And we all made Merry...

Fridays. Statistically, this is the day when the population's mortality rate decreases. No prizes for guessing why. Its also my favourite day. And Jasmine's birthday.

Come 6pm, the S'pore meddies trooped into Robert's Hall for a feast of Chicken Rice, courtesy of MJ/Kerf etc. Jasmine should feel damn honoured lor! I like Apollo Char Kway Tiao k? (Hint: My birthday's on 11th July) *wink wink*

After the feast, we were consumed with pangs of guilt, and headed for badminton to work it all out.

I would have blogged on thursday, had there not been a traffic accident which cut of all the power supply in the area. Hohoho, and I didn't have a torchlight. Oh well, went to sleep at 7pm. 7PM! Speaking of deprivation...and I wasn't even granted the simple wish of a good night's sleep, for at 8.30pm, I was awoken by the fire alarm. It had me running out of the building in pitch darkness and greeted with the sight of 2 fire engines, only to be informed at 9pm that a ^%£$%^&* b******(s) released a bottle of fire extinguisher into the stairway, triggering off the alarm.

I seriously thought I was gonna die in some explosion and my family wouldn't even have a body to take back. At that moment, I realised that I wasn't ready to die yet. I'll also probably never have the courage to risk my life and join MSF (aka Doctor's Without Borders) so serve humanity. What a rude awakening X 2.

Nightmares

I had a nightmare on Wednesday night. Dreamt that I was getting back my exam results which were graded out of 10 (10 being the best). Ended up with:
1.6 for Higher Chinese
<5 for Math
6 for C.Lit

*Shakes fist at heaven, yelling, "How many times do you want to traumatise a girl in a week???"

1st Hospital Visit

Bused over to D. Hospital today. Decked out in a pant-suit I suspect I was overdressed, considering the docs weren't nearly as formally clad. Well, I didn't bring my ID card, and suddenly I remembered 'Catch Me if You Can', where Leo pulls off pretending to be a doctor despite not having attended med sch just by acting professional, which inspired me to put on the full pant-suit upon alighting the bus.

Got to interview 2 patients. Bumper harvest! The 1st was an Aborigine who had had his appendix removed the night before. The other was a 60+ yr old white male who suffered from hypertension/osteoarthritis/menier's/cancerous tumor in colon. I won't go into details on the condition(s), but is was pretty fun. And tiring. Especially because I was in those 'power shoes' which are freaking high.

On another note, there's something I can't get out of my head! On Monday night, after badminton, YH/John/Ling/Kel and I trooped toward Mess Hall for dinner, during which our conversation turned to the movie 'Memoirs of a Geisha'. YH made a sublimely interesting observation (I always knew he was a science person!): It seems that whichever movie Zhang Ziyi stars in, she gets screwed like hell. It happaned in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and again in House of Flying Daggers. Now in the Geisha movie too. wth? She's undeniably good at it, I must say. *Some raunchy scenes from House of Flying Daggers flashes across my mind*

City...the place to be

Remember the story of Town mouse and Country mouse? Well, I've figured out that I can relate better to the Town mouse. Having spent a large part of my youth in the city, I longed to get away to the countryside and live life in oblivion. In Perth, I got my wish, and quickly realised that it wasn't all that chimerical after all.

To cut a long story short: I went to the city today (2nd time since I've arrived in melbourne) to meet up wif Fong Chin and her family. Had lunch at a little pizza + pasta place. Was too full to do myself justice by having dessert at the ice-cream parlour.

Found out that my cousin had a chiongster girlfriend. Cracked me up.

Came back to the little surburb of Clayton only to find that the S'pore meddies were meeting for dinner at Monash Pizza. Damnit! Went along anyway. Ended up eating placenta-looking sweet&sour chicken from the dodgy chinese restaurant next door.

Returned home to chat with mom and watch TVB!

Currently watching: War and Beauty. I seriously think that this show should have been named Warring Beauties. Its about these few concubines in the palace bitching for the emperor's favour. Unbelievable. I'm beginning to appreciate the 21st century more.

Exams over. 5% Doctor!

Had my first med exam today. Well, its not really an exam, considering that its worth a mere 5%. Shh, don't let other faculties know we actually studied for this! It was pretty good. Yay, won't get kicked out!

Another piece of good news: NUS DENTISTRY SHORTLISTED ME FOR INTERVIEW! Don't know why but I'm so thrilled, even though I probably won't even turn up. I mean, come on, Med is all I've wanted in this life and probably the next, and now that I'm FINALLY in, I'm not about to give it up so easily!

But then again, during a particularly boring sociology tutorial yesterday, I had one of my usual out-of-body experience while being enlightened by the tutor (put simply, I was daydreaming). No prizes for guessing what I was dreaming about; I suddenly thought about what life would be like had I applied for dentistry at UWA. Yes, I'd be with my beloved family, enjoying mom's sometimes-nice-sometimes-not-so-nice cooking, fighting with Jon over that last chicken wing, playing Need For Speed with him on X-box...oh, dreams. Then I thought about the 2 million a yr after tax income of a dentist, the 9-5 working hours, the shorter journey to specialist training, and, for a split second, and intoxicated as I was, I actually wished I was doing dentistry at UWA. And when I get home, surprise surprise: Mom's asking if I regretted not doing dent, and Dad tells me about the offer. Was that ESP or what?

