Mamak Night

Baked cookies for PBL on Friday, and went to SMSUA's AGM in the afternoon, which proceeded smoothly and quickly, in a world-record-breaking time of 24 minutes and 30 seconds. Talk about speed and efficiency!

In the evening, I went for Mamak night, which was a food night hosted by Paradise church, at the UniSA City West Campus. Eugene was supposed attend the function as well, but he had an upset tummy in the evening, and declined the invitation to the food night (think -pangseh- :p). Had a nice chat with Fang while walking there from Med school.

There were so many people there, with lots of familiar faces popping up every now and then. Many hardworking paradise-church-people were scurrying (hurrying would be a nicer word) around, ensuring everything was being prepared according to plan, setting tables, cooking food, stirring drinks and checking tickets at the registration counter. I met Bruce (aka the bouncer), Yen, Kristin, lots of Aquinas people, Jesse, Bridgette, and some new people like a staff from Women's and Children's, a China guy studying here, an Indonesian woman doing an econs masters. It was an entertaining night, talking to people, watching soccer goals and Yamakazi action, catching up with people I haven't seen in quite awhile.

*Ominous music* Fact or Fiction

While queueing for the food, one of the servers mistook me for another guy in dental school! And this isn't the first time it's happening. During university open day, staff and students manning the dental booth welcomed me initially, saying it's great that I took time off to come down and help out at the booth.. I was like, "nope sorry wrong guy, I'm not from dental school, I'm from next door." Some of my friends like Eugene and You Wen have also seen this mysterious
person in school, and claims he looks exactly like me! Apparently, his name is Peter, and he is a fourth year dental student.

Is this pure myth, or does it have any seams of reality woven in between the fabrics of fiction? Could he just be a future me, coming back in time to visit Adelaide for nostalgic purposes, after time machines have been invented? Or could he be a CIA agent planted here to take over my identity, after they silence me and dispose of my body? Stay tuned to the next episode of Fact or Fiction!

Jokes aside, I'm very interested to meet this guy one day, and find out exactly how much he resembles me.

More updates

On the second week of holidays, I had international week, which was superimposed on a week long of OSCE practice (which was rather minimal thanks to procrastination and laziness, although I would like to think it took up most of my time) International week was a week's worth of activities and lectures organised by medical school, which featured talks by doctors who did attachments overseas in places like Nepal and Ecquador. They showed us beautiful pictures of the colossal snow-capped mountains in all their wonderous glory, simple rural people walking for hours just to seek medical treatment, and much more. It was really enticing to go for such attachments in the future, to travel and see the world whilst doing so.








Eugene's birthday was on Thursday, and we (the singaporeans) ate lunch at La Trottoria on Friday afternoon, and they served really good pasta! We ordered a dish that had salmon, caviar, and vodka, and tasted magnificent. We gave him a monopoly set, with an electronic banking device, so playing monopoly was as easy as swiping your credit card on the card reader! Hassle-free, cashless hours of fun, we're really getting high-tech now...

Tuesday was the OSCEs (objective structured clinical examinations), which basically was our clinical (physical) examination exam. It went quite smoothly, and I tried my best not to forget anything in the physical examinations, but there was this funny bit in the respiratory exam that went...

Me: "Upon depressing the patient's tongue, I see no signs of tonsilar enlargement or redness of the pharynx, which may be indicative of upper airways disease"

Patient:"I don't have tonsils"

~ examiner stares at me ~

*gulp*

Me: "Well, I didn't notice enlarged tonsils because it seems the patient doesn't have tonsils at all."

What a mess, it was really embarrassing in front of the examiner. I finished early, having skipped all the rest stations (by accident!), and so did Kudnarto, so had a nice -and rare- 5 minute chat with her :)

PBL started the next day, and school was back to normal.

Photos...

Me at the beach with Leny, Kiki, Yao Chai, Ge Hong, Cynthia, Monica, Eugene, Jesse, Yen Yen. The villagers!





My Birthday with the villagers. And our rabbit pizza!

Blur me :p

Updates...

Just a few updates on what's been happening the past few weeks.

Holidays started on the 18th of September, whoohoo! Had a fun Saturday, and did the City-Bay run on Sunday, 17th Sept. It was a 12km jog from the city (Elder Park, running down King William Street) to Glenelg Beach, via Anzac Highway. It was an amazing experience, with more than 60000 people participating in this huge event. Lots of people were strolling, walking, talking, jogging, and running. There was a wonderful variety of people from all different age groups, ranging from the young disabled children moving themselves in their wheelchairs, to the chatting bunch of housewives who were there for the exercise, to fathers carrying their little daughters on their shoulders, letting them have a bird's eye view of the crowd! Absolutely fantastic.

I tried running continuously, but only managed to do it for about 9km, before I stopped for a cup of water, and tried to run the rest of the distance. It was a really bright and sunny day, great weather for the run, but a little on the scorching-desert side though, so I felt extremely dehydrated especially in the second half of the run. Along the way, there were many groups of people supporting the runners, like school bands playing their instruments, teenage rock bands singing, residents coming out of their houses and cheering for us, spraying us with water from their garden hoses.

It's great that the event is dedicated to charity, and all proceeds will benefit many non-profitable charity organisations.

On the first monday of the holidays, we had a majong-pizza-beer-poker party at our house, and quite alot of people attended! Eugene made delicious chocolate brownies, and I made interesting strawberry cookies. Yum.
It was really entertaining to play poker, though I lost most of my money to Fang. After that, played a drinking game, with us drinking water and seeing who can resist the urge to rush to the toilet for the longest amount of time. We had lots of silly rules for the game, and it was great fun. Luckily, they decided to stop the game after awhile, cos I really really really had to pee.

During the holidays, I went to meet Graham, a 62 year old man who was paralysed waist down due to multiple sclerosis, and had weakness in both arms and a speech inpediment. He was part of my St John's community care program, and I would be visiting him regularly to talk and chat with him. He was a friendly old man, but it was really hard to understand him due to his speech problem.

I visited him a few times over the holidays, and found it really interesting to find out about his life. He smokes like crazy, and regularly smokes marijuana and drinks white wine. At first I tried to ask him to quit, but then I realised that he doesn't really have much to live for, and all these are just means of providing him relief with the pains in his life. Caretakers come and clean him and help him prepare food three times a day, and nurses visit him occassionally to check on his general health.

I guess it's quite sad to see someone in that state, but it just makes me appreciate my life even more, and not take the things I have for granted. Sometimes, when I'm complaining about why I'M the one having all the problems, I just think of him, and it just hits me that my problems are really trivial and minor, compared to alot of other people in the world. So why am I whining so much about my life, when others are trying their hardest to cope with theirs? Why am I complaining that life has treated me unfairly, when all I've had so far is a really comfortable life with great family and friends?

I know I've been blessed with so many things in my life, that I think it's time I spent some time and effort to help those, whom life has -really- been unfair to. Shouldn't you?