Jospeh and His Amazing Technicoloured Labcoat

Every year, the 4th year medics put on a musical to raise funds for their Final Year Ball.

My first encounter with this was back in 2nd year when I was a puny little medical student.
The musical by the then 4th years was entitled Burke and Hare (yup, you got it right, the famous body snatchers of Edinburgh) and it was one word : -

Brilliant.

I remember the moment I walked out of the theatre, I immediately decided that when 4th year came, I'll definitely take part, come what may, in my year's musical, despite lacking in the singing, dancing and even stage appearance department.

But, that doesn't mean the play has got no space for me right?

Of course it does!

So, with my inch-thick skin, I dragged myself to the horribly embarrassing auditions (just a formality really) and was casted to be part of the chorus.

The many different colours of Joseph's Coat

Practices started in March, every Sunday for 3 freaking hours. 3 HOURS! And we only learn one song per week. To be honest, the chorus only has 4 songs so it really isn't that difficult. But 3 hours was required for crowd control and just to get everyone to generally shut up and listen to the directors.

Then of course, in between I skived tonnes of practices due to Easter, the retreat, my trip to Manchester etc etc. However, since my part was as minor as could be, it didn't really matter though I am positive the directors were not very happy with my absence. But I cannot help it.

Sigh, priorities, priorities.

Without further ado, let's move straight on to the play itself.

24-26 April 2008 was the debut of our musical:- Joseph and His Amazing Technicoloured Labcoat at Pleasance Theatre.


Running exclusively for 3 nights ONLY, our play can be summarised into three words:

Pretty Darn Brilliant.

Completely sold out for every single performance, with each night getting progressively more and more packed (people ended up sitting on the stairs/standing), I believe that the 4th year medics gave many of London's West End musicals a proper run for their money.

Applying make up for each other

Not only did we come up with our own script (although the idea is taken from the Bible and also a West End Musical), we also rewrote the lyrics for all the songs, had our own props, settled our own make up, hair, costumes, and of course, had our very own full blown Orchestra.

Back combing, back combing...

Well, if you have read up to here, I suppose you would like to know the story line.

So, very very briefly :-

Joseph, a transfer student from Cambridge appears amongst the high and mighty students of Edinburgh only to prove that he is smarter than them. By A Lot. He saves a patient by performing a tracheotomy (a trache- what? Go Google) and is bestowed the highest accolade that Edinburgh University gives its students - The Amazing Technicoloured Labcoat.


Now this doesn't go down too well them as really, we Edinburghans are quite an arrogant bunch. So they got poor Joseph drunk and sells him off to a Freak Show that was passing by. Hence, Joseph is down graded to a slave, and is left cleaning and scrubbing floors in the house of the Head of the Freaks.

Of course, the wife of the Head of the Freaks takes a fancy to Joseph and seduces him.

The wife and her chambermaids

And of course, they are found out by the Head (although Joseph tries his best to avoid her) and Joseph gets imprisoned. While mulling over his misfortunes, he meets a pair of Siamese Twins and lo and behold! manages to successfully separate them.

Siamese through and through

His fame reaches the ears of the Head of the Freaks once again who at that time is suffering from a very serious problem of man boobs aka moobs (aka having gynaecomastia. Google it. Alternatively, see below: )

Male boobs. Get it?

So at his wits end, the Head of the Freaks calls upon Joseph who manages to remove his boobs (by bursting it with a scalpel) and hence Joseph is promoted to the head of the General Medical Council (GMC).

Cheesy, cheesy

The Edinburgh medical students by now have graduated and having not done very well in their exams; are jobless. So they go to the GMC and begs Joseph (whom they do not recognise) to give them jobs which he does. However, Joseph having not forgotten their past, decides to test their integrity and plants a fake ear in one of the student's bags and accuses them for stealing. To his delight, they all stood up for each other and took the blame for it together.

Again, cheesy, cheesy

So Joseph then reveals himself and it is all hunky dory as the play wraps up with the song of Don't Stop Me Now by Queen.

Don't strike me off... (Don't Stop Me Now)

Although I was on stage for a total of probably 15 minutes (4 songs, about 3 plus minutes per song?) I still had loads of fun and was on a perpetual high after every night of the play.

I suppose this is the closest I'll ever get to major stage performance but I have to say I was really impressed with the quality of performers, dancers, music, singers, in fact - everything! we had.

A few really fantabulous performances include an a capella song performed by 4 very lovely boys:



Joseph singing a song when he is in prison to the song Supreme by Robbie Williams:



complete with an intro of Any Dream Will Do by our fantastic orchestra.


Now that it is all over, done and dusted, I can only hope that we made a huge fat wad of cash for our final year ball and can probably have it at the Edinburgh Castle or something.

