Friday, August 31, 2007
I love the song Everything by michael buble! It's such a sweet song! :) I've been listening to it a lot lately :)
You're a falling star, you're the getaway car
You're the line in the sand when I go too far.
You're the swimming pool on an August day,
and you're the perfect thing to say.
And you play it cold, but it's kinda cute.
When you smile at me you know exactly what you do.
Baby, don't pretend, cuz you know it's true,
cuz you can see it when I look at you.
And in this crazy life, and through these crazy times,
it's you, it's you, you make me sing,
You're every line, you're every word,
You're everything.
ahh it's so sweet :) and also sometimes when we touch by dan hill.. I think it's a cover, but I love it!
You ask me if I love you, and I choke on my reply.
I'd rather hurt you honestly than mislead you with a lie.
And who am I to judge you and what you say or do
I'm only just beginning to see the real you
and sometimes when we touch, the honesty's too much
and I have to close my eyes and hide.
I wanna hold you till I die, till we both break down and cry
I wanna hold you till the fear in me subsides.
-sigh- so sweet. :) went to clayton for grocery shopping with shu, xf, zx, armaan and wan jie. Armaan left, then the rest of us went for dinner at this chinese restaurant.. can't remember what it's called, but it was a fantastic dinner. :) We were sitting there for a good 3 hours just talking about everything under the sun, having a very very meaningful conversation. It was fantastic, and I'm so thankful for it. :) It was nice to get to know wan jie more; she's such a nice girl :D -hugs- love ya!
My surgery got cancelled today though. Sheryl and I went down to MMC, but we had to leave because the surgeon we were attached to was involved in an emergency surgery and all his afternoon surgeries were postponed. ah well :) there's always another time :) at least we had a good dinner. :)
I'm going to play squash this weekend! need to lose weight for med ball! wahaha. anyway, I need to vacuum my room >.< but i'll do that tomorrow or something. Going to read the Time Traveller's wife after I take a shower! whee. God bless~
10:18 PM
Thursday, August 30, 2007
this is a continuation of the previous entry. so we played badminton and squash and now I'm aching. It wasn't as bad as the first time I played squash. That was in sec 4 and Paula and I went for NJ open house. -grin- then we went to see the squash courts. such fond memories. :)
anyway, after badminton-ing and squash-ing, there was this mad rush to get ready for dinner. 12 of us went down to the crown casino for dinner and we went for the buffet at this restaurant called sante. It was really nice! The people who went down were shu, xf, kw, sheryl, lynn, eugene, perryn, zx, hc, armaan, ezra and myself! :) it was a really nice dinner! when it came to dessert time, kw, shu and I piled 2 plates and a bowl full of dessert and shared it. we couldn't finish it, but it was so good! we were also facing the yarra river, and we could see the fire show from the restaurant. :) it was a very enjoyable dinner and the company was nice! :) and we ate until chins. :) after that we ezra drove shu, xf, sheryl and i back to halls.. and we got lost and ended up at st. kildas. we took about 2 hours to get home from the city, but thank you ezra for driving us back :)
I'll put photos up one day, when I get them because shu has most of them :)
Then we had lessons today. Bleh. I'm going to watch a coronary artery bypass tomorrow! it's quite exciting! then we're we're going to clayton for dinner. AND we finally convinced xf to go for med ball! -beams- and we've decided to not be completely antisocial and go for the after party. sweet. ugh I need to go read up on the muscles/bones/vessels/nerves of the arm and the cubital fossa. I was rather lost during anat prac today even though I read up before the prac -.- ah well. The weekend is coming! and we're going to the city for some shopping. woohoo. :D rightey, going to bathe then do some cubital fossa-ing and radius-and-ulna-ing. God bless~
8:44 PM
I'm finally exam free! I haven't blogged in more than a week! and I just realised that blogger has added a new video option. cool beans. Here I am typing a nice blog entry at 650am, when normally (before the exam) I'll be trying to read some notes to get some information in.
