un-festiveness

I cant believe it's the last day of 2007 today! How did my usual favourite part of the year go by just like that? Must be Pathology that's spoiling all the festiveness. -SIGH-

Fortunately, most of my friends found ways to cheer themselves up. I heard wenhui got himself a sheltie, gab must be happy after spending a great time in China, most others are meeting old friends and the rest are just BZ with their own things and are very happy with their hols :) I wish i can have a proper no-test-after holiday!

X'mas eve has traditionally been quite a big thing for my maternal family. Everyone has to prepare something for the night and this year, i made sushi!





I'm still a little clumsy and messy when it comes to sushi making cos the sushi rice is so sticky and unappealing on the hands :) and I definitely need more practice with the sushi mat :)

I also bought myself a gift.

I've only made a few batches of muffins in my life and this book shall start me baking them soon, hopefully. :)



My treo has been making me happy too!
Palm's support is excellent i tell you. I was unhappy that some letters on the keypad were quite unresponsive and Palm swappped a new device for me. And now, my new treo is working beautifully! Even the screen looks more interesting after i changed the boring windows default theme :)



I really wonder if there'll be any phone to serve me better. I really like my Treo :)

Some random photos i just tool today...


See i told you everyone seems busy. Even my mom's hamster is occupied eating his lettuce :) I think it's so cute tt he lives in a Toblerone house :)

Happy New Year, Friends! Cheers to a good year of friendship and many more to come! :)

Till then, it's back to Pathology. I think i have trouble finishing :S

Back from China

My trip to Xiamen was interesting cos the supposed tour group was made of a grand total of 3 people. Yes, my dad, my mom and myself. After the first day, the driver even started to drive a family car instead of the usual mini school bus-like vehicle!

Photos will wait while i write a quick post on the things i found out since i got back from china.

(1) The cat that grew up with me passed away :(
(2) My favourite granny of the block also passed away :(
(3) I realised that i really cannot stand crowded places

My mom wanted to pick up more sushi-making things from daiso right after we came back and vivocity was SO crowded. Isnt it ridiculous that i was relieved to be in the toilet cubicle, away from all the people?

I watched more grey's anatomy today and izzie bakes whenever she's stressed or upset. Baking makes me happy too, which makes me wonder if baking's a common thing to do to dissipate unhappiness :)


In memory of the cat that grew up with me.

My hydrangea

There are currently 3 balls of pink flowers on my plant but i only took photos of the pinkest ball :) Anyway, the collage looks a little pixelated after i resized it.. can click on it for a nicer view! :) I really love my hydrangea :)





I think i need pple who are into photography to teach me how to take better pictures. Friend, is the second pic too dark?

On a side note, my mom brought us to a supposedly very famous LOR mee at LORong ah soo today. i've always thought the name "lorong ah soo" is abit amusing.. :)
There was expectedly a long queue but perhaps 'cos i've nv been a great fan of lor mee i wasnt able to taste how great this lor mee is :) It definitely has more liao though.

Haha.. the signboard, the lor mee and my dad in the queue :)

Lucky

This is so blog-worthy... and i'm sure u can see why! :)

Kendrick's family has a new dog and he's called Lucky. U all know that it's difficult to take a proper photo of animals cos they're always moving, but i managed to take these!




I especially like his ears. Look closely to see how they're framed by fur of a darker shade!

I managed to take a video too :) He's really cute when he plays with his toy :)
Too bad he was running around too quickly for u to observe his gait. He has this really cute way of walking. He looks like he is half hoping and prancing. Oh and when he stands. His front paws are almost always together, just like a ballerina :) haha.. Maybe next time!

This is so blog-worthy!

Blogthings

Wenhui and Gabriel! U 2 must do this test :)

I saw this on friend's blog and i thought it described him pretty accurately. It strike jackpot with the "high standards and own critic part". So i decided to do the test. I dont know if it is accurate. Haa.. my biggest fixation according to the first result is gluttony! OH NO! :)
Anyway, there was one question i was torn between 2 options. so i repeated the test and i got a different profile. I wonder which describes me better. If it only took one option to change the entire profile, i guess i'm in between?

The question was.."You would most likely to say,"
"I prefer to figure things out on my own."
"I always see the bright side of things."

I chose bright side for the first time cos i thought the figure things out on my own part only applies to my rubiks cube. Most other times, i think i'm quite lazy... like checking all the mcq ans.. i rather split the work and discuss with someone.
But then again, i dont like to be told the solution of things cos i gain greater satisfaction from deriving them on my own..

At the end of the day, both profiles have parts i can identify with :) Pretty interesting!

