testing...testing

I'ma try be a little better from now on, eh?
So I have a few updates in my life, presented graphically.
The first is in regards to my first exam. Observe:I know what you may be thinking: first, your unimpressed at how little above passing I was; second, you see that I got above average and you think that that's pretty, well, above-average; third, you see that I failed ethics and are not surprised; fourth, you see how poorly everyone did on ethics and are surprised; fifth, you wonder why the picture is so damn small; sixth, you have stopped caring and are now at a different blog, browsing through lolcatz. My defense is as such: average in medical school isn't your typical average, and so beating that is alright with me. As far as ethics go, the abysmal scores are not because this is a country founded by convicts (though I do love bringing that point up with my classmates) but because they purposely make it difficult to get you to study for the second ethics test as the end of the year. With all the anatomy, physiology, pathology, biochemistry, immunology, and the rest of the real stuff, most students gloss over ethics, seeing it as being mostly bullshit. (It kind of is.) And so they make it hard. Also that's the biggest the photo could be in damn blogger.

Now you might be asking yourself, "what kind of n00b posts online the results of a medical school exam?" Well, I might answer you with, "the same kind that posts medical pictures of himself! Burn!"Above is the handsome writer of this literary piece of bits and bytes - shown through the magic of technetium and nuclear imaging. They injected some radioactive stuff into my blood and then waited 20 minutes. They then set me on a table and a machine took pictures of my neck for half an hour. What you're seeing is, essentially, blood flow to tissues. Darker spots on the picture correlate to denser/thicker/more vascular objects: those that receive more blood. I have included a detailed image, showing the most visible parts of the body. What is says, basically, is that I have no cancer or goiter or anything like that and so it's most likely an auto-immune problemo.
As far as other stuff is going, it's all well. Today Hyeshin left for Melbourne. Yesterday her sister and niece and nephew arrived. We met in the afternoon for a BBQ on the river (where I had cooked bomb hamburgers that I made, as well as Kanga Bangas - kangaroo sausages) and then we walked around, showed a bit of the city. We got to the hotel so the family could rest and then I did something glorious: watch TV. I haven't seen TV for like 4 weeks and while it's very survivable without it (thank you Torrent, god of the expat!) it's still pretty pleasant to chill and watch 2 hours of the tube. Here, cable is actually something good and there are very few commercials: I somehow watched 2 episodes of South Park, 1 of Simpsons, 1 of Futurama, and 1 of Scrubs in exactly 2 hours. TV shows start when they need to, so it's not unusual for something to start at 5:43 or 6:07 or whatever. Sweet! Afterwards we went to a nice Turkish restaurant, which was great for me and Hyeshin but less so for them foreigners. Living in Korea is very different from living in USA, culinarily speaking. As there is no "American" food, really, we eat lots of different foods and are a bit better of new food. Korean food is so real and established and various and amazing, that there's little penetration within the country. Chinese and Japanese are most common, with some showing for American (places like Sizzler and McDonalds) and then Thai and Italian being the most exotic. So Turkish was quite an experience and so, while they liked it in theory, they were non-too-impressed. Afterwards, we went to an amazing dessert place and then to sleep. Not together. The most amazing part was that I biked back from their hotel with Hyeshin sitting on my rack... It was dark and cool and we were biking through parks and along the river. It was hard as balls but quite pleasant and took about 10 minutes longer than the trip normally takes.Today I went to 3 different hospitals. In the morning, to the University one to discuss my thyroid. Then I went to a private one to do my clinical coaching (eating catered sandwiches and fried shit while discussing the muscoskeletal physical exam) and then I went to the big hospital to do my history-taking test: a 10 minute recorded video of me talking to some actor pretending she's sick. I have the DVD in my backpack right now, but I reckon I will not watch it until I have to.
And now I'm sleepy, alright?
Jesus, I didn't know that!1:
Oh man, I said I was sleepy! I'll make it quick. Um... apparently gonorrhea can give you urethral stricture, causing a hardening of the urethra -> less elasticity -> poor stream w/ dribbles. For guys, at least. Treatment is by surgery. Ouch