The 3rd week of Tanjung Karang provided a busier schedule than the 2nd, somehow providing relief for us that had bored ourselves out of our minds. Since Monday was Deepavali, we had lost precious time for visits, nevertheless, we made full use of it to enjoy ourselves rather than sulking over it.
We went back to Tg Karang on Monday, bringing along some ingredients for some ala steamboat dinner, due to some skyrocketing prices of food, and for guys, starving ourselves with bread for dinner or oats will just not do. We need meat, meat and meat. :P
Stim-boat!
The ingredients
Balls, balls, and balls. There's a reason for all these balls. Men are egoistic creatures anyway. n_n
Basically we were a bit tad full from all the eating and mucnching before we call it a day in Deepavali. The next day was the visit days for us. Half of the students here will be going to Sabak Bernam district and the other half would be visiting in the Kuala Selangor district (Tg Karang is in Kuala Selangor district, for your information). For each half, there are 3 groups visiting different aspects of health community areas, namely the district hospital, District Health Office, and lastly the community and rural clinics.
Well, Caryn, Stella and I (Me, stella, and Caryn; a better preposition for a more self-centered direction) are in the same group, so we were visiting the district health office. When we say visit, we did not merely stay in the comfort of the air-conditioned office. We have to follow their activities as well, namely field work. So, off we go travelling to and fro on the natural air-conditioned bus. The bus moves, the windy air-cond works. The bus stops, it's hot like hell inside.
The natural air-conditioned bus
The Health District Office in Kuala Selangor
Basically, we'd followed them almost everywhere if you'd asked me. Not really, but the mere exaggeration does not make any difference in perspective. On the first day(Tues), we'd followed them investigating dengue cases, abating, house inspection for Aedes, and fogging. On Wednesday, we followed the BAKAS (Bekalan Air dan Kebersihan Alam Sekeliling) on a tour around the village areas, hunting for ancient relics of sanitization (No kidding). We learned from the officers the sewage system, water supply system as well as waste disposal system. It's pretty impressive if you'd asked me, though I'd prefered the modern toilets.
House inspection for Aedes 'hot spots' and abating
The paddy fields make nice scenery
The old waste disposal system requiring burning in an enclosed system which was banned later on due to air pollution.
The students took some time to snap photos whenever possible. Lolz..
An old waste disposal system as well. Currently not in use apart from being a stand of decoration by its owner. Creative!
A sink with the drainage system passing a 'filter system'(far behind) before being drained off into the river.
Does this look like a normal squatting toilet?
It is not!! The cylinder behind it holds all the secrets of the dung. What we see is just one third of the cylinder, as it is dug deep inside. It takes more than a person's lifetime to fill it with dung(even if he does it thrice a day), since the processing system in it makes dung compacted into a filling of around 1 inch cube a day for a usage of 4-5 persons.
The narcissist toilet! The no-hold barrier applies as the narcissist tries to take on the center stage even in the toilet. Or perhaps, you can try covering your face, so that no one would recognise you. :P
The cover for the underground pit where the narcissist's dung is drained into. A new pit had to be dugged up when this pit is full. The old pit, try planting some fruit and you'll get a big fat harvest from all the fertilizer. :P
The third day was about communicable disease, so we'd followed around for TB contact tracing. It must be difficult for the health officers to do their work all thanks to those gimmick salesmen that should be hanged dead. We followed the health officers to a house to do contact tracing, only to find no one there. The house was practically silent for the whole 15 minutes when we were there knocking and calling.
Well, that was until I'd told a passing neighbor that the guy who had TB did not finish his treatment (I had no idea why we were there initially anyway, so I crapped something serious) and the neighbor was so worried she just went in and use a broomstick to dig the keys in the house to open it.
And voila! There are a village of people inside unveiled, transforming the house with some lively atmosphere. An illusionist's act indeed. And just to find out that this was the patient's daughter's house where the patient had not even stayed here before. So, it was fruitless afterall. The case was referred to Sabak Bernam district since that patient is residing in Sekinchan.
