Cripple

It was another routine morning. I went back to office, and started the computer before doing anything else. After fumbling through the keyboard, I found an Internet connection problem, and thereafter my work ground to a halt.

I couldn't open the tax computation message from the Inland Revenue Department. Interim report form for my research project could not be completed. I had no way to send out the reference letter for my intern. It was impossible for me to read the new issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Gone are the days when we survived perfectly well without computer and the Internet. In the event of computer crash nowadays, we doctors can't even read our old notes or figure out what drugs our patients have been taking, not to mention prescribe new ones.

If our computers do contribute to the flattening of the world, we are the guys who really cannot walk without falling whenever the field becomes less flat after a computer crash.