053: Kindness in Budapest

Went to Budapest for a class trip during reading week. This is my first class trip since moving to England so I didn't really know what I was in for. But having no expectations did leave me open to new experiences. Chaperoned by 2 of my lecturers, we roamed the cities of Buda and Pest, discovering its unique medical history in the process. The itinerary was packed and we saw a lot: from ancient books and mummies to anatomical dissections of deformed foetuses. As I have been keeping medicine at an arm's length throughout the academic year, it was refreshing to be reunited with the medical field once again. But instead of going too deeply into the academia part of the trip, before it vanishes from my memory, I just want to jot down the stories of the 3-ish kind people I met during my short stay in the city.

Kind person(s) 1: Drivers

I cannot believe how considerate the drivers were in Budapest. They literally stop for you, even if you are jaywalking! True story: We just arrived at our hostel and the road leading up to it was a one-way narrow little road. Our huge van had to stop and unload all our luggages whilst the row of cars started to quickly increase in length. No horn sounds. To make matters worse, there was confusion on the amount agreed on payment so the driver had to make a quite lengthy phone call to confirm the details with his boss. All the drivers waited patiently until the van driver eventually parked his car on the side of the road to continue his phone call. Absolutely astounding! If this happened in London or Kuala Lumpur, there would have been a decapitated head rolling on the pavement 5 minutes in.

Kind person 2: French Matthew at the Opera

For some reason, I decided to attend my first ever opera, alone in Hungary. The Hungarian National Opera house was breathtakingly beautiful. The architecture was really lavish. I didn't have any expectations for this either. I bought the ticket for 5 euros so I thought, why not give this a try? Little did I know that I would not understand anything until the 3rd act. The opera singers were singing in Italian and the subtitles were in Hungarian. So, I sat there for the first 2 hours making up the story in my head based on the emotions portrayed on stage. And boy, were they emotive. If they are sad, it is heart breaking to watch but when they portrayed love, it was all mushy and dreamy. I guess emotions are universal and requires no medium of language.

But back to my point, I was clueless up until the 2nd intermission when I plucked up the courage to ask the guy next to me whether he knew what the story was about. Thankfully, he did! He was French so he couldn't understand anything either but he had read the synopsis online. Phew! So he spent the next 15 minutes explaining the plot to me. But to be fair, the make-believe story in my head came pretty close! ;) Then, we exchanged stories about what brought us to Budapest. He was a masters student, computer programmer who will be migrating to Canada soon, so he was travelling around Europe in the mean time. Lucky for him: he can code at any geographical location. It was definitely a good conversation and he advised me to learn Python before attempting Javascript. We only asked each others names when we were both about to leave and we parted with "It was nice to meet you!" Overall, it was a serendipitous encounter with a helpful, nice and interesting stranger!

Kind person 3: Juiceman at Budapest Airport 

I was fiddling with the remainder of my HUF coins, thinking I should definitely get rid of them before I board the plane back to London. So I was exploring the airport looking for something cheap to buy because I only had about 3 euros left. I could have bought a bar of chocolates, but really I wanted juice. And lo and behold, there was a juice bar. Freshly squeezed juice, just what I needed to ease the pain of yesterday's feverish episode. So I went to the juice bar and found out that I was HUF50 (about 15 pence) short. So I asked the guy at the counter:

"I really want a juice but I don't have enough HUFs. Can I pay the rest in GBP?"

"Do you have euros?"

"Emmm... no.."

"How much are you short?"

"HUF50"

Just when I was about to give up and pay by card, he said...

"No problem. Which juice would you like?"

I was like... no way! This has never happened to me before!

5 minutes later, I was happily sipping my banana, coconut, mango, yogurt smoothie. 

Thank you juiceman!

In summary, there are kind people out there. 

Chance encounters like these give me hope that tomorrow will be a lot better than yesterday, inshaAllah.

052: What I learnt from philosophy

It just dawned on me that half of my iBSc year has come and gone in lightning speed. Yesterday I went to my friend's birthday party, and it was there I met up with many of my medic acquaintances whom I have seldom bumped into since our academic roads diverged. I was met with this question many times, "How is it going so far, your course?"

Honestly, I cannot rave about it enough. Maybe I am the type that truly belongs in the humanities so my views mights be quite skewed, but I do feel like I won the lottery with the choice of my course. I am loving it - and I hope to take what I have learnt this year onwards into my future career (whatever that may be). If I were to sum up 5 points that I have learnt so far, it would be these:

1. You can have an opinion

Most medical students struggle with this when we enter this course because throughout our education, we, or at least I was taught to take the middle road. To not lean towards one view or one school of thought. But in philosophy, you are taught to have a stand (or backbone) and fight for your point of view. Fight, with evidence so convincing, that you'll win over supporters (namely the people reading your essay). This was clearly very new to me - because after so long passively absorbing, for once I am required to actually think! 