Friday is all about food safety and quality control. We were taught all procedures and regulation required to be met by food premises as well as hawkers. the afternoon was a lecture with Dr Azmi on statistics and how the previous students fared. A good indicator if you'd asked me, on how well we would perform if we do slack.
And surveys, yeah, we are on it now. we are doing 2 surverys, one is for ourselves, and the other is the National RESTU survey. We'd to do Kg Sungai Gulang-Gulang and cover the area from house to house. The houses are scattered apart, and the distance from each house can be up to 200-300 meters. Some are clustered, and some are just 50m apart. All makes it harder to survey, and we did see some villagers driving away after rejecting our request for surveys, with the 'busy' reason, such as to avoid us. It's kind of hillarious actually, to see them doing to such extent.
In the RESTU survey which was one inch thich, all we did was having some fun asking some lengthy and useless questions at times when we can fill them ourselves. Some questions even asked about whether they eat Ayam kari, Ayam rendang, Ayam Percik or any other ayams. Can't they like just ask if anyone eating ayam? It's just like a menu in the restaurant, even with the Mamak menu there for all types of rotis, thosais, and naans, as well as vegetables. This is just plain ridiculous most of the time.
Anyway, we are halfway done, so hopefully this would do for now. There are 5 more weeks in Tanjung Karang, so hopefully, we'll be finishing it. I'm looking forward towards the Mobile Clinic thing, which would be the first time done (replacing Program Tindakan), so we get to practise our clinical skills alongside qualified doctors. This might be cool anyway. :P
In the meantime, see you later!! Signing off....
We went back to Tg Karang on Monday, bringing along some ingredients for some ala steamboat dinner, due to some skyrocketing prices of food, and for guys, starving ourselves with bread for dinner or oats will just not do. We need meat, meat and meat. :P
Stim-boat!
The ingredients
Balls, balls, and balls. There's a reason for all these balls. Men are egoistic creatures anyway. n_nBasically we were a bit tad full from all the eating and mucnching before we call it a day in Deepavali. The next day was the visit days for us. Half of the students here will be going to Sabak Bernam district and the other half would be visiting in the Kuala Selangor district (Tg Karang is in Kuala Selangor district, for your information). For each half, there are 3 groups visiting different aspects of health community areas, namely the district hospital, District Health Office, and lastly the community and rural clinics.
Well, Caryn, Stella and I (Me, stella, and Caryn; a better preposition for a more self-centered direction) are in the same group, so we were visiting the district health office. When we say visit, we did not merely stay in the comfort of the air-conditioned office. We have to follow their activities as well, namely field work. So, off we go travelling to and fro on the natural air-conditioned bus. The bus moves, the windy air-cond works. The bus stops, it's hot like hell inside.
The natural air-conditioned bus
The Health District Office in Kuala SelangorBasically, we'd followed them almost everywhere if you'd asked me. Not really, but the mere exaggeration does not make any difference in perspective. On the first day(Tues), we'd followed them investigating dengue cases, abating, house inspection for Aedes, and fogging. On Wednesday, we followed the BAKAS (Bekalan Air dan Kebersihan Alam Sekeliling) on a tour around the village areas, hunting for ancient relics of sanitization (No kidding). We learned from the officers the sewage system, water supply system as well as waste disposal system. It's pretty impressive if you'd asked me, though I'd prefered the modern toilets.
House inspection for Aedes 'hot spots' and abatingTalking about Aedes, it is the ignorance that causes it to happen. Even when a house was struck down by dengue, the neighbors were still ignorant and refuse to allow cleaning of possible Aedes breeding spots. Even the house directly next to the dengue-struck house did not bother and lock themselves in to prevent fogging to be done effectively, and at the same time providing sanctuary to the Aedes mosquitoes. How nice of them to the Aedes mosquitoes, that I believe that they must have been practising Buddhism to some extent!
The paddy fields make nice scenery
The old waste disposal system requiring burning in an enclosed system which was banned later on due to air pollution.
The students took some time to snap photos whenever possible. Lolz..
An old waste disposal system as well. Currently not in use apart from being a stand of decoration by its owner. Creative!
