People keep asking me what I'm doing with my time off. What have I done so far? What am I doing next week? I need to come up with a good answer because the truth is that I'm going to be just hanging around listening to tiny sounds.
Tiny sounds are the sounds that are there all around us but we never notice them or care about them because we're too busy. You can tell that you're relaxed because you start to notice the tiny sounds around you. I think most of us are familiar with that phenomenon. But my revolutionary theory goes further - I've turned things on their heads and shaken them up. My theory is that by deliberately noticing the tiny sounds you can induce a state of blissful relaxation. (This is a specific application of my more general theory that cause and effect are in fact usually interchangeable, but more of that another time.)
I noticed a great tiny sound just this afternoon. I was putting some cold hot cross buns under the griller to convert them into hot hot cross buns using the magic of thermal energy. I'd put down a sheet of alfoil on the griller tray and turned on the griller, and as I turned away to get the cold HCBs I heard a faint little squeaking noise, as if there were cartoon mice in the cupboard singing a little lullaby to their cartoon mouse baby. A little investigation revealed that the tiny sound was coming from the serrated edge of the alfoil rubbing on the edge of the griller tray as the hot air from the griller gently blew across the foil and moved it up and down. Awesome stuff!
Tiny sounds like that pull you out of yourself and induce a state of serene calm. It makes me want to tool around in a fleet of Rolls Royces like an Indian guru. But it's not just about hearing them and then just digging them for the rest of the day. Hearing the tiny sounds gets you prepared for really listening to the big sounds, the ones that carry the really important messages.
In my case, the big sounds came in the form of Lionel Richie's Greatest Hits that I'm spinning up on my boombox right now. Let me tell you, hearing that alfoil squeak under my hot cross buns has really got me into a good place to hear Lionel preach it.
Freedom, no more lies! We can save this world if we try!
Oh yeah!
Friday, April 10, 2009
Humanoid
I'm feeling almost human again.
You know when you've done really intense exercise, how your body aches and groans for the next few days? (If you're under thirty, you'll learn ... you'll learn!) That's how my mind feels. It feels like one of those little sponge dinosaurs that grows into something the size of your hand when you dip it into the bath. It's slowly re-assuming the old familiar shape.
Drove home yesterday afternoon after the prac exam. Was pretty wiped out so I excused myself from the impromptu hour-long run up the beach, and slept for that hour instead. Time well spent. Woke up with severe pillow-face just in time to listen to that excellent album of bluegrass covers of Franz Ferdinand that an Esteemed Colleague lent me, before going out and eating an enormous pizza for dinner. Yum yum yum. So salty.
I completely bludged today. Nothing to report. Except that it really IS better on holidays.
You know when you've done really intense exercise, how your body aches and groans for the next few days? (If you're under thirty, you'll learn ... you'll learn!) That's how my mind feels. It feels like one of those little sponge dinosaurs that grows into something the size of your hand when you dip it into the bath. It's slowly re-assuming the old familiar shape.
Drove home yesterday afternoon after the prac exam. Was pretty wiped out so I excused myself from the impromptu hour-long run up the beach, and slept for that hour instead. Time well spent. Woke up with severe pillow-face just in time to listen to that excellent album of bluegrass covers of Franz Ferdinand that an Esteemed Colleague lent me, before going out and eating an enormous pizza for dinner. Yum yum yum. So salty.
I completely bludged today. Nothing to report. Except that it really IS better on holidays.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Endocrine exam review
Someone suggested to me that I review today's exam in haiku form. So here it is:
exam this morning
writing on hypothyroid
tired, cold, confused
writing on hypothyroid
tired, cold, confused
Monday, April 6, 2009
John the Baptist
I hate it when, the night before your exam, you are reviewing your lecture notes and you find something written in your own handwriting that is patently ridiculous. In my endocrine notes I just found the sentence:
But what on earth does it mean??
"Growth hormone is like John the Baptist".
Now I didn't make that up, I remember the lecturer saying it, and I remember me writing it down because I thought it was very clever.But what on earth does it mean??
Gastroenterologist - a review
This morning I attended the debut of a bold new opera, Gastroenterologist (2009), by Australian composer F. Linders. It is of note that this most recent work of Linders is hardly original. It is strongly derivative of his previous works including Gastroenterologist (2002), Gastroenterologist (2005), and the notoriously difficult Gastroenterologist (2008). After reviewing and comparing so many similar works in the past week, I eagerly look forward to moving on to something new.
The production was well attended, with all seats occupied as far I could see. However, it was disappointing to see the same old faces in the audience as always. Surely a new work such as this could be expected to appeal to newcomers? Compared to last year's groundbreaking Human Homeostasis which was attended almost solely by novices, this opera was surely lacking in accessibility. I suspect that today's show may be the first and the last, unless a special performance is put on later in the year for those who missed today's.
The libretto is ambitious. Written in English, it is nevertheless almost incomprehensible, favouring a polysyllabic and numeric vocabulary which even this reviewer found daunting. Scoring it must have been hell.
Structurally, the opera is divided into two acts. The first act is a simple detective story, revolving around the trials and tribulations of a young woman, Simone Milligan, who has been suffering with malaise, wasting and diarrhoea for several months. The first scene is substantially devoted to exploring her mysterious symptoms and hearing her lamentations over her upcoming exams. It seems likely that Linders included this detail of the exams as a superficial appeal to the expected audience, perhaps thinking that this would endear her to us. However, apart from this thin detail, little else is shown to us of Simone. What of her family history? What of her diet? Was she in pain? What was the consistency of her stool? I was left with so many questions.
The second scene largely dispenses with Simone, and focuses instead on the Doctor. He spends the entirety of the scene brooding ghoulishly over a sample of Simone's blood. He inspects it with such intensity that we await a revelation. What clues can he extract from this vital spirit? Yet all the Doctor can manage is some mumbles and a bleating gasp. He gives two possible diagnoses and pleads for the assistance of the eponymous Gastroenterologist as the lights go down.
The only other significant character is the Gastroenterologist himself, who is presumed to be able to solve all of Simone's problems, if only he would see her. He is frequently referred to by the Doctor, yet we spend a lot of time waiting for him in vain. In the third scene, when he is about to arrive, Simone is rushed to surgery and operated upon, and the Gastroenterologist is never seen. The paternalistic Gastroenterologist can be seen in many roles: as a father, as Messiah, as a Godot-esque absence on the stage, and this ambiguity is the most successful part of the production. The contrast of his presumed (yet never manifested) power versus the ineffectual rambling of the Doctor is worth pondering.
In the second act, the characters are dispensed with in favour of an ensemble cast. Rather than sing in chorus, they group themselves in fives and each group sings in turn. This was the part of the opera that had me guessing. The melodic lines were frequently overly complex, even contradictory, and the overall effect was overwhelming and incoherent, with little if any connection, apart from the thematic, to the first act.
It was only made intelligible by choosing to listen to only one performer at a time, but the availability of multiple appealing choices meant that this was hard to do quickly and decisively. I confess that at times my choice was arbitrary and that this definitely impinged on my enjoyment of the production. In the end I left early, and noted that many others did the same.
In summary, Gastroenterologist was a tedious production that asked far too much of its audience. It was overly academic and intellectual and offered little for any save the most avid fan of the composer's previous work. I, for one, would not care to repeat the experience.
The production was well attended, with all seats occupied as far I could see. However, it was disappointing to see the same old faces in the audience as always. Surely a new work such as this could be expected to appeal to newcomers? Compared to last year's groundbreaking Human Homeostasis which was attended almost solely by novices, this opera was surely lacking in accessibility. I suspect that today's show may be the first and the last, unless a special performance is put on later in the year for those who missed today's.
The libretto is ambitious. Written in English, it is nevertheless almost incomprehensible, favouring a polysyllabic and numeric vocabulary which even this reviewer found daunting. Scoring it must have been hell.
Structurally, the opera is divided into two acts. The first act is a simple detective story, revolving around the trials and tribulations of a young woman, Simone Milligan, who has been suffering with malaise, wasting and diarrhoea for several months. The first scene is substantially devoted to exploring her mysterious symptoms and hearing her lamentations over her upcoming exams. It seems likely that Linders included this detail of the exams as a superficial appeal to the expected audience, perhaps thinking that this would endear her to us. However, apart from this thin detail, little else is shown to us of Simone. What of her family history? What of her diet? Was she in pain? What was the consistency of her stool? I was left with so many questions.
The second scene largely dispenses with Simone, and focuses instead on the Doctor. He spends the entirety of the scene brooding ghoulishly over a sample of Simone's blood. He inspects it with such intensity that we await a revelation. What clues can he extract from this vital spirit? Yet all the Doctor can manage is some mumbles and a bleating gasp. He gives two possible diagnoses and pleads for the assistance of the eponymous Gastroenterologist as the lights go down.
The only other significant character is the Gastroenterologist himself, who is presumed to be able to solve all of Simone's problems, if only he would see her. He is frequently referred to by the Doctor, yet we spend a lot of time waiting for him in vain. In the third scene, when he is about to arrive, Simone is rushed to surgery and operated upon, and the Gastroenterologist is never seen. The paternalistic Gastroenterologist can be seen in many roles: as a father, as Messiah, as a Godot-esque absence on the stage, and this ambiguity is the most successful part of the production. The contrast of his presumed (yet never manifested) power versus the ineffectual rambling of the Doctor is worth pondering.
In the second act, the characters are dispensed with in favour of an ensemble cast. Rather than sing in chorus, they group themselves in fives and each group sings in turn. This was the part of the opera that had me guessing. The melodic lines were frequently overly complex, even contradictory, and the overall effect was overwhelming and incoherent, with little if any connection, apart from the thematic, to the first act.
It was only made intelligible by choosing to listen to only one performer at a time, but the availability of multiple appealing choices meant that this was hard to do quickly and decisively. I confess that at times my choice was arbitrary and that this definitely impinged on my enjoyment of the production. In the end I left early, and noted that many others did the same.
In summary, Gastroenterologist was a tedious production that asked far too much of its audience. It was overly academic and intellectual and offered little for any save the most avid fan of the composer's previous work. I, for one, would not care to repeat the experience.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Kiss me, Hardy
I hope you don't mind me mixing my military metaphors, but tomorrow is D-day. My exam on the gastrointestinal system starts at 0900 hrs. It will go for 90 minutes, plus whatever time is taken up by reading time and collecting the minicase papers halfway through. So with luck, I'll be out of there by 11 o'clock and I will never ever have to think about digestion again ever ever until I become a doctor and most of my patients present with diarrhoea.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Beefcaaaake!
I find it very difficult to sit at a desk all day and study. It's heaps of fun for the first hour because the cat sits on my lap and I play with her, and I check my email and read various other blogs and online forumae and write stupid stuff on facebook and drink the tea I made and eat a little snack as an anticipatory reward for all the hard work I'm going to do next semester when I stop procrastinating. But after that it just gets tedious. So I go check those blogs again.
You may have gotten the impression that I approach my studies in a flippant and dismissive way. That's because I'm a boy-genius writer who has cleverly created that facade for your passing entertainment. In reality I am a tortured, talentless hack who agonizes constantly at the time I am frittering away and the opportunities I am squandering. It gets especially bad around exam time because The Fear makes me extremely susceptible to finding other interests apart from medicine to occupy my time with and divert my attention away from the pain of the approaching cataclysm.
The latest internet fad I have thrown myself into is One Hundred Pushups! It's an exercise program designed to increase your strength so that after 6 weeks you'll be able to do 100 pushups in a row. Sounds mental eh?! Sounds totally implausible eh?!
Here's what I like about it:
Pump it!
You may have gotten the impression that I approach my studies in a flippant and dismissive way. That's because I'm a boy-genius writer who has cleverly created that facade for your passing entertainment. In reality I am a tortured, talentless hack who agonizes constantly at the time I am frittering away and the opportunities I am squandering. It gets especially bad around exam time because The Fear makes me extremely susceptible to finding other interests apart from medicine to occupy my time with and divert my attention away from the pain of the approaching cataclysm.
The latest internet fad I have thrown myself into is One Hundred Pushups! It's an exercise program designed to increase your strength so that after 6 weeks you'll be able to do 100 pushups in a row. Sounds mental eh?! Sounds totally implausible eh?!
Here's what I like about it:
- You only do it for 10 minutes a day, three days a week. This seriously limits the amount of time that I waste by doing it. (The time that I am wasting by writing about it here is obviously considered in a separate account.)
- It gives me a sense of making progress. Often with study, the more you learn the more you realize there's a lot you don't understand so you feel like you're going backwards. After doing pushups I do not torture myself with the thought of all the pushups I didn't do. Some simple, straightforward, positive feedback is a nice thing to have at the moment.
- I will actually get something out of this, as opposed to most of the other things I do which are totally pointless. In the short term I will get hypoxic euphoria, in the long term I will be totally buff. To the max!
- It's strengthening my marriage. My Smaller Half is also embarking on this great triceps adventure. Otherwise I think I'd get slack and skip days. Soon we'll start applying walnut-coloured fake tan, wearing tiny swimsuits, and entering bodybuilding competitions. I can hardly wait!
- For ten minutes a day, three days a week, I don't have to think. In fact, the less I think, the better I do. It's kind of like living in Queensland!
Pump it!
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Kidneys, Nazis, giraffes!
Once again it's time for me to give you all some advice on how to pass your exams. I am well qualified to give such advice since I always pass my exams. Well, except for that Circuit Theory class back in 1993 which I crashed and burned in. But to be fair I was up against it from the start. The lecturers were biased against me purely because of my lack of knowledge and because I didn't hand in any of the assignments.
So here's how you do it:
Get plenty of sleep. Not in the exam itself though, I mean beforehand. Sleep is essential for your brain to file information into your long term memory, which is why we have dreams like the one I had where my tooth was the size of my fist and was filtering my blood like a kidney. That one was really useful. On the other hand, if it's the night before the exam, long term memory is not required so you're better off smoking some crack and staying up all night. Let me know how that works for you. Injecting adrenaline straight into your heart is also helpful, especially if someone is trying to kill you with nerve gas.
