Broken hearts &c

No, not dead, arrested or deported! I'm in HN now attending this regional cardiology conference. No extremes of life and death to report - my days are now filled with lectures about things like the electrophysiological diagnosis of atrial flutters (who knew there were so many types?). Apart from bits of extreme detail about randomness such as Takotsubo "Broken Heart Syndrome" Cardiomyopathy, the main messsages I've gotten are: smoking bad. Fat bad. Exercise good, immobility bad. Vegetables and fruit good. Diabetes bad. Hypertension bad. Prevention is better than cure. Not a whole lot different from cardio week. It's weird, because some of the new research they're presenting seems to basically confirm the same old conclusions about risk factors rahrahrah. Surely the problem is WHAT TO DO about it.

Anyway, I was mentally drafting a post about discovering a whole new branch of my family tree for the first time ever but then I was distracted by someone else's family (Jerry is enbumped again! hehe awww). I'm related to a guy who's an instructor in the VC army, a paediatrician and an artist who moved to Germany and married Aryan. I bonded more with my grandfather's sister in one day than I have with him for my whole life, and now he's not well. And I have all these people looking out for me in VN, including my new aunt who's not the man-eating "I use you for citizenship! ha! ha!" she-devil we all automatically assume Vietnamese brides are.

Sleep now. More later maybe.

Vietnam travel tips

• Go to Saigon, Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, Sapa, Nha Trang, Hue and Dalat if at all possible. Take the train from Saigon to Hanoi, there's great scenery of rice paddies and hills and buffalos.
  
• Don't drink the water or anything with ice, for this will end up with you hugging the toilet bowl, or worse, the squat toilet on the side of the road where the plumbing is a hole running down the mountain. FYI, a litre of water with one teaspoon of table salt and eight of sugar plus lime for flavour makes for a decent rehydration solution. Says Wikipedia, so it must be true.
  
• Speaking of which, always bring your own supply of tissues and toilet paper. And work on your thigh and ankle muscles, you'll need em for squatting.
  
• Do buy one of those face-mask type things that everyone wears. Helpful if you want to take a ride on a xe om ("hug taxi" - hop on the back of a motorbike and hold on for dear life. Quickest, cheapest, funnest, most lung-blackening and dangerous mode of travel). Also helpful if you're in the doctor's lounge in a hospital, and a senior surgeon is chain smoking in this small closed room with the windows shut, and you're too polite to leave. (PS. ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION!) If you're a smoker, this is your paradise.
  
• Avoid raw vegetables and seafood if you're careful. Do try some of the street foods like sticky rice and noodle soups.
  
• If you're on a tour and stop at a beach resort, remember to bring get your bathers from your suitcase, especially if the bus is parking 20 minutes away. Otherwise, an XXXL men's souvenir t-shirt will suffice, though beware of transparency and cling when wet. Whether you wear knickers with this ensemble is up to you - you need to make the choice between modesty in the ocean vs sitting on a bus for the next five hours with a wet bum - or commando. (hint: breezy!)
  
• If you're an Asian girl, be prepared to be stared at like you're some kind mutant freak because of your Australian Weetbix-and-Vegemite-fed height ("are you a basketballer?" at 165cm!) - and, alas, girth.
  
• If you're white, be prepared to be stared at like you're some kind of mutant freak...just because. And be prepared to be ripped off by every friendly-seeming local. There are actually different price lists printed for "international guests", and that's when they're being nice. Travel with a trusted local if you can. Take Vinasun taxis, they're the most reliable.
  
• When you're feeling like a stranger in a strange, busy, hot, dirty land full of skinny little people who speak a language that's half familiar and half gobbledegook (racistpunlol), whose culture seems alien, and you are reduced to nodding and smiling like a dimwit bobblehead doll...be reassured that some things are the same everywhere. Anatomy. Hospital politics. The fact that surgeons wear those bandanna-like caps in theatre, while nurses and others wear the much less badass, but much more hygienic shower caps. The questions general surgeons always ask post-op: "have you been eating? pooing? peeing?".
  
