I am FREAKING OUT about how little I know. Last night I wrote out a study plan for the next four months, and I realised I have forgotten 90% of what I knew last year. My brain is a FREAKING bottomless bucket. *sigh*.
I also overslept majorly. Not sleeping enough.
Sometime this week I am moving to Campbelltownland.
ARGH.
A 10 day break is better than nothing, but it's a bit depressing knowing that I'm well into the second half. I didn't get nearly as much stuff done as I'd have liked, but a few key boxes have been ticked off.
Monday was spent at Gerard's place, itemising and packing donated medical supplies into boxes for MSAP. The first box was full of "optical system sets" or something. I'm pretty sure that's not the name, but I can't rememeber, and I had no idea what they were for. And there were heaps of them with tiny little differences in size and catalogue numbers, and my obsessive compulsiveness took over, and we spent way too much time categorising. That box was named "Sputnik". The next ones were "Tokyo", so called because of the boxy, compacted nature of the contents, and "Box O' Ports", filled with whole and parts of miscellaneous laparascopic ports and handles. We weren't very efficient workers, but I had a pretty good day.
A lot of time these holidays have been spent online at Ponystars. It's a website where you get to keep a virtual pony. You first choose the mummy and daddy pony to create your baby, and then you watch it grow into an adult. They need daily feeding and brushing, and I've also been training mine so taht eventually she can go on Grasslands adventures. My favourite part of the website is the fact that you can marry other ponies and breed with them. Seriously. I'm a little bit obsessed. My pony's name is Rosa, and she is now 3 days old. She is a fire pony, like her mummy, but her personality comes from her dad, who is an earth pony. She's level 2 in speed. When she grows up I'm hoping she'll fall in love with and marry Joseph. Don't tell her though, it's going to be a surprise.
I'm rushing around a bit tonight packing for a picnic tomorrow. You know how sometimes when you overplan for something it tends to be a bit rubbish? I'm hoping that's not the case.
It's the end of Week 7, and despite the shoddy state of my case report and the looming prospect of the psych interview/viva, I managed to have a brilliant weekend. Friday/Saturday was spent helping out with our church sunday school camp, which was incredibly tiring but simultaneously much fun and extremely memorable. We set up tents in the church hall, and there was a visit to the Powerhouse Museum, and there were mountainloads of sugared goods, and extremely late night capers (trying to get kids to stay quiet and go to sleep at 2 in the morning), and Korean instant noodles, and 7 year olds trying to help with washing up, and frying a kilo of bacon at 6:30 in the morning, and general hecticness overall. It was good bonding time.
Today we went out to the Rocks for the Aroma coffee festival. There were too many people and in some ways it was a bit overrated, but it was still awesome choosing $1 cups of coffee based on the quality of the stall name: "Let's go to Nero Vellucio... Look, it has the name Nero, which is evil, so it has to be good! And everyone at the stall's wearing black!" And there were congealing shots of what tasted like hot Yogo, and very yummy chocolate covered strawberries, and at one point we had to stop for beer because of the non-ideal sweet-savoury ratio of food consumption, and Voodoo rocky road and cookies and cream, and a stop at the dirtiest McDonald's in Sydney. No soft drinks. ZOMG!
I get the feeling that the flaunting of my non-single state is reasonably nauseating for most people. At the same time, it's difficult to hide how happy I am in his company. You know how you find that person who understands you better than you understand yourself, who loves you for who you are, who accepts your strengths and faults with sincerity and is devoted to you entirely? Maybe we just fall in love too quickly. Maybe we're awesome for each other. Fingers crossed.
Amidst the general rubbishness of psych, you do get the odd patient who makes you smile. This is probably inappropriate, but I figure you have to find laughs where you can. Today we had a VERY manic patient coming into emergency, and one of his delusions was that he had written all the Beatles' music for John Lennon. Anyway, he had a pretty good singing voice and I got a kick out of getting him to perform warped versions of various songs, totally oblivious to the chaos of ED. Did I mention also that he was also a Russion neo-Nazi?
Y: So which songs did you write?
Z: Everything! I wrote everything! You know Hey Jude?
Y: Hey Jude?
Z: No, Hey *Jew*. Listen:
Hey Jewww...
You're not like orange juuuice...
Y: (LOL!)
What's perhaps slightly more disturbing is Ahilan's Youtube follow-up...