Get plenty of exercise. Again, not so much in the exam, although it is possible to run in the spot while sitting down, or to do some triceps lifts off your chair. This can actually help to calm you down and has the beneficial side effect of distracting the people around you. But you should be exercising every day just to burn off toxic metabolites and allow disinhibiation of the catecholamine residues that would otherwise antagonize your mesonephros. Plus it'll help you sleep better, which as I've already explained is good for you.
Eat plenty of hot chips with gravy. Delicious!
Learn some technical jargon so that your answers are buzzword compliant. Look back at the penultimate sentence in the advice about exercise. You were probably pretty impressed by how smart I sounded, right? And if you were marking my exam paper, you'd say "Wow! This guy must have, like, three PhDs in physiomology. Top marks for him!" But here's the secret - it's all a bluff. I just totally made up that stuff. Here are some terms that sound really impressive but no-one actually knows what they mean, so they are perfect for playing this kind of bullshit bingo: tyrosine kinase, cytochrome P450, pregnenenenolone, syncytiotrophoblast, artery of Drummond, prophase II, spleen.
Dress in layers. I learned this one from bushwalkers. The idea is that if you get too hot you can just peel off the outer layer of clothes, and if a bushfire comes through you can put extra clothes on to protect yourself from the radiant heat. Initially you'll feel hot because you'll be all amped up and your sympathetic nervous system will be making you all jumpy. But an hour into the exam you'll feel much colder because you'll have had a stroke from smoking all that crack the night before and the thermoregulatory centre of your brain will be necrosing, so you'll want to have a jacket to put on or you'll be uncomfortable.
Go to the toilet immediately before the exam. Squeeze really hard. It will force extra blood up to your brain and make you smarter. That's why Einstein had crazy-hair. And how smart was he? (As a corollary, try not become sexually aroused during the exam. As a corollary to that corollary, try to avoid sitting with me in your line of sight.)
If you're having trouble remembering stuff, make up some awesome mnemonics. I've posted on this topic before, so I'll just give a brief example. Yesterday I was having trouble remembering that the three layers of the adrenal cortex are the zona glomerulosa, zona fasciculata, and zona reticularis. So I thought to myself: the glomerulosa produces aldosterone which acts on the kidneys which have glomeruli in them, the fasciculata sounds like fascists and no-one's ever going to forget the fascists, and the most common giraffe subspecies in Kenya is the reticulated giraffe. So instead of having to remember those long and complicated terms from other languages, I now just have to remember "kidneys, Nazis, giraffes". It's so easy!
Finally, hedge your bets. Begin every answer with the phrase, "It has been proposed that..." Even if you write something which is completely wrong they have to give you marks for it, because what you've written is correct in the meta-environment of the exam itself. To illustrate, if I write "It has been proposed that the pancreas produces hydrochloric acid to digest the adjacent spleen", a shallow thinker may simply contradict me and claim that I am wrong. However, it has indeed been proposed by myself in that very sentence! How do you like them beans?
Well, those are the secrets of my success. If you have any other tips feel free to pass them on to fellow readers in the comments block below. But don't circulate this information too widely, if we all pass someone will get suspicious.
Good luck to you all.
So here's how you do it:
Get plenty of sleep. Not in the exam itself though, I mean beforehand. Sleep is essential for your brain to file information into your long term memory, which is why we have dreams like the one I had where my tooth was the size of my fist and was filtering my blood like a kidney. That one was really useful. On the other hand, if it's the night before the exam, long term memory is not required so you're better off smoking some crack and staying up all night. Let me know how that works for you. Injecting adrenaline straight into your heart is also helpful, especially if someone is trying to kill you with nerve gas.
Get plenty of exercise. Again, not so much in the exam, although it is possible to run in the spot while sitting down, or to do some triceps lifts off your chair. This can actually help to calm you down and has the beneficial side effect of distracting the people around you. But you should be exercising every day just to burn off toxic metabolites and allow disinhibiation of the catecholamine residues that would otherwise antagonize your mesonephros. Plus it'll help you sleep better, which as I've already explained is good for you.
Eat plenty of hot chips with gravy. Delicious!
Learn some technical jargon so that your answers are buzzword compliant. Look back at the penultimate sentence in the advice about exercise. You were probably pretty impressed by how smart I sounded, right? And if you were marking my exam paper, you'd say "Wow! This guy must have, like, three PhDs in physiomology. Top marks for him!" But here's the secret - it's all a bluff. I just totally made up that stuff. Here are some terms that sound really impressive but no-one actually knows what they mean, so they are perfect for playing this kind of bullshit bingo: tyrosine kinase, cytochrome P450, pregnenenenolone, syncytiotrophoblast, artery of Drummond, prophase II, spleen.
Dress in layers. I learned this one from bushwalkers. The idea is that if you get too hot you can just peel off the outer layer of clothes, and if a bushfire comes through you can put extra clothes on to protect yourself from the radiant heat. Initially you'll feel hot because you'll be all amped up and your sympathetic nervous system will be making you all jumpy. But an hour into the exam you'll feel much colder because you'll have had a stroke from smoking all that crack the night before and the thermoregulatory centre of your brain will be necrosing, so you'll want to have a jacket to put on or you'll be uncomfortable.
Go to the toilet immediately before the exam. Squeeze really hard. It will force extra blood up to your brain and make you smarter. That's why Einstein had crazy-hair. And how smart was he? (As a corollary, try not become sexually aroused during the exam. As a corollary to that corollary, try to avoid sitting with me in your line of sight.)
If you're having trouble remembering stuff, make up some awesome mnemonics. I've posted on this topic before, so I'll just give a brief example. Yesterday I was having trouble remembering that the three layers of the adrenal cortex are the zona glomerulosa, zona fasciculata, and zona reticularis. So I thought to myself: the glomerulosa produces aldosterone which acts on the kidneys which have glomeruli in them, the fasciculata sounds like fascists and no-one's ever going to forget the fascists, and the most common giraffe subspecies in Kenya is the reticulated giraffe. So instead of having to remember those long and complicated terms from other languages, I now just have to remember "kidneys, Nazis, giraffes". It's so easy!
Finally, hedge your bets. Begin every answer with the phrase, "It has been proposed that..." Even if you write something which is completely wrong they have to give you marks for it, because what you've written is correct in the meta-environment of the exam itself. To illustrate, if I write "It has been proposed that the pancreas produces hydrochloric acid to digest the adjacent spleen", a shallow thinker may simply contradict me and claim that I am wrong. However, it has indeed been proposed by myself in that very sentence! How do you like them beans?
Well, those are the secrets of my success. If you have any other tips feel free to pass them on to fellow readers in the comments block below. But don't circulate this information too widely, if we all pass someone will get suspicious.
Good luck to you all.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Maybe I'll be a bananaologist
I hate that feeling you get when you study really hard but then can't remember anything you just "learned". I went to town on the adrenal glands and the thyroid today, but guess what was the only thing I could really remember while driving home?
I really need to find a way to mention that in my exam next Tuesday.
Bananas contain significant levels of noradrenaline.
Chess does not make good TV
We watched The West Wing tonight on DVD. Towards the end of season 3. It's a great show, but tonight's episode really annoyed me for two reasons.
First, the entire episode was structured around this conceit that the President is a gun chess player and that's what makes him so awesome at being President. He had two simultaneous games going with staffers while also dealing with a military crisis in the South China Sea. Yeah right. He kept saying hackneyed things like, "Look at the whole board, Sam", and "You've got checkmate in twelve moves!" Being good at chess doesn't make you good at anything except chess. Ask Deep Blue.
Second, in one of the games, his opponent (Toby) started with a pawn move and the President said, "Ah, the Evans gambit!". No, it's a pawn move. Now, I have been known to say things like that at the start of games to try to distract my opponent. But lo and behold, a few moves later, Toby actually did play the Evans gambit. It was really obvious that the scriptwriters just looked up the board position and didn't realize which move was the gambit - they thought it started right from the first move.
Sorry to yap on about chess, it just really annoyed me that such a good program could be so lame for once...
First, the entire episode was structured around this conceit that the President is a gun chess player and that's what makes him so awesome at being President. He had two simultaneous games going with staffers while also dealing with a military crisis in the South China Sea. Yeah right. He kept saying hackneyed things like, "Look at the whole board, Sam", and "You've got checkmate in twelve moves!" Being good at chess doesn't make you good at anything except chess. Ask Deep Blue.
Second, in one of the games, his opponent (Toby) started with a pawn move and the President said, "Ah, the Evans gambit!". No, it's a pawn move. Now, I have been known to say things like that at the start of games to try to distract my opponent. But lo and behold, a few moves later, Toby actually did play the Evans gambit. It was really obvious that the scriptwriters just looked up the board position and didn't realize which move was the gambit - they thought it started right from the first move.
Sorry to yap on about chess, it just really annoyed me that such a good program could be so lame for once...
Monday, March 30, 2009
The little car that could
As I mentioned several aeons ago (link) my Little Red Car tried to asplode on me and has been holidaying at the mechanics ever since. I was really worried because the last time the mechanic looked at it, he thought that it was likely that the head gasket was shot and the head itself would have to be replaced because it had gone soft.
No, I don't know what that means either, but it sounds very expensive. So I was greatly relieved when I spoke to him this afternoon and he said that there didn't seem to be any damage to the engine apart from a little plastic impeller on the water pump which is why the engine overheated so suddenly.
This means that instead of paying thousands for a new engine, I will pay $5 for a new little piece of plastic. Of course, I'll still be in hock for a squillion bucks in labour, but the exciting thing is that the pump failure is covered by my warranty whereas the engine damage due to pump failure would not have been.
I am so happy! Now I just need to pass these exams next week and I promise I'll be good forevermore.
No, I don't know what that means either, but it sounds very expensive. So I was greatly relieved when I spoke to him this afternoon and he said that there didn't seem to be any damage to the engine apart from a little plastic impeller on the water pump which is why the engine overheated so suddenly.
This means that instead of paying thousands for a new engine, I will pay $5 for a new little piece of plastic. Of course, I'll still be in hock for a squillion bucks in labour, but the exciting thing is that the pump failure is covered by my warranty whereas the engine damage due to pump failure would not have been.
I am so happy! Now I just need to pass these exams next week and I promise I'll be good forevermore.
Sickening
I really hit the books pretty hard on the weekend, but I think they hit me back. I had some really bizarre dreams last night, mostly related to all of the digestive stuff I've been learning.
I dreamed that I kept regurgitating these slimy, bouncy, golf-ball-sized lumps. Every now and then one would be a bit longer, more like an egg. It wasn't painful, but it was pretty unpleasant because I would choke and gag as it came up. At first I thought it was food that I had eaten, but it wasn't.
I cut one open to try to see what it was. It was made of smooth meat, like a chinese pork ball, all grey and gristly. In the very middle was some half-chewed up stuff like alfalfa sprouts.
Ew, it makes me feel sick just to think of it. I hope you enjoyed reading this.
I dreamed that I kept regurgitating these slimy, bouncy, golf-ball-sized lumps. Every now and then one would be a bit longer, more like an egg. It wasn't painful, but it was pretty unpleasant because I would choke and gag as it came up. At first I thought it was food that I had eaten, but it wasn't.
I cut one open to try to see what it was. It was made of smooth meat, like a chinese pork ball, all grey and gristly. In the very middle was some half-chewed up stuff like alfalfa sprouts.
Ew, it makes me feel sick just to think of it. I hope you enjoyed reading this.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
You dirty rat
Sometimes you learn something that you really should have figured out a long time ago. Today is one of those days.
For more than a year now, I've been studying medicine and on many occasions I've read about "murine models" of various diseases. Today I was reading about inflammatory bowel disease, and there it was again: a statement about murine models showing this, that and the other.
It was only today that some part of my brain went ping! and said to me, "You know, you have no idea what that word actually means."
So it turns out that murines are rats and mice. You know, the ones that get kept in labs and conduct fiendishly clever experiments on us. This is all starting to make a bit more sense now.
Shame it's not really examinable. "Question 1. Explain the difference between a murine and a purine." Still, probably useful to know in order to avoid future total humiliation, right?
For more than a year now, I've been studying medicine and on many occasions I've read about "murine models" of various diseases. Today I was reading about inflammatory bowel disease, and there it was again: a statement about murine models showing this, that and the other.
It was only today that some part of my brain went ping! and said to me, "You know, you have no idea what that word actually means."
PTR
Yes I do, murines are one of the two major types of compounds that DNA is made out of. So there.
Brain
Sigh. No, that's purines. How on earth could you have a purine model of a disease?
PTR
Oh. I'd better look it up on wikipedia...
Shame it's not really examinable. "Question 1. Explain the difference between a murine and a purine." Still, probably useful to know in order to avoid future total humiliation, right?
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Flash! Ah-ah! Saviour of the universe!
I study using flash cards. I have a little program which lets me create and edit cards and orders them for me based on how long it has been since I last saw it and how well I thought I remembered the card the last time. I really like studying this way since my brain seems to respond better to interactivity rather than just reading and writing stuff out.
It does take a bit of time to get the knack of writing good cards. You need to ask very specific questions and the answer needs to be fairly brief. List of things are harder to remember than sequential processes. It helps to put key terms in bold because that seems to stimulate my visual memory. You know how you can often remember where on page something interesting was written, even if you can't remember the thing itself? With flash cards, scattered text in bold helps to make each card look a little bit different which I think helps me remember them.
However, I learned a valuable lesson today, which is this:
If you are studying with flash cards, you should review them as you make them, day by day. Do not spend a week making flash cards and then sit down to review several hundred of them all at once. It's really demoralizing.
It does take a bit of time to get the knack of writing good cards. You need to ask very specific questions and the answer needs to be fairly brief. List of things are harder to remember than sequential processes. It helps to put key terms in bold because that seems to stimulate my visual memory. You know how you can often remember where on page something interesting was written, even if you can't remember the thing itself? With flash cards, scattered text in bold helps to make each card look a little bit different which I think helps me remember them.
However, I learned a valuable lesson today, which is this:
If you are studying with flash cards, you should review them as you make them, day by day. Do not spend a week making flash cards and then sit down to review several hundred of them all at once. It's really demoralizing.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Excuse me while I whip this out
I am at home today trying to study the gastrointestinal system. I am very uninspired. For some reason I am not very interested in it. Oh sure, the way everything is put together is very clever, here's a little golf clap for evolution: *clap clap clap*. But the actual medicine aspect is boring.
