My new wallpaper makes me smile.

[Updated] Britain’s Got Talent: Susan Boyle proves you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

Or a singer by her appearance.

“But the tigers come at night,
With their voices soft as thunder.
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame.”

- I Dreamed a Dream, Les Miserables.”

Before I watched this video, I had already read the news articles about her, and knew she was going to be pitch-perfect.

The audience, and the judges, though, Simon Cowell included, clearly had no idea what they were in for, and you could see from their facial expressions that within the first 5 seconds of Susan Boyle walking out on stage, they had already dismissed the next act as old, ridiculous, frumpy, and an uncool, unlikely singer.

Much the same way people had dismissed this uncool, unlikely singer.

I loved how when she started singing, she made everyone take those looks back. And I bet that girl in the video is mortified at how she was caught rolling her eyes at this 47 year-old woman, who might well turn out to be this year’s Britain’s Got Talent winner.

“I am so thrilled, because I know that everybody was against you. I honestly think that we were all being cynical, and I think that’s the biggest wake-up call ever. And I just want to say it was a complete privilege listening to that.”

- Amanda Holden.

“In our pop-minded culture so slavishly obsessed with packaging – the right face, the right clothes, the right attitudes, the right Facebook posts – the unpackaged artistic power of the unstyled, un-hip, un-kissed Ms Boyle let me feel, for the duration of one blazing showstopping ballad, the meaning of human grace.”

- Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly.

Still on the subject of House Season 5 Episode 20: “Simple explanation.”

Opinion:

Fox’s memorial page to Kutner is creepy. I’m not even going to link it because I think it’s in really poor taste. I mean, some people have even started thinking Kal Penn – actor who plays Kutner – is dead.

Fact:

Kal Penn is NOT dead.

According to an interview with EW’s Michael Ausiello, Kal Penn has left House (and Hollywood) to work in the Obama White House. He tells Ausiello that during his time volunteering for the Obama campaign, he got to know the President pretty well and “expressed interest” in working for the administration. Now, Kal Penn will be the associate director in the White House office of public liaison. Not sure what that entails, but it sounds pretty fancy. Basically, he’ll go from working with Hugh Laurie to working with President Obama, which makes him the luckiest guy on the planet.

- Review by Hemal Jhaveri.

Just to say:

I bought the T-shirt in the picture. Proceeds go to the National Alliance of Mental Illness, and people who might have read some of my earlier blog-posts know how I feel about suicide & mental illness.

There is a stigma & a silence surrounding mental illness & suicide. Even doctors don’t admit to being depressed, because we’re expected to act as though we’re immune to every disease that we see in the hospital or the community, and if we’re not immune, we’re not “tough enough” for the profession.

As this episode of House illustrates, a lot more people than we realise - including medical professionals - are vulnerable to mental illness. And organisations need funding to be able to reach them.

So, if you’re thinking of a charity to support, for example, doing a blogathon for, consider your local suicide/mental illness organisation.

(In Malaysia, one of which would be the Malaysian Mental Health Association.)

And if you’re a medical student/doctor who’s depressed, please seek help. We’re not any less good medical students/doctors for feeling the way we do, or struggling the way we do. Please don’t do yourself or your patients a disservice by trying to ride this out alone, because you’re not alone. Because we wouldn’t expect our patients to ride it out alone, and neither should you.

Blessed Good Friday, everyone.

“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

- 1 John 4:9-10. (Emphasis mine.)

All things H I am super tak puas hati (not happy) with:

1) Hair-cut.

I asked her to cut my split-ends off, still got hidden split-ends left. Ask her to thin my hair, she left it thick. AND, she leaves me with one long jagged edge in front. Tokenism* of her efforts to layer my hair.

*Favourite word of many an IMU-debater.

It didn’t look TOO bad in the salon at the time, because my hair was still damp. I did, however, ask her to carry on cutting, to which she replied, “Don’t worry, it’ll look better after you wash it.”

I paid TWENTY POUNDS – ONE HUNDRED RINGGIT, WEY! OWWWW! – went home, washed my hair, etc. etc. Woke up this morning, with my hair looking absolutely TERRIBLE.

Granted, hair doesn’t look its best in the morning, but this was absolute shambles. I combed, conditioned, changed parting… Nothing. I still look like a blimmin 80′s glam-rock chick.

Only it’s NOT the 80′s, I’m NOT into glam-rock, and I HATE HAVING BIG, POOFY HAIR.

You know, barely a month ago I toyed with the idea of not straightening my hair anymore, seeing as I felt so guilty about the money I was spending, not to mention a certain someone mentioned he likes my hair natural & wavy…

It’s abundantly obvious to me now that all that money was money well-spent, and money that I pay in future to straighten my hair will be considered an investment. A little price to pay for being able to wake up in the morning & not be shocked at how I look. Or stressed out over having a bad hair-day, and subsequently going into work late, grumpy, distracted, and endangering patients under my care.

And as for the natural look… NORMAL, or rather, NATURAL’s OVER-RATED.

And I’m going to straighten every last d*mned strand the SECOND I balik Malaysia, ‘cos that look actually WORKS.