• If you're working in a hospital and you thought you knew Vietnamese, you don't. Buy a medical English-Viet dictionary. Curse yourself for learning a dead language for six years (no, not French! heh) instead of something useful. (ahh it was fun though)
  
• You may want to reconsider going to Vietnam for a rotation if your patership is a very visible dissident in exile, because your host's pathologically jealous and delusional husband may follow her to a (chaste) nocturnal meeting with your uncle and accuse him of bringing news from patership with whom she's (falsely) alleged to be having an affair. Othello may then raid all of his wife's emails and mobile phone, call up her family and colleagues to badmouth her, change all the phone numbers in the house so no one can contact her, and forbid you to stay with them for you are the spawn of That Man. Worst of all, poor Des can't leave because if she does, he threatens to denounce her to the cops for her (non-existent) political connection with said armchair revolutionary - and people have been imprisoned for less in this land of justice and freedom for all (*cough*). Seriously, one of patership's colleagues - an Australian citizen! - was recently hauled in for questioning. Consider writing to the Australian embassy to explain the situation in case Grand Frere decides to mess with you or Des for shits and giggles.
  
• An iPod or similar is a must if you're touring in a bus in which the driver plays Vietnamese folk music at full blast. Earplugs are recommended if you're staying in Saigon, because the blast of motorbike horns never stops, even in the middle of the night.
  
• Wear sunscreen. Don't wear any precious jewellery or carry a handbag - try putting your stuff in a strong shopping bag. Keep a sharp eye on your belongings when on the move.

Just because I'm paranoid

...doesn't mean that the television isn't watching me!

For serious. Day 5 in VN and I'm wondering whether I'll have to get out by those same rickety boats. Man! All I wanted from this trip was to a) never enter a VN hospital lying down (and you thought the Australian public hospital system was bad...) and b) no melodrama of the hair-tearing variety.

One of the above is going well: I'm still standing, though mothership is currently undergoing the South (East Asia) Beach Diet...that's to say, massive gastro.

The other thing, not so great. My placement plans are in shambles due to a shitstorm that is some bizarre variation on Othello complete with misguided accusations of adultery and political intrigue. I'll write more when I can figure out how to protect the innocent. So far Desdemona hasn't copped it yet, but it's a possibility, and I could get dragged in as well.

Why this blog is like safety scissors

It has no point.

(Do I see eyes rolling?)

Anywho. So there's been this story/play idea rumbling around ever since Vietnam, based on a family I met. I've talked about the wife (H) a bit before here, she's the doctor and "family friend" who saved us from evil Bac Q's house in Hanoi. She won us all over, including my mum, who isn't the easiest to please, with her sweet disposition and gracious hosting. I was intrigued by her.

On the surface, especially in public settings with parents and elders around, she's the perfect well-bred Vietnamese lady. Considerate to a fault, always tends to other people's needs, says all the right things- lavish with praise, slow to criticise, self-deprecating. For example, my dad mentioned once or twice that he had trouble sleeping, so she bought him some herbal sleeping tablets for me to bring back to Australia. I found myself taking everything she said with a grain of salt because she took so much care not to hurt anyone's feelings that white lies weren't beyond her, like saying how much she loved our crappy presents.

Besides this Jane Bennet aspect, there's some Lizzy as well, in her quick-eyed observation, an instantaneous understanding of people and situations. The first time she came to meet us, my mum grabbed her in the alley moments after she arrived and told her to pretend to be my aunt to simplify things with Bac Q's family. Once inside, she understood immediately how to play along, and how her Specialist Doctor Aunt label would give us a boost in that status-conscious household/hell-hole where we were lower than dirt. Also Lizzyish is her lively, occasionally cheeky wit. I got to see more of this the day we went to hospital together. In our halting half-English half-Viet we managed to joke around a bit- I teased her for being so paranoid that she made me call my (pro-democracy shitstirrer) dad from a phone booth instead of from home, for fear of Big Brother; she jokingly asked whether I wanted to shoot her for being a puppet of the Commie state, as a government-employed doctor. That day was strange, because we kept shifting from egalitarian English to tortuous etiquette-bound Viet, from student-teacher roles to guest-host to joshing equals. Stressful but interesting. Though I appreciate observant and sharp-minded people, it's so much easier dealing with the thickheaded ones who don't notice all your gaucheness!

The comme-il-faut manners, the gentle tact, the lively eye and humour - these are still the outer layers of the onion. As the day progressed and she grew more tired and strained, I noticed impatience, though of course not with me. With her housekeeper, daughter, husband and mother she had a quietly sharp tongue. In this setting she's no longer the demure hostess, but the exacting head of the household. Underlying these contradictions - or are they really? - there is a deep sadness.

