Northern Lights

Happily enjoying the long weekend. Sort of. Maybe I'm enjoying it too much.

Went to see the Northern Lights on Friday night. No, it's not those glowy things in the North Pole. :P It's a light display with a twist. They basically project lights onto some buildings along North Terrace according to their shape and architecture. The result? Stunning works of art! For the first time in my life, I saw people sitting on the grass just staring at buildings. The lights change every few minutes, and each pattern is unique.

Had steamboat on Saturday night with the Villagers + IMU 4th years (whom are also Villagers). It was simple but really really fun. Matthew (Shiau Cern's boyfriend) brought his Wii, so that contributed to the fun too. :) Then yesterday night we attended Kian's birthday dinner at The Earl of Leicester Hotel. OMG it was The Attack of the Giant Schnitzels! Jebbrine and I shared a small schnitzel and even that wasn't small. As usual, Ken and his bottomless black hole of a stomach managed to sapu his large shnitzel. Watching Rahul, Kian and the rest of the guys was so painful... why do guys need to show that they're 'man enough' by shoving giant schnitzels down their gullets? But it was good fun anyway. After dinner the ABCs (Australian Born Chinese, though not all of them are Chinese) brought Kian to a skate park by the airport to cut his cake. As for his present, everyone chipped in to get him flying lessons! How cool is that?

Last night I've discovered a couple of new places in Adelaide, at least not so katak di bawah tempurung already. :P

Okie here are some pictures of the Northern Lights. Don't have pictures from the other events. Viva and OSCE is in 2 weeks and the stress in mounting. Oh please oh please let me pass O&G so that I won't need to repeat it next year....

Who wants to be a billionaire?

Elections 2008...

Thanks Pak Seong for forwarding this to me. Selamat Berundi!

The dream was so beautiful, I don't wanna to wake up.

I looked out the bus window. The airport slowly disappeared from view. Clouds overhead seemed to reflect my emotions. It was mostly grey and heavy with impending rain, but there were patches of blue shinning through. It hurts to say goodbye to you again and again, but instead I should be happy that you came.

These 5 weeks have made your absence now so foreign. My room feels too spacious, yet smaller at the same time. Emptier. When I glance upon that vacant spot, there's a rise of suffocating tears.

Opened my balcony door to let the noise of the Clipsal in. Cars zooming. Live bands. Crowds cheering. Fireworks to end the night. And then the return of heart-wrenching silence.

The most precious moments can never be captured on camera. It's your presence, your happiness and most importantly, the unwavering faith that everything will be alright.

I'll heed your advice. I'll continue on with my journey here, and achive my goals in life with no regret. I'll take good care of myself and I know you'll do the same. You said 9 months will pass quickly. I cannot help but believe, you've never given me reason to doubt your promises.

Nice, long rant about my current rotation (have to get this off my chest!)

Yet another long-delayed post. Sorry peeps, been sucked into a hell-hole in terms of work the past few weeks. Am currently on week 4 of Obstetrics & Gynaecology. Of all the hospitals, I got Lyell McEwin (surprise, surprise). Yes dear readers, those of you with bionic memory will recall me mentioning last year that it's roughly 54 bus stops away from the city. It isn't just the distance I'm pissed about though.

The timetable and student expectations are a little ridiculous. Let me explain why:

1. Most days it'll be from 8.00a.m. till 5.00p.m. Each student will take turn attending multiple sessions of clinics (WTF why are there so many: Antenatal, Gynae, Triage, Colposcopy, Complications of Pregnancy, Ultrasound, Midwives clinic). Each clinic session takes up half a day. Sometimes you'll be assigned to midwives clinics which go from 5.00p.m. to 8.00p.m. You also have sessions in the Operating theatre. Oh and don't forget PBL sessions and tutorials on O&G and Neonatology.

2. If doing antenatal & Gynaecology clinics in Lyell Mc isn't enough, you're supposed go to a hospital in Gawler (which is even further than Lyell Mc) for MORE clinics. Then when you're done, you're to come back to Lyell Mc for MORE MORE clinics/PBL/tutorials/Theatre/24-hour call.

