On Desanguination

Feeling moved by the spirit of Christmas to give something to someone other than myself, I went down to the blood bank at the Health Sciences Authority today to give blood. They obviously value donors: from the very start to finish it was a charm offensive all the way. I've never had so many nurses smile at me before. I bet even when I was an infant-in-arms they scowled at me. The receptionist was unsuually cheerful, calling everyone 'dearie' and gleefully handing out forms to fill in. Of course, given the recent cases of men being charged for donating HIV-tainted blood, all this charm has a dagger behind its back should you compromise the system. And all the literature (innumerable pamphlets that would later take turns to slide off my lap when I reclined on the chair) stresses this point, while never failing to be enthusingly grateful for the volunteer's donation.

But all that aside, my other primary reason for going down was to accustom myself to the feeling of a canula into my vein in preparation for the dreaded medic course I'll have to go for next month. With respect to sharp objects poking into me and the sight of blood, I was not to be disappointed. After the medical interview (wherein I found that I had gained 5 kilograms from the last time I checked), a nurse came (or rather I went to a nurse) to do a haemoglobin test, which consisted of stapling my finger to draw a drop of blood into a capillary tube and then shaking that drop into a beaker of blue solution which already had several other drops of blood floating within. The nurse who performed this procedure was an extremely pale lady, and it didn't help her complexion that she wore a light yellow blouse with a white disposable medical gown over it. When she put on her white latex gloves she seemed almost bloodless. After conducting the test she retired again to a small, dark anteroom. One wonders.

In the donation room itself were rows of reclining chairs lined up, with a few people already giving blood. I was seated down and a few nurses, finding that it was my first time, came to fawn over me. It's okay, a senior one said, it's just like an ant bite, not pain. Yes, ant bite, said another who was ministering to the donor in the chair beside mine, elephant ant; Godzilla ant. She laughed and quickly added, no no just joking, see this man? Your first time but this he has done this 28 times already. Not pain, right? He nodded, no, not pain. I suspected conspiracy. I felt a cool prodding on the inside of my arm, could this be it? I faced away and closed my eyes. She was reassuring: don't worry just swabbing your arm with disinfectant, to kill the germs, I explain to you what I'm doing. It's okay, I replied, just don't tell me when you stick it in, if I don't know I won't feel anything. You don't want me to talk to you, she asked? No, I clarified, just don't tell me when you stick the needle in. Okay, I won't.

Some time later I looked at my arm again and saw that she was preparing a syringe, this had to be the anaesthetic. Okay I need to inject you now, local anaesthetic so you won't feel the pain, look away now. I felt a prick and the usual odd feeling of having something shot into you and very soon the area was numb. A few moments later and she seemed to be pressing a pad onto my arm; was it done yet? I looked and saw the hugeass needle waiting to be stuck inside and quickly looked away. Goodness, what have I done? Okay, done now, she said to me cheerfully and patted me on the arm. I looked. The joint between my vein and the tube was covered tastefully with a piece of gauze, so I was spared the distressing site. I was given a ball to squeeze regularly (like this, she squeezed the ball gently, not like the way you did just now, she crushed the ball) and left to ponder the consequences of my actions. My right arm occupied I couldn't do anything but ponder the post-donation pamphlet. Their hotline number was circled: if at anytime you have doubts and wish to withdraw your blood from use, please call this number. They stressed that it was anonymous. I considered the fact that of the men who were charged, surely a few had come to this same centre, seen the same jolly cheerful faces, been given the same free calendar and milo. Perhaps one of them might have even sat in the same chair. I turned back to look at the tube carrying blood from my arm to a bag quickly being filled below. Blood, in such quantity, seemed less red than purple, a thick opaque syrup being drawn out of my body by a pump somewhere behind me. I looked at the bag and wondered if I were shot or slashed how much blood would I lose? If the blood in the bag which I've donated today were taken out and splashed around, how blood-spattered would the room be? How much blood need a man lose to die? (Say if the needle got stuck, the bag were leaking, and I fell asleep.) The tube ran over my hand before looping downwards to the bag. It was curious to feel the warmth of the blood, my blood. Somehow my subconscious expected it to be cold or at room temperature, not warm, so obviously ex corpori vivo. It's warm, I told the nurse. Of course, she said, it's from your body. My arm felt cold from the air conditioning. When it was all done (I winced when she pulled out the needle but I felt no pain, only a strange soreness) she let me feel the heft of the bag of blood in my hand. See, she told me, it's warm. After pressing a piece of gauze into the puncture wound (I still hadn't seen it, only when I went home and removed the dressing would I see it was a small nondescript puncture with barely enough space for a scab.) for five minutes, it was dressed up with a bright green dinosaur compress and I was good to go. I said goodbye to the veteran on my left and looked for the exit. While having my free hot milo at the cafe just outside the door, I looked at the list of veteran donors from the '80s and '90s, on a board hung on the wall. Curiously enough, not a single female name was to be found! Hopefully times are a-changing. In the room with me were two makciks quietly going through the process, regulars I suppose from their lack of fuss. The nurse asked me if I'd be back again. Considering how painless it was, perhaps I shall. But the next time I'll do the other arm, for symmetry's sake.