See, the reason we know her is through my uncle L. She came to Australia for a 6 month study visit last year and somehow befriended L. It was a weird relationship. He was estranged from his unfaithful wife at the time. H too was apparently in an unhappy marriage. According to my grandma, husband and wife lived on different floors, just staying in the same house for appearance's sake, and for their 7 year-old daughter TH. When H and L came over to my grandparents' house, they acted like lovers, flirting and joking. I assumed she was his girlfriend. Everyone accepted that. Although before we went to Vietnam L's wife had returned - somewhere in the bargain a new car was included! their sorry story will have to be told another time - the understanding was that H was still kindasorta his girlfriend. I admit I judged them a bit for that, she had a little kid and husband, he a wife, what were they thinking?! Though the "internally separated" explanation on her part seemed fair enough, and the husband and kid were only abstract concepts.

It was seeing H in her world that made the tragedy and complexity of the situation more real to me. They live in this perfect display-room house, with modcons and luxuries impressive even by Western standards, staff to take care of everything. Her husband T is a high-level engineer for the state. A sophisticated, soft-spoken, gentle-mannered man, he would appear to be a good match for H. Their daughter TH is precocious, whip-smart, destined to follow in her parents' high-achieving footsteps. From the outside they look like a model upper bourgeoisie family. The only thing missing in this picture? Love. Well it is there, but only for the daughter, which is probably why she's spoiled rotten. I think TH may not even know that her parents are semi-separated; they still go on family outings together and everything. You have to squint to spot the cracks. It's in how H and T call each other "Mother" and "Father" instead of the standard "Anh/Em" endearments, how they never touch or joke or speak to each other except about practical matters- Stepdork and mum looked like lovebirds in comparison, holding hands, feeding each other, scolding. But this is on close observation; otherwise, it's an unnervingly smooth pretense.

I see now why H went for my uncle, with his boyish mischievous charm and rough romance. It's also clear why she likes my family and is in regular contact with my grandma and dad. Despite our Bac Ky origins, we've adopted the frank and direct style of the South, so different from the frigid Northern politesse that rules in her house. At our dinner table everyone talks and debates politics and jokes, food is passed to and fro, and even with my crazy grandpa stirring trouble and my uncle's abrasive teasing it's warm and lively. In contrast, I imagine meals are a lonely time for H and T, as TH eats alone with her nanny and the parents both work late.

My grandma said that H's parents had divorced and she had suffered greatly for it, which is why she won't split with T. Grandma has advised her that she's doing the right thing by staying with him for TH's sake, giving her a stable environment. I don't agree. My uncle in Canada did the same thing - stayed in the same house with his ex until his kids were in uni. The last time I met him he was bitter and disillusioned. At 50-odd, he had nothing: no one to grow old with, kids he thought ungrateful and disobedient, his assets chipped away by a war-of-attrition divorce settlement case. And who's to say that having two parents in the house is going to make the kid any better adjusted? Bearing the burden of guilt later on, not having an example of a happy relationship, being stifled by love that has no other conduit...that can't be good for a kid. For all the dark twistyness and slow-healing scars, both parents and I are better off after their divorce I reckon. Look at how normal and well-adjusted I am! (spluttersnort). No but according to grandma, there are other barriers to H and T's divorce as well - something to do with losing face and lessening of a woman's worth. Even worse reasons, to my banana mind...though I can see how divorce would seem an ugly black mark and a failure to H, who's worked so hard for perfection or at least the appearance of it.

It's vaguely obscene to plunder someone's life for a story, but I can't help imagining how it'd play out - it's so inherently dramatic and tragic. Our layered heroine in her tangled dilemma - mother vs woman; an apparently idyllic family that is a sham; two lovely, lonely people seemingly so well suited, unable to live happily together, unable to break away to make their own lives. Is a happy ending even possible? In literature the poor woman always seems to shoot herself or go under a train or something. But just as terrible would be the more realistic end: long years of status quo, resignation, unfulfillment, bitterness. They both deserve more.

Nam

Sweet jeebus it's great to be home. So, so many stories to tell, I'm a bit overwhelmed by it all. Never fear, trusty unordered listage to the rescue!

The Good

• Langkawi. I spent whole days lazing by the pool reading (The Kite Runner, thanks Chris' brother) and occasionally going for a dip. Gorgeous wide beach, not too overrun with tourists.
  
• Cheapass and delicious Malaysian cuisine. Roti canai, Rotiboy buns, ice kachang, teh tarik, coconut, fruit smoothies and juice.
  
• Cheapass Vietnamese food and drink.Best was banh mi thit (at Saigon's famous Nhu Lan bakery).
• More cheapness: got a stack of fake Moleskines notebooks and sketchbooks, stationery, drawing pencils, some medbooks and a supply of DVDs to last me the whole year and then some. West Wing here I come!
• A lot of fodder for an Amy Tan-esque novel that will never be written, about the flaming batshit that is Vietnamese family life.
  
