To Forget is to Repeat, To Ignore is to Condone

This is what I believe:
That I am I.
That my soul is a dark forest.
That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.
That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.
That I must have the courage to let them come and go.
That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.
There is my creed.


- D.H Lawrence

"I know I have a pretty good sense for music, but she was better than me. I used to think it was such a waste! I thought, 'If only she had started out with a good teacher and received proper training, she'd be so much further along!' But I was wrong. She wasn't the kind of child who could stand proper training. There just happen to be people like that. They're blessed with this marvellous talent but they can't make the effort to systematize it. They end up squandering it in little bits and pieces. I've seen my share of people like that. At first you think they're amazing. they can sight-read some terrifically difficult piece and do a damn good job playing it all the way though. You see them do it, and you're over-whelmed. You think, 'I could never do that in a million years.' But that's as far as it goes. They can't take it any further. And why not? Because they won't put in the effort. They haven't had the discipline pounded into them. They've been spoiled. They have just enough talent so they've been able to play things well without any effort and they've had people telling them how great they are from an early age, so hard work looks stupid to them. They'll take some piece another kid has to work on for three weeks and polish it off in half the time, so the teacher assumes they've put enough into it and lets them go on to the next thing. And they do that in half the time and go on to the next piece. they never find out what it means to be hammered by the teacher; they lose out on a crucial element required for character building. It's a tragedy. I myself had tendencies like that, but fortunately I had a vey tough teacher, so I kept them in check."

from Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, translated by Jay Rubin

12

There are 12 stars in the European flag. Probably 12 eggs in the carton, 12 pairs of ribs in a human. 12 Zodiac signs. The 12th(twelfth night) is also the end of the merry and joy of Christmas. And it has been 12 months in Bloomberg.

That was probably the main highlight of my life. Getting started with my first job. So where am I now?

There's definitely many things going on during this period. And I really wonder how to summarise these experiences.

There was certainly loads of fun working in GCUS. Because there were loads of partying going on over the weekends. And it had sort of carry on over into the new year as I moved into Analytics. I can remember the nights partying over the weekend, the GCUS Pink Party, organising Bloomberg Sweatshop(Badminton session), having a go at bowling and more recently, the Office Awards(it's almost like Halloween in disguise).

In the midst of these, I manage to make some little trips, to Bintan for a weekend, Vietnam for a week, and soon Cambodia. I also had my open diving license in Tioman, Malaysia over a weekend. I would had pretty much wanted to go to a faraway and exotic place had I had the ability to take a longer break.

But that is also how work has became for me. It's pretty much lots of learning, I would classify them as market and product knowledge. And now, being in the desk. It's always very much difficult to take a breather, with questions coming one after another. It's challenging, no doubts about it, but I feel drop dead tired at the end of the day. It's like taking an exam, not a 3 hours one, but like the full day. Then I have to make some time for preparing my CFA now.

Well, out of all these, to think if I have had a fulfilling year, I would probably say yes. I have met a wonderful bunch of colleagues of which some became my good friends. Yet now, the goal after my graduation has been achieved and it's time to set new ones. In which, I am pretty quite lost, and disarray with stuffs happening. It's time to perhaps put all what is ahead of me and pick a new path to extend the career.

"In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't."
- Blaise Pascal

"If you're going to succeed, you need a vision, one that's affordable, practical and fills a customer need. Don't second guess your creativity. Avoid overanalyzing the new project's potential. Most importantly, don't strategize about long term too much" - Michael Bloomberg from Bloomberg by Bloomberg

Touching... that's why I love Grey's Anatomy

Krista Vernoff on life, death, and "Six Days, Part 2"
Original Airdate: 1-18-07

The card at the end of this hour of TV that read “In memory of Bob Verne” was a tribute to my father. He died six years ago at the age of 56 after a very short battle with esophageal cancer. He called me one day at my office at Charmed and told me he thought he had the flu. A week after that he had surgery on a massive tumor at the base of his esophagus. Before the surgery he was laughing and celebrating with family. He had a profoundly positive attitude. After the surgery, he had a massive scar down his belly and was intubated and pale, and upon seeing him, I, who thought of myself as quite strong and educated and capable of handling that moment, started to shake and then hyperventilate and had to be helped out of the room.