You Are 7: The Enthusiast

You are outgoing and playful - always seeing the happy side to life. You're enthusiastic and excitable. You love anything new. Multi-talented, you do many things well... and find success easy. You prefer to keep things light with others. Opening up is hard for you. At Your Best: You are deeply involved in each experience. You appreciate life for what it is, and you take the time to enjoy each moment. At Your Worst: You are greedy, self centered, impulsive, and insatiable. Your Fixation: Gluttony Your Primary Fear: Deprivation and pain Your Primary Desire: To be satisfied and content Other Number 7's: Howard Stern, Cameron Diaz, Robin Williams, Jim Carey, and Jenny Mccarthy.

What Number Are You?

You Are 5: The Investigator

You're independent - and a logical analytical thinker. You love learning and ideas... and know things no one else does. Bored by small talk, you refuse to participate in boring conversations. You are open minded. A visionary. You understand the world and may change it. At Your Best: You are sharp, inventive, and creative. You have the skills to lead the world. At Your Worst: You are reclusive, weird, and a bit paranoid. Your Fixation: Greed Your Primary Fear: Being useless or incompetent Your Primary Desire: Being competent and needed Other Number 5's: Bill Gates, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Bjork, and Stephen Hawking.

What Number Are You?

Photo Updates

So much has happened since the start of family med posting that i do not know where to start. Fortunately there're plenty of photos to substitute words!


My fam med posting started with 2 weeks at a gp clinic. Compared to my friends, my gp was more enthusiastic. When the whole world ended spend 4 to 6 hours at their clinics, wenhui and i spend 8.30am to 7.00pm at the clinic every weekday OK! With more time spent sitting in the clinic, we naturally spent less time studying for pharmacology test. Hai.. and the test was damn hard! I just pray tt i can pass.

Anyway in the collage, i arrived very early on the first day and i had breakfast at the market nearby. I like this fishball kway teow soup and i always rmbr it for the mini fishballs. I took the photo with my fingers on the ball for comparision. On day one, there was also a random cart of pineapples in the middle of the market place!


Some shots around the neighbourhood which wenhui thinks it's like a kampong in the morning :)


There are some animals i see everyday. I'm especially fond of this dog which has very short legs :) So cute right?


I ended my posting at the gp clinic on a happy note cos i bought 2 pots of flowers from the flowershop right next to the clinic. One pot of pink gerberas and one pot of 绣球花 (wikipaedia says it's called Hydrangea in Eng).

Most of my friends know that i get quite easily distracted when i study, cos i have a short attention span. A thought occurred to me this time while i was studying for Pharmacology and tt pink might be my secret favourite colour. It's not hard to guess why i thought so! Look at the pic.. any idea what's my actual favourite colour? :)

Because i have short attention span, i often find myself doing random things when i try to study. Just like how i started to take photos of my very pink room, i took out my yoga mat on one occasion to do some yoga! Opps.. and i realise my mat is pink too! :)




One of my favourite flowers deserves a paragraph of its own. Dont u think the way these flowers gather in a cluster like a ball is very cute? My favourite colour is the purplish-blue but the pot i own now is... PINK. I waited for 2 whole weeks for a chance that the shop will bring in the purplish-blue ones. But since they didnt i rather go home with the pink ones than none :) Aren't they pretty? I will take photos of my hydrangea when the cluster of flowers turn pink. It's currently greenish-white with a tinge of pink :)


Random photo collage.
(1) Isnt this car plate number cool? SBASH!
(2) Very chinese signboard of the GP clinic run by an ACS boy
(3) My new hobby! Rubik's cubing! :)
(4) A trapped gingerbread man at coffeebean

I've been playing my cube when i'm bored on my train or bus journey home. It's exceptionally fulfilling tt i'm figuring things out on my own when everyone learns the steps by rote :) My classmate's dad took 2 years to figure out the cube.. now tt i know how to solve 2 layers, i hope i wont take 1 year and 11 mths to figure out the 3rd!


This week is week 3 of Family medicine posting. 2 days of palliative medicine is pretty interesting. Day one of palliative medicine concluded with a nice stopby at donut factory! I still think they make the best donuts in singapore, i ought to try krispy creme one day to compare! So wenhui, how do u rate donut factory?



Last but not least, the STAR photo of this entry.
Omeprazole to my rescue!
I was having the worst tummyache of my life when i recieved this pleasant surprise via my fax machine! It's such a brilliant thought to think wenhui just wanted to test out his fax machine. It really put a smile of my face :) :)


I had the worst tummyache of my life ystdy. If someone tells u that he's having a worst headache of his life, it's a red flag but what about tummyache?
I rated the pain to be 8/10. It was 6 or 7 after dinner but when it was 8 i could barely walk properly! I had to press against my eigastrium. I'm so thankful that it's over and i hope it was nothing serious too!
The thing about having any physical discomfort when u're a medical student is u'll try to put a diagnosis to the cause of it. This is what my friends say..