• My Viet improved. I was thinking in Viet and even managed to write a letter (unsent) even if I managed to misspell "I" every single time, frigging diacritics. Remind me to bitch some time about the ridiculous grammatical caste system whereby there are no fixed personal pronouns so that at EVERY SINGLE ENCOUNTER you have to work out your interlocutor's age and status relative to yourself and thus a simple question like "can you please pass me a pen" turns into a tongue-tying etiquette death trap.
• Bonded with the mothership against common enemies. We're a team. I realised that for all the usual mother-daughter bickering, I'm fiercely loyal to her and vice versa.
  
• Motorbike rides, baby! Too bad that they've just brought in helmet laws meaning that my hair doesn't get to blow sexily in the polluted wind.
• Met some lovely people. Primo, Co H, a family friend of sorts, who gave me a personal guided tour of a Hanoi hospital and sheltered the five of us when we were kicked out of / ran screaming from Bac Q's house. I like her a lot - spirited, very sweet, with a cheeky humour. She was an almost painfully thoughtful and considerate hostess so that I was slightly stressed out at being on my best behaviour the whole time. Her husband Chu T was sweet as well. Probably will write more about them later - intricate and sad family circumstances. There was also Bac T's family in Hanoi. He gave me another hospital tour and kept teasing me in his incomprehensible northern accent. A good-natured bloke - I think he might be useful in dad's pro-democracy work. He's Everyman, made some astute and witty jokes about the political sitch. In Saigon there was the orthopaedic surgeon who took me to yet another hospital and patiently taught me how to stab people with sharp things. Basically did more hands-on meddy stuff in two days than in the whole of last year. Plenty of nice nurses there too who each taught me their own special technique, thoroughly confusing this hapless medkid. There's quite an art to getting drugs out of an ampoule I tell ya. Also in Saigon was another Bac T, an anaesthetist and Stepdork's childhood friend. Jolly and straightforward, such a change from the poisonous peoples in Hanoi (below).
  
• Personal Growth. Learned plenty about my own numerous flaws (temper, acid tongue, impenetrable reserve, selfishness, etc etc) and hidden strengths (2008 = Tina takes no more shit year). Learned what kind of person I respect and want to be like (see above), and what kind of person I have to avoid becoming (see below).
  

The Bad

• The initial awkward icy silence between me and the stepsisters. It lasted more than a week, but through our shared misadventures it's now thawed to a warmer truce. Not BFFs by a long way, but we can trade the odd joke or comment.
• Learned to give injections ie. caused already sick people more pain by my clumsiness. Oh and managed to spill some poor patients' meds and make a mess. Worse still though, was how I found my compassion gland switching off. I couldn't see every single person as an individual human being - there were so many, with such horrific injuries (ortho ward), and there was the language barrier, and they just lay there passively. Not that any of that is an excuse. I didn't engage with them, I broke every rule of bedside manner that Newie has so carefully taught.
  
• I'm a generally chilled out person, but somehow the stress of travel and family political bullshit reset my baseline mood to a constant pissed-offness, sometimes elevating to full-blown stinking rage to the point where I'm imagining smashing brick walls with a baseball bat and/or running into traffic.
• Vietnam bathrooms. It's called SHOWER CURTAINS people!! A piece of plastic to stop the water splashing everywhere so you don't get a wet ass every time you go to the toilet! It's not rocket science!
• Bac Ky (Northern Vietnamese) politesse. Related to the stupid pronouns above and also other linguistic formalities like forms of greeting and polite phrasing. But extends to how people are judged by their status - wealth, family position, education, age - and then treated accordingly (ie. like shit, if you aren't deemed worthy). It's bloody mediaeval. Even the nice northern people freaked me out with their politeness. God bless the frankness of English. NB. My paternal side is from the north but moved south after 1954 (fall of the French); my dad has never even been to Hanoi.
  
• Vietnam street juice ie. the dodgy patches of wetness on the street that are a mere centimeter of plastic from parts of my body. Definitely not pure water either - one time we caught a dog nonchalantly pissing in the middle of the pavement.
• Vietnam crowdedness and rule of the jungle. Spent Christmas eve in the middle of a throng of motorbikes and pollution. You risk your life every time you cross the street. You're a target for pickpockets and cheats wherever you go. Stepdork got his pants pocket slit (nothing important was in it) and at Saigon airport, the taxi registry guy stuck his hand into Stepdork's backpack and stole our camera! Huge screaming match shitball. Luckily mum had the presence of mind to look under the taxi and found the camera where he'd ditched it upon hearing Stepdork accuse him. This was about 15 minutes after we'd touched down in Saigon.
  