Here's how it works:
It drives me nuts to try to remember stuff about so-called enterchromaffin-like cells when I don't even know what the hell this so-called enterochromaffin is. Maybe it's something I've forgotten from last year, or maybe I was sick that day in high school when everyone learned about enterochromaffin. Like that time when I missed the lesson on complex numbers and was lost for a fortnight. "The square root of negative one? That's crazy-talk!"
Hmm, hang on, contrary to the last post I have just sat here whinging about my study. Oh well. Toughen up people, you'll be reading a lot more of this stuff from now on as from day to day I learn more and more about just how badly my goose is cooked.
Here's how it works:
- Patient presents with diarrhoea. (All patients present with diarrhoea.)
- Doctor takes detailed history about things apparently unrelated to poo, such as tattoos, sexual practices, blood transfusions, and whether patient has ever worked as a paprika splitter.
- Doctor advises patient to wait a week.
- Patient re-presents in a week with the same symptoms.
- Doctor sends patient for colonoscopy.
- If anything like a lump is found, whip it out.
- If no lump is found, patient is put on steroids.
- If the steroids don't work, doctors keep alternately removing pieces of the patient and putting them back on steroids until something different happens.
- Oh yeah, tell the patient to try not eating wheat just to see if that helps.
It drives me nuts to try to remember stuff about so-called enterchromaffin-like cells when I don't even know what the hell this so-called enterochromaffin is. Maybe it's something I've forgotten from last year, or maybe I was sick that day in high school when everyone learned about enterochromaffin. Like that time when I missed the lesson on complex numbers and was lost for a fortnight. "The square root of negative one? That's crazy-talk!"
Hmm, hang on, contrary to the last post I have just sat here whinging about my study. Oh well. Toughen up people, you'll be reading a lot more of this stuff from now on as from day to day I learn more and more about just how badly my goose is cooked.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Saved by seals
Well, it's been a slow week so far. I think my decision to take a short blogging break was wise, because all I would have been doing is whinging about how much I hate studying, how little work I have done and so on and so forth, which I sincerely doubt anyone else is interested in reading about. Besides which, the more I whine about stuff, the worse I feel, so it's in my best interests to bottle it all up until I have some kind of crisis because of the internal pressure and bust a valve of some sort.
I realized this week how lazy I have been this year because I only just started wearing my reading glasses. Normally if I sit in front of a computer or books without them for more than an hour I get headaches. This hasn't been happening, so clearly I've been taking it pretty easy.
Yesterday I was feeling morose all day until dusk, when we went for a walk down to the beach and out onto the causeway. The sun was setting and it was quiet and dim and soothing, and in the hush we could hear puffing and splashing coming from out in the water. There were two seals splashing around, having a grand old time. Watching them slide above and below the water was good for me I think. It made me forget about exams, about all this civilization nonsense.
The sea is good when you're stressed. It's big, it's mysterious, it's grey and green and blue, it's like the night sky but you can reach out and dip your hand in it in a way that you can't with the stars unless you've got really long arms. It has a way of reminding you of your insignificance and making you feel more humble and also more grateful for things being the way they are, largely beyond your control. It gives you perspective, and the perspective is this: we're just dust in the water, so you might as well just float.
Good luck with whatever trials are coming. They're just waves. From the top you can see further. Enjoy the view.
I realized this week how lazy I have been this year because I only just started wearing my reading glasses. Normally if I sit in front of a computer or books without them for more than an hour I get headaches. This hasn't been happening, so clearly I've been taking it pretty easy.
Yesterday I was feeling morose all day until dusk, when we went for a walk down to the beach and out onto the causeway. The sun was setting and it was quiet and dim and soothing, and in the hush we could hear puffing and splashing coming from out in the water. There were two seals splashing around, having a grand old time. Watching them slide above and below the water was good for me I think. It made me forget about exams, about all this civilization nonsense.
The sea is good when you're stressed. It's big, it's mysterious, it's grey and green and blue, it's like the night sky but you can reach out and dip your hand in it in a way that you can't with the stars unless you've got really long arms. It has a way of reminding you of your insignificance and making you feel more humble and also more grateful for things being the way they are, largely beyond your control. It gives you perspective, and the perspective is this: we're just dust in the water, so you might as well just float.
Good luck with whatever trials are coming. They're just waves. From the top you can see further. Enjoy the view.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
I'll be back?
The longer I stare at this screen the heaps more crappier I feel. I'm going to take a break from writing this junk for a while...
Big eared tortoise
I like compliments. But recently I've been getting compliments which are a bit odd.
For example, when I got my hair cut recently the hairdresser remarked to me how small my ears were. I suggested to her that perhaps it was simply that my head is quite large, but she wouldn't have a bar of it. My Smaller Half suggested that perhaps it's because the hairdresser is right next to the hospital so most of her clients are elderly people. Since the ears continue to grow throughout life (which is why Galapagos tortoises have such large ears), my own comparatively youthful ears must have looked like little rosebuds.
Mind you, that hairdresser was barking mad. She started to laugh to herself soon after she started cutting my hair and when I gave her an inquisitive look she assured me that she wasn't laughing at me, but was laughing at how awful my haircut was. What a relief!
Then she proceeded to tell me all about how nervous she was during her wedding because she was a virgin and was really nervous about consumating the union. Too much information, just cut the hair thanks!
Anyway, I got a bit sidetracked there, sorry. I was talking about compliments. This week, after I emailed him a picture of me and my Smaller Half at a recent wedding, my Wise Elder Brother mentioned how pleased he was to see that my nostril hairs were so well groomed. I'm pretty sure he was joking, but when it comes to my nostril hair you just never know. There are a lot of admirers out there.
Then, on Friday, one of my Esteemed Colleagues asked me if I was a fashionista. This genuinely caught me by surprise. Normally I look like I got dressed in the dark and slept in my clothes. But apparently my Friday ensemble was cutting edge - definitive proof that fashion moves in cycles. I suspect that my new shoes can carry most of the credit. I've had more people remark on those shoes than I have thumbs. And that's a lot for me (remarks, not thumbs. I have the usual number of thumbs).
Also, I have a rip in my jeans. This is the first pair of jeans I have ever owned long enough to have them rip. Until the age of 18 I grew out of my jeans every year. After that I boycotted jeans for the next 12 years because I thought they were uncomfortable and there's probably some kind of ethical issue concerning denim that I would have cared about if I'd been aware of it plus when I started working my arse got fat. But then in New York in 2005 I bought a great pair of jeans that I really like, but now the legs are coming apart. Anyway, ripped jeans are sometimes worn by fashionistas, so you can see how the confusion arose.
So if you see me moping around in the next two weeks, miserable because I have really buggered up the first two blocks of second year by being a lazy lump, why not shoot me a compliment? Something unusual, something unexpected. It could make my day!
For example, when I got my hair cut recently the hairdresser remarked to me how small my ears were. I suggested to her that perhaps it was simply that my head is quite large, but she wouldn't have a bar of it. My Smaller Half suggested that perhaps it's because the hairdresser is right next to the hospital so most of her clients are elderly people. Since the ears continue to grow throughout life (which is why Galapagos tortoises have such large ears), my own comparatively youthful ears must have looked like little rosebuds.
Mind you, that hairdresser was barking mad. She started to laugh to herself soon after she started cutting my hair and when I gave her an inquisitive look she assured me that she wasn't laughing at me, but was laughing at how awful my haircut was. What a relief!
Then she proceeded to tell me all about how nervous she was during her wedding because she was a virgin and was really nervous about consumating the union. Too much information, just cut the hair thanks!
Anyway, I got a bit sidetracked there, sorry. I was talking about compliments. This week, after I emailed him a picture of me and my Smaller Half at a recent wedding, my Wise Elder Brother mentioned how pleased he was to see that my nostril hairs were so well groomed. I'm pretty sure he was joking, but when it comes to my nostril hair you just never know. There are a lot of admirers out there.
Then, on Friday, one of my Esteemed Colleagues asked me if I was a fashionista. This genuinely caught me by surprise. Normally I look like I got dressed in the dark and slept in my clothes. But apparently my Friday ensemble was cutting edge - definitive proof that fashion moves in cycles. I suspect that my new shoes can carry most of the credit. I've had more people remark on those shoes than I have thumbs. And that's a lot for me (remarks, not thumbs. I have the usual number of thumbs).
Also, I have a rip in my jeans. This is the first pair of jeans I have ever owned long enough to have them rip. Until the age of 18 I grew out of my jeans every year. After that I boycotted jeans for the next 12 years because I thought they were uncomfortable and there's probably some kind of ethical issue concerning denim that I would have cared about if I'd been aware of it plus when I started working my arse got fat. But then in New York in 2005 I bought a great pair of jeans that I really like, but now the legs are coming apart. Anyway, ripped jeans are sometimes worn by fashionistas, so you can see how the confusion arose.
So if you see me moping around in the next two weeks, miserable because I have really buggered up the first two blocks of second year by being a lazy lump, why not shoot me a compliment? Something unusual, something unexpected. It could make my day!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Anticipatory paranoia
I read a story in the paper the other day that got me thinking. Here it is: linky.It made me think to myself, "Self, that guy is totally ripped. You really should take up body-building". It also made me think, "Hmm, I wonder if a time will come when I will regret putting all this blog stuff up for the world to see?"
Let me give an example to illustrate. Twenty years from now, I am an expert medical practitioner of surprisingly youthful appearance. I have many patients, all of whom love and respect me for the care that I provide to them. All, that is, save one, who I shall refer to as Mr Diddy.
Mr Diddy suffers from a chronic inflammatory condition that I have not been able to help him with. He is unable to work. He is housebound. He is unable to maintain social contacts or engage in hobbies or anything to break the monotony of the day. All he can do is sit on the internet and cyberstalk his doctors.
Eventually, Mr Diddy finds this very blog, long discontinued, archived in a dusty corner of the web. And he finds a post that I wrote, all about inflammation. And when he reads it, he becomes enraged. Clearly I am an idiot. Clearly I do not take medicine seriously. Clearly I am causing him pain and suffering with my attitude. Mr Diddy somehow finds a rapacious lawyer for hire and sets him loose upon me.
How will the story end? Will I be bankrupted and ruined? Will I win the case but lose my reputation as all this foolishness is made public? Or will I eventually triumph and be depicted in a movie dramatization by a freshly thawed Tom Cruise? It worries me. Tom Cruise is a nutbag and is far too short. Ryan Gosling would be more appropriate.
And so I have decided to write a Disclaimer. No harm will come to me whilst I am under its protection, for I shall speak magic words of legalese such as "heretofor", "whereas", and "moreover". It will be an Iron-Clad Disclaimer. It will be the blog equivalent of Ned Kelly's helmet. I'm just praying that Mr Diddy doesn't think of shooting me in the legs.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Look right
Polls don't vote in themselves, people.
And no, I won't be voting this time. That would be weird.
And no, I won't be voting this time. That would be weird.
Information underload
This is the bit where I complain (again) about being lucky enough to study medicine.
We had a lecture today which purported to be about the menstrual cycle. It was incomprehensible. Now, I appreciate that it's a complex topic, so it's unlikely that I was going to come out of that lecture unscathed. But the guy who presented it to us did us no favours either.
He may well know his stuff back to front and inside out, but I seriously think I could have given a better lecture than him with just five minutes preparation. He didn't ever seem to summarize or recap or explain or do any of those good pedagogical things.
It got even worse when someone asked him a question and it sounded like he was making up the answer. It went like this:
Then later on today there was an outrage perpetrated by a different lecturer. In the course of trying to explain how to use trigonometry to find the distance from the beach in Chennai to the cricket stadium (the guy was ambitiously trying to distract us from the fact that his lecture was Content Free (tm) by weaving a line through Auckland, Mount Everest, surveying, Chennai, and antenatal oxygen tension, not necessarily in that order), he claimed that if you know the length of one side of a triangle and one of the angles that you can calculate the length of another side. Oh, sorry, I meant to end that sentence like this: "... another side!!!" I can tell you're shocked.
I shouted out to him that he needed to know two angles (yes, another side will also do, but that's not how you do geological surveying) but he chose to ignore me, clearly recognizing that I spoke with the Voice Of Authority and was not to be trifled with.
The War On Innumeracy rages on.
We had a lecture today which purported to be about the menstrual cycle. It was incomprehensible. Now, I appreciate that it's a complex topic, so it's unlikely that I was going to come out of that lecture unscathed. But the guy who presented it to us did us no favours either.
He may well know his stuff back to front and inside out, but I seriously think I could have given a better lecture than him with just five minutes preparation. He didn't ever seem to summarize or recap or explain or do any of those good pedagogical things.
It got even worse when someone asked him a question and it sounded like he was making up the answer. It went like this:
Q: Could you explain again how luteinizing hormone causes the follicle to release the ovum?Not very convincing. He wouldn't last 2 minutes in my old PBL group. We could bullshit for 3 hours much more fluently than that.
A: "Well it's simple, the way that, the thing is that, LH stimulates FSH, until it's high, and by high what I mean is that it's not dropping so fast as it was before, estrogen doesn't, I mean, how long have you got? I could give you a 200 page book on this stuff."
Then later on today there was an outrage perpetrated by a different lecturer. In the course of trying to explain how to use trigonometry to find the distance from the beach in Chennai to the cricket stadium (the guy was ambitiously trying to distract us from the fact that his lecture was Content Free (tm) by weaving a line through Auckland, Mount Everest, surveying, Chennai, and antenatal oxygen tension, not necessarily in that order), he claimed that if you know the length of one side of a triangle and one of the angles that you can calculate the length of another side. Oh, sorry, I meant to end that sentence like this: "... another side!!!" I can tell you're shocked.
I shouted out to him that he needed to know two angles (yes, another side will also do, but that's not how you do geological surveying) but he chose to ignore me, clearly recognizing that I spoke with the Voice Of Authority and was not to be trifled with.
