30+ telling-off 50+ for bullying 70+

Something interesting happened at lunch today. I, a 30-something, told off 2 ladies, in their fifties, for bullying 2 ladies in their seventies.

I was at lunch at HDB Hub's basement food court. It was filled with the lunchtime crowd. I could hardly find a place for myself, a solo diner. Then I spotted a place at 2 adjoining tables. Table 1 with seats L1, L2, R1 and R2 and table 2 with seats L3, L4, R3 and R4.

L1 L2 L3 L4
R1 R2 R3 R4

R1 and R2 were taken up by 2 young ladies in office wear. The lady at R1 told me that L1 and L2 were also taken. L3, L4 and R4 were taken up by a family of 4 who were about to finish their lunch and R3 was vacated by one of their child. I asked the parents if I could occupy R3, despite the table being almost full of dirty dishes. The parents kindly shared their table with me. Soon enough the family completed their meal and left the table.

A lady, who looked like she was in her fifties and dressed in office wear, came over to asked me if seat R4 was taken. I indicated that she could have the seat. Then she went off to buy her lunch. She returned with her soupy meal, left it on the table and went off again to buy something else. Then she returned to her R4 seat. Let's call her Lady 50A.

Then 2 elderly ladies, dressed in casual, came by. They looked like they were in their seventies. One of them, facing me and Lady 50A, asked if they could occupy seats L3 and L4. I nodded that they could have the seats. Both of them sat down. Let's call the one sitting at L3 Lady 70A and the other sitting at L4 Lady 70B. Lady 50A did not make any remark.

Lady 70B decided to buy her food, leaving Lady 70A to reserve seat L4 for her with small plastic bag of things on the table. After a while, a friend of Lady 50A came by and stood next to seat L4. Let's call her Lady 50B. Lady 50B chatted briefly about the food with Lady 50A. Then Lady 50B turned to face Lady 70A, who was sitting at L3. Lady 50B pointed to seat L2 and said the following to Lady 70A.

“你坐那遍。我剛才坐那遍，你可以坐那遍。” ["You sit there. I sat there just now, you can sit there."]

To think that all 5 of us (I, Lady 50A, Lady 50B, Lady 70A and Lady 70B) are Chinese and the typical Chinese emphasis on value of respecting one's elders. I kept quiet, waiting for Lady 50A to correct her friend. Instead I was stunned by the deafening silence from Lady 50A and the "this is my seat" serious look on the face of Lady 50B.

Without complaining, Lady 70A moved over to seat L2. Lady 50B sat down on L4. Both Lady 50A and Lady 50B started eating lunch and chatting as if nothing had happened. These two 50-something professional looking ladies spoke in fluent English to each other, not Singlish. I looked at Lady 70A and gave her an apologetic smile, indicated to her with my eyes darting to Lady 50B and shook my head. Chinese body language for “那個人沒家教”。[Literary, "That person has no family upbringing."] Sometime later, Lady 70A moved further to seat L1 and her friend Lady 70B sat at another table, to the left of R1.

After a while, Lady 50B got up from her seat to get something from the stalls. To avoid Lady 50A from “丟臉” ["losing face"]， I took this opportunity while her friend was not around and feedback to her,

"Next time you should have informed that you are reserving the table for 3. We are all here to find a place for lunch, we should be kind to each other."

"My friend was sitting at there (pointing vaguely to the direction of L1 and L2). When I came over, I was expecting to be sitting alone." was her lame defence. By then, her friend Lady 50B returned and indicated with her body language to Lady 50A "what's going on?"

I looked at her and repeated, "I was just telling your friend that next time she should have informed that she was reserving the table for 3. Don't demand that an elderly moves from her seat."

"But I offered my seat to her", Lady 50B retorted, raising her voice in her defence.

"You should not demand that she moves over. She an elderly. You could offer your seat, but not demand that she moves."

Lady 50B insisted that she offered her seat. Is her command of the Chinese language so poor that she doesn't know how to offer her seat to an elderly in a polite manner? Even then, is her body language so lousy that she doesn't know how to smile when making a request? Then Lady 50B sat down, ate her lunch and started talking to Lady 50A as if nothing had happened. Lady 50B decided to adopt the "ignore the nuisance" (aka me) strategy.

I turned to Lady 50A and repeated, "Next time you should inform that you are reserving the table for 3."

Lady 50A whined, "I was expecting to eat alone". I'm not convinced. If that were true, why didn't she tell her friend not to bully an elderly lady into giving up the seats? The only logical conclusion I could come to was that she did not see anything wrong with her friend's bullying and played along so as to have a nice face-to-face seating for her lunchtime chat with her friend. Anyway, after my final sentence, she became quieter and less participative in her conversation with Lady 50B.

I finished lunched quickly and left the table without further words. Fifty-somethings in Singapore often lament the lack of traditional values in the younger set. It is perhaps time for them to look into the mirror.

