that's extreme

I apologize that it's been this long since we last spoke. It is entirely my fault. My last week had gone by without problem. Actually, I should be affirmative and say that my last week went by quite well, indeed.
On Monday was the Med Revue. This weird little thing was a 3hr sketch&musical bonanza in which I did not participate but only spectatored. After lectures, we all went to a Thai restaurant near campus, had some wine, and made our way to the Revue. It was really good. I love musicals (especially humorously-slanted ones) and I love "in" jokes about nerdy stuff that I get. There were some skits that worked very well and some gags that were quite funny and a great song, set to When I'm Sixty Four, about how we are not qualified to practice medicine ("I should have chosen law..." I love the making-fun-of-each-other-ness betwixt law and med). All in all, a good night.
Tuesday we had clinical coaching and with our new awesome coach, actually got to see a real patient for the first time in 3 months! Woo! He had some weird knee problem (kneeitis) and so we got to poke away for a while.
Wednesday was the Ekka. You don't know what the Ekka is? It is apparently a big show thing that's been held in Brisbane since the late 19th century. It's where people come to show off their large cows and big zucchinis and new tractors and any other adjective noun combination you know. Like the Minnesota State Fare, it has evolved into a smörgåsbord of unhealthy food, boring rides, and expense. However, Ekka Day is a state holiday where there is no school. The usual chain of events is: <16yr>30yr olds go to the show. Those in between dress up in their finest and go to the horse track where it is a smörgåsbord of lechery, frumpery, and queuing-up-for-beer-ery. I went during my semester abroad and, well... if by know you don't know how I feel about dressing up and then waiting in huge lines to buy expensive beer, then you should be reading this a bit more diligently. So we decided to have our own party. It was Fiona's, one of the girls in my discussion (the 9 of us who are always together and like each other) birthday and she invited us over mid-afternoon for a hot-tub party. There was gin (and tonic with which to mix it) and some of us cooked some shit. And hottubing. It was glorious, as there's nothing better than chilling in a hot tub with some mates, drinking, eating, laughing, listening to music, all on a Wednesday. Good thing we indulged, too, as that was our only day off this semester.Thursday was lots of class.
Friday I went for a swim in the morning, the first in over a month, which was very nice. After school, a couple of us went to Ben's house and studied a bit; I made pumpkin soup; we had some wine and played balderdash. Low key but fun.
Yesterday was markets and then study.
Today I woke up at 5:20am (pretty impressive, I know) and biked to the top of the local mountain to watch the sunrise and meet Fiona and her friend. We then went hiking for a couple hours, descended, came back to my place where I baked some fresh banana bread with which to warm up. Now it's raining - this is great as we sorely need it. However, I'm spoiled by the constant sunshine here and am feeling the weight of the clouds enough to hinder all study. And so I play scrabble. Recently, Facebook (and its capabilities) have one-upped my ability to procrastinate by featuring an amazing application: scrabbulous. It is a clean interactive scrabble board, complete with dictionary and messaging, that allows for multiple games. That's all I've been doing the last 2 weeks.
I think I'm going to add a new "daily" section as this is another thing I think about very often, along with medicine-stuff and cooking, so I present to you with the first edition of:
Smarmy Environmental Diatribez
The other day I was studying in my classroom and took my bathroom break with an extended walk. I happened upon a computer lab with 36 computers, all with their screensavers running, with no one in there, on a Sunday. This pissed me off. Screensavers are one of the worst things around because these days you don't actually need them! They were necessary to prevent screenburning back in the day of shit-ass-monitors and people leaving them on for days without end. The thing is, a screensaver uses the same amount of energy (~100w/hr) as having a monitor on whilst computing. That's a lot of energy if you think how many people in the world leave their screensavers on, wasted. So I was (rightfully) pissed off and proceeded to write a note, calculating how much energy they use per year by leaving on the monitors and how much CO2 and sulfur oxide and other shit that directly releases into the atmosphere, finishing off by telling them that setting monitors to 'standby' reduces energy use to 10% and to 'off' to nearly 0%. So I hung it up next to the lab. Yesterday I went to check on it, assuming to see it torn off and surprised to see it still hanging up. However, there was a word scrawled in crawly blue ink on the bottom and it was the least surprising word I could have imagine - I just had to laugh it was so predictable: fag.
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Lactation. It is instigated by hormones, coordinated with birth. As these hormones are circulating within the mom, the baby (whose teats are as functional as a prepubescent girl's/adult male's) actually lactates a bit due to the signaling. This is known as "witch's milk" and is pretty normal. Prolactin, one of the hormones responsible, can arise during times of stress or malnutrition, as an evolutionary mechanism to make sure the young survive. In times that combine the two, saw a Japanese POW camp, males have lactated in order to survive. Supposedly, the great Amazonian women used to keep the men in cages, where they had to provide milk for the young. The milk was elicited by constant manual manipulation.*
The only other thing I can think of has to do with iron absorption. Somewhere along the way of life, you may have heard about eating vitamin C pills with your steak or taking iron pills and drinking orange juice to help absorption of iron. This is actually a common misconception and can make it harder to absorb iron. In some people, <10%, size="1">*this tidbit is from a tutor and therefore not necessarily true