the 10 minute walk

I stared at the pages of the General Surgery textbook, the details of triple A disappearing from the inside of my brain, and my mind began to wander into the details of summer plans. No. No. Must. Focus. I took my BlackBerry off the table and unlocked it to check the time. The watch read 23:01. Grabbing my hospital 'Visitor' ID, I stood up and pulled my grey hoodie tighter around me. Let's go for a short walk.

The hospital looked even lonelier at night. The orange and blue hallway was completely deserted, with just a cleaner wearing a black sweater mopping the floor. He looked up when he saw me coming, and I gave him the faintest of smiles. The constant smell of cleanliness and medication felt even stronger.

I walked past the curious room with the glass window, the one that has the huge teddybear wearing a pair of sunglasses just sitting there, watching passers-by. There was a doctor wearing a pair of blue scrubs putting money into the vending machine with chocolates in it. He gave me a friendly nod when he saw me walking past him. I hugged myself when the cold night breeze swept over me as I walked near the automatic sliding doors.

I was wide awake despite having slept quite late the night before, because of the cup of coffee that I made in the pantry. The staff pantry near the library. Somebody left the door open, so I walked in and helped myself to a healthy dose of lovely caffeine.

When I was walking back to the library, I saw two men walking side-by-side. Handcuffs binding them together. I can distinctively tell (from those weeks that I spent at the Psychiatry ward) that these two were a male nurse and a psychiatric patient with involuntary hospital admission. They were chatting and laughing away as they walked, as if they were the best of friends. As if the handcuffs never existed.

I reached in my pocket for the ID as I approached the library door. It gave a faint beep when I waived it on the scanner, and the little red LED light turned green.

Taking a deep breath in, I stepped back inside and walked to the table with my books strewn all over it.


I can do this. I will pass this year in one go.

* * *

Hey, just dropping in to say my exams kick off next week. Pray for me kay loves <3


x
Atiq

Summer is coming soon

Hey, blog.

So much is at stake this summer, it's getting more and more overwhelming for me. I just...I have to pass this finals, especially, in one go.

There is a constant melancholy accompanying me every single day lately, as one after one medical finals ended at the various universities my friends go (/went) to, and more and more 'Alhamdulillah...I am now qualified' appear in my facebook homepage.

Don't get me wrong, I'm genuinely happy for them, and I'm thankful that I skipped standard four so I'm actually the same age with the rest of the Malaysian fourth years...it's the weird sense of getting left behind that gets to me. Only a couple of people are staying back to work here, so I'm losing quite a portion of my friends next year. I've grown so used to having them be my family all these years, the thought of them graduating and going back to Malaysia for good is just so unbearable...

Anyway, here's a gorgeous song for you.

This is how I feel
Whenever I'm with you
Everything is all about you
Too good to be true

Somehow I just can't believe
You can lay your eyes on me
If this is a fairytale
I wish it will end happily

Even though we are apart I can feel you here next to me
Here and now I will vow, stay with me

Let me love you
With all my heart
You are the one for me
You are the light in my soul
Let me hold you
With my arms
I wanna feel love again
'Cos I know
Love is you

xx
Atiqah

Hilarious things that I did when I first gained independence...from my parents.

I am very clingy with my mom and would become an uber obnoxious and annoying daughter around her, especially when I am sick. However, oleh kerana Ayahnda adalah sangat menakutkan, Atiq tetap apply MRSM when I was in Form 3, determined to move out from my house. I sent it in without my dad's signature, and without my school's stamp of approval (because Naim understandably hates losing *cough*good*cough* students to MRSMs), and miraculously got accepted to MRSM PC anyway.

I eagerly waved my parents goodbye on that first registration day, after Mama unpacked all my stuff into my locker and put the bedsheet on for me. Little did I know back then, that I would struggle so much in those first months in boarding school.

I had absolutely no idea how to do anything. Noted hilarity that happened was;

• Doing a peer-to-peer survey on how many minutes does it take for my friends to wash each item of clothing...because it took me AGES.
• Asking my friend to do a demo on how she folds her clothes because she folded them so neat and meticulously, and no matter how hard I try, I was so shit at folding clothes (I am now ace at it)
• Asking my dormmate to teach me how to nila my school uniform because I tried and it turned out all blotchy and...sigh.

I also had no clue of the untold rules of hostel life, such as the 'AFTER!' rule of the showers and the no-sleeping-with-your-bestfriend-on-the-same-bed rule, because I came from a family of 8 sisters and this was the norm for me.

Also, the boys block was SO NEAR to ours that on the first few days, I actually thought it was part of the girls' block so...I...walked to the tempat sidai kain behind our block to hang my washed laundry wearing my towel. Just my towel.