Its great to feel so wanted once in a while.

Currently reading: Hope in hell: Inside the world of doctors without borders. Its a pretty good book, though a tad too dry at times. I wished the author had included more short stories focussing on particular volunteers. Abit too explicit at times, especially when discribing the Rwandan genocide. Not for those with a weak constitution.

1st GP site visit

I've been through alot of 'firsts' since arriving in melbourne. So for the record, here's another one.

Today's GP visit went smoothly. I was expecting to see a run down old shophouse-like-clinic, yet was greeted with a very pleasant old cottage that had been refurbished (complete with parquet flooring etc). The interior was very homely, not at all like a conventional clinic.

I got to see around 11 patients today. Literally, as I wasn't allowed to interview them. Of the lot, only 1 belonged to the normal weight bracket. Another was slightly overweight. The rest were massive. In the olden days, men fought bloody wars to expand their countries. Today, we've gotta fight fatty wars to shrink ours.

3 of the patients had depression. Bolded so it doesn't come across too nonchalantly. Its a terrible condition to have, especially given our current treatment options which, by the way, do FAR more harm than good. But that is another story.

I also found out my GP did acupuncture! Its an eye opener, really, to find that the Australian healthcare system is so open to alternative treatments. And we Singaporeans fondly call our little country 'the island where East meets West'. We are fooling ourselves. Especially when oriental medicine and western medicine in Singapore are not encouraged to meet. Western medicine will always be gao gao zai shang (far superior) and oriental medicine lian shi dou bu ru (not even worth a shit), given the way things are in Singapore; our healthcare saystem and laws do not protect TCM physicians, they are poorly paid, not highly respected etc.

'Growing old is inevitable. Growing up is optional'

Wise words from an angmoh in my tute. Sort of explains why the kids here in uni are so childish. *Throws arms up in air*

Had a formative exam today. I personally found the questions quite crappy! Like 'What are the most important risk factors and protective factors of Mary's drinking problem'. Thinking along biomedical lines, I wrote something like RISK FACTOR: LIVER CIRRHOSIS. PROTECTIVE FACTOR: REDUCED RISK OF CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE. You will never guess how smart I felt writing that, especially the latter part. To my horror, the answer was RISK FACTORS: BREAKDOWN OF MARRIAGE, LOSS OF DRIVER'S LICENSE. PROTECTIVE FACTORS: FAMILY SUPPORT, BEING EMPLOYED. WTH?

Learnt something else recently: In Roman law, a person's ability to testify was intimately linked with the possession of testes! This was because he was swearing upon is testes, which would be crushed if he lied.

8cmX10cmX10cm is the number I DON'T WANNA HEAR!

Just had a sandwich, oops, 2 sandwiches actually, for lunch. Total volume 8cmX10cmX10cm.

Did anyone say I'm a small eater...?

We're having a formative (ie. practice) exam tomorrow. Studying sucks when you don't know what to study.

Singhealth Seduction

Perhaps its just me, or did anyone else feel seduced to join SingHealth?

Here's the story:

Friday evening 6pm. The Singapore Monash Mob trudges wearily into Lecture Theatre 3 of Unimelb, wet, cold and hungry. Then suddenly, a video of spanking new hospitals (INCENTIVE 1), handsome young doctors(INCENTIVE 2a)and pretty nurses (INCENTIVE 2b), flashes on and we're treated to eye candy for the next 20 mins.

Learnt some interesting stuff, like doctors who train in a popular speciality get S$1000 ripped off their already miserly paycheck, and doctors who train in an unpopular speciality get an extra S$1000 (which brings their paycheck 1mm closer to being 'decent').

Starting pay of HOs wasn't new to me, only God knows why I kept staring at the S$3000 figure, instead of looking at the Consultant's pay! Apparently its 10+k for a consultant, which VERY LUCIDLY explains why doctors flock to private practice! Yes, yes. Medicine isn't all about $$$. But after going through 5 years of medical school, and another 6-10 years of speciality training where you work 30-50 hr shifts and get paid pittance, $10k is just not sufficient compensation. Its like buying our youth at flea-market prices. And all this discussion if for people who actually GET TO SPECIALISE.

What about the HAVE NOTS? Well, they probably get to enjoy the sweetness of paying back their study loans over a far longer period:

NUS med school fees: S$17.5k/annum.
X5 = S$87.5k

1 year salary as a HO: S$36k
1 year salary as a MO: approx S$54k.

How long will a doc take to repay his/her loans? You do the math. Oh, and by the way, a foreign trained doctor has loans of up to S$500k.

In view of all this, what with the rush to go back? My Chem teacher was wrong when she said that metallic bonding was the strongest of all. I've come to realise that family ties were far stronger.

Nobel Prize, anyone?