Weiyan: Aiya.. girls mostly is menstrual cramp lor
Weixiang: (I was lying very still in bed) Why very still? Movement aggreavtes the pain? Sounds like peritonitis

Before bedtime, the pain actually radiated to the back. So i really thought it felt like pancreatitis! Gosh.. It's so funny cos ystdy i tried pressing on my mcburney's point to make sure tt there's no tenderness cos i wanted to exclude a appendicitis cos afterall the pain was only slightly above the umbilicus. I also listened for bowel sounds with my sthethoscope and it was hyperactive.

I'm glad that my pain score is zero now.. although i'm glad tt the pain has left me, i'm still rather curious about what caused the pain. Any expert opinion? :)

sickk.

I hate it when i am not productive! I woke up this morning with a terrible terrible headache. The kind that u cant move ur head too much or u'll feel that whatever is inside is smashing abt and it hurts terribly!
The weird thing is my whole family is done with different things. My mom has sore throat, my dad is sneezing and has been spitting alot into my sink and now i have headache. Hopefully it's the same bug and not 3 different bug tt we'll spread to one another!
If it is only ONE bug which affected 3 of us differently, chances are I'm the one who bring it home. Sitting in a room with pple carrying different bugs walking in for consultation is no joke ok! Calls for a very resilient immune system to stay strong and fall ill!
I so need to start pharmaco! PLEASE PLEASE, LET ME GET WELL SOON!
On a happier note, congrats to me, aft this episode, i have immunity to another bug!

Ohya, ystdy i was told that my GP might have secret diagnosis for me. I might been secretly treated with asthma orally! How interesting :)

Happy Day

I've been waiting for this day for a very long time! Because...
(1) I've been having trouble uploading photos until today!
(2) My long waited post-exam is TODAY!
(3) I think my student is damn smart!
(4) I was at orchard and i could feel tt Xmas is really coming!
(5) I bought a cd i've been looking for!

I had this impulse to post these photos cos they made me very happy some days ago!



Don't you think ballet is such a graceful and beautiful form of art? It put a smile on my face when my dad put these postcards on my desk knowing tt i'll like them!

Some weeks ago, my fridge broke down... actually a lot more things have broken down at my home, including my living room tv. It's gone mute for some time but because we have other TVs at home, we never bothered to replace it. It wasnt a gd i idea cos my family gradually spent less time together watching tv and we always retreat to our own rooms. So, my dad had a solution!





Compare the thickness! ;)
It was quite interesting on Sunday cos i was napping and i woke up to a new tv still in the box. For a while i thought i was dreaming, or maybe santa came earlier this year! Haha.. y'know my old TV has already lived for miraculously long life considering it fell from a height and there's even a huge crack! Tt's why my dad says it served us long enough liao!

As a result of this new tv, I've been watching a lot of tv! Not sure if it's a gd or bad thing.

Below are some pictures that made me really really happy!

That dog on the first row really look troubled cos he's frowning so much! Haa.. but he's cute in a way :) Dont you think?

Dog 2 and 3 are really cute too!





Arent hamsters cute? Spot one of them tt was caught on camera praying! I like the pile of sleeping hamsters and also the 2 hamsters in the green wheel. One of them is about to fall out!

Why did i say my student is damn smart? I wonder if any of you still rmbr the theories of DNA replication.



U see, i taught Nobelle abt DNA today and how there are complimentary base-pairing. Then i went on to tell her the 3 theories of DNA replication and i was amazed that she correctly thought that the semi-conservative was the correct theory and was able to derive an explanation for me! I was so happy i tell you! To be able to link all those things i've taught her means she understands! Whoa :) i never felt as happy as a teacher! :)
Y'know i was interested in DNA and i read up on my own in sec 3, but i was only taught the theories of DNA replication in JC 1? My student will only be sec 3 NEXT year!!!
Not only that, she understands mendelian genetics too OK! I'm so proud of her :)

Alright.. pretty long post. Hope i'll enjoy my 2 day worth of break :)

Updates!

I so supposed to be sleeping right now but if i do not post now, i might never until after my Psychiatry Test.

Hai.. speaking of which i have not read my textbook from cover to cover which we're told is expected of us if we want to pass the MCQ test on monday :(

Anyway, i'm still up at this hour cos i just edited and uploaded the Public Healthscreening Post mortem minutes! I can only say i'm damn thankful for bringing my laptop cos the meeting was 3 hrs long and i would have cried so bad if i had to type out everything i wrote on paper!

