Another day, another chapter.

It has been...what? Week number....? You know, everything seemed to be the same. Checking the COVID update, going to work, make sure to adhere to the new SOP, keep myself sane by occupying myself with my favourite things: Books, writing, drawing, rinse and repeat in that order. Nothing new. Grocery shopping is now a little bearable. There's no more food hoarding (I hope), so things are back on the shelves again. One thing that really boomed during this whole period was online shopping and food ordering. I used to think the latter was cute until I realized, while trying to order my favourite drink - Because on that particular day, I was feeling a little lazy to go out of the hospital - and this is what it roughly says:

ALL PRICES CHARGED ARE EXACTLY THE SAME AS OUR IN-HOUSE MENU

You can't fool me with that sweet line, same goes for buying books. I'm a bookworm, I compare prices between several bookstores, so you can't fool with me with marking up a book price ridiculously high and then slapping a discount that says <insert number> discount, which is basically the normal price that everyone is retailing for. I love this drink very much and it's one of my guilty pleasures whenever I'm having a rough day. What ticked me off was they increased the price by a dollar, and to add insult, charging five whole dollars for the delivery fee. I ended up having to pay nearly double just to get the same thing that I usually do. The cheek of it. I do order some food online, but only if I'm desperate, and that's usually if there's promotions like free delivery or getting the same thing that has its price marked down. Mainly I stick to house food because I'm a picky eater.

MCO got extended and extended till around June. Slowly, life is slowly going back to normal, except with the SOP guidelines:

Social distancing
Registering with QR Scanner for tracking
MASK ON (NO MASK, NO ENTRY)
Hand washing (Sanitizing, wipes, just make sure to wash your hands)

Now that our patients are slowly coming back.... Sigh, if I thought things were bad, this is worse. As mentioned before, people had started becoming paranoid to the point where they refused to touch our skin when we need to hand charge forms to them, claiming that we are unhygienic. Some health professionals treated us as though we are expendable ("Oh, hey, make sure you guys check my patients temperature." "Aren't you all scared going near patients? What if you all get sick? What if the patient is a suspected COVID case?") When you're a healthcare professional, you always need to be in close contact with people, especially your patients, because that's our job. What we can only do is wear our mask, goggles, boost our immunity and hope for the best. I've seen people (non-healthcare professionals) outside who are so paranoid when that they stood so far away trying to take our temperature as per SOP. Jesus Christ.

The one thing I really want to stress on is why are people wearing gloves. Like why? Patients tell me, "Oh, because hospitals are the most dirtiest place in the world." I say it once, and I'll say it again till I drill it into your head. Wearing gloves are not a good solution, even the Ministry of Health says so. You touch a surface while wearing your gloves, then you touch something else wearing the same gloves, and the cycle goes on to the point where the gloves looks scary. Have you ever seen sweaty gloves? It's gross and scary-looking. Patients were quick to clap back at us: "You guys wear gloves as well." Let me emphasize this. We only wear gloves when we are doing procedures, not for hours. Ministry of Health had stressed that HAND WASHING is still the best way to reduce contamination. Furthermore, you touched so many surfaces that we don't even know whether your gloves had been contaminated or not. Those were the days where things are so simple. Health professionals advice you based on their experience, people accept. Now, everything is "Mr Google/ My friends says so..."

*This is 5 minutes after donning my gloves. Notice you can see near my thumb is getting a little sweaty.

*This is after an hour. I could go on but my hands had started to itch, so I took it off. The sweat acted like glue and my hands felt sticky. Disclaimer: Some people's hands sweat much faster.

Once again, I'm going to say this... Everyone is different. Your friend may have experienced this symptom, friend number 2 may not have the symptoms as mentioned. You can't expect to be the same. A good example would be I have a knee injury where my bones were about to rub against each other because there's no cartilage, but there's not much pain unless I do aggressive actions like running or jumping. Someone else may have the same diagnosis as me but they don't feel pain. Stop lumping everything into the same basket, and please get a consultation when in doubt.

Recently, I was reading this article online on trying to lengthen my hair and they mentioned that you need to use this serum and this vitamin otherwise your hair wouldn't grow. The mentioned products were pricey and are imported from the States. Harbouring doubt, I went to consult with my doctor who happens to be an expert in hair and he basically confirmed my doubt. There is no such thing to lengthen hair, you can only repair your hair or increase its density to make it healthy. Why I mentioned this was because I have a friend whose hair I envied. She often have to cut it because her hair grows fast, like she can cut it to chest-length and 2 weeks later, it'll be waist-length. I wished my hair could grow like that. It has been 3 months at point during MCO where I haven't cut my hair. It went from shoulder-length to nearly chest-length. I'm trying to get it to waist-length because short hair doesn't suits me at all.

On a parting note, if you can't remember to wash your hands, play this song.