This Chinese new year period doesn’t fall short of surprises. None too positive ones, I’m afraid. For my brother, it’s the astonishing decrease of my fifth maternal uncle’s red packet. For me, it’s the unfortunate announcement that I have to work on the first day of lunar new year – they all sympathise me with no more than words. For my father, he regrets not being able to catch the full CCTV’s lunar new year special.
But for my mother, it’s sadder – her brother was sent to intensive care unit of the hospital. I can imagine her in the hospital helplessly waiting for the medical staff to do their magic.
She would have wish she could have done much more than just waiting. Doctors are blessed or perhaps not too – they get a chance of saving their love ones.
I don’t know if I could do it. One of the reasons I am not in the profession is the fear that I may be held responsible for practices that causes the health of a person to degrade. I fear being responsible of someone else’s life this way.
I have to admit, I dislike the amount that they are being paid for the knowledge they own. But after a little more thought by my lazy brain, I think the risks are just there. Being a doctor, it is possible that you sent the patient to the wrong course of treatment after a diagnostic mistake.
Such responsibility is not easy to bear. They’re somewhat like pilots. Only the pilots (and those who play flight simulator) knows how to drive a plane and in an event that they given up saving the plane, you just have the rest of the people crying helplessly.
(Anyone plays Microsoft Flight Simulator?)
So it isn’t easy being a doctor I feel. You become a public relations officer, a medical technology scapegoat and someone who is expected to know every bacteria and disease – living or dead.
Anyway, for my uncle. I hope his doctor does his job well. I have to admit that I am not close to my uncle, or I probably won’t be right here blogging already. Still, I hope he gets better.
Possibly related:
@Mr Dew: Best wishes to your uncle!
Well, I have bought 3 old Flight Simulator II books from Amazon’s MarketPlace (1986-88). I own the SubLogic C64 original but it’s the same from Microsoft released for other systems. Both developed by Bruce Altwick
So since you spoke about Flight Simulator, wanted to show you some history!
by Nafcom (Feb 2, 2006 at 6 AM)Nafcom: I didn’t know Flight Simulator is that old already. I can’t imagine how it would look like with the dated graphics, hahaa… You sure collect quite a few prized old items.
by Mr. Dew (Feb 2, 2006 at 9 AM)@Mr Dew: So let me help you to imagine:
Flight Simulator II for C64 – 1984 (there was no ‘I’ for the C64).
I own the disk original complete and in top condition, amazing! =)
Yeah, I am sure the books and the game will be much worth in a couple of more years, but I won’t sell them!
by Nafcom (Feb 3, 2006 at 5 AM)Nafcom: Wow, that sure is a classic! 16 colors only? Who published Flight Simulator II? Microsoft all along?
by Mr. Dew (Feb 4, 2006 at 8 AM)@Mr Dew: Yes, 16 colours vector flighting. But it has different views on the plane already and a lot of scenery disks and a War mode, where you are put into WWI scenery.
Bruce Artwick’s company SubLOGIC released (since a while sold to Sierra) released it for all the systems except IBM PC. (Microsoft did that). But Bruce Artwick, being a hardware developer, coder and pilot, coded all versions. Check the links I provided in this comment here!
22 years later now, a Flight Simulator III on the C64 would look definately better and faster, granted, it’s still the same old computer, but thanks to illegal opcodes (=undocumented commands) , better knowledge of the hardware than back in 1984 and better data cruncher, it would look better on the same machine like for example F-16 which is pretty fast and looks soooo much batter than Flight Simulator II.
But Flight Simulator is a beast when run with a SuperCPU! FUN! =)
By the way: Bruce Artwick is still coding Flight Simulators!
by Nafcom (Feb 5, 2006 at 1 AM)Nafcom: Interesting. Is he coding Flight Simulator for Microsoft or is he into his own projects now. I haven’t tried MS’s Flight Simulator by the way, hahaa…
by Mr. Dew (Feb 19, 2006 at 4 PM)