The War On Innumeracy rages on.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Beetles
For some reason I am thinking back to when we drove home at Christmas to my Aged Mother's house. It was quite rainy so we were driving slowly. We were also exhausted because we'd just flown in that morning from Vietnam on an overnight flight. To make matters worse we were driving a old car belonging to the mother of a friend of ours and we were slightly paranoid about it packing up on us in the middle of nowhere. We were about 150 km from home.
I could smell, coming into the car from the outside air, a sharp green acid smell. It was the smell of christmas beetles. (I hope you know what a christmas beetle is. It's a dark brown beetle, about the size of the end of your thumb. I don't know if their proper name is christmas beetle or if it's just a made up name that my family used, like the name "walking peanut" which is what we called one of the common sorts of small brown beetle that used to get caught in the flyscreens all the time.)
It transported me back to when I was young and we would go to the university or to my father's work and play tennis under the lights in summer. The bright lights would attract thousands of christmas beetles that would swarm around, buzzing and swaying clumsily through the air and crashing even more clumsily to the ground to lie on their backs and wave their legs feebly in the air on the concrete courts. The air was filled with the smell of them.
It was usually cool at night even though it was summer, though the courts would still be warm. I would flick the beetles off the court with my racket because I felt sorry for them for being so hopelessly inadequate at the task of righting themselves. The tennis balls almost glowed yellow. They always seemed new, probably because we didn't play very often. There were dense rows of pines adjacent to the courts and when it was my turn to sit out for a while I would creep under the trees and get their sticky sap on my hands from pulling the young pine cones off the branches.
I have no idea why the smell of the beetles was so strong right there at that point on the road on Christmas eve, nor why I had not noticed or thought about the smell since I was much younger. Perhaps it was the exhaustion and stress that planed away our everyday worries and allowed me to notice it. But it brought back a lot of happy memories, so I was glad for it.
I could smell, coming into the car from the outside air, a sharp green acid smell. It was the smell of christmas beetles. (I hope you know what a christmas beetle is. It's a dark brown beetle, about the size of the end of your thumb. I don't know if their proper name is christmas beetle or if it's just a made up name that my family used, like the name "walking peanut" which is what we called one of the common sorts of small brown beetle that used to get caught in the flyscreens all the time.)
It transported me back to when I was young and we would go to the university or to my father's work and play tennis under the lights in summer. The bright lights would attract thousands of christmas beetles that would swarm around, buzzing and swaying clumsily through the air and crashing even more clumsily to the ground to lie on their backs and wave their legs feebly in the air on the concrete courts. The air was filled with the smell of them.
It was usually cool at night even though it was summer, though the courts would still be warm. I would flick the beetles off the court with my racket because I felt sorry for them for being so hopelessly inadequate at the task of righting themselves. The tennis balls almost glowed yellow. They always seemed new, probably because we didn't play very often. There were dense rows of pines adjacent to the courts and when it was my turn to sit out for a while I would creep under the trees and get their sticky sap on my hands from pulling the young pine cones off the branches.
I have no idea why the smell of the beetles was so strong right there at that point on the road on Christmas eve, nor why I had not noticed or thought about the smell since I was much younger. Perhaps it was the exhaustion and stress that planed away our everyday worries and allowed me to notice it. But it brought back a lot of happy memories, so I was glad for it.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
This is what I learned today
The parathyroid glands are right beside the thyroid gland.
Hypoparathyroidism is a condition caused by having parathyroid glands that don't make enough parathyroid hormone.
Pseudohypoparathyroidism is a condition with the same symptoms as hypoparathyroidism but caused by parathyroid hormone being ineffective.
Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism is yet another condition which is similar to pseudohypoparathyroidism but lacks some of the symptoms and has a different cause again.
And megapseudopseudohypoparathyroidism is when you have pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism real bad. Okay, I made up this one. But the others are all real.
Hypoparathyroidism is a condition caused by having parathyroid glands that don't make enough parathyroid hormone.
Pseudohypoparathyroidism is a condition with the same symptoms as hypoparathyroidism but caused by parathyroid hormone being ineffective.
Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism is yet another condition which is similar to pseudohypoparathyroidism but lacks some of the symptoms and has a different cause again.
And megapseudopseudohypoparathyroidism is when you have pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism real bad. Okay, I made up this one. But the others are all real.
Dodgy
Last night I attended a local drinking establishment in the company of my Smaller Half and another (female) friend. I seldom go to pubs because they are loud, smelly and full of idiots, but we'd been out for dinner and had decided to try to find a hot chocolate somewhere and had ended up careening around looking unsuccessfully for somewhere that was open, so we decided to go to the pub instead.
I walked through the front door, but the security person at the door stopped my companions and asked to see proof of age, which I found a bit preposterous to be honest. As they fumbled in their wallets I turned and asked the security person, "Me too?" and she just looked me up and down and said, "No mate, you'll be right."
Apparently I look like the kind of guy who walks into pubs with an underage girl on each arm.
I walked through the front door, but the security person at the door stopped my companions and asked to see proof of age, which I found a bit preposterous to be honest. As they fumbled in their wallets I turned and asked the security person, "Me too?" and she just looked me up and down and said, "No mate, you'll be right."
Apparently I look like the kind of guy who walks into pubs with an underage girl on each arm.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Group work
Today at school my tute group had to present a talk on a government model for training and retaining indigenous health workers. It went pretty well. I even managed to buy some cheap laughs by referring to the task as "an arduous assessment task cooked up by eccentric academics".
We had to submit a page to the lecturer afterwards outlining our contribution to the group and how we felt the group had worked together. I was originally going to submit a bit of garbage glossing over everything and saying nothing but how lovely everything was and how it was like an enchanted fairyland where nobody ever got angry or had to go to bed without their dinner, but then I realized that everyone probably writes that sort of nonsense. So I tried to write down what I really thought, and it was actually quite enjoyable and even a little bit educational.
Since I have had no other original thoughts today, I have decided to share what I wrote with you. I'd be interested to know what you think...
We had to submit a page to the lecturer afterwards outlining our contribution to the group and how we felt the group had worked together. I was originally going to submit a bit of garbage glossing over everything and saying nothing but how lovely everything was and how it was like an enchanted fairyland where nobody ever got angry or had to go to bed without their dinner, but then I realized that everyone probably writes that sort of nonsense. So I tried to write down what I really thought, and it was actually quite enjoyable and even a little bit educational.
Since I have had no other original thoughts today, I have decided to share what I wrote with you. I'd be interested to know what you think...
"I am part of group 16 which presented its talk today on the Canadian AHHRI model for training and retaining indigenous health workers.STOP PRESS! The lecturer emailed me back thanking me for my "honest appraisal". How disappointingly bland. I suppose getting 140 of these things would get a bit tiresome...
"First, let me say that as a raging introvert, I always dread group projects. The process of trying to find a direction for the group without actually adopting a formal method of group leadership and decision-making is painful for me. This is exacerbated by my 7 years of prior employment in the public service which has given me a fondness for resorting to bureaucracy in order to resolve disagreements. Although I recognise that having formal meeting procedure and voting is too heavy handed for such a small project, I can't help but think it would have been useful a few times as a way of drawing the group's attention to an elephant in the room. More on this later.
"Fortunately, the group worked well together. Relations were always amicable, everybody was cooperative, and everybody contributed in roughly equal proportion. Out of everybody I honestly had the least impact on the final content of the talk although since I presented half the talk and wrote my own speaking notes (including hilarious knee-slapping jokes) I suppose that was my main contribution. I always tried to contribute to discussions that the group was having about the project, for example by encouraging people to explain their ideas or asking them to explain things that I didn't understand.
"I was pleased that everyone in the group seemed motivated to contribute, and that the group as a whole took the project seriously and wanted to do well.
"There was a small hiccup early on when the group's topic changed from an Australian model to a Canadian one due to difficulty locating information. Unfortunately, the decision to change was made without the input and awareness of the whole group, which subsequently led to a very confusing meeting where myself and possibly others were totally confused about what had happened and why and when. This meant that I, at least, was left thinking that the decision was probably made too expediently (as similar problems arose later with the Canadian model as with the Australian one) and I felt somewhat disenfranchised with the process. Due to this, my project libido took a hit for a week or so. I think that such a major decision should probably have been subjected to a group vote rather than a straw poll. However, given that I had an opportunity to suggest this at the time and chose not to, it's fair to say that my grievance was not major.
"My other sad memory was that we did not take the opportunity to present something more interesting than just a talk with slides. Early on I floated the idea of presenting the information in the form of a drama, with characters acting out the barriers encountered by indigenous health workers, and a "Mr Government" figure offering assistance. I think it would have made the final presentation much more interesting, albeit at the cost of having to do more preparation. The reception by the group was mixed, which is to be expected, but somehow the idea just drifted away without really ever being discussed seriously as a possibility and we fell back into the default option of giving a talk. I regret not drawing the group's attention to this and requesting a vote on the idea, as now it is hard to avoid the sneaking suspicion that we took the easy way out rather than acting out of more honorable motivations, such as stage fright.
"Overall I found the process a lot less unpleasant than I had expected (yes, my wife accuses me of being a pessimist) and I was satisfied with our final presentation which I think focussed well on the topic at hand. I think that working on this project helped us to bond better as a group and led to an improvement in our PBL tutorials, which is a nice spinoff benefit.
"This email has been circulated to all group members."
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Always get your colonoscopy on film
When you have a colonoscopy, you are given a drug called midazolam. Apparently it is an amnesiac, so you can't remember what happened when you were under its effects. This sounds pretty freaky.
I wonder how this drug was discovered? Perhaps someone was experimenting on themselves by self-administering it, and they suddenly found themselves sitting exhausted and stubbly at the lab bench with an empty bottle of midazolam in front on them, wondering what the hell just happened.
The reason I bring it up is that I recently heard talk of a gastroenterologist who, each year, has several patients who refuse to pay him for colonoscopies that he has performed because they don't remember anything happening and thus accuse him of trying to trick them.
It's kind of the inverse problem of Descartes' evil demon, which fed him false sensory data to undermine his ability to obtain any reliable knowledge. If only Descartes had had more colonoscopies - I'd like to hear his perspective.
I wonder how this drug was discovered? Perhaps someone was experimenting on themselves by self-administering it, and they suddenly found themselves sitting exhausted and stubbly at the lab bench with an empty bottle of midazolam in front on them, wondering what the hell just happened.
The reason I bring it up is that I recently heard talk of a gastroenterologist who, each year, has several patients who refuse to pay him for colonoscopies that he has performed because they don't remember anything happening and thus accuse him of trying to trick them.
It's kind of the inverse problem of Descartes' evil demon, which fed him false sensory data to undermine his ability to obtain any reliable knowledge. If only Descartes had had more colonoscopies - I'd like to hear his perspective.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance
Yesterday was a crap day all right. The verdict was finally handed down on my Little Red Car, and it was found guilty of overheating and buggering up the cylinder head gasket. Overheating = $$$$.
My mood wasn't improved when I talked to the head of servicing at the dealership where I bought it. The fault occurred on the last day of the statutory warranty that you get with all second hand cars. Since then it's been waiting for my mechanic down here to look at it. The dealership argues that I should have informed them on the day that something happened and that since I didn't, the warranty doesn't apply. I think that's pretty lame.
The funny thing (if you enjoy laughing at the spectacle of thousands of dollars of your own money swirling down the toilet) is that we purchased an extended warranty for the car at no inconsiderable cost, but it specifically excludes any liability for faults related to overheating. As I mentioned before, overheating = $$$$.
I had a narky conversation with the dealer who also tried to tell me that my warranty period started three days earlier than it really did, because the original delivery date was different. He took a very strange approach where he started out really hardline and flatly refused to accept any duty to repair the car and was quite rude to me, but then at the end of the conversation he agreed to talk to my mechanic and then to his own boss to see if they might agree to cover the repairs. What on earth is going on there??
I'd like to think that I talked him round, but to be honest I think it's probably his standard approach to piss people off then offer them a carrot. That way they aren't too disappointed when it's subsequently snatched away again. I will continue to badger him since I think I am in the right, both legally and morally.
Anyway, the fact that the car hasn't been driveable for 2 weeks now has been really frustrating. It's tricky trying to manage with one car when you live in the country and you and your Smaller Half need to travel 100 km in opposite directions.
I got myself worked up into a bit of a frenzy about it yesterday, but eventually I just burned out. Getting some perspective on it (which is easier said than done) was made possible by a conversation with a friend in which we discussed some awful things that are happening in his life, compared to which a broken-down car is insignificant. Sure it's a pain in the arse, but it's not a life-defining moment.
Will I telling my grandchildren all about the Broken Down Car? No. End of story.
My mood wasn't improved when I talked to the head of servicing at the dealership where I bought it. The fault occurred on the last day of the statutory warranty that you get with all second hand cars. Since then it's been waiting for my mechanic down here to look at it. The dealership argues that I should have informed them on the day that something happened and that since I didn't, the warranty doesn't apply. I think that's pretty lame.
The funny thing (if you enjoy laughing at the spectacle of thousands of dollars of your own money swirling down the toilet) is that we purchased an extended warranty for the car at no inconsiderable cost, but it specifically excludes any liability for faults related to overheating. As I mentioned before, overheating = $$$$.
I had a narky conversation with the dealer who also tried to tell me that my warranty period started three days earlier than it really did, because the original delivery date was different. He took a very strange approach where he started out really hardline and flatly refused to accept any duty to repair the car and was quite rude to me, but then at the end of the conversation he agreed to talk to my mechanic and then to his own boss to see if they might agree to cover the repairs. What on earth is going on there??
I'd like to think that I talked him round, but to be honest I think it's probably his standard approach to piss people off then offer them a carrot. That way they aren't too disappointed when it's subsequently snatched away again. I will continue to badger him since I think I am in the right, both legally and morally.
Anyway, the fact that the car hasn't been driveable for 2 weeks now has been really frustrating. It's tricky trying to manage with one car when you live in the country and you and your Smaller Half need to travel 100 km in opposite directions.
I got myself worked up into a bit of a frenzy about it yesterday, but eventually I just burned out. Getting some perspective on it (which is easier said than done) was made possible by a conversation with a friend in which we discussed some awful things that are happening in his life, compared to which a broken-down car is insignificant. Sure it's a pain in the arse, but it's not a life-defining moment.
