work and how it never seems to end

Worry walks beside me

2011-12-28T22:27:00.000-08:00

I'll be doing fine, if you just leave me behind

What will it take, to believe I can run

Yet another one of those songs which makes your chest hurt almost physically. The kind that makes you feel like it was written just for you and if it's late enough at night, worth listening to on loop.

Delusional Letter to Inanimate Object #23682

2011-12-27T17:09:00.000-08:00

Dear Coffee,

We go back a long way, don't we? Ours was an arranged love. My mom introduced you to me when I was at that young, impressionable age. God knows what she was thinking, but I haven't been able to stay away from you ever since. You were hot and black and sweet; the three things I can never resist.

Remember my a levels exams, honey? It was just you and me and a whole lotta modules. You kept me company so well for that one month and stained my teeth so badly that when I visited my dentist after exams, he asked me if I had started smoking.

Granted, there has been brief periods of infidelity in this delicious relationship we share, mostly on my part with other beverages like tea, milo, but I always came back to you. You drive me crazy with energy, literally.

Anyway, I think we need to talk. Recently, things have been getting a bit intense between us. This is moving too fast than I'm comfortable with. Yesterday I succumbed to your temptation 4 times. That's 4 mugs of coffee a day. It's not you, it's me. It's time we take a break from each other. I would say, 'let's just be friends', but you and I know that that's just not possible. You deserve better than me. I love you, but I'm not in love with you.

I'm dumping you cold turkey, coffee, and it's making my soul bleed.

Now excuse me while I go sniff the nescafe jar from a distance.

5 years and counting

2011-12-27T12:38:00.000-08:00

I came across this online back in 2007. This song never fails to depress me beyond belief and yet I enjoy it so much. What's worse is that I'm not sure why exactly it makes me feel so blue.

All the songs that make me sad are either related to my childhood or to ex-boyfriends. This has absolutely nothing to do with both.

Anyway, it's become one of those few songs that I've listened to constantly over the years. Not often, but regularly enough that I've memorized the entire thing. Lyrics and all too, even though I don't know the meaning of any word other than "nandri". It's become one of those special songs I listen to in my head.

Not a fan of the video from the movie when the song was played, hence this vid..

heaven is a place on earth with you

2011-12-25T18:51:00.000-08:00

heaven is a place on earth with you,

tell me all the things you want to do,

i heard that you like the bad girls,

honey, is that true

Sunshine here I come!

2011-12-23T16:14:00.000-08:00

Malaga

I am so excited I just spontaneously broke into sweat! Who knew that's even possible?!

2011-12-22T18:11:00.000-08:00

Dear Self,

Why are you doing this to yourself? Why do you spend the day dawdling away, wasting time, then panic after midnight that you haven't studied? Why are you being so self destructive? Why can't you get it into your dense head that the exam is 2 weeks away, you have not even practiced any physical examination skills, you haven't even started on the questions, you haven't even finished half the lectures, and yet you can waste time? What is wrong with you? Do you want to fail?

Self.

Girl in need of Sambal

2011-12-21T18:30:00.000-08:00

Dear nasi lemak Uncle,

You were the reason I passed my phase 1 exam back in msia earlier this year. Thanks to my hedonism during 2009 and 2010, I had major catching up to do. I had to do daily all-nighters and my pain was getting out of control, until I met you and your food.

The only thing that pulled me through those long, dark and lonely nights were the thought of the impending morning and the sweet taste of your spicy sambal that came with the rising of dawn. The crispy anchovies you (or your slave) fried to golden perfection, the cucumbers sliced in different sizes so that I as the first customer could choose all the large pieces for myself. Even the boiled egg in the tupperware; I used to dig out the yolk and take only the whites right in front of your eyes in the very tupperware that you sold them in, and you never said a word of admonition for my barbaric manners.

But you knew, didn't you? You knew very well that I was addicted to your wares and you manipulated my infatuation by raising the price from rm1.20 to rm1.30. I was scandalized and decided to boycott your business once and for all! I lasted all of 2 days, before I came crawling back to your jars of sambal, this time with 10 cents extra in my pocket. You were a smug old man, but as long as you let me ladle my own sambal without restrictions on the amount, I'm a girl of zero principles.