That's aiming a bit too high though.

After all, I am a bit too old for fairytales.

PCCF Retreat 2008

1 weekend earlier than the one held last year, this year's PCCF Retreat was held in Gartmore, 20 miles out of Stirling from the 18th - 20th of April.

The house that we thought we were staying in. Hard luck.

So, as part of the organising committee, my team was scheduled to reach there at least 1 hour 30 minutes earlier than everyone else to set up and welcome the participants, put up decoration, prepare a sumptuous spread of supper and also be at our very best behaviour.

My foot.

Malaysian timing as usual, and the so called 'organising committee' car got there -


Late. Duh


So no welcome team,


no food and snacks,


no one to show you where your rooms are,


no one full stop.

But we still did arrive at the end of the day.

Night one started with a short worship session by our very talented 1st years. After it ended, we had the normal introductory talks by Roland, our head and after that everyone retired to their rooms for the night.

Wait.

Did I say everyone?

Oh, forgive me.

Basketball enthusiasts retired to the sports hall instead. A whole 3 hours of non stop basketball games til about 2 am differentiated the night owls from the early birds.

Of course, by 3 am we were all showered and in our pyjamas ready for a night cap of hot chocolate and poker.

Christian retreat ok. Poker chips are in the form of chocolate. And the loser walks all the way down the chilly corridors to the kitchen-in-the-corner to make hot drinks.

And that is where I went.

Forced into it.

Finally climbing into bed at 3.30 am (or was it 4 am?) without trying to make too much noise, I tossed and turned til the sun came up.

What's with me not being able to sleep the first night in some foreign place? It has been happening everytime I leave my comfortable nest in the shape of my heavenly bed in Edinburgh! It has never happened in the past! I must be getting old.

Or.

I can only sleep well in expensive, goose down filled pillows and mattresses of softest quality yet medically therapeutic to the back that is only found in 5 star hotels. Or my room.

So a cheap hostel and bunk beds does not suit me well.

At all.

Upon awakening and getting ready, we went off to the dining hall across the road (in that fine building you see up there) as the delightful smell of fried sausages and bacon wafted into the crisp morning air.

Following our noses and filled with happy thoughts of a large breakfast spread, we were led into a room and the first sight that greeted our eyes was:

Cereal.

Yay! Cereal even!

A quick look down the aisle and we saw Yoghurt! Fruit! Milk! Coffee... Tea...

Wait a minute.

Where are those lovely, lovely sausages ????

'Only for the people who book to stay in the fine building laahhh,' goes the organiser.

-_-

Yun Yi trying to look happy

The sacrfices us students-on-a-budget make.

Another session of worship and a long, long talk by Wee Leon, our guest speaker all the way from Leeds about post-modernism ensues soon after.

Fast forward to games.

Introductory game. We were all given a coloured balloon (I was bent on getting a red coloured one but my attempts of picking my colour from the bag was foiled big time) and no surprise there, our games group was of the coloured balloon.

Now, each group is supposed to have 8 people.

And my group had : -

SIX.

!"£%^*

Where all the people go? And no one wants to own up that yes, they DO belong to the yellow group.

WHY?!
THE REST OF US SO UNFUN IS IT? I AM VERY BORING ISIT???????

FINE.

The first challenge was to get all your group members stick the balloons they have on the wall.

Trying to generate static by rubbing the balloons on hair, clothes etc.

Which we won.

Would have won. If only the games master listened to us. They claimed that we had more balloons that we didn't stick up.

HOW NOT TO WIN??? 6 BALLOONS ONLY LEH! OBVIOUSLY ALL UP!

Never mind, we won in our hearts.

***

Lunch came and went. Food was so unmemorable that I have already forgotten what we had.

Worship and another talk by Wee Leon about... er.... something Very Important That You Can Definitely Apply in Life.

Fast forward to games again.

The next challenge was the Treasure Hunt.

Slips of paper where handed to us and we had to go to the spot and collect a clue. And finally piece together all the letters and make a word out of the anagram.

Who won?

Yellow group.

I know, thank you very much. (ok fine, we tied with was it Purple or Pink group but that is of relative unimportance.)

And then a roly poly of captain's ball/basketball and practices for the night's event of 'PCCF's Got Talent' happened next as we all get ready to battle it out centre stage.

We were to act out a scene from a chapter in the Bible - Acts 5:1-10.

" 1Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property.

2With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet.

3Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?

4Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God."

5When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. 6Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

7About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. 8Peter asked her, "Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?"
"Yes," she said, "that is the price."

9Peter said to her, "How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also."

10At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband."

