Monday, February 13, 2012

Ventilate and inspirate

No, they're not related. Yes, I know it's not a word.

I definitely lost any 'blogging mojo' a bit back there, somehow I felt it was all pointless - with the advent of Facebook and given how addictive it is - why painstackingly post pictures and write lengthy descriptive paragraphs when a few clicks will give me more likes and comments? Fine I'll admit I'm superficial like that. Responses from an 'audience' - it just feels good when people take interest in your comings and goings, even if the 'like' is merely following a fleeting glance and a moment's amusement, to be forgotten forever in a second.

Damn that sounds shallow.

So perhaps now I will blog for the sake of it, even if no one reads or comments. This shall be the first step in mastering the art of Not Giving A Fuck. Or further honing of self-righteous pompousness. Whatever.

Okay so there is a reason behind this sudden and unexpected post. To put it simply, I have a few reports to write and it's stressing the hell outta me. I thought a little venting would help. It usually does.

It's eerily uncharacteristic though. I definitely haven't made it this far into medical school without writing a few scrummy reports. Yet why has this ordinary task bothered me to the point of snapping out of a blogging stupor?

The answer is simple my friend. (Oh great now I'm talking to myself.) You've just been lazy. I've been lazy. Incredibly lazy. After the last frenzied exam season and starting on this pseudomedicine called psychiatry, I may have lost a bit more overall motivation than I normally do in the relaxednoexam--->stressedexam cycle I've been living for over a decade.

And now, thrust into Old Age medicine and needing to write - well, passable reports, I think I've hit a brick wall. It's like trying to go from nought to a hundred on a rickety manual car and then killing the engine.

I just need to get back on track I suppose. There's just many factors that pile on the stressors, stuff I won't go into detail simply because there is no need to. Besides I feel better already.

Hmm I should write more. I've forgotten how strangely therapeutic it could be.

Perhaps this is a good time and place to have a picture dump. Just because.

Oh yes. Snow. The recent big thing. But seriously, February? And I had to wait a full year to get my first sight of snow (while my juniors got it 3 weeks in - where is the justice?) But anyway. It was exactly like how it's been described. Pretty, glittery, cold, wet, slippery. I built a snowman (more like a snowpile) and threw some snowballs. That's one off my provisional (aka not yet existent) bucket list.

Did make for some pretty pictures, though.

My parents came recently for work purposes and we spent a few hours in York, an absolutely pretty city up north. This is the Yorkminster, trademark massive church of York.

But perhaps even more 'trademark' would be the walls of York, a battle frontier functional several hundred years ago. (I seem to have a thing for tilting my pictures.) York is also famous for its tea rooms, particularly this one called Betty's, which had a queue snaking out of its doors the entire time we were there. Needless to say, we passed it up.

Somewhere alone a quaint stone-paved street, a little Harry Potter themed play was being filmed. They'd even got Dementors. Onlooking muggles gawked at the colourful display of dark robes and delighted smiles and childrens' faces.

Guess who? :)

Dropped by London for a few days after the new year began, on a whim. Met an old friend and yet another superb host. Spent most of the time wandering around Chinatown and eating Chinese food, being so anything-oriental deprived in the east midlands. I used to assume there were lots of east asians in the UK, but outside London that isn't really true.

I also used to rank Korean food as rather low on my list of favourite cuisines, but this spicy-tofu-seafood (still a newb at food names here) dish bumped it up a few spots.

Going in reverse order now. This was a Christmas market in Nottingham - relatively small but had all the atmosphere one needed.

I also discovered roasted chestnuts here - where have you been all my life?

Christmas Day was spent in Boston, Lincolnshire with a bunch of mostly IMU seniors. It was like the good old days. I whipped up a not-so-little Christmas dinner a few weeks before - this homemade fruitcake being one of the highlights. I've still got the crumbs.

I'm still cooking, just taking far less pictures than usual. I did say I was lazy.

Made lomaikai during one of my sudden chinese-food cravings. Dimsum was one of the many things I'd only sampled after leaving Kuching for KL - those three and a half years in the capital really broadened my culinary horizons and made me realize how sheltered my tastes were.

If you've not discovered eggs in a basket, well - you should.

Sleep beckons. Hope I fare better tomorrow.

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Imminent.

It's that time of the year again. It's been a fairly good year to me, though really I'm fortunate enough not to have had a truly disastrous year. Came to the UK and adapted to a new life pretty well. I suppose I should be grateful for my well-functioning Darwin-esque coping mechanism.

The UK has been a lot of things, many of which I never expected, but that's a post for another day.
School has been well....school (I still call it 'school' out of habit), still within the endless mantra of slack-study-exams. Just come off the exams bit in November and still comfortably in the slack part, but hey it's Christmas/New Year. However I do know I am inching closer towards this thing called completion and graduation. Just well..bloody Psych to tackle. And some more.

We're at these stages of life. I never realized it, yet I did all along. Many of my non-5-year-critical-course friends have graduated and are working. Some are attached, some are not. There seems to be a spree of engagement proposals amongst the mid-twenties people and it hit me that in about 5 years or less it would happen to us, the 1989ers.