Now it's that season of the year again, the season of all-nighters. Except that now, I don't have you in my life. Staying up all night is painful and seems to have no rewards. I don't see any hopes of passing my exam without the magic of your nasi lemak lighting up my otherwise empty life. Life has almost lost its meaning. Good lord, I can't go on! :'(

I know you are old and wrinkled, and such attention from a pretty young lass such as I (ahem ahem) may seem unseemly and unsettling, but as long as you bring your cooking utensils and ingredients with you, would you please move to the uk? There's a lovely corner on the pavement down my street for you to set up camp.

Love,

Your long lost but eternally Faithful, customer.

2011-12-17T15:21:00.001-08:00

selling money

2011-12-16T14:35:00.000-08:00

I met this girl from chicago who is studying at my uni. She was telling me how when she first got here, an english girl noticed her US dollars in her purse, then kindly informed her how "that currency is not in use anymore" and then offered to buy it off my friend since according to this english girl, "they will probably be valuable in a few years or so"

Hahahahahahaha!

This gave me a whole new idea. Instead of studying medicine, I can just start selling malaysian currency here! I'm sure there is bound to be someone who would believe me when I show them a 50 cents coin and tell them how it stopped being in production years ago. I'd make so much of money this way I'd never have to work again for the rest of my life!

goosebumps!

2011-12-15T05:05:00.001-08:00

This makes me want to learn another instrument! I know I have a really bad track record when it comes to musical instruments, starting and never really sticking to them, but still... just listen to that cello..

Brief Reassessment

2011-12-12T18:45:00.000-08:00

Studies aren't going so well. I've finally finished HALF of the reproductive module - and I was supposed to finish the entire module last week. :( I'm completely sick of (reading about) sti's right now and so will put a pause on reproductive. Not to mention, I feel a quarter exhausted, a quarter brain dead and half insane right now. What I'm doing is not enough, but how am I to find the energy and concentration to do more?!

Since I started and abandoned halfway the gastrointestinal module what seems like a million years ago, I should be able to finish that this week. Tomorrow, I will revise clinical pharmacology and try and finish most of it... After all, unlike the other modules which were taught when I wasn't even here yet, I went to all the lectures this semester for pharmacology except the last one on epilepsy. So it shouldn't be too much of a trauma. I'm going to have to abandon the Tissues of the Body module and hope it doesn't get questioned, in exchange for spending time on the more important respiratory stuff..

Plan!

Tuesday: Pharmaco
Wednesday - Saturday: Alternate between GI and Resp. So I'd have to do roughly 6 respiratory lecturess a day and god knows how much for gi, since the learning objectives aren't even covered in the bloody lecture.
When Bored: Do a reproductive lecture just to move things along and resist temptation to throw yourself out of the window. Also, I just noticed that the next lecture in this module is entitled Coitus. Since I make notes mainly by making diagrams and drawings, this one is going to be interesting! Hahahaha I'm such a kid.

Off to sleep now, my head feels like someone smashed it in with a ton of bricks.

Hat without a Home

2011-12-12T12:54:00.000-08:00

I've recently taken to walking around checking out other people's hats.

Not to be intentionally strange, but I've been procrastinating getting myself head cover for winter since they all look so dorky on my oversized skull so it's more to speculate what my options are. Today at about 8pm on my walk home, I see the most worn looking hat that I've seen so far. The person wearing it sits down on the pavement in a corner next to Mc Donalds and wraps around himself an equally worn blanket that looks useless in the face of 2 degrees.. I realized I was staring when a girl approaches him, strikes up a conversation in the most cheerful tones and offers to buy him food. What a sweet thing for her to do.. Being homeless must be horrible enough, but homeless in winter seems much worse. It makes you wonder where homeless people go when it starts to snow.

It's just a matter of tense

2011-12-09T20:43:00.000-08:00

I know I'm always thinking how much easier everything would be if I could just turn back time and go back to the start. But what I think I need to realize that is that the start is always there here and now. What I want to change in the past, I can still change. It's just whether I choose to take a chance of it or not. Let the blunted affect wear off.