So the very talented Yellow Group produced our child actress prodigy Miss Meryl Grace Lansing as Ananias and their coveted, red carpet worthy, queen of drama - moi - as Sapphira. The wise and stately Mr. Mark Ong starred as non other than Peter the apostle and the beautifully yet dangerously evil Miss Doris Winata fitted the role of Satan to the T. Lastly, our very sweet and equally as talented Miss Jacintha Gong and Miss Ivy Sim became the narrator and estate agent respectively.

Of course, being the oh-so-amazingly talented people that we are, we naturally had about what? 2 1/2 practices and ad libbed the rest of it on the real show itself.

Which won us best acting of the night.

Standing together as one while we listened to the comments from the judges.

Once again, I know, we were fab. Thanks very much.

A lot of other awards also okay -

Most Creative: -

This group did a puppet show with socks, a teddy bear, a duvet cover and lots of bananas.

Most Application of Things Learnt :-

" I think I had think and think and post modernism and I know and think think think...."

Good dialogue, crappy acting.

But excusey me, PCCF's got talent IS about acting and the fact that we bagged the Best Acting Award warrants us instant stardom and unrivalled X Factor status.

Of course, after the very entertaining performances by everyone, we headed outside into the cold to :-

Our lovely campfire.

Alex Da Ge and I went mad before we even reached the fire belting out Jay Chou songs in our very best voice.

Only to be taken over by the voices of everyone else singing Christian songs along to the guitar.

"Shout to the world all the earth let us sing, power and majesty praise to the King!! "

After about 1 hour, my friend, Yoch and I decided that this was too boring.

We needed Action.

And 'action' came in the form of dancing the Nightwalk.

* * *

A bit of background regarding the Nightwalk.
It is a partner dance that is usually danced at every campfire between Girl Guides/Rangers and Boy Scouts. It involves singing a few lines of songs and swapping of partners everytime the song ends.

This dance has provided me entertainment throughout my life and also saved my butt a couple of times.

For example, when I was on my camp trip to South Africa.
Every country had to come out with a performance during the campfire and representing Malaysia, me and my 2 other partners had no idea what to do.

What? Sing Chan Mali Chan?
Rasa Sayang?

Heck, no one will know the words!
And I believe we don't know the actions either. So we will probably end up looking very syiok sendiri when we perform it while everyone else smiles patronizingly on.

But then, the brainwave in the form of the Nightwalk came into my mind.

We were voted the best performance ever and everyone continued to dance the Nightwalk for the rest of the 5 days or so left of the 10 day camp.

* * *

And now, standing by the warm fire, happy thoughts of the Nightwalk came over me and I decided to share my idea with Yoch. Obviously she loved it and immediately wanted everyone to do it.
Only we weren't sure if PCCF was liberal enough to do a 'partner' dance. You know, boy touch girl, girl touch boy.

So we waited til most of the 'elders' left. And then spilled the idea.

Which of course was enormously welcomed and everyone had a good heck of a time.

Except those who left early because of too cold/too boring/too hot/too smoky/too potong stim.


Oh well, too bad, you missed out.

We finally stopped after the fire started smoking us out, and considering non of us really wanted to develop lung cancer, we left and ran straight back to the :-


Sports Hall.


Where Basketball and Captain Ball happened again.

Finally left the place at about 2 plus am and at this point, I was dropping with lethargy.
I can feel it seeping into my bones, my eyelids are falling shut, I can hardly sit up straight and the moment my head hit the pillow, I was dead to the world.

Only to wake up again at 8am the next day to a similar breakfast of cereal with no sausages nor bacon.

After that came Sunday service with a fantastic worship session and a close up by Wee Leon regarding his topic of post modernism - how to be in this world but not of it.

Good speaker ok!

As always, all good things have gotta come to an end, so we cleaned up, packed up, bundled up and drove home.


That's the end of this year's PCCF Retreat and we once again look forward to next year's.

Sigh, I'll be an old bat by then.

A 'Gordon Ramsay' Treat

Wait.
Did I JUST hear you ask: WHO the heck is Gordon Ramsay?!


Celebrity chef of the UK, specialises in French cuisine, owns goodness knows how many Michelin star restaurants and is as famous as Jamie Oliver, thank you very much.

If you are going to ask me who Jamie Oliver is, you can stop reading now, go to your room and hide under your covers while contemplating your lack of knowledge regarding the world around you.


Fast forward to Edinburgh, and we have a Ramsay's junior chef visiting - in the form of wholly Malaysian born, fully Kuantan bred:-Mr. Tan Yan Yih.

Graduated from IMI Switzerland in Culinary Art, Mr. Tan now works in Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen at Claridges, as a commis chef, learning the ropes as he goes along and also stealing as much food and recipes as he can.

