School life

Tutorials, being grilled, fried, interrogated, tortured and scared out of one's wits. Everyone seems so comfortable with it though, except me. I'm skipping this morning's tutorials cause I just am so tired of tutorials and I'm totally unprepared so I won't get much out of this morning's tutorials.

I dunno, I think I'm in for a terrible fall. Where is my enthusiasm? Where is my energy? Back in secondary school I had these terrific friends in school who sorta worked together and motivated each other - not in a mushy soppy way - but we saw each other as role models to emulate. I gotta admit my self-motivation really truly sucks.

Well, it's not like everyone's nasty in school now or anything, but the atmosphere is just so competitive, lag behind, and no one turns around to see how you are.

But there are things that cheer me up still, like when M dragged me to the canteen despite me insisting on staying in the students' room instead. I hardly eat lunch at where I'm posted to because the canteen is a warzone, full of long queues and pushy people and the food sorta sucks.

So she dragged me along and tried to make me eat but no way I was going to jostle with the crowds for lousy food, so settled for a coffee anyway (which sorta sucked heh).

But it's nice, knowing that there are people around who notice that I exist, and that they want my company. It feels so... sweet. Hopefully, despite being the messed-up me, I hope I don't get these people down!

Webcamming

Webcamming rocks! 'Borrowed' my brother's webcam to webcam with my friend who's now in USA studying, quite an interesting experience.

So today I webcammed with Bozo! Couldn't get it to work at first but once it worked it was really fun. We showed each other all the cool stuff in our rooms. I'm not gonna reveal what!

Things I done in front of the webcam: spun a drum stick, balanced a teddy bear on my head, tried to play out a vampire scene with my Lego vampire keychain, shuffed an empty medication box onto the head of the teddy like a hat, lit up my face with my phone's torchlight horror-storytelling style and posed with my earphones I decided to open today Japanese-model style.

Sometimes I just act like a kid!

Bozo also found it amusing that I sometimes use the computer while hugging my pillow heh.

Oh and Skype seems to handle webcam conversations better. The picture's clearer and the sound less jerky.

I ought to get my own webcam! Anyone else wanna webcam?

Mangled Mistruths

Saturday morning, and my dad's particularly chatty today. First thing in the morning after I came back from a run, he went on this crazy diatribe on his crazy theories of health. Well, actually, most of these theories are thanks to the way the mass media mangles medical truths, and also from all the weird books he reads.

He was telling me about how he liked this absolutely insane book about how flouridation of water is evil, how electrolytes in drinking water are evil and how we should only eat 'organic' minerals.



Erm, organic minerals? But but minerals are just free floating ions, whether they come from your tap or from your friendly juicy chicken or tame head of cabbage!

No matter how I try to explain the physiology of fluid and electrolytes in the body, he just can't accept it. That perhaps, his son who's studying scientific medicine may well be correct and the 2 loonys who wrote that book was probably in it just for the money.

I dunno but it's really frustrating when the very people who send me to university, refuse to accept what I learn there. Hmm, maybe they simply can't trust their son who still leaves the kitchen in a mess and wipes his mouth on his sleeves when it comes to serious stuff. *Shrug.*

Everytime I try to start of explaining things in a logical way, saying how their conculsions may have come out of statistical bias and stuff - even he never seems to listen. So I just give up and nod and pretend I'm interested and in my heart, I just want the whole speech to end dammit!

Everytime this happens, I see it as a failure of myself and my education to spread the word of scientific medicine. Bleagh. It ain't easy being me dude. With great powers comes great responsibility, the wise Uncle Ben from Spiderman said.

Somehow it's always me, me and me who gets all the tough questions from family, friends and patients from the wards during my clinical attachments. Even in online forums. And I got this stressful responsibility to say the right thing, even if I may not know enough.

"Yes Mr. XXX. It's true, your glucose self-monitoring device is telling you that your diabetes is getting worse, you may have to take medications. The high readings are probably not due to your surgery."

"It probably is nothing, but better get it checked just to be safe!"

"I'll ask around to see if there's anything I can do regarding your dependence on sleeping pills. It's not good you know, is there anyone you can talk to about it?"

"It's alright madam. You see, this is XXXX hospital you know. It's such a good hospital they will take care of you!"

Sweet! (Friday)

Begun the day by rushing for school again. Stupid bus scheduling changed so I had to wait for the later bus.

Tutorial. Arrgh. I'm always the one who doesn't know the answers. These days instead of stalling in a blurry blank when being asked a question I don't know, I just smile and say "I think I need to read up first" or if in a bigger group and less formal situation, "Can I ask a friend?".

