Of Singapore and Fractures

It's been almost a month since my last entry. And I think I need to write about things before I forget about them, or forget about the finer points in the stories. Went to Singapore to attend a conference with a colleague of mine. We stayed at the YMCA Hotel at One Orchard Road, if I'm not mistaken. And the conference was held at Raffles' Convention Centre. The conference was called 'Health Informatics Asia 2004' . It was about information technology's role in healthcare and the problems that comes with it. There were speakers from Malaysia, Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan, and some other places. Most of the speakers were medical doctors. There weren't many IT people there, but we got to know some very interesting people from all over Asia. My colleague and I would attend the conference during the day, and would go out for dinner and shopping at night. It was fun. The last time I went to Singapore was 2 years ago.

At KLIA before leaving for Singapore, had trouble at the boarding gate. I don't know what happened, but we had to shift to another boarding gate, and had to wait I around over an hour before we got to board the plane. An Italian guy started talking to us. He was saying how the delay happens everytime he tries to board a plane to Singapore. Poor guy. Hehehe. So anyway, we arrived in Singapore around 1 1/2 hours late. From Changi Airport, we took a cab straight to our hotel. We were so tired by then. But we manage to contact our loved ones before we said goodnight and slept till morning. Breakfast was ok, I guess. I mean, my colleague and I were quite worried about the food there, being halal or not. So we only ate bread and cereal for breakfast.

After the Singapore trip, went to Cherating for a workshop. The workshop was for the developers to design the input output interface for the HIS project we are currently in. On the second day we were there, we had a game of beach volleyball and beach soccer. I played two sets of beach volleyball before I joined in the fun in the beach soccer. But lo and behold, a few minutes into the game, I accidentally kicked my colleague's shin. The impact was great because we were both swinging our legs into each other's path, in the hopes of securing the ball. To keep the story short, I came out of the fray with a fractured toe. Hehehe. Yup. But I wasn't aware of the fact yet. I thought I'd sprained my foot. So, there I was, hobbling everywhere I went, till I arrived at home on the third night. That night my dad and I went straight to the emergency ward to have it checked. The doctor that was on duty took one look at it and said, "It's broken". I looked down and saw that half of my left foot was sort of blue in colour, and it was swollen. So after the x-ray, and the confirmation that my toe was fractured, I was put in a cast and given 2 weeks leave. The bright side of that was I got to start the first week of the fasting month at home, lying around, watching dvds', reading, and most of the time, sleeping. Hehehe.

Then, something happened in the office that really shocked me. Actually, it shocked a few of my colleagues as well. The shocking thing happened on the day I got the cast. But I only found out about it the next day. After some discussion with my colleagues and my boss, we managed to come to a decision. And the decision was to strike back!! Hehehe. I will keep it crypted, you know. Hehehe.