Don't Panic, Stay Focusd

2011-12-09T14:39:00.000-08:00

Stay Focusd, best add-on invented!

baby steps from error to lesson

2011-12-08T18:35:00.000-08:00

Yet another day gone by with not much studying achieved. Just looked through one of the past years, the questions are so difficult I'm getting palpitations right now. I feel like I'm in big trouble...

How exactly am I supposed to deal with all of this? Just when I think that's it, that's the most I could ever possibly miss you, I surpass myself. Sakit hati are the only words I can think of to sum up all of this. How will I ever come to terms with the mistakes I feel I've made and make that transition from error to lesson? How to accept, how to let go? The hardest, how to forgive myself? All very rhetorical questions I'm struggling with for years and years. Shouldn't I be over all this by now? Wasn't it all just teen angst? Shouldn't the importance of these same old questions have faded away a little by now? All they seem to do with time is take on deeper, different meanings and cause more complex emotions that are difficult to live with, difficult to accept. I find myself unable to do anything except swallow this monster as it grows bigger.

This is why I hate staying up late. It provides too much of space for these kinds of morose self examination and the silence causes all sorts of compressed feelings to spring up. I should let the sleeping dogs lie and go to sleep.

Inefficient Coping Strategies?

2011-12-08T05:19:00.000-08:00

It's 12 noon and I'm awake, despite having slept at only around 5am last night. I don't feel rested at all, thanks to the vivid and endless dreams I had. I hate having such dreams, the dreams themselves were not nightmarish enough to make me wake up but the message my subconscious is giving out in the dreams (the things I force myself to just don't think about when I'm awake) is literal and upsetting enough for me to wake up feeling like shit. The first thing I did was google 'how to stop dreaming'. Then I wondered how have I ended up with so many internal issues. All the things that were once external but now extinguished seemed to have wormed themselves into my psyche and my own brain is hellbent on torturing me every single night.

Back when I was 15, there was a time when I used to have so many unbearable nightmares that I became reluctant to even fall asleep but at that time, I had a lot of negative things going on in my life which I couldn't deal with. I was practically living in an external nightmare hence it made sense that the problems crept into my dreams as well. But now, things are actually going pretty good. I have no sources of stress/problems in my life apart from the exams, which I'm less worried about now that I'm studying consistently. So why exactly my inner life is in so much turmoil when externally everything is just peachy is beyond me.

There really is nothing I can do about this troubles that plague my dreams. If only there is some magic pill I can swallow which will let me sleep dreamless, restful nights.

Make love, not porn

2011-12-05T17:18:00.000-08:00

Even though some of the myths in the porn world part of her website make you wonder what kind of horribly stupid younger guys she has been dating, it's still a good video. http://makelovenotporn.com/ Also, funny that she talks about the pointlessness of promoting teen abstinence but her website has an over 18 marker on it? Probably a legal requirement though.

And a bit off topic, but her hair looks suspiciously like a wig..

Two Things

2011-12-04T15:28:00.000-08:00

1. Noteworthy event of today:

I gave a random stranger the finger in public! So proud of myself. :)

Yeahhhhh Girl Power Bitchez!

One thing I was so grateful for here, when I first got here, is the fact that I can walk in public by myself and not be harassed by random malaysian indian (no other race has the energy) assholes in cars driving past.

My joy was short-lived about a month ago when a car full of punjabi guys decided it would be appropriate to make kissing noises at me. I couldn't find it in me to be pissed back then because the sight of five huge turbans squeezed into a tiny car was just too funny.

Today, however, I definitely was annoyed. It was 3 degrees outside, all I wanted to do was get home, not hear you, shout (!!!) at me from your car in voice that went from sleazy to persistent to downright nasty. I look at you and you are brown. Of course you are. I don't want to be racist, I'm actively trying not to turn into a racist bitch, but you guys are not helping me one bit. What's the deal, men, whats the deal? What kind of weird satisfaction do you get from harassing me?

Next time this happens, I'm going to throw rocks at your car, no more this wimpy business of using fingers.