2. History is not fact

In the first week of the course, we had an introductory lecture with brief explanations of what is to come. One of the lecturers, Dr Reeves said something that I will remember forever. "History is not fact. History is what you interpret it to be." My initial reaction, with widened round eyes (if you have seen my small eyes, you would know how much an effort this is) was: WHAT? MY WHOLE LIFE WAS A LIE! In Malaysia, we were taught to memorise history. No negotiations, no reinterpretations, no discussion. When I learnt about how the state kings use to give up land to the British, I have always questioned how it could have been as easy as it was stated in the text books. No fighting, just "Here, my land is yours now." Proper strange - but I couldn't question what was in the text book because it was fact. So when Dr Reeves said what she said, it blew my mind! I never saw a historical book the same from then on out. I would read it from the eyes of the author, and question the "facts" in them which might be skewed to fulfil the author's personal agendas.

There you go, the truth is out kids! History is not fact. Which brings me to the next lesson...

3. Scientific facts are not facts (or truths) 

Akin to the historians, scientists have their own agendas too. In weeks of classes, I have learnt about the philosophical arguments revolving around "scientific truth", the "objectivity" in scientific data and it has been utterly fascinating. In medical school, we were fed bundles of information and we were instructed to believe in them as verified truths without questioning its authenticity. But through philosophy, I am learning about the centuries of debates that has revolved around the "right" scientific method, the amount of trust that we give to our senses and the successful trajectory of science throughout history. For instance, I wrote a 3000 word essay defending a German philosopher, van Fraassen as to me, his thoughts upholds intellectual humility which scientific practice is seriously lacking nowadays. To van Fraassen, the word "truth" should only be used on things that we can observe, while unobservables should be suspended to only being "empirically adequate". Basically, if you see it, believe it - because if you cannot see it, it might turn out to be false. So if we subscribe to van Fraassen's philosophy, we should prevent ourselves from labelling things we cannot see like electrons, atoms, radio waves as un-refutable truths, because a new theory might come along and blow everything out of the water. Don't believe me? Einstein's relativity theory threw Newtonian mechanics into a complete frenzy. And history has its ways of repeating itself.

4. Freedom is liberating and paralysing at the same time

In all of my modules, I have essays to write. And in all of them, with an exception of one this term, I was allowed to choose the essay topic. I have never been given that sort of trust or freedom before, so it felt paralysing. "Write what interests you," they said. So for my first essay, I read so many articles and books, aimlessly looking for something that interests me. When I found one that might be "the one", I abandoned it the next day for something that interested me more. It took so much time for me to commit to one topic, but when I did, I thrived. Enjoying what you are researching really makes a difference. So instead of pretending to be interested in Leonardo da Vinci, I can creatively commit to exploring the world of Salvador Dali instead. 

As the saying goes, "Love what you do. Do what you love." 

5. Thing(s) I know for sure

It suffices to say that I have grown a lot more skeptical as the years draws closer to a close. It really cannot be helped. I have realised that we are living in a human constructed world. Science, art, reason, logic and indeed philosophy are all created and developed by humans. And as fragile a person is, so too are their creations. Full of mistakes, fallible at every corner and incoherent. So, it got me thinking: what is it that I know for sure? It was this: I am going to die. Sounds very morose, but it is a fact. Life is unpredictable, but death is certain. So why do people prepare for life but neglect to prepare for death? 

In short, through my short philosophy deep dive, I have discovered that historically, people have been thirsty for one thing: truth. Philosophy's mistake is putting man (and his thoughts, his theories etc) at the centre of the study. 

If only they centred their intellectual discourses to a place where imperfection was completely absent, I would argue that they would in the end find the truth that they dedicated their lives searching for.

So I guess another thing I know for sure is: God is perfect, and therein lies the truth we all seek.

051: Dreams

My brother Raeyn and Embahyah

I have had some really weird dreams lately. Maybe its because I feel a tad unsettled since I came back to London from my winter trip back home. For the longest time, my late grandfather has not appeared in my dreams. But that day, he did. Unlike many of my dreams though, this dream was so ingrained in my memory when I awoke that it scared me.

I was in my house back home and we were having our weekly family gathering. Embahyah was there dressed in white and he was radiant. Not glowing, but exuding light. Whilst conversations were echoing in the background, I hugged Embahyah tightly. Somehow, I knew that he was leaving us - that his stay was temporary. So when he walked towards the front door, I followed him. I stood by the door and watched as he made his way outside slowly. Then suddenly, he collapsed to the floor. I ran towards him, fell to my knees and embraced him.

I woke up.

There is no doubt that I miss my grandfather terribly. After his passing, I packed my bags right away for Kenya. Since then, I don't think I have fully confronted my grief. I guess Kenya was an analogy of running away from my problems, for denial was bliss. I have recently started reading a book by a psychiatrist called, The Road Less Travelled. In his introduction, he talked about delayed gratification. Based on his experience helping the mentally ill and unstable, he said that a common theme apparent amongst his patients is that they delay "good times" and push "work" for later. We box up our problems and pretend its not there because we can't trust that gratification will come after we've dealt with the hard stuff. So instead of hoping that the good will come, we prolong and cling on to the "good" we already have now. 

Its akin to faith. Although God promises you heaven, a place infinitely much better than this world, we still prolong gratification in this world. Because our place in heaven is not guaranteed. So instead of working hard now, its ironic that we give up prematurely and leave it up to fate.

In short, I pray that Embahyah is now placed amongst those who truly believe. I love you, and always will.