Today I had a real conversation with my neighbour, for the first time since we came back from Shanghai! That’s 8 years ago. Whaow.

He’s a 70 plus year old grandfather who likes to garden. Anyway we usually say hi to each other when I get back home in the evenings. That’s when he’s re-potting plants and… doing other things that gardeners do. Regrettably, my limited gardening knowledge consists of talking encouragingly to a cactus.

He told me that before we left, he used to play with me. I would be wheeled over in my pram for walks around the neighbourhood.

It’s always weird when people talk about you in a pram. “Do you remember?” he asked me. He had that same reminiscent smile on his face that we get when we talk about the cute babies in KKH. Of course I had to disappoint – I can’t remember anything about my time in a pram.

“And you’re in medical school now, right? 2nd year? Or is it 3rd year?” So I told him, and he got that wistful smile again and said, “Wow, it’s hard to believe. Time flies.”

And it was a cliched thing to say but it struck me as so true. Here was a man who, 20 years ago, was working (as a radiographer, incidentally) to support his family. And every now and again a little boy would be wheeled past his gate in a pram. Now that same boy was walking by as a medical student, almost a doctor. In those 20 years my elderly neighbour had probably accumulated a wealth of experience, knowledge, and wisdom – but in the instant he said “time flies” he probably meant, with all sincerity, that it seemed like those 20 long years had gone by so very swiftly.

So I got back home and sat on the sofa and thought, in a few decades, when I’m the one saying to the young student, ”time flies” – what will I mean by it?

Today at the Holland V bus stop I bumped into this M1 who had been to On Call Night. She said medicine was proving harder than she’d anticipated. I told her that M1 was a fun year and that stress in M1 was usually self-inflicted, so to try not to stress herself out.

Immediately after I boarded the bus I thought, what a useless piece of advice. It’s not as though she can act on it, hindsight is 20/20, and I’m not that much older anyway. Maybe I should have said, don’t forget to have a life.

I remember when we were in M1, the M4s seemed so old. And I can see, now, how the M1s might see us as such. But really, we’re not that much older – it’s just that the past year has grown us by experience.

And so now I’m at the stage where I’m old enough to appear serious about life, but still too young to have any idea of how to handle it.

Recently I’ve had this foot in my mouth. It’s stinking up the place, really.

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