===

2. What exactly is the deal with people who get married as soon as they graduate from university?

It's almost as if they walk straight from the convocation hall into the wedding hall. As it is, I have friends getting married and how weird does it feel to type that out and to be looking at wedding pictures on facebook! We are in our early twenties, people, what's the rush to get a ring on your finger? This is the time to cultivate a complicated love-you-at-night-but-not-so-much-in-the-morning relationship with jagerbombs, not a husband/wife. One of my junior friends got married after the 2nd year exams in medical school to his classmate. That was surprising enough but I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with that alone if they're both fine with it, none of my business. Now I hear that his wife is pregnant. What I'm curious about is, what happens to medschool now that you are preggers? You are my age, so it's not like your biological clock is a ticking time bomb either to be in such a rush. I'm sure it is amazing to have a baby, but it just seems like a lot of unnecessary hard work and odd timing. Anyway, different people have different priorities. May be there really is an uncontested joy in being a (very) young mother, that I just can't appreciate. To each his/her own, and once again it is none of my business to judge.

Thought Provoking Conversation of The Day

2011-12-03T17:38:00.000-08:00

===

Women Aggressive Towards Sexy Peers

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/women-aggressive-sexy-peers/story?id=15040553#.TtrMHmNT-WI

Well, nice to see scientific proof for what I had an inkling for all along. It can't be coincidence that all the girls I don't like very much are more attractive than I am, the stupid bitches. What I find irritating is the defensive way in which other girls who commented/ are discussing this on TSR are claiming otherwise. I mean, it is what it is, jealousy. Just because I hate my sister a little bit for being so goddamn pretty and would be hesitant to introduce any boy I'm dating to her (Frank Netter, at the moment), doesn't mean that I don't love her to bits and wouldn't buy her chocolates when I see her next. Also, if you realize, many girls who are extraordinarily and naturally pretty tend to hang out with groups of guys. Oh well, this is of no consequence anyway.

Whine

2011-12-03T05:21:00.000-08:00

I have a whole host of complaints against my medical school exams! To begin with:

1. To pass the written paper, you have to pass the questions individually, that is you have to pass at least 18 questions out of 24 questions to pass. To pass a question, you have to get a minimum of 7/10 for that question.

Now this is why this system is absolute rubbish:

Person 1: Gets 10/10 (full marks!) for 17 questions, and 6/10 for 7 questions: Fail.
Person 2: Gets 7/10 for 18 questions, and 0/10 (zero!) for 6 questions: Pass. (?!?!)

Who do you think deserves to pass? The first person has a percentage of 88.3 % and fails. The second person has a percentage of 52.5 % and passes.

How could you not be fed up with such a system?!

2. There's a practical exam on examining patients as well that's taken into account. If you get a borderline (which is a pass, just on the lower side) for both the practical and a borderline for the written paper, you should pass. Right?

Isn't it common sense that two passes (even if it is borderline passes) equal one big borderline pass?

Apparently not. If you get two borderlines, you are considered to have failed the entire exam. Even though actually, you passed each component individually.

I know no other medical school that has such an insane marking system in place. Because of this, loads of students have to repeat the year and the school gets an insane amount of tuition fees from them.

I'm done ranting, now off to hit the books for today. It's a nice sunshiny saturday and I'm going to spend it in the library. What a wonderful life. Although typing out the above post has pretty much sucked all the hope out of me, I can't wait to pass my exams and lie in the sun doing nothing until I get burnt to an absolute crisp!

Any Day Will Do Fine

2011-12-02T17:47:00.000-08:00

New found love - Michael Kiwanuka. Gotta love youtube for all these less popular artists I've discovered on there. This has to be the song that I listen to the most often. Although for some reason it depresses the hell out of me, there's just something that makes me want to listen again. It makes you ache a bit inside, but it's an interesting sort of ache that you want to feel again and again until you can make sense of it. I suppose it stirs up a lot of emotions. Since I'm a bit deaf and can't tell the words apart, I've been searching for the lyrics but can't seem to find it anywhere.

'Hey listen girl
Can I get along with you'

superficialties, my area of expertise

2011-12-02T14:19:00.000-08:00

Today I'm exceedingly pleased with myself.

1. No more doing dishes.

I've gone down the budget unfriendly paper plate route, the plastic microwave tupperware route, and the disgusting eat straight from the pain with the cooking ladle route, but now I just wrap my plate with a layer of foil before putting my food on it. Free, since I found a roll of unclaimed aluminium foil lying around, fast, and it can even go in the oven.

