So it's been a while, let's see what's happened. The semester wound down with a crazy term known as SWOT-VAC (study without teaching vacation) where all we do is study or feel guilty about not studying. I had several sessions over the week and a half where I was in a group til 11 or midnight, after starting in the morning. But I found a good group of people to study with and it made it much more tolerable (doing practice exams together, dinners, drinking wine and winding down towards the end).
A day before the exam, I went over to a friend's place to use his clippers to get my longish hair shorn. I was doing it myself and trimmed the front half first and jokingly showed them, "hey guys, check it out: the Jewish mullet!". They then offered me 20, then 30, then 40 dollars to keep it for the exam, the after parties, and the next day to show my mom. I obviously accepted. They then did a professional job making the front as short as possible, while keeping the back long. It was ridiculous, for sure.
The morning of the exam, I woke up at 5:30am and with a friend biked up Mt. Coottha, the local "mountain" near the heart of Brisbane. It's only about a 30 minute ride to the top from my home, so it's not that far. We wanted to get to the top for sunrise as a way of pumping ourselves up and working up an appetite so we could eat a good breakfast and not feel groggy for our 8am 3-hour exam. The sunrise was beautiful, especially as it was really really foggy and all you could see was a couple sky scrapers and the rest of the city looked like a cloud city. Quite beautiful. The ride down was also excellent (I reached 68kmph (42mph), my highest speed ever I think) and I was pumped for the exam.The exam itself was quite ridiculous, as they usually are here. I could have spent the whole swot-vac at the beach and probably performed the same on the test. Some of the questions were basic enough that I needn't have done anything (name 2 reasons why melanoma screening is good, what are the components of the Glasgow coma score) and the other ones were so random that if I had studied 10x more than I had, I wouldn't have gotten them (how much glucose does a neonate need per hour to maintain base metabolism, what are 3 specific side effects of isoniazid (a drug for tuberculosis even though we didn't cover TB this year), if a 2 week old baby vomits 60cm, what condition does he have? (luckily I guessed pyloric stenosis)). Anyway, it was over and that was definitely the best part of it.
The craziness began soon after we handed in the exam. I, as per normal post-exam protocol, brought a strong gin'n'tonic in a bottle for immediately afterwards. We then moved on to the Uni bar. There for a bit, then sat outside in the sun with a carton, playing frisbee and hanging out. We then had a bit of a bike posse and went to the other side of the city to a lawn-bowling place right on the river where we drank and chilled, it being league session and us not being allowed to play. Afterwards to the city for drinks and games at a place called CyberCity 2002 (so futuristic!). They had the largest pool table I've ever seen. We brought another carton into there and I don't think paid a corkage charge. Oh well. Afterwards we went to a Chinese restaurant and had a late dinner. I then rode home with a friend (it had to have been illegal) and got home at 11:30. It was a huge day. I would have had about 20-25 drinks over the day and rode over 40km.
I had to wake up the next morning at 7 and go wait for my mom to get off the shuttle. This was easier said than done. After standing on the street (still with my ridiculous haircut, remember) for about an hour and a half, I figured something was off. Checked the internet and her flight was delayed - yay. She finally arrived a bit later, aghast with my hair but still happy to see me. She liked Brisbane a lot, I must say.
The next day, we flew up to Cairns - a city in northern Queensland that sucks but is a good gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and rainforests and other shit. We hired a car and drove north and entered the Daintree Rainforest. It was a beautiful place and quite unique: it's dense and lush forest that goes all the way up to the beach, where you have sand and then ocean and then great barrier reef. Lovely.
We stayed in a cute little place that was built within the forest. Very basic but very pretty and a good experience. 
We spent a couple days there hiking around and swimming etc. There is lots of wildlife there, ostensibly, but we didn't see much. We heard a lot of crazy noises at night, though. The place is famous for cassowaries, an emu-like bird that is really aggressive. We didn't see any, but that's fine because what we did see was the Cassowary plum. It's a fruit that somehow only the cassowary can eat without dying. It's completely blue and looks totally like some plastic man-made thing. I really wanted to try it but I was warned heaviy against it. 
Eventually headed back to Brisbane.
Now I'm back here and back in school. "Already?" you justifiably query? Yes. We have 1 week of winter vacation. At least we're starting our psychiatry block, which has seemed pretty cruisy so far. Just learning about drug and alcohol addiction, no big deal.Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Well let's see... it's been a while since I've done this and I pretty much know everything by now. No, not true. Let's see...
Withdrawal symptoms of alcohol and other drugs produce a lot of side effects, some very serious. In fact, alcohol is the only drug that withdrawal of which can actually cause death! Pretty crazy. Some of the side effects of of withdrawal include shivering and goosebumps, leading to the phrase, "cold turkey", at least according to our lecturer.
Medical Word of the Post:
veisalgia - the pain associated the day after drinking alcohol heavily, aka hangover.
0 comments:
Post a Comment