The Fugly

• Staying with Bac Q in Hanoi. Oh my flord. I never knew there could be so many incredibly duckwitted jerks in one family. I thought Chu H, Stepdork's brother in Sydney, was bad enough. His mental age is about 13. He's a doctor, "just a GP" but has made shitloads of money and lets everyone know about it. Buys (and boasts about) the most expensive of everything- he gives his kids Louis Vuitton bags and $20k first class plane tickets and zero parenting or attention. I've watched him for ten years and have never seen him show any evidence of thinking about anyone but himself. BUT WAIT, THERE'S WORSE. Bac Q. He's Stepdork's 60+yo cousin and a former maths professor. Oh my god. I had a bad first impression as soon as we came in- barely a nod of welcome. I started disliking him when in his first conversation with my mother he asked her point blank "what do you do? I mean, what did you study at university? what do you mean, you didn't even go to university?!". I left the room at that point. I started hating him when he started to patronise her while at the same time bossing her around the kitchen and telling her off like she was his servant or a child. This is my mum, who can turn men to quivering jelly by the mere force of her glare! And my contempt for him was cemented when he made a speech on his wife's birthday. A masterpiece of vanity. He managed to spare about two sentences to grandiloquise about her virtues and then proceeded to talk for twenty minutes about his own qualifications and the glory of his family line. He actually brought out the equivalent of a Viet Cong Who's Who and pointed out his father's entry and then catalogued all his children's academic achievements and the dollar value of his properties. I didn't know whether to laugh or bash my head into a wall. In fact Stepdork was filming the occasion and thinking it was our video camera, I pulled magnificent faces and eye-rolls - only to find out later that it was Bac Q's vidcam! Apparently he thought I didn't understand Viet and was just bored at the length of the speech. If only he knew. Even more contemptible was how there was an abrupt about-face in how he treated me and mum after he found out that my "aunt" (Co H) was a cardiologist and that I was a med student. How he started fawning then. There's more to the Bac Q story that lead to us fleeing his house, let's save that for next time.
  
• Ba Noi (stepgrandmother). Or, as I like to call her, B-I-T-C-H (to the tune of "Bingo was his name-o"). Dominates her husband and treats him like an infant- she actually forbade him to go get a coffee when he'd already gotten his coat and was almost at a door. "You won't be able to sleep so you will get skinny and then everyone will think you're a drug addict! And who will suffer? ME! Everyone will laugh at ME! How dare you be so selfish!" He's this gentle, quiet, harmless little man for whom coffee is the only escape from the witch. The worst was when we were leaving - both Bac Q AND she had to do some more speechifying. In her bit she repeated the whole "oh HOW I HAVE SUFFERED because of my husband" spiel again and then added a dig at my mum, who had taken pity on stepgrandfather and made him some coffee. She said she'd never liked my mum from the beginning but noooo, Stepdork was so disobedient. She also snarked at how having a university education was THE most important thing. This was in front of everyone, with mum and me and stepgrandfather all present! This was one of those internal baseball bat moments. I slightly regret not saying exactly what I was thinking. I did manage to finally interject "RESPECTFULLY, THAT'S ENOUGH WE GET IT GRANDMA, WE ARE GOING TO BE LATE FOR OUR APPOINTMENT". Later we heard that she'd bitched about my mum behind her back saying that she was a money-grubbing home-wrecker, which, if you know the history of my parents' divorce, is not only the worst insult but also the greatest irony. Apparently she also said I dressed like a beggar and that she'd slap me in my face for my intervention in a certain family crisis (more later on that). Just before we flew off, Stepdork phoned her again. Of course she was all hypocritically saccharine to us. I'm very proud to say I suppressed the urge to curse and instead beat her at her own slimy Bac Ky game with the following exchange in Viet (B = her, T = me):

B: I wish you happiness in the new year and hope you study well and get great exam results and--

T: Oh THANK YOU Grandma. You know I have to say how grateful I am that you have treated me JUST LIKE your very own grandchild.

B: You're welcome dear. Now when I come to Australia you have to promise to give me medical treatment!

T: Alas, I am a very stupid student. SO, SO STUPID. I guess you'll have to wait til S2 [ie. younger stepsister] graduates, she is far smarter than me.

B: No no no, [stepsisters' mother] has told me how brilliant you are, the girls always go to you with questions.

T: Oh, [stepsister's mother] and you are both TOO SWEET.

