lesson-wise, this week has been a slack week because we've had very few lectures. this does not mean more time to study; on the contrary when i wake up late i tend to spend the rest of the day lazing around in a semi-conscious state, until eventually i realise that it's midnight and all the expletives start flying. i notice that once i start sleeping i can't stop- it's just one nap after the other, and then it's like where did all the time go to???

which also means that exam-wise, i am SCREWDED. teehee, i am so far behind my supposed 'revision schedule' that i laugh everytime i think about it. haha!

oh and i succumbed to facebook over the weekend when tung tagged some photos of me. i took a look and they were indeed horrendous! boy have we come a long way since then, although i don't even know what i did with the year that flew by. looks like i'm getting older faster than i thought i would, and 'tis not a nice feeling at all.

soon i will be cranky and brittle and arthritic, and then i will be an even greater pain to be around than i am now. haha, everything is just so funny today!

the library is like a place of guilt, because everywhere you turn you see people who are mugging away and have been doing so for the last 5 hours, and it unsettles me a bit, it does. the innate kiasuism instilled in me by the singapore school system makes me feel as if i'm losing out on something, except that when i flip open my textbook i have a hard time fathoming what that something is.

on tuesday we had our first ward round with a highly chio cardiology consultant at TTSH. for the guys it was like instant love; i could see it on their faces! anyway there was quite a large group of us, and we all had to crowd around the patient's bed inside a tightly drawn curtain while the consultant was examining him. after like 15 minutes or so i started to feel a bit hypoxic, and my heart started beating really quickly and i thought i was going to faint. but just before i started hyperventilating, another girl in my group suddenly rushed over to the chair because she was about to faint too. at least that stopped making me feel like the world's greatest freak, and i was able to summon my last bit of willpower to remain on my feet until the consultant wrapped up soon after. talk about a bad first experience :P

when i told mark about it he reminded me of how i get squirmish easily, and that when i graduate i will be a prime candidate to become The Fainting Doctor. whenever someone with something gross walks through my door, i will stage my performance, and the nurses will rush in from the wings to take over. how i am going to survive giving rectal examinations during housemanship remains a mystery to me.

the other day i was with mark at the coffee grounds cafe, where raisin scones were giving me the strength to study. i just discovered that while i was studiously trying to slough through my notes, mark had been using my phone to take pictures of me in what he calls my Crabby Face. he says that's to show me the kind of look that i keep treating him with nowadays. 'tis disgruntling! i suppose i really need to smile more, but hey, i always knew i would make a great discipline mistress for recalcitrant brats...

all this studying has been no good for me! i've been having too much junk food lately and not exercising, and as a result my face is now fatter and more pimply than ever =X but nevermind, after exams i swear i will DEHOMOGENISE THE SIXPACK! dunch pray pray!

revision has not been going well these past few days. today i saw the words "UPPER LIMB" on the front page of my anat file, and wondered woefully if it meant that "LOWER LIMB" would follow.

and alas, it did.

anyway, here's a rather funny vid which i just found on bert's blog:


What Versatile Hair

and walker, fishy, nic: miss you guys terribly too! we must floorball when everyone's back- tunginator organise ok? yay!

TGIF!!!

today we had pbl with the head of plastics at SGH, and his enthusiasm was far too much for the 2 hour session. we were doing the module on myocardial infarction (yes, that's how it's spelt!) and i don't remember much except that he kept asking questions and we kept having to answer. he got particularly cheesed off when 2 classmates were using notes from wikipedia, which incidentally gets like 50% of its info partially wrong all the time. i don't know which med student can actually say with a straight face that the source of his pathology presentation is from wiki, especially when it's an open-source encyclopedia for everyone to screw around with. i learnt that one day when i was stoning through a case i was supposed to be helping my TP debaters set up, when suddenly their teacher barged into the room and was like "NOBODY IS TO USE WIKIPEDIA!" that's how i realised they were talking about how the iraq war has been a major political success with minimal collateral damage, which we all know is not very right.

anyway, it didn't help that i happened to be sitting right opposite our tutor, so he kept asking me explain this and that and like my brain was working on 500% overload. then when he got paged to go back and wrapped up, he was like, "so is it TGIF for you guys?" and i wanted to say yes!! tgif starts from thursday and lasts till sunday, dammit. too bad we had anat prac after that, and it was a rather nasty one concerning the pelvis. examining the nether regions of cadavers who have been dissected years ago = not enticing.