Preparing for this exam has been tiring. On Monday night, charmaine, fawn, kw, eugene, alex, kh and I stayed in the library until 12, and by then we were all so exhausted and sleepy. Then on Tuesday night, a few of us stayed in the library until 9, upon which when I got back, I just gave up and went to sleep early :)
Yesterday was really nice though! The exam was at 8am and the night before, mom called me up and she was very worried that I wouldn't be able to wake up in time for it. She even asked me whether I wanted a wake-up call, but I had to wake up at 6+ and it would be crazy for her to call me then. So I just set both my alarms, the tactic which hasn't failed me yet. :) zx was late to meet us, then we walked to the engineering hall, and it was freezing yesterday! The weather was so nice a few days before that, in the 20s I think. Then yesterday it dropped to about 16! At least, it felt like 16. We went into the exam hall and I sat between hc and zx. When reading time started and I flipped the paper over, I was absolutely horrified, because there were some questions for what we learned on monday, which I obviously didn't study for. I think there were about 2 pages of those questions and I heard hc on my left go, "shiiiiiiiiiiiiit" When the paper started, I just ploughed my way through the first 2 pages, and took a whack at the questions. Some of them came out in the formative quiz that was online the night before. sneaky buggers. It got better towards the middle, and the end became horrible again because it was microb, which I didn't study for either, but it was just about 1 or 2 questions.
After the exam, sy, kw, sheryl, hc, armaan, zx and I went to clayton for lunch! We went to this restaurant called Taste of Singapore. sy, kw and I shared a murtabak, a cheese prata and a nasi lemak. All the fattening stuff. :) but it was nice! I didn't even eat prata when I went home, which is really retarded because I stay so near to THE prata place. Ah well. I'll go when I go back at the end of the year. The cheese prata was nice though! They stuffed it with mozarella so it was very stringy.
When we got back to school, after a nice lunch, we decided to go and play some sports! smart, but we didn't have a VERY filling lunch anyway. When we got to the courts, the badminton courts were all full, so sy, zx, sheryl and i decided to try squash, since the courts were empty. I haven't played since I was in J1. I sucked then and I am no better now. In fact, I may be worse now because of all the creaky bones :)
I'll blog more later. Need to go get ready for school. It's so cruel. The morning after the exam and we have an 8am lecture -.- Take care and God bless~
6:52 AM
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
argh I'm so constipated, I'm in a really bad mood -fumes- apparently I'm not the only one. Charmaine and kw are also suffering with me at the moment. But then mine is chronic, so I think I'd better go see a doctor. I'm taking some mild laxatives now, so hopefully they'll work, then I'll just get my system up. I need food poisoning or something.
ooh i'm so stuffed up -.- charmaine was complaning how she felt like she was so full of wind and fart and how if she went running, she'd leave this trail of fart.
I'm convinced it's stress that's the culprit! exam is in exactly in one week's time! good luck to all the year 2s for their exam tomorrow! -beams-
I really have no idea what's wrong with me. It's so annoying! I'm drinking more water. maybe I'm not getting enough fibre. But shu pointed out that I eat more fibre than all of them. hm. maybe I should eat more. That's it! salads for lunch from now on. Not only is it constipation-solving, it's also very healthy!
and to add on to my list of woes, I'm now aching all over from badminton yesterday. I don't know why. I think it's because I did about 2 minutes of circuit training, which just goes to show my fitness level. shu and I were doing jumps up the spectators stand, lunges across the badminton courts and that funny shuffling feet exercise. ok maybe it was more than 2 minutes. heh.
argh I'm so stuffed up. I'm going to eat an orange. maybe I should eat the peel as well. That will give me lots of fibre, not to mention possbly a terrible case of diarrhoea as well. This is so annoying. ok i'll eat an orange, go and bathe then start studying! woohoo~
I need to buy prune juice this weekend.
8:54 PM
Monday, August 20, 2007
It's monday of week 6! The exam is in 9 days! bah I don't know why I'm blogging, not like there's much to write about. hm. I'm so tired.. but I still haven't finished studying.. I don't know whether I'm even half through at the moment. -sigh-
AND
Liverpool and Chelsea drew last night. That wasn't a very good start to the day. -.- but yay torres! :D ah well. I just got back from school about 20 minutes ago. I think I'll go running later whee~ hopefully that will wake me up a bit.
back to studying..
