Where do we draw the line?

One morning earlier of last week, I overheard one MP in the parliament presenting some statistics on sexual harassment at workplace on the morning news while I was sipping my hot milo before leaving for work. I didn’t stay on to listen (or I would be late for work) but what I managed to gather in that few minutes was, apparently, sexual harassment at workplace in Malaysia is very low where only about 200+ cases have been reported since the year 1999. While driving to work, I couldn’t help wondering if those numbers were the true representative of what’s happening in this country or was it a case of under-reporting (or gross cover-ups).

I remember reading in the papers recently that a girl had a shock of her life when she was asked to take off her top during an interview for her potential employer to ‘assess’ whether she qualifies for the job or not since one of the criteria for the job was one need to be ‘beautiful’. Obviously, since the incident made it to the front page of many local papers, she didn’t get the job and the interviewer ended up with a legal action instead. This is one clear example of sexual harassment, am sure all would agree. But how do you truly define sexual harassments? Does verbal flirting among colleagues or between superiors and employees considered as sexual harassment? If not, where do you draw the line? How about if the verbal flirting from your male colleague or boss becoming too frequent or too obvious leading to office gossips hence making you uncomfortable or worst, miserable? And if the flirting leads to certain conditional favours like you-go-out-with-me-for-a-drink-or-else-I-wont-approve-your-leaves… is that still acceptable? If it is not, does that alone have enough weight to be brought upon a disciplinary board?

And how about touching? Of course if a male colleague or boss start touching your bums or boobs, you have the rights to complain but how about usually acceptable gestures like a pat on the back? I remember one superior at my old workplace has a habit of doing just that.. he would pat on people backs not just to congratulate on a work well done, but also when having usual conversation and even when saying hi while passing by at corridors. Some female staff found the habit a bit annoying that they would stay a distance away from him but others found it perfectly ok since he was more like a father figure… totally different perspective by different people...

I have also come across this one happy-go-lucky doctor who like to pinch female staff... It’s just his way of saying hi! No complaint against him so far but again, some would walk away whenever he enters the room/ward because the pinches can sometimes be really hard that your arms may turn blue! I personally don’t see it as any type of harassments but wonder if any other female staff thinking the opposite.

Alas, there is also one doctor who is very good at what he does and fully committed to his patients but who is also a well-known ‘Mark Sloan’ among the female staff due to his skirt-chasing activities although nobody really know how many has really fallen for his tricks. You’ll be unfortunate if you become his target (or fortunate if sleeping with a doctor is one of your wish lists!) since being a goal-orientated person as he is, he definitely won’t let you off easily! If this is the case, would you file a complaint or would you take it as a compliment (knowing that you’re desirable can definitely boost your self-confidence, would you agree?) and move along without making a big fuss out of it?

Random thoughts (how original!)

My best buddy has finally started blogging after months and months of persuasions. Welcome to the blogsphere mate! He's a huge fan of grey's anatomy,hence the theme of his blog... I like!

Oh.. and for the record, he is still SINGLE!

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In my inbox a few days ago:

Smoking Helps You Lose Weight ...
One Lung At A Time!

Such a catchy phrase.. I think I'll use it when seeing my Quit Clinic patients since many gave weight gain as the excuse of not wanting to quit smoking. Thanks uncle!

A nose job and two bloody nostrils

I finally had my nose surgery done last Friday. Had a cold feet a few days earlier after hearing a friend had to suffer a week-long of terrible pain after a throat surgery.. But went ahead anyway knowing that i didn't have much choices in hand. I had 2 procedures done at one go, Septoplasty and Turbinectomy (reduction of the turbinate, I believe) which weren't as bad as they sound really since they were both done under general anaesthesia.

The 3-day stay was pretty short but spending the days on the hospital bed for hours and hours on end with nothing much to do was not an experience that I would want to repeat that soon if I can. At one point, my boredom turned to anxiety that I started counting the minutes and hours to the next mealtime (not that the food served was that great), the next visiting hours, the next doctors' rounds and even the next toilet trips. Yeah... I was that bored! I did try to do a bit of work on the first day but got reprimanded by one of the doctors (no, I'm not that sad doc.. I just did it to kill my time and the work needs doing anyway!). I tried to catch up with some sleep too but the ward was so cold that I kept waking up shivering. Anyway, the only thing that I managed to do successfully to keep me occupied (apart from counting the hours of course) was reading and I'm glad that Ardy lent me this book just a few weeks ago. I finished it in less than 2 days on the hospital bed... a great company for a time in need indeed!


Anyway, I received a surprise gift just before I got discharged from the hospital... A huge surprise indeed. I was all over the moon and all smiley even when my nose hurt and bled like hell with tears all over my face when the surgeon pulled out the gauze packs from the inside of my nose or when he tried to clean the nostrils(no doc, you can't ask for one too!).


So friends (you know who you are), you can now stop your 'throw your phone into the Klang river' jibes since I am now officially NOT the user of the near-extinct monophonic mobile phone anymore!