In secondary school, we’re bound to have written a composition on “a visit to the doctor” or “a visit to the dentist”. My compo is on my visit to the sinseh. Or sinsei, however you like to spell it. In fact, it’s my first visit as far as I can remember. I’ve had dozens and dozens of sports injuries over the years, particularly through basketball, but never serious enough for me to make that visit. Partly because I’m one of those nuts who can sprain an ankle during a game, curse a little immediately after while getting up, hobble around the court a few times while cursing under my breath, then declare that I’m OK and continue on with the game (but jumping a lot less). So when my left shoulder started aching during that game a few months ago, it was something easily ignored. It was just an ache, I didn’t remember any particular incident like a bump or a fall that caused the ache, so playing the game was more important on my mind. The thing about spraining an ankle during a game is that if you continue playing immediately after, the pain subsides to a very tolerable level. But once you get rested, particularly on the following day, the pain kills you. So the next day, the extent of the shoulder injury really hit me when I was at the bus stop (of all places). When the bus came, I raised my left arm to flag down the bus. Like most people, I would normally raise it 90 degrees. This time, it was impossible to come anywhere close to 45 degrees. Flagging down the bus with my right hand felt rather awkward. I soon found that scratching my left ear was impossible with my left hand, as was smoothening out my silky smooth hair. Wearing and taking off a t-shirt, particularly of the tighter variety, especially during the phase where the left arm and left sleeve are sliding past each other, was an intense activity. Like any other injury of recent memory, it would get a lot better after a day or three. Except that this one had almost no improvement even after a week. Well-meaning friends would often ask me to go see a sinseh after a sprain, but I never felt the need to. I’ve always heard stories where the sinseh does some twisting maneuver to a friend’s sprained ankle, which causes some degree of screaming, but things supposedly get better because of the treatment. My sprains always get better without treatment. But the shoulder thing wasn’t like any sprain I’ve had in the past. It wasn’t getting any better. The thought of visiting a ‘proper’ western doctor did enter my mind, but I figured they’d just send me for an x-ray “just in case”, and then find out that I had no fractures, only to send me for a series of increasingly expensive treatments, while all the while I’d be getting better naturally, and then they’d claim credit. So, the thought of visiting a sinseh started becoming rather attractive to me. Besides, it would be an interesting new experience for me. I could even blog about it! But which sinseh? Most of my friends didn’t really have any direct contact with a really good sinseh, so I went to the net, to blogs, but the research was inconclusive. I had to rely on serendipity. So there I was one Saturday at Chinatown. I figured that if there was a good sinseh in town, there’d be one at Chinatown. Except that there were a few sinsehs in Chinatown. And they’d all think they were the best one. So I popped in to a corner Chinese medical hall, one of those dusty old shops that sell Chinese herbs and medicines and ginseng and other distasteful looking stuff with magical medicinal properties. I asked the uncle at the counter if he knew of any good sinsehs around. After I described my problem to him, he immediately had one in mind. “Go to this one,” he said while he rummaged through his cardholder. “They are very good for this kind of injury. Both the mother and the son are very good. The mother is my good friend.” I looked at the business card. The son’s name was Ben Tan. How can a good Chinese sinseh have an English name? “They’re just at Ann Siang road - very near.” That road was just a couple of streets away, so off to Ann Siang road I went, despite my bias against sinsehs with English names. (to be continued)