3. We have virtually no time on our timetable to do actual ward work. I think none of us have been able to clerk and examine patients in the women's ward so far. And the head of unit expects us to present the patients during the ward round every week. Seriously how on earth are we supposed to do that? We hardly have time to sleep.

4.There are also various teaching sessions outside Lyell McEwin Hospital, such as STD clinics in the city, vaginal examination tutorials in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, family planning sessions in God-knows-where, etc etc etc. And for people who don't have a car like yours truly, it's like they expect me to pull a miraculous teleportation act or something. We're in Adelaide, not Star Trek! How on earth do you expect me to be in Lyell Mc for 24 hours call, and then magically appear in Hindmarsh within the next hour? And then after Hindmarsh, you expect me to teleport myself back to Lyell Mc for a tutorial. That's so impossible if you take the bus! It takes me 1.5 hours to get to Lyell Mc by bus from my house. That's provided that the buses come on time and I don't spend 45 minutes standing like an idiot at the bus stop.

5. We have to do 5 lots of 24-hour shifts in the labour ward. There's a signature sheet midwives have to sign off for every birth you witness/assist. You have to do a minimum of 5 births. Technically you're supposed to be in the labour ward from 8.00a.m. to 8.00a.m. the next day. You'd be lucky if you get more than 4 hours of sleep. My last shift was busy. Only got 1.5 hours. You'll also be lucky if they actually give you a place to sleep. Sometimes you have to shove yourself into a saggy little couch. I don't mind doing 24-hour shifts, seriously. What gets to me is that on most days they don't give you the next day off. Or at least half the day off. No, right after your 24-hour shifts, you are expected in clinic/theatre/ultrasound/Hindmarsh/wherever. And to top it off, there may be a PBL right at the end of the day. How do you expect students to actually learn anything if they've been awake for 36 hours straight??? Good thing most midwives and doctors (except the Prof, who designed this timetable in the first place) are sympathetic. Though there was one midwife who didn't allow one of us to sleep at all throughout his shift. And he had to drive out to this family planning clinic today and spend the whole day in seminars/lectures. Even doctors here don't do 24-hour shifts anymore. The most is 12 hours, and they're getting PAID for it. WTF.

6. The IMU students (4th & 5th years) had a nice Chinese New Year Eve dinner in Chinatown. Guess what I was doing instead? Inserting speculums and performing vaginal exams on a group of pleasant ladies in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Though the timing was not very convenient, it was a really good tutorial on vaginal examination. The simulated patients taught us everything and did a splendid job too ("No, no. You're not in deep enough. Press harder. Yes, that's much better."). It was a little bizzare at first, but very educational. It's good to see more women being more open-minded about their bodies and health.

7. How bout Valentine's Day then? I spent the 14th of February in the labour ward doing my 24-hour shift. Blarrdy.

So there. Not enough sleep, let alone time for study. Horrendously long travel time. No way to get around unless you've got a car/leech off someone else. All in all, it's been going ok. It has its moments. Thank goodness Aishah (a Singaporean girl in my batch) and I manage to get a lift from Jeremy (another Singaporean) on most mornings. And thank goodness some (not all!) of the registrars + Prof. are nice and keen on teaching. Still, I'm still pretty worried bout the end-of-rotation case/viva/OSCE. It's like after putting us through all the pressure and exhaustion, they expect us to magically acquire all the knowlege + skills to manage most O&G cases. At the rate I'm going, that is so not going to happen.

*Breathes deep* 4.5 weeks to go....

Sydney Trip

Long time no update?

Dear All,

Sorry for not updating. Been busy with a few things:

1. My family moved house months ago, but there're still a ton of things left over that needed sorting. Not to mention my Mom has been busy with all sorts of errands in addition to driving back and forth from my sisters' school/tuition/the old house/various locations in Subang Jaya. The best I could do was to help with the moving and help clean the new house as we are yet to hire a maid.

