of godfathers and free stuff
As a form of celebration after ending our first block here in Ninewells Hospital & Medical School, I decided to...(drumroll)...spend more time over the weekend glued to the TV. hey it's not too bad being a TV junky for a few hours. they have some pretty good shows here - Lost, Malcolm in the Middle, Simpsons, CSI (they show all 3-Las Vegas, NY & Miami!), Legally Blond...and i finally caught the Godfathers on DVD! I tell ya that must be one of the most gaya shows of all times. 'Luca Brasi is sleeping with the fishes' is currently what Lena, Esther & me say a dozen times a day because it just sounds so good. oh and you must say it with the Italian accent and hand gestures like how they do it in the movies. well, we stopped half way through the 2nd one coz the rest wanted to watch Legally Blond -_-"
helped out in our Dundee Chinese Christian Fellowship booth in the fresher's fayre on Saturday and man was the place packed! prayerfully, those who got our flyers will go to the welcome night this Fri. (if you're within the vicinity of St Peter's church Perth Road on Fri night and don't come in for it, you're missing out on authentic M'sian food that we're cooking! it's your choice!)
the best thing was, nearly every booth was giving away chocs, sweets, CD samples, posters, keychains etc etc etc. my best haul - a huge bottle of shampoo and another bottle of moisturizer, both from Schwarzkopf. think it must have cost ~£15. but...but...the shampoo is for brunettes. but, it's free! that's the main thing, isn't it. heh...sorry...guess i can't deny some Singapore blood still runs in me. hmmm...nah...i think Caucasians, M'sians, Indians, we're all the same. you should have seen how some Caucasians came to our booth and took our sweets without even looking up to see what our booth was about. oh well, human nature.
got pretty entertained by some of the clubs. there was this club with the main aim of fighting for the independence of Scotland from the UK. they actually had a toilet roll with Tony Blair's face printed on every sheet of it. wonder what they do during their club meetings??
(to all who were concerned about me over the last week, thanks so much. no worries, I'm fine :) Romans 5:4-5 perseverance, character, hope. it's the perseverance part now. dad, mom: thanks for the email, don't lose sleep, love you guys)
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
there must be a conspiracy going on in Dundee...
had my biggest ward round ever yesterday. 13 people! can you imagine? once we draw the curtains around the patient's bed, there's barely room for anyone else. and guess what? out of the 13 people, 9 were foreigners! there must be some conspiracy going on! the consultant was a french (i think), and then you get a couple of Indian registrars and JHOs, then an Italian or French SHO and then of course me & Sheng Yeeng the 2 lost Malaysians. and all along I was wondering, Dundee must be sucking the rest of the world dry of their medical talents.
but seriously...13 ppl in one ward round is just too much. i could barely hear what the consultant was saying or doing to the patient. got quite fed-up after a while. and it didn't help either that most consultants/specialist registrars/SHOs here look right through the space we're standing as if we're just thin air. hello?? Medical student who's paying £18800/yr for your teaching standing here. and yes, you'll be telling me: Aiky, make yourself visible and tell the consultant you're there and get some teaching! yea right...try doing that! the atmosphere during the ward round is so tensed i could feel my eyes popping out. no one smiles. there's no time to stop for you to ask questions. even the JHOs don't utter a word. only SHOs, registrars reporting to the consultant. urgh. can't wait for this week to be over and i'll be done with this Surgery block.
i'm starting to have this dreaded feeling that i'm gonna hate this profession more and more. remember how before you enter IMU, you tell the interviewer :oh i want to be a doctor because i am compassionate towards patients, i want to relieve their suffering, i want to save the world...yadah yadah all that kinda crap? yeap, that's nothing more than 100% crap. somehow, i just don't see the nobility of being a doctor anymore. 1st you slot as a JHO, then you slot somemore as an SHO, then you SLOT SOMEMORE as a registrar (and all this while, having a consultant to report to and always watching your back for fear that you'll do something wrong causing a patient's condition to deterioate) and then after all that hard work, you finally get to be a consultant. how boring. oh well...already in 4th year...no turning back. if God didn't mean me to be here, he wouldn't have brought me this far.
my brains are failing me in a tremendous speed. i can't retain stuff in there anymore. i'll read about this drug today and the next day i can't recall anything about it at all. and i lack a lot of basic medical knowledge. i think the Dundee professors who did the PMS ranking will be cursing themselves for having chosen me once they realise how little i know. it gives me the shudders how i'm gonna survive this 2 yrs. but as Si Peng said: trust in God, believe in the theory of SOMEHOW.
