My Own Happiness Project

My Own Happiness Project
because happiness begins inside and flows out...

20101030

patients stampeed and missed dinners.....

  1. Locum isn't so bad today. Think I had only about 10 - 15 patients so far. Last night was bad, with less than 60 patients for the whole day, more than 30 was served in the duration between 1730 and 2300hr. With the average of one patient every 10 minutes I wasn't even allowed a time for dinner, and when I finally got a breather, it was already 10pm!
  2. October has been a crazy month with all the departments deciding to give our assessments and presentations simultaneously. After the Research Methodology paper last Wednesday, the exam climate seems to cool down a little bit, leaving only one assignment left, which is the journal article critique to be due on Thursday. As usual, me being me, I've not started anything on it yet. Instead I've decided to treat myself with a season of Chuck, 13 episodes of it in just 2 days. Started on the second season today.
  3. Shah the personal trainer has been texting me to remind me about our paused training. Needed that break to focus a bit on the exams. With about 2 weeks break between now and the last session we had, I'll have my stamina down to the level of a potatobag on the treadmills. Sigh.
  4. Went out with Ben last Thursday, didn't do the Japanese food @ JayaOne though, instead went to SS2 for pigging out session at the WSK and followed by dessert before calling it a day.
  5. Deep in the mode of pondering about the future and the life decisions made at the present. I wish I'm out partaying in a Haloween Party like previous years, instead I'm stuck here doing locum. Next year Haloween I must join a dress up party, I don't care. I guess I'll be a terrorist again though.
  6. Damn hungry now.

how to work better.........

  1. DO ONE THING AT A TIME
  2. KNOW THE PROBLEM
  3. LEARN TO LISTEN
  4. LEARN TO ASK QUESTION
  5. DISTINGUISH SENSE FROM NONSENSE
  6. ACCEPT CHANGES AS INEVITABLE
  7. ADMIT MISTAKES
  8. SAY IT SIMPLE
  9. BE CALM
  10. SMILE

20101027

arteo rambling while waiting for exam time...

  1. Been on D for the past 2 days, took my 3rd and last from the previous stock today. Been prompted to restart by comments from people that I've seemed to pack on some flab lately. Valid reason for that observation -- I've frozen the last few sessions of gym training to cope with the exam stress this month. October wasn't a month to relax at all.
  2. Ben has been around for the past month but he also seemed to be rather busy with his course schedule. At least then I don't feel that bad for not meeting up with him since the day he checked in at Shah Alam. Tonight we're going out to have that internet purchased offer meal at Jaya One we've been postponing for a while.
  3. After being off D for almost half a year, the side effects of it seem to be felt stronger. Mood swings are more extreme and that snappy tendency is there all the time. Good thing today is the last of the never-seems-to-be-ending series of continuous assessments and presentations and reports for this semester. Next I can focus to make a come back to the gym and I won't be needing these anymore.
  4. I miss working. It's totally different being a student. At this age, adjustment is kinda slow, even after half a year of doing post graduate degree.

taxation explained.....

Got this from a circulating email. Like the analogy a lot, especially the caption right at the end of it.

UNDERSTANDING TAX


Suppose that every evening, 10 men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to RM 100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay RM 1.
The sixth would pay RM 3.
The seventh would pay RM 7.
The eighth would pay RM 12.
The ninth would pay RM 18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay RM 59.

So, that's what they decided to do....... The 10 men drank in the bar every evening and were quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner said, "Since you are all such good customers, I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by RM 20".

Drinks for the 10 men would now cost just RM 80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men, the paying customers - how could they divide the RM 20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share? They realised that RM 20 divided by six is RM 3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

Therefore, the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing.
The sixth now paid RM 2 instead of R3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid RM 5 instead of RM 7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid RM 9 instead of RM 12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid RM 14 instead of RM 18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid RM 49 instead of RM 59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a rand out of the RM 20 saving," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got RM 10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a rand too. It's unfair - he got 10 times more benefit than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get RM 10 back, when I got only RM 2? The wealthy always win!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists, labour unions and government ministers, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

20101024

arteo's assignment on malaysia's progress on achieving the fifth millenium development goal...

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is a set of eight targets that each of the 192 member states of the United Nation and some other international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. The goals are targeting essential developmental and socio-economic issues of the states, generally in health related areas, and are indicated by specific measurable indices. The areas of concern are to eradicate extreme poverties, to achieve universal primary education, to promote gender equality among women, to reduce child mortality rate, to improve maternal health, to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases such as tuberculosis, to ensure environmental sustainability and to encourage global partnership for development.

The fifth element of the Millennium Development Goals spells out targets to achieve in improving maternal health. There are 2 targets attributed to this goal, the first being a reduction by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio; and to achieve, by 2015, a universal access to reproductive health. Under each of these goals, there are specific indicators to chart the progress towards achieving the goals.