2. My grandma fell down again. The first time was earlier in September. I won't elaborate much on this today, perhaps in another post. The most important thing is she wasn't badly injured. She fell on the back of her head and lost quite an amount of blood. We suspect that she had a hypogycaemic attack while spreading out some clothes (which we told her not to). Though, as some of my close friends know, it isn't just her physical well-being I'm concerned about at the moment. I felt even more disheartened when my mom told me a few days ago that the wound got infected (she's diabetic btw). I hope that my grandma gets better soon, as my family could use some rest from all this stress.

3. Went to Sydney with Xian-Nian last week. The trip was lovely, albeit some cold, rainy weather for the first three days. Even so, I loved every minute of it. He'll be here in Adelaide for another 4 weeks for a selective in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital respiratory ward. Sometimes, I feel like this is all a dream. Like maybe I'm actually in a coma and all of this is just an illusionary world within my mind. Well, time to wake up 'cos tomorrow I have to start my first posting for Year 5: Human & Reproductive Health a.k.a. Obstetrics & Gynaecology. Oh no.....I'm so not prepared.... I quote the lovely Miss Nelly Furtado: Why do all good things come to an end?

4. Finally, the final and MOST IRRITATING THING THAT'S BEEN KEEPING ME BUSY. I took lots of pictures of my Sydney trip. And being the neurotic person that I am, I like renaming and grouping photo files. I thought my new Dell laptop, equiped with Windows Vista, would be a welcome change from my crappy Acer. Mana tahu, every time I try to rename multiple photo files and videos, Windows Vista will jumble up their sequence! This is especially for videos. For some stupid reason, it'll mix them up randomly in between my photos and be renamed under different names from the one I entered. The final blow was yesterday. I was trying to rename a huge batch of photos from my last day in Sydney when the jumbling nonsense occured again. So I clicked on "undo rename". Guess what happened? THE BLOODY WINDOWS VISTA DELETED ALL MY PHOTOS EXCEPT FOR 2!! 130+ PHOTOS GONE JUST LIKE THAT! THEY WEREN'T EVEN IN THE RECYCLE BIN! VANISHED INTO OBLIVION! OMGWTF!!! And of all the photos, these were the ones I didn't back up in Xian-Nian's thumb drive. So they were LOST. I have no idea how this happened. Spent the entire day from 8a.m. to 10.30p.m. weeping, moaning, cursing and searching frantically for a way to restore them. Finally found this programe called Recover My Files which managed to fish out half of the photos from from the deepest crevices of my hard drive.

So today I've backed up all my photo files. About 40 or so Sydney photos and 2 videos are still unaccounted for. Most likely I'll never see them again. At least I've gotten back half of the lot. Thank goodness for that. I'll avoid renaming my photos in this laptop from now on, unless Microsoft comes up with a solution to this fuckery.

Lessons learnt?

1. Photos may be lost, but the sweet memories will last a lifetime.

2. Back up everything.

3. Windows Vista sucks big time. Come up with an update for this QUICK!!!!

I'll post up photos of the Sydney trip some other day. Need to sleep early 'cos tomorrow it's gonna be my first day back to the hospital. Year 5 here I come....Zzzzzzz....

Christmas Eve Party 2007

Hehehe... a wonderful night. Minus the little accident after dinner (still trying to locate Ground Zero!). Everyone who came, glad you could make it. Andrew and Erna... wish you were there! Hope the next gathering at Vee Han's place will be just as if not more fun than this.

Yesterday the lustketeers (a term coined by Yoke Sin) + Vee Vern embarked on a KL walkabout. Literally. The monorail was slow due to some sytem malfuntion or some sort, so we had to do some extra walking from one LRT station to another. Spent some time in Petaling Street, Pavillion and met up with Meng Lee for lunch in between. By the time I got home, I was caked with layer upon layer of dried sweat. Ugh. Walking around KL wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for the humidity and scary traffic. But it was a day well spent. =)

Nowadays I'm getting lazier and lazier when it comes to blogging about events. So... cue the photos!

