Frustration is a mutual feeling

I admire his eloquent speech. His brain and deductions. I find his unkept physique adorable. He was analysing crime and his fishing analogy reminds me how he envelopes himself in nature to calm his vivid thoughts down.

And I thought, how do you love such a guy?

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On an unrelated note, "frustrated" is the word I've been looking for these past few days. I want to share this feeling with someone because it is good to vent, but I also appreciate that it's only temporary relief before feeling stupid sinks in. My options are also limited to my parents or Umair, both of which don't match me psychologically and wouldn't know what to say. I don't feel my parents are approaching me correctly and admitting my frustration to Umair will only validate her own frustration. I have my cool demeanour to live up to.

Perhaps these two notes aren't as unrelated as I claimed.

I am also quicker to lose patience with human nowadays. I react by quietly fuming. It's not helping anything and perhaps facilitating their deterioration, and at the end all I can do is pray Allah gives me more patience and guide us (them!) to the right path.

Name-calling

My kid siblings mischievously call each other names a lot. Maru calls Melle "bún" short from "arnabun" which is a poor but funny jab at Melle's teeth.  Sometimes he outright calls Melle "arnab". This leads to Melle retaliating back with "baby" which he deserves because I am never an advocate of physical jestering.

Calling Maru "baby" can be traced back to me since I've been calling Maru that since he was born. Nowadays he gets exasperated whenever we call him that but unless he shows maturity and responsibility, the name is here to stay.

Recently Melle has been calling Maru "bimbo". I laughed like mad when I first heard that name and that stopped the two in their cat fight, amused at my sudden lapse into insanity. I asked Melle if she knew the meaning of bimbo.

"No. What does it mean?"

"It means pretty but dumb." And we all cackled like mad, Maru not so enthusiastically.

Just now the two were at it again. Maru called Melle "arnab" which led to Melle jabbing back with a "bimbo". Dad joined the fight by squeezing a helplessly squiggling Maru like an octopus would an unfortunate fish while proclaiming he is "ayah arnab".

Maru turned to me and seeked support. "Kakngah, she's calling me dumb!"

"You forgot the pretty part!" Melle laughed back.

Well at least Maru is learning English. That kid's conversational English and Arabic are abysmal.

Definition of stupid

It will be interesting to profile these anti-vaccine and pro-home birth no-doctors-around people. Their social standing, demography and all that. I wonder if they have the same mistrust to other professional bodies. Do they build their own houses? Grow their own crops? Assemble their own cars?

I don't debate about these things. Apparently they came from a group of traumatised people. They were traumatised by someone's child who reacted severely to vaccine and traumatised by someone's unpleasant labour experience. They feared and so they Googled their own alternatives.

Elsewhere, we studied our ass off understanding vaccines and O&G. We know nothing is perfect and thus we try to our best so that the worst doesn't happen.

Partners in crime

Is it normal to be excited watching Hannibal?

I blame Will's apathetic arrogant expression that I find endearing and adorable. I especially grinned with Dr. Lecter's subtle amused smirk that I can relate to. I hail the psychopathic tone of the series. The intelligent writing. 

There's a good reason why they air this show at 0050. It's so dark it's exhilarating.

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On another note, I complained to mom that I'm demotivated to do anything when I'm left on my own.

"Like today, I ran out of cash and I was only motivated to withdraw some after I picked up Melle."

"I told you, you need a partner." Mom grinned.

We had this conversation before, it's either Mitchi or no one. Or Will.

"What I need, is a driver."

Innova from the Garage

It's amusing how my parents caring for me can somehow border on distrust. Today I was to fetch Melle from school. I wore my tudung, picked up my IDs and phone and realised the car key was not where it was supposed to be. I heard its engine running outside and went out.

Mom was in the car, backing out from the garage. The Innova was parked in a way that its rear will be facing the concrete fence and mom's Accord when backed out. She said she was sleepy and that's why she asked me to pick Melle up, so what was she doing not napping? There were few differentials for her intention ranging from doing a favour to downright distrust that I might dent the Innova or worse her Accord. Hahah.

