the chinese are big fans of superstitions. it's almost like they go all the way out to find small little minute details that can make or break matters of life and death. things like not washing your hair after pregnancy, to not using knives or scissors during the first day of the lunar new year (it may literally 'cut off' your fortune). which makes me wonder, are the chinese such simple-minded folk who not only smell bad post-partum but also prefer food that do not require any slicing or dicing during new year's day? or are they just willing to believe that they can at least do something, albeit silly and impractical, to divert the course of fate?

singapore being made up of a majority of chinese is of course riddled with a seemingly never-ending number of superstitions. and nursing is one profession that is not spared from the bane of mythical beliefs. afterall, the health-care industry deals with people's lives. and the only thing we chinese nurses want from our patients is for them to be safe and alive at the end of our shifts. and one method of guaranteeing that would be to avoid eating pau at the beginning of your shift.

pau being chinese steamed buns, possibly filled with pork, chicken, egg, kaya, red bean paste, chocolate, pandan, etc. pau also means 'to wrap' in hokkien. and the only things we wrap in the ward (i'm thinking of a lame joke along the rap lines of 50 cents, Snoop Dogg and Chamillionaire) would be patients who pass away during our shift. we wrap them in body bags after having wiped up the body nice and clean. all this done with due respect and dignity.

it's not so much about the death and dying bit that scares me. but the shitload of paperwork and administration to be done when someone dies. finding the right person to issue the death certificate. is it a coroner's or non-coroner's case? do i need to get the doctor to remove the pacemaker embedded in the patient? how do i go about breaking the news to the patient's relatives? what do i do when i have a bawling relative on my hands? what if they get violent? when somebody dies in a hospital setting, it sets off a chain of events that end up with the nurse getting off work at least an hour late. thus, i normally equate the consumption of pau during my shift with going home late. and nobody wants to go home late after a stressful day in the hospital.

which is why i avoid pau most of the time. but recently, i've been getting all smart-assed and complacent with my patients. i know them like the back of my hand and i have faith that they won't die on me or any of my shifts. in fact, i haven't had any patient dying on me throughout my entire nursing career yet. thus for three days in a row, i tried to test fate and my boundaries of luck, to see whether i would be immune to superstitions. true enough, everyone survived and i passed my reports over to the next shift without any problems.

but i guess fate would have never let me off so easily for tempting her.
i was caught red-handed by my supervisor, trying to leave work 45 minutes earlier than the stipulated timing.

you see, the morning shift lasts from 0700 - 1515 hours, while the afternoon, 1300 - 2130 hours. so there would be this overlapping of shifts between 1300 and 1515 hours. the norm would be to pass the morning reports over to the afternoon shifts at 1330 and then finish up other miscellaneous things that haven't been done. we can basically go rest in the staff room once we're free of work. frankly speaking, there’s nothing much left to do other than to amble around the hospital, have some lunch, a quick smoke, or if you’ve got a friend with benefits, a quickie. You could do that, or you could just go back into the ward to work. but there's no point because the afternoon shift is self-sufficient enough, to keep things running without the morning staff over-crowding the nursing-students-infested ward. since i'm not needed, i just leave. and you know lah, nobody sees you when you come in half an hour earlier for work. but everybody notices when you leave half an hour earlier from work.

as fate would have it, the supervisor was looking for me regarding some unsettled issues. and she found me in the staff toilet. end result? i had to compose a flowery memo stating what happened and they threw in a free 'counseling' session. i felt bad about it. not because it would affect my work performance grading or anything like that. i can't be bothered with those. afterall, i'm not going to stay with this organization for any time longer than my bond.

i felt horrid because i've let my supervisor down. i respect her deeply. and she respects me as a model worker. i know my work and i do it well. problem is, if i see no point in doing something, i won't do it. and clocking time till the end of shift when there's nothing left to do just doesn't go well with me. the most painful thing she said? 'now my respect for you has dropped somewhat and i think you're going to have to work very hard to get it back up'. i've been agonizing over it the whole day.

and i swear i'm not bluffing about this. but the father just came home from work and guess what he bought for breakfast tomorrow?

yeap. pau.

fate is such a fucking asshole.

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