end, what I really enjoy about reading is it's ability to take me somewhere else. To exercise my escapist tendencies and vicariously enjoy someone else's life for a while. To have a story woven that reels you in so deep that you squeal when the heroine gets the man and cry when he sobs over her inopportune accident in the rain. To experience the Catch-22 where you can't wait to finish the tale but not want to reach the end quite yet. I came across an awesome quote once that I can't quite recall but rings so true. It goes something like, "You know you've read a good book when you reach the end and it and feel like you've lost a best friend". Blogs have that added charming quality too of gaining a new perspective on life, which I always welcome to broaden my mind (not so wide till my brains fall out, mind you) and experience a world beyond my own or seen through different oculars. Someone else's experience, someone else's knowledge, things that may never occur to you. Other people's stories have something to teach you and it's nice because ultimately, that is what I feel the true purpose of reading is.

On that note, I leave you with a couple of interesting blogs I enjoy reading:

- The Datin Diaries. So darn readable! Exquisitely written with wonderful style (you can refer to my brief take on what I mean by that here), this blog is one Datin's journal on her life married to a Datuk. Set in KL today, it gives an honest insight into what goes on behind closed doors. A refreshing read but you need an open mind (and your sense of self and values deeply entrenched) in order to appreciate her blog for what it is!

- The Daily Brunei Resources. Duh, I love home;) Mr. BR blogs about so many interesting stuff about Brunei. Things I often wondered about and debated over with friends. It's nice to have someone more knowledgeable expand on just the kinds of matters I want to know more about in the quest of broadening my mind and knowledge about my country. Plus I love getting an insight into our history and things like how places were named and old legends. I love that stuff;)