anyway, depressing thoughts aside, i had a good weekend with extended LOTR dvd version marathon. was great fun watching it in the comforts of our own Nine Castle living room with great company, cozy couches, lotsa junkfood downstairs in the kitchen, and Lena shouting in excitement & sobbing at the right moments to add some extra flavour to the movie.
oh yea...i've developed this thing called Consultant Phobia Syndrome, CPS. they scare me. they're like the Nazgul, the Death Eaters, the Dementors. i freeze in front of them. the cause is idiopathic and of sudden onset. i was never afraid of HT or FA or TS back in IMU. but you should have seen the state i was in before my case presentation last week in front of my consultant supervisor. but thank God, it ended well. 'A Good Case Presentation' he commented. will blog about it the next time.
had my biggest ward round ever yesterday. 13 people! can you imagine? once we draw the curtains around the patient's bed, there's barely room for anyone else. and guess what? out of the 13 people, 9 were foreigners! there must be some conspiracy going on! the consultant was a french (i think), and then you get a couple of Indian registrars and JHOs, then an Italian or French SHO and then of course me & Sheng Yeeng the 2 lost Malaysians. and all along I was wondering, Dundee must be sucking the rest of the world dry of their medical talents.
but seriously...13 ppl in one ward round is just too much. i could barely hear what the consultant was saying or doing to the patient. got quite fed-up after a while. and it didn't help either that most consultants/specialist registrars/SHOs here look right through the space we're standing as if we're just thin air. hello?? Medical student who's paying £18800/yr for your teaching standing here. and yes, you'll be telling me: Aiky, make yourself visible and tell the consultant you're there and get some teaching! yea right...try doing that! the atmosphere during the ward round is so tensed i could feel my eyes popping out. no one smiles. there's no time to stop for you to ask questions. even the JHOs don't utter a word. only SHOs, registrars reporting to the consultant. urgh. can't wait for this week to be over and i'll be done with this Surgery block.
i'm starting to have this dreaded feeling that i'm gonna hate this profession more and more. remember how before you enter IMU, you tell the interviewer :oh i want to be a doctor because i am compassionate towards patients, i want to relieve their suffering, i want to save the world...yadah yadah all that kinda crap? yeap, that's nothing more than 100% crap. somehow, i just don't see the nobility of being a doctor anymore. 1st you slot as a JHO, then you slot somemore as an SHO, then you SLOT SOMEMORE as a registrar (and all this while, having a consultant to report to and always watching your back for fear that you'll do something wrong causing a patient's condition to deterioate) and then after all that hard work, you finally get to be a consultant. how boring. oh well...already in 4th year...no turning back. if God didn't mean me to be here, he wouldn't have brought me this far.
my brains are failing me in a tremendous speed. i can't retain stuff in there anymore. i'll read about this drug today and the next day i can't recall anything about it at all. and i lack a lot of basic medical knowledge. i think the Dundee professors who did the PMS ranking will be cursing themselves for having chosen me once they realise how little i know. it gives me the shudders how i'm gonna survive this 2 yrs. but as Si Peng said: trust in God, believe in the theory of SOMEHOW.
anyway, depressing thoughts aside, i had a good weekend with extended LOTR dvd version marathon. was great fun watching it in the comforts of our own Nine Castle living room with great company, cozy couches, lotsa junkfood downstairs in the kitchen, and Lena shouting in excitement & sobbing at the right moments to add some extra flavour to the movie.
oh yea...i've developed this thing called Consultant Phobia Syndrome, CPS. they scare me. they're like the Nazgul, the Death Eaters, the Dementors. i freeze in front of them. the cause is idiopathic and of sudden onset. i was never afraid of HT or FA or TS back in IMU. but you should have seen the state i was in before my case presentation last week in front of my consultant supervisor. but thank God, it ended well. 'A Good Case Presentation' he commented. will blog about it the next time.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
if u thought pilots are gaya, wait until you see surgeons in action...
phew. just stood for 5 hrs in the operation theatre holding my forearms up above my elbows. i went through the whole process of scrubbing and making myself as sterile as possible. and man, it just makes you feel so conscious of everything you touch. once you scrub up, you aren't allowed to put your arms down coz there is a chance of your lower half apron touching the wall or 'unsterilised' surfaces and thus contaminating it. and man, it's tiring. after that, i just felt like hanging my arms loose on both sides.