2:26 PM
Saturday, August 18, 2007
I just came back from dinner! sy, xf, kw, zx, chai and i went to clayton to have korean bbq and it was really really good :) blew up a bit but i think it was worth it. It was probably the best dinner i've had in a while. after that we went to cold rock and I had cheesecake flavoured ice cream mixed with caramel mudcake ice cream with brownies and cookie dough smashed in. it was heavenly! just that I'll probably have to work out a bit tomorrow. at least i went running this morning. offset some of the fats.
I called paulee and the batch is having their ball at px's condo now! sigh. I really really miss them a lot. When I was talking to them, it was so nice hearing their voices again and I felt all these waves of nostalgia. I was so sad when I spoke to lynette especially because I haven't talked to her in ages and it was so nice to hear her again. and xin and novella and an min. -hugs- i love you guys. and the guys too.. it just sounded so chaotic and so fun in the background, I just started to cry when I was talking to paul again. I miss them all so much. I just have to hold out for another 3 months :) then I can go home again, to my family, to friends.. 24 november, come quickly..
10:01 PM
It has been a while since I've blogged. I made another batch of claypot rice gone wrong and I'm eating it now. It's really tasty, even though it looks like gruel.
Anyway, this week has been unbelievably hectic. Rural assignment was due yesterday and I am so glad it's finally over. For the whole of last week, I was meeting shu almost every night just to edit and collate all the bits of the essay sent to us and to do the mindmap, which turned out beautifully. But I was so exhausted for the whole week. I just want to say a beeeg thank you to xf who was of a massive help with all the collating and stuff even though she didn't have to do it -beams- thankew dear.
Adding on to the pile of stuff, which has just diminished by some, my exam is in less than 2 weeks! hurhur. how exciting, seeing as how I've just started studying. At least micro-b isn't coming up, whooo~ and cancer.
I was thinking about getting more sleep over this weekend so I slept early last night, around 11..
and I woke up at 530. -.- how annoying. ah well. anyway I'm probably going ot the library to study. nothing new happening at the moment. God bless~
12:43 PM
Sunday, August 12, 2007
gah I woke up at 530 again this morning. It's rather annoying actually, but I did go for a nice run this morning! About 3km. I didn't end up running yesterday as I had planned to. But I decided that today I should treat myself as an end of my detox week. I was very good last week and ate lots of relatively healthier food, like sandwiches and yogurt and the like. No deep fried stuff!
There's a lot of work coming in now. Especially since the midsem exam is coming up, and the rural assignment is due soon. pfft. and anatomy kills.
I was talking to paulee yesterday and he said mark asked him how he and I were doing. and he said we were fine, normal. Then mark told him that there's supposedly some rumour going around nus med that paul and i were very on and off, which led me to wonder where the hell he heard that from. and paul told me that when mark asked them where they got their information from, they said that they have their sources -.- what sources? as far as I know, the only person I talk to in med fac is px and paul, to mark. hm. strange. there could be another paul and iris somewhere. hurhur. so amusing.
bah anyway, I'm going to go and bathe and then do laundry, prepare lunch, eat, go to the library, study then go to church. yay. my schedule for today is all nicely planned. :D
8:53 AM
Saturday, August 11, 2007
It is now 0700 and I cannot believe that I'm already awake. In fact, I've been awake since 530 this morning. Why? I think my body clock has completely screwed up. I think I slept around 1145 hoping to take a nap and as a result, ended up sleeping (with numerous interruptions by the alarm clock, the phone..) until about 5am this morning, upon which I just lay in bed and then decided to wake up, have some brekky and, yes, attempt to study. I'm really sleepy now but if I fall asleep, I'll probably miss the bus to bp and I'm out of groceries! I realised that sandwiches with yogurt and a fruit make a very nice lunch. :)
I went to donate blood yesterday! They don't inject anaesthetic into the skin to numb the area before they insert the fat needle in. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt as much when they punctured my skin, but now I have a small 16G needle hole around my cubital fossa on my left arm. hurhur. anatomy. ah well. It was a bit weird because when I sat up, I felt slightly woozy and when I was walking to the table to get a drink and some food after I finished, i felt quite light headed. I'm proud to say that I didn't pass out, so yay for me :)
I made claypot rice the other day! Actually, it was claypot rice gone wrong because I don't have dark soy sauce so when I opened the rice cooker, the rice was all off-colour and looked very dodgy. To add on to that, I threw in carrots and xiao bai cai because I was too lazy to go down to the kitchen and cook it, so all the water from the veggies came out, causing the rice to look slightly mushy. The chicken tasted really good though! I think I marinated it quite well -feels proud of myself- on a whole, it looked looked like crap, but food is food and it tasted good :) today I will cook.. rice and chicken and xiao bai cai (my staple veg) and an egg. woohoo. I'm such a good cook.
