Frame of Reference 2

While watching news clip of news, I was reminded of my first frame of reference post, where I blogged about my battle with insomnia.

The news clip I watched talked about the increase of use by hospital staff of "code white" within the last three years.

Having spent a week here and there in the hospital as a patient, I think I can be a contributing part of the ongoing conversation.  I honestly don't know what all the codes are, I was a patient who needed some attention for a week or two because I could not sleep.  I wanted to leave as soon as possible because the hospital was a very unfamiliar environment to me.  I did not get staff trainings on all the potential sounds I could hear, including "code colour" sound.  Needless to say whenever I hear a "code whatever" on the PA system, I wonder wtf is going on, yet, there is not a single person who can answer my question.

A potential problem that may be missed by the news media is that there is probably and most likely a lack of communication between and among patient, staff, nurses, supervising nurses, doctor and the responsible doctor.  After finally being able to sleep, I was unable to find a staff to speak with.  Thinking back, I felt a little like Rick Grimes waking up from a coma.  I am often left at the mercy of unverify information provided by other patients.  Yes, I knew the name of my assigned nurse because it is posted but I did not know how the assigned nurse look like and the assigned nurse changes with each shift changes.  Perhaps, that is a problem of short staff.  I end up never speaking with the assigned nurse as a result.  I see my assigned nurse doing rounds during the evening though, the assigned nurse will creepily open the door while I pretend to be sleeping.  I am a light sleeper.  Mind you, I was the person who went to the hospital for help in the first place.  Sometimes, I also hear the dingling sounds of keys in the evening, it echos in the hallway, I assumed it was the caretaker but I did not get out of bed to verify.  Once you get in, it's very confusing.

From my few short stays, I see that my sleep improves and then de-proves. I hope I have illustrated why the improvement goes from plateau to downwards. That's why I no longer want to go to the hospital if I am ever unable to goto sleep again.  I'll just wait it out for my family doctor's office to open.  I will let my nonexistent readers know how this method work out if I am ever unlucky enough to have to resort to it.

Fire Drill 3.0

Recently, I saw videos on some door opening trainings (probably for fireman).  It invoked my imagination so I thought why not add to my Fire Drills series.

The videos I saw basically show the viewers how fast a professional can open a hard to open door.  Before seeing those videos, I didn't even know that many types of doors existed.  I guess it make sense since we have such big buildings now.  If a fire was to break out, you really would want to be able to compartmentalize the fire, contain and control it.

I guess during a fire drill, where you are simply practicing how to open a door, you should not be too proud of your time.  In a real emergency, you have to think about whether you should open the door, what is behind the door and react to whatever you see once you open the door.

I guess it's nice to open a door after a fire has been put out and see someone trapped inside, alive; however, it would be sad to open a door to find someone yelling at you for breaking their door when there was no fire in the first place.

Today's Special

Lunch time

Preference and habits are hard to change

On the last day of 2018, I finally read the comments my elementary school teachers made about me in my report cards.  I believe my mother and I neglected to read the comments and only focused on the grades.

It was funny reading the comments on the report cards because my strengths and weaknesses were consistent throughout my elementary school years in Canada.  My major weakness in English was to attend to my final edits.  My other major weakness was the lack of participation during class discussions.  Every single teacher encouraged me to participate more in class in their comments on my report card.  I apologize that I did not read your comments until today.  I acknowledge receipt of your valid observations and I thank you for noticing me.  It really shows in your comments.

If any of you stumble across this, in response to your comments, I always disliked editing.  When I was little, I was not sure if I was editing correctly and I also valued the content I was writing more than grammatical structures.  I still have trouble with my singles and plurals and autocorrect is really not helping because it sometimes corrects incorrectly and makes assumption before I finish my typing or swiping.  I believe writing is still best learned with a pencil, eraser and paper because nothing is interrupting your thoughts.  Sometimes as I swipe on my mobile device, I feel like there is an annoying pest trying to finish my sentence.  Peer editing is great with a coloured pen!  I try very hard to edit my own work but sometimes I just don't have time.  It is sad that I did not address this weakness at a younger age.  I envy people who tells me that grammar came to them naturally.  They don't have to work for it, they don't have to think about it, correct grammar just come out naturally.  I believe grammar is harder for me because my first language is drastically different from my second language.  Anyhow, I now see the importance of having good sentence and grammar foundation because it definitely makes your writing that much better and convincing.  I also believe the correct grammar will eventually come naturally if you catch your mistakes as you speak and write.

In terms of class participation, I did not want to speak out loud because I was conscious of my accent.  I am well aware of sounds I cannot pronounce like the -n sound.  It sucks when you cannot pronounce certain sounds.  When I speak I purposely have to replace word I cannot pronounce.  I have been practicing speaking out loud by myself, I am working on intonation, pronunciation, pace and enunciation.  I am avoiding public speech still because I will get stage fright and end up mumbling quickly with an accent again.  I think I am ok at times at conveying my message across in person but it is a lot harder to do it over telephone conversation.

Anyways, I hope you are all well.  Thank you for believing in me and seeing my potentials at such a young age!  I also finally read the first year book and realized some significant events that happened that year.  It's nice to discover new things about the past in the present.