Malaysia has seen a heightened national concern and has been involved in international effort to promote health in general, and particularly the maternal and child health throughout the post independence era. Even before the Safe Motherhood Initiative that was launched in the 1980s, this country has gone through impressive reduction of the reported maternal mortality ration, which was halved between 1957 and 1970, from around 280 to 141 per 100,000 live births. The figure continued to come down to under 20 per 100,000 live births, which is a level very close to that of mostly advanced countries.

According to the United Nation Development Programme report in 2004, Malaysia approached the reduction of the maternal mortality through six key elements. These includes improved access to, and quality of care of, maternal health services including family planning, and by expanding health care facilities in rural and urban areas. Malaysia has invested in upgrading the quality of essential obstetrics care in rural clinics and district hospitals, with focus on emergency obstetrics care services. Streamlining and improving of the efficiency of referral systems and feedback systems to prevent delays in service delivery. On the human resource angle, Malaysia has invested in training and increasing the professional skills of trained delivery attendants to manage pregnancy and delivery complications. A comprehensive monitoring system was implemented which focuses on periodic reviews of system investigation, including reporting of maternal deaths through confidential enquiry systems, and to work closely with communities to remove social and cultural constrains in improving acceptability of modern maternal health services.

It is doubtlessly challenging, and requiring tremendous amount of commitment, human and financial resources, and innovative programmes to further reduce the maternal mortality to a lower level, even to sustain the maternal mortality at the current low level. Continued monitoring of maternal deaths, improvement in access and quality of care is of utmost importance to further lower maternal mortality. The shift from direct to indirect cause of maternal mortality requires greater involvement of multidisciplinary professionals and sectors, including Non-Governmental Organisations and religious leaders to address more complex factors of maternal mortality.

Based on the evident and accounts of development gains over the last recent decades, Malaysia has kept itself on-track in achieving its ambition and goals. For this country to become a fully developed nation by 2020, this positive weather of growth needs to be carefully sustained and improved, including continuous human development, especially with emphasis on higher education and trained skills. Essential issues that need to be continuously addressed are such as poverty and inequality, education, gender issues, health improvement, sustained development, issues pertaining to foreign migrants, improvement of information systems and partnership with multisectorial agencies for development.

Economically, the vast majority of remaining poor households are Bumiputeras, and are mainly concentrated in the agricultural sectors especially in the least developed states. Addressing the ethnic group disparities in maternal mortality continues to be a challenge for the health policy makers. At the same time, the high maternal mortality rate among immigrant women, comprising 42 percent of maternal deaths in this country in the year 2000. Migrant women face a limited accessibility to maternal health services, especially those lacking of valid travel documentation. This limited accessibility problem will cascade to a bigger problem resulting from unwanted pregnancies such as complicated trial of abortion, and abandonment of newborns.

Over the past decades, there has been a shift in preference of delivery at home to institutional delivery centers such as the hospitals, the health clinics and the alternative birthing centers (popularly known as the ABC in rural setting). Therefore, there is a need to increase and establish more of these facilities to provide safe deliveries closer to communities and to prevent overcrowding of the maternity units in the hospitals. These facilities must be equipped with full range of antenatal and maternal services such as family planning, management of complicated pregnancies and counseling services, as well as staffed by skilled professionals and adequately equipped for basic essential obstetric care and provision for referrals.

With the advancement of the information technology era, we are seeing more and more well informed and educated clients, together with the rise in educational level of Malaysian women. The societies nowadays are better empowered to make their own decisions and informed choices regarding healthcare, delivery and family planning. There health service provider, therefore, has to be better prepared and equipped to meet the raised expectations of the clientele, and to be able to provide necessary information to facilitate autonomy in client’s decision making. Good use of information and communication technology will eventually lead to positive changes in health seeking behaviour and healthy lifestyles.

Even though maternal deaths have become rather relatively low in Malaysia, there is still a need to ensure the preservation of quality, accuracy and reconciliation of data obtained from the government registration system. As proposed by the UNDP Malaysia report, for analytical purpose, it would be helpful to have the adjusted and the unadjusted annual maternal death figures to be made readily available. Provision of regular and detailed reporting of contraceptives prevalence rate would provide a better comprehensive profile of maternal health.

20101015

is it november already??

I've been reading on Maslow's theory and how it is linked to Sartre's philosophy on existentialism on the field of existentialist psychology during locum. Then I bought some medicine from the clinic which requires me to open an account. Seeing my age calculated a 31 years and 8 months, brings me straight away to my yearly blues -- occuring mostly in November -- the period when I ponder back on what legacy have I created, and what significance I have achieved in life. This is also the month when I ponder on the philosophy of existantialism... sigh...