Will I telling my grandchildren all about the Broken Down Car? No. End of story.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
I don't get no respect
I had a pretty substandard day today in my tutorial. Since I'd been gallivanting in Melbourne all long weekend at a friend's wedding, I had done zero work. Unfortunately my tactic of making hilarious jokes to cover up my ignorance failed today on account of being unable to make hilarious jokes.
For example, after an Esteemed Colleague had been talking about microadenomas of the pituitary being defined as those tumours up to 1 cm in size, I wittily observed that if a microadenoma was 1 cm across, then an adenoma would be 10 km across! (sound of crickets chirping) Seriously, that was some of my best material and it just crashed and burned in there.
I also managed to be blatantly incorrect about stuff that I dredged up out of my memory. So when the tutorial notes mentioned the use of a exophthalmometer, I leaped in and claimed that it was a device which measures intra-ocular pressure by bouncing a pulse of air off your eye. Now, I believe that such a device does actually exist, but it isn't called an exophthalmometer, as was made embarrassingly clear to me just a few minutes later. An exophthalmometer is a set of calipers and prisms which you use to measure how far someone's eyes are bulging out of their sockets. Different concept entirely.
This led to the following conversation between my Smaller Half and I over dinner tonight.
It is because of such shenanigans that I dispute the opinion of my recently married friend's mother who thought that my Smaller Half was far too lovely to be a doctor. I believe she is a fiendish scoundrel who will be right at home in the cut-throat world of medical practice.
For example, after an Esteemed Colleague had been talking about microadenomas of the pituitary being defined as those tumours up to 1 cm in size, I wittily observed that if a microadenoma was 1 cm across, then an adenoma would be 10 km across! (sound of crickets chirping) Seriously, that was some of my best material and it just crashed and burned in there.
I also managed to be blatantly incorrect about stuff that I dredged up out of my memory. So when the tutorial notes mentioned the use of a exophthalmometer, I leaped in and claimed that it was a device which measures intra-ocular pressure by bouncing a pulse of air off your eye. Now, I believe that such a device does actually exist, but it isn't called an exophthalmometer, as was made embarrassingly clear to me just a few minutes later. An exophthalmometer is a set of calipers and prisms which you use to measure how far someone's eyes are bulging out of their sockets. Different concept entirely.
This led to the following conversation between my Smaller Half and I over dinner tonight.
PTR
What's the name of that thing that measures eye pressure by bouncing air off your eye?
Smaller Half
It's an optometron.
PTR
Wow. Optometron. That's such a cool name...
[short pause]
Wait, you just made that up!
Smaller Half
You're so gullible!
[Dies laughing]
It is because of such shenanigans that I dispute the opinion of my recently married friend's mother who thought that my Smaller Half was far too lovely to be a doctor. I believe she is a fiendish scoundrel who will be right at home in the cut-throat world of medical practice.
Monday, March 9, 2009
One year old today
Gaaaah!!! I almost forgot my own blog's birthday! How insensitive. As of today I have been blogging for one year.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday dear Prone To Reverie.
Happy birthday to you.
Hip-hip, hooray! Hip-hip, hooray! Hip-hip, hooray!
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday dear Prone To Reverie.
Happy birthday to you.
Hip-hip, hooray! Hip-hip, hooray! Hip-hip, hooray!
Lo, I am returned
I'm just back from a weekend jaunt to Melbourne for the wedding of an old friend. Had a great time, of which I will write more tomorrow. I can't really string it together at the moment - too tired.
But the exciting news that has just been brought to my attention is that this blog is considered by Google to be the fourth leading web source of fictional country names. Try it! I knew I'd find a niche one day. Next stop - third!
But the exciting news that has just been brought to my attention is that this blog is considered by Google to be the fourth leading web source of fictional country names. Try it! I knew I'd find a niche one day. Next stop - third!
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Cool link
Sorry, nothing from me here. I just wanted to post a link to this awesome diagram, here.
It shows the relationship between language pairs, where one language uses the name of another language as its prototype for unintelligibility. For example, in English we say, "It's all Greek to me". (However, I'm annoyed by the non-inclusion of the English phrase "double Dutch".)
My favourite part of this diagram is the inclusion of "Heavenly Script". Sweet.
It shows the relationship between language pairs, where one language uses the name of another language as its prototype for unintelligibility. For example, in English we say, "It's all Greek to me". (However, I'm annoyed by the non-inclusion of the English phrase "double Dutch".)
My favourite part of this diagram is the inclusion of "Heavenly Script". Sweet.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Pituitawhatty?
We're learning bits and bobs about the pituitary gland at the moment. I find it quite interesting, in that "oh-my-god-I'm-going-to-drown" way.
However, the prac we had this morning was bordering on the incomprehensible. The worst bit was a radiologist who showed us about 20 slides of the pituitary, all in different formats, different sections, different orientations, and (for all I know) different species. He didn't waste any time explaining anything, he just flipped rapidly from slide to slide while naming all the things he could see in each one. Unfortunately in a volume about the size of a golf ball right in the middle of your head there are about 5 major nerves, umpteen major arteries, and of course all the arcanely-named bits of the brain, all of which are crossing over and twisting up into strange shapes.
When each new slide flashed up I spent the first 10 seconds trying to figure out which direction was forward or up, which means I missed most of the names of things, and the names that I did catch meant nothing to me because they were all coined by Latin-speaking dead people. As a result, I eventually tuned out and went into La-La Land and just listened to his voice like he was telling me a soothing bedtime story.
One thing I noticed was that he seemed to be using alliteration excessively. It was like listening to a clinical version of Beowulf. Two examples were so great that I wrote them down, and these fragments constitute the entirety of my notes from the prac:
After an hour and a half of that, I was ready to not be an endocrinologist. Next specialty please!
However, the prac we had this morning was bordering on the incomprehensible. The worst bit was a radiologist who showed us about 20 slides of the pituitary, all in different formats, different sections, different orientations, and (for all I know) different species. He didn't waste any time explaining anything, he just flipped rapidly from slide to slide while naming all the things he could see in each one. Unfortunately in a volume about the size of a golf ball right in the middle of your head there are about 5 major nerves, umpteen major arteries, and of course all the arcanely-named bits of the brain, all of which are crossing over and twisting up into strange shapes.
When each new slide flashed up I spent the first 10 seconds trying to figure out which direction was forward or up, which means I missed most of the names of things, and the names that I did catch meant nothing to me because they were all coined by Latin-speaking dead people. As a result, I eventually tuned out and went into La-La Land and just listened to his voice like he was telling me a soothing bedtime story.
One thing I noticed was that he seemed to be using alliteration excessively. It was like listening to a clinical version of Beowulf. Two examples were so great that I wrote them down, and these fragments constitute the entirety of my notes from the prac:
"Any insidious mass in the supra-sellar cistern gives a similar set of symptoms."We then got to move on to another room to keep learning. This room was full of models and specimens to examine in befuddlement. One of the displays I found most intriguing was a set of X-rays of the head with numbers labelling about 30 different structures. There was an accompanying guide with names which I was examining with fervour until one of my Esteemed Colleagues pointed out that the names were itemized with letters and didn't correspond in any way to the numbers on the X-rays. For example, on the X-ray the label "A" was in the middle of the forehead. There was no "A" in the guide, but the number "1" was for the mandible (lower jaw) which, if recall my surface anatomy correctly from way back in last year, is not located in the middle of the forehead. So that was educational.
"Patients present with precocious puberty from having a hypothalamic hamartoma."
After an hour and a half of that, I was ready to not be an endocrinologist. Next specialty please!
Monday, March 2, 2009
Ow
I have a tragic confession to make. I just spent the evening re-reading my own blog. How sad is that? When my Smaller Half found out, she hit me with the weekend edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. Thank God they don't send the real estate supplement this far west.
Xenocrine glands?
I had a Big Moment today in class in the first lecture of our block on the endocrine glands. The lecturer asked a question and I was the only person to stick up their hand. Sadly, the question was, "Does anyone not know what an endocrine gland is yet?"
To be fair, I have heard the term endocrine before and I could even name some endocrine glands - I was just a bit fuzzy as to the definition. To confuse the issue, there are also exocrine glands and paracrine glands. From the sound of them, endocrine glands secrete stuff into the body and exocrine glands secrete stuff outside the body and paracrine glands secrete stuff ... beside the body?
When I stuck up my hand and said, "Yo dawg!", the lecturer fixed me with a piercing glare. I'd like to think that it was because she was impressed with my intellectual honesty and wanted to make sure she remembered my face so that she could follow my future career and make a heartfelt speech in front of the King of Sweden when I am awarded the Nobel Prize for my discoveries in endocrinology, but to be honest she was probably sighing inwardly and pining for the olden days when idiots like me were sent over the trenches to charge the machine-guns rather than being admitted to medical school.
Anyway, it turns out that the definition is pretty prosaic. Endocrine glands secrete hormones into the blood, while exocrine glands secrete hormones into a duct that goes somewhere else, and paracrine glands just kind of ooze stuff over their neighbours. How dull.
It does, however, invite the obvious follow-up question, "What's a hormone?" - to which the equally obvious answer is, "Whatever you want her to, she's a professional." Boom boom! Thanks for reading, have a great night.
To be fair, I have heard the term endocrine before and I could even name some endocrine glands - I was just a bit fuzzy as to the definition. To confuse the issue, there are also exocrine glands and paracrine glands. From the sound of them, endocrine glands secrete stuff into the body and exocrine glands secrete stuff outside the body and paracrine glands secrete stuff ... beside the body?
When I stuck up my hand and said, "Yo dawg!", the lecturer fixed me with a piercing glare. I'd like to think that it was because she was impressed with my intellectual honesty and wanted to make sure she remembered my face so that she could follow my future career and make a heartfelt speech in front of the King of Sweden when I am awarded the Nobel Prize for my discoveries in endocrinology, but to be honest she was probably sighing inwardly and pining for the olden days when idiots like me were sent over the trenches to charge the machine-guns rather than being admitted to medical school.
Anyway, it turns out that the definition is pretty prosaic. Endocrine glands secrete hormones into the blood, while exocrine glands secrete hormones into a duct that goes somewhere else, and paracrine glands just kind of ooze stuff over their neighbours. How dull.
It does, however, invite the obvious follow-up question, "What's a hormone?" - to which the equally obvious answer is, "Whatever you want her to, she's a professional." Boom boom! Thanks for reading, have a great night.
A simple story involving a humorous misunderstanding
Found myself wandering around a Myer department store on the weekend. As happens when you're pretty much eligible for the Senior's Card, I realized that a quick trip to the bathroom would be desirable. Rather than careen randomly around the store in an ever-increasing state of urgency, I made my way purposefully to the store directory near the escalator and verified that yes indeedy, this floor had a bathroom on it. But it didn't say precisely where.
Figuring that it had to somewhere on the perimeter, and probably near the elevators, I made my way even more purposefully there. But the bathroom was nowhere to be found. So for lack of a better strategy I decided to circumnavigate the store in a counterclockwise direction. I made my way briskly around the entire floor, eventually arriving back at my starting point in a state of near panic.
I decided to try a different floor, so I went back to the escalators, and that was when I realized that I had mis-interpreted the sign beforehand. It did indeed say "Level 5: Bathroom", but it continued on with, "Kitchen, Manchester, Furniture" - what I thought was an indication of facilities was just one more sales department. It's just as well they don't actually sell toilets or there could have been a terrible scene.
Figuring that it had to somewhere on the perimeter, and probably near the elevators, I made my way even more purposefully there. But the bathroom was nowhere to be found. So for lack of a better strategy I decided to circumnavigate the store in a counterclockwise direction. I made my way briskly around the entire floor, eventually arriving back at my starting point in a state of near panic.
I decided to try a different floor, so I went back to the escalators, and that was when I realized that I had mis-interpreted the sign beforehand. It did indeed say "Level 5: Bathroom", but it continued on with, "Kitchen, Manchester, Furniture" - what I thought was an indication of facilities was just one more sales department. It's just as well they don't actually sell toilets or there could have been a terrible scene.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Karma Chameleon
Following on from my previous post on personality, I find it really difficult to confront people about things. This means that when I'm sitting in a pleasant seaside cafe with my Smaller Half and my Aged Mother and some boof-head walks in wearing a T-shirt saying, "Australia: f*ck off, we're full!", I have problems. These are the things I considered:
- Approach the man and inform him that I find his T-shirt offensive.
- Approach the man and tell him that his shirt is a disgrace to the country.
- Approach the man and tell him that he's a disgusting redneck pig and it's people like him that make me wish I was from New Zealand.
- Get a part-time job as a morning barista in that cafe and wait for him to come back so I can give him a little "Coogee Bay Special" in his latte.
- Go very quiet and seethe for the rest of the meal, leave the cafe quietly and without incident, then explode an hour later into raving and ranting about how much I hate people like that.
Strange Doctor
I really like taking personality tests. I especially like the ones which tell me that I like taking personality tests. There's nothing better than getting a few people together who have all sat the same test. You can compare strengths and weaknesses, and then those of you who are similar can band together and ridicule those who are different and alone. Great fun.
Because my Aged Mother was visiting this weekend and we needed some conversation bait, we all sat the VIA Signature Strengths test available on the Authentic Happiness website care of Dr Martin Seligman and U.Penn (you need to create a free account to access the questionnaire, which is 240 questions - takes about 15 minutes to do). It gives you a personal ranking of the 24 different personality strengths, with a brief explanation of what they mean. While I did the quiz I was lucky enough to have my Aged Mother looking over my shoulder and heckling me, telling me that I didn't know what I was talking about or that I was cheating or lying. Great fun.
Anyway, for interest's sake, here are my top 5 strengths:
So I encourage you to embark on this journey of self-discovery. Why not sit a personality test today and post your result here under a thinly transparent alias for the world to see? You never know what you'll learn.