Oh yes I forgot to mention! Yesterday when I was donating blood, the nurse was looking for my veins, so after she put the tourniquet and asked me to pump, she said, "you have really good veins for someone so small" and that statement totally made my day. :D I was just lying on the bed grinning to myself. hee hee. -feels happy- take that woman-in-orchard-road-who-told-me-my-ideal-weight-is-47kg
Rightey, I think I'm going to go for a walk. I need to exercise! I played badminton on Wednesday, and it was very fun! At first it was just zx, sy and myself. So we rotated playing 2v1 and it was super tiring, but it felt like a very good workout. -beams- hm.
will blog more another day. :)
7:02 AM
Friday, August 03, 2007
Ok the order is kinda screwed up but here're some photos that I took over the week. I couldn't get them up in the previous entry, for some strange reason
Before getting onto the ferry to go to Raymond island.
One of the beaches in Paynesville
Stupid pose.. one of the many
argh I look fat here >.<>
The view out our backdoor. :)
In school today
The Royal Caves in Buchan
Stalactites and Stalacmites
View from the bluff at Buchan
At Raymond Island.8:50 PM
I'm back from rural week! I just spent the last 5 days in Bairnsdale and it was without a doubt, the best week I've spent this entire academic year!
On Monday, I woke up at 5 something to catch a cab down to Southern Cross station to catch my train, which was at 745am. The train station is in the city, so there was no way I could take a bus down. I was really panicky as well, because I booked the cab and if it didn't come, we would have to call another cab, and we weren't sure how long it would take to arrive. Thank goodness it was there just as I was coming out of halls, so shu, xf, sheryl, chai and kh took the cab down to the city. It cost us $66. The metre was jumping every 3 seconds, and I think it didn't go up in intervals of 10 cents but 20-30 cents. It gave me a neckache trying to look at it. In the end we arrived early and some of us wanted to eat something, so we sat at the food court for a while. I was so tired. Eventually we got onto our train. The V line train is quite nice. It's very comfortable! It was quite hard getting in and out though, because I was fighting a losing battle with my orange bag. The train ride was almost 4 hours long. Most of the time was spent playing bridge but we slept for a while before arriving, so when we arrived at the train station, we all had bed hair.
Bairnsdale was gorgeous though. It was quiet and small. Some of the staff from the rural school, Deb and Jenny, came to pick us up and drove us to the supermarket to get some lunch and to buy some groceries. The town was so nice! but the sun was so bright! I could feel my retinas burning hehe and I forgot to bring my sunnies. Ah well. Deb and Jenny drove us to the rural school and we had a short briefing. After that, we had a talk by the people from the SES, following which we went were driven to our accomodation at captain's cove. The place was absolutely amazing! The houses were clean and overlooking a lake. The link is here xf, shu, sheryl and I rushed upstairs, and we abandoned chau and ryan downstairs. The place was so so nice! and shu and I took PLENTY of stupid photos. We had a really nice dinner of roasted chicken with garlic bread and soup, all bought from the supermarket because we didn't want to spend too much time cooking.