During the week we waited for him to recover, we learned that kidney function was of the utmost importance and I became obsessed, absolutely obsessed with his urine output. I checked that urine bag like 50 times a day.
At one point, the doctors gathered the family to tell us that my Dad had a kink in his breathing tube and that they might not be able to get a new one in. They told us we needed to prepare ourselves for the possibility that this was it. We stood out in the hallway and waited, holding our breath, terrified. There was another family there in the hallway, the family of a 16 year old boy who’d been shot on the street on his way home from work in what was feared to be gang related violence, though his family insisted that he was a good kid, that he wasn’t in any gang. They were as scared as we were as they waited for news of condition. We talked to them for awhile, made small talk, then fell silent. And after a long, pregnant pause, one of the teenagers of the family looked over at a member of my family with a very disturbed look on his face. And then he said “Dang. Somebody just farted. And I think it’s this old white guy right here.” My family laughed harder than we have ever laughed in our lives. And my dad lived through the reintubation.

He lived for three more days.

When the surgeon sat us down to tell us that it was time to let him go, he explained that Dad had come to him – behind our backs – on his way into the OR actually – and begged him to proceed with the tumor removal no matter what. My Dad believed, truly believed, that he could fight that caner, that he could live, if only they would remove the tumor. The surgeon did as he wished. And I have yet to completely forgive that surgeon for that decision. Because my dad’s body was riddled with cancer. Plus he had a liver condition and a heart condition. There was pretty much no way for him to recover from a surgery that traumatic. And the surgeon knew that. I believe in forgiveness, I do. I’m a fervent and avid believer that resentment, unchecked, leads to illness and spiritual misery. But I also believe that that surgeon cut my dad in half because he wanted the practice. It wasn’t the right call. He knew better. My Dad didn’t. The scene in which George yells at Bailey and Richard – that scene didn’t happen in my life. Writing and shooting that scene was wish fulfillment for me. What happened in my life is, we went into my Dad’s ICU and put our hands on his body and sang him Beatles songs while the nurses turned off the machines. When they pulled the intubation tubes from his mouth, my sister and I put our faces to his mouth so we could feel the last of his breath. And then he died. And I became a member of the Dead Dad’s club.

I know you didn’t want us to kill Mr. O’Malley. Believe me, I know that. He was funny and warm and kind and too young and too happy to die, just like my Dad. He had children and a wife who loved him and needed him, just like my Dad.

Sometimes life sucks. Sometimes, surgery sucks. (By the way, because Bailey and Richard are Bailey and Richard, I don’t think they did what they did for anything but the highest reasons. I believe they were persuaded by Mr. O’Malley’s plea. I believe they felt they had a responsibility to honor his wishes even if they thought it was the wrong decision. But still, sometime surgeons and surgery suck.) It’s been hard for me sometimes to work on a show that by its very nature idealizes Western medicine and surgery. I believe in both, but only as a last resort. Because I fervently believe (and statistics support) that surgery often does more harm than good. So, one of the reasons I haven’t written an episode since 302 is because I called dibs on this one. I knew which story I wanted to tell.
I’m sorry it was so hard to watch – but I believe that where there is darkness there is light. I believe that from death comes life. I believe that in the face of great pain, families become closer. Friendships become deeper. Life becomes sweeter. And I believe it’s important to be reminded of the loss of love so that we will value and honor the love we have while have it.

I hope you do that.

I hope, that if you were impacted by this episode, you will use it as inspiration to call your Dad or your Mom or a Grandparent or a sibling or a friend or a teacher and thank them for being in your life and tell them what they mean to you.

If you weren’t impacted by this episode, and you just want to write me hate mail that’s okay too. That’s your choice. We all get one life to live. Or, maybe we get reincarnated a lot of times, I don’t know. But like Burke, in my experience science isn’t enough. For me it’s about faith. Some kind of faith. Any kind of faith.
So maybe, while you’re calling your families or sending me hate mail, I’ll put forth a little effort and try, once again, to forgive my Dad’s surgeon…

All my best, Krista
(p.s. those of you who keep writing and begging for dirty, gratuitous Mer/Der sex? I have one word for you: porny. You have porny, porny minds. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing… : )
(p.s.s. Aren’t you glad little baby Laura is okay? I am. Because as you know I’m expecting a daughter on March 17th. And another thing that’s hard for me about our show is that by necessity, we tell a lot of traumatic baby stories and birth stories. I read a book that helped me undo a lot of the fear those stories had instilled in me – it’s called “A Guide to Childbirth” by Ina May Gaskin. If you’re pregnant or know someone who’s pregnant or are thinking of ever getting pregnant, you should read it. It’s so so so great. Okay, now I’m really done. Bye.)http://www.greyswriters.com/2007/01/six_more_days_w.html