the whole scrubbing procedure was pretty fun. you stand infront of the sink and wonder, where's the tap? guess what? it's on the floor! you step on it and water flows out. magic. but i wonder whether i'll be able to do the whole thing again without a nurse guiding me. it involves a lot of conscious acts like keeping your hands and forearms above your elbows while running it through water and being careful not to touch or brush against anything else after that.
oh man i hope no consultants or doctors are reading this. they'll be laughing at this ulu, dumb dumb twit student blogging about her 1st scrubbing up.
anyway, i felt a bit more significant as a medical student at last. since i scrubbed up i was able to stand right next to the operation table and i actually helped to cut up sutures and hold some instruments in place! alright alright it's nothing much. but still, it's a change rather than standing there just observing and trying to make yourself as thin as possible so that you won't be in the way of ever-so-important consultants doing their job.
and yeap...watching surgeons in action just made me in awe of them. especially my supervisor for this block. i have the utmost respect for him (and i pray everyday he doesn't bombard me with questions). he just commands this really calm aura around him. and he must be one of the most polite surgeons around (or are all of the scottish surgeons this way as well?). he says thanks and please to his assistant every 2 minutes during his operations. it humbles you to stand beside consultants like that. urgh...wonder if there will actually come a day when i am a consultant as good as him. ah...better pass my 4th yr finals 1st.
finally had our house warming last Sunday. it was great! 35 of us altogether but there was so much food left that all 9 of us didn't need to cook for lunch/dinner on Mon. n the food was really good. had sheperd's pie, claypot rice (used rice cooker), laksa, carbonara spaghetti, roast lemon chicken, salad. and we prepared them all by ourselves.
everyone was pretty impressed at our culinary skills. and i was quite amazed at our own hidden talents as well (heh allow me a bit of self praise here). but it was a tedious job. from buying the ingredients on sat morn, making the pie on sat night, n spending most of sunday all in the kitchen cooking together. but it was great fun. n the party was a success. got ex-IMU seniors and the chinese christian fellowship ppl over. played 2 rounds of Mafia Murderer Game after that which ended with everyone in stitches.
right. i really should be doing research for my project now.
phew. just stood for 5 hrs in the operation theatre holding my forearms up above my elbows. i went through the whole process of scrubbing and making myself as sterile as possible. and man, it just makes you feel so conscious of everything you touch. once you scrub up, you aren't allowed to put your arms down coz there is a chance of your lower half apron touching the wall or 'unsterilised' surfaces and thus contaminating it. and man, it's tiring. after that, i just felt like hanging my arms loose on both sides.
the whole scrubbing procedure was pretty fun. you stand infront of the sink and wonder, where's the tap? guess what? it's on the floor! you step on it and water flows out. magic. but i wonder whether i'll be able to do the whole thing again without a nurse guiding me. it involves a lot of conscious acts like keeping your hands and forearms above your elbows while running it through water and being careful not to touch or brush against anything else after that.
oh man i hope no consultants or doctors are reading this. they'll be laughing at this ulu, dumb dumb twit student blogging about her 1st scrubbing up.
anyway, i felt a bit more significant as a medical student at last. since i scrubbed up i was able to stand right next to the operation table and i actually helped to cut up sutures and hold some instruments in place! alright alright it's nothing much. but still, it's a change rather than standing there just observing and trying to make yourself as thin as possible so that you won't be in the way of ever-so-important consultants doing their job.
and yeap...watching surgeons in action just made me in awe of them. especially my supervisor for this block. i have the utmost respect for him (and i pray everyday he doesn't bombard me with questions). he just commands this really calm aura around him. and he must be one of the most polite surgeons around (or are all of the scottish surgeons this way as well?). he says thanks and please to his assistant every 2 minutes during his operations. it humbles you to stand beside consultants like that. urgh...wonder if there will actually come a day when i am a consultant as good as him. ah...better pass my 4th yr finals 1st.
finally had our house warming last Sunday. it was great! 35 of us altogether but there was so much food left that all 9 of us didn't need to cook for lunch/dinner on Mon. n the food was really good. had sheperd's pie, claypot rice (used rice cooker), laksa, carbonara spaghetti, roast lemon chicken, salad. and we prepared them all by ourselves.
everyone was pretty impressed at our culinary skills. and i was quite amazed at our own hidden talents as well (heh allow me a bit of self praise here). but it was a tedious job. from buying the ingredients on sat morn, making the pie on sat night, n spending most of sunday all in the kitchen cooking together. but it was great fun. n the party was a success. got ex-IMU seniors and the chinese christian fellowship ppl over. played 2 rounds of Mafia Murderer Game after that which ended with everyone in stitches.
right. i really should be doing research for my project now.
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