2. No more struggling to find cheap, cute clothes in my size.

The answer to my problems: The Children's Section (hallelujah!). It's quite unfair that the kids get all the cute clothes, but hey, if you can fit into it, might as well wear it. Interestingly, a small adult size is much harder to find than a large child size. Plus, I don't think I look very out of place there. A brief anecdote to make my point: I was walking down the street when this lady seeking donations started chasing me. I couldn't get rid of her ('not interested' just doesn't cut it these days) until I told her I am sixteen and hence not legal. She believed me without a shred of doubt. Ha!

2011-12-01T19:56:00.001-08:00

This country will always be your weakness, and your downfall.

girl sure loves to plan

2011-11-28T17:51:00.000-08:00

After a bit of pain, both in my head and on my butt (hard chair, hard life), i'm done with the statistics bit. I am now a genius in calculating 95% confidence intervals, although i doubt I would be doing that very much with any patients in the hospital.

Future scene in the A&E:

Patient: "doctor P! I'm dyinggggg..."
Me: "Yo wassup! Hang on a minute, yeah, lemme just whip out my fancy calculator and find out the 95% confidence interval for the probability that your lifestyle habit of smoking 7-14 cigarettes a day is the cause of your problems. Hmmm."

Anyways, I am feeling totally motivated right now to attempt at passing this exam! So let's continue with the planning. For the 2nd week in december once i'm back in this gloomy place, I shall aim to do up the respiratory module, tissues of the body module, and get myself up to date with the clinical pharmacology module. Easy peasy no problemo.

The week after that, I should be in panic mode, and hence would be best suited to getting my head around the module on head and neck which is complicated and a pain. I would also have to do the bit about infections and the different antibiotics, and somehow squeeze in time somewhere to work through the checklist for the cardiovascular system.

The week after that busy and horrible sounding week, I should celebrate christmas and live the joyful spirit by understanding the musculoskeletal module and calming my exam nervousness by studying the wonderful and difficult module of neurology. the fun and joy of my life, i tell you.

After that, it would be january. (next year, folks! can you believe it?!) I would probably post an obligatory rant here about how the year seemed to have gone by in minutes. Alright, so the aim is to finish the individual modules by the end of this year, so that i can spend my precious one week before exams in january, revising the modules as a whole.

This medical school feels that having a 75% pass mark and a 50% failure rate is not difficult enough for us. So, to make things that much harder and to turn us all into raging alcoholics from all the stress, each main question would involve components from at the very least, 5 different modules. Therefore, the key to scraping through this nightmare is to find ways to connect, relate and crosslink many different modules into one patient presentation. Now the last sentence sounds like something the dean would say, with the word nightmare replaced by the word challenge.

flickering light at the end of the tunnel

2011-11-28T13:45:00.000-08:00

right, so, if i do this systematically and organizedly, i should be able to cover what i need to know. since i enjoy writing rubbish so much, i might as well include my slow and agonizing plans for the winter to come in this space as well.

so by tonight; with the help of the cheesecake i just made, i shall finish the horribly boring statistics module. this is supposed to help us if in case we decide to go into research, but all it is doing is making the prospect of research the most dull thing ever.

by the end of this week, i should be able to finish up health in society module, which looks like light reading even though the book itself is quite heavy, and also finish up the mechanisms of disease module, which would be painful to do, but i'm thinking better face the agony now than before resit exams. this should help me prepare a bit for the mock test at the end of this week. the saturday is going to be taken up by mock practical exams, which im quite excited for, since i love talking to fake patients and examining them. it feels like thats the only bit out of this whole course that i can do well, so i like doing it.

moving along, next week i should be feeling severely demoralized after crapping my way through yet another test, and so will be quite productive if i appropriately manage to channel my frustration into work and not into baking up a storm in the kitchen like today. so, i should be able to cover the damn reproductive module, and get metabolism over with as well. and if manage to do all of this till then, hold it together and not slit my wrists with my kitchen knife, i'll have that weekend awayyy from this indian town in uk! a trip out of town woohoo :)

2011-11-25T06:17:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine (FOM) who comes from msia described his conversation with a local student (LS) who was born and bred here.