Getting to Uni, graduating from Uni, entering the workforce, getting married, having kids. I'm just at that point where each and every single one of these things are inevitable (though am thankfully(??) still stuck at the first part). It will happen. I know it, but it still amazes me that the past 6 years or so has gone the way it has, and that I'm no longer 16 without a care in the world (except SPM).

Sometimes I think about the future. But it's all so big, so rife with uncertainties that I revert back to my old 'deal with the present' and 'cross the bridge when I get there' mantra. I have a sort of idea of what I'd like my future to be, but I'm taking that as a huge bucketful of salt, because well, no one knows what the future'll be like.

I know I'm sounding like a misty-eyed Doc Brown going the future....I can tell you all about the future....but truth is I just woke up to a cloudy New Year's Eve feeling...odd. So I opened a new tab and rambled. No plans for anything tonight. I remember what I was doing last year. I was at my dad's friends place drinking wine and eating peanuts. Frankly the countdown was a little anticlimatic, but aren't they all?

Happy New Year for now.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

What the fog?

Woke up to a nice visibility of 50m on a chilly Sunday morning.

It's coming. Winter.

I'd been feeling rather blues-y the past week or so. I put it down to exam stress and the weather (dark by 4.30pm and cloudy 6 days a week) and it didn't help that the Aussie people had just finished exams and were homebound and my Facebook feed was full of airport check-ins and mobile uploads of family reunions.
For a while I hated being here. Hated the weather, the distance, the people, the food, everything. I missed home and everything missable about it.

This morning I had an early squash game with one of my squash buddies. On the way I enjoyed breathing mist and watching it linger for longer than normal. We had a good game.

Yesterday I had a massive urge to make a Christmas cake. What.

It's always during exams when you have the insatiable urge to do random things, then think 'ok I'll do this after exams' and never do it after exams.

Like my sudden longing for all things Christmas and TV-series-neutral me developing a sudden interest in Scrubs, TBBT and HIMYM.

In a way I'm quite glad it's foggy and not sunny today. Sunny days make me want to go out and bask in the rays. I need to be indoors and processing important information and this weather is perfect for just that.

I'm suddenly quite thankful to be able to spend my first very possibly white Christmas in the UK. All I need to do is get exams out of the way.




And you know it's autumn when you have to bring out the bright fuzzy orange poundstore gloves. (And please, if you're not in good ol' pizza-is-a-vegetable 'Merica, don't call it 'fall'.)

Haven't taken food pics in the longest time, but did remember to snap what's left of the pumpkin pie I made yesterday. Well actually I used squash, pumpkin's phallic cousin. Formula for filling - mashed pumpkin:cream cheese:sugar = 1:1:0.5cups. Throw in 3 eggs and a pinch of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg and mixed spice are perfect).

Exams in T-7.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Times like these

When it's less than 2 weeks to exams, you're crammed and saturated and blur with all the things you need to study, the weather's crap and you suddenly miss things like home and family and when it doesn't help that your Facebook news feed is full of happy celebrating home-bound post-exam friends and I'm stuck here knowing I should be studying but feeling like baking pies and eating said pies while watching TBBT and feeling terrible for not studying.

I'm no big bible quoter (or bible belt for that matter) but there's this chapter in Eccesiastes about there being a time for everything and I really do believe it's a gem of wisdom. It's how I get through times like these, and being away from those I hold dear for such long periods.

1 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

A time for stress and a time for fun

A time for exams and a time for none

A time for studying and a time for random internet surfing

A time for home and a time for being away from it

A time for reunion and a time for separation

A time for kolo mee and belacan beehon and a time for...none

A time for east-bound flights and a time for the opposite

A time for sweltering heat and humidity and a time for dreary cold

A time for hugs and a time for making do with skype conversations


I'll survive. I always have, and will.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

incompatible

You just know when there's that chemistry, and when there isn't.

I'm just too elitist for my own fucking good.

Friday, October 21, 2011

What looking up fish recipes led me to.

I don't really care much for all that hipster vegan stuff, but running out of fish in my lifetime? That's a bit hard to swallow.


(inb4 American consumerism problem, rest of sane sensible world need not apply)

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Poor you.


Sad giraffe is sad.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Pale Stools

tfaduh:
One of my patients had twins
and called them
Billy and Rubin
Guess what off? ;p

Faye Anne Lim:
what

tfaduh:
bilirubin
-_-

Faye Anne Lim:
omgggggggggggggggggggg
you are kidding me right

tfaduh:
Nop
I was the one
who told her her bilirubin count was ok
she was like
ok
That sounds quite interesting
I'll call them Billy and Rubin

Faye Anne Lim:
trolololololololol

tfaduh:
Yeh.
True story bro.

Faye Anne Lim:
lolllllllllll
when they find out...
theyll shit...pale stools
XD

Saturday, October 8, 2011

I'm reminded why I always hung out with guys.

cat·ty

1 [kat-ee] Show IPA
adjective, -ti·er, -ti·est.
1.
catlike; feline.
2.
slyly malicious; spiteful: a catty gossip.


