Anaesthetist misbehaviour

Question is, why did the surgeon and team not object to this?

Patients often depend on their appointed surgeon to choose the anaesthetist.



From Straits Times —

SINGAPORE – An anaesthetist who walked out of the operating theatre several times to take calls from other patients while another in his care was undergoing surgery has been suspended for 2½ years, the Singapore Medical Council said on Tuesday.

During the operation in 2016, the patient suffered a complication when a blood clot blocked oxygen from his lungs, an event known as a pulmonary embolism. He was successfully resuscitated by a team of doctors, but died the following day.

The Singapore Medical Council’s disciplinary tribunal said the patient’s chances of surviving the embolism was very low. But that chance may have been further lowered by Dr Islam Md Towfique’s delay in recognising the changes in the patient’s vital signs and consequent delay in taking action.

Dr Islam told the tribunal it was common practice for anaesthetists to leave the operating theatre for short periods of time.

The patient, 64, had surgery performed at Gleneagles Hospital on a fracture caused by his bone marrow cancer on Sept 1, 2016. Given his age, obesity, prior heart problems and cancer, he was “considered a high anaesthetic risk patient”, said the tribunal. 

During the operation, his oxygen reading fell below 90 per cent, “into the 80s and 70s”. Normal range for blood oxygen level is between 96 per cent and 99 per cent. Despite that, the oxygen given to the patient was not increased.

Hospital parent firm Parkway Pantai Ltd said in a letter to Dr Islam that “increasing the oxygen delivery is one of the first few actions that an anaesthetist should initiate when a patient’s SpO2 falls, and yet for almost 50 minutes, with the SpO2 either un-recordable or in an unacceptable range, this remedial action was not taken”.

M1 SunPerks Rewards Not Rewarding Enough

SunPerks is M1's reward programme for M1 mobile (including Corporate Individual), broadband and M1 IDD residential fixed line customers.

M1 boldly advertises — "With every $1 spent on M1 bills, you will earn 1 SunPerks point".

M1 goes on to say — "You may use the points to redeem rewards. Every point is a reward!"


However, "you will earn" does not necessarily translates to "you will get to redeem".


For example, after 2 years of contract, this is what a 500-GB Fibre-plan subscriber would get:-

$29* per month x 24 months = TOTAL $696 = TOTAL 696 SunPerks rewards points.
*2020 price has since increase to $29.90.


Here's the Catch: M1's minimum points for redemption is 900 points, that is to redeem a $5 off Fibre Broadband Bill Plan Subscription per month for 2 months.




After two whole years, for those on lower value plans, there is nothing to redeem.

M1 should be more transparent about this, right at the beginning on a contract, or re-contract.

Feedbacks for M1 to halve it to 450 points, in order to allow customers to redeem a $5 off Fibre Broadband Bill Plan Subscription per month for 1 month (instead of 2 months), has so far fallen on deaf years.

For some of us, after two years of anticipation, the SunPerks just acts as a tease.

Circles Life Bill Waiver Benefits

Almost sign up for a cheaper mobile plans, as our Circles.Life's porting benefits of $10 subsidy per month for a year has ceased.

Now, instead of $18 for 20-GB, we have to pay $28 per user.

In the process of checking how to exit from Circles.Life, we realized that they have automatically applied a $10 Bill Waiver benefit from 28/04/2020 to 01/04/2021.

How proactive!

The benefit should be extended even after the COVID situation has stabilized, if competitive choices are still flooding the market.  Otherwise it makes more sense for the consumer to head for better deals elsewhere.

Irresponsible Cab Driver - Part 2

Infected again!  By yet another taxi driver who cough badly and spread his germs to us.

After our bed-ridden experience from one "Irresponsible Cab Driver" in 2015, we encounter yet again another one who was coughing so badly that the taxi swerved as he fought to control the wheels while struggling to suppress his cough with even more sweets and then eventually, giving his cough the all-out blast, bombing the whole cab!  We were travelling on a highway, so it would be a distance before we can call him to a halt - by which time, we would have reached the destination. 

