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Ma J gets back into the hospital for the 3rd time this year. The doctors are asking if they should send some kind of micro-camera into her body, but they are too busy to explain any further what it all means except that it costs $2k - and there's a 1% chance it may get lost somehwere in her gut!

This time Ma J is in a 6-bed ward (sb - yes, some kind of cattle class). Like the doctors who are too busy for the patients' bothersome families, it would seem that we also are too busy with our professional lives for the patients. So of the 5 beds that are occupied, 4 of the patients are accompanied by the families' domestic help. 4 ladies from Indonesia. They sit daily by the beds, assist the nurses with the changing of the patients' diapers and sheets, chitchat with the bedridden old women, give each compatriot smiles, and doze off. 3 of them actually stay over at the hospital - lying across an arrangement of peach-coloured plastic chairs. This being December, we are all glad a gentle wind sends relief constantly through the room's open windows, having found its way to the hospital in between the highrise condominiums and office blocks.