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Prelude: My Obstetrics and Gynaecology assessment coming up this 30th! Whatever happen, pray that I don’t get extended…so far so good (I hope). So in this post, not only will I relegade to you my experience in going to one of Siti Nurhaliza’s many performances, I will also ‘ulangkaji’ with some things O&G.

Way back since last month, my MO has invited me to tag along with her to a function which will have one very special guest star: Dato’ Siti Nurhaliza. While I am a so-so fan of her, I do admire Siti as she is indeed a superb entertainer, so I said yes. Besides it would be fun, I hoped, and a chance for me to once again test my camera to its limit. The function will be held at Stadium Malawati Shah Alam on 15/11/09, so I’d get a chance to test my camera in a dark indoors, and if I’m lucky I’d be able to snap some close up pics of Siti live on stage.

It was a function held by one of many multi-level-marketing company in Malaysia (shall not mention names here because I am not a member; I was simply there to watch Siti perform and of course, the ticket was free of charge courtesy of my MO). To get to Shah Alam, I drove to The Curve where my MO waited for me as she was not familiar with the roads to Shah Alam, and I have been a native to Shah Alam for a few years. We got to the stadium without a hitch, and already we saw a long line quieing up. However, I texted a couple of my fellow O&G HOs who were also there (for Siti and due to the free tickets courtesy of said MO) and they told us to park at the parking lot nearer to the Sunday Bazaar….which turned out to be almost empty!

The stadium was definitely jam-packed with people and by the time we got in there were no more good seats left! We wanted to be facing the stage and thus we opted to sit on the stone-cold stairs! LOL. We were not the only ones who did so ok…it was facing the stage and the view was good. So other than a rather sore butt a couple of hours later, I basically didn’t have any complain (or so I thought).

Turns out, the M-L-M function actually begun with the coronation of 110 of its members who had achieved Diamond status! And each member will be taken to the stage by a golf cart where they got to wave to the applauding crowds like Miss Universe before taking center stage and their award. While I do think that they deserve the award for their hard work to achieve such distinguished status, some members went out of their way to really stood out! I mean, wearing a WEDDING GOWN?? That was so…so….mencapub!

Halfway through the ‘coronation’ I began to doze off despite the sounds and applause. All of a sudden an O&G joke came across my mind. I texted my friend saying “Bila la Siti nak kluar ni…kalau org pregnant dah hyperemesis teruk dah!” (Hyperemesis: nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy).

My friend replied: Kalau aku Gravida 1, dah jadi Para 0 +1 dah! Complete miscarriage terus!! (Gravida denotes pregnancy. Gravida 1 means pregnancy number one. Para denotes…child delivered. Para 0 means no child. Para 1 means one child - alive or dead as long as the child is delivered, it’s counted as a para. Para 0+1 however means…no child delivered with one complete miscarriage.  What my friend was trying to say that, if he’s a gravida1 patient he’d end up so sick with the whole situation that he’d miscarried..hence the Para 0+1. Please pardon the morbidity.)

So if you are at a obs&gynae department and heard the doctor talking to another doctor about you or your wife in those terms I mentioned, bear in mind that we are not actually cursing you in an unknown language. We simply are conveying info about our patients in the most direct manner we are taught to.

Anyway, when I got my friend’s message and showed to my MO, we both laughed so hard that we earned a few stares ourselves. Eheh…femes sekejap. She wanted to join in the fun as well and asked me to text my friend, “Kalau kena post case for caeser for poor progress…patient dah terberanak pun!”

Caeserean section for poor progress: this denotes a situation when a woman went into labor for too long, and her cervical os still does not open up to 10cm - fully dilated - to fascilitate delivery per vaginally. A woman who has never had a caeserean before or a woman who has never delivered at all…we can allow her to be in labor for 8-10hours before having to post the case to the operation theater for poor progress, so you can imagine what my MO meant by her joke. Ensue another shameless laughter.

After what seemed like hours the powers that be decided that we’d had enough of the coronation and decided to entertain us first. Finally! Upon hearing the announcement we all hoped for Siti Nurhaliza to take center stage. But we were given the appetizers first… in forms of a couple of cultural dance shows. First was a Malay cultural dance, which garnered a “WTH?” thought from me, as it was a really disappointing show! I mean, it looked as if there was very minimal or last minute effort put in by the team. I have seen far awesome job done by my fellow university students back at Russia…and I have seen Russians performing better Malay dances! Couldn’t suppress my yawn, couldn’t be bothered to snap pictures.

However the next performance was a yet another cultural dance: Bangra!! This I really want to watch, as I have seen these too in my university and those were really energetic performances even a post-call houseman like me could not sleep. And yup, they did not disappoint. I snapped many pics and these two were a couple that I think are amongst the better ones. Forgive the quality; I was seated far from the stage hence I had to utilize my camera’s farthest zoom capability and further crop the pictures.

The entertainment continued with a performance by a foreign singer. We were told that it was a singer from Taiwan. And I really could be fooled into thinking that she was a Malaysian, because her Malaysian language is so damn GOOD! Her command and mastery of the language really put to shame to many of our fellow Malaysians who claimed to be Malaysians but could not speak the language. Well, I am one to say since I blog in English but I can talk in BM fine. My MO said that next time she sees a Malaysian patient who can’t speak/understand the national language, that patient is really gonna get it from her. Haha. 1Malaysia here and there and some Malaysians cannot speak the national language? And how do we know that the singer is not a Malaysian…the singer has this kind of awkward way of saying some words in Malay, and yet she tried and she passed with flying colors. She also belted out a decent Bukan Cinta Biasa which is actually a song from Siti Nurhaliza.

After she concluded her performance, to my horror, it was yet another coronation. I began to suspect that perhaps Siti didn’t actually make it! Texted my friends to convey my suspicion, as as the coronation thing dragged on and on - the poor progress moms probably already been discharged with their babies back home by now - my butt began to feel sore and I began fidgeting about. An hour passed and my friends declared that they were leaving. My MO consoled me to stick around for a while, she had a feeling that Siti would show up. I agreed reluctantly and waited. Oh my poor aching butt..hopefully no pressure sores resulted from the long duration of sitting on stone-cold-and-hard surface.

Then as the coronation ended Siti waltzed out from backstage greeting the fans! I whipped out my camera and began snapping and snapping away instantly. Siti proved to be a charming performer. There was a time when I was really an avid fan of Siti but after spending years abroad the fanboyism in me melted away as Siti produced more and more albums and I practically lost contact with the Malaysian entertainment news other than the occasional snippets from the online newspapers I read. But graceful Siti and her melodious voice made me think that I was her number one fan again. Haha. Maybe I will buy her new album because the fifth - also the final - song she whipped out was from her new album and it really has that haunting effect on me. But I couldn’t remember the title. Aha.

Here are pictures of Siti Nurhaliza. I’m quite happy with how the pictures turned out; all the beautiful lightings are captured nicely. Heee….

In the end, despite the sore butt I still quite enjoyed the show. Siti sang a total of five songs there. I was only familiar with one song which dated way back to 1998 (Shows how behind I am in the entertainment news. Don’t really bother me that much).

Anyway, Siti…semoga murah rezeki untuk menjadi Gravida 1. Hehe.