I made my first trip to a polyclinic in a long time. The last time I was at one, it was this rundown clinic at the corner of Upper Aljunied Road and Macpherson Road. I remember going there as a child, and the most vivid memory I had was this mother who was encouraging her young daughter to take a dump in the drain just outside the clinic waiting area.

I am pleased to announce that polyclinics are no longer a dump. The Hougang branch I went to was a newly renovated building, with its own coffee joint and shops.

I checked online to see if there would be a crowd there. You can now see the queue at any Polyclinic via live web video  to see if there really is a crowd, then after you look at the queues, you go to the one nearest to your home anyway.

But hey, it was fun to look at the video feeds.

Of course I had to choose to make my visit on one of the busiest periods in polyclinic times, early in the week, in the morning. I went to the machines where you scan your IC to get a number. Then I began my first of many queues: Registration.

It wasn't too bad - I waited only 20 minutes for my number to be called for registration. At the counter, the nice lady asked me if I wanted to sign up for Opportunistic Health Screening. This badly-named offering is a basic health screening for folks like me: above 40, have not had a health check for a while. It was only $12, and since the wait to see the doctor was at least an hour to 90 minutes, seeing the nurse to check my BMI, blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol would not be a bad way to kill time.

I passed my blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol tests with flying colours. According to the BMI chart, I had to be 64.5kg and I fell somewhat short of that mark. I understand these are fancy-schmancy medical standards but look, the last time I was below 65kg, I was 18 years old and doing my BMT.

I twittered from the polyclinic, asking my readers to see if they could spot me on the live video feed. I felt like I was on a reality TV show.

One thing you realise about visiting a polyclinic is the need to wait. You wait to register, you wait to see the nurse, you wait to see the doctor, you wait for your tests, you wait to pay, you wait to get your hospital referral. You become very familiar with your queue number. You are no longer You, you are number 2214.

Whilst waiting, the only thing to do was to watch free-to-air TV. The polyclinic kindly screened Channel News Later and Channel 8. My brain went numb watching reruns of ancient local Chinese dramas.

During the commercial breaks, trailers promoting the current TV shows kept playing. One show they kept touting was a food show featuring actress Michelle Chia. While she is certainly pretty to look at, I soon grew tired of the countless extreme closeups of food entering her mouth and the food orgasms she had to display.

In fact, I got so bored, I wondered over to the Tasty and Healthy Eating display set up to encourage you to eat less than 13 teaspoons of fat a day. Did you know that laksa has 6 teaspoons of fat, char kuay teow has 8, chicken rice has 5, and prata has 6?  The all-time winner was satay, with 11 teaspoons of fat. The lowest was mee soup with half a teaspoon of fat.

All this was done with plastic food displayed behind a glass cabinet. The char kuay teow looked a little hard and shiny. The idea behind this display was to show you how you could eat all this sinful local fare and still have less fat by doing things like not finishing the laksa gravy, or the satay peanut sauce, or replacing half your chicken rice with plain rice.

Of course you could enjoy all this great food without ANY fat at all if you just ate the plastic versions of the dishes shown in the cabinet. You will think you are eating what LOOKS like satay, just without the taste and with the small possibility of plastic poisoning.

After spending four hours at the polyclinic, I saw the doctor who promptly arranged for an immediate referral to a restructured hospital (that means semi-gahmen hospital), to see a specialist. I was most impressed with this but that meant another few hours at another medical institution, partaking of the TV fare there.

This prompted one of my readers to ask, via Twitter, if I was on 'an island-wide healthcare institution TV channel inspection'. It certainly felt like it.

One thing I noticed about the hospital and polyclinic that has not changed was the shouting of names. Nurses shouted names all day: Chinese names, Malay names, Indian Names, Others Names. I was sitting for hours in the waiting areas, watching old TV dramas (and Michelle Chia opening her mouth orgasmically a lot) with no TV sound on, surrounded by the cacophony of nurses calling out for people. It was surreal.

And it was also amusing to hear my name being mangled, just like the old days. Look, I am "Kin Mun", as in Bun, Run, Sun. Not 'Kin Moon'.

Another thing I found strange was how, when some staff came to speak to me, their default language was Mandarin. Did I look like a person who could only speak Chinese? I would try to steer the conversation back to a more familiar English medium (for me), though I was happy to learn, from the nurse, new medical terms in Mandarin.

I spent a total of 8 hours, a full day, in the medical system. I was fairly impressed with the efficiency and professionalism displayed, though I never did get to see the faces of the doctors and specialists who saw me. All I saw were their eyes because they were in medical masks throughout. They looked like Transformer robots with hair.

To Mrs Optimus Prime, thank you being my doctor. You had very kind eyes.

Now I have to go to the 4D shop to buy my queue numbers.


About mrbrown
mrbrown aka Mr Kin Mun LEE is the accidental author of the popular Singapore website, mrbrown.com, and has been documenting the dysfunctional side of Singapore life since 1997.

Affectionately known as the Blogfather of Singapore, his readers follow his writings closely, which these days range from current affairs, his family, and even his trips abroad.

Currently, mrbrown also hosts the mrbrown show (mrbrownshow.com), probably Singapore's best known comedy and satire podcast.

mrbrown is married to Ginny, his long-suffering wife for 12 years, and is father to three lovely kids, Faith,  Isaac and Joy.