the rest of the day has been a lot better, thanks to food and the promise of sleeping in tomorrow. after pbl i was trudging my way down to the anat lab, when i saw mark sitting outside clutching this paper bag which contained... a blueberry muffin! he must have psychically seen me frowning away during pbl from the thought of how lunch would have to be forgone thanks to long pbl + nasty prac. after that i had a ham and spinach quiche and ice-cream, which are both apparently considered healthy food. AND THEN I WENT RUNNING! omg i shock myself sometimes, i really do. it's like every once in a while i have a little mental aberration about how my body longs to run with the wind, which leads to a frenzy of pavement-pounding and profanity until negative feedback kicks in and puts a stop to the undesired muscular contraction. i am like, a retard in everyday life.

oh and check out how hot britney looks just 2 months after HAVING A BABY, now that she's ditched that bum:

The Dark Ages Are Over

reading everyone else's blogs has made me realise that my life recently has been, well, mediocre. nothing terrible, nothing ecstatic, just the same old boring things and the wheels keep on spinning.

even if i wanted an emo moment, there would be nothing to emo about. the parents are being cohesive albeit at a total loss as to what to do with themselves now that my sister is not in the house. nowadays my dad and mom run up and down the stairs for no reason to try and irritate me for fun. it's mildly annoying, but impenetrable to the fortress of mental preparation which i have been building ever since i knew about her trip. anyway, it's not all bad either- my mom is now so free that she cooks me all my favourite soups and keeps stocking up on all my favourite meiji crackers and apples, AND she even washes and peels punnets of longans for me! haha, tell me where i'd get such service if i was living on hostel grounds :P

work is piling up as expected, but i feel that i am surprisingly handling it all pretty well. nothing fazes me these days, not even files full of metabolic pathways which i am supposed to memorise by the end of tonight. haha! who would have guessed that there are a million different ways to store and build fats?

classmates are becoming nicer, and i am beginning to feel less paranoid that they're all backstabbers who spend their lives mugging away. only half of them are like that. i have discovered that my anat group is actually kinda nice, except that i hate them for bursting my bubble concerning my expected starting salary. $1600 for housemanship? WTF?! do they expect us to eat air? apparently that's even less than what part-time maids get paid, and i don't think maids have to inspect people's urine or catheterise private regions. i need to start saving up to buy a house, dammit. if i was a chain smoker i could cut down on my cigarettes and put the money in the bank to earn interest, but since i don't smoke, there is not much i can do.

in fact i have resigned myself to the fact that i will be poor till i am 40, but that's ok because everybody knows money cannot buy you happiness; it can only buy you shoes and cars. and when you die you can't take your possessions to heaven, so they will all have to be willed away to ungrateful grandchildren. therefore, love is more important. and i love mark! really i do :) and sometimes i feel like a horrible person because i know deep down that i am really a mean bitch and he's altogether too tolerant and sweet to me, especially when i get into my Moods and sulk about in my morose face even when he does everything to make me happy. heehee, i think i am being pampered!

anyway, since my life is so boring i have decided to take up a hobby after the CAs. i'm going to dance, yay! i thought of starting ballet again but decided against it since my calves cannot afford to get any fatter. so i'm gonna do jazz ballet! or maybe classical jazz. but definitely not hiphop because it's just too cool for me. i like only poshness, and style.

today was my mummy's birthday, so she had to wake up early and pretend to be surprised when she saw a cake and presents on the dining table. this has been the family birthday ritual for as long as i can remember, so there is some sentimentality to it, plus the reassurance that everything will be just as well in the year to come. the only things i object to are the getting up early and my dad's insistence that we take photos. i have not a single strand of photogenic hair on my body, and this syndrome is especially bad in the morning. nonetheless chocolate tiramisu = a yummy breakfast. and guess who persauded the father into getting her mother a chocolate tiraumisu cake!

the other bad thing about this morning was that i forgot to get my mother a present, so i had to print a crappy childish-looking card off an online card making site at midnight last night. my dad usually helps me get something in case i forget, but this year: PANG SEI, i say!

being the daughter with a functional conscience, i made up for it by getting my mom chocolates and flowers after school. a very boring present, but guess what, there's a reason why people give women chocolates and flowers: it WORKS. plus i had a great time picking the chocolates from the fancy pants restaurant at raffles city. in fact, i think i have rediscovered my love for pralines in great glass refrigerators, and so i'm adding it to my list of Things I Will Own When I Am Rich.

anyway now i need to rush off to familiarise myself with the perineum, which was the region we were learning today during the anat lec which i totally slept through. of all things! on the upside, i have also discovered that eating cheesecake helps me sleep well and have happy dreams. so not all is lost.

lastly: ARSENAL KICKED POOL ASS! 3-0 says they were clearly the superior side from the start. sadly, there were no brilliant henry goals, but while waiting for someone to upload 'arsenal thrash liverpool' onto youtube, i just rewatched his hattrick against roma. heehee :D

if i'm not wrong, today marks 3 weeks to the start of CAs. and what big shit i am in! yesterday we had a formative assesment for anat, where prof raj flashed questions and pics from the projector and we were supposed to identify the answers / structures on an MCQ sheet. all was going well, until i confused an aorta with what was supposed to be an esophagus. 'tis not easy to tell the difference from a cross-section, i tell you!

and yesterday's anat prac was even less enjoyable than usual, because the formalyn from the bodies was so strong i could barely open my eyes. apparently it's because each group got 3 bodies, instead of 2, so that we could better observe how some organs are embedded in the posterior abdominal wall. personally, i am having a hard time accepting that babies can grow entire systems from little tubes: how do the cells know when to become a heart and when to become a lung??? yet another mystery of life.