But all are out of love, so I simply grinned in amusement and took over the car from her.

Granted I do drive as awesome as an Egyptian (or as dangerously as, depends how you see it) and accidentally blew up the Vios's tyre in the process once, I can safely manoeuvre the Innova ever since I learned how to drive and I've never got it scratched since.

This one should go under Smug category. Yeah so I am vain.

Have I told you my all-time favourite case is Down syndrome? Babies with Down syndrome are probably the cutest ever and so far I've never been unable to tell one apart. We once had a baby in tutorial and my classmates disagree with me when I said he has Down syndrome. So I went up to the professor and asked her if he indeed has Down syndrome.

"Yes he does," Dr. Nadia Zaghloul was impressed. She commended my spot-on observation before proceeding to ask the mother follow up questions.

I once saw an adult male with Down syndrome walking towards me in the street near AR Hospital and my initial reaction was to run towards him and give him a bear hug. He was wearing a maroon jumper.

A functioning sociopath

Dad has been vivaing people here and there lately. It's part of his work description but I'm feeling the brunt of it now that I am back home. He comes home and shower me with questions like "describe me the iron metabolism" or ask me the differentials for a lab report and more than anything suggestions to study certain topics.

When I answered him and followed through with asking why was he asking me all this, his answers will be along the line of "today I discussed this with the medical student/HO/master student". I know but I still ask. It's a great way to distract him from asking me anything further.

I'm grateful for him. But frankly I am impartial. I want to do something medically related but at the same time I don't want to have anything to do with medicine. I've sharpened my brain enough to the level of completing Hannibal's psychoanalysis (it's just a one time thing but I'm still going to brag. But if it keeps going I'll be scared of my own sociopathy.) but it isn't balanced by anything physical...

Yeah, writing this makes me realise that's probably why I'm so out of it. I need to go out and take super long walks.

On an unrelated note, I am a jerk who periodically stood people up. If being sorry for it makes people assume there won't ever be a repeat of this stint, then I guess I am not sorry and I never was. I have no excuse for my inconveniently-timed periodic need to be a recluse. Still alive and observing but that's about it.

Animal lover

I remember once Dr. Hussein was telling us the diagnosis for a certain infection.. haha I forgot the title. Fine I'll scrounge for my notes in the morning. Anyway, as usual we have serological study, blood cultures bla3 and last but not least inoculation into animal.

Usually any professor will just mention "mycobacterium leprosy into banded armadillo" and begone with it, but Dr. Hussein was different.

He mentioned the bacteria and the animal inoculated (guinea pigs I think), and then he stressed how overdone the procedure is. How he is against us using animals inoculation and we shouldn't be doing it. Poor cute souls inoculated just for a confirmed diagnosis.

He spent close to a minute to get that message across. I grinned wider and noted him. That day was 34 weeks ago. A summer class not in the usual hall but in Dr. Saeed Gomaa's usual hall instead. Sir had three caped pens lined up in his shirt pocket. It was amusing. Why would anyone need three pens lined up in his shirt pocket?

One of my favourite thing to do, if you haven't figure out by now, is to analyse him.

The best thing about living in Egypt is I can go out for a long walk whenever I need to cool down

We don't have time. That thing is not ours. We're going to die anytime anywhere and if we live with the mindset that we have time, we're never going to do things according to priority.

When you lived far away from your family, you will learn to appreciate them more. When you realise how good they have been to you all this life, you're going to want to celebrate them when you can.

That is why I am going back to kampung for the annual event Ateh is organising to gather everyone in the family. Any other events that coincide with the date can just go screw themselves. Because no one gathers at kampung after Atuk and Opah passed away in 2010 unless Ateh organises this annual event. Because it's only once a year I get to meet everyone in the same setting. They're not important people, they're family. I don't know what that means to you.

Arguing with people who value things differently is moot and endless. I cannot and will not force you to value what I value. And this makes me want to throw things and kick balls to the wall.