All of us. It was a pot luck dinner: Seng Kiat + Shing Wei made mash potato and cheesecake, Ching Ee + Musen brought black pepper chicken, Calvin made bread and dip, Meng Lee + May Eve brought fruits and Barcadi, Vee Han made champagne jelly, Darling brought salad and cendol kuih and yours truly provided the venue + drinks + made some crappy chocolate cookies. :P Put that altogether and what do you get? A fabulous Christmas feast.

Vee Han's champagne jelly shots. Yes, they taste as good as they look. Love Seng Kiat's mash potato and cheesecake too. Being able to cook and clean well boosts a guy's attactiveness by like, 50 points. *Hint hint* Darling...

After dinner, we had a little gift exchange game. It was 90% fun and 10% disaster.

To all my dear readers and friends out there, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! May the coming year bring you more joy and fulfillment than the last!

*Gasp*

Christine was matched to Mother Theresa after taking this test (very fitting for her if I say so myself). So I decided to give it a go as well. Look who I got...

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I've fallen for another man...

I have a habit of falling for guys who aren't exactly drop-dead gorgeous, but just.... appealing in a twisted sort of way. And OMG I find this guy so hot!

It feels weird cheering for a serial killer, but I can't help it. After watching the first season, I feel like flaying some meat with him. :P There's something sickly seductive about this character as he silently stalks his prey. And yet, he can be so adorable and cute when he tries to act and feel like a normal person. I also love the opening credits. Subtle, unnerving and freakin' creative! I was surprised my mom didn't feel anything odd about the credtis when she saw it. :P Hmm. More often that not, I find myself falling for the character rather than the actor himself. Michael C. Hall did a superb job playing this novel-turned-TV character, but I'm infatuated with Dexter Morgan. :P

I highly recommend this TV series. It's dark, intelligent, sad and yet funny. Watch it and be entranced. :)

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_(TV_series)

Dexter is an American television drama series based on the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay and adapted for television by Emmy Award-winning screenwriter James Manos, Jr.. The show premiered on the premium cable network Showtime on October 1, 2006 and has since enjoyed wide critical acclaim.

The show stars Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) as the title character Dexter Morgan, a Miami-based serial killer who works for the Miami Metro Police Department as a blood spatter analyst.

The first season finished airing on December 17, 2006. On November 2, 2006, Showtime renewed the series for a second season which began shooting on May 21, 2007 and premiered on September 30, 2007. Showtime President Robert Greenblatt has confirmed a third season is planned.

And.....she's back!

Internet's up. Finally. After more than 3 weeks of chasing and calling those TM ppl... Konon they lost the application for our house phone, then our internet connection was not set up although they claimed they did... etc etc.

A quick photoblog cum bimbo post bout my life so far back in Malaysia. Been more or less occupied with moving stuff from my old house, helping my mom with house chores, unpacking and re-packing stuff, arranging items and gorging down food like there's no tomorrow. Why on earth don't they have mamaks in Adelaide? And why on earth don't they have traditional kaya and pineapple tarts and murukku? Sadness.... Wish they'd have a seafood place like those in Klang. Kam Heong crabs, anyone? :P

I finally got my first taste of KL nightlife last Friday. Seng Kiat, Andrew, Erna, Meng Lee and I attended the Black & Bling Gala 2007 at Maison. It was organised by Malaysian Today and overall it was pretty good. The ticket was only RM30 and was worth it. Meng Lee was with a whole bunch of uni friends and work collegues, most whose names I regretfully don't know. The dress code for the event was black and bling and no one told me about that! (didn't even know what was the event about until I got the ticket from Meng Lee that night. So blur right?). Most people came in black and glitzy dresses while yours truly arrived in lime green. At least I had uh.. a 'bling' of sorts. Good times, good times. One of the many things I've missed while away from home.

K anyway I'll let the pictures do the talking 'cos if I continue any longer I'll only be typing weird nonsense and you wouldn't want that now, would you? Nights...