nearly two months of chp is over. what was initially to me "just a project" turned out to be something like a bonding session with my classmates. it started off on a small scale, with just seven people on the literature review team before the entire group of thirty-seven medical students turned into survey machines and chewed our way through a suburb. then it was time to break up into smaller groups to crunch the data and turn them into digestable forms. it culminated in a presentation last week and the submission of our first (well, for most of us anyway) paper last week.

being singaporeans, at every step of the way, food was one of our top priorities. whether it was driving down to the new ikea to check out their cafeteria, spending time savouring the food at clementi hawker centre and chomp chomp, or heading to the various malls for burgers and pasta, we always got food involved, especially after using up our brain juice to explain our data. over sugar cane drinks and or lua, we talked and laughed and shared about our school life, our takes on tcm, our latent ebstein barr viruses and everything else in between.

one of my most treasured memories of chp would be heading to mind's cafe at boat quay to unwind. tried their pasta there which was not bad, to my surprise, and played crazy games like taboo and freehand. it's been such a blessing to work with this bunch of people and getting to know them in more ways than i could ever have imagined. am grateful for some of the special friendships forged. heh.

some interesting comments by two Very Higher Ups have been heating up the papers recently. they describe the dilemma our tiny nation faces - to choose between keeping our economy humming and finding ways to handle diseases unique to our part of the world. not an easy decision to make, since the big money is in the "western" diseases and not the "exotic" ones (some medical schools in australia view dengue as an exotic disease). as an up-and-coming research hub, however, perhaps we should take upon ourselves the responsibility in searching for breakthroughs in diseases like hepatitis b, and devote more resources to investigating local diseases. idealistic yes, but if we don't do it, no one will. then again, only time can tell us which path singapore should take in the long run. we'll just have to see how it goes.

an update: our exams have been shifted back to the original date. not sure what madness possessed the examiners but i'm glad it's been cured. yay.