A: You should show it to him
A: Tell him someone else is psychic and must have read his mind and stolen his songs
Y: Oh... you are evil
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On a slightly more depressing note, there is apparently a "serious shortage of forensic pathologists in Sydney." I can't remember if I wrote about the morgue visit I had a couple of months back, but it was an extremely traumatic experience. Forensic pathology is a bland way of describing human butchery. Autopsies are truly, truly awful. It's not like anatomy where cadavars are preserved in formalin then carved strategically to reveal step-by-step the complexities of human structure... It's hacking away at bodies, slicing up organs, throwing it all back in and roughly sewing everything together before hosing the blood down afterwards. I don't understand the people who do this every day for a living... Serious antisocial personality issues. Anyway, I'm reasonably sure that the interview component of the medical school entrance scheme isn't going to help the shortage. Ugh.
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Enchanted
27 Dresses
Semi Pro
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Iron Man
What Happens In Vegas
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
21
Made of Honour
Shutter
You Don't Mess with the Zohan
Get Smart
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
(I like making lists.)
1. The whole world (Boomdiada) - it's the song they use on the Discovery Channel ads. This is an awesome ad. I love love love it. Probably because it has astronauts and whales and catchy singing.
2. MiniLyrics. It's a little floating program that runs in conjunction with iTunes/WMP that automatically downloads lyrics for songs. I love love love it. It's like karaoke, for every single song in your collection. Yay!!!
3. My Fair Lady. Admittedly I had not seen the movie in a long while but it was MUCH better than the Audrey Hepburn version! It definitely works better on stage. The singing and acting was wonderful - the characters were so so loveable. I can't decide on a favourite - Higgins was a bastard but he had to be, and he couldn't change for Eliza, and he had to accept Eliza for who she was. And Alfred Dolittle was played by the man who was BORN to play Alfred Dolittle. So good! And Mrs Higgins and Colonel Pickering... Oh it was all so wonderful. And the company was fantastic and there were stars everywhere. You know how sometimes the world stops and you'd give everything just to be locked in that moment of pure happiness forever? Okay maybe I'm just way too idealistic, but yeah. It was a good night.
I have a sleeping problem. This is affecting my productivity and my emotional lability. Sorry if this post is a bit disjointed.
There are only 2 more weeks of psychiatry left. They won't go by fast enough. I'm so tired. This is the 20th week of uni I'm doing this year. It's good and all, but I really really really want a rest.
Next term I've been allocated to paediatrics at Campbelltown. Hopefully I'll learn a lot, and be able to study a bit for end-of-year vivas as well. There's a bit of an ongoing struggle getting accommodation, but hopefully things will work out.
Electives were making me very anxious. Germany replied back today with an incredibly nice email telling me to come, and bring friends. So depending on how things turn out, I might actually end up staying in Bonn for the Europe part of my elective. We'll see.
My boyfriend is totally, freaking awesome.
...from sitting down so much. Far out, I'm going to finish medical school and I'll need counterweights to stop myself from falling over backwards from all the bum-weight I've put on. It doesn't help that my coping strategies for stress include shovelling as much high-energy food into my mouth in the shortest period of time possible.
Faaaaar out. I hate assignments. ARGH.
So what's been happening.
I turned 22. I didn't really want it to be a big deal, but recent acquirement of boyfriend sort of coincided with the nearing of birthday, so it turned out to be a kind of debut slash meet the friends type thing for us. We had dinner at a pretty Singaporean/Malaysian in Haymarket that had cylinder lights and patterned wallpaper and extremely wide lounges. The abundance of random curries evoked fond memories of Ronnie D, and they were almost as tasty. (I think, in my mind, those reheated concoctions will remain crystallised as one of the most soul-heartening foods I'll ever experience. Perhaps it was just the company.) Shelly, with the encouragement of Ahilan, surprised us with a moderately inapppropriate cake, to the bemusement of many and confusion of some. Afterwards we walked through the rain to Chamberlain (encouraged by Hannah to HOLD HANDS so Xiao in Grafton could see), for buzz-inducing beverage consumption. Ubercamera utilisation married with photoshop competent boyfriend resulted in a set of beautiful photos, probably the best I've had from an event. I had a good night, surprisingly.
Psychiatry is sort of passing by. There are probably too many distractions, but even so, it's still a bit rubbish. Listening to the stories of my psych patients, I feel helpless about the dodgy situations they've endured and general disillusionment about the human race. I know I'm a bit retarded and the craziness will probably get worse in future, but I hope not to lose insight into things, and myself.
It's been six odd years since I've worn braces, and my teeth have relapsed veeerrrrryyyy slightly. Anyway, I visited my orthodontist who made me an Essix retainer to reset my smile. Having an enunciation-impeding chunk of plastic in my mouth makes me feel like I'm in high school again. Lame.
Soooo tired. Argh.
