Dan just sent me home...spent the evening at his place and went for a sumptuous dinner of hokkien mee, hong kong noodles and yummy barbecue/fried chicken wings. Thank you dandan....i only have one more week before i leave for my equine clinic attachment back in australia..but oh well, at least i'll be back for cny....so please wait for me. Thanks for listening to me about how we've missed out on those sundays. You brought it all back for me today although it is only a tuesday.....yes, it feels really like a sunday today :) (except no banglas on the mrt!)

Reached the dairy farm at 630+ today.

Started off the morning bottle feeding a one-day-old kid. Saw another kid which was damp and gooey, and found out that it was only born 3 hours or so ago...cute. However, John also told me its sibling died while mum was giving birth due to the fact that it weighed about 4 kgs and that was a tad bigger than the standard birth weight. I went to look at mum and the dead kid which laid by her side. Felt sad for a moment but realised there will be more deaths to face once my career kicks off. I better get used to the idea of seeing dead animals...

Spent the morning getting the goats in and out of their pens to be milked. John asked me and Yuet Foong to check on the kids because he kept hearing one particular kid from pen 3 calling. We did and found nothing wrong. However in the afternoon, one of the workers actually found a dead kid which probably killed itself due to bloating from excessive food and milk. I felt bad about my inexperience which costs the farm a second death today...guess i still have a long way to go before i can even talk about saving lives.

I tried my hands at tattooing the kids which are barely 2 weeks old (this involves using some stapler-like tool which consists of uncountable needles which have to be used to pierce the kid's ear and then smeared with some sorta tattooing cream). After that, John taught us the how to dehorn them as well. Dehorning the kid made my legs wobbly.....i had to use red-hot iron (or whatever metal), force and press it onto the surround area which the kid's horns grew and burn its horns away. As i did that, smoke was coming out from the poor kid's head and it gave out squeals of pain and anguish. For a moment, the kid smelt like a badly charred wok. My heart raced like mad and my legs went really soft when i did that. I wonder whether doctors/vets just get numb to their patients' pain and perform whatever gross task they have to carry even if it involves a great deal of pain and suffering. I think i will never want to reach that day that i can dehorn a kid without feeling any guilt or remorse. Being void of emotion may make a vet's job much easier to bear, but i will never want to be an unfeeling person. It may sound silly at this point of time, but i hope in years to come, witnessing the death of my animal patients will still bring at least a tinge of sadness in my heart.