Great work colleagues

I had a relatively good workday today despite the hectic workload. Took the team near the nurses' counter. Started with 7 patients, then 2 admissions and 1 discharge during my shift. 2 more new admissions at the end of the shift.

I attribute my "good workday" to my great work colleagues. SN L was in-charge, SN O was taking the other team, SEN S (from the adjoining ward) was assigned to be my runner and SEN MY was the runner for SN O. SEN L from the morning shift handed over several outstanding items to be followed-up. I admitted one of the new patients. SN L, SN O and SEN S helped me with the admissions-related work, 1 discharge, some doctors' rounds and IV insertion. Thus, I managed to finished the work on time, taped the handover report and had dinner while the night shift staff were taking report.

SN L is amazing. She stays calm, polite and supportive despite her heavy workload. I hope that she will go far in her career. SN O has good skills, is a careful and observant nurse. In addition, she is supportive of others where possible. She was from the same course as mine, 2 batches before me. I really love working with these 2 professionals. SEN S is a stark contrast with SEN MY. She automatically answers call-bells regardless of whichever team the patient was from. In addition, she shows initiative in admitting a new patient and offers to assist me with my 4 nebulization (although I did not need her help with that today). To top it all, she did all her work in good spirit without complaining.

Online fortune cookie

Sometimes when I am bored or stressed and not keen on meditating, I crack an online fortune cookie. One of the more memorable ones goes,

"Always remember that people may not necessarily want to hurt you. They may be acting the best they can given that current situation in that point in time."

IELTS result

Received my IELTS result today. I'm glad that it's good enough for my migration plans and application for nursing overseas. However, in order to register as a nurse overseas, I would need my current employer's reference. This would be tricky as I have yet to be confirmed at my current job. In addition, I still need a lot of support from my colleagues given my limited nursing experience. As an ex-lecturer put it, once people know you have an opportunity to leave, they may react in surprising ways -- sometimes positive and frequently negative. She suggested thinking of a life-choices excuse to reduce negative reactions.

My IELTS overall band score is 8, in a range of lowest 0 to highest 9. The various components are: listening 8.5, reading 9, writing 7.5 and speaking 7.5. Except for a brief lapse in attention during the listening test, I found reading and listening tests easy. For the writing test, I found it slightly challenging as speed is not my forte and I am losing touch with the occasionally-used vocabulary. I had fun during the speaking test. However, I wasn't sure if my casual conversational style -- frequent use of partial phrases instead of full sentences -- would affect my results. Thus, I am quite pleased with my results. [Note: "Quite" here refers to "very", as in the British usage of the word.]

Another thing is that my IELTS results contrast with the evaluations of my English standard by an ex-nursing lecturer [Note: different person from the above ex-lecturer] who graded my nursing essays. She commented that I have a poor standard of English. Granted that in a bad emotional state, I wrote off-topic in my first essay submission to her. However, my subsequent essays were also judged to be poor to average by her. My self-justifying rationale is that my writing style is not what she likes. My writing is heavily influenced by the traditional English style of long descriptive sentences. E.g. Agatha Christie's mystery fiction. In addition, she prefers the use of simple generic vocabulary, whereas I was trained to use precise vocabulary, where available, over generic words. Thus, I gave up expecting good grades on essays submitted to her. My hypothesis was that like the evaluation of Art, the evaluation of English is very subjective unless one is professionally trained as evaluators in that field. Considering that the only preparation I did was to tune-in to BBC radio (British Broadcasting Corporation) regularly one week before the IELTS test, I consider the IELTS evaluation indicative of my usual standard of English. Perhaps this is just my self-serving bias.

3 months old

Back to work today after a 1+ week long break.

The ward manager (NO) was in-charge, doing double shift today. SEN L and I were taking teams, HCA K and SEN MY were runners for each team respectively. Was assigned the team with the single rooms (far from the nursing station), with 8 patients in relatively stable condition today. However, there was incessant interruptions to deal with issues from the patients in the other team and the adjoining ward.

I noticed a difference in the attitudes of SEN L and HCA K compared with 1 month ago.

• SEN MY still habitually refuses to do whatever she considers as not her work. As a result, HCA K gets annoyed with her. E.g. SEN MY expects others to cover her duties while she is taking her break, but she refused (or at least drags her feet) when it comes to covering for others while they are having their breaks.
• For the past few weeks before I went on leave, HCA K has been half-joking about SEN L being the NO's favourite, and that she has never been seen SEN L being scolded by the NO. Putting SEN L and HCA K together in a team results in some tension.
• In addition for the couple of weeks before I went on leave, SEN L had been mentioning about learning another skill to change her line. For some reason, SEN L was rather bo-chap today, even had to have me covering some of her work while she has already completed her taped report and taken her dinner (when I had not even had the time for either). Perhaps working in the front team with the NO on her back got to her nerves. I do not know.

What I have observed is that ward interpersonal dynamics are a challenge to manage.