Dr Paul Sinnadurai OB

Dr

Paul Sinnadurai FCIEEM, Honorary Research Fellow Cardiff University Senior Ecologist

Bannau Brycheiniog

National Park Authority Ballet Teacher, L4 Strength and Conditioning Coach, Youth Training Specialist

I left St Jo’s, where I’d been fortunate enough to be DeputyHead Boy alongside Colin Gilbert (see page 13), with Sara Owen and Andrew Ogden as Head Girl and Head Boy, in 1982. I made life-long friends but I’ve not been good enough at keeping in touch with other school mates, which is sad on my part. One of my greatest friends was our inspiring, much loved and lost, Brother Paul McAuley, who taught me to see the good in everyone.

I trod the A-level path and secured my place at King’s College London to study zoology but during my sixth form I caught the ballet bug and decided that I had to try to become a ballet dancer. I started attending lessons in Woodbridge at the late age of 17, got more involved with school productions, annoyed our rugby coach by dropping out of training, and having left St Jo’s, auditioned for ballet school. I got a grant-maintained place, with support from my parents, and my St Jo’s mates. I was lucky to have very patient and understanding parents, and King’s was very understanding too, wishing me the best of luck and if it didn’t work out in ballet, to get back in touch! Different times!

Five years later I graduated from the Central School of Ballet with a Professional Diploma in Classical Ballet and Contemporary Dance, having met the love of my life there, Katy, whom I would later marry. Katy landed a full-time contract with the Ballet der Bayerischer Staatsballett and I landed an apprentice contract there. I danced in the corps de ballet in ballets such as Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, La Fille Mal Gardée, Romeo and Juliet, Onegin, Petruschka and others, as well as numerous operas. I wasn’t the next Rudolf Nureyev or Mikhail Baryshnikov, however, so I always felt I had a limited shelf life as a dancer.

My other great interest has always been nature conservation, as it was at St Jo’s, where I would bore my mates pontificating on wildlife and the environment. So, with a few too many injuries and a realisation that I needed to move on from ballet, and being keen to start a career in nature conservation, I contacted King’s College London, who, on understanding my interests in nature conservation, offered me an unconditional place to study ecology, under the excellent supervision of Drs Peter Moore and Bryan Turner. This was during the era of fully maintained university places. I graduated in 1992 with a First-Class Honours Degree in Ecology, and rather than pursue the post-graduate offers that came in, I felt that I needed to start paying my way in society and look for a job. Also, Katy and I married soon after I graduated and whilst she was by now dancing with London

City Ballet (with whom I danced occasionally whilst at university), we wanted to start a family, so I needed to share the income responsibility.

Six months later I landed my first job with English Nature (now Natural England), where I worked as a Conservation Officer for seven years, in the team covering Essex, Hertfordshire and London. London life was expensive even then, and, with two children and a third on the way, Katy and I wanted to give our children the sort of countrybased childhood I had enjoyed in Ufford and Woodbridge. So, after several near-miss job applications, I landed the job as Ecologist with the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority, where I’ve worked now for the past 23 years.

Dr Victor Yeo OB

We are grateful to Chat Chan OB, who sent us the obituary of a member of his class, Dr Victor Yeo. Chat wrote, ‘He joined the school from Hong Kong in 1980 for Year 4, took O-levels in 1982, and then A-levels in ‘83 and ‘84. He then went up to Cambridge in 1985 to read Medicine. He returned to practise medicine in HK in 1996, where he remained until his untimely death.’

We republish the obituary here;

Dr Victor Yeo (1964 – 2022)

FRCA, MRCP, FANZCA, FHKCA (Anaes), FFICANZCA, FHKCA (IC), FJFICM

My brother, Victor, passed away on 22 September 2022, having succumbed to metastatic renal cell carcinoma. He was 57 years old.

Victor was born in Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar) in 1964. Our family left Burma for Hong Kong when he was five years old. He studied at La Salle Primary School and La Salle College, before pursuing his education in United Kingdom. He attended St Joseph College, Ipswich, and subsequently gained entrance to study Medicine at Magdalene College, Cambridge and later obtained a scholarship to continue his Clinical Medicine years at Hughes Hall, Cambridge.

He began his training in Anaesthesia at Leicester Royal Infirmary UK and rotated among teaching hospitals in Leicester and Sheffield. He side-branched into Neonatology and Paediatrics for a year, and also ventured across the Altantic to work in the USA briefly to challenge himself. After obtaining his Fellowship in Anaesthesia and Membership in Paediatrics in the UK, he returned to Hong Kong in 1996 and began working at the Prince of Wales Hospital. On completing his anaesthetic training under the ANZCA and HKCA programmes, he decided to pursue a career in Intensive Care Medicine. He obtained his ICM Fellowship under both Colleges too, and moved on to Queen Mary Hospital Hong Kong in 2000. Besides clinical duties, his other passion was teaching. He was an instructor for the ATLS course and an examiner for the College exams.

Victor left the public health sector to work in private practice in 2010. During his career, he treated many patients but the most memorable would be the survivors from the Pak Sin Leng wildfire in 1996, and also the SARS patients in 2003. I never asked my brother why he chose anaesthesia and intensive care medicine. It was well known to all his friends that Victor loved reading and indeed enjoyed studying. It was no surprise that he would choose the most demanding field which would cover all specialties in medicine, and that he would treat the sickest patients in the hospitals. Having Victor as my brother was a special blessing. He would use the knowledge he learnt from physiology and apply it to daily life. When I was sitting for my undergraduate exams, he advised me to avoid heavy meals before exam (to maintain cerebral blood flow), and the advantage of taking candies (the most direct substrate for the neurones). And being a fan of ‘Star Wars’ and the Jedi Order, he would wish me luck saying ‘May the Force be with you’. When we were both anaesthetic trainees, we could discuss our work and our ‘dilemmas’. And in scenarios where we had to decide whether to intubate the patients or not, he would say, ‘if in doubt, put the tube down’, a principle by which I still abide. We could discuss our post-operative analgesic regime or how to improve the success rate of our epidural anaesthesia. He would always give you his honest and fair view. My father told me Victor used to draw pictures of horses all day long when he was young. However, I never saw him draw. In his teen years, his favourite pastimes were making models, playing board games and computer war-gaming. He would made models of tanks, fighters, warships and battlefields which were based on real historic backgrounds and through these activities he became an expert in world history, especially World War II. Reading was his favourite hobby and Kindle his best gadget. And he would prefer swimming to any other sports. Regarding his musical talent, one must agree his singing of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, the only song he would sing on request, was admirable.

When he was undergoing cancer treatment, Victor experienced many, many side effects. We were distraught and devastated, but Victor was the one to comfort us. He remained his normal calm and intellectual self, balancing the benefits and side effects of all the novel treatments he underwent, and analysing his progress as the disease unfolded.

Finally, it was the courage he showed in his fight against the disease, the sufferings he chose to endure silently, and the selfless love he showed to his family, that made him such a remarkable man. Victor is survived by his wife Alice and his two children, Victoria and Horatio, his parents and three sisters.

Dr Patricia Yeo Anaesthetist (Private Practice, Hong Kong)