Because my Aged Mother was visiting this weekend and we needed some conversation bait, we all sat the VIA Signature Strengths test available on the Authentic Happiness website care of Dr Martin Seligman and U.Penn (you need to create a free account to access the questionnaire, which is 240 questions - takes about 15 minutes to do). It gives you a personal ranking of the 24 different personality strengths, with a brief explanation of what they mean. While I did the quiz I was lucky enough to have my Aged Mother looking over my shoulder and heckling me, telling me that I didn't know what I was talking about or that I was cheating or lying. Great fun.
Anyway, for interest's sake, here are my top 5 strengths:
1. Love Of Learning. You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading and museums - anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.Okay, I probably didn't need to answer 240 questions to find out that I'm a nerd. I knew that already.
2. Humor And Playfulness. You like to laugh and tease. Bringing smiles to other people is important to you. You try to see the light side of all situations.On careful reading I note that it doesn't actually say that I'm any good at it. Perhaps this is why my grade 5 teacher used to say things to me like, "Okay Mister Funnyman, maybe you'd like to spend all of lunchtime picking up rubbish in the playground. Who's laughing now?"
3. Appreciation Of Beauty And Excellence. You notice and appreciate beauty and excellence and skilled performance in all domains of life from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.This is more like it. Art, nature, sounds pretty romantic - just like me. Hey, what's with the mathematics and science again? I got the nerd message already, Seligman!
4. Fairness, Equity And Justice. Treating all people fairly is one of your abiding principles. You do not let your personal feelings bias your decisions about other people. You give everyone a chance.Promising stuff. I wonder if my Public Health lecturer will give me a pass if I show this to him? Hopefully I'll be able to get out doing that presentation on Health Equity and catch up on some zees.
5. Master Of The Mystic Arts. As the Sorceror Supreme of Earth's universe, charged with defending it from otherworldy threats, you can channel the virtually unlimited extra-dimensional energy of nigh-omnipotent beings in multiple realms to empower your spells.Oh - now that's new! To be honest I've never thought of myself in this way. Hooray for personality tests!
So I encourage you to embark on this journey of self-discovery. Why not sit a personality test today and post your result here under a thinly transparent alias for the world to see? You never know what you'll learn.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Et tu, Ranga?
My day started well. We're being visited for the weekend by my Aged Mother, so I took her off to a nearby town and we had a coffee before walking up and down the beach for an hour. Then we met up with my Smaller Half for lunch before I set off for uni, as I had a liver microscopy prac to attend.
Unfortunately, that's when my car chose to betray me. It overheated soon after I left town, the temperature gauge swinging wildly around as I pulled off the road every few kilometres to let it cool down. I turned for home and searched around for a spanner-monkey to fix it. Once I got it to a mechanic, he told me he'd just fixed another car of the same model and year as mine for the same problem and that I shouldn't drive it over the weekend until he could look at it on Monday, or it might explode and scatter my limbs across the countryside.
Curses. No liver prac for me.
Unfortunately, that's when my car chose to betray me. It overheated soon after I left town, the temperature gauge swinging wildly around as I pulled off the road every few kilometres to let it cool down. I turned for home and searched around for a spanner-monkey to fix it. Once I got it to a mechanic, he told me he'd just fixed another car of the same model and year as mine for the same problem and that I shouldn't drive it over the weekend until he could look at it on Monday, or it might explode and scatter my limbs across the countryside.
Curses. No liver prac for me.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
If you have upper right quadrant abdominal pain while you're above the Arctic circle you need to read this post
Today I was swarmed by unruly mobs of angry medical students. They demanded that I retract my allegations that they have heads like roosters. After several rounds of being told to kiss Boron's Medical Physiology like I meant it or get a punch in the face, and then getting punched in the face anyway, I came to realize that I had grossly defamed them.
I'd like to make it clear that the incidence of cockheadism is lower in the medical student population than in society at large. Furthermore, they are handsome, charming, generous to the young and the elderly, and care for library books like they were their own and seldom cut pictures out of them.
I would also like to apologize for the eskimo language in the last few posts. Sorry. And by "eskimo", I'm referring to the usage in the novel "Cheaper By The Dozen", which bears no resemblance to the terrible film of the same name that I have not seen except for the fact that there are twelve children in each in which "eskimo" means language which is crass or coarse.
Speaking of eskimo, (hey, nice segue) did you know that eating a diet high in fat (for example, whale blubber) can give you gallstones? And did you know that you can treat those gallstones by supplementing your total bile acid pool to redissolve those stones? And did you know that you can do that by drinking bile? And did you know that ursodeoxycholic acid is a component of bile which is especially effective at dissolving gallstones? And finally, did you know that ursodeoxycholic acid is particularly abundant in the bile of polar bears? And who has the best access to polar bear bile in the world? (Apart from polar bears?)
Eskimos.
Some day, knowing that might save someone's life.
I'd like to make it clear that the incidence of cockheadism is lower in the medical student population than in society at large. Furthermore, they are handsome, charming, generous to the young and the elderly, and care for library books like they were their own and seldom cut pictures out of them.
I would also like to apologize for the eskimo language in the last few posts. Sorry. And by "eskimo", I'm referring to the usage in the novel "Cheaper By The Dozen", which bears no resemblance to the terrible film of the same name that I have not seen except for the fact that there are twelve children in each in which "eskimo" means language which is crass or coarse.
Speaking of eskimo, (hey, nice segue) did you know that eating a diet high in fat (for example, whale blubber) can give you gallstones? And did you know that you can treat those gallstones by supplementing your total bile acid pool to redissolve those stones? And did you know that you can do that by drinking bile? And did you know that ursodeoxycholic acid is a component of bile which is especially effective at dissolving gallstones? And finally, did you know that ursodeoxycholic acid is particularly abundant in the bile of polar bears? And who has the best access to polar bear bile in the world? (Apart from polar bears?)
Eskimos.
Some day, knowing that might save someone's life.
Monday, February 23, 2009
It's not me, it's you
Having my Smaller Half studying medicine at the same time as me is ... interesting. Sometimes, to be honest, it's a real pain in the whatsit, especially when we're both stressed and no-one wants to make the pancakes and sing the special pancake song because exams are looming. But one of the real advantages is that she really understands what I'm going through because 12 months ago, she was me (but smaller and more beautiful).
This was demonstrated to me tonight in the most poignant way I could imagine. I had just finished my regular rant to her in which I got stuck into some serious character assassination of my current nemesis in my course. (It's important to always have a nemesis - someone who dogs your every step, salivating at the thought of your downfall. If you haven't got a nemesis, you might find yourself taking responsibility for your unpleasant circumstances, and who knows what might happen then.) Naturally, although I took great pains to be even-handed in describing the vicissitudes and tribulations wrought on me by this twerp, my Smaller Half came to agree with me that my foe's qualities were not merely galling, but actually deficient.
Then a thoughtful look stole across her eye and she said, "I don't know what it is about medicine that attracts these cockheads."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
This was demonstrated to me tonight in the most poignant way I could imagine. I had just finished my regular rant to her in which I got stuck into some serious character assassination of my current nemesis in my course. (It's important to always have a nemesis - someone who dogs your every step, salivating at the thought of your downfall. If you haven't got a nemesis, you might find yourself taking responsibility for your unpleasant circumstances, and who knows what might happen then.) Naturally, although I took great pains to be even-handed in describing the vicissitudes and tribulations wrought on me by this twerp, my Smaller Half came to agree with me that my foe's qualities were not merely galling, but actually deficient.
Then a thoughtful look stole across her eye and she said, "I don't know what it is about medicine that attracts these cockheads."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Big red car
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Today was an exciting day for me and for my car Ranga. Today Ranga's clock ticked over to 100,000 kms. I noticed that he was up to 99,997 so I drove around the block twice in order to see the change happen. It was probably the greatest moment of my life so far.
The difference between the photo above and the photo below is about 10 metres. That's why the trip meter hasn't changed.
I'm going to treat him to a day spa and full service, followed by an all-you-can-eat petrol buffet.
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Saturday, February 21, 2009
Want want
Isn't it funny how you can want to want something, without actually wanting the thing itself? Or maybe that's nonsense and my brain is just a bit worn out right now...
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Pet peeve
"I don't know the effects of Lyme disease on chimpanzees, but I will say that it's deceiving to think that if any animal is, quote-unquote, well-behaved around humans that means there is no risk involved to humans for potential outbursts of behaviour," she said.I don't know the effects of Lyme disease on chimpanzees either, but I do know that whoever said that sentence above needs to get their head examined (in my unqualified opinion). By saying:
"quote-unquote"she is actually quoting nothing at all, except for that hyphen. And why would you quote a hyphen?
If only she knew the so-called magic of "so-called" she could have extricated herself from this grammatical cesspool.
(By the way, you may be getting the impression that I'm totally obsessed with thinking about grammar and strange words and such things. You'd be right.)
Monday, February 16, 2009
You deserve better
Am I the only one who can't see anything on the blog homepage? If I click on the entry title on the right it comes up but the banner page is giving me a big fat nuthin'.
Dern it! I've been hornswoggled!
Dern it! I've been hornswoggled!
Are these things going to hatch and eat my face?
Whilst strolling on the beach in my Sunday best I espied a veritable flotilla of fibrous balls washed up at the high tide mark.
The largest one in the picture above is the size of an orange, or perhaps a smallish grapefruit or a very large apple or even a whole punnet of strawberries. It was firm to the touch, light and dry. It was formed from what resembled horse-hair, and embedded in the surface was some kind of dried vegetable matter akin to the flower of Geraldton Wax but brown and flaky.
Most of them were perfectly round, but some of the smaller ones were eccentric or ovate. There was a stretch of about 100 metres of beach about a metre wide with these things scattered across it, roughly 10 per square metre.
From their appearance they resembled gigantic fur-balls with perfect symmetry. I have no idea what they are. Perhaps a cargo ship carrying horses sunk and the horses were eaten by giant squid which regurgitated the indigestible components in spherical form.
Any better ideas?
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Lock it in Eddie!
I'm feeling heaps better than I did when I made my last pathetic sad-sack post on Friday night. Why? Well, partly because I am now filthy rich!
I found out about a website which tells you how much your own website is worth. So I plugged in http://pronetoreverie.blogspot.com/ and it told me that my blog is worth ...
... wait for it ...
MORE THAN FIVE MILLION SHINY AMERICAN DOLLARS!
Read the full report by clicking here. I have no idea what any of those subscores mean (although having a popularity of zero point zero zero seems bad rather than great) so don't ask. However, if you have $5,000,000 and would like to buy my blog from me, just let me know.
Meanwhile, screw learning issues for tomorrow's tute - I'm going shopping...
I found out about a website which tells you how much your own website is worth. So I plugged in http://pronetoreverie.blogspot.com/ and it told me that my blog is worth ...
... wait for it ...
MORE THAN FIVE MILLION SHINY AMERICAN DOLLARS!
Read the full report by clicking here. I have no idea what any of those subscores mean (although having a popularity of zero point zero zero seems bad rather than great) so don't ask. However, if you have $5,000,000 and would like to buy my blog from me, just let me know.
Meanwhile, screw learning issues for tomorrow's tute - I'm going shopping...
Friday, February 13, 2009
Phone home
The end of week 2 has arrived. It's been a downward trajectory for me today. During the drive home I start thinking a bit too much about stuff and it kind of got me down.
I feel like ET. A lost little alien surrounded by hostility and strangeness. Sure, I have a few friends to shield me from the scary people but in the end I'm just waiting for my spaceship to hear my call and come to pick me up and take me home.
Things are a bit better now though. I spent the evening eating a giant schitzel in a pub in a nearby town. We had good company and I was able to pour my heart out to my Smaller Half on the drive home. I'm a lucky fella.
I am gonna make through this year if it kills me.
I feel like ET. A lost little alien surrounded by hostility and strangeness. Sure, I have a few friends to shield me from the scary people but in the end I'm just waiting for my spaceship to hear my call and come to pick me up and take me home.
Things are a bit better now though. I spent the evening eating a giant schitzel in a pub in a nearby town. We had good company and I was able to pour my heart out to my Smaller Half on the drive home. I'm a lucky fella.
I am gonna make through this year if it kills me.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
People of Earth, your attention please!
You know the pre-sliced cheese that is sold for making sandwiches with? Yesterday I noticed that the slices are almost exactly the same size as a sheet of toilet paper.
Coincidence or conspiracy?
You decide.
Coincidence or conspiracy?
You decide.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Questioneering
I looked at the wrong week of my timetable last night so here I am at uni and I don't have a class for a whole 'nother hour. When I mentioned it to one of my Esteemed Colleagues he told me, "Mate, that's such a first year mistake to make". O the shame. (I like to use "O" instead of "Oh" like that because it looks really Biblical. Like me.)
Anyway, in my past life as a Man With A Job, I presented papers at a bunch of different conferences. About half of them were academic research conferences, and the other half were professional conferences. I noticed that the types of questions people asked at the two types of conferences were completely different.
At professional conferences people ask the speaker to clarify things for them or to comment on what the speaker's future plans are. This seems to be motivated by the fact that they are trying to get something done.
In contrast, at academic conferences people ask questions about topics the speaker hasn't mentioned at all but that the questioneer (a typo that deserves to be a neologism) clearly has the desire to parade around in front of the audience as something that they know all about. In this way it's actually more of a statement than a question. This seems to be motivated by the fact that academics are trying to show each up as numbskulls so the question is directed as much at the other audience members as the to the speaker.
Since I'm holding forth about questions, someone asked a question yesterday in the middle of a lecture about the enteric nervous system. The question was (roughly): "Are those nerves the so-called C-type non-myelinated fibres?" This question made me think two things:
As you can see, it's a handy little phrase to use. But I'm still struggling to figure out what the questioneer intended to convey by referring to "so-called C-type non-myelinated fibres", unless perhaps he has some kind of intellectual dispute with the text-book writers or the lecturer.
Any ideas? I'm interested in your so-called opinions.
Anyway, in my past life as a Man With A Job, I presented papers at a bunch of different conferences. About half of them were academic research conferences, and the other half were professional conferences. I noticed that the types of questions people asked at the two types of conferences were completely different.
At professional conferences people ask the speaker to clarify things for them or to comment on what the speaker's future plans are. This seems to be motivated by the fact that they are trying to get something done.