On balance, it wasn't THAT bad of a trip. Touristing-wise it was all deja vu since we basically retraced the trip mum and I took in 2004-5, only Langkawi was new. It was the people that made it maddening and interesting. The bitter drama just made more of an impression on me than the good stuff, but I'll take lessons from both. I've said it'll be a long time before I go back to Vietnam...I dunno now. Travelling in other countries, we only see the outside, have contact with other tourists and those who cater for tourists. More or less moving postcards. Only in Vietnam do we get plunged into the bubbling stew of human relationships with all the ensuing pain and humour.

Updates

• Feh is the new favourite word of the week.

• It sucks being the lone singleton in a house of couples. Cue violins!

• Talked to my dad about the crazy grandpa thing a while ago. There's been some progress made on the "go to the damned doctor" front especially since my great-uncle has just come over from America and has been harping on at him. Today he had an appointment but backed out at the last minute - still, baby steps.

• On the JFSS/BMP project, I've decided that maybe it wasn't the blinding flash of genius that I always think my ideas are (snort). Sent it off to the National Rural Health Network who should be natural allies in this, and their council considered it and decided against. Sent me some (rather hollow) reasons why.
  

  The NRHN supports conference funding being available to BMP students, and does not believe that this should be replaced by other schemes. BMP students are currently eligible to apply for JFSS scholarships under the same criteria as other students and so the aims of the JFSS program ie to increase the number of rural practitioners is open to all interested students, are best met...The NRHN believes that should be avoiding comparison with JFSS, or attempting to get a BMP allocation of JFSS scholarships. The NRHN believes that we should be pushing for rural mentoring on an individual or small group basis, and expressing a need that face-to-face meetings with mentors is important. It would be hoped that face-to-face encounters would include some clinical time, but merely seeing the work environment may be sufficient to convince BMP holders to stay with the programme and not buy their way out.

  Bolded bit translated: "shut yo piehole, ignoramus!" Ok I concede that group mentoring is a good idea I didn't think of. But jeebus, they think EXCURSIONS are sufficient to deter students from bailing. And "pushing for rural mentoring" - hello, John Flynn is already in place and set up for that! Feh I say. Come to think of it, maybe my idea isn't pure inspiration, but their arguments aren't strong. It seems more like conservative guarding of their own position and protecting the sacredness of the JFSS (which isn't actually under threat, gah). Maybe I communicated badly. Will I take it any further? Meh. Drawing is funner. Being told to STFU grates though.

• On HES, Mauritius was my first choice but the grapevine says that even interns there hardly get to do any meddy stuff, just trail in the wake of senior docs taking notes and doing scutwork. So that's up in the air again. Que faire! ?
  

• My housemate's boyfriend doesn't know which party Rudd and Howard belong to. The election is in a week. He is a med student. Errrr. And dear Millionaire woman, "wherefore" is WHY!
  

• Translated said housemate's letter for her HES in Madagascar to French this evening. And discovered that a) my français has gone down the crapper despite NINE HARD YEARS of study and b) despite a), translation is one of those things I love doing and can lose track of time. Even Latin. Hell, especially Latin, cos even though it's sometimes frustrating - "WTF is the verb doing 5 lines down from the subject?!" - at the end you get the "woah, I just understood something thunk up 2000 years ago and it's still funny or moving or beautiful despite my godawful mangling" feeling. I was always more into the process than the result...don't ask me anything about Tacitus now.
  

• Went shopping at Charlestown today. And in possibly the nerdiest development ever, the most exciting time was when I bought some 4B and 6B pencils for my new inner artiste. Resisted the temptation of sexy thick-papered sketchbooks because there's no guarantee I won't get bored of this hobby in like 3 days (as you can prolly tell, I have hot flushes of passion which quickly fizzle). When we got home, my friend and I plonked ourselves on the couch and sketched. Very therapeutic.
  

Maybe Daddies

(dry-blogged from Sydney a few weeks ago)

So I was telling my mum how I semi-fancied Pharm Guy, but didn't know wtf to do and my instinct was to run away (yep, my genes are doomed). Anyway, we got to talking about her conquests. Dudettes, she started at EIGHT. Boys were chasing her from then. One guy followed her home from school from age 11 to 16, waiting years before even talking to her. She was a svelte little thing, with enormous doe eyes that gave her a look of perpetual innocent wonderment, it's little surprise that they were all trying to woo her. I dunno how she spawned the clumsy lu

She named three people who were her "might have beens". First was that stalker suitor. They'd finally started talking and things were going well. Except then the Communists came in and he was thrown into jail for years, because his family was wealthy and owned a chain of petrol stations. She too was sent away. It might also have been because they were involved in some fledgling anti-VC activities - student meetings sort of thing, hardly La Resistance. She got out soon enough, and didn't wait for him. He's now married to a friend of great-aunt #9 (my great-grandparents were busy!). Rumour has it that he told his wife he would've married my mum if she'd waited.