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Those who are interested in donating blood can check out the HSA's website. The blood bank is located in the HSA building, opposite the road from Outram Park MRT. Closed on Mondays and public holidays.

Today's Dessert

The pasta and the salad bombed; the dessert was somewhat better received. The recipe:

Ingredients:
Vanilla ice-cream
A large, sweet pear
Cinnamon

Method:
Slice pear and arrange decoratively upon bowl, and scoop ice cream upon it. Grate a stick of cinnamon upon the setup and serve frosty.

Almost laughably simple but then it's usually over-elaboration that results in failed recipes. Like my salad. I was originally intending to use ciku fruit instead of pear, but they were out of season, so I had to settle for something similarly sandy in texture. Ciku might have worked better because it's sweeter and softer, and its unique honeyed flavour would be a worthy counterpoint to the gentle highlights of cinnamon and vanilla.

Passing the Bar

This is for Sel. (With apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson.)

Sunset and evening star
And one clear call for you!
And may there be no groaning of the bar
When you seek to join it too

But all the firms you're passing seem too full
Too full for lawyers new
When those who fresh from out the college school
Out-ward issue

Twilight and evening bell
The jobscape seems so dark!
You close your eyes to shut those fears of hell
When you embark

For tho' from out your class of Sex and Race
Your books may bear you far
You've yet to see the Real World face to face
When you have passed the bar

Marathon Day

Met a lot of people yesterday and today, hence proving what a small world it is.

At Holland Village, while waiting to meet Audrey to get the ticket for the night's Law Bash (where the ratio of boys to girls corresponded roughly to SAF doctrine, i.e. 4:1), I bumped into Ian who was there to get his haircut. We walked a few rounds around the Village and talked about what everyone from our class was doing now. It was great catching up, also because it was so unexpected. Met Adrian too, who was also meeting Audrey, and we had a long army boy talk about army stuff while waiting at Coffee Club. Audrey managed to convince Adrian to buy a ticket to the party and so we went down to Clarke Quay, though first dropping by Adrian's place. On the train at Chinatown station I saw Mr Chua who was out with his wife and youngest son, of all people. He's flying off tomorrow to Xiamen on a trip with Prof Ben Tan so it was even more unlikely that I'd bump into him. We had dinner at this pasta place at Robertson Walk; I had gnocchi done in the restaurant's proprietary way and it was quite nice, just slightly spicy. After dinner we spent a pretty long time waiting outside the bar for people to come, because Audrey was supposed to pass them their tickets. Among the surprise encounters were my 'first friend' (Eugene) and Lt. Khairil, who'd long since finished his service but still has the same loud nasal voice. Having heard it so much on Tekong, I tried to stay out of his way as much as possible. Later that night I bumped into David Pflug who was also quite alarmed to see that Khairil was around. But the biggest surprise of the night was meeting Pamela (Tham) again on the dance floor; she was with a few girl friends of hers and was, I think, quite surprised to see me too. I'd caught a glimpse of her earlier while having dinner but wasn't too sure if it was indeed her. She'll be leaving to study in Australia soon, so it's also fortunate that I saw her before she left.