Between the time i last posted and now, quite a lot happened. Last week was rather eventful cos i was posted to IMH. Saw a lot, felt a lot and also learnt a lot :) Shall elaborate on a separate post if i ever have time!

In chronologically order...


My more than 10 year-old fridge broke down and my mom replacied it on the same day we discovered mould was growing undetectedly in our containers of food due to increasing temp. Gross right?
I only rmbr to take out my camera after my old fridge was outside and in the midst of being carried away. Looking at the picture makes me wonder where my old fridge is now. I didnt even get a proper last look 0f it! Hmm.. Anyway, my mom is very happy with the new fridge!

On Sunday, we celebrated Weiyan, Wenxiang and Ryan's bday at Waruku!

Food-wise, i was rather disappointed cos my Curry Katsudon wasnt as good as what my mom has made :) Wenyang's katsudon looked and tasted really good though!


The birthday boy who sat opposite me :) Weixiang couldnt resist from commenting "SO SHUAI" on facebook.


Friends who turned up. Bean, if u read this, send me photos from ur camera! :) I dont have a picture with u!


My obsession with the glass and the GREEN lime slice.


Please spot the Ningqi.


|Happy Boys|This is the last and the most happifying photos of the lot :)

I shall go sleep now it's past 3!

TGIF

Thank goodness it's Friday!

Not only am i glad that the weekend is finally here, i must say tt i'm also happy that today's been eventful in a gd way!

Here's how my day went!

6.00 am - Rise and Shine!
7.15 am - Gym with very fit CG mates
9.00 am - Tutorial
11.40 am - Meeting at Dean's Office
12.45 pm - Lunch
1.30 pm - I SAW Jackie Chan!!!
2.00 pm - Tutorial
3.30 pm - Cab down to TTSH
4.00 pm - Buy presents for tutors
6.00 pm - Queue for Starbucks Staff Treat

Firstly, i'm glad that i took the first big step to get my fitness back. I ought to listen to ronnie who told me that exercise is really beneficial, 'cos not only does it keep u fit, it also keeps u mentally alert and helps u sleep better :)
I didnt do much at the Gym today cos i wanted to start slow... but i hope this isnt the first and last time i make the effort to go to the gym!

I got to see Jackie Chan! Though i didnt get close enough to take a good pic of him. Here's some shots i took anyway!


Next highlight of the day is the Starbucks's Treat to TTSH Staff! 50% OFF you know???
It's a bit ironical tt my cg only queue for Starbucks Treat after we leave TTSH.


The long long queue :)
Our buys and happy Gab.


The much talked abt starbucks Tiramisu -> not bad :)
Wenhui and my decent receipt and Gab's atrociously long receipt!
Happy Gab again :)

I was wondering if i'd ever spend more than 100 bucks on starbucks... probably unlikely.

Till i post again, hope my knowledge of psychiatry would have expanded by leaps and bounds! haha

Understanding Food & People

I seriously have no idea why i'm persistently tired... and i really have NO idea why i was obedient enough to go for the sushi making class my mom sign me up for despite countless refusal.

K la.. it wasnt too bad :)


I should really make them when i have the time. I'm sure it'll be a good change from my usual baking!

Food from the past few weeks :)








Meals at waruku comes with a complimentary salad! What a healthy way to start the meal! :)

This week is the first week of Psychiatric Medicine at NUH. Naturally we'll make our way to nus when we can cos there are food we miss when we're posted to other hospitals far far away from nus :) I'm looking fwd to eat my 面搀搀.

On Tues, we met our dearest friends doing orthopaedics for lunch at Megabites.

I had Vegetarian Pesto. Not too bad :) But the tomato-based sauce was a little too sweet for my liking. But thanks to Gab who bought me ginseng tea to (1)WAKE ME UP (2) Counter the sweetness, I was quite happy with lunch on a whole!:)


Last pic here is taken at Zhenzhen's party. I really heart her spread of food and the mini donuts are really cute!


I think i've fulfilled the food part of the title by writing about how i learnt/understood how sushi is made. What about 'Understanding People'? Not surprisingly, i've been learning alot about people from just 3 days of my posting.

Psychiatric illnesses have never been more real to me till i spoke to and see people with them myself. Unfortunately, with the increasing understanding of each condition, it is inevitable that u begin to see some parts of it in yourself.

For example, we were told today that most medical students / doctors have some element of OCD-ness. I thought i may marginally fulfill the criteria for bipolar disorder but i'm now convinced that i do not cos true bipolars fluctate between mania and depression spontaneously without a trigger.

I'm looking forward to learn more! But meanwhile i just hope to break out of this sleepiness cycle, hopefully by the next time i post!