On Tuesday we all split up into smaller groups and went to different places, be it a primary industry visit or a hospital. I went to forestec and it was pretty interesting. It was this place that not only produces timber, but also conducts courses on woodworking and tree climbing. It was really cool because our guide, rick, brought us to the workshop to see some of the furniture that the students made, and they were lovely! The workshop had lots of gigantic pieces of machinery for woodworking. It was like a high end D&T workshop. Rick was also telling us that the forest in the area stretched for about 100km and the SES used the forest to train for bush fire rescues. It was quite interesting! The place also had spaces for their students who had already finished the course, but couldn't afford to start up their business just yet, so they loaned them some space to store their items and let them work from there for a while. The building itself was absolutely gorgeous! It was made up from timber from the surrounding forest and it was so nice! In the afternoon, we had PCL with Jess, a 4th year student, and she was telling us a lot of stuff about the first couple of years of med school, which was highly entertaining. After that we went back to captain's cove and relaxed a bit. Then we discussed our assignment >.< which is this shadow hovering over our trip to bairnsdale, but ah well. THen in the evening, Trevor, our driver, drove us to Raymond Island, which supposedly has a gigantic population of koalas. It was really cool because there was just a track which you could drive along. It was like a safari. THe road was really bumpy and we kept on stopping to see koalas in trees. They were really fat. At the northern part of the island there are many kangaroos and as we were driving through, all these kangaroos kept on hopping across the road. They were so cute!On Wednesday I had to leave the house at 7am because we were going up to Buchan, which is one hour away. It is in a remote area of Victoria, and we could see the difference between the remote and rural areas. The remote areas were so nice! In the rural areas there were these smal clusters of towns but in the remote areas, there houses were all few and far between. The land was all green and there were so many cows and sheep. It kind of reminds me of J1 when we went to Ireland and were kept on seeing sheep and cows. Jennifer and I followed a bush nurse around. It was so amazing because everyone in that town knew each other. They were all so friendly! I spoke to some of them and they were really really nice. Then Anne, the bush nurse, drove Jennifer and I to go sightseeing in between patients, and she brought us to various high points in the region and the view was absolutely fantastic! The grass was so green, and there were many streams and brooks running through the land. We also did home visits and visited this old couple, who were so sweet. When we arrived, the lady already had the table set with cakes and drinks ready for us. We were just talkig about random things and she just had her 4th great grandchild and was showing us photos and various clothes that she knitted for her great grandchildren. Her husband was really amusing too! Along the way, Anne stopped by one house to pop some cigarettes into the occupant's mailbox. Apparently this woman smokes 100 cigarettes and drinks 5L of wine in a day. Anne was telling us she didn't want to provide the cigarettes and alcohol to her, but if she didn't do so, this woman would drive to town, drunk, and try to get her stuff. It was very alarming! I realised that technology in the rural areas is not as backward as most people think. Towards the end of our visit, Anne had a video conference. Deb was telling us today that the technology was potentially even higher because they need to be contactable. The nearest doctor was in Bairnsdale, which is more than an hours drive from Buchan. Occasionally a doctor would go into the region, but other than that, in emergency cases, patients have to be helicoptered to the hospital. After the visit, Anne managed to get us some tickets to visit the Buchan caves, which was so nice! It wasn't a very long tour, but Sheryl and Megan, who went to Gelantipy, which was even more remote than Buchan, joined Jenn and I and we went to see the caves. There was one part where the tour guide switched ALL the lights in the cave off and it was pitch black inside. The darkness was so.. thick, I felt like I could cut through it. I couldn't see a single thing, which was so cool. I was so exhausted at the end of the day though. On the drive back, Deb pointed this house to us in the middle of a field and she said that during the recent floods to the Bairnsdale and Sale area, that house floated down the river.