Items 2) and 3) are pertaining to the latest 2 episodes of House, so if you haven’t watched it, be warned: Spoilers ahead.

2) House Season 5 Episode 19: “Locked-In.”

What worked:

The cinematography on House has always been star for me, and it was definitely “Gold Star Of David” (to quote House) for this episode.

I remember as a kid - what, 10 or 11? - writing a story about a woman being murdered, and writing it from the point-of-view (POV) of the woman, post-murder. I went into great detail about how it was like inside the coffin, what she remembered about her last days, etc.

I never liked writing stories, to be honest, but I recall enjoying myself with that one.

And so, having them film & hear the narration from the patient’s POV for this episode of a patient with “locked-in” syndrome was something I enjoyed.

What didn’t:

My housemate, Khang Yean, and I were watching this episode, when the patient went into cardiac arrest. ECG showed asystole, you know, like on TV - No kidding! - when they have the flat-line on the monitor and that “Beeeeeeeeeeep!” sound.

And, like on TV, the doctors grabbed the paddles and shocked the patient. At which point, KY & I looked at each other & said the same thing.

You don’t shock a patient who is flat-lining.

The idea behind shocking a patient is that the patient’s heart is in a weird rhythm, so you want to shock the heart back into a normal rhythm. If the patient has a flat-line, the heart’s not in any rhythm at all, ie. not beating at all, and your priority then becomes getting blood around the body via CPR.

That’s my free medical lesson for the day, and congratulations, you have now been initiated into the ranks of irritated doctors/paramedics everywhere who balk everytime we see a flat-line being shocked. Spread the love.

3) House Season 5 Episode 20: “Simple Explanation.”

*I am not kidding, if you haven’t watched this episode, and you intend to, it’s not too late to stop now, and go read a blog-post about happy little elves. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.*

I had read, maybe last week, that a major character was going to die on House. And I figured, OK, guess it’ll happen much later in the season. (Yes, I know it’s already Episode 20, but I thought MUCH later; final episode of the series, or second-to-final episode.)

Mana tahu, the very next episode after I read that, Kutner dies.

And the way it was set-up… STUNNED, wey. Kutner doesn’t turn up to work, and there’s the usual House-type dialogue within the team, no one’s really worried, neither am I. And then, at their noon-time, which is barely into the first 10 minutes of the episode, House tells Foreteen to go & get Kutner, who still hasn’t come in. They break into his apartment, again, no one’s too worried. Then suddenly, through a doorway, you see a someone collapsed on the floor beside the bed.

Remy Hadley, “Oh my G**.”

And they rush into the bedroom. At this point, I’m thinking, “Oh, no, Kutner has taken sick. Maybe he’ll be another mystery for the team to solve, since we (the viewers) don’t know much about him, and now we will.”

You see Thirteen frantically doing CPR – well, you assume she is, ‘cos our angle is still of that through the doorway, so all we can see is the lower part of the body, and the head & chest are out of sight – and Foreman’s calling an ambulance:

“We need an ambulance to [address]. 28 year-old male with a single gunshot wound to the temple!”

At which point, I’m now like WTF??

And you see Thirteen sit back, and she’s got blood all over her face, and there’s blood on the floor… They don’t show Kutner’s face/head at all, and they never show him again for the rest of the episode.

So now, for the rest of the episode, I’m too shocked to pay attention to the rest of the story-line.

I remember going for a case presentation competition in London, and one of the cases was that of a penis avulsion. Which is as painful and as traumatic as it sounds. And this medical student had made the mistake of showing pictures immediately after the title-slide, supposedly to stun the audience into attention. If that was what he aimed for, then he achieved his desired effect. Achieved it too well, in fact. I couldn’t pay attention to the rest of the presentation, as hard as I tried, and as far as I was concerned, his presentation just seemed to go downhill after the initial shock-factor of those pictures.

Likewise, the story of the patients, though slightly interesting, just faded into the background for me, despite the fact that no advancement was made in the main story-line as to why Kutner died. In fact, even when the episode ended, I was still confused as to whether it was a suicide or a murder. The episode implies it’s a suicide, and I don’t think there’s going to be a twist anytime soon, but still…

No hint at all. We’re all shocked; the team didn’t see it coming, I didn’t see it coming. HOUSE didn’t see it coming.

“Simple Explanation” is anything but.

Secret shame:

I actually cried at the end of this episode. Not because I was particularly fond of Kutner’s character, mind you.

The whole episode, Taub had been acting like a cold b*stard, who said repeatedly that he has no sympathy for people who commit suicide, and that he feels no guilt, since people who commit suicide sometimes do so not as a cry for help, but because they want to “finish the business”. Basically, he seems completely unaffected by Kutner’s death, and is the only one who’s focused on the case. Even more so than House.

At the end, everyone goes to the funeral, except House, who’s in Kutner’s apartment, and Taub, who stays back in the hospital to look after the patient. After the patient dies, there’s this scene where Taub’s sitting on a bench in the hospital by himself, and all of a sudden, his face crumples up, and he just starts to cry.

Emo-ness.

Super tak puas hati.