*headdesk*

Needless to say, my dormmate was completely horrified when she saw this, and yelled at me to get back upstairs. I was bewildered at this seemingly unwarranted drama, but obeyed anyway.

Later that day, after things were explained to me (in a rather exasperated WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS STUCK IN OBLIVION manner), I felt like jumping off a cliff.

There was obviously a late-night roll call that night, because the seniors heard about a slut roaming around naked in her towel near the boys block. They had kindly included helpful anecdotes amidst their angry shrieks, such as 'don't think you can do whatever you like because you have a sister here'.

All I worried about at that point in time was my older sister finding out about what had happened. I was about as scared of her as I was of my dad*.


Such are the things that I was (am?) capable of, because I live in a world of my own.




xoxo
Atiqah

*to put this in context, she once yelled at me from the front door of my class during night prep because I lost her history textbook

coffee room moment

This morning I was sitting in the parents' coffee room in the private paediatric ward in the Bon Secours Hospital, hastily re-writing the forty* history and examination reports that I scribbled on the sheets of A4 paper haphazardly clipped on the orange clipboard I got for my birthday. A man with an epic beard walked in, presumably to make himself coffee.

'Do you mind?' He politely asked, despite the room blatantly being there for him, not for medical students panicking to finish work at 9am, right before the morning ward round.

'No no no, go ahead please.' I said with a smile, adjusting the pale metallic green stethoscope hanging on my neck and continuing to write furiously.

'Would you like me to make you tea or coffee?' He said, insisting to be nice and polite.

'No thanks,' I said, and paused for a few seconds to get a good look at him before adding 'Is your child in this ward?' because I know all of the patients in this ward and their parents, and I definitely haven't met this friendly middle-aged man.

'I do. He just got in yesterday,' He said. After going on a bit of a chat about his 6 children and joking about his career being a Nappy Changer, he asked another question;

'Did you go to that Palestine march we had in the city some time ago?'

'I did, yes.' I said, partially alarmed, partially amused as to where this is going.

'Yeah...I definitely remember your face'

**

It's good to know that somebody can tell the average-looking me apart from the sea of Malaysians (and the sea of people) at the march, after this incident.

Also, blog? I'm falling in love with Paediatrics.



xoxo
Atiqah

*the probability of this being a lie is as high as the probability of Heidi Montag being an actual idiot

Privacy issues

I'm paranoid about people judging me. Maybe because I'm judgmental myself...I don't know.

My blog is private, my twitter is private. I don't tell most people most things about me because I don't trust people in general. The rule in my head is - the less people know, the less they have to bitch about me.

Many things that I write on my Twitter and my blog are private and usually if people don't know something about me...it means I don't want them to know about it.

I hope I don't have anybody in here who'd go about telling people about what I write in my blog.

I'm assuming you're all nice and trustworthy. Well. That, or I'm really just a friend not worth gossiping about to you - that will work just as fine for me.

Yeah?

xoxo
Atiqah

p.s. oh my God sentence structure in this blog is just...i can't even.

Mentega

'This butter is so hard to spread'

'You should get the spreadable ones'

4 people at once : 'NO! THOSE ARE NOT REAL BUTTER!'

'Wtf?'

'I will sacrifice spreadability for the sake of eating real butter. The secret is to hold it in your hands...blow on it for a few seconds...'

'You're turning me on'

#lunchtime

demam.

Hai. Dah lama tak demam, selalu migraine je.

Semalam I can't sleep properly sebab I can't breathe. So I did what I've been doing from time to time for the past 5 years when I can't sleep - I call Arih and ask him to sing for me. He's nice. I like him.

Selama ni when my friends go all 'aaargh semua orang dah kawen stress stress' I just laughed because it never felt like that to me, I've always been the 'waaaaa cantiknya baju beliau' atau 'kenapa hantaran ni buruk tapi takpelah bukan untuk aku' kind of person.

But when Zaty messaged me on facebook last week to say she's getting engaged, it finally hit me. Everyone's getting married. Tipulah kalau cakap I don't want to get married as well, but it's more than that - it's the fact that when I finally go home to Malaysia, friends have moved on so far with their lives. They've worked for a few years, they got married...they've probably grown into a person I barely know anymore. And there'll be me, just sitting there, trying to fit back into Malaysia after 6 years of absence and stagnance.

Even though I know new friends will never be the same with the friends we make in school...I hope I'll meet awesome new friends. I haven't made (actual) new friends for so long.

xoxo
Atiqah

even though I'm not friends with Luke anymore, I remember a lot of the things he said. I think they're gold. mostly because he was high on weed half of the time.

everytime Aer Lingus send emails saying 'Fly to Chicago this month!' I itch to click it.

freaking Luke Willard. what the hell happened to you. I hope you haven't OD-ed.


'I'm curious to learn how someone so young can be so damaged'

x
Atiqah