Scene: at yet another shitty Italian restaurant in town. (I love Italian food, but most restaurants here cook bad food.)

LS: (obviously unsure about asking a potentially offensive question) Do you have like restaurants in your country?
FOM: ...

---

different FOM: (kidding) you know, I came here on a ship.. it took me 3 months..
LS: oh really? (believes it.)

---

Doctor who was teaching us: (looks at 2 of my msian friends who are of different colouring and ethnic groups) So how come both of you are Malaysian but you have such different skin colours??!

Friend with fair skin: (kidding) Oh I just don't go out in the sun much.

Doctor: Ohhh... (believes it.)

---

The other day, someone tried to explain to me what a brooch is. A fucking brooch. At this rate, I might as well just get a tattoo on my forehead that says, "I no speaking engrish?"

Reassessment

2011-11-25T06:04:00.000-08:00

I've been here 3 months now. I'm in the mood to make lists so here goes.

Things I Like about this country

1. The place where I live. Bills, water and internet are included in the rent. After 2.5 years of monthly nightmares involving electricity bills, this is an exceedingly pleasant change.

2. Sometimes, the weather. I enjoy the cool crisp fresh air and the lack of humidity is awesome.

3. The fact that I can walk everywhere, and have to walk everywhere. This means that I have reached that blissful state of balance where I eat chocolates like pig but never get fat, since I walk a minimum of an hour a day.

4. The fact that I can return things so easily. Now I don't have to think twice (or once!) before buying anything. If I don't like it, I get all my money back. It's an extremely exciting feeling.

5. The price of south indian food. A dosa is 5 pounds. wtf?

Things I Don't Like about this country

1. Most people are slightly xenophobic. This is a big thing and it continues to annoy me. England's not the center of the world, you smelly folks, and people in Asia don't live in trees anymore, believe it or not.

2. The fact that it is now dark at 4pm.

3. The wind. Last night I was lying in bed listening to the wind, and I realized that it sounds a lot like the waves on the beach at Mirissa. Those were really big, loud waves.

4. The price of Shoes, Handbags. I recently spent a small fortune on a pair of suede boots. Every step I take in them makes my heart ache a little.

5. The price of pots and pans. Why the hell is a cheap wok 20 pounds? Thank goodness I don't have to spend on cutlery. I just steal those from my housemates.

Theme song

2011-11-23T12:40:00.000-08:00

I am sixteen going on seventeen

I know that I'm naive

Fellows I meet may tell me I'm sweet

And willingly I believe!

I am sixteen going on seventeen

Innocent as a rose

Bachelor dandy's, drinkers of brandy

What do I know of those?

But what can we do?

2011-11-22T18:59:00.000-08:00

Obviously, I want(ed?) to be sexy, to be popular, to be smart, to be confident.

but equally obviously to my eyes, which is the only eyes I've got, I'm not.

My hips are out of proportion from my frame, I'm socially awkward, I struggle with my studies, and I'm too harsh on myself.

Just a few things i would like to do right now

2011-11-20T04:11:00.000-08:00

1. go out and explore the city center properly, particularly that indian area which i've been told is amazing and which i've wanted to look at from the first day that i got here

2. go for a run in this awesome weather, in the cool, crisp, fresh autumn air.

3. go to the market, buy me some lovely fresh produce, come home and cook up a storm using all those fancy spices i've bought.

4. walk to the botanical gardens, which is another thing i;ve been wanting to do since i got here

5. take a bus to bradgate and go hiking for a day.

6. go to the chaplaincy with my mozart sonatas book and spend a few hours there banging away on the piano

7. start playing the violin again. i've even found a shop that would rent the violin to me for a cheap price for 3 months at a time.

8. take advantage of those cheap airline deals that keep landing in my inbox and taunting me. just taking the weekend to go somewhere amazing. anywhere.

9. go to the circus :( i found discount tickets for these, and it is killing me inside that i can't go.

10. actually join the cs meet ups which seem to be so much fun.

so there you go! ten perfectly reasonable, plausible, economical, easy-and-fun things that i would LOVE to do right now.

instead of that, this is what i end up doing.

wake up, eat, go to class, come home, eat, study a page or two, and suddenly its time to sleep.