In contrast, at academic conferences people ask questions about topics the speaker hasn't mentioned at all but that the questioneer (a typo that deserves to be a neologism) clearly has the desire to parade around in front of the audience as something that they know all about. In this way it's actually more of a statement than a question. This seems to be motivated by the fact that academics are trying to show each up as numbskulls so the question is directed as much at the other audience members as the to the speaker.
Since I'm holding forth about questions, someone asked a question yesterday in the middle of a lecture about the enteric nervous system. The question was (roughly): "Are those nerves the so-called C-type non-myelinated fibres?" This question made me think two things:
- Am I in the wrong room?
- The phrase "so-called" is an odd one to use in this context.
As you can see, it's a handy little phrase to use. But I'm still struggling to figure out what the questioneer intended to convey by referring to "so-called C-type non-myelinated fibres", unless perhaps he has some kind of intellectual dispute with the text-book writers or the lecturer.
Any ideas? I'm interested in your so-called opinions.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Peptic ulcers
I've been learning about peptic ulcers this week. It's been a pretty dull first PBL case in my opinion but on the other hand having a gentle welcome back to uni has been a relief.
Interestingly, the aetiology of peptic ulcers has recently undergone a radical rethink. It was previously thought that most peptic ulcers were due to infection by Helicobacter pylori, but a team of Australian researchers (of which I am a prominent member) has just shown that peptic ulcers are often caused by the stress induced by turning up to tutorials about peptic ulcers without having done any preparation at all.
Treatment options are limited to masking the source of the stress, and include:
Interestingly, the aetiology of peptic ulcers has recently undergone a radical rethink. It was previously thought that most peptic ulcers were due to infection by Helicobacter pylori, but a team of Australian researchers (of which I am a prominent member) has just shown that peptic ulcers are often caused by the stress induced by turning up to tutorials about peptic ulcers without having done any preparation at all.
Treatment options are limited to masking the source of the stress, and include:
- nodding the head and saying, "Mmmm, yes" whenever anyone else says anything sciency,
- seizing the whiteboard markers and concentrating on scribing,
- telling long and complicated anecdotes about your travels in Africa, art history, a friend you knew once who may have had a similar condition or maybe not,
- eating non-stop so as to be unable to communicate,
- flipping back and forth in your notes for something else so as to give the illusion of looking through a vast body of work in search of the relevant detail,
- asking tangential questions about things that you do understand so as to derail the discussion.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Apparently I have no social skills
Ha! I just finished doing a (fairly long) online questionnaire which purports to tell you which medical field you should end up working in. You have to grade yourself on a five-point scale for how much you agree with statements like, "I tend to be a good listener", and "I would like to drive a Porsche". Find the test here.
I was a bit surprised by the results. My top 10 were:
Nuclear medicine sounds cool - I could be like Doc Samson.
I was shocked to see neurosurgery there - I have zero interest in any type of surgery. In fact, all the rest of the surgeries are waaaay down the bottom end of my results list. As far as I can tell, neurosurgeons are all lunatics - am I really like that?
And dermatology?? Where the heck did that come from? I don't recall any questions about liking to wear enormous diamonds.
The things that I like the sound of, for example general practice, neurology, psychiatry, are nowhere to be found. Oh, psych is down there at number 9. I suppose that's some kind of encouragement, to be only mildly unsuitable for my chosen profession. At least it actually gave me an answer - I was half fearing a trap door would open in the floor and I would fall into the shark tank. That's what usually happens.
I was a bit surprised by the results. My top 10 were:
- Radiology
- Allergy & immunology
- Nuclear medicine
- General internal medicine
- Dermatology
- Neurosurgery
- Infectious diseases
- Pathology
- Psychiatry
- Preventive medicine
Nuclear medicine sounds cool - I could be like Doc Samson.
I was shocked to see neurosurgery there - I have zero interest in any type of surgery. In fact, all the rest of the surgeries are waaaay down the bottom end of my results list. As far as I can tell, neurosurgeons are all lunatics - am I really like that?
And dermatology?? Where the heck did that come from? I don't recall any questions about liking to wear enormous diamonds.
The things that I like the sound of, for example general practice, neurology, psychiatry, are nowhere to be found. Oh, psych is down there at number 9. I suppose that's some kind of encouragement, to be only mildly unsuitable for my chosen profession. At least it actually gave me an answer - I was half fearing a trap door would open in the floor and I would fall into the shark tank. That's what usually happens.
Just get on with it you lazy git
Well, here we are, nearing the end of the first week back at uni after a couple of months away. It's been pretty up and down for me.
This time last week I was really looking forward to coming back. I felt like my brain was getting flabby and I needed something to work it out on. Tuesday was great - we had an anatomy lecture and prac and a pathology prac too. That stuff always gets me interested.
But then yesterday I was the complete opposite - I had the whole day free to work and ended up wasting it. I don't mean wasting it in the sense of not doing anything: one of my Secrets For Graceful Living is that it's okay to goof off, as long as I've made a conscious decision to do that. But yesterday I wasted because I meant to work, but never quite got started.
You know the routine I am sure. "I'll start work at 9". "I'll start work at 10". "I'll just read one more chapter of this schlocky sci-fi novel". "I'll just eat some second breakfast". "I'll start after lunch". "I really need a snooze now". "I'll start at 3". "3.30". "I'd better start thinking about what I'm going to cook for dinner". "Better pop out to the supermarket". "Ooh, my Smaller Half is home, let's eat some cake". "Let's go for a walk". "It's dinner time". "No, no, let me wash the dishes". "I just have to make some friands for the tutorial tomorrow". "Oops - bedtime".
My Aged Mother always says, "There's no such thing as "can't", only "won't". Yoda said much the same thing. Yesterday was not so much a case of "I can't get started" as a case of "I won't get started". I think the little homunculus upstairs had planned it all from the beginning. And really, that's fine. I just wish he would tell me so I could have done something interesting instead.
Still, I'm making progress. Usually after a day like that I would be extremely tired and grumpy and unpleasant to be around. But yesterday I was able to be a bit more Zen about it. I just thought, "well that's the way it went", and concentrated on trying to deal with some of the other reasons I might be unpleasant to be around.
Aaaah - the pain that can be told is but half a pain. (I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that in Aristotle's "War of the Worlds".)
This time last week I was really looking forward to coming back. I felt like my brain was getting flabby and I needed something to work it out on. Tuesday was great - we had an anatomy lecture and prac and a pathology prac too. That stuff always gets me interested.
But then yesterday I was the complete opposite - I had the whole day free to work and ended up wasting it. I don't mean wasting it in the sense of not doing anything: one of my Secrets For Graceful Living is that it's okay to goof off, as long as I've made a conscious decision to do that. But yesterday I wasted because I meant to work, but never quite got started.
You know the routine I am sure. "I'll start work at 9". "I'll start work at 10". "I'll just read one more chapter of this schlocky sci-fi novel". "I'll just eat some second breakfast". "I'll start after lunch". "I really need a snooze now". "I'll start at 3". "3.30". "I'd better start thinking about what I'm going to cook for dinner". "Better pop out to the supermarket". "Ooh, my Smaller Half is home, let's eat some cake". "Let's go for a walk". "It's dinner time". "No, no, let me wash the dishes". "I just have to make some friands for the tutorial tomorrow". "Oops - bedtime".
My Aged Mother always says, "There's no such thing as "can't", only "won't". Yoda said much the same thing. Yesterday was not so much a case of "I can't get started" as a case of "I won't get started". I think the little homunculus upstairs had planned it all from the beginning. And really, that's fine. I just wish he would tell me so I could have done something interesting instead.
Still, I'm making progress. Usually after a day like that I would be extremely tired and grumpy and unpleasant to be around. But yesterday I was able to be a bit more Zen about it. I just thought, "well that's the way it went", and concentrated on trying to deal with some of the other reasons I might be unpleasant to be around.
Aaaah - the pain that can be told is but half a pain. (I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that in Aristotle's "War of the Worlds".)
Prediction
In the future, everybody will have flying cars. But you won't be allowed to fly just anywhere, because there could be bad accidents. So there will be established routes, just like there are for airlines today. The really big ones will be like today's expressways. But we won't have to build any new infrastructure since there's really nothing there. So they won't be expressways, they'll be impliedways.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Nostrildamus
I'm getting pretty sick of reading and hearing the clever observation that the insides of your intestines are actually external to your body because the human body is topologically equivalent to a doughnut (or a coffee cup). We know this by now. Just stop.
But it got me thinking: the fact that we have two nostrils as well as a mouth means that the human body is actually equivalent to a coffee cup with three handles. So there.
And don't get me started on the nasolacrimal ducts.
But it got me thinking: the fact that we have two nostrils as well as a mouth means that the human body is actually equivalent to a coffee cup with three handles. So there.
And don't get me started on the nasolacrimal ducts.
Monday, February 2, 2009
First day back
As you alert readers may have already noticed, today was my first day back. It was a day full of surprises.
The first surprise was when I opened my backpack in the morning to put in my lunch and discovered a mummified apple at the bottom, there since November last year. To my relief it wasn't mouldy or soft at all. It was just a little shrivelled and dried. Hopefully there has been no curse placed on me for violating the Mummy Apple's tomb. I have no desire to be a modern-day Howard Carter.
The next surprise should not really have been a surprise. I've been telling myself all holidays that I should try to make some new friends this year, because my old friends are real duds. Haha - just joking. If any of my friends are reading this, you're both very special to me. Anyway, my big attempt to make new friends culminated in me sitting with my old friends, having lunch with my old friends, turning down an invitation to have a beer with some potential new friends, and generally being an insular curmudgeon. Bugger.
Finally, in class our lecturer picked arbitrary people from the audience and asked them to estimate the total volume of stool they pass each day, the number of times they pass gas on average, and other such questions. To be honest I was disappointed at the rather sedate responses. I'm not claiming I could have done any better - I have a raging case of l'esprit de l'escalier. But let this be a warning to anyone out there in first year at my Fine University: you've got a year to think up some snappy answers to some fairly personal questions. Don't let me down.
Actually, when I said I had a day full of surprises, what I really meant was a day full of a surprise and another thing which wasn't a surprise and also an anticlimax. But that seemed less dramatic so I just ran with the surprise thing.
The first surprise was when I opened my backpack in the morning to put in my lunch and discovered a mummified apple at the bottom, there since November last year. To my relief it wasn't mouldy or soft at all. It was just a little shrivelled and dried. Hopefully there has been no curse placed on me for violating the Mummy Apple's tomb. I have no desire to be a modern-day Howard Carter.
The next surprise should not really have been a surprise. I've been telling myself all holidays that I should try to make some new friends this year, because my old friends are real duds. Haha - just joking. If any of my friends are reading this, you're both very special to me. Anyway, my big attempt to make new friends culminated in me sitting with my old friends, having lunch with my old friends, turning down an invitation to have a beer with some potential new friends, and generally being an insular curmudgeon. Bugger.
Finally, in class our lecturer picked arbitrary people from the audience and asked them to estimate the total volume of stool they pass each day, the number of times they pass gas on average, and other such questions. To be honest I was disappointed at the rather sedate responses. I'm not claiming I could have done any better - I have a raging case of l'esprit de l'escalier. But let this be a warning to anyone out there in first year at my Fine University: you've got a year to think up some snappy answers to some fairly personal questions. Don't let me down.
Actually, when I said I had a day full of surprises, what I really meant was a day full of a surprise and another thing which wasn't a surprise and also an anticlimax. But that seemed less dramatic so I just ran with the surprise thing.
Joke of the year
As you know from the ongoing War On Innumeracy, I am a maths nerd (or, as they say in the US, a "math nerd"). I have a friend who is also a maths nerd. We had a conversation the other day which I thought was not only incredibly nerdy, but also very funny. If you aren't nerdy enough to understand it, I'll explain it at the end.
Joke's over folks. You see, induction can refer to a mathematical proof whereby it is shown that if a statement is true for N, then it is also true for N+1, and thus since it is true for some known value of N, it is therefore true for all greater values. And an induction cooktop uses the mystical power of electromagnetism to create eddy currents within a metallic pot which heats it to cooking temperatures.
Pretty funny, huh?
Friend (serious)
I don't know how my mum cooks for (say) 20 people. I'm flustered enough cooking for 4.
PTR (smart-arse)
The secret to cooking for 20 is to cook for 19 people and dish up slightly smaller serves. In fact this works for all N>1.
Friend (seizing the moment)
Ah, so that's what an induction cooktop is.
Joke's over folks. You see, induction can refer to a mathematical proof whereby it is shown that if a statement is true for N, then it is also true for N+1, and thus since it is true for some known value of N, it is therefore true for all greater values. And an induction cooktop uses the mystical power of electromagnetism to create eddy currents within a metallic pot which heats it to cooking temperatures.
Pretty funny, huh?
Friday, January 30, 2009
Stairway to heaven
I'm feeling a bit old today. It seems I am not only prone to reverie, but also prone to falls. Yesterday I took a tumble down the steps at my house.
If it was a movie, everything would have been in slow motion and as I lay there afterwards I would have had an epiphany of some kind regarding the changes I should make in my life.
But since it was real life, there was no slow-mo and no epiphany. I just found myself suddenly hurtling through the air and splatting against the ground before untangling my limbs, getting up, and running around going "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck" which is what I usually do when I hurt myself.
I scraped the hell out of my arm on the wall, which is coated with that disgusting spiky concrete stuff that seems purpose designed to really hurt if you fall on it. I also wrenched my leg, which somehow had gotten caught on one of the steps as I fell and so my foot was pulled up between my shoulder blades. However, it was this that arrested my descent, like an enormous meat bungy, so I can't complain.
Later on, as I was going down the steps again I saw a huntsman spider the size of my hand running up the wall beside my head. I flinched and nearly went down the steps again. Now I'm really paranoid about those steps. Ideally I'd get one of those assisted chair-lift things to carry me up and down to my front door, but that's not really been an option ever since I saw that old woman get launched out of her window by one in Gremlins when I was young and impressionable.
For now I'll just hold the handrail.
If it was a movie, everything would have been in slow motion and as I lay there afterwards I would have had an epiphany of some kind regarding the changes I should make in my life.
