WE like to call 28-year-old Kelly Siew “The Singing Doctor”, but don’t get the wrong idea – she doesn’t diagnose patients to the tune of The Sound Of Music.
Cool as that would be, Siew, a licensed doctor back in Australia where she completed her medical studies, doesn’t practise medicine any more.
About a year ago, Siew swapped her stethoscope and lab coat for a microphone and some rather more glamorous outfits to pursue her life-long dream of becoming a recording artiste.
“It was something that was always in the back of my mind – that someday I’d take a year off to do music,” she said in an interview.
It might sound crazy for a doctor to want to throw away a steady medical career for pop/R&B semi-stardom, but hey, how many people can say they’ve saved a life while performing at a gig?
Back when she was still in medical school in Melbourne, Siew was just about to take the stage to perform when someone asked if there was a doctor around – just like in the movies!
“I had to tell the performer after me to just go ahead, you know, ‘duty of care’, ‘first do no harm’…” she said.
Turns out the guy was in pretty bad shape. He was so intoxicated and throwing up so much that he was struggling to breathe and turning blue. Luckily for him, The Singing Doctor was in the room.
Singing had always been Siew’s first passion since she was seven, when her father started enrolling her in talent competitions back in her hometown of Bintulu, Sarawak. By the time she left for Australia at 17, she had a few boxes full of trophies.
Obviously an over-achiever, Siew explains why she went for medical school anyway: “Not many people know what they want at that age. I didn’t, but my results in school were quite good, and my parents wanted me to try medicine, so I went for it.”
Yes, medical school is all about you just deciding to go for it. Even in Australia, she continued singing and taking part in competitions, sometimes going on-call immediately after a gig.
For someone who had completed the first year of her psychiatry major (which she says she still might fully complete some day), Siew knows all too well what unfulfilled passions can do to someone.
She’s been performing mostly at pubs, restaurants and the occasional festivals, and is only going into the studio to record her first EP this month; but Siew has been enjoying herself enough to keep her mind off from medicine for the foreseeable future.
“When I was studying psychiatry, I was working with a lot of people who were unhappy with what they were doing.
“I do this to keep myself happy. I get this ‘high’ when I perform, that I get from nothing else,” she said.
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