The second was another boyfriend who vuot bien'd (boatperson'd?) before she did. He arrived at the same Malaysian island as my other great-aunt #8, the one my mum is closest to (she's only about 5 years older). Unmindful of the spies and not thinking that my mum would soon escape as well, he chased skirts all day long. Needless to say, my great-aunt passed on word of his behaviour and her disapproval. When my mum arrived in Australia, he camped outside her door for days but she refused to speak to him. Turns out he is the brother of my childhood GP, married now as well. Mum says she saw him once in a pho restaurant - I was there too apparently, but she didn't say anything!

The last was the most serious. He was in the same engineering course as my dad and to hear her tell it, they were almost on the brink of marriage. He'd already asked her. However, great-aunt #8 disapproved of him, and mum didn't like his horrid mother. At the same time, my father was courting her shamelessly. He'd invited himself along to one of their picnics - later he cut out pictures of himself and her from that day and grafted them together. My great-aunt was very keen on him, possibly because my grandparents were very charming. My grandfather, a supplies officer in the war, hadn't yet lost the plot and was very gentlemanly, even if he looked down on less educated people like my mother. Grandma is and was an awesome mother-in-law, not to mention woman. More on her some other time. Anyway, things came to a head when a false rumour spread that my mother was pregnant. Knowing that it couldn't be his, and that my dad's side were making a move, the guy backed out quietly. Mum was angry he didn't even put up a fight, so she let him go. She found a photo of them all on that picnic day, in a boat. It shows a lanky, geeky fellow looking at the camera, as is my mum. She's blocking the faces of the two other girls there who were invited because of my dad's presence. He, of course, is looking at her. The rest is history. They married when she was 20, he 25. Six years on when she was pregnant with me, she saw the guy on the tram, then never again.

I'm not sure how reliable these stories are. I'm sure they're coloured by the bitterness of what came to pass. The photo-graft is interpreted as a sinister portent and the ruthless courtship as a sign of caddishness. She blamed my great-aunt. I told her to take some responsibility, because she did make a choice. I don't know though. It's impossible to compare her and me. While she was more knowing about boys and had to survive in the more dog-eat-dog world of Vietnam, it sounds like she really was a wide-eyed ingenue at age 20.

We ended up looking through some of the other photos as well, from my mum's childhood. Pretty amazing that they've survived war and crossed oceans. They speak of a different world. Black and white mostly, some garishly colourised. There are many of my uncle Lanh, who was lost at sea. He was the second-youngest, practically raised by my mum, the eldest child and only daughter. She says he was the best of her brothers. Their pictures are there too, features hardly changed over the years. I see echoes of my cousins' faces. There's a cute one of them all lined up, with the youngest still in my grandma's belly. Five kids and widowed at around 30. My grandfather is absent from the album altogether.

It's amazing how much the world has changed in basically a historical eyeblink. My mum describes an old-fashioned society. Even though this was the 60's, boys and girls would hardly kiss before marriage. They went on bike rides together, that was courtship. Who could envision internet dating then!

Can of worms

Just had a chat with dad about the grandpa situation and put the hard word on about taking it seriously. Dad said that there's been a change lately, he's been staying in bed all the time. He thinks he's getting weaker and weaker. At the time I said "well, all the more reason to get some medical attention!". But I wonder if I'm doing the right thing, imposing my shiny new (paternalistic Western) medical POV on my family, like some born-again fanatic "saving" the natives from their heathen religion. Slapping on labels and shepherding the sick onto steel conveyor belts of The Healthcare System- is this where it's all leading? When I think of the bleakness of the psych hospital, hell even of general hospitals and nursing homes, and compare it to our experience...the choice isn't obvious. Ong Noi has had a place in our home and family, despite all the ruckus, despite all that my grandma has had to put up with. He's had love and respect, which is a sight more than some psych patients, all but discarded by their families.

No dammit, it's not dichotomous. It's not Barren Institution vs Loving Ethnic Family Environment. Western medicine can co-exist with the latter. And it's not fair to put the whole burden of care on grandma. A co-operative and understanding Viet doctor is what's needed, preferably a family friend.