I left pretty early, around one in the morning and went to Sgt Samuel's place to camp overnight before the run this morning. Changed out of my smokey clothes and slept on a mattress that he had in his room. We left around five for the start point, after a breakfast of eggs and a bun kindly provided by his mother. Surprisingly it wasn't as chaotic at the start point as I'd thought it'd be, possibly because the marathoners were separated from the half-marathoners and the 10 km runners. At any rate it was still a pretty large crowd (6500 people) and the music they were playing to psyche us up was disturbingly similar to that at the party last night. The run itself was great, though extremely painful. Somewhere along the way in Marina South I saw Sarah Ng running in the opposite direction as I looped back from the turning point; she was running the half marathon. I called out to her at the same time as another person behind me but I think she didn't notice. Other sightings include Vivian Balakrishnan, who was running 10 km with his bodyguard, and the blind half-marathoner Henry Wanyoike and his friend and guide Joseph Kibunja who were running hand in hand the whole way, stride for stride. Henry came in ahead of Joseph by only one second, and they went up to the podium to accept their medals together after the race was over. There's a short writeup on Henry in today's Straits Times for those who are curious.

By the 33rd kilometer my legs were giving way and cramping painfully, so I had to stop and stretch. Stopping was the worst thing that I could do but I felt that I had no choice. After stopping it was very hard to get running again and the temptation to simply walk the whole way back was strong. But I remembered the promise I made to myself to push all the way, and started jogging again, though it was more of a shuffle than a jog. After some time I managed to run through the cramp and open up my stride again. This lasted for about 2-3 km before the cramps came and I had to stop and walk once more. The last ten kilometers were hence an alternation between stopping and starting: stopping when the road appeared long and bleak and starting when the marshallers and pretty cheerleaders pipped up my morale. Somewhere along the Kallang River, at the stretch leading underneath the Sheares bridge I had the strongest sense of deja vu because that was exactly the place where I felt like giving up during last year's Sheares Bridge Run. But this year I can at least tell myself that my performance has improved: where last year's run was only 10 km, this year's was 42. The last two kilometers stretched out into 20 minutes of hellish battle with myself. I'd no hope remaining of finishing under 4 hours when I hit the 40 km mark at 4 hours. Likewise I'd no more energy to keep up the same pace of 1 km per five minutes that I'd been trying to keep for the whole race. In the end my average timing per km over the whole race was closer to 6:15. Eventually I managed to struggle through and by the time I hit the Esplanade, I was running again and no longer stopped to walk. I rounded the corner and for the last 200 metres, the road was straight and terminated in the endpoint gantry. Just then the Lemur song from the movie Madagascar played up and I thought well what the heck and sprinted the last stretch as fast as I could. My own hand-timed result was 4:24:28, not as good as I'd hoped but still passable for a first timer. The official result, though, would probably be longer becasue I started timing when I passed through the start gantry but the race had already begun before that; I was somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Along the route there were water points at every 2 kilometers and each point was literally strewn with empty bottles flung to the wayside by runners who'd taken their drink on the go. I tried my best to throw the bottles into dustbins or trash bags though, but sometimes I did miss the target. I took at least one or two bottles of water at each waterpoint, to cool off my head and to drink, as the day got progressively hotter, in all totalling almost 30 bottles. Aside from my own two packets of powergel I brought along for the run, I also picked up one of the free packets they were distributing at the 26 km mark, consuming three packs in all. Sgt CK also was waiting for us at the 16 / 33 km point with cans of Red Bull and I took two of those too. Hence all in all I have to admit that I had a lot of help for this race, without which I'd probably not have completed it. It was an amazing experience, though I'm not sure if I'm up to doing it again. Next year when this date comes round again (less than a week from my ORD) I hope to be more prepared. This year's training programme was useful, for certain, but somehow I felt it wasn't quite enough. It was a good run, but hopefully next year's will be even better.