He is 22 years old, 174 cm tall, weighs 68kg, of Chinese origin and is pretty darn rich as far as I can tell. His Facebook name is Tan Yan Yih, Friendster page: Aryan Tan and msn ---

Eh, I am not stalking him okay.

Anyway, Mr. Tan decided to grace our kitchens by preparing us a proper fine dining meal, worthy to be served in Gordon Ramsay's Michelin star restaurants. A mouth watering gastronomic delight main course of lamb shank tastefully matched with mint sauce, a starter of crab meat salad chilled with fish roe dressing and to finish up - a deliciously sweet dessert of pear tarts with a side serving of rich cold ice cream was the menu of the night and I went to sleep the night before thinking happy thoughts.

Only to find out the next day that Edinburgh has no butcher's to get the lamb shank, crab is almost non existent, and the oven in the kitchen is of so poor temperature control quality that the baking of a rich yet light base for the tarts is almost close to mission impossible.

Well, to be honest, we do have a butcher who has got lamb shanks and we do have crabs which are affordable.
However, one can think that the cook might not be experienced enough to prepare the above mentioned dishes or we can blame it on other factors.
Depends on how you roll.

So, our Gordon Ramsay chef opted for Tesco Pork Steaks and Tesco Bramley apples to prepare the main dish : Pork Steak and Apple Sauce.
Courtesy of Tesco.
Wait, I mean, of Victoria Chan whose friend he was and who paid for everything.
*We love you!*

The host of ingredients

Of course, there is never only one chef in any Michelin star restaurant. There is always, always, more than that.

Introducing:

Gordon Ramsay's protege/Head Chef of West Richmond Kitchen

West Richmond Kitchen untapped talent for cooking/Sous Chef

The one who cuts and washes the mud of the potatoes/West Richmond Kitchen noob

For extra credit, I chopped all those mushrooms and apples into small, small, smaaaaaalll pieces ok.

Then promptly forgot to put the apples in water to prevent oxidisation because Mr. Gordon Ramsay didn't tell me and got yelled at a la Ramsay style for the end product was a lifeless brown colour when it really should have a shining white yellowy tint.

Oh CRAP! Oxidised apples. -_-

Hard at work chopping fresh basil/mint/coriander leaves. Sure, the head chef chops the easy ones and I chop things like rock hard green Bramley apples. This is what they call child labour.

Finally after about 1 1/2 hours, we were ready to roll.

The starter:Crispy garden salad leaves with deep fried bacon bits (which I CUT TOO), quarters of boiled egg and small cherry vine tomatoes seasoned with herbs and salt and finished off with Tesco Finest Sweet Balsamic Vinegar.

We do love Tesco.

Main Course:

Fresh out of the oven - the pork steaks.

All delicately sliced and nicely presented on its bed of mash potatoes (infused with MINT) with a side sweep of freshly picked greens, a salty concoction of fried chestnut, shiitake and portobello mushrooms and topped with sweet as honey apple sauce and sun blushed tomatoes slightly grilled to tippy top perfection.

It is then drizzled with reduced juices from the steaks.
*Shivers*

All for show ok.

What we really had was a spread of every thing, piecing together the bits ourselves as we all dig in unceremoniously into the food.


Who wants to wait for the head chef to plate everything?

Or the more likely situation is he was too lazy to plate it and told us to eat it ourselves.
Unceremoniously.

Dessert was Tiramisu made from the most refined mascorpone cheese and rum recipe you can find in Gordon's kitchen and also a trifle of triple chocolate mousse that our Head Chef made FROM SCRATCH.

HAH.

TOP THAT.

SCRATCH OK.

THEY DO NOT SERVE ANYTHING THAT IS PROCESSED IN GORDON RAMSAY'S KITCHEN.

THEY GROW THEIR OWN POTATOES, MILK THEIR OWN COWS THAT ARE FED OF ORGANIC FOOD AND SMOKE THEIR OWN HAM. THEY EVEN CULTURE THEIR OWN CHEESE AND SUN WATER FROM THE DEAD SEA FOR ITS SALT.

All in a little back garden called The Gordon Ramsay Spot.

*damn, I am doing so much publicity for him, some one should pay me advertisement fees*

But dessert -

Tiramisu we had, triple chocolate trifle we had -


all Tesco brand.


Because our Gordon Ramsay child prodigy says that according to the current latest up-to-date economy and an all round market survey of student spending habits in Edinburgh, these desserts are not profitable to make for our sampling.

Fine.

We got Tesco okay.

*Tesco should ALSO pay me for advertisement*

And since we already had our 80-pound-a-meal from 'Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen at Claridges' minus wine, we have nothing more to ask for.

Except to ensure Mr. Tan Yan Yih remains our friend forever. Because he can cook.
And Miss Victoria Chan too. Because she can pay.

Muax.