A sink with the drainage system passing a 'filter system'(far behind) before being drained off into the river.
Does this look like a normal squatting toilet?
It is not!! The cylinder behind it holds all the secrets of the dung. What we see is just one third of the cylinder, as it is dug deep inside. It takes more than a person's lifetime to fill it with dung(even if he does it thrice a day), since the processing system in it makes dung compacted into a filling of around 1 inch cube a day for a usage of 4-5 persons.
The narcissist toilet! The no-hold barrier applies as the narcissist tries to take on the center stage even in the toilet. Or perhaps, you can try covering your face, so that no one would recognise you. :P
The cover for the underground pit where the narcissist's dung is drained into. A new pit had to be dugged up when this pit is full. The old pit, try planting some fruit and you'll get a big fat harvest from all the fertilizer. :PThe third day was about communicable disease, so we'd followed around for TB contact tracing. It must be difficult for the health officers to do their work all thanks to those gimmick salesmen that should be hanged dead. We followed the health officers to a house to do contact tracing, only to find no one there. The house was practically silent for the whole 15 minutes when we were there knocking and calling.
Well, that was until I'd told a passing neighbor that the guy who had TB did not finish his treatment (I had no idea why we were there initially anyway, so I crapped something serious) and the neighbor was so worried she just went in and use a broomstick to dig the keys in the house to open it.
And voila! There are a village of people inside unveiled, transforming the house with some lively atmosphere. An illusionist's act indeed. And just to find out that this was the patient's daughter's house where the patient had not even stayed here before. So, it was fruitless afterall. The case was referred to Sabak Bernam district since that patient is residing in Sekinchan.
Friday is all about food safety and quality control. We were taught all procedures and regulation required to be met by food premises as well as hawkers. the afternoon was a lecture with Dr Azmi on statistics and how the previous students fared. A good indicator if you'd asked me, on how well we would perform if we do slack.
And surveys, yeah, we are on it now. we are doing 2 surverys, one is for ourselves, and the other is the National RESTU survey. We'd to do Kg Sungai Gulang-Gulang and cover the area from house to house. The houses are scattered apart, and the distance from each house can be up to 200-300 meters. Some are clustered, and some are just 50m apart. All makes it harder to survey, and we did see some villagers driving away after rejecting our request for surveys, with the 'busy' reason, such as to avoid us. It's kind of hillarious actually, to see them doing to such extent.
In the RESTU survey which was one inch thich, all we did was having some fun asking some lengthy and useless questions at times when we can fill them ourselves. Some questions even asked about whether they eat Ayam kari, Ayam rendang, Ayam Percik or any other ayams. Can't they like just ask if anyone eating ayam? It's just like a menu in the restaurant, even with the Mamak menu there for all types of rotis, thosais, and naans, as well as vegetables. This is just plain ridiculous most of the time.
Anyway, we are halfway done, so hopefully this would do for now. There are 5 more weeks in Tanjung Karang, so hopefully, we'll be finishing it. I'm looking forward towards the Mobile Clinic thing, which would be the first time done (replacing Program Tindakan), so we get to practise our clinical skills alongside qualified doctors. This might be cool anyway. :P
In the meantime, see you later!! Signing off....
ok.. now i know why i hated JKM. =P
heard there's no prog tindakan for u guys. lucky ppl..
hopefully no... wahaha.. but well, each have their own problems... heard u've no RESTU, which is like, so cool since there's so little in the booklet of surveys you all had. :P
i remembered we had to do 2 surveys too! but it wasn't as detailed as RESTU though..
i think JKM is a good eye-opener, for city gals like me who never been to the kampung... we learnt a lot, well, correction: i learnt a lot... and it was fun following then aedes team, counting aedes larva, fogging, visiting factories, BAKAS, orang asli homes, etc.. and the limitations of a health clinic and district hospital... never realised all that until i see them for my eyes at JKM...
and we had a lot of fun, back then... haha! those were the days.. enjoy your JKM ya!
It's nice you nice to go jalan2 outside. We engineering students are stuck in the campus all semester. Oh btw...I do not wish to see what is in the cylinder