do you believe in destiny and the fates? do you believe that somehow, there's a Guy up there who arranges our life in nice chronological order so that all things work out together for the better good of us? do you even believe that somehow, you are reading this post right now, not by random chance but because of a series of fortunate events that led you to this point in time? these days, i'm somehow inclined to believe in this ideology. you see, picking nursing as a career choice has been one of the best decisions i have made for myself in this life. not only because the salary's somewhat decent (i will never agree that it's competent with the amount of work that we do), but i get to do some good in this selfish world while at it. a job that pays and racks up a whole lot of karma points, where else can you find something like that?

after my 'O' levels, i took up the first job i've ever worked in my entire life. what's that you say? oh, you want to get technical eh? right right, given my perverse nature it was prolly the second job that i've ever done (the first being a 'blow' job). none the less, it was ironically an administrative job at the current hospital that i'm employed with. i worked as a medical records clerk in 2004 for several months. it was mindless, back-breaking work that involved looking for dusty medical records in dusty shelves in an even dustier medical records office. it was there that i learned several things about the big picture of the hospital and the working world.

like for example, i learned that there were petty people who didn't like others to help them with their work despite the fact that they were swamped. i also learned that going for lunch with someone else's girlfriend is a criminial act. of course 'someone else' here is with reference back to the same group of petty people who were swamped with work and refused my help and were thus unable to go for lunch with their girlfriend. one of these petty people pulled me aside one fine working day and told me to stop 'breaking their rice bowl'. and so i did just that. i stuck to polishing my own rice bowl till it shined like a black guy's ass on a nudist beach. eh... wait. how often do you see black people tanning on a nudist beach? there's an irony to this though. the lunchtime girlfriend? she took up nursing too and we got to see each other occasionally during our course of education. good times, good times.

more importantly, it was during this time that i got to explore the hospital inside-out. i learned of the underground routes the hospital used to transport dead people to the mortuary. i learned what happened administratively after a patient was discharged. i got to see the place where all the hospital charges were keyed in and tabulated. i basically got to see the clockwork of the hospital and how everything was run. but the most important life-changing bit of all was that i discovered the hospital and their offer of a three-year bond/scholarship. they were offering three years of employment with a bond of $32,000 for people who decided to make nursing their career choice. i was immediately hooked. money, as you might have already known, is a very strong incentive in life.

at that point of time, nursing wasn't exactly a very popular choice. the general thinking of the local population went something like 'why be a nurse when you can be a doctor?' in fact, there were only two types of people who took up nursing: people with the passion for saving lives, and people with a passion for bad results during their GCE 'O' levels. i belong to the latter category. i had horrid results, was aiming for an education in Mass Communications and only managed to get an interview with the course that offered a diploma in 'Film, Sound and Video'. i preferred the written word more than the visual. so i rejected FSV and took a random gamble for nursing. i figured that i was not going to waste my life with the mainstream by gunning for course in business & finance, marketing, engineering or IT.

and life can sometimes have quite a bizarre sense of humour. you see, i've never got to take up mass communications as an education, but i've managed to get quite a good taste of it. my best friend Sunanthar, had to complete a radio interview with an interesting person of sorts as an assignment. and what other interesting person than a male nurse? it was there that i sit in a somewhat professional radio studio for the first time in my life. cut the long story short, Sunanthar got an 'A' for her assignment and i got a compliment from the lecturer that my voice was very 'well-suited for the radio'. and the irony of it all? i got to do this radio interview thing twice. another acquaintance from secondary school was doing the same project and decided to rope me in about a year after i did the first interview. you've got to hand it to the Guy up there and his arrangements.

the blessings of nursing didn't just stop there apparently. during the days of National Service with the army, i made quite a substantial amount of cash. i was enrolled into the Medical Corps as a combat medic. it was there that i volunteered for a thirteen month overseas posting. i went to Brunei, served my time as a medic and went on plenty of adventures. i got the once-in-a-lifetime chance to ride in combat helicopters, see the sultan of Brunei, climb mountains, mingle with all sorts of snakes, scorpions and reptiles, walk round half an army encampment in boxer shorts and singlet and generally have a hell of a time with other like-minded servicemen. and i did all this with quite a substantial salary labelled 'overseas allowance'.

fast-forward to today. i have been employed and working for this current hospital for quite a few years. and as much as i dislike some of the systems and process of the way things are done here, i can't help but still love the hospital. it's a bit like a love-hate relationship with more lovely good times than bad. i have kinda influenced a lot of people in my family to make nursing a career or business choice. one cousin has taken up nursing because of me. my brother has taken up nursing because he saw the grotesque amount of money that i made during my schooling day. unfortunately, he didn't get a bond because of his results that were even more grotesque than mine. he took up nursing at a time when it was becoming popular.

my mother, she's an enrolled nurse with a different hospital from mine. she's applying for an extension of contract with a diploma course at a local polytechnic currently. she's an efficient worker and her boss likes her. chances are that she will get the contract extension. and one of my paternal uncles, John Chua's father to be precise, has just opened his very own post-basic education centre offering tie-in courses with various overseas universities. one of these post-basic courses is a direct-honours nursing degree with a relatively reputable UK university. and since blood is thicker than water or any other bodily fluids that come to mind, the uncle has offered me a place with an outrageous discount to boot. plus, the first batch of students get a free Dell laptop as an incentive (i'm giving this new laptop to the father).

so you see, it seems that as long as i follow the path of nursing, i have nothing much to worry about. i have many other jobs that i'm passionate about. i want to be a writer for a local publication. i want to do stage management. there was even a time when i wanted to be a dancer (that was after watching 'Honey'). but destiny and the fates work in really mysterious ways. everything and everyone in life seems to be connected in some sort of way.

if i didn't work in the hospital as a medical records clerk, i wouldn't have found out about the bond. if i never discovered the bond, i wouldn't have taken up nursing. if i never took up nursing, i wouldn't have become the person i am today. if i were never the person today, i would never have had the guts to write so much scandalous stuff about myself. if i never wrote so much scandalous stuff about myself, i wouldn't have started www.spankthemalenurse.blogspot.com.

and if i never started spankthemalenurse, you wouldn't be reading this post right now.

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