Sunday, July 8, 2012

1066. Learn, Earn, Return? Giving back to society

E-MAIL TO DR SING DATED JUL 8, 2012

Many times  I encountered interesting clients. One was a young lady who brought an orphan baby rat of a few days old for treatment one early weekday morning. Nowadays, I am in the Surgery from  8.30 am to help Mr Min and to do my email replies.

The rat was gasping and I knew it had inhaled the milk given since the lady held the rat's head high and gave a syringe of milk. Some milk would have been breathed in, causing pneuomia and the difficulty in breathing now. "There is not much hope of human beings rearing up an orphan rat or puppy of a small breed successfully," I said from experience with the Pasir Ris dog breeders I attended to for some 2 years at one time. "They don't know how to rear the puppy using a syringe.  A milk bottle would be safer and better."

Two days later, I phoned the young lady who graduated from Princeton but I could not contact her. I encouraged her to give back to society since she was given a scholarship and had a chance to study in a top American University. But how would she do it? Create and share knowledge via a blog or website on some niche areas of interest to the public.

Today I was surprised to receive her email.
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Jul 8, 2012
Hi Dr. Sing,

I hope you are well!


I'm the girl who brought in the baby rat two weeks ago. I'm sad to say that the rat did not survive... But at least it had a few more days of life from the day I brought it home. It got to open its eyes to see the world and sleep in human hands. :)  I will be going back to the US on 16 July and will update you when I start a blog. It will probably be related to the work I will be doing in the US at the Housing Development Fund. In any case, I will be keeping up with your blog too.


Take care,

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E-MAIL REPLY FROM DR SING DATED JUL 8, 2012.
It is good to have met you and to know that you could help the baby rat. Most likely, the baby rat had got aspirational pneumonia from human feeding of syringe. Failure to rear new born puppies with syringes and subsequent death is commonly reported as many people are inexperienced in feeding very small orphan newborn puppies, from my experience with Singapore dog breeders.
.
On another matter, please let me know what are the 3 words from this US investment banker's family.
Something like "learn, earn, (give back to society)". Is it learn, earn, burn?

Giving back to society does not need to be after you have "made" your money, as in the case of the U.S investment banker who is giving educational grants to many undergraduates. Any individual who has benefitted from a University education and scholarship can give back to society immediately by "adding value to the employer" in research on the employer's industry as what I did for the Singapore Turf Club's "reversing the decline in racing" task force publication of my article in the Bmagazine or by means like educational blogs.

Best wishes.











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