received news early in the morning that our fave prof was gonna transfer out of our dept. apparently cos of the NUH + Med faculty merging, they're restructuring the depts and family health physicians will no longer have a place here. GK seemed distraught when he told us the news, finger (ahem) pointing to one of our dear stat boards, who like every other govt org annouces decisions at the last min and expects everyone to conform without protest. it was a joke that GL thought this only happened in her country. GK was like..my dear..this happens here ALL the time. could see the frustration he had - imagine having to sacrifice ur research to do something u don't wanna focus on, and being pushed into it at that.
on a personal note, he's impacted my stay in the dept for a long time. since i first joined, i was inspired by the way he always has a smile on his face. always the cheery prof who is genuinely interested in his work. even when he was doing field work on our factory visits, u could see his passion - he's not one of those docs who simply says "ok, height, weight, are u healthy",etc. even on our corridoor chit chats he exudes enthusiasm about public health, almost giving me a lecture once about how "the system needs to be changed" (haven't we all heard that one before? yeah, but not all of us actually do something about it, unlike him). when i was having my down periods i looked to him as an example. i remember V (embarrassingly asking on my behalf once) asking him why he was always smiling and laughing, and his response was "What's there not to be grateful for? There's so many good things in life." and he started to list the simplest things like going home to a happy family, being healthy enough to have a great job, etc. Wow. I held those words and constantly reminded myself that yeah, when you're down, look at the littlest things to be happy about.
It was also b'cos of my fondness for him that I joined the Health & Wellness committee. Don't think the previous chairpersons could've matched his standard ;). He likes to do things differently, has a chop-chop way of work which minimises our workload, and our meetings are never full of laughter, and most importantly he shows how grateful he is for our help (knowing how many ppl wanna join this "glam" comm unlike the other more popular safety comm). He even asked DK to treat the comm "for their hard work" (Straits Kitchen next week..yay!) I also sang at the dept gathering partly cos he was in it. Oh and he has one of the better voices I might add!
When he told us at the meeting abt his leaving, everyone became glum, especially AW and me. AW also has a special bond with him...due to some other circumstances. GK's role in their research group is one of the reasons AW is motivated to stay at his (low-paying and stressful-due-to-a-certain-superior..tsk tsk) job.
To GK: thanks for all the encouragement and motivation you've given us. You'll be sadly missed. Hope you manage to drop by next door even when you leave, and as u quoted DK, you're always one of us! Keep in touch and continue to inspire everyone around u!
Didn't realise I was so affected by the news till I realised I was glum the rest of the day. It didn't help that my experiments were not working again. Sigh. As if that wasn't enough, one of my friends was pouting and not wanting to talk to me. By the end of the day my headache cos of lack of sleep on Sun nite turned into a migraine, and I had to resort to taking some meds for it (I'm anti meds even tho I'm a scientist...maybe cos I know how toxic they can be for my dear organs ha). Stayed in darkness the whole night, chatting with MB under the night light and a dimmed screen...even went to the loo with the lights off lol. Thank God it finally disappeared with the powerful new med I got. Yay.
Hopefully things are better to day. At least my head is. :)
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