We were so shocked that none of us thought to ask him to open the windows to let the germs out.

That would have been the regular reaction, except this time, we got distracted trying to make out what he was mumbling under his breath.  He was not only sick, he appears demented, and we thought it wiser to try to make out what he was talking to himself, in case he got agitated by us wanting to abort the trip or making any changes. 

True enough, just as the taxi reached the end of the highway, he mumbled: "Suicide lah (cough! cough!)"

Another poor victim

By then, we were nearing the end (of the destination; not our end, thankfully).  We got out of the taxi in a jiffy.

That's it!

Since there is no law to prevent taxi drivers from working while suffering from cough and flu, we will remember to ask all future taxi drivers if they are suffering from this ailment before we board.   

Another few days of being bedridden and the lost productivity is no joke, not to mention the need for another round of antibiotics as we got quite badly infected, coughing till the throat became raw and inflamed.

Spreading of disease by taxi drivers who are obviously sick, yet choose to drive for money without consideration for public health, should be made an offence.

ShopBack Click-bait

ShopBack is copying Qoo10.

When googling, we try to avoid clicking on Qoo10 urls because whatever opens up shows no semblance to the topic searched.

In ShopBack's case, they put tantalising keywords to hook customers into clicking the email.

But when you click in response to the Subject title, you have to run through a whole list of vendors and you still could not find the topic at hand.

As a recent example, they blast out: "Want 20GB free data?"

This only leads to advertisement for an assortment of vendors' products.

Time-wasters!  Subject has nothing to do with content.
Or if it is there, they make sure you click every other links before finding it.

Popular Sale To Avoid

Not going to be tricked again.

Popular sale at Singapore Expo has always been good.

But we avoid Popular's BookFest@Singapore no matter what the lure.  2 hours-long cashier queue cleverly hidden by partitions - even during off-peak sales hours.

Once bitten, twice shy.

Want us to be repeat customers?

Nah.  Not going to happen.

Immunity for marital rape being reviewed

Today's Headline: Immunity for marital rape being reviewed

Married women should have same protection from violence as unmarried women: Minister


'Married women should have the same access to protection from violence as unmarried women, Social and Family Development Minister Tan Chuan-Jin said yesterday. To that end, the Government is "actively reviewing" the issue of marital immunity for rape, and will give an update once it is completed.'

'In one of the firmest statements from the Government on the subject, Mr Tan emphatically told Parliament that violence against women is "unequivocally wrong".'

'Although married persons have conjugal rights over each other, such rights should be exercised within reasonable behaviour," he told the House during a debate on a proposal to express support for women's aspirations in Singapore.'



This is one of those things in life we expect to already have been in effect.

Surprised to see that in this day and age, it still requires a minister to point out that the law needs a review towards reality.

There remains a lot of slack in marital laws around the world.

Husband who steal from wife; wife who steal from husband - there's still loopholes, when the law does not allow the distinction between the act of thievery over that of conjugal sharing of properties, just become one becomes married.  It is left to the judge to commiserate and each party hopes the judge rule in their favour.  In such a scenario, you are left with 2 choices: suffer or divorse.  Then, if the other party resists a consensual divorce, and you end up filing the divorce, there are some countries which requires that the party who initiates the divorce must pay alimony. Spouse steals from you, and spouse gets rewarded with alimony! The irony! There are records - google the news - whereby battered wives, forced to divorse to escape abusive husbands, were ordered by courts to pay the abusive parties since they initiated the divorce.

By its requirement to register it today, a degree of legality seeps into every act of marriage. It's all good when it's all good.  But once it turns, that's the time many find out how the law works or don't work. 

Whenever protective elements or provisions in the laws are missing, victims can find themselves in a "Hotel California" situation where "You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave."