Steve: a tribute

My Smaller Half and I went to check out used cars on Saturday. It was an extraordinarily painful experience because the used car salesman we got seemed to have been sent direct from central casting with instructions to be sure to not under-act.

He was an enormously tall and fat ruddy-faced English bloke called Steve. All fine so far. But then he opened his mouth. Steve talked non-stop. And whatever came out of his mouth was either idiocy or lies.

For example, first he was trying to push on us a car with 200,000 km on the clock. His argument was something like this:

Mate, if a car is running this good after 200, it'll run forever. That's a bargain that.

But then, when trying to push on us one with only 75,000 km on it, his argument was:

This is a real find. Only 75 on it. Just like a brand new one.

So apparently the total mileage (kilometrage?) is of no relevance in the worth of a car. And apparently if you never say the word "thousand", people won't notice that the car has been driven to the moon and back.

Another classy thing Steve did was whenever I leaned down to inspect any of the various dings and scratches on the cars was to lick his thumb, rub it vigorously over the blemish, and announce:

Nah mate, that'll buff right out, won't even show. I'd have done it already but I'm that busy. Still, must have been a woman driver eh? Eh? Oh 'allo, the missus not listening to me? I been married thirty years. And you only get fifteen for murder! How's that fair?

He had a whole host of jokes like that that he showered us with all morning, like the contents of a chamber-pot gently falling from an upper-storey window.

Then we started talking money. He'd been telling us all about what a great deal we could get because it was the end of the month and this and that. So when he tells us the listed price for this car we were interested in, we offer him two grand less, as a starting point for negotiation. So he has to go and call his boss, in another room, to "spin him a bit of a yarn and get a good price" for us. Of course - because he's our best friend!

He comes back in, shaking his head. Unfortunately there's been a terrible mixup and the boss is furious! The car has been listed at the WRONG PRICE! Gasp! So not only can they not consider our lower offer, but after today they'll have to increase the price so it's going to be $2000 more expensive than it is today. We are just so lucky!

After this egregious insult to our intelligence, we simply stood up and walked out. Steve looked a bit surprised, but I could hear him still talking behind us as we left, trying to ham it up with various bystanders, exclaiming about how this fantastic car that was just like a new one was accidentally priced too cheaply and my goodness what a bargain it was and he'd buy it himself if he was allowed and they don't even make them like this anymore, these days they're all plastic and Korean and you can purchase a warranty at a great price but why would you want to since it'll run forever especially since it was just like a new one.

Sigh. As you can see, my scars run deep. But not as deeply, I suspect, as his lobotomy scars.

Free cheese

I went to a function tonight where awards were handed out for the tutors who were voted the best by the medical students at my Fine University. I went because I had voted for my Illustrious Tutor from last semester and was hoping he might win. He did win, but unfortunately didn't go to the function so wasn't able to accept his award in person.

There was an ulterior motive for me to go though. There was free cheese. There was a lot of free cheese. And even better, a lot of people there seemed to think that some of the cheese was too strongly flavoured.

Ha! I laugh in the face of such a concept! Cheese that is too strongly flavoured? Impossible! That just sounds like the kind of excuse peddled by those who think that cheese should come pre-sliced into squares rather than heaved around in wheels the size of your head.

The upshot of all this is that I got to spend a good 2 hours eating cheese. Yummo.

Anyway, there was a reason that I started talking about all this, but now I can't remember what the relevance was. I should write my ideas down.

Taxing times

Just finished doing my taxes. That was tedious in the extreme. One of my Esteemed Colleagues reminded me today that I could have gotten it done for free by a local accounting firm that sponsors the medical students society. I came up with some pathetic excuse, but the truth is:

1. I am very manly, and real men do their own taxes without help,
2. I am hopelessly disorganized, and most of the work involves rummaging around our store-room looking for old letters and financial statements, and
   
3. I forgot.

Now that I am no longer a government employee, I think it's fair to say that taxes are way too high, public servants are just a bunch of shiny-bummed fat-cats who are leeches on the public purse, and the sooner Kevin Rudd takes a hatchet to every gubberment department that starts with "Department of ...", the better. Chop chop!

Remember how I recently swore that for my next set of exams I would do the work as I went along rather than leave it all to the end? Well that's how I'm going to do my taxes next year. I'm going to put everything in a box as I go, and on D-day I'll dump it all on someone else's desk and tell them to do it for me for nuthin'.

And I will laugh like this: "muahahahaHAH!!"

Marx and mangoes

When I was a kid, I read a great book called My Friend Mr Leakey. It was full of stories about the author's good friend (Mr Leakey) who was a magician living in London. They had all sorts of interesting encounters.

I can remember very little of the book apart from the name, the illustrations, and a piece of advice within it - namely that mangoes should always be eaten in the bath so that the mess is manageable. On many occasions since I have advised people to do so, although to be honest I have never done so myself since I shower rather than bathe, and as such I have nowhere to put the mango but in the soap dish, which seems unhygienic at best and stomach turning at worst.

I have just now returned from so advising one of my Esteemed Colleagues, who was lamenting the messiness of mangoes in his own blog. In so doing, it occurred to me to google(tm) the name of the book to see what I could find out about it.

As it turns out, My Friend Mr Leakey was written in the 30's by JBS Haldane. I looked him up and discovered that he was one of the great geneticists of the 20th century, as well as a devoted Marxist for much of his life. In fact, it was he who, when asked what might be inferred about the mind of God from the study of nature, replied that God clearly had "an inordinate fondness for beetles". As a result of such smart-arsed remarks, he was a bitter enemy of the devoutly Christian CS Lewis, whose book The Screwtape Letters I just finished reading. What a strange coincidence.

JBS Haldane was apparently also able to blow tobacco smoke out of his ears because of the residual holes in his eardrums caused by him accidentally rupturing them during his experiments with a hyperbaric chamber. A most accomplished man.

(Those of you in the biological sciences may have heard of the Haldane effect - describing how the deoxygenation of blood increases its ability to transport carbon dioxide. This was discovered by JBS Haldane's father.)

As a result, I've spent the last hour not doing my embryology learning issues. I think what I have learned is much more interesting though, wouldn't you agree?

Tim Winton no dud

I wish to publicly apologize to Tim Winton for privately vilifying him for years. I was sent a copy of his book Breath by my Aged Mother and now that I have gotten around to reading it, I am really enjoying it. This guy can write!

Somehow I have been labouring under the impression that Tim Winton is a dud. Some kind of Bryce Courtenay clone whose work should appear only in extracts in The Women's Weekly. I don't know why as I have never read any of his books before. I suspect that my innate suspicion of popularity is to blame here. His books were so popular, even amongst people who I knew were not normally avid readers, that I assumed that they must be garbage.

Tim, I am sorry. And I also apologize to anyone who has previously tried to get me to read a Tim Winton book and has had to listen to me ignorantly pooh-pooh their taste in books. How you refrained from punching me in the nose I have no idea.

Modern life

Was making chilli con carne for tea tonight. Well into the swing of things. Opened up fridge door to get meat out. No meat. Hmm.

Open freezer door to look for meat. No meat. What?

Look again in fridge. Look again in freezer. Look again in fridge. Look really really hard in fridge. Even move the butter around and look behind it. And under the parsley too. No meat.

Think for a while.

Go to shopping basket in laundry. Meat in bottom of basket. Since Saturday. When it was 37 degrees.

Drive to shops to buy more meat.

Wisdom

If you've never been to Adelaide before, you're missing out! Here, the bus tickets have inspirational sayings printed on them.

You know how exciting it is when you walk past a church and there's a big sign out front saying something like, "The most important vitamin for Christians: B1". Well in Adelaide it's like that every time you buy a bus ticket. Except multiplied by three because that's how many pithy little sayings you get on each tiny little ticket.

It's like a fortune cookie but without the horrible cookie bit.

Here are some of the life-improving messages I have found on my bus tickets recently:

• To know one's ignorance is part of knowledge. (Definitely relevant to my recent exams, where I demonstrated mastery of the ignorance.)
• You'll never get rid of a bad temper by losing it. (Because your mum wrote your name on the label.)
  
• Every ending is a new beginning. (Confirmation of the Oscillating Universe cosmology theory?)
  
• Insert this way. (Always a good rule to follow.)
  
• Nothing makes people go into debt like trying to keep up with people who already are. (Adelaide Metro foresees the subprime mortgage crisis years in advance.)
  

If you've read anything profound on a bus ticket, fortune cookie, or church billboard, I'd like to hear about it!

A bit of commitment please

My feet hurt. And tomorrow I'm going to be hobbling around like an old man.

I played basketball today for the first time in at least 10 years. I had heaps of fun and didn't even throw up too many airballs. Speaking of throwing up, I am spectacularly unfit. I didn't actually hurl but if I had played for much longer I might have. I've done it before and it's not pleasant.

The first time was when I was in high school trying out for a representative basketball team. We'd played all our matches for the day and I didn't think I'd played that well so I went off and bought a litre of ginger ale and drank it all in about 5 minutes. Then it turned out that I got selected into the "possibles and probables" match so I had to play again.

I was pretty uncomfortable but somehow managed to play well enough to be chosen. Then I went outside and chundered up all that ginger ale that had been sloshing around inside me during the game. Yuk.

The second time was at uni when I was running in the 800 metres at a collegiate carnival. I got the time of my race wrong and had just finished eating my second plate of veal parmigiana when someone told me my race was about to start. I ran about a kilometre to the track, got there just in time, and took off!

I led for the whole first lap. I had visions of breaking records and going to the olympics. Then with about 200m to go my legs turned to jelly and everyone ran past me and I finished last. As I staggered across the line I barfed up all that veal parmigiana. Ew.

So never let anyone tell you that sport isn't character building. Dean Jones made a double century in India and was immediately hospitalized for severe dehydration. If there more players like him (or me!) in the current Australian team we wouldn't be 0-1 down with two to play.

Wusses.

You just keep me hanging on

Good day today. Funny how when you slip out from under the burden you've been carrying, at first you don't notice that the weight isn't there. Or you do, but it doesn't feel right. You start to miss it in a funny way. Freedom feels confining.

I mentioned this to my Smaller Half today over breakfast. I compared myself not unfavourably to Nelson Mandela, and remarked that when he obtained his freedom at last he probably didn't really know what to do with himself either. My Smaller Half paused, realized that I was only half-joking, and curled her lip at me. She observed that apparently Nelson Mandela did know what to do with himself because he subsequently became President of South Africa. I thought this was a bit unfair since I only finished my exams yesterday and I'm not even a South African citizen.

The first true pleasure of today was in wasting it. I can't account for the hours at all because I spent the day deliberately not looking at my watch.

The second true pleasure of today was walking halfway from Glenelg to Brighton at super-low tide with my Smaller Half this evening. The beach was surprisingly empty. There were a few families there and the obligatory dog walkers. It was warm, not a breath of wind. The sea was flat as, bro. It was very peaceful.

The third true pleasure was returning to Chips, the hamburger joint on Jetty Rd, Glenelg, that one of my Esteemed Colleagues introduced me to just yesterday. I took my Smaller Half back there tonight and we bought burgers and chips and sat on the wall watching the tide turn and the sun set. These burgers are seriously awesome. To the max! They put onion jam inside them and mayo and fried eggs and bacon and cheese and all that good stuff that gives other people heart disease.

The guy that works there has some attitude though. He doesn't look at you when you order, he just stares off at an angle looking bored. And he wanders slowly around the shop taking aaaages to make you your food. As if he's some kind of new wave subversive burger artist and he can't believe that these bourgeois customers keep coming in for food. It's worth it though. They are the best burgers I've eaten since the truck stop at Holbrook.

Perhaps even better.

Life is good.

Oww

I'M FINISHED MY EXAMS NOW. HOORAY! IF ONLY MY EARS WOULD STOP RINGING.

I just got back from the post-exam celebratory drinks at some scuzzy Adelaide pub. It was so flipping loud in there that I might as well have put my head in a sack, got everyone to kick it, then eaten some sandpaper to rough up my vocal cords.

We were all crammed into a tiny room by the bar. In an adjacent tiny room a DJ played deafeningly loud "music" (I'm a grumpy old man, I'm entitled to use quotation marks like that) which he seemed to be scratching together at random. From time to time, just to make sure we were listening, he'd get this screeching feedback going that made your bowels turn to water. Happy days.

At this point, I'd like to send a big shout-out to my Esteemed Colleague whose feelings were deeply hurt by not being mentioned yet in this blog. Hi there Esteemed Colleague! How's your wheeze?

As befits the day of my renal exam, I got severely dehydrated this afternoon. Because I knew there would be questions about urination on the exam this morning, I deliberately didn't drink anything beforehand so as to avoid the insidious power of suggestion during the exam. Unfortunately, the only fluid I had for the rest of the day was two cups of coffee and a couple of schooners, topped off with a huge salty burger and chips. By the time I got home this afternoon I was practically peeing stock cubes I was so dry.

Hmm, I shouldn't type tired. I haven't planned this post very well. I started at the end, then went back to the beginning, and now I'm stuck in the middle with nowhere to go. Any advice on how to resolve this compositional dilemma?

One to go

Respiratory systems done. Phew!

It was an exam from Bizarro-Land though. There were only four questions on it.

One question was on something we covered in one tute for about 10 minutes. So that was fun.

Another question was all about what muscles you use to breathe. Hopefully I got the full 1o marks for "diaphragm". About a mark per letter seems fair.

There was a question about predicting all sorts of fancy-pants science things like pH, partial pressures of oxygen and CO₂ and haemoglobin saturation for some poor woman who had diabetes and let her blood sugar get too low and OD'd on heroin before smashing her car and choking on the exhaust fumes in the smoking wreck! I just wrote PROGNOSIS NEGATIVE!

And the final question was, for some strange reason, nothing to do with respiratory systems at all. It was about some theoretical model for caring for chronically ill patients which we apparently had a lecture about at some stage. Whoops!

Seems to me that the primary goal of the course co-ordinator (who in the Olden Days we would have called a lecturer, except that this one doesn't lecture. At least not that I saw) was to minimize his marking burden. Kudos to him, I say, as long as my exam burden is minimized too (ie: I hope I don't fail and have to sit a sup.)

I got to the exam a little late and most of the seats were taken, so an invigilator directed me to a free seat. Which was right underneath the asthma poster that I mentioned in my previous post. And there was nothing about asthma on the exam.

This country is stuffed!

Cardio-funk!

Cardio exam is all done with! Hooray!

It was an okay exam. There were a few questions which I had seen before but decided not to look at in detail because I thought to myself, "no way, that'll never come up". Whoops!

On the plus side, there were a few questions that I did guess might be in there even though they hadn't been examined before, so I should do pretty well in those.

Onwards to the next one: the respiratory system! I fear this exam because it is only an hour long. This means that it'll be a pretty busy hour, and if things start to go pear-shaped it could be unpleasant.

Amusingly, the only poster on the wall of the exam room is a health promotion poster titled, "Managing your asthma". I think it has a whole lot of different drugs on it and when to use them. I wonder if they will think to remove it before tomorrow morning? There could be a rush for the left side of the room.

First Australians

If you haven't been watching First Australians on SBS (8.30 pm Sundays and Tuesdays), do yourself a favour and tune in. It is an incredible series all about how the Aboriginal nations of Australia have been repeatedly screwed over by the white settlers.

One of the many strengths of the show is that they get the opinions of a wide variety of expert historians, some Aboriginal, some white. There's a broad range of responses mostly concerning the character and motivations of some of the major historical figures. It's really interesting to see the same person described as incredibly selfish and manipulative by one historian, then as wonderfully altruistic and honorable by another. The uncertainty and debate is what's great about history, but you seldom see it shown on TV. Yet despite the uncertainties, the terrible facts speak for themselves.

I was surprised to find that I knew almost nothing about Aboriginal history. I had thought I was well-informed and well-educated yet almost all of this story is new to me. By comparison, because of books like Dee Brown's Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, I have a much better sense of the native American experience of invasion and conquest. However, the sense I am getting from this series is that unfortunately many of the themes are the same. Disease, murder, lies, broken promises, prejudice, denial of autonomy, genocide. It's a tragic story.

One of the historians on the show (whose name escapes me) has an understandably angry and hostile air which sometimes makes for uncomfortable viewing. She maintains that the reason that this history is not taught in Australian schools is because Australians could not face up to the truth and would prefer to lie about history instead.

I think that on this point she is mistaken, although perhaps the truth is worse. I think that the real reason this history isn't taught in schools (at least not in my day) is because all this violence and crime and genocide is simply considered to be unimportant, of no impact, not worth knowing about because it happened to "those people over there", not "us".

This is terrible because not only does it deny the basic humanity of the victims, but it hides from us an awful truth - that by perpetrating and perpetuating these crimes our society has something monstrous at its heart. That's a lesson that we are fools to ignore.

I've watched three episodes so far and it has had such an impact on me and my Smaller Half that I decided to contact one of the show's interviewees, Bruce Pascoe. If you've seen the show, Bruce is the guy with the white hair and long beard who in my opinion has the most interesting things to say out of all of them.

I emailed him telling him how amazed I was and thanking him for his input to the show. He emailed me back today, saying:

"Good on you [PTR]. I'm glad you enjoyed the show. Please help us change the outlook of australia. This is a great country and we can be a great nation... with the application of intelligence and compassion. Bruce"

If you've missed the episodes so far, you can watch them online at the SBS website.

Do it.

New quote

"I am trying to read in the succession of things presented to me every day the world's intentions towards me, and I grope my way, knowing that there can exist no dictionary that can translate into words the burden of obscure allusions that lurks in these things." - Italo Calvino

Sorry Mr Calvino, but I'm retiring your quote. As much as I like what you're saying, it's just not punchy enough for a hip, modern blog like this. I'm bringing in something from the 21st century.

Do you like sport? Do you like mathematics? Do you like sport and mathematics? Then why not come and see my collection on the Isle of Man!

Alternatively, read Moneyball by Michael Lewis. It's the gripping, unputdownable story of how nerds revolutionized the running of modern baseball teams by applying hard analytical models to player performance and dispelled generations of accumulated folk-wisdom on who the best players were and how the game should be played.

I picked it up on Friday and ended up reading the whole book that day instead of studying. I can't recommend it highly enough!

Turmoil

I haven't posted since Thursday - whoops! No wonder world financial markets are collapsing. There are probably rumours circulating like wildfire that I am dead or have had my fingers broken, and as a result blogspot.com shares has plunged. Millions of readers left stranded! Turmoil on-line as content gap leaves geeks reeling!

It's been a funny few days. Ever since my prac exam I've had real difficulties studying. I think I've become accustomed to having my exams all back-to-back, so my brain woke up on Friday and announced that it was going to have a long weekend.

Well, the joke is you, brain, because tomorrow I am going to ride you around the exam room like a motorbike! And I'm going to do the same thing on Tuesday and Wednesday too!

I'm going to work harder next semester, I promise.

How to win at exams

Prac exam done. I'm pleased that's over because now I can concentrate on the scary exams next week. It's nice to think that I've already earned a good chunk of marks towards passing. If anything goes haywire in the exams next week (for example, I blow a fuse and wipe out) I think an adequate showing in the prac exam is kind of like a gesture of goodwill from me to the lecturers, so they won't really be able to fail me.

Isn't it funny the little lies we tell ourselves, just like that one, so that we don't freak out too much?

Anyway, a lot of people have been saying to me recently, "PTR, you're my role model. What tips can you give me?", to which I reply, "Sorry kiddo, fashion isn't a game for the faint-hearted. If you don't have the guts to step out on that catwalk on your own then you don't deserve your own line of designer underwear."

And then they say, "Actually I was thinking not so much about fashion as about the way you seem so calm before exams." And I say, "That's because I don't drink or smoke or kiss girls, just like Snoopy". And that seems to satisfy them because they stop asking me questions after that.

But for those of you who need them, here are PTR's Study Tips For Poise And Style!

• Shave every second day, at about 11am. Don't shave every day, it's a waste of razor-blades and being smooth-skinned isn't hot right now. Don't leave it too long though because then you'll start feeling like a slob. And slobs don't win. 11am is the best time to shave because it fills in that awkward gap between breakfast and lunch when you might be tempted to open a book and scare yourself. Don't furrow that brow!
• Study the curriculum in reverse order. While this will confuse you and waste plenty of time, it creates the impression of vast knowledge and implacable power when you casually mention something from the final week of semester while everyone else is struggling over week 3. Who knows, maybe by the time the exam comes you will get to the second last week of semester!
  
• Eat meat pies and drink flavoured milk for lunch. You deserve it! And in case you have to get a job as a bricklayer you'll fit right in, so that's one less thing to worry about.
  
• Breathe circularly, as if playing the didgeridoo. It's a well-known fact that people who are cool and calm exhale slowly and steadily, so do it for minutes on end to show people just how calm you are. You may need to carry and use a small harmonica if they aren't noticing.
• Spend heaps of time on social networking sites like FaceBook. Make sure you leave an identifiable trace of activity, preferably spread evenly throughout the day. I try to post a message to someone every 17 minutes between the hours of 5:45am and 12:30am. The messages should indirectly show how unconcerned about things you are and how much spare time you have. For example, rather than saying, "I am freaking out!!!!", say something like, "Wasn't the third US Presidential debate a fascinating indictment of modern democracy?"
• Arrive late to your exam. Nothing says, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" like being late.
• Conversely, it's vitally important to overdress. People who dress casually will be momentarily stunned by your sartorial splendour. They'll wonder how you found time to starch your spats while they wasted their time learning about adenylylyl cyclase or whatever.
  
• Hire a special car for the day so that people notice how laid back you are. A pink stretch humvee is good. If the car park isn't visible from the exam venue, consider crashing your pink stretch humvee through the wall of the exam room.

Well, that's just a few of my tips to keeping your poise in this tricky exam period. Good luck.

Adios, amigos! Yeeee-ha!

Milestone on the road to nowhere

I'm about to head off to my prac exam. In the next 3 hours I'll have to dissect a heart, take a patient's medical history, identify various weird anatomical things, and maybe even multiply some numbers together or something. Fingers crossed.

And we've passed 1000 page views as of noon today. Excitement!

Do not pass "Go".

I realized last night that I had stopped trying to learn new things and had entered the final phase of the study cycle: damage control.

I realized this because I was looking at some drug info and noticed that lots of drugs, for example the antibiotic gentamicin, are nephrotoxic. That is, they give your kidneys a good hard pounding and that can be enough to stop your kidneys working.

This is a useful thing to know. But rather than continue on and try to learn more useful things, my reaction was to immediately pick up some past exams and try to figure out exactly how many different types of question I might be able to avoid answering simply by writing down, "gentamicin nephrotoxicity". This is damage control at its finest.

Gentamicin nephrotoxicity appeals to me for several reasons:

1. Each word is polysyllabic and hence sounds very learned.
2. The mechanism is either poorly understood or outrageously complex, hence I don't have to bother to try to remember anything.
3. Lots of people take antibiotics, so it's broadly applicable.
4. By singling out a particular drug it gives the illusion that I have carefully considered this specific scenario rather than used a blanket Get Out Of Jail Free card.

The other thing I've been doing as part of my damage control is spending lots of time praying to the Exam Gods that I get asked questions about stuff I know and understand (for example: physics, the Napoleonic wars, vintage sci-fi) rather than stuff I don't (for example: the content of lectures).

If I had spent half the time studying that I have spent worrying, I wouldn't have had to spend half the time worrying that I have.

Tangerine

There is a controversy boiling over regarding the imaginary nation of Tangeria and its national anthem. A recent commenter asserts that the anthem of Tangeria should be something more tangential than Led Zeppelin's "Tangerine", even with my proposed new lyrics.

However, if you go to Wikipedia's list of national anthems you'll see that most countries do have non-tangential anthems. In fact, some are downright eponymous. For example, Djibouti ("Djibouti"), American Samoa ("Amerika Samoa"), and most notably Eritrea ("Eritrea, Eritrea, Eritrea").

I'll award a near miss to Canada ("O Canada"). Maybe that's a typo.

It's reassuring to know that with their new anthem, people in Tangeria will be shakin' djibouti on the dance floor well into the future.

No plan C

"Yea, Lord we greet thee, born this happy morn." There are no atheists in foxholes, right?

I got up this morning thinking to myself, gee - my exams start next Monday. That doesn't seem to leave me much time. So I sat myself down and wrote up a timetable for my study. I'll spare you the details, but the salient point is that I have about 3 hours to revise each week of the semester just gone.

I found that so frightening that I immediately jumped on FaceBook and played some Scrabble and sent people some messages and then came here to write this. Ayayayay!

Fictional country name

Meanwhile, if I ever write a spy novel, the evil adversary country will be called Tangeria. It sounds like a country doesn't it? Perhaps that's where tangerines come from.

In praise of weeds

Gardening is great! More specifically, my garden is great! That's because it has weeds in it that are taller than me!

We hadn't weeded it for about a year, because all summer we were in a terrible drought and weeds didn't grow. Then it rained all winter, and spring has been mostly sunny but with rain every now and then to really get the weeds revved up.

We kept looking at it and saying things like, "We really should weed the garden this weekend". This kind of comment is right up there with "I'll work harder next semester", and "I'm never going to eat so much ever again" in the Self-Delusion Stakes.

So of course, the weeds grew up higher than my head.

We finally decided to attack it. So far we've filled up one wheelie bin and 4 wheelie-bin-sized plastic bags. We're about two-thirds done.

The reason I think it's great is that it has given me a great de-stressing activity which I can do daily to blow off steam and tension that builds up while studying. When all you're doing is pulling up weeds your mind goes pretty blank. It just mosies along and stops to admire the finer things in life like grubs, dirt, beetles, and more dirt, rather than the less fine things such as ... oh, exams, say.

And the great thing about the weeds being head high is that you have a real sense of achievement as you go because you're liberating whole cubic metres of garden from tyranny.

So if you have exams coming up soon, try my patented de-stressing technique: a year before, stop weeding your garden. It does take some foresight, or good luck, but it's well worth the effort.

Clouds

I was fascinated by the results of the latest poll on how you think of clouds. Three people, including myself, indicated that they see clouds as ice-cream castles. No-one saw clouds as bows and flows of angel hair, or feather canyons everywhere. Is this perhaps a reflection of the prevailing westerlies here in Adelaide in spring? Moreover, in a startling rejection of the poetic school of meteorology, four voters chose "None of the above".

I wonder if perhaps they think that clouds only block the sun and rain and snow on everyone. Let's face it, there are times when I thought that there were so many things I could have done but clouds got in my way. Perhaps people might care to add a comment indicating their own view of clouds.

We all know there are two sides to clouds. In the end what you recall is their illusions and you have to admit that maybe you don't know clouds as well as you thought you did.

Whine and cheese

Sometimes I really look forward to getting up in the morning. Today I am really looking forward to going to bed.

I'm trying to count my blessings, I really am. I know that I am lucky to even have this opportunity to be able to study medicine, I know that I am in excellent health and I am only temporarily sick in the most minor possible way, I know that my upcoming exams are passable and that realistically I will be fine as long as I work hard, I know, I know, I know. I know.

I'm just a bit fed up with this crap today, that's all.

Do you know which word I have used most in this post? "I". As such, I diagnose myself as being a selfish little brat.

Goodnight.

Damn you Rolf Harris!

I'm exhausted! For some reason, the last couple of nights I have had real trouble getting to sleep. I haven't been tossing and turning, just lying there with the same two or three thoughts running around my head. Typically, these thoughts will be:

1. A song. Usually at least 10 years old. Usually one I don't like. Last night it was the ballad "Wild Colonial Boy", as sung by Rolf Harris.

2. A medical fact that I failed to learn during the day. Last night I spent what seemed like hours speculating on what the pressure might be in the pulmonary trunk during diastole, like this: 10? No, 15. No! 12. No, it must be 8. No! 12 is right. No, it's 30. ... and so forth.

3. An obsessive fixation on a trivial detail of a book I read when I was a child or a game of chess I may or may not once have played.

It's a real bunch of laughs let me tell you.

Fingers crossed

I reckon I'm going to be fine in these exams. As long as they ask the right questions.

The problem I am having is that my hyper-distractable state of mind, my curious and wandering intellect, and my propensity to use wikipedia for study purposes are all combining synergistically to ensure that I am seldom learning anything that is actually relevant to my course.

On the off chance that any of my lecturers are reading this, here is a sample of some of the types of question that I will be able to answer.

1. Which endangered animal is immune to effect of ouabain, used for poisoning arrows in some parts of Africa?
A. The panda
B. The galapagos tortoise
C. The orange roughy
D. The bilby

2. Expansion of the lungs is best described by analogy to the military campaigns of which ancient leader?
A. Spartacus
B. Hadrian
C. Pachacutec
D. Julius Caesar

3. Removal of what organ results in the regrowth of the thymus?
A. Testes
B. Parathyroid glands
C. Prostate
D. Gall bladder

Get the idea? Bizarre + useless = good. Relevant + useful = bad. Please please please Mr Doctor-Man, write some exam questions like this. I may not pass even then, but at least I'll have an interesting hour or two.

Answers: 1.B 2.D 3.A (Kudos to J. and L. who alerted me to questions 2 & 3.)

Let the study commence

I've got exams in just over two weeks. Actually, one of those exams is in 12 days, since it has been thoughtfully placed right in the middle of swotvac. Fantastic.

This week I was good. I actually worked quite hard. For me.

This is because my Smaller Half had to start at thoroughly ungodly times such 7:30 (in the morning!), while on many days I had my whole morning free. So in fit of uncharacteristic discipline I got up early, drove her in to uni, and plonked myself in the library and did some work.

That's how I discovered that the library doesn't open until 8:30. No problem, I thought, I'll just grab a coffee and sit in one of the tute rooms until then. That's how I discovered that the cafeteria doesn't open until 8:00.

I was deeply shocked.

But on the bright side, it motivated me to work really hard this week, because I am going to pass my exams, graduate from medicine, work as a doctor and climb to top of my profession so that one day I can be in charge of running that fine Medical Institution. And when I do, I will make them get to work early and open the cafeteria at a civilized time, like 7:29 am.

I love a mystery!

Today we had a couple of pathology lectures from a guy who looks like Kevin Rudd with a beard. Eerie.

As I have mentioned before, I like the way pathologists speak. This guy is extra great because not only does he used all the crazy pathology words, but he drops little teasers into his lectures. For example, he'll say things like this:

"Renal cell carcinoma also occurs in the rare, but fascinating, von Hippel-Lindau syndrome."

Does he tell us anything else about it? No. He blithely sails on to the next topic. We were left knowing absolutely nothing about this condition except that it:

1. is rare,
2. is fascinating,
3. has a strange name.
   

It reminds me of the fantasy and sci-fi writing of Jack Vance. His books frequently introduce strange, almost frivolous-sounding terms, such as toince, deodand, or gaun, and don't bother to provide any detail beyond describing the character's own reactions. So you learn that deodands are dangerous and cunning, but little else.

So when I find out about some heretofore unknown condition, with a name that evokes images of giant airships, and I learn only that it is rare and fascinating, my imagination runs wild!

Which is a shame because it turns out that von Hippel-Lindau disease is quite awful.

Dental hygiene makes rodeo clowns tough!

I like mnemonics. I can still remember the mnemonic for the main sequence stars from high school physics: Oh be a fine girl kiss me now = O, B, A, F, G, K, M, N. For some reason this is still in my brain despite the fact that I have never used this information in any practical way.

On Monday my Smaller Half told me a great mnemonic for remembering the bones of the wrist. So long to pinkie, here comes the thumb = Scaphoid, lunate, triquetrium, pisiform, hamate, capitate, trapezoid, trapezium. They are listed as the proximal four then the distal four, lateral to medial and medial to lateral, respectively. Awesome! I'm sure that some day I'll win a lot of money on a game show by knowing that. Like that nut on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire who knew all the kings and queens of England since day dot with some crazy mnemonic.

Since I have a huge amount of study to do, I spent this morning making up some mnemonics of my own instead. Here are some of them:

To remember the symptoms of anaemia:
Why's this pale person falling down? = Weakness, tiredness, pallor, postural dizziness, fatigue, dyspnoea.

To remember the family history risk factors for kidney disease:
Dad's gout has produced renal calculi = Diabetes, gout, hypertension, polycystic kidneys, renal disease, calculi.

To remember the personal history risk factors for non-ischaemic heart disease:
Dental hygiene makes rodeo clowns tough! = Dental work recently, heart disease, murmurs, rheumatic fever, congenital heart disease, thyroid disease.

To remember the personal history risk factors for respiratory disease:
Ask patient to raise his shoulders = Asthma, pneumonia, tuberculosis, respiratory illness, HIV/AIDS, sleep apnoea

Looking back on them now some of them seem pretty ridiculous, but they really have helped me to remember these lists without leaving things out. I suppose the bogosity of them helps the images to stick in the mind. In fact, I may have to axe the more sensible ones and make them far more foolish. More rodeo clowns I say!

Election results

At the close of counting, the Fish was pronounced the animal that most people would like to be (4 votes). Filling in the position of vice-Fish will be the Pig (2 votes). And the deputy vice-Fish is the Mule (1 vote).

Exit polling revealed that the Fish was the preferred candidate primarily because of the perceived lifestyle advantages of most aquatic vertebrates. This was in marked contrast to voter perception of the alternative choices, both domesticated ungulates, as being required to either work excessively hard (Mule) or wallow in their own faeces (Pig). Interestingly, supporters of the Pig quoted this same factor as a positive.

Quote of the day

"Most blogs are a waste of time; at best of interest to close friends and family, at worst vanity-driven ego sops full of posts by the same half-dozen people plus a couple of trolls." - Jody Kline

Represent!

Big Pedant

Oh, and one more thing. Today a lecturer told us that patients with kidney stones are "invariably" men. And then he told us that a quarter of them are women.

Obviously he was using the word "invariably" in some kind of specialized medical way to mean "variably". Right?

Sourdough report

I sliced my first ever sourdough loaf this afternoon after spending from 7:30 am to 5 pm at uni. I was pretty zonked out by that stage so I was expecting the worst but guess what? Against all expectation, the sourdough bread worked! Repeat: it WORKED!!

It was pretty dense but not inedibly so. There were identifiable pockets of gas in the parenchyma of the loaf, but not so airy as to be emphysematous. It had a nice sour taste which was noticeable but not overwhelming.

I toasted it lightly and we ate it with butter and honey accompanied by a cup of tea. Yummo! Best of all were the words of praise from my Smaller Half: "You made bread - just like Jesus!"

Since this blog is not titled "Prone to sourdough" I won't bore you with further bready adventures after this. Unless my secret plan for adding pumpkin seeds works out. That would be exciting!

Let them eat cake

This is my first ever loaf of home-made sourdough. It looks good! It smells great! And it is the size of a golf ball and weighs as much as a pony!

Well - not quite, but it certainly is very dense. You know how when you pick something up that is heavier than you expect it to be, your mind momentarily asks itself if perhaps you're in the vicinity of a black hole and the gravitational tidal forces are about to tear you apart and you get a sudden surge of adrenaline? That happened to me with this bread.

There seems to have been some kind of hitch in the rising process. After it rose overnight and I pounded it back down again it failed to rise again today. Instead it just oozed out sideways, losing the charming loaf shape that I had carefully crafted. I had even slashed the top in a quaint checkerboard pattern. You may be able to see this faintly in the picture, but it is pretty smoothed out by now.

I was heartbroken that it didn't rise properly but I decided to chuck it in the oven and try it out anyway. Much to my surprise it roughly doubled in size during the baking process, so I suppose I did something right. If, at this point, you are laughing at my total baking naivety, please understand: this is the first loaf of bread of any type I have ever made. I once made scones under my mother's supervision. I haven't even ever made a cake that isn't out of a box. Although I am quite good at friands - the recipe does claim that they are "idiot-proof" and I still managed to stuff them up once.

Anyway, the loaf is cooling on a reinforced support platform. We plan to bust it open later tonight and attempt to eat it with butter and honey. Such excitement!

Three things

1. I just made my first batch of sourdough from Brett. It's going to rise overnight (I hope).

2. This morning I found 5 dead bees on the floor of the study and on my desk. Is this some kind of creepy omen? Or perhaps a message of good fortune from the gods? Any theories?

3. While listening to the Johnny Cash song Folsom Prison Blues I thought I heard him sing "I shot a man in renal just to watch him die". I think my brain is obsessed with the current block at uni: renal. Of course the (fictional) man was actually shot in Reno. I may the first person to ever report this particular mondegreen. What an achievement.

Thanks for your attendance.

Vote you scurvy dogs!

In case you didn't notice, there's a new poll to the right of your screen. Vote now, or accept the consequences of an arbitrary allocation to a new genus.

Don't say you weren't warned.

Professionalism

We had an interesting lecture today on the legalities (or otherwise) of abortion. I learned that medical practitioners have the right to refuse to provide abortions on the grounds that they are conscientious objecters (and I learned how to spell "conscientious"). I asked if this was true for any other medical procedure. Turns out - yes! According to our lecturer, doctors can conscientiously object to providing any medical service.

Now - this just strikes me a bizarre. Professionalism is (and I quote my lecturer directly here) "putting your patient's interests ahead of your own". It seems to me that professionalism requires that doctors put aside any and all of their own personal views when treating patients.

Obviously it's not that simple as doctors are not robots or Vulcans or merchant bankers or other such soulless automatons. Nevertheless, the general principle seems valid. In a more practical sense, doctors should be able to either provide the service requested or provide it indirectly by referring onward in a sensible way. Refusing outright to be involved at all strikes me as being extremely unprofessional given that the profession itself presumably provides education to its members on how to perform the procedure.

A doctor who refused to give analgesics because of a personal belief that suffering ennobles the human spirit and gives dignity would be deregistered and would be unable to practise except in regional New South Wales or perhaps Queensland. Why is it that more "mainstream" personal beliefs are somehow exempt from considering their patient's interests and wishes and are permitted to withhold treatment?

When you sign up for a life of doctoring you should be aware that sometimes you're going to have to act contrary to your own personal sense of what's right. Tough luck. Lawyers defend clients they believe are guilty because our system of justice requires them to play that role. Public servants implement government policies that they believe are wrong because they know it is part of living in our type of democratic society.

It's called professionalism.

Urine it for life

Today was interesting. Today was the first time I have ever taken a good sniff of someone else's urine.

Sure, on a frosty winter's day when the men's room gets crowded one sometimes wonders at the hygiene implications of it all as the steam comes billowing up off the stainless steel like a cross between a toilet and a sauna. But it's more of a crowd situation - you wouldn't normally chirp up to single out a specimen with a comment like, "Excuse me sir, no not you, the gentleman to the left of you - perhaps you should check your blood sugars. Your urine is rather fruity."

But today in a prac we were presented with small phials of urine from different people which we were able to pass around, take a good sniff of, and compare notes on colour, clarity and smell. It was rather like a wine tasting. In fact the urine from the person with keto-acidosis smelt a lot like dodgy chardonnay.

I was surprised that the third urine sample was very small. Perhaps the donor was suffering from reduced kidney output? No, as it turns out, someone in the previous group had accidentally spilled it all over his jeans. Try explaining that on the bus home. "I didn't wet my pants, this is someone else's urine." I reckon you'd be able to clear the whole back seat for yourself with that line.

Panic stations!

Today I hit the wall. In an attempt to overcompensate for my recent slackness, I downloaded waaaay too much detailed technical info on the condition of the week: Acute Tubular Necrosis. Then I sat down and attempted to get through it all at 8 am this morning before my 10:30 am clinical skills tute (summary: poke someone in the gut and they'll scream if it hurts).

When I started to get overwhelmed I tried to read faster. Then I tried to read only every second sentence, then only every second sentence in every second paragraph, then I tried skipping pages, and it ended up making about as much sense as if I had skipped every second letter.

I caught up with my Smaller Half at lunch time and the first thing she said to me was, "What happened to you?" - presumably because I looked like someone had hit me over the head with a textbook and told me to beg for more like I meant it.

The whole thing put me in a foul mood and I became convinced I was going to fail. Then I turned up to my afternoon tute and was reassured that it's going to be okay. Mechanisms, mechanisms, mechanisms. I can do mechanisms, one by one, and put the pieces together. And I can do it in time for my exams in three weeks. No, really I can.

Inhaaaaale. Exhaaaaale.

Mayor of Chumpsbridge

What kind of moron rear-ends someone who is stopped at traffic lights? Perhaps the same kind of moron who then drives off without stopping to assess the damage.

But I got your license number, loser.

Our car was not seriously damaged. A small plastic panel underneath the license-plate illumination lamp was knocked loose and has vanished. It's not something I would have given a moment's thought to under normal circumstances. But because this prize twerp didn't even bother to pull over afterwards, I am feeling vengeful. I intend to make sure that they pay for it.

And if I ever see your big fat ugly troop-mobile again I'll be leaving a rude note on your windscreen too...

Meet Brett

I have a new friend. His name is Brett. He was born on Friday, but only really perked up today. He will move into my fridge tonight. Every week I plan to cut him in half and feed him a cup of flour. The half I remove will be turned into bread. Mwahahah!!! I feel like an evil giant from a fairy-tale.

But the truth is more prosaic. I'm trying to make sourdough bread.

Here's a picture of Brett.

He's my "starter". He's made of a cup of flour and a cup of water, left sitting in a jar on the bench until he gets frothy from the bacteria and yeasts growing inside him. I didn't add any yeast, he's just growing on the yeasts that somehow found their way into that jar, either floating on the air or else already dried up in the flour. Ditto for the bacteria.

I like the idea that, in theory, this blob of frothy batter that I call Brett could live in my fridge for the rest of my life, providing me with sourdough bread every week or so.

Good night Brett! It's going to be a bog day for you tomorrow!

Why do I try so hard?

I thought that I had come so far in my mission to ensure that my lecturers do not mis-use mathematical terminology. I was wrong. Today was a slap in the face. Like ashes in my mouth. It was like inhaling rather too much mandarin-peel-vapour, rather than the intended refreshing spritz.

Here's the situation - the Learned Professor was discussing the kidney. (Ever notice that medicine is like hunting? Everything happens only singularly. You never see zebras, you only see zebra. And doctors never discuss kidneys, only the kidney.)

More specifically, he was discussing the effects of plasma concentration of aldosterone and potassium on tubular secretion of potassium. He showed us a graph, showing how each one has an independent effect. Then, in what I thought was my moment of triumph, he correctly characterized the combination of the two as "additive".

O frabjous day! I was so happy.

But then Defeat was snatched from the jaws of Victory. In his very next breath, the Learned Professor described this additive combination as "synergistic". What!?? Synergy occurs when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, not equal to them.

For example: take an ordinary med student like me, add the boring old internet, and what is the result? The magic of Prone To Reverie - synergizing you up since 2008.

ποίησις

I was reading something
on the internet when I
realized that I had mistaken
it for poetry
when it was really
just prose
with very short line lengths.

Fascias and Fistulas

I'm really enjoying the anatomy class I'm taking. The thing I like most about it is that there are a lot of really strange sounding names for things in the body. I love unusual words. I sometimes repeat them over and over to myself or incorporate them into little tunes or ditties that I can hum. I suppose it helps me remember them.

Something that struck me today when we were going over the upper limb (which I like to call the "arm"), is that many of the best names have an almost Tolkien-ish vibe to them. I was sitting in class imagining little bits of dialogue from overwrought fantasy novels using those words.

Like this:

Bow down before the Mighty Thenar Eminence, worthless dog!

Or this:

Behold! The lost city of Olecranon, glittering like a diamond in the desert sun!

Or even:

My sword is forged of pure Acromion - I will smite you down unless you yield!

I was thinking that this was probably a pretty weird thing to do, but when I came home and told my Smaller Half, she completely agreed with me. Ain't she cool?

Coincidence? You decide...

Now this is just getting incestuous. Today's Irregular Webcomic is a pisstake on xkcd. (There are links to both sites on the right side of this page in case you have no idea what the relevance of this is...)

Candlewax

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, my favourite band was The Simpletons. I found out about them because my father decided to take us to see Willie Nelson play at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre in 1994. For some strange reason, The Simpletons were his first support act. They were completely out of place there and to be honest I didn't know what to make of them.

However, my future brother-in-law had the good judgement to buy a copy of their EP Smother. When he opened it up there were two discs inside, one on top of the other. So he gave me one as a birthday present. That disc was soon my favourite, eclipsing Guns 'n' Roses, Queen, even Willie Nelson!

They released several more EPs over the next few years, as well as a couple of albums. The best of their albums for me was Matter. I must have listened to it a squillion times. It kept me company through some dark days. (Unfortunately, as so often happens to the discs you listen to the most, most of my Simpletons collection is now badly scratched and scratched discs make my stereo system jump like a Frenchman from Maine.)

I saw the band play live a few more times, including the time they played a Thursday gig somewhere in East Brisbane (I think) which is the only time in my life I have ever had to have a sickie due to a hangover. At least I came away with the band's signatures on a souvenir T-shirt - thanks guys! Of course, I wore the shirt so much that it disintegrated and is now long gone.

This evening I'd been listening to Matter again (scratches and all) for the first time in years, and I thought I'd check out the interwebs to see what I could find out about what the band members have been up to. And I got a nasty shock. I found out that their singer Shane (or Cheyne) Gelagin died suddenly in 2003. He was probably only a few years older than me. The guy was an awesome songwriter.

Shane himself wrote and sang, in the song Postcard, "It's better to become candlewax than to burn on". Long gone T-shirts. Scratched discs. Dead young men. It all seems sad and futile in hindsight. But I'm glad it happened once rather than not at all.

Am I emo?

In a fit of boredom, I headed to quizilla.com and filled in an online quiz called "Are you a wanna be emo?". I was pretty sure beforehand that I was in fact not a wannabe emo, but hey - stranger things have happened at sea. (I did this quiz while on land.)

I was really hoping that the quiz wouldn't just come back with a yes or no answer. I really needed some more detailed feedback and guidance. So I carefully considered my answers to their equally thoughtful questions on fashion, colour preference, self-harm, poetry, eyeliner, age, and with my heart in my throat, I clicked the submit button.

My destiny was mere seconds away. Was I a wannabe emo? Maybe I was already an emo and didn't know it! I did like that song "Black Parade", but mostly because of the Queen-like guitar work - Queen don't seem very emo.

This is what came up:

U HATE emo!

no point in talking to u. exept to say, FUCK U BITCH! U SUUUUUUCCK!!!! DUMBASS JOCK HOE!

So it seems I'm not emo at all. I can deal with that. But did they have to show me a picture of a pink sports car, just to rub it in? Now I feel so eighties.

Oh the humanity.

Asymmetry

Why is it that listening to sad music makes me sad, but listening to happy music does not make me happy?

Hexadecimalgrams

For my eighteenth birthday I was given a set of runes that purported to be useful for foretelling the future. I scoffed at the notion, of course, since although I am a determinist through and through, the problems of chaotic systems on the macro level and the Heisenberg effect at the quantum level mean that prediction of the future is not feasible.

Nevertheless, being a good engineer, I read the user manual thoroughly, and came across an interesting idea. The idea behind the runes was not that they predicted the future at all! Just like the I Ching, the runes claimed only to draw the user's attention to certain aspects of their own life. In a way, it's a kind of guided introspection more than anything else.

This really appealed to me, and for a while I tried using the runes on a regular basis to get a deeper insight into life. I soon fell out of the habit though, since they are a bit clunky to use and I had other things on my mind at that age.

But I did learn the habit of keeping an eye out for things "out there" in the world that may shed light on what was going on "in here" inside my head. That's why the Italo Calvino quote above jumped out of the page at me. Hmm, re-reading the previous sentences makes me sound a bit nutty. Just think of it as me having a conversation with the world.

PTR
Hello world! I am in a bad mood today...

World
Oh look! A frog!

PTR
Wow! That's awesome! I wonder if frogs ever feel down?
I wonder what kind of things they think about to cheer themselves up?

It's a process of keeping a sense of perspective I suppose. You just have to be receptive to things that come your way. Anyhoo, this is all just a long preamble to what I wanted to post.

Yesterday after seeing someone off at the airport I went to the ticket machine to pay for my parking. The ticket machine screen said, in large letters on the screen, "CHANGE IS POSSIBLE".

And I thought that was very uplifting.

Bye bye Kurt Vonnegut quote

It's time for a small change here at Prone To Reverie. I'm going to retire the quote that has been the sub-heading of each page since day one. Why? Sheer caprice I suppose. However, so its important role in getting me to start this blog is not forgotten, I shall record it here in this post for me to reflect on in the future.

"When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and truth at top speed." - Kurt Vonnegut

Ungracious loser

It's Show Time here in Adelaide! I live close to the showgrounds, so the quiet nights are punctuated with loud music, screams, and fireworks. It's all very exciting!

It reminds me of being a kid, when it was show time in the town where I grew up. Every year I would go on rides if I dared (I was scared of The Hurricane for a long time, mostly because of the strange whooshing bangs it made when it moved), dodgem cars, watch the Bridgestone Precision Driving Team, watch the fireworks, play on those machines where you drop a ball in the clown's mouth and win prizes (I soooo loved those things), eat a dagwood dog, and I would go with Dad to look at the agricultural exhibitions even though I found it boring.

There was always a Lego building category in the exhibition too. I remember it clearly because it was so lame. I was the best Lego designer/builder in the world I think. I could easily build much better stuff than the junk that won the prizes year after year in the show. One year the winner had just made the kit straight out of the box, no originality at all! Obviously the judges were incompetent fools!

So every year I would vow to enter the next year and sweep the prize pool. But a year is a long time when you're a kid (not like now. These summer days go slow, but the years - they fly by) and of course I would have forgotten all about the Lego category until I entered the hall and saw the Lego, sandwiched between the model airplanes and the tea-cakes. And then I would realize once more that I had forgotten to enter, and some other idiot had won undue recognition for his mediocre skills. Nooooooooo!!!

It's just like the Reader's Digest Sweepstakes, and the Oscars, and the Nobel Prize. Always getting won by the only moron who remembered to enter. Those punks!

Let's talk about my thermos

The issue of the day is whether or not carrying a thermos full of a hot drink makes the bearer nerdy. I bring it up because I've started doing it. Not all the time, mind you. I'm way too urbane and sophisticated, as I would have repeatedly told you if you spend much time with me. But twice a week, when I have afternoon tutorials, I take in a thermos of piping hot green tea to give me that extra vim and vigour that I need. Sometimes I feel a little self-conscious about it. I worry that my Esteemed Colleagues may be mistaking me for a nerd. I'm not! (Those people I sit next to in class though - whooh!)

Superficially, carrying around a thermos may appear nerdy. It makes my backpack significantly heavier, so I have to lean even further forward, potentiating my somewhat nerd-like appearance. It is probably not as cool as dashing to the kerb for a quick macchiato, giving instead the appearance that my lunch has been packed by my mother. And it seems to display an embarrassing investment of effort and expenditure on hardware in order to save $2 on coffee each day. Such tightwad behaviour is pretty nerdy.

Furthermore, noted cool people such as Snoop Dogg do not pour their bizzles some hot tea in the middle of the afternoon. Angelina Jolie does not carry a thermos tucked under her bizarre, otherworldly upper lip. Thakoon Panichgul, to pluck a name from the aether, does not (to the best of my knowledge) use any type of insulated drinks container.

However, I prefer to think of it this way. If I cared about your opinion of me so much, concerning such a trivial issue, that I changed my behaviour to conform, that would not be cool at all! That would show that I was weak-willed, desperate for approval, and lacking in any sense of my own individuality and worth! Instead, I note your disdain, and move on. I transcend fashion, take flight, and soar above the smog of judgement, to make my own way through this confusing world of beverages - beverages that are not only hot, but cold, and sometimes even carbonated.

How can I be trusted as a doctor if I can't even be true to myself? Carry your thermos, my friends. Let us sup the tea of the gods together! But be careful, it's hot.

That's cool!

I'm changing the world!

Despite the morose tone of my previous post (two posts in one evening? I'm clearly putting off my Learning Issues!) I am feeling quite chirpy. Why? Because I'm Making A Difference.

You may remember that I was previously outraged at my lecturers mis-use of mathemathical terminology. Well, the message is getting through to them! Today in class the Learned Professor was describing the effect of smoking and asbestos together when considering their carcinogenic effect. And how did he characterize it? He said it was "multiplicative".

Please, please - no more applause. I did it for the children.

Empowered and informed member of society

I'm feeling confused. I've noticed that a lot of the time I have strong opinions about things. These opinions seem to leap from no-where into my mind fully formed, rather than as a result of some kind of reasoning process. So when I am forced to actually think about them I get all tied up in knots.

For example, there was an article in a local paper about one of the nearby private hospitals which is outsourcing its maternal care to one of the local big fancy hotels. Once the new mums (do you feel like Ray Martin when you use the word "mums") have been given the okay by the doctors at the hospital, they spend their final two nights at the hotel under the care of an on-site midwife and nurse, rather than chilling at the hospital. My first reaction to this was to be outraged that health insurance would pay for this and express contempt for the whole thing.

On further (somewhat relentless) questioning by my Smaller Half, my reaction doesn't seem to make sense. For example, it's probably cheaper than staying in the hospital, otherwise the insurance company wouldn't pay for it. So my "This is a wasteful indulgence!" reaction is wrong (relatively speaking). Likewise, it's clearing out beds in the hospital which means more people can get treatment.

I was shocked that the mothers are ferried to the hospital in BMWs. But again, they're cheaper to buy and run than ambulances, so maybe it's a good idea. So I tried the angle that health insurance should only get used for "serious" problems. This opens up a whole big can of worms that I'd rather not get into - suffice it to say that if you bought the insurance, you can have the service, and vice versa. It has no impact on me at all if that's not the sort of thing I want to shell out money for.

So while my initial reaction was that the whole thing was a huge wank and was just a bunch of rich people flaunting their money over the rest of us, the fact that it's happening at all means that some very clever people have figured out how to make people happy and save money and use the hospital more efficiently at the same time. And for some reason that angers me.

I think it's because I have an underlying assumption that rich people are all arseholes and that capitalism is evil. And "rich people" are defined as "anyone who has more than me". Meanwhile my condemnation of capitalism has done nothing to prevent me from trying to use the stock market to fund my retirement. Sigh. It's depressing how inconsistent my own actions are with my judgement of other people's actions.

It's no wonder that so many people turn into such jerks eventually. It's tiring trying to figure out how to play fairly. In the end maybe it's easier and more fun to just play the game to win. Come to think of it, isn't that kind of what the new Batman film is about? You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain. I bet Batman would have some great ideas on post-natal care. Although he is pretty much your arch-capitalist isn't he? Maybe it would just be insurance all the way for him.

Random Wikipedia Link - use the power of coincidence to solve your dilemmas today!

Something rotten in the state of those lungs

A funny thing happened last week: I enjoyed a histology prac. In fact, not only did I enjoy it, I learned something!

You may recall, if you are an avid reader, that the last time I wrote about histology I clearly had no idea what I was talking about, or looking at for that matter. Since then I have somehow learned something without realizing it, since the prac last week came as a complete surprise to me.

The pathologist running the prac told me to look at the slide and note that there was an eosinophilic infiltration - and I did! He told me to note the thickened basement membrane - and I did! He told me to observe the non-necrotizing epithelioid granulomas - so I did! And then he told me to find where the ciliated epithelium had been replaced by the keratinizing squamous metaplasia - and I could! It was all a bit eerie, as if I had gone to sleep and woken up knowing a lot more stuff than I had the night before. Perhaps sleeping with my head on those textbooks every day in the library is really starting to pay off.

The other surprising thing to me is that I enjoyed the prac. This is partly from not being completely lost like I have been in the past. It also helps to sit closer to the front of the room so that my aged ears can hear what the pathologist is saying, rather than the fascinating gossip concerning my fellow students' social lives which is all I can hear if I sit up the back with the Cool Kids.

But mainly I think I enjoyed it because pathologists have fantastic vocabularies so it's very entertaining to listen to them. They use words like fulminant, nodular, and serpiginous. And they compare things to food like cheese, porridge and rind just to make it a bit more earthy. It's like listening to Shakespearean dialogue. I can understand what they are talking about but I would be unable to create anything like it myself.

Words, words, words...

Ow my leg!

I spent yesterday morning being a patient for the 3rd years for their practise clinical examinations. I had to lie on a bed and pretend to have a DVT and they had to take a brief history from me and examine my leg in just 5 minutes. The task was actually pretty straightforward and most people did fine, but I could tell that they were pretty nervous about it.

The interesting part for me was to be on the other side of the stethoscope and be able to watch how they conducted themselves. I learned that little things in what doctors do can make a huge difference to the patient's perception of them. I knew this before of course, but seeing 12 people do the same task in different ways in one morning really emphasizes the point.

Weird things that people did that I found really off-putting included:

• not introducing themselves to me,
  
• having their hands jammed in their pockets while talking to me,
• leaning against a wall or chair while talking to me,
• not warning me beforehand when squeezing my supposedly painful leg,
• not looking me in the face when squeezing my supposedly painful leg and hence missing my NIDA inspired grimaces of agony,
• looking up at the roof and saying, "ummm, what else?" when they were stuck for a moment (everyone got stuck at some point - the good people just didn't talk about it out loud)

Since DVTs cause the affected leg to get hot, I was supplied with a heat pack which I applied to my leg before the students came in to examine me. Most of them checked my legs for differences in temperature, but since they knew I was just pretending, they didn't expect to actually find any physical signs, so only one student all morning noticed that one of my legs was hot. (Actually I think both of my legs are hot, though perhaps a little hairy.) He looked up at me in surprise and said, "I don't know how you've done this, it's very clever, but the affected leg is much warmer to touch". Everyone else just skated past it, saying that both legs were the same temperature. The examiner would ask them at the end to go back and check my legs again - it wasn't until they were specifically directed to compare temperatures (obviously indicating that something was going on) that they noticed it. Then they would get all quizzical and I would say, "ha-HA!" like a stage magician and show them the heat pack that I had thrown under the bed as they walked in. To their credit, they all laughed.

I certainly learned a few lessons of what not to do, which I will hopefully be able to put to good use next week, when I have to do a respiratory examination on a standardized patient of my own. It's hard to imagine someone deliberately filling their lungs up with fluid just to trick us, but at least now I'm aware that I need to report what I find, not what I expect to find. Good bit of learning, that.

Spare me the purple prose

If you are very observant, you may have noticed that I am currently reading "The Memory Room" by Christopher Koch. He's a great writer and I am enjoying the book but there's one thing about it that I am a bit iffy about. It relies heavily on diary extracts as a narrative device, and to this day I think the only book I have ever read which portrayed diaries at all accurately was (tragically) "The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 and 3/4".

One of the great (perhaps the only great) diary-based books is (in my mind at least) Bram Stoker's "Bram Stoker's Dracula". (It's actually just called Dracula, but have you noticed that people always call it "Bram Stoker's Dracula"?) I think Stoker pulled off this stunt because it is Gothic horror, and it just seems plausible that in the face of such soul-chilling evil that the protagonists would keep detailed diaries in order to preserve their own sanities. But also, in the time in which the novel was set (and written for that matter), people actually did things like write each other long letters that lasted several pages!

The problem with translating this to a modern novel is that people just aren't like that any more. No-one sits down and carefully crafts beautiful descriptions of the weather and scenery and the ambient sounds and smells in the course of documenting their everyday life. It seems to me, as I sit here in the dim light of my computer as it whines faintly, half-drowned out even by the distant midnight traffic noises from the nearby roadworks that throw up a fine dust that settles on one's bedclothes during the day and inks the sky vermillion every evening, that no-one in their right mind could be bothered to do it because it's incredibly time consuming and pretentious and I have to get up early tomorrow to get a good park at uni and it's already a quarter to one.

I think James Elroy could probably write a good diary-novel. "Got up at noon. Sheets were scorched from cigarette butts again. Too drunk to write more." And so forth. Hmm - sounds like a blog. Maybe not such a good idea...

Self-portrait

One of the only blogs I read on a regular basis is Michelle Au's startlingly named The Underwear Drawer. The reason I started reading it is because of this cartoon about medical students, which still makes me laugh.

And so, as a blatant rip-off of her latest post, I present my own cartoon self-portrait, produced by Face Your Manga:

He's a good man but...

Oddly enough, I don't think anyone has ever asked me where the name of this blog comes from. It's possible that it's so ridiculous that they just don't want to mention it to save me the shame. It's also possible that it is so catchy and full of winnage that they just assumed that I made it up because that's the kind of thing that a guy with my vim, zeal and elan does.

Alas, the truth is that I stole the phrase from a cartoon that was published in the New Yorker. I liked the cartoon because I thought it could very well have been written about me personally, and my ego just loooooves that kind of thing. I liked it so much that I ripped it out and stuck it to my fridge for a year until the fateful day when I decided to start this blog and realized that I needed a name. Thank you Robert Mankoff.

Closing ceremony

I watched the closing ceremony of the Olympics just now. Man - what's in the water over there in Beijing? That was some freaky stuff going on. People flying around on giant drums? Men bouncing on their back on portable trampolines? There was a real Dr Seuss quality to the whole thing, but without the catchy rhymes. I kept expecting elephants wearing tutus and balancing bowls of goldfish on their heads to ride in on tiny little bicycles, but it didn't happen.

My favourite part of the ceremony was the speech by the Chinese President, Hu Jintao. Mr Hu spoke in Mandarin, but I was fortunate enough to be able to bring you this translation from the Australian Athletic Team's un-official translator for the Games:

Hu Jintao
(translation from Mandarin by Sally McLellan)

Oh my god! Is this for real? Did we just run the Olympics? Did you see it? I told China to host the Olympics and they did and we won lots of medals! Did you see me at the opening ceremony? I was so pumped! I have never been so pumped in my life! The torch got lit up and I just thought "Go for it! You're running the country! Do it!" and I did! Shit! I finally ran the Olympics! Oh my God!

Invention

I'd like a longer stethoscope please. The tube bit on mine is about 40 or 50 centimeters, which is fine for most purposes. But because I am slightly taller than average, I sometimes have to stoop a bit, especially when listening to (or "auscultating", if you're a medical person, because God knows we wouldn't like the rest of the world to understand anything that important) a particularly flat patient. But worse still, when doing a respiratory examination, the patient has to breathe in and out deeply while we listen to their lungs, which typically involves getting mouth-breathed-on quite vigorously. This doesn't really appeal to me that much.

It's not that I don't like people. I do. In fact, some of my best friends are people. It's just that mouth-breaths are so moist and warm and often carry strange food-like odors. I get enough of that kind of thing at home from my cat.

Apparently the stethoscope was originally invented by a guy who didn't like pressing his ear against the chests of his patients with tuberculosis. Bravo! I'd like to stake a claim to the invention of the bihomostethoscope, which requires two men to operate. It's basically a really long stethoscope. One person presses the listening end to the patient's chest and gets breathed on, and the other (more senior) person stands 5 or 6 feet away listening to the lung sounds.

You heard it here first!

Let's not get our lethal Bird-Women confused

I was eating dinner in a Burmese restaurant over the weekend. The candle-light was just right, the hi-fi was in the background, and the wine was delicious. One of my Dining Companions commented that the Burmese classical music sounded "harp-y". I remarked that perhaps we had all better lash ourselves to the mast. Not only did no-one laugh, I had to explain what I meant to everyone present. And here I was thinking it was some of my best work!

To add insult to injury, when I returned home I realized that I had confused Harpies with Sirens. Isn't that always the way?

Crimes against nerdity

I just can't take it any more! The time has come for me to take a stand, to right a wrong, to speak out where there has been silence. Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot. In brightest day, in blackest night etc etc. I can no longer stand by while my lecturers describe curves as "exponential" when they merely have a positive second derivative. I know you're with me on this one.

Today it happened again. That makes twice this semester, and at least twice last semester. Today's curve described the ventilation/perfusion ratio of the lung. We were shown a graph of ventilation (litres per minute) versus distance from the base of the lung. The graph was a linear one, so y1 = ax+b. On the same graph was shown perfusion, again of the form y2 = cx+d. The ventilation/perfusion ratio was then shown and was described as being exponentially increasing. But if you let x = (z-d)/c, it's easy to see that (ax+b)/(cx+d) = a/c + (b - ad/c)/z, which is clearly a hyperbola! Outrageous!

If you think it's unimportant, consider the difference in the two cases as the size of your lungs approaches infinity!

Similarly, we were previously shown another example which was two linear curves multiplied together. Thus, it was simply a polynomial rather than exponential! How would you feel if you were a patient lying in hospital struggling for breath and you heard one of your treating physicians so egregiously confuse his high-school mathematics?

Every time it happens I feel like sticking my hand up and correcting them but part of my brain (I'm guessing the right hemisphere) tells me to be quiet. It is innate knowledge amongst medical students that any consultant that is corrected by a student would tear that student limb from stinking limb and I have no desire to be dismembered just yet. Nevertheless, ignorance breeds where wise men say nothing. If you are reading this I place upon you a most solemn duty. The next time a lecturer describes a curve as "exponential", you must raise your hand and enquire whether the gradient of the curve is proportional to its height or if it merely curves upward. And don't tell them I sent you.

Olympics

Aaaargh! The Olympics are here!!! Noooooooo!!!

I have very mixed feelings about the Olympics. When I was a kid, the Olympics were on in Los Angeles. My school ran a competition to design a poster for an Olympic sport, and the prize was this special book all about the Olympics, with lots of glossy photos. I so wanted that book. I think I must have been bouncing around the house being all obsessed with Olympic stuff, because a couple of days later my mother gave me a copy of that same book! Oddly, I was kind of disappointed, because I had wanted to win it rather than be given it. I think that reflects positively on my moral character, don't you? My disappointment only lasted about 10 minutes though, because it was an awesome book and now it was mine! I learned everything I have ever needed to know about the Modern Pentathlon from that book. I can still remember a picture of Glynnis Nunn throwing the javelin as part of the Heptathlon. She had this crazy muscle popping out of the side of her neck, that I now know to be the sternocleidomastoid muscle. In my next set of exams I can inform the examiner that the sternocleidomastoid muscle is not on an accessory muscle of respiration, but can be used to hurl javelins! Bonus marks!!

Anyway, mixed feelings for the Olympics. I love esoteric sports. I spent six weeks in Canada a while back. Spent most of it watching curling on tv. Awesome! The Olympics is a great time for me because for a short time it seems like there are enough sports in the world that everyone can win a gold medal for something.

But there's a downside to that too - some of those "sports" are pretty lame. I mean come on, trampolining? And I'm not big on swimming, which is a shame because Australia tends to do well at swimming so every single damn race gets shown. Face up to it people - every race looks the same. You can't tell the swimmers apart in all that splashing. I think they're showing us the same race over and over again and just changing the commentary. And a quick aside: there was a swimmer on tonight (bald of course) whose surname was Nederpelt. This made me laugh because to me, "Nederpelt" sounds like it might mean "Hairless" in Dutch. Maybe his name used to be Grossepelt before he shaved his head.

And then there's the drugs. (I'm talking about the athletes, not me.) I'd like to see the Olympics re-formatted so that drugs are no longer feasible. It would run like a military draft. Everyone in the world would have their name put inside a ping-pong ball (one ping-pong ball per name, not all names in the same ball) and they'd all go inside this big biscuit barrel and be drawn out at random by a minor celebrity, event by event. And then helicopters would go out and grab those people and they would have one week (say) to train for their event, just to eliminate the most fearfully gumby performances, and then - the Olympics!

Because the odds of being chosen at random to compete for your country would be so small, it just wouldn't be worthwhile taking performance enhancing drugs in advance. So you'd get people competing in a real state of nature. I personally would pay big money to watch a bunch of obese Americans plummet from the 10-metre board in the synchronized diving. And every now and then, maybe once per games, you'd get someone who actually knew what they were doing and put on a good show.

Memo to the IOC: you heard it here first!

Sometimes I doubt my sanity

I was just doing some reading for my tute tomorrow, so that if someone happens to ask me, "Did you do any work at all this week?", I can truthfully answer, "Yes I did!" and get all self-righteous on them.

So I'm flipping around through a big fat book reading about croup:

PTR
Wow! Croup is real!

Smaller Half
Of course croup is real. What are you talking about?

PTR
I always thought it was just a word that old nannas used to describe sick babies. Like colic.

Smaller Half
Colic is real. Colic refers to a specific type of pain.

PTR
Not colic then. You know what I mean though - a kind of old-wives word for an entirely non-specific set of symptoms that don't really exist. Like lumbago.

Smaller Half
Lumbago is real too.

PTR
Aaaaargh!

I seem to have developed the idea that any disease with a short or old-fashioned-sounding name doesn't really exist. Isn't that strange?

Get out of jail free?

Last week we (my Smaller Half and I) were chatting to a friend who is also studying medicine at This Fine Institution. He is in his third year, so he's two years ahead of me. I find it really useful to talk to people in the years ahead from time to time because they can speak authoritatively about what I'm going through. They know what is hard, what's easy, what's important, what is not. In general they tend to say that first year is pretty cushy and not to get too worked up about it.

This is great because it really puts things in perspective and calms me down. It's unfortunate that the perspective is due to the enormous increase in work as you progress through the later years of the course. It's a bit like being told, "No, that headache you have now is nothing compared to how you'll feel by lunchtime tomorrow". Nevertheless, it is of some short-term benefit.

We were discussing the sheer vastness of the landscape of health and illness knowledge that we're expected to acquire and how overwhelming it can seem, when our friend said something like this:

Knowledgable Friend
My supervisor said that in the end, there are four things that will kill the patient in the next five minutes, and that's all you really have to know. Everything else gives you time to duck around the corner and look it up in a book or google it.

PTR
Wow, that's encouraging - makes it seem a lot more manageable. What are the four things that you do need to know?

Knowledgable Friend
He didn't say.

PTR
Oh.

I guess I don't get to go straight to third year after all...

Anything but that

Went to the markets as usual this morning to shop. I was very disappointed that nobody stopped me to ask for advice on what to buy or how to cook it like they did the last two times. I complained of this to my Smaller Half, and she said, "It's because you're unshaven and you look like a thug. And your eyes are too close together too." Great - I'm married to a phrenologist (see the comment section below regarding this). It's true though that I am a bit bristly, and it's possible that I had a stern look on my face because my shopping trolley fell apart on me so I had to wrestle this big bag of food back to the car without the benefit of wheels. It was like shopping in the Paleolithic.

Nevertheless I did get to do some quality eavesdropping on my fellow customers. My favourite was the suave man with a charming French accent and his young son who I queued behind at the Italian deli. Once the guy had finished buying his stuff he said to the boy, who was about 5, "Would you like to choose some sausages? You can choose whatever you like, zey are for you." The boy considered his options and tapped on the glass in front of want he wanted. His papa recoiled visibly and said, "Ze English sausages? Oh! Perhaps you would like to choose somezing else? Ze Continental sausage perhaps?".

I can't say I blame him. The English sausages were pale and smooth and limp looking.
They actually looked like they were made out of English people. The Continental sausages, on the other hand, were coarse and meaty and fiery. Viva la salsiccia!!