(or should i say 'mesentery' of life? haha omg what a bad geekjoke.)

the other big thing is that my little sister will be in shanghai till next saturday, and therefore i am getting the attention and affections of both parents solely to myself. this is more love than any child can handle. plus, there are practical problems too, like for example not having anybody to blame when i mess up the bathroom or spill stuff in the kitchen. so now i have to be extra careful wherever i go, lest i do anything that might trigger an emo moment from a mom who is already worrying overtime now about the Land Where Toilets Have No Doors. and then, there will be no diverting the floodgate once it's opened =x

however, since i am not one to mope around, i have begun appreciating the many new clothes and shoe options at my disposal, now that i have free access to the wardrobe. which compensates for the pangs i felt when i saw my sis pack away some of my favourite things in her suitcase after i selflessly offered them up for her trip. all i can say is that there will be no forgiveness if any of them are ruined or missing on arrival. i think it's great to be able to fit into the clothes of 3 women in the house :D

1. a new tagboard is up, which is ugly but functional. so tag away!

2. my new love for the week: raisin scones! the disappointing thing is that web images do zero justice to its taste, but i trust, as always, your vivid imagination and hope that you appreciate this:






Like Muffins, But Not Quite!

and the best part is that i just discovered the little food place outside the dean's office sells excellent raisin scones - whee i love school! haha i bought one before physio tut today but only got to eat it halfway before our tutor appeared, and then i spent the rest of the lesson thinking of it as the fresh hot smell kept wafting towards me. scones are like cheesecake; you have to keep eating them till you get sick. go try!

for the past 3 days i've practically been a snivelling nose on a pair of legs. i've been using tissues at the rate of 1 packet per hour during lectures, and as a result my nose has swollen so as to obliterate the greater part of my body. i feel real sexaaaaaye, rawr.

in the spirit of things, i made the decision to only appear for physio prac late in the afternoon, bypassing whatever morning lectures were supposed to have been had. which was just as well, because i hear that our class rep lifeng decided to flash the mugshot i submitted for our matric card in front of the whole LT. what a great way to warm everybody up to helping me with next year's medicine DnD! and so i have to say that my decision was probably the best one i've made in ages, because i would have been even more mortified if i was around whilst the public embarrasment was taking place. whoever came up with the idea of passport photos: death be thy fate!

on tuesday i finally got to watch The Prestige, which i found disturbing in many ways: 1. everybody knows that clones cannot be born through magnetic fields 2. everybody knows that clones are not created in seconds 3. even if you could create a clone as such, everybody knows that clones are only genetically identical and do not bear the same personalities or shared memories. PEOPLE, THIS IS A MAJOR PLOT FLAW! i was so caught up with the incredulousness of the 'real magic' that i regret to report that much of hugh jackman's appearances were lost on me, although i did feel fleeting sadness to see him limping around after the trapdoor sabotage. mark says that christian bale was the Hunk of the show; i disagree. i think he looks too normal, and lacks the smolder factor of hugh jackman. likewise, nobody can come close to our dear friend johnny depp, who apparently is either recently married or soontobemarried :( nonetheless the cast was generally pleasant on the eyes, and i like piper perapo! and apart from a few creepy blind men and severed fingers and the freakiest ending shot ever, i think it's a rather clever movie overall. but you have to piece together all the flashbacks to appreciate the twists at the end, so you don't get to leave your brain at the door and enjoy the show. therefore, a bad choice if you're trying to destress before exams!

oh and today, we looked at the abdominal viscera after lunch. cirrhotic livers look gross, as do black lungs, which have totally reinforced in me the message that ALCOHOL AND SMOKING KILL. there are faster and more cost-effective ways to go, such as carbon monoxide inhalation, so i see no reason for people to carry on paying big bucks to overload their systems with carcinogens. don't they know it's disgusting??? also, in the course of the practical i happened to stand opposite joshua, who was zealously flicking about pieces of liver and spleen with the almost maniacal look which i suppose smart people get when they finger the organs of dead people. i had to remind him that i would never forgive him if so much as a drop of cadaverjuice landed on me or my clothes, which is my standing warning to all friends who hang around me in the dissection hall. hygiene is priority, after all.