Class Reunion Informal Night (University of Malaya Medical Faculty 1973)

My wife and I attended the class reunion of MU Medical Faculty Class 1973. If I’m not mistaken, this is the 12th reunion dinner and it was a happy occasion to meet up with all the old friends. We started with a class of 128, but finally graduated with 120. A few actually dropped out by changing course since they lost interest half way through and a few failed their final year examination and were retained for another 6 months. The turnout this year was less compared to last year where a lot of classmates who were practicing overseas come back for the reunion.

This year, only 43 classmates turned up for the event. The main topics for conversation at the informal night were:

1) The fuel hike
2) How all these seniors are unwinding and taking a more relaxed attitude towards their practice
3) The recent political landscape in our country where the rakyat were fed with all sorts of allegations about personal conducts of politicians from sodomy to murder, statutory declaration and retractions. All of them noted personal attack and accusation became the weapon of choice to demolish your opponents. Politicians from both political divide do not compete on performance, but confine to allegations which were rather personal.

Most of the senior doctors, like the rest of rakyat were equally confused on who to believe and who not to believe. In short, they were disappointed with politicians from both sides. Some of my classmates were also equally keen to urge me to stand for party election but I declined to be drawn into any discussion about the party election. Another hot topic among the doctors was the deteriorating standards of junior doctors. They felt that these are the products of poor teaching, poor supervision at the clinical stage and lack of commitment and dedication by the junior doctors.

A lot of junior doctors still believe that medical practice is a gold mine. As in previous year gathering, there were generous serving of food and liquor, singing, dancing and obscene jokes filled the air. Personally, I observed that a lot of my classmates have not changed very much in their mannerism, except of course the tell tale signs of aging, hair loss and balding.

Generally, most of them are healthy and there may be some truth in the saying “Doctors know best when it comes to personal health”.

我和太太一起出席1973马大医药系的老同学聚会。若没记错，这应该是第12届的聚餐会。我很高兴能再见到所有的老同学。

我们这班开始共有128位同学，后来只有120人毕业。一些因半途对医药失去兴趣而转系，有些则因年终考试不及格而需要再呆多半年。

今年的出席率必去年少，也有很多在海外就医的老同学都回来聚会。今年只有43人出席。聚会上的话题围绕在：

1） 燃油起价；
2） 学长们如何改变心态，以更轻松的态度行医；
3） 国家最近的政局，人民被种种的政治指控，从有关个人操守如鸡奸到谋杀，提呈宣誓和收回宣誓等所困扰。所有人都察觉到政敌利用人身攻击和指责来攻击对手。两派的政治领袖不是互相竞争表现，而是互相做个人或人身攻击。很多学长都如一般人民，分不清该相信那一方。简单的来说，大家都对双方感到失望。有些同学希望我能再次出来参与党选，但我尽量避开有关党选的话题。

另外一个热门的话题便是学弟妹日益滑落的医学水平。他们都认为这是因为教学水准的低落、习医时缺乏辅导和学生们缺乏热忱及献身态度所致。很多年轻一辈的都认为从事医疗是一个金矿。

如往年一般，聚会时都少不了丰富的酒菜、歌舞和笑话。我察觉到大多数同学都没什么改变，只是多了些老化的现象，如头发稀薄。大致上，大家都很健康。显然的，有如他人所言，‘医生懂得照顾自己的健康’切实是有所根据。