we prayed and we prayed.

we prayed.

we waited.

and it rained......finally, over the weekend.


then we continued to pray.

and we wait.

will this prayer be answered soon?

one born every minute

email scams are so common, yet people fall for it all the time. the ones i often get are strangers from african countries who seemed to have pin-pointed me as a beneficiary of grand sums of money left by unknown benefactors.

but a windfall from singapore airlines may sound more believeable.....

esp if the reward is in SGD & not USD.....

the postal address is correctly stated but the email domain remains highly suspicious.....

 

so i just deleted it.

i don't want to be another statistic.

live & let live

i know times are hard...

and this headline doesn't help.

most of my colleagues aren't rubbing their hands in glee because they don't strictly follow the fee schedule, ie. they don't charge the maximum allowable, because of the fierce fee competition amongst doctors. many of my GPs colleagues are struggling to make a decent living. those with huge cars & houses are mostly in established practices & are in the panels of doctors for factories & other businesses; many others are not in these "lucrative" panels. well, it's not exactly lucrative as these factories also try to squeeze a deal with the doctors - with so many clinics now, they will go for ones with the lowest cost.

i'm not saying the increase aren't justified - no increase in prices will ever please the majority. if you've ever been admitted to a private hospital, you will realise that the doctors' portion of the total bill range between 25-35%, while the hospital charges are NOT regulated. one hospital charges rm3.30 just to serve medication. multiply that by the number of tablets a day and the number of patients served & you'll realise who else has been reaping the rich rewards of private healthcare!

all i want to say is, live & let live.

when astro increased the price of their packages, i cancelled the movie subscription. when TNB increase their tariff, i stopped using the air-con on cooler nites. everytime McD adjusts the price of their value meals, i patronise it even less.

live & let live.

upstaged

not many people like to be upstaged by others.

but i have to admit that my little girl (well, not so little now but still.....) has outperformed me at every level of school education.

when she did well in the UPSR & PMR exams, i brushed it off as a different level of standard over the decades between our exams. when she did it again at O-levels, i thought it was a flash in the pan.

and yes, i'm a hard man to please.

but now that she has outscored & out-aced me at A-levels, it's certainly time to pass the torch to the next generation & i'm proud she's up to the challenge.

she 1st flew the nest here and then here.