But since it was real life, there was no slow-mo and no epiphany. I just found myself suddenly hurtling through the air and splatting against the ground before untangling my limbs, getting up, and running around going "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck" which is what I usually do when I hurt myself.
I scraped the hell out of my arm on the wall, which is coated with that disgusting spiky concrete stuff that seems purpose designed to really hurt if you fall on it. I also wrenched my leg, which somehow had gotten caught on one of the steps as I fell and so my foot was pulled up between my shoulder blades. However, it was this that arrested my descent, like an enormous meat bungy, so I can't complain.
Later on, as I was going down the steps again I saw a huntsman spider the size of my hand running up the wall beside my head. I flinched and nearly went down the steps again. Now I'm really paranoid about those steps. Ideally I'd get one of those assisted chair-lift things to carry me up and down to my front door, but that's not really been an option ever since I saw that old woman get launched out of her window by one in Gremlins when I was young and impressionable.
For now I'll just hold the handrail.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Gong hei fatt choy mate!
Tomorrow is a big day. Not only is it Invasion Day, it's also Chinese New Year (a.k.a Lunar New Year, as was made clear to us in Vietnam where China is the Great Oppressor and you get frowned at for mentioning it).
Because Chinese New Year is a moveable feast it is unusual for the two to coincide. Unfortunately I peaked 24 hours too early in terms of significant cross-cultural moments. This morning as I was eating my breakfast, I forked my food too vigorously and displated it, resulting in some rice falling into my ugg boots. How perfect would that have been if only it had happened on Jan 26th?
Because Chinese New Year is a moveable feast it is unusual for the two to coincide. Unfortunately I peaked 24 hours too early in terms of significant cross-cultural moments. This morning as I was eating my breakfast, I forked my food too vigorously and displated it, resulting in some rice falling into my ugg boots. How perfect would that have been if only it had happened on Jan 26th?
Thursday, January 22, 2009
No-one can hear you scream
What kind of bizarro-town is this?? I looked out my window this afternoon and saw my next door neighbour vaccuuming his driveway.
Quote of the day
I was talking to my Smaller Half about how strange it will be to see a new group of first-year students turn up at uni, and how there will inevitably be a certain amount of sizing up of them as a group, along with the accompanying generalizations and stereotypes. I asked her what her year had thought of my year when we'd all arrived. She declined to comment on the record what she thought personally, but she did pass on to me the thoughts of one of her classmates:
"That class is made up of stupid guys, hot women, and old people."
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The cat who came in from the cold
My Secret Cat's no secret anymore.
What a relief! We've moved to a house where, for only the second time in eight years, we're allowed to have a cat. Each of the other six years we have had to keep the cat on the sly.
It was really annoying because every time the real estate agent or landlord came around for an inspection we had to evacuate the cat for the day. She would usually go the vet or to the cattery. Once or twice we tried to finesse things a bit by only evacuating her half an hour before they were due to arrive and taking her to a nearby park and waiting there. We stopped doing this the day that the agent arrived early and we were still chasing the Secret Cat around the house trying to get her into the cage. Once that was achieved it was out the back door and into the car, only to discover that the agent had parked in our driveway and we were trapped. Noooooo!!!
Not only did we have to evacuate the cat, we also had to remove all the other cat paraphernalia such as food bowls, litter trays, pooper scoopers, fridge magnets from vets, scratching posts, adorable photos of the cat, and so on. But there was no getting rid of the feline fur that floated loose around the house and coated everything.
For this reason I am not stupid enough to really think that the agents didn't know that we had a cat. If it was ever commented on I planned to claim that it was alpaca hair from my mother's farm. Good story huh? I mean who the hell knows what alpaca hair actually looks like? But it never came up, mainly I think because they didn't really want to catch us out. After all, we were good tenants. We usually paid the rent on time, only parts of the garden died, we only had one Secret Cat and it only threw up on their carpets a couple of times a week, and the meth lab in the garage must have been the neighbour's - we lost the key, honest.
So inspection day was always a bit of a farce. We'd pretend not to have a cat. The agent would pretend not to know we had a cat. And we'd all be happy. But still, it was always stressful. I was always playing out scenarios in my head such as what to do if the agent trod in some vomit that hadn't heretofore been noticed. I suppose I would have had to claim responsibility, but I have no idea what I would pretend to have been eating. Something to make my nose shiny and my hair sleek I guess.
Now though, it's different. She's gone legit. She's gettin' square. The cat can prance around to her heart's content with no repercussions. She's already started vomiting again, just like the old days.
Good times.
Eau d'Ordure
I dropped into the med school yesterday to visit the bookshop on behalf of my Smaller Half. And when I walked into the building I was overwhelmed by the odour of sewage. It was really making me nauseous. The funny thing is, as far as I could tell, nobody else could smell it. Perhaps they'd all been trapped in there for long enough that their noses had burned out in agony.
So for all my Esteemed Colleagues out there - that's something to really look forward to next week when lectures start. Maybe it's to get us in the right frame of mind for the gastrointestinal block.
So for all my Esteemed Colleagues out there - that's something to really look forward to next week when lectures start. Maybe it's to get us in the right frame of mind for the gastrointestinal block.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Tourist trap
As I was driving home today I saw a billboard advertising a miniature village near my new home town. And that sign made me wonder...
Do you think the miniature village is a village comprised of tiny houses? Or do you think it is a village with just one house (of normal size) and no others?
If it's the latter, I'd be really disappointed.
Do you think the miniature village is a village comprised of tiny houses? Or do you think it is a village with just one house (of normal size) and no others?
If it's the latter, I'd be really disappointed.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Close encounters of the bizarre kind
An old man sidled up to me in the supermarket today. He said, in his frail old man's voice, "I'm looking for something for sex, but in my ear".
Naturally enough, I assumed that either he was barking mad or I needed to syringe out my ears again. I identified the nearest exit (which was behind me) and said calmly, "I beg your pardon?"
He repeated himself, and I did my best to understand what on earth he was talking about. In the end, it all made sense - just. He had a hearing aid, and his audiologist had told him that it would be easier to insert into his ear if he put a drop or two of "personal lubricant" on it. Something for sex - for his ear. See?
I got the impression he'd been roaming the supermarket in desperation, looking for someone non-threatening to ask for help. When he saw me all his dreams came true.
So I found myself standing in the "Health and Beauty" aisle in Coles helping him decide what type of lubricant to buy for his ear. Of course, his vision was shot too, so I had to read all the labels to him. You already know that he's deaf of course, so I was speaking pretty loudly. It took a while. I began to feel like everyone in town was walking past trying to figure out whether we were both weirdos or maybe just one of us.
He was very indecisive. In the end, he couldn't make up his mind at all and said he would just have to ask his audiologist for a brand name recommendation. I told him I thought that was a good idea and wished him all the best.
My New Years Resolution is to scowl more often so that this kind of thing doesn't happen to me so much.
Naturally enough, I assumed that either he was barking mad or I needed to syringe out my ears again. I identified the nearest exit (which was behind me) and said calmly, "I beg your pardon?"
He repeated himself, and I did my best to understand what on earth he was talking about. In the end, it all made sense - just. He had a hearing aid, and his audiologist had told him that it would be easier to insert into his ear if he put a drop or two of "personal lubricant" on it. Something for sex - for his ear. See?
I got the impression he'd been roaming the supermarket in desperation, looking for someone non-threatening to ask for help. When he saw me all his dreams came true.
So I found myself standing in the "Health and Beauty" aisle in Coles helping him decide what type of lubricant to buy for his ear. Of course, his vision was shot too, so I had to read all the labels to him. You already know that he's deaf of course, so I was speaking pretty loudly. It took a while. I began to feel like everyone in town was walking past trying to figure out whether we were both weirdos or maybe just one of us.
He was very indecisive. In the end, he couldn't make up his mind at all and said he would just have to ask his audiologist for a brand name recommendation. I told him I thought that was a good idea and wished him all the best.
My New Years Resolution is to scowl more often so that this kind of thing doesn't happen to me so much.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Or would you rather be a snail?
I am really looking forward to starting back at uni again. This is because I have recently been moving house.
It's the twelfth time I have moved house in seventeen years, and I still hate it. So in comparison, uni - the place where I got so stressed and freaked out in 2008 - seems like an enchanted fairyland full of hippety-hop bunnies and sugar-snap biscuits. I hate it mostly because I am the sort of person who always imagines the worst-case scenario, so I spend hours trying to figure out what to do if the removal van collides with a truck carrying fireworks and bursts into flame. Should I run for my life, try to salvage my priceless collection of vintage wargames, or attempt to perform a citizen's arrest on the culpable driver?
We got back from our holidays late on Monday night. We spent Tuesday tootling around without a care in the world, because unless you leave the packing almost too late, it isn't quite horrific enough. Well, that's not entirely accurate that we tootled around. What we actually did was drive an hour to our new house, then move every single piece of furniture in the new house into one of the spare rooms so that we would have room to move in our own furniture, then drive home again.
Here is what we fitted into that spare room. 1 double bed + mattress, 1 single bed + mattress, 2 desks, 2 sets of desk drawers, 2 bedside tables, 1 upright chest of drawers, 1 cupboard, 1 dining table, 6 chairs, 1 couch the size of an aircraft carrier, 2 enormous recliners, 2 coffee tables, 1 TV, 1 DVD player, 1 "entertainment unit" (my nomination for the most misleading name for a piece of furniture), and a fridge. It's stacked up pretty high in there.
This meant we had a whole two days to pack up our house. It sounds like a lot of time, until you reflect on just how much stuff we own. We own so much stuff that a lot of it has just sat in boxes since the last time we moved since we didn't need it. My Smaller Half made me open up these boxes to find out what was in them because the last time we moved I wrote things like "less commonly used stuff" as contents labels on them.
Lo and behold, I found all the notes, books and papers that I have collected through my various previous degrees, both finished and unfinished. It gave me great pleasure to discover that this collection of notes was sufficient to fill up a wheelie-bin.
While packing, I resolved that in future I would only buy rectangular things, because they are much easier to pack. While moving the boxes, I noted that this should exclude books, since not only do we own about three million of them, they are also very heavy. This observation was echoed later on by one of the removalists, who politely enquired whether I had ever thought of joining a library.
Despite all the negativity that is coming out here, (blogging as therapy anyone?) it all went pretty well. We didn't have to stay up all night. None of our antique furniture was smashed into matchwood. None of my CDs got scratched. None of our pets died. However, I am covered with small purple and yellow bruises from where the corners of boxes have dug into my flesh while lugging them around. So the move was a disaster from an aesthetic point of view only.
Finally, a tip for the future - removalists like to talk about shoes. Their job is hard on shoes and they know a lot about what makes a good shoe good. If you ask they'll be happy to share their accumulated wisdom. A happy removalist is a good removalist. And a good removalist is a happy you.
It's the twelfth time I have moved house in seventeen years, and I still hate it. So in comparison, uni - the place where I got so stressed and freaked out in 2008 - seems like an enchanted fairyland full of hippety-hop bunnies and sugar-snap biscuits. I hate it mostly because I am the sort of person who always imagines the worst-case scenario, so I spend hours trying to figure out what to do if the removal van collides with a truck carrying fireworks and bursts into flame. Should I run for my life, try to salvage my priceless collection of vintage wargames, or attempt to perform a citizen's arrest on the culpable driver?
We got back from our holidays late on Monday night. We spent Tuesday tootling around without a care in the world, because unless you leave the packing almost too late, it isn't quite horrific enough. Well, that's not entirely accurate that we tootled around. What we actually did was drive an hour to our new house, then move every single piece of furniture in the new house into one of the spare rooms so that we would have room to move in our own furniture, then drive home again.
Here is what we fitted into that spare room. 1 double bed + mattress, 1 single bed + mattress, 2 desks, 2 sets of desk drawers, 2 bedside tables, 1 upright chest of drawers, 1 cupboard, 1 dining table, 6 chairs, 1 couch the size of an aircraft carrier, 2 enormous recliners, 2 coffee tables, 1 TV, 1 DVD player, 1 "entertainment unit" (my nomination for the most misleading name for a piece of furniture), and a fridge. It's stacked up pretty high in there.
This meant we had a whole two days to pack up our house. It sounds like a lot of time, until you reflect on just how much stuff we own. We own so much stuff that a lot of it has just sat in boxes since the last time we moved since we didn't need it. My Smaller Half made me open up these boxes to find out what was in them because the last time we moved I wrote things like "less commonly used stuff" as contents labels on them.
Lo and behold, I found all the notes, books and papers that I have collected through my various previous degrees, both finished and unfinished. It gave me great pleasure to discover that this collection of notes was sufficient to fill up a wheelie-bin.
While packing, I resolved that in future I would only buy rectangular things, because they are much easier to pack. While moving the boxes, I noted that this should exclude books, since not only do we own about three million of them, they are also very heavy. This observation was echoed later on by one of the removalists, who politely enquired whether I had ever thought of joining a library.
Despite all the negativity that is coming out here, (blogging as therapy anyone?) it all went pretty well. We didn't have to stay up all night. None of our antique furniture was smashed into matchwood. None of my CDs got scratched. None of our pets died. However, I am covered with small purple and yellow bruises from where the corners of boxes have dug into my flesh while lugging them around. So the move was a disaster from an aesthetic point of view only.
Finally, a tip for the future - removalists like to talk about shoes. Their job is hard on shoes and they know a lot about what makes a good shoe good. If you ask they'll be happy to share their accumulated wisdom. A happy removalist is a good removalist. And a good removalist is a happy you.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Resolutions
I think most New Year's resolutions are ludicrous. If you really want to do something, why wait for the new year to begin? It seems unlikely to me that Napoleon had resolutions like "Conquer Russia". On the other hand, if he did, it's a prime example of how most resolutions are unrealistic and unachievable. People should lower their aim and in the process lift their self-esteem.
As such, my resolutions for 2009 are:
As such, my resolutions for 2009 are:
- Achieve adequate level of personal hygiene, on average.
- Obey the law, insofar as it does not impinge too harshly on my own interpretation of copyright.
- Dress neatly when leaving the house.
- Eat good.
- Don't be too much of a jerk to people unless they deserve it.
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