Yesterday was the most fantastic day of the week! I went to the Bairnsdale hospital. When we arrived in the morning, David, another 4th year, was there. I realised that he's so gentlemanly! Whenever there was a door in front of us, he would walk ahead and open the door for us. So sweet. :) He brought us to the hospital. Jenn made this comment about how medical students are seriously the bottom of the pile and the lowest of the low, what more a first year student. Ah well. I was attachd to the midwife unit in the morning. It was sad because a lady delivered a baby just before I arrived. I didn't do much, but I have a newfound respect for nurses. They showed me around, explained things to me and taught me a lot of things. They kept on asking me whether I wanted a break, if I wanted anything to eat; I learned how to make hospital beds and pretty much made beds for the whole morning. But the nurses there, Colleen and Susan especially, were wonderful! Whenever they had something else to do, they would let me know and not just abandon me in the ward. I met some really nice people there. There was this cute old lady who kept on forgetting who I was, so every time I popped in to say hi to her and to see how she was doing, she would think that I was one of the doctors to check up on her, even though I told her I was just a student about an hour ago. The morning was quite slow, but the afternoon was wonderful! I went to the emergency ward and the first thing I did was learn how to do an ECG for a patient who came in with angina. The nurse showed me how to do it, then she told me to go do it for another patient in another consultation room. I cannot describe how terrified I was, since I know absolutely nothing about ECGs. I don't even know how to read them. So I tried to stall and told the girl to change into a gown and just waited outside the consultation room. One of the interns, Emma, walked past when I told her my predicament, she told me to just stick 2 leads on the arms, 2 on the hands and 6 on the chest. I did the arms and legs first and stuck them in all the wrong areas. WHen the nurse came in, she showed me where to stick them and asked me to connect the leads to the ECG and described the graph to me. That was quite scary. When I came out, Emma asked me to go into another consultation room to see this other patient who got a nasty gash on his thumb. She was showing me how to bandage the wound and how to clean it up. She used this dressing called a condom dressing, which is this roll of dressing that you unroll onto your finger. It was quite cute. She then asked me whether I knew how to give injections and when I said yes, she told me that I could give this guy his tetanus shot, which is intramuscular. It was quite scary and I was convinced that I was going to jab myself with the needle instead. I realised it's not as scary as I thought it would be and I got to sign for it! I think IVs are going to be absolute hell, but that will come another time. The nurses and interns were so so nice! There was this old man whose BP was supposed to be taken, so one of the nurses let me use the sphygmomanometer to try and after 2 times I couldn't hear a single thing, so she did it on the other arm and then let me listen. She then allowed me to try on her, and I almost took her arm off because I released the pressure too slowly. Soon after another patient came in who had a 2 inch gash across his scalp because while he was working, a strong wind blow a door into him that caused him to crash into a forklift. It was very scary because he had blood all over his hands and running down his face. He didn't look like he was in a lot of pain though. Cleaning him up took a while and the cut was actually quite deep. He had to have stitches done and I got to watch the process! It was quite painful to watch though. When Vlad, the resident, was injecting the local anaesthetic, the poor guy kept on flinching because it was so painful. And the LA was oozing out of the wound as well along with some more blood. Vlad was telling the patient and myself that when he was doing his elective in moscow, he got into an accident and had to have stitches, the doctor injected the anaesthesia and immediately started suturing, without allowing the anaesthesia to take effect. It was really funny because the patient's boss's wife came in to see him and she made a comment about how if he had to have the hair around the wound shaved, there wouldn't have been much hair to shave anyway. :) Watching the suturing made me feel slightly woozy though, because vlad had to use the forcepts to pick the skin up and stick the needle through. It was well-done though! The afternoon was very very interesting and I was sad to leave! That night, we walked to Paynesville town, which is where our accomodation was, and we had fish and chips, which was amazing! It tasted very good and was very cheap.
This morning, we had a man with Down Syndrome come in to talk to us after which we boarded the train and headed back to school. Met chai and kh on the train at sale. We played bridge almost the whole way back. In fact, we played bridge every night for the past 4 nights. It took us more than 4 hours to get back to school!
This week was unbelievable! I'm so glad I got to go on this rural placement. I think I learned a lot this week and I feel very happy! I'm sad that I had to leave, but I'm kinda glad to be back in my room as well. I checked my EOS results and I'm happy with them :) When I checked them on wednesday, i almost got a heart attack. According to that result, I almost failed the paper. I felt so depressed after that, but I was trying to convince myself that I should be glad that the screw-up occured for the paper that was 5% and I felt slightly better. After that I got a call from kh who told me that the result I got may not have been my own because the system screwed up or something like that. I was kinda relieved, but my stress levels went up again. I just want to thank shu and xf and sheryl and kh for all their support though. They were very encouraging and they made me feel a lot better when I was down. :) thanks you guys. -beams-
Ok this entry has been long enough. I want to watch Indiana Jones! After Wayne Hodgson's lecture on tubacurarine where he showed us a clip from Raiders of the Lost Arc with the tribal people, I feel stimulated to watch indy woohoo. :) take care and God bless~
6:13 PM