2. mean, nasty, malevolent; bitchy.


Feeling like you're constantly walking in a minefield. It gets tiring, not to mention old.


Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Medicine is full of anecdotes.

'In the States, condoms used to be marketed as small medium and large. But no one bought small or medium and everyone went for large. So now they're sold as large, extra large and jumbo! True story.'

So said the surgeon as he carefully did a knife cone biopsy on a 28 year old with CIN1 cervical carcinoma. She was engaged but got dumped by her fiance when he found out she had cancer.

Those two things are unrelated, but still life goes on.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

I don't normally have celebrity crushes...


.....but when I do, it's on these middle-aged druggie rocker uncles who've been around way before I was born. (I'm not going to even include Josh in here - with all due respect he's a great guitarist and musician but sometimes I feel he was given the wrong memo and replaced the wrong John - Frusicante instead of Mayer.)

I can't quite understand it either - these guys are nearly my parents' age and probably been high more times than they've worn shirts. But listening to their stuff I get the high you only get with Very Good Music, and I'm not even a fan of funk. I've listened to Under The Bridge and Don't Forget Me and Can't Stop a million times and will play them another million times gladly. Their music is so awesome it doesn't matter most of their lyrics don't mean shit.

While I'm not too fond of Rain Dance Maggie and honestly think 'I'm With You' is a boring name for any album (but I've a few faves in there) I'm glad they're back and if you never saw them, you wouldn't think they'd aged at all.

Stuff I can't get over (aka fangirl raving)
-Flea's hair colours
-the way Anthony does that swirl/spin crazy dance on stage
-the orgasmic look John has on his face when he's doing a solo
-the way they were so drugged up before shows in the old days
-Anthony's circa mid-2000s look (totally not digging the current Hitler/70s porn star look)
-Flea's tooth gap
-Anthony's voice - always spot on live
-how their live shows are all so awesome
-when John and Flea jam solos for a few minutes before getting on to intro riffs
-the quirkiness and funkiness of everything from their music vids to 80s interviews
-the way Taira from Beck (my most favourite anime of all time) was essentially modelled after Flea

They'll be performing around the midlands mid November ie one week before my paeds and O&G exams, so I'll be a good girl and not spend over 50 quid and go to Manchester on a Tuesday evening and be contented with watching Youtube videos of their live shows. *sob* I only hope they don't do a Kurt Cobain/Amy Winehouse before I get to see them live.

Oh and if Flea looks familiar, it's because he was Needles in Back to the Future 2. Genius bassist and not afraid to call you 'chicken'. Yeah.

And I'll never get to see him live with the Peppers. T_T

Monday, September 19, 2011

Somewhere at the back of my mind

I always knew I wasn't good with kids. I couldn't do all that cooing and baby talk and 'eeee so cuteeeee' gushing that most girls seem to emit whenever they see a baby, cute or otherwise. (Personally, when I see a baby all I can think of is labour pains, sleepless nights, mess and disorder, expen$e$ and the aloof ungrateful teenagers they will eventually become.)

I also knew that marriage and family was something way ahead. Too distant in the future to warrant my worrying about now at the present moment, not when there are more pressing things like exams to worry about. I accepted the fact that I would eventually marry, settle down and have kids one day, but barely dwelled on it at all. It's sort of like how when you're in primary school, you know after UPSR comes PMR and SPM, but who thinks of SPM when they're in Primary 4?

And I knew that one day my apprehension towards kids would slowly melt away and with age, I would become like any estrogen-surged woman with unrestrained maternal urges and the womanly ability to speak kiddie. I always had the idea that in about 10 years maybe, when I'm fully and truly comfortable with my career and financially stable, I'd wake up one day and decide to stop being a dink I want to have a family. (Unnecessary opinion: I always believed the right age to marry would be after at least two years of working and being financially independent. If I can't fund my own wedding I have no business getting married.)

Doing paeds for the past 10 weeks have brought that day a little closer, perhaps. Not saying I'm suddenly all mummy-mode; I just feel more understanding towards children and less likely to avoid them with a ten foot pole when I see them, which is an improvement I suppose. I have a feeling obs and gynae will complement that change in perception.

Today was the first day of O&G and we were bombarded (and will be for the next two days) on the basics and essentials of the entire specialty (aka why I should really be studying). We were shown some videos on labour and childbirth. I think I may have teared a little.

It'll be interesting to see where the next 10 weeks bring me (apart from Derby, duh.)

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Finally the room






It's smaller but warmer, older but cosier. A single bed replacing a double but I like it better. Plus it's always nice to wake up and come home to friendly greetings. (Not that they were hostile in the old place; we just kept to ourselves more.)

I like it here.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Food=dump




Because sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm not a complete banana. Btw, I sucked at calligraphy in SJK(C).

Because I like to state the obvious.

Because I like to attempt mad feats - such as the kek lapis trial run for the raya celebrations (ended up bringing a cheesecake - far less work.)



Because cooking chinese style every day can be so boring.

Wish me luck for the OSLERs on Wednesday! (yes all you 5 readers)