School progressed on, clinics shadowing the doc then a lecture. Was bored so SMS'd Ryan and decided to meet early before the movie!

Went home, fixed a quick lunch, slacked a little then went out again. Hanging around with Ryan is fun! Although we just walked in aimless circles it was great fun talking about movies, graphic novels, books, video games and stuff. All too often it's like I dunno what to talk about but it wasn't the case yay!

After what Ryan recommends and what I Googled/Wiki'd/Rottentomatoes'd -- List of movies I gotta watch: Scary Movie 4, From Hell, Daredevil, X-men 3. Gotta hunt for them the next time I pop by Video-Ezy. (Just realised that Junction 8 had one a few days ago, with lots of good titles.)

Oh. Ryan: the carton series that parodies Spongebob, Link from Zelda, Superman, Betty Boop and etc is called Drawn Together.

Met up with the gang again! Starbucks. Mr Black recommends using skim milk for coffee instead of the usual milk, so I tried it. It sorta tastes less creamy but it's quite a small difference really. Maybe I should stick to that - healthy choices that taste more or less the same!

Movie movie! Grudge 1 and 2 marathon. Grudge 1 was sorta bad. To be honest. There was no coherent plot to talk about, unlike most good horror shows I've watched so far. And oh well, looked like I was the only one not enjoying it so it was quite depressing, slumped in the seat while the others around me just laughed and joked about it with each other. The cons of being a picky movie aficionado after all those years! Grade : C+

Grudge 2 is slightly better, but it's not going to get anything above a B- in my eyes anyway. Was freezing in the cinema by then. Forgot that Plaza Singapura got really cold at night, like the time I watched Death Note there. Thanks Kate for that jacket!

Hung around in Macs for a while then made our way back! Was having this conversation with Kate about our career choices and stuff. Hmm, I still am having do some thinking about it. The way I think logically, it is probably the right choice for me but it doesn't feel like it. In any case, I need to plan out my career path to a slack career! Long hours and hard work aren't good for my poor brain.

Oh and from what I'm like will I really get bullied when I start working? Yikes!

Reached home, still high after all that so hanged around online for a while. Then off to the bed! It's always a little sad when a blissful and fun gathering ends, so I'm looking forward to the next one!

Orthopaedics sucks

To quote Ali G, it's more eviler than Skeletor. Evil lecturers who insist you know everything in the textbook, then double that, and quadruple that again.

Stupid lectures. And the students seem to lap it up like it's precious little pearls of wisdom they're going to save the world with. Dude, really, why bother when it's like ten times more important to start with the basics?

And they're copying every single word and letter the lecturers speak, while I just frown and try to decipher the alien structures on those black-and-white pictures they call X-rays.

It's times like these when I wonder if I'm in the wrong course in uni!

Oh and I think I offended a girl when I insisted that I didn't want to present yet another case presentation so she had to do it. Yikes. What else could I have done? I really hate case presentations and I was totally unprepared!

Feeling really tired lately. Wonder why. Even fell asleep on the bus and missed my stop! Dammit. My tempermental nose's trying to tell me that a common cold is to be expected in the next few days. Yikes.

Anyway: James Morrison - Wonderful World

Heard that song on BBC Radio 1 and loved it straight away. Raw vocals and great lyrics.

Local radio

(richie has The Kooks - Naive as the now playing song)
kc - shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, like a polaroid picture says:
i like the swingish rhythm of naive
richie says:
its overplayed in nz
kc - shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, like a polaroid picture says:
o rly
kc - shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, like a polaroid picture says:
at least you get good stuff being overplayed
kc - shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, like a polaroid picture says:
sian ½
richie says:
[o rly
richie says:
i had nightmares in the start of the sem dude
kc - shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, like a polaroid picture says:
would you rather have black eyed peas being overplayed?

Grrr

1. Yet another crappy school day!
2. Was supposed to do case presentation with another guy but that guy didn't turn up!
3. Was so caught up doing the preparation that I didn't get a single bite of lunch!
4. Screwed up my case presentation!
5. It was a realy big screw up!
6. I wonder how my classmates suddenly can come up with all those smart answers in tutorial I can't even dream of!
7. I hate smiling and acting like an idiot when I keep on not knowing the answers for tutorial!
8. Dude I hate my life and want to punch something up!
9. Or go for a good bike ride or run - but it's freaking wet out there!
10. So I stay at home and sulk!