Argh writing makes me think in thèse antithèse synthèse like it's about some theoretical dilemma, not my own flesh and blood. Inhumanly. I've never been close to grandpa, grandma's the one I've looked up to and adored. She practically raised me. With him there's been a sort of distance. God, I've just realised what a little shit I've been. I treat him with tolerance at best, and at worst, contempt. Yes he is by turns patronising, imperious, demanding and unreasonable...but what personal grievances do I have? What could possibly justify that sort of treatment? And I realise now that I also do this with some other people. I should know better. I DO know better. It's the changing of entrenched behaviours that's the problem.

I dunno whether I'll have the balls to press "publish".

J'accuse

Ever since we started doing psych, there have been uncomfortable flashes of recognition while reading lists of symptoms. And with them a growing burden on my conscience. Basically, I'm starting to suspect my grandfather has some form of psychotic disorder. It's been going on for 20-odd years, and my poor grandma has been suffering alongside him. For years everyone's dismissed it as just "grandpa being grandpa". As he refuses to see a doctor, there's been no attempt at diagnosis let alone treatment. Seriously he's an 83yo man who hasn't seen a doctor since maybe his 50's. The whole family has been complicit by ignoring the problem.

The evidence for:

• He has almost daily episodes of shouted ranting at neighbours and conspirators against him. Possible auditory hallucinations?
  
• He believes they ("they" being the Jewish mafia and suchlike) cause his aches and pains, and electronic devices in the house are used to monitor and control him. He's called my dad in the middle of the night to warn him about this kind of thing. He believes that chemicals are bad and refuses any kind of medication. Although he is otherwise rational, my dad has tried arguing him out of it many times to no avail. Fixed Firm False beliefs = delusions of persecutory flavour, as well as passivity.
• He didn't leave the house for years at a time, used to not pick up the phone, has no friends. Social withdrawal.
  
• He doesn't have signs of delirium or dementia: no fluctuating consciousness or orientation, nor obvious progressive cognitive deterioration.
• My uncle Bac Dai also had some psychiatric condition. I never met him because he lived in Vietnam, but from what I've been told, he was "like your grandpa". He died of dysentery in 2003 because he refused medical care. Fair enough, he also survived VC re-education camps and the war so who knows what exogenous factors might be involved, but it's at least a possibility that there's a genetic link.
  

The evidence against:

• From what I've heard, all this began when he was in his 60's, which is pretty far beyond the normal age of onset for schizophrenia (mid teens to 30's).
  
• In between episodes, he is pretty functional: lucid, intelligent, witty, courteous to guests. I think one of the reasons why nothing has been done is because only grandma and I have seen the worst; dad only comes over for brief visits, when he's on his best behaviour.

I talked to my mum about it, she said something like "I TOLD your dad to do something about it AGES ago and he never listened, but you know what a useless bastard your father is". I talked to dad about it, asked if it was a form of negligence that we haven't forced him to get medical attention? Because it certainly would be if it was a physical condition and not a mental one right?And it's no excuse that he didn't want to see doctors because he's hardly fit to decide that for himself. Dad started talking about the legal criteria for negligence and I wanted to hit my head in despair because it isn't a matter of bloody abstract principles, it's about how our whole family has turned a blind eye to suffering that could have been prevented or at least mitigated by treatment. What if it's something that could have been managed by surgery or drugs or hormone replacement or dietary supplements? Dad said it probably wasn't something organic since his personality had tended in this direction all his life-- though in that case personality could be a predisposing factor in a psych condition! What if a simple blood test could have saved 20 years? My grandma, a warm and bright and sociable woman, has isolated herself because she can never invite friends home for fear he'd blow up and shame her in front of them. If he'd been diagnosed, she might've had access to a carer's pension. If he'd been cured, she might've had a different life. What if, what if.

It's my responsibility. Living with my grandparents through my teens, I was close enough to know the worst. I was woken at 5am by his rants and heard him yelling awful things at my grandmother during his episodes. I remember thumping the walls to get him to shut the f up, and being glad when grandma quietly manoeuvred him so that he would be out of earshot while I studied, bearing the brunt of it herself. I'm not proud of that. Now, at a physical distance and with the more objective perspective of medicine, I can put a name to it as a problem that could be solved. The question is what to do next. He's 83. Should I shatter the status quo and stir familial shitstorms and force dad to force grandpa to see a doctor? It's a callous question, but is it worth it, when he might have only years to live? When antipsychotics might not even work and have all sorts of side effects? I know these are excuses. Maybe it's time someone stopped making them.