There's no use hiding his pretty head in the ground

Hello all. It's been a week since I last spoked with you, so I will present thyself with an update. My week roiled about quite well. It was the usual cacophony of classes, in a light presentation. I had few classes and, for quite possibly the 43rd time in my life, learned about glycolysis. The best part is that I fucking understand the shit out of for the first time evar! In addition we had our weekly hospital visit. This is becoming a pleasant part of my week:
I bike to the hospital, trying to arrive at 12:15.
I change into nice-ish slacks, dress-shirt, real shoes, and tie, unfortunately.
I cool down for 15 minutes.
I go to the doctor's office with several of my classmates, where we eat meat pies (Australians' pies aren't like the 'Mericans') and chat for 30 minutes.
We then go to a room, get a patient's history and do a physical examination. As he works in a psychiatric clinic, most of his patients are -ok- physically, so we just do it for practice.
Our last patient proved to be quite interesting. He's had a tough life but was amazingly optimistic and light and bright. He's been living alone for the last couple years since he left his wife after she was so drunk that she accidentally lit herself on fire. He drinks about a bottle of rum a day and smokes ~30 cigs. The upside of all this was that we were actually able to feel his liver! woowoo.
Friday we had off from school so I chilled at home and then studied and dicked around. That evening we had our 2nd kegger, this time at the medical school around a 30min bike ride away. It was St. Paddy's day themed and so people we drinking green shit, wearing green shit, and shitting green shit. The party itself was pretty blah but leaving was great. Biking at 10pm, in cool night weather, while fairly tipsy, through the Roma Street Parklands is an experience I need more often. The cool breeze; the speed; the exhilaration; the shadowy light. Fuck it was fun.
Saturday I, as usual, went to the market. I met up with my market buddy and trundled around buying sweet sweet produce at low low prices. We went back to his house and made a nice lunch and watched The Castle, a really funny Aussie film. I was actually quite impressed by it and if you guys are perchance interested in some Australian culture outside of Steve Irwin, you should check it out.
That evening we had a housewarming party here. I invited the 8 people I knew and as far as I knew, everyone else did the same. We made a nice punch, set up a sound system, and started playing 21. Not one person I invited showed up. Not one person Max or HuaQi invited turned up either. Thank god Laura has friends or otherwise we would have had to drink a lot of punch. It was a bit sad in a funny way and a lot funny in a sad way but I still had an agreeable time. Sunday I studied and did whatever.
The week is off. Today we had our first graded thing, where we were tested on our ability to give a decent physical examination of each other (concentrating on the GIT). We had to go through and say what we were looking for, explaining what each thing meant and what caused it. Any of you who've had doctors examining yourself (I actually really haven't since my dad would medicate us) should know that there's a lot of fucking shit going through their head when they're looking at you. (Okay, hands... palmar erythema, luecinichia, DuPutreyne's conracture, clubbing, no... arms, striae, spider naevi, petechia, pruritis, no... okay, eyes... conjunctivatae palor, xanthalasma, Keyser Fleischer Rings, iritis, sclerae jaundice, etc. etc. etc). Damn, that's alotta shit. So give your doc a break, or at least a brake.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Today's lesson will be a bit fraudulent. Forgiveness, please. This is something that I did know, in theory, yet the whole big picture stuff I never fully grasped and I think it's really interesting to think about. So let's start with everyone's favorite subject: Food.
Where does your food go?
Um, well you put it in your mouth and eat it and it goes to your stomach.
Okay, then what happens to it?
Uh, it gets digested.
What is that?
It gets broken down into parts and then we absorb it to get all the good stuff.
Where does the good stuff and bad stuff go?
Good stuff goes to the rest of your body and bad stuff leaves.
Ok... That was stupid. Anyway think about this: you eat at least 1-2kg of stuff a day (5lbs), yet you shit 200g (half a lb) a day. So most of what you eat doesn't go in the toilet. And you don't get 1.7kg heavier every day. So what happens to it? You exhale it. Sugar, protein, and most fat get broken down into a little guy called Acetyl-CoA, where it then gets stored or processed for energy. The energy is not from what you eat per se, but from the energy stored within the food, i.e. the bonds of the molecules. Breaking up the bonds gives the energy. You break up the carbon bonds by adding oxygen (oxidation